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 washstand, 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 washstand 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 cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of gum or
of an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten.
Mr Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder.
A mediæval 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 alms 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,
emotionalised 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 recognised 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 man 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: