The glory and the dream

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Great Unknown 1

II The New Country 19

Chapter I

Michael had spent six joyful years in eagerly, curiously, making the acquaintance of the world into which he had come, before he found a hint of sadness in it. On the contrary, he found it such a beautiful and happy place that he grudged ever to close his eyes, and would vigorously demand an instant release from his crib at the first break of dawn. Meadows full of damp grass, where he was always finding a fresh spot to be happy in; a brook where he wanted to go on and on playing, always, and never stop ; the monastery garden, steeped in a mysterious sweetness and quiet, full of 1 monks who were all alike, into which he sometimes strayed; a mother who was sometimes very much in the way, when she made him come in to meals, or washed him, or put him to bed, just as he was running to do some dehghtful thing that had come into his head, and whom he sometimes hugged and hugged, yet couldn’t hug enough; these were a few of the good things that filled up his little life.

He knew, vaguely, that this wasn’t everything; that there was something very big and solemn above and beyond, and that he must feel solemn every night when he said his prayers, no matter how many other things he might have to think about. Although he lived in Claddagh, where everybody about him spoke the Irish tongue, his parents spoke English sometimes ; but he was better pleased when they spoke Irish. His mother taught him the little prayer that English-speaking children say, and a strange hushed feeling always came over him at the thought of the soul folded up inside of him, which he prayed the Lord to keep. And at the words: —

**And if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take/*

a momentary chill would pass over him at the thought that he might die before he opened his eyes on the delightful world again. But then, he wouldn’t. He always woke up all right. But he had a picture in his mind of the soul being taken — a brown, folded, passive thing. The Irish word, anam^ gave him a very different idea. It made him think of something vague and black, that filled up a person’s whole inside. But he really thought very little about it. These ideas were merely images that the words imprinted on his mind, without any thought on his part.

But there came a time when his mother was ill, and his father told him he mustn’t run into her room and disturb her. He knew from his father’s tone that it would be very dreadful to do that, and he meant to obey; but once he got wildly excited chasing the cat, and first thing he knew he was running after it into her room, shouting: — ‘‘You thief! You thief!” Then a languid voice from the bed, 3 saying; — ‘‘What has he stolen?” suddenly brought back his father’s command, and he hung his head, overcome with shame, and would hardly answer the question. His mother was not angry — she only explained, kindly and patiently, that you never called anybody a thief unless he had stolen something, and this made Michael more deeply ashamed than any reproof could have done. He never forgot again.

At first his mother’s illness made no difference to him, except for this incident; his joyful life was not touched or disturbed. He played in the meadow and the brook just the same, the smell of wet grass and steaming earth filled him with the same wild delight, and made him want to run and run, as if he could never be still again. He continued to watch and listen everywhere for fairies, filled with the hope that he would find them in the next clump of grass or weeds he investigated. But after a while his aunts began to come very often, and they were crying whenever he saw them, and his father was silent and sorrowful;

and then, although Michael still did all these things, the warmth and sunshine seemed to go out of them. His mother wanted him to come in and see her every day, and cuddled him up close to her; but one morning when he was brought in, and climbed on the bed to hug her, she didn’t hug back, and although she spoke to him, and called him a chuisUn mo chroidhe, it wasn’t like having her speak to him at all. He burst out crying, for he knew something very dreadful was coming, though he had no idea what it was. Next morning his father took him in his arms and told him she was dead.

Michael broke into a loud howl, not because he wanted to cry, but because it was so strange and sudden, so utterly outside his range of experience that he could not even attempt to understand it, and he wanted to drown out all sensation in the physical exercise of making a noise. After that, the bright, fresh world was completely blotted out by the blackness that enveloped everything. Crowds of people in black clothes filled the house, and in the night 6 there were such awful crying noises that Michael could not go to sleep, but sat up in his crib, shivering with horror, and thinking about all the strange things his aunts had said to him that day. They had told him an angel had come and taken his mother’s soul away, and he had said:^ — “Why didn’t you tell me when it came? I would have frightened it away!” They had told him that nobody could frighten away the death angel, but Michael insisted that he would have fought with it till it flew away. Then they told him, so solemnly that he knew it must be true, that nobody had ever done that, and the death angel came to everybody. Thus Michael learned that everybody had to die, and he thought of it now with passionate rebellion. He didn’t want to die that way, and have everybody turn black and make hideous noises because he died. If he had to die that way, he would rather the stork had never brought him at all. He made up his mind he would die as a patriot flghting the Sacsanaigh, or be a flsherman and get drowned. Then he thought of the death angel taking his

