Once Only

by OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY

MAYBE once a year, maybe not once in two or three years, the dream or vision comes to me of a small boy who was myself lying in the heather beside a mountain rivulet gazing down at a trout balanced about an inch or two above the sandy bottom of a little pool.

Of late the vision has become more frequent, so frequent in fact that I decided to visit Roundwood and try to find again that mountain pool which cannot have been far from the house where I stayed, for a little tiny boy may not wander far without being missed and chided on his return; and chided I was not.

To Roundwood then I resolved to go prepared for the disappointment and the disillusion that are in store for all who seek to recapture the wonder and enthusiasm of their childhood.

Half a hundred years ago! Where will Beda Murphy be and the maids who served that little inn?

From the railway station at Bray the drive was long, for there were no taxis owing to the restrictions on motor fuel. A landau or victoria, one of those carriages that stretch between their pairs of wheels like an inverted Cupid’s bow, was surely the kind of vehicle that took me to Roundwood in the days gone by. It seemed appropriate now. That is why I hired it. I liked the looks of the driver, a rubicund fellow in his early forties.

The drive was tedious, for the horse had to be walked up the many hills that lead to the Rocky Valley. We stopped at Pluck’s. Pluck may not own it now because taverns change owners even as the Fort of Rathangan. The driver threw a rug across his horse and followed me into the bar parlor. There was nobody about. A round mahogany table, a horsehair sofa, and a few sporting prints gave a noncommittal greeting to all and sundry. In the yard outside, a hen could be heard clucking. Sunlight slanted across the narrow yard. After a long wait, the driver obligingly went in search of an attendant. A girl appeared and disappeared. We were more or less intruders. It seemed that we had broken the conventions by coming in by a side door instead of by the door over which the porcelain letters of J. Pluck encouraged the fainthearted. We apologized for being there at all. This confused the barmaid or the housemaid or whatever she was into action.

“What d’yez want?” she inquired.

The hen made a commotion as the maid returned with the drinks.

“Don’t go away,” I said, “we’ll want the same again.”

We left with a feeling that the management had conferred a favor by suffering our presence at all.

The Rocky Valley was before us, the road escarped by granite boulders upthrust between broken acres of golden gorse. A few summer cottages hid among the rocks to the right under the shelter of a hill. After a slow climb the high ground on the right fell away and revealed a wide valley with a hint of a stream.

The driver, who failed to draw me into conversation, not for the want of a vocabulary but for fear that he might make the unforgivable mistake of taking a native for an American, began to thaw under the delayed action of the depth charges we had laid down at Pluck’s. He leveled his whip, and pointing to a large mansion of light brown stone crowned by a dome of green bronze hardly visible in the trees, said: “That’s Powerscourt over there.”

“Powerscourt ? ”

“Yes; where the Battle of Agincourt was fought.”

“It seems to me that I have heard something about movie men and a battle they staged in Wicklow. So that’s the place?”

“Begob, sir, you should have seen it. It took months. It was the longest battle I ever heard tell of. There was horses and spears and tents and knights in armor. My son was working in it. You never seen the like.”

“Who ran it?” I asked, and foolishly stopped the tide. He had to consider what to him was quite an irrelevant detail. After much thought he said in a voice that had lost its enthusiasm, “I think it was a man by the name of Rank that was behind it.”

“Soldiers rank on rank,” I said, and was sorry for myself. It does nobody good to gulp down a drink.

The driver resumed the saga. “They hired the Waterfall and pitched tents and bought up every old nag in the country and paid the boys well to dress up in armor and go charging at one another hell for leather with a long pole in their hands.”

“A pole?”

“Well, a spear. There’s plenty of them about for keepsakes since. They have a round rise near one end and a point at the other. Regular spears they are, like the lancers used to have. They spent a lot of money while they were at it. It was thirsty work. The Powerscourt Arms was full every night and The Royal and every pub in Enniskerry. But they had to be up and mounted and ready to charge at cock crow. And they kept the crowds out. That’s why I’m thinking that they took Powerscourt because it has a wall round it to keep out the crowds.”

