reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in
the funds. He is young Leopold, 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 Clambrassil 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,
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. She
is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden
babe of day. No, Leopold! Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful
illusion of thy strength was taken from thee and in vain. No son of thy loins is
by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence : silence that is the infinite of space : and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial
