автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Dubliners

James Joyce

The Sisters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who?” said I.

“Father Flynn.”

“Is he dead?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cot­ter for al­lud­ing to me as a child, I puzzled my head to ex­tract mean­ing from his un­fin­ished sen­tences. In the dark of my room I ima­gined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the para­lytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christ­mas. But the grey face still fol­lowed me. It mur­mured; and I un­der­stood that it de­sired to con­fess some­thing. I felt my soul re­ced­ing into some pleas­ant and vi­cious re­gion; and there again I found it wait­ing for me. It began to con­fess to me in a mur­mur­ing voice and I wondered why it smiled con­tinu­ally and why the lips were so moist with spittle. But then I re­membered that it had died of para­lysis and I felt that I too was smil­ing feebly as if to ab­solve the si­mo­niac of his sin.

The next morn­ing after break­fast I went down to look at the little house in Great Bri­tain Street. It was an un­as­sum­ing shop, re­gistered un­der the vague name of Drapery. The drapery con­sisted mainly of chil­dren’s bootees and um­brel­las; and on or­din­ary days a no­tice used to hang in the win­dow, say­ing: Um­brel­las Re-covered. No no­tice was vis­ible now for the shut­ters were up. A crape bou­quet was tied to the 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.
RIP

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 arm­chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great­coat. 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 snuff­box 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 shop­win­dows 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 win­dowpanes of the houses that looked to the west re­flec­ted the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nan­nie re­ceived us in the hall; and, as it would have been un­seemly to have shouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old wo­man poin­ted up­wards in­ter­rog­at­ively and, on my aunt’s nod­ding, pro­ceeded to toil up the nar­row stair­case be­fore us, her bowed head be­ing scarcely above the level of the ban­is­ter-rail. At the first land­ing she stopped and beckoned us for­ward en­cour­agingly to­wards the open door of the dead-room. My aunt went in and the old wo­man, see­ing that I hes­it­ated to enter, began to beckon to me again re­peatedly with her hand.

I went in on tip­toe. The room through the lace end of the blind was suf­fused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like pale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nan­nie gave the lead and we three knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pre­ten­ded to pray but I could not gather my thoughts be­cause the old wo­man’s mut­ter­ings dis­trac­ted me. I no­ticed how clum­sily her skirt was hooked at the back and how the heels of her cloth boots were trod­den down all to one side. The fancy came to me that the old priest was smil­ing as he lay there in his coffin.

But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he was not smil­ing. There he lay, sol­emn and co­pi­ous, ves­ted as for the al­tar, his large hands loosely re­tain­ing a chalice. His face was very truc­u­lent, grey and massive, with black cav­ernous nos­trils and circled by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room—the flowers.

We blessed ourselves and came away. In the little room down­stairs we found El­iza seated in his arm­chair 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 wine­glasses. 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 wine­glass be­fore sip­ping a little.

“Did he … peace­fully?” she asked.

“Oh, quite peace­fully, ma’am,” said El­iza. “You couldn’t tell when the breath went out of him. He had a beau­ti­ful death, God be praised.”

“And everything … ?”

“Father O’Rourke was in with him a Tues­day and anoin­ted him and pre­pared him and all.”

“He knew then?”

“He was quite resigned.”

“He looks quite resigned,” said my aunt.

“That’s what the wo­man we had in to wash him said. She said he just looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peace­ful and resigned. No one would think he’d make such a beau­ti­ful corpse.”

“Yes, in­deed,” said my aunt.

She sipped a little more from her glass and said:

“Well, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great com­fort for you to know that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to him, I must say.”

El­iza smoothed her dress over her knees.

“Ah, poor James!” she said. “God knows we done all we could, as poor as we are—we wouldn’t see him want any­thing while he was in it.”

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

“There’s poor Nan­nie,” said El­iza, look­ing at her, “she’s wore out. All the work we had, she and me, get­ting in the wo­man to wash him and then lay­ing him out and then the coffin and then ar­ran­ging about the Mass in the chapel. Only for Father O’Rourke I don’t know what we’d have done at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two can­dle­sticks out of the chapel and wrote out the no­tice for the Free­man’s Gen­eral and took charge of all the pa­pers for the cemetery and poor James’s in­sur­ance.”

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

El­iza closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.

“Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends,” she said, “when all is said and done, no friends that a body can trust.”

“Indeed, that’s true,” said my aunt. “And I’m sure now that he’s gone to his eternal re­ward he won’t for­get you and all your kind­ness to him.”

“Ah, poor James!” said El­iza. “He was no great trouble to us. You wouldn’t hear him in the house any more than now. Still, I know he’s gone and all to that. …”

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

“I know that,” said El­iza. “I won’t be bring­ing him in his cup of beef-tea any more, nor you, ma’am, send­ing him his snuff. Ah, poor James!”

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

“Mind you, I no­ticed there was some­thing queer com­ing over him lat­terly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him with his brevi­ary fallen to the floor, ly­ing back in the chair and his mouth open.”

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

“But still and all he kept on say­ing that be­fore the sum­mer was over he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nan­nie with him. If we could only get one of them new­fangled car­riages that makes no noise that Father O’Rourke told him about—them with the rheum­atic wheels—for the day cheap—he said, at Johnny Rush’s over the way there and drive out the three of us to­gether of a Sunday even­ing. He had his mind set on that. … Poor James!”

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

El­iza took out her handker­chief and wiped her eyes with it. Then she put it back again in her pocket and gazed into the empty grate for some time without speak­ing.

“He was too scru­pu­lous al­ways,” she said. “The du­ties of the priest­hood was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.”

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

A si­lence took pos­ses­sion of the little room and, un­der cover of it, I ap­proached the table and tasted my sherry and then re­turned quietly to my chair in the corner. El­iza seemed to have fallen into a deep re­very. We waited re­spect­fully for her to break the si­lence: and after a long pause she said slowly:

“It was that chalice he broke. … That was the be­gin­ning of it. Of course, they say it was all right, that it con­tained noth­ing, I mean. But still. … They say it was the boy’s fault. But poor James was so nervous, God be mer­ci­ful to him!”

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

El­iza nod­ded.

“That af­fected his mind,” she said. “After that he began to mope by him­self, talk­ing to no one and wan­der­ing about by him­self. So one night he was wanted for to go on a call and they couldn’t find him any­where. They looked high up and low down; and still they couldn’t see a sight of him any­where. So then the clerk sug­ges­ted to try the chapel. So then they got the keys and opened the chapel and the clerk and Father O’Rourke and an­other priest that was there brought in a light for to look for him. … And what do you think but there he was, sit­ting up by him­self in the dark in his con­fes­sion-box, wide-awake and laugh­ing-like softly to him­self?”

She stopped sud­denly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was ly­ing still in his coffin as we had seen him, sol­emn and truc­u­lent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.

El­iza re­sumed:

“Wide-awake and laugh­ing-like to him­self. … So then, of course, when they saw that, that made them think that there was some­thing gone wrong with him. …”

An Encounter

It was Joe Dil­lon who in­tro­duced the Wild West to us. He had a little lib­rary made up of old num­bers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Half­penny Marvel. Every even­ing after school we met in his back garden and ar­ranged In­dian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm; or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, how­ever well we fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dil­lon’s war dance of vic­tory. His par­ents went to eight-o’clock mass every morn­ing in Gardiner Street and the peace­ful odour of Mrs. Dil­lon was pre­val­ent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an In­dian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beat­ing a tin with his fist and yelling:

“Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!”

Every­one was in­cred­u­lous when it was re­por­ted that he had a vo­ca­tion for the priest­hood. Never­the­less it was true.

A spirit of un­ru­li­ness dif­fused it­self among us and, un­der its in­flu­ence, dif­fer­ences of cul­ture and con­sti­tu­tion were waived. We ban­ded ourselves to­gether, some boldly, some in jest and some al­most in fear: and of the num­ber of these lat­ter, the re­luct­ant In­di­ans who were afraid to seem stu­di­ous or lack­ing in ro­bust­ness, I was one. The ad­ven­tures re­lated in the lit­er­at­ure of the Wild West were re­mote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of es­cape. I liked bet­ter some Amer­ican de­tect­ive stor­ies which were tra­versed from time to time by un­kempt fierce and beau­ti­ful girls. Though there was noth­ing wrong in these stor­ies and though their in­ten­tion was some­times lit­er­ary they were cir­cu­lated secretly at school. One day when Father But­ler was hear­ing the four pages of Ro­man His­tory clumsy Leo Dil­lon was dis­covered with a copy of The Half­penny Marvel.

“This page or this page? This page? Now, Dil­lon, up! ‘Hardly had the day’ … Go on! What day? ‘Hardly had the day dawned’ … Have you stud­ied it? What have you there in your pocket?”

Every­one’s heart pal­pit­ated as Leo Dil­lon handed up the pa­per and every­one as­sumed an in­no­cent face. Father But­ler turned over the pages, frown­ing.

“What is this rub­bish?” he said. “The Apache Chief! Is this what you read in­stead of study­ing your Ro­man His­tory? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this col­lege. The man who wrote it, I sup­pose, was some wretched fel­low who writes these things for a drink. I’m sur­prised at boys like you, edu­cated, read­ing such stuff. I could un­der­stand it if you were … Na­tional School boys. Now, Dil­lon, I ad­vise you strongly, get at your work or …”

This re­buke dur­ing the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me and the con­fused puffy face of Leo Dil­lon awakened one of my con­sciences. But when the re­strain­ing in­flu­ence of the school was at a dis­tance I began to hun­ger again for wild sen­sa­tions, for the es­cape which those chron­icles of dis­order alone seemed to of­fer me. The mimic war­fare of the even­ing be­came at last as wear­i­some to me as the routine of school in the morn­ing be­cause I wanted real ad­ven­tures to hap­pen to my­self. But real ad­ven­tures, I re­flec­ted, do not hap­pen to people who re­main at home: they must be sought abroad.

The sum­mer hol­i­days were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the wear­i­ness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo Dil­lon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day’s mich­ing. Each of us saved up six­pence. We were to meet at ten in the morn­ing on the Canal Bridge. Mahony’s big sis­ter was to write an ex­cuse for him and Leo Dil­lon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We ar­ranged to go along the Wharf Road un­til we came to the ships, then to cross in the ferry­boat and walk out to see the Pi­geon House. Leo Dil­lon was afraid we might meet Father But­ler or someone out of the col­lege; but Mahony asked, very sens­ibly, what would Father But­ler be do­ing out at the Pi­geon House. We were re­as­sured: and I brought the first stage of the plot to an end by col­lect­ing six­pence from the other two, at the same time show­ing them my own six­pence. When we were mak­ing the last ar­range­ments on the eve we were all vaguely ex­cited. We shook hands, laugh­ing, and Mahony said:

“Till to­mor­row, mates!”

That night I slept badly. In the morn­ing I was first-comer to the bridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the ash­pit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hur­ried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morn­ing in the first week of June. I sat up on the cop­ing of the bridge ad­mir­ing my frail can­vas shoes which I had di­li­gently pipe­clayed overnight and watch­ing the do­cile horses pulling a tram­load of busi­ness people up the hill. All the branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves and the sun­light slanted through them on to the wa­ter. The gran­ite stone of the bridge was be­gin­ning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.

When I had been sit­ting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony’s grey suit ap­proach­ing. He came up the hill, smil­ing, and clambered up be­side me on the bridge. While we were wait­ing he brought out the cata­pult which bulged from his in­ner pocket and ex­plained some im­prove­ments which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds. Mahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father But­ler as Old Bun­ser. We waited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of Leo Dil­lon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:

“Come along. I knew Fatty’d funk it.”

“And his six­pence … ?” I said.

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

We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play the In­dian as soon as we were out of pub­lic sight. He chased a crowd of ragged girls, bran­dish­ing his un­loaded cata­pult and, when two ragged boys began, out of chiv­alry, to fling stones at us, he pro­posed that we should charge them. I ob­jec­ted that the boys were too small and so we walked on, the ragged troop scream­ing after us: “Swad­dlers! Swad­dlers!” think­ing that we were Prot­est­ants be­cause Mahony, who was dark-com­plex­ioned, wore the sil­ver badge of a cricket club in his cap. When we came to the Smooth­ing Iron we ar­ranged a siege; but it was a fail­ure be­cause you must have at least three. We re­venged ourselves on Leo Dil­lon by say­ing what a funk he was and guess­ing how many he would get at three o’clock from Mr. Ryan.

We came then near the river. We spent a long time walk­ing about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watch­ing the work­ing of cranes and en­gines and of­ten be­ing shouted at for our im­mob­il­ity by the drivers of groan­ing carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and, as all the la­bour­ers seemed to be eat­ing their lunches, we bought two big cur­rant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal pip­ing be­side the river. We pleased ourselves with the spec­tacle of Dub­lin’s com­merce—the barges sig­nalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fish­ing fleet bey­ond Ring­send, the big white sail­ing-ves­sel which was be­ing dis­charged on the op­pos­ite quay. Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, look­ing at the high masts, saw, or ima­gined, the geo­graphy which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradu­ally tak­ing sub­stance un­der my eyes. School and home seemed to re­cede from us and their in­flu­ences upon us seemed to wane.

We crossed the Lif­fey in the ferry­boat, pay­ing our toll to be trans­por­ted in the com­pany of two la­bour­ers and a little Jew with a bag. We were ser­i­ous to the point of solem­nity, but once dur­ing the short voy­age our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the dis­char­ging of the grace­ful three­mas­ter which we had ob­served from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Nor­we­gian ves­sel. I went to the stern and tried to de­cipher the le­gend upon it but, fail­ing to do so, I came back and ex­amined the for­eign sail­ors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some con­fused no­tion. … The sail­ors’ eyes were blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could have been called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay by call­ing out cheer­fully every time the planks fell:

“All right! All right!”

When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ring­send. The day had grown sul­try, and in the win­dows of the gro­cers’ shops musty bis­cuits lay bleach­ing. We bought some bis­cuits and chocol­ate which we ate sed­u­lously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the fam­il­ies of the fish­er­men live. We could find no dairy and so we went into a huck­ster’s shop and bought a bottle of rasp­berry lem­on­ade each. Re­freshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat es­caped into a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field we made at once for a slop­ing bank over the ridge of which we could see the Dod­der.

It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our pro­ject of vis­it­ing the Pi­geon House. We had to be home be­fore four o’clock lest our ad­ven­ture should be dis­covered. Mahony looked re­gret­fully at his cata­pult and I had to sug­gest go­ing home by train be­fore he re­gained any cheer­ful­ness. The sun went in be­hind some clouds and left us to our jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our pro­vi­sions.

There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the bank for some time without speak­ing I saw a man ap­proach­ing from the far end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those green stems on which girls tell for­tunes. He came along by the bank slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shab­bily dressed in a suit of green­ish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a high crown. He seemed to be fairly old for his mous­tache was ashen-grey. When he passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then con­tin­ued his way. We fol­lowed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for per­haps fifty paces he turned about and began to re­trace his steps. He walked to­wards us very slowly, al­ways tap­ping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he was look­ing for some­thing in the grass.

He stopped when he came level with us and bade us good day. We answered him and he sat down be­side us on the slope slowly and with great care. He began to talk of the weather, say­ing that it would be a very hot sum­mer and adding that the sea­sons had changed greatly since he was a boy—a long time ago. He said that the hap­pi­est time of one’s life was un­doubtedly one’s school­boy days and that he would give any­thing to be young again. While he ex­pressed these sen­ti­ments which bored us a little we kept si­lent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He asked us whether we had read the po­etry of Tho­mas Moore or the works of Sir Wal­ter Scott and Lord Lyt­ton. I pre­ten­ded that I had read every book he men­tioned so that in the end he said:

“Ah, I can see you are a book­worm like my­self. Now,” he ad­ded, point­ing to Mahony who was re­gard­ing us with open eyes, “he is dif­fer­ent; he goes in for games.”

He said he had all Sir Wal­ter Scott’s works and all Lord Lyt­ton’s works at home and never tired of read­ing them. “Of course,” he said, “there were some of Lord Lyt­ton’s works which boys couldn’t read.” Mahony asked why couldn’t boys read them—a ques­tion which agit­ated and pained me be­cause I was afraid the man would think I was as stu­pid as Mahony. The man, how­ever, only smiled. I saw that he had great gaps in his mouth between his yel­low teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the most sweet­hearts. Mahony men­tioned lightly that he had three tot­ties. The man asked me how many had I. I answered that I had none. He did not be­lieve me and said he was sure I must have one. I was si­lent.

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

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

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

His at­ti­tude on this point struck me as strangely lib­eral in a man of his age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and sweet­hearts was reas­on­able. But I dis­liked the words in his mouth and I wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared some­thing or felt a sud­den chill. As he pro­ceeded I no­ticed that his ac­cent was good. He began to speak to us about girls, say­ing what nice soft hair they had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew. There was noth­ing he liked, he said, so much as look­ing at a nice young girl, at her nice white hands and her beau­ti­ful soft hair. He gave me the im­pres­sion that he was re­peat­ing some­thing which he had learned by heart or that, mag­net­ised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circ­ling round and round in the same or­bit. At times he spoke as if he were simply al­lud­ing to some fact that every­body knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke mys­ter­i­ously as if he were telling us some­thing secret which he did not wish oth­ers to over­hear. He re­peated his phrases over and over again, vary­ing them and sur­round­ing them with his mono­ton­ous voice. I con­tin­ued to gaze to­wards the foot of the slope, listen­ing to him.

After a long while his mono­logue paused. He stood up slowly, say­ing that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without chan­ging the dir­ec­tion of my gaze, I saw him walk­ing slowly away from us to­wards the near end of the field. We re­mained si­lent when he had gone. After a si­lence of a few minutes I heard Mahony ex­claim:

“I say! Look what he’s do­ing!”

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

“I say … He’s a queer old josser!”

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

We said noth­ing fur­ther to each other. I was still con­sid­er­ing whether I would go away or not when the man came back and sat down be­side us again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony, catch­ing sight of the cat which had es­caped him, sprang up and pur­sued her across the field. The man and I watched the chase. The cat es­caped once more and Mahony began to throw stones at the wall she had es­cal­aded. Des­ist­ing from this, he began to wander about the far end of the field, aim­lessly.

After an in­ter­val the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a very rough boy and asked did he get whipped of­ten at school. I was go­ing to reply in­dig­nantly that we were not Na­tional School boys to be whipped, as he called it; but I re­mained si­lent. He began to speak on the sub­ject of chas­tising boys. His mind, as if mag­net­ised again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said that when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well whipped. When a boy was rough and un­ruly there was noth­ing would do him any good but a good sound whip­ping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good: what he wanted was to get a nice warm whip­ping. I was sur­prised at this sen­ti­ment and in­vol­un­tar­ily glanced up at his face. As I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peer­ing at me from un­der a twitch­ing fore­head. I turned my eyes away again.

The man con­tin­ued his mono­logue. He seemed to have for­got­ten his re­cent lib­er­al­ism. He said that if ever he found a boy talk­ing to girls or hav­ing a girl for a sweet­heart he would whip him and whip him; and that would teach him not to be talk­ing to girls. And if a boy had a girl for a sweet­heart and told lies about it then he would give him such a whip­ping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was noth­ing in this world he would like so well as that. He de­scribed to me how he would whip such a boy as if he were un­fold­ing some elab­or­ate mys­tery. He would love that, he said, bet­ter than any­thing in this world; and his voice, as he led me mono­ton­ously through the mys­tery, grew al­most af­fec­tion­ate and seemed to plead with me that I should un­der­stand him.

I waited till his mono­logue paused again. Then I stood up ab­ruptly. Lest I should be­tray my agit­a­tion I delayed a few mo­ments pre­tend­ing to fix my shoe prop­erly and then, say­ing that I was ob­liged to go, I bade him good day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beat­ing quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and, without look­ing at him, called loudly across the field:

“Murphy!”

My voice had an ac­cent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again be­fore Mahony saw me and hal­looed in an­swer. How my heart beat as he came run­ning across the field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was pen­it­ent; for in my heart I had al­ways des­pised him a little.

Araby

North Rich­mond Street, be­ing blind, was a quiet street ex­cept at the hour when the Chris­tian Broth­ers’ School set the boys free. An un­in­hab­ited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, de­tached from its neigh­bours in a square ground The other houses of the street, con­scious of de­cent lives within them, gazed at one an­other with brown im­per­turb­able faces.

The former ten­ant of our house, a priest, had died in the back draw­ing-room. Air, musty from hav­ing been long en­closed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room be­hind the kit­chen was littered with old use­less pa­pers. Among these I found a few pa­per-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp: The Ab­bot, by Wal­ter Scott, The De­vout Com­mu­nic­ant and The Mem­oirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best be­cause its leaves were yel­low. The wild garden be­hind the house con­tained a cent­ral apple-tree and a few strag­gling bushes un­der one of which I found the late ten­ant’s rusty bi­cycle-pump. He had been a very char­it­able priest; in his will he had left all his money to in­sti­tu­tions and the fur­niture of his house to his sis­ter.

When the short days of winter came dusk fell be­fore we had well eaten our din­ners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the col­our of ever-chan­ging vi­olet and to­wards it the lamps of the street lif­ted their feeble lan­terns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bod­ies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the si­lent street. The ca­reer of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes be­hind the houses where we ran the gaunt­let of the rough tribes from the cot­tages, to the back doors of the dark drip­ping gar­dens where odours arose from the ash­pits, to the dark odor­ous stables where a coach­man smoothed and combed the horse or shook mu­sic from the buckled har­ness. When we re­turned to the street light from the kit­chen win­dows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turn­ing the corner we hid in the shadow un­til we had seen him safely housed. Or if Man­gan’s sis­ter came out on the door­step to call her brother in to his tea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she would re­main or go in and, if she re­mained, we left our shadow and walked up to Man­gan’s steps resign­edly. She was wait­ing for us, her fig­ure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her brother al­ways teased her be­fore he obeyed and I stood by the rail­ings look­ing at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morn­ing I lay on the floor in the front par­lour watch­ing her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the door­step my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and fol­lowed her. I kept her brown fig­ure al­ways in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways di­verged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morn­ing after morn­ing. I had never spoken to her, ex­cept for a few cas­ual words, and yet her name was like a sum­mons to all my fool­ish blood.

Her im­age ac­com­pan­ied me even in places the most hos­tile to ro­mance. On Saturday even­ings when my aunt went mar­ket­ing I had to go to carry some of the par­cels. We walked through the flar­ing streets, jostled by drunken men and bar­gain­ing wo­men, amid the curses of la­bour­ers, the shrill lit­an­ies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the bar­rels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chant­ing of street-sing­ers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a bal­lad about the troubles in our nat­ive land. These noises con­verged in a single sen­sa­tion of life for me: I ima­gined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at mo­ments in strange pray­ers and praises which I my­self did not un­der­stand. My eyes were of­ten full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour it­self out into my bosom. I thought little of the fu­ture. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my con­fused ad­or­a­tion. But my body was like a harp and her words and ges­tures were like fin­gers run­ning upon the wires.

One even­ing I went into the back draw­ing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy even­ing and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain im­pinge upon the earth, the fine in­cess­ant needles of wa­ter play­ing in the sod­den beds. Some dis­tant lamp or lighted win­dow gleamed be­low me. I was thank­ful that I could see so little. All my senses seemed to de­sire to veil them­selves and, feel­ing that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands to­gether un­til they trembled, mur­mur­ing: “O love! O love!” many times.

At last she spoke to me. When she ad­dressed the first words to me I was so con­fused that I did not know what to an­swer. She asked me was I go­ing to Araby. I for­got whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splen­did bazaar, she said; she would love to go.

“And why can’t you?” I asked.

While she spoke she turned a sil­ver brace­let round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said, be­cause there would be a re­treat that week in her con­vent. Her brother and two other boys were fight­ing for their caps and I was alone at the rail­ings. She held one of the spikes, bow­ing her head to­wards me. The light from the lamp op­pos­ite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that res­ted there and, fall­ing, lit up the hand upon the rail­ing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white bor­der of a pet­ti­coat, just vis­ible as she stood at ease.

“It’s well for you,” she said.

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

What in­nu­mer­able fol­lies laid waste my wak­ing and sleep­ing thoughts after that even­ing! I wished to an­ni­hil­ate the te­di­ous in­ter­ven­ing days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bed­room and by day in the classroom her im­age came between me and the page I strove to read. The syl­lables of the word Araby were called to me through the si­lence in which my soul lux­uri­ated and cast an Eastern en­chant­ment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was sur­prised and hoped it was not some Free­ma­son af­fair. I answered few ques­tions in class. I watched my mas­ter’s face pass from ami­ab­il­ity to stern­ness; he hoped I was not be­gin­ning to idle. I could not call my wan­der­ing thoughts to­gether. I had hardly any pa­tience with the ser­i­ous work of life which, now that it stood between me and my de­sire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly mono­ton­ous child’s play.

On Saturday morn­ing I re­minded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the even­ing. He was fuss­ing at the hall­stand, look­ing for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:

“Yes, boy, I know.”

As he was in the hall I could not go into the front par­lour and lie at the win­dow. I left the house in bad hu­mour and walked slowly to­wards the school. The air was piti­lessly raw and already my heart mis­gave me.

When I came home to din­ner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat star­ing at the clock for some time and, when its tick­ing began to ir­rit­ate me, I left the room. I moun­ted the stair­case and gained the up­per part of the house. The high cold empty gloomy rooms lib­er­ated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front win­dow I saw my com­pan­ions play­ing be­low in the street. Their cries reached me weakened and in­dis­tinct and, lean­ing my fore­head against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, see­ing noth­ing but the brown-clad fig­ure cast by my ima­gin­a­tion, touched dis­creetly by the lamp­light at the curved neck, at the hand upon the rail­ings and at the bor­der be­low the dress.

When I came down­stairs again I found Mrs. Mer­cer sit­ting at the fire. She was an old gar­rulous wo­man, a pawn­broker’s widow, who col­lec­ted used stamps for some pi­ous pur­pose. I had to en­dure the gos­sip of the tea-table. The meal was pro­longed bey­ond an hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs. Mer­cer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait any longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the room, clench­ing my fists. My aunt said:

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

At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latch­key in the hall­door. I heard him talk­ing to him­self and heard the hall­stand rock­ing when it had re­ceived the weight of his over­coat. I could in­ter­pret these signs. When he was mid­way through his din­ner I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had for­got­ten.

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

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

“Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.”

My uncle said he was very sorry he had for­got­ten. He said he be­lieved in the old say­ing: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” He asked me where I was go­ing and, when I had told him a second time he asked me did I know The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed. When I left the kit­chen he was about to re­cite the open­ing lines of the piece to my aunt.

I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buck­ing­ham Street to­wards the sta­tion. The sight of the streets thronged with buy­ers and glar­ing with gas re­called to me the pur­pose of my jour­ney. I took my seat in a third-class car­riage of a deser­ted train. After an in­tol­er­able delay the train moved out of the sta­tion slowly. It crept on­ward among ru­in­ous houses and over the twink­ling river. At West­land Row Sta­tion a crowd of people pressed to the car­riage doors; but the port­ers moved them back, say­ing that it was a spe­cial train for the bazaar. I re­mained alone in the bare car­riage. In a few minutes the train drew up be­side an im­pro­vised wooden plat­form. I passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large build­ing which dis­played the ma­gical name.

I could not find any six­penny en­trance and, fear­ing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turn­stile, hand­ing a shil­ling to a weary-look­ing man. I found my­self in a big hall girdled at half its height by a gal­lery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in dark­ness. I re­cog­nised a si­lence like that which per­vades a church after a ser­vice. I walked into the centre of the bazaar tim­idly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which were still open. Be­fore a cur­tain, over which the words Café Chant­ant were writ­ten in col­oured lamps, two men were count­ing money on a sal­ver. I listened to the fall of the coins.

Re­mem­ber­ing with dif­fi­culty why I had come I went over to one of the stalls and ex­amined por­cel­ain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talk­ing and laugh­ing with two young gen­tle­men. I re­marked their Eng­lish ac­cents and listened vaguely to their con­ver­sa­tion.

“O, I never said such a thing!”

“O, but you did!”

“O, but I didn’t!”

“Didn’t she say that?”

“Yes. I heard her.”

“O, there’s a … fib!”

Ob­serving me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy any­thing. The tone of her voice was not en­cour­aging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like east­ern guards at either side of the dark en­trance to the stall and mur­mured:

“No, thank you.”

The young lady changed the po­s­i­tion of one of the vases and went back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same sub­ject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.

I lingered be­fore her stall, though I knew my stay was use­less, to make my in­terest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I al­lowed the two pen­nies to fall against the six­pence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one end of the gal­lery that the light was out. The up­per part of the hall was now com­pletely dark.

Gaz­ing up into the dark­ness I saw my­self as a creature driven and de­rided by van­ity; and my eyes burned with an­guish and an­ger.

Eveline

She sat at the win­dow watch­ing the even­ing in­vade the av­enue. Her head was leaned against the win­dow cur­tains and in her nos­trils was the odour of dusty cre­tonne. She was tired.

Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his foot­steps clack­ing along the con­crete pave­ment and af­ter­wards crunch­ing on the cinder path be­fore the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every even­ing with other people’s chil­dren. Then a man from Bel­fast bought the field and built houses in it—not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shin­ing roofs. The chil­dren of the av­enue used to play to­gether in that field—the Dev­ines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her broth­ers and sis­ters. Ern­est, how­ever, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used of­ten to hunt them in out of the field with his black­thorn stick; but usu­ally little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father com­ing. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and be­sides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her broth­ers and sis­ters were all grown up; her mother was dead. Tiz­zie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to Eng­land. Everything changes. Now she was go­ing to go away like the oth­ers, to leave her home.

