DUBLINERS

by James Joyce

 

Contents

 

 The Sisters

 An Encounter

 Araby

 Eveline

 After the Race

 Two Gallants

 The Boarding House

 A Little Cloud

 Counterparts

 Clay

 A Painful Case

 Ivy Day in the Committee Room

 A Mother

 Grace

 The Dead

 

 

THE SISTERS

 

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work. 

Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his: 

“No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly ... but there was something queer ... there was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my opinion....” 

He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery. 

“I have my own theory about it,” he said. “I think it was one of those ... peculiar cases.... But it’s hard to say....” 

He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My uncle saw me staring and said to me: 

“Well, so your old friend is gone, you’ll be sorry to hear.” 

“Who?” said I. 

“Father Flynn.” 

“Is he dead?” 

“Mr Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.” 

I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter. 

“The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.” 

“God have mercy on his soul,” said my aunt piously. 

Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate. 

“I wouldn’t like children of mine,” he said, “to have too much to say to a man like that.” 

“How do you mean, Mr Cotter?” asked my aunt. 

“What I mean is,” said old Cotter, “it’s bad for children. My idea is: let a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be.... Am I right, Jack?” 

“That’s my principle, too,” said my uncle. “Let him learn to box his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and large.... Mr Cotter might take a pick of that leg mutton,” he added to my aunt. 

“No, no, not for me,” said old Cotter. 

My aunt brought the dish from the safe and put it on the table. 

“But why do you think it’s not good for children, Mr Cotter?” she asked. 

“It’s bad for children,” said old Cotter, “because their minds are so impressionable. When children see things like that, you know, it has an effect....” 

I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!

 

It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for

alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from

his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw

again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my

head and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed

me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.

I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and

there again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a

murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the

lips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died

of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve

the simoniac of his sin.

 

The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little

house in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered

under the vague name of _Drapery_. The drapery consisted mainly of

children’s bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to

hang in the window, saying: _Umbrellas Re-covered_. No notice was

visible now for the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the

door-knocker with ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were

reading the card pinned on the crape. I also approached and read:

 

     July 1st, 1895

     The Rev. James Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine’s

     Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years.

     _R. I. P._

 

The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was

disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have

gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in

his arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great-coat. Perhaps

my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this

present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I

who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled

too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about

the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose

little clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of

his coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave

his ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red

handkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a

week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite

inefficacious.

 

I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I

walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the

theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it

strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt

even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I

had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as

my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He

had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to

pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs

and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of

the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments

worn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting

difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain

circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or

only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious

were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as

the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and

towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I

wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake

them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the

Church had written books as thick as the _Post Office Directory_ and as

closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all

these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no

answer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used to

smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me

through the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart;

and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now

and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately.

When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his

tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in

the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.

 

As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried

to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered

that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique

fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the

customs were strange—in Persia, I thought.... But I could not remember

the end of the dream.

 

In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning.

It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to

the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie

received us in the hall; and, as it would have been unseemly to have

shouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman

pointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt’s nodding, proceeded to

toil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely

above the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped

and beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the

dead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated

to enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.

 

I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was

suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like

pale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we

three knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I

could not gather my thoughts because the old woman’s mutterings

distracted me. I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back

and how the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side.

The fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in

his coffin.

 

But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he

was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the

altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very

truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled

by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room—the flowers.

 

We blessed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we

found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards

my usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and

brought out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these

on the table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at

her sister’s bidding, she filled out the sherry into the glasses and

passed them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but

I declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them.

She seemed to be somewhat disappointed at my refusal and went over

quietly to the sofa where she sat down behind her sister. No one spoke:

we all gazed at the empty fireplace.

 

My aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:

 

“Ah, well, he’s gone to a better world.”

 

Eliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the

stem of her wine-glass before sipping a little.

 

“Did he ... peacefully?” she asked.

 

“Oh, quite peacefully, ma’am,” said Eliza. “You couldn’t tell when the

breath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised.”

 

“And everything...?”

 

“Father O’Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and

prepared him and all.”

 

“He knew then?”

 

“He was quite resigned.”

 

“He looks quite resigned,” said my aunt.

 

“That’s what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just

looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No

one would think he’d make such a beautiful corpse.”

 

“Yes, indeed,” said my aunt.

 

She sipped a little more from her glass and said:

 

“Well, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great comfort for you to

know that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to

him, I must say.”

 

Eliza smoothed her dress over her knees.

 

“Ah, poor James!” she said. “God knows we done all we could, as poor as

we are—we wouldn’t see him want anything while he was in it.”

 

Nannie had leaned her head against the sofa-pillow and seemed about to

fall asleep.

 

“There’s poor Nannie,” said Eliza, looking at her, “she’s wore out. All

the work we had, she and me, getting in the woman to wash him and then

laying him out and then the coffin and then arranging about the Mass in

the chapel. Only for Father O’Rourke I don’t know what we’d have done

at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two

candlesticks out of the chapel and wrote out the notice for the

_Freeman’s General_ and took charge of all the papers for the cemetery

and poor James’s insurance.”

 

“Wasn’t that good of him?” said my aunt.

 

Eliza closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

 

“Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends,” she said, “when all is

said and done, no friends that a body can trust.”

 

“Indeed, that’s true,” said my aunt. “And I’m sure now that he’s gone

to his eternal reward he won’t forget you and all your kindness to

him.”

 

“Ah, poor James!” said Eliza. “He was no great trouble to us. You

wouldn’t hear him in the house any more than now. Still, I know he’s

gone and all to that....”

 

“It’s when it’s all over that you’ll miss him,” said my aunt.

 

“I know that,” said Eliza. “I won’t be bringing him in his cup of

beef-tea any more, nor you, ma’am, sending him his snuff. Ah, poor

James!”

 

She stopped, as if she were communing with the past and then said

shrewdly:

 

“Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him

latterly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him with

his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth

open.”

 

She laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued:

 

“But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over

he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again

where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with

him. If we could only get one of them new-fangled carriages that makes

no noise that Father O’Rourke told him about, them with the rheumatic

wheels, for the day cheap—he said, at Johnny Rush’s over the way there

and drive out the three of us together of a Sunday evening. He had his

mind set on that.... Poor James!”

 

“The Lord have mercy on his soul!” said my aunt.

 

Eliza took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it. Then she

put it back again in her pocket and gazed into the empty grate for some

time without speaking.

 

“He was too scrupulous always,” she said. “The duties of the priesthood

was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.”

 

“Yes,” said my aunt. “He was a disappointed man. You could see that.”

 

A silence took possession of the little room and, under cover of it, I

approached the table and tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to

my chair in the corner. Eliza seemed to have fallen into a deep revery.

We waited respectfully for her to break the silence: and after a long

pause she said slowly:

 

“It was that chalice he broke.... That was the beginning of it. Of

course, they say it was all right, that it contained nothing, I mean.

But still.... They say it was the boy’s fault. But poor James was so

nervous, God be merciful to him!”

 

“And was that it?” said my aunt. “I heard something....”

 

Eliza nodded.

 

“That affected his mind,” she said. “After that he began to mope by

himself, talking to no one and wandering about by himself. So one night

he was wanted for to go on a call and they couldn’t find him anywhere.

They looked high up and low down; and still they couldn’t see a sight

of him anywhere. So then the clerk suggested to try the chapel. So then

they got the keys and opened the chapel and the clerk and Father

O’Rourke and another priest that was there brought in a light for to

look for him.... And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by

himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like

softly to himself?”

 

She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no

sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in

his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle

chalice on his breast.

 

Eliza resumed:

 

“Wide-awake and laughing-like to himself.... So then, of course, when

they saw that, that made them think that there was something gone wrong

with him....”

 

 

AN ENCOUNTER

 

It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little

library made up of old numbers of _The Union Jack_, _Pluck_ and _The

Halfpenny Marvel_. Every evening after school we met in his back garden

and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the

idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm;

or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we

fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe

Dillon’s war dance of victory. His parents went to eight-o’clock mass

every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon

was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for

us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an

Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head,

beating a tin with his fist and yelling:

 

“Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!”

 

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation

for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.

 

A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its

influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We

banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in

fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were

afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The

adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from

my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better

some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time

by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong

in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they

were circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was

hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was

discovered with a copy of _The Halfpenny Marvel_.

 

“This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! _‘Hardly had the

day’...._ Go on! What day? _‘Hardly had the day dawned’...._ Have you

studied it? What have you there in your pocket?”

 

Everyone’s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and

everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages,

frowning.

 

“What is this rubbish?” he said. “_The Apache Chief!_ Is this what you

read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more

of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I

suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink.

I’m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could

understand it if you were ... National School boys. Now, Dillon, I

advise you strongly, get at your work or....”

 

This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of

the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened

one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school

was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the

escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The

mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the

routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to

happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to

people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.

 

The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break

out of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo

Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day’s miching. Each of us

saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal

Bridge. Mahony’s big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo

Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go

along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the

ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid

we might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college; but Mahony

asked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the

Pigeon House. We were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the

plot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same

time showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last

arrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands,

laughing, and Mahony said:

 

“Till tomorrow, mates!”

 

That night I slept badly. In the morning I was first-comer to the

bridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the

ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried

along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of

June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiring my frail canvas

shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight and watching the

docile horses pulling a tramload of business people up the hill. All

the branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with

little light green leaves and the sunlight slanted through them on to

the water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and

I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was

very happy.

 

When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony’s

grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered up

beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out the

catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some

improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it

and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds.

Mahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We

waited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of

Leo Dillon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:

 

“Come along. I knew Fatty’d funk it.”

 

“And his sixpence...?” I said.

 

“That’s forfeit,” said Mahony. “And so much the better for us—a bob and

a tanner instead of a bob.”

 

We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works

and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play

the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd of

ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult and, when two ragged

boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we

should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small and so we

walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us: _“Swaddlers!

Swaddlers!”_ thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was

dark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap.

When we came to the Smoothing Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a

failure because you must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on

Leo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he would

get at three o’clock from Mr Ryan.

 

We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the

noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of

cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the

drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and,

as all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two

big currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside

the river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin’s

commerce—the barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly

smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white

sailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony

said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big

ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the

geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually

taking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from

us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.

 

We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be

transported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a

bag. We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the

short voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the

discharging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the

other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went

to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to

do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of

them green eyes for I had some confused notion.... The sailors’ eyes

were blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could

have been called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay

by calling out cheerfully every time the planks fell:

 

“All right! All right!”

 

When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The

day had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers’ shops musty

biscuits lay bleaching. We bought some biscuits and chocolate which we

ate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the

families of the fishermen live. We could find no dairy and so we went

into a huckster’s shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each.

Refreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped

into a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the

field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we

could see the Dodder.

 

It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of

visiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o’clock lest

our adventure should be discovered. Mahony looked regretfully at his

catapult and I had to suggest going home by train before he regained

any cheerfulness. The sun went in behind some clouds and left us to our

jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.

 

There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the

bank for some time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the

far end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those

green stems on which girls tell fortunes. He came along by the bank

slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he

held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily

dressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a

jerry hat with a high crown. He seemed to be fairly old for his

moustache was ashen-grey. When he passed at our feet he glanced up at

us quickly and then continued his way. We followed him with our eyes

and saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces he turned

about and began to retrace his steps. He walked towards us very slowly,

always tapping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he

was looking for something in the grass.

 

He stopped when he came level with us and bade us good-day. We answered

him and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly and with great care.

He began to talk of the weather, saying that it would be a very hot

summer and adding that the seasons had changed greatly since he was a

boy—a long time ago. He said that the happiest time of one’s life was

undoubtedly one’s schoolboy days and that he would give anything to be

young again. While he expressed these sentiments which bored us a

little we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He

asked us whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of

Sir Walter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every

book he mentioned so that in the end he said:

 

“Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now,” he added, pointing

to Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, “he is different; he

goes in for games.”

 

He said he had all Sir Walter Scott’s works and all Lord Lytton’s works

at home and never tired of reading them. “Of course,” he said, “there

were some of Lord Lytton’s works which boys couldn’t read.” Mahony

asked why couldn’t boys read them—a question which agitated and pained

me because I was afraid the man would think I was as stupid as Mahony.

The man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great gaps in his

mouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the

most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties.

The man asked me how many had I. I answered that I had none. He did not

believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.

 

“Tell us,” said Mahony pertly to the man, “how many have you yourself?”

 

The man smiled as before and said that when he was our age he had lots

of sweethearts.

 

“Every boy,” he said, “has a little sweetheart.”

 

His attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man of

his age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and

sweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth and I

wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared something or

felt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was

good. He began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair

they had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so

good as they seemed to be if one only knew. There was nothing he liked,

he said, so much as looking at a nice young girl, at her nice white

hands and her beautiful soft hair. He gave me the impression that he

was repeating something which he had learned by heart or that,

magnetised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly

circling round and round in the same orbit. At times he spoke as if he

were simply alluding to some fact that everybody knew, and at times he

lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously as if he were telling us

something secret which he did not wish others to overhear. He repeated

his phrases over and over again, varying them and surrounding them with

his monotonous voice. I continued to gaze towards the foot of the

slope, listening to him.

 

After a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying

that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without

changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from

us towards the near end of the field. We remained silent when he had

gone. After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony exclaim:

 

“I say! Look what he’s doing!”

 

As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:

 

“I say.... He’s a queer old josser!”

 

“In case he asks us for our names,” I said, “let you be Murphy and I’ll

be Smith.”

 

We said nothing further to each other. I was still considering whether

I would go away or not when the man came back and sat down beside us

again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony, catching sight of the cat

which had escaped him, sprang up and pursued her across the field. The

man and I watched the chase. The cat escaped once more and Mahony began

to throw stones at the wall she had escaladed. Desisting from this, he

began to wander about the far end of the field, aimlessly.

 

After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a

very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was

going to reply indignantly that we were not National School boys to be

whipped, as he called it; but I remained silent. He began to speak on

the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetised again by his

speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said

that when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well

whipped. When a boy was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him

any good but a good sound whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the

ear was no good: what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was

surprised at this sentiment and involuntarily glanced up at his face.

As I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me

from under a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.

 

The man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgotten his recent

liberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or

having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him; and that

would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl for

a sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such a

whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was

nothing in this world he would like so well as that. He described to me

how he would whip such a boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate

mystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this

world; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through the mystery,

grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should

understand him.

 

I waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly.

Lest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to

fix my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade

him good-day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating

quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached

the top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called

loudly across the field:

 

“Murphy!”

 

My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my

paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and

hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the

field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in

my heart I had always despised him a little.

 

 

ARABY

 

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the

hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An

uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from

its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street,

conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown

imperturbable faces.

 

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back

drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all

the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old

useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the

pages of which were curled and damp: _The Abbot_, by Walter Scott, _The

Devout Communicant_ and _The Memoirs of Vidocq_. I liked the last best

because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house

contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of

which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very

charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to

institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.

 

When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten

our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The

space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and

towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The

cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts

echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through

the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the

rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping

gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous

stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music

from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the

kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the

corner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if

Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his

tea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We

waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained,

we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was

waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened

door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the

railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the

soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

 

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her

door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I

could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I

ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown

figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our

ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened

morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few

casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish

blood.

 

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On

Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some

of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by

drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the

shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’

cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a _come-all-you_

about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native

land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I

imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her

name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which

I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could

not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself

out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know

whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I

could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp

and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

 

One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had

died. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house.

Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the

earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds.

Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful

that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil

themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed

the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: _“O

love! O love!”_ many times.

 

At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was

so confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I

going to _Araby_. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a

splendid bazaar, she said; she would love to go.

 

“And why can’t you?” I asked.

 

While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist.

She could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week

in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their

caps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes,

bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door

caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there

and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side

of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible

as she stood at ease.

 

“It’s well for you,” she said.

 

“If I go,” I said, “I will bring you something.”

 

What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts

after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening

days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and

by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove

to read. The syllables of the word _Araby_ were called to me through

the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment

over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My

aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I

answered few questions in class. I watched my master’s face pass from

amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could

not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with

the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my

desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.

 

On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the

bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the

hat-brush, and answered me curtly:

 

“Yes, boy, I know.”

 

As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at

the window. I left the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards

the school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.

 

When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was

early. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking

began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase and

gained the upper part of the house. The high cold empty gloomy rooms

liberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front

window I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries

reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the

cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have

stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast

by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved

neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.

 

When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire.

She was an old garrulous woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected

used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the

tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did

not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait

any longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be

out late as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to

walk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:

 

“I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.”

 

At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the halldoor. I heard

him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had

received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs.

When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money

to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.

 

“The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,” he said.

 

I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:

 

“Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late

enough as it is.”

 

My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed

in the old saying: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” He

asked me where I was going and, when I had told him a second time he

asked me did I know _The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed_. When I left the

kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my

aunt.

 

I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street

towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and

glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my

seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an

intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept

onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland

Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the

porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the

bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the

train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to

the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes

to ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical

name.

 

I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar

would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a

shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girdled

at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and

the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognised a silence

like that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the

centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the

stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words

_Café Chantant_ were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting

money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.

 

Remembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the

stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door

of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young

gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to

their conversation.

 

“O, I never said such a thing!”

 

“O, but you did!”

 

“O, but I didn’t!”

 

“Didn’t she say that?”

 

“Yes. I heard her.”

 

“O, there’s a ... fib!”

 

Observing me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy

anything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have

spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars

that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to

the stall and murmured:

 

“No, thank you.”

 

The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back

to the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or

twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.

 

I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make

my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly

and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to

fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one

end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall

was now completely dark.

 

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and

derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

 

 

EVELINE

 

She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head

was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the

odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

 

Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way

home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and

afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One

time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every

evening with other people’s children. Then a man from Belfast bought

the field and built houses in it—not like their little brown houses but

bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used

to play together in that field—the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,

little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest,

however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to

hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually

little Keogh used to keep _nix_ and call out when he saw her father

coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father

was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long

time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her

mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone

back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like

the others, to leave her home.

 

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects

which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on

earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those

familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And

yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the

priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken

harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed

Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.

Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass

it with a casual word:

 

“He is in Melbourne now.”

 

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She

tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had

shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about

her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business.

What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she

had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place

would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had

always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people

listening.

 

“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”

 

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

 

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

 

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like

that. Then she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her

with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been.

Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in

danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given

her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for

her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl;

but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to

her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect

her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating

business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the

invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her

unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry

always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from

her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no

head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw

about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a

Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had

she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out

as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather

purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and

returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to

keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had

been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals

regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to

leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

 

She was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind,

manly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to

be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home

waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen

him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to

visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his

peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a

face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet

her outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to

see _The Bohemian Girl_ and she felt elated as she sat in an

unaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music

and sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he

sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly

confused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had

been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to

like him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck

boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada.

He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the

different services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and

he told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his

feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country

just for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and

had forbidden her to have anything to say to him.

 

“I know these sailor chaps,” he said.

 

One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her

lover secretly.

 

The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap

grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest

had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming

old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very

nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read

her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day,

when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill

of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to

make the children laugh.

 

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window,

leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of

dusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ

playing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night

to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the

home together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of

her mother’s illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other

side of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The

organ-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She

remembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:

 

“Damned Italians! coming over here!”

 

As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on

the very quick of her being—that life of commonplace sacrifices closing

in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice

saying constantly with foolish insistence:

 

“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!”

 

She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!

Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But

she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to

happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He

would save her.

 

 

She stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He

held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying

something about the passage over and over again. The station was full

of soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds

she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the

quay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her

cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God

to direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long

mournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on

the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had

been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her?

Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in

silent fervent prayer.

 

A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:

 

“Come!”

 

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her

into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron

railing.

 

“Come!”

 

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy.

Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!

 

“Eveline! Evvy!”

 

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was

shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face

to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of

love or farewell or recognition.

 

 

AFTER THE RACE

 

The cars came scudding in towards Dublin, running evenly like pellets

in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore

sightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward

and through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its

wealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the

cheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the

blue cars—the cars of their friends, the French.

 

The French, moreover, were virtual victors. Their team had finished

solidly; they had been placed second and third and the driver of the

winning German car was reported a Belgian. Each blue car, therefore,

received a double measure of welcome as it topped the crest of the hill

and each cheer of welcome was acknowledged with smiles and nods by

those in the car. In one of these trimly built cars was a party of four

young men whose spirits seemed to be at present well above the level of

successful Gallicism: in fact, these four young men were almost

hilarious. They were Charles Ségouin, the owner of the car; André

Rivière, a young electrician of Canadian birth; a huge Hungarian named

Villona and a neatly groomed young man named Doyle. Ségouin was in good

humour because he had unexpectedly received some orders in advance (he

was about to start a motor establishment in Paris) and Rivière was in

good humour because he was to be appointed manager of the

establishment; these two young men (who were cousins) were also in good

humour because of the success of the French cars. Villona was in good

humour because he had had a very satisfactory luncheon; and besides he

was an optimist by nature. The fourth member of the party, however, was

too excited to be genuinely happy.

 

He was about twenty-six years of age, with a soft, light brown

moustache and rather innocent-looking grey eyes. His father, who had

begun life as an advanced Nationalist, had modified his views early. He

had made his money as a butcher in Kingstown and by opening shops in

Dublin and in the suburbs he had made his money many times over. He had

also been fortunate enough to secure some of the police contracts and

in the end he had become rich enough to be alluded to in the Dublin

newspapers as a merchant prince. He had sent his son to England to be

educated in a big Catholic college and had afterwards sent him to

Dublin University to study law. Jimmy did not study very earnestly and

took to bad courses for a while. He had money and he was popular; and

he divided his time curiously between musical and motoring circles.

Then he had been sent for a term to Cambridge to see a little life. His

father, remonstrative, but covertly proud of the excess, had paid his

bills and brought him home. It was at Cambridge that he had met

Ségouin. They were not much more than acquaintances as yet but Jimmy

found great pleasure in the society of one who had seen so much of the

world and was reputed to own some of the biggest hotels in France. Such

a person (as his father agreed) was well worth knowing, even if he had

not been the charming companion he was. Villona was entertaining also—a

brilliant pianist—but, unfortunately, very poor.

 

The car ran on merrily with its cargo of hilarious youth. The two

cousins sat on the front seat; Jimmy and his Hungarian friend sat

behind. Decidedly Villona was in excellent spirits; he kept up a deep

bass hum of melody for miles of the road. The Frenchmen flung their

laughter and light words over their shoulders and often Jimmy had to

strain forward to catch the quick phrase. This was not altogether

pleasant for him, as he had nearly always to make a deft guess at the

meaning and shout back a suitable answer in the face of a high wind.

Besides Villona’s humming would confuse anybody; the noise of the car,

too.

 

Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the

possession of money. These were three good reasons for Jimmy’s

excitement. He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the

company of these Continentals. At the control Ségouin had presented him

to one of the French competitors and, in answer to his confused murmur

of compliment, the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of

shining white teeth. It was pleasant after that honour to return to the

profane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks. Then as

to money—he really had a great sum under his control. Ségouin, perhaps,

would not think it a great sum but Jimmy who, in spite of temporary

errors, was at heart the inheritor of solid instincts knew well with

what difficulty it had been got together. This knowledge had previously

kept his bills within the limits of reasonable recklessness and, if he

had been so conscious of the labour latent in money when there had been

question merely of some freak of the higher intelligence, how much more

so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his substance! It

was a serious thing for him.

 

Of course, the investment was a good one and Ségouin had managed to

give the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of

Irish money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had

a respect for his father’s shrewdness in business matters and in this

case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment;

money to be made in the motor business, pots of money. Moreover Ségouin

had the unmistakable air of wealth. Jimmy set out to translate into

days’ work that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In

what style they had come careering along the country roads! The journey

laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the

machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the

swift blue animal.

 

They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual traffic,

loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient

tram-drivers. Near the Bank Ségouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend

alighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay

homage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that

evening in Ségouin’s hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who

was staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out

slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way

through the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious

feeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale

globes of light above them in a haze of summer evening.

 

In Jimmy’s house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion. A certain

pride mingled with his parents’ trepidation, a certain eagerness, also,

to play fast and loose for the names of great foreign cities have at

least this virtue. Jimmy, too, looked very well when he was dressed

and, as he stood in the hall giving a last equation to the bows of his

dress tie, his father may have felt even commercially satisfied at

having secured for his son qualities often unpurchaseable. His father,

therefore, was unusually friendly with Villona and his manner expressed

a real respect for foreign accomplishments; but this subtlety of his

host was probably lost upon the Hungarian, who was beginning to have a

sharp desire for his dinner.

 

The dinner was excellent, exquisite. Ségouin, Jimmy decided, had a very

refined taste. The party was increased by a young Englishman named

Routh whom Jimmy had seen with Ségouin at Cambridge. The young men

supped in a snug room lit by electric candle-lamps. They talked volubly

and with little reserve. Jimmy, whose imagination was kindling,

conceived the lively youth of the Frenchmen twined elegantly upon the

firm framework of the Englishman’s manner. A graceful image of his, he

thought, and a just one. He admired the dexterity with which their host

directed the conversation. The five young men had various tastes and

their tongues had been loosened. Villona, with immense respect, began

to discover to the mildly surprised Englishman the beauties of the

English madrigal, deploring the loss of old instruments. Rivière, not

wholly ingenuously, undertook to explain to Jimmy the triumph of the

French mechanicians. The resonant voice of the Hungarian was about to

prevail in ridicule of the spurious lutes of the romantic painters when

Ségouin shepherded his party into politics. Here was congenial ground

for all. Jimmy, under generous influences, felt the buried zeal of his

father wake to life within him: he aroused the torpid Routh at last.

The room grew doubly hot and Ségouin’s task grew harder each moment:

there was even danger of personal spite. The alert host at an

opportunity lifted his glass to Humanity and, when the toast had been

drunk, he threw open a window significantly.

 

That night the city wore the mask of a capital. The five young men

strolled along Stephen’s Green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke. They

talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders.

The people made way for them. At the corner of Grafton Street a short

fat man was putting two handsome ladies on a car in charge of another

fat man. The car drove off and the short fat man caught sight of the

party.

 

“André.”

 

“It’s Farley!”

 

A torrent of talk followed. Farley was an American. No one knew very

well what the talk was about. Villona and Rivière were the noisiest,

but all the men were excited. They got up on a car, squeezing

themselves together amid much laughter. They drove by the crowd,

blended now into soft colours, to a music of merry bells. They took the

train at Westland Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they

were walking out of Kingstown Station. The ticket-collector saluted

Jimmy; he was an old man:

 

“Fine night, sir!”

 

It was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at

their feet. They proceeded towards it with linked arms, singing _Cadet

Roussel_ in chorus, stamping their feet at every:

 

_“Ho! Ho! Hohé, vraiment!”_

 

They got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the American’s

yacht. There was to be supper, music, cards. Villona said with

conviction:

 

“It is delightful!”

 

There was a yacht piano in the cabin. Villona played a waltz for Farley

and Rivière, Farley acting as cavalier and Rivière as lady. Then an

impromptu square dance, the men devising original figures. What

merriment! Jimmy took his part with a will; this was seeing life, at

least. Then Farley got out of breath and cried _“Stop!”_ A man brought

in a light supper, and the young men sat down to it for form’s sake.

They drank, however: it was Bohemian. They drank Ireland, England,

France, Hungary, the United States of America. Jimmy made a speech, a

long speech, Villona saying: _“Hear! hear!”_ whenever there was a

pause. There was a great clapping of hands when he sat down. It must

have been a good speech. Farley clapped him on the back and laughed

loudly. What jovial fellows! What good company they were!

 

Cards! cards! The table was cleared. Villona returned quietly to his

piano and played voluntaries for them. The other men played game after

game, flinging themselves boldly into the adventure. They drank the

health of the Queen of Hearts and of the Queen of Diamonds. Jimmy felt

obscurely the lack of an audience: the wit was flashing. Play ran very

high and paper began to pass. Jimmy did not know exactly who was

winning but he knew that he was losing. But it was his own fault for he

frequently mistook his cards and the other men had to calculate his

I.O.U.‘s for him. They were devils of fellows but he wished they would

stop: it was getting late. Someone gave the toast of the yacht _The

Belle of Newport_ and then someone proposed one great game for a

finish.

 

The piano had stopped; Villona must have gone up on deck. It was a

terrible game. They stopped just before the end of it to drink for

luck. Jimmy understood that the game lay between Routh and Ségouin.

What excitement! Jimmy was excited too; he would lose, of course. How

much had he written away? The men rose to their feet to play the last

tricks, talking and gesticulating. Routh won. The cabin shook with the

young men’s cheering and the cards were bundled together. They began

then to gather in what they had won. Farley and Jimmy were the heaviest

losers.

 

He knew that he would regret in the morning but at present he was glad

of the rest, glad of the dark stupor that would cover up his folly. He

leaned his elbows on the table and rested his head between his hands,

counting the beats of his temples. The cabin door opened and he saw the

Hungarian standing in a shaft of grey light:

 

“Daybreak, gentlemen!”

 

 

TWO GALLANTS

 

The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild

warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets,

shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured

crowd. Like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their

tall poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue

unceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging

unceasing murmur.

 

Two young men came down the hill of Rutland Square. One of them was

just bringing a long monologue to a close. The other, who walked on the

verge of the path and was at times obliged to step on to the road,

owing to his companion’s rudeness, wore an amused listening face. He

was squat and ruddy. A yachting cap was shoved far back from his

forehead and the narrative to which he listened made constant waves of

expression break forth over his face from the corners of his nose and

eyes and mouth. Little jets of wheezing laughter followed one another

out of his convulsed body. His eyes, twinkling with cunning enjoyment,

glanced at every moment towards his companion’s face. Once or twice he

rearranged the light waterproof which he had slung over one shoulder in

toreador fashion. His breeches, his white rubber shoes and his jauntily

slung waterproof expressed youth. But his figure fell into rotundity at

the waist, his hair was scant and grey and his face, when the waves of

expression had passed over it, had a ravaged look.

 

When he was quite sure that the narrative had ended he laughed

noiselessly for fully half a minute. Then he said:

 

“Well!... That takes the biscuit!”

 

His voice seemed winnowed of vigour; and to enforce his words he added

with humour:

 

“That takes the solitary, unique, and, if I may so call it, _recherché_

biscuit!”

 

He became serious and silent when he had said this. His tongue was

tired for he had been talking all the afternoon in a public-house in

Dorset Street. Most people considered Lenehan a leech but, in spite of

this reputation, his adroitness and eloquence had always prevented his

friends from forming any general policy against him. He had a brave

manner of coming up to a party of them in a bar and of holding himself

nimbly at the borders of the company until he was included in a round.

He was a sporting vagrant armed with a vast stock of stories, limericks

and riddles. He was insensitive to all kinds of discourtesy. No one

knew how he achieved the stern task of living, but his name was vaguely

associated with racing tissues.

 

“And where did you pick her up, Corley?” he asked.

 

Corley ran his tongue swiftly along his upper lip.

