h, to be gay with the
merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as
her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing
the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a
modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is
young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within
a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then
is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old
house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on
him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's
thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first
hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged
traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented
handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas!
a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this
or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for
a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his
studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark
eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission
to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in
the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating),
reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a
month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young
knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the
mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his
sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a
drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the
first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine
and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear
the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal
university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever
remember the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined
in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant
(_fiat_!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay,
fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but--hold! Back! It must not be! In
terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. Sh