Home! She looked round the room, re­view­ing all its fa­mil­iar ob­jects which she had dus­ted once a week for so many years, won­der­ing where on earth all the dust came from. Per­haps she would never see again those fa­mil­iar ob­jects from which she had never dreamed of be­ing di­vided. And yet dur­ing all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yel­low­ing pho­to­graph hung on the wall above the broken har­monium be­side the col­oured print of the prom­ises made to Blessed Mar­garet Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the pho­to­graph to a vis­itor her father used to pass it with a cas­ual word:

“He is in Mel­bourne now.”

She had con­sen­ted to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the ques­tion. In her home any­way she had shel­ter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at busi­ness. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fel­low? Say she was a fool, per­haps; and her place would be filled up by ad­vert­ise­ment. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had al­ways had an edge on her, es­pe­cially whenever there were people listen­ing.

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

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leav­ing the Stores.

But in her new home, in a dis­tant un­known coun­try, it would not be like that. Then she would be mar­ried—she, Eve­line. People would treat her with re­spect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nine­teen, she some­times felt her­self in danger of her father’s vi­ol­ence. She knew it was that that had given her the pal­pit­a­tions. When they were grow­ing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ern­est, be­cause she was a girl; but lat­terly he had be­gun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to pro­tect her. Ern­est was dead and Harry, who was in the church dec­or­at­ing busi­ness, was nearly al­ways down some­where in the coun­try. Besides, the in­vari­able squabble for money on Saturday nights had be­gun to weary her un­speak­ably. She al­ways gave her en­tire wages—seven shil­lings—and Harry al­ways sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t go­ing to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usu­ally fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any in­ten­tion of buy­ing Sunday’s din­ner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her mar­ket­ing, hold­ing her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she el­bowed her way through the crowds and re­turn­ing home late un­der her load of pro­vi­sions. She had hard work to keep the house to­gether and to see that the two young chil­dren who had been left to her charge went to school reg­u­larly and got their meals reg­u­larly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly un­desir­able life.

She was about to ex­plore an­other life with Frank. Frank was very kind, manly, open­hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home wait­ing for her. How well she re­membered the first time she had seen him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was stand­ing at the gate, his peaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled for­ward over a face of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her out­side the Stores every even­ing and see her home. He took her to see The Bo­hemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an un­ac­cus­tomed part of the theatre with him. He was aw­fully fond of mu­sic and sang a little. People knew that they were court­ing and, when he sang about the lass that loves a sailor, she al­ways felt pleas­antly con­fused. He used to call her Pop­pens out of fun. First of all it had been an ex­cite­ment for her to have a fel­low and then she had be­gun to like him. He had tales of dis­tant coun­tries. He had star­ted as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Al­lan Line go­ing out to Canada. He told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the dif­fer­ent ser­vices. He had sailed through the Straits of Ma­gel­lan and he told her stor­ies of the ter­rible Patago­ni­ans. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old coun­try just for a hol­i­day. Of course, her father had found out the af­fair and had for­bid­den her to have any­thing to say to him.

“I know these sailor chaps,” he said.

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

The even­ing deepened in the av­enue. The white of two let­ters in her lap grew in­dis­tinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ern­est had been her fa­vour­ite but she liked Harry too. Her father was be­com­ing old lately, she no­ticed; he would miss her. So­me­times he could be very nice. Not long be­fore, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a pic­nic to the Hill of Howth. She re­membered her father put­ting on her mother’s bon­net to make the chil­dren laugh.

Her time was run­ning out but she con­tin­ued to sit by the win­dow, lean­ing her head against the win­dow cur­tain, in­hal­ing the odour of dusty cre­tonne. Down far in the av­enue she could hear a street or­gan play­ing. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night to re­mind her of the prom­ise to her mother, her prom­ise to keep the home to­gether as long as she could. She re­membered the last night of her mother’s ill­ness; she was again in the close dark room at the other side of the hall and out­side she heard a mel­an­choly air of Italy. The or­gan-player had been ordered to go away and given six­pence. She re­membered her father strut­ting back into the sick­room say­ing:

“Damned Itali­ans! com­ing over here!”

As she mused the pi­ti­ful vis­ion of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her be­ing—that life of com­mon­place sac­ri­fices clos­ing in fi­nal crazi­ness. She trembled as she heard again her mother’s voice say­ing con­stantly with fool­ish in­sist­ence:

“Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!”

She stood up in a sud­den im­pulse of ter­ror. Es­cape! She must es­cape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, per­haps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be un­happy? She had a right to hap­pi­ness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.

She stood among the sway­ing crowd in the sta­tion at the North Wall. He held her hand and she knew that he was speak­ing to her, say­ing some­thing about the pas­sage over and over again. The sta­tion was full of sol­diers with brown bag­gages. Through the wide doors of the sheds she caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, ly­ing in be­side the quay wall, with il­lumined portholes. She answered noth­ing. She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of dis­tress, she prayed to God to dir­ect her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long mourn­ful whistle into the mist. If she went, to­mor­row she would be on the sea with Frank, steam­ing to­wards Buenos Ayres. Their pas­sage had been booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her? Her dis­tress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept mov­ing her lips in si­lent fer­vent prayer.

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

“Come!”

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was draw­ing her into them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron rail­ing.

“Come!”

No! No! No! It was im­possible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of an­guish!

“Eve­line! Evvy!”

He rushed bey­ond the bar­rier and called to her to fol­low. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, pass­ive, like a help­less an­imal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or re­cog­ni­tion.

After the Race

The cars came scud­ding in to­wards Dub­lin, run­ning evenly like pel­lets in the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at In­chicore sight­seers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars ca­reer­ing home­ward and through this chan­nel of poverty and in­ac­tion the Contin­ent sped its wealth and in­dustry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the cheer of the grate­fully op­pressed. Their sym­pathy, how­ever, was for the blue cars—the cars of their friends, the French.

The French, moreover, were vir­tual vic­tors. Their team had fin­ished solidly; they had been placed second and third and the driver of the win­ning Ger­man car was re­por­ted a Bel­gian. Each blue car, there­fore, re­ceived a double meas­ure of wel­come as it topped the crest of the hill and each cheer of wel­come was ac­know­ledged with smiles and nods by those in the car. In one of these trimly built cars was a party of four young men whose spir­its seemed to be at present well above the level of suc­cess­ful Gal­li­cism: in fact, these four young men were al­most hil­ari­ous. They were Charles Ségouin, the owner of the car; André Rivière, a young elec­tri­cian of Ca­na­dian birth; a huge Hun­garian named Vil­lona and a neatly groomed young man named Doyle. Ségouin was in good hu­mour be­cause he had un­ex­pec­tedly re­ceived some or­ders in ad­vance (he was about to start a mo­tor es­tab­lish­ment in Paris) and Rivière was in good hu­mour be­cause he was to be ap­poin­ted man­ager of the es­tab­lish­ment; these two young men (who were cous­ins) were also in good hu­mour be­cause of the suc­cess of the French cars. Vil­lona was in good hu­mour be­cause he had had a very sat­is­fact­ory lunch­eon; and be­sides he was an op­tim­ist by nature. The fourth mem­ber of the party, how­ever, was too ex­cited to be genu­inely happy.

He was about twenty-six years of age, with a soft, light brown mous­tache and rather in­no­cent-look­ing grey eyes. His father, who had be­gun life as an ad­vanced Na­tion­al­ist, had mod­i­fied his views early. He had made his money as a butcher in King­stown and by open­ing shops in Dub­lin and in the sub­urbs he had made his money many times over. He had also been for­tu­nate enough to se­cure some of the po­lice con­tracts and in the end he had be­come rich enough to be al­luded to in the Dub­lin news­pa­pers as a mer­chant prince. He had sent his son to Eng­land to be edu­cated in a big Cath­olic col­lege and had af­ter­wards sent him to Dub­lin University to study law. Jimmy did not study very earn­estly and took to bad courses for a while. He had money and he was pop­u­lar; and he di­vided his time curi­ously between mu­sical and mo­tor­ing circles. Then he had been sent for a term to Cam­bridge to see a little life. His father, re­mon­strat­ive, but cov­ertly proud of the ex­cess, had paid his bills and brought him home. It was at Cam­bridge that he had met Ségouin. They were not much more than ac­quaint­ances as yet but Jimmy found great pleas­ure in the so­ci­ety of one who had seen so much of the world and was re­puted to own some of the biggest ho­tels in France. Such a per­son (as his father agreed) was well worth know­ing, even if he had not been the charm­ing com­pan­ion he was. Vil­lona was en­ter­tain­ing also—a bril­liant pi­an­ist—but, un­for­tu­nately, very poor.

The car ran on mer­rily with its cargo of hil­ari­ous youth. The two cous­ins sat on the front seat; Jimmy and his Hun­garian friend sat be­hind. De­cidedly Vil­lona was in ex­cel­lent spir­its; he kept up a deep bass hum of melody for miles of the road. The French­men flung their laughter and light words over their shoulders and of­ten Jimmy had to strain for­ward to catch the quick phrase. This was not al­to­gether pleas­ant for him, as he had nearly al­ways to make a deft guess at the mean­ing and shout back a suit­able an­swer in the face of a high wind. Besides Vil­lona’s hum­ming would con­fuse any­body; the noise of the car, too.

Rapid mo­tion through space elates one; so does no­tori­ety; so does the pos­ses­sion of money. These were three good reas­ons for Jimmy’s ex­cite­ment. He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the com­pany of these Contin­ent­als. At the con­trol Ségouin had presen­ted him to one of the French com­pet­it­ors and, in an­swer to his con­fused mur­mur of com­pli­ment, the swarthy face of the driver had dis­closed a line of shin­ing white teeth. It was pleas­ant after that hon­our to re­turn to the pro­fane world of spec­tat­ors amid nudges and sig­ni­fic­ant looks. Then as to money—he really had a great sum un­der his con­trol. Ségouin, per­haps, would not think it a great sum but Jimmy who, in spite of tem­por­ary er­rors, was at heart the in­her­itor of solid in­stincts knew well with what dif­fi­culty it had been got to­gether. This know­ledge had pre­vi­ously kept his bills within the lim­its of reas­on­able reck­less­ness, and, if he had been so con­scious of the la­bour lat­ent in money when there had been ques­tion merely of some freak of the higher in­tel­li­gence, how much more so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his sub­stance! It was a ser­i­ous thing for him.

Of course, the in­vest­ment was a good one and Ségouin had man­aged to give the im­pres­sion that it was by a fa­vour of friend­ship the mite of Irish money was to be in­cluded in the cap­ital of the con­cern. Jimmy had a re­spect for his father’s shrewd­ness in busi­ness mat­ters and in this case it had been his father who had first sug­ges­ted the in­vest­ment; money to be made in the mo­tor busi­ness, pots of money. Moreover Ségouin had the un­mis­tak­able air of wealth. Jimmy set out to trans­late into days’ work that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In what style they had come ca­reer­ing along the coun­try roads! The jour­ney laid a ma­gical fin­ger on the genu­ine pulse of life and gal­lantly the ma­chinery of hu­man nerves strove to an­swer the bound­ing courses of the swift blue an­imal.

They drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with un­usual traffic, loud with the horns of mo­tor­ists and the gongs of im­pa­tient tram-drivers. Near the Bank Ségouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend alighted. A little knot of people col­lec­ted on the foot­path to pay homage to the snort­ing mo­tor. The party was to dine to­gether that even­ing in Ségouin’s hotel and, mean­while, Jimmy and his friend, who was stay­ing with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers. They walked north­ward with a curi­ous feel­ing of dis­ap­point­ment in the ex­er­cise, while the city hung its pale globes of light above them in a haze of sum­mer even­ing.

In Jimmy’s house this din­ner had been pro­nounced an oc­ca­sion. A cer­tain pride mingled with his par­ents’ trep­id­a­tion, a cer­tain eager­ness, also, to play fast and loose for the names of great for­eign cit­ies have at least this vir­tue. Jimmy, too, looked very well when he was dressed and, as he stood in the hall giv­ing a last equa­tion to the bows of his dress tie, his father may have felt even com­mer­cially sat­is­fied at hav­ing se­cured for his son qual­it­ies of­ten un­pur­chaseable. His father, there­fore, was un­usu­ally friendly with Vil­lona and his man­ner ex­pressed a real re­spect for for­eign ac­com­plish­ments; but this sub­tlety of his host was prob­ably lost upon the Hun­garian, who was be­gin­ning to have a sharp de­sire for his din­ner.

The din­ner was ex­cel­lent, ex­quis­ite. Ségouin, Jimmy de­cided, had a very re­fined taste. The party was in­creased by a young Eng­lish­man named Routh whom Jimmy had seen with Ségouin at Cam­bridge. The young men supped in a snug room lit by elec­tric candle-lamps. They talked vol­ubly and with little re­serve. Jimmy, whose ima­gin­a­tion was kind­ling, con­ceived the lively youth of the French­men twined el­eg­antly upon the firm frame­work of the Eng­lish­man’s man­ner. A grace­ful im­age of his, he thought, and a just one. He ad­mired the dex­ter­ity with which their host dir­ec­ted the con­ver­sa­tion. The five young men had vari­ous tastes and their tongues had been loosened. Vil­lona, with im­mense re­spect, began to dis­cover to the mildly sur­prised Eng­lish­man the beau­ties of the Eng­lish mad­rigal, de­plor­ing the loss of old in­stru­ments. Rivière, not wholly in­genu­ously, un­der­took to ex­plain to Jimmy the tri­umph of the French mech­an­icians. The res­on­ant voice of the Hun­garian was about to pre­vail in ri­dicule of the spuri­ous lutes of the ro­mantic paint­ers when Ségouin shep­her­ded his party into polit­ics. Here was con­genial ground for all. Jimmy, un­der gen­er­ous in­flu­ences, felt the bur­ied zeal of his father wake to life within him: he aroused the tor­pid Routh at last. The room grew doubly hot and Ségouin’s task grew harder each mo­ment: there was even danger of per­sonal spite. The alert host at an op­por­tun­ity lif­ted his glass to Hu­man­ity and, when the toast had been drunk, he threw open a win­dow sig­ni­fic­antly.

That night the city wore the mask of a cap­ital. The five young men strolled along Stephen’s Green in a faint cloud of aro­matic smoke. They talked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders. The people made way for them. At the corner of Grafton Street a short fat man was put­ting two hand­some ladies on a car in charge of an­other fat man. The car drove off and the short fat man caught sight of the party.

“André.”

“It’s Far­ley!”

A tor­rent of talk fol­lowed. Far­ley was an Amer­ican. No one knew very well what the talk was about. Vil­lona and Rivière were the nois­i­est, but all the men were ex­cited. They got up on a car, squeez­ing them­selves to­gether amid much laughter. They drove by the crowd, blen­ded now into soft col­ours, to a mu­sic of merry bells. They took the train at West­land Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they were walk­ing out of King­stown Sta­tion. The ticket-col­lector sa­luted Jimmy; he was an old man:

“Fine night, sir!”