 

“One night, man,” he said, “I was going along Dame Street and I spotted

a fine tart under Waterhouse’s clock and said good-night, you know. So

we went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a slavey

in a house in Baggot Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed her a

bit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by appointment. We

went out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told

me she used to go with a dairyman.... It was fine, man. Cigarettes

every night she’d bring me and paying the tram out and back. And one

night she brought me two bloody fine cigars—O, the real cheese, you

know, that the old fellow used to smoke.... I was afraid, man, she’d

get in the family way. But she’s up to the dodge.”

 

“Maybe she thinks you’ll marry her,” said Lenehan.

 

“I told her I was out of a job,” said Corley. “I told her I was in

Pim’s. She doesn’t know my name. I was too hairy to tell her that. But

she thinks I’m a bit of class, you know.”

 

Lenehan laughed again, noiselessly.

 

“Of all the good ones ever I heard,” he said, “that emphatically takes

the biscuit.”

 

Corley’s stride acknowledged the compliment. The swing of his burly

body made his friend execute a few light skips from the path to the

roadway and back again. Corley was the son of an inspector of police

and he had inherited his father’s frame and gait. He walked with his

hands by his sides, holding himself erect and swaying his head from

side to side. His head was large, globular and oily; it sweated in all

weathers; and his large round hat, set upon it sideways, looked like a

bulb which had grown out of another. He always stared straight before

him as if he were on parade and, when he wished to gaze after someone

in the street, it was necessary for him to move his body from the hips.

At present he was about town. Whenever any job was vacant a friend was

always ready to give him the hard word. He was often to be seen walking

with policemen in plain clothes, talking earnestly. He knew the inner

side of all affairs and was fond of delivering final judgments. He

spoke without listening to the speech of his companions. His

conversation was mainly about himself: what he had said to such a

person and what such a person had said to him and what he had said to

settle the matter. When he reported these dialogues he aspirated the

first letter of his name after the manner of Florentines.

 

Lenehan offered his friend a cigarette. As the two young men walked on

through the crowd Corley occasionally turned to smile at some of the

passing girls but Lenehan’s gaze was fixed on the large faint moon

circled with a double halo. He watched earnestly the passing of the

grey web of twilight across its face. At length he said:

 

“Well ... tell me, Corley, I suppose you’ll be able to pull it off all

right, eh?”

 

Corley closed one eye expressively as an answer.

 

“Is she game for that?” asked Lenehan dubiously. “You can never know

women.”

 

“She’s all right,” said Corley. “I know the way to get around her, man.

She’s a bit gone on me.”

 

“You’re what I call a gay Lothario,” said Lenehan. “And the proper kind

of a Lothario, too!”

 

A shade of mockery relieved the servility of his manner. To save

himself he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the

interpretation of raillery. But Corley had not a subtle mind.

 

“There’s nothing to touch a good slavey,” he affirmed. “Take my tip for

it.”

 

“By one who has tried them all,” said Lenehan.

 

“First I used to go with girls, you know,” said Corley, unbosoming;

“girls off the South Circular. I used to take them out, man, on the

tram somewhere and pay the tram or take them to a band or a play at the

theatre or buy them chocolate and sweets or something that way. I used

to spend money on them right enough,” he added, in a convincing tone,

as if he was conscious of being disbelieved.

 

But Lenehan could well believe it; he nodded gravely.

 

“I know that game,” he said, “and it’s a mug’s game.”

 

“And damn the thing I ever got out of it,” said Corley.

 

“Ditto here,” said Lenehan.

 

“Only off of one of them,” said Corley.

 

He moistened his upper lip by running his tongue along it. The

recollection brightened his eyes. He too gazed at the pale disc of the

moon, now nearly veiled, and seemed to meditate.

 

“She was ... a bit of all right,” he said regretfully.

 

He was silent again. Then he added:

 

“She’s on the turf now. I saw her driving down Earl Street one night

with two fellows with her on a car.”

 

“I suppose that’s your doing,” said Lenehan.

 

“There was others at her before me,” said Corley philosophically.

 

This time Lenehan was inclined to disbelieve. He shook his head to and

fro and smiled.

 

“You know you can’t kid me, Corley,” he said.

 

“Honest to God!” said Corley. “Didn’t she tell me herself?”

 

Lenehan made a tragic gesture.

 

“Base betrayer!” he said.

 

As they passed along the railings of Trinity College, Lenehan skipped

out into the road and peered up at the clock.

 

“Twenty after,” he said.

 

“Time enough,” said Corley. “She’ll be there all right. I always let

her wait a bit.”

 

Lenehan laughed quietly.

 

“Ecod! Corley, you know how to take them,” he said.

 

“I’m up to all their little tricks,” Corley confessed.

 

“But tell me,” said Lenehan again, “are you sure you can bring it off

all right? You know it’s a ticklish job. They’re damn close on that

point. Eh?... What?”

 

His bright, small eyes searched his companion’s face for reassurance.

Corley swung his head to and fro as if to toss aside an insistent

insect, and his brows gathered.

 

“I’ll pull it off,” he said. “Leave it to me, can’t you?”

 

Lenehan said no more. He did not wish to ruffle his friend’s temper, to

be sent to the devil and told that his advice was not wanted. A little

tact was necessary. But Corley’s brow was soon smooth again. His

thoughts were running another way.

 

“She’s a fine decent tart,” he said, with appreciation; “that’s what

she is.”

 

They walked along Nassau Street and then turned into Kildare Street.

Not far from the porch of the club a harpist stood in the roadway,

playing to a little ring of listeners. He plucked at the wires

heedlessly, glancing quickly from time to time at the face of each

new-comer and from time to time, wearily also, at the sky. His harp,

too, heedless that her coverings had fallen about her knees, seemed

weary alike of the eyes of strangers and of her master’s hands. One

hand played in the bass the melody of _Silent, O Moyle_, while the

other hand careered in the treble after each group of notes. The notes

of the air sounded deep and full.

 

The two young men walked up the street without speaking, the mournful

music following them. When they reached Stephen’s Green they crossed

the road. Here the noise of trams, the lights and the crowd released

them from their silence.

 

“There she is!” said Corley.

 

At the corner of Hume Street a young woman was standing. She wore a

blue dress and a white sailor hat. She stood on the curbstone, swinging

a sunshade in one hand. Lenehan grew lively.

 

“Let’s have a look at her, Corley,” he said.

 

Corley glanced sideways at his friend and an unpleasant grin appeared

on his face.

 

“Are you trying to get inside me?” he asked.

 

“Damn it!” said Lenehan boldly, “I don’t want an introduction. All I

want is to have a look at her. I’m not going to eat her.”

 

“O.... A look at her?” said Corley, more amiably. “Well ... I’ll tell

you what. I’ll go over and talk to her and you can pass by.”

 

“Right!” said Lenehan.

 

Corley had already thrown one leg over the chains when Lenehan called

out:

 

“And after? Where will we meet?”

 

“Half ten,” answered Corley, bringing over his other leg.

 

“Where?”

 

“Corner of Merrion Street. We’ll be coming back.”

 

“Work it all right now,” said Lenehan in farewell.

 

Corley did not answer. He sauntered across the road swaying his head

from side to side. His bulk, his easy pace, and the solid sound of his

boots had something of the conqueror in them. He approached the young

woman and, without saluting, began at once to converse with her. She

swung her umbrella more quickly and executed half turns on her heels.

Once or twice when he spoke to her at close quarters she laughed and

bent her head.

 

Lenehan observed them for a few minutes. Then he walked rapidly along

beside the chains at some distance and crossed the road obliquely. As

he approached Hume Street corner he found the air heavily scented and

his eyes made a swift anxious scrutiny of the young woman’s appearance.

She had her Sunday finery on. Her blue serge skirt was held at the

waist by a belt of black leather. The great silver buckle of her belt

seemed to depress the centre of her body, catching the light stuff of

her white blouse like a clip. She wore a short black jacket with

mother-of-pearl buttons and a ragged black boa. The ends of her tulle

collarette had been carefully disordered and a big bunch of red flowers

was pinned in her bosom, stems upwards. Lenehan’s eyes noted

approvingly her stout short muscular body. Frank rude health glowed in

her face, on her fat red cheeks and in her unabashed blue eyes. Her

features were blunt. She had broad nostrils, a straggling mouth which

lay open in a contented leer, and two projecting front teeth. As he

passed Lenehan took off his cap and, after about ten seconds, Corley

returned a salute to the air. This he did by raising his hand vaguely

and pensively changing the angle of position of his hat.

 

Lenehan walked as far as the Shelbourne Hotel where he halted and

waited. After waiting for a little time he saw them coming towards him

and, when they turned to the right, he followed them, stepping lightly

in his white shoes, down one side of Merrion Square. As he walked on

slowly, timing his pace to theirs, he watched Corley’s head which

turned at every moment towards the young woman’s face like a big ball

revolving on a pivot. He kept the pair in view until he had seen them

climbing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram; then he turned about and

went back the way he had come.

 

Now that he was alone his face looked older. His gaiety seemed to

forsake him and, as he came by the railings of the Duke’s Lawn, he

allowed his hand to run along them. The air which the harpist had

played began to control his movements. His softly padded feet played

the melody while his fingers swept a scale of variations idly along the

railings after each group of notes.

 

He walked listlessly round Stephen’s Green and then down Grafton

Street. Though his eyes took note of many elements of the crowd through

which he passed they did so morosely. He found trivial all that was

meant to charm him and did not answer the glances which invited him to

be bold. He knew that he would have to speak a great deal, to invent

and to amuse, and his brain and throat were too dry for such a task.

The problem of how he could pass the hours till he met Corley again

troubled him a little. He could think of no way of passing them but to

keep on walking. He turned to the left when he came to the corner of

Rutland Square and felt more at ease in the dark quiet street, the

sombre look of which suited his mood. He paused at last before the

window of a poor-looking shop over which the words _Refreshment Bar_

were printed in white letters. On the glass of the window were two

flying inscriptions: _Ginger Beer_ and _Ginger Ale_. A cut ham was

exposed on a great blue dish while near it on a plate lay a segment of

very light plum-pudding. He eyed this food earnestly for some time and

then, after glancing warily up and down the street, went into the shop

quickly.

 

He was hungry for, except some biscuits which he had asked two grudging

curates to bring him, he had eaten nothing since breakfast-time. He sat

down at an uncovered wooden table opposite two work-girls and a

mechanic. A slatternly girl waited on him.

 

“How much is a plate of peas?” he asked.

 

“Three halfpence, sir,” said the girl.

 

“Bring me a plate of peas,” he said, “and a bottle of ginger beer.”

 

He spoke roughly in order to belie his air of gentility for his entry

had been followed by a pause of talk. His face was heated. To appear

natural he pushed his cap back on his head and planted his elbows on

the table. The mechanic and the two work-girls examined him point by

point before resuming their conversation in a subdued voice. The girl

brought him a plate of grocer’s hot peas, seasoned with pepper and

vinegar, a fork and his ginger beer. He ate his food greedily and found

it so good that he made a note of the shop mentally. When he had eaten

all the peas he sipped his ginger beer and sat for some time thinking

of Corley’s adventure. In his imagination he beheld the pair of lovers

walking along some dark road; he heard Corley’s voice in deep energetic

gallantries and saw again the leer of the young woman’s mouth. This

vision made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was

tired of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts

and intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a

good job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how

pleasant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good dinner to

sit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and

with girls. He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls

too. Experience had embittered his heart against the world. But all

hope had not left him. He felt better after having eaten than he had

felt before, less weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit. He

might yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily

if he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little

of the ready.

 

He paid twopence halfpenny to the slatternly girl and went out of the

shop to begin his wandering again. He went into Capel Street and walked

along towards the City Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street. At the

corner of George’s Street he met two friends of his and stopped to

converse with them. He was glad that he could rest from all his

walking. His friends asked him had he seen Corley and what was the

latest. He replied that he had spent the day with Corley. His friends

talked very little. They looked vacantly after some figures in the

crowd and sometimes made a critical remark. One said that he had seen

Mac an hour before in Westmoreland Street. At this Lenehan said that he

had been with Mac the night before in Egan’s. The young man who had

seen Mac in Westmoreland Street asked was it true that Mac had won a

bit over a billiard match. Lenehan did not know: he said that Holohan

had stood them drinks in Egan’s.

 

He left his friends at a quarter to ten and went up George’s Street. He

turned to the left at the City Markets and walked on into Grafton

Street. The crowd of girls and young men had thinned and on his way up

the street he heard many groups and couples bidding one another

good-night. He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it

was on the stroke of ten. He set off briskly along the northern side of

the Green hurrying for fear Corley should return too soon. When he

reached the corner of Merrion Street he took his stand in the shadow of

a lamp and brought out one of the cigarettes which he had reserved and

lit it. He leaned against the lamp-post and kept his gaze fixed on the

part from which he expected to see Corley and the young woman return.

 

His mind became active again. He wondered had Corley managed it

successfully. He wondered if he had asked her yet or if he would leave

it to the last. He suffered all the pangs and thrills of his friend’s

situation as well as those of his own. But the memory of Corley’s

slowly revolving head calmed him somewhat: he was sure Corley would

pull it off all right. All at once the idea struck him that perhaps

Corley had seen her home by another way and given him the slip. His

eyes searched the street: there was no sign of them. Yet it was surely

half-an-hour since he had seen the clock of the College of Surgeons.

Would Corley do a thing like that? He lit his last cigarette and began

to smoke it nervously. He strained his eyes as each tram stopped at the

far corner of the square. They must have gone home by another way. The

paper of his cigarette broke and he flung it into the road with a

curse.

 

Suddenly he saw them coming towards him. He started with delight and,

keeping close to his lamp-post, tried to read the result in their walk.

They were walking quickly, the young woman taking quick short steps,

while Corley kept beside her with his long stride. They did not seem to

be speaking. An intimation of the result pricked him like the point of

a sharp instrument. He knew Corley would fail; he knew it was no go.

 

They turned down Baggot Street and he followed them at once, taking the

other footpath. When they stopped he stopped too. They talked for a few

moments and then the young woman went down the steps into the area of a

house. Corley remained standing at the edge of the path, a little

distance from the front steps. Some minutes passed. Then the hall-door

was opened slowly and cautiously. A woman came running down the front

steps and coughed. Corley turned and went towards her. His broad figure

hid hers from view for a few seconds and then she reappeared running up

the steps. The door closed on her and Corley began to walk swiftly

towards Stephen’s Green.

 

Lenehan hurried on in the same direction. Some drops of light rain

fell. He took them as a warning and, glancing back towards the house

which the young woman had entered to see that he was not observed, he

ran eagerly across the road. Anxiety and his swift run made him pant.

He called out:

 

“Hallo, Corley!”

 

Corley turned his head to see who had called him, and then continued

walking as before. Lenehan ran after him, settling the waterproof on

his shoulders with one hand.

 

“Hallo, Corley!” he cried again.

 

He came level with his friend and looked keenly in his face. He could

see nothing there.

 

“Well?” he said. “Did it come off?”

 

They had reached the corner of Ely Place. Still without answering,

Corley swerved to the left and went up the side street. His features

were composed in stern calm. Lenehan kept up with his friend, breathing

uneasily. He was baffled and a note of menace pierced through his

voice.

 

“Can’t you tell us?” he said. “Did you try her?”

 

Corley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly before him. Then with

a grave gesture he extended a hand towards the light and, smiling,

opened it slowly to the gaze of his disciple. A small gold coin shone

in the palm.

 

 

THE BOARDING HOUSE

 

Mrs Mooney was a butcher’s daughter. She was a woman who was quite able

to keep things to herself: a determined woman. She had married her

father’s foreman and opened a butcher’s shop near Spring Gardens. But

as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr Mooney began to go to the

devil. He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong into debt. It was no

use making him take the pledge: he was sure to break out again a few

days after. By fighting his wife in the presence of customers and by

buying bad meat he ruined his business. One night he went for his wife

with the cleaver and she had to sleep in a neighbour’s house.

 

After that they lived apart. She went to the priest and got a

separation from him with care of the children. She would give him

neither money nor food nor house-room; and so he was obliged to enlist

himself as a sheriff’s man. He was a shabby stooped little drunkard

with a white face and a white moustache and white eyebrows, pencilled

above his little eyes, which were pink-veined and raw; and all day long

he sat in the bailiff’s room, waiting to be put on a job. Mrs Mooney,

who had taken what remained of her money out of the butcher business

and set up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street, was a big imposing

woman. Her house had a floating population made up of tourists from

Liverpool and the Isle of Man and, occasionally, _artistes_ from the

music-halls. Its resident population was made up of clerks from the

city. She governed her house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give

credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass. All the resident

young men spoke of her as _The Madam_.

 

Mrs Mooney’s young men paid fifteen shillings a week for board and

lodgings (beer or stout at dinner excluded). They shared in common

tastes and occupations and for this reason they were very chummy with

one another. They discussed with one another the chances of favourites

and outsiders. Jack Mooney, the Madam’s son, who was clerk to a

commission agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard

case. He was fond of using soldiers’ obscenities: usually he came home

in the small hours. When he met his friends he had always a good one to

tell them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing—that is to

say, a likely horse or a likely _artiste_. He was also handy with the

mits and sang comic songs. On Sunday nights there would often be a

reunion in Mrs Mooney’s front drawing-room. The music-hall _artistes_

would oblige; and Sheridan played waltzes and polkas and vamped

accompaniments. Polly Mooney, the Madam’s daughter, would also sing.

She sang:

 

     _I’m a ... naughty girl.

         You needn’t sham:

         You know I am._

 

Polly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small

full mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through

them, had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which

made her look like a little perverse madonna. Mrs Mooney had first sent

her daughter to be a typist in a corn-factor’s office but, as a

disreputable sheriff’s man used to come every other day to the office,

asking to be allowed to say a word to his daughter, she had taken her

daughter home again and set her to do housework. As Polly was very

lively the intention was to give her the run of the young men. Besides,

young men like to feel that there is a young woman not very far away.

Polly, of course, flirted with the young men but Mrs Mooney, who was a

shrewd judge, knew that the young men were only passing the time away:

none of them meant business. Things went on so for a long time and Mrs

Mooney began to think of sending Polly back to typewriting when she

noticed that something was going on between Polly and one of the young

men. She watched the pair and kept her own counsel.

 

Polly knew that she was being watched, but still her mother’s

persistent silence could not be misunderstood. There had been no open

complicity between mother and daughter, no open understanding but,

though people in the house began to talk of the affair, still Mrs

Mooney did not intervene. Polly began to grow a little strange in her

manner and the young man was evidently perturbed. At last, when she

judged it to be the right moment, Mrs Mooney intervened. She dealt with

moral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had

made up her mind.

 

It was a bright Sunday morning of early summer, promising heat, but

with a fresh breeze blowing. All the windows of the boarding house were

open and the lace curtains ballooned gently towards the street beneath

the raised sashes. The belfry of George’s Church sent out constant

peals and worshippers, singly or in groups, traversed the little circus

before the church, revealing their purpose by their self-contained

demeanour no less than by the little volumes in their gloved hands.

Breakfast was over in the boarding house and the table of the

breakfast-room was covered with plates on which lay yellow streaks of

eggs with morsels of bacon-fat and bacon-rind. Mrs Mooney sat in the

straw arm-chair and watched the servant Mary remove the breakfast

things. She made Mary collect the crusts and pieces of broken bread to

help to make Tuesday’s bread-pudding. When the table was cleared, the

broken bread collected, the sugar and butter safe under lock and key,

she began to reconstruct the interview which she had had the night

before with Polly. Things were as she had suspected: she had been frank

in her questions and Polly had been frank in her answers. Both had been

somewhat awkward, of course. She had been made awkward by her not

wishing to receive the news in too cavalier a fashion or to seem to

have connived and Polly had been made awkward not merely because

allusions of that kind always made her awkward but also because she did

not wish it to be thought that in her wise innocence she had divined

the intention behind her mother’s tolerance.

 

Mrs Mooney glanced instinctively at the little gilt clock on the

mantelpiece as soon as she had become aware through her revery that the

bells of George’s Church had stopped ringing. It was seventeen minutes

past eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr

Doran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street. She was sure

she would win. To begin with she had all the weight of social opinion

on her side: she was an outraged mother. She had allowed him to live

beneath her roof, assuming that he was a man of honour, and he had

simply abused her hospitality. He was thirty-four or thirty-five years

of age, so that youth could not be pleaded as his excuse; nor could

ignorance be his excuse since he was a man who had seen something of

the world. He had simply taken advantage of Polly’s youth and

inexperience: that was evident. The question was: What reparation would

he make?

 

There must be reparation made in such cases. It is all very well for

the man: he can go his ways as if nothing had happened, having had his

moment of pleasure, but the girl has to bear the brunt. Some mothers

would be content to patch up such an affair for a sum of money; she had

known cases of it. But she would not do so. For her only one reparation

could make up for the loss of her daughter’s honour: marriage.

 

She counted all her cards again before sending Mary up to Mr Doran’s

room to say that she wished to speak with him. She felt sure she would

win. He was a serious young man, not rakish or loud-voiced like the

others. If it had been Mr Sheridan or Mr Meade or Bantam Lyons her task

would have been much harder. She did not think he would face publicity.

All the lodgers in the house knew something of the affair; details had

been invented by some. Besides, he had been employed for thirteen years

in a great Catholic wine-merchant’s office and publicity would mean for

him, perhaps, the loss of his job. Whereas if he agreed all might be

well. She knew he had a good screw for one thing and she suspected he

had a bit of stuff put by.

 

Nearly the half-hour! She stood up and surveyed herself in the

pier-glass. The decisive expression of her great florid face satisfied

her and she thought of some mothers she knew who could not get their

daughters off their hands.

 

Mr Doran was very anxious indeed this Sunday morning. He had made two

attempts to shave but his hand had been so unsteady that he had been

obliged to desist. Three days’ reddish beard fringed his jaws and every

two or three minutes a mist gathered on his glasses so that he had to

take them off and polish them with his pocket-handkerchief. The

recollection of his confession of the night before was a cause of acute

pain to him; the priest had drawn out every ridiculous detail of the

affair and in the end had so magnified his sin that he was almost

thankful at being afforded a loophole of reparation. The harm was done.

What could he do now but marry her or run away? He could not brazen it

out. The affair would be sure to be talked of and his employer would be

certain to hear of it. Dublin is such a small city: everyone knows

everyone else’s business. He felt his heart leap warmly in his throat

as he heard in his excited imagination old Mr Leonard calling out in

his rasping voice: “Send Mr Doran here, please.”

 

All his long years of service gone for nothing! All his industry and

diligence thrown away! As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of

course; he had boasted of his free-thinking and denied the existence of

God to his companions in public-houses. But that was all passed and

done with ... nearly. He still bought a copy of _Reynolds’s Newspaper_

every week but he attended to his religious duties and for nine-tenths

of the year lived a regular life. He had money enough to settle down

on; it was not that. But the family would look down on her. First of

all there was her disreputable father and then her mother’s boarding

house was beginning to get a certain fame. He had a notion that he was

being had. He could imagine his friends talking of the affair and

laughing. She _was_ a little vulgar; sometimes she said “I seen” and

“If I had’ve known.” But what would grammar matter if he really loved

her? He could not make up his mind whether to like her or despise her

for what she had done. Of course he had done it too. His instinct urged

him to remain free, not to marry. Once you are married you are done

for, it said.

 

While he was sitting helplessly on the side of the bed in shirt and

trousers she tapped lightly at his door and entered. She told him all,

that she had made a clean breast of it to her mother and that her

mother would speak with him that morning. She cried and threw her arms

round his neck, saying:

 

“O Bob! Bob! What am I to do? What am I to do at all?”

 

She would put an end to herself, she said.

 

He comforted her feebly, telling her not to cry, that it would be all

right, never fear. He felt against his shirt the agitation of her

bosom.

 

It was not altogether his fault that it had happened. He remembered

well, with the curious patient memory of the celibate, the first casual

caresses her dress, her breath, her fingers had given him. Then late

one night as he was undressing for bed she had tapped at his door,

timidly. She wanted to relight her candle at his for hers had been

blown out by a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open

combing-jacket of printed flannel. Her white instep shone in the

opening of her furry slippers and the blood glowed warmly behind her

perfumed skin. From her hands and wrists too as she lit and steadied

her candle a faint perfume arose.

 

On nights when he came in very late it was she who warmed up his

dinner. He scarcely knew what he was eating, feeling her beside him

alone, at night, in the sleeping house. And her thoughtfulness! If the

night was anyway cold or wet or windy there was sure to be a little

tumbler of punch ready for him. Perhaps they could be happy

together....

 

They used to go upstairs together on tiptoe, each with a candle, and on

the third landing exchange reluctant good-nights. They used to kiss. He

remembered well her eyes, the touch of her hand and his delirium....

 

But delirium passes. He echoed her phrase, applying it to himself:

_“What am I to do?”_ The instinct of the celibate warned him to hold

back. But the sin was there; even his sense of honour told him that

reparation must be made for such a sin.

 

While he was sitting with her on the side of the bed Mary came to the

door and said that the missus wanted to see him in the parlour. He

stood up to put on his coat and waistcoat, more helpless than ever.

When he was dressed he went over to her to comfort her. It would be all

right, never fear. He left her crying on the bed and moaning softly:

_“O my God!”_

 

Going down the stairs his glasses became so dimmed with moisture that

he had to take them off and polish them. He longed to ascend through

the roof and fly away to another country where he would never hear

again of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by

step. The implacable faces of his employer and of the Madam stared upon

his discomfiture. On the last flight of stairs he passed Jack Mooney

who was coming up from the pantry nursing two bottles of _Bass_. They

saluted coldly; and the lover’s eyes rested for a second or two on a

thick bulldog face and a pair of thick short arms. When he reached the

foot of the staircase he glanced up and saw Jack regarding him from the

door of the return-room.

 

Suddenly he remembered the night when one of the music-hall _artistes_,

a little blond Londoner, had made a rather free allusion to Polly. The

reunion had been almost broken up on account of Jack’s violence.

Everyone tried to quiet him. The music-hall _artiste_, a little paler

than usual, kept smiling and saying that there was no harm meant: but

Jack kept shouting at him that if any fellow tried that sort of a game

on with _his_ sister he’d bloody well put his teeth down his throat, so

he would.

 

 

Polly sat for a little time on the side of the bed, crying. Then she

dried her eyes and went over to the looking-glass. She dipped the end

of the towel in the water-jug and refreshed her eyes with the cool

water. She looked at herself in profile and readjusted a hairpin above

her ear. Then she went back to the bed again and sat at the foot. She

regarded the pillows for a long time and the sight of them awakened in

her mind secret amiable memories. She rested the nape of her neck

against the cool iron bed-rail and fell into a revery. There was no

longer any perturbation visible on her face.

 

She waited on patiently, almost cheerfully, without alarm, her memories

gradually giving place to hopes and visions of the future. Her hopes

and visions were so intricate that she no longer saw the white pillows

on which her gaze was fixed or remembered that she was waiting for

anything.

 

At last she heard her mother calling. She started to her feet and ran

to the banisters.

 

“Polly! Polly!”

 

“Yes, mamma?”

 

“Come down, dear. Mr Doran wants to speak to you.”

 

Then she remembered what she had been waiting for.

 

 

A LITTLE CLOUD

 

Eight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and

wished him godspeed. Gallaher had got on. You could tell that at once

by his travelled air, his well-cut tweed suit, and fearless accent. Few

fellows had talents like his and fewer still could remain unspoiled by

such success. Gallaher’s heart was in the right place and he had

deserved to win. It was something to have a friend like that.

 

Little Chandler’s thoughts ever since lunch-time had been of his

meeting with Gallaher, of Gallaher’s invitation and of the great city

London where Gallaher lived. He was called Little Chandler because,

though he was but slightly under the average stature, he gave one the

idea of being a little man. His hands were white and small, his frame

was fragile, his voice was quiet and his manners were refined. He took

the greatest care of his fair silken hair and moustache and used

perfume discreetly on his handkerchief. The half-moons of his nails

were perfect and when he smiled you caught a glimpse of a row of

childish white teeth.

 

As he sat at his desk in the King’s Inns he thought what changes those

eight years had brought. The friend whom he had known under a shabby

and necessitous guise had become a brilliant figure on the London

Press. He turned often from his tiresome writing to gaze out of the

office window. The glow of a late autumn sunset covered the grass plots

and walks. It cast a shower of kindly golden dust on the untidy nurses

and decrepit old men who drowsed on the benches; it flickered upon all

the moving figures—on the children who ran screaming along the gravel

paths and on everyone who passed through the gardens. He watched the

scene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of

life) he became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He

felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the

burden of wisdom which the ages had bequeathed to him.

 

He remembered the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He had

bought them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he sat in the

little room off the hall, he had been tempted to take one down from the

bookshelf and read out something to his wife. But shyness had always

held him back; and so the books had remained on their shelves. At times

he repeated lines to himself and this consoled him.

 

When his hour had struck he stood up and took leave of his desk and of

his fellow-clerks punctiliously. He emerged from under the feudal arch

of the King’s Inns, a neat modest figure, and walked swiftly down

Henrietta Street. The golden sunset was waning and the air had grown

sharp. A horde of grimy children populated the street. They stood or

ran in the roadway or crawled up the steps before the gaping doors or

squatted like mice upon the thresholds. Little Chandler gave them no

thought. He picked his way deftly through all that minute vermin-like

life and under the shadow of the gaunt spectral mansions in which the

old nobility of Dublin had roystered. No memory of the past touched

him, for his mind was full of a present joy.

 

He had never been in Corless’s but he knew the value of the name. He

knew that people went there after the theatre to eat oysters and drink

liqueurs; and he had heard that the waiters there spoke French and

German. Walking swiftly by at night he had seen cabs drawn up before

the door and richly dressed ladies, escorted by cavaliers, alight and

enter quickly. They wore noisy dresses and many wraps. Their faces were

powdered and they caught up their dresses, when they touched earth,

like alarmed Atalantas. He had always passed without turning his head

to look. It was his habit to walk swiftly in the street even by day and

whenever he found himself in the city late at night he hurried on his

way apprehensively and excitedly. Sometimes, however, he courted the

causes of his fear. He chose the darkest and narrowest streets and, as

he walked boldly forward, the silence that was spread about his

footsteps troubled him, the wandering silent figures troubled him; and

at times a sound of low fugitive laughter made him tremble like a leaf.

 

He turned to the right towards Capel Street. Ignatius Gallaher on the

London Press! Who would have thought it possible eight years before?

Still, now that he reviewed the past, Little Chandler could remember

many signs of future greatness in his friend. People used to say that

Ignatius Gallaher was wild. Of course, he did mix with a rakish set of

fellows at that time, drank freely and borrowed money on all sides. In

the end he had got mixed up in some shady affair, some money

transaction: at least, that was one version of his flight. But nobody

denied him talent. There was always a certain ... something in Ignatius

Gallaher that impressed you in spite of yourself. Even when he was out

at elbows and at his wits’ end for money he kept up a bold face. Little

Chandler remembered (and the remembrance brought a slight flush of

pride to his cheek) one of Ignatius Gallaher’s sayings when he was in a

tight corner:

 

“Half time now, boys,” he used to say light-heartedly. “Where’s my

considering cap?”

 

That was Ignatius Gallaher all out; and, damn it, you couldn’t but

admire him for it.

 

Little Chandler quickened his pace. For the first time in his life he

felt himself superior to the people he passed. For the first time his

soul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no

doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could

do nothing in Dublin. As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the

river towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They

seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the riverbanks,

their old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama

of sunset and waiting for the first chill of night bid them arise,

shake themselves and begone. He wondered whether he could write a poem

to express his idea. Perhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some

London paper for him. Could he write something original? He was not

sure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic

moment had touched him took life within him like an infant hope. He

stepped onward bravely.

 

Every step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober

inartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind.

He was not so old—thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just

at the point of maturity. There were so many different moods and

impressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within

him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul.

Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it

was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and

simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems

perhaps men would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He

could not sway the crowd but he might appeal to a little circle of

kindred minds. The English critics, perhaps, would recognise him as one

of the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems;

besides that, he would put in allusions. He began to invent sentences

and phrases from the notice which his book would get. _“Mr Chandler has

the gift of easy and graceful verse.” ... “A wistful sadness pervades

these poems.” ... “The Celtic note.”_ It was a pity his name was not

more Irish-looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert his mother’s

name before the surname: Thomas Malone Chandler, or better still: T.

Malone Chandler. He would speak to Gallaher about it.

 

He pursued his revery so ardently that he passed his street and had to

turn back. As he came near Corless’s his former agitation began to

overmaster him and he halted before the door in indecision. Finally he

opened the door and entered.

 

The light and noise of the bar held him at the doorways for a few

moments. He looked about him, but his sight was confused by the shining

of many red and green wine-glasses. The bar seemed to him to be full of

people and he felt that the people were observing him curiously. He

glanced quickly to right and left (frowning slightly to make his errand

appear serious), but when his sight cleared a little he saw that nobody

had turned to look at him: and there, sure enough, was Ignatius

Gallaher leaning with his back against the counter and his feet planted

far apart.

 

“Hallo, Tommy, old hero, here you are! What is it to be? What will you

have? I’m taking whisky: better stuff than we get across the water.

Soda? Lithia? No mineral? I’m the same. Spoils the flavour.... Here,

_garçon_, bring us two halves of malt whisky, like a good fellow....

Well, and how have you been pulling along since I saw you last? Dear

God, how old we’re getting! Do you see any signs of aging in me—eh,

what? A little grey and thin on the top—what?”

 

Ignatius Gallaher took off his hat and displayed a large closely

cropped head. His face was heavy, pale and clean-shaven. His eyes,

which were of bluish slate-colour, relieved his unhealthy pallor and

shone out plainly above the vivid orange tie he wore. Between these

rival features the lips appeared very long and shapeless and

colourless. He bent his head and felt with two sympathetic fingers the

thin hair at the crown. Little Chandler shook his head as a denial.

Ignatius Galaher put on his hat again.

 

“It pulls you down,” he said. “Press life. Always hurry and scurry,

looking for copy and sometimes not finding it: and then, always to have

something new in your stuff. Damn proofs and printers, I say, for a few

days. I’m deuced glad, I can tell you, to get back to the old country.

Does a fellow good, a bit of a holiday. I feel a ton better since I

landed again in dear dirty Dublin.... Here you are, Tommy. Water? Say

when.”

 

Little Chandler allowed his whisky to be very much diluted.

 

“You don’t know what’s good for you, my boy,” said Ignatius Gallaher.

“I drink mine neat.”

 

“I drink very little as a rule,” said Little Chandler modestly. “An odd

half-one or so when I meet any of the old crowd: that’s all.”

 

“Ah, well,” said Ignatius Gallaher, cheerfully, “here’s to us and to

old times and old acquaintance.”

 

They clinked glasses and drank the toast.

 

“I met some of the old gang today,” said Ignatius Gallaher. “O’Hara

seems to be in a bad way. What’s he doing?”

 

“Nothing,” said Little Chandler. “He’s gone to the dogs.”

 

“But Hogan has a good sit, hasn’t he?”

 

“Yes; he’s in the Land Commission.”

 

“I met him one night in London and he seemed to be very flush.... Poor

O’Hara! Boose, I suppose?”

 

“Other things, too,” said Little Chandler shortly.

 

Ignatius Gallaher laughed.

 

“Tommy,” he said, “I see you haven’t changed an atom. You’re the very

same serious person that used to lecture me on Sunday mornings when I

had a sore head and a fur on my tongue. You’d want to knock about a bit

in the world. Have you never been anywhere even for a trip?”

 

“I’ve been to the Isle of Man,” said Little Chandler.

 

Ignatius Gallaher laughed.

 

“The Isle of Man!” he said. “Go to London or Paris: Paris, for choice.

That’d do you good.”

 

“Have you seen Paris?”

 

“I should think I have! I’ve knocked about there a little.”

 

“And is it really so beautiful as they say?” asked Little Chandler.

 

He sipped a little of his drink while Ignatius Gallaher finished his

boldly.

 

“Beautiful?” said Ignatius Gallaher, pausing on the word and on the

flavour of his drink. “It’s not so beautiful, you know. Of course, it

is beautiful.... But it’s the life of Paris; that’s the thing. Ah,

there’s no city like Paris for gaiety, movement, excitement....”

 

Little Chandler finished his whisky and, after some trouble, succeeded

in catching the barman’s eye. He ordered the same again.

 

“I’ve been to the Moulin Rouge,” Ignatius Gallaher continued when the

barman had removed their glasses, “and I’ve been to all the Bohemian

cafés. Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like you, Tommy.”

 

Little Chandler said nothing until the barman returned with two

glasses: then he touched his friend’s glass lightly and reciprocated

the former toast. He was beginning to feel somewhat disillusioned.

Gallaher’s accent and way of expressing himself did not please him.

There was something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed

before. But perhaps it was only the result of living in London amid the

bustle and competition of the Press. The old personal charm was still

there under this new gaudy manner. And, after all, Gallaher had lived,

he had seen the world. Little Chandler looked at his friend enviously.

 

“Everything in Paris is gay,” said Ignatius Gallaher. “They believe in

enjoying life—and don’t you think they’re right? If you want to enjoy

yourself properly you must go to Paris. And, mind you, they’ve a great

feeling for the Irish there. When they heard I was from Ireland they

were ready to eat me, man.”

 

Little Chandler took four or five sips from his glass.

 

“Tell me,” he said, “is it true that Paris is so ... immoral as they

say?”

 

Ignatius Gallaher made a catholic gesture with his right arm.

 

“Every place is immoral,” he said. “Of course you do find spicy bits in

Paris. Go to one of the students’ balls, for instance. That’s lively,

if you like, when the _cocottes_ begin to let themselves loose. You

know what they are, I suppose?”

 

“I’ve heard of them,” said Little Chandler.

 

Ignatius Gallaher drank off his whisky and shook his head.

 

“Ah,” he said, “you may say what you like. There’s no woman like the

Parisienne—for style, for go.”

 

“Then it is an immoral city,” said Little Chandler, with timid

insistence—“I mean, compared with London or Dublin?”

 

“London!” said Ignatius Gallaher. “It’s six of one and half-a-dozen of

the other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit about London when

he was over there. He’d open your eye.... I say, Tommy, don’t make

punch of that whisky: liquor up.”

 

“No, really....”

 

“O, come on, another one won’t do you any harm. What is it? The same

again, I suppose?”

 

“Well ... all right.”

 

“_François_, the same again.... Will you smoke, Tommy?”

 

Ignatius Gallaher produced his cigar-case. The two friends lit their

cigars and puffed at them in silence until their drinks were served.

 

“I’ll tell you my opinion,” said Ignatius Gallaher, emerging after some

time from the clouds of smoke in which he had taken refuge, “it’s a rum

world. Talk of immorality! I’ve heard of cases—what am I saying?—I’ve

known them: cases of ... immorality....”

 

Ignatius Gallaher puffed thoughtfully at his cigar and then, in a calm

historian’s tone, he proceeded to sketch for his friend some pictures

of the corruption which was rife abroad. He summarised the vices of

many capitals and seemed inclined to award the palm to Berlin. Some

things he could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of others

he had had personal experience. He spared neither rank nor caste. He

revealed many of the secrets of religious houses on the Continent and

described some of the practices which were fashionable in high society

and ended by telling, with details, a story about an English duchess—a

story which he knew to be true. Little Chandler was astonished.

 

“Ah, well,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “here we are in old jog-along

Dublin where nothing is known of such things.”

 

“How dull you must find it,” said Little Chandler, “after all the other

places you’ve seen!”

 

“Well,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “it’s a relaxation to come over here,

you know. And, after all, it’s the old country, as they say, isn’t it?

You can’t help having a certain feeling for it. That’s human nature....

But tell me something about yourself. Hogan told me you had ... tasted

the joys of connubial bliss. Two years ago, wasn’t it?”

 

Little Chandler blushed and smiled.

 

“Yes,” he said. “I was married last May twelve months.”

 

“I hope it’s not too late in the day to offer my best wishes,” said

Ignatius Gallaher. “I didn’t know your address or I’d have done so at

the time.”

 

He extended his hand, which Little Chandler took.

 

“Well, Tommy,” he said, “I wish you and yours every joy in life, old

chap, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you. And

that’s the wish of a sincere friend, an old friend. You know that?”

 

“I know that,” said Little Chandler.

 

“Any youngsters?” said Ignatius Gallaher.

 

Little Chandler blushed again.

 

“We have one child,” he said.

 

“Son or daughter?”

 

“A little boy.”

 

Ignatius Gallaher slapped his friend sonorously on the back.

 

“Bravo,” he said, “I wouldn’t doubt you, Tommy.”

 

Little Chandler smiled, looked confusedly at his glass and bit his

lower lip with three childishly white front teeth.

 

“I hope you’ll spend an evening with us,” he said, “before you go back.

My wife will be delighted to meet you. We can have a little music

and——”

 

“Thanks awfully, old chap,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “I’m sorry we

didn’t meet earlier. But I must leave tomorrow night.”

 

“Tonight, perhaps...?”

 

“I’m awfully sorry, old man. You see I’m over here with another fellow,

clever young chap he is too, and we arranged to go to a little

card-party. Only for that....”

 

“O, in that case....”

 

“But who knows?” said Ignatius Gallaher considerately. “Next year I may

take a little skip over here now that I’ve broken the ice. It’s only a

pleasure deferred.”

 

“Very well,” said Little Chandler, “the next time you come we must have

an evening together. That’s agreed now, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes, that’s agreed,” said Ignatius Gallaher. “Next year if I come,

_parole d’honneur_.”

 

“And to clinch the bargain,” said Little Chandler, “we’ll just have one

more now.”

 

Ignatius Gallaher took out a large gold watch and looked at it.

 

“Is it to be the last?” he said. “Because you know, I have an a.p.”

 

“O, yes, positively,” said Little Chandler.

 

“Very well, then,” said Ignatius Gallaher, “let us have another one as

a _deoc an doruis_—that’s good vernacular for a small whisky, I

believe.”

 

Little Chandler ordered the drinks. The blush which had risen to his

face a few moments before was establishing itself. A trifle made him

blush at any time: and now he felt warm and excited. Three small

whiskies had gone to his head and Gallaher’s strong cigar had confused

his mind, for he was a delicate and abstinent person. The adventure of

meeting Gallaher after eight years, of finding himself with Gallaher in

Corless’s surrounded by lights and noise, of listening to Gallaher’s

stories and of sharing for a brief space Gallaher’s vagrant and

triumphant life, upset the equipoise of his sensitive nature. He felt

acutely the contrast between his own life and his friend’s and it

seemed to him unjust. Gallaher was his inferior in birth and education.

He was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever

done, or could ever do, something higher than mere tawdry journalism if

he only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His

unfortunate timidity! He wished to vindicate himself in some way, to

assert his manhood. He saw behind Gallaher’s refusal of his invitation.

Gallaher was only patronising him by his friendliness just as he was

patronising Ireland by his visit.

 

The barman brought their drinks. Little Chandler pushed one glass

towards his friend and took up the other boldly.

 

“Who knows?” he said, as they lifted their glasses. “When you come next

year I may have the pleasure of wishing long life and happiness to Mr

and Mrs Ignatius Gallaher.”

 

Ignatius Gallaher in the act of drinking closed one eye expressively

over the rim of his glass. When he had drunk he smacked his lips

decisively, set down his glass and said:

 

“No blooming fear of that, my boy. I’m going to have my fling first and

see a bit of life and the world before I put my head in the sack—if I

ever do.”

 

“Some day you will,” said Little Chandler calmly.

 

Ignatius Gallaher turned his orange tie and slate-blue eyes full upon

his friend.

 

“You think so?” he said.

 

“You’ll put your head in the sack,” repeated Little Chandler stoutly,

“like everyone else if you can find the girl.”

 

He had slightly emphasised his tone and he was aware that he had

betrayed himself; but, though the colour had heightened in his cheek,

he did not flinch from his friend’s gaze. Ignatius Gallaher watched him

for a few moments and then said:

 

“If ever it occurs, you may bet your bottom dollar there’ll be no

mooning and spooning about it. I mean to marry money. She’ll have a

good fat account at the bank or she won’t do for me.”

 

Little Chandler shook his head.

 

“Why, man alive,” said Ignatius Gallaher, vehemently, “do you know what

it is? I’ve only to say the word and tomorrow I can have the woman and

the cash. You don’t believe it? Well, I know it. There are

hundreds—what am I saying?—thousands of rich Germans and Jews, rotten

with money, that’d only be too glad.... You wait a while my boy. See if

I don’t play my cards properly. When I go about a thing I mean

business, I tell you. You just wait.”

 

He tossed his glass to his mouth, finished his drink and laughed

loudly. Then he looked thoughtfully before him and said in a calmer

tone:

 

“But I’m in no hurry. They can wait. I don’t fancy tying myself up to

one woman, you know.”

 

He imitated with his mouth the act of tasting and made a wry face.

 

“Must get a bit stale, I should think,” he said.

 

 

Little Chandler sat in the room off the hall, holding a child in his

arms. To save money they kept no servant but Annie’s young sister

Monica came for an hour or so in the morning and an hour or so in the

evening to help. But Monica had gone home long ago. It was a quarter to

nine. Little Chandler had come home late for tea and, moreover, he had

forgotten to bring Annie home the parcel of coffee from Bewley’s. Of

course she was in a bad humour and gave him short answers. She said she

would do without any tea but when it came near the time at which the

shop at the corner closed she decided to go out herself for a quarter

of a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar. She put the sleeping child

deftly in his arms and said:

 

“Here. Don’t waken him.”

 

A little lamp with a white china shade stood upon the table and its

light fell over a photograph which was enclosed in a frame of crumpled

horn. It was Annie’s photograph. Little Chandler looked at it, pausing

at the thin tight lips. She wore the pale blue summer blouse which he

had brought her home as a present one Saturday. It had cost him ten and

elevenpence; but what an agony of nervousness it had cost him! How he

had suffered that day, waiting at the shop door until the shop was

empty, standing at the counter and trying to appear at his ease while

the girl piled ladies’ blouses before him, paying at the desk and

forgetting to take up the odd penny of his change, being called back by

the cashier, and finally, striving to hide his blushes as he left the

shop by examining the parcel to see if it was securely tied. When he

brought the blouse home Annie kissed him and said it was very pretty

and stylish; but when she heard the price she threw the blouse on the

table and said it was a regular swindle to charge ten and elevenpence

for it. At first she wanted to take it back but when she tried it on

she was delighted with it, especially with the make of the sleeves, and

kissed him and said he was very good to think of her.

 

Hm!...

 

He looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered

coldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But

he found something mean in it. Why was it so unconscious and ladylike?

The composure of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him and defied

him: there was no passion in them, no rapture. He thought of what

Gallaher had said about rich Jewesses. Those dark Oriental eyes, he

thought, how full they are of passion, of voluptuous longing!... Why

had he married the eyes in the photograph?

 

He caught himself up at the question and glanced nervously round the

room. He found something mean in the pretty furniture which he had

bought for his house on the hire system. Annie had chosen it herself

and it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull

resentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from

his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like

Gallaher? Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be

paid for. If he could only write a book and get it published, that

might open the way for him.

 

A volume of Byron’s poems lay before him on the table. He opened it

cautiously with his left hand lest he should waken the child and began

to read the first poem in the book:

 

     _Hushed are the winds and still the evening gloom,

         Not e’en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,

     Whilst I return to view my Margaret’s tomb

         And scatter flowers on the dust I love._

 

He paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse about him in the room. How

melancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that, express the

melancholy of his soul in verse? There were so many things he wanted to

describe: his sensation of a few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for

example. If he could get back again into that mood....

 

The child awoke and began to cry. He turned from the page and tried to

hush it: but it would not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro in

his arms but its wailing cry grew keener. He rocked it faster while his

eyes began to read the second stanza:

 

     _Within this narrow cell reclines her clay,

         That clay where once...._

 

It was useless. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t do anything. The wailing

of the child pierced the drum of his ear. It was useless, useless! He

was a prisoner for life. His arms trembled with anger and suddenly

bending to the child’s face he shouted:

 

“Stop!”

 

The child stopped for an instant, had a spasm of fright and began to

scream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hastily up and down the

room with the child in his arms. It began to sob piteously, losing its

breath for four or five seconds, and then bursting out anew. The thin

walls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it but it sobbed

more convulsively. He looked at the contracted and quivering face of

the child and began to be alarmed. He counted seven sobs without a

break between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it

died!...

 

The door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.

 

“What is it? What is it?” she cried.

 

The child, hearing its mother’s voice, broke out into a paroxysm of

sobbing.

 

“It’s nothing, Annie ... it’s nothing.... He began to cry....”

 

She flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.

 

“What have you done to him?” she cried, glaring into his face.

 

Little Chandler sustained for one moment the gaze of her eyes and his

heart closed together as he met the hatred in them. He began to

stammer:

 

“It’s nothing.... He ... he began to cry.... I couldn’t ... I didn’t do

anything.... What?”

 

Giving no heed to him she began to walk up and down the room, clasping

the child tightly in her arms and murmuring:

 

“My little man! My little mannie! Was ’ou frightened, love?... There

now, love! There now!... Lambabaun! Mamma’s little lamb of the

world!... There now!”

 

Little Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back

out of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the child’s

sobbing grew less and less; and tears of remorse started to his eyes.

 

 

COUNTERPARTS

 

The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a

furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent:

 

“Send Farrington here!”

 

Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at

a desk:

 

“Mr Alleyne wants you upstairs.”

 

The man muttered “_Blast_ him!” under his breath and pushed back his

chair to stand up. When he stood up he was tall and of great bulk. He

had a hanging face, dark wine-coloured, with fair eyebrows and

moustache: his eyes bulged forward slightly and the whites of them were

dirty. He lifted up the counter and, passing by the clients, went out

of the office with a heavy step.

 

He went heavily upstairs until he came to the second landing, where a

door bore a brass plate with the inscription _Mr Alleyne_. Here he

halted, puffing with labour and vexation, and knocked. The shrill voice

cried:

 

“Come in!”

 

The man entered Mr Alleyne’s room. Simultaneously Mr Alleyne, a little

man wearing gold-rimmed glasses on a clean-shaven face, shot his head

up over a pile of documents. The head itself was so pink and hairless

it seemed like a large egg reposing on the papers. Mr Alleyne did not

lose a moment:

 

“Farrington? What is the meaning of this? Why have I always to complain

of you? May I ask you why you haven’t made a copy of that contract

between Bodley and Kirwan? I told you it must be ready by four

o’clock.”

 

“But Mr Shelley said, sir——”

 

“_Mr Shelley said, sir...._ Kindly attend to what I say and not to what

_Mr Shelley says, sir_. You have always some excuse or another for

shirking work. Let me tell you that if the contract is not copied

before this evening I’ll lay the matter before Mr Crosbie.... Do you

hear me now?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Do you hear me now?... Ay and another little matter! I might as well

be talking to the wall as talking to you. Understand once for all that

you get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half. How

many courses do you want, I’d like to know.... Do you mind me, now?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Mr Alleyne bent his head again upon his pile of papers. The man stared

fixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosbie &

Alleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for

a few moments and then passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of

thirst. The man recognised the sensation and felt that he must have a

good night’s drinking. The middle of the month was passed and, if he

could get the copy done in time, Mr Alleyne might give him an order on

the cashier. He stood still, gazing fixedly at the head upon the pile

of papers. Suddenly Mr Alleyne began to upset all the papers, searching

for something. Then, as if he had been unaware of the man’s presence

till that moment, he shot up his head again, saying:

 

“Eh? Are you going to stand there all day? Upon my word, Farrington,

you take things easy!”

 

“I was waiting to see....”

 

“Very good, you needn’t wait to see. Go downstairs and do your work.”

 

The man walked heavily towards the door and, as he went out of the

room, he heard Mr Alleyne cry after him that if the contract was not

copied by evening Mr Crosbie would hear of the matter.

 

He returned to his desk in the lower office and counted the sheets

which remained to be copied. He took up his pen and dipped it in the

ink but he continued to stare stupidly at the last words he had

written: _In no case shall the said Bernard Bodley be...._ The evening

was falling and in a few minutes they would be lighting the gas: then

he could write. He felt that he must slake the thirst in his throat. He

stood up from his desk and, lifting the counter as before, passed out

of the office. As he was passing out the chief clerk looked at him

inquiringly.

 

“It’s all right, Mr Shelley,” said the man, pointing with his finger to

indicate the objective of his journey.

 

The chief clerk glanced at the hat-rack but, seeing the row complete,

offered no remark. As soon as he was on the landing the man pulled a

shepherd’s plaid cap out of his pocket, put it on his head and ran

quickly down the rickety stairs. From the street door he walked on

furtively on the inner side of the path towards the corner and all at

once dived into a doorway. He was now safe in the dark snug of

O’Neill’s shop, and filling up the little window that looked into the

bar with his inflamed face, the colour of dark wine or dark meat, he

called out:

 

“Here, Pat, give us a g.p., like a good fellow.”

 

The curate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a

gulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and,

leaving the curate to grope for it in the gloom, retreated out of the

snug as furtively as he had entered it.

 

Darkness, accompanied by a thick fog, was gaining upon the dusk of

February and the lamps in Eustace Street had been lit. The man went up

by the houses until he reached the door of the office, wondering

whether he could finish his copy in time. On the stairs a moist pungent

odour of perfumes saluted his nose: evidently Miss Delacour had come

while he was out in O’Neill’s. He crammed his cap back again into his

pocket and re-entered the office, assuming an air of absent-mindedness.

 

“Mr Alleyne has been calling for you,” said the chief clerk severely.

“Where were you?”

 

The man glanced at the two clients who were standing at the counter as

if to intimate that their presence prevented him from answering. As the

clients were both male the chief clerk allowed himself a laugh.

 

“I know that game,” he said. “Five times in one day is a little bit....

Well, you better look sharp and get a copy of our correspondence in the

Delacour case for Mr Alleyne.”

 

This address in the presence of the public, his run upstairs and the

porter he had gulped down so hastily confused the man and, as he sat

down at his desk to get what was required, he realised how hopeless was

the task of finishing his copy of the contract before half past five.

The dark damp night was coming and he longed to spend it in the bars,

drinking with his friends amid the glare of gas and the clatter of

glasses. He got out the Delacour correspondence and passed out of the

office. He hoped Mr Alleyne would not discover that the last two

letters were missing.

 

The moist pungent perfume lay all the way up to Mr Alleyne’s room. Miss

Delacour was a middle-aged woman of Jewish appearance. Mr Alleyne was

said to be sweet on her or on her money. She came to the office often

and stayed a long time when she came. She was sitting beside his desk

now in an aroma of perfumes, smoothing the handle of her umbrella and

nodding the great black feather in her hat. Mr Alleyne had swivelled

his chair round to face her and thrown his right foot jauntily upon his

left knee. The man put the correspondence on the desk and bowed

respectfully but neither Mr Alleyne nor Miss Delacour took any notice

of his bow. Mr Alleyne tapped a finger on the correspondence and then

flicked it towards him as if to say: _“That’s all right: you can go.”_

 

The man returned to the lower office and sat down again at his desk. He

stared intently at the incomplete phrase: _In no case shall the said

Bernard Bodley be_ ... and thought how strange it was that the last

three words began with the same letter. The chief clerk began to hurry

Miss Parker, saying she would never have the letters typed in time for

post. The man listened to the clicking of the machine for a few minutes

and then set to work to finish his copy. But his head was not clear and

his mind wandered away to the glare and rattle of the public-house. It

was a night for hot punches. He struggled on with his copy, but when

the clock struck five he had still fourteen pages to write. Blast it!

He couldn’t finish it in time. He longed to execrate aloud, to bring

his fist down on something violently. He was so enraged that he wrote

_Bernard Bernard_ instead of _Bernard Bodley_ and had to begin again on

a clean sheet.

 

He felt strong enough to clear out the whole office singlehanded. His

body ached to do something, to rush out and revel in violence. All the

indignities of his life enraged him.... Could he ask the cashier

privately for an advance? No, the cashier was no good, no damn good: he

wouldn’t give an advance.... He knew where he would meet the boys:

Leonard and O’Halloran and Nosey Flynn. The barometer of his emotional

nature was set for a spell of riot.

 

His imagination had so abstracted him that his name was called twice

before he answered. Mr Alleyne and Miss Delacour were standing outside

the counter and all the clerks had turned round in anticipation of

something. The man got up from his desk. Mr Alleyne began a tirade of

abuse, saying that two letters were missing. The man answered that he

knew nothing about them, that he had made a faithful copy. The tirade

continued: it was so bitter and violent that the man could hardly

restrain his fist from descending upon the head of the manikin before

him:

 

“I know nothing about any other two letters,” he said stupidly.

 

“_You—know—nothing_. Of course you know nothing,” said Mr Alleyne.

“Tell me,” he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside

him, “do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?”

 

The man glanced from the lady’s face to the little egg-shaped head and

back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found

a felicitous moment:

 

“I don’t think, sir,” he said, “that that’s a fair question to put to

me.”

 

There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was

astounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbours) and

Miss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly.

Mr Alleyne flushed to the hue of a wild rose and his mouth twitched

with a dwarf’s passion. He shook his fist in the man’s face till it

seemed to vibrate like the knob of some electric machine:

 

“You impertinent ruffian! You impertinent ruffian! I’ll make short work

of you! Wait till you see! You’ll apologise to me for your impertinence

or you’ll quit the office instanter! You’ll quit this, I’m telling you,

or you’ll apologise to me!”

 

 

He stood in a doorway opposite the office watching to see if the

cashier would come out alone. All the clerks passed out and finally the

cashier came out with the chief clerk. It was no use trying to say a

word to him when he was with the chief clerk. The man felt that his

position was bad enough. He had been obliged to offer an abject apology

to Mr Alleyne for his impertinence but he knew what a hornet’s nest the

office would be for him. He could remember the way in which Mr Alleyne

had hounded little Peake out of the office in order to make room for

his own nephew. He felt savage and thirsty and revengeful, annoyed with

himself and with everyone else. Mr Alleyne would never give him an

hour’s rest; his life would be a hell to him. He had made a proper fool

of himself this time. Could he not keep his tongue in his cheek? But

they had never pulled together from the first, he and Mr Alleyne, ever

since the day Mr Alleyne had overheard him mimicking his North of

Ireland accent to amuse Higgins and Miss Parker: that had been the

beginning of it. He might have tried Higgins for the money, but sure

Higgins never had anything for himself. A man with two establishments

to keep up, of course he couldn’t....

 

He felt his great body again aching for the comfort of the

public-house. The fog had begun to chill him and he wondered could he

touch Pat in O’Neill’s. He could not touch him for more than a bob—and

a bob was no use. Yet he must get money somewhere or other: he had

spent his last penny for the g.p. and soon it would be too late for

getting money anywhere. Suddenly, as he was fingering his watch-chain,

he thought of Terry Kelly’s pawn-office in Fleet Street. That was the

dart! Why didn’t he think of it sooner?

 

He went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, muttering to

himself that they could all go to hell because he was going to have a

good night of it. The clerk in Terry Kelly’s said _A crown!_ but the

consignor held out for six shillings; and in the end the six shillings

was allowed him literally. He came out of the pawn-office joyfully,

making a little cylinder, of the coins between his thumb and fingers.

In Westmoreland Street the footpaths were crowded with young men and

women returning from business and ragged urchins ran here and there

yelling out the names of the evening editions. The man passed through

the crowd, looking on the spectacle generally with proud satisfaction

and staring masterfully at the office-girls. His head was full of the

noises of tram-gongs and swishing trolleys and his nose already sniffed

the curling fumes of punch. As he walked on he preconsidered the terms

in which he would narrate the incident to the boys:

 

“So, I just looked at him—coolly, you know, and looked at her. Then I

looked back at him again—taking my time, you know. ‘I don’t think that

that’s a fair question to put to me,’ says I.”

 

Nosey Flynn was sitting up in his usual corner of Davy Byrne’s and,

when he heard the story, he stood Farrington a half-one, saying it was

as smart a thing as ever he heard. Farrington stood a drink in his

turn. After a while O’Halloran and Paddy Leonard came in and the story

was repeated to them. O’Halloran stood tailors of malt, hot, all round

and told the story of the retort he had made to the chief clerk when he

was in Callan’s of Fownes’s Street; but, as the retort was after the

manner of the liberal shepherds in the eclogues, he had to admit that

it was not as clever as Farrington’s retort. At this Farrington told

the boys to polish off that and have another.

 

Just as they were naming their poisons who should come in but Higgins!

Of course he had to join in with the others. The men asked him to give

his version of it, and he did so with great vivacity for the sight of

five small hot whiskies was very exhilarating. Everyone roared laughing

when he showed the way in which Mr Alleyne shook his fist in

Farrington’s face. Then he imitated Farrington, saying, _“And here was

my nabs, as cool as you please,”_ while Farrington looked at the

company out of his heavy dirty eyes, smiling and at times drawing forth

stray drops of liquor from his moustache with the aid of his lower lip.

 

When that round was over there was a pause. O’Halloran had money but

neither of the other two seemed to have any; so the whole party left

the shop somewhat regretfully. At the corner of Duke Street Higgins and

Nosey Flynn bevelled off to the left while the other three turned back

towards the city. Rain was drizzling down on the cold streets and, when

they reached the Ballast Office, Farrington suggested the Scotch House.

The bar was full of men and loud with the noise of tongues and glasses.

The three men pushed past the whining match-sellers at the door and

formed a little party at the corner of the counter. They began to

exchange stories. Leonard introduced them to a young fellow named

Weathers who was performing at the Tivoli as an acrobat and knockabout

_artiste_. Farrington stood a drink all round. Weathers said he would

take a small Irish and Apollinaris. Farrington, who had definite

notions of what was what, asked the boys would they have an Apollinaris

too; but the boys told Tim to make theirs hot. The talk became

theatrical. O’Halloran stood a round and then Farrington stood another

round, Weathers protesting that the hospitality was too Irish. He

promised to get them in behind the scenes and introduce them to some

nice girls. O’Halloran said that he and Leonard would go, but that

Farrington wouldn’t go because he was a married man; and Farrington’s

heavy dirty eyes leered at the company in token that he understood he

was being chaffed. Weathers made them all have just one little tincture

at his expense and promised to meet them later on at Mulligan’s in

Poolbeg Street.

 

When the Scotch House closed they went round to Mulligan’s. They went

into the parlour at the back and O’Halloran ordered small hot specials

all round. They were all beginning to feel mellow. Farrington was just

standing another round when Weathers came back. Much to Farrington’s

relief he drank a glass of bitter this time. Funds were getting low but

they had enough to keep them going. Presently two young women with big

hats and a young man in a check suit came in and sat at a table close

by. Weathers saluted them and told the company that they were out of

the Tivoli. Farrington’s eyes wandered at every moment in the direction

of one of the young women. There was something striking in her

appearance. An immense scarf of peacock-blue muslin was wound round her

hat and knotted in a great bow under her chin; and she wore bright

yellow gloves, reaching to the elbow. Farrington gazed admiringly at

the plump arm which she moved very often and with much grace; and when,

after a little time, she answered his gaze he admired still more her

large dark brown eyes. The oblique staring expression in them

fascinated him. She glanced at him once or twice and, when the party

was leaving the room, she brushed against his chair and said _“O,

pardon!”_ in a London accent. He watched her leave the room in the hope

that she would look back at him, but he was disappointed. He cursed his

want of money and cursed all the rounds he had stood, particularly all

the whiskies and Apollinaris which he had stood to Weathers. If there

was one thing that he hated it was a sponge. He was so angry that he

lost count of the conversation of his friends.

 

When Paddy Leonard called him he found that they were talking about

feats of strength. Weathers was showing his biceps muscle to the

company and boasting so much that the other two had called on

Farrington to uphold the national honour. Farrington pulled up his

sleeve accordingly and showed his biceps muscle to the company. The two

arms were examined and compared and finally it was agreed to have a

trial of strength. The table was cleared and the two men rested their

elbows on it, clasping hands. When Paddy Leonard said _“Go!”_ each was

to try to bring down the other’s hand on to the table. Farrington

looked very serious and determined.

 

The trial began. After about thirty seconds Weathers brought his

opponent’s hand slowly down on to the table. Farrington’s dark

wine-coloured face flushed darker still with anger and humiliation at

having been defeated by such a stripling.

 

“You’re not to put the weight of your body behind it. Play fair,” he

said.

 

“Who’s not playing fair?” said the other.

 

“Come on again. The two best out of three.”

 

The trial began again. The veins stood out on Farrington’s forehead,

and the pallor of Weathers’ complexion changed to peony. Their hands

and arms trembled under the stress. After a long struggle Weathers

again brought his opponent’s hand slowly on to the table. There was a

murmur of applause from the spectators. The curate, who was standing

beside the table, nodded his red head towards the victor and said with

stupid familiarity:

 

“Ah! that’s the knack!”

 

“What the hell do you know about it?” said Farrington fiercely, turning

on the man. “What do you put in your gab for?”

 

“Sh, sh!” said O’Halloran, observing the violent expression of

Farrington’s face. “Pony up, boys. We’ll have just one little smahan

more and then we’ll be off.”

 

 

A very sullen-faced man stood at the corner of O’Connell Bridge waiting

for the little Sandymount tram to take him home. He was full of

smouldering anger and revengefulness. He felt humiliated and

discontented; he did not even feel drunk; and he had only twopence in

his pocket. He cursed everything. He had done for himself in the

office, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got

drunk. He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in

the hot reeking public-house. He had lost his reputation as a strong

man, having been defeated twice by a mere boy. His heart swelled with

fury and, when he thought of the woman in the big hat who had brushed

against him and said _Pardon!_ his fury nearly choked him.

 

His tram let him down at Shelbourne Road and he steered his great body

along in the shadow of the wall of the barracks. He loathed returning

to his home. When he went in by the side-door he found the kitchen

empty and the kitchen fire nearly out. He bawled upstairs:

 

“Ada! Ada!”

 

His wife was a little sharp-faced woman who bullied her husband when he

was sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk. They had five

children. A little boy came running down the stairs.

 

“Who is that?” said the man, peering through the darkness.

 

“Me, pa.”

 

“Who are you? Charlie?”

 

“No, pa. Tom.”

 

“Where’s your mother?”

 

“She’s out at the chapel.”

 

“That’s right.... Did she think of leaving any dinner for me?”

 

“Yes, pa. I——”

 

“Light the lamp. What do you mean by having the place in darkness? Are

the other children in bed?”

 

The man sat down heavily on one of the chairs while the little boy lit

the lamp. He began to mimic his son’s flat accent, saying half to

himself: _“At the chapel. At the chapel, if you please!”_ When the lamp

was lit he banged his fist on the table and shouted:

 

“What’s for my dinner?”

 

“I’m going ... to cook it, pa,” said the little boy.

 

The man jumped up furiously and pointed to the fire.

 

“On that fire! You let the fire out! By God, I’ll teach you to do that

again!”

 

He took a step to the door and seized the walking-stick which was

standing behind it.

 

“I’ll teach you to let the fire out!” he said, rolling up his sleeve in

order to give his arm free play.

 

The little boy cried _“O, pa!”_ and ran whimpering round the table, but

the man followed him and caught him by the coat. The little boy looked

about him wildly but, seeing no way of escape, fell upon his knees.

 

“Now, you’ll let the fire out the next time!” said the man striking at

him vigorously with the stick. “Take that, you little whelp!”

 

The boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped

his hands together in the air and his voice shook with fright.

 

“O, pa!” he cried. “Don’t beat me, pa! And I’ll ... I’ll say a _Hail

Mary_ for you.... I’ll say a _Hail Mary_ for you, pa, if you don’t beat

me.... I’ll say a _Hail Mary_....”

 

 

CLAY

 

The matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women’s tea was

over and Maria looked forward to her evening out. The kitchen was spick

and span: the cook said you could see yourself in the big copper

boilers. The fire was nice and bright and on one of the side-tables

were four very big barmbracks. These barmbracks seemed uncut; but if

you went closer you would see that they had been cut into long thick

even slices and were ready to be handed round at tea. Maria had cut

them herself.

 

Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose

and a very long chin. She talked a little through her nose, always

soothingly: _“Yes, my dear,”_ and _“No, my dear.”_ She was always sent

for when the women quarrelled over their tubs and always succeeded in

making peace. One day the matron had said to her:

 

“Maria, you are a veritable peace-maker!”

 

And the sub-matron and two of the Board ladies had heard the

compliment. And Ginger Mooney was always saying what she wouldn’t do to

the dummy who had charge of the irons if it wasn’t for Maria. Everyone

was so fond of Maria.

 

The women would have their tea at six o’clock and she would be able to

get away before seven. From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes;

from the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty minutes; and twenty minutes to

buy the things. She would be there before eight. She took out her purse

with the silver clasps and read again the words _A Present from

Belfast_. She was very fond of that purse because Joe had brought it to

her five years before when he and Alphy had gone to Belfast on a

Whit-Monday trip. In the purse were two half-crowns and some coppers.

She would have five shillings clear after paying tram fare. What a nice

evening they would have, all the children singing! Only she hoped that

Joe wouldn’t come in drunk. He was so different when he took any drink.

 

Often he had wanted her to go and live with them; but she would have

felt herself in the way (though Joe’s wife was ever so nice with her)

and she had become accustomed to the life of the laundry. Joe was a

good fellow. She had nursed him and Alphy too; and Joe used often say:

 

“Mamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother.”

 

After the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the

_Dublin by Lamplight_ laundry, and she liked it. She used to have such

a bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice

people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live

with. Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking

after them. She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone

came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from

her conservatory. There was one thing she didn’t like and that was the

tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal

with, so genteel.

 

When the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women’s

room and began to pull the big bell. In a few minutes the women began

to come in by twos and threes, wiping their steaming hands in their

petticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over their red

steaming arms. They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook

and the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar

in huge tin cans. Maria superintended the distribution of the barmbrack

and saw that every woman got her four slices. There was a great deal of

laughing and joking during the meal. Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure

to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow

Eves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or man

either; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with

disappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her

chin. Then Ginger Mooney lifted up her mug of tea and proposed Maria’s

health while all the other women clattered with their mugs on the

table, and said she was sorry she hadn’t a sup of porter to drink it

in. And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip

of her chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder

because she knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the

notions of a common woman.

 

But wasn’t Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the

cook and the dummy had begun to clear away the tea-things! She went

into her little bedroom and, remembering that the next morning was a

mass morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six. Then she

took off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt

out on the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She

changed her blouse too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought

of how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a

young girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body

which she had so often adorned. In spite of its years she found it a

nice tidy little body.

 

When she got outside the streets were shining with rain and she was

glad of her old brown waterproof. The tram was full and she had to sit

on the little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people, with

her toes barely touching the floor. She arranged in her mind all she

was going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent

and to have your own money in your pocket. She hoped they would have a

nice evening. She was sure they would but she could not help thinking

what a pity it was Alphy and Joe were not speaking. They were always

falling out now but when they were boys together they used to be the

best of friends: but such was life.

 

She got out of her tram at the Pillar and ferreted her way quickly

among the crowds. She went into Downes’s cake-shop but the shop was so

full of people that it was a long time before she could get herself

attended to. She bought a dozen of mixed penny cakes, and at last came

out of the shop laden with a big bag. Then she thought what else would

she buy: she wanted to buy something really nice. They would be sure to

have plenty of apples and nuts. It was hard to know what to buy and all

she could think of was cake. She decided to buy some plumcake but

Downes’s plumcake had not enough almond icing on top of it so she went

over to a shop in Henry Street. Here she was a long time in suiting

herself and the stylish young lady behind the counter, who was

evidently a little annoyed by her, asked her was it wedding-cake she

wanted to buy. That made Maria blush and smile at the young lady; but

the young lady took it all very seriously and finally cut a thick slice

of plumcake, parcelled it up and said:

 

“Two-and-four, please.”

 

She thought she would have to stand in the Drumcondra tram because none

of the young men seemed to notice her but an elderly gentleman made

room for her. He was a stout gentleman and he wore a brown hard hat; he

had a square red face and a greyish moustache. Maria thought he was a

colonel-looking gentleman and she reflected how much more polite he was

than the young men who simply stared straight before them. The

gentleman began to chat with her about Hallow Eve and the rainy

weather. He supposed the bag was full of good things for the little

ones and said it was only right that the youngsters should enjoy

themselves while they were young. Maria agreed with him and favoured

him with demure nods and hems. He was very nice with her, and when she

was getting out at the Canal Bridge she thanked him and bowed, and he

bowed to her and raised his hat and smiled agreeably, and while she was

going up along the terrace, bending her tiny head under the rain, she

thought how easy it was to know a gentleman even when he has a drop

taken.

 

Everybody said: _“O, here’s Maria!”_ when she came to Joe’s house. Joe

was there, having come home from business, and all the children had

their Sunday dresses on. There were two big girls in from next door and

games were going on. Maria gave the bag of cakes to the eldest boy,

Alphy, to divide and Mrs Donnelly said it was too good of her to bring

such a big bag of cakes and made all the children say:

 

“Thanks, Maria.”

 

But Maria said she had brought something special for papa and mamma,

something they would be sure to like, and she began to look for her

plumcake. She tried in Downes’s bag and then in the pockets of her

waterproof and then on the hallstand but nowhere could she find it.

Then she asked all the children had any of them eaten it—by mistake, of

course—but the children all said no and looked as if they did not like

to eat cakes if they were to be accused of stealing. Everybody had a

solution for the mystery and Mrs Donnelly said it was plain that Maria

had left it behind her in the tram. Maria, remembering how confused the

gentleman with the greyish moustache had made her, coloured with shame

and vexation and disappointment. At the thought of the failure of her

little surprise and of the two and fourpence she had thrown away for

nothing she nearly cried outright.

 

But Joe said it didn’t matter and made her sit down by the fire. He was

very nice with her. He told her all that went on in his office,

repeating for her a smart answer which he had made to the manager.

Maria did not understand why Joe laughed so much over the answer he had

made but she said that the manager must have been a very overbearing

person to deal with. Joe said he wasn’t so bad when you knew how to

take him, that he was a decent sort so long as you didn’t rub him the

wrong way. Mrs Donnelly played the piano for the children and they

danced and sang. Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts.

Nobody could find the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over

it and asked how did they expect Maria to crack nuts without a

nutcracker. But Maria said she didn’t like nuts and that they weren’t

to bother about her. Then Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout

and Mrs Donnelly said there was port wine too in the house if she would

prefer that. Maria said she would rather they didn’t ask her to take

anything: but Joe insisted.

 

So Maria let him have his way and they sat by the fire talking over old

times and Maria thought she would put in a good word for Alphy. But Joe

cried that God might strike him stone dead if ever he spoke a word to

his brother again and Maria said she was sorry she had mentioned the

matter. Mrs Donnelly told her husband it was a great shame for him to

speak that way of his own flesh and blood but Joe said that Alphy was

no brother of his and there was nearly being a row on the head of it.

But Joe said he would not lose his temper on account of the night it

was and asked his wife to open some more stout. The two next-door girls

had arranged some Hallow Eve games and soon everything was merry again.

Maria was delighted to see the children so merry and Joe and his wife

in such good spirits. The next-door girls put some saucers on the table

and then led the children up to the table, blindfold. One got the

prayer-book and the other three got the water; and when one of the

next-door girls got the ring Mrs Donnelly shook her finger at the

blushing girl as much as to say: _O, I know all about it!_ They

insisted then on blindfolding Maria and leading her up to the table to

see what she would get; and, while they were putting on the bandage,

Maria laughed and laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the

tip of her chin.

 

They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her

hand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about

here and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt

a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody

spoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and

then a great deal of scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something

about the garden, and at last Mrs Donnelly said something very cross to

one of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at once: that

was no play. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she

had to do it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.

 

After that Mrs Donnelly played Miss McCloud’s Reel for the children and

Joe made Maria take a glass of wine. Soon they were all quite merry

again and Mrs Donnelly said Maria would enter a convent before the year

was out because she had got the prayer-book. Maria had never seen Joe

so nice to her as he was that night, so full of pleasant talk and

reminiscences. She said they were all very good to her.

 

At last the children grew tired and sleepy and Joe asked Maria would

she not sing some little song before she went, one of the old songs.

Mrs Donnelly said _“Do, please, Maria!”_ and so Maria had to get up and

stand beside the piano. Mrs Donnelly bade the children be quiet and

listen to Maria’s song. Then she played the prelude and said _“Now,

Maria!”_ and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny

quavering voice. She sang _I Dreamt that I Dwelt_, and when she came to

the second verse she sang again:

 

     _I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls

         With vassals and serfs at my side

     And of all who assembled within those walls

         That I was the hope and the pride.

     I had riches too great to count, could boast

         Of a high ancestral name,

     But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,

         That you loved me still the same._

 

But no one tried to show her her mistake; and when she had ended her

song Joe was very much moved. He said that there was no time like the

long ago and no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other

people might say; and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he

could not find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his

wife to tell him where the corkscrew was.

 

 

A PAINFUL CASE

 

Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as

possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found

all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. He lived

in an old sombre house and from his windows he could look into the

disused distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Dublin

is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from

pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room:

a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a

clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a square table on

which lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means

of shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and

a black and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung

above the washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the

sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves

were arranged from below upwards according to bulk. A complete

Wordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of the

_Maynooth Catechism_, sewn into the cloth cover of a notebook, stood at

one end of the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the desk. In

the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann’s _Michael Kramer_,

the stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little

sheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a

sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment,

the headline of an advertisement for _Bile Beans_ had been pasted on to

the first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance

escaped—the fragrance of new cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of gum or

of an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten.

 

Mr Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder.

A mediæval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which

carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin

streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a

tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones

also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the

eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave

the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in

others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his

body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd

autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time

to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the

third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to

beggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.

 

He had been for many years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street.

Every morning he came in from Chapelizod by tram. At midday he went to

Dan Burke’s and took his lunch—a bottle of lager beer and a small

trayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four o’clock he was set free. He

dined in an eating-house in George’s Street where he felt himself safe

from the society of Dublin’s gilded youth and where there was a certain

plain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings were spent either

before his landlady’s piano or roaming about the outskirts of the city.

His liking for Mozart’s music brought him sometimes to an opera or a

concert: these were the only dissipations of his life.

 

He had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his

spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his

relatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they

died. He performed these two social duties for old dignity’s sake but

conceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic

life. He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances he

would rob his bank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life

rolled out evenly—an adventureless tale.

 

One evening he found himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda.

The house, thinly peopled and silent, gave distressing prophecy of

failure. The lady who sat next him looked round at the deserted house

once or twice and then said:

 

“What a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It’s so hard on people

to have to sing to empty benches.”

 

He took the remark as an invitation to talk. He was surprised that she

seemed so little awkward. While they talked he tried to fix her

permanently in his memory. When he learned that the young girl beside

her was her daughter he judged her to be a year or so younger than

himself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained

intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The

eyes were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant

note but was confused by what seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil

into the iris, revealing for an instant a temperament of great

sensibility. The pupil reasserted itself quickly, this half-disclosed

nature fell again under the reign of prudence, and her astrakhan

jacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fullness, struck the note of

defiance more definitely.

 

He met her again a few weeks afterwards at a concert in Earlsfort

Terrace and seized the moments when her daughter’s attention was

diverted to become intimate. She alluded once or twice to her husband

but her tone was not such as to make the allusion a warning. Her name

was Mrs Sinico. Her husband’s great-great-grandfather had come from

Leghorn. Her husband was captain of a mercantile boat plying between

Dublin and Holland; and they had one child.

 

Meeting her a third time by accident he found courage to make an

appointment. She came. This was the first of many meetings; they met

always in the evening and chose the most quiet quarters for their walks

together. Mr Duffy, however, had a distaste for underhand ways and,

finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he forced her to

ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged his visits, thinking

that his daughter’s hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife so

sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that

anyone else would take an interest in her. As the husband was often

away and the daughter out giving music lessons Mr Duffy had many

opportunities of enjoying the lady’s society. Neither he nor she had

had any such adventure before and neither was conscious of any

incongruity. Little by little he entangled his thoughts with hers. He

lent her books, provided her with ideas, shared his intellectual life

with her. She listened to all.

 

Sometimes in return for his theories she gave out some fact of her own

life. With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature

open to the full: she became his confessor. He told her that for some

time he had assisted at the meetings of an Irish Socialist Party where

he had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score of sober workmen in

a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had divided

into three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret,

he had discontinued his attendances. The workmen’s discussions, he

said, were too timorous; the interest they took in the question of

wages was inordinate. He felt that they were hard-featured realists and

that they resented an exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not

within their reach. No social revolution, he told her, would be likely

to strike Dublin for some centuries.

 

She asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked

her, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of

thinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the

criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to

policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?

 

He went often to her little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent

their evenings alone. Little by little, as their thoughts entangled,

they spoke of subjects less remote. Her companionship was like a warm

soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon

them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their

isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them.

This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character,

emotionalised his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to

the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend

to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his

companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal

voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul’s incurable

loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own. The end

of these discourses was that one night during which she had shown every

sign of unusual excitement, Mrs Sinico caught up his hand passionately

and pressed it to her cheek.

 

Mr Duffy was very much surprised. Her interpretation of his words

disillusioned him. He did not visit her for a week, then he wrote to

her asking her to meet him. As he did not wish their last interview to

be troubled by the influence of their ruined confessional they met in a

little cakeshop near the Parkgate. It was cold autumn weather but in

spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for

nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse: every

bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow. When they came out of the Park they

walked in silence towards the tram; but here she began to tremble so

violently that, fearing another collapse on her part, he bade her

good-bye quickly and left her. A few days later he received a parcel

containing his books and music.

 

Four years passed. Mr Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room

still bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of

music encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves

stood two volumes by Nietzsche: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ and _The Gay

Science_. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk.

One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with

Mrs Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there

must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is

impossible because there must be sexual intercourse. He kept away from

concerts lest he should meet her. His father died; the junior partner

of the bank retired. And still every morning he went into the city by

tram and every evening walked home from the city after having dined

moderately in George’s Street and read the evening paper for dessert.

 

One evening as he was about to put a morsel of corned beef and cabbage

into his mouth his hand stopped. His eyes fixed themselves on a

paragraph in the evening paper which he had propped against the

water-carafe. He replaced the morsel of food on his plate and read the

paragraph attentively. Then he drank a glass of water, pushed his plate

to one side, doubled the paper down before him between his elbows and

read the paragraph over and over again. The cabbage began to deposit a

cold white grease on his plate. The girl came over to him to ask was

his dinner not properly cooked. He said it was very good and ate a few

mouthfuls of it with difficulty. Then he paid his bill and went out.

 

He walked along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel

stick striking the ground regularly, the fringe of the buff _Mail_

peeping out of a side-pocket of his tight reefer overcoat. On the

lonely road which leads from the Parkgate to Chapelizod he slackened

his pace. His stick struck the ground less emphatically and his breath,

issuing irregularly, almost with a sighing sound, condensed in the

wintry air. When he reached his house he went up at once to his bedroom

and, taking the paper from his pocket, read the paragraph again by the

failing light of the window. He read it not aloud, but moving his lips

as a priest does when he reads the prayers _Secreto_. This was the

paragraph:

 

     DEATH OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE

 

     A PAINFUL CASE

 

Today at the City of Dublin Hospital the Deputy Coroner (in the absence

of Mr Leverett) held an inquest on the body of Mrs Emily Sinico, aged

forty-three years, who was killed at Sydney Parade Station yesterday

evening. The evidence showed that the deceased lady, while attempting

to cross the line, was knocked down by the engine of the ten o’clock

slow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of the head and

right side which led to her death.

 

James Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had been in the

employment of the railway company for fifteen years. On hearing the

guard’s whistle he set the train in motion and a second or two

afterwards brought it to rest in response to loud cries. The train was

going slowly.

 

P. Dunne, railway porter, stated that as the train was about to start

he observed a woman attempting to cross the lines. He ran towards her

and shouted, but, before he could reach her, she was caught by the

buffer of the engine and fell to the ground.

 

_A juror_. “You saw the lady fall?”

 

_Witness_. “Yes.”

 

Police Sergeant Croly deposed that when he arrived he found the

deceased lying on the platform apparently dead. He had the body taken

to the waiting-room pending the arrival of the ambulance.

 

Constable 57E corroborated.

 

Dr Halpin, assistant house surgeon of the City of Dublin Hospital,

stated that the deceased had two lower ribs fractured and had sustained

severe contusions of the right shoulder. The right side of the head had

been injured in the fall. The injuries were not sufficient to have

caused death in a normal person. Death, in his opinion, had been

probably due to shock and sudden failure of the heart’s action.

 

Mr H. B. Patterson Finlay, on behalf of the railway company, expressed

his deep regret at the accident. The company had always taken every

precaution to prevent people crossing the lines except by the bridges,

both by placing notices in every station and by the use of patent

spring gates at level crossings. The deceased had been in the habit of

crossing the lines late at night from platform to platform and, in view

of certain other circumstances of the case, he did not think the

railway officials were to blame.

 

Captain Sinico, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased,

also gave evidence. He stated that the deceased was his wife. He was

not in Dublin at the time of the accident as he had arrived only that

morning from Rotterdam. They had been married for twenty-two years and

had lived happily until about two years ago when his wife began to be

rather intemperate in her habits.

 

Miss Mary Sinico said that of late her mother had been in the habit of

going out at night to buy spirits. She, witness, had often tried to

reason with her mother and had induced her to join a league. She was

not at home until an hour after the accident. The jury returned a

verdict in accordance with the medical evidence and exonerated Lennon

from all blame.

 

The Deputy Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed great

sympathy with Captain Sinico and his daughter. He urged on the railway

company to take strong measures to prevent the possibility of similar

accidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.

 

 

Mr Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on

the cheerless evening landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty

distillery and from time to time a light appeared in some house on the

Lucan road. What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him

and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he

held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of sympathy,

the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of a

commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she

degraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her

vice, miserable and malodorous. His soul’s companion! He thought of the

hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to be

filled by the barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been

unfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits,

one of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared. But that she

could have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself so

utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and

interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no

difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.

 

As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand

touched his. The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now

attacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat quickly and went

out. The cold air met him on the threshold; it crept into the sleeves

of his coat. When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he

went in and ordered a hot punch.

 

The proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk.

There were five or six workingmen in the shop discussing the value of a

gentleman’s estate in County Kildare. They drank at intervals from

their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on the floor and

sometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their heavy boots.

Mr Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or hearing

them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He

sat a long time over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor

sprawled on the counter reading the _Herald_ and yawning. Now and again

a tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.

 

As he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately

the two images in which he now conceived her, he realised that she was

dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He

began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have

done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he

could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him

best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how

lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that

room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to

exist, became a memory—if anyone remembered him.

 

It was after nine o’clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and

gloomy. He entered the Park by the first gate and walked along under

the gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they had

walked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At

moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his.

He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he

sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.

 

When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked

along the river towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and

hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the

base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures

lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed

the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life’s

feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her

life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame.

He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him

and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s

feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along

towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of

Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the

darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight;

but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine

reiterating the syllables of her name.

 

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding

in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He

halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not

feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He

waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was

perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he

was alone.

 

 

IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM

 

Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and

spread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome

was thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself

to fan the fire again, his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall

and his face slowly re-emerged into light. It was an old man’s face,

very bony and hairy. The moist blue eyes blinked at the fire and the

moist mouth fell open at times, munching once or twice mechanically

when it closed. When the cinders had caught he laid the piece of

cardboard against the wall, sighed and said:

 

“That’s better now, Mr O’Connor.”

 

Mr O’Connor, a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by many

blotches and pimples, had just brought the tobacco for a cigarette into

a shapely cylinder but when spoken to he undid his handiwork

meditatively. Then he began to roll the tobacco again meditatively and

after a moment’s thought decided to lick the paper.

 

“Did Mr Tierney say when he’d be back?” he asked in a husky falsetto.

 

“He didn’t say.”

 

Mr O’Connor put his cigarette into his mouth and began to search his

pockets. He took out a pack of thin pasteboard cards.

 

“I’ll get you a match,” said the old man.

 

“Never mind, this’ll do,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

He selected one of the cards and read what was printed on it:

 

     MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

 

     ROYAL EXCHANGE WARD

 

Mr Richard J. Tierney, P.L.G., respectfully solicits the favour of your

vote and influence at the coming election in the Royal Exchange Ward.

 

 

Mr O’Connor had been engaged by Tierney’s agent to canvass one part of

the ward but, as the weather was inclement and his boots let in the

wet, he spent a great part of the day sitting by the fire in the

Committee Room in Wicklow Street with Jack, the old caretaker. They had

been sitting thus since the short day had grown dark. It was the sixth

of October, dismal and cold out of doors.

 

Mr O’Connor tore a strip off the card and, lighting it, lit his

cigarette. As he did so the flame lit up a leaf of dark glossy ivy in

the lapel of his coat. The old man watched him attentively and then,

taking up the piece of cardboard again, began to fan the fire slowly

while his companion smoked.

 

“Ah, yes,” he said, continuing, “it’s hard to know what way to bring up

children. Now who’d think he’d turn out like that! I sent him to the

Christian Brothers and I done what I could for him, and there he goes

boosing about. I tried to make him someway decent.”

 

He replaced the cardboard wearily.

 

“Only I’m an old man now I’d change his tune for him. I’d take the

stick to his back and beat him while I could stand over him—as I done

many a time before. The mother, you know, she cocks him up with this

and that....”

 

“That’s what ruins children,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“To be sure it is,” said the old man. “And little thanks you get for

it, only impudence. He takes th’upper hand of me whenever he sees I’ve

a sup taken. What’s the world coming to when sons speaks that way to

their father?”

 

“What age is he?” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“Nineteen,” said the old man.

 

“Why don’t you put him to something?”

 

“Sure, amn’t I never done at the drunken bowsy ever since he left

school? ‘I won’t keep you,’ I says. ‘You must get a job for yourself.’

But, sure, it’s worse whenever he gets a job; he drinks it all.”

 

Mr O’Connor shook his head in sympathy, and the old man fell silent,

gazing into the fire. Someone opened the door of the room and called

out:

 

“Hello! Is this a Freemasons’ meeting?”

 

“Who’s that?” said the old man.

 

“What are you doing in the dark?” asked a voice.

 

“Is that you, Hynes?” asked Mr O’Connor.

 

“Yes. What are you doing in the dark?” said Mr Hynes advancing into

the light of the fire.

 

He was a tall, slender young man with a light brown moustache. Imminent

little drops of rain hung at the brim of his hat and the collar of his

jacket-coat was turned up.

 

“Well, Mat,” he said to Mr O’Connor, “how goes it?”

 

Mr O’Connor shook his head. The old man left the hearth and, after

stumbling about the room returned with two candlesticks which he thrust

one after the other into the fire and carried to the table. A denuded

room came into view and the fire lost all its cheerful colour. The

walls of the room were bare except for a copy of an election address.

In the middle of the room was a small table on which papers were

heaped.

 

Mr Hynes leaned against the mantelpiece and asked:

 

“Has he paid you yet?”

 

“Not yet,” said Mr O’Connor. “I hope to God he’ll not leave us in the

lurch tonight.”

 

Mr Hynes laughed.

 

“O, he’ll pay you. Never fear,” he said.

 

“I hope he’ll look smart about it if he means business,” said Mr

O’Connor.

 

“What do you think, Jack?” said Mr Hynes satirically to the old man.

 

The old man returned to his seat by the fire, saying:

 

“It isn’t but he has it, anyway. Not like the other tinker.”

 

“What other tinker?” said Mr Hynes.

 

“Colgan,” said the old man scornfully.

 

“It is because Colgan’s a working-man you say that? What’s the

difference between a good honest bricklayer and a publican—eh? Hasn’t

the working-man as good a right to be in the Corporation as anyone

else—ay, and a better right than those shoneens that are always hat in

hand before any fellow with a handle to his name? Isn’t that so, Mat?”

said Mr Hynes, addressing Mr O’Connor.

 

“I think you’re right,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“One man is a plain honest man with no hunker-sliding about him. He

goes in to represent the labour classes. This fellow you’re working for

only wants to get some job or other.”

 

“Of course, the working-classes should be represented,” said the old

man.

 

“The working-man,” said Mr Hynes, “gets all kicks and no halfpence. But

it’s labour produces everything. The working-man is not looking for fat

jobs for his sons and nephews and cousins. The working-man is not going

to drag the honour of Dublin in the mud to please a German monarch.”

 

“How’s that?” said the old man.

 

“Don’t you know they want to present an address of welcome to Edward

Rex if he comes here next year? What do we want kowtowing to a foreign

king?”

 

“Our man won’t vote for the address,” said Mr O’Connor. “He goes in on

the Nationalist ticket.”

 

“Won’t he?” said Mr Hynes. “Wait till you see whether he will or not. I

know him. Is it Tricky Dicky Tierney?”

 

“By God! perhaps you’re right, Joe,” said Mr O’Connor. “Anyway, I wish

he’d turn up with the spondulics.”

 

The three men fell silent. The old man began to rake more cinders

together. Mr Hynes took off his hat, shook it and then turned down the

collar of his coat, displaying, as he did so, an ivy leaf in the lapel.

 

“If this man was alive,” he said, pointing to the leaf, “we’d have no

talk of an address of welcome.”

 

“That’s true,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“Musha, God be with them times!” said the old man. “There was some life

in it then.”

 

The room was silent again. Then a bustling little man with a snuffling

nose and very cold ears pushed in the door. He walked over quickly to

the fire, rubbing his hands as if he intended to produce a spark from

them.

 

“No money, boys,” he said.

 

“Sit down here, Mr Henchy,” said the old man, offering him his chair.

 

“O, don’t stir, Jack, don’t stir,” said Mr Henchy.

 

He nodded curtly to Mr Hynes and sat down on the chair which the old

man vacated.

 

“Did you serve Aungier Street?” he asked Mr O’Connor.

 

“Yes,” said Mr O’Connor, beginning to search his pockets for memoranda.

 

“Did you call on Grimes?”

 

“I did.”

 

“Well? How does he stand?”

