Bram Stoker: The Complete Novels. A to Z Classics

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.

Chapter 3 — An Opening

      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.

      From the receipt of Sebright’s letter, Jerry had found the old wish reviving stronger than ever. He was so prosperous that the idea of failure in work seemed too far away to be easily realised; and his home was so happy that domestic trouble was absolutely beyond his comprehension.

      The holy admonition — “Ye that stand take heed lest ye fall,” should be ever before the minds of men.

      Katey saw her husband’s secret wish gradually growing into a resolve, with unutterable pain; and tried to combat Jerry’s views but hopelessly. At first he listened, and argued the matter over fairly in all its aspects, being ever kind-hearted and tender, and seeming to thoroughly sympathise with her views; but as the weeks wore on, he began to take a different tone, and without losing any of his kindness or tenderness to express more decided opinions and intentions. The change was so gradual that even Katey’s wifely love, and the acuteness which is the handmaiden of love, could see no cause for change, nor could mark any time as being the period of a definite change.

      In fact, the masculine resolution was asserting itself over the feminine, and acting and reacting in itself, but constantly in the direction of settled purpose.

      With the feeling of power which a man of average mental calibre feels over a woman of similar status amongst her own sex, comes a fuller purpose — a more decided, definite resolve to the man himself. Thus, Jerry, whilst arguing with his wife, had been all the time strengthening his own resolve, and working himself up to the belief that immediate action was necessary to his success in life.

      Wives, be careful how you argue with your husbands, for you walk on a ridge between two precipices. If you allow a half-formed wish to be the parent of immediate action on your husband’s part, without raising a warning voice should you see danger that he does not, then you do him a wrong which will surely recoil on your own head and the heads of your children. But if, on the other hand, you persistently combat with argument wishes which should be furthered or opposed with the patent truths of the heart’s experience, then you will surely fail, for you will be fighting reality with vacuity — opposing steel with air-drawn daggers of the fancy.

      Katey’s position was very painful. She felt that her speaking to her husband was a duty which her wifely vow, as much as her wifely love, called on her to fulfil; but at the same time she felt with that subtle instinct of true love which never errs and never lies, that she was sapping the foundations of her husband’s love and weakening the influence which she had over him. Poor Katey! her lot was a hard one, but she felt — and she was right — that where duty points the way, then the way must be walked whatever be the misery of the journey, and wherever the road may lead.

      Jerry’s mother, too, was fretted by her son’s determination. He never spoke of it to her, but she heard it from their mutual friends, and the very fact of his being reticent on the point caused her more pain by raising doubts as to his motive, not only for going, but concealing his wish from her. Jerry had a two-fold reason for his silence. Firstly, he did not wish to give her pain, and thought that by keeping silent on the point she would be spared at least the agony of looking forward to his departure. In this, Jerry, like many of his fellows, fell into the same error, which leads the hunted ostrich to hide its head in the sand — the error which we make when we think that shutting our eyes means shutting out the danger which we wish to avoid. Again, Jerry wished to avoid pain to himself.

      The analysis of a sensual nature shows two evil qualities, which, although not always expressed, are, nevertheless, ruling powers — obstinacy and cruelty. No matter how these qualities may be counterbalanced by other qualities as good as these are bad, or no matter how well they are disguised, these two evil powers have here their home. Obstinacy in its hardest light is the adherence to a line of action begun for its end to be gained rather than for its duty; and cruelty is almost its logical consequence, for it is by its direct or indirect means that obstacles are cleared away or points of vantage unworthily gained. Jerry’s nature was a sensual one, although it had ever been held in check.

      The power of evil has a home in every human heart. In one it is a palace vast and splendid, so splendid and vast that to the onlooker there are no dark nooks, no gloomy corners, but where all is so rich and noble that there is dignity in everything. In another it is a shooting-box only visited for motives of pleasure. In another it is an office where gold and secrecy are synonymous