It was a se­rene sum­mer night; the har­bour lay like a darkened mir­ror at their feet. They pro­ceeded to­wards it with linked arms, singing “Ca­det Rous­sel” in chorus, stamp­ing their feet at every:

“Ho! Ho! Hohé, vraiment!”

They got into a row­boat at the slip and made out for the Amer­ican’s yacht. There was to be sup­per, mu­sic, cards. Vil­lona said with con­vic­tion:

“It is de­light­ful!”

There was a yacht pi­ano in the cabin. Vil­lona played a waltz for Far­ley and Rivière, Far­ley act­ing as cava­lier and Rivière as lady. Then an im­promptu square dance, the men de­vis­ing ori­ginal fig­ures. What mer­ri­ment! Jimmy took his part with a will; this was see­ing life, at least. Then Far­ley got out of breath and cried “Stop!” A man brought in a light sup­per, and the young men sat down to it for form’s sake. They drank, how­ever: it was Bo­hemian. They drank Ire­land, Eng­land, France, Hun­gary, the Un­ited States of Amer­ica. Jimmy made a speech, a long speech, Vil­lona say­ing: “Hear! hear!” whenever there was a pause. There was a great clap­ping of hands when he sat down. It must have been a good speech. Far­ley clapped him on the back and laughed loudly. What jovial fel­lows! What good com­pany they were!

Cards! cards! The table was cleared. Vil­lona re­turned quietly to his pi­ano and played vol­un­tar­ies for them. The other men played game after game, fling­ing them­selves boldly into the ad­ven­ture. They drank the health of the Queen of Hearts and of the Queen of Dia­monds. Jimmy felt ob­scurely the lack of an audi­ence: the wit was flash­ing. Play ran very high and pa­per began to pass. Jimmy did not know ex­actly who was win­ning but he knew that he was los­ing. But it was his own fault for he fre­quently mis­took his cards and the other men had to cal­cu­late his IOU’s for him. They were dev­ils of fel­lows but he wished they would stop: it was get­ting late. Someone gave the toast of the yacht The Belle of New­port and then someone pro­posed one great game for a fin­ish.

The pi­ano had stopped; Vil­lona must have gone up on deck. It was a ter­rible game. They stopped just be­fore the end of it to drink for luck. Jimmy un­der­stood that the game lay between Routh and Ségouin. What ex­cite­ment! Jimmy was ex­cited too; he would lose, of course. How much had he writ­ten away? The men rose to their feet to play the last tricks. talk­ing and ges­tic­u­lat­ing. Routh won. The cabin shook with the young men’s cheer­ing and the cards were bundled to­gether. They began then to gather in what they had won. Far­ley and Jimmy were the heav­iest losers.

He knew that he would re­gret in the morn­ing but at present he was glad of the rest, glad of the dark stupor that would cover up his folly. He leaned his el­bows on the table and res­ted his head between his hands, count­ing the beats of his temples. The cabin door opened and he saw the Hun­garian stand­ing in a shaft of grey light:

“Day­break, gen­tle­men!”

Two Gallants

The grey warm even­ing of August had des­cen­ded upon the city and a mild warm air, a memory of sum­mer, cir­cu­lated in the streets. The streets, shuttered for the re­pose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily col­oured crowd. Like il­lumined pearls the lamps shone from the sum­mits of their tall poles upon the liv­ing tex­ture be­low which, chan­ging shape and hue un­ceas­ingly, sent up into the warm grey even­ing air an un­chan­ging un­ceas­ing mur­mur.

Two young men came down the hill of Rut­land Square. One of them was just bring­ing a long mono­logue to a close. The other, who walked on the verge of the path and was at times ob­liged to step on to the road, ow­ing to his com­pan­ion’s rude­ness, wore an amused listen­ing face. He was squat and ruddy. A yacht­ing cap was shoved far back from his fore­head and the nar­rat­ive to which he listened made con­stant waves of ex­pres­sion break forth over his face from the corners of his nose and eyes and mouth. Little jets of wheez­ing laughter fol­lowed one an­other out of his con­vulsed body. His eyes, twink­ling with cun­ning en­joy­ment, glanced at every mo­ment to­wards his com­pan­ion’s face. Once or twice he re­arranged the light wa­ter­proof which he had slung over one shoulder in tor­eador fash­ion. His breeches, his white rub­ber shoes and his jauntily slung wa­ter­proof ex­pressed youth. But his fig­ure fell into ro­tund­ity at the waist, his hair was scant and grey and his face, when the waves of ex­pres­sion had passed over it, had a rav­aged look.

When he was quite sure that the nar­rat­ive had ended he laughed noise­lessly for fully half a minute. Then he said:

“Well! … That takes the bis­cuit!”

His voice seemed win­nowed of vigour; and to en­force his words he ad­ded with hu­mour:

“That takes the sol­it­ary, unique, and, if I may so call it, recher­ché bis­cuit!”

He be­came ser­i­ous and si­lent when he had said this. His tongue was tired for he had been talk­ing all the af­ter­noon in a pub­lic-house in Dor­set Street. Most people con­sidered Lene­han a leech but, in spite of this repu­ta­tion, his adroit­ness and elo­quence had al­ways pre­ven­ted his friends from form­ing any gen­eral policy against him. He had a brave man­ner of com­ing up to a party of them in a bar and of hold­ing him­self nimbly at the bor­ders of the com­pany un­til he was in­cluded in a round. He was a sport­ing vag­rant armed with a vast stock of stor­ies, lim­er­icks and riddles. He was in­sens­it­ive to all kinds of dis­cour­tesy. No one knew how he achieved the stern task of liv­ing, but his name was vaguely as­so­ci­ated with ra­cing tis­sues.

“And where did you pick her up, Cor­ley?” he asked.

Cor­ley ran his tongue swiftly along his up­per lip.

“One night, man,” he said, “I was go­ing along Dame Street and I spot­ted a fine tart un­der Water­house’s clock and said good­night, you know. So we went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a slavey in a house in Bag­got Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed her a bit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by ap­point­ment. We went out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told me she used to go with a dairy­man. … It was fine, man. Cigar­ettes every night she’d bring me and pay­ing the tram out and back. And one night she brought me two bloody fine ci­gars—O, the real cheese, you know, that the old fel­low used to smoke. … I was afraid, man, she’d get in the fam­ily way. But she’s up to the dodge.”

“Maybe she thinks you’ll marry her,” said Lene­han.

“I told her I was out of a job,” said Cor­ley. “I told her I was in Pim’s. She doesn’t know my name. I was too hairy to tell her that. But she thinks I’m a bit of class, you know.”

Lene­han laughed again, noise­lessly.

“Of all the good ones ever I heard,” he said, “that em­phat­ic­ally takes the bis­cuit.”

Cor­ley’s stride ac­know­ledged the com­pli­ment. The swing of his burly body made his friend ex­ecute a few light skips from the path to the road­way and back again. Cor­ley was the son of an in­spector of po­lice and he had in­her­ited his father’s frame and gait. He walked with his hands by his sides, hold­ing him­self erect and sway­ing his head from side to side. His head was large, glob­u­lar and oily; it sweated in all weath­ers; and his large round hat, set upon it side­ways, looked like a bulb which had grown out of an­other. He al­ways stared straight be­fore him as if he were on parade and, when he wished to gaze after someone in the street, it was ne­ces­sary for him to move his body from the hips. At present he was about town. Whenever any job was va­cant a friend was al­ways ready to give him the hard word. He was of­ten to be seen walk­ing with po­lice­men in plain clothes, talk­ing earn­estly. He knew the in­ner side of all af­fairs and was fond of de­liv­er­ing fi­nal judg­ments. He spoke without listen­ing to the speech of his com­pan­ions. His con­ver­sa­tion was mainly about him­self: what he had said to such a per­son and what such a per­son had said to him and what he had said to settle the mat­ter. When he re­por­ted these dia­logues he as­pir­ated the first let­ter of his name after the man­ner of Florentines.

Lene­han offered his friend a ci­gar­ette. As the two young men walked on through the crowd Cor­ley oc­ca­sion­ally turned to smile at some of the passing girls but Lene­han’s gaze was fixed on the large faint moon circled with a double halo. He watched earn­estly the passing of the grey web of twi­light across its face. At length he said:

“Well … tell me, Cor­ley, I sup­pose you’ll be able to pull it off all right, eh?”

Cor­ley closed one eye ex­press­ively as an an­swer.

“Is she game for that?” asked Lene­han du­bi­ously. “You can never know wo­men.”

“She’s all right,” said Cor­ley. “I know the way to get around her, man. She’s a bit gone on me.”

“You’re what I call a gay Lothario,” said Lene­han. “And the proper kind of a Lothario, too!”

A shade of mock­ery re­lieved the servil­ity of his man­ner. To save him­self he had the habit of leav­ing his flat­tery open to the in­ter­pret­a­tion of raillery. But Cor­ley had not a subtle mind.

“There’s noth­ing to touch a good slavey,” he af­firmed. “Take my tip for it.”

“By one who has tried them all,” said Lene­han.

“First I used to go with girls, you know,” said Cor­ley, un­bosom­ing; “girls off the South Cir­cu­lar. I used to take them out, man, on the tram some­where and pay the tram or take them to a band or a play at the theatre or buy them chocol­ate and sweets or some­thing that way. I used to spend money on them right enough,” he ad­ded, in a con­vin­cing tone, as if he was con­scious of be­ing dis­be­lieved.

But Lene­han could well be­lieve it; he nod­ded gravely.

“I know that game,” he said, “and it’s a mug’s game.”

“And damn the thing I ever got out of it,” said Cor­ley.

“Ditto here,” said Lene­han.

“Only off of one of them,” said Cor­ley.

He moistened his up­per lip by run­ning his tongue along it. The re­col­lec­tion brightened his eyes. He too gazed at the pale disc of the moon, now nearly veiled, and seemed to med­it­ate.

“She was … a bit of all right,” he said re­gret­fully.

He was si­lent again. Then he ad­ded:

“She’s on the turf now. I saw her driv­ing down Earl Street one night with two fel­lows with her on a car.”

“I sup­pose that’s your do­ing,” said Lene­han.

“There was oth­ers at her be­fore me,” said Cor­ley philo­soph­ic­ally.

This time Lene­han was in­clined to dis­be­lieve. He shook his head to and fro and smiled.

“You know you can’t kid me, Cor­ley,” he said.

“Hon­est to God!” said Cor­ley. “Didn’t she tell me her­self?”

Lene­han made a tra­gic ges­ture.

“Base be­trayer!” he said.

As they passed along the rail­ings of Trin­ity Col­lege, Lene­han skipped out into the road and peered up at the clock.

“Twenty after,” he said.

“Time enough,” said Cor­ley. “She’ll be there all right. I al­ways let her wait a bit.”

Lene­han laughed quietly.

“Ecod! Cor­ley, you know how to take them,” he said.

“I’m up to all their little tricks,” Cor­ley con­fessed.

“But tell me,” said Lene­han again, “are you sure you can bring it off all right? You know it’s a tick­lish job. They’re damn close on that point. Eh? … What?”

His bright, small eyes searched his com­pan­ion’s face for re­as­sur­ance. Cor­ley swung his head to and fro as if to toss aside an in­sist­ent in­sect, and his brows gathered.

“I’ll pull it off,” he said. “Leave it to me, can’t you?”

Lene­han said no more. He did not wish to ruffle his friend’s tem­per, to be sent to the devil and told that his ad­vice was not wanted. A little tact was ne­ces­sary. But Cor­ley’s brow was soon smooth again. His thoughts were run­ning an­other way.

“She’s a fine de­cent tart,” he said, with ap­pre­ci­ation; “that’s what she is.”

They walked along Nas­sau Street and then turned into Kil­dare Street. Not far from the porch of the club a harp­ist stood in the road­way, play­ing to a little ring of listen­ers. He plucked at the wires heed­lessly, glan­cing quickly from time to time at the face of each new­comer and from time to time, wear­ily also, at the sky. His harp, too, heed­less that her cov­er­ings had fallen about her knees, seemed weary alike of the eyes of strangers and of her mas­ter’s hands. One hand played in the bass the melody of “Si­lent, O Moyle,” while the other hand ca­reered in the treble after each group of notes. The notes of the air soun­ded deep and full.

The two young men walked up the street without speak­ing, the mourn­ful mu­sic fol­low­ing them. When they reached Stephen’s Green they crossed the road. Here the noise of trams, the lights and the crowd re­leased them from their si­lence.

“There she is!” said Cor­ley.

At the corner of Hume Street a young wo­man was stand­ing. She wore a blue dress and a white sailor hat. She stood on the curb­stone, swinging a sun­shade in one hand. Lene­han grew lively.

“Let’s have a look at her, Cor­ley,” he said.

Cor­ley glanced side­ways at his friend and an un­pleas­ant grin ap­peared on his face.

“Are you try­ing to get in­side me?” he asked.

“Damn it!” said Lene­han boldly, “I don’t want an in­tro­duc­tion. All I want is to have a look at her. I’m not go­ing to eat her.”

“O … A look at her?” said Cor­ley, more ami­ably. “Well … I’ll tell you what. I’ll go over and talk to her and you can pass by.”

“Right!” said Lene­han.

Cor­ley had already thrown one leg over the chains when Lene­han called out:

“And after? Where will we meet?”

“Half ten,” answered Cor­ley, bring­ing over his other leg.

“Where?”

“Corner of Mer­rion Street. We’ll be com­ing back.”

“Work it all right now,” said Lene­han in farewell.

Cor­ley did not an­swer. He sauntered across the road sway­ing his head from side to side. His bulk, his easy pace, and the solid sound of his boots had some­thing of the con­queror in them. He ap­proached the young wo­man and, without sa­lut­ing, began at once to con­verse with her. She swung her um­brella more quickly and ex­ecuted half turns on her heels. Once or twice when he spoke to her at close quar­ters she laughed and bent her head.

Lene­han ob­served them for a few minutes. Then he walked rap­idly along be­side the chains at some dis­tance and crossed the road ob­liquely. As he ap­proached Hume Street corner he found the air heav­ily scen­ted and his eyes made a swift anxious scru­tiny of the young wo­man’s ap­pear­ance. She had her Sunday finery on. Her blue serge skirt was held at the waist by a belt of black leather. The great sil­ver buckle of her belt seemed to de­press the centre of her body, catch­ing the light stuff of her white blouse like a clip. She wore a short black jacket with mother-of-pearl but­tons and a ragged black boa. The ends of her tulle col­lar­ette had been care­fully dis­ordered and a big bunch of red flowers was pinned in her bosom, stems up­wards. Lene­han’s eyes noted ap­prov­ingly her stout short mus­cu­lar body. Frank rude health glowed in her face, on her fat red cheeks and in her un­abashed blue eyes. Her fea­tures were blunt. She had broad nos­trils, a strag­gling mouth which lay open in a con­ten­ted leer, and two pro­ject­ing front teeth. As he passed Lene­han took off his cap and, after about ten seconds, Cor­ley re­turned a sa­lute to the air. This he did by rais­ing his hand vaguely and pens­ively chan­ging the angle of po­s­i­tion of his hat.

Lene­han walked as far as the Shel­bourne Hotel where he hal­ted and waited. After wait­ing for a little time he saw them com­ing to­wards him and, when they turned to the right, he fol­lowed them, step­ping lightly in his white shoes, down one side of Mer­rion Square. As he walked on slowly, tim­ing his pace to theirs, he watched Cor­ley’s head which turned at every mo­ment to­wards the young wo­man’s face like a big ball re­volving on a pivot. He kept the pair in view un­til he had seen them climb­ing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram; then he turned about and went back the way he had come.

Now that he was alone his face looked older. His gaiety seemed to for­sake him and, as he came by the rail­ings of the Duke’s Lawn, he al­lowed his hand to run along them. The air which the harp­ist had played began to con­trol his move­ments. His softly pad­ded feet played the melody while his fin­gers swept a scale of vari­ations idly along the rail­ings after each group of notes.

He walked list­lessly round Stephen’s Green and then down Grafton Street. Though his eyes took note of many ele­ments of the crowd through which he passed they did so mor­osely. He found trivial all that was meant to charm him and did not an­swer the glances which in­vited him to be bold. He knew that he would have to speak a great deal, to in­vent and to amuse, and his brain and throat were too dry for such a task. The prob­lem of how he could pass the hours till he met Cor­ley again troubled him a little. He could think of no way of passing them but to keep on walk­ing. He turned to the left when he came to the corner of Rut­land Square and felt more at ease in the dark quiet street, the sombre look of which suited his mood. He paused at last be­fore the win­dow of a poor-look­ing shop over which the words Re­fresh­ment Bar were prin­ted in white let­ters. On the glass of the win­dow were two fly­ing in­scrip­tions: Ginger Beer and Ginger Ale. A cut ham was ex­posed on a great blue dish while near it on a plate lay a seg­ment of very light plum-pud­ding. He eyed this food earn­estly for some time and then, after glan­cing war­ily up and down the street, went into the shop quickly.

He was hungry for, ex­cept some bis­cuits which he had asked two grudging cur­ates to bring him, he had eaten noth­ing since break­fast-time. He sat down at an un­covered wooden table op­pos­ite two work-girls and a mech­anic. A slat­ternly girl waited on him.

“How much is a plate of peas?” he asked.

“Three half­pence, sir,” said the girl.

“Bring me a plate of peas,” he said, “and a bottle of ginger beer.”

He spoke roughly in or­der to be­lie his air of gen­til­ity for his entry had been fol­lowed by a pause of talk. His face was heated. To ap­pear nat­ural he pushed his cap back on his head and planted his el­bows on the table. The mech­anic and the two work-girls ex­amined him point by point be­fore re­sum­ing their con­ver­sa­tion in a sub­dued voice. The girl brought him a plate of gro­cer’s hot peas, seasoned with pep­per and vin­egar, a fork and his ginger beer. He ate his food greed­ily and found it so good that he made a note of the shop men­tally. When he had eaten all the peas he sipped his ginger beer and sat for some time think­ing of Cor­ley’s ad­ven­ture. In his ima­gin­a­tion he be­held the pair of lov­ers walk­ing along some dark road; he heard Cor­ley’s voice in deep en­er­getic gal­lantries and saw again the leer of the young wo­man’s mouth. This vis­ion made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was tired of knock­ing about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and in­trigues. He would be thirty-one in Novem­ber. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how pleas­ant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good din­ner to sit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and with girls. He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls too. Ex­per­i­ence had em­bittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left him. He felt bet­ter after hav­ing eaten than he had felt be­fore, less weary of his life, less van­quished in spirit. He might yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live hap­pily if he could only come across some good sim­ple­minded 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 good­night. 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 lamp­post 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 lamp­post, tried to read the res­ult in their walk. They were walk­ing quickly, the young wo­man tak­ing quick short steps, while Cor­ley kept be­side her with his long stride. They did not seem to be speak­ing. An in­tim­a­tion of the res­ult pricked him like the point of a sharp in­stru­ment. He knew Cor­ley would fail; he knew it was no go.

They turned down Bag­got Street and he fol­lowed them at once, tak­ing the other foot­path. When they stopped he stopped too. They talked for a few mo­ments and then the young wo­man went down the steps into the area of a house. Cor­ley re­mained stand­ing at the edge of the path, a little dis­tance from the front steps. Some minutes passed. Then the hall-door was opened slowly and cau­tiously. A wo­man came run­ning down the front steps and coughed. Cor­ley turned and went to­wards her. His broad fig­ure hid hers from view for a few seconds and then she re­appeared run­ning up the steps. The door closed on her and Cor­ley began to walk swiftly to­wards Stephen’s Green.

Lene­han hur­ried on in the same dir­ec­tion. Some drops of light rain fell. He took them as a warn­ing and, glan­cing back to­wards the house which the young wo­man had entered to see that he was not ob­served, he ran eagerly across the road. Anxi­ety and his swift run made him pant. He called out:

“Hallo, Cor­ley!”

Cor­ley turned his head to see who had called him, and then con­tin­ued walk­ing as be­fore. Lene­han ran after him, set­tling the wa­ter­proof on his shoulders with one hand.

“Hallo, Cor­ley!” he cried again.

He came level with his friend and looked keenly in his face. He could see noth­ing there.

“Well?” he said. “Did it come off?”

They had reached the corner of Ely Place. Still without an­swer­ing, Cor­ley swerved to the left and went up the side street. His fea­tures were com­posed in stern calm. Lene­han kept up with his friend, breath­ing un­eas­ily. He was baffled and a note of men­ace pierced through his voice.

“Can’t you tell us?” he said. “Did you try her?”

Cor­ley hal­ted at the first lamp and stared grimly be­fore him. Then with a grave ges­ture he ex­ten­ded a hand to­wards the light and, smil­ing, opened it slowly to the gaze of his dis­ciple. A small gold coin shone in the palm.

The Boarding House

Mrs. Mooney was a butcher’s daugh­ter. She was a wo­man who was quite able to keep things to her­self: a de­term­ined wo­man. She had mar­ried her father’s fore­man and opened a butcher’s shop near Spring Gar­dens. But as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr. Mooney began to go to the devil. He drank, plundered the till, ran head­long into debt. It was no use mak­ing him take the pledge: he was sure to break out again a few days after. By fight­ing his wife in the pres­ence of cus­tom­ers and by buy­ing bad meat he ruined his busi­ness. One night he went for his wife with the cleaver and she had to sleep in a neigh­bour’s house.

After that they lived apart. She went to the priest and got a sep­ar­a­tion from him with care of the chil­dren. She would give him neither money nor food nor house­room; and so he was ob­liged to en­list him­self as a sher­iff’s man. He was a shabby stooped little drunk­ard with a white face and a white mous­tache and white eye­brows, pen­cilled above his little eyes, which were pink-veined and raw; and all day long he sat in the bailiff’s room, wait­ing to be put on a job. Mrs. Mooney, who had taken what re­mained of her money out of the butcher busi­ness and set up a board­ing house in Hard­wicke Street, was a big im­pos­ing wo­man. Her house had a float­ing pop­u­la­tion made up of tour­ists from Liver­pool and the Isle of Man and, oc­ca­sion­ally, ar­tistes from the mu­sic halls. Its res­id­ent pop­u­la­tion was made up of clerks from the city. She gov­erned her house cun­ningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass. All the res­id­ent young men spoke of her as The Madam.

Mrs. Mooney’s young men paid fif­teen shil­lings a week for board and lodgings (beer or stout at din­ner ex­cluded). They shared in com­mon tastes and oc­cu­pa­tions and for this reason they were very chummy with one an­other. They dis­cussed with one an­other the chances of fa­vour­ites and out­siders. Jack Mooney, the Madam’s son, who was clerk to a com­mis­sion agent in Fleet Street, had the repu­ta­tion of be­ing a hard case. He was fond of us­ing sol­diers’ ob­scen­it­ies: usu­ally he came home in the small hours. When he met his friends he had al­ways a good one to tell them and he was al­ways sure to be on to a good thing—that is to say, a likely horse or a likely ar­tiste. He was also handy with the mits and sang comic songs. On Sunday nights there would of­ten be a re­union in Mrs. Mooney’s front draw­ing-room. The mu­sic-hall ar­tistes would ob­lige; and Sheridan played waltzes and pol­kas and vamped ac­com­pani­ments. Polly Mooney, the Madam’s daugh­ter, would also sing. She sang:

“I’m a … naughty girl.
You needn’t sham:
You know I am.”

Polly was a slim girl of nine­teen; she had light soft hair and a small full mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through them, had a habit of glan­cing up­wards when she spoke with any­one, which made her look like a little per­verse madonna. Mrs. Mooney had first sent her daugh­ter to be a typ­ist in a corn-factor’s of­fice but, as a dis­rep­ut­able sher­iff’s man used to come every other day to the of­fice, ask­ing to be al­lowed to say a word to his daugh­ter, she had taken her daugh­ter home again and set her to do house­work. As Polly was very lively the in­ten­tion was to give her the run of the young men. Besides, young men like to feel that there is a young wo­man not very far away. Polly, of course, flir­ted with the young men but Mrs. Mooney, who was a shrewd judge, knew that the young men were only passing the time away: none of them meant busi­ness. Th­ings went on so for a long time and Mrs. Mooney began to think of send­ing Polly back to type­writ­ing when she no­ticed that some­thing was go­ing on between Polly and one of the young men. She watched the pair and kept her own coun­sel.

Polly knew that she was be­ing watched, but still her mother’s per­sist­ent si­lence could not be mis­un­der­stood. There had been no open com­pli­city between mother and daugh­ter, no open un­der­stand­ing but, though people in the house began to talk of the af­fair, still Mrs. Mooney did not in­ter­vene. Polly began to grow a little strange in her man­ner and the young man was evid­ently per­turbed. At last, when she judged it to be the right mo­ment, Mrs. Mooney in­ter­vened. She dealt with moral prob­lems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.

It was a bright Sunday morn­ing of early sum­mer, prom­ising heat, but with a fresh breeze blow­ing. All the win­dows of the board­ing house were open and the lace cur­tains bal­looned gently to­wards the street be­neath the raised sashes. The bel­fry of Ge­orge’s Church sent out con­stant peals and wor­ship­pers, singly or in groups, tra­versed the little cir­cus be­fore the church, re­veal­ing their pur­pose by their self-con­tained de­mean­our no less than by the little volumes in their gloved hands. Break­fast was over in the board­ing house and the table of the break­fast-room was covered with plates on which lay yel­low streaks of eggs with morsels of ba­con-fat and ba­con-rind. Mrs. Mooney sat in the straw arm­chair and watched the ser­vant Mary re­move the break­fast things. She made Mary col­lect the crusts and pieces of broken bread to help to make Tues­day’s bread-pud­ding. When the table was cleared, the broken bread col­lec­ted, the sugar and but­ter safe un­der lock and key, she began to re­con­struct the in­ter­view which she had had the night be­fore with Polly. Th­ings were as she had sus­pec­ted: she had been frank in her ques­tions and Polly had been frank in her an­swers. Both had been some­what awk­ward, of course. She had been made awk­ward by her not wish­ing to re­ceive the news in too cava­lier a fash­ion or to seem to have con­nived and Polly had been made awk­ward not merely be­cause al­lu­sions of that kind al­ways made her awk­ward but also be­cause she did not wish it to be thought that in her wise in­no­cence she had di­vined the in­ten­tion be­hind her mother’s tol­er­ance.

Mrs. Mooney glanced in­stinct­ively at the little gilt clock on the man­tel­piece as soon as she had be­come aware through her re­very that the bells of Ge­orge’s Church had stopped ringing. It was sev­en­teen minutes past el­even: she would have lots of time to have the mat­ter out with Mr. Doran and then catch short twelve at Marl­bor­ough Street. She was sure she would win. To be­gin with she had all the weight of so­cial opin­ion on her side: she was an out­raged mother. She had al­lowed him to live be­neath her roof, as­sum­ing that he was a man of hon­our, and he had simply ab­used her hos­pit­al­ity. He was thirty-four or thirty-five years of age, so that youth could not be pleaded as his ex­cuse; nor could ig­nor­ance be his ex­cuse since he was a man who had seen some­thing of the world. He had simply taken ad­vant­age of Polly’s youth and in­ex­per­i­ence: that was evid­ent. The ques­tion was: What re­par­a­tion would he make?

There must be re­par­a­tion made in such cases. It is all very well for the man: he can go his ways as if noth­ing had happened, hav­ing had his mo­ment of pleas­ure, but the girl has to bear the brunt. Some moth­ers would be con­tent to patch up such an af­fair for a sum of money; she had known cases of it. But she would not do so. For her only one re­par­a­tion could make up for the loss of her daugh­ter’s hon­our: mar­riage.

She coun­ted all her cards again be­fore send­ing Mary up to Mr. Doran’s room to say that she wished to speak with him. She felt sure she would win. He was a ser­i­ous young man, not rak­ish or loud-voiced like the oth­ers. If it had been Mr. Sheridan or Mr. Meade or Ban­tam Ly­ons her task would have been much harder. She did not think he would face pub­li­city. All the lodgers in the house knew some­thing of the af­fair; de­tails had been in­ven­ted by some. Besides, he had been em­ployed for thir­teen years in a great Cath­olic wine-mer­chant’s of­fice and pub­li­city would mean for him, per­haps, the loss of his job. Whereas if he agreed all might be well. She knew he had a good screw for one thing and she sus­pec­ted he had a bit of stuff put by.

Nearly the half-hour! She stood up and sur­veyed her­self in the pier-glass. The de­cis­ive ex­pres­sion of her great florid face sat­is­fied her and she thought of some moth­ers she knew who could not get their daugh­ters off their hands.

Mr. Doran was very anxious in­deed this Sunday morn­ing. He had made two at­tempts to shave but his hand had been so un­steady that he had been ob­liged to de­sist. Three days’ red­dish beard fringed his jaws and every two or three minutes a mist gathered on his glasses so that he had to take them off and pol­ish them with his pocket-handker­chief. The re­col­lec­tion of his con­fes­sion of the night be­fore was a cause of acute pain to him; the priest had drawn out every ri­dicu­lous de­tail of the af­fair and in the end had so mag­ni­fied his sin that he was al­most thank­ful at be­ing af­forded a loop­hole of re­par­a­tion. The harm was done. What could he do now but marry her or run away? He could not brazen it out. The af­fair would be sure to be talked of and his em­ployer would be cer­tain to hear of it. Dub­lin is such a small city: every­one knows every­one else’s busi­ness. He felt his heart leap warmly in his throat as he heard in his ex­cited ima­gin­a­tion old Mr. Leonard call­ing out in his rasp­ing voice: “Send Mr. Doran here, please.”

