Chapter I: Walked in Arden (5)

Horror flooded the man, and conquering his repugnance he plucked the mouse up quickly by the neck. Immediately the little thing fastened its teeth in his finger; the touch was no more than the slight prick of a pin. The man’s impulse then exhausted itself. What should he do with it? He put his hand behind him, he dared not look, but there was nothing to be done except kill it at once, quickly, quickly. Oh, how should he do it? He bent towards the fire as if to drop the mouse into its quenching glow; but he paused and shuddered, he would hear its cries, he would have to listen. Should he crush it with finger and thumb? A glance towards the window decided him. He opened the sash with one hand and flung the wounded mouse far into the dark street. Closing the window with a crash he sank into a chair, limp with pity too deep for tears.

So he sat for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. Anxiety and shame filled him with heat. He opened the window again, and the freezing air poured in and cooled him. Seizing his lantern he ran down the echoing stairs, into the dark empty street, searching long and vainly for the little philosopher until he had to desist and return to his room, shivering, frozen to his very bones.

When he had recovered some warmth he took the trap from its shelf. The two feet dropped into his hand; he cast them into the fire. Then he once more set the trap and put it back carefully into the cupboard.

* * * * *

FELIX TINCLER

* * * * *

FELIX TINCLER

The child was to have a birthday tomorrow and was therefore not uneasy about being late home from school this afternoon. He had lost his pencil case; a hollow long round thing it was, like a rolling-pin, only it had green and yellow rings painted upon it. He kept his marbles in it and so he was often in a trouble about his pencils. He had not tried very much to find the pencil case because the boys “deludered” him--that’s what his father always said. He had asked Heber Gleed if he had seen it--he had strange suspicions of that boy--but Heber Gleed had sworn so earnestly that the greengrocer opposite the school had picked it up, he had even “saw him do it,” that Felix Tincler went into Mr. Gobbit’s shop, and when the greengrocer lady appeared in answer to the ring of the door bell he enquired politely for his pencil case. She was tall and terrible with a squint and, what was worse, a large velvety mole with hairs sprouting from it. She immediately and with inexplicable fury desired him to flee from her greengrocer shop, with a threat of alternative castigation in which a flatiron and a red-hot pick-axe were to figure with unusual and unpleasant prominence. Well he had run out of Mr. Gobbit’s shop, and there was Heber Gleed standing in the road giggling derisively at him. Felix walked on alone, looking in the gutters and areas for his pencil case, until he encountered another friendly boy who took him to dig in a garden where they grew castor-oil plants. When he went home it was late; as he ran along under the high wall of the orphanage that occupied one end of his street its harsh peevish bell clanged out six notes. He scampered past the great gateway under the dismal arch that always filled him with uneasiness, he never passed it without feeling the sad trouble that a prison might give. He stepped into his own pleasant home, a little mute, and a little dirty in appearance; but at six years of age in a home so comfortable and kind the eve of the day that is to turn you into seven is an occasion great enough to yield an amnesty for peccadilloes. His father was already in from work, he could hear him singing. He gave his mother the sprigs he had picked from the castor-oil plant and told her about the pencil case. The meal was laid upon the table, and while mother was gone into the kitchen to boil the water for tea he sat down and tried to smooth out the stiff creases in the white table cloth. His father was singing gaily in the scullery as he washed and shaved:

_High cockalorum,
Charlie ate the spinach...._

He ceased for a moment to give the razor a vigorous stropping and then continued:

_High cockalorum,
High cockalee...._

Felix knew that was not the conclusion of the song. He listened, but for some moments all that followed was the loud crepitation of a razor searching a stubborn beard and the sigh of the kettle. Then a new vigour seized the singer:

_But mother brought the pandy down
And bate the gree...._

Again that rasping of chin briefly intervened, but the conclusion of the cropping was soon denoted by the strong rallentando of the singer:

_...dy image,
High cock-alorum,
High cock-a-lee._

Mrs. Tincler brought in the teapot and her husband followed her with his chin tightly shaven but blue, crying with mock horror:

“Faylix, my son! that is seven years old tomorrow! look at him, Mary, the face of him and the hands of him! I didn’t know there was a bog in this parish; is it creeping in a bog you have been?”

The boy did not blench at his father’s spurious austerity, he knew he was the soul of kindness and fun.

“Go wash yourself at the sink,” interposed his mother. Kevin Tincler, taking his son by the hand, continued with mocking admonishment: “All the fine copybooks of the world that you’ve filled up with that blather about cleanliness and holiness, the up strokes very thin and the down strokes very thick! What was it, Mary, he has let it all out of his mind?”

“Go and wash, Felix, and come quickly and have your tea,” laughed Mary Tincler.

“Ah, but what was it--in that grand book of yours?”

The boy stood, in his short buff tunic, regarding his father with shy amusement. The small round clear-skinned face was lovely with its blushes of faint rose; his eyes were big and blue, and his head was covered with thick curling locks of rich brown hair.

“Cleanliness comes next to godliness,” he replied.

“Does it so, indeed?” exclaimed his father. “Then you’re putting your godliness in a pretty low category!”

