SEAN stood in the office of a business man in whose fancy the sombre blackness of coal glittered more than the onyx, jasper, and chrysolite of heaven's architecture. It was a big, dull, thoughtless room, deprecating any emotion other than one connected with the sale of coal.
Hush! This room is sacred to the transubstantiation of coal into the shimmer of money. In front of a big, dusty window stood a wide table-desk of the dullest brown Sean had ever seen. It stood where it was, like a rock of ages, steadfast, and, apparently, immovable. No wisp of poetry, no wistful tinkle of a folk-song had ever entertained its lonely bulk. Ink, pens, blotting-paper, a ruler, and office writing-paper, each in its proper place, were piled on its pompous top, as if invoking animation out of the stillness, saying silently, Use us, and make the big desk hum. To tinge the common hue of business with the colour of art, two pictures of a costermonger and a costerwoman, by Jack Morrow, had been hung on the wall; badly done, they went on withering, colourless and cold, pictures that must have been dying while they were being painted. In a glass-doored bookcase, handy to the great desk, were two books on the value and quality of coal, flanked on one side by a huge brass-bound, brass-buckled family bible, intimating that with the things that belong to Caesar, the things belonging to God may be very near and very dear to the business man. Under all, a red and blue rubber carpet covered the floor, the red dull, the blue duller.
There the boss sat at his desk in a wide, leather-seated swivel-chair, a portly man as firm in his seat as the desk was on the floor. A large head, bald on the top, but sprayed at the sides and back with sturdy tufts of iron-grey hair. A broad, ruddy face like a big cheese turning rusty, with small, shrewd, beady eyes; eyes that were never dimmed for more than a moment or two by any thought of worry. A thick soft nose, and under it a broad, thick-lipped mouth, which laughed, or shouted vehemently, any reason for laughing or shouting invariably equalling the others in futility.
Knowing little of art, literature, or science; self-centred, not only in the earth, but in the very universe, he sat there, humming; yet possessing a charm and forcible personality that seemed clouded with a knowledge of all things; a friend of artists, with a charm that was irresistible in a restaurant at a luncheon, or sitting, sprawled before an intimate fire with a friend or two, or persuading a doubtful business man that his way was the best way; a volatile mind that could gather coloured thoughts round trivial things, and present them to any company ordered into the frame of a confused and hilarious picture: a molten mass of brazen energy without a hope of taking an ordered form. A great soul lost in the flood of its own hilarity.
There he sat idle in his swivel-chair, a wide-brimmed black hat slung carelessly on the desk beside him; there he sat, a big, hooked pipe dangling from his red, fleshy lips, his stout, short fingers tapping out some inconstant, uneasy tune on the top of the hardwood desk.
He had nothing to do; the miners were on strike, and no coal crept up the river in big-bottomed barges to herald the income of heartening cheques in return for the toil of writing a letter after breakfast, one after lunch, and another before the office closed for the evening. The fires of the nation were going out: the big-topped desk could do no more.
Idly, the strong, fat fingers tapped the desk-top, and the thick, fleshy lips moved moodily to the humming of an air. Then the hum changed to a whistle, then words began to trickle through it to an air Sean had never heard before. He cocked an ear to listen; the words came huskily to his ear, uttered thoughtlessly, unemotionally by the moody crooner:
Gae fetch to me a pint o' wine'
An' full it in a sulver tossie;
That I may drink before I gae
A service tae my bonnie lossie.
-Ay, Sean, me lad, it's a woefu' state o' things: th' flooers o' th' forest are a' wede awa'. There isn't as much as a bean in th' locker, th' day.
But it's no' the roar of sea or shore
Wad mak' me langer wish tae tarry;
Nor shout o' war that's heard afar -
It's leavin' thee, my bonnie lossie.
