John Millington Synge - The Playboy of the Western World (abridged)

John Millington Synge

The Playboy of the Western World

(abridged)

Christopher Mahon

Old Mahon, his father, a squatter

Michael James Flaherty, a publican

Margaret Flaherty (called Pegeen Mike), his daughter

Shawn Keogh, a young farmer

Widow Quin, a woman of about thirty

Village girls and small farmers

ACT I

A country public house or shebeen, very rough and untidy. Pegeen, a wild-looking but fine girl, of about twenty, is dressed in the usual peasant dress. Enters Christy Mahon, a slight young man, very tired and frightened and dirty. He starts telling his story at request of the young farmers present.

CHRISTY. I never left my own parish till Tuesday was a week..

PEGEEN. If you didnt commit murder or a bad nasty thing; or false coining, or robbery, or butchery, or the like of them, there isnt anything that would be worth your troubling to run from now. You did nothing at all.

CHRISTY (his feelings hurt). Thats an unkindly thing to be saying to a poor orphaned traveller, has a prison behind him, and hanging before, and hells gap gaping below.

PEGEEN . Youre only saying it. You did nothing at all. A soft lad the like of you wouldnt slit the wind pipe of a screeching sow.

CHRISTY (offended). Youre not speaking the truth.

PEGEEN (in a mock rage) Not speaking the truth, is it? Would you have me knock the head of you with the butt of the broom?

CHRISTY Dont strike me. I killed my poor father ,Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that.

PEGEEN (with blank amazement) Is it killed your father?

CHRISTY (subsiding) With the help of God I did, surely, and that the Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for his soul.

Michael (with great respect) That was a hanging crime, mister honey. You should have had good reason for doing the like of that.

CHRISTY He wad a dirty man, God forgive him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldnt put up with him at all. Michael. And where was it that you did the deed?

CHRISTY . Oh, a distant place, master of the house, a windy corner of high, distant hill.

PEGEEN Thatd be a lad with the sense of Solomon to have for a pot-boy, Michael James if its the truth youre seeking one at all. And if Id that lad in the house, I wouldnt be fearing the loosed khaki cut-throats, or the walking dead.

CHRISTY (swelling with surprise and triumph) Well, glory be to God!

MICHAEL (with deference) Would you think well to stop here and be pot-boy, mister honey, if we gave you good wages, and didnt destroy you with the weight of work.

CHRISTY (Looking round with satisfaction) Its a nice room, an if its not humbugging me you are, Im thinking that Ill surely stay.

WIDOW QUIN Itd be crazy to be lodged in the shebeen where he works by day, so young man, come to see my little houseenTheres great temptation in a man did slay his da, So rise up and come with me young fellow.

PEGEEN Hell not stir. Hes pot-boy in this place, and Ill not have him stolen off and kidnapped.

WIDOW QUIN When you see me contriving in my little gardens, Christy Mahon, youll swear the Lord God formed to be living lone, and that there isnt my match in Mayo for thatching, or mowing, or shearing a sheep.

CHRISTY (After PEGEEN has shown him his bed, she goes out. He feels the quilt with immense satisfaction). Well, its a clean bed and soft with it, and its great luck and company Ive won me in the end of time two fine women fighting for the likes of me till Im thinking this night wasnt I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.

ACT II

Scene as before. Brilliant morning light. CHRISTY, looking bright and cheerful, is cleaning a girls boots.

CHRISTY . Theres her boots now, nice and decent for her evening use, and isnt it grand brushes she has?. Well, this d be a fine place to be my whole life talking out with swearing Christians, in place of my own dogs and cat; and I stalking around, smoking my pipe and drinking my fill, and never a days work but drawing a cork an odd time, or wiping a glass. Or rinsing out a shiny tumbler for a decent man. (He takes the looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then he sits down in front of it and begins washing his face). Didnt I know rightly, I was handsome, though it was the divils own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angels brow; and Ill be growing fine from this day, the way Ill have a soft lovely skin on me and wont be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung.

(Sara, Susan and Honor, country girls, come in).

SARA. Asking your pardon, is it yous the man killed his father?

CHRISTY . I am, God help me!

SARA Then my thousand welcomes to you, and Ive run up with a brace of ducks eggs for your food today, Pegeens ducks is no use, but these are the real rich sort. Hold out your hand and youll see its no lie Im telling you.

CHRISTY (coming forward shyly, and holding out his left hand) Theyre a great and weighty size.

SUSAN. And I run up with a pat of butter, for itd be a poor thing to have you eating your spuds dry, and you after running a great way since you did destroy your da.

CHRISTY .Thank you kindly.

HONOR. And I brought you a little cut of a cake, for you should have a thin stomach on you, and you that length walking the world.

SARA. Is your right hand too sacred for use at all? (She slips round behind him). Its a glass he has. Well, I never seen to this day a man with a looking glass held to his back. Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely.

WIDOW QUIN (coming in quietly) Sara Tansey, Susan Brady, Honor Blake! What in glory has you here at this hour of day?

GIRLS (giggling) Thats the man killed his father.

WIDOW QUIN. I know well its the man; and Im after putting him down in the sports below for racing, leaping, pitching, and the Lord knows what. (To Christy). Come here to me and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come.

CHRISTY Its a long story; youd be destroyed listening. WIDOW QUIN. Dont be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamy, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull?

CHRISTY (shy, but flattered) It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divils patch of a field. (He tells of a dispute with his father, with the two of them threatening each other).

With the sun come out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face.God have mercy on your soul, says he, lifting the scythe. Or on your own, says I, raising the loy.

SUSAN. Thats a grand story.

HONOR. He tells it lovely.

CHRISTY (flattered and confident,) He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a lept to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet.

GIRLS (together). Well, youre a marvel! Oh, God bless you! Youre the lad surely.

SUSAN. Im thinking the Lord God sent him this road to make a second husband to the Widow Quin, and she with a great yearning to be wedded, though all dread her here. (Going over to counter and getting two glasses and porter) Youre heroes, surely, and let you drink a supeen with your arms linked like outlandish lovers in the sailors song. Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgements of the English law.

While they drink with their arms linked, Pegeen comes in and stands aghast. All go out except for Pegeen and Christy.

CHRISTY ( with a last effort to make up with her, takes up a loy, and goes towards her, with feigned assurance) It was with a loy the like of that I killed my father.

PEGEEN (still sharply) Youve told me that story six times since the dawn of day.

CHRISTY (reproachfully) Its a queer thing you wouldnt care to be hearing it and them girls after walking four miles to be listening to me now.

(Pegeen tells him of a murder that was put in the newspapers. Christy is worried about being betrayed by the village people).

PEGEEN (beginning to play with him) It would, maybe, for Ive heard the circuit judges this place is a heartless crew.

CHRISTY (bitterly) Its more than judges this place is a heartless crew. And isnt it a poor thing to be starting again, and I a lonesome fellow will be looking out on women and girls the way the needy fallen spirits do be looking on the Lord?

PEGEEN What call have you to be that lonesome when theres poor girls walking Mayo in their thousands now?

CHRISTY Its well you know what call I have. Its well you know its a lonesome thing to be passing small towns with the lights shining sideways when the night is down, or drawn to the cities where youd hear a voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow of the ditch, and you passing on with an empty, hungry stomach failing from your heart.

PEGEEN Im thinking youre an odd man, Christy Mahon. The oddest walking fellow I ever set my eyes on to this hour today.

CHRISTY What would any be but odd men and they living lonesome in the world?

PEGEEN .Im not odd, and Im my whole life with my father only.

CHRISTY (with infinite admiration) How would a lovely, handsome woman the like of you be lonesome when all men should be thronging around to hear the sweetness of your voice, and the little infant children should be pestering your steps, Im thinking, and you walking the roads.

PEGEEN Im hard set to know what way a coaxing fellow the like of yourself should be lonesome either.

CHRISTY. Coaxing?

PEGEEN . Would you have me think a man never talked to the girls would have the words youve spoken today? Its only letting on you are to be lonesome, the way youd get around me now.

CHRISTY . I wish to God I was letting on; but I was lonesome all times, and born lonesome, Im thinking, as the moon of dawn.

PEGEEN (puzzled by his talk) Well, its a story Im not understanding at all why youd be worse than another, Christy Mahon, and you a fine lad with the great savagery to destroy your da.

(Christys father, old Mahon appears and discloses the falsity of Christys story to Widow Quin. During this time Christy had hidden in terror behind the door. Old Mahon leaves to look for him and take revenge).

WIDOW QUIN. (She swings the door to and looks at Christy, who is cowering in terror, for a moment, then she bursts into laugh). Well, youre the walking Playboy of the Western World, and thats the poor man you had divided to his breeches belt.

CHRISTY . Whatll Pegeen say when she hears that story?

WIDOW QUIN. Shell knock the head of you, and drive you from the door. God help her to be taking you for a wonder and you a little schemer making up a story you destroyed your da.

CHRISTY (nearly speechless with rage, half to himself). To be letting on he was dead, and coming back to his life, and following after me like a weasel tracing a rat, and coming in here laying desolation between my own self and the fine women of Ireland, and he a kind of carcass that youd fling upon the sea

WIDOW QUIN. Theres talking for a mans only son.

(Christy asks Widow Quin to keep his secret and win Pegeen)

ACT III

Christy wins all the competitions in the village, and he is hailed the champion of the world. Pegeen decides to marry him and tells her father about it.

MICHAEL.(loudly, with horror) Youd be making him a son to me, and he wet and crusted with his fathers blood?

PEGEEN Aye. Wouldnt it be a bitter thing for a girl to go marrying the like of Shaneen, and he a middling kind of a scarecrow, with no savagery or fine words in him at all?

MICHAEL. Oh. Arent you a heathen daughter to go shaking the fat of my heart.Have you not a word to aid me, Shaneen? Are you not jealous at all?

SHAWN (in great misery) Id be afeard to be jealous of a man did slay his da.

PEGEEN Well, itd be a poor thing to go marrying your like. Im seeing theres a world of peril for an orphan girl, and isnt it a great blessing I didnt wed you before himself came walking from the west or south?

SHAWN. And have you no mind of my weight of passion, and the holy dispensation, and the drift of heifers Im giving, and the golden ring?

PEGEEN . Im thinking youre too fine for the like of me, Shawn Keogh of Killakeen, and let you go off till youd find a radiant lady with droves of bullocks on the plains and herself bedizened in the diamond jewelleries of Pharaohs ma. Thatd be your match, Shaneen. (She retreats behind Christy).

SHAWN. Wont you hear me telling you?

CHRISTY (with ferocity) Take yourself from this, young fellow, or Ill maybe add a murder to my deeds today.

MICHAEL. Murder, is it? Is it mad yous are? Would you go making murder in this place, and it piled with poteen for our drink tonight? Go on to the foreshore if its fighting you want, where the rising tide will wash all traces from the memory of man. (Pushing Shawn towards Christy)

SHAWN. (shaking himself free) Ill not fight him, Id liefer live a bachelor, simmering in passions to the end of time, than face a lepping savage the like of him has descended from the Lord knows where. Strike him yourself, Michael James, or youll lose my drift of heifers and my blue bull from Sneem.

MICHAEL. Is it me fight him, when its father-slaying hes bred to now? (Pushing Shawn) Go on, you fool, and fight him now.

SHAWN (coming forward a little) Will I strike him with my hand?

MICHAEL. Take the loy is on your western side.

SHAWN. Id be afeard of the gallows if I struck with that.

CHRISTY (taking up the loy) Then Ill make you face the gallows or quit off from this.

Shawn flies out of the door.

PEGEEN Bless us now, for I swear to God Ill wed him, and Ill not renege.

MICHAEL. Its the will of God that all should win an easy or a cruel end Its many would be in dread to bring your like into their house for to end them, maybe, with a sudden end; but Im a decent man of Ireland, and I liefer face the grave untimely and I seeing a score of grandsons growing up little gallant swearers by the name of God, than go peopling my bedside with puny weeds the like of what youd breed out of Shaneen Keogh. (he joins their hands) A daring fellow is the jewel of the world, and a man did split his fathers middle with a single clout should have the

bravery of ten, so may God and Mary and St. Patrick bless you, and increase you from this mortal day.

Hubbub outside. Old Mahon rushes in, followed by all the crowd and Widow Quin. He makes a rush at Christy, knocks him down, and begins to beat him.

PEGEEN (dragging back his arm) Stop that, will you? Who are you at all?

MAHON. His father, God forgive me!PEGEEN (drawing back) Is it rose from the dead?

MAHON. Do you think I look so easy quenched with the tap of a loy? Beats Christy again.

PEGEEN (glaring at Christy) And its lies you told, letting on you had him slitted, and you nothing at all.

CHRISTY (catching Mahons stick) Hes not my father. Hes a raving maniac would scare the world.CROWD. Youre fooling, Pegeen! The Widow Quin seen him this day, and you likely knew! Youre a liar!

CHRISTY (dumbfounded) Its himself was a liar, lying stretched out with an open head on him, letting on he was dead.

MAHON. Werent you off racing the hills before I got my breath with the start I had seeing you turn on me at all?

PEGEEN . And to think of the coaxing glory we had given him, and he after doing nothing but hitting a soft blow and chasing northward in a sweat of fear. Quit off from this.

CHRISTY .(piteously) Youve seen my doings this day, and let you save me from the old man; for why would you be in such a scorch of haste to spur me to destruction now?

PEGEEN . Its there your treachery is spurring me, till Im hard set to think youre the one Im after lacing in my heart-strings half an hour gone by. (To Mahon). Take him on from this, for I think bad the world should see me raging for a Munster liar, and the fool of men.

MAHON. Rise up now to retribution, and come on with me.

CROWD (jeeringly) Theres the playboy! Theres the lad thought hed rule to roost in Mayo! Slate him now, mister.

CHRISTY (getting upin shy terror) What is it drives you to torment me here, when Id asked the thunders of the might of God to blast me if I ever did hurt to any saving only that one single blow.

MAHON (loudly) If you didnt, youre a poor good-for-nothing, and isnt it by thr like of you the sins of the whole world are committed?

CHRISTY (raising his hands) In the name of the Almighty God

MAHON. Leave troubling the Lord God. Would you have Him sending down droughts and fevers, and the old hen and the cholera morbus?

