James Stephens

“ They had eaten the bread and the turnip, and were waiting for the potatoes to be cooked, and as they waited an odd phrase, an exclamation, a sigh would pass from one to the other; and then, suddenly, the dark curtain of night moved noiselessly, and the three angels stepped nobly in the firelight.
For an instant neither Mac Cann nor his daughter made a movement; they did not make a sound. Here was terror, and astonishment the sister of terror: they gaped: their whole being was in their eyes as they stared. ”

“ Sure, listen to me, Padraig; I never did like any one in the world but yourself; there wasn't a man of them all was more to me than a blast of wind; you were the one I liked always. Listen to me now, Padraig. Don't I be wanting you day and night, and saying prayers to you in the darkness and crying out in the dawn; my heart is sore for you, so it is: there's a twist in us, O my dear. Don't you be minding the men ”

“ Perhaps that shyness of speech is responsible for more than is apparent to either of us in a world eager for speech and gesture, but I say the word now in all sincerity, with a gravity, perhaps, which you find repulsive. Be at least as honest with me, no matter how cruel you are. I cannot live in the half-knowledge which is jealousy. It tears my heart. It makes me unfit for thought, for life, for sleep, even for death. I must know, or I am a madman and no man any longer, a wild beast that will bite itself in despair of hurting its enemy. ”

“ Which of these two were the more terrible she did not know, but there was no difficulty as to which she must do first, the simple orderliness of logic clamoured that she must think before she could do anything, and, so, her brain set to the painful weaving of webs too flimsy at first for any usage; but on this day she discovered where her head lay and how to use it without any assistance. She had memory to work with also, the recollection of her father's activities, and memory is knowledge; a well-packed head and energy—that is the baggage for life, it is the baggage for eternity. ”

“ They were no longer together although they were lying but a few inches apart; there [pg 139] was only the darkness that had no inches to it; the darkness that has no beginning and no end; that appears and disappears, calling hush as it comes and goes, and holding peace and terror in either invisible hand; there was no silver moon in the sky and no sparkle of white stars; there was only darkness and silence and the steady hushing of the rain. ”

“ It was not on earth, nor in any planet, that the beginning of love came to these two, it was in the hell that they had fashioned for themselves in terror and lust and cruelty. For, as they sat among their demons, a seed germinated in the soul of one, the seed of knowledge which is the parent of love and the parent of every terrible and beautiful thing in the worlds and the heavens. ”

“ Is there actually a wolf in our neighbour? We see that which we are, and our eyes project [pg 62] on every side an image of ourselves; if we look with fear that which we behold is frightful; if we look with love then the colours of heaven are repeated to us from the ditch and the dungeon. We invent eternally upon one another; we scatter our sins broadcast and call them our neighbours; let us scatter our virtues abroad and build us a city to live in.
For Mac Cann and his daughter there was no longer any strangeness in their companions. ”

“ She dwelt on him broodingly as a miser burns on his gold or a mother hovers hungrily upon her infant, but he had never given her any [pg 231] heed. Now he was looking at her, and across the brazier their eyes communed deeply.
There was birth already between them—sex was born, and something else was shaping feebly to existence. Love, that protection and cherishing, that total of life, the shy prince scarcely to be known among the teeming populations of the world, raised languidly from enchanted sleep a feeble hand. ”

“ As they went they saw a man sitting on a raised bank. His arms were folded; he had a straw in his mouth; there was a broad grin on his red face; a battered hat was thrust far back on his head, and from beneath this a brush of stiff hair poked in any direction like an ill-tied bundle of black wire.
Mac Cann stared at that red joviality.
"There's a man," said he to Caeltia, "that hasn't got a care in the world."
"It must be very bad for him," commented Caeltia.
"Holloa, mister," cried Patsy heartily, "how's everything?"
"Everything's fine," beamed the man, "how's yourself?" ”

“ The woman lifted her ash-plant threateningly and crouched towards him, but the look on his face was such that she let her hand fall again.
"You're full of fun," said Patsy, "and you always were, but we're going to be the great friends from now on, yourself and myself and the man with the stick; we'll be going by short cuts everywhere in the world, and having a gay time."
"We're not going with you, Padraig," said the woman, "and whatever road you are taking this day the man and myself will be going another road." ”

“ But the sudden change of atmosphere wrought like a foreign chemical in their blood, the sound of the falling rain dulled their spirits, the must of that sleeping house went to their brains like an opiate, and the [pg 103] silence of the place folded them about, compelling them to a similar quietude.
We are imitative beings; we respond to the tone and colour of our environment almost against ourselves, and still have our links with the chameleon and the moth; the sunset sheds its radiant peace upon us and we are content; the silent mountain-top lays a finger on our lips and we talk in whispers ”

“ They adorn themselves, and too often adornment is the chief manifestation of boredom. They are world-weary, sex-weary, [pg 76] and they do not know what they want; but they want power, so that they may rule evolution once more as long ago they ruled it; their blood remembers an ancient greatness; they crave to be the queens again, to hold the sceptre of life in their cruel hands, to break up the mould which has grown too rigid for freedom, to form anew the chaos which is a womb, and which they conceive is their womb, and to create therein beauty and freedom and power. ”