 

“He wouldn’t promise. He said: ‘I won’t tell anyone what way I’m going

to vote.’ But I think he’ll be all right.”

 

“Why so?”

 

“He asked me who the nominators were; and I told him. I mentioned

Father Burke’s name. I think it’ll be all right.”

 

Mr Henchy began to snuffle and to rub his hands over the fire at a

terrific speed. Then he said:

 

“For the love of God, Jack, bring us a bit of coal. There must be some

left.”

 

The old man went out of the room.

 

“It’s no go,” said Mr Henchy, shaking his head. “I asked the little

shoeboy, but he said: ‘Oh, now, Mr Henchy, when I see the work going on

properly I won’t forget you, you may be sure.’ Mean little tinker!

’Usha, how could he be anything else?”

 

“What did I tell you, Mat?” said Mr Hynes. “Tricky Dicky Tierney.”

 

“O, he’s as tricky as they make ’em,” said Mr Henchy. “He hasn’t got

those little pigs’ eyes for nothing. Blast his soul! Couldn’t he pay up

like a man instead of: ‘O, now, Mr Henchy, I must speak to Mr

Fanning.... I’ve spent a lot of money’? Mean little shoeboy of hell! I

suppose he forgets the time his little old father kept the hand-me-down

shop in Mary’s Lane.”

 

“But is that a fact?” asked Mr O’Connor.

 

“God, yes,” said Mr Henchy. “Did you never hear that? And the men used

to go in on Sunday morning before the houses were open to buy a

waistcoat or a trousers—moya! But Tricky Dicky’s little old father

always had a tricky little black bottle up in a corner. Do you mind

now? That’s that. That’s where he first saw the light.”

 

The old man returned with a few lumps of coal which he placed here and

there on the fire.

 

“That’s a nice how-do-you-do,” said Mr O’Connor. “How does he expect us

to work for him if he won’t stump up?”

 

“I can’t help it,” said Mr Henchy. “I expect to find the bailiffs in

the hall when I go home.”

 

Mr Hynes laughed and, shoving himself away from the mantelpiece with

the aid of his shoulders, made ready to leave.

 

“It’ll be all right when King Eddie comes,” he said. “Well boys, I’m

off for the present. See you later. ’Bye, ’bye.”

 

He went out of the room slowly. Neither Mr Henchy nor the old man said

anything but, just as the door was closing, Mr O’Connor, who had been

staring moodily into the fire, called out suddenly:

 

“’Bye, Joe.”

 

Mr Henchy waited a few moments and then nodded in the direction of the

door.

 

“Tell me,” he said across the fire, “what brings our friend in here?

What does he want?”

 

“’Usha, poor Joe!” said Mr O’Connor, throwing the end of his cigarette

into the fire, “he’s hard up, like the rest of us.”

 

Mr Henchy snuffled vigorously and spat so copiously that he nearly put

out the fire, which uttered a hissing protest.

 

“To tell you my private and candid opinion,” he said, “I think he’s a

man from the other camp. He’s a spy of Colgan’s, if you ask me. Just go

round and try and find out how they’re getting on. They won’t suspect

you. Do you twig?”

 

“Ah, poor Joe is a decent skin,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“His father was a decent respectable man,” Mr Henchy admitted. “Poor

old Larry Hynes! Many a good turn he did in his day! But I’m greatly

afraid our friend is not nineteen carat. Damn it, I can understand a

fellow being hard up, but what I can’t understand is a fellow sponging.

Couldn’t he have some spark of manhood about him?”

 

“He doesn’t get a warm welcome from me when he comes,” said the old

man. “Let him work for his own side and not come spying around here.”

 

“I don’t know,” said Mr O’Connor dubiously, as he took out

cigarette-papers and tobacco. “I think Joe Hynes is a straight man.

He’s a clever chap, too, with the pen. Do you remember that thing he

wrote...?”

 

“Some of these hillsiders and fenians are a bit too clever if you ask

me,” said Mr Henchy. “Do you know what my private and candid opinion is

about some of those little jokers? I believe half of them are in the

pay of the Castle.”

 

“There’s no knowing,” said the old man.

 

“O, but I know it for a fact,” said Mr Henchy. “They’re Castle

hacks.... I don’t say Hynes.... No, damn it, I think he’s a stroke

above that.... But there’s a certain little nobleman with a

cock-eye—you know the patriot I’m alluding to?”

 

Mr O’Connor nodded.

 

“There’s a lineal descendant of Major Sirr for you if you like! O, the

heart’s blood of a patriot! That’s a fellow now that’d sell his country

for fourpence—ay—and go down on his bended knees and thank the Almighty

Christ he had a country to sell.”

 

There was a knock at the door.

 

“Come in!” said Mr Henchy.

 

A person resembling a poor clergyman or a poor actor appeared in the

doorway. His black clothes were tightly buttoned on his short body and

it was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman’s collar or a

layman’s, because the collar of his shabby frock-coat, the uncovered

buttons of which reflected the candlelight, was turned up about his

neck. He wore a round hat of hard black felt. His face, shining with

raindrops, had the appearance of damp yellow cheese save where two rosy

spots indicated the cheekbones. He opened his very long mouth suddenly

to express disappointment and at the same time opened wide his very

bright blue eyes to express pleasure and surprise.

 

“O Father Keon!” said Mr Henchy, jumping up from his chair. “Is that

you? Come in!”

 

“O, no, no, no!” said Father Keon quickly, pursing his lips as if he

were addressing a child.

 

“Won’t you come in and sit down?”

 

“No, no, no!” said Father Keon, speaking in a discreet indulgent

velvety voice. “Don’t let me disturb you now! I’m just looking for Mr

Fanning....”

 

“He’s round at the _Black Eagle_,” said Mr Henchy. “But won’t you come

in and sit down a minute?”

 

“No, no, thank you. It was just a little business matter,” said Father

Keon. “Thank you, indeed.”

 

He retreated from the doorway and Mr Henchy, seizing one of the

candlesticks, went to the door to light him downstairs.

 

“O, don’t trouble, I beg!”

 

“No, but the stairs is so dark.”

 

“No, no, I can see.... Thank you, indeed.”

 

“Are you right now?”

 

“All right, thanks.... Thanks.”

 

Mr Henchy returned with the candlestick and put it on the table. He sat

down again at the fire. There was silence for a few moments.

 

“Tell me, John,” said Mr O’Connor, lighting his cigarette with another

pasteboard card.

 

“Hm?”

 

“What he is exactly?”

 

“Ask me an easier one,” said Mr Henchy.

 

“Fanning and himself seem to me very thick. They’re often in Kavanagh’s

together. Is he a priest at all?”

 

“Mmmyes, I believe so.... I think he’s what you call a black sheep. We

haven’t many of them, thank God! but we have a few.... He’s an

unfortunate man of some kind....”

 

“And how does he knock it out?” asked Mr O’Connor.

 

“That’s another mystery.”

 

“Is he attached to any chapel or church or institution or——”

 

“No,” said Mr Henchy, “I think he’s travelling on his own account....

God forgive me,” he added, “I thought he was the dozen of stout.”

 

“Is there any chance of a drink itself?” asked Mr O’Connor.

 

“I’m dry too,” said the old man.

 

“I asked that little shoeboy three times,” said Mr Henchy, “would he

send up a dozen of stout. I asked him again now, but he was leaning on

the counter in his shirt-sleeves having a deep goster with Alderman

Cowley.”

 

“Why didn’t you remind him?” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“Well, I couldn’t go over while he was talking to Alderman Cowley. I

just waited till I caught his eye, and said: ‘About that little matter

I was speaking to you about....’ ‘That’ll be all right, Mr H.,’ he

said. Yerra, sure the little hop-o’-my-thumb has forgotten all about

it.”

 

“There’s some deal on in that quarter,” said Mr O’Connor thoughtfully.

“I saw the three of them hard at it yesterday at Suffolk Street

corner.”

 

“I think I know the little game they’re at,” said Mr Henchy. “You must

owe the City Fathers money nowadays if you want to be made Lord Mayor.

Then they’ll make you Lord Mayor. By God! I’m thinking seriously of

becoming a City Father myself. What do you think? Would I do for the

job?”

 

Mr O’Connor laughed.

 

“So far as owing money goes....”

 

“Driving out of the Mansion House,” said Mr Henchy, “in all my vermin,

with Jack here standing up behind me in a powdered wig—eh?”

 

“And make me your private secretary, John.”

 

“Yes. And I’ll make Father Keon my private chaplain. We’ll have a

family party.”

 

“Faith, Mr Henchy,” said the old man, “you’d keep up better style than

some of them. I was talking one day to old Keegan, the porter. ‘And how

do you like your new master, Pat?’ says I to him. ‘You haven’t much

entertaining now,’ says I. ‘Entertaining!’ says he. ‘He’d live on the

smell of an oil-rag.’ And do you know what he told me? Now, I declare

to God I didn’t believe him.”

 

“What?” said Mr Henchy and Mr O’Connor.

 

“He told me: ‘What do you think of a Lord Mayor of Dublin sending out

for a pound of chops for his dinner? How’s that for high living?’ says

he. ‘Wisha! wisha,’ says I. ‘A pound of chops,’ says he, ‘coming into

the Mansion House.’ ‘Wisha!’ says I, ‘what kind of people is going at

all now?’”

 

At this point there was a knock at the door, and a boy put in his head.

 

“What is it?” said the old man.

 

“From the _Black Eagle_,” said the boy, walking in sideways and

depositing a basket on the floor with a noise of shaken bottles.

 

The old man helped the boy to transfer the bottles from the basket to

the table and counted the full tally. After the transfer the boy put

his basket on his arm and asked:

 

“Any bottles?”

 

“What bottles?” said the old man.

 

“Won’t you let us drink them first?” said Mr Henchy.

 

“I was told to ask for the bottles.”

 

“Come back tomorrow,” said the old man.

 

“Here, boy!” said Mr Henchy, “will you run over to O’Farrell’s and ask

him to lend us a corkscrew—for Mr Henchy, say. Tell him we won’t keep

it a minute. Leave the basket there.”

 

The boy went out and Mr Henchy began to rub his hands cheerfully,

saying:

 

“Ah, well, he’s not so bad after all. He’s as good as his word,

anyhow.”

 

“There’s no tumblers,” said the old man.

 

“O, don’t let that trouble you, Jack,” said Mr Henchy. “Many’s the good

man before now drank out of the bottle.”

 

“Anyway, it’s better than nothing,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“He’s not a bad sort,” said Mr Henchy, “only Fanning has such a loan of

him. He means well, you know, in his own tinpot way.”

 

The boy came back with the corkscrew. The old man opened three bottles

and was handing back the corkscrew when Mr Henchy said to the boy:

 

“Would you like a drink, boy?”

 

“If you please, sir,” said the boy.

 

The old man opened another bottle grudgingly, and handed it to the boy.

 

“What age are you?” he asked.

 

“Seventeen,” said the boy.

 

As the old man said nothing further, the boy took the bottle and said:

“Here’s my best respects, sir,” to Mr Henchy, drank the contents, put

the bottle back on the table and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Then

he took up the corkscrew and went out of the door sideways, muttering

some form of salutation.

 

“That’s the way it begins,” said the old man.

 

“The thin edge of the wedge,” said Mr Henchy.

 

The old man distributed the three bottles which he had opened and the

men drank from them simultaneously. After having drunk each placed his

bottle on the mantelpiece within hand’s reach and drew in a long breath

of satisfaction.

 

“Well, I did a good day’s work today,” said Mr Henchy, after a pause.

 

“That so, John?”

 

“Yes. I got him one or two sure things in Dawson Street, Crofton and

myself. Between ourselves, you know, Crofton (he’s a decent chap, of

course), but he’s not worth a damn as a canvasser. He hasn’t a word to

throw to a dog. He stands and looks at the people while I do the

talking.”

 

Here two men entered the room. One of them was a very fat man whose

blue serge clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping

figure. He had a big face which resembled a young ox’s face in

expression, staring blue eyes and a grizzled moustache. The other man,

who was much younger and frailer, had a thin, clean-shaven face. He

wore a very high double collar and a wide-brimmed bowler hat.

 

“Hello, Crofton!” said Mr Henchy to the fat man. “Talk of the

devil....”

 

“Where did the boose come from?” asked the young man. “Did the cow

calve?”

 

“O, of course, Lyons spots the drink first thing!” said Mr O’Connor,

laughing.

 

“Is that the way you chaps canvass,” said Mr Lyons, “and Crofton and I

out in the cold and rain looking for votes?”

 

“Why, blast your soul,” said Mr Henchy, “I’d get more votes in five

minutes than you two’d get in a week.”

 

“Open two bottles of stout, Jack,” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“How can I?” said the old man, “when there’s no corkscrew?”

 

“Wait now, wait now!” said Mr Henchy, getting up quickly. “Did you ever

see this little trick?”

 

He took two bottles from the table and, carrying them to the fire, put

them on the hob. Then he sat down again by the fire and took another

drink from his bottle. Mr Lyons sat on the edge of the table, pushed

his hat towards the nape of his neck and began to swing his legs.

 

“Which is my bottle?” he asked.

 

“This lad,” said Mr Henchy.

 

Mr Crofton sat down on a box and looked fixedly at the other bottle on

the hob. He was silent for two reasons. The first reason, sufficient in

itself, was that he had nothing to say; the second reason was that he

considered his companions beneath him. He had been a canvasser for

Wilkins, the Conservative, but when the Conservatives had withdrawn

their man and, choosing the lesser of two evils, given their support to

the Nationalist candidate, he had been engaged to work for Mr Tierney.

 

In a few minutes an apologetic “Pok!” was heard as the cork flew out of

Mr Lyons’ bottle. Mr Lyons jumped off the table, went to the fire, took

his bottle and carried it back to the table.

 

“I was just telling them, Crofton,” said Mr Henchy, “that we got a good

few votes today.”

 

“Who did you get?” asked Mr Lyons.

 

“Well, I got Parkes for one, and I got Atkinson for two, and got Ward

of Dawson Street. Fine old chap he is, too—regular old toff, old

Conservative! ‘But isn’t your candidate a Nationalist?’ said he. ‘He’s

a respectable man,’ said I. ‘He’s in favour of whatever will benefit

this country. He’s a big ratepayer,’ I said. ‘He has extensive house

property in the city and three places of business and isn’t it to his

own advantage to keep down the rates? He’s a prominent and respected

citizen,’ said I, ‘and a Poor Law Guardian, and he doesn’t belong to

any party, good, bad, or indifferent.’ That’s the way to talk to ’em.”

 

“And what about the address to the King?” said Mr Lyons, after drinking

and smacking his lips.

 

“Listen to me,” said Mr Henchy. “What we want in this country, as I

said to old Ward, is capital. The King’s coming here will mean an

influx of money into this country. The citizens of Dublin will benefit

by it. Look at all the factories down by the quays there, idle! Look at

all the money there is in the country if we only worked the old

industries, the mills, the ship-building yards and factories. It’s

capital we want.”

 

“But look here, John,” said Mr O’Connor. “Why should we welcome the

King of England? Didn’t Parnell himself....”

 

“Parnell,” said Mr Henchy, “is dead. Now, here’s the way I look at it.

Here’s this chap come to the throne after his old mother keeping him

out of it till the man was grey. He’s a man of the world, and he means

well by us. He’s a jolly fine decent fellow, if you ask me, and no damn

nonsense about him. He just says to himself: ‘The old one never went to

see these wild Irish. By Christ, I’ll go myself and see what they’re

like.’ And are we going to insult the man when he comes over here on a

friendly visit? Eh? Isn’t that right, Crofton?”

 

Mr Crofton nodded his head.

 

“But after all now,” said Mr Lyons argumentatively, “King Edward’s

life, you know, is not the very....”

 

“Let bygones be bygones,” said Mr Henchy. “I admire the man personally.

He’s just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He’s fond of his

glass of grog and he’s a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he’s a good

sportsman. Damn it, can’t we Irish play fair?”

 

“That’s all very fine,” said Mr Lyons. “But look at the case of Parnell

now.”

 

“In the name of God,” said Mr Henchy, “where’s the analogy between the

two cases?”

 

“What I mean,” said Mr Lyons, “is we have our ideals. Why, now, would

we welcome a man like that? Do you think now after what he did Parnell

was a fit man to lead us? And why, then, would we do it for Edward the

Seventh?”

 

“This is Parnell’s anniversary,” said Mr O’Connor, “and don’t let us

stir up any bad blood. We all respect him now that he’s dead and

gone—even the Conservatives,” he added, turning to Mr Crofton.

 

Pok! The tardy cork flew out of Mr Crofton’s bottle. Mr Crofton got up

from his box and went to the fire. As he returned with his capture he

said in a deep voice:

 

“Our side of the house respects him, because he was a gentleman.”

 

“Right you are, Crofton!” said Mr Henchy fiercely. “He was the only man

that could keep that bag of cats in order. ‘Down, ye dogs! Lie down, ye

curs!’ That’s the way he treated them. Come in, Joe! Come in!” he

called out, catching sight of Mr Hynes in the doorway.

 

Mr Hynes came in slowly.

 

“Open another bottle of stout, Jack,” said Mr Henchy. “O, I forgot

there’s no corkscrew! Here, show me one here and I’ll put it at the

fire.”

 

The old man handed him another bottle and he placed it on the hob.

 

“Sit down, Joe,” said Mr O’Connor, “we’re just talking about the

Chief.”

 

“Ay, ay!” said Mr Henchy.

 

Mr Hynes sat on the side of the table near Mr Lyons but said nothing.

 

“There’s one of them, anyhow,” said Mr Henchy, “that didn’t renege him.

By God, I’ll say for you, Joe! No, by God, you stuck to him like a

man!”

 

“O, Joe,” said Mr O’Connor suddenly. “Give us that thing you wrote—do

you remember? Have you got it on you?”

 

“O, ay!” said Mr Henchy. “Give us that. Did you ever hear that,

Crofton? Listen to this now: splendid thing.”

 

“Go on,” said Mr O’Connor. “Fire away, Joe.”

 

Mr Hynes did not seem to remember at once the piece to which they were

alluding but, after reflecting a while, he said:

 

“O, that thing is it.... Sure, that’s old now.”

 

“Out with it, man!” said Mr O’Connor.

 

“’Sh, ’sh,” said Mr Henchy. “Now, Joe!”

 

Mr Hynes hesitated a little longer. Then amid the silence he took off

his hat, laid it on the table and stood up. He seemed to be rehearsing

the piece in his mind. After a rather long pause he announced:

 

     THE DEATH OF PARNELL

     6_th October_ 1891

 

 

He cleared his throat once or twice and then began to recite:

 

     He is dead. Our Uncrowned King is dead.

         O, Erin, mourn with grief and woe

     For he lies dead whom the fell gang

         Of modern hypocrites laid low.

 

     He lies slain by the coward hounds

         He raised to glory from the mire;

     And Erin’s hopes and Erin’s dreams

         Perish upon her monarch’s pyre.

 

     In palace, cabin or in cot

         The Irish heart where’er it be

     Is bowed with woe—for he is gone

         Who would have wrought her destiny.

 

     He would have had his Erin famed,

         The green flag gloriously unfurled,

     Her statesmen, bards and warriors raised

         Before the nations of the World.

 

     He dreamed (alas, ’twas but a dream!)

         Of Liberty: but as he strove

     To clutch that idol, treachery

         Sundered him from the thing he loved.

 

     Shame on the coward, caitiff hands

         That smote their Lord or with a kiss

     Betrayed him to the rabble-rout

         Of fawning priests—no friends of his.

 

     May everlasting shame consume

         The memory of those who tried

     To befoul and smear the exalted name

         Of one who spurned them in his pride.

 

     He fell as fall the mighty ones,

         Nobly undaunted to the last,

     And death has now united him

         With Erin’s heroes of the past.

 

     No sound of strife disturb his sleep!

         Calmly he rests: no human pain

     Or high ambition spurs him now

         The peaks of glory to attain.

 

     They had their way: they laid him low.

         But Erin, list, his spirit may

     Rise, like the Phœnix from the flames,

         When breaks the dawning of the day,

 

     The day that brings us Freedom’s reign.

         And on that day may Erin well

     Pledge in the cup she lifts to Joy

         One grief—the memory of Parnell.

 

 

Mr Hynes sat down again on the table. When he had finished his

recitation there was a silence and then a burst of clapping: even Mr

Lyons clapped. The applause continued for a little time. When it had

ceased all the auditors drank from their bottles in silence.

 

Pok! The cork flew out of Mr Hynes’ bottle, but Mr Hynes remained

sitting flushed and bareheaded on the table. He did not seem to have

heard the invitation.

 

“Good man, Joe!” said Mr O’Connor, taking out his cigarette papers and

pouch the better to hide his emotion.

 

“What do you think of that, Crofton?” cried Mr Henchy. “Isn’t that

fine? What?”

 

Mr Crofton said that it was a very fine piece of writing.

 

 

A MOTHER

 

Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the _Eire Abu_ Society, had been

walking up and down Dublin for nearly a month, with his hands and

pockets full of dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series of

concerts. He had a game leg and for this his friends called him Hoppy

Holohan. He walked up and down constantly, stood by the hour at street

corners arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it was Mrs

Kearney who arranged everything.

 

Miss Devlin had become Mrs Kearney out of spite. She had been educated

in a high-class convent, where she had learned French and music. As she

was naturally pale and unbending in manner she made few friends at

school. When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many

houses where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat

amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor

to brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she

met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console

her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in

secret. However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began to

loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr

Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay.

 

He was much older than she. His conversation, which was serious, took

place at intervals in his great brown beard. After the first year of

married life, Mrs Kearney perceived that such a man would wear better

than a romantic person, but she never put her own romantic ideas away.

He was sober, thrifty and pious; he went to the altar every first

Friday, sometimes with her, oftener by himself. But she never weakened

in her religion and was a good wife to him. At some party in a strange

house when she lifted her eyebrow ever so slightly he stood up to take

his leave and, when his cough troubled him, she put the eider-down

quilt over his feet and made a strong rum punch. For his part, he was a

model father. By paying a small sum every week into a society, he

ensured for both his daughters a dowry of one hundred pounds each when

they came to the age of twenty-four. He sent the elder daughter,

Kathleen, to a good convent, where she learned French and music, and

afterward paid her fees at the Academy. Every year in the month of July

Mrs Kearney found occasion to say to some friend:

 

“My good man is packing us off to Skerries for a few weeks.”

 

If it was not Skerries it was Howth or Greystones.

 

When the Irish Revival began to be appreciable Mrs Kearney determined

to take advantage of her daughter’s name and brought an Irish teacher

to the house. Kathleen and her sister sent Irish picture postcards to

their friends and these friends sent back other Irish picture

postcards. On special Sundays, when Mr Kearney went with his family to

the pro-cathedral, a little crowd of people would assemble after mass

at the corner of Cathedral Street. They were all friends of the

Kearneys—musical friends or Nationalist friends; and, when they had

played every little counter of gossip, they shook hands with one

another all together, laughing at the crossing of so many hands, and

said good-bye to one another in Irish. Soon the name of Miss Kathleen

Kearney began to be heard often on people’s lips. People said that she

was very clever at music and a very nice girl and, moreover, that she

was a believer in the language movement. Mrs Kearney was well content

at this. Therefore she was not surprised when one day Mr Holohan came

to her and proposed that her daughter should be the accompanist at a

series of four grand concerts which his Society was going to give in

the Antient Concert Rooms. She brought him into the drawing-room, made

him sit down and brought out the decanter and the silver

biscuit-barrel. She entered heart and soul into the details of the

enterprise, advised and dissuaded; and finally a contract was drawn up

by which Kathleen was to receive eight guineas for her services as

accompanist at the four grand concerts.

 

As Mr Holohan was a novice in such delicate matters as the wording of

bills and the disposing of items for a programme, Mrs Kearney helped

him. She had tact. She knew what _artistes_ should go into capitals and

what _artistes_ should go into small type. She knew that the first

tenor would not like to come on after Mr Meade’s comic turn. To keep

the audience continually diverted she slipped the doubtful items in

between the old favourites. Mr Holohan called to see her every day to

have her advice on some point. She was invariably friendly and

advising—homely, in fact. She pushed the decanter towards him, saying:

 

“Now, help yourself, Mr Holohan!”

 

And while he was helping himself she said:

 

“Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid of it!”

 

Everything went on smoothly. Mrs Kearney bought some lovely blush-pink

charmeuse in Brown Thomas’s to let into the front of Kathleen’s dress.

It cost a pretty penny; but there are occasions when a little expense

is justifiable. She took a dozen of two-shilling tickets for the final

concert and sent them to those friends who could not be trusted to come

otherwise. She forgot nothing and, thanks to her, everything that was

to be done was done.

 

The concerts were to be on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

When Mrs Kearney arrived with her daughter at the Antient Concert Rooms

on Wednesday night she did not like the look of things. A few young

men, wearing bright blue badges in their coats, stood idle in the

vestibule; none of them wore evening dress. She passed by with her

daughter and a quick glance through the open door of the hall showed

her the cause of the stewards’ idleness. At first she wondered had she

mistaken the hour. No, it was twenty minutes to eight.

 

In the dressing-room behind the stage she was introduced to the

secretary of the Society, Mr Fitzpatrick. She smiled and shook his

hand. He was a little man, with a white vacant face. She noticed that

he wore his soft brown hat carelessly on the side of his head and that

his accent was flat. He held a programme in his hand and, while he was

talking to her, he chewed one end of it into a moist pulp. He seemed to

bear disappointments lightly. Mr Holohan came into the dressing-room

every few minutes with reports from the box-office. The _artistes_

talked among themselves nervously, glanced from time to time at the

mirror and rolled and unrolled their music. When it was nearly

half-past eight, the few people in the hall began to express their

desire to be entertained. Mr Fitzpatrick came in, smiled vacantly at

the room, and said:

 

“Well now, ladies and gentlemen. I suppose we’d better open the ball.”

 

Mrs Kearney rewarded his very flat final syllable with a quick stare of

contempt, and then said to her daughter encouragingly:

 

“Are you ready, dear?”

 

When she had an opportunity, she called Mr Holohan aside and asked him

to tell her what it meant. Mr Holohan did not know what it meant. He

said that the Committee had made a mistake in arranging for four

concerts: four was too many.

 

“And the _artistes_!” said Mrs Kearney. “Of course they are doing their

best, but really they are not good.”

 

Mr Holohan admitted that the _artistes_ were no good but the Committee,

he said, had decided to let the first three concerts go as they pleased

and reserve all the talent for Saturday night. Mrs Kearney said

nothing, but, as the mediocre items followed one another on the

platform and the few people in the hall grew fewer and fewer, she began

to regret that she had put herself to any expense for such a concert.

There was something she didn’t like in the look of things and Mr

Fitzpatrick’s vacant smile irritated her very much. However, she said

nothing and waited to see how it would end. The concert expired shortly

before ten, and everyone went home quickly.

 

The concert on Thursday night was better attended, but Mrs Kearney saw

at once that the house was filled with paper. The audience behaved

indecorously, as if the concert were an informal dress rehearsal. Mr

Fitzpatrick seemed to enjoy himself; he was quite unconscious that Mrs

Kearney was taking angry note of his conduct. He stood at the edge of

the screen, from time to time jutting out his head and exchanging a

laugh with two friends in the corner of the balcony. In the course of

the evening, Mrs Kearney learned that the Friday concert was to be

abandoned and that the Committee was going to move heaven and earth to

secure a bumper house on Saturday night. When she heard this, she

sought out Mr Holohan. She buttonholed him as he was limping out

quickly with a glass of lemonade for a young lady and asked him was it

true. Yes, it was true.

 

“But, of course, that doesn’t alter the contract,” she said. “The

contract was for four concerts.”

 

Mr Holohan seemed to be in a hurry; he advised her to speak to Mr

Fitzpatrick. Mrs Kearney was now beginning to be alarmed. She called Mr

Fitzpatrick away from his screen and told him that her daughter had

signed for four concerts and that, of course, according to the terms of

the contract, she should receive the sum originally stipulated for,

whether the society gave the four concerts or not. Mr Fitzpatrick, who

did not catch the point at issue very quickly, seemed unable to resolve

the difficulty and said that he would bring the matter before the

Committee. Mrs Kearney’s anger began to flutter in her cheek and she

had all she could do to keep from asking:

 

“And who is the _Cometty_ pray?”

 

But she knew that it would not be ladylike to do that: so she was

silent.

 

Little boys were sent out into the principal streets of Dublin early on

Friday morning with bundles of handbills. Special puffs appeared in all

the evening papers, reminding the music-loving public of the treat

which was in store for it on the following evening. Mrs Kearney was

somewhat reassured, but she thought well to tell her husband part of

her suspicions. He listened carefully and said that perhaps it would be

better if he went with her on Saturday night. She agreed. She respected

her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office,

as something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small

number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male. She

was glad that he had suggested coming with her. She thought her plans

over.

 

The night of the grand concert came. Mrs Kearney, with her husband and

daughter, arrived at the Antient Concert Rooms three-quarters of an

hour before the time at which the concert was to begin. By ill luck it

was a rainy evening. Mrs Kearney placed her daughter’s clothes and

music in charge of her husband and went all over the building looking

for Mr Holohan or Mr Fitzpatrick. She could find neither. She asked the

stewards was any member of the Committee in the hall and, after a great

deal of trouble, a steward brought out a little woman named Miss Beirne

to whom Mrs Kearney explained that she wanted to see one of the

secretaries. Miss Beirne expected them any minute and asked could she

do anything. Mrs Kearney looked searchingly at the oldish face which

was screwed into an expression of trustfulness and enthusiasm and

answered:

 

“No, thank you!”

 

The little woman hoped they would have a good house. She looked out at

the rain until the melancholy of the wet street effaced all the

trustfulness and enthusiasm from her twisted features. Then she gave a

little sigh and said:

 

“Ah, well! We did our best, the dear knows.”

 

Mrs Kearney had to go back to the dressing-room.

 

The _artistes_ were arriving. The bass and the second tenor had already

come. The bass, Mr Duggan, was a slender young man with a scattered

black moustache. He was the son of a hall porter in an office in the

city and, as a boy, he had sung prolonged bass notes in the resounding

hall. From this humble state he had raised himself until he had become

a first-rate _artiste_. He had appeared in grand opera. One night, when

an operatic _artiste_ had fallen ill, he had undertaken the part of the

king in the opera of _Maritana_ at the Queen’s Theatre. He sang his

music with great feeling and volume and was warmly welcomed by the

gallery; but, unfortunately, he marred the good impression by wiping

his nose in his gloved hand once or twice out of thoughtlessness. He

was unassuming and spoke little. He said _yous_ so softly that it

passed unnoticed and he never drank anything stronger than milk for his

voice’s sake. Mr Bell, the second tenor, was a fair-haired little man

who competed every year for prizes at the Feis Ceoil. On his fourth

trial he had been awarded a bronze medal. He was extremely nervous and

extremely jealous of other tenors and he covered his nervous jealousy

with an ebullient friendliness. It was his humour to have people know

what an ordeal a concert was to him. Therefore when he saw Mr Duggan he

went over to him and asked:

 

“Are you in it too?”

 

“Yes,” said Mr Duggan.

 

Mr Bell laughed at his fellow-sufferer, held out his hand and said:

 

“Shake!”