“What nonsense,” said Mary Tincler as the boy left them.

The Irishman and his dark-eyed Saxon wife sat down at the table waiting for their son.

“There’s a bit of a randy in the Town Gardens tonight, Mary--dancing on the green, fireworks! When the boy is put to bed we’ll walk that way.”

Mary expressed her pleasure but then declared she could not leave the boy alone in his bed.

“He’ll not hurt, Mary, he has no fear in him. Give him the birthday gift before we go. Whisht, he’s coming!”

The child, now clean and handsome, came to his chair and looked up at his father sitting opposite to him.

“Holy Mother!” exclaimed the admiring parent, “it’s the neck of a swan he has. Faylix Tincler, may ye live to be the father of a bishop!”

After tea his father took him up on the down for an hour. As they left their doorway a group of the tidy but wretched orphans was marching back into their seminary, little girls moving in double columns behind a stiff-faced woman. They were all dressed alike in garments of charity exact as pilchards. Grey capes, worsted stockings, straw hats with blue bands round them, and hard boots. The boys were coming in from a different direction, but all of them, even the minutest, were clad in corduroy trousers and short jackets high throated like a gaoler’s. This identity of garment was contrary to the will of God for he had certainly made their pinched bodies diverse enough. Some were short, some tall, dark, fair, some ugly, others handsome. The sight of them made Felix unhappy, he shrank into himself, until he and his father had slipped through a gap in a hedge and were going up the hill that stretched smoothly and easily almost from their very door. The top of the down here was quiet and lovely, but a great flank of it two miles away was scattered over with tiny white figures playing very deliberately at cricket. Pleasant it was up there in the calm evening, and still bright, but the intervening valley was full of grey ungracious houses, allotments, railway arches, churches, graveyards, and schools. Worst of all was the dull forbidding aspect of the Orphanage down beyond the roof of their own house.

They played with a ball and had some wrestling matches until the declining day began to grow dim even on the hill and the fat jumbo clouds over the town were turning pink. If those elephants fell on him--what would they do? Why, they’d mix him up like ice-cream! So said his father.

“Do things ever fall out of the sky?”

“Rain,” said Mr. Tincler.

“Yes, I know.”

“Stars--maybe.”

“Where do they go?”

“O they drop on the hills but ye can never find ’em.”

“Don’t Heaven ever?”

“What, drop down! no,” said Mr. Tincler, “it don’t. I have not heard of it doing that, but maybe it all just stoops down sometimes, Faylix, until it’s no higher than the crown of your hat. Let us be going home now and ye’ll see something this night.”

“What is it?”

“Wait, Faylix, wait!”

As they crossed from the hill Mary drawing down the blinds signalled to them from the window.

“Come along, Felix,” she cried, and the child ran into the darkened room. Upon the table was set a little church of purest whiteness. Kevin had bought it from an Italian hawker. It had a wonderful tall steeple and a cord that came through a hole and pulled a bell inside. And that was not all; the church was filled with light that was shining through a number of tiny arched windows, blue, purple, green, violet, the wonderful windows were everywhere. Felix was silent with wonder; how could you get a light in a church that hadn’t got a door! then Mary lifted the hollow building from the table; it had no floor, and there was a night-light glowing in one of her patty-pans filled with water. The church was taken up to bed with him in the small chamber next his parents’ room and set upon a bureau. Kevin and Mary then went off to the “bit of devilment” in the town gardens. Felix kept skipping from his bed, first to gaze at the church, and then to lean out of the window in his nightshirt, looking for the lamplighter who would come to the street lamp outside. The house was the very last, and the lamp was the very last lamp, on one of the roads that led from the town and thence went poking out into the steady furze-covered downs. And as the lamp was the very last to be lit darkness was always half-fallen by the time the old man arrived at his journey’s end. He carried a pole with a brass tube at one end. There were holes in the brass tube showing gleams of light. The pole rested upon his shoulders as he trudged along humming huskily.

“Here he is,” cried Felix, leaning from the window and waving a white arm. The dull road, empty of traffic and dim as his mother’s pantry by day, curved slightly, and away at the other end of the curve a jet of light had sprung suddenly into the gloom like a bright flower bursting its sheath; a black figure moved along towards him under the Orphanage wall. Other lamps blossomed with light and the lamplighter, approaching the Tinclers’ lamp, thrust the end of his pole into the lantern, his head meanwhile craning back like the head of a horse that has been pulled violently backwards. He deftly turned the tap; with a tiny dull explosion that sounded like a doormat being beaten against the wall in the next street the lamp was lit and the face of the old man sprang into vague brilliance, for it was not yet utterly dark. Vague as the light was, the neighbouring hills at once faded out of recognition and became black bulks of oblivion.

“Oi.... Oi....” cried the child, clapping his hands. The old man’s features relaxed, he grunted in relief, the pole slid down in his palm. As the end of it struck the pavement a sharp knock he drew an old pipe from his pocket and lit it quite easily although one of his hands was deficient of a thumb and some fingers. He was about to travel back into the sparkling town when Felix called to him:

“Soloman! Soloman!”