Sean was startled. Aaron's rod had budded. A riotous and romantic song had drifted up from the solid rancour of the big, impassive desk, that was to hum in his mind for many months to come. He hummed it in his tiny flat in South Kensington; he hummed it in the dead of night, strolling down the Cromwell Road. He would give the title of the song to his next play. He would set down without malice or portly platitude the shattered enterprise of life to be endured by many of those who, not understanding the bloodied melody of war, went forth to fight, to die, or to return again with tarnished bodies and complaining minds. He would show a wide expanse of war in the midst of timorous hope and overweening fear; amidst a galaxy of guns; silently show the garlanded horror of war. However bright and haughty be the burning of a town; however majestic be the snapping thunder of the cannon-fire, the consummation is the ruin of an ordered, sheltering city, with the odious figure of war astride the tumbled buildings, sniffing up the evil smell of the burning ashes. The ruin, the squeal of the mangled, the softening moan of the badly rended are horrible, be the battle just or unjust; be the fighters striving for the good or manifesting faith in evil.
And he would do it in a new way. There was no importance in trying to do the same thing again, letting the second play imitate the first, and the third the second. He wanted a change from what the Irish critics had called burlesque, photographic realism, or slices of life, though the manner and method of two of the plays were as realistic as the scents stealing from a gaudy bunch of blossoms.
He was working on the last act when Mr. Lennox Robinson suddenly paid a visit to his flat in South Kensington. Not to linger, he said, but just to ask about the new play. There were rumours in Dublin that the play wouldn't be given to the Abbey Theatre. The rumours aren't true? You will give the play? Oh, that will be joyful! Yeats and I were sure the rumours were false. No, I can't stay for a cup of tea. Just called because of the silly rumours in Dublin that your play would not be given to the Abbey. Mr. Robinson held out an aesthetic, tentative hand. Goodbye, Sean. Sorry I can't stay; so glad you'll give your play to us; and off he went to the air, it seemed to Sean, of Danny Boy.
Rumours? Sean couldn't believe it. If there were, surely he would have got letters asking if they were true, and he hadn't received a line. He was puzzled. The Abbey seemed to be eager to get the play; he was eager to give it, and so all was peace. He calculated the play would run in the Abbey for at least three weeks, maybe four, and the royalties he'd get would about cover the expenses of the birth of his child. Oh, that would be joyful, too!
Later on, while a play of his was running in the London Court Theatre, and Sean was in the office chatting about the poor houses, the Commissionaire came in to say that there was a bloke called Yeats outside who wanted to see him. Before he had ended the sentence, the stately figure of the poet stepped in as if it was marching to the tune of Old Comrades. He would sit down only for a moment. No, wouldn't take a whiskey and soda - doctor's orders. The company in the play were good, very good. He came to ask O'Casey if he intended to give his new play to the Abbey. Rumours in Dublin said O'Casey had decided to ignore the Abbey, which would be a pity. O'Casey had come to the Abbey when he had been most needed, and a refusal of the new play would cause irritation. The rumours untrue? O'Casey will give the new play? Oh, that will be joyful! He could assure the other Directors that the Abbey would get the play. No, he couldn't stay longer. Friends were waiting. Goodbye; and the great man stepped out as if marching to the tune of Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.
Sean had promised the first glimpse of the play to Sir Barry Jackson, had sent him the manuscript, and had forgotten about it. Then one day Sir Barry came bustling into the house when he and Eileen were busy trying to make the debts they owed meet and marry the money they had in hand. Sir Barry was in a hurry, a panting hurry; he sat down on a chair in a hurry, first setting down a burnished bowler hat on the table in a hurry, and arranging a pompous-looking umbrella to a stately stand in a corner in a hurry too.
-You've written a fine play, he said; a terrible play! An impossible play for me. I dare not put it on - an English audience couldn't stand it. There's the script. I'm grateful to you for letting me read it. His hand shot out for the burnished bowler hat. I must go now. The play would lacerate our feelings; it would be unbearable. Goodbye; and he hurried out to his waiting car, and vanished: a plain man in a plain van rushing from life. The next morning, the plain van slid up to the door, and the plain man slid into the house, and hurried to the stately umbrella still standing in the corner. My umbrella - I forgot it yesterday; and the plain man vanished into the plain van again, and Sean saw him no more.
With, in some ways, a...
