_ BOOK VI. THE THIN WOMAN'S JOURNEY AND THE HAPPY MARCH
CHAPTER XVII
THE ability of the Thin Woman of Inis Magrath for anger was unbounded.
She was not one of those limited creatures who are swept clean by a gust
of wrath and left placid and smiling after its passing. She could store
her anger in those caverns of eternity which open into every soul, and
which are filled with rage and violence until the time comes when they
may be stored with wisdom and love; for, in the genesis of life, love
is at the beginning and the end of things. First, like a laughing
child, love came to labour minutely in the rocks and sands of the heart,
opening the first of those roads which lead inwards for ever, and then,
the labour of his day being done, love fled away and was forgotten.
Following came the fierce winds of hate to work like giants and gnomes
among the prodigious debris, quarrying the rocks and levelling the
roads which soar inwards; but when that work is completed love will come
radiantly again to live for ever in the human heart, which is Eternity.
Before the Thin Woman could undertake the redemption of her husband by
wrath, it was necessary that she should be purified by the performance
of that sacrifice which is called the Forgiveness of Enemies, and this
she did by embracing the Leprecauns of the Gort and in the presence of
the sun and the wind remitting their crime against her husband. Thus she
became free to devote her malice against the State of Punishment, while
forgiving the individuals who had but acted in obedience to the pressure
of their infernal environment, which pressure is Sin.
This done she set about baking the three cakes against her journey to
Angus Og.
While she was baking the cakes, the children, Seumas and Brigid Beg,
slipped away into the wood to speak to each other and to wonder over
this extraordinary occurrence.
At first their movements were very careful, for they could not be quite
sure that the policemen had really gone away, or whether they were
hiding in dark places waiting to pounce on them and carry them away
to captivity. The word "murder" was almost unknown to them, and its
strangeness was rendered still more strange by reason of the nearness
of their father to the term. It was a terrible word and its terror was
magnified by their father's unthinkable implication. What had he done?
Almost all his actions and habits were so familiar to them as to be
commonplace, and yet, there was a dark something to which he was a
party and which dashed before them as terrible and ungraspable as a
lightning-flash. They understood that it had something to do with that
other father and mother whose bodies had been snatched from beneath
the hearthstone, but they knew the Philosopher had done nothing in that
instance, and, so, they saw murder as a terrible, occult affair which
was quite beyond their mental horizons.
No one jumped out on them from behind the trees, so in a little time
their confidence returned and they walked less carefully. When they
reached the edge of the pine wood the brilliant sunshine invited them to
go farther, and after a little hesitation they did so. The good spaces
and the sweet air dissipated their melancholy thoughts, and very soon
they were racing each other to this point and to that. Their wayward
flights had carried them in the direction of Meehawl MacMurrachu's
cottage, and here, breathlessly, they threw themselves under a small
tree to rest. It was a thorn bush, and as they sat beneath it the
cessation of movement gave them opportunity to again consider the
terrible position of their father. With children thought cannot be
separated from action for very long. They think as much with their hands
as with their heads. They have to do the thing they speak of in order
to visualise the idea, and, consequently, Seumas Beg was soon
reconstructing the earlier visit of the policemen to their house
in grand pantomime. The ground beneath the thorn bush became the
hearthstone of their cottage; he and Brigid became four policemen, and
in a moment he was digging furiously with a broad piece of wood to find
the two hidden bodies. He had digged for only a few minutes when the
piece of wood struck against something hard. A very little time sufficed
to throw the soil off this, and their delight was great when they
unearthed a beautiful little earthen crock filled to the brim with
shining, yellow dust. When they lifted this they were astonished at its
great weight. They played for a long time with it, letting the heavy,
yellow shower slip through their fingers and watching it glisten in the
sunshine. After they tired of this they decided to bring the crock home,
but by the time they reached the Gort na Cloca Mora they were so tired
that they could not carry it any farther, and they decided to leave it
with their friends the Leprecauns. Seumas Beg gave the taps on the tree
trunk which they had learned, and in a moment the Leprecaun whom they
knew came up.