“Goo an to yer bed, my little billycock, or you’ll ketch a fever.”

“No, but what’s this?” Felix was pointing to the ground below him. The old man peered over the iron railings into the front garden that had just sufficient earth to cherish four deciduous bushes, two plants of marigold, and some indeterminate herbs. In the dimness of their shadows a glowworm beamed clearly.

“That?” exclaimed he. “O s’dripped off the moon, yas, right off, moon’s wastin’ away, you’ll see later on if you’m watch out fer it, s’dripped off the moon, right off.” Chuckling, he blew out the light at the end of his pole, and went away, but turned at intervals to wave his hand towards the sky, crying “Later on, right off!” and cackling genially until he came to a tavern.

The child stared at the glowworm and then surveyed the sky, but the tardy moon was deep behind the hills. He left the open window and climbed into bed again. The house was empty, but he did not mind, father and mother had gone to buy him another birthday gift. He did not mind, the church glowed in its corner on the bureau, the street lamp shined all over the ceiling and a little bit upon the wall where the splendid picture of Wexford Harbour was hanging. It was not gloomy at all although the Orphanage bell once sounded very piercingly. Sometimes people would stroll by, but not often, and he would hear them mumbling to each other. He would rather have a Chinese lantern first, and next to that a little bagpipe, and next to that a cockatoo with a yellow head, and then a Chinese lantern, and then.... He awoke; he thought he heard a heavy bang on the door as if somebody had thrown a big stone. But when he looked out of the window there was nobody to be seen. The little moon drip was still lying in the dirt, the sky was softly black, the stars were vivid, only the lamp dazzled his eyes and he could not see any moon. But as he yawned he saw just over the down a rich globe of light moving very gradually towards him, swaying and falling, falling in the still air. To the child’s dazzled eyes the great globe, dropping towards him as if it would crush the house, was shaped like an elephant, a fat squat jumbo with a green trunk. Then to his relief it fell suddenly from the sky right on to the down where he and father had played. The light was extinguished and black night hid the deflated fire-balloon.

He scrambled back into bed again but how he wished it was morning so that he could go out and capture the old elephant--he knew he would find it! When at last he slept he sank into a world of white churches that waved their steeples like vast trunks, and danced with elephants that had bellies full of fire and hidden bells that clanged impetuously to a courageous pull of each tail. He did not wake again until morning was bright and birds were singing. It was early but it was his birthday. There were no noises in the street yet, and he could not hear his father or mother moving about. He crawled silently from his bed and dressed himself. The coloured windows in the little white fane gleamed still, but it looked a little dull now. He took the cake that mother always left at his bedside and crept down the stairs. There he put on his shoes and, munching the cake, tiptoed to the front door. It was not bolted but it was difficult for him to slip back the latch quietly, and when at last it was done and he stood outside upon the step he was doubly startled to hear a loud rapping on the knocker of a house a few doors away. He sidled quickly but warily to the corner of the street, crushing the cake into his pocket, and then peeped back. It was more terrible than he had anticipated! A tall policeman stood outside that house bawling to a woman with her hair in curl papers who was lifting the sash of an upper window. Felix turned and ran through the gap in the hedge and onwards up the hill. He did not wait; he thought he heard the policeman calling out “Tincler!” and he ran faster and faster, then slower and more slow as the down steepened, until he was able to sink down breathless behind a clump of the furze, out of sight and out of hearing. The policeman did not appear to be following him; he moved on up the hill and through the soft smooth alleys of the furze until he reached the top of the down, searching always for the white elephant which he knew must be hidden close there and nowhere else, although he had no clear idea in his mind of the appearance of his mysterious quarry. Vain search, the elephant was shy or cunning and eluded him. Hungry at last and tired he sat down and leaned against a large ant hill close beside the thick and perfumed furze. Here he ate his cake and then lolled, a little drowsy, looking at the few clouds in the sky and listening to birds. A flock of rooks was moving in straggling flight towards him, a wide flat changing skein, like a curtain of crape that was being pulled and stretched delicately by invisible fingers. One of the rooks flapped just over him; it had a small round hole right through the feathers of one wing--what was that for? Felix was just falling to sleep, it was so soft and comfortable there, when a tiny noise, very tiny but sharp and mysterious, went “Ping!” just by his ear, and something stung him lightly in the neck. He knelt up, a little startled, but he peered steadily under the furze. “Ping!” went something again and stung him in the ball of the eye. It made him blink. He drew back; after staring silently at the furze he said very softly “Come out!” Nothing came; he beckoned with his forefinger and called aloud with friendliness “Come on, come out!” At that moment his nose was almost touching a brown dry sheath of the furze bloom, and right before his eyes the dried flower burst with the faint noise of “Ping!” and he felt the shower of tiny black seeds shooting against his cheek. At once he comprehended the charming mystery of the furze’s dispersal of its seeds, and he submitted himself to the fairylike bombardment with great glee, forgetting even the elephant until in one of the furze alleys he came in sight of a heap of paper that fluttered a little heavily. He went towards it; it was so large that he could not make out its shape or meaning. It was a great white bag made of paper, all crumpled and damp, with an arrangement of wire where the hole was and some burned tow fixed in it. But at last he was able to perceive the green trunk, and it also had pink eyes! He had found it and he was triumphant! There were words in large black letters painted upon it which he could not read, except one word which was CURE. It was an advertisement fire-balloon relating to a specific for catarrh. He rolled the elephant together carefully, and carrying the mass of it clasped in his two arms he ran back along the hill chuckling to himself, “I’m carrying the ole elephant.” Advancing down the hill to his home he was precariously swathed in a drapery of balloon paper. The door stood open; he walked into the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen but there were sharp strange voices speaking in the room above. He thought he must have come into the wrong house but the strange noises frightened him into silence; he stood quite still listening to them. He had dropped the balloon and it unfolded upon the floor, partly revealing the astounding advertisement of

