Bram Stoker: The Complete Novels. A to Z Classics

stage. You have missed your vocation. By the way, what is your vocation?”

      “I am a hatter.”

      Miss M’Anaspie blurted out suddenly, “Mad as a hatter,” and then suddenly got red in the face, and shut up completely as she saw her employer’s eye fixed on her with a glare almost baleful in its intensity.

      Mr. Muldoon laughed loudly, and slapped his fat knees as he ejaculated — “Brayvo, brayvo. One for his nob — mad as a hatter. That accounts for the enthusiasm.” Then, seeing a look of such genuine pain on Katey’s face that even his obtuseness could not hide from him how deeply he was hurting her, added — “Of course, Mr. Parnell, I am only joking; but still it is not bad — mad as a hatter. Ha, ha!”

      No one said anything more, and no one laughed; and so the matter was dropped.

      Jerry felt that a gloom had fallen on the assemblage, and tried to lift it by starting a new topic.

      “Do you know,” said he, “I had a letter from John Sebright the other day, and he tells me if you want to make money England’s the place.”

      “Indeed,” said his mother, satirically.

      Going to England was an old “fad” of Jerry’s, and one which had caused his mother many an anxious hour of thought, and many a sleepless night.

      “Yes,” answered Jerry, “he says there is more work there than here, and better paid; and that a man has ten chances for gettin’ on for one he has here.”

      “The one chance often wins when the ten fail,” said Parnell.

      “And it’s worse losing ten pounds than one,” added Margaret.

      “And some girls’ tongues are as long as ten,” said Mrs. O’Sullivan, who could not bear anything which tended to make light of her wishes with regard to Jerry, and so determined to put a stop to Miss M’Anaspie’s volubility.

      Mr. Muldoon, however, came to the rescue.

      “And some girls who have been for ten years in misery and discomfort find sometimes that one year brings them all they want.”

      Miss M’Anaspie put her handkerchief before her face, and again dead silence fell on the assembly. Parnell broke it.

      “Jerry, put the idea out of your head. You know that you couldn’t go now even if you wanted, and there is no use sighing for what can’t be.”

      “I don’t know that,” said Jerry argumentatively. “I could go now with Katey and the young ones, just as well as if I was a boy still; ay, and better, for she would keep me out of harm.”

      Parnell said with great feeling, “That’s right, Jerry; stick up for the wife and stick to her too, for she’s worth it. Do you but keep to your wife, and the home that she will always make for you, as long as you let her, and you may go when and where you will, and your hands will find work.”

      Katey began to cry. She was still a little delicate, and anything which touched her feelings upset her very much. There was an immediate rush of all the women in the room to comfort her.

      Jerry offered her some of his punch, but she put the glass aside, saying —

      “No, no, dear, I never take it.”

      “Come, come,” said Mr. Muldoon, “Mrs. Katey, this will never do, you must take it. It is good for you.”

      “No, it is good for no one.”

      “Come now, Mr. Parnell,” said Mr. Muldoon, “don’t you know a sup of liquor would do her good? Tell her so.”

      “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