“Good-bye,” he added, as she was closing the door.
She looked in again, her face set with awe and expectation.
“Good-bye,” she said. “But you won’t be long away, will you?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“All depends,” he answered. “It’s difficult, sometimes. Perhaps you’d better not come in till Nikoota raps on the table. I’ll tell her, as we pass.”
Eithne nodded, and went out. Dermot allowed a good minute and a half to pass before he rapped on the table. He huddled himself, as he did so, into a bent misshapen form, and his face creased in querulous wrinkles.
“Good evening, my dear,” croaked an old voice, as Eithne came tiptoeing in. The voice had the shake of some of the old St. Patrick’s ladies, but their Irish accent was overlaid with something more theatrical.
Five minutes later Eithne was once again in the dim hall, holding the door handle, waiting for the blundering sounds which would announce Miboosha. She found him hungry, and more uncouth than ever.
“Wha’, wha’, wha’,” the ogre complained, pawing his way about the room. “Ugg! Gunnuck! Nuyce !”
He picked up her favourite doll, and made as if to eat it.
Then indeed Dermot had to admire the presence of mind of his little sister. No trace of horror or panic showed itself on her face: she wore only an expression of polite concern.
“I’m ’fraid,” she said, and stopped short. “I hardly recommend that. I’m ’fraid it wouldn’t be good for your digestion. You have to be careful, don’t you?”
While he hesitated, she took the doll firmly out of his hands, and put it in safety.
“Here, Miboosha,” she said, “I thought you might be hungry, and I kept these.”
She produced a small piece of cake, a piece of bread-and-butter, and two biscuits—secreted during tea. Cunning little thing, he thought, for he had never seen her take them.
Miboosha, falling on the viands with ferocious joy, discovered speedily that he was not as hungry as he had thought.
“Well,” said Dermot presently, as, restored to his proper form, he rubbed his hands at the fire. “How were they? How did you get on?”
“Oh, it was all right. It was lovely some of the time. Only——” She hurried over, as if to make sure that the doll was still safe. “One thing was rather awful. Miboosha wanted to eat poor Ethelfreda. But I managed to get her away from him, and ’stract his attention.”
“Oh? Tell me.”
He went on rubbing his hands, expressing great approval of her tact.
“Whew,” he said presently. “It was pretty cold, on that staircase, in the Pyramids.”
Now that Eithne was asked with him to Delgany, however, she began perforce to take a share in his holiday life. She was one of the party, and, away from home, she sparkled. The journeys into the mountains involved the sidecar now: or, if the route were to be too rough, Con took the two in turns. This went on all through the holiday, for he came often to Walmer Villa, on his free day, to pick up one or the other of them. Dermot, without resentment, but with a sort of wonder, had to step back from the exclusive possession of Con, and look at his sister with a fresh respect. If Con did not find her company tiresome ; if Con sought her out for hours at a time, there must be something in her. And there was. Appreciation brought her on like a spring tide, and she discovered to the astonished Con a personality ready made and mature, the existence of which he had never suspected. The small girl, neat, pretty, brown, presided delightfully at their picnics and the teas they ate in lonely mountain cottages. She poured out for them, she kept Con in order, happily rebuking his more outrageous outbursts of flirtation, twinkling from one of them to the other till Dermot, his nose in his teacup, wondered half dazed who this changeling was that had suddenly come to life in the quiet and unregarded person of his little sister.
Every Sunday afternoon Con came down to Walmer Villa to play with them. Soon, obviously, he came to play with Eithne: but Dermot was quite happy to assist at the games. Con was the royal source of all exciting things, all feats, and all “divarsion.” Everything he did was right. Dermot felt no jealousy, and his first bewilderment soon passed. His conceit and self-consciousness were ignorance, more than the vices themselves. Like many an only son, he had his own way, and did not at first realise that there were others. Parents and relations had put him first so long that the first place seemed only natural. Once enlightened, he was almost pathetically ready to play second fiddle.
“Well, Dermot.” Con sat in the hay, his collar undone, his hair tousled, puffing. “So you’re going away to a boarding school after this, wha’?”
“Yes.”
“Will ye—Eithne, ye little divil, if you put any more hay down me neck, I’ll have the hide off ye. G’way. Will ye like that?”
“I don’t know. I shall feel very strange at first, I expect.”
“And it’s some sort of a scholarship thing ye got?”
“Yes.”
“For what—ah, no, Eithne pet. I’m too hot. Easy a minute. Easy. Oh, glory !”
The indefatigable maiden, dodging cleverly, had put a last handful down between his collar and skin.
“Now I’ll leave you in peace,” she announced.
“That’s one thousand seven hundred and seventy two you owe me, mind,” threatened Con, laughing.
“Poo,” replied Eithne, loftily ; and allowed herself an unrepentant grin. This formidable score represented kisses due, as penalties for misdemeanours, to be claimed at some indefinite date in the future. The creditor occasionally took one or two on account.
“What were we sayin’—Eithne, ye ill-mannered little gomm! Here was I having an important conversation with your brother, and you’ve put it all out of me head.”
“About my scholarship,” said Dermot awkwardly.
“Oh yes, bedad. What was it for, exactly?”
“For Classics.”
“For Classics, eh.” Con sighed. “I was never a hand for me books. More power to you, son! Eithne “—his great arm shot out like lightning, grabbing her ankle. “C’m here. Do you realise what a grand, learned brother ye have?” He shook her so hard that she could not reply. “You don’t? Very well—I’ll show ye.”
And he took a full revenge for the handful of hay, rolling her over and over, cramming it into her mouth, and maltreating her generally.
“Pfoo—pfff—pfoo. You beast !”
She ran away, and stood, crying with laughter, spitting hayseeds out of her mouth.
“What did I hear you say? WHA’?”
He rose, and galumphed after her, like some enormous dog, to a far corner of the garden. Dermot watched, smiling, but made no move to follow.
An hour later, the three sat quiet, under the spell of evening. Grandpapa had come down, talked to Con a while, and retired, one hand held open behind him, in the small of his back. Smoke from the cottages rose frail and straight into the musing air. They saw it against the trees of Sandycove ; higher, it was gone. The shadow of the summer-house and its laburnums streamed towards them across the little lawn. Standing up straight in the rich slanting rays, with the blue hazy darkness of the hedge behind them, the red-hot pokers glowed, deep flaming suns, feeding furiously on their living core. The bells of Kingstown had begun to fill the sky with their music. This was Ireland. Soon, soon Dermot would be gone: gone to he knew not what.
“Sing, Con,” he said suddenly.
“Yes,” said Eithne, nestling up closer to him. “Please.”
“What will I sing?”
She wriggled on the seat.
“You know.”
Con was silent for a moment. Then, lifting up his face into the sunset, and shutting his eyes, he began, the first deep note startling them, as it always did, with the full quality they could never quite remember, which no experience could teach them to expect.
“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers around her are sighing,
<
br /> But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.”
Gazing across the garden, held by the small suns of the poker flowers, they abandoned themselves to the sweet melancholy of the song. Yes, yes: they were soon to go, to leave Ireland for a whole long year. Yes, yes. The very seat beneath them thrilled with some of the deep notes, like a church pew thrilling to the organ. Dermot considered, in a wonder he never outgrew, the phenomenon of a human being with a Voice: a real voice, rich, powerful, something which welled up from the depths of life: something which Con, god-like, turned on at will: with which he could exult in a fine summer morning, filling the bathroom with sounds free as the sunlight, sounds which threatened to blow the four walls apart and let in the empyrean upon the room’s two occupants: Dermot, sitting in the bath, directly over the inlet, enjoying the secret feeling of warm water welling up beneath him, bubbling along his thighs and round at his back, tickling the inside of his legs, with its suggestion of strange, unlawful joy: suddenly forgetting this and everything else in the magnificent shock of sound that burst from the great figure in the window ; Con, stropping his razor, rolling out the magnificent notes in challenge to the sunny colours of Vico Hill. Dermot caught his breath. No more, this year. That was all over. They had had their week at Delgany. This was the last proper time they would have of Con.
“Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him.”
Oh, would there ever be any escape from a world of good-byes! Why was everything so capriciously ordered that happiness could only last for a little at a time, and then one must be dragged away, protesting, looking backward, and flung into adversity? Home wasn’t adversity—but school, the big new school? Why, this day fortnight, he would have been there several days already! Hold, hold on to the precious minutes. The chill will soon be stealing up from the grass, the sun will have sunk behind the trees. Con will stretch himself, and have to go. He has stayed away from evening church, already, as it’s our last time, and he couldn’t get down earlier, because of visitors at Delgany. Hold on, hold on.
The song ceased, and all three sat silent, watching the sun go down. For the two children, another golden day was added to the store that warmed them through the year. Con, when they were gone, would spend his Saturdays in racing and reliability trials, till the weather got too bad. On Sundays, he would play with other children, or go off for the day with Eileen, his favourite sister. Dermot and Eithne knew about the other children, but could not realise them. Con was so much a being of their world that they could not believe he did not hibernate until they came again.
“Well, childher——” He got up, and stretched his mighty frame, suddenly, and for no reason, putting a fist as large as a ham an inch from Dermot’s nose. “Smell that! D’ye hear me? Smell that !”
He laughed, and let all his muscles go slack.
“Ye’re goin’—when? Monda’—to-morrow week. And I’m off on Frida’.” The good-natured creature had put off his own holiday, so as not to disappoint them. “But ye’re comin’ up on Thursda’? Y’are? Ah, well. Sure we don’t have to say good-bye yet. We have a bit of divarsion in front of us still.”
A bit of divarsion, yes, one bit, still. Divarsion so late, so final, as to be almost heartrending. The last bit of divarsion. Eithne clung tight to his arm, as they went slowly up the garden. He had to duck, laughing, under each pergola.
It was a fine bit of divarsion when it came, but dearly bought. A farewell visit to Dalkey Island, exploring round the fort, making faces at the goats, building a little cairn “till we all come again next year” ; an afternoon so serene, so lovely that the promise seemed real, and they left in good spirits, already seeing ahead to the joys which should be theirs when they returned to dismantle the cairn and find the written message to themselves, signed with their three names, buried underneath it. The chill fell once or twice after that, the sudden sick weight on the heart, but feverishly they kept it at bay, till dinner-time. Then, as though to cheer them up, and make a laughing matter of the departure, the whole family from time to time uttered a kind of chant. “Aaah—aaah! the last meal till next year”: which became, in Con’s ferocious utterance, “Aaaaaaah! The last meal ye’ll ever eat.” This, which they received at first with laughter, grew too much for them. To the dismay of the company, Eithne’s face suddenly puckered, and she slid out of sight under the table, to hide the bitterness of her sorrow.
There was a reaction after that, of course, and they left hilariously—not by tram, as usual, but in the sidecar: a last treat.
“We’ll go a bit of a round home,” explained Con. “Sure we’ve lots of time. We won’t take longer than the walk and the tram.”
The pair were clad in half the overcoats the house could muster, and sped off with happy cries. A ride under the full moon! Never had that happened before. Up Vico Road they sped, past houses washed pale in the moonlight, past secret, mysterious, smiling trees: along the white ribbon of road, under the great shadow of the hill, down, down between cool woods smelling of pine-needles, out on the levels beside the sea: past Ballybrack Station, past Brian’s house: Brian, a married man now, settled in Killiney: inland then, through hedges grey in the moonlight, through sleepy, twinkling Loughlinstown, all strange and different at night, round by the big tree, and along the flat road home.