PEASEGOOD’S PODOPHYLLIN

The voices above were unravelling horror upon horror. He knew by some divining instinct that tragedy was happening to him, had indeed already enveloped and crushed him. A mortar had exploded at the fireworks display, killing and wounding people that he knew.

“She had a great hole of a wound in the soft part of her thigh as you could put a cokernut in....”

“God a mighty...!”

“Died in five minutes, poor thing.”

“And the husband ... they couldn’t...?”

“No, couldn’t identify ... they could not identify him ... only by some papers in his pocket.”

“And he’d got a little bagpipe done up in a package ... for their little boy....”

“Never spoke a word....”

“Never a word, poor creature.”

“May Christ be good to ’em.”

“Yes, yes,” they all said softly.

The child walked quietly up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom. Two policemen were there making notes in their pocket books, their helmets lying on the unused bed. There were also three or four friendly women neighbours. As he entered the room the gossip ceased abruptly. One of the women gasped “O Jesus!” and they seemed to huddle together eyeing him as if he had stricken them with terror. With his fingers still upon the handle of the door he looked up at the tallest policeman and said:

“What’s the matter?”

The policeman did not reply immediately; he folded up his notebook, but the woman who had gasped came to him with a yearning cry and wrapped him in her protesting arms with a thousand kisses.

“Ye poor lamb, ye poor little orphan, whatever ’ull become of ye!”

At that moment the bell of the Orphanage burst into a peal of harsh impetuous clangour, and the policemen picked up their helmets from the bed.

* * * * *

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

* * * * *

THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH

Since the earth began its twisting, or since very soon after it began, there have been persons on it who perceived more or less early in life that it was seldom possible to get something in return for quite nothing, and that even if you did the delicate situation then arising was attended often with at least as much personal danger as delight, and generally with much more. Tom Toole knew all about it, so he was not going to sell his own little white soul to the devil, though he was sixty years of age and his soul, he expected, was shrivelled a bit now like a dried fig. He had no faith in Wishing Hats, or Magic Carpets, or Herbs of Longevity, and he had not heard of the Philosopher’s Stone, but he had a belief in an Elixir, somewhere in the world, that would make you young again. He had heard, too, of the Transmutation of Metals; indeed, he had associated himself a great many years ago with a Belfast brassfounder in the production of certain sovereigns. The brassfounder perished under the rigours of his subsequent incarceration in gaol, but Tom Toole had been not at all uncomfortable in the lunatic asylum to which a compassionate retribution had assigned him. It was in the Asylum that he met the man from Kilsheelan who, if you could believe him, really had got a “touch” from the fairies and could turn things he had no wish for into the things he would be wanting. The man from Kilsheelan first discovered his gift, so he told Tom Toole, when he caught a turtle dove one day and changed it into a sheep. Then he turned the sheep into a lather-pot just to make sure, and it was sure. So he thought he would like to go to the land of the Ever Young which is in the western country, but he did not know how he could get there unless he went in a balloon. Sure, he sat down in his cabin and turned the shaving-pot into a fine balloon, but the balloon was so large it burst down his house and he was brought to the asylum. Well that was clear enough to Tom Toole, and after he had got good advice from the man from Kilsheelan it came into his mind one day to slip out of the big gates of the asylum, and, believe me, since then he had walked the roads of Munster singing his ballads and searching for something was difficult to find, and that was his youth. For Tom Toole was growing old, a little old creature he was growing, gay enough and a bit of a philanderer still, but age is certain and puts the black teeth in your mouth and the whiteness of water on your hair.

One time he met a strange little old quick-talking man who came to him; he seemed to just bob up in front of him from the road itself.

“Ah, good day t’ye, and phwat part are ye fram?”

“I’m from beyant,” said Tom Toole, nodding back to the Knockmealdown Mountains where the good monks had lodged him for a night.

“Ah, God deliver ye and indeed I don’t want to know your business at all but ... but ... where are ye going?”

Between his words he kept spitting, in six or seven little words there would be at least one spit. There was yellow dust in the flaps of his ears and neat bushes of hair in the holes. Cranks and wrinkles covered his nose, and the skull of him was bare but there was a good tuft on his chin. Tom Toole looked at him straight and queer for he did not admire the fierce expression of him, and there were smells of brimstone on him like a farmer had been dipping his ewes, and he almost expected to see a couple of horns growing out of his brow.

“It’s not meself does be knowing at all, good little man,” said Tom Toole to him, “and I might go to the fair of Cappoquin, or I might walk on to Dungarvan, in the harbour now, to see will I buy a couple of lobsters for me nice supper.”

And he turned away to go off upon his road but the little old man followed and kept by his side, telling him of a misfortune he had endured; a chaise of his, a little pony chaise, had been almost destroyed, but the ruin was not so great for a kind lady of his acquaintance, a lady of his own denomination, had given him four pounds, one shilling and ninepence. “Ah, not that I’m needing your money, ma’am, says I, but damage is damage, I says, and it’s not right, I says, that I should be at the harm of your coachman.” And there he was spitting and going on like a clock spilling over its machinery when he unexpectedly grasped Tom Toole by the hand, wished him Good day, and Good luck, and that he might meet him again.

Tom Toole walked on for an hour and came to a cross roads, and there was the same old man sitting in a neat little pony chaise smoking his pipe.

“Where are ye going?” says he.

“Dungarvan,” said Tom Toole.

“Jump in then,” said the little old man, and they jogged along the road conversing together; he was sharp as an old goat.

“What is your aspiration?” he said, and Tom Toole told him.

“That’s a good aspiration, indeed. I know what you’re seeking, Tom Toole; let’s get on now and there’ll be tidings in it.”

When Tom Toole and the little old man entered the public at Dungarvan there was a gang of strong young fellows, mechanics and people to drive the traction engines, for there was a circus in it. Getting their fill of porter, they were, and the nice little white loaves; very decent boys, but one of them a Scotchman with a large unrejoicing face. And he had a hooky nose with tussocks of hair in the nostrils and the two tails of hair to his moustache like an old Chinese man. Peter Mullane was telling a tale, and there was a sad bit of a man from Bristol, with a sickness in his breast and a cough that would heave out the side of a mountain. Peter Mullane waited while Tom Toole and his friend sat down and then he proceeded with his tale.

“Away with ye! said the devil to Neal Carlin, and away he was gone to the four corners of the world. And when he came to the first corner he saw a place where the rivers do be rushing, ...”

“... the only darn thing that does rush then in this country,” interrupted the Scotchman with a sneer.

“Shut your ...” began the man from Bristol, but he was taken with the cough, until his cheeks were scarlet and his eyes, fixed angrily upon the Highland man, were strained to teardrops. “Shut your ...” he began it again, but he was rent by a large and vexing spasm that rocked him, while his friends looked at him and wondered would he be long for this world. He recovered quite suddenly and exclaimed “... dam face” to that Highland man. And then Peter Mullane went on:

“I am not given to thinking,” said he, “that the Lord would put a country the like of Ireland in a wee corner of the world and he wanting the nook of it for thistles and the poor savages that devour them. Well, Neal Carlin came to a place where the rivers do be rushing ...” he paused invitingly--“and he saw a little fairy creature with fine tresses of hair sitting under a rowan tree.”

“A rowan?” exclaimed the Highland man.

Peter nodded.

“A Scottish tree!” declared the other.

“O shut your ...” began the little coughing man, but again his conversation was broken, and by the time he had recovered from his spasms the company was mute.

“If,” said Peter Mullane, “you’d wish to observe the rowan in its pride and beauty just clap your eye upon it in the Galtee Mountains. How would it thrive, I ask you, in a place was stiff with granite and sloppy with haggis? And what would ye do, my clever man, what would ye do if ye met a sweet fairy woman...?”

“I’d kiss the Judy,” said the Highland man spitting a great splash.

Peter Mullane gazed at him for a minute or two as if he did not love him very much, but then he continued:

“Neal Carlin was attracted by her, she was a sweet creature. Warm! says she to him with a friendly tone. Begod, ma’am, it is a hot day, he said, and thinks he, she is a likely person to give me my aspiration. And sure enough when he sat down beside her she asked him What is your aspiration, Neal Carlin? and he said, saving your grace, ma’am, it is but to enjoy the world and to be easy in it. That is a good aspiration, she said, and she gave him some secret advice. He went home to his farm, Neal Carlin did, and he followed the advice, and in a month or two he had grown very wealthy and things were easy with him. But still he was not satisfied, he had a greedy mind, and his farm looked a drifty little place that was holding him down from big things. So he was not satisfied though things were easy with him, and one night before he went sleeping he made up his mind ‘It’s too small it is. I’ll go away from it now and a farm twice as big I will have, three times as big, yes, I will have it ten times as big.’ He went sleeping on the wildness of his avarice, and when he rolled off the settle in the morning and stood up to stretch his limbs he hit his head a wallop against the rafter. He cursed it and had a kind of thought that the place had got smaller. As he went from the door he struck his brow against the lintel hard enough to beat down the house. What is come to me, he roared in his pains; and looking into his field there were his five cows and his bullock no bigger than sheep--will ye believe that, then--and his score of ewes no bigger than rabbits, mind it now, and it was not all, for the very jackdaws were no bigger than chafers and the neat little wood was no more account than a grove of raspberry bushes. Away he goes to the surgeon’s to have drops put in his eyes for he feared the blindness was coming on him, but on his return there was his bullock no bigger than an old boot, and his cabin had wasted to the size of a birdcage.”

Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and consumed a deal of porter. And the Highland man asked him “Well, what happened?”

“O he just went up to his cabin and kicked it over the hedge as you might an old can, and then he strolled off to another corner of the world, Neal Carlin did, whistling ‘The Lanty Girl.’”

Tom Toole’s friend spoke to Peter Mullane. “Did ye say it was in the Galtee Mountains that the young fellow met the lady?”

“In the Galtee Mountains,” said Peter.

“To the Galtee Mountains let us be going, Tom Toole,” cried the little old man, “Come on now, there’ll be tidings in it!”

So off they drove; and when they had driven a day and slept a couple of nights they were there, and they came to a place where the rivers do be rushing and there was a rowan tree but no lady in it.

“What will we do now, Tom Toole?” says the old man.

“We’ll not stint it,” says he, and they searched by night and by day looking for a person would give them their youth again. They sold the chaise for some guineas and the pony for a few more, and they were walking among the hills for a thousand days but never a dust of fortune did they discover. Whenever they asked a person to guide them they would be swearing at them or they would jeer.

“Well, may a good saint stretch your silly old skins for ye!” said one.

“Thinking of your graves and travelling to the priest ye should be!” said another.

“The nails of your boots will be rusty and rotted searching for the like of that,” said a third.

“It’s two quarts of black milk from a Kerry cow ye want,” said one, “take a sup of that and you’ll be young again!”

“Of black milk!” said Tom Toole’s friend; “where would we get that?”

The person said he would get a pull of it in the Comeragh Mountains, fifty miles away.

“Tom Toole,” said the little old-man, “it’s what I’ll do. I’ll walk on to the Comeragh Mountains to see what I will see, and do you go on searching here, for to find that young girl would be better than forty guineas’ worth of blather. And when I find the cow I’ll take my fill of a cup and bring you to it.”

So they agreed upon it and the old man went away saying, “I’ll be a score of days, no more. Good day, Tom Toole, good day!” much as an old crow might shout it to a sweep.

When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the world and the day after he went walking to a fair. Along the road the little ass carts were dribbling into town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young girl in a field trying to secure an ass.

“Oi.... Oi...!” the girl was calling out to him and he went in the field and helped her with the ass, which was a devil to capture and it not wanting. She thanked him; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a long fall of hair that the wind was easy with.

“’Tis warm!” she said to Tom Toole. “Begod, ma’am,” says he to her quickly, taking his cue, “it is a hot day.”

“Where are ye going, Tom Toole?” she asked him, and he said, “I am seeking a little contrivance, ma’am, that will let me enjoy the world and live easy in it. That is my aspiration.”

“I’ll give you what you are seeking,” and she gave him a wee bottle with red juices in it.

“Indeed, ma’am, I’m obliged to ye,” and he took her by the hand and wished her Good day and Good luck and that he might meet her again.

When he got the elixir of youth he gave over his searching. He hid the bottle in his breast and went up into the mountains as high as he could go to bide the coming of the little old man. It is a queer thing but Tom Toole had never heard the name of him--it would be some foreign place in the corners of the world like Portugal, that he had come from; no doubt. Up he went; first there was rough pasture for bullocks, then fern and burst furze, and then little but heather, and great rocks strewn about like shells, and sour brown streams coming from the bog. He wandered about for twenty days and the old man did not return, and for forty days he was still alone.

“The divil receive him but I’ll die against his return!” And Tom Toole pulled the wee bottle from his breast. He was often minded to lift the cork and take a sup of the elixir of youth. “But,” says he, “it would be an unfriendly deed. Sure if I got me youth sudden I’d be off to the wonders of the land and leave that old fool roaming till the day of Judgment.” And he would put the bottle away and wait for scores of days until he was sick and sorry with grieving. A thousand days he was on his lonely wanderings, soft days as mellow as cream, and hard days when it is ribs of iron itself you would want to stiffen you against the crack of the blast. His skimpy hair grew down to the lappet of his coat, very ugly he was, but the little stranger sheep of the mountain were not daunted when he moved by, and even the flibeens had the soft call for him. A thousand days was in it and then he said:

“Good evening to me good luck. I’ve had my enough of this. Sure I’ll despise myself for ever more if I wait the tide of another drifting day. It’s tonight I’ll sleep in a bed with a quilt of down over me heart, for I’m going to be young again.”

He crept down the mountain to a neat little town and went in a room in the public to have a cup of porter. A little forlorn old man also came in from the road and sat down beside, and when they looked at each other they each let out a groan. “Glory be!” says he. “Glory be,” cried Tom Toole, “it’s the good little man in the heel of it. Where in hell are ye from?”

“From the mountains.”

“And what fortune is in it, did ye find the farm?”

“Divil a clod.”

“Nor the Kerry cow?”

“Divil a horn.”

“Nor the good milk?”

