There was a pause again. Mr Power turned to Mrs Kernan and said with abrupt
joviality:
`Well, Mrs Kernan, we're going to make your man here a good holy pious and God-
fearing Roman Catholic.'
He swept his arm round the company inclusively.
`We're all going to make a retreat together and confess our sins - and God knows we
want it badly.'
`I don't mind,' said Mr Kernan, smiling a little nervously.
Mrs Kernan thought it would be wiser to conceal her satisfaction. So she said:
`I pity the poor priest that has to listen to your tale.'
Mr Kernan's expression changed.
`If he doesn't like it,' he said bluntly, `he can... do the other thing. I'll just tell him my
little tale of woe. I'm not such a bad fellow--'
Mr Cunningham intervened promptly.
`We'll all renounce the devil,' he said, `together, not forgetting his works and pomps.'
`Get behind me, Satan!' said Mr Fogarty, laughing and looking at the others.
Mr Power said nothing. He felt completely out-generalled. But a pleased expression
flickered across his face.
`All we have to do,' said Mr Cunningham, `is to stand up with lighted candles in our
hands and renew our baptismal vows.'
`O, don't forget the candle, Tom,' said Mr M'Coy, `whatever you do.'
`What?' said Mr Kernan. `Must I have a candle?'
`O yes,' said Mr Cunningham.
`No, damn it all,' said Mr Kernan sensibly, `I draw the line there. I'll do the job right
enough. I'll do the retreat business and confession, and... all that business. But... no
candles! No, damn it all, I bar the candles!'
He shook his head with farcical gravity.
`Listen to that!' said his wife.
`I bar the candles,' said Mr Kernan, conscious of having created an effect on his
audience and continuing to shake his head to and fro. `I bar the magic-lantern
business.'
Everyone laughed heartily.
`There's a nice Catholic for you!' said his wife.
`No candles!' repeated Mr Kernan obdurately. `That's off!'
The transept of the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street was almost full; and still at every
moment gentlemen entered from the side door and, directed by the lay-brother,
walked on tiptoe along the aisles until they found seating accommodation. The
gentlemen were all well dressed and orderly. The light of the lamps of the church fell
upon an assembly of black clothes and white collars, relieved here and there by
tweeds, on dark mottled pillars of green marble and on lugubrious canvases. The
gentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly above their knees
and laid their hats in security. They sat well back and gazed formally at the distant
speck of red light which was suspended before the high altar.
In one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr Cunningham and Mr Kernan. In the
bench behind sat Mr M'Coy alone: and in the bench behind him sat Mr Power and Mr
Fogarty. Mr M'Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find a place in the bench with the
others, and, when the party had settled down in the form of a quincunx, he had tried
unsuccessfully to make comic remarks. As these had not been well received, he had
desisted. Even he was sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to
respond to the religious stimulus. In a whisper, Mr Cunningham drew Mr Kernan's
attention to Mr Harford, the moneylender, who sat some distance off, and to Mr
Fanning, the registration agent and mayor-maker of the city, who was sitting
immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly elected councillors of the ward.
To the right sat old Michael Grimes, the owner of three pawnbroker's shops, and Dan
Hogan's nephew, who was up for the job in the Town Clerk's office. Farther in front
sat Mr Hendrick, the chief reporter of The Freeman's Journal, and poor O'Carroll, an
old friend of Mr Kernan's, who had been at one time a considerable commercial
figure. Gradually, as he recognized familiar faces, Mr Kernan began to feel more at
home. His hat, which had been rehabilitated by his wife, rested upon his knees. Once
or twice he pulled down his cuffs with one hand while he held the brim of his hat
lightly, but firmly, with the other hand.
A powerful-looking figure, the upper part of which was draped with a white surplice,
was observed to be struggling up into the pulpit. Simultaneously the congregation
unsettled, produced handkerchiefs and knelt upon them with care. Mr Kernan
followed the general example. The priest's figure now stood upright in the pulpit, two-
thirds of its bulk, crowned by a massive red face, appearing above the balustrade.
Father Purdon knelt down, turned towards the red speck of light and, covering his
face with his hands, prayed. After an interval, he uncovered his face and rose. The
congregation rose also and settled again on its benches. Mr Kernan restored his hat to
its original position on his knee and presented an attentive face to the preacher. The
preacher turned back each wide sleeve of his surplice with an elaborate large gesture
and slowly surveyed the array of faces. Then he said:
`For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.
Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity so that when
you die they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.'
Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of the most
difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly. It was a text which
might seem to the casual observer at variance with the lofty morality elsewhere
preached by Jesus Christ. But, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him
specially adapted for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the
world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings. It was a
text for business men and professional men. Jesus Christ, with His divine
understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not
called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the
world, and, to a certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to give
them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those
very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in matters
religious.
He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant
purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to
business men and he would speak to them in a business-like way. If he might use the
metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every
one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they
tallied accurately with conscience.
Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood
the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We
might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all
had, our failings. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that
was: to be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to say:
`Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.'
But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank
and say like a man:
`Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with
God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts.'
The Dead
Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought
one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped
him off with his overcoat, than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to
scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not
to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had
converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss
Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the
head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her
who had come.
It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew
them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of
Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary
Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in
splendid style, as long as anyone could remember: ever since Kate and Julia, after the
death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane,
their only niece, to live with them in the dark, gaunt house on Usher's Island, the
upper part of which they had rented from Mr Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground
floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a
little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the
organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils'
concert every year in the upper room of the Ancient Concert Rooms. Many of her
pupils belonged to the better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as
they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the
leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much,
gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the
caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for them. Though their life was modest,
they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-
shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders,
so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But
the only thing they would not stand was back answers.
Of course, they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long
after ten o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were
dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed. They would not wish for
worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him under the influence; and when
he was like that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always
came late, but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what
brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy
come.
`O, Mr Conroy,' said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, `Miss Kate
and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good night, Mrs Conroy.'
`I'll engage they did,' said Gabriel, `but they forget that my wife here takes three
mortal hours to dress herself.'
He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily led his wife to
the foot of the stairs and called out:
`Miss Kate, here's Mrs Conroy.'
Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed
Gabriel's wife, said she must be perished alive, and asked was Gabriel with her.
`Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I'll follow,' called out Gabriel
from the dark.
He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs,
laughing, to the ladies' dressing-room. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the
shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the
buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened
frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.
`Is it snowing again, Mr Conroy?' asked Lily.
She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat. Gabriel
smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She was a
slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the
pantry made her look still paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and
used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll.
`Yes, Lily,' he answered, `and I think we're in for a night of it.'
He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and
shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano and then
glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat carefully at the end of a shelf.
`Tell me, Lily,' he said in a friendly tone, `do you still go to school?'
`O no, sir,' she answered. `I'm done schooling this year and more.'
`O, then,' said Gabriel gaily, `I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these
fine days with your young man, eh?'
The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness:
`The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.'
Gabriel coloured, as if he felt he had made a mistake, and, without looking at her,
kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather
shoes.
He was a stout, tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed upwards
even to his forehead, where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red;
and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright
gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black
hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where it
curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat.
When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down
more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin rapidly from his pocket.
`O Lily,' he said, thrusting it into her hands, `it's Christmastime, isn't it? Just... here's a
little... '
He walked rapidly towards the door.
`O no, sir!' cried the girl, following him. `Really, sir, I wouldn't take it.'
`Christmas-time! Christmas-time!' said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and