“ Laughter is purely an intellectual quality, and in my planet I have no intellectual equals: my jokes can only be enjoyed by myself, and it is of the essence of humour that one share it, or it turns to ill-health and cynicism and mental sourness. My humour cannot be shared with the people of my planet, for they are all half a round beneath me—they can never see the joke, they only see consequences, and these blind them to the rich drollery of any affair, and render me discontented and angry. ”

“ He did not know the entire of any song but he knew verses of many, and he was able to relate the tunes of these so harmoniously, with such gradual slipping of theme into theme, that twenty minutes of his varied lilting could appear like one consecutive piece of music.
"That lad has a great ear," said Patsy. "He could make his fortune at the music."
"He is a musician," Caeltia replied. "That is his business when we are in our own place, and, as you can see, it is his pleasure also." ”

“ For Mac Cann there was no upward and no downward movements, he had plumbed to the very rocks of life, but his horizontal movements were bounded only by the oceans around his country, and in this gigantic underworld he moved with almost absolute freedom, and a knowledge which might properly be termed scientific.
In despite of his apparent outlawry he was singularly secure; ambition waved no littlest lamp at him; the one ill which could overtake him was death, which catches on every man ”

“ But Mary was not there. The same instant those tall forms strode from the darkness in front Mary had slipped, swift and noiseless as the shadow of a cat, into the darkness behind her.
"Mary," said her father again, "these are decent people, I'm thinking. Let you [pg 16] come from wherever you are, for I'm sure they wouldn't hurt yourself or myself."
As swiftly as she had disappeared she reappeared.
"I was looking if the ass was all right," said she sullenly.
She sat again by the brazier, and began to turn the potatoes with a stick. ”

“ That is why robbery is infantile and of no importance."
"It fills the stomach," replied Patsy cunningly.
"The stomach has to be filled," said Caeltia. "Its filling is a necessity superior to any proprietarial right or disciplinary ethic, and its problem is difficult only for children; it is filled by the air and the wind, the rain and the clay, and the tiny lives that move in the clay. There is but one property worth stealing; it is never missed by its owners, although every person who has that property offers it to all men from his gentle hands." ”

“ So for a few moments they sat wrestling with the dull ghosts of that broken house, the mournful phantasms that were not dead long enough to be happy, for death is sorrowful at first and for a long time, but afterwards the dead are contented and learn to shape themselves anew. ”

“ But, and it is humanity's guard against a solitary development, while women worship a beautiful woman the beauty does not care for them; she accepts their homage and flies them as one flies from the deadliest boredom; she [pg 74] is the widest swing of their pendulum, and must hurry again from the circumference to the centre with the violent speed of an outcast who sees from afar the smoke of his father's house and the sacred roof-tree. ”

“ Art continued, "he forfeited his evolution and added treble to his karmic burden because he had not got a sense of humour."
"No magician has a sense of humour," remarked Finaun, "he could not be a magician if he had—Humour is the health of the mind."
"That," Art broke in, "is one of the things he said to me. So you see he had discovered something. He was very near to being a wise man. He was certainly a courageous man, or, perhaps, foolhardy; but he was as serious as a fog, and he could not bring himself to believe it."
"Tell us the story," said Caeltia. ”

“ EILEEN NI COOLEY
[pg 87]
CHAPTER XIII Early in the morning the sun had been shining gloriously, and there was a thump of a wind blowing across the road that kept everything gay; the trees were in full leaf and every bough went jigging to its neighbour, but on the sky the clouds raced so fast that they were continually catching each other up and getting so mixed that they could not disentangle themselves again, and from their excessive gaiety black misery spread and the sun took a gloomy cast.
Mac Cann screwed an eye upwards like a bird and rubbed at his chin. ”

“ The man by her side was tall also and as thin as a pole; he was ramshackle and slovenly; there was not much pith in his body, for he was weak at the knees and his big feet splayed outwards at a curious angle; but his face was extraordinary intelligent, and when he was younger must have been beautiful. Drink and ill-health had [pg 93] dragged and carved his flesh, and nothing of comeliness remained to him but his eyes, which were timid and tender as those of a fawn, and his hands which had never done anything but fumble with women. He also leaned quietly on a cudgel and watched Patsy Mac Cann. ”

“ They had reached an end, and it was a precipice down which they must spin giddily to the murk, or else shape wings for themselves and soar from that completion, for completion is a consciousness, and once again they were powerfully aware of themselves. They were vice-conscious, and virtue did not abide in their minds than as a dream which was an illusion and a lie. ”

“ To woman beauty is energy, and they would gladly take from their own sex that which they have so long accepted from man. They are economical; the ants and the bees are not more amazingly parsimonious than they, and, like the ants and the bees, their subsequent extravagance is a thing to marvel at. Food and children they will hoard, and when these are safeguarded their attitude to the life about them is ruinous. They will adorn themselves at the expense of all creation, and in a few years they crush from teeming life a species which nature has toiled through laborious ages to perfect. ”

“ Now, it is very easy to prove that one is a magician, for one has only to do things and then people are astonished; they are filled with fear and wonder; they fall down and worship and call one god and master. But it is not so easy to be a humourist, because in that case it is necessary to make people laugh. If a man is to be a magician it is necessary, if his art is to be appreciated, that the people around him be fools. If a person desires to be a humourist it is necessary that the people around him shall [pg 217] be at least as wise as he is, otherwise his humour will not be comprehended. ”