“Divil a quart, and I that dry I could be drunk with the smell of it. Tom Toole, I have traipsed the high and the deep of this realm and believe you me it is not in it; the long and the wide of this realm ... not in it.” He kept muttering sadly “not in it.”

“Me good little man,” cried Tom Toole, “don’t be havering like an old goat. Here it is! the fortune of the world!”

He took the wee bottle from his breast and shook it before his eyes. “The drops that ’ull give ye your youth as easy as shifting a shirt. Come, now. I’ve waited the long days to share wid ye, for I couldn’t bring myself to desart a comrade was ranging the back of the wild regions for the likes of me. Many’s the time I’ve lifted that cork, and thinks I: He’s gone, and soon I’ll be going, so here goes. Divil a go was in it. I could not do it, not for silver and not for gold and not for all the mad raging mackerel that sleep in the sea.”

The little old stranger took the wee bottle in his two hands. He was but a quavering stick of a man now; half dead he was, and his name it is Martin O’Moore.

“Is it the tale stuff, Tom Toole?”

“From herself I got it,” he said, and he let on to him about that sweet-spoken young girl.

“Did she give you the directions on the head of it?”

“What directions is it?”

“The many drops is a man to drink!”

“No, but a good sup of it will do the little job.”

“A good sup of it, Tom Toole, a good sup of it, ay?” says he unsqueezing the cork. “The elixir of youth, a good sup of it, says you, a good sup of it, a great good good sup of it!”

And sticking it into his mouth he drained the wee bottle of its every red drop. He stood there looking like a man in a fit, holding the empty bottle in his hand until Tom Toole took it from him with reproaches in his poor old eyes. But in a moment it was his very eyes he thought were deceiving him; not an inch of his skin but had the dew of fear on it, for the little old man began to change his appearance quick like the sand running through a glass, or as fast as the country changes down under a flying swan.

“Mother o’ God!” screamed Martin O’Moore, “it’s too fast backward I’m growing, dizzy I am.”

And indeed his bald head suddenly got the fine black hair grown upon it, the whiskers flew away from him and his face was young. He began to wear a strange old suit that suddenly got new, and he had grown down through a handsome pair of trousers and into the little knickerbockers of a boy before you could count a score. And he had a bit of a cold just then, though he was out of it in a twink, and he let a sneeze that burst a button off his breeches, a little tin button, which was all that ever was found of him. Smaller and smaller he fell away, like the dust in an hour glass, till he was no bigger than an acorn and then devil a bit of him was left there at all.

Tom Toole was frightened at the quiet and the emptiness and he made to go away, but he turned in the doorway and stretching out his arms to the empty room he whispered “The greed! the avarice! May hell pour all its buckets on your bad little heart! May....” But just then he caught sight of the cup of porter that Martin O’Moore had forgotten to drink, so he went back to drink his enough and then went out into the great roaring world where he walked from here to there until one day he came right back to his old Asylum. He had been away for twenty years, he was an old man, very old indeed. And there was the man from Kilsheelan digging potatoes just inside the gates of the sunny garden.

“’Tis warm!” said the traveller staring at him through the railings, but the man from Kilsheelan only said “Come in, Tom Toole, is it staying or going ye are?”

* * * * *

THE CHERRY TREE

* * * * *

THE CHERRY TREE

There was uproar somewhere among the backyards of Australia Street. It was so alarming that people at their midday meal sat still and stared at one another. A fortnight before murder had been done in the street, in broad daylight with a chopper; people were nervous. An upper window was thrown open and a startled and startling head exposed.

“It’s that young devil, Johnny Flynn, again! Killing rats!” shouted Mrs. Knatchbole, shaking her fist towards the Flynns’ backyard. Mrs. Knatchbole was ugly; she had a goitred neck and a sharp skinny nose with an orb shining at its end, constant as grief.

“You wait, my boy, till your mother comes home, you just wait!” invited this apparition, but Johnny was gazing sickly at the body of a big rat slaughtered by the dogs of his friend George. The uproar was caused by the quarrelling of the dogs, possibly for honours, but more probably, as is the custom of victors, for loot.

“Bob down!” warned George, but Johnny bobbed up to catch the full anger of those baleful Knatchbole eyes. The urchin put his fingers promptly to his nose.

“Look at that for eight years old!” screamed the lady. “Eight years old ’e is! As true as God’s my maker I’ll....”

The impending vow was stayed and blasted for ever, Mrs. Knatchbole being taken with a fit of sneezing, whereupon the boys uttered some derisive “Haw haws!”

So Mrs. Knatchbole met Mrs. Flynn that night as she came from work, Mrs. Flynn being a widow who toiled daily and dreadfully at a laundry and perforce left her children, except for their school hours, to their own devices. The encounter was an emphatic one and the tired widow promised to admonish her boy.

“But it’s all right, Mrs. Knatchbole, he’s going from me in a week, to his uncle in London he is going, a person of wealth, and he’ll be no annoyance to ye then. I’m ashamed that he misbehaves but he’s no bad boy really.”

At home his mother’s remonstrances reduced Johnny to repentance and silence; he felt base indeed; he wanted to do something great and worthy at once to offset it all; he wished he had got some money, he’d have gone and bought her a bottle of stout--he knew she liked stout.