 

Mrs Kearney passed by these two young men and went to the edge of the

screen to view the house. The seats were being filled up rapidly and a

pleasant noise circulated in the auditorium. She came back and spoke to

her husband privately. Their conversation was evidently about Kathleen

for they both glanced at her often as she stood chatting to one of her

Nationalist friends, Miss Healy, the contralto. An unknown solitary

woman with a pale face walked through the room. The women followed with

keen eyes the faded blue dress which was stretched upon a meagre body.

Someone said that she was Madam Glynn, the soprano.

 

“I wonder where did they dig her up,” said Kathleen to Miss Healy. “I’m

sure I never heard of her.”

 

Miss Healy had to smile. Mr Holohan limped into the dressing-room at

that moment and the two young ladies asked him who was the unknown

woman. Mr Holohan said that she was Madam Glynn from London. Madam

Glynn took her stand in a corner of the room, holding a roll of music

stiffly before her and from time to time changing the direction of her

startled gaze. The shadow took her faded dress into shelter but fell

revengefully into the little cup behind her collar-bone. The noise of

the hall became more audible. The first tenor and the baritone arrived

together. They were both well dressed, stout and complacent and they

brought a breath of opulence among the company.

 

Mrs Kearney brought her daughter over to them, and talked to them

amiably. She wanted to be on good terms with them but, while she strove

to be polite, her eyes followed Mr Holohan in his limping and devious

courses. As soon as she could she excused herself and went out after

him.

 

“Mr Holohan, I want to speak to you for a moment,” she said.

 

They went down to a discreet part of the corridor. Mrs Kearney asked

him when was her daughter going to be paid. Mr Holohan said that Mr

Fitzpatrick had charge of that. Mrs Kearney said that she didn’t know

anything about Mr Fitzpatrick. Her daughter had signed a contract for

eight guineas and she would have to be paid. Mr Holohan said that it

wasn’t his business.

 

“Why isn’t it your business?” asked Mrs Kearney. “Didn’t you yourself

bring her the contract? Anyway, if it’s not your business it’s my

business and I mean to see to it.”

 

“You’d better speak to Mr Fitzpatrick,” said Mr Holohan distantly.

 

“I don’t know anything about Mr Fitzpatrick,” repeated Mrs Kearney. “I

have my contract, and I intend to see that it is carried out.”

 

When she came back to the dressing-room her cheeks were slightly

suffused. The room was lively. Two men in outdoor dress had taken

possession of the fireplace and were chatting familiarly with Miss

Healy and the baritone. They were the _Freeman_ man and Mr O’Madden

Burke. The _Freeman_ man had come in to say that he could not wait for

the concert as he had to report the lecture which an American priest

was giving in the Mansion House. He said they were to leave the report

for him at the _Freeman_ office and he would see that it went in. He

was a grey-haired man, with a plausible voice and careful manners. He

held an extinguished cigar in his hand and the aroma of cigar smoke

floated near him. He had not intended to stay a moment because concerts

and _artistes_ bored him considerably but he remained leaning against

the mantelpiece. Miss Healy stood in front of him, talking and

laughing. He was old enough to suspect one reason for her politeness

but young enough in spirit to turn the moment to account. The warmth,

fragrance and colour of her body appealed to his senses. He was

pleasantly conscious that the bosom which he saw rise and fall slowly

beneath him rose and fell at that moment for him, that the laughter and

fragrance and wilful glances were his tribute. When he could stay no

longer he took leave of her regretfully.

 

“O’Madden Burke will write the notice,” he explained to Mr Holohan,

“and I’ll see it in.”

 

“Thank you very much, Mr Hendrick,” said Mr Holohan, “you’ll see it in,

I know. Now, won’t you have a little something before you go?”

 

“I don’t mind,” said Mr Hendrick.

 

The two men went along some tortuous passages and up a dark staircase

and came to a secluded room where one of the stewards was uncorking

bottles for a few gentlemen. One of these gentlemen was Mr O’Madden

Burke, who had found out the room by instinct. He was a suave, elderly

man who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk

umbrella. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon

which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely

respected.

 

While Mr Holohan was entertaining the _Freeman_ man Mrs Kearney was

speaking so animatedly to her husband that he had to ask her to lower

her voice. The conversation of the others in the dressing-room had

become strained. Mr Bell, the first item, stood ready with his music

but the accompanist made no sign. Evidently something was wrong. Mr

Kearney looked straight before him, stroking his beard, while Mrs

Kearney spoke into Kathleen’s ear with subdued emphasis. From the hall

came sounds of encouragement, clapping and stamping of feet. The first

tenor and the baritone and Miss Healy stood together, waiting

tranquilly, but Mr Bell’s nerves were greatly agitated because he was

afraid the audience would think that he had come late.

 

Mr Holohan and Mr O’Madden Burke came into the room. In a moment Mr

Holohan perceived the hush. He went over to Mrs Kearney and spoke with

her earnestly. While they were speaking the noise in the hall grew

louder. Mr Holohan became very red and excited. He spoke volubly, but

Mrs Kearney said curtly at intervals:

 

“She won’t go on. She must get her eight guineas.”

 

Mr Holohan pointed desperately towards the hall where the audience was

clapping and stamping. He appealed to Mr Kearney and to Kathleen. But

Mr Kearney continued to stroke his beard and Kathleen looked down,

moving the point of her new shoe: it was not her fault. Mrs Kearney

repeated:

 

“She won’t go on without her money.”

 

After a swift struggle of tongues Mr Holohan hobbled out in haste. The

room was silent. When the strain of the silence had become somewhat

painful Miss Healy said to the baritone:

 

“Have you seen Mrs Pat Campbell this week?”

 

The baritone had not seen her but he had been told that she was very

fine. The conversation went no further. The first tenor bent his head

and began to count the links of the gold chain which was extended

across his waist, smiling and humming random notes to observe the

effect on the frontal sinus. From time to time everyone glanced at Mrs

Kearney.

 

The noise in the auditorium had risen to a clamour when Mr Fitzpatrick

burst into the room, followed by Mr Holohan, who was panting. The

clapping and stamping in the hall were punctuated by whistling. Mr

Fitzpatrick held a few banknotes in his hand. He counted out four into

Mrs Kearney’s hand and said she would get the other half at the

interval. Mrs Kearney said:

 

“This is four shillings short.”

 

But Kathleen gathered in her skirt and said: _“Now, Mr Bell,”_ to the

first item, who was shaking like an aspen. The singer and the

accompanist went out together. The noise in hall died away. There was a

pause of a few seconds: and then the piano was heard.

 

The first part of the concert was very successful except for Madam

Glynn’s item. The poor lady sang _Killarney_ in a bodiless gasping

voice, with all the old-fashioned mannerisms of intonation and

pronunciation which she believed lent elegance to her singing. She

looked as if she had been resurrected from an old stage-wardrobe and

the cheaper parts of the hall made fun of her high wailing notes. The

first tenor and the contralto, however, brought down the house.

Kathleen played a selection of Irish airs which was generously

applauded. The first part closed with a stirring patriotic recitation

delivered by a young lady who arranged amateur theatricals. It was

deservedly applauded; and, when it was ended, the men went out for the

interval, content.

 

All this time the dressing-room was a hive of excitement. In one corner

were Mr Holohan, Mr Fitzpatrick, Miss Beirne, two of the stewards, the

baritone, the bass, and Mr O’Madden Burke. Mr O’Madden Burke said it

was the most scandalous exhibition he had ever witnessed. Miss Kathleen

Kearney’s musical career was ended in Dublin after that, he said. The

baritone was asked what did he think of Mrs Kearney’s conduct. He did

not like to say anything. He had been paid his money and wished to be

at peace with men. However, he said that Mrs Kearney might have taken

the _artistes_ into consideration. The stewards and the secretaries

debated hotly as to what should be done when the interval came.

 

“I agree with Miss Beirne,” said Mr O’Madden Burke. “Pay her nothing.”

 

In another corner of the room were Mrs Kearney and her husband, Mr

Bell, Miss Healy and the young lady who had to recite the patriotic

piece. Mrs Kearney said that the Committee had treated her

scandalously. She had spared neither trouble nor expense and this was

how she was repaid.

 

They thought they had only a girl to deal with and that, therefore,

they could ride roughshod over her. But she would show them their

mistake. They wouldn’t have dared to have treated her like that if she

had been a man. But she would see that her daughter got her rights: she

wouldn’t be fooled. If they didn’t pay her to the last farthing she

would make Dublin ring. Of course she was sorry for the sake of the

_artistes_. But what else could she do? She appealed to the second

tenor who said he thought she had not been well treated. Then she

appealed to Miss Healy. Miss Healy wanted to join the other group but

she did not like to do so because she was a great friend of Kathleen’s

and the Kearneys had often invited her to their house.

 

As soon as the first part was ended Mr Fitzpatrick and Mr Holohan went

over to Mrs Kearney and told her that the other four guineas would be

paid after the Committee meeting on the following Tuesday and that, in

case her daughter did not play for the second part, the Committee would

consider the contract broken and would pay nothing.

 

“I haven’t seen any Committee,” said Mrs Kearney angrily. “My daughter

has her contract. She will get four pounds eight into her hand or a

foot she won’t put on that platform.”

 

“I’m surprised at you, Mrs Kearney,” said Mr Holohan. “I never thought

you would treat us this way.”

 

“And what way did you treat me?” asked Mrs Kearney.

 

Her face was inundated with an angry colour and she looked as if she

would attack someone with her hands.

 

“I’m asking for my rights,” she said.

 

“You might have some sense of decency,” said Mr Holohan.

 

“Might I, indeed?... And when I ask when my daughter is going to be

paid I can’t get a civil answer.”

 

She tossed her head and assumed a haughty voice:

 

“You must speak to the secretary. It’s not my business. I’m a great

fellow fol-the-diddle-I-do.”

 

“I thought you were a lady,” said Mr Holohan, walking away from her

abruptly.

 

After that Mrs Kearney’s conduct was condemned on all hands: everyone

approved of what the Committee had done. She stood at the door, haggard

with rage, arguing with her husband and daughter, gesticulating with

them. She waited until it was time for the second part to begin in the

hope that the secretaries would approach her. But Miss Healy had kindly

consented to play one or two accompaniments. Mrs Kearney had to stand

aside to allow the baritone and his accompanist to pass up to the

platform. She stood still for an instant like an angry stone image and,

when the first notes of the song struck her ear, she caught up her

daughter’s cloak and said to her husband:

 

“Get a cab!”

 

He went out at once. Mrs Kearney wrapped the cloak round her daughter

and followed him. As she passed through the doorway she stopped and

glared into Mr Holohan’s face.

 

“I’m not done with you yet,” she said.

 

“But I’m done with you,” said Mr Holohan.

 

Kathleen followed her mother meekly. Mr Holohan began to pace up and

down the room, in order to cool himself for he felt his skin on fire.

 

“That’s a nice lady!” he said. “O, she’s a nice lady!”

 

“You did the proper thing, Holohan,” said Mr O’Madden Burke, poised

upon his umbrella in approval.

 

 

GRACE

 

Two gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him

up: but he was quite helpless. He lay curled up at the foot of the

stairs down which he had fallen. They succeeded in turning him over.

His hat had rolled a few yards away and his clothes were smeared with

the filth and ooze of the floor on which he had lain, face downwards.

His eyes were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise. A thin

stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

 

These two gentlemen and one of the curates carried him up the stairs

and laid him down again on the floor of the bar. In two minutes he was

surrounded by a ring of men. The manager of the bar asked everyone who

he was and who was with him. No one knew who he was but one of the

curates said he had served the gentleman with a small rum.

 

“Was he by himself?” asked the manager.

 

“No, sir. There was two gentlemen with him.”

 

“And where are they?”

 

No one knew; a voice said:

 

“Give him air. He’s fainted.”

 

The ring of onlookers distended and closed again elastically. A dark

medal of blood had formed itself near the man’s head on the tessellated

floor. The manager, alarmed by the grey pallor of the man’s face, sent

for a policeman.

 

His collar was unfastened and his necktie undone. He opened his eyes

for an instant, sighed and closed them again. One of gentlemen who had

carried him upstairs held a dinged silk hat in his hand. The manager

asked repeatedly did no one know who the injured man was or where had

his friends gone. The door of the bar opened and an immense constable

entered. A crowd which had followed him down the laneway collected

outside the door, struggling to look in through the glass panels.

 

The manager at once began to narrate what he knew. The constable, a

young man with thick immobile features, listened. He moved his head

slowly to right and left and from the manager to the person on the

floor, as if he feared to be the victim of some delusion. Then he drew

off his glove, produced a small book from his waist, licked the lead of

his pencil and made ready to indite. He asked in a suspicious

provincial accent:

 

“Who is the man? What’s his name and address?”

 

A young man in a cycling-suit cleared his way through the ring of

bystanders. He knelt down promptly beside the injured man and called

for water. The constable knelt down also to help. The young man washed

the blood from the injured man’s mouth and then called for some brandy.

The constable repeated the order in an authoritative voice until a

curate came running with the glass. The brandy was forced down the

man’s throat. In a few seconds he opened his eyes and looked about him.

He looked at the circle of faces and then, understanding, strove to

rise to his feet.

 

“You’re all right now?” asked the young man in the cycling-suit.

 

“Sha, ’s nothing,” said the injured man, trying to stand up.

 

He was helped to his feet. The manager said something about a hospital

and some of the bystanders gave advice. The battered silk hat was

placed on the man’s head. The constable asked:

 

“Where do you live?”

 

The man, without answering, began to twirl the ends of his moustache.

He made light of his accident. It was nothing, he said: only a little

accident. He spoke very thickly.

 

“Where do you live?” repeated the constable.

 

The man said they were to get a cab for him. While the point was being

debated a tall agile gentleman of fair complexion, wearing a long

yellow ulster, came from the far end of the bar. Seeing the spectacle,

he called out:

 

“Hallo, Tom, old man! What’s the trouble?”

 

“Sha, ’s nothing,” said the man.

 

The new-comer surveyed the deplorable figure before him and then turned

to the constable, saying:

 

“It’s all right, constable. I’ll see him home.”

 

The constable touched his helmet and answered:

 

“All right, Mr Power!”

 

“Come now, Tom,” said Mr Power, taking his friend by the arm. “No bones

broken. What? Can you walk?”

 

The young man in the cycling-suit took the man by the other arm and the

crowd divided.

 

“How did you get yourself into this mess?” asked Mr Power.

 

“The gentleman fell down the stairs,” said the young man.

 

“I’ ’ery ’uch o’liged to you, sir,” said the injured man.

 

“Not at all.”

 

“’ant we have a little...?”

 

“Not now. Not now.”

 

The three men left the bar and the crowd sifted through the doors into

the laneway. The manager brought the constable to the stairs to inspect

the scene of the accident. They agreed that the gentleman must have

missed his footing. The customers returned to the counter and a curate

set about removing the traces of blood from the floor.

 

When they came out into Grafton Street, Mr Power whistled for an

outsider. The injured man said again as well as he could:

 

“I’ ’ery ’uch o’liged to you, sir. I hope we’ll ’eet again. ’y na’e is

Kernan.”

 

The shock and the incipient pain had partly sobered him.

 

“Don’t mention it,” said the young man.

 

They shook hands. Mr Kernan was hoisted on to the car and, while Mr

Power was giving directions to the carman, he expressed his gratitude

to the young man and regretted that they could not have a little drink

together.

 

“Another time,” said the young man.

 

The car drove off towards Westmoreland Street. As it passed Ballast

Office the clock showed half-past nine. A keen east wind hit them,

blowing from the mouth of the river. Mr Kernan was huddled together

with cold. His friend asked him to tell how the accident had happened.

 

“I ’an’t, ’an,” he answered, “’y ’ongue is hurt.”

 

“Show.”

 

The other leaned over the well of the car and peered into Mr Kernan’s

mouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the

shell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Kernan opened

obediently. The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and

from the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with

clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been

bitten off. The match was blown out.

 

“That’s ugly,” said Mr Power.

 

“Sha, ’s nothing,” said Mr Kernan, closing his mouth and pulling the

collar of his filthy coat across his neck.

 

Mr Kernan was a commercial traveller of the old school which believed

in the dignity of its calling. He had never been seen in the city

without a silk hat of some decency and a pair of gaiters. By grace of

these two articles of clothing, he said, a man could always pass

muster. He carried on the tradition of his Napoleon, the great

Blackwhite, whose memory he evoked at times by legend and mimicry.

Modern business methods had spared him only so far as to allow him a

little office in Crowe Street on the window blind of which was written

the name of his firm with the address—London, E.C. On the mantelpiece

of this little office a little leaden battalion of canisters was drawn

up and on the table before the window stood four or five china bowls

which were usually half full of a black liquid. From these bowls Mr

Kernan tasted tea. He took a mouthful, drew it up, saturated his palate

with it and then spat it forth into the grate. Then he paused to judge.

 

Mr Power, a much younger man, was employed in the Royal Irish

Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle. The arc of his social rise

intersected the arc of his friend’s decline, but Mr Kernan’s decline

was mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known

him at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character.

Mr Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword

in his circle; he was a debonair young man.

 

The car halted before a small house on the Glasnevin road and Mr Kernan

was helped into the house. His wife put him to bed while Mr Power sat

downstairs in the kitchen asking the children where they went to school

and what book they were in. The children—two girls and a boy, conscious

of their father’s helplessness and of their mother’s absence, began

some horseplay with him. He was surprised at their manners and at their

accents, and his brow grew thoughtful. After a while Mrs Kernan entered

the kitchen, exclaiming:

 

“Such a sight! O, he’ll do for himself one day and that’s the holy alls

of it. He’s been drinking since Friday.”

 

Mr Power was careful to explain to her that he was not responsible,

that he had come on the scene by the merest accident. Mrs Kernan,

remembering Mr Power’s good offices during domestic quarrels, as well

as many small, but opportune loans, said:

 

“O, you needn’t tell me that, Mr Power. I know you’re a friend of his,

not like some of the others he does be with. They’re all right so long

as he has money in his pocket to keep him out from his wife and family.

Nice friends! Who was he with tonight, I’d like to know?”

 

Mr Power shook his head but said nothing.

 

“I’m so sorry,” she continued, “that I’ve nothing in the house to offer

you. But if you wait a minute I’ll send round to Fogarty’s at the

corner.”

 

Mr Power stood up.

 

“We were waiting for him to come home with the money. He never seems to

think he has a home at all.”

 

“O, now, Mrs Kernan,” said Mr Power, “we’ll make him turn over a new

leaf. I’ll talk to Martin. He’s the man. We’ll come here one of these

nights and talk it over.”

 

She saw him to the door. The carman was stamping up and down the

footpath, and swinging his arms to warm himself.

 

“It’s very kind of you to bring him home,” she said.

 

“Not at all,” said Mr Power.

 

He got up on the car. As it drove off he raised his hat to her gaily.

 

“We’ll make a new man of him,” he said. “Good-night, Mrs Kernan.”

 

 

Mrs Kernan’s puzzled eyes watched the car till it was out of sight.

Then she withdrew them, went into the house and emptied her husband’s

pockets.

 

She was an active, practical woman of middle age. Not long before she

had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her

husband by waltzing with him to Mr Power’s accompaniment. In her days

of courtship Mr Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and

she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported

and, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had

passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the

arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat

and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon

his other arm. After three weeks she had found a wife’s life irksome

and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had

become a mother. The part of mother presented to her no insuperable

difficulties and for twenty-five years she had kept house shrewdly for

her husband. Her two eldest sons were launched. One was in a draper’s

shop in Glasgow and the other was clerk to a tea-merchant in Belfast.

They were good sons, wrote regularly and sometimes sent home money. The

other children were still at school.

 

Mr Kernan sent a letter to his office next day and remained in bed. She

made beef-tea for him and scolded him roundly. She accepted his

frequent intemperance as part of the climate, healed him dutifully

whenever he was sick and always tried to make him eat a breakfast.

There were worse husbands. He had never been violent since the boys had

grown up and she knew that he would walk to the end of Thomas Street

and back again to book even a small order.

 

Two nights after his friends came to see him. She brought them up to

his bedroom, the air of which was impregnated with a personal odour,

and gave them chairs at the fire. Mr Kernan’s tongue, the occasional

stinging pain of which had made him somewhat irritable during the day,

became more polite. He sat propped up in the bed by pillows and the

little colour in his puffy cheeks made them resemble warm cinders. He

apologised to his guests for the disorder of the room, but at the same

time looked at them a little proudly, with a veteran’s pride.

 

He was quite unconscious that he was the victim of a plot which his

friends, Mr Cunningham, Mr M’Coy and Mr Power had disclosed to Mrs

Kernan in the parlour. The idea had been Mr Power’s but its development

was entrusted to Mr Cunningham. Mr Kernan came of Protestant stock and,

though he had been converted to the Catholic faith at the time of his

marriage, he had not been in the pale of the Church for twenty years.

He was fond, moreover, of giving side-thrusts at Catholicism.

 

Mr Cunningham was the very man for such a case. He was an elder

colleague of Mr Power. His own domestic life was not very happy. People

had great sympathy with him for it was known that he had married an

unpresentable woman who was an incurable drunkard. He had set up house

for her six times; and each time she had pawned the furniture on him.

 

Everyone had respect for poor Martin Cunningham. He was a thoroughly

sensible man, influential and intelligent. His blade of human

knowledge, natural astuteness particularised by long association with

cases in the police courts, had been tempered by brief immersions in

the waters of general philosophy. He was well informed. His friends

bowed to his opinions and considered that his face was like

Shakespeare’s.

 

When the plot had been disclosed to her, Mrs Kernan had said:

 

“I leave it all in your hands, Mr Cunningham.”

 

After a quarter of a century of married life, she had very few

illusions left. Religion for her was a habit and she suspected that a

man of her husband’s age would not change greatly before death. She was

tempted to see a curious appropriateness in his accident and, but that

she did not wish to seem bloody-minded, she would have told the

gentlemen that Mr Kernan’s tongue would not suffer by being shortened.

However, Mr Cunningham was a capable man; and religion was religion.

The scheme might do good and, at least, it could do no harm. Her

beliefs were not extravagant. She believed steadily in the Sacred Heart

as the most generally useful of all Catholic devotions and approved of

the sacraments. Her faith was bounded by her kitchen but, if she was

put to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost.

 

The gentlemen began to talk of the accident. Mr Cunningham said that he

had once known a similar case. A man of seventy had bitten off a piece

of his tongue during an epileptic fit and the tongue had filled in

again so that no one could see a trace of the bite.

 

“Well, I’m not seventy,” said the invalid.

 

“God forbid,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

“It doesn’t pain you now?” asked Mr M’Coy.

 

Mr M’Coy had been at one time a tenor of some reputation. His wife, who

had been a soprano, still taught young children to play the piano at

low terms. His line of life had not been the shortest distance between

two points and for short periods he had been driven to live by his

wits. He had been a clerk in the Midland Railway, a canvasser for

advertisements for _The Irish Times_ and for _The Freeman’s Journal_, a

town traveller for a coal firm on commission, a private inquiry agent,

a clerk in the office of the Sub-Sheriff and he had recently become

secretary to the City Coroner. His new office made him professionally

interested in Mr Kernan’s case.

 

“Pain? Not much,” answered Mr Kernan. “But it’s so sickening. I feel as

if I wanted to retch off.”

 

“That’s the boose,” said Mr Cunningham firmly.

 

“No,” said Mr Kernan. “I think I caught a cold on the car. There’s

something keeps coming into my throat, phlegm or——”

 

“Mucus.” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“It keeps coming like from down in my throat; sickening thing.”

 

“Yes, yes,” said Mr M’Coy, “that’s the thorax.”

 

He looked at Mr Cunningham and Mr Power at the same time with an air of

challenge. Mr Cunningham nodded his head rapidly and Mr Power said:

 

“Ah, well, all’s well that ends well.”

 

“I’m very much obliged to you, old man,” said the invalid.

 

Mr Power waved his hand.

 

“Those other two fellows I was with——”

 

“Who were you with?” asked Mr Cunningham.

 

“A chap. I don’t know his name. Damn it now, what’s his name? Little

chap with sandy hair....”

 

“And who else?”

 

“Harford.”

 

“Hm,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

When Mr Cunningham made that remark, people were silent. It was known

that the speaker had secret sources of information. In this case the

monosyllable had a moral intention. Mr Harford sometimes formed one of

a little detachment which left the city shortly after noon on Sunday

with the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at some public-house

on the outskirts of the city where its members duly qualified

themselves as _bona fide_ travellers. But his fellow-travellers had

never consented to overlook his origin. He had begun life as an obscure

financier by lending small sums of money to workmen at usurious

interest. Later on he had become the partner of a very fat short

gentleman, Mr Goldberg, in the Liffey Loan Bank. Though he had never

embraced more than the Jewish ethical code his fellow-Catholics,

whenever they had smarted in person or by proxy under his exactions,

spoke of him bitterly as an Irish Jew and an illiterate and saw divine

disapproval of usury made manifest through the person of his idiot son.

At other times they remembered his good points.

 

“I wonder where did he go to,” said Mr Kernan.

 

He wished the details of the incident to remain vague. He wished his

friends to think there had been some mistake, that Mr Harford and he

had missed each other. His friends, who knew quite well Mr Harford’s

manners in drinking, were silent. Mr Power said again:

 

“All’s well that ends well.”

 

Mr Kernan changed the subject at once.

 

“That was a decent young chap, that medical fellow,” he said. “Only for

him——”

 

“O, only for him,” said Mr Power, “it might have been a case of seven

days, without the option of a fine.”

 

“Yes, yes,” said Mr Kernan, trying to remember. “I remember now there

was a policeman. Decent young fellow, he seemed. How did it happen at

all?”

 

“It happened that you were peloothered, Tom,” said Mr Cunningham

gravely.

 

“True bill,” said Mr Kernan, equally gravely.

 

“I suppose you squared the constable, Jack,” said Mr M’Coy.

 

Mr Power did not relish the use of his Christian name. He was not

straight-laced, but he could not forget that Mr M’Coy had recently made

a crusade in search of valises and portmanteaus to enable Mrs M’Coy to

fulfil imaginary engagements in the country. More than he resented the

fact that he had been victimised he resented such low playing of the

game. He answered the question, therefore, as if Mr Kernan had asked

it.

 

The narrative made Mr Kernan indignant. He was keenly conscious of his

citizenship, wished to live with his city on terms mutually honourable

and resented any affront put upon him by those whom he called country

bumpkins.

 

“Is this what we pay rates for?” he asked. “To feed and clothe these

ignorant bostooms ... and they’re nothing else.”

 

Mr Cunningham laughed. He was a Castle official only during office

hours.

 

“How could they be anything else, Tom?” he said.

 

He assumed a thick provincial accent and said in a tone of command:

 

“65, catch your cabbage!”

 

Everyone laughed. Mr M’Coy, who wanted to enter the conversation by any

door, pretended that he had never heard the story. Mr Cunningham said:

 

“It is supposed—they say, you know—to take place in the depot where

they get these thundering big country fellows, omadhauns, you know, to

drill. The sergeant makes them stand in a row against the wall and hold

up their plates.”

 

He illustrated the story by grotesque gestures.

 

“At dinner, you know. Then he has a bloody big bowl of cabbage before

him on the table and a bloody big spoon like a shovel. He takes up a

wad of cabbage on the spoon and pegs it across the room and the poor

devils have to try and catch it on their plates: 65, _catch your

cabbage_.”

 

Everyone laughed again: but Mr Kernan was somewhat indignant still. He

talked of writing a letter to the papers.

 

“These yahoos coming up here,” he said, “think they can boss the

people. I needn’t tell you, Martin, what kind of men they are.”

 

Mr Cunningham gave a qualified assent.

 

“It’s like everything else in this world,” he said. “You get some bad

ones and you get some good ones.”

 

“O yes, you get some good ones, I admit,” said Mr Kernan, satisfied.

 

“It’s better to have nothing to say to them,” said Mr M’Coy. “That’s my

opinion!”

 

Mrs Kernan entered the room and, placing a tray on the table, said:

 

“Help yourselves, gentlemen.”

 

Mr Power stood up to officiate, offering her his chair. She declined

it, saying she was ironing downstairs, and, after having exchanged a

nod with Mr Cunningham behind Mr Power’s back, prepared to leave the

room. Her husband called out to her:

 

“And have you nothing for me, duckie?”

 

“O, you! The back of my hand to you!” said Mrs Kernan tartly.

 

Her husband called after her:

 

“Nothing for poor little hubby!”

 

He assumed such a comical face and voice that the distribution of the

bottles of stout took place amid general merriment.

 

The gentlemen drank from their glasses, set the glasses again on the

table and paused. Then Mr Cunningham turned towards Mr Power and said

casually:

 

“On Thursday night, you said, Jack.”

 

“Thursday, yes,” said Mr Power.

 

“Righto!” said Mr Cunningham promptly.

 

“We can meet in M’Auley’s,” said Mr M’Coy. “That’ll be the most

convenient place.”

 

“But we mustn’t be late,” said Mr Power earnestly, “because it is sure

to be crammed to the doors.”

 

“We can meet at half-seven,” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“Righto!” said Mr Cunningham.

 

“Half-seven at M’Auley’s be it!”

 

There was a short silence. Mr Kernan waited to see whether he would be

taken into his friends’ confidence. Then he asked:

 

“What’s in the wind?”

 

“O, it’s nothing,” said Mr Cunningham. “It’s only a little matter that

we’re arranging about for Thursday.”

 

“The opera, is it?” said Mr Kernan.

 

“No, no,” said Mr Cunningham in an evasive tone, “it’s just a little

... spiritual matter.”

 

“O,” said Mr Kernan.

 

There was silence again. Then Mr Power said, point blank:

 

“To tell you the truth, Tom, we’re going to make a retreat.”

 

“Yes, that’s it,” said Mr Cunningham, “Jack and I and M’Coy here—we’re

all going to wash the pot.”

 

He uttered the metaphor with a certain homely energy and, encouraged by

his own voice, proceeded:

 

“You see, we may as well all admit we’re a nice collection of

scoundrels, one and all. I say, one and all,” he added with gruff

charity and turning to Mr Power. “Own up now!”

 

“I own up,” said Mr Power.

 

“And I own up,” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“So we’re going to wash the pot together,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

A thought seemed to strike him. He turned suddenly to the invalid and

said:

 

“D’ye know what, Tom, has just occurred to me? You might join in and

we’d have a four-handed reel.”

 

“Good idea,” said Mr Power. “The four of us together.”

 

Mr Kernan was silent. The proposal conveyed very little meaning to his

mind but, understanding that some spiritual agencies were about to

concern themselves on his behalf, he thought he owed it to his dignity

to show a stiff neck. He took no part in the conversation for a long

while but listened, with an air of calm enmity, while his friends

discussed the Jesuits.

 

“I haven’t such a bad opinion of the Jesuits,” he said, intervening at

length. “They’re an educated order. I believe they mean well too.”

 

“They’re the grandest order in the Church, Tom,” said Mr Cunningham,

with enthusiasm. “The General of the Jesuits stands next to the Pope.”

 

“There’s no mistake about it,” said Mr M’Coy, “if you want a thing well

done and no flies about it you go to a Jesuit. They’re the boyos have

influence. I’ll tell you a case in point....”

 

“The Jesuits are a fine body of men,” said Mr Power.

 

“It’s a curious thing,” said Mr Cunningham, “about the Jesuit Order.

Every other order of the Church had to be reformed at some time or

other but the Jesuit Order was never once reformed. It never fell

away.”

 

“Is that so?” asked Mr M’Coy.

 

“That’s a fact,” said Mr Cunningham. “That’s history.”

 

“Look at their church, too,” said Mr Power. “Look at the congregation

they have.”

