Here are Ladies

J >> James Stephens >> Here are Ladies

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Once a day he trod solemnly forth on the designated walk--

"Be back before one o'clock," said the voice of kind authority, "lunch
will be ready."

"Won't you be back before two?" said that voice, "the lawn has to be
rolled."

"Don't stay out after three," the voice entreated, "we are going to
visit Aunt Kate."

And at one and two and three o'clock he paced urgently wifeward. He
ate the lunch that was punctually ready. He rolled the inevitable
lawn. He trod sturdily to meet the Aunt Kate and did not quail, and
then he went home again. One climbed to bed at ten o'clock, one was
gently spoken to until eleven o'clock, and then one went to sleep.

On a day she entrusted him with a sum of money, and requested that he
should go down to the town and pay at certain shops certain bills, the
details whereof she furnished to him on paper.

"Be back before three o'clock," said the good lady, "for the Fegans are
coming to tea. You need not take your umbrella, it won't rain, and you
ought to leave your pipe behind, it doesn't look nice. Bring some
cigarettes instead, and your walking-stick if you like, and be sure to
be back before three."

He pressed his pipe into a thing on the wall which was meant for pipes,
put his cigarette-case into his pocket, and took his walking-stick in
his hand.

"You did not kiss me good-bye," said she gently.

So he returned and did that, and then he went out.

It was a delicious day. The sun was shining with all its might. One
could see that it liked shining, and hoped everybody enjoyed its art.
If there were birds about anywhere it is certain they were singing. In
this suburb, however, there were only sparrows, but they hopped and
flew, and flew and hopped, and cocked their heads sideways and chirped
something cheerful, but possibly rude, as one passed. They were busy
to the full extent of their beings, playing innocent games with happy
little flies, and there was not one worry among a thousand of them.

There was a cat lying on a hot window-ledge. She was looking drowsily
at the sparrows, and any one could see that she loved them and wished
them well.

There was a dog stretched across a doorway. He was very quiet, but he
was not in the least bored. He was taking a sun-bath, and he was
watching the cat. So steadily did he observe her that one discerned at
a glance he was her friend, and would protect her at any cost.

There was a small boy who held in his left hand a tin can and a piece
of string. With his right hand he was making affectionate gestures to
the dog. He loved playing with animals, and he always rewarded their
trust in him.

Our traveller paced slowly onwards, looking at his feet as he went. He
noticed with a little dismay that he could not see as much of his legs
as he thought he should see. There was a slight but nicely-shaped
curve between him and his past--

"I am getting fat," said he to himself, and the reflection carried him
back to the morning mirror--

"I am getting a bit bald, too," said he, and a quiet sadness took
possession of him.

But he reassured himself. One does get fat. "Every one gets fat,"
said he, "after he gets married." He reviewed his friends and
acquaintances, and found that this was true, and he bowed before an
immutable decree.

"One does get bald," quoth he. "Everybody gets bald. The wisest
people in the world lose their hair. Kings and generals, rich people
and poor people, they are all bald! It is not a disgrace," said he;
and he trod soberly forward in the sunshine.

A young man caught up on him from behind, and strode past. He was
whistling. His coat-tails were lifted and his hands were thrust in his
pockets. His elbows jerked to left and right as he marched.

"A fellow oughtn't to swagger about like that," said our traveller.
"What does he want to tuck up his coat for, anyhow? It's not decent,"
said he in a low voice. "It makes people laugh," said he.

A girl came out of a shop near by and paced down in their direction.
She looked at the young man as they passed, and then she turned again,
a glance, no more, and looked after him without stopping her pace. She
came on. She had no pockets to stick her hands in, but she also was
swaggering. There was a left and right movement of her shoulders, an
impetus and retreat of her hips. Something very strong and yet
reticent about her surging body. She passed the traveller and went
down the road.

"She did not look at me," said he, and his mind folded its hand across
its stomach, and sat down, while he went forward in the sunlight to do
his errands.

He stopped to light a cigarette, and stood for a few minutes watching
the blue smoke drifting and thinning away on the air. While he stood a
man drove up with a horse and car. The car was laden with
groceries--packets of somebody's tea, boxes of somebody's chocolate,
bottles of beer and of mineral water, tins of boot blacking, and
parcels of soap; confectionery, and tinned fish, cheese, macaroni, and
jam.

The man was beating the horse as he approached, and the traveller
looked at them both through a wreath of smoke.