"We have brought this, sir," said Seumas. But he got no further, for the
instant the Leprecaun saw the crock he threw his arms around it and wept
in so loud a voice that his comrades swarmed up to see what had happened
to him, and they added their laughter and tears to his, to which chorus
the children subjoined their sympathetic clamour, so that a noise of
great complexity rang through all the Gort.
But the Leprecauns' surrender to this happy passion was short. Hard on
their gladness came remembrance and consternation; and then repentance,
that dismal virtue, wailed in their ears and their hearts. How could
they thank the children whose father and protector they had delivered
to the unilluminated justice of humanity? that justice which demands not
atonement but punishment; which is learned in the Book of Enmity but
not in the Book of Friendship; which calls hatred Nature, and Love a
conspiracy; whose law is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility
and chagrin; the blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that
unfruitful loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would
petrify the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled
and death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the
inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They
could do no more, so they fed the children lovingly and carried them
home.
The Thin Woman had baked three cakes. One of these she gave to each of
the children and one she kept herself, whereupon they set out upon their
journey to Angus Og.
It was well after midday when they started. The fresh gaiety of
the morning was gone, and a tyrannous sun, whose majesty was almost
insupportable, forded it over the world. There was but little shade
for the travellers, and, after a time, they became hot and weary and
thirsty--that is, the children did, but the Thin Woman, by reason of her
thinness, was proof against every elemental rigour, except hunger, from
which no creature is free.
She strode in the centre of the road, a very volcano of silence,
thinking twenty different thoughts at the one moment, so that the
urgency of her desire for utterance kept her terribly quiet; but against
this crust of quietude there was accumulating a mass of speech which
must at the last explode or petrify. From this congestion of thought
there arose the first deep rumblings, precursors of uproar, and another
moment would have heard the thunder of her varied malediction, but that
Brigid Beg began to cry: for, indeed, the poor child was both tired
and parched to distraction, and Seumas had no barrier against a similar
surrender, but two minutes' worth of boyish pride. This discovery
withdrew the Thin Woman from her fiery contemplations, and in comforting
the children she forgot her own hardships.
It became necessary to find water quickly: no difficult thing, for the
Thin Woman, being a Natural, was like all other creatures able to sense
the whereabouts of water, and so she at once led the children in a
slightly different direction. In a few minutes they reached a well by
the road-side, and here the children drank deeply and were comforted.
There was a wide, leafy tree growing hard by the well, and in the shade
of this tree they sat down and ate their cakes.
While they rested the Thin Woman advised the children on many important
matters. She never addressed her discourse to both of them at once,
but spoke first to Seumas on one subject and then to Brigid on another
subject; for, as she said, the things which a boy must learn are not
those which are necessary to a girl. It is particularly important that a
man should understand how to circumvent women, for this and the capture
of food forms the basis of masculine wisdom, and on this subject she
spoke to Seumas. It is, however, equally urgent that a woman should be
skilled to keep a man in his proper place, and to this thesis Brigid
gave an undivided attention.
She taught that a man must hate all women before he is able to love a
woman, but that he is at liberty, or rather he is under express command,
to love all men because they are of his kind. Women also should love
all other women as themselves, and they should hate all men but one man
only, and him they should seek to turn into a woman, because women, by
the order of their beings, must be either tyrants or slaves, and it is
better they should be tyrants than slaves. She explained that between
men and women there exists a state of unremitting warfare, and that
the endeavour of each sex is to bring the other to subjection; but that
women are possessed by a demon called Pity which severely handicaps
their battle and perpetually gives victory to the male, who is thus
constantly rescued on the very ridges of defeat. She said to Seumas
that his fatal day would dawn when he loved a woman, because he would
sacrifice his destiny to her caprice, and she begged him for love of her
to beware of all that twisty sex. To Brigid she revealed that a woman's
terrible day is upon her when she knows that a man loves her, for a man
in love submits only to a woman, a partial, individual and temporary
submission, but a woman who is loved surrenders more fully to the
very god of love himself, and so she becomes a slave, and is not alone
deprived of her personal liberty, but is even infected in her mental
processes by this crafty obsession. The fates work for man, and
therefore, she averred, woman must be victorious, for those who dare to
war against the gods are already assured of victory: this being the
law of life, that only the weak shall conquer. The limit of strength
is petrifaction and immobility, but there is no limit to weakness, and
cunning or fluidity is its counsellor. For these reasons, and in order
that life might not cease, women should seek to turn their husbands into
women; then they would be tyrants and their husbands would be slaves,
and life would be renewed for a further period.
