The Crock of Gold (18 page)

"One day this thought came to me—'It is time that I settled down.' I don't know where that idea came from; one hears it often enough and it always seems to apply to some one else, but I
don't know what brought it to roost with me. I was foolish, too, I bought ties and differently shaped collars, and took to creasing my trousers by folding them under the bed and lying on them all
night—It never struck me that I was more than three times her age. I brought home sweets for her and she was delighted. She said she adored sweets and she used to insist on my eating some of
them with her; she liked to compare notes as to how they tasted while eating them. I used to get a toothache from them, but I bore with it although at that time I hated toothache almost as much as
I hated sweets. Then I asked her to come out with me for a walk. She was willing enough and it was a novel experience for me. Indeed, it was rather exciting. We went out together often after that,
and sometimes we'd meet people I knew, young men from my office or from other offices. I used to be shy when some of these people winked at me as they saluted. It was pleasant, too, telling the
girl who they were, their business and their salaries: for there was little I didn't know. I used to tell her of my own position in the office and what the chief said to me through the day.
Sometimes we talked of the things that had appeared in the evening papers. A murder perhaps, some phase of a divorce case, the speech a political person had made, or the price of stock. She was
interested in anything so long as it was talk. And her own share in the conversation was good to hear. Every lady that passed us had a hat that stirred her to the top of rapture or the other
pinnacle of disgust. She told me what ladies were frights and what were ducks. Under her scampering tongue I began to learn something of humanity, even though she saw most people as delightfully
funny clowns or superb, majestical princes, but I noticed that she never said a bad word of a man, although many of the men she looked after were ordinary enough. Until I went walking with her I
never knew what a shop window was. A jeweller's window especially: there were curious things in it. She told me how a tiara should be worn, and a pendant, and she explained the kind of studs I
should wear myself; they were made of gold and had red stones in them; she showed me the ropes of pearl or diamonds that she thought would look pretty on herself: and one day she said that she
liked me very much. I was pleased and excited that day, but I was a business man and I said very little in reply. I never liked a pig in a poke.

"She used to go out two nights in the week, Monday and Thursday, dressed in her best clothes. I didn't know where she went, and I didn't ask I—thought she visited an acquaintance, a girl
friend or some such. The time went by and I made up my mind to ask her to marry me. I had watched her long enough and she was always kind and bright. I liked the way she smiled and I liked her
obedient, mannerly bearing. There was something else I liked, which I did not recognise then, something surrounding all her movements, a graciousness, a spaciousness, I did not analyse it; but I
know now that it was her youth. I remember that when we were out together she walked slowly, but in the house she would leap up and down the stairs—she moved furiously, but I didn't.

"One evening she dressed to go out as usual, and she called at my door to know had I everything I wanted. I said I had something to tell her when she came home, something important. She promised
to come in early to hear it, and I laughed at her and she laughed back and went sliding down the bannisters. I don't think I have had any reason to laugh since that night. A letter came for me
after she had gone, and I knew by the shape and the handwriting that it was from the office, it puzzled me to think why I should be written to. I didn't like opening it somehow. . . . It was my
dismissal on account of advancing age, and it hoped for my future welfare politely enough. It was signed by the Senior. I didn't grip it at first, and then I thought it was a hoax. For a long time
I sat in my room with an empty mind. I was watching my mind, there were immense distances in it that drowsed and buzzed; large, soft movements seemed to be made in my mind, and although I was
looking at the letter in my hand I was really trying to focus those great, swinging spaces in my brain and my ears were listening for a movement of some kind. I can see back to that time plainly. I
went walking up and down the room. There was a dull, subterranean anger in me. I remember muttering once or twice, 'Shameful!' and again I said, 'lous!' At the idea of age I looked face in the
glass, but I was looking at my mind and it seemed to go grey, there was a heaviness there also. I seemed to be peering from beneath a weight at something strange. I had a feeling that I had let go
a grip which I had held tightly for a long time, and I had a feeling that the letting go was a grave disaster . . . that strange face in the glass! how wrinkled it was! there were only a few hairs
on the head and they were grey ones. There was a constant twitching of the lips and the eyes were deep-set, little and dull. I left the glass and sat down by the window looking out. I saw nothing
in the street: I just looked into a blackness. My mind was as blank as the night and as soundless. There was a swirl outside the window, rain tossed by the wind; without noticing, I saw it, and my
brain swung with the rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind to think, but now and again a word swooped from immense
distances through my brain, swinging like a comet across a sky and jarring terribly when it struck, 'Sacked' was one word, 'Old' was another word.

"I don't know how long I sat watching the flight of these dreadful words and listening to their clanking impact, but a movement in the street aroused me. Two people, the girl and a young,
slender man, were coming slowly up to the house. The rain was falling heavily, but they did not seem to mind it. There was a big puddle of water close to the kerb, and the girl, stepping daintily
as a cat, went round this, but the young man stood for a moment beyond it. He raised both arms, clenched his fists, swung them, and jumped over the puddle. Then he and the girl stood looking at the
water apparently measuring the jump. I could see them plainly by a street lamp. They were bidding each other good-bye. The girl put her hand to his neck and settled the collar of his coat, and
while her hand rested on him the young man suddenly and violently flung his arms about her and hugged her; then they kissed and moved apart. The man walked to the rain puddle and stood there with
his face turned back laughing at her, and then he jumped straight into the middle of the puddle and began to dance up and down in it, the muddy water splashing up to his knees. She ran over to him
crying 'Stop, silly!' When she came into the house, I bolted my door and I gave no answer to her knock.

"In a few months, the money I had saved was spent. I couldn't get any work, I was too old; they put it that they wanted a younger man. I couldn't pay my rent. I went out into the world again,
like a baby, an old baby in a new world. I stole food, food, food anywhere and everywhere. At first I was always caught. Often I was sent to gaol; sometimes I was let go; sometimes I was kicked;
but I learned to live like a wolf at last. I am not often caught now when I steal food. But there is something happening every day, whether it is going to gaol or planning how to steal a hen or a
loaf of bread. I find that it is a good life, much better than the one I lived for nearly sixty years, and I have time to think over every sort of thing. . . ."

When the morning came the Philosopher was taken on a car to the big City in order that he might be put on his trial and hanged. It was the custom.

BOOK VI

THE THIN WOMAN'S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH

BOOK VI

CHAPTER XVII

The ability of the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath for anger was unbounded. She was not one of those limited creatures who are swept clean by a gust of wrath and left placid and smiling after its
passing. She could store her anger in those caverns of eternity which open into every soul, and which are filled with rage and violence until the time comes when they may be stored with wisdom and
love; for, in the genesis of life, love is at the beginning and the end of things. First, like a laughing child, love came to labour minutely in the rocks and sands of the heart, opening the first
of those roads which lead inwards forever, and then, the labour of his day being done, love fled away and was forgotten. Following came the fierce winds of hate to work like giants and gnomes among
the prodigious debris, quarrying the rocks and levelling the roads which soar inwards; but when that work is completed love will come radiantly again to live forever in the human heart, which is
Eternity.

Before the Thin Woman could undertake the redemption of her husbandry wrath, it was necessary that she should be purified by the performance of that sacrifice which is called the Forgiveness of
Enemies, and this she did by embracing the Leprecauns of the Gort and in the presence of the sun and the wind remitting their crime against her husband. Thus she became free to devote her malice
against the State of Punishment, while forgiving the individuals who had but acted in obedience to the pressure of their infernal environment, which pressure is Sin.

This done she set about baking three cakes against her journey to Angus Óg.

While she was baking the cakes, the children, Seumas and Brigid Beg, slipped away into the wood to speak to each other and to wonder over this extraordinary occurrence.

At first their movements were very careful, for they could not be quite sure that the policemen had really gone away, or whether they were hiding in dark places waiting to pounce on them and
carry them away to captivity. The word "murder" was almost unknown to them, and its strangeness was rendered still more strange by reason of the nearness of their father to the term. It was a
terrible word and its terror was magnified by their father's unthinkable implication. What had he done? Almost all his actions and habits were so familiar to them as to be commonplace, and yet,
there was a dark something to which he was a party and which dashed before them as terrible and ungraspable as a lightning-flash. They understood that it had something to do with that other father
and mother whose bodies had been snatched from beneath the hearthstone, but they knew the Philosopher had done nothing in that instance, and, so, they saw murder as a terrible, occult affair which
was quite beyond their mental horizons.

No one jumped out on them from behind the trees, so in a little time their confidence returned and they walked less carefully. When they reached the edge of the pine wood the brilliant sunshine
invited them to go further, and after a little hesitation they did so. The good spaces and the sweet air dissipated their melancholy thoughts, and very soon they were racing each other to this
point and to that. Their wayward flights had carried them in the direction of Meehawl MacMurrachu's cottage, and here, breathlessly, they threw themselves under a small tree to rest. It was a thorn
bush, and as they sat beneath it, the cessation of movement gave them opportunity to again consider the terrible position of their father. With children thought can not be separated from action for
very long. They think as much with their hands as with their heads. They have to do the thing they speak of in order to visualise the idea, and, consequently, Seumas Beg was soon reconstructing the
earlier visit of the policemen to their house in grand pantomime. The ground beneath the thorn bush became the hearthstone of their cottage; he and Brigid became four policemen, and in a moment he
was digging furiously with a broad piece of wood to find the two hidden bodies. He had digged for only a few minutes when the piece of wood struck against something hard. A very little time
sufficed to throw the soil off this, and their delight was great when they unearthed a beautiful little earthen crock filled to the brim with shining, yellow dust. When they lifted this they were
astonished at its great weight. They played for a long time with it, letting the heavy, yellow shower slip through their fingers and watching it glisten in the sunshine. After they tired of this
they decided to bring the crock home, but by the time they reached the Gort na Cloca Mora they were so tired that they could not carry it any farther and they decided to leave it with their friends
the Leprecauns. Seumas Beg gave the taps on the tree trunk which they had learned, and in a moment the Leprecaun whom they knew came up.

"We have brought this, sir," said Seumas. But he got no further, for the instant the Leprecaun saw the crock he threw his arms around it and wept in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed up
to see what had happened to him, and they added their laughter and tears to his, to which chorus the children subjoined their sympathetic clamour, so that a noise of great complexity rung through
all the Gort.

But the Leprecauns' surrender to this happy passion was short. Hard on their gladness came remembrance and consternation; and then repentance, that dismal virtue, wailed in their ears and their
hearts. How could they thank the children whose father and protector they had delivered to the unilluminated justice of humanity? That justice which demands not atonement but punishment; which is
learned in the Book of Enmity but not in the Book of Friendship; which calls hatred Nature and Love a conspiracy; whose law is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility and chagrin. The blind fiend
who would impose his own blindness. That unfruitful loin which curses fertility. That stony heart which would petrify the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled and death would
shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They could do no more, so they fed the children lovingly and carried them
home.

The Thin Woman had baked three cakes. One of these she gave to each of the children and one she kept herself, whereupon they set out upon their journey to Angus Óg.