All his long years of ser­vice gone for noth­ing! All his in­dustry and di­li­gence thrown away! As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of course; he had boas­ted of his free­think­ing 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 bed she had tapped at his door, tim­idly. She wanted to re­light her candle at his for hers had been blown out by a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open comb­ing-jacket of prin­ted flan­nel. Her white in­step shone in the open­ing of her furry slip­pers and the blood glowed warmly be­hind her per­fumed skin. From her hands and wrists too as she lit and stead­ied her candle a faint per­fume arose.

On nights when he came in very late it was she who warmed up his din­ner. He scarcely knew what he was eat­ing, feel­ing her be­side him alone, at night, in the sleep­ing house. And her thought­ful­ness! If the night was any­way cold or wet or windy there was sure to be a little tum­bler of punch ready for him. Per­haps they could be happy to­gether. …

They used to go up­stairs to­gether on tip­toe, each with a candle, and on the third land­ing ex­change re­luct­ant 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 mu­sic-hall ar­tistes, a little blond Lon­doner, had made a rather free al­lu­sion to Polly. The re­union had been al­most broken up on ac­count of Jack’s vi­ol­ence. Every­one tried to quiet him. The mu­sic-hall ar­tiste, a little paler than usual, kept smil­ing and say­ing that there was no harm meant: but Jack kept shout­ing at him that if any fel­low tried that sort of a game on with his sis­ter he’d bloody well put his teeth down his throat, so he would.

Polly sat for a little time on the side of the bed, cry­ing. Then she dried her eyes and went over to the look­ing-glass. She dipped the end of the towel in the wa­ter-jug and re­freshed her eyes with the cool wa­ter. She looked at her­self in pro­file and re­ad­jus­ted a hair­pin above her ear. Then she went back to the bed again and sat at the foot. She re­garded the pil­lows for a long time and the sight of them awakened in her mind secret, ami­able memor­ies. She res­ted the nape of her neck against the cool iron be­d­rail 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 lunch­time 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 light­heartedly. “Where’s my con­sid­er­ing cap?”

That was Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her all out; and, damn it, you couldn’t but ad­mire him for it.

Little Chand­ler quickened his pace. For the first time in his life he felt him­self su­per­ior to the people he passed. For the first time his soul re­vol­ted against the dull in­el­eg­ance of Capel Street. There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to suc­ceed you had to go away. You could do noth­ing in Dub­lin. As he crossed Grat­tan Bridge he looked down the river to­wards the lower quays and pit­ied the poor stun­ted houses. They seemed to him a band of tramps, huddled to­gether along the ri­verb­anks, their old coats covered with dust and soot, stu­pefied by the pan­or­ama of sun­set and wait­ing for the first chill of night bid them arise, shake them­selves and be­gone. He wondered whether he could write a poem to ex­press his idea. Per­haps Gal­la­her might be able to get it into some Lon­don pa­per for him. Could he write some­thing ori­ginal? He was not sure what idea he wished to ex­press but the thought that a po­etic mo­ment had touched him took life within him like an in­fant hope. He stepped on­ward bravely.

Every step brought him nearer to Lon­don, farther from his own sober in­ar­tistic life. A light began to tremble on the ho­ri­zon of his mind. He was not so old—thirty-two. His tem­pera­ment might be said to be just at the point of ma­tur­ity. There were so many dif­fer­ent moods and im­pres­sions that he wished to ex­press in verse. He felt them within him. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul. Mel­an­choly was the dom­in­ant note of his tem­pera­ment, he thought, but it was a mel­an­choly tempered by re­cur­rences of faith and resig­na­tion and simple joy. If he could give ex­pres­sion to it in a book of poems per­haps men would listen. He would never be pop­u­lar: he saw that. He could not sway the crowd but he might ap­peal to a little circle of kindred minds. The Eng­lish crit­ics, per­haps, would re­cog­nise him as one of the Celtic school by reason of the mel­an­choly tone of his poems; be­sides that, he would put in al­lu­sions. He began to in­vent sen­tences and phrases from the no­tice which his book would get. “Mr. Chand­ler has the gift of easy and grace­ful verse.” … “A wist­ful sad­ness per­vades these poems.” … “The Celtic note.” It was a pity his name was not more Irish-look­ing. Per­haps it would be bet­ter to in­sert his mother’s name be­fore the sur­name: Tho­mas Malone Chand­ler, or bet­ter still: T. Malone Chand­ler. He would speak to Gal­la­her about it.

He pur­sued his re­very so ar­dently that he passed his street and had to turn back. As he came near Cor­less’s his former agit­a­tion began to over­mas­ter him and he hal­ted be­fore the door in in­de­cision. Fin­ally he opened the door and entered.

The light and noise of the bar held him at the door­ways for a few mo­ments. He looked about him, but his sight was con­fused by the shin­ing of many red and green wine­glasses. The bar seemed to him to be full of people and he felt that the people were ob­serving him curi­ously. He glanced quickly to right and left (frown­ing slightly to make his er­rand ap­pear ser­i­ous), but when his sight cleared a little he saw that nobody had turned to look at him: and there, sure enough, was Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her lean­ing with his back against the counter and his feet planted far apart.

“Hallo, Tommy, old hero, here you are! What is it to be? What will you have? I’m tak­ing whisky: bet­ter stuff than we get across the wa­ter. Soda? Lithia? No min­eral? I’m the same. Spoils the fla­vour. … Here, garçon, bring us two halves of malt whisky, like a good fel­low. … Well, and how have you been pulling along since I saw you last? Dear God, how old we’re get­ting! Do you see any signs of aging in me—eh, what? A little grey and thin on the top—what?”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her took off his hat and dis­played a large closely cropped head. His face was heavy, pale and 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,” he said. “Press life. Al­ways hurry and scurry, look­ing for copy and some­times not find­ing it: and then, al­ways to have some­thing new in your stuff. Damn proofs and print­ers, I say, for a few days. I’m deuced glad, I can tell you, to get back to the old coun­try. Does a fel­low good, a bit of a hol­i­day. I feel a ton bet­ter since I landed again in dear dirty Dub­lin. … Here you are, Tommy. Water? Say when.”

Little Chand­ler al­lowed his whisky to be very much di­luted.

“You don’t know what’s good for you, my boy,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her. “I drink mine neat.”

“I drink very little as a rule,” said Little Chand­ler mod­estly. “An odd half-one or so when I meet any of the old crowd: that’s all.”

“Ah well,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, cheer­fully, “here’s to us and to old times and old ac­quaint­ance.”

They clinked glasses and drank the toast.

“I met some of the old gang today,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her. “O’Hara seems to be in a bad way. What’s he do­ing?”

“Noth­ing,” said Little Chand­ler. “He’s gone to the dogs.”

“But Hogan has a good sit, hasn’t he?”

“Yes; he’s in the Land Com­mis­sion.”

“I met him one night in Lon­don and he seemed to be very flush. … Poor O’Hara! Boose, I sup­pose?”

“Other things, too,” said Little Chand­ler shortly.

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her laughed.

“Tommy,” he said, “I see you haven’t changed an atom. You’re the very same ser­i­ous per­son that used to lec­ture me on Sunday morn­ings when I had a sore head and a fur on my tongue. You’d want to knock about a bit in the world. Have you never been any­where even for a trip?”

“I’ve been to the Isle of Man,” said Little Chand­ler.

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her laughed.

“The Isle of Man!” he said. “Go to Lon­don or Paris: Paris, for choice. That’d do you good.”

“Have you seen Paris?”

“I should think I have! I’ve knocked about there a little.”

“And is it really so beau­ti­ful as they say?” asked Little Chand­ler.

He sipped a little of his drink while Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her fin­ished his boldly.

“Beau­ti­ful?” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, paus­ing on the word and on the fla­vour of his drink. “It’s not so beau­ti­ful, you know. Of course, it is beau­ti­ful. … But it’s the life of Paris; that’s the thing. Ah, there’s no city like Paris for gaiety, move­ment, ex­cite­ment. …”

Little Chand­ler fin­ished his whisky and, after some trouble, suc­ceeded in catch­ing the bar­man’s eye. He ordered the same again.

“I’ve been to the Moulin Rouge,” Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her con­tin­ued when the bar­man had re­moved their glasses, “and I’ve been to all the Bo­hemian cafés. Hot stuff! Not for a pi­ous chap like you, Tommy.”

Little Chand­ler said noth­ing un­til the bar­man re­turned with two glasses: then he touched his friend’s glass lightly and re­cip­roc­ated the former toast. He was be­gin­ning to feel some­what dis­il­lu­sioned. Gal­la­her’s ac­cent and way of ex­press­ing him­self did not please him. There was some­thing vul­gar in his friend which he had not ob­served be­fore. But per­haps it was only the res­ult of liv­ing in Lon­don amid the bustle and com­pet­i­tion of the Press. The old per­sonal charm was still there un­der this new gaudy man­ner. And, after all, Gal­la­her had lived, he had seen the world. Little Chand­ler looked at his friend en­vi­ously.

“Everything in Paris is gay,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her. “They be­lieve in en­joy­ing life—and don’t you think they’re right? If you want to en­joy your­self prop­erly you must go to Paris. And, mind you, they’ve a great feel­ing for the Irish there. When they heard I was from Ire­land they were ready to eat me, man.”

Little Chand­ler took four or five sips from his glass.

“Tell me,” he said, “is it true that Paris is so … im­moral as they say?”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her made a cath­olic ges­ture with his right arm.

“Every place is im­moral,” he said. “Of course you do find spicy bits in Paris. Go to one of the stu­dents’ balls, for in­stance. That’s lively, if you like, when the cocottes be­gin to let them­selves loose. You know what they are, I sup­pose?”

“I’ve heard of them,” said Little Chand­ler.

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her drank off his whisky and shook his head.

“Ah,” he said, “you may say what you like. There’s no wo­man like the Par­is­i­enne—for style, for go.”

“Then it is an im­moral city,” said Little Chand­ler, with timid in­sist­ence—“I mean, com­pared with Lon­don or Dub­lin?”

“Lon­don!” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her. “It’s six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit about Lon­don when he was over there. He’d open your eye. … I say, Tommy, don’t make punch of that whisky: li­quor up.”

“No, really. …”

“O, come on, an­other one won’t do you any harm. What is it? The same again, I sup­pose?”

“Well … all right.”

“François, the same again. … Will you smoke, Tommy?”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her pro­duced his ci­gar-case. The two friends lit their ci­gars and puffed at them in si­lence un­til their drinks were served.

“I’ll tell you my opin­ion,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, emer­ging after some time from the clouds of smoke in which he had taken refuge, “it’s a rum world. Talk of im­mor­al­ity! I’ve heard of cases—what am I say­ing?—I’ve known them: cases of … im­mor­al­ity. …”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her puffed thought­fully at his ci­gar and then, in a calm his­tor­ian’s tone, he pro­ceeded to sketch for his friend some pic­tures of the cor­rup­tion which was rife abroad. He sum­mar­ised the vices of many cap­it­als and seemed in­clined to award the palm to Ber­lin. Some things he could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of oth­ers he had had per­sonal ex­per­i­ence. He spared neither rank nor caste. He re­vealed many of the secrets of re­li­gious houses on the Contin­ent and de­scribed some of the prac­tices which were fash­ion­able in high so­ci­ety and ended by telling, with de­tails, a story about an Eng­lish duch­ess—a story which he knew to be true. Little Chand­ler was as­ton­ished.

“Ah, well,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, “here we are in old jog-along Dub­lin where noth­ing is known of such things.”

“How dull you must find it,” said Little Chand­ler, “after all the other places you’ve seen!”

“Well,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, “it’s a re­lax­a­tion to come over here, you know. And, after all, it’s the old coun­try, as they say, isn’t it? You can’t help hav­ing a cer­tain feel­ing for it. That’s hu­man nature. … But tell me some­thing about your­self. Hogan told me you had … tasted the joys of con­nu­bial bliss. Two years ago, wasn’t it?”

Little Chand­ler blushed and smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “I was mar­ried last May twelve months.”

“I hope it’s not too late in the day to of­fer my best wishes,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her. “I didn’t know your ad­dress or I’d have done so at the time.”

He ex­ten­ded his hand, which Little Chand­ler took.

“Well, Tommy,” he said, “I wish you and yours every joy in life, old chap, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you. And that’s the wish of a sin­cere friend, an old friend. You know that?”

“I know that,” said Little Chand­ler.

“Any young­sters?” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her.

Little Chand­ler blushed again.

“We have one child,” he said.

“Son or daugh­ter?”

“A little boy.”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her slapped his friend son­or­ously on the back.

“Bravo,” he said, “I wouldn’t doubt you, Tommy.”

Little Chand­ler smiled, looked con­fusedly at his glass and bit his lower lip with three child­ishly white front teeth.

“I hope you’ll spend an even­ing with us,” he said, “be­fore you go back. My wife will be de­lighted to meet you. We can have a little mu­sic and—”

“Thanks aw­fully, old chap,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, “I’m sorry we didn’t meet earlier. But I must leave to­mor­row night.”

“To­night, per­haps … ?”

“I’m aw­fully sorry, old man. You see I’m over here with an­other fel­low, clever young chap he is too, and we ar­ranged to go to a little card-party. Only for that …”

“O, in that case …”

“But who knows?” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her con­sid­er­ately. “Next year I may take a little skip over here now that I’ve broken the ice. It’s only a pleas­ure de­ferred.”

“Very well,” said Little Chand­ler, “the next time you come we must have an even­ing to­gether. That’s agreed now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s agreed,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her. “Next year if I come, pa­role d’hon­neur.”

“And to clinch the bar­gain,” said Little Chand­ler, “we’ll just have one more now.”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her took out a large gold watch and looked at it.

“Is it to be the last?” he said. “Be­cause you know, I have an a. p.”

“O, yes, pos­it­ively,” said Little Chand­ler.

“Very well, then,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, “let us have an­other one as a deoc an doruis—that’s good ver­nacu­lar for a small whisky, I be­lieve.”

Little Chand­ler ordered the drinks. The blush which had risen to his face a few mo­ments be­fore was es­tab­lish­ing it­self. A trifle made him blush at any time: and now he felt warm and ex­cited. Three small whiskies had gone to his head and Gal­la­her’s strong ci­gar had con­fused his mind, for he was a del­ic­ate and ab­stin­ent per­son. The ad­ven­ture of meet­ing Gal­la­her after eight years, of find­ing him­self with Gal­la­her in Cor­less’s sur­roun­ded by lights and noise, of listen­ing to Gal­la­her’s stor­ies and of shar­ing for a brief space Gal­la­her’s vag­rant and tri­umphant life, up­set the equi­poise of his sens­it­ive nature. He felt acutely the con­trast between his own life and his friend’s and it seemed to him un­just. Gal­la­her was his in­ferior in birth and edu­ca­tion. He was sure that he could do some­thing bet­ter than his friend had ever done, or could ever do, some­thing higher than mere taw­dry journ­al­ism if he only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His un­for­tu­nate timid­ity! He wished to vin­dic­ate him­self in some way, to as­sert his man­hood. He saw be­hind Gal­la­her’s re­fusal of his in­vit­a­tion. Gal­la­her was only pat­ron­ising him by his friend­li­ness just as he was pat­ron­ising Ire­land by his visit.

The bar­man brought their drinks. Little Chand­ler pushed one glass to­wards his friend and took up the other boldly.

“Who knows?” he said, as they lif­ted their glasses. “When you come next year I may have the pleas­ure of wish­ing long life and hap­pi­ness to Mr. and Mrs. Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her.”

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her in the act of drink­ing closed one eye ex­press­ively over the rim of his glass. When he had drunk he smacked his lips de­cis­ively, set down his glass and said:

“No bloom­ing fear of that, my boy. I’m go­ing to have my fling first and see a bit of life and the world be­fore I put my head in the sack—if I ever do.”

“Some day you will,” said Little Chand­ler calmly.

Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her turned his or­ange tie and slate-blue eyes full upon his friend.

“You think so?” he said.

“You’ll put your head in the sack,” re­peated Little Chand­ler stoutly, “like every­one else if you can find the girl.”

He had slightly em­phas­ised his tone and he was aware that he had be­trayed him­self; but, though the col­our had heightened in his cheek, he did not flinch from his friend’s gaze. Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her watched him for a few mo­ments and then said:

“If ever it oc­curs, you may bet your bot­tom dol­lar there’ll be no moon­ing and spoon­ing about it. I mean to marry money. She’ll have a good fat ac­count at the bank or she won’t do for me.”

Little Chand­ler shook his head.

“Why, man alive,” said Ig­na­tius Gal­la­her, vehe­mently, “do you know what it is? I’ve only to say the word and to­mor­row I can have the wo­man and the cash. You don’t be­lieve it? Well, I know it. There are hun­dreds—what am I say­ing?—thou­sands of rich Ger­mans and Jews, rot­ten with money, that’d only be too glad. … You wait a while my boy. See if I don’t play my cards prop­erly. When I go about a thing I mean busi­ness, I tell you. You just wait.”

He tossed his glass to his mouth, fin­ished his drink and laughed loudly. Then he looked thought­fully be­fore him and said in a calmer tone:

“But I’m in no hurry. They can wait. I don’t fancy ty­ing my­self up to one wo­man, you know.”

He im­it­ated with his mouth the act of tast­ing and made a wry face.

“Must get a bit stale, I should think,” he said.

Little Chand­ler sat in the room off the hall, hold­ing a child in his arms. To save money they kept no ser­vant but An­nie’s young sis­ter Mon­ica came for an hour or so in the morn­ing and an hour or so in the even­ing to help. But Mon­ica had gone home long ago. It was a quarter to nine. Little Chand­ler had come home late for tea and, moreover, he had for­got­ten to bring An­nie home the par­cel of cof­fee from Bew­ley’s. Of course she was in a bad hu­mour and gave him short an­swers. She said she would do without any tea but when it came near the time at which the shop at the corner closed she de­cided to go out her­self for a quarter of a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar. She put the sleep­ing child deftly in his arms and said:

“Here. Don’t waken him.”

A little lamp with a white china shade stood upon the table and its light fell over a pho­to­graph which was en­closed in a frame of crumpled horn. It was An­nie’s pho­to­graph. Little Chand­ler looked at it, paus­ing at the thin tight lips. She wore the pale blue sum­mer blouse which he had brought her home as a present one Saturday. It had cost him ten and el­ev­en­pence; but what an agony of nervous­ness it had cost him! How he had suffered that day, wait­ing at the shop door un­til the shop was empty, stand­ing at the counter and try­ing to ap­pear at his ease while the girl piled ladies’ blouses be­fore him, pay­ing at the desk and for­get­ting to take up the odd penny of his change, be­ing called back by the cash­ier, and fi­nally, striv­ing to hide his blushes as he left the shop by ex­amin­ing the par­cel to see if it was se­curely tied. When he brought the blouse home An­nie kissed him and said it was very pretty and styl­ish; but when she heard the price she threw the blouse on the table and said it was a reg­u­lar swindle to charge ten and el­ev­en­pence for it. At first she wanted to take it back but when she tried it on she was de­lighted with it, es­pe­cially with the make of the sleeves, and kissed him and said he was very good to think of her.

Hm! …

He looked coldly into the eyes of the pho­to­graph and they answered coldly. Cer­tainly they were pretty and the face it­self was pretty. But he found some­thing mean in it. Why was it so un­con­scious and lady­like? The com­pos­ure of the eyes ir­rit­ated him. They re­pelled him and de­fied him: there was no pas­sion in them, no rap­ture. He thought of what Gal­la­her had said about rich Jewesses. Those dark Ori­ental eyes, he thought, how full they are of pas­sion, of vo­lup­tu­ous long­ing! … Why had he mar­ried the eyes in the pho­to­graph?

He caught him­self up at the ques­tion and glanced nervously round the room. He found some­thing mean in the pretty fur­niture which he had bought for his house on the hire sys­tem. An­nie had chosen it her­self and it re­minded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull re­sent­ment against his life awoke within him. Could he not es­cape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gal­la­her? Could he go to Lon­don? There was the fur­niture still to be paid for. If he could only write a book and get it pub­lished, that might open the way for him.

A volume of Byron’s poems lay be­fore him on the table. He opened it cau­tiously with his left hand lest he should waken the child and began to read the first poem in the book:

“Hushed are the winds and still the even­ing gloom,
Not e’en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,
Whilst I re­turn to view my Mar­garet’s tomb
And scat­ter flowers on the dust I love.”

He paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse about him in the room. How mel­an­choly it was! Could he, too, write like that, ex­press the mel­an­choly of his soul in verse? There were so many things he wanted to de­scribe: his sen­sa­tion of a few hours be­fore on Grat­tan Bridge, for ex­ample. If he could get back again into that mood. …

The child awoke and began to cry. He turned from the page and tried to hush it: but it would not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro in his arms but its wail­ing cry grew keener. He rocked it faster while his eyes began to read the second stanza:

“Within this nar­row cell re­clines her clay,
That clay where once …”

It was use­less. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t do any­thing. The wail­ing of the child pierced the drum of his ear. It was use­less, use­less! He was a pris­oner for life. His arms trembled with an­ger and sud­denly bend­ing to the child’s face he shouted:

“Stop!”

The child stopped for an in­stant, had a spasm of fright and began to scream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hast­ily up and down the room with the child in his arms. It began to sob piteously, los­ing its breath for four or five seconds, and then burst­ing out anew. The thin walls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it but it sobbed more con­vuls­ively. He looked at the con­trac­ted and quiv­er­ing face of the child and began to be alarmed. He coun­ted seven sobs without a break between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it died! …

The door was burst open and a young wo­man ran in, pant­ing.

“What is it? What is it?” she cried.

The child, hear­ing its mother’s voice, broke out into a par­oxysm of sob­bing.

“It’s noth­ing, An­nie … it’s noth­ing. … He began to cry …”

She flung her par­cels on the floor and snatched the child from him.

“What have you done to him?” she cried, glar­ing into his face.

Little Chand­ler sus­tained for one mo­ment the gaze of her eyes and his heart closed to­gether as he met the hatred in them. He began to stam­mer:

“It’s noth­ing. … He … he began to cry. … I couldn’t … I didn’t do any­thing. … What?”

Giv­ing no heed to him she began to walk up and down the room, clasp­ing the child tightly in her arms and mur­mur­ing:

“My little man! My little man­nie! Was ’ou frightened, love? … There now, love! There now! … Lam­babaun! Mamma’s little lamb of the world! … There now!”

Little Chand­ler felt his cheeks suf­fused with shame and he stood back out of the lamp­light. He listened while the par­oxysm of the child’s sob­bing grew less and less; and tears of re­morse star­ted to his eyes.

Counterparts

The bell rang furi­ously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furi­ous voice called out in a pier­cing North of Ire­land ac­cent:

“Send Far­ring­ton here!”

Miss Parker re­turned to her ma­chine, say­ing to a man who was writ­ing at a desk:

“Mr. Al­leyne wants you up­stairs.”

The man muttered “Blast him!” un­der his breath and pushed back his chair to stand up. When he stood up he was tall and of great bulk. He had a hanging face, dark wine-col­oured, with fair eye­brows and mous­tache: his eyes bulged for­ward slightly and the whites of them were dirty. He lif­ted up the counter and, passing by the cli­ents, went out of the of­fice with a heavy step.

He went heav­ily up­stairs un­til he came to the second land­ing, where a door bore a brass plate with the in­scrip­tion Mr. Al­leyne. Here he hal­ted, puff­ing with la­bour and vex­a­tion, and knocked. The shrill voice cried:

“Come in!”

The man entered Mr. Al­leyne’s room. Sim­ul­tan­eously Mr. Al­leyne, a little man wear­ing gold-rimmed glasses on a clean­shaven face, shot his head up over a pile of doc­u­ments. The head it­self was so pink and hair­less it seemed like a large egg re­pos­ing on the pa­pers. Mr. Al­leyne did not lose a mo­ment:

“Far­ring­ton? What is the mean­ing of this? Why have I al­ways to com­plain of you? May I ask you why you haven’t made a copy of that con­tract between Bod­ley and Kir­wan? I told you it must be ready by four o’clock.”

“But Mr. Shel­ley said, sir—”

“Mr. Shel­ley said, sir. … Kindly at­tend to what I say and not to what Mr. Shel­ley says, sir. You have al­ways some ex­cuse or an­other for shirk­ing work. Let me tell you that if the con­tract is not copied be­fore this even­ing I’ll lay the mat­ter be­fore Mr. Cros­bie. … Do you hear me now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you hear me now? … Ay and an­other little mat­ter! I might as well be talk­ing to the wall as talk­ing to you. Under­stand once for all that you get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half. How many courses do you want, I’d like to know. … Do you mind me now?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Al­leyne bent his head again upon his pile of pa­pers. The man stared fix­edly at the pol­ished skull which dir­ec­ted the af­fairs of Cros­bie & Al­leyne, gauging its fra­gil­ity. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for a few mo­ments and then passed, leav­ing after it a sharp sen­sa­tion of thirst. The man re­cog­nised the sen­sa­tion and felt that he must have a good night’s drink­ing. The middle of the month was passed and, if he could get the copy done in time, Mr. Al­leyne might give him an or­der on the cash­ier. He stood still, gaz­ing fix­edly at the head upon the pile of pa­pers. Sud­denly Mr. Al­leyne began to up­set all the pa­pers, search­ing for some­thing. Then, as if he had been un­aware of the man’s pres­ence till that mo­ment, he shot up his head again, say­ing:

“Eh? Are you go­ing to stand there all day? Upon my word, Far­ring­ton, you take things easy!”

“I was wait­ing to see …”

“Very good, you needn’t wait to see. Go down­stairs and do your work.”

The man walked heav­ily to­wards the door and, as he went out of the room, he heard Mr. Al­leyne cry after him that if the con­tract was not copied by even­ing Mr. Cros­bie would hear of the mat­ter.

He re­turned to his desk in the lower of­fice and coun­ted the sheets which re­mained to be copied. He took up his pen and dipped it in the ink but he con­tin­ued to stare stu­pidly at the last words he had writ­ten: In no case shall the said Bern­ard Bod­ley be … The even­ing was fall­ing and in a few minutes they would be light­ing the gas: then he could write. He felt that he must slake the thirst in his throat. He stood up from his desk and, lift­ing the counter as be­fore, passed out of the of­fice. As he was passing out the chief clerk looked at him in­quir­ingly.

“It’s all right, Mr. Shel­ley,” said the man, point­ing with his fin­ger to in­dic­ate the ob­ject­ive of his jour­ney.

The chief clerk glanced at the hat-rack, but, see­ing the row com­plete, offered no re­mark. As soon as he was on the land­ing the man pulled a shep­herd’s plaid cap out of his pocket, put it on his head and ran quickly down the rick­ety stairs. From the street door he walked on furt­ively on the in­ner side of the path to­wards the corner and all at once dived into a door­way. He was now safe in the dark snug of O’Neill’s shop, and filling up the little win­dow that looked into the bar with his in­flamed face, the col­our of dark wine or dark meat, he called out:

“Here, Pat, give us a g. p., like a good fel­low.”

The cur­ate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a gulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and, leav­ing the cur­ate to grope for it in the gloom, re­treated out of the snug as furt­ively as he had entered it.

Dark­ness, ac­com­pan­ied by a thick fog, was gain­ing upon the dusk of Febru­ary and the lamps in Eus­tace Street had been lit. The man went up by the houses un­til he reached the door of the of­fice, won­der­ing whether he could fin­ish his copy in time. On the stairs a moist pun­gent odour of per­fumes sa­luted his nose: evid­ently Miss Delacour had come while he was out in O’Neill’s. He crammed his cap back again into his pocket and reentered the of­fice, as­sum­ing an air of ab­sent­minded­ness.

“Mr. Al­leyne has been call­ing for you,” said the chief clerk severely. “Where were you?”

The man glanced at the two cli­ents who were stand­ing at the counter as if to in­tim­ate that their pres­ence pre­ven­ted him from an­swer­ing. As the cli­ents were both male the chief clerk al­lowed him­self a laugh.

“I know that game,” he said. “Five times in one day is a little bit … Well, you bet­ter look sharp and get a copy of our cor­res­pond­ence in the Delacour case for Mr. Al­leyne.”

This ad­dress in the pres­ence of the pub­lic, his run up­stairs and the porter he had gulped down so hast­ily con­fused the man and, as he sat down at his desk to get what was re­quired, he real­ised how hope­less was the task of fin­ish­ing his copy of the con­tract be­fore half past five. The dark damp night was com­ing and he longed to spend it in the bars, drink­ing with his friends amid the glare of gas and the clat­ter of glasses. He got out the Delacour cor­res­pond­ence and passed out of the of­fice. He hoped Mr. Al­leyne would not dis­cover that the last two let­ters were miss­ing.

The moist pun­gent per­fume lay all the way up to Mr. Al­leyne’s room. Miss Delacour was a middle-aged wo­man of Jew­ish ap­pear­ance. Mr. Al­leyne was said to be sweet on her or on her money. She came to the of­fice of­ten and stayed a long time when she came. She was sit­ting be­side his desk now in an aroma of per­fumes, smooth­ing the handle of her um­brella and nod­ding the great black feather in her hat. Mr. Al­leyne had swiv­elled his chair round to face her and thrown his right foot jauntily upon his left knee. The man put the cor­res­pond­ence on the desk and bowed re­spect­fully but neither Mr. Al­leyne nor Miss Delacour took any no­tice of his bow. Mr. Al­leyne tapped a fin­ger on the cor­res­pond­ence and then flicked it to­wards him as if to say: “That’s all right: you can go.”

The man re­turned to the lower of­fice and sat down again at his desk. He stared in­tently at the in­com­plete phrase: In no case shall the said Bern­ard Bod­ley be … and thought how strange it was that the last three words began with the same let­ter. The chief clerk began to hurry Miss Parker, say­ing she would never have the let­ters typed in time for post. The man listened to the click­ing of the ma­chine for a few minutes and then set to work to fin­ish his copy. But his head was not clear and his mind wandered away to the glare and rattle of the pub­lic-house. It was a night for hot punches. He struggled on with his copy, but when the clock struck five he had still four­teen pages to write. Blast it! He couldn’t fin­ish it in time. He longed to ex­ec­rate aloud, to bring his fist down on some­thing vi­ol­ently. He was so en­raged that he wrote Bern­ard Bern­ard in­stead of Bern­ard Bod­ley and had to be­gin again on a clean sheet.

He felt strong enough to clear out the whole of­fice single­han­ded. His body ached to do some­thing, to rush out and revel in vi­ol­ence. All the in­dig­nit­ies of his life en­raged him. … Could he ask the cash­ier privately for an ad­vance? No, the cash­ier was no good, no damn good: he wouldn’t give an ad­vance. … He knew where he would meet the boys: Leonard and O’Hal­loran and No­sey Flynn. The ba­ro­meter of his emo­tional nature was set for a spell of riot.

His ima­gin­a­tion had so ab­strac­ted him that his name was called twice be­fore he answered. Mr. Al­leyne and Miss Delacour were stand­ing out­side the counter and all the clerks had turn round in an­ti­cip­a­tion of some­thing. The man got up from his desk. Mr. Al­leyne began a tirade of ab­use, say­ing that two let­ters were miss­ing. The man answered that he knew noth­ing about them, that he had made a faith­ful copy. The tirade con­tin­ued: it was so bit­ter and vi­ol­ent that the man could hardly re­strain his fist from des­cend­ing upon the head of the manikin be­fore him.

“I know noth­ing about any other two let­ters,” he said stu­pidly.

“You—know—noth­ing. Of course you know noth­ing,” said Mr. Al­leyne. “Tell me,” he ad­ded, glan­cing first for ap­proval to the lady be­side him, “do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an ut­ter fool?”

The man glanced from the lady’s face to the little egg-shaped head and back again; and, al­most be­fore he was aware of it, his tongue had found a fe­li­cit­ous mo­ment:

“I don’t think, sir,” he said, “that that’s a fair ques­tion to put to me.”

There was a pause in the very breath­ing of the clerks. Every­one was astoun­ded (the au­thor of the wit­ti­cism no less than his neigh­bours) and Miss Delacour, who was a stout ami­able per­son, began to smile broadly. Mr. Al­leyne flushed to the hue of a wild rose and his mouth twitched with a dwarf’s pas­sion. He shook his fist in the man’s face till it seemed to vi­brate like the knob of some elec­tric ma­chine:

“You im­per­tin­ent ruf­fian! You im­per­tin­ent ruf­fian! I’ll make short work of you! Wait till you see! You’ll apo­lo­gise to me for your im­per­tin­ence or you’ll quit the of­fice in­stanter! You’ll quit this, I’m telling you, or you’ll apo­lo­gise to me!”

He stood in a door­way op­pos­ite the of­fice watch­ing to see if the cash­ier would come out alone. All the clerks passed out and fi­nally the cash­ier came out with the chief clerk. It was no use try­ing to say a word to him when he was with the chief clerk. The man felt that his po­s­i­tion was bad enough. He had been ob­liged to of­fer an ab­ject apo­logy to Mr. Al­leyne for his im­per­tin­ence but he knew what a hor­net’s nest the of­fice would be for him. He could re­mem­ber the way in which Mr. Al­leyne had houn­ded little Peake out of the of­fice in or­der to make room for his own nephew. He felt sav­age and thirsty and re­venge­ful, an­noyed with him­self and with every­one else. Mr. Al­leyne would never give him an hour’s rest; his life would be a hell to him. He had made a proper fool of him­self this time. Could he not keep his tongue in his cheek? But they had never pulled to­gether from the first, he and Mr. Al­leyne, ever since the day Mr. Al­leyne had over­heard him mim­ick­ing his North of Ire­land ac­cent to amuse Hig­gins and Miss Parker: that had been the be­gin­ning of it. He might have tried Hig­gins for the money, but sure Hig­gins never had any­thing for him­self. A man with two es­tab­lish­ments to keep up, of course he couldn’t. …

He felt his great body again aching for the com­fort of the pub­lic-house. The fog had be­gun to chill him and he wondered could he touch Pat in O’Neill’s. He could not touch him for more than a bob—and a bob was no use. Yet he must get money some­where or other: he had spent his last penny for the g. p. and soon it would be too late for get­ting money any­where. Sud­denly, as he was fin­ger­ing his watch-chain, he thought of Terry Kelly’s pawn-of­fice in Fleet Street. That was the dart! Why didn’t he think of it sooner?

He went through the nar­row al­ley of Temple Bar quickly, mut­ter­ing to him­self that they could all go to hell be­cause he was go­ing to have a good night of it. The clerk in Terry Kelly’s said A crown! but the con­signor held out for six shil­lings; and in the end the six shil­lings was al­lowed him lit­er­ally. He came out of the pawn-of­fice joy­fully, mak­ing a little cyl­in­der, of the coins between his thumb and fin­gers. In West­mo­re­land Street the foot­paths were crowded with young men and wo­men re­turn­ing from busi­ness and ragged urchins ran here and there yelling out the names of the even­ing edi­tions. The man passed through the crowd, look­ing on the spec­tacle gen­er­ally with proud sat­is­fac­tion and star­ing mas­ter­fully at the of­fice-girls. His head was full of the noises of tram-gongs and swish­ing trol­leys and his nose already sniffed the curl­ing fumes of punch. As he walked on he pre­con­sidered the terms in which he would nar­rate the in­cid­ent to the boys:

“So, I just looked at him—coolly, you know, and looked at her. Then I looked back at him again—tak­ing my time, you know. ‘I don’t think that that’s a fair ques­tion to put to me,’ says I.”

No­sey Flynn was sit­ting up in his usual corner of Davy Byrne’s and, when he heard the story, he stood Far­ring­ton a half-one, say­ing it was as smart a thing as ever he heard. Far­ring­ton stood a drink in his turn. After a while O’Hal­loran and Paddy Leonard came in and the story was re­peated to them. O’Hal­loran stood tail­ors of malt, hot, all round and told the story of the re­tort he had made to the chief clerk when he was in Cal­lan’s of Fownes’s Street; but, as the re­tort was after the man­ner of the lib­eral shep­herds in the ec­logues, he had to ad­mit that it was not as clever as Far­ring­ton’s re­tort. At this Far­ring­ton told the boys to pol­ish off that and have an­other.

Just as they were nam­ing their pois­ons who should come in but Hig­gins! Of course he had to join in with the oth­ers. The men asked him to give his ver­sion of it, and he did so with great vi­va­city for the sight of five small hot whiskies was very ex­hil­ar­at­ing. Every­one roared laugh­ing when he showed the way in which Mr. Al­leyne shook his fist in Far­ring­ton’s face. Then he im­it­ated Far­ring­ton, say­ing, “And here was my nabs, as cool as you please,” while Far­ring­ton looked at the com­pany out of his heavy dirty eyes, smil­ing and at times draw­ing forth stray drops of li­quor from his mous­tache with the aid of his lower lip.

When that round was over there was a pause. O’Hal­loran had money but neither of the other two seemed to have any; so the whole party left the shop some­what re­gret­fully. At the corner of Duke Street Hig­gins and No­sey Flynn bev­elled off to the left while the other three turned back to­wards the city. Rain was drizz­ling down on the cold streets and, when they reached the Bal­last Of­fice, Far­ring­ton sug­ges­ted the Scotch House. The bar was full of men and loud with the noise of tongues and glasses. The three men pushed past the whin­ing match-sellers at the door and formed a little party at the corner of the counter. They began to ex­change stor­ies. Leonard in­tro­duced them to a young fel­low named Weath­ers who was per­form­ing at the Tivoli as an ac­robat and knock­about ar­tiste. Far­ring­ton stood a drink all round. Weath­ers said he would take a small Irish and Apol­lin­aris. Far­ring­ton, who had def­in­ite no­tions of what was what, asked the boys would they have an Apol­lin­aris too; but the boys told Tim to make theirs hot. The talk be­came the­at­rical. O’Hal­loran stood a round and then Far­ring­ton stood an­other round, Weath­ers protest­ing that the hos­pit­al­ity was too Irish. He prom­ised to get them in be­hind the scenes and in­tro­duce them to some nice girls. O’Hal­loran said that he and Leonard would go, but that Far­ring­ton wouldn’t go be­cause he was a mar­ried man; and Far­ring­ton’s heavy dirty eyes leered at the com­pany in token that he un­der­stood he was be­ing chaffed. Weath­ers made them all have just one little tinc­ture at his ex­pense and prom­ised to meet them later on at Mul­ligan’s in Pool­beg Street.

When the Scotch House closed they went round to Mul­ligan’s. They went into the par­lour at the back and O’Hal­loran ordered small hot spe­cials all round. They were all be­gin­ning to feel mel­low. Far­ring­ton was just stand­ing an­other round when Weath­ers came back. Much to Far­ring­ton’s re­lief he drank a glass of bit­ter this time. Funds were get­ting low but they had enough to keep them go­ing. Presently two young wo­men with big hats and a young man in a check suit came in and sat at a table close by. Weath­ers sa­luted them and told the com­pany that they were out of the Tivoli. Far­ring­ton’s eyes wandered at every mo­ment in the dir­ec­tion of one of the young wo­men. There was some­thing strik­ing in her ap­pear­ance. An im­mense scarf of pea­cock-blue muslin was wound round her hat and knot­ted in a great bow un­der her chin; and she wore bright yel­low gloves, reach­ing to the el­bow. Far­ring­ton gazed ad­mir­ingly at the plump arm which she moved very of­ten and with much grace; and when, after a little time, she answered his gaze he ad­mired still more her large dark brown eyes. The ob­lique star­ing ex­pres­sion in them fas­cin­ated him. She glanced at him once or twice and, when the party was leav­ing the room, she brushed against his chair and said “O, par­don!” in a Lon­don ac­cent. He watched her leave the room in the hope that she would look back at him, but he was dis­ap­poin­ted. He cursed his want of money and cursed all the rounds he had stood, par­tic­u­larly all the whiskies and Apo­lin­aris which he had stood to Weath­ers. If there was one thing that he hated it was a sponge. He was so angry that he lost count of the con­ver­sa­tion of his friends.

When Paddy Leonard called him he found that they were talk­ing about feats of strength. Weath­ers was show­ing his bi­ceps muscle to the com­pany and boast­ing so much that the other two had called on Far­ring­ton to up­hold the na­tional hon­our. Far­ring­ton pulled up his sleeve ac­cord­ingly and showed his bi­ceps muscle to the com­pany. The two arms were ex­amined and com­pared and fi­nally it was agreed to have a trial of strength. The table was cleared and the two men res­ted their el­bows on it, clasp­ing hands. When Paddy Leonard said “Go!” each was to try to bring down the other’s hand on to the table. Far­ring­ton looked very ser­i­ous and de­term­ined.

The trial began. After about thirty seconds Weath­ers brought his op­pon­ent’s hand slowly down on to the table. Far­ring­ton’s dark wine-col­oured face flushed darker still with an­ger and hu­mi­li­ation at hav­ing been de­feated by such a strip­ling.

“You’re not to put the weight of your body be­hind it. Play fair,” he said.

“Who’s not play­ing fair?” said the other.

“Come on again. The two best out of three.”

The trial began again. The veins stood out on Far­ring­ton’s fore­head, and the pal­lor of Weath­ers’ com­plex­ion changed to pe­ony. Their hands and arms trembled un­der the stress. After a long struggle Weath­ers again brought his op­pon­ent’s hand slowly on to the table. There was a mur­mur of ap­plause from the spec­tat­ors. The cur­ate, who was stand­ing be­side the table, nod­ded his red head to­wards the vic­tor and said with stu­pid fa­mili­ar­ity:

“Ah! that’s the knack!”

“What the hell do you know about it?” said Far­ring­ton fiercely, turn­ing on the man. “What do you put in your gab for?”

“Sh, sh!” said O’Hal­loran, ob­serving the vi­ol­ent ex­pres­sion of Far­ring­ton’s face. “Pony up, boys. We’ll have just one little sma­han more and then we’ll be off.”

A very sul­len-faced man stood at the corner of O’Con­nell Bridge wait­ing for the little Sandy­mount tram to take him home. He was full of smoul­der­ing an­ger and re­venge­ful­ness. He felt hu­mi­li­ated and dis­con­ten­ted; he did not even feel drunk; and he had only two­pence in his pocket. He cursed everything. He had done for him­self in the of­fice, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got drunk. He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in the hot reek­ing pub­lic-house. He had lost his repu­ta­tion as a strong man, hav­ing been de­feated twice by a mere boy. His heart swelled with fury and, when he thought of the wo­man in the big hat who had brushed against him and said Par­don! his fury nearly choked him.

His tram let him down at Shel­bourne Road and he steered his great body along in the shadow of the wall of the bar­racks. He loathed re­turn­ing to his home. When he went in by the side-door he found the kit­chen empty and the kit­chen fire nearly out. He bawled up­stairs:

“Ada! Ada!”

His wife was a little sharp-faced wo­man who bul­lied her hus­band when he was sober and was bul­lied by him when he was drunk. They had five chil­dren. A little boy came run­ning down the stairs.

“Who is that?” said the man, peer­ing through the dark­ness.

“Me, pa.”

“Who are you? Charlie?”

“No, pa. Tom.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s out at the chapel.”

“That’s right. … Did she think of leav­ing any din­ner for me?”

“Yes, pa. I—”

“Light the lamp. What do you mean by hav­ing the place in dark­ness? Are the other chil­dren in bed?”

The man sat down heav­ily on one of the chairs while the little boy lit the lamp. He began to mimic his son’s flat ac­cent, say­ing half to him­self: “At the chapel. At the chapel, if you please!” When the lamp was lit he banged his fist on the table and shouted:

“What’s for my din­ner?”

“I’m go­ing … to cook it, pa,” said the little boy.

The man jumped up furi­ously and poin­ted to the fire.

“On that fire! You let the fire out! By God, I’ll teach you to do that again!”

He took a step to the door and seized the walk­ing stick which was stand­ing be­hind it.

“I’ll teach you to let the fire out!” he said, rolling up his sleeve in or­der to give his arm free play.

The little boy cried “O, pa!” and ran whim­per­ing round the table, but the man fol­lowed him and caught him by the coat. The little boy looked about him wildly but, see­ing no way of es­cape, fell upon his knees.

“Now, you’ll let the fire out the next time!” said the man strik­ing at him vig­or­ously with the stick. “Take that, you little whelp!”

The boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped his hands to­gether in the air and his voice shook with fright.

“O, pa!” he cried. “Don’t beat me, pa! And I’ll … I’ll say a Hail Mary for you. … I’ll say a Hail Mary for you, pa, if you don’t beat me. … I’ll say a Hail Mary. …”