 

“The Jesuits cater for the upper classes,” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“Of course,” said Mr Power.

 

“Yes,” said Mr Kernan. “That’s why I have a feeling for them. It’s some

of those secular priests, ignorant, bumptious——”

 

“They’re all good men,” said Mr Cunningham, “each in his own way. The

Irish priesthood is honoured all the world over.”

 

“O yes,” said Mr Power.

 

“Not like some of the other priesthoods on the continent,” said Mr

M’Coy, “unworthy of the name.”

 

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Mr Kernan, relenting.

 

“Of course I’m right,” said Mr Cunningham. “I haven’t been in the world

all this time and seen most sides of it without being a judge of

character.”

 

The gentlemen drank again, one following another’s example. Mr Kernan

seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He was impressed. He had a

high opinion of Mr Cunningham as a judge of character and as a reader

of faces. He asked for particulars.

 

“O, it’s just a retreat, you know,” said Mr Cunningham. “Father Purdon

is giving it. It’s for business men, you know.”

 

“He won’t be too hard on us, Tom,” said Mr Power persuasively.

 

“Father Purdon? Father Purdon?” said the invalid.

 

“O, you must know him, Tom,” said Mr Cunningham stoutly. “Fine jolly

fellow! He’s a man of the world like ourselves.”

 

“Ah, ... yes. I think I know him. Rather red face; tall.”

 

“That’s the man.”

 

“And tell me, Martin.... Is he a good preacher?”

 

“Munno.... It’s not exactly a sermon, you know. It’s just kind of a

friendly talk, you know, in a common-sense way.”

 

Mr Kernan deliberated. Mr M’Coy said:

 

“Father Tom Burke, that was the boy!”

 

“O, Father Tom Burke,” said Mr Cunningham, “that was a born orator. Did

you ever hear him, Tom?”

 

“Did I ever hear him!” said the invalid, nettled. “Rather! I heard

him....”

 

“And yet they say he wasn’t much of a theologian,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

“Is that so?” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“O, of course, nothing wrong, you know. Only sometimes, they say, he

didn’t preach what was quite orthodox.”

 

“Ah! ... he was a splendid man,” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“I heard him once,” Mr Kernan continued. “I forget the subject of his

discourse now. Crofton and I were in the back of the ... pit, you know

... the——”

 

“The body,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

“Yes, in the back near the door. I forget now what.... O yes, it was on

the Pope, the late Pope. I remember it well. Upon my word it was

magnificent, the style of the oratory. And his voice! God! hadn’t he a

voice! _The Prisoner of the Vatican_, he called him. I remember Crofton

saying to me when we came out——”

 

“But he’s an Orangeman, Crofton, isn’t he?” said Mr Power.

 

“‘Course he is,” said Mr Kernan, “and a damned decent Orangeman too. We

went into Butler’s in Moore Street—faith, I was genuinely moved, tell

you the God’s truth—and I remember well his very words. _Kernan_, he

said, _we worship at different altars_, he said, _but our belief is the

same_. Struck me as very well put.”

 

“There’s a good deal in that,” said Mr Power. “There used always to be

crowds of Protestants in the chapel where Father Tom was preaching.”

 

“There’s not much difference between us,” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“We both believe in——”

 

He hesitated for a moment.

 

“... in the Redeemer. Only they don’t believe in the Pope and in the

mother of God.”

 

“But, of course,” said Mr Cunningham quietly and effectively, “our

religion is _the_ religion, the old, original faith.”

 

“Not a doubt of it,” said Mr Kernan warmly.

 

Mrs Kernan came to the door of the bedroom and announced:

 

“Here’s a visitor for you!”

 

“Who is it?”

 

“Mr Fogarty.”

 

“O, come in! come in!”

 

A pale oval face came forward into the light. The arch of its fair

trailing moustache was repeated in the fair eyebrows looped above

pleasantly astonished eyes. Mr Fogarty was a modest grocer. He had

failed in business in a licensed house in the city because his

financial condition had constrained him to tie himself to second-class

distillers and brewers. He had opened a small shop on Glasnevin Road

where, he flattered himself, his manners would ingratiate him with the

housewives of the district. He bore himself with a certain grace,

complimented little children and spoke with a neat enunciation. He was

not without culture.

 

Mr Fogarty brought a gift with him, a half-pint of special whisky. He

inquired politely for Mr Kernan, placed his gift on the table and sat

down with the company on equal terms. Mr Kernan appreciated the gift

all the more since he was aware that there was a small account for

groceries unsettled between him and Mr Fogarty. He said:

 

“I wouldn’t doubt you, old man. Open that, Jack, will you?”

 

Mr Power again officiated. Glasses were rinsed and five small measures

of whisky were poured out. This new influence enlivened the

conversation. Mr Fogarty, sitting on a small area of the chair, was

specially interested.

 

“Pope Leo XIII.,” said Mr Cunningham, “was one of the lights of the

age. His great idea, you know, was the union of the Latin and Greek

Churches. That was the aim of his life.”

 

“I often heard he was one of the most intellectual men in Europe,” said

Mr Power. “I mean, apart from his being Pope.”

 

“So he was,” said Mr Cunningham, “if not _the_ most so. His motto, you

know, as Pope, was _Lux upon Lux—Light upon Light_.”

 

“No, no,” said Mr Fogarty eagerly. “I think you’re wrong there. It was

_Lux in Tenebris_, I think—_Light in Darkness_.”

 

“O yes,” said Mr M’Coy, “_Tenebrae_.”

 

“Allow me,” said Mr Cunningham positively, “it was _Lux upon Lux_. And

Pius IX. his predecessor’s motto was _Crux upon Crux_—that is, _Cross

upon Cross_—to show the difference between their two pontificates.”

 

The inference was allowed. Mr Cunningham continued.

 

“Pope Leo, you know, was a great scholar and a poet.”

 

“He had a strong face,” said Mr Kernan.

 

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham. “He wrote Latin poetry.”

 

“Is that so?” said Mr Fogarty.

 

Mr M’Coy tasted his whisky contentedly and shook his head with a double

intention, saying:

 

“That’s no joke, I can tell you.”

 

“We didn’t learn that, Tom,” said Mr Power, following Mr M’Coy’s

example, “when we went to the penny-a-week school.”

 

“There was many a good man went to the penny-a-week school with a sod

of turf under his oxter,” said Mr Kernan sententiously. “The old system

was the best: plain honest education. None of your modern trumpery....”

 

“Quite right,” said Mr Power.

 

“No superfluities,” said Mr Fogarty.

 

He enunciated the word and then drank gravely.

 

“I remember reading,” said Mr Cunningham, “that one of Pope Leo’s poems

was on the invention of the photograph—in Latin, of course.”

 

“On the photograph!” exclaimed Mr Kernan.

 

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

He also drank from his glass.

 

“Well, you know,” said Mr M’Coy, “isn’t the photograph wonderful when

you come to think of it?”

 

“O, of course,” said Mr Power, “great minds can see things.”

 

“As the poet says: _Great minds are very near to madness_,” said Mr

Fogarty.

 

Mr Kernan seemed to be troubled in mind. He made an effort to recall

the Protestant theology on some thorny points and in the end addressed

Mr Cunningham.

 

“Tell me, Martin,” he said. “Weren’t some of the popes—of course, not

our present man, or his predecessor, but some of the old popes—not

exactly ... you know ... up to the knocker?”

 

There was a silence. Mr Cunningham said:

 

“O, of course, there were some bad lots.... But the astonishing thing

is this. Not one of them, not the biggest drunkard, not the most ...

out-and-out ruffian, not one of them ever preached _ex cathedra_ a word

of false doctrine. Now isn’t that an astonishing thing?”

 

“That is,” said Mr Kernan.

 

“Yes, because when the Pope speaks _ex cathedra_,” Mr Fogarty

explained, “he is infallible.”

 

“Yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

“O, I know about the infallibility of the Pope. I remember I was

younger then.... Or was it that——?”

 

Mr Fogarty interrupted. He took up the bottle and helped the others to

a little more. Mr M’Coy, seeing that there was not enough to go round,

pleaded that he had not finished his first measure. The others accepted

under protest. The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an

agreeable interlude.

 

“What’s that you were saying, Tom?” asked Mr M’Coy.

 

“Papal infallibility,” said Mr Cunningham, “that was the greatest scene

in the whole history of the Church.”

 

“How was that, Martin?” asked Mr Power.

 

Mr Cunningham held up two thick fingers.

 

“In the sacred college, you know, of cardinals and archbishops and

bishops there were two men who held out against it while the others

were all for it. The whole conclave except these two was unanimous. No!

They wouldn’t have it!”

 

“Ha!” said Mr M’Coy.

 

“And they were a German cardinal by the name of Dolling ... or Dowling

... or——”

 

“Dowling was no German, and that’s a sure five,” said Mr Power,

laughing.

 

“Well, this great German cardinal, whatever his name was, was one; and

the other was John MacHale.”

 

“What?” cried Mr Kernan. “Is it John of Tuam?”

 

“Are you sure of that now?” asked Mr Fogarty dubiously. “I thought it

was some Italian or American.”

 

“John of Tuam,” repeated Mr Cunningham, “was the man.”

 

He drank and the other gentlemen followed his lead. Then he resumed:

 

“There they were at it, all the cardinals and bishops and archbishops

from all the ends of the earth and these two fighting dog and devil

until at last the Pope himself stood up and declared infallibility a

dogma of the Church _ex cathedra_. On the very moment John MacHale, who

had been arguing and arguing against it, stood up and shouted out with

the voice of a lion: ‘_Credo!_’”

 

“_I believe!_” said Mr Fogarty.

 

“_Credo!_” said Mr Cunningham. “That showed the faith he had. He

submitted the moment the Pope spoke.”

 

“And what about Dowling?” asked Mr M’Coy.

 

“The German cardinal wouldn’t submit. He left the church.”

 

Mr Cunningham’s words had built up the vast image of the church in the

minds of his hearers. His deep raucous voice had thrilled them as it

uttered the word of belief and submission. When Mrs Kernan came into

the room drying her hands she came into a solemn company. She did not

disturb the silence, but leaned over the rail at the foot of the bed.

 

“I once saw John MacHale,” said Mr Kernan, “and I’ll never forget it as

long as I live.”

 

He turned towards his wife to be confirmed.

 

“I often told you that?”

 

Mrs Kernan nodded.

 

“It was at the unveiling of Sir John Gray’s statue. Edmund Dwyer Gray

was speaking, blathering away, and here was this old fellow,

crabbed-looking old chap, looking at him from under his bushy

eyebrows.”

 

Mr Kernan knitted his brows and, lowering his head like an angry bull,

glared at his wife.

 

“God!” he exclaimed, resuming his natural face, “I never saw such an

eye in a man’s head. It was as much as to say: _I have you properly

taped, my lad_. He had an eye like a hawk.”

 

“None of the Grays was any good,” said Mr Power.

 

There was a pause again. Mr Power turned to Mrs Kernan and said with

abrupt joviality:

 

“Well, Mrs Kernan, we’re going to make your man here a good holy pious

and God-fearing Roman Catholic.”

 

He swept his arm round the company inclusively.

 

“We’re all going to make a retreat together and confess our sins—and

God knows we want it badly.”

 

“I don’t mind,” said Mr Kernan, smiling a little nervously.

 

Mrs Kernan thought it would be wiser to conceal her satisfaction. So

she said:

 

“I pity the poor priest that has to listen to your tale.”

 

Mr Kernan’s expression changed.

 

“If he doesn’t like it,” he said bluntly, “he can ... do the other

thing. I’ll just tell him my little tale of woe. I’m not such a bad

fellow——”

 

Mr Cunningham intervened promptly.

 

“We’ll all renounce the devil,” he said, “together, not forgetting his

works and pomps.”

 

“Get behind me, Satan!” said Mr Fogarty, laughing and looking at the

others.

 

Mr Power said nothing. He felt completely out-generalled. But a pleased

expression flickered across his face.

 

“All we have to do,” said Mr Cunningham, “is to stand up with lighted

candles in our hands and renew our baptismal vows.”

 

“O, don’t forget the candle, Tom,” said Mr M’Coy, “whatever you do.”

 

“What?” said Mr Kernan. “Must I have a candle?”

 

“O yes,” said Mr Cunningham.

 

“No, damn it all,” said Mr Kernan sensibly, “I draw the line there.

I’ll do the job right enough. I’ll do the retreat business and

confession, and ... all that business. But ... no candles! No, damn it

all, I bar the candles!”

 

He shook his head with farcical gravity.

 

“Listen to that!” said his wife.

 

“I bar the candles,” said Mr Kernan, conscious of having created an

effect on his audience and continuing to shake his head to and fro. “I

bar the magic-lantern business.”

 

Everyone laughed heartily.

 

“There’s a nice Catholic for you!” said his wife.

 

“No candles!” repeated Mr Kernan obdurately. “That’s off!”

 

 

The transept of the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street was almost full;

and still at every moment gentlemen entered from the side door and,

directed by the lay-brother, walked on tiptoe along the aisles until

they found seating accommodation. The gentlemen were all well dressed

and orderly. The light of the lamps of the church fell upon an assembly

of black clothes and white collars, relieved here and there by tweeds,

on dark mottled pillars of green marble and on lugubrious canvases. The

gentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly

above their knees and laid their hats in security. They sat well back

and gazed formally at the distant speck of red light which was

suspended before the high altar.

 

In one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr Cunningham and Mr Kernan.

In the bench behind sat Mr M’Coy alone: and in the bench behind him sat

Mr Power and Mr Fogarty. Mr M’Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find a

place in the bench with the others and, when the party had settled down

in the form of a quincunx, he had tried unsuccessfully to make comic

remarks. As these had not been well received he had desisted. Even he

was sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to respond to

the religious stimulus. In a whisper Mr Cunningham drew Mr Kernan’s

attention to Mr Harford, the moneylender, who sat some distance off,

and to Mr Fanning, the registration agent and mayor maker of the city,

who was sitting immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly

elected councillors of the ward. To the right sat old Michael Grimes,

the owner of three pawnbroker’s shops, and Dan Hogan’s nephew, who was

up for the job in the Town Clerk’s office. Farther in front sat Mr

Hendrick, the chief reporter of _The Freeman’s Journal_, and poor

O’Carroll, an old friend of Mr Kernan’s, who had been at one time a

considerable commercial figure. Gradually, as he recognised familiar

faces, Mr Kernan began to feel more at home. His hat, which had been

rehabilitated by his wife, rested upon his knees. Once or twice he

pulled down his cuffs with one hand while he held the brim of his hat

lightly, but firmly, with the other hand.

 

A powerful-looking figure, the upper part of which was draped with a

white surplice, was observed to be struggling up into the pulpit.

Simultaneously the congregation unsettled, produced handkerchiefs and

knelt upon them with care. Mr Kernan followed the general example. The

priest’s figure now stood upright in the pulpit, two-thirds of its

bulk, crowned by a massive red face, appearing above the balustrade.

 

Father Purdon knelt down, turned towards the red speck of light and,

covering his face with his hands, prayed. After an interval, he

uncovered his face and rose. The congregation rose also and settled

again on its benches. Mr Kernan restored his hat to its original

position on his knee and presented an attentive face to the preacher.

The preacher turned back each wide sleeve of his surplice with an

elaborate large gesture and slowly surveyed the array of faces. Then he

said:

 

 

_“For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the

children of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the

mammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into

everlasting dwellings.”_

 

 

Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of

the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret

properly. It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at

variance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ.

But, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him specially adapted

for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the

world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of

worldlings. It was a text for business men and professional men. Jesus

Christ, with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human

nature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life,

that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world and, to

a certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to

give them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the

religious life those very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the

least solicitous in matters religious.

 

He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying,

no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his

fellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them

in a businesslike way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was

their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his

hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if

they tallied accurately with conscience.

 

Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little

failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood

the temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time

to time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But

one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to

be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every

point to say:

 

“Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.”

 

But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the

truth, to be frank and say like a man:

 

“Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this

wrong. But, with God’s grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set

right my accounts.”

 

 

THE DEAD

 

Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly

had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office

on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the

wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the

bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not

to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought

of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies’

dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and

laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the

stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask

her who had come.

 

It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.

Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends

of the family, the members of Julia’s choir, any of Kate’s pupils that

were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane’s pupils too. Never

once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in

splendid style as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and

Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in

Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them

in the dark gaunt house on Usher’s Island, the upper part of which they

had rented from Mr Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor. That

was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a

little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household,

for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the

Academy and gave a pupils’ concert every year in the upper room of the

Antient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class

families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts

also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the

leading soprano in Adam and Eve’s, and Kate, being too feeble to go

about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in

the back room. Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, did housemaid’s work for

them. Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the

best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the

best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders so

that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that

was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers.

 

Of course they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it

was long after ten o’clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his

wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn

up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane’s

pupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it

was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late

but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what

brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel

or Freddy come.

 

“O, Mr Conroy,” said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him,

“Miss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good-night,

Mrs Conroy.”

 

“I’ll engage they did,” said Gabriel, “but they forget that my wife

here takes three mortal hours to dress herself.”

 

He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily

led his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out:

 

“Miss Kate, here’s Mrs Conroy.”

 

Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them

kissed Gabriel’s wife, said she must be perished alive and asked was

Gabriel with her.

 

“Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I’ll follow,”

called out Gabriel from the dark.

 

He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went

upstairs, laughing, to the ladies’ dressing-room. A light fringe of

snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps

on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat

slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a

cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.

 

“Is it snowing again, Mr Conroy?” asked Lily.

 

She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat.

Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and

glanced at her. She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and

with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still

paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on

the lowest step nursing a rag doll.

 

“Yes, Lily,” he answered, “and I think we’re in for a night of it.”

 

He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping

and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the

piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat

carefully at the end of a shelf.

 

“Tell me, Lily,” he said in a friendly tone, “do you still go to

school?”

 

“O no, sir,” she answered. “I’m done schooling this year and more.”

 

“O, then,” said Gabriel gaily, “I suppose we’ll be going to your

wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?”

 

The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great

bitterness:

 

“The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of

you.”

 

Gabriel coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without

looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his

muffler at his patent-leather shoes.

 

He was a stout tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed

upwards even to his forehead where it scattered itself in a few

formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there

scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of

the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy

black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind

his ears where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat.

 

When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his

waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin

rapidly from his pocket.

 

“O Lily,” he said, thrusting it into her hands, “it’s Christmas-time,

isn’t it? Just ... here’s a little....”

 

He walked rapidly towards the door.

 

“O no, sir!” cried the girl, following him. “Really, sir, I wouldn’t

take it.”

 

“Christmas-time! Christmas-time!” said Gabriel, almost trotting to the

stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation.

 

The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him:

 

“Well, thank you, sir.”

 

He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish,

listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of

feet. He was still discomposed by the girl’s bitter and sudden retort.

It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his

cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a

little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He

was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they

would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would

recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The

indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their soles

reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would

only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could

not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior

education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl

in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a

mistake from first to last, an utter failure.

 

Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies’ dressing-room.

His aunts were two small plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an

inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears,

was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid

face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect her slow eyes and

parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where

she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face,

healthier than her sister’s, was all puckers and creases, like a

shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned

way, had not lost its ripe nut colour.

 

They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the

son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of

the Port and Docks.

 

“Gretta tells me you’re not going to take a cab back to Monkstown

tonight, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate.

 

“No,” said Gabriel, turning to his wife, “we had quite enough of that

last year, hadn’t we? Don’t you remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta

got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind

blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a

dreadful cold.”

 

Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.

 

“Quite right, Gabriel, quite right,” she said. “You can’t be too

careful.”

 

“But as for Gretta there,” said Gabriel, “she’d walk home in the snow

if she were let.”

 

Mrs Conroy laughed.

 

“Don’t mind him, Aunt Kate,” she said. “He’s really an awful bother,

what with green shades for Tom’s eyes at night and making him do the

dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And

she simply hates the sight of it!... O, but you’ll never guess what he

makes me wear now!”

 

She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose

admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face

and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily too, for Gabriel’s solicitude

was a standing joke with them.

 

“Goloshes!” said Mrs Conroy. “That’s the latest. Whenever it’s wet

underfoot I must put on my goloshes. Tonight even he wanted me to put

them on, but I wouldn’t. The next thing he’ll buy me will be a diving

suit.”

 

Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly while Aunt

Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The

smile soon faded from Aunt Julia’s face and her mirthless eyes were

directed towards her nephew’s face. After a pause she asked:

 

“And what are goloshes, Gabriel?”

 

“Goloshes, Julia!” exclaimed her sister. “Goodness me, don’t you know

what goloshes are? You wear them over your ... over your boots, Gretta,

isn’t it?”

 

“Yes,” said Mrs Conroy. “Guttapercha things. We both have a pair now.

Gabriel says everyone wears them on the continent.”

 

“O, on the continent,” murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.

 

Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:

 

“It’s nothing very wonderful but Gretta thinks it very funny because

she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels.”

 

“But tell me, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. “Of course,

you’ve seen about the room. Gretta was saying....”

 

“O, the room is all right,” replied Gabriel. “I’ve taken one in the

Gresham.”

 

“To be sure,” said Aunt Kate, “by far the best thing to do. And the

children, Gretta, you’re not anxious about them?”

 

“O, for one night,” said Mrs Conroy. “Besides, Bessie will look after

them.”

 

“To be sure,” said Aunt Kate again. “What a comfort it is to have a

girl like that, one you can depend on! There’s that Lily, I’m sure I

don’t know what has come over her lately. She’s not the girl she was at

all.”

 

Gabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point but she

broke off suddenly to gaze after her sister who had wandered down the

stairs and was craning her neck over the banisters.

 

“Now, I ask you,” she said almost testily, “where is Julia going?

Julia! Julia! Where are you going?”

 

Julia, who had gone half way down one flight, came back and announced

blandly:

 

“Here’s Freddy.”

 

At the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the

pianist told that the waltz had ended. The drawing-room door was opened

from within and some couples came out. Aunt Kate drew Gabriel aside

hurriedly and whispered into his ear:

 

“Slip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he’s all right, and

don’t let him up if he’s screwed. I’m sure he’s screwed. I’m sure he

is.”

 

Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could

hear two persons talking in the pantry. Then he recognised Freddy

Malins’ laugh. He went down the stairs noisily.

 

“It’s such a relief,” said Aunt Kate to Mrs Conroy, “that Gabriel is

here. I always feel easier in my mind when he’s here.... Julia, there’s

Miss Daly and Miss Power will take some refreshment. Thanks for your

beautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time.”

 

A tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy

skin, who was passing out with his partner said:

 

“And may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?”

 

“Julia,” said Aunt Kate summarily, “and here’s Mr Browne and Miss

Furlong. Take them in, Julia, with Miss Daly and Miss Power.”

 

“I’m the man for the ladies,” said Mr Browne, pursing his lips until

his moustache bristled and smiling in all his wrinkles. “You know, Miss

Morkan, the reason they are so fond of me is——”

 

He did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of

earshot, at once led the three young ladies into the back room. The

middle of the room was occupied by two square tables placed end to end,

and on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker were straightening and

smoothing a large cloth. On the sideboard were arrayed dishes and

plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top

of the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and

sweets. At a smaller sideboard in one corner two young men were

standing, drinking hop-bitters.

 

Mr Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to

some ladies’ punch, hot, strong and sweet. As they said they never took

anything strong he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then he

asked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the

decanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky. The young

men eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip.

 

“God help me,” he said, smiling, “it’s the doctor’s orders.”

 

His wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies

laughed in musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and

fro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The boldest said:

 

“O, now, Mr Browne, I’m sure the doctor never ordered anything of the

kind.”

 

Mr Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling

mimicry:

 

“Well, you see, I’m like the famous Mrs Cassidy, who is reported to

have said: ‘Now, Mary Grimes, if I don’t take it, make me take it, for

I feel I want it.’”

 

His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had

assumed a very low Dublin accent so that the young ladies, with one

instinct, received his speech in silence. Miss Furlong, who was one of

Mary Jane’s pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty

waltz she had played; and Mr Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned

promptly to the two young men who were more appreciative.

 

A red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room,

excitedly clapping her hands and crying:

 

“Quadrilles! Quadrilles!”

 

Close on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying:

 

“Two gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!”

 

“O, here’s Mr Bergin and Mr Kerrigan,” said Mary Jane. “Mr Kerrigan,

will you take Miss Power? Miss Furlong, may I get you a partner, Mr

Bergin. O, that’ll just do now.”

 

“Three ladies, Mary Jane,” said Aunt Kate.

 

The two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the

pleasure, and Mary Jane turned to Miss Daly.

 

“O, Miss Daly, you’re really awfully good, after playing for the last

two dances, but really we’re so short of ladies tonight.”

 

“I don’t mind in the least, Miss Morkan.”

 

“But I’ve a nice partner for you, Mr Bartell D’Arcy, the tenor. I’ll

get him to sing later on. All Dublin is raving about him.”

 

“Lovely voice, lovely voice!” said Aunt Kate.

 

As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane

led her recruits quickly from the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt

Julia wandered slowly into the room, looking behind her at something.

 

“What is the matter, Julia?” asked Aunt Kate anxiously. “Who is it?”

 

Julia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her

sister and said, simply, as if the question had surprised her:

 

“It’s only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him.”

 

In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins

across the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of

Gabriel’s size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was

fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes

of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse features,

a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His

heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look

sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had

been telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the

knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.

 

“Good-evening, Freddy,” said Aunt Julia.

 

Freddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an

offhand fashion by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then,

seeing that Mr Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard, crossed

the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the

story he had just told to Gabriel.

 

“He’s not so bad, is he?” said Aunt Kate to Gabriel.

 

Gabriel’s brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered:

 

“O, no, hardly noticeable.”

 

“Now, isn’t he a terrible fellow!” she said. “And his poor mother made

him take the pledge on New Year’s Eve. But come on, Gabriel, into the

drawing-room.”

 

Before leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr Browne by

frowning and shaking her forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr Browne

nodded in answer and, when she had gone, said to Freddy Malins:

 

“Now, then, Teddy, I’m going to fill you out a good glass of lemonade

just to buck you up.”

 

Freddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer

aside impatiently but Mr Browne, having first called Freddy Malins’

attention to a disarray in his dress, filled out and handed him a full

glass of lemonade. Freddy Malins’ left hand accepted the glass

mechanically, his right hand being engaged in the mechanical

readjustment of his dress. Mr Browne, whose face was once more

wrinkling with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while

Freddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his

story, in a kink of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down

his untasted and overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his

left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye, repeating words of

his last phrase as well as his fit of laughter would allow him.

 

 

Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece,

full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He

liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he

doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they

had begged Mary Jane to play something. Four young men, who had come

from the refreshment-room to stand in the doorway at the sound of the

piano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only

persons who seemed to follow the music were Mary Jane herself, her

hands racing along the keyboard or lifted from it at the pauses like

those of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing

at her elbow to turn the page.

 

Gabriel’s eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax

under the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A

picture of the balcony scene in _Romeo and Juliet_ hung there and

beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which

Aunt Julia had worked in red, blue and brown wools when she was a girl.

Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had

been taught for one year. His mother had worked for him as a birthday

present a waistcoat of purple tabinet, with little foxes’ heads upon

it, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was

strange that his mother had had no musical talent though Aunt Kate used

to call her the brains carrier of the Morkan family. Both she and Julia

had always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister.

Her photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her

knees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed

in a man-o’-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the

name of her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family

life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbrigan

and, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal

University. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen

opposition to his marriage. Some slighting phrases she had used still

rankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country

cute and that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had

nursed her during all her last long illness in their house at

Monkstown.

 

He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was

playing again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar

and while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart.

The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep

octave in the bass. Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and

rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most

vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had

gone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had

come back when the piano had stopped.

 

Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors.

She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and

prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large

brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish

device and motto.

 

When they had taken their places she said abruptly:

 

“I have a crow to pluck with you.”

 

“With me?” said Gabriel.

 

She nodded her head gravely.

 

“What is it?” asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.

 

“Who is G. C.?” answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.

 

Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not

understand, when she said bluntly:

 

“O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for _The Daily

Express_. Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

 

“Why should I be ashamed of myself?” asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes

and trying to smile.

 

“Well, I’m ashamed of you,” said Miss Ivors frankly. “To say you’d

write for a paper like that. I didn’t think you were a West Briton.”

 

A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel’s face. It was true that he

wrote a literary column every Wednesday in _The Daily Express_, for

which he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West

Briton surely. The books he received for review were almost more

welcome than the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn

over the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his

teaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to

the second-hand booksellers, to Hickey’s on Bachelor’s Walk, to Webb’s

or Massey’s on Aston’s Quay, or to O’Clohissey’s in the by-street. He

did not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature

was above politics. But they were friends of many years’ standing and

their careers had been parallel, first at the university and then as

teachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued

blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw

nothing political in writing reviews of books.

 

When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and

inattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said

in a soft friendly tone:

 

“Of course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now.”

 

When they were together again she spoke of the University question and

Gabriel felt more at ease. A friend of hers had shown her his review of

Browning’s poems. That was how she had found out the secret: but she

liked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly:

 

“O, Mr Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this

summer? We’re going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid

out in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr Clancy is coming, and Mr

Kilkelly and Kathleen Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if

she’d come. She’s from Connacht, isn’t she?”

 

“Her people are,” said Gabriel shortly.

 

“But you will come, won’t you?” said Miss Ivors, laying her warm hand

eagerly on his arm.

 

“The fact is,” said Gabriel, “I have just arranged to go——”

 

“Go where?” asked Miss Ivors.

 

“Well, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows

and so——”

 

“But where?” asked Miss Ivors.

 

“Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany,” said

Gabriel awkwardly.

 

“And why do you go to France and Belgium,” said Miss Ivors, “instead of

visiting your own land?”

 

“Well,” said Gabriel, “it’s partly to keep in touch with the languages

and partly for a change.”

 

“And haven’t you your own language to keep in touch with—Irish?” asked

Miss Ivors.

 

“Well,” said Gabriel, “if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my

language.”

 

Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross-examination. Gabriel

glanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour

under the ordeal which was making a blush invade his forehead.

 

“And haven’t you your own land to visit,” continued Miss Ivors, “that

you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?”

 

“O, to tell you the truth,” retorted Gabriel suddenly, “I’m sick of my

own country, sick of it!”

 

“Why?” asked Miss Ivors.

 

Gabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him.

 

“Why?” repeated Miss Ivors.

 

They had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss

Ivors said warmly:

 

“Of course, you’ve no answer.”

 

Gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with

great energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on

her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel

his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a

moment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about

to start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear:

 

“West Briton!”

 

When the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the

room where Freddy Malins’ mother was sitting. She was a stout feeble

old woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her son’s

and she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and

that he was nearly all right. Gabriel asked her whether she had had a

good crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and came

to Dublin on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had

had a beautiful crossing and that the captain had been most attentive

to her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in

Glasgow, and of all the friends they had there. While her tongue

rambled on Gabriel tried to banish from his mind all memory of the

unpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or

whatever she was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all

things. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like that. But she

had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She

had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and

staring at him with her rabbit’s eyes.

 

He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing

couples. When she reached him she said into his ear:

 

“Gabriel, Aunt Kate wants to know won’t you carve the goose as usual.

Miss Daly will carve the ham and I’ll do the pudding.”

 

“All right,” said Gabriel.

 

“She’s sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is over

so that we’ll have the table to ourselves.”

 

“Were you dancing?” asked Gabriel.

 

“Of course I was. Didn’t you see me? What row had you with Molly

Ivors?”

 

“No row. Why? Did she say so?”

 

“Something like that. I’m trying to get that Mr D’Arcy to sing. He’s

full of conceit, I think.”

 

“There was no row,” said Gabriel moodily, “only she wanted me to go for

a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn’t.”

 

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

 

“O, do go, Gabriel,” she cried. “I’d love to see Galway again.”

 

“You can go if you like,” said Gabriel coldly.

 

She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs Malins and said:

 

“There’s a nice husband for you, Mrs Malins.”

 

While she was threading her way back across the room Mrs Malins,

without adverting to the interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what

beautiful places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her

son-in-law brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go

fishing. Her son-in-law was a splendid fisher. One day he caught a

beautiful big fish and the man in the hotel cooked it for their dinner.

 

Gabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he

began to think again about his speech and about the quotation. When he

saw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother Gabriel

left the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the

window. The room had already cleared and from the back room came the

clatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the

drawing-room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in

little groups. Gabriel’s warm trembling fingers tapped the cold pane of

the window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to

walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The

snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright

cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it

would be there than at the supper-table!

 

He ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad

memories, the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning. He

repeated to himself a phrase he had written in his review: “One feels

that one is listening to a thought-tormented music.” Miss Ivors had

praised the review. Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own

behind all her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling

between them until that night. It unnerved him to think that she would

be at the supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke with her

critical quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail

in his speech. An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He

would say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: “Ladies and Gentlemen,

the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its

faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality,

of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and

hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to

lack.” Very good: that was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that

his aunts were only two ignorant old women?

 

A murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr Browne was advancing

from the door, gallantly escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm,

smiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of applause

escorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated

herself on the stool, and Aunt Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so

as to pitch her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel

recognised the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt

Julia’s—_Arrayed for the Bridal_. Her voice, strong and clear in tone,

attacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though

she sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest of the grace

notes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer’s face, was

to feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel

applauded loudly with all the others at the close of the song and loud

applause was borne in from the invisible supper-table. It sounded so

genuine that a little colour struggled into Aunt Julia’s face as she

bent to replace in the music-stand the old leather-bound songbook that

had her initials on the cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his

head perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when

everyone else had ceased and talking animatedly to his mother who

nodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he

could clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to

Aunt Julia whose hand he seized and held in both his hands, shaking it

when words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for

him.

 

“I was just telling my mother,” he said, “I never heard you sing so

well, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is tonight.

Now! Would you believe that now? That’s the truth. Upon my word and

honour that’s the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so

... so clear and fresh, never.”

 

Aunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as

she released her hand from his grasp. Mr Browne extended his open hand

towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a

showman introducing a prodigy to an audience:

 

“Miss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!”

 

He was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned

to him and said:

 

“Well, Browne, if you’re serious you might make a worse discovery. All

I can say is I never heard her sing half so well as long as I am coming

here. And that’s the honest truth.”

 

“Neither did I,” said Mr Browne. “I think her voice has greatly

improved.”

 

Aunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride:

 

“Thirty years ago I hadn’t a bad voice as voices go.”

 

“I often told Julia,” said Aunt Kate emphatically, “that she was simply

thrown away in that choir. But she never would be said by me.”

 

She turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a

refractory child while Aunt Julia gazed in front of her, a vague smile

of reminiscence playing on her face.

 

“No,” continued Aunt Kate, “she wouldn’t be said or led by anyone,

slaving there in that choir night and day, night and day. Six o’clock

on Christmas morning! And all for what?”

 

“Well, isn’t it for the honour of God, Aunt Kate?” asked Mary Jane,

twisting round on the piano-stool and smiling.

 

Aunt Kate turned fiercely on her niece and said:

 

“I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it’s not at

all honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs

that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers

of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if

the pope does it. But it’s not just, Mary Jane, and it’s not right.”

 

She had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in

defence of her sister for it was a sore subject with her but Mary Jane,

seeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically:

 

“Now, Aunt Kate, you’re giving scandal to Mr Browne who is of the other

persuasion.”

 

Aunt Kate turned to Mr Browne, who was grinning at this allusion to his

religion, and said hastily:

 

“O, I don’t question the pope’s being right. I’m only a stupid old

woman and I wouldn’t presume to do such a thing. But there’s such a

thing as common everyday politeness and gratitude. And if I were in

Julia’s place I’d tell that Father Healey straight up to his face....”

 

“And besides, Aunt Kate,” said Mary Jane, “we really are all hungry and

when we are hungry we are all very quarrelsome.”

 

“And when we are thirsty we are also quarrelsome,” added Mr Browne.

 

“So that we had better go to supper,” said Mary Jane, “and finish the

discussion afterwards.”

 

On the landing outside the drawing-room Gabriel found his wife and Mary

Jane trying to persuade Miss Ivors to stay for supper. But Miss Ivors,

who had put on her hat and was buttoning her cloak, would not stay. She

did not feel in the least hungry and she had already overstayed her

time.

 

“But only for ten minutes, Molly,” said Mrs Conroy. “That won’t delay

you.”

 

“To take a pick itself,” said Mary Jane, “after all your dancing.”

 

“I really couldn’t,” said Miss Ivors.

 

“I am afraid you didn’t enjoy yourself at all,” said Mary Jane

hopelessly.

 

“Ever so much, I assure you,” said Miss Ivors, “but you really must let

me run off now.”

 

“But how can you get home?” asked Mrs Conroy.

 

“O, it’s only two steps up the quay.”

 

Gabriel hesitated a moment and said:

 

“If you will allow me, Miss Ivors, I’ll see you home if you are really

obliged to go.”

 

But Miss Ivors broke away from them.

 

“I won’t hear of it,” she cried. “For goodness’ sake go in to your

suppers and don’t mind me. I’m quite well able to take care of myself.”

 

“Well, you’re the comical girl, Molly,” said Mrs Conroy frankly.

 

“_Beannacht libh_,” cried Miss Ivors, with a laugh, as she ran down the

staircase.

 

Mary Jane gazed after her, a moody puzzled expression on her face,

while Mrs Conroy leaned over the banisters to listen for the hall-door.

Gabriel asked himself was he the cause of her abrupt departure. But she

did not seem to be in ill humour: she had gone away laughing. He stared

blankly down the staircase.

 

At the moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost

wringing her hands in despair.

 

“Where is Gabriel?” she cried. “Where on earth is Gabriel? There’s

everyone waiting in there, stage to let, and nobody to carve the

goose!”

 

“Here I am, Aunt Kate!” cried Gabriel, with sudden animation, “ready to

carve a flock of geese, if necessary.”

 

A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on

a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham,

stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat

paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef.

Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little

minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of

blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a

stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled

almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna

figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of

chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass

vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table

there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of

oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut

glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed

square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind

it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up

according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with

brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with

transverse green sashes.

 

Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having

looked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the

goose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked

nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.

 

“Miss Furlong, what shall I send you?” he asked. “A wing or a slice of

the breast?”

 

“Just a small slice of the breast.”

 

“Miss Higgins, what for you?”

 

“O, anything at all, Mr Conroy.”

 

While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham

and spiced beef Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury

potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Jane’s idea and she

had also suggested apple sauce for the goose but Aunt Kate had said

that plain roast goose without any apple sauce had always been good

enough for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane

waited on her pupils and saw that they got the best slices and Aunt

Kate and Aunt Julia opened and carried across from the piano bottles of

stout and ale for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies.

There was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise

of orders and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and

glass-stoppers. Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he

had finished the first round without serving himself. Everyone

protested loudly so that he compromised by taking a long draught of

stout for he had found the carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down

quietly to her supper but Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling

round the table, walking on each other’s heels, getting in each other’s

way and giving each other unheeded orders. Mr Browne begged of them to

sit down and eat their suppers and so did Gabriel but they said they

were time enough so that, at last, Freddy Malins stood up and,

capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her down on her chair amid general

laughter.

 

When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling:

 

“Now, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call stuffing

let him or her speak.”

 

A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came

forward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him.

 

“Very well,” said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory

draught, “kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few

minutes.”

 

He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which

the table covered Lily’s removal of the plates. The subject of talk was

the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr Bartell

D’Arcy, the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart

moustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company but

Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production.

Freddy Malins said there was a negro chieftain singing in the second

part of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he

had ever heard.

 

“Have you heard him?” he asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy across the table.

 

“No,” answered Mr Bartell D’Arcy carelessly.

 

“Because,” Freddy Malins explained, “now I’d be curious to hear your

opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice.”

 

“It takes Teddy to find out the really good things,” said Mr Browne

familiarly to the table.

 

“And why couldn’t he have a voice too?” asked Freddy Malins sharply.

“Is it because he’s only a black?”

 

Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the

legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for _Mignon_.

Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor

Georgina Burns. Mr Browne could go back farther still, to the old

Italian companies that used to come to Dublin—Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka,

Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were

the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in

Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be

packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung

five encores to _Let me like a Soldier fall_, introducing a high C

every time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their

enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great _prima

donna_ and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why

did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, _Dinorah,

Lucrezia Borgia?_ Because they could not get the voices to sing them:

that was why.

 

“Oh, well,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy, “I presume there are as good

singers today as there were then.”

 

“Where are they?” asked Mr Browne defiantly.

 

“In London, Paris, Milan,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy warmly. “I suppose

Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the

men you have mentioned.”

 

“Maybe so,” said Mr Browne. “But I may tell you I doubt it strongly.”

 

“O, I’d give anything to hear Caruso sing,” said Mary Jane.

 

“For me,” said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, “there was only

one tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard

of him.”

 

“Who was he, Miss Morkan?” asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy politely.

 

“His name,” said Aunt Kate, “was Parkinson. I heard him when he was in

his prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was ever

put into a man’s throat.”

 

“Strange,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy. “I never even heard of him.”

 

“Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right,” said Mr Browne. “I remember hearing

of old Parkinson but he’s too far back for me.”

 

“A beautiful pure sweet mellow English tenor,” said Aunt Kate with

enthusiasm.

 

Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table.

The clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriel’s wife served out

spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway

down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with

raspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was

of Aunt Julia’s making and she received praises for it from all

quarters. She herself said that it was not quite brown enough.

 

“Well, I hope, Miss Morkan,” said Mr Browne, “that I’m brown enough for

you because, you know, I’m all brown.”

 

All the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of

compliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had

been left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it

with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for

the blood and he was just then under doctor’s care. Mrs Malins, who had

been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to

Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray,

how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and

how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.

 

“And do you mean to say,” asked Mr Browne incredulously, “that a chap

can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on

the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?”

 

“O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave.”

said Mary Jane.

 

“I wish we had an institution like that in our Church,” said Mr Browne

candidly.

 

He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in

the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.

 

“That’s the rule of the order,” said Aunt Kate firmly.

 

“Yes, but why?” asked Mr Browne.

 

Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr Browne still

seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he

could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by

all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very

clear for Mr Browne grinned and said:

 

“I like that idea very much but wouldn’t a comfortable spring bed do

them as well as a coffin?”

 

“The coffin,” said Mary Jane, “is to remind them of their last end.”

 

As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the

table during which Mrs Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in

an indistinct undertone:

 

“They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.”

 

The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates

and sweets were now passed about the table and Aunt Julia invited all

the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr Bartell D’Arcy

refused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and

whispered something to him upon which he allowed his glass to be

filled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the

conversation ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the

wine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked

down at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few

gentlemen patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence

came and Gabriel pushed back his chair.

 

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased

altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth

and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he

raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune

and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door.

People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing

up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was

pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted

with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that

flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.

 

He began:

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

“It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a

very pleasing task but a task for which I am afraid my poor powers as a

speaker are all too inadequate.”

 

“No, no!” said Mr Browne.

 

“But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will

for the deed and to lend me your attention for a few moments while I

endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this

occasion.

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered

together under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It

is not the first time that we have been the recipients—or perhaps, I

had better say, the victims—of the hospitality of certain good ladies.”

 

He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed

or smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned

crimson with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly:

 

“I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no

tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so

jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique

as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places

abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us

it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even

that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will

long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long

as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid—and I wish from my

heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come—the tradition

of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our

forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down

to our descendants, is still alive among us.”

 

A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through

Gabriel’s mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone away

discourteously: and he said with confidence in himself:

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

“A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by

new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these

new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I

believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if

I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear

that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack

those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which

belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those

great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were

living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration,

be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us

hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of

them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory

of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not

willingly let die.”

 

“Hear, hear!” said Mr Browne loudly.

 

“But yet,” continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer

inflection, “there are always in gatherings such as this sadder

thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth,

of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through

life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon

them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work

among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections

which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.

 

“Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy

moralising intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together

for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine. We

are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as

colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of

_camaraderie_, and as the guests of—what shall I call them?—the Three

Graces of the Dublin musical world.”

 

The table burst into applause and laughter at this allusion. Aunt Julia

vainly asked each of her neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel

had said.

 

“He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia,” said Mary Jane.

 

Aunt Julia did not understand but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel,

who continued in the same vein:

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

“I will not attempt to play tonight the part that Paris played on

another occasion. I will not attempt to choose between them. The task

would be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I

view them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good

heart, whose too good heart, has become a byword with all who know her,

or her sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and whose

singing must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all tonight,

or, last but not least, when I consider our youngest hostess, talented,

cheerful, hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and

Gentlemen, that I do not know to which of them I should award the

prize.”

 

Gabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt

Julia’s face and the tears which had risen to Aunt Kate’s eyes,

hastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while

every member of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said

loudly:

 

“Let us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health,

wealth, long life, happiness and prosperity and may they long continue

to hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their

profession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in

our hearts.”

 

All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three

seated ladies, sang in unison, with Mr Browne as leader:

 

     For they are jolly gay fellows,

     For they are jolly gay fellows,

     For they are jolly gay fellows,

     Which nobody can deny.

 

Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia

seemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the

singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference,

while they sang with emphasis:

 

     Unless he tells a lie,

     Unless he tells a lie.

 

Then, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang:

 

     For they are jolly gay fellows,

     For they are jolly gay fellows,

     For they are jolly gay fellows,

     Which nobody can deny.

 

The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the

supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time,

Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high.

 

 

The piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so

that Aunt Kate said:

 

“Close the door, somebody. Mrs Malins will get her death of cold.”

 

“Browne is out there, Aunt Kate,” said Mary Jane.

 

“Browne is everywhere,” said Aunt Kate, lowering her voice.

 

Mary Jane laughed at her tone.

 

“Really,” she said archly, “he is very attentive.”

 

“He has been laid on here like the gas,” said Aunt Kate in the same

tone, “all during the Christmas.”

 

She laughed herself this time good-humouredly and then added quickly:

 

“But tell him to come in, Mary Jane, and close the door. I hope to

goodness he didn’t hear me.”

 

At that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr Browne came in from the

doorstep, laughing as if his heart would break. He was dressed in a

long green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and wore on

his head an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from

where the sound of shrill prolonged whistling was borne in.

 

“Teddy will have all the cabs in Dublin out,” he said.

 

Gabriel advanced from the little pantry behind the office, struggling

into his overcoat and, looking round the hall, said:

 

“Gretta not down yet?”

 

“She’s getting on her things, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate.

 

“Who’s playing up there?” asked Gabriel.

 

“Nobody. They’re all gone.”

 

“O no, Aunt Kate,” said Mary Jane. “Bartell D’Arcy and Miss O’Callaghan

aren’t gone yet.”

 

“Someone is fooling at the piano anyhow,” said Gabriel.

 

Mary Jane glanced at Gabriel and Mr Browne and said with a shiver:

 

“It makes me feel cold to look at you two gentlemen muffled up like

that. I wouldn’t like to face your journey home at this hour.”

 

“I’d like nothing better this minute,” said Mr Browne stoutly, “than a

rattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good spanking

goer between the shafts.”

 

“We used to have a very good horse and trap at home,” said Aunt Julia

sadly.

 

“The never-to-be-forgotten Johnny,” said Mary Jane, laughing.

 

Aunt Kate and Gabriel laughed too.

 

“Why, what was wonderful about Johnny?” asked Mr Browne.

 

“The late lamented Patrick Morkan, our grandfather, that is,” explained

Gabriel, “commonly known in his later years as the old gentleman, was a

glue-boiler.”

 

“O now, Gabriel,” said Aunt Kate, laughing, “he had a starch mill.”

 

“Well, glue or starch,” said Gabriel, “the old gentleman had a horse by

the name of Johnny. And Johnny used to work in the old gentleman’s

mill, walking round and round in order to drive the mill. That was all

very well; but now comes the tragic part about Johnny. One fine day the

old gentleman thought he’d like to drive out with the quality to a

military review in the park.”

 

“The Lord have mercy on his soul,” said Aunt Kate compassionately.

 

“Amen,” said Gabriel. “So the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed

Johnny and put on his very best tall hat and his very best stock collar

and drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near

Back Lane, I think.”

 

Everyone laughed, even Mrs Malins, at Gabriel’s manner and Aunt Kate

said:

 

“O now, Gabriel, he didn’t live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill was

there.”

 

“Out from the mansion of his forefathers,” continued Gabriel, “he drove

with Johnny. And everything went on beautifully until Johnny came in

sight of King Billy’s statue: and whether he fell in love with the

horse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the

mill, anyhow he began to walk round the statue.”

 

Gabriel paced in a circle round the hall in his goloshes amid the

laughter of the others.

 

“Round and round he went,” said Gabriel, “and the old gentleman, who

was a very pompous old gentleman, was highly indignant. ‘Go on, sir!

What do you mean, sir? Johnny! Johnny! Most extraordinary conduct!

Can’t understand the horse!’”

 

The peal of laughter which followed Gabriel’s imitation of the incident

was interrupted by a resounding knock at the hall door. Mary Jane ran

to open it and let in Freddy Malins. Freddy Malins, with his hat well

back on his head and his shoulders humped with cold, was puffing and

steaming after his exertions.

 

“I could only get one cab,” he said.

 

“O, we’ll find another along the quay,” said Gabriel.

 

“Yes,” said Aunt Kate. “Better not keep Mrs Malins standing in the

draught.”

 

Mrs Malins was helped down the front steps by her son and Mr Browne

and, after many manœuvres, hoisted into the cab. Freddy Malins

clambered in after her and spent a long time settling her on the seat,

Mr Browne helping him with advice. At last she was settled comfortably

and Freddy Malins invited Mr Browne into the cab. There was a good deal

of confused talk, and then Mr Browne got into the cab. The cabman

settled his rug over his knees, and bent down for the address. The

confusion grew greater and the cabman was directed differently by

Freddy Malins and Mr Browne, each of whom had his head out through a

window of the cab. The difficulty was to know where to drop Mr Browne

along the route, and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane helped the

discussion from the doorstep with cross-directions and contradictions

and abundance of laughter. As for Freddy Malins he was speechless with

laughter. He popped his head in and out of the window every moment to

the great danger of his hat, and told his mother how the discussion was

progressing, till at last Mr Browne shouted to the bewildered cabman

above the din of everybody’s laughter:

 

“Do you know Trinity College?”

 

“Yes, sir,” said the cabman.

 

“Well, drive bang up against Trinity College gates,” said Mr Browne,

“and then we’ll tell you where to go. You understand now?”

 

“Yes, sir,” said the cabman.

 

“Make like a bird for Trinity College.”

 

“Right, sir,” said the cabman.

 

The horse was whipped up and the cab rattled off along the quay amid a

chorus of laughter and adieus.

 

Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part

of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top

of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but

he could see the terracotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which

the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was

leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised

at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear

little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few

chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man’s voice singing.

 

He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that

the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and

mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked

himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening

to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her

in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her

hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show

off the light ones. _Distant Music_ he would call the picture if he

were a painter.

 

The hall-door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came

down the hall, still laughing.

 

“Well, isn’t Freddy terrible?” said Mary Jane. “He’s really terrible.”

 

Gabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife

was standing. Now that the hall-door was closed the voice and the piano

could be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be

silent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer

seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice, made

plaintive by distance and by the singer’s hoarseness, faintly

illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:

 

     O, the rain falls on my heavy locks

     And the dew wets my skin,

     My babe lies cold....

 

“O,” exclaimed Mary Jane. “It’s Bartell D’Arcy singing and he wouldn’t

sing all the night. O, I’ll get him to sing a song before he goes.”

 

“O do, Mary Jane,” said Aunt Kate.

 

Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase, but before

she reached it the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.

 

“O, what a pity!” she cried. “Is he coming down, Gretta?”

 

Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A

few steps behind her were Mr Bartell D’Arcy and Miss O’Callaghan.

 

“O, Mr D’Arcy,” cried Mary Jane, “it’s downright mean of you to break

off like that when we were all in raptures listening to you.”

 

“I have been at him all the evening,” said Miss O’Callaghan, “and Mrs

Conroy too and he told us he had a dreadful cold and couldn’t sing.”

 

“O, Mr D’Arcy,” said Aunt Kate, “now that was a great fib to tell.”

 

“Can’t you see that I’m as hoarse as a crow?” said Mr D’Arcy roughly.

 

He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others,

taken aback by his rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate

wrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr

D’Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.

 

“It’s the weather,” said Aunt Julia, after a pause.

 

“Yes, everybody has colds,” said Aunt Kate readily, “everybody.”

 

“They say,” said Mary Jane, “we haven’t had snow like it for thirty

years; and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is

general all over Ireland.”

 

“I love the look of snow,” said Aunt Julia sadly.

 

“So do I,” said Miss O’Callaghan. “I think Christmas is never really

Christmas unless we have the snow on the ground.”

 

“But poor Mr D’Arcy doesn’t like the snow,” said Aunt Kate, smiling.

 

Mr D’Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a

repentant tone told them the history of his cold. Everyone gave him

advice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of

his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife, who did not join

in the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty fanlight

and the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair, which he

had seen her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same

attitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her. At last she turned

towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and

that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of

his heart.

 

“Mr D’Arcy,” she said, “what is the name of that song you were

singing?”

 

“It’s called _The Lass of Aughrim_,” said Mr D’Arcy, “but I couldn’t

remember it properly. Why? Do you know it?”

 

“_The Lass of Aughrim_,” she repeated. “I couldn’t think of the name.”

 

“It’s a very nice air,” said Mary Jane. “I’m sorry you were not in

voice tonight.”

 

“Now, Mary Jane,” said Aunt Kate, “don’t annoy Mr D’Arcy. I won’t have

him annoyed.”

 

Seeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door,

where good-night was said:

 

“Well, good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening.”

 

“Good-night, Gabriel. Good-night, Gretta!”

 

“Good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Good-night, Aunt

Julia.”

 

“O, good-night, Gretta, I didn’t see you.”

 

“Good-night, Mr D’Arcy. Good-night, Miss O’Callaghan.”

 

“Good-night, Miss Morkan.”

 

“Good-night, again.”

 

“Good-night, all. Safe home.”

 

“Good-night. Good-night.”

 

The morning was still dark. A dull yellow light brooded over the houses

and the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy

underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on

the parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still

burning redly in the murky air and, across the river, the palace of the

Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky.

 

She was walking on before him with Mr Bartell D’Arcy, her shoes in a

brown parcel tucked under one arm and her hands holding her skirt up

from the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude but Gabriel’s

eyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along

his veins; and the thoughts went rioting through his brain, proud,

joyful, tender, valorous.

 

She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to

run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something

foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that

he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with

her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his

memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he

was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and

the sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could

not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and

he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was

standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a

man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face,

fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he

called out to the man at the furnace:

 

“Is the fire hot, sir?”

 

But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just

as well. He might have answered rudely.

 

A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing

in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments

of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of,

broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those

moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together

and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had

not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her

household cares had not quenched all their souls’ tender fire. In one

letter that he had written to her then he had said: “Why is it that

words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no

word tender enough to be your name?”

 

Like distant music these words that he had written years before were

borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When

the others had gone away, when he and she were in their room in the

hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:

 

“Gretta!”

 

Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then

something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at

him....

 

At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its

rattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out

of the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words,

pointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily

under the murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his

heels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the

boat, galloping to their honeymoon.

 

As the cab drove across O’Connell Bridge Miss O’Callaghan said:

 

“They say you never cross O’Connell Bridge without seeing a white

horse.”

 

“I see a white man this time,” said Gabriel.

 

“Where?” asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy.

 

Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he

nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.

 

“Good-night, Dan,” he said gaily.

 

When the cab drew up before the hotel, Gabriel jumped out and, in spite

of Mr Bartell D’Arcy’s protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a

shilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:

 

“A prosperous New Year to you, sir.”

 

“The same to you,” said Gabriel cordially.

 

She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while

standing at the curbstone, bidding the others good-night. She leaned

lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few

hours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his,

proud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling

again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and

strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover

of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they

stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives

and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with

wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure.

 

An old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a

candle in the office and went before them to the stairs. They followed

him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly

carpeted stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head

bowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her

skirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her

hips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to

seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his

hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on

the stairs to settle his guttering candle. They halted too on the steps

below him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten

wax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.

 

The porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his

unstable candle down on a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were

to be called in the morning.

 

“Eight,” said Gabriel.

 

The porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a

muttered apology but Gabriel cut him short.

 

“We don’t want any light. We have light enough from the street. And I

say,” he added, pointing to the candle, “you might remove that handsome

article, like a good man.”

 

The porter took up his candle again, but slowly for he was surprised by

such a novel idea. Then he mumbled good-night and went out. Gabriel

shot the lock to.

 

A ghostly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one

window to the door. Gabriel threw his overcoat and hat on a couch and

crossed the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in

order that his emotion might calm a little. Then he turned and leaned

against a chest of drawers with his back to the light. She had taken

off her hat and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror,

unhooking her waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her,

and then said:

 

“Gretta!”

 

She turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of

light towards him. Her face looked so serious and weary that the words

would not pass Gabriel’s lips. No, it was not the moment yet.

 

“You looked tired,” he said.

 

“I am a little,” she answered.

 

“You don’t feel ill or weak?”

 

“No, tired: that’s all.”

 

She went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited

again and then, fearing that diffidence was about to conquer him, he

said abruptly:

 

“By the way, Gretta!”

 

“What is it?”

 

“You know that poor fellow Malins?” he said quickly.

 

“Yes. What about him?”

 

“Well, poor fellow, he’s a decent sort of chap after all,” continued

Gabriel in a false voice. “He gave me back that sovereign I lent him,

and I didn’t expect it, really. It’s a pity he wouldn’t keep away from

that Browne, because he’s not a bad fellow, really.”

 

He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He

did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something?

If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take

her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes

first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.

 

“When did you lend him the pound?” she asked, after a pause.

 

Gabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal

language about the sottish Malins and his pound. He longed to cry to

her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her.

But he said:

 

“O, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas-card shop in

Henry Street.”

 

He was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come

from the window. She stood before him for an instant, looking at him

strangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her

hands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.

 

“You are a very generous person, Gabriel,” she said.

 

Gabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the

quaintness of her phrase, put his hands on her hair and began smoothing

it back, scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it

fine and brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just

when he was wishing for it she had come to him of her own accord.

Perhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt

the impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had

come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered

why he had been so diffident.

 

He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm

swiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:

 

“Gretta, dear, what are you thinking about?”

 

She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:

 

“Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I

know?”

 

She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:

 

“O, I am thinking about that song, _The Lass of Aughrim_.”

 

She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms

across the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stock-still for a

moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way

of the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his

broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always

puzzled him when he saw it in a mirror and his glimmering gilt-rimmed

eyeglasses. He halted a few paces from her and said:

 

“What about the song? Why does that make you cry?”

 

She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of

her hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his

voice.

 

“Why, Gretta?” he asked.

 

“I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song.”

 

“And who was the person long ago?” asked Gabriel, smiling.

 

“It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my

grandmother,” she said.

 

The smile passed away from Gabriel’s face. A dull anger began to gather

again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to

glow angrily in his veins.

 

“Someone you were in love with?” he asked ironically.

 

“It was a young boy I used to know,” she answered, “named Michael

Furey. He used to sing that song, _The Lass of Aughrim_. He was very

delicate.”

 

Gabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested

in this delicate boy.

 

“I can see him so plainly,” she said after a moment. “Such eyes as he

had: big, dark eyes! And such an expression in them—an expression!”

 

“O then, you were in love with him?” said Gabriel.

 

“I used to go out walking with him,” she said, “when I was in Galway.”

 

A thought flew across Gabriel’s mind.

 

“Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl?”

he said coldly.

 

She looked at him and asked in surprise:

 

“What for?”

 

Her eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:

 

“How do I know? To see him, perhaps.”

 

She looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in

silence.

 

“He is dead,” she said at length. “He died when he was only seventeen.

Isn’t it a terrible thing to die so young as that?”

 

“What was he?” asked Gabriel, still ironically.

 

“He was in the gasworks,” she said.

 

Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the

evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he

had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of

tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind

with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him.

He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his

aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians

and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he

had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back

more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his

forehead.

 

He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when

he spoke was humble and indifferent.

 

“I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta,” he said.

 

“I was great with him at that time,” she said.

 

Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be

to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands

and said, also sadly:

 

“And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?”

 

“I think he died for me,” she answered.

 

A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer as if, at that hour when

he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was

coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world.

But he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued

to caress her hand. He did not question her again for he felt that she

would tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not

respond to his touch but he continued to caress it just as he had

caressed her first letter to him that spring morning.

 

“It was in the winter,” she said, “about the beginning of the winter

when I was going to leave my grandmother’s and come up here to the

convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and

wouldn’t be let out and his people in Oughterard were written to. He

was in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew

rightly.”

 

She paused for a moment and sighed.

 

“Poor fellow,” she said. “He was very fond of me and he was such a

gentle boy. We used to go out together, walking, you know, Gabriel,

like the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing only

for his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey.”

 

“Well; and then?” asked Gabriel.

 

“And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up

to the convent he was much worse and I wouldn’t be let see him so I

wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in

the summer and hoping he would be better then.”

 

She paused for a moment to get her voice under control and then went

on:

 

“Then the night before I left I was in my grandmother’s house in Nuns’

Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window.

The window was so wet I couldn’t see so I ran downstairs as I was and

slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at

the end of the garden, shivering.”

 

“And did you not tell him to go back?” asked Gabriel.

 

“I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his

death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his

eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where

there was a tree.”

 

“And did he go home?” asked Gabriel.

 

“Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died

and he was buried in Oughterard where his people came from. O, the day

I heard that, that he was dead!”

 

She stopped, choking with sobs and, overcome by emotion, flung herself

face downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand

for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her

grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.

 

 

She was fast asleep.

 

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully

on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn

breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her

sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her

husband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept as

though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious

eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of

what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty,

a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to

say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful but he knew

that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved

death.

 

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair

over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string

dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen

down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of

emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt’s

supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the

merry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the

walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon

be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had

caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was

singing _Arrayed for the Bridal_. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in

that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees.

The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside

him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He

would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and

would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very

soon.

 

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself

cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by

one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other

world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally

with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her

heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told

her that he did not wish to live.

 

Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that

himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.

The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness

he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping

tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where

dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not

apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was

fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which

these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and

dwindling.

 

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had

begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,

falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to

set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow

was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark

central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of

Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous

Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely

churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly

drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the

little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard

the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like

the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.