e mother’s soul to a place called Purgatory, to be burned for a long time before it was taken to Heaven, where every one was perfectly happy. This was what happened to everybody’s soul. Tired out at last with these thoughts, Michael lay down and fell asleep with that awful crying in his ears, and presently he had a vivid impression that he was in his mother’s room, and three women all in black were hidden behind the curtain, and were peering out at him, craning long black necks and showing the whites of eyes that stared unbearably out of black faces. He screamed, and when his father came in, kept repeating something, over and over, about the three black friends behind the curtain, and could not be persuaded that it was a dream. His father stayed with him and soothed him, and presently Michael told him what his aunts had said about the death angel taking away his mother’s soul to Purgatory. His father was silent for a moment, then he said: — “Michael, your aunts know no more about it than you do yourself.”

‘‘But they saw the death angel come!” said Michael, his voice soft and hushed with awe.

“They didn’t, see it — ^nobody ever does, and nobody knows where it takes people’s souls. But I think — ^when a woman has been as good as your mother was, Michael — that she may surely be taken straight to Heaven.” His father’s voice was choked with tears.

“Is Heaven a happier place than the world?” asked Michael.

“Ever so much,” his father replied decidedly.

Michael lay silently thinking for a long time after that. He could not imagine how Heaven could possibly he a much happier place than the world. He concluded at last that it might be, if the big golden sounds went on all the time there and never stopped. The big golden sounds were the music of his father’s harp.

Next morning the house was all darkened, and at breakfast Michael heard the favourite horse whinnying outside the shutters; his place at the table was right in front of the window, and this horse had been accustomed to poke his head in and be fed generously with morsels 8 from Michael’s own breakfast. But nothing happened in the natural way this morning. An aunt with tousled hair and red, tear-swollen face sat in his mother’s place, and this sight, together with the general atmosphere of tears, and the darkness of the room, made it impossible for him to eat his breakfast.

It was this same aunt who gave Michael his first pang of real grief. He came into the kitchen and found her there, with his mother’s pink apron on. He burst into the first actual tears he had shed, rushed outside, and stood sobbing there. His aunt came out to comfort him, but he ran away from her. He could not bear to be cuddled up to that apron, now. He felt as if she had hurt him all through, and he could not bear to be touched by her.

All day he wandered about alone, wet repeatedly by soft bursts of rain and warmed by the fleeting sunshine. The crowds of people in black went away in a procession, his father among them, and Michael thought with relief that this awful blackness had passed off for 9 good, and things would go on in the natural happy way again. But he didn’t feel like going back to his accustomed plays just yet; his mind was too full of wonder. The mystery of the death angel filled it. He couldn’t help thinking he could have driven the death angel away if he had been there. He would just have fought and fought till it had to fly away. That wouldn’t be any harder than killing a lion. And yet, all his aunts were there, and they couldn’t drive it away — they couldn’t even see it.

Then, as the sun was getting low and making the grass look golden, and it was beginning to occur to Michael with all the old delight that he might find a fairy any moment, the black procession came back. The aunt who had worn his mother’s apron called him in, and washed him and dressed him in clean, dry clothes, and brought him into the dining room, where all the people in black were assembled. They were done crying now. They ate and ate and ate, till Michael was so tired he thought 10 he couldnH sit still and be good any longer. But every time he kicked and wriggled he was sternly hushed by his aunts. He looked for the three black friends, but could not see them. He wondered if they were still in his mother’s room, hiding behind the curtain, waiting for him to come in, that they might crane their awful necks, and peer at him. He wouldn’t go, he resolved defiantly.

The chair grew harder and harder, the sight of this solemn continuous eating more intolerable, and he squirmed and fumed in spite of all his aunts’ dark looks and whispers. At last his father, who did not go on eating like the rest, sat back in his chair and called to him. Michael ran to him gladly, chmbed on his knee and fell asleep in five minutes.

Fortunately there was soon great fun, to bury, though not to efface, the memory of this black time. Michael learned that he and his father were going away across the sea in a ship, to a new country, where they were to live all by themselves. The horse who poked 11 his head in the window was coming with them, also the harp, and a few books, but nothing else.

“I’m so glad we’re going away from this house!” cried Michael. “We’ll leave the three black friends behind, and they’ll crane and crane their necks” (he did his best to illustrate their eerie motion) “and keep peeping out for me, and I won’t be here!” Michael’s sweet voice was full of gleeful, mischievous triumph, and he danced for joy.

There were days of fun after that, when all sorts of delightful things were rummaged out of dark corners. There were two great wreaths of paper roses, one white and one red, which Michael went about holding up on a level with his head, imagining that they fitted it, although they were as big as cart-wheels. But they finally had to be burned, although his father felt very bad about doing it. A whole lot of things were burned^ — things just as curious, as richly suggestive of delightful plays, and many of them as deeply regretted by his father, as these paper wreaths; and men came 12 and took away waggon loads of other things.

At last the morning came when he and his father took their departure, leaving the three black friends in possession, as Michael firmly believed, in spite of all his father could say. He had to say good-bye to his grandmother and grandfather and all his aunts, and when he was finally released from their kisses and tears and hot smothering embraces, he stood in the fresh windy roadway and pranced till his clean hoots and stockings were all splashed with mud, and indulged in shout after shout of joy. He got on to the train with eyes and ears wide open for wonders, but encountered nothing more remarkable than an old couple who were in the compartment he and his father entered. He speedily poured forth to them the story of the three black friends and their consequent departure for a strange country — a tale which his father found it necessary to supplement by an explanation that the three black friends were not actual flesh and blood usurpers. As the old lady, won by the shivery charm of the manner in which he reproduced 13 the looks and ways of those remarkable beings, gave him a huge, gaily striped bull’s-eye, he took no further part in the conversation for some time. He received it with an appreciative smile, and the remark: — “Oh, I’m so glad it’s a good hard one! It’ll last,” and devoted himself to enjoyment of it for some time to come. When he once more became conversationally inchned, he gave them a description of “the beautiful crowns made of roses,” which • he “wore for a long time, but father had to bum them. He didn’t want to, but he said we couldn’t take anything with us, because we might have to build our own house and things would get rained on. Besides, lions might come and steal them. I’m so glad we’re going away, where we’ll find lions and all sorts of things we can’t find at home, but no matter how nice it is, I’m going to come back to Ireland when I’m grown up and be a patriot. F ather’s a patriot, but he is a kind that doesn’t have to fight. Of course he would if he had a chance, but he hasn’t had a chance yet. I want to have a chance to fight,” said Michael, his 14 great luminous eyes shining with ardent longing. ‘T want to kill a whole lot of Sacsanaigh, and then get killed myself, because if I’m killed fighting, people won’t cry about me, and turn all black and horrid, the way they do when a person just dies.”

The old couple expressed their dehght at these sentiments in the warmest manner, and showered a hundred thousand blessings on his brave enterprise. This was naturally stimulating to Michael, but as the day wore on even his lively little tongue began to weary. He got hot, and so tired of sitting in this dull close place, with no fun going on. The interest of the old couple began to languish, and presently they fell asleep, and their mouths opened, and they looked ugly and stupid. His father fell asleep, too, after forbidding him to indulge in any more of the bull’s-eye. Michael sat holding this one remaining source of pleasure in his hands, his whole little being one ache of longing for another delicious taste; but his sense of honour was strong enough to withstand the temptation. He would not disobey 15 while his father was asleep. The tedium was such an acute pain as only an eager-hearted child, condemned to hours of inaction, can know. If only his father would waken, so that he could ask when they were going to get to the sea, and get on the ship! But his father continued to sleep; and finally awoke, to find Michael asleep against his shoulder.

He had an impression of arriving in a noisy place, full of shouting, and men, and lights, although it wasn’t indoors, and asking if they had got to the sea yet. His father said: — “This is Cork, and we’ll get on board to-morrow.” He was so sleepy he could hardly stand up, but his father held him and made him walk somehow, and they came to a house with stairs in it= — something Michael had never been in before. He had to chmb the stairs, sleepily conscious that this was being brave, and his father would not let him fall, and he was put to bed at the top of the stairs.

Michael had forgotten all the solemn thoughts he had had lately in the excitement of taking breakfast at a long table full of strange 16 people next morning, of demanding: — ‘‘Where are the grandmother and grandfather who gave me the bulFs-eye yesterday?” and of starting off to the ship with his father, when a picture in a shop window caught his eye, and he stopped short, pulling so hard at his father’s hand that he had to stop too.

