At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [220]
“Blood and death and tears,” he said. “Who don’t fall in battle will hang from the Saxon tree. Many the mother will mourn and many the hearth will be lonely. And they will be reviled, Mr. Mack, as was Our Savior. But Ireland will rise again, as did Our Lord. She will waken and look upon herself as one from a dream. And she will wonder at the magnificence of her sons. Pray, Mr. Mack, pray God your son may so be exalted as with these joyful martyrs to die. For already in heaven the saints prepare the welcoming feast.
“And now, Mr. Mack, I believe I must leave you. I am on a mission of mercy to the sisters at St. Mary’s. I was at Boland’s mills with Commandant de Valera, a rigorous man and pious, and would you believe we ran plumb out of the Holy Sacrament.”
It would scarce have surprised Mr. Mack now if the priest had lifted his frock-coat and floated across the road, so strange and elated his countenance. Mr. Mack shook his head; and he was shaking it still when he traipsed at last into Kingstown. The sleepy town was sleepy yet. Invalids and convalescents pushed in their chairs. Weary children walked with balloons. The mailboat siren wailed, dead to its time by the Findlater’s clock. Constables stood their point immemorial. The gunfire, wild rumors, all that riot and rumpus lay far behind, a rumor itself. Perhaps there was more of a crowd in the streets than was normal, and they remonstrating against the trains and the trams, the qualified things, never on time and the least sign of trouble, banjaxed. Respectable people; and their indignation worked on Mr. Mack till he wondered might it not be true, that it was all a little local madness, nothing strange in Ireland, every second week sure, hotheads and firebrands, demonstrations in the streets, parading with arms, an imitation of violence, a longing even, but never realized, shrunk from at the brink.
Then at the cab-rank he watched two gentlemen come to blows, bidding for the sole jarvey. And it was eerie the streets with so little traffic, only people walking, trudging, their jaded faces; entire families, well-to-do and with their maids some of them, who had been bathing at Killiney or taking the ozone down in Bray. He felt the truth had not made up its mind: the signs were contrary everywhere.
At the People’s Park, would you credit it, that runt of a newsboy latched on to him, and he was dogging Mr. Mack all along Glasthule Road, piping out his little news or his want of news, making a holy show of Mr. Mack in the street. Until Mr. Mack turned, flailing at him, not intending to strike, but striking nonetheless his nails on his lip so that it bled.
It bled, and Mr. Mack said, “Oh dear me, no.” The boy took no more regard of his cut than of a fly, and he was still piping away his idiotic questions. Mr. Mack had his handkerchief out, and he wet the corner to dab it on the boy’s chin. “You’re not hurt,” he told him.
“But mister, what about the papers, mister?”
“Well, what about them?” said Mr. Mack, still dabbing.
“The even papers. What’s happened the even papers, mister?”
“There are no evening papers,” Mr. Mack explained. “Don’t you know now there’s a rising in Dublin?”
“But what am I to sell so?”
“You won’t be selling anything sure.”
“But they can’t do that, mister. I’ll be bate now.”
“No you won’t now.”
“I’ll be bate, mister, and I don’t have nothing brung home.”
“Is it your da you mean?” The boy nodded. “Sure he’ll know it’s not your fault.” Mr. Mack put away his handkerchief. Where he had dabbed was the only clean in the wee scrap’s face. He stood wobble kneed and his toes turned in. His squinting eyes, misbelieving, peered up at Mr. Mack. Terrible slight he looked. “Don’t you see now,” Mr. Mack told him, not unkindly, “where your talk of Fenians and fighting and nation-once-again