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The Man That Stopped
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[from Bones Of Contention London: Macmillan 1936]
I
'The queerest thing I ever saw,' began the old man in his meditative way. 'Yes?' I said eagerly. 'The queerest thing anyone ever saw,' he continued, correcting himself with great firmness, 'occurred in this town when I was a boy.' 'And that was?' 'The man that stopped.' 'Stopped!' 'Stopped.' 'What do you mean by stopped?' 'I mean stopped and nothing else. Now you're a clever young man; you write stories; and still you never thought of writing a story about a man that stopped... I'm not blaming you. Far from it. How could you, and you never having seen the like? But it just shows you.'
*
John Cronin, the heavens be his bed, was an old bachelor; a tall, thin, melancholy man with a long miserable face and a grey moustache. He always looked untidy as though someone was after throwing the clothes on him from the back-door. He had only one way of amusing himself and that was going for long walks, always alone. I never saw him as much as cross the road to look for company or pass the time of day. He was some sort of fancy gardener, and I suppose he made money by that, but if he did he never had any great signs of it. A decent navy-blue suit and a boxer's cap with a shiny peak was his get-up year in, year out. He was fond of the country and fond of flowers, and you hardly ever saw him without a posy in his buttonhole. He was a great chapel man. Every morning out to Mass and every Sunday to the altar as regular as clock-work. You'd say he was a thoughtful fellow, because that long melancholy face of his was always tied up in a black knot, but he never had much to say except on one thing. That was women, and blowing off about them, and all the harm they did the world from the first day man was made, he'd talk you sober. Now every night of the week, wet or fine, hail, rain or snow, John Cronin took his walk, up Fair Hill or round the Lough or down the river to Rochestown. No one ever noticed anything strange about him till a certain night when one man and two men and three men came in with the same story, that they were after seeing him standing at a street corner as if he was waiting for somebody. Well, we made great sport of it. Naturally we all took it that if John Cronin was waiting he was waiting for a woman, and it was a powerful story, an old woman-hater like himself to be caught in the latter end. One of the crowd began to take him off making a speech about women in his growling, sober-and-easy voice, and we laughed ourselves sick. But the laugh was at the other side of our face before the night was out. Soon after midnight and I with the deck in my hands, Mrs Crowley that owned the lodging-house near Peter and Paul's Chapel walked in with a face on her like a pail of sour milk. "Excuse me, men, and not wishing to interrupt ye," says she politely, "but did e'er a one of ye by chance see Mr Cronin?" "Yerra," says I, "didn't he come in yet, the ould rip?" "He did not," says she, "him that was never five minutes late the whole long days of his life." "A woman it is," says I to the men. "Mo leir! Mo leir, what woman?" says she, "or is it mad ye're going? Is it John Cronin go with a woman, him that I sent up me two beautiful educated daughters to every day for three years and in the heel of the hunt he wouldn't know which end of them was up, not to mind which of them 'twas?" "Well," says I, "there's three men here at this very minute that saw him waiting for someone at the corner of the South Main Street and if 'twasn't a woman would you mind telling us who it was?" At those words she began to clap her hands and bawl like one demented. "He's gone! He's gone!" says she. "The best lodger a woman ever had and his twelve shillings a week as certain as the grace of God!" By main persuasion we got her to go back to the house and sit up a bit longer for him, but we got no more fun out of the cards that night. "As sure as God 'tis a drag," says one of them to me. About one o'clock Mrs Crowley came back, and without as much as By your leave, gentlemen, down she dropped in the middle of the floor in a dead mag. We knew then he was lost, so myself and another man called Charlie Coveney went off to give word to the police. It was a quiet night with a full moon shining. "'Twas just at this very spot he was seen last," those were the words Charlie was saying to me as we rounded the corner into the South Main Street when all at once he stopped and clapped his hands to his forehead. "Sweet God alive!" says he. "Look and tell me who is it!" "'Tis never Long John," says I in a whisper. "If 'tisnt, 'tis his spit," says he. And there, beyond a shadow of doubt was John Cronin, standing at the street corner where the three men were after seeing him more than four hours before and looking for all the world as if he didn't stir a step in the meantime. There was a bobby in front of him with his notebook out. "What's wrong, constable?" says I, running up and putting my hand on Long John's shoulder. "Are you a friend of this man?" says the bobby. "I am," says I, a bit nervous, "but no enemy of the law." "The law 'twill be then," says he, '"if you don't shift him off out of this in double-quick time." "The law, constable?" says I. "Erra, what for?" "For being drunk on the public street," says the bobby. "Constable," says I, "you're a clever young man no doubt, seeing you're where you are, and by the way you talk I can tell you're a well-read man besides, but will you kindly tell me where you saw or read of a drunken man that kept his two feet like that?" "I'm passing no compliments to you," says the bobby sourly, "but will you tell me where you saw a sober man with two eyes like that in his head?" So, begob, I looked close at my hero and noticed his two eyes standing and his face, as pale as death, all tied up in an elegant knot. "'Tis queer, I'll grant you, constable," says I. "Queer?" says he. "Queer, did you say? 'Tis drink, or if 'tisnt 'tis as close as makes no difference, and drink 'twill be if you don't get him out of this." "'Tis not drink," says Charlie. "That man never hurt the feelings of a bottle of stout in all his born days. I know what it is. 'Tis sleep-walking!" "Merciful Hour!" says the bobby, drawing back his fist to give Charlie a clout. "Is that what you call walking? Is it, you unlettered yob? ...Come on now, the pair of ye! I'll be back this way in a couple of minutes, and if that hump of misery is there still I'll put the whole bleddy lot of ye in the lock-up, for 'tis my firm conviction ye're a Fenian conspiracy."
Well, now, getting Long John home was a hard job. I took home men that were quarter drunk and half drunk and drunk to God and the world, but I never took home a heavier load. There was no more life in him than a post, and when we grabbed him he fell back into our arms with his two hands stiff by his sides like something you'd see in the waxworks and the same idioty look on his face. At first we couldn't even bend his legs and they dragged along after him as stiff as pokers. His hands were the same, flapping dead on our shoulders. "Merciful Jesus!" says Charlie to me, "he's as cold as an altar stone!" "What is it at all?" says I. "Do you think he's dead?" "In the name of God," says Charlie, "how would he be dead and he standing up against the corner as large as life?" "Don't ask me," says I, "but if he's dead God help the two of us at the Coroner's inquest!" Well, he wasn't dead, but we didn't know that till we had him nearly home, and then the life began to come into him again, and such bawling and screeching he had with the pains shooting through every bit of him. He wanted us to let him down there and then to die, and not be lugging him in his last agony through the streets of the city. But we never gave him a minute's rest till we got him up to my place and put him sitting before the fire to thaw. Then we put him the question, and this was the story he told, and a very queer story it was you'll agree. It seems he was going for his usual constitutional without having his mind made up for certain where exactly he wanted to go. He stopped at the corner of the South Main Street to decide whether 'twould be round the Lough or up Fair Hill, or maybe out the Lee Road for a bit of a change; and then, he said, something came over him and damn the bit of him could decide. The very thought of Fair Hill of the Lough or the Lee Road was enough to sicken him; he knew every inch of the way inside out, and there was nothing good in any of them. "So, begod," says he to himself, "if that's the way I might as well go back to the ould doss and sleep off me deliberations!" but no sooner did the thought come to his mind than he was worse than ever. "Hell's bells!" says he (for being a religious man he never used bad words), "that's as bad as the rest." As sick as he was of all his old walks he was sicker still of Norry-Dance-Naked and her two educated daughters. Now, that was a serious predicament, and the more John Cronin thought over it, the hazier he got; he remembered vaguely the darkness coming on, and the lamps being lighted, and seeing the moon rising, and after that he remembered nothing more till he woke up in the horrors of hell with the life coming back into him as myself and Charlie dragged him home. Naturally, he was shaken. A misfortune like that might shake anybody. It was two days before he'd face out again, and he knowing the queer story was after going the rounds. After that everything went well for a while. Then one night he stopped again at the foot of the Mardyke on his way back from a walk in the Lee Fields. At two o'clock in the morning Mrs Crowley called for me. I went to the police barracks, but they had no account of him there, so off with me to the Bridewell. The sergeant in charge brought me in. He threw back a slide and asked me to look. There was a jet of gas lighting and under it on top of a pallet, and looking like a ghost, was Cronin. He was leaning forward with his two hands behind his ears. "Is it for drunk ye took him, sergeant?" says I. "Drunk?" says he in an old woman's voice. "He's no more drunk than I am." 'Twas then I noticed the keys knocking together in his hands and saw he was half crazy with fright. "What do you think it is?" says I. "Would I take him to a doctor?" "Take him to anyone at all you like," says he, "so long as I'm shut of him. And I'm in dread 'tis little good a doctor will do him. 'Tis my firm conviction the man is bewitched." Next morning Long John and myself went to a priest and the priest took down a book and said a long Latin prayer over him; and to a doctor, and the doctor made him strip and sounded every inch of his skinny get-up. Then he got to slapping his knees, and 'tis my firm conviction that in the latter end he thought we were joking him. "Next time you're inclined to stop," says he, "take my advice and go on. Go on even if you have to go into the river. That'll cure or kill you in my belief." It struck us that this was very good advice, and in one way it was. But as John Cronin explained to me after he stopped the third time, the effect of it wore off after a while. Even though he mightn't be worried when he got to a corner he'd be worried before ever he reached it, wondering whether he'd be lucky and get past. The thought of that played so much on him that he got into walking slower and slower, barely dragging the legs after him, so as to put off the bad moment, until at last you'd hardly say he was walking at all. One day he stopped dead halfway along King Street. He only stopped there about an hour all told, for the story was going the rounds and there was a big crowd around him when the bobbies came to haul him off. After that he stopped anywhere and everywhere, without rhyme or reason, like my daughter-in-law's alarm clock, and the wonder grew till there wasn't a soul but knew of it. That was how he lost his first job (poor man, he lost them all after). Up in one of the big houses in Montenotte it was, and he never got past Saint Luke's Cross. It got into the paper, all about the strange man that stopped, and advising people to call a policeman if they saw him at it. Then there was another notice from the police not to do anything of the sort, because it appeared that a young fellow couldn't be five minutes waiting for his doll without someone reporting him, and it led to a lot of crossness. Sometimes it was the young fellows beat the bobbies, and sometimes it was the bobbies beat the young fellows, but whichever it was, it was always poor John that got blamed, and in next to no time there was the devil's own ill-feeling grew up concerning him. One day the inspector of the police got so tearing mad he took his courage in his hands and hauled John up before the bench. "I'm asking your worships for a direction," says he. "Ye're sitting up there on yeer behinds for weeks, listening to cases of assault and battery, and abuse, and defamation of character, and my district is getting a bad name all on account of this one man that's getting off scot-free, and as true as the Lord God is above me," says he, thumping his chest, "damn the bit of an ould charge can I rake up against him, the law being the misfortunate, ould addled gligeen it is, what with Habeas Corpus and Nulla Bona, Ne Temere and Noli me Tangere, and all the rest of the bleddy ould nonsense," says he, getting hotter and hotter till he was lepping the height of the table off the floor, "and be the living Jasus," says he, "if ye don't go and do something about it quick we'll have the end of the world on top of us before we know where we are."
*
'Did he say all that?' I interrupted. 'He did then,' replied the old man emphatically, 'every bleddy word of it!'
*
But if the law wouldn't handle John Cronin there was a party that would, and that party was all for chucking him into the river and putting a stop to his stopping. At a special meeting of the Corporation one man denounced him as an English spy that was trying to give the country a bad name; pretending the people here had no place to go, and our own small city as he said with half a dozen sodalities and an Opera House, not to mention public-houses past human reckoning. Then the Nationalists got their knife in him and said he was trying to distract attention from the legitimate grievances of the people - English tyranny and the Sunday Closing. And about the same time everything began to go wrong. First there was a dry spell and diphtheria and then a wet spell and influenza, and children went down with whooping-cough and scarlatina, and Long John was blamed for it all. And then, of all things that could happen, one night the Lee overflowed. The people were sailing through the main streets in boats, and when they couldn't get boats they went in baths and dustbins. The same morning the paper was after coming out with the story that a woman in Midleton and a man in Bantry were both took with the stopping. Picture now the plight of Cronin when he was caught that night and he stopped dead in a foot and a half of water! There was - and let me impress it on you - a general commotion. There were stones flying and whistles blowing and policemen rushing out with carbines in their hands. And then - who should appear but the Proud Woman!
