POOR TOM'S ACOLD

SEAN stood silently in the room looking long at the fearful figure of his brother, Tom, crouched in the comfortable armchair before a sunnily-blazing fire, for the night was cold, and a white frost was calmly settling down on the paths and street outside. He felt a choking in his throat, and tears trickled down his cheeks, but Tom couldn't see them, for his eye-strings had broken, and he was blind.

Tom had done well and done ill since he had come home from the Boer War, jaunty in his khaki uniform, helmet and puggaree, the Queen's coloured box of chocolate in his kit-bag still full of the sweetmeat, for what soldier could eat chocolate given by a queen? And he had kept it just as it had been given to him during a parade on the brown veldt, in the shadow of high kopjes when many bugles had blown the cease-fire, and the ragged De Wet, with many a curse, had stabled his horse, and had flung his rifle and whip into a corner, easing his sweating body on a sofa till another chance came to strike again, galloping over the veldt or crouching behind a kopje.

War's wager won, Tom had gone back to his job as a postman, was shortly after promoted to his old job of a sorter, finally becoming head sorter in the morning mail running from Dublin to Belfast, this job bringing another and much higher one almost within his reach: he was getting on well and worthily. Then he married: married an ignorant catholic girl who in some way had influenced him towards a newer home, and a companionable bed. Agatha Cooley was a yellow-skinned, stout woman, badly built in body, and mind-sly in a lot of ways, as so many toweringly ignorant persons are; her best knowledge lay in guessing what a newspaper was trying to say. She could struggle through a short letter with pain and anxiety, her finest phrase always being that of hoping all were in the best of health as that left her at present. A lid that drooped half-way down over one eye gave one side of her face the appearance of falling into a jocular sleep, and, watch as he would, Sean had never seen it lift or fall; it stood still like a fading yellow blind whose worn-out spring refused to send it more than half-way up on a dark and dusty oval window. She dressed in a very dowdy, slovenly way, and spoke in a voice from which a rough life had mobbed even the dimmest tinkle of music. She was a cook-general when Tom met her, and how or where they met, or how the rather fastidious Tom had been gathered into her bosom, none of the family ever knew. Before they were married, Tom had brought her once or twice to see his mother; but do all we did to make things merry and offhand, the core of every effort was uneasiness, for poor Agatha could do nothing but sit straight on her chair, prim and fat, sipping her glass of beer, making herself look as unrefined as possible; giving a flat yes or a flatter no to every question, till one grew tired of asking, turning away to other thoughts, leaving her there to sit and sip her beer in peace. She had got Tom, and there she sat, thick and stout, like a queen cactus on a kitchen chair of state.

Mrs. Casside had an anxious time of it, for she had an old protestant dread of a mixed marriage, and all her time now was a silent prayer that, in some way or another, the marriage would drift into a happy unfulfilment. She told her trouble to but one outside the family - the Rev. Mr. Griffin, who agreed with her in a scholarly way, though Tom had only once ever put his foot inside his church, feeling very uncomfortable till he got out again. The Rector prayed in the little room, with Mrs. Casside, that God in His goodness would see the dear woman's son safe, and lead him from the tangible danger of marrying one alien in religion, and different in manner and outlook in life, his words mingling with the laughing shouts of children swinging from a rope tied to the lamp-post just outside the window. Sean wasn't bothering about her alienism in religion, even for Tom's sake, for he knew that Tom had slid away from all of them. The smell of a pub was incense to Tom, and its portals had the beauty of a Persian garden, with an everlasting fountain of sweet waters in the midst of it. The hold of the faith had weakened well on Sean himself. Though he hadn't said farewell, the anchor was getting weighed, and his ship of life was almost about to leave the harbour. He no longer thought that God's right hand, or His left one either, had handed the bible out of Heaven, all made up with chapter and verse and bound in a golden calfskin. Darwin's flame of thought had burned away a lot of the sacred straw and stubble, and following men had cleanly shown how incredible much of the bible was, contradicting itself so often and so early that no-one could argue with it, rearing up an imposition of fancy, myth, and miracle coloured by neither fact nor figure; depending on a crowd who, as Coleridge said, didn't believe, but only believed that they believed, ready to strike at, and drive away, any sincere and sorrowful heart daring to murmur, I can believe no longer.

No, it wasn't Agatha's religion that troubled Sean, for she had none save to eat and drink and sleep and be afeared of fancies; it was her slovenliness that tortured him, her drowsy ignorance and deep-set superstition that seared his imagination; for Tom was the one brother whom he liked, and, in his heart, he knew that this marriage would be the end of Tom, and that he would be separated even from the bawdy exhilaration of the pub.

God was no good, and the marriage took place, how, or where, no-one seemed to know. Tom just came to the home one day and, in a silent silence, took his box away. For some years after, he was rarely seen, and it was gossip that told us where he was living. Occasionally at the railway station, Sean, with his dinner in a handkerchief fixed to a billycan tied to his belt, hurrying to his train for a country job at the screek of dawn, met Tom who murmured a hurried hello, and Sean gave him the railwaymen's signal of greeting of a raised index-finger as he passed by to his train. All the same, three fine kids came out of the mating, Sam, Sylvester, and Sally; the little girl, a real handsome kid, the younger boy, handsome and sturdy, and the older one strong too, his boyish face an annoying blend of his father's good-nature and his mother's tireless querulousness. They rented a small house with three steps up to the door, a shining brass knocker, and a bow-window. This residence, with a few others, stood out grandly in the narrow terrace, for the rest on the opposite side had only iron knockers, no bow-windows, and no steps up to the doors. Here with a selection of fair furniture, especially what was in the room with the bow window, fine lace curtains on the window, with dark yellow blinds at night, and a plant on a round mahogany table, Tom made quite a splash, and for a time all went well as a marriage bell. Once in a blue moon Tom would pay a flying call to see the mother, send out for a jug of porter, and, with bread and butter, drink it with her, chatting rapidly about what had happened at work, but never a word about what had happened at home; and Sean gave a guess that these lunar visits were spell-snatched out of acrimony and thorny-worded leisure time. Once Sean caught a glimpse of what was happening. It was Tom's day off, and Sean had taken the day to help in a local election, and when he came to Tom's terrace he came on the bould boy polishing the brass knocker. Tom brought him in for a cup of tea, pointing a thumb warningly upwards, and murmuring, She's up in bed, not feeling too well. In the kitchen, Sean noticed a pile of delft draining on a shelf, the things of yesterday mixed with the things of today, and he knew that Tom had washed them.

-What's wrong with her? asked Sean, with a pointed gesture of a thumb upwards.

-Not feeling too well; just not feeling too well, he murmured.

Down the road, in one of the houses on the opposite side of the terrace, Sean was told that this was a common thing on Tom's day off; and that it was he who kept the children's hair combed, bathed them often, and tried to see that the boys got their meals in time to allow them to attend, without blame, the local Christian Brothers' schools.

The time came when Tom himself wasn't feeling too well, and came oftener to see his mother - not to complain, but, maybe, to look at the old, hardy, encouraging face that had weathered so much of the stormy world. At first Tom took his inability to work with pretended joy - a holiday on full pay, he called it. The Post Office doctor attended him, gave him remedies, but Tom got weaker and weaker, and nothing stayed on his stomach. One day, out with the pipers' band, Sean hurried home to get a letter about a festival they were to attend, found Tom there, sitting heavily on a chair, his breath coming in gasps, and when asked what was wrong, I came upstairs too quick - all right in a minute, came staggering out of his mouth. When he came to himself a little, he sent for a pint of porter, but this time his mother drank it alone. His face, once so ruddy and confident, had waned into the pallor of a half-dead man.

-What's wrong with you, old man? asked Sean.

-Dunno right; something; I'll be all right again soon.

-But what does the doctor say 'tis?

-Didn't say, Jack; can't be anything serious, or he'd say, wouldn't he?

-You'd think so, said Sean doubtedly.

-Well, I'll be getting back home to rest awhile, and a flash of meek panic at the journey before him flickered over the pale face; getting back now, I'd betther. He stood up slowly, and...