The Crock of Gold, James Stephens [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

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,”