“Why do ye vex people so, Johnny?” asked Mrs. Flynn wearily. “I work my fingers to the bone for ye, week in and week out. Why can’t ye behave like Pomony?”

His sister was a year younger than he; her name was Mona, which Johnny’s elegant mind had disliked. One day he re-baptized her; Pomona she became and Pomona she remained. The Flynns sat down to supper. “Never mind, mum,” said the boy, kissing her as he passed, “talk to us about the cherry tree!” The cherry tree, luxuriantly blooming, was the crown of the mother’s memories of her youth and her father’s farm; around the myth of its wonderful blossoms and fruit she could weave garlands of romance, and to her own mind as well as to the minds of her children it became a heavenly symbol of her old lost home, grand with acres and delightful with orchard and full pantry. What wonder that in her humorous narration the joys were multiplied and magnified until even Johnny was obliged to intervene. “Look here, how many horses _did_ your father have, mum ... really, though?” Mrs. Flynn became vague, cast a furtive glance at this son of hers and then gulped with laughter until she recovered her ground with “Ah, but there _was_ a cherry tree!” It was a grand supper--actually a polony and some potatoes. Johnny knew this was because he was going away. Ever since it was known that he was to go to London they had been having something special like this, or sheep’s trotters or a pig’s tail. Mother seemed to grow kinder and kinder to him. He wished he had some money, he would like to buy her a bottle of stout--he knew she liked stout.

Well, Johnny went away to live with his uncle, but alas he was only two months in London before he was returned to his mother and Pomony. Uncle was an engine-driver who disclosed to his astounded nephew a passion for gardening. This was incomprehensible to Johnny Flynn. A great roaring boiling locomotive was the grandest thing in the world. Johnny had rides on it, so he knew. And it was easy for him to imagine that every gardener cherished in the darkness of his disappointed soul an unavailing passion for a steam engine, but how an engine-driver could immerse himself in the mushiness of gardening was a baffling problem. However, before he returned home he discovered one important thing from his uncle’s hobby, and he sent the information to his sister:

_Dear Pomona--_

_Uncle Harry has got a alotment and grow veggutables. He says what
makes the mold is worms. You know we pulled all the worms out off our
garden and chukked them over Miss Natchbols wall. Well you better get
some more quick a lot ask George to help you and I bring som seeds
home when I comes next week by the xcursion on Moms birthday_

_Your sincerely brother
John Flynn_

On mother’s birthday Pomona met him at the station. She kissed him shyly and explained that mother was going to have a half holiday to celebrate the double occasion and would be home with them at dinner time.

“Pomony, did you get them worms?”

Pomona was inclined to evade the topic of worms for the garden, but fortunately her brother’s enthusiasm for another gardening project tempered the wind of his indignation. When they reached home he unwrapped two parcels he had brought with him; he explained his scheme to his sister; he led her into the garden. The Flynns’ backyard, mostly paved with bricks, was small and so the enclosing walls, truculently capped by chips of glass, although too low for privacy were yet too high for the growth of any cherishable plant. Johnny had certainly once reared a magnificent exhibit of two cowslips, but these had been mysteriously destroyed by the Knatchbole cat. The dank little enclosure was charged with sterility; nothing flourished there except a lot of beetles and a dauntless evergreen bush, as tall as Johnny, displaying a profusion of thick shiny leaves that you could split on your tongue and make squeakers with. Pomona showed him how to do this and they then busied themselves in the garden until the dinner siren warned them that Mother would be coming home. They hurried into the kitchen and Pomona quickly spread the cloth and the plates of food upon the table, while Johnny placed conspicuously in the centre, after laboriously extracting the stopper with a fork and a hair-pin, a bottle of stout brought from London. He had been much impressed by numberless advertisements upon the hoardings respecting this attractive beverage. The children then ran off to meet their mother and they all came home together with great hilarity. Mrs. Flynn’s attention having been immediately drawn to the sinister decoration of her dining table, Pomona was requested to pour out a glass of the nectar. Johnny handed this gravely to his parent, saying:

“Many happy returns of the day, Mrs. Flynn!”

“O, dear, dear!” gasped his mother merrily, “you drink first!”

“Excuse me, no, Mrs. Flynn,” rejoined her son, “many happy returns of the day!”

When the toast had been honoured Pomona and Johnny looked tremendously at each other.

“Shall we?” exclaimed Pomona.

“O yes,” decided Johnny; “come on, mum, in the garden, something marvellous!”

She followed her children into that dull little den, and fortuitously the sun shone there for the occasion. Behold, the dauntless evergreen bush had been stripped of its leaves and upon its blossomless twigs the children had hung numerous couples of ripe cherries, white and red and black.

“What do you think of it, mum?” cried the children, snatching some of the fruit and pressing it into her hands, “what do you think of it?”

“Beautiful!” said the poor woman in a tremulous voice. They stared silently at their mother until she could bear it no longer. She turned and went sobbing into the kitchen.

* * * * *

CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN

* * * * *

CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN