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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dubliners, by James Joyce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Dubliners
+
+Author: James Joyce
+
+Release Date: September, 2001 [eBook #2814]
+[Most recently updated: January 20, 2019]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Reed, Karol Pietrzak and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DUBLINERS ***
+
+cover
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
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