“Father, there’s a picture of an angel!” he exclaimed in a tone of awe. “Is it the death angel?”

His father stood looking at it long and silently, in such a way that Michael did not repeat his question, for he knew it was the death angel. Great and soft, slow and inexorable, it crept up the steps and in at the door. A little boy like himself, only with no clothes on, and with wings, was trying his very best to fight it away — just as he had wanted to do. But the death angel, with bowed head, as if it did not want to see the struggles of that little boy, was pushing him back with its hand — not in a way that could hurt at all, but in a way you couldn’t fight against. And the little boy was not even an ordinary httle boy — ^he 17 had wings, so he must be a sort of angel, or fairy, or something like that that could do wonderful things a person couldn’t do. But he couldn’t keep away the death angel. Michael was as silent and grave, if not as sorrowful, as his father when they finally went on down the street. All the excitement of going to the ship had been momentarily hushed out of him. He understood, now, that nobody could ever drive away the death angel.

Chapter II

Michael never forgot his sensations when he first saw the ship. He had imagined a dirty, oily sail-boat, delightfully slippery and redolent of fish, like those in which many of his neighbours went out and sometimes got drowned, and he had imagined that he and his father would cross the great ocean all alone in such a craft, and that he would help to sail it • — a thing he had always longed so to do ! And instead, he saw standing still and majestic at the dock, shining blue and white in a sudden bright burst of sunshine, the grandest thing he had ever beheld in his life. He caught his breath in wonder and awe. It was so big, so still, so beautiful!

“Oh!’’ he exclaimed to his father. “Is that the ship? Are we going to get on that?”

They went up a long plank and on to the 19 great thing, and Michael stood motionless there, his eyes upturned and dilated, for a long time before he moved or spoke. Then he exclaimed: — ‘T don’t feel any water under it!” That continuous soft, swaying, quivering motion — the greatest charm of the anchored fishing boats into which he had sometimes been allowed to climb^ — was missing; but after there had been a great deal of noise, and people going about in a hurry and pushing him out of the way as he stood gazing around him, and trunks and bundles slammed down on the deck (the harp, all tied up in sacking, was among them, and the big golden sounds boomed forth as it was set down) the land began to steal away, softly, over the sunlit waters. Michael gazed at it in speechless wonder. It went farther and farther, in that slow, mysterious manner, till at last the dock they had left to get on the ship was barely distinguishable. At last Michael asked his father: — ‘‘Why is the land going away from us?”

His father could not convince him, for some time, that it was really the ship that was 20 leaving the land behind. When he realized at last that they were moving over the sea, leaving all the old familiar things behind, going forth to meet unknown wonders, he was swallowed up into a trance of pure happiness. He stood leaning against the railing, gazing down at the green quivering waters far below, and did not move or speak for a long time. But he was lively enough after that first day. He soon awakened to the fact that there were a whole lot of other little boys and girls on board to play with, and he lost no time in making their acquaintance. Then, he and his father went down to a dark place at the bottom of the ship, every day, to see poor Fionn, the pet horse. It was so dark, Michael could just barely see the familiar old head reaching out towards him, with its long fiexible nose stretched forth for tidbits. It made him very unhappy to see Fionn, and all those other horses, shut up down there. Sometimes he thought about it after he went to bed at night, and burst out crying; sometimes he thought about it when he was in the middle of a par- 21 ticularly nice dinner, and then the dinner didn’t seem nice any more, and he couldn’t finish it.

After they landed in the new country they had another wearisome journey on the train, but at last they got to a city where they spent a day buying things. Then they got on the train again, and got oflf at a station with the river on one side, and a great many piles of wood on the other. Fionn was to come on a freight train, but he would not be there till late in the afternoon. Michael and his father went to a place that was full of fine new waggons, and his father bought a beauty, painted red and green, over which Michael went wild with delight. Fionn was to be harnessed to it as soon as he came, and they were to drive to their new home, miles up the river. Michael awaited Fionn’s arrival with the utmost impatience. He wanted to be sitting beside his father on the high seat of that alluring new vehicle, with its great red wheels. When Fionn was at last unloaded he was very frisky, and pranced all the way to the waggon shop. He stamped and tossed his head all the 22 time he was being harnessed, and the man in the shop had to hold him while Michael was being lifted into the seat, and his father climbed in and took the reins. Then Fionn dashed off down the street with them, the empty waggon rumbling in the grandest way, while Michael jumped up and down in the seat with delight at this wild ride. They came once more to the station, and there Michael watched the fascinating process of loading the waggon. The tent they were to live in while they built their house, the harp, the parcels they had got in the city, and, last and best, a lot of delightful paper bags, full of good things to eat, were loaded in; then they were off along the road beside the river, Michael beaming with joy. They were actually driving in their own new waggon, through the new country, where the next step might land them into the midst of unheard-of wonders. This expectation lent an inexpressible charm to the clear-hued, bright new country. It was new and unknown, consequently wonderful. Everything about it was wonderful, and the 23 life they lived in it could not fail to be wonderful. This was surely enough to fill Michael with a bliss too pure for words to utter, which could only be expressed in his smile.