“But what did Lord Powerscourt say to all this?”

“Sure wasn’t it him that rented the demesne to them? It was Her Ladyship that did any objecting there was.”

“Why should she object when His Lordship didn’t?”

“There I leave you. Women is queer. They say that when she came across an arm or a leg or a nose that had been lopped off the day before, she would pick it up on her spiked stick and say, ‘What shall I do with this beastly thing?’”

I had to comment aloud as a chorus to his tale. “It must have been shocking, right enough, to find a nose or an elbow in the demesne?”

“Sure. They were the limbs that was lost the day before and never missed.”

“The casualties must have been heavy?” I suggested.

“Faith you’re right; but they were mostly French. The English won every day and the people didn’t like it. They began to blame the management.”

“ What could they expect? ” I asked. “ Was it not an English company that was running Agincourt in Powerscourt?”

He thought that out and reluctantly agreed that what they were staging had the backing of history.

“Aye; that’s the way it happened in the old days. The French got the hell of a licking. It: must be true, for a nephew of mine who worked in the battle for a month on the French side — and didn’t like it — got such a belting that he turned on the Englishman, a fellow by the name of Houlihan, and sez he to him, ‘See here, Houlihan, get this into your head and under your helmet and don’t forget it: if ye larrup me on the last night as ye have been doing up to this, bejabs, I’ll reverse history.’ It’s history all right. That’s how I know.”

I felt the need of silence to think this out.

2

THE Great Sugar Loaf was behind us now. The old Gaelic inhabitants called that and the Lesser Sugar Loaf the Silver Spears. In that lies history too, and more than history. The Anglo-Saxons, lovers of creature comforts, thought of food. The more unsettled Gaels thought of feuds and forays. Wicklow was a battlefield long before Mr. Rank with his chain of flour mills staged Agincourt beneath the Sugar Loaf.

The driver was talking to his horse. I accepted the cue and inquired after the horse’s welfare. This started more history; but this time it was personal and contemporary.

“You think that the country is prosperous but God forgive you! Do you know that if it wasn’t for the Old Age Pension and the Battle of Agincourt the mare and I wouldn’t have a bit to eat?”

It is evidently my destiny to be astonished. I had never seen the country looking more prosperous. The people appeared to be cheerful and well fed: misery was nowhere to be seen. But now I am told that it is all as deceptive as a movie. And what am I to think of an Old Age Pension for a man in the prime of life? I was dumfounded. At last I said, “Do you tell me that you are in receipt of an Old Age Pension?”

“Aye; and only for that I might as well retire.”

“Surely there is an Inspector to interview you before the Government hands out Old Age Pensions?”

“ Av course there is; and two of them. But it was not me they seen at all but an auld alibi out of the mountains.” He jerked his whip over his left shoulder and indicated the O’Byrne country with its mountain fastnesses and deep glens.

Again I was silenced. I wanted to picture to myself that “auld alibi out of the mountains,” that old mountainy man, suddenly finding himself of growing importance as the value of the Old Age Pensions dawned on the tribesmen of hill and glen. Just as he has decided to settle down and to “husband out Life’s taper at the close” he is thrust forward to represent his constituency, the younger generation, who are helpless when it comes to being suddenly matured. I longed to cast eyes on that auld alibi. Maybe I shall meet him before my excursion ends. I have hopes, for I remember Mahaffy’s dictum: “In Ireland the Inevitable never happens, the Unexpected always.”

After two hours, the road passed by an artificial lake in fields to the left. Soon it afforded a glimpse of a natural lake and then passed between two or three houses on either side. A house on the right was my destination.

The driver took my bag into the hall. He was enjoying such a welcome that I wondered if there would be any left for me. Obviously he was well known to the owners. He was a clansman who never drove past the house with a fare who might be a good customer. But now it was the driver who had to listen to local histories. A grave and ancient man was the speaker. His daughter was woman of the house. She appeared to be a widow, for to no husband did she refer. This by itself would be a poor proof of widowhood in a court of law; but in a home it had more import.