As the Thin Woman proceeded with this lesson it became at last so
extremely complicated that she was brought to a stand by the knots, so
she decided to resume their journey and disentangle her argument when
the weather became cooler.
They were repacking the cakes in their wallets when they observed a
stout, comely female coming towards the well. This woman, when she drew
near, saluted the Thin Woman, and her the Thin Woman saluted again,
whereupon the stranger sat down.
"It's hot weather, surely," said she, "and I'm thinking it's as much as
a body's life is worth to be travelling this day and the sun the way it
is. Did you come far, now, ma'am, or is it that you are used to going
the roads and don't mind it?"
"Not far," said the Thin Woman.
"Far or near," said the stranger, "a perch is as much as I'd like to
travel this time of the year. That's a fine pair of children you have
with you now, ma'am."
"They are," said the Thin Woman.
"I've ten of them myself," the other continued, "and I often wondered
where they came from. It's queer to think of one woman making ten new
creatures and she not getting a penny for it, nor any thanks itself."
"It is," said the Thin Woman.
"Do you ever talk more than two words at the one time, ma'am?" said the
stranger.
"I do," said the Thin Woman.
"I'd give a penny to hear you," replied the other angrily, "for a more
bad-natured, cross-grained, cantankerous person than yourself I never
met among womankind. It's what I said to a man only yesterday, that thin
ones are bad ones, and there isn't any one could be thinner than you are
yourself."
"The reason you say that," said the Thin Woman calmly, "is because you
are fat and you have to tell lies to yourself to hide your misfortune,
and let on that you like it. There is no one in the world could like to
be fat, and there I leave you, ma'am. You can poke your finger in
your own eye, but you may keep it out of mine if you please, and, so,
good-bye to you; and if I wasn't a quiet woman I'd pull you by the hair
of the head up a hill and down a hill for two hours, and now there's an
end of it. I've given you more than two words; let you take care or I'll
give you two more that will put blisters on your body for ever. Come
along with me now, children, and if ever you see a woman like that woman
you'll know that she eats until she can't stand, and drinks until she
can't sit, and sleeps until she is stupid; and if that sort of person
ever talks to you remember that two words are all that's due to her, and
let them be short ones, for a woman like that would be a traitor and a
thief, only that she's too lazy to be anything but a sot, God help her I
and, so, good-bye."
Thereupon the Thin Woman and the children arose, and having saluted the
stranger they went down the wide path; but the other woman stayed where
she was sitting, and she did not say a word even to herself.
As she strode along the Thin Woman lapsed again to her anger, and became
so distant in her aspect that the children could get no companionship
from her; so, after a while, they ceased to consider her at all and
addressed themselves to their play. They danced before and behind
and around her. They ran and doubled, shouted and laughed and sang.
Sometimes they pretended they were husband and wife, and then they
plodded quietly side by side, making wise, occasional remarks on the
weather, or the condition of their health, or the state of the fields of
rye. Sometimes one was a horse and the other was a driver, and then
they stamped along the road with loud, fierce snortings and louder and
fiercer commands. At another moment one was a cow being driven with
great difficulty to market by a driver whose temper had given way hours
before; or they both became goats and with their heads jammed together
they pushed and squealed viciously; and these changes lapsed into one
another so easily that at no moment were they unoccupied. But as the
day wore on to evening the immense surrounding quietude began to weigh
heavily upon them. Saving for their own shrill voices there was no
sound, and this unending, wide silence at last commanded them to a
corresponding quietness. Little by little they ceased their play. The
scamper became a trot, each run was more and more curtailed in its
length, the race back became swifter than the run forth, and, shortly,
they were pacing soberly enough one on either side of the Thin Woman
sending back and forth a few quiet sentences. Soon even these sentences
trailed away into the vast surrounding stillness. Then Brigid Beg
clutched the Thin Woman's right hand, and not long after Seumas gently
clasped her left hand, and these mute appeals for protection and comfort
again released her from the valleys of fury through which she had been
so fiercely careering.
As they went gently along they saw a cow lying in a field, and, seeing
this animal, the Thin Woman stopped thoughtfully.
"Everything," said she, "belongs to the wayfarer," and she crossed into
the field and milked the cow into a vessel which she had.
"I wonder," said Seumas, "who owns that cow."
"Maybe," said Brigid Beg, "nobody owns her at all."
"The cow owns herself," said the Thin Woman, "for nobody can own a thing
that is alive. I am sure she gives her milk to us with great goodwill,
for we are modest, temperate people without greed or pretension."
On being released the cow lay down again in the grass and resumed its
interrupted cud. As the evening had grown chill the Thin Woman and the
children huddled close to the warm animal. They drew pieces of cake from
their wallets, and ate these and drank happily from the vessel of milk.
Now and then the cow looked benignantly over its shoulder bidding them
a welcome to its hospitable flanks. It had a mild, motherly eye, and
it was very fond of children. The youngsters continually deserted their
meal in order to put their arms about the cow's neck to thank and praise
her for her goodness, and to draw each other's attention to various
excellences in its appearance.
"Cow," said Brigid Beg in an ecstasy, "I love you."
"So do I," said Seumas. "Do you notice the kind of eyes it has?"
"Why does a cow have horns?" said Brigid.
So they asked the cow that question, but it only smiled and said
nothing.
"If a cow talked to you," said Brigid, "what would it say?"
"Let us be cows," replied Seumas, "and then, maybe, we will find out."
So they became cows and ate a few blades of grass, but they found that
when they were cows they did not want to say anything but "moo," and
they decided that cows did not want to say anything more than that
either, and they became interested in the reflection that, perhaps,
nothing else was worth saying.
A long, thin, yellow-coloured fly was going in that direction on a
journey, and he stopped to rest himself on the cow's nose.
"You are welcome," said the cow.
"It's a great night for travelling," said the fly, "but one gets tired
alone. Have you seen any of my people about?"
"No," replied the cow, "no one but beetles to-night, and they seldom
stop for a talk. You've rather a good kind of life, I suppose, flying
about and enjoying yourself."
"We all have our troubles," said the fly in a melancholy voice, and he
commenced to clean his right wing with his leg.
"Does any one ever lie against your back the way these people are lying
against mine, or do they steal your milk?"
"There are too many spiders about," said the fly.
"No corner is safe from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on you.
I've got a twist, my eye trying to watch them. They are ugly,
voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible, terrible
creatures."
"I have seen them," said the cow, "but they never done me any harm. Move
up a little bit please, I want to lick my nose: it's queer how itchy my
nose gets"--the fly moved up a bit. "If," the cow continued, "you had
stayed there, and if my tongue had hit you, I don't suppose you would
ever have recovered."
"Your tongue couldn't have hit me," said the by. "I move very quickly
you know."
Hereupon the cow slily whacked her tongue across her nose. She did not
see the fly move, but it was hovering safely half an inch over her nose.
"You see," said the fly.
"I do," replied the cow, and she bellowed so sudden and furious a snort
of laughter that the fly was blown far away by that gust and never came
back again.
This amused the cow exceedingly, and she chuckled and sniggered to
herself for a long time. The children had listened with great interest
to the conversation, and they also laughed delightedly, and the Thin
Woman admitted that the fly had got the worse of it; but, after a while,
she said that the part of the cow's back against which she was resting
was bonier than anything she had ever leaned upon before, and that while
thinness was a virtue no one had any right to be thin in lumps, and that
on this count the cow was not to be commended. On hearing this the cow
arose, and without another look at them it walked away into the dusky
field. The Thin Woman told the children afterwards that she was sorry
she had said anything, but she was unable to bring her self to apologise
to the cow, and so they were forced to resume their journey in order to
keep themselves warm.