II
The Proud Woman! That was her title. Julia Cantillon was a girl you wouldn't believe the like of existed in the whole wide world. The DeCantillons were a good family, but proud and headstrong as well, and 'tis likely that the same pride brought them down. Julia took after them. She was a handsome girl and a good worker, but no man born could ever put up with her. She was the most obstinate, pigheaded, contrairy child, maid and woman ever seen in this city. And the way of her obstinacy was this: whatever she was told to do she wouldn't do, and whatever she was told not to do she would do, and without a word of a lie she'd tear iron to do it. If she saw a notice in the park not to walk on the grass she'd walk on it, if 'twas to warn her against picking flowers she'd pick them. Her father was a very religious man and leathered blood and sparks out of her, but he might as well have been leathering a wall. Nothing ever took a stir out of her. She was got apast her first communion, but confirmed she never was, because when the priest asked her would she be a strong and perfect Christian, she said in a very quiet voice "I will not," and she stuck to it. Before she was eighteen she was a public scandal. In those days there used to be a lot of English sailors in Cork, and after hearing a sermon about them at the sodality, Julia's father told her to stop at home of nights. That, to Julia, was as good as an invitation to do the other thing. Then he warned her flat against the sailors, and the same evening Julia walked up the lane past his very door with a sailor on her arm. Her father reared. Divil such a crowd was ever seen separating one couple as there was between himself and Julia. Not before he dragged one of the ear-rings out of her ear though, and a bit of the ear along with it. "There you are!" says he, "you night-walking vagabond! Next thing is you'll be bringing me home what I won't shock the neighbours' ears by mentioning, and as the Lord is over me," says he, raising his arm, "the day you do will be your last on God's blessed earth!" Julia drew herself up, and a fine tall masterful girl she was, and every bit of her the colour of the table, bar the one ear and that bleeding, and she shaking with turmoil and her eyes on fire. "I call on the neighbours to witness," says she in the quiet, ringing sort of voice she had when she was roused, "that and drawing the razor across my throat were the two things ever farthest from my mind, but," says she in a whisper, giving the table one quick bang, "I'll allow no man in the world to quell my spirit." And, signs on, she didn't. She brought home what her old fellow wouldn't shock the neighbours' ears by mentioning, and when the English sailor boy (who by all accounts was mad on her) wanted her to marry him she wouldn't, just to spite her father. So she was thrown, body and bones, into the public street. Though, indeed, bar the one little mistake, no one could ever say she was anything but a right good girl. She took a little room, and furnished it, and made her living by doing chares. She was a fine worker, but man dear, her contrariness was a caution. Nothing would do her but right go wrong, all the married women were damned and every child that had a lawful father was a fool or next door to it. She lived like that, all alone but for the child, and as happy as a lark. Her only amusement was playing the concertina, and she wouldn't have been bothered with that either, only someone said 'twas no instrument for a woman. She was never what you'd call a good hand at it, because she hardly knew one note from another, but if you told her so she'd contradict you flat.
Julia was the lady who arrived that night and found John Cronin standing like a tailor's dummy in a foot and a half of water without as much as a glimmer of a notion of the crowds that were fighting one another to get at him. One dive she made into the middle of them and scattered them. They were all frightened of her, because she was such a strange girl. "Away with ye!" says she. "Bad luck to ye, what do ye think ye're doing? Get off with ye!" "Kill him!" says someone. "Hold his head in the water!" "Ye'll do nothing of the sort," says Julia. "What did he ever do to ye?" "He's stopped," says a dirty-visaged lump of a market-woman. "And why the blazes wouldn't he be stopped?" says Julia. "'Tis a thing I often thought of doing myself." "'Tis he drownded the town." "And 'tisnt the town either," says a man. "Look at the face of him. 'Tis no town he's trying to destroy." "And what?" asks Julia. "Sun, moon and stars," says he. "A fellow like that would stop them up like a bolt in an engine." "Oh, God!" says someone, beginning to clap his hands and bawl. "Where's the moon!" "Moon my eye!" says Julia. "'Tis going round long enough." So, begod, they turned on her too, but she managed to hold them off till a couple of bobbies came. The bobbies grabbed John and started frog marching him to the barracks. "Move on you too!" says one of them to her. "I will not," says she promptly. "Then, begod, you'll folly your friend." "Folly him I will," says she. "You can take me in charge now." Let me remark that this was the first natural mannerly word she was ever known to pass to a man.
Next morning the two of them were hauled up. 'Twas a different story now from what it was before. There were the papers out reporting thousands of pounds worth of damage, half a dozen people hurt and scores of cases of the stopping. "There's no doubt in my mind," says the Bench, "that if steps aren't taken in a hurry there'll be untold mischief done. I don't know what to make of you, Cronin. Some say you're an English spy, but you have an honest Irish face. Some say you're a lunatic, but you don't look like a lunatic to me. Some say you're Antichrist. Are you, do you think?" "I don't know, sir" says John. "I have my own opinion about that," says he. "Tell me, Cronin, do you believe in God?" "I don't know," says John. "One time I thought I knew everything but now I'm all upset." "Because," says the Bench, "we hear the divil of a lot about people who don't, but in my humble opinion 'tis all moonshine. You're the first man I met that behaved as if he didn't." "He's not the only one," says Julia. "Will you be quiet, woman?" says the magistrate. "I won't," says she. "You're a violent, contradictory woman," says he, "and I don't know how you escaped being lodged in the body of the gaol before this." Well, my dear, Julia mounted up like a fighting cock and thumped her two hands on the box like one demented. "You're a liar, mister!" says she. "You're a liar and no gentleman! I never contradict anyone and never did. There's nothing makes me madder than people saying I contradict them. Anything else they like to say they're welcome to say. I'd forgive anyone saying I was a liar or a thief or a drunkard or a loose-living woman, but to say that I do something I never even have the temptation to do is badness; black, bitter badness of heart." "John Cronin," says the magistrate, ignoring her, "what am I going to do with you? If I leave you go, they'll eat you, so for your own protection more than anything else I'm going to give you three months and be hanged to the law." "You'll do nothing of the kind," says Julia. "Shut your mouth!" says the magistrate, getting as mad as hell. "I will not. But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take that man home with me and look after him, and I'll take my bible oath he'll never stop again." The magistrate looked at her as if he was between two minds. Then he smiled, and all at once the people in court began to see the joke. "Will you go home with her, John?" says the magistrate. "If 'tis all the same to you, your worship," says John, "I'd liefer go to gaol." "Never mind him!" shouts Julia. "He's put out by the bad reputation you gave me, a reputation I never earned. Damn the bit of sense ye have, either of ye! Leave him come home with me for a week till he see I'm the quietest-mannered woman the Almighty God gave tongue to." "Will you try her?" says the magistrate, and 'twas clear he was impressed. "I will, your worship, I will," says John.