"I wonder," said he, "why that man beats his horse?"

The driver was sitting at ease. He was not angry. He was not
impatient. There was nothing the matter with him at all. But he was
steadily beating the horse; not harshly, gently in truth. He beat the
horse without ill-will, almost without knowing he was doing it. It was
a sort of wrist exercise. A quick, delicate twitch of the whip that
caught the animal under the belly, always in the same place. It was
very skilful, but the driver was so proficient in his art that one
wondered why he had to practice at it any longer. And the horse did
not make any objection! Not even with his ears; they lay back to his
mane as he jogged steadily forward in the sunlight. His hooves were
shod with iron, but they moved with an unfaltering, humble regularity.
His mouth was filled with great, yellow teeth, but he kept his mouth
shut, and one could not see them. He did not increase or diminish his
pace under the lash; he jogged onwards, and did not seem to mind it.

The reins were jerked suddenly, and the horse turned into the path and
stopped, and when he stood he was not any quieter than when he had been
moving. He did not raise his head or whisk his tail. He did not move
his ears to the sounds behind and on either side of him. He did not
paw and fumble with his feet. There was a swarm of flies about his
head; they moved along from the point of his nose to the top of his
forehead, but mostly they clustered in black, obscene patches about his
eyes, and through these patches his eyes looked out with a strange
patience, a strange mildness. He was stating a fact over and over to
himself, and he could not think of anything else--

"There are no longer any meadows in the world," said he. "They came in
the night and took away the green meadows, and the horses do not know
what to do." . . . Horse! Horse! Little horse! . . . You do not
believe me. There are those who have no whips. There are children who
would love to lift you in their arms and stroke your head. . . .

The driver came again, he mounted to his seat, and the horse turned
carefully and trotted away.

The man with the cigarette looked after them for a few minutes, and
then he also turned carefully, to do his errands.

He reached the Railway Station and peered in at the clock. There were
some men in uniform striding busily about. Three or four people were
moving up the steps towards the ticket office. A raggedy man shook a
newspaper in his face, paused for half a second, and fled away bawling
his news. A red-faced woman pushed hastily past him. She was carrying
a big basket and a big baby. She was terribly engrossed by both, and
he wondered if she had to drop one which of them it would be. A short,
stout, elderly man was hoisting himself and a great leather portmanteau
by easy stages up the steps. He was very determined. He bristled at
everybody as at an enemy. He regarded inanimate nature as if he was
daring it to move. It would not be easy to make that man miss a train.
A young lady trod softly up the steps. She draped snowy garments about
her, but her ankles rebelled: whoever looked quickly saw them once, and
then she spoke very severely to them, and they hid themselves. It was
plain that she could scarcely control them, and that they would escape
again when she wasn't looking. A young man bounded up the steps; he
was too late to see them, and he looked as if he knew it. He stared
angrily at the girl, but she lifted her chin slightly and refused to
admit that he was alive. A very small boy was trying to push a large
india-rubber ball into his mouth, but his mouth was not big enough to
hold it, and he wept because of his limitations. He was towed along by
his sister, a girl so tall that one might say her legs reached to
heaven, and maybe they did.

He looked again at the hour. It was one minute to two o'clock; and
then something happened. The whole white world became red. The oldest
seas in the world went suddenly lashing into storm. An ocean of blood
thundered into his head, and the noise of that primitive flood, roaring
from what prehistoric gulfs, deafened him at an instant. The waves
whirled his feet from under him. He went foaming up the steps, was
swept violently into the ticket office, and was swirled away like a
bobbing cork into the train. A guard tried to stop him, for the train
was already taking its pace, but one cannot keep out the tide with a
ticket-puncher. The guard was overwhelmed, caught in the backwash, and
swirled somewhere, anywhere, out of sight and knowledge. The train
gathered speed, went flying out of the station into the blazing
sunlight, picked up its heels and ran, and ran, and ran; the wind
leaped by the carriage window, shrieking with laughter; the wide fields
danced with each other, shouting aloud

"The horses are coming again to the green meadows. Make way, make way
for the great, wild horses!"

And the trees went leaping from horizon to horizon shrieking and
shrieking the news.

MISTRESS QUIET-EYES

While I sit beside the window
I can hear the pigeons coo,
That the air is warm and blue,
And how well the young bird flew--
Then I fold my arms and scold the heart
That thought the pigeons knew.

