very much moved. He said that there was no time like the long ago and no music for
him like poor old Balfe, whatever other people might say; and his eyes filled up so
much with tears that he could not find what he was looking for and in the end he had
to ask his wife to tell him where the corkscrew was.
A Painful Case
Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from
the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of
Dublin mean, modern, and pretentious. He lived in an old sombre house, and from his
windows he could look into the disused distillery or upwards along the shallow river
on which Dublin is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from
pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black iron
bedstead, an iron wash-stand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender
and irons, and a square table on which lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made
in an alcove by means of shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with white
bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung
above the wash-stand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the sole
ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves were arranged
from below upwards according to bulk. A complete Wordsworth stood at one end of
the lowest shelf and a copy of the Maynooth Catechism, sewn into the cloth cover of a
notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the
desk. In the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann's Michael Kramer, the
stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers held
together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from time to time
and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been
pasted on to the first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped - the
fragrance of new cedar-wood pencils or a bottle of gum or of an over-ripe apple
which might have been left there and forgotten.
Mr Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder. A
medieval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire
tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large
head grew dry black hair, and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable
mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no
harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows,
gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but
often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts
with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to
compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a
subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave aims to
beggars, and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.
He had been for many years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street. Every
morning he came in from Chapelizod by tram. At midday he went to Dan Burke's and
took his lunch a bottle of lager beer and a small trayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four
o'clock he was set free. He dined in an eating-house in George's Street where he felt
himself safe from the society of Dublin's gilded youth and where there was a certain
plain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings were spent either before his landlady's
piano or roaming about the outskirts of the city. His liking for Mozart's music brought
him sometimes to an opera or a concert: these were the only dissipations of his life.
He had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his spiritual life
without any communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting
them to the cemetery when they died. He performed these two social duties for old
dignity's sake, but conceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the
civic life. He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances he would rob his
bank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life rolled out evenly - an
adventureless tale.
One evening he found himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda. The house,
thinly peopled and silent, gave distressing prophecy of failure. The lady who sat next
him looked round at the deserted house once or twice and then said:
`What a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It's so hard on people to have to sing
to empty benches.'
He took the remark as an invitation to talk. He was surprised that she seemed so little
awkward. While they talked he tried to fix her permanently in his memory. When he
learned that the young girl beside her was her daughter he judged her to be a year or
so younger than himself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained
intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The eyes were very
dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant note, but was confused by what
seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris, revealing for an instant a
temperament of great sensibility. The pupil reasserted itself quickly, this half-
disclosed nature fell again under the reign of prudence, and her astrakhan jacket,
moulding a bosom of a certain fullness, struck the note of defiance more definitely.
He met her again a few weeks afterwards at a concert in Earlsfort Terrace and seized
the moments when her daughter's attention was diverted to become intimate. She
alluded once or twice to her husband, but her tone was not such as to make the
allusion a warning. Her name was Mrs Sinico. Her husband's great-great-grandfather
had come from Leghorn. Her husband was captain of a mercantile boat plying
between Dublin and Holland; and they had one child.
Meeting her a third time by accident, he found courage to make an appointment. She
came. This was the first of many meetings; they met always in the evening and chose
the most quiet quarters for their walks together. Mr Duffy, however, had a distaste for
underhand ways and, finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he forced
her to ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged his visits, thinking that his
daughter's hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife so sincerely from his
gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone else would take an interest in
her. As the husband was often away and the daughter out giving music lessons, Mr
Duffy had many opportunities of enjoying the lady's society. Neither he nor she had
had any such adventure before and neither was conscious of any incongruity. Little by
little he entangled his thoughts with hers. He lent her books, provided her with ideas,
shared his intellectual life with her. She listened to all.
Sometimes in return for his theories she gave out some fact of her own life. With
almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full: she became
his confessor. He told her that for some time he had assisted at the meetings of an
Irish Socialist Party, where he had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score of sober
workmen in a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had divided into
three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret, he had discontinued his
attendances. The workmen's discussions, he said, were too timorous; the interest they
took in the question of wages was inordinate. He felt that they were hard-featured
realists and that they resented an exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not
within their reach. No social revolution, he told her, would be likely to strike Dublin
for some centuries.
She asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what? he asked her, with
careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively
for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which
entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?
He went often to her little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent their evenings
alone. Little by little, as their thoughts entangled, they spoke of subjects less remote.
Her companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the
dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room,
their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them. This union
exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character, emotionalized his mental
life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought
that in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the
fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange
impersonal voice which he recognized as his own, insisting on the soul'S incurable
loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own. The end of these
discourses was that one night, during which she had shown every sign of unusual
excitement, Mrs Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek.
Mr Duffy was very much surprised. Her interpretation of his words disillusioned him.
He did not visit her for a week; then he wrote to her asking her to meet him. As he did
not wish their last interview to be troubled by the influence of their ruined
confessional they met in a little cakeshop near the Parkgate. It was cold autumn
weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for
nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse: every bond, he said, is a
bond to sorrow. When they came out of the Park they walked in silence towards the
tram; but here she began to tremble so violently that, fearing another collapse on her
part, he bade her good-bye quickly and left her. A few days later he received a parcel
containing his books and music.
Four years passed. Mr Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room still bore
witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of music encumbered the
music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche:
Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers
which lay in his desk. One of his sentences, written two months after his last
interview with Mrs Sinico, read: Love between man and woman is impossible
because there must not be sexual intercourse, and friendship between man and woman
is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse. He kept away from concerts
lest he should meet her. His father died; the junior partner of the bank retired. And
still every morning he went into the city by tram and every evening walked home
from the city after having dined moderately in George's Street and read the evening
paper for dessert.
One evening as he was about to put a morsel of corned beef and cabbage into his
mouth his hand stopped. His eyes fixed themselves on a paragraph in the evening
paper which he had propped against the water-carafe. He replaced the morsel of food
on his plate and read the paragraph attentively. Then he drank a glass of water, pushed
his plate to one side, doubled the paper down before him between his elbows and read
the paragraph over and over again. The cabbage began to deposit a cold white grease
on his plate. The girl came over to him to ask was his dinner not properly cooked. He
said it was very good and ate a few mouthfuls of it with difficulty. Then he paid his
bill and went out.
He walked along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel stick striking
the ground regularly, the fringe of the buff Mail peeping out of a side-pocket of his
tight reefer overcoat. On the lonely road which leads from the Parkgate to Chapelizod
he slackened his pace. His stick struck the ground less emphatically, and his breath,
issuing irregularly, almost with a sighing sound, condensed in the wintry air. When he
reached his house he went up at once to his bedroom and, taking the paper from his
pocket, read the paragraph again by the failing light of the window. He read it not
aloud, but moving his lips as a priest does when he reads the prayers Secreto. This
was the paragraph:
DEATH OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE
A PAINFUL CASE
Today at the City of Dublin Hospital the Deputy Coroner (in the
absence of Mr Leverett) held an inquest on the body of Mrs Emily
Sinico, aged forty-three years, who was killed at Sydney Parade Station
yesterday evening. The evidence showed that the deceased lady, while
attempting to cross the line, was knocked down by the engine of the ten
o'clock slow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of the
head and right side which led to her death.
James Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had been in the
employment of the railway company for fifteen years. On hearing the
guard's whistle he set the train in motion and a second or two
afterwards brought it to rest in response to loud cries. The train was
going slowly.
P. Dunne, railway porter, stated that as the train was about to start he
observed a woman attempting to cross the lines. He ran towards her and
shouted, but, before he could reach her, she was caught by the buffer of
the engine and fell to the ground.
A juror. `You saw the lady fall?'
Witness. `Yes.'
Police-Sergeant Croly deposed that when he arrived he found the
deceased lying on the platform apparently dead. He ha-the body taken
to the waiting-room pending the arrival of the ambulance.
Constable 57 corroborated.
Dr Halpin, assistant house-surgeon of the City of Dublin Hospital,
stated that the deceased had two lower ribs fractured and had sustained
severe contusions of the right shoulder. The right side of the head had
been injured in the fall. The injuries were not sufficient to have caused
death in a normal person. Death, in his opinion, had been probably due
to shock and sudden failure of the heart's action.
Mr H. B. Patterson Finlay, on behalf of the railway company, expressed
his deep regret at the accident. The company had always taken every