Out with the pair of them and the crowds of Cork looking on. And, whatever happened, no one said "boo" to them all the way back to John's lodging, whether it was that he looked such a terrible toppled-down mountain of a man in the light of day or Julia such a fine masterful woman with the fire of fighting in her eyes. When they came to the house they found the door locked and the blinds drawn, and on the roadway outside were the ashes of a fire and three holy pictures no one had the courage to burn. John gave a great sigh and sat on the kerb with his head between his hands. Julia sat beside him. "You're not going to stop on me, John?" says she very sweetly. "I don't know," says he. "Say 'bad luck and end to them!'" says she. "To who, girl?" says he. "To the bodachs inside, of course," says Julia. "Why would I say that?" says John. "'Tis what I always say myself," says she. "I won't wish anyone a bad end," says John. "Not even the bad luck, John?" says she, coaxing him. "Not even that," says he. "John," says she, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Well, girl?" says he. "If you stopped on me now, my pride would be gone for ever," says she. "Would it?" says John. "'Twould," says she. "And damn the bit else I have in the wide world." "Haven't you your child?" asks John. "A child," says she, "is a gift or a loss, but no shame coming or going. I never see a crowd but I want to tear the lightning from the sky and fling it at them. You won't fail me, John?"
She took him by the arm and off they went to the little attic room she had. After that she made him go to bed, and whether 'twas the excitement or something else, he slept and went on sleeping till she waked him next morning to give him his breakfast. After that the two of them went off arm-in-arm together. They travelled from house to house where John used to work, and whenever the door was opened for them Julia said in her fine ringing voice: "Here's the fancy gardener, the man that stopped, and now he's not going to stop any more." That day they got one of the jobs back, and Julia promised him that in a few weeks he'd have them all. Signs on it, he had. In a month he was working in places he never worked in before and wherever he went Julia took him and brought him back. But the best of it was, not that he didn't stop (for Julia kept her promise and John Cronin never stopped again) but that he was putting up a fine colour and plenty of flesh. He got a house and he wasn't in it a week before he asked her to marry him. He was very put out about that, he being old enough to be her father, but what could he do and he not able to live without her? Anyway she didn't mind. She was glad enough to get him. They married, and, no lie on it, they were the happiest couple ever seen in this city. Up to the day of his death they could be heard coorting and kissing for miles off. Every fellow in the Marsh was cutting his throat about losing a match like Julia, for to crown her glory she turned out a right good manager. When he died they were worth two shops and three or four houses. Whenever you congratulated her over the counter she had a way of throwing out her hands and smiling that was as good as saying "I told you so." "'Twas pride that done it," she used to say. "What use is anyone without a bit of pride? ...I'll let you into a great secret now," she'd say, leaning across the counter and whispering, "a secret that might be the making of you. There's only one prayer you should ever pray over a child, only one, mind you! 'God make this little child independent!'"
*
''Tis a remarkable prayer,' said I. ''Tis so, a remarkable prayer. But the astounding thing is -' at this point the old man gathered himself into a knot. 'The astounding thing is that to the day of his death she never by as much as one syllable contradicted John Cronin.' 'She must have been a very unusual wife, then,' said I. 'She was a divil out of hell,' said the old man with the simplicity of utter resignation. 'Women are a black bitter pool of iniquity and deceit that no man knows the bottom of. Look at my daughter-in-law!'
["The Man That Stopped" from Bones Of Contention London: Macmillan 1936]
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