IN Dublin, sometime in the early 'eighties, on the last day of the month of March, a mother in child-pain clenched her teeth, dug her knees home into the bed, sweated and panted and grunted, became a tense living mass of agony and effort, groaned and pressed and groaned and pressed, and pressed a little boy out of her womb into a world where white horses and black horses and brown horses and white-and-black horses and brown-and-white horses trotted tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tappety-tap over cobble stones, conceitedly, in front of landau, brougham, or vis-à-vis; lumberingly in front of tramcar; pantingly and patiently in front of laden lorry, dray, or float; and gaily in front of the merry and irresponsible jaunting-car:
Where soldiers paraded, like figures taken out of a toy-box, wearing their red coats with yellow breastpieces; blue jackets with white breastpieces; and tight trousers with red stripes or white stripes or yellow stripes down the whole length of each leg; marching out on each royal birthday of the Queen to the Phoenix Park for a Review and Sham Battle, with guns and lances and swords and cannons; going by the Saluting Point at a quick march, or at a trot, and lastly, at a gallop, with a thunder of hoofs and a rattle of shaking cannon, that made all hearts quiver with hope for a new war; while the soldiers having got back to barracks when the fun was all over, rubbed down their sweating horses or cleaned their rifles, murmuring all the time against the birthdays of queens that gave them all so much mucking about for nothing:
Where a great poet named Tennyson, anticipating Hollywood, had built up in the Studio of his mind, his Come into the garden, Maud, the black bat night has flown; and had sent his cardboard kings and warriors and uncompromising virgins out into the highways and byways that sprinkled the lawns of the welltodo, men bowing low to the knights as they went galloping by like the wind in a hurry; and the maidens smiled and beckoned and sighed as the knights careered about among the roses and the hollyhocks, gathering on the points of their lances lovely little bunches of rosemary and rue:
Where energy was poured out in Bibles and tracts and hymns; and sweet little stories, swinging little boys and girls up to heaven or down to hell; where the hosts of heaven, embattled, assembled for the fray on a croquet lawn; and all the passion, frightfulness, laughter, strife, tears, peace, defeat, victory, agony, and bloody sweat of heaven's war with hell sank into a delicately scented, gently moving, sweet conversing, pink and mauve and cream-coloured garden party:
Where it was believed that when children died of croup or consumption or fever, they were simply not, for God took them:
Where Ruskin, with his delicate mind and Christianly crafted hands, modelled his figures of speech with mud and tinsel; and Mr. Poynter, president of the Royal Academy, summoning up all his powers of imagination, and summing all that ever had been or would be in art, painted the tour de force and cul-de-sac of a visit to Æsculapius:
Where almost all found all in all in God on Sundays; and the rest of the week found all in all in bustles, Bibles, and bassinets; preaching, prisons, and puseyism; valentines, victoria crosses, and vaccination; tea fights, tennis, and transubstantiation; magic lanterns, minstrel shows, and mioramas; music-halls, melodramas, and melodeons; antimacassars, moonlighting, and midwives; fashions, fenians, and fancy-fairs; musk, money, and monarchy:
Where every shrubbery in every pet-of-heaven house held a monkey, stuck there by Darwin, a monkey that stretched out a sudden paw to rip a bit of fragrant lace from the petticoat of any lady stooping down to pull a sprig of lavender, sending the ladies flying with fear into the churches to pull and pull the bells, making all the clergy run like hell into the pulpits to yell Peace, be still, for there is nothing revealed that cannot be hidden away; and so queen and consort, peers, clergy, commons, and people buried deep this monkey bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, thick edge of the wedge, whereby millions of years were thrust between themselves and other people and God, jerking away a sense of nearness so obliging that it put a latch-key into the pocket of every catholic and protestant for a private gateway into the kingdom of heaven.
And the woman in child-pain clenched her teeth, dug her knees home into the bed, became a tense living mass of agony and effort, sweated and panted, pressed and groaned, and pressed and pressed till a man-child dropped from her womb down into the world; down into a world that was filled up with the needs, ambitions, desires, and ignorances of others, to be shoved aside, pressed back, beaten down by privileges carrying godwarrants of superiority because they had dropped down into the world a couple of hours earlier. The privileges were angry and irritable; but the round-bellied, waggle-headed, lanky-legged newborn latecomer kicked against the ambitions, needs, and desires of the others, cleared a patch of room for itself from the trampling feet and snapping hands around it; was washed, napkined, and fed; added on three, four, or five ounces of weight every week, taking most of it from its mother and a little from the life around it; and so grew gradually, and gathered to itself the power, the ignorance, the desire, and the ambition of man.
Forty years of age the woman was when the boy was three, with hair still raven black, parted particularly down the middle of the head, gathered behind in a simple coil, and kept together by a couple of hairpins; a small nose spreading a little at the bottom; deeply set, softly gleaming brown eyes that sparkled when she laughed and hardened to a steady glow through any sorrow, deep and irremediable; eyes that, when steadily watched, seemed to hide in their deeps an intense glow of many dreams, veiled by the nearer vision of things that were husband and children and home. But it was the mouth that arrested attention most, for here was shown the chief characteristic of the woman: it quivered with fighting perseverance, firmness, human humour, and the gentle, lovable fullness of her nature. Small strong hands, hands that could slyly bathe a festered wound or scour a floor - wet cloth first, then the brush soap-foamed, tearing the dirt out, then wet cloth again and, finally, the dry cloth finishing the patch in back and forward strokes and twisting circles of rhythmic motions. A sturdy figure carried gracefully and with resolution; flexible, at peace in its simple gown of black serge, with its tiny white frill round the neck that was fair and unwrinkled still. A laugh that began in a ripple of humour, and ended in a musical torrent of full-toned mirth which shook those who listened into an irresistible companionship.
And all this was seen, not then, but after many years when the dancing charm and pulsing vigour of youthful life had passed her by, and left her moving a little stiffly, but still with charm and still with vigour, among those whose view of the light of life had dimmed and was mingling more and more with a spreading darkness; and vividly again, and with an agonised power, when she was calmly listening to the last few age-worn beats of her own dying heart.
This had been the shake of the bag, and she knew that she would never have another child. She had had seven before - three boys and one girl living, and one girl and two boys dead. Each of the two dead boys had been called John, and her husband said that this last boy's name was to be John, too. She thought for a long time. It seemed to be a challenge to God to do that, to give the name of John to this new child. He was undoubtedly her last child, and she wanted him to live. The two born before that had been called John, had died, died of the same thing, died of croup.
She remembered how the first had died, died before she knew he was dying, died of croup. Then after another two years, another boy had come, and they had called him John. Her husband had said we must have a boy called John. Her husband with doggedness and she with misgiving had called him John. He had been vigorous enough, and had sprawled and kicked a twelve-month way into the world, when suddenly he seemed to get a feverish cold, a little cough, and a watering from the eyes. Then one evening on her way to his bedside she stopped, frightened by the sound of a hard choking cough. Prompted, at first, by fear to go away and refuse to hear, she went slowly through the room to the bed, and found him struggling from under the clothes, his arms moving wildly, his eyes staring, his face bluish, and his breath coming in short and cluttering gulps. She remembered that, in a panic, she had slapped a bonnet on her head and a shawl round her shoulders, had gathered the little body into a blanket, rushed out of the house, down the street, climbed into a passing cab, calling on the driver for God's sake to drive fast, fast, fast to the Abercorn Hospital.
-He can do it, if He wants to, she murmured in the cab all the way to the hospital, He can save the child; the other died, but this won't, this won't, won't, won't die. With a thought, God can take this choking lump from the little child's throat, and give him back his healthy happy breathing.
And the child got it harder and harder to get its breath, and the choking effort of the child to breathe whistled agony into her brain. She tore up the steps of the hospital, rang and rang and rang the bell, pushed past into the hall...