While I sit beside the window
I can watch the flowers grow
Till the seeds are ripe and blow
To the fruitful earth below--
Then I shut my eyes and tell my heart
The flowers cannot know.

While I sit beside the window
I am growing old and drear;
Does it matter what I hear,
What I see, or what I fear?
I can fold my hands and hush my heart
That is straining to a tear.

The earth is gay with leaf and flower,
The fruit is ripe upon the tree,
The pigeons coo in the swinging bower,
But I sit wearily
Watching a beggar-woman nurse
A baby on her knee.

THREE LOVERS WHO LOST

I

Young Mr. O'Grady was in love. It was the first time he had been in
love, and it was all sufficiently startling. He seemed to have leaped
from boyhood to manhood at a stroke, and the things which had pretended
to be of moment yesterday were to-day discovered to have only the very
meanest importance. Different affairs now occupied him. A little
while ago his cogitations had included, where he would walk to on the
next Sunday, whether his aunt in Meath Street would lend him the price
of a ticket for the coming Bank Holiday excursion, whether his brother
would be using his bicycle on Saturday afternoon, and whether the
packet of cigarettes which he was momently smoking contained as many
cigarettes as could be got elsewhere for two pence.

These things were no longer noteworthy. Clothing had assumed an
importance he could scarcely have believed in. Boots, neck-ties, the
conduct of one's hat and of one's head, the progress of one's
moustache, one's bearing towards people in the street and in the house,
this and that social observance--all these things took on a new and
important dignity. He bought a walking-stick, a card-case, a purse, a
pipe with a glass bottom wherein one could observe one's own nicotine
inexorably accumulating.--He bought a book on etiquette and a pot of
paste for making moustaches grow in spite of providence, and one day he
insisted on himself drinking a half glass of whisky--it tasted sadly,
but he drank it without a grimace. Etiquette and whisky! these things
have to be done, and one might as well do them with an air. He was in
love, he was grown up, he was a man, and he lived fearlessly up to his
razor and his lady.

From the book on etiquette he exhumed a miscellany of useful and
peculiar wisdom. Following information about the portage of knives and
forks at incredible dinners he discovered that a well-bred person
always speaks to the young lady's parents before he speaks to the young
lady. He straightened his shoulders.--It would be almost as bad, he
thought, as having to drink whisky, but if it had to be done why he
would not shrink from this any more than he had from that. He set
forth on the tingling errand.

Mr. O'Reilly was a scrivener, a husband and a father. He made copies
of all kinds of documents for a living. He also copied maps. It has
been said that scriveners have to get drunk at least twice a week in
order to preserve their sanity; but the person whose miserable
employment is to draw copies of maps is more desperately environed than
an ordinary scrivener. It was Mr. O'Reilly's misfortune that he was
unable to get drunk. He disliked liquor, and, moreover, it disagreed
with him. He had, to paraphrase Lamb, toiled after liquor as other
people toil after virtue, but the nearer he got the less did he like
it. As a consequence of this enforced decency the ill-temper, which is
the normal state of scriveners, had surged and buzzed around him so
long that he had quite forgotten what a good temper was like.--It might
be said that he hated every one, not excepting his wife and daughter.
He could avoid other people, but these he could never escape from.
They wanted to talk to him when he wanted to be let alone. They
worried him with this and that domestic question or uproar. He would
gladly have sold them both as slaves to the Barbadoes or presented them
to the seraglio of any eastern potentate. There they were! and he
often gnashed his teeth and grinned at them in amazement because they
were there.

On the evening when young Mr. O'Grady sallied forth to ask him for the
hand of his daughter in marriage he was sitting at supper with his
consort--

Mr. O'Reilly took the last slice of bread from under his wife's hand.
It was loot, so he ate it with an extra relish and his good lady
waddled away to get more bread from cupboard--

"Everything's a trouble," said she, as she cut the loaf. "Doesn't it
make you think of the hymn 'I'm but a stranger here, heaven is my
home'?"

"No, ma'm," said her husband, "it does not. Where is Julia Elizabeth?"
and he daringly and skilfully abstracted the next slice of bread while
his wife was laying down the butter knife.

"I wish," said she, as she reached for the knife again, "I wish you
would give me a chance, O'Reilly: you eat much quicker than I do, God
help me!"

"I wish," rapped her husband fiercely, "that you would give a plain
answer to a plain question. Now then, ma'm, in two words, where is
that girl? My whole life seems to be occupied in asking that question,
and yours seems to be spent in dodging the answer to it."