There was a sickle moon in the sky, a tender sword whose radiance stayed
in its own high places and did not at all illumine the heavy world
below; the glimmer of infrequent stars could also be seen with spacious,
dark solitudes between them; but on the earth the darkness gathered
in fold on fold of misty veiling, through which the trees uttered an
earnest whisper, and the grasses lifted their little voices, and the
wind crooned its thrilling, stern lament.
As the travellers walked on, their eyes, flinching from the darkness,
rested joyfully on the gracious moon, but that joy lasted only for a
little time. The Thin Woman spoke to them curiously about the moon,
and, indeed, she might speak with assurance on that subject, for
her ancestors had sported in the cold beam through countless dim
generations.
"It is not known," said she, "that the fairies seldom dance for joy,
but for sadness that they have been expelled from the sweet dawn, and
therefore their midnight revels are only ceremonies to remind them
of their happy state in the morning of the world before thoughtful
curiosity and self-righteous moralities drove them from the kind face of
the sun to the dark exile of midnight. It is strange that we may not be
angry while looking on the moon. Indeed, no mere appetite or passion of
any kind dare become imperative in the presence of the Shining One; and
this, in a more limited degree, is true also of every form of beauty;
for there is something in an absolute beauty to chide away the desires
of materiality and yet to dissolve the spirit in ecstasies of fear and
sadness. Beauty has no liking for Thought, but will send terror and
sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes. We may neither
be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may we dare to think
in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely afflict us. I think
that she is not benevolent but malign, and that her mildness is a cloak
for many shy infamies. I think that beauty tends to become frightful as
it becomes perfect, and that, if we could see it comprehendingly, the
extreme of beauty is a desolating hideousness, and that the name
of ultimate, absolute beauty is Madness. Therefore men should seek
loveliness rather than beauty, and so they would always have a friend
to go beside them, to understand and to comfort them, for that is the
business of loveliness: but the business of beauty--there is no person
at all knows what that is. Beauty is the extreme which has not yet swung
to and become merged in its opposite. The poets have sung of this beauty
and the philosophers have prophesied of it, thinking that the beauty
which passes all understanding is also the peace which passeth
understanding; but I think that whatever passes understanding, which
is imagination, is terrible, standing aloof from humanity and from
kindness, and that this is the sin against the Holy Ghost, the great
Artist. An isolated perfection is a symbol of terror and pride, and
it is followed only by the head of man, but the heart winces from it
aghast, cleaving to that loveliness which is modesty and righteousness.
Every extreme is bad, in order that it may swing to and fertilize its
equally horrible opposite."
Thus, speaking more to herself than to the children, the Thin Woman
beguiled the way. The moon had brightened as she spoke, and on either
side of the path, wherever there was a tree or a rise in the ground,
a black shadow was crouching tensely watchful, seeming as if it might
spring into terrible life at a bound. Of these shadows the children
became so fearful that the Thin Woman forsook the path and adventured on
the open hillside, so that in a short time the road was left behind and
around them stretched the quiet slopes in the full shining of the moon.
When they had walked for a long time the children became sleepy; they
were unused to being awake in the night, and as there was no place where
they could rest, and as it was evident that they could not walk much
further, the Thin Woman grew anxious. Already Brigid had made a
tiny, whimpering sound, and Seumas had followed this with a sigh, the
slightest prolongation of which might have trailed into a sob, and when
children are overtaken by tears they do not understand how to escape
from them until they are simply bored by much weeping.
When they topped a slight incline they saw a light shining some distance
away, and toward this the Thin Woman hurried. As they drew near she saw
it was a small fire, and around this some figures were seated. In a few
minutes she came into the circle of the firelight, and here she halted
suddenly. She would have turned and fled, but fear loosened her knees
so that they would not obey her will; also the people by the fire had
observed her, and a great voice commanded that she should draw near.
The fire was made of branches of heather, and beside it three figures
sat. The Thin Woman, hiding her perturbation as well as she could, came
nigh and sat down by the fire. After a low word of greeting she gave
some of her cake to the children, drew them close to her, wrapped her
shawl about their heads and bade them sleep. Then, shrinkingly, she
looked at her hosts.