After talking to me for a quarter of an hour she turned to the old man, and to his surprise announced that I knew as much about the place as herself. I had been here as a boy. This took the conversation far into the night. It was late when I went along the corridor to my room. In the morning I would begin to explore.

3

THROUGH a thin screen of pines the Vartry Lake gleamed gray. That was over the road; but as far as I remembered, it was on the hither side the little stream flowed down. I went through the garden at the back of the house. A few apple trees stood with arms akimbo covered with silver moss. Through the fence I passed and walked to the right through the fields. There was no sign of a brook. That was strange: mortal things pass away but a running brook flows on. If I go back and out onto the road and then turn into the fields, or, better still, go on until I come to a bridge, I may find it. There was no bridge. Perhaps the stream was too small to need a bridge which would only cause a rise in the road. I left the road and made a wide semicircle high up in the fields but no brook was there. Then I thought of the heather. Maybe it was from a picnic I had stumbled upon the brook.

The heather began far away, so far away I went. The ground rose brokenly into what in Scotland they call “ braes.” A high bank, too high to see what was above it, rose before me. What is that? Distinctly I heard the sound of water falling hidden from the eye. I should have known that in such broken ground a rivulet would be hidden. I reached the bank. To my delight I saw the little pool with a wall of rock rising upright beyond it covered with brown wet moss. A tenuous and broken column of water blew sideways now and then as gusts caught it, but the greater part of it fell into the pool. Eagerly I took in every detail: heather, ferns, moss, a leafy branch spreading half across to hide the pool from above. Would I look for the trout and risk a disappointment, or be satisfied with what I had found?

It was no wonder that I had failed to find it at once. The pool lay low in the heather under a wall of rock; ferns and branches of a willow took root out of sight. It was just a little basin in a mountain stream. How clear it was! Had it not been for the ripple where the water fell into it, I could not have been sure where its surface ended and the air began. It was as crystal clear as the eyes of a wondering child.

I tried to see it as I had seen it for the first time. The branches I did not remember; but everything else was there: the gushet from the rock, the tinkle behind me as the overflow hid again in the heather and the granite dust that formed its sandy floor. There was one difference though: I could now reach down an arm through the fluent crystal and touch the sand that had seemed long ago so out of reach.

It was comforting, this sense of accomplishing something by my discovery. I realized that it was not all a dream and that the persistent vision had its origin in reality. I followed with my eye the course of the stream to where it went under the road. Just as I thought: it had not a bridge to itself. It passed through a square tunnel of cement. I marked the spot; it was not more than a few furlongs from the inn. Hedges started again, interrupted here and there by walls. I could not miss the place even in the dark.

Childhood is indefatigable but not so I. How long I lay beside the pool I do not know. Half an hour would take me home when I wished to go. I did not seek a fish in the little pool. Instead I crossed it by the help of the boskage beside the tiny waterfall. I worked my way along the narrow channel of the stream. I passed between two boulders like the pillars of a door on level ground where the stream was absorbed among mosses and ferns. The ground grew firm and dry. I turned around the last bush of golden gorse that bloomed by the way under a solitary boulder of granite, and a strange sight met my eyes.

I had come upon a town not a hundred yards away: houses, streets, carriages and horses, men, women, and children, and the cheerful hum of life. A church rose beside its tall steeple that held a clock with gilt hands upon a black dial. The church was the only building out of proportion. Another picture in process of being shot, I guessed. But there were no guards nor fences to turn me back. I walked along the first street I came to and looked about me. Shops and offices and private houses lined the way. Smoke rose from chimneys, for the weather though bright can be cold in Ireland in summer. Motor cars and motor bicycles were absent. It was as if you were in Bermuda or some town of old Japan. A period picture evidently. And yet there was no apparent sign that buildings had been thrown up temporarily. They looked far more solid and substantial than anything I had seen in the studios of the West Coast. Whatever company is financing this must intend the set to be permanent.