"I don't know," replied his wife severely, "and that's three words."

"You don't know!" he looked around in helpless appeal and condemnation.
"What sort of an answer is that for a mother to give about her
daughter?" and under cover of his wrath he stole the next slice of
bread.

His wife also became angry--she put her plate in her lap and sat up at
him--

"Don't barge me, man," said she. "A nice daughter to have to give such
an answer about. Leave me alone now for I'm not well, I say, on the
head of her. I never know where she does be. One night it's (she
endeavoured to reproduce her daughter's soprano) 'I am going to a
dance, mother, at the Durkins'----'"

"Ha'penny hops!" said her husband fiercely. "Can't you cut me a bit of
bread!"

"And another night, 'she wants to go out to see Mary Durkan.'"

"I know her well, a big hat and no morals, a bankrupt's baggage."

"And the night after she 'wants to go to the theatre, ma.'"

"Dens of infamy," said he. "If I had my way I'd shut them all up and
put the actors in gaol, with their hamleting and gamyacting and
ha-ha'ing out of them."

"I can't keep her in," said his wife, wringing her hands, "and I won't
try to any longer. I get a headache when I talk to her, so I do. Last
night when I mentioned about her going out with that Rorke man she
turned round as cool as you please and told me 'to shut up.' Her own
mother!" and she surveyed Providence with a condemnatory eye--

At this point her husband swung his long arm and arrested the slice of
bread in his wife's lap--

"If she spoke to me that way," he grinned, "I'll bet I'd astonish her."

His wife looked in amazement from her lap to his plate, but she had
ability for only one quarrel at a time--

"And doesn't she talk to you like that? You never say a word to her
but she has a look in her eye that's next door to calling you a
fool.--I don't know where she is at all to-day."

"What time did she go out?"

"After breakfast this morning."

"And now it's supper-time--ha! that's good! Can't you give me a bit of
bread, or do you want to eat the whole loaf yourself? Try to remember
that I do pay for my food."

With an angry shake of the head his wife began to cut the loaf, and
continued speaking--

"'Where are you going to, Julia Elizabeth?' said I. 'Out,' said she,
and not another word could I get from her. Her own mother, mind you,
and her best clothes----"

Mr. O'Reilly ate the last slice of bread and arose from the table.

"I suppose," said he, "she is loafing about the streets with some young
puppy who has nothing of his own but a cigarette and a walking-stick,
and they both borrowed. I'll have a talk with her when she comes in,
and we'll see if she tells me to shut up."

The door banged, the room shook, and Mrs. O'Reilly settled to her
frustrated tea, but her thoughts still ran on her daughter.

It was at this point that, directed by love and etiquette, Mr. O'Grady
knocked at the door. Mrs. O'Reilly was again cutting the loaf in an
exasperation which was partly hunger and partly maternal, and, as she
cut, she communed with herself--

"As if," said she, "I haven't enough trouble trying to keep a cranky
man like her pa in good humour, without being plagued by Julia
Elizabeth"--she paused, for there was a knock at the door.--"If," said
she to the door, "you are a woman with ferns in a pot I don't want you,
and I don't want Dublin Bay herrings, or boot-laces either, so you can
go away.--The crankiness of that man is more than tongue can tell. As
Miss Carty says, I shouldn't stand it for an hour--Come in, can't
you--and well she may say it, and she a spinster without a worry under
heaven but her suspicious nature and her hair falling out. And then to
be treated the way I am by that girl! It'd make a saint waxy so it
would.--Good heavens! can't you come in, or are you deaf or lame or
what?" and in some exasperation she arose and went to the door. She
looked in perplexity for one moment from her food to her visitor, but
as good manners and a lady are never separate she welcomed and drew the
young man inside--

"Come in, Mr. O'Grady," said she. "How are you now at all? Why it's
nearly a week since you were here. Your mother's well I hope (sit down
there now and rest yourself). Some people are always well, but I'm
not--it's (sit there beside the window, like a good boy) it's hard to
have poor health and a crotchety husband, but we all have our trials.
Is your father well too? but what's the use of asking, every one's well
but me. Did your aunt get the pot of jam I sent her last Tuesday?
Raspberry is supposed to be good for the throat, but her throat's all
right. Maybe she threw it out: I'm not blaming her if she did. God
knows she can buy jam if she wants it without being beholden to any one
for presents and her husband in the Post Office.--Well, well, well, I'm
real glad to see you--and now, tell me all the news?"

