Chapter 8 No.8

It was believed long ago in the ancient kingdom of Erinn that it was death to be a poet, death to love a poet, and death to mock a poet. So the Gael said, and, in that distant time, the people of the Gael were a wise people, holding the ancient knowledge, and they honoured the poet and feared him, for his fostering was among the people of the Shee, and his curse was quickened with the authority of the gods.

Even lately the people feared the poets and did them reverence, although the New Ignorance (known humorously as Education) was gradually strangling the life out of Wisdom, and was setting up a different and debased standard of mental values. There was a lady once and she scorned a poet, wittingly and with malice, and it was ill for her in the sequel, for the gods saw to it.

She was very beautiful-"The finest girl in three counties, sir," said her father: but he might have been prejudiced in favour of his own, and he had been known to speak of himself as "the finest man in Ireland, and you know what that means, sir." Further, his dog was "the greatest dog that ever ratted in the universe." Whatever he owned was not only good, it was great and unique, and whatever he did not own had, in his opinion, very little to recommend it.

But his daughter was beautiful. When the male eye encountered her it was in no haste to look away. When the female eye lit on her it was, and the owner of the female eye, having sniffed as was proper, went home and tried to do up her hair or her complexion in the like manner-as was also proper. A great many people believe (and who will quarrel with their verities) that beauty is largely a matter of craft and adjustment.-Such women are beautiful with a little difficulty-they pursue loveliness, run it to earth in a shop, obtain it with a certain amount of minted metal, and reincarnate themselves from a box.-They deserve all the success which they undoubtedly obtain. There are other women who are beautiful by accident-such as, the cunning disposition of a dimple, the abilities of a certain kind of smile, the possession of a charming voice-for, indeed, an ugly woman with a beautiful voice is a beautiful woman. But some women are beautiful through the spendthrift generosity of nature, and of this last was she. Whatever of colour, line, or motion goes to the construction of beauty that she was heiress to, and she knew it only too well.

A person who has something of his own making may properly be proud of his possession, even if it is nothing more than a stamp album, but a person who has been gifted by Providence or Fairy Godmothers should not be conceited. A self-made man may be proud of his money, but his son may not. Pride in what has been given freely to you is an empty pride, and she was prouder of her beauty than a poet is of his odes-it was her undoing in the end.

She was so accustomed to the homage of men that one who failed to make instant and humble obeisance to her proved himself to be either a very vulgar person or else a miracle. Such folk were few, for the average man bends as readily to beauty as a flower sways to the wind, or the sea to the touch of the moon.

Before she was twenty years of age she had loomed in the eye of every male in her vicinity as the special female whom nature had built to his exclusive measure. When she was twenty-one she had withstood the matrimonial threats of half the male population of Ireland, and she knew how every social grade (there are not many of them) of Irish life made love, for that was the only thing they were able to do while they were near her. From the farmer with a spade in his fist to the landlord with a writ in his agent's pocket, all sang the same song, the sole difference being a matter of grammar; and, although young women have big appetites in these cases, and great recuperative powers, she was as tired of love and love-lorn swains as a young and healthy woman can be, and then, suddenly, and to her own delighted consternation, she did fall in love.

The tantalising part of the whole matter was that she was unable to formulate any good reason for falling in love with this particular male. Her powers of observation (and they were as sharp as a cat's tooth) pointed out that although he was a young man his head was beginning to push out through his hair, and she had always considered that a bald man was outside the pale of human interest. Furthermore, his trousers bagged at the knees, perhaps the most lamentable mishap that can descend on manly apparel.-They were often a little jagged at the ends. She did not understand that trousers such as these were the correct usage, they were in the tradition: he was wearing "the bearded breeches of the bard." He was a little weak on his legs, and his hands sometimes got in his own way, but she said to herself with a smile, "How different he is from other men!"

What that difference consisted in got between her and her rest, there was a crumb in her bed on the head of it.

Meanwhile, he had not told her that he loved her, and she was strangely anxious for news to that effect. Indeed, she sought confirmation of her hopes as often as maidenly modesty permitted, which was pretty frequent, for maidenly modesty has its diplomacy also; besides, has not a reigning beauty liberty to pay court?-there are plenty of other queens who have done it.

He was a poet by profession, but his livelihood depended upon his ability as a barrister. When she first saw him he was crossing a street. Suddenly, in the centre of the road, he halted, with his toes turned in, his fingers caressing his chin, and an expression of rapt and abstracted melancholy on his visage, while he sought for the missing, the transfiguring word. There was a sonnet in his eye and it impeded his vision. Meanwhile, the wheeled traffic of the street addressed language to him which was so vigorous as almost to be poetical. She had pulled him from beneath a horse's head which a frantic driver was endeavouring to pull the mouth from. The words of the driver as he sailed away were-"Go home and die, you moonstruck, gibbering, wobbling omadhaun," and she had thought that his description was apt and eloquent.

