“That’s a new answer for yourself,” said Patsy, grinning savagely.
“It is, and it’s a new day for me, and a poor day, for it’s the first day of my old age.”
“You’ll die in a ditch,” cried Patsy, “you’ll die in a ditch like an old mare with a broken leg.”
“I will,” she snarled, “when the time comes, but you’ll never have the killing of me, Padraig.”
Finaun was sitting beside Mary with her hand in his, but she snatched her hand away and flared so fiercely upon Eileen that the woman looked up.
“Don’t be angry with me, Mary,” said she; “I never did you any harm yet and I’ll never be able to do it now, for there are years between us, and they’re going to break my back.”
Finaun was speaking, more, it seemed, to himself than to the company. He combed his white beard with his hand as he spoke, and they all looked at him.
“He is talking in his sleep,” said Eileen pensively, “and he an old man, and a nice old man.”
“My father,” said Caeltia, in an apologetic voice; “there is no need to tell about that.”
“There is every need, my beloved,” replied Finaun with his slow smile.
“I would rather you did not,” murmured Caeltia, lifting his hand a little.
“I ask your permission, my son,” said Finaun gently.
Caeltia spread out his open palms and dropped them again.
“Whatever you wish to do is good, my father,” and, with a slight blush, he slid the pipe into his pocket.
Finaun turned to Eileen Ni Cooley:
“I will tell you a story,” said he.
“Sure,” said Eileen, “I’d love to hear you, and I could listen to a story for a day and a night.”
Mac Cann pulled solemnly at his pipe and regarded Finaun who was looking at him peacefully from a corner.
“You’re full of fun,” said he to the archangel.
XVI
Said Finaun:
“While generation succeeds generation a man has to fight the same fight. At the end he wins, and he never has to fight that battle again, and then he is ready for Paradise.
“Every man from the beginning has one enemy from whom he can never escape, and the story of his lives is the story of his battles with that enemy whom he must draw into his own being before he can himself attain to real being, for an enemy can never be crushed, but every enemy can be won.
“Long before the foundations of this world were laid, when the voice was heard and the army of the voice went through the darkness, two people came into being with the universe that was their shell. They lived through myriad existences knowing star after star grow hot and cold in the broad sky, and they hated each other through the changing of the stars and the ebbing and flooding of their lives.
“At a time this one of them would be a woman and that other would be a man, and again in due period the one that had been a woman would be a man and the other would be a woman, that their battle might be joined in the intimacy which can only come through difference and the distance that is attraction.
“No one can say which of these did most harm to the other; no one can say which was the most ruthless, the most merciless, for they were born, as all enemies are, equal in being and in power.
“Through their lives they had many names and they lived in many lands, but their names in eternity were Finaun Mac Dea and Caeltia Mac Dea, and when the time comes, their name will be Mac Dea and nothing else: then they will become one in each other, and one in Infinite Greatness, and one in the unending life of Eternity which is God: but still, in world under world, in star under flaming star, they pursue each other with a hate which is slowly changing into love.
“It was not on earth, nor in any planet, that the beginning of love came to these two, it was in the hell that they had fashioned for themselves in terror and lust and cruelty. For, as they sat among their demons, a seed germinated in the soul of one, the seed of knowledge which is the parent of love and the parent of every terrible and beautiful thing in the worlds and the heavens.
“While that one looked on his companion, writhing like himself in torment, he grew conscious, and although he looked at the other with fury it was with a new fury, for with it came contempt, and they were no longer equal in power or in hate.
“Now, for the first time, that one in whom knowledge had been born desired to escape from his companion; he wished to get away so that he might never behold that enemy again; suddenly the other appeared to him hideous as a toad that couches in slime and spits his poison at random, but he could not escape, and he could never escape.
“As that one increased in knowledge so he increased in cruelty and power, so his lust became terrible, for now there was fear in his contempt because he could never escape. Many a time they fled from one another, but always, and however they fled, it was towards each other their steps were directed. At the feast, in the camp, and in the wilderness they found themselves and undertook anew the quarrel which was their blood and their being.
“And that other in whom knowledge had not awakened—He raged like a beast; he thought in blood and fever; his brains were his teeth and the nails of his hands. Cunning came creepingly to his aid against knowledge; he lay in wait for his enemy in gloomy places; he spread snares for him in the darkness and baited traps. He feigned humility to get closer to his vengeance, but he could not combat knowledge.
“Time and again he became the slave of that