The young man was a little embarrassed by this flood of language and
its multiplicity of direction, but the interval gave him time to
collect himself and get into the atmosphere.--He replied--

"I don't think there is any news to tell, ma'm. Father and mother are
quite well, thank you, and Aunt Jane got the jam all right, but she
didn't eat it, because----"

"I knew she didn't," said Mrs. O'Reilly with pained humility, "we all
have our troubles and jam doesn't matter. Give her my love all the
same, but maybe she doesn't want it either."

"You see," said the young man, "the children got at the jam before she
could, and they cleaned the pot. Aunt Jane was very angry about it."

"Was she now?" said the instantly interested lady. "It's real bad for
a stout person to be angry. Apoplexy or something might ensue and
death would be instantaneous and cemeteries the price they are in
Glasnevin and all: but the children shouldn't have eaten all the jam at
once, it's bad for the stomach that way: still, God is good and maybe
they'll recover."

"They don't seem much the worse for it," said he, laughing; "they said
it was fine jam."

"Well they might," replied his hostess, with suppressed indignation,
"and raspberries eightpence the pound in Grafton Street, and the best
preserving sugar twopence-three-farthings, and coal the way it is.--Ah,
no matter, God is good, and we can't live for ever."

The four seconds of silence which followed was broken by the lover--

"Is Julia Elizabeth in, ma'm?" said he timidly.

"She's not, then," was the reply. "We all have our trials, Mr.
O'Grady, and she's mine. I don't complain, but I don't deserve it, for
a harder working woman never lived, but there you are."

"I'm rather glad she's out," said the youth hastily, "for I wanted to
speak to yourself and your husband before I said anything to her."

Mrs. O'Reilly wheeled slowly to face him--

"Did you now?" said she, "and is it about Julia Elizabeth you came
over? Well, well, well, just to think of it! But I guessed it long
ago, when you bought the yellow boots. She's a real good girl, Mr.
O'Grady. There's many and many's the young man, and they in good
positions, mind you--but maybe you don't mean that at all. Is it a
message from your Aunt Jane or your mother? Your Aunt Jane does send
messages, God help her!"

"It's not, Mrs. O'Reilly: it's, if I may presume to say so, about
myself."

"I knew it," was the rapid and enthusiastic reply. "She's a fine cook,
Mr. O'Grady, and a head of hair that reaches down to her waist, and won
prizes at school for composition. I'll call himself--he'll be
delighted. He's in the next room making faces at a map. Maps are a
terrible occupation, Mr. O'Grady, they spoil his eyesight and make him
curse----"

She ambled to the door and called urgently--

"O'Reilly, here's young Mr. O'Grady wants to see you."

Her husband entered with a pen in his mouth and looked very severely at
his visitor--

"What brought you round, young man?" said he.

The youth became very nervous. He stood up stammering--

"It's a delicate subject, sir," said he, "and I thought it would only
be right to come to you first."

Here the lady broke in rapturously--

"Isn't it splendid, O'Reilly! You and me sitting here growing old and
contented, and this young gentleman talking to us the way he is.
Doesn't it make you think of the song 'John Anderson, my Jo, John'?"

Her husband turned a bewildered but savage eye on his spouse--

"It does not, ma'm," said he. "Well," he barked at Mr. O'Grady, "what
do you want?"

"I want to speak about your daughter, sir."

"She's not a delicate subject."

"No indeed," said his wife. "Never a day's illness in her life except
the measles, and they're wholesome when you're young, and an appetite
worth cooking for, two eggs every morning and more if she got it."

Her husband turned on her with hands of frenzy--

"Oh----!" said he, and then to their visitor, "What have you to say
about my daughter?"

"The fact is, sir," he stammered, "I'm in love with her."

"I see, you are the delicate subject, and what then?"

"And I want to marry her, sir."

"That's not delicacy, that's disease, young man. Have you spoken to
Julia Elizabeth about this?"

"No, sir, I wanted first to obtain your and Mrs. O'Reilly's permission
to approach her."

"And quite right, too," said the lady warmly. "Isn't it delightful,"
she continued, "to see a young, bashful youth telling of his love for
our dear child? Doesn't it make you think of Moore's beautiful song,
'Love's Young Dream,' O'Reilly?"

"It does not," her husband snapped, "I never heard of the song I tell
you, and I never want to."

He turned again to the youth--

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