They were quite naked, and each of them gazed on her with intent
earnestness. The first was so beautiful that the eye failed upon him,
flinching aside as from a great brightness. He was of mighty stature,
and yet so nobly proportioned, so exquisitely slender and graceful, that
no idea of gravity or bulk went with his height. His face was kingly
and youthful and of a terrifying serenity. The second man was of equal
height, but broad to wonderment. So broad was he that his great height
seemed diminished. The tense arm on which he leaned was knotted and
ridged with muscle, and his hand gripped deeply into the ground. His
face seemed as though it had been hammered from hard rock, a massive,
blunt face as rigid as his arm. The third man can scarcely be described.
He was neither short nor tall. He was muscled as heavily as the second
man. As he sat he looked like a colossal toad squatting with his arms
about his knees, and upon these his chin rested. He had no shape nor
swiftness, and his head was flattened down and was scarcely wider than
his neck. He had a protruding dog-like mouth that twitched occasionally,
and from his little eyes there glinted a horrible intelligence. Before
this man the soul of the Thin Woman grovelled. She felt herself crawling
to him. The last terrible abasement of which humanity is capable came
upon her: a fascination which would have drawn her to him in screaming
adoration. Hardly could she look away from him, but her arms were about
the children, and love, mightiest of the powers, stirred fiercely in her
heart.
The first man spoke to her.
"Woman," said he, "for what purpose do you go abroad on this night and
on this hill?"
"I travel, sir," said the Thin Woman, "searching for the Brugh of Angus
the son of the Dagda Mor."
"We are all children of the Great Father," said he. "Do you know who we
are?"
"I do not know that," said she.
"We are the Three Absolutes, the Three Redeemers, the three
Alembics--the Most Beautiful Man, the Strongest Man and the Ugliest Man.
In the midst of every strife we go unhurt. We count the slain and the
victors and pass on laughing, and to us in the eternal order come all
the peoples of the world to be regenerated for ever. Why have you called
to us?"
"I did not call to you, indeed," said the Thin Woman; "but why do you
sit in the path so that travellers to the House of the Dagda are halted
on their journey?"
"There are no paths closed to us," he replied; "even the gods seek us,
for they grow weary in their splendid desolation--saving Him who liveth
in all things and in us; Him we serve and before His awful front we
abase ourselves. You, O Woman, who are walking in the valleys of anger,
have called to us in your heart, therefore we are waiting for you on the
side of the hill. Choose now one of us to be your mate, and do not fear
to choose, for our kingdoms are equal and our powers are equal."
"Why would I choose one of you," replied the Thin Woman, "when I am well
married already to the best man in the world?"
"Beyond us there is no best man," said he, "for we are the best in
beauty, and the best in strength, and the best in ugliness; there is no
excellence which is not contained in us three. If you are married what
does that matter to us who are free from the pettiness of jealousy
and fear, being at one with ourselves and with every manifestation of
nature."
"If," she replied, "you are the Absolute and are above all pettiness,
can you not be superior to me also and let me pass quietly on my road to
the Dagda!"
"We are what all humanity desire," quoth he, "and we desire all
humanity. There is nothing, small or great, disdained by our immortal
appetites. It is not lawful, even for the Absolute, to outgrow Desire,
which is the breath of God quick in his creatures and not to be bounded
or surmounted by any perfection."
During this conversation the other great figures had leaned forward
listening intently but saying nothing. The Thin Woman could feel the
children like little, terrified birds pressing closely and very quietly
to her sides.
"Sir," said she, "tell me what is Beauty and what is Strength and what
is Ugliness? for, although I can see these things, I do not know what
they are."
"I will tell you that," he replied--"Beauty is Thought and Strength is
Love and Ugliness is Generation. The home of Beauty is the head of man.
The home of Strength is the heart of man, and in the loins Ugliness
keeps his dreadful state. If you come with me you shall know all
delight. You shall live unharmed in the flame of the spirit, and nothing
that is gross shall bind your limbs or hinder your thought. You shall
move as a queen amongst all raging passions without torment or despair.
