precaution to prevent people crossing the lines except by the bridges,
both by placing notices in every station and by the use of patent spring
gates at level crossings. The deceased had been in the habit of crossing
the lines late at night from platform to platform and, in view of certain
other circumstances of the case, he did not think the railway officials
were to blame.
Captain Sinico, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased,
also gave evidence. He stated that the deceased was his wife. He was
not in Dublin at the time of the accident as he had arrived only that
morning from Rotterdam. They had been married for twenty-two years
and had lived happily until about two years ago, when his wife began to
be rather intemperate in her habits.
Miss Mary Sinico said that of late her mother had been in the habit of
going out at night to buy spirits. She, witness, had often tried to reason
with her mother and had induced her to join a League. She was not at
home until an hour after the accident.
The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence
and exonerated Lennon from all blame.
The Deputy-Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed
great sympathy with Captain Sinico and his daughter. He urged on the
railway company to take strong measures to prevent the possibility of
similar accidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.
Mr Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on the cheerless
evening landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty distillery and from time to
time a light appeared in some house on the Lucan road. What an end! The whole
narrative of her death revolted him and it revolted him to think that he had ever
spoken to her of what he held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of
sympathy, the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of a
commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she degraded
herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her vice, miserable and
malodorous. His soul's companion! He thought of the hobbling wretches whom he
had seen carrying cans and bottles to be filled by the barman.
Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been unfit to live, without any strength of
purpose, an easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on which civilization has been
reared. But that she could have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself
so utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and interpreted it in a
harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no difficulty now in approving of the
course he had taken.
As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand touched his.
The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now attacking his nerves. He put
on his overcoat and hat quickly and went out. The cold air met him on the threshold;
it crept into the sleeves of his coat. When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod
Bridge he went in and ordered a hot punch.
The proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk. There were five or
six working-men in the shop discussing the value of a gentleman's estate in County
Kildare. They drank at intervals from their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting
often on the floor and sometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their
heavy boots. Mr Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them without seeing or hearing
them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He sat a long time
over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor sprawled on the counter reading the
Herald and yawning. Now and again a tram was heard swishing along the lonely road
outside.
As he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately the two images in
which he now conceived her, he realized that she was dead, that she had ceased to
exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself
what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception
with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him
best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life
must have been, sitting night after night, alone in that room. His life would be lonely
too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory - if anyone remembered
him.
It was after nine o'clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and gloomy. He
entered the Park by the first gate and walked along under the gaunt trees. He walked
through the bleak alleys where they had walked four years before. She seemed to be
near him in the darkness. At moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her
hand touch his. He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had
he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.
When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked along the river
towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and hospitably in the cold night. He
looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw
some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He
gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast. One
human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he
had sentenced her to ignominy, a death Of shame. He knew that the prostrate
creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted
him; he was outcast from life's feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river,
winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of
Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness,
obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears
the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name.
He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears.
He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and
allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor
her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing:
the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was
alone.
Ivy Day In The Committee Room
Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and spread them
judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome was thinly covered his
face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself to fan the fire again, his crouching
shadow ascended the opposite wall and his face slowly re-emerged into light. It was
an old man's face, very bony and hairy. The moist blue eyes blinked at the fire and the
moist mouth fell open at times, munching once or twice mechanically when it closed.
When the cinders had caught he laid the piece of cardboard against the wall, sighed
and said:
`That's better now, Mr O'Connor.'
Mr O'Connor, a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by many blotches
and pimples, had just brought the tobacco for a cigarette into a shapely cylinder, but
when spoken to he undid his handiwork meditatively. Then he began to roll the
tobacco again meditatively and after a moment's thought decided to lick the paper.
`Did Mr Tierney say when he'd be back?' he asked in a husky falsetto.
`He didn't say.'
Mr O'Connor put his cigarette into his mouth and began to search his pockets. He
took out a pack of thin pasteboard cards.
`I'll get you a match,' said the old man.
`Never mind, this'll do,' said Mr O'Connor.
He selected one of the cards and read what was printed on it:
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS
ROYAL EXCHANGE WARD
Mr Richard J. Tierney, P.L.G., respectfully Solicits the favour of your
vote and influence at the coming election in the Royal Exchange Ward.
Mr O'Connor had been engaged by Tierney's agent to canvass one part of the ward
but, as the weather was inclement and his boots let in the wet, he spent a great part of
the day sitting by the fire in the Committee Room in Wicklow Street with Jack, the
old caretaker. They had been sitting thus since the short day had grown dark. It was
the sixth of October, dismal and cold out of doors.
Mr O'Connor tore a strip off the card and, lighting it, lit his cigarette. As he did so the
flame lit up a leaf of dark glossy ivy in the lapel of his coat. The old man watched him
attentively and then, taking up the piece of cardboard again, began to fan the fire
slowly while his companion smoked.
`Ah, yes,' he said, continuing, `it's hard to know what way to bring up children. Now
who'd think he'd turn out like that! I sent him to the Christian Brothers and I done
what I could for him, and there he goes boozing about. I tried to make him somewhat
decent.'
He replaced the cardboard wearily.
`Only I'm an old man now I'd change his tune for him. I'd ta&e the stick to his back
and beat him while I could stand over him - as I done many a time before. The mother
you know, she cocks him up with this and that... '
`That's what ruins children,' said Mr O'Connor.
`To be sure it is,' said the old man. `And little thanks you get for it, only impudence.
He takes th'upper hand of me whenever he sees I've a sup taken. What's the world
coming to when sons speaks that way to their fathers?'
`What age is he?' said Mr O'Connor.
`Nineteen,' said the old man.
`Why don't you put him to something?'
`Sure, amn't I never done at the drunken bowsy ever since he left school? "I won't
keep you," I says. "You must get a job for yourself." But, sure it's worse whenever he
gets a job; he drinks it all.'
Mr O'Connor shook his head in sympathy, and the old man fell silent, gazing into the
fire. Someone opened the door of the room and called out:
`Hello! Is this a Freemasons' meeting?'
`Who's that?' said the old man.
`What are you doing in the dark?' asked a voice.
`Is that you, Hynes?' asked Mr O'Connor.
`Yes. What are you doing in the dark?' Said Mr Hynes, advancing into the light of the
fire.
He was a tall, Slender young man with a light brown moustache. Imminent little drops
of rain hung at the brim of his hat and the collar of his jacket-coat was turned up.
`Well, Mat,' he said to Mr O'Connor, `how goes it?'
Mr O'Connor shook his head. The old man left the hearth, and after stumbling about
the room returned with two candlesticks which he thrust one after the other into the
fire and carried to the table. A denuded room came into view and the fire lost all its
cheerful colour. The walls of the room were bare except for a copy of an election
address. In the middle of the room was a small table on which papers were heaped.
Mr Hynes leaned against the mantelpiece and asked:
`Has he paid you yet?'
`Not yet,' said Mr O'Connor. `I hope to God he'll not leave us in the lurch tonight.'
Mr Hynes laughed.
`O, he'll pay you. Never fear,' he said.
`I hope he'll look smart about it if he means business,' said Mr O'Connor.
`What do you think, Jack?' said Mr Hynes satirically to the old man.
The old man returned to his seat by the fire, saying:
`It isn't but he has it, anyway. Not like the other tinker.'
`What other tinker?' said Mr Hynes.
`Colgan,' said the old man scornfully.
`It is because Colgan's a working-man you say that? What's the difference between a
good honest bricklayer and a publican - eh? Hasn't the working-man as good a right to
be in the Corporation as anyone else - ay, and a better right than those shoneens that
are always hat in hand before any fellow with a handle to his name? Isn't that so,
Mat?' said Mr Hynes, addressing Mr O'Connor.
`I think you're right,' said Mr O'Connor.
`One man is a plain honest man with no hunker-sliding about him. He goes in to
represent the labour classes. This fellow you're working for only wants to get some
job or other.'
`Of course, the working-classes should be represented,' said the old man.
`The working-man,' said Mr Hynes, `gets all kicks and no halfpence. But it's labour
produces everything. The working-man is not looking for fat jobs for his sons and
nephews and cousins. The working-man is not going to drag the honour of Dublin in
the mud to please a German monarch.'
`How's that?' said the old man.
`Don't you know they want to present an address of welcome to Edward Rex if he
comes here next year? What do we want kowtowing to a foreign king?'
`Our man won't vote for the address,' said Mr O'Connor. `He goes in on the
Nationalist ticket.'
`Won't he?' said Mr Hynes. `Wait till you see whether he will or not. I know him. Is it
Tricky Dicky Tierney?'
`By God! perhaps you're right, Joe,' said Mr O'Connor. `Anyway, I wish he'd turn up
with the spondulicks.'
The three men fell silent. The old man began to rake more cinders together. Mr Hynes
took off his hat, shook it and then turned down the collar of his coat, displaying, as he
did so, an ivy leaf in the lapel.
`If this man was alive,' he said, pointing to the leaf, `we'd have no talk of an address
of welcome.'
`That's true,' said Mr O'Connor.
`Musha, God be with them times!' said the old man. `There was some life in it then.'
The room was silent again. Then a bustling little man with a snuffling nose and very
cold ears pushed in the door. He walked over quickly to the fire, rubbing his hands as
if he intended to produce a spark from them.
`No money, boys,' he said.
`Sit down here, Mr Henchy,' said the old man, offering him his chair.
`O, don't stir, Jack, don't stir,' said Mr Henchy.
