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MAY EVE

I was told that some one wanted to see me.

“Who is it?” I asked.

They told me it was an old lady, who would give no name. I inquired of her appearance. “She is an old lady,” they replied, “and very, very small.” I think I must have guessed, for I asked no further questions. I told them to show her in.

If I could only describe to you the way she came into the room! She was so wee and so tiny. Her eyes sparkled with such brilliancy, she might have been seven instead of seventy. Then, when she bobbed me a curtsey as she entered, I could have believed she was a fairy come from the uttermost ends of the earth to attend a christening.

There was every good reason for my belief, not the least of which was that it was May Eve. In Ireland, as you know, the folk dare not go out after dark on this eventful day. The fairies are in the fields, fairies good and bad, and heaven only knows what you may not come across if you wander through the boreens or across the hillside when once the evening has put on her mantle of grey.

Not only will you meet them in the fields, moreover; they come to your very door and milk they ask of you, and fire and water. Now, except that she asked for nothing, but rather brought a gift to me, my wee visitor might have been a fairy come out of the land beyond the edge of Time; come ten million miles to this old farmhouse which hugs itself so close to the land in the valley between the hills.

For the moment I felt my heart in my throat. I had added things together so quickly in my mind that I was sure my belief was right. She was a fairy. May Eve—the very time of day, when the grey mist is creeping over the meadows, and the river runs blip, blip between the reeds—the strange and youthful glitter in her wee brown eyes, set deep in the hollows of that old and wrinkled face; then last of all, her bobbing curtsey and the way she smiled at me as though she had a blessing in her pocket—these were the things I added so swiftly together in my mind. The result was inevitable. Undoubtedly she was a fairy. Now see how strange the tricks life plays with you; for, whereas I had believed in fairies before, I knew now that my belief had been vain. I had only believed in the idea of them—that was all. I had only said I believed because I knew I should never see one to contradict the doubt which still lingered in my heart. That is the way most of us say our credo.

“I’ve brought you your travelling-rug,” said she, and she bobbed again.

“What travelling-rug?” I asked.

And then, what happened, do you think? I could hardly believe my eyes. She took from off her arm what seemed at first to me some garment, lined richly with orange-coloured sateen. My eyes grew wider in wonder as she laid it down and spread it out upon the floor.

It was a patchwork quilt!

Oh, you never did see such a galaxy of colours in all your life! Blues and reds, greens, yellows and purples, they all jostled each other for a place upon that square of orange-coloured sateen. All textures they were, too; some velvet, some silk, and some brocade. It was as if the caves of Aladdin had been thrown open to me, and I were allowed just for one moment to peep within.

But that was not all.

For when I said: “You’ve finished it, then?” I saw to what purpose that completion had been made. Right in the centre of all those dazzling patches was a square of purple—purple that the Emperors used to wear—while worked across in regal letters of gold there were my own initials.

I stared at them. I went down on my knees, looking close into the stitches to make sure that there was no mistake. Then I gazed up at her.

“But it’s for me?” said I.

She nodded her head and her whole face was lighted up with pride and satisfaction. She was so excited, too. Her eyes danced with excitement. You know the quaint little twisted attitudes that children get into when they are giving you a present which they have made themselves; they are half consumed with fear that you are going to laugh at them and half consumed with pride in their own handiwork. She was just like that.

Lest you do not know already, I should tell you that I had made her my pensioner as long as she lives, in order to enable her to leave off work and make this patchwork quilt whereby she might be remembered by those who slept beneath it when she had gone to sleep. But I had thought to myself, surely it will be in the family. I had wondered who would become the proud possessor of it. Imagine my amazement, then, when I realised that it was my very own.

“And you’ll think of me when I’m gone, won’t you, sir—when you go to bed at night?” she said.

“Think of you?” said I. “You may well call it a travelling-rug. I only have to wrap this round me and, with the mere wish of it, I shall be in the land of dreams—millions and millions of miles away.”

“P’raps I shall be there, too,” said she, clasping her hands.

“And then we’ll meet,” said I.

She began folding it up with just that care which she had used in the making of it. She folded it one way.

“It’s nice and warm,” said she.

She doubled it another way.

“Every one of the squares is lined with sateen.”

She redoubled it once more.

“And it’s all padded with cotton wool.”

When she said that, she stood up with her face all beaming with smiles, and she laid it in my hands.

Then I did what I had wanted to do from the very first moment I saw her. I took her little face in my hands and I kissed the soft, warm, wrinkled cheeks.

“When I was very unhappy,” said I, “I used to entertain what is called a belief in fairies. Now that I know what it is to be happy, I find them. It’s a very different thing.”