CHRISTY (to Widow Quin) Will you come between us and protect me now?

WIDOW QUIN. Ive tried a lot, God help me, and my share is done.

CHRISTY (looking round in desperation) And I must go back into my torment, is it, or run off like a vagabond straying through the unions with the dust of August making mudstains in the gullet of my throat; or the winds of March blowing on me till Id take an oath I felt them making whistles of my ribs within?

SARA. Ask Pegeen to aid you. Her like does often change.

CHRISTY . I will not tnen, for theres torment in the splendour of her like, and she a girl any moon of midnight would take pride to meet, facing southwards on the heaths of Keel. But what did I want cawling forward to scorch my understanding at her flaming brow?

PEGEEN (to Mahon, vehemently, fearing she will break into tears) Take him on from this or Ill set the young lads to dwestroy him here.

MAHON (going to him, shaking his stick) Come on now if you wouldnt have the company to see you skelped.

PEGEEN (half laughing, half tears) Thats it, now the world will see him pandied, and he an ugly liar was playing off the hero, and the fright of men.

CHRISTY (to Mahon, very sharply Leave me go!

CROWD. Thats it. Now, Christy. If them two set fighting, it will lick the world.Keep it up, the two of you. Ill back the old one. Now the playboy.

CHRISTY (in low and intense voice). Shut your feeling, for if youre after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie, youre setting me now ti think if its a poor thing to be lonesome its worse, maybe, go mixing with the fools of earth.

Mahon makes a movement towards him.

CHRISTY (almost shouting) Keep off lest I do show a blow unto the lot of you would set the guardian angels winking in the clouds above.

He swings round with a sudden rapid movement and picks up a loy. He runs at old Mahon with the loy, chases him out of the door, followed by the crowd. There is a great noise outside, then a yell, and dead silence for a moment. Christy comes in, half dazed, and goes to fire.

WIDOW QUIN. (Coming in hurriedly) Theyre turning again you. Come on, or youll be hanged, indeed.

CHRISTY Im thinking from this out, Pegeenll be giving me praises, the same as in the hours gone by.

WIDOW QUIN. Come by the back door. Id think bad to have you stifled on the gallows tree.

CHRISTY (indignantly) I will not, then. What goodd be my lifetime if I left Pegeen?

WIDOW QUIN. Come on, and and youll be no worse than you were last night; and you with a double murder this time to be telling to the girls.

CHRISTY .Ill not leave Pegeen Mike.

WIDOW QUIN (impatiently) Isnt there the match of her in every parish public? Come on, I tell you, and Ill find you finer sweethearts at each waning moon.

CHRISTY Its Pegeen Im seeking only, and would I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the eastern world?

SARA (runs in, pulling off one of her petticoats) Theyre going to hang him. (Holding out petticoat and shawl). Fit these upon him, and let him run off to the east.

WIDOW QUIN. Hes raving now; but well fit them on him, and Ill take him in the ferry to the Achill boat.

CHRISTY (struggling feebly) Leave me go, will you? When Im thinking of my luck today, for she will wed me surely, and I a proven hero in the end of all.

CHRISTY Its Pegeen Im seeking only, and would I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe, from this place to the eastern world?

SARA (runs in, pulling off one of her petticoats) Theyre going to hang him. (Holding out petticoat and shawl). Fit these upon him, and let him run off to the east.

WIDOW QUIN. Hes raving now; but well fit them on him, and Ill take him in the ferry to the Achill boat.

CHRISTY (struggling feebly) Leave me go, will you? When Im thinking of my luck today, for she will wed me surely, and I a proven hero in the end of all. Youll be taking me from her? Youre jealous, is it, of her wedding me? Go on from this.

He snatches up a stool, and threatens them with it.
WIDOW QUIN. Its in the madhouse they should put him, not in jail, at all. Well go by the back door to call the doctor, and well save him so.

She goes out with Sara. Men crowd in the doorway. MICHAEL (in a terrified whisper) Is the old lad killed surely?

PHILLY. Im after feeling the last gasps quitting his heart.

MICHAEL (with a rope) Look at the way he is. Twist a hangmans knot on it, and slip it over his head, Shaneen, while hes not minding at all.

SHAWN. Is it me to go near him, and he the wickedest and worst with me? Let you take it, Pegeen Mike.

PEGEEN .Come on, so.

She goes forward with the other, and they drop the double hitch over his head.

CHRISTY What ails you?

SHAWN (triumphantly, as they pull the rope tight on his arms) Come on to the peelers, till they stretch you now.

MICHAEL. If we took pity on you the Lord God would, maybe, bring us ruin from the law today, so youd best come easy, for hanging is an easy and speedy end.

CHRISTY Ill not stir. (To Pegeen) And what is it youll say to me, and I after doing it this time in the face of all?

