The Crock of Gold (19 page)

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, lorded 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 farther 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?"

"No 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 forever. 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! 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 tonight, 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 in 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 did 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 fly. "I move very quickly, you know."

Hereupon the cow slyly 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 worst 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 herself 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.