Down the street came a two-seated trap or carriage with the horses in tandem. That was a sight I had not seen for years. The man who drove it wore a tall silk hat. Though young he sported side whiskers. Beside him sat a “tiger" or little groom. He raised his whip in salute as he passed. I turned to see if there were anyone behind me for whom it was intended, for I could not take it that he meant the salute for me. There was no one near. Strange!

Two ladies approached. Between them walked a little boy. He wore a large collar outside his coat and he walked demurely with his toes turned out. When he saw me he seized the hand of one of the ladies. Mother and governess, whoever they were, wore clothes that seemed strange to me. Their skirts swept the pathway and their sleeves were puffed out like legs of mutton and rose over the shoulders in two soft peaks. Their shoes were buttoned higher than the ankle like those of the little boy. They carried umbrellas with long handles. They walked leisurely, talking the while, without hurry or even purpose.

I turned into a street at right angles to the one by which I had entered. Here crowds were lining the way. A hum of excitement ran through them. A procession of some kind was about to pass. I took a place three steps up in front of one of the houses to get a better view. Presently a large coach came on suspended by great leather straps. Four horses drew it, driven by a fat and bewigged coachman with golden epaulets. Beside him sat a footman similarly dressed. Within the coach, which had large windows of glass, sat an alderman with a lady beside him. On the seat in front of them on a dark red velvet cushion lay a huge silver mace. The crowds cheered and waved handerchiefs. “The Lord Mayor!” they cried. He bowed in acknowledgment of the cheers. Behind his coach, in gay red vests and helmets of shining brass, came the city’s Fire Brigade. They drove by, riding in or clinging to fire engines, hose carriers, and a long ladder shining with fresh brown varnish. The Fire Chief drove behind them in a smart two-wheeler. He raised his hand when he too was met by cheers. After these came what appeared to be the various guilds of the town with large banners pictured with their emblems. Behind the banners walked men in civilian clothes, some of whom wore gold sashes across their breasts. They marked time like soldiers when the procession slowed at a turn. They marched gravely without looking at the cheering crowd.

Suddenly a bucket of water fell on my head and shoulders and on those who were standing beside me. We looked up. A small boy was held dangling by one leg from a top window of the house on the steps of which we were standing. A man who held him leaned out of the window and waved his free hand. We took this gesture for a sign that he was punishing the boy for his mischievous act. Anyway it had the effect of appeasing the crowd.

4

AFTER a while the procession moved past and I was left standing on the steps of the house alone. I took out a handkerchief and began to dry my hat and coat, when the door opened behind me and a lady who looked like one of those whom I had met out walking appeared and said gently, “Won’t you come in? ” She spoke with quiet dignity, yet I knew that she was disturbed.

I entered a large hall which had a brass rail just inside the door. A deer horn receptacle for umbrellas was beside it. At the back of the hall rose a tall grandfather clock. Chairs stood against the walls, and over the fireplace was a large picture, framed in cane, of a paddle steamer gay with bunting passing a crowded pier with a lighthouse at one end.

“We are extremely sorry for what has happened. My son, I am afraid, is very bold. Rest assured that he will be corrected.”

I made light of the incident; “accident” I called it; and turned to go.

“You cannot go,” the lady said. “You must have your clothes dried thoroughly; and you must stay to lunch. My husband will be in shortly and will be glad to see you. He will not be pleased when he hears of Alec’s escapade. He spoils the child.” As she spoke a key turned in the lock and a small man in his early middle age entered the hall. He wore whiskers like the rest of the cast. He looked at me in no unfriendly way and then looked inquiringly at his wife.

“Alec poured a jug of water on the people who were standing on the steps of the hall door. This gentleman got the most of it. I have asked him to lunch while his coat is being dried.”

He extended his hand. “If you have not noticed my name on the door — and I don’t suppose you did — it is Purefoy. I am a doctor. This is my wife. I hope that you will accept our invitation.”

“It is extremely kind of you,” I said, “but I cannot think of trespassing on your hospitality. After all, the accident was due to a boyish prank. I am wet already through wading along a mountain stream!” I glanced at my shoes. He followed my gaze but apparently saw nothing odd about my shoes.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “lunch is ready.” He looked at his watch as if to confirm his statement. “We will not let you go. Thackeray will attend to your coat. Oh, Thackeray,” (as the butler appeared) “while this gentleman’s coat is being dried I will give him one of mine.” He led me upstairs and turning to his wife said, “We won’t be long: better tell Miss Orr.”

We entered a large room made smaller by a double bed and a mahogany wardrobe with three doors. He opened it and selected a dark coat for me. Try as I did, I could not get into it. I thought it odd that so much fuss was being made over me. At last I made a driving coat of his cover my chest. Thus attired I went to lunch.

We entered another large room furnished with heavy mahogany chairs, sideboard, and dumbwaiters. Silver shone on the sideboard. On a mantelpiece of dark gray marble in front of a mirror that reached the ceiling stood a clock of gilt bronze based on black marble between two bronze urns. The room seemed strangely familiar. Mrs. Purefoy came forward with another lady who was obviously Miss Orr. I had seen them before. It was they whom I met out walking when I entered the town. Old and recently familiar things were becoming confused in my brain. If these people are rehearsing, I thought, it must be the most unremitting rehearsal to which any cast has been subjected. They keep it up off the set. But even though they were friendly a gentle reserve which I sensed made me forbear to ask directly what they were playing. I preferred to fall in, so to speak, with the play.

Miss Orr was bantered on the misconduct of her charge. She turned the raillery gracefully. “All’s well that ends well, we must admit.” Shyly she glanced at me.

“Yes; Alec has brought us pleasant company,” Mrs. Purefoy conceded.

“Through no intention of his own,” the doctor commented.

“I would have sought the baptism had I known to what happiness it would lead me,” I said in an endeavor to return the polite words of Miss Orr.

Claret in colored glasses was served with the lunch. Neither of the ladies drank wine.

The talk was of the opera and of the fullness of the house. They were going to hear Madame Patti sing.

I asked Miss Orr if she liked grand opera. She said that she did but that she preferred chamber music. She seemed to be embarrassed to talk about the opera before the doctor and his wife. The thought struck me: her employers were not including her in their party.

The doctor rose and apologized for leaving before the end of lunch. “But you will understand,” he said. That was the only inkling, if it were intended, that I got of his being wanted on the set. I supposed that they were glad to have me to test themselves out on, as it were. I dismissed the thought as being uncomplimentary even to myself; yet when we went upstairs to the drawing room the thought recurred. They were rehearsing a Victorian “At Home.” I was the foil, the visitor.

The ladies seated themselves on satin-covered chairs. I stood behind a chair the back of which was covered with mother-of-pearl inlay, until I was invited to be seated. I felt very conscious of my incongruous costume and wet shoes which the ladies were too polite to notice.

“I am so sorry that my husband had to go out. I never know when he may be called. You know the way it is?”

I nodded understandingly.

“You are very photogenic,” I ventured. I might have known beforehand that neither of them would depart from character. They pretended not to know what I meant. They looked puzzled.

“You photograph well,” I said.

They looked at one another. Then Mrs. Purefoy said, “Evangeline, would you be good enough to bring the photographs?”

Miss Orr left the room.

“It is impossible to get Alec to keep still. Mr. Lawrence has to fix his head with an iron bracket before he takes his photographs. Miss Orr will show you what I mean.”

Miss Orr returned and placed a set of photographs wrapped in tissue paper in my hands. She stood behind the chair and leaned over my shoulder as I unwrapped them. I saw a small boy with a lace collar and a large sailor hat standing on a rustic bridge. In his left hand he held a fishing net the handle of which obviously served to steady him on the bridge. His full broad face was turned to the beholder. Long golden ringlets fell down to his shoulders. The face seemed strangely familiar.

So that’s the brat who inundated me, I said to myself. I hoped that the look on my face might pass for a look of interest. I turned to a second photograph. The subject was the same.

“Miss Lacey is here,” Thackeray announced; but no one was ushered in. That, being interpreted, meant that Miss Lacey was not a visitor but a sewing maid. This proved to be right. Mrs. Purefoy excused herself, saying that she had to tryon her dress for the opera. I was about to leave when she added: “ I will leave you alone for a little while. You cannot go until your coat is dry.”

5

MISS ORR was still standing behind me. I turned round when Mrs. Purefoy had gone through the door which Thackeray held open. I looked Miss Orr in the eyes.

“When do you go on?" I asked, summoning my courage. The result of the question was surprising. Miss Orr went over and sat on one of the seats in the middle of the room. She bent her head into her hands. Her shoulders shook convulsively.

“Take me out of this!” she moaned. “Oh, take me away!”

At first I wondered what book they were screening and what was her part. Something that had to do with an elopement evidently. But why all this waste of energy when there was no one to see her?

Tears fell through her fingers. Sobs shook her. Good heavens, can she be in earnest? I asked myself.

“Why do you want to get away?” I asked.

She looked up with eyes like drenched violets and said: “From that awful man.”

“The doctor?”

She nodded.

“But you have Mrs. Purefoy to protect you.”

“She’s worse.”

I saw the position in a flash: a pandering wife.

“Take me away,” she cried again.

“But how? How? When can you leave? When do you intend to go?”

“Any time. Oh, any time. Tonight when they are at the opera.” She rose from her seat and fell on my neck. If there were ever embarrassing positions I had found one.

Two heavy plaits contained her hair. I noticed that it curled in golden ringlets behind her ears and yet it had looked light brown, which goes to show how much my mind must have been in abeyance that I should notice in a crisis such a trivial thing.

“Promise to take me away. Oh, promise me.”

I was about to ask, “What will I do with you?” when I remembered that only a fellow like George Moore would ask a question like that. The code they taught me lays it down that you do not argue with a lady who invites you to elope.

“Where can we meet?” was all I said.

“By the church at eight. It will be dark by then. There will be a service tonight. No one will notice me.” I confess that code or no code, it did seem strange the way she recovered her wits. Mine were still dispersed; while I was trying to gather them, “Promise,” she said.

I could feel how round her arms were in the black silk sleeves of her governess’s dress, her badge of servitude. All at once the pathos of her position overwhelmed me. I promised.

She released me and walked slowly to a window. She was just in time, for Thackeray appeared with, “Your coat is ready, sir.”

When I returned to the drawing room, the ladies were preparing tea. Very politely I refused an invitation to join them. Where was it I had heard that on your first visit to lunch in a strange house, it is not done to remain on to tea? The clock in the steeple chimed. I looked at my watch. It marked four o’clock. They had never heard of summer time I realized.

“You must come again,” Mrs. Purefoy said.

“I should love to.” As I said it, I wondered if I would be welcomed again.

It was dusk when I set out from the inn to keep my promise. I gave myself ample time, for I intended to enter the town from the same approach rather than take the risk of failing to find it. I walked rapidly to reach the stream while the light lasted. Once I had that for a guide, I could take my time until darkness gathered. This time I took the road and soon left it to follow the course of the brook. I would wait by the pool until the service was over and it was time to meet Evangeline. What was I letting myself in for? Was she quite sane? Maybe the doctor and his wife were sheltering in their home one who was subject to hallucinations? But hallucinations or none, I had given my word to be at the church at eight. The light was fading now.

I turned round the rock and stared. There was no town. I walked forward to where a street had been. There was neither street nor house; there was only gorse and heather.

And then a strange thing happened which I accepted because it had all the plausibility of a dream. I seemed to be the small boy; and the water he threw at me out of a jug wet me again. I was both victim and aggressor. I was getting drenched though he seemed, or I seemed, to have but one jugful. I sat up and moved my position. The wind had changed and the waterfall was falling over me.

I arose, and as I did so, overhead in the middle air, I heard a deep bell ring.