PEGEEN . Ill say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but whats a squabble in your back yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that theres a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. (To men) Take him on from this, or the lot of us will be likely put on trial for his deed today.

CHRISTY (with horror in his voice) And its yourself will send me off, to have a horny-figured hangman hitching slip-knots at the butt of my ear? MEN (pulling rope) Come on, will you?

He is pulled down the floor

CHRISTY .Cut the rope, Pegeen, and Ill quit the lot of you, and live from this out, like the madman of Keel, eating muck and green weeds on the faces of the cliffs.

PEGEEN .And leave us to hang, is it, for a saucy liar, the like of you? (to men) Take him on, out from this.

SHAWN. Pull atwist on his neck, and squeeze him so.

PHOLLY. Twist yourself. Sure he cannot hurt you, if you keep your distance from his teeth alone.

SHAWN. Im afeard of him.(To Pegeen). Lift a lighted sod, will you, and scorch his leg.

PEGEEN (blowing the fire with a bellows) Leave go now, young fellow, or Ill scorch your shins.

CHRISTY Youre blowing for to torture me. Thats your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be wary, for, if Ive to face the gallows, Ill have a gay march down, I tell you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.

SHAWN (to Pegeen). Make haste, will you? Oh, isnt he a holy terror, and isnt it true for Father Reilly, that all drinks a curse that has the lot of you so shaky and uncertain now?

CHRISTY If I can wring a neck among you, Ill have a royal judgment looking on the trembling jury in the courts of law. And wont there be crying out in Mayo the day Im stretched upon the rope, with ladies in their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kerchiefs, and they rhyming songs and ballads on the terror of my fate?

He squirms round the floor and bites Shawns leg.

SHAWN (shrieking) My legs bit on me. Hes the like of a mad dog, Im thinking, the way that I will surely die.

CHRISTY (delighted with himself) You will, then, the way you can shake out hells flags of welcome for my coming in two weeks or three, for Im thinking Satan hasnt many have killed their da in Kerry, and in Mayo too.

Old Mahon comes in behind on all fours and looks on unnoticed.

MEN (to Pegeen). Bring the sod, will you?

PEGEEN (coming over) God help him so.

Burns his leg.

CHRISTY (kicking and screaming) Oh, glory be to God!

He kicks loose from the table and they all drag him towards the door. When they see old Mahon, they drop Christy and run .

CHRISTY (scrambling on his knees face to face with old Mahon) Are you coming to be killed a third time, or what ails you now?

MAHON For what is it they have you tied?

CHRISTY .Theyre taking me to the peelers to have me hanged for slaying you.

MICHAEL (apologetically) It is the will of God that all should guard their little cabins from the treachery of law, and what would my daughter be doing if I was ruined or was hanged itself?

MAHON (grimly, loosening Christy) Its little I care if you put a bag on her back, and went picking cockles till the hour of death; but my son and myself will be going our own way, and well have great times from this out telling stories of the villainy of Mayo, and the fools is here. (To Christy, who is freed). Come on now.

CHRISTY . Go with you, is it? I will then, like a gallant captain with his heathen slave. Go on now and Ill see you from this day stewing my oatmeal and washing my spuds, for Im master of all fights from now. (Pushing Mahon). Go on, Im saying.

MAHON. Is it me?

CHRISTY . Not a word out of you. Go on from this.

MAHON (going out and looking back at Christy over his shoulder) Glory be to God! I am crazy again. (Goes).

CHRISTY . Ten thousand blessings upon all thats here, for youve turned me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way Ill go romancing through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the Judgment Day.

He goes out.

MICHAEL. By the will of God, well have peace now for our drinks. Will you draw the porter, Pegeen?

SHAWN (going up to her) Its a miracle Father Reilly can wed us in the end of all, and well have none to trouble us when his vicious bite is healed.

PEGEEN (hitting him a box on the ear). Quit my sight. (Putting her shawl over her head and breaking out into wild lamentations). Oh, my grief, Ive lost him surely. Ive lost the only Playboy of the Western World.

Samuel Beckett

Molloy

(abridged)

