Dubliners

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 mind 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 doorknocker 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 crossed 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 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 me, 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 comer. 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 schoollife 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 firstcomer 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 sailingvessel 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 goodday. 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 gready
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 I had.
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 Communnicant 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 house 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 Cafe 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.”

“0, 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. O 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 no 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 on 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 hr 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 mothers 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
Segouin, the owner of the car; Andre Riviere, a young electrician
of Canadian birth; a huge Hungarian named Villona and a neatly
groomed young man named Doyle. Segouin was in good humour because
he had unexpectedly received some orders in advance (he was about
to start a motor establishment in Paris) and Riviere 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 Segouin.
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
Segouin 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. Segouin,
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 Segouin 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 Segouin 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 Segouin 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 Segouin’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. Segouin, Jimmy decided, had
a very refined taste. The party was increased by a young Englishman
named Routh whom Jimmy had seen with Segouin 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. Riviere, 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 Segouin 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
Segouin’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.

“Andre.”

“It’s Farley!”

A torrent of talk followed. Farley was an American. No one knew
very well what the talk was about. Villona and Riviere 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! Hohe, 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 Riviere, Farley acting as cavalier and Riviere 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
Segouin. 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. On 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, recherche 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 vent 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 gut. 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. rank 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 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 white
eyebrows, pencilled above his little eyes, which were 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 the 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 mad
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 case. 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
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; some times 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 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 goodnights. 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 musichall
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
reverie. 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 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.” ... “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, garcon, 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 cleanshaven. 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,” be 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.