“Good night, Dermot boy. Good-bye. Good luck to ye at your new school. You’ll write and tell me how you get on. Oh, sure, you’ll get on all right. Good-bye. We had great divarsion, didn’t we? Oh, but nothing to what we’ll have next year, please God.”
Dermot stood for a minute, waiting for Eithne. Then, suddenly wiser, he went in by himself.
Book IV
Chapter XXX
Dermot and Paddy walked eagerly up the slope that led to the Forty Foot, Dermot holding the moist shillings in the palm of his hand. The slope was decorated with strips of bunting, which accorded strangely with its bare, forbidding rocks. Crowds were ascending it, gaily dressed crowds, ladies and girls treading where ladies and girls were permitted to tread once only in the year. Their unaccustomed voices and laughter rang happily up the steep walls and echoed back from the fat Martello Tower, above the bathing pool. Down Sandycove Avenue in a steady stream, past the little white dusty harbour, and up the rock they came, peopling its summer somnolence with footsteps, colour, and voices: while here and there a scarlet-coated bandsman, clasping some large instrument, added a vivid splash of colour for the eye, and promised as vivid music for the ear.
It was the afternoon of the Forty Foot Swimming Gala. This took place early in August, and Dermot never missed it. Now, having spent a year at a public school, and discovered that he could swim better than the average, he was madly keen on swimming and all to do with it: resolved to concentrate on his new ambition, to swim one day for his house, or even, possibly, long hence, for the school. Till this year, he had watched a spectacle. To-day, he would be a novice, receiving instruction in a mystery.
The love of boys for any form of athletics, and their veneration of the athlete, is a sound and natural thing: and those leaders are ill-advised who try to combat it. The boy proceeds from enthusiasm to enthusiasm, and it is bad psychology to try and force his transition from one phase to another. All that is necessary is that the materials for his successive enthusiasms should be within his reach, so that, when he outgrows one, he may pass on easily to the next. Athletics (or anything else) only become dangerous when there is nothing to succeed them: when a boy’s elders all maintain with their prestige the same stage of arrested development, and, by implication, disparage all further stages. If, however, a boy must worship for a long time at one altar only, it is hard to think of a better one than the altar of skilled physical prowess. To play cricket or golf, to box or swim, is an art. It demands sacrifices and incessant practice. It requires a sound technique. Great artists in this kind deserve more approbation from other art
ists than they commonly receive, but that is because, as with some musicians and many actors, the practice of their art has taught them nothing outside it ; they remain inarticulate and undeveloped. So, fittingly, from the inarticulate and undeveloped they receive their deepest worship. Pursuing always a practical, tangible end—to strike more swiftly, more accurately, or to cut a second off their time—they exemplify in the simplest possible way the doctrine that man is here to overcome difficulty and to perfect his powers: and if there is a better lesson than that, the schools have yet to find it.
When Paddy and Dermot reached the bathing pool, they found that, as usual, rows and rows of chairs had been set on the platforms and flatter portions of the rock. These were filling rapidly. All the more precarious perches had been filled long since by boys whose tickets entitled them to any place of vantage except a chair. A few even sat with their legs dangling from the edges of the diving boards ; but this was not considered a good position, as they had to “come off ou’ o’ that” when the diving began, and huddle upright against the rock as best they might, squeezing back to let the wet bodies pass. Dermot’s cousin, Desmond—younger son of the O’Dowda—was competing in the diving. He had blossomed out suddenly into one of the most expert divers on the coast, and taken seven first prizes the year before. The experts, swimmers and divers alike, attended every gala within their range. This was not from pothunting motives. They were favourites with the crowd, and their absence would be fatal to the gate.
A steward with a rosette showed the two to their chairs, and there was a burst of affectionate derision as some of Paddy’s cronies recognised him from the “free rock” opposite. The Forty Foot authorities could only enclose the actual pool. The rocks outside it, commanding almost as good a view as the dearest seats, were black with all the ragamuffins in Kingstown.
“Ay, Wingman.”
“Yeeow! ”
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