Never shall you be driven or ashamed, but always you will choose your
own paths and walk with me in freedom and contentment and beauty."
"All things," said the Thin Woman, "must act according to the order of
their being, and so I say to Thought, if you hold me against my will
presently I will bind you against your will, for the holder of an
unwilling mate becomes the guardian and the slave of his captive."
"That is true," said he, "and against a thing that is true I cannot
contend; therefore, you are free from me, but from my brethren you are
not free."
The Thin Woman turned to the second man.
"You are Strength?" said she.
"I am Strength and Love," he boomed, "and with me there is safety and
peace; my days have honour and my nights quietness. There is no evil
thing walks near my lands, nor is any sound heard but the lowing of my
cattle, the songs of my birds and the laughter of my happy children.
Come then to me who gives protection and happiness and peace, and does
not fail or grow weary at any time."
"I will not go with you," said the Thin Woman, "for I am a mother and my
strength cannot be increased; I am a mother and my love cannot be added
to. What have I further to desire from thee, thou great man?"
"You are free of me," said the second man, "but from my brother you are
not free."
Then to the third man the Thin Woman addressed herself in terror, for to
that hideous one something cringed within her in an ecstasy of loathing.
That repulsion which at its strongest becomes attraction gripped her.
A shiver, a plunge, and she had gone, but the hands of the children
withheld her while in woe she abased herself before him.
He spoke, and his voice came clogged and painful as though it urged from
the matted pores of the earth itself.
"There is none left to whom you may go but me only. Do not be afraid,
but come to me and I will give you these wild delights which have been
long forgotten. All things which are crude and riotous, all that is
gross and without limit is mine. You shall not think and suffer any
longer; but you shall feel so surely that the heat of the sun will be
happiness: the taste of food, the wind that blows upon you, the ripe
ease of your body--these things will amaze you who have forgotten them.
My great arms about you will make you furious and young again; you shall
leap on the hillside like a young goat and sing for joy as the birds
sing. Leave this crabbed humanity that is barred and chained away
from joy and come with me, to whose ancient quietude at the last both
Strength and Beauty will come like children tired in the evening,
returning to the freedom of the brutes and the birds, with bodies
sufficient for their pleasure and with no care for Thought or foolish
curiosity."
But the Thin Woman drew back from his hand, saying "It is not lawful to
turn again when the journey is commenced, but to go forward to whatever
is appointed; nor may we return to your meadows and trees and sunny
places who have once departed from them. The torments of the mind may
not be renounced for any easement of the body until the smoke that
blinds us is blown away, and the tormenting flame has fitted us for that
immortal ecstasy which is the bosom of God. Nor is it lawful that ye
great ones should beset the path of travellers, seeking to lure them
away with cunning promises. It is only at the cross-roads ye may sit
where the traveller will hesitate and be in doubt, but on the highway ye
have no power."
"You are free of me," said the third man, "until you are ready to come
to me again, for I only of all things am steadfast and patient, and
to me all return in their seasons. There are brightnesses in my secret
places in the woods, and lamps in my gardens beneath the hills, tended
by the angels of God, and behind my face there is another face not hated
by the Bright Ones."
So the three Absolutes arose and strode mightily away; and as they went
their thunderous speech to each other boomed against the clouds and the
earth like a gusty wind, and, even when they had disappeared, that great
rumble could be heard dying gently away in the moonlit distances.
The Thin Woman and the children went slowly forward on the rugged,
sloping way. Far beyond, near the distant summit of the hill there was a
light gleaming.
"Yonder," said the Thin Woman, "is the Brugh of Angus Mac an Og, the
son of the Dagda Mor," and toward this light she assisted the weary
children.
In a little she was in the presence of the god and by him refreshed
and comforted. She told him all that had happened to her husband and
implored his assistance. This was readily accorded, for the chief
business of the gods is to give protection and assistance to such of
their people as require it; but (and this is their limitation) they
cannot give any help until it is demanded, the freewill of mankind being
the most jealously guarded and holy principle in life; therefore, the
interference of the loving gods comes only on an equally loving summons. _