The sun was setting when they came to a broad green hill. They drove past a little house that nestled at its foot, and up to a great wild slope of unbroken meadow, full of little bushes and long grass and flowers. Here Fionn was stopped, and Michael’s father lifted him down, saying: — “This is our land.” Michael’s first impulse was to race as fast as he could go through that long grass, and he ran uphill till he couldn’t run any more, and had to flop down on the ground. Then he started to run downhill, and ran faster and faster till he could hardly stop himself, and then his father’s operations became so interesting that he had to devote all his energies to watching them. The pitching of the tent was particularly absorbing, and when it was up Michael thought it the most charming abode any heart could desire. He ran in and out the door, he crawled in and out underneath, 24 he rolled about in the sweet fresh grass that was to be their floor. When his father unpacked two cot beds and put them up, he exclaimed: — “Why have we got to sleep in beds? It would be so nice just to make nests for ourselves in the grass !”

But the most joyful time of all was when his father made a fire, and took good things to eat out of those alluring paper bags and cooked them. Michael had been looking and sniffing longingly at those paper bags for some time, and he enjoyed their contents with an intensity that would have caused absolute silence, and grim devotion to business, in another boy; but in him the need for self-expression was even more imperative than hunger, so he was not too busy to exclaim at intervals all through the meal: — “This is the best tea I ever had!” It was so good, that it was the hardest work to spare even the tiniest morsels for Fionn, whose share of good things from Michael’s plate was generally so liberal.

He found the new country no less delightful in the succeeding weeks and months than 25 on that first joyful day. There was so much sunshine, that it sometimes made him almost tired being happy. There was the great river to play beside, and when he once got down close to the water he never wanted to go away again. But his father did not like him to go alone, and he never could stay half as long as Michael would have hked. He was always saying — “Come along now, old man, we must get to work at our house again.” Michael never could object very strongly to this, building the house was such fun. He helped his father a great deal with it. When Fionn was harnessed to a great big turtle, (this was the scraper) which dug out the place for the cellar, Michael took the reins and put one hand on each of the great wooden handles, and drove. There was no such proud delight as this — to feel the warm thrill from that great strong body come down the reins to his hands, and to feel that he had it in his power! Besides this, he did a lot of sawing, and that was hard work, for the saw would wobble and go all crooked. He seized the plane every time his 26 father laid it down, tied a string around it, and dragged it all over the place, declaring it was his pet swan. He made a sphynx out of the mortar left over from the chimney. His father had said there was only one sphynx in the world, and Michael was immediately fired with an ambition to make another, and announced triumphantly, when it was completed, that there were two sphynxes now! But the glory of this achievement was soon cast into the shade by another, still more helpful to his father and the progress of the new house. When his father began to make fires in the yard and melt tar, he could not keep away from the black, sticky, delightful stuff, and one day his father was short-sighted enough to leave him alone in the yard with a big pot of it for three minutes. A great deal can sometimes happen in three minutes, as Michael’s father was fully convinced after that day. He came back to find Michael very happy, very proud of himself, and so gleeful over the impression his personal appearance made on his father, that the latter wondered, 27 for one brief moment, if his character were not in keeping with his present outer hue. Just why this exploit gave him such mad joy at the time, was remembered and caressed and gloated over with such delicious satisfaction, and the marks of it, which wore off with a gratifying slowness, cherished as if they had been the Victoria Cross, would be difficult even for Michael himself to explain. Perhaps if he had not been blessed with a father who had a sense of humour and a tender heart, the experience might not have been so pleasing.