She saw him a second time, when her father took her for a visit to the Four Courts. He was addressing the Court, and, while his language was magnificent, the judge must have considered that his law was on vacation, for he lost his cause.

They met again in her own home. Her father knew him very well, and, although they seldom met, he had that strong admiration for him which a vigorous and overbearing personality sometimes extends to a shy and unworldly friend-

"A perfect frost as a lawyer," he used to say, "but as a poet, sir, Shakespeare is an ass beside him, and if any one asks you who said so, tell them that I did, sir."

He sat beside her at dinner and forgot her before the first course was removed, and, later, when he knocked a glass off the table, he looked at her as though she were responsible for the debris.

He did not make love to her, a new and remarkable omission in her experience of men, however bald, and while this was refreshing for a time it became intolerable shortly. She challenged him, as a woman can, with the flash of her eyes, the quick music of her laugh, but he was marvelling at the width of the horizon, rapt in contemplation of the distant mountains, observing how a flower poised and nodded on its stalk, following the long, swooping flight of a bird or watching how the moon tramped down on the stars. So far as she could see he was unaware that her charms were of other than average significance-

"These poets are awful fools," said she angrily.

But the task of awakening this landlocked nature was one which presented many interesting features to her. She was really jealous that he paid her no attention, and, being accustomed to the homage of every male thing over fifteen years of age, she resented his negligence, became interested in him, as every one is in the abnormal, and when a woman becomes interested in a man she is unhappy until he becomes interested in her.

There had arrived, with the express intention of asking her to marry him, another young gentleman. He had a light moustache and a fancy waistcoat, both of which looked new. He was young, rich, handsome, and sufficiently silly to make any woman wish to take charge of him, and her father had told him to "go in and win, my boy, there's no one I'd like better, sir," a very good heartener for a slightly dubious youth, even though he may consider that the lady of his choice is watching another man more intently than is pleasant.

The young gentleman gripped, with careful frenzy, at his light, new moustache, and growled as he watched the stalking. But the poet was occupied and careless, and then, suddenly, it happened. What movement, conscious or unconscious, opened his eyes one cannot say: the thing seemed to be done without any preliminaries, and he was awakened and in the toils.

They had been reading poetry together, his poetry, and he was expressing, more to himself than to her, how difficult and how delightful it was to work with entire satisfaction within the "scanty plot" of a sonnet. She was listening with bated breath, and answering with an animation more than slightly tinged with ignorance, for she was as little interested in the making of sonnets as in the making of shoes.-Nobody is interested in the making of sonnets, not even poets.

He fell silent after a space and sat gazing at the moon where it globed out on the stillness, and she also became silent. Her nerves, she told herself, were out of order. She was more used to dismissing than to being dismissed and yet she seemed beaten. There was nothing further that a girl could do. He cared no more about her than he did about whatever woman cleaned his rooms. She was not angry, but a feeling of weariness came upon her. (It is odd that one can be so in earnest when one is in jest.) Once or twice she shook her head at the moon, and as she stared, moody and quiet, it seemed that the moon had slid beyond her vision and she was looking into great caverns of space, bursting with blackness. Some horror of emptiness was reaching to roll her in pits of murk, where her screams would be battered back on her tongue soundless.

With an effort she drew her eyes into focus again and turned them, smiling bitterly, on her companion, and, lo, he was looking at her with timid eyes, amazed eyes, and they spoke, for all their timidity, louder than trumpets. She knew that look, who could mistake it? Here was flame from the authentic fire. He was silent, but his breath came and went hurriedly, and he was bending towards her, little by little he was bending, his eyes, his whole body and soul yearning.

Then she arose--

"It is getting a little cold," said she: "we had better go in."

They went indoors silently. He was walking like a man just awakened from a dream. While she!-her head was high. Where was her equal! She frowned in the face of the moon and stars. She beat her small feet upon the earth and called it slave. She had torn victory from nowhere. A man's head swung at her girdle and she owned the blood that dripped, and her heart tossed rapture and anthem, carol and paean to the air around.-She had her hour.

That night the other young gentleman whom any woman would like to take charge of asked her to be his wife, and she consented gracefully, slightly disarranging his nice, new moustache in the act of surrender.

The next day the poet left the house pleading urgent briefs as an excuse-

"You'll come to the wedding," cried her father, "or," laughing, "maybe, you'll help us with the settlements, that's more in your line," and he put an arm fondly about his daughter. She, regarding their visitor, nestled to him and laughingly said-

"It would not be like my wedding at all if you stayed away. You must write me an ode," and her eyes mocked him.

He stood, looking at her for a moment, and his eyes mocked also, for the poet knew by his gift what she had done, and he replied with careless scorn-

"I will come with pleasure, and," with an emphasis she noted, "I will dance at your wedding." So he laughed and marched away heart-whole.

Then, disengaging her arm from her father's, she smiled and walked slowly indoors, and as she walked there spread over her body a fierce coldness, and when her husband sought her afterwards that wintry breast chilled him, and he died: but the poet danced at her wedding, when her eyes were timid and pleading, and frightened.