Bram Stoker: Bram Stoker: The Complete Novels

“No, no,” said Katey, “I know myself.”

Parnell spoke —

“I cannot say, but it is good as a medicine, and as a medicine one may take it without harm.”

“Capital thing to be sick sometimes,” said Muldoon, winking at Tom and Pat, and laughing at his own joke.

Parnell did not like to let a point go unquestioned on a subject on which he felt deeply, so he answered

“When you are sick, your wish is to be well again, and the medicine that seems nice to you when well, is only in sickness but medicine after all.”

Once more Mr. Muldoon began to get angry, and said, with a determination to fight the argument — à I’outrance —

“Why, man, you would make the world a hell with all your self-denials. Do you think life would be worth having if every enjoyment of it, great and little, was to be suppressed. The world is bad enough, goodness knows, already, without making a regular hell of it.”

“Hell is a big word.”

“It is a big word, and I mean it to be a big word.”

“Ah, it is like enough to hell already,” said Parnell sadly.

“On account of all the bad spirits,” added Miss M’Anaspie.

“Laugh, my child. Laugh whilst you may. Heaven grant that the day may never come when you cannot laugh at such thoughts. Ay, truly, the world is hard enough as it is. Bad enough, and the devil is abroad enough, and too much.”

“Oh, he’s on earth is he?”

“Yes, Mr. Muldoon, he is, to and fro, he walks always.”

Whilst he was speaking he was drawing in his note-book.

Miss M’Anaspie got curious to know what he was doing, and asked him.

In reply he handed her the book.

She took it eagerly, and then passed it on to all the others in turn.

He had drawn an allegorical picture under which he had written — “To and Fro.”

The picture represented a road through a moor to a village, seen lying some distance away, the spire of its church shadowed by a passing cloud. The moor was bleak, with, in the foreground, a clump of blasted trees, and in the distance a ruined house. On the road two travellers were journeying, both seated on the same horse — a sorry nag. One of them was booted and spurred, and wore a short cloak, a slouched hat, under which the lineaments showed ghastly, for the face was but that of a skull. The other, who rode pick-a-back, was clad as the German romances love to clothe their demon when he walks the earth, with trunk hose and pointed shoes, a long floating cloak, and peaked cap with cock’s feathers. On his arm he bore a basket full of bottles, and as he clutched his grisly companion he laughed with glee, bending his head as men do when their enjoyment is in perspective rather than an actuality.

From beneath a stone a viper had raised itself, and seemed to salute the travellers with its forked tongue.

When the picture came into Mrs. O’Sullivan’s hands, she fixed her spectacles and held it up a little to let the most light possible fall on it. Then she spoke —

“God bless us and save us, but that’s an awful thing. Where did you see that, Mr. Parnell?”

“I never saw it, ma’am, except in my mind, and I see it there often enough. You, young men, mind the lesson of that picture, for it is truth. Death and the devil go together, and so sure as the devil grips hold of you, death is not far off, you may be sure, in some form or other, waiting, waiting, waiting.”

Mr. Muldoon saw that the subject of drinking was coming in again, and said maliciously — “And this is all from a glass of beer.”

“Ay, if you will,” said Parnell. “That’s how it begins — that which is the curse of Ireland in our own time; and which, so surely as Irishmen will not use the wit and strength that God has given them, will drag her from her throne.”

Jerry got into the conversation:

“One thing John Sebright tells me, that there is less drunkenness in England than here.”

“Don’t you believe him,” said Parnell. “That man means mischief to you. He wants to entice you to England, and then live on you when he gets you there. For Heaven’s sake put that idea of going away out of your head. You’re very well here as you are; and let well alone.”

Jerry’s mother spoke also. “John Sebright is a nice chap to quote sobriety as a virtue. Do you remember how often I gave you money to pay his fines to keep him out of prison after his drunken freaks, for the sake of his poor dead and gone mother. Why, that chap could no more tell truth than he could work, and that’s saying a good deal.”

“Well, drink or no drink, mother, England’s a grand place, anyhow, and there’s lots of money going there.”

Parnell rose up from his chair and said severely — “Jerry O’ Sullivan, do you know what you are talking about? True, that England is rich, but is money all that a man is to seek after? If the good men leave poor Ireland to make a little more money for themselves, what is to become of her? Is it not as if she was sold for money; and if you look at the real difference of wages — the wages that good sober men that can work, get here and there, a poor price she would be sold for after all.”

“I don’t like that way of putting it,” said Jerry, rather testily. “In fact I have almost made up my mind to go, and I don’t think I’m selling my country at all at all, and I wish you wouldn’t say such things.”

Parnell said nothing for a few moments. Then he tore the picture out of his note-book and handed it to him saying —

“Jerry, old boy, if you ever do go, keep that in your purse, and if ever you go to pay for liquor for yourself or others, just think what it means.”

When the party rose up to go they found that Katey had been crying quietly, and her eyes were red and swollen.

Jerry O’Sullivan’s home was happy, and his poor, good little wife feared a change.

Jerry O’Sullivan’s desire to go to England was no mere transient wish. As has been told, he had had for years a strong desire to try his fortune in a country other than his own; and although the desire had since his marriage fallen into so sound a sleep that it resembled death, still it was not dead but sleeping.

Deep in the minds of most energetic persons lies some strong desire, some strong ambition, or some resolute hope, which unconsciously moulds, or, at least, influences their every act. No matter what their circumstances in life may be, or how much they may yield to those circumstances for a time, the one idea remains ever the same. This is, in fact, one of the secrets of how individual force of character comes out at times. The great idea, whatever it may be, sits enthroned in the mind, and round it gather subordinate wishes and resolves, as the feudal nobles round the King, and so goes on the chain down the whole gamut of man’s nature from the taming or suppression of his wildest passions down to the commonplace routine of his daily life.

And yet we wonder at times to see, when occasion offers, with what astonishing rapidity certain individuals assert themselves, and how, when a strange circumstance arises, some new individual arises along with it, as though the man and the hour were predestined for each other.

We need not wonder if we will but think that all along the man was ready, girt in his armour, resolved in his cause, and merely awaiting, although, perhaps, he knew it not, the opportunity to manifest himself.

Whilst Jerry had been working — and working so honestly and well that he was on the high road to success — he never once abandoned in his secret heart the idea of seeking a wider field for his exertion. Truly, Alexander has his prototypes in every age and country; and men even try to look ever beyond the horizon of their hopes, sighing for new worlds when the victories of the old have been achieved.