about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts and intrigues. He would be thirty-one
in November. Would he never get a good job? Would he never have a home of his
own? He thought how pleasant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good
dinner to sit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and with
girls. He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls too. Experience had
embittered his heart against the world. But all hope had not left him. He felt better
after having eaten than he had felt before, less weary of his life, less vanquished in
spirit. He might yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily if he
could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little of the ready.
He paid twopence halfpenny to the slatternly girl, and went out of the shop to begin
his wandering again. He went into Capel Street and walked along towards the City
Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street. At the corner of George's Street he met two
friends of his, and stopped to converse with them. He was glad that he could rest from
all his walking. His friends asked him had he seen Corley, and what was the latest. He
replied that he had spent the day with Corley. His friends talked very little. They
looked vacantly after some figures in the crowd, and sometimes made a critical
remark. One said that he had seen Mac an hour before in Westmoreland Street. At this
Lenehan said that he had been with Mac the night before in Egan's. The young man
who had seen Mac in Westmoreland Street asked was it true that Mac had won a bit
over a billiards match. Lenehan did not know: he said that Holohan had stood them
drinks in Egan's.
He left his friends at a quarter to ten and went up George's Street. He turned to the left
at the City Markets and walked on into Grafton Street. The crowd of girls and young
men had thinned, and on his way up the street he heard many groups and couples
bidding one another good night. He went as far as the clock of the College of
Surgeons: it was on the stroke of ten. He set off briskly along the northern side of the
Green, hurrying for fear Corley should return too soon. When he reached the corner
of Merrion Street he took his stand in the shadow of a lamp, and brought out one of
the cigarettes which he had reserved and lit it. He leaned against the lamp-post and
kept his gaze fixed on the part from which he expected to see Corley and the young
woman return.
His mind became active again. He wondered had Corley managed it successfully. He
wondered if he had asked her yet or if he would leave it to the last. He suffered all the
pangs and thrills of his friend's situation as well as those of his own. But the memory
of Corley's slowly revolving head calmed him somewhat: he was sure Corley would
pull it off all right. All at once the idea struck him that perhaps Corley had seen her
home by another way, and given him the slip. His eyes searched the street: there was
no sign of them. Yet it was surely half an hour since he had seen the clock of the
College of Surgeons. Would Corley do a thing like that? He lit his Fast cigarette and
began to smoke it nervously. He strained his eyes as each tram stopped at the far
corner of the square. They must have gone home by another way. The paper of his
cigarette broke and he flung it into the road with a curse.
Suddenly he saw them coming towards him. He started with delight, and keeping
close to his lamp-post tried to read the result in their walk. They were walking
quickly, the young woman taking quick short steps, while Corley kept beside her with
his long stride. They did not seem to be speaking. An intimation of the result pricked
him like the point of a sharp instrument. He knew Corley would fail; he knew it was
no go.
They turned down Baggot Street, and he followed them at once, taking the other
footpath. When they stopped he stopped too. They talked for a few moments, and then
the young woman went down the steps into the area of a house. Corley remained
standing at the edge of the path, a little distance from the front steps. Some minutes
passed. Then the hall-door was opened slowly and cautiously. A woman came
running down the front steps and coughed. Corley turned and went towards her. His
broad figure hid hers from view for a few seconds and then she reappeared, running
up the steps. The door closed on her, and Corley began to walk swiftly towards
Stephen's Green.
Lenehan hurried on in the same direction. Some drops of light rain fell. He took them
as a warning, and glancing back towards the house which the young woman had
entered to see that he was not observed, he ran eagerly across the road. Anxiety and
his swift run made him pant. He called out:
`Hallo, Corley!'
Corley turned his head to see who had called him, and then continued walking as
before. Lenehan ran after him, settling the waterproof on his shoulders with one hand.
`Hallo, Corley!' he cried again.
He came level with his friend and looked keenly in his face. He could see nothing
there.
`Well?' he said. `Did it come off?'
They had reached the corner of Ely Place. Still without answering, Corley swerved to
the left and went up the side street. His features were composed in stern calm.
Lenehan kept up with his friend, breathing uneasily. He was baffled, and a note of
menace pierced through his voice.
`Can't you tell us?' he said. `Did you try her?'
Corley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly before him. Then with a grave
gesture he extended a hand towards the light and, smiling, opened it slowly to the
gaze of his disciple. A small gold coin shone in the palm.
The Boarding House
Mrs Mooney was a butcher's daughter. She was a woman who was quite able to keep
things to herself: a determined woman. She had married her father's foreman, and
opened a butcher's shop near Spring Gardens. But as soon as his father-in-law was
dead Mr Mooney began to go to the devil. He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong
into debt. It was no use making him take the pledge: he was sure to break out again a
few days after. By fighting his wife in the presence of customers and by buying bad
meat he ruined his business. One night he went for his wife with the cleaver, and she
had to sleep 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 house-room; and
so he was obliged to enlist himself as a sheriff's man. He was a shabby stooped little
drunkard with a white face and a white moustache 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 the
house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to
let things pass. All the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam.
Mrs Mooney's young men paid fifteen shillings a week for board and lodgings (beer
or stout at dinner excluded). They shared in common tastes and occupations and for
this reason they were very chummy with one another. They discussed with one
another the chances of favourites and outsiders. Jack Mooney, the Madam's son, who
was clerk to a commission agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard
case. He was fond of using soldiers' obscenities: usually he came home in the small
hours. When he met his friends he had always a good one to tell them, and he was
always sure to be on to a good thing - that is to say, a likely horse or a likely artiste.
He was also handy with the mits and sang comic songs. On Sunday nights there
would often be a reunion in Mrs Mooney's front drawing-room. The music-hall
artistes would oblige; and Sheridan played waltzes and polkas and vamped
accompaniments. Polly Mooney, the Madam's daughter, would also sing. She sang:
I'm a... naughty girl
You needn't sham:
You know I am.
Polly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small full mouth. Her
eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through them, had a habit of glancing
upwards when she spoke with anyone, which made her look like a little perverse
madonna. Mrs Mooney had first sent her daughter to be a typist in a corn-factor's
office, but as a disreputable sheriff's man used to come every other day to the office,
asking to be allowed to say a word to his daughter, she had taken her daughter home
again and set her to do housework. As Polly was very lively, the intention was to give
her the run of the young men. Besides, young men like to feel that there is a young
woman not very far away. Polly, of course, flirted with the young men, but Mrs
Mooney, who was a shrewd judge, knew that the young men were only passing the
time away: none of them meant business. Things went on so for a long time, and Mrs
Mooney began to think of sending Polly back to typewriting, when she noticed that
something was going on between Polly and one of the young men. She watched the
pair and kept her own counsel.
Polly knew that she was being watched, but still her mother's persistent silence could
not be misunderstood. There had been no open complicity between mother and
daughter, no open understanding, but though people in the house began to talk of the
affair, still Mrs Mooney did not intervene. Polly began to grow a little strange in her
manner, and the young man was evidently perturbed. At last, when she judged it to be
the right moment, Mrs Mooney intervened. She dealt with moral problems as a
cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.
It was a bright Sunday morning of early summer, promising heat, but with a fresh
breeze blowing. All the windows of the boarding house were open and the lace
curtains ballooned gently towards the street beneath the raised sashes. The belfry of
George's Church sent out constant peals, and worshippers, singly or in groups,
traversed the little circus before the church, revealing their purpose by their self-
contained demeanour no less than by the little volumes in their gloved hands.
Breakfast was over in the boarding house, and the table of the breakfast-room was
covered with plates on which lay yellow streaks of eggs with morsels of bacon-fat and
bacon-rind. Mrs Mooney sat in the straw arm-chair and watched the servant Mary
remove the breakfast things. She 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 ewkward, 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 reverie 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 a case. It is all very well for the man: he can
go his ways as if nothing had happened, having had his moment of pleasure, but the
girl has to bear the brunt. Some mothers would be content to patch up such an affair
for a sum of money: she had known cases of it. But she would not do so. For her only
one reparation could make up for the loss of her daughter's honour: marriage.
She counted all her cards again before sending Mary up to 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