I am in my mothers room. Its I who live there now. I dont know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. Id never have got there alone. Theres this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got there thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages, so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I dont know how to work any more. That doesnt matter apparently. What Id like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my goodbyes, dying. They dont want that. Yes, there is more than one, apparently. But its always the same one that comes. Youll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is I havent much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous weeks. They are marked with signs I dont understand. Anyway I dont read them. When Ive done nothing hr gives me nothing, he scolds me. Yet I dont work for money. For what then? I dont know. The truth is I dont know much. For example my mothers death. Was she already dead when I came? Or did she only die later? I mean enough to bury. I dont know. Perhaps they havent buried her yet. In any case I have her room. I sleep in her bed. I piss and shit in her pot. I have taken her place. I must resemble her more and more. All I need now is a son. Perhaps I have somewhere. But I think not. He would be old now, nearly as old as myself. It was a little chambermaid. It wasnt true love. The true love was in another. Well come to that. Her name? Ive forgotten it again. It seems to me sometimes that I even knew my son, that I helped him. Then I tell myself its impossible. Its impossible I could ever have helped anyone. Ive forgotten how to spell too, and half the words. That doesnt matter apparently. Good. Hes a queer one the one who comes to see me. He comes every Sunday apparently. The other days he isnt free. Hes always thirsty. It was be told me Id begun all wrong., that I should have begun differently. He must be right. I began at the beginning, like an old ballock, can you imagine that? Heres my beginning. Because theyre keeping it apparently. I took a lot of trouble with it. Here it is. It gave me a lot of trouble. It was the beginning, do you understand? Whereas now its nearly the end. I do now any better? I dont know. Thats beside the point. Heres my beginning. It must mean something, or they wouldnt keep it. Here it is.

This time, then once more I think, then perhaps a last time, then I think itll be over, with that world too. Premonition of the last but one but one. All grows dim. A little more and youll go blind. Its in the head. It doesnt work any more, it says, I dont work any more. You go dumb as well and sounds fade. The threshold scarcely crossed thats how it is. Its the head. It must have had enough. So that you say, Ill manage this time, then perhaps once more, then perhaps a last time, then nothing more. You are hard set to formulate this though, for it is one, in a sense. They you try to pay attention, to consider with attention all those dim things, saying to yourself, laboriously, its my fault. Fault? That was the word. But what fault? Its not goodbye, and what magic in those dim things to which it will be time enough, when next they pass, to say goodbye. For you must say goodbye, it would be madness not to say goodbye, when the time comes. If you think of the forms and light of other days it is without regret. But you seldom think of them, with what would you think of them? I dont know. People pass too, hard to distinguish from yourself. That is discouraging. So I saw A and C going slowly towards each other, unconscious of what they were going. It was on a road remarkably bare, I mean without hedges or ditches or any kind of edge, in the country, for cows were chewing in enormous fields, lying and standing, in the evening silence. Perhaps Im inventing a little, perhaps embellishing, but on the whole thats the way it was. They chew, swallow, then after a short pause effortlessly bring up the next mouthful. A neck muscle stirs and the jaws begin to grind again. But, perhaps Im remembering things. Never once a human voice. But the cows, when the peasants passed, crying in vain to be milked. A and C never saw again. But perhaps I shall see them again. But shall I be able to recognize them? And am I sure I never saw again? And who do I mean by seeing and seeing again? An instant of silence, as when the conductor taps on his stand, raises his arms, before the unanswerable clamour. Smoke, sticks, flesh, hair, at evening, afar, flung about the craving for a fellow. I know how to summon these rags to cover my shame. I wonder what that means. But I shall not always be in need. But talking of the craving for a fellow let me observe that having waked between eleven oclock and midday (I heard the angelus, recalling the incarnation, shortly after) I resolved to go and see my mother. I needed, before I could resolve to go and see that woman, reasons of an urgent nature, and with such reasons, since I did not know what to do, or where to go, it was childs play for me, the play of an only child, to fill my mind until it was rid of all other preoccupation and I seized with a trembling at the mere idea of being hindered from going there, I mean to my mother, there and then. So I got up, adjusted my crutches and went down to the road, where I found my bicycle (I didnt know I had one) in the same place I must have left it. Which enables me to remark that, crippled though I was, I was no mean cyclist, at that period. This is how I went about it. I fastened my crutches to the cross-bar, one on either side, I propped the foot of my stiff leg (I forget which, now theyre both stiff) on the projecting front axle, and I pedalled with the other. It was a chainless bicycle, with a free-wheel, if such a bicycle exists. Dear bicycle, I shall not call you bike, were green, like so many of your generation, I dont know why. It is a pleasure to meet it again. To describe it at length would be a pleasure. It had a little red horn instead of the bell fashionable in your days. To blow this horn was for me a real pleasure, almost a vice. I will go further and declare that if I were obliged to record, in a roll of honour, those activities which in the course of my interminable existence have given me only a mild pain in the balls, the blowing of a rubber horn toot! would figure among the first. And when I had to part from my bicycle I took off the horn and kept it about me. I believe I have it still, somewhere, and if I blow it no more it is because it has gone dumb. Even motor-cars have no horns nowadays, as I understand the thing, or rarely. When I see one, through the lowered window of a stationary car, I often stop and blow it. This should all be re-written in the pluperfect. What a rest to speak of bicycles and horns. Unfortunately it is not of them I have to speak, but of her who brought me into the world, through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct. First taste of the shit. So I shall only add that every hundred yards or so I stopped to rest my legs, the good one as well as the bad, and not only my legs, not only my legs. I didnt properly speaking get down off the machine, I remained astride it, my feet on the ground, my arms on the handlebars, my head on my arms, and I waited until I felt better. But before I leave this earthly paradise, suspended between the mountains and the sea, sheltered from certain winds and exposed to all that Auster vents, in the way of scents and langours, on this accursed country, it would ill become me not to mention the awful cries of the corncrakes that run in the corn, in the meadows, all the short summer night long, dinning their rattles. And this enables me, what is more, to know when that unreal journey began, the second last but one of a form fading among fading forms, and which I here declare without further ado to have begun in the second or third week of June, at the moment that is to say most painful of all when over what is called our hemisphere the sun is at its pitilessmost and the arctic radiance comes pissing on our midnights. It is then the corncrakes are heard. My mother never refused to see me, that is she never refused to receive me, for it was many a long day since she had seen anything at all. I shall try and speak calmly. We were so old, she and I, she had had me so young, that we were like a couple of old cronies, sexless, unrelated, with the same memories, the same rancours, the same expectations. She never called me son, fortunately, I couldnt have borne it, but Dan, I dont know why, my name is not Dan. Dan was my fathers name perhaps, yes, perhaps she took me for my father. I took her for my mother and she took me for my father. Dan, you remember the day I saved the swallow. Dan, you remember the day you buried the ring. I remembered, I remembered, I mean more or less what she was talking about, and if I hadnt always taken part personally in the scenes she evoked, it was just as if I had. I called her Mag, when I had to call her something. And I called her Mag because for me, without my knowing why, the letter g abolished the syllable Ma, and as it were spat on it, better than any other letter would have done. And at the same time I satisfied a deep and doubtless unacknowledged need, the need to have a Ma, that is a mother, and to proclaim it, audibly. For before you say mag you say ma, inevitably. And da, in my part of the world, means father. Besides for me the question did not arise, at the period Im worming into now, I mean the question of whether to call her Ma, Mag or the Countess Caca, she having for countless years been as deaf as a post. I think she was quite incontinent, both of faeces and water, but a kind of prudishness made us avoid the subject when we met, and I could never be certain of it. In any case it cant have amounted to much, a few niggardly wetted goat-droppings every two or three days. The room smelt of ammonia, oh not merely of ammonia, but of ammonia, ammonia. She knew it was me, by my smell. Her shrunken hairy old face lit up, she was happy to smell me. She jabbered away with a rattle of dentures and most of the time didnt realize what she was saying. Anyone but myself would have been lost in this clattering gabble, which can only have stopped during her brief instants of unconsciousness. In any case I didnt come to listen to her. I got into communication with her by knocking on her skull. One knock meant yes, two no, three I dont know, four money, five goodbye. I was hard put to ram this code into her ruined and frantic understanding, but I did it, in the end. That she should confuse yes, no, I dont know and goodbye, was all the same to me, I confused them myself. But that she should associate the four knocks with anything but money was something to be avoided at all costs. During the period of training therefore, at the same time as I administered the four knocks on her skull, I stuck a bank-note under her nose or in her mouth. In the innocence of my heart! For she seemed to have lost, if not absolutely all notion of mensuration, at least the faculty of counting beyond two. It was too far for her, yes, the distance was too great, from one to four. By the time she came to the fourth knock she imagined she was only at the second, the first two having been erased from her memory as completely as if they had never been felt, though I dont quite see how something never felt can be erased from the memory, and yet it is a common occurrence. She must have though I was saying no to her all the time, whereas nothing was further from my purpose. Enlightened by these considerations I looked for and finally found a more effective means of putting the idea of money into her head. The consisted in replacing the four knocks of my index-knuckle by one or more (according to my needs) thumps of the fist, on her skull. That she understood. In any case didnt come for money. I took her money, but I didnt come for that. My mother. I dont think too harshly of her. I know she did all she could not to have me, except of course the one thing, and if she never succeeded in getting me unstuck, it was fate that ear-marked me for less compassionate sewers. But it was well-meant and thats enough for me. No it is not enough for me, but I give her credit, though she is my mother, for what she tried to do for me. And I forgive her for having jostled me a little in the first months and spoiled the only endurable, just endurable, period of my enormous history. And I also give her credit for not having done it again, thanks to me, of for having stopped in time, when she did. And if ever Im reduced to looking for a meaning to my life, you never can tell, its in that old mess Ill stick my nose to begin with, the mess of that poor old uniparous whore and myself the last of my foul brood, neither man nor beast. I should add, before I get down to the facts, youd swear they were facts, of that distant summer afternoon, that with this deaf blind impotent mad old woman, who called me Dan and whom I called Mag, and with her alone, I no, I cant say it. That is to say I could say it but I wont say it, yes, I could say it easily, because it wouldnt be true. What did I see of her? A head always, the hands sometimes, the arms rarely. A head always. Veiled with hair, wrinkles, filth, slobber. A head that darkened the air. Not that seeing matters, but its something to go on with. It was took the key from under the pillow, who took the money out of the drawer, who put the key back under the pillow. But I didnt come for money. I think there was a woman who came each week. Once I touched with my lips, vaguely, hastily, that little grey wizened pear. Pah. Did that please her? I dont know. Her babble stopped for a second, then began again. Perhaps she said to herself, Pah. I smelt a terrible smell. It must have come from the bowels. Odour of antiquity. Oh Im not criticizing her, I dont diffuse the perfumes of Araby myself. Shall I describe the room? No. I shall have occasion to do so later perhaps. When I seek refuge there, bet to the world, all shame drunk, my prick in my rectum, who knows. Good. Now that we know where were going, lets go there. Its so nice to know where youre going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there. I was distraught, who am so seldom distraught, from what should I be distraught, and as to my motions even more uncertain than usual. The night must have tired me, at least weakened me, and the sun, hoisting itself higher and higher in the east, had poisoned me, while I slept. I ought to have put the bulk of the rock between it and me before closing my eyes. I confuse east and west, the poles too, I invert them readily. I was out of sorts. They are deep, my sorts, a deep ditch, and I am not often out of them. Thats why I mention it. Nevertheless I covered several miles and found myself under the ramparts. There I dismounted in compliance with the regulations. Yes, cyclists entering and leaving town are required by the police to dismount, cars to go into bottom gear and horsedrawn vehicles to slow down to a walk. The reason for this regulation is I think this, that the ways into and of course out of this town are narrow and darkened by enormous vaults, without exception. It is a good rule and I observe it religiously, in spite of the difficulty I have in advancing on my crutches pushing my bicycle at the same time. I managed somehow. Being ingenious. Thus we cleared these difficult straits, my bicycle and I, together. But a little further on I heard myself hailed. I raised my head and saw a policeman. Elliptically, speaking, for it was only later, by way of induction, or deduction, I forget which, that I knew what it was. What are you doing there? He said. Im used to that question, I understood it immediately. Resting, I said. Resting, he said. Resting, I said. Will you answer my question? He cried. So it always is when Im reduced to confabulation, I honestly believe I have answered the question I am asked and in reality I do nothing of the kind. I wont reconstruct the conversation in all its meanderings. It ended in my understanding that my way of resting, my attitude when at rest, astride my bicycle, my arms on the handlebars, my head on my arms, was a violation of I dont know what, public order, public decency. Modestly I pointed my crutches and ventured one or two noise regarding my infirmity, which obliged me to rest as I could, rather than as I should. But there are not two laws, that was the next thing I thought I understood, not two laws, one for the healthy, another for the sick, but one only to which all must bow, rich and poor, young and old, happy and sad. He was eloquent. I pointed out that I was not sad. That was a mistake. Your papers, he said, I knew it a moment later. Not at all, I said, not at all. Your papers! He cried. Ah my papers. Now the only papers I carry with me are bits of newspaper to wipe myself, you understand, when I have a stool. Oh I dont say I wipe myself every time I have a stool, no, but I like to be in a position to do so, if I have to. Nothing strange about that, it seems to me. In a panic I took this paper from my pocked and thrust it under his nose. The weather was fine. We took the little side streets, quiet, sunlit, I springing along between my crutches, he pushing my bicycle, with the tips of his white-gloved fingers. I wasnt I didnt feel unhappy. I stopped a moment, I made so bold, to lift my hand and touch the crown of my hat. It was scorching. I felt the faces turning to look after us, calm faces and joyful faces, faces of men, of women and of children. I seemed to hear, at a certain moment, a distant music. I stopped, the better to listen. Go on, he said. Listen, I said. Get on, he said. I wasnt allowed to listen to the music. It might have drawn a crowd. He gave me a shove. I had been touched, oh not my skin, but none the less my skin had felt it, it had felt a mans hard first, through its coverings. While still putting my best foot foremost I gave myself up to that golden moment, as if I had been someone else. It was the hour of rest, the forenoons toil ended, the afternoons to come. The wisest perhaps, lying in the squares or sitting on their door-steps, were savouring its languid ending, forgetful of recent cares, indifferent to those at hand. Others on the contrary were using it to hatch their plans, their heads in their hands. Was there one among them to put himself in my place, to feel how removed I was then from him I seemed to be, and in that remove what strain, as of hawsers about to snap? Its possible. Yes, I was straining towards those spurious deeps, their lying promise of gravity and peace, from all my old poisons I struggled towards them, safely bound. Under the blue sky, under the watchful gaze. Forgetful of my mother, set free from the act, merged in this alien hour, saying, Respite, respite. At the police station I was haled before a very strange official. Dressed in plain-clothes, in his shirt-sleeves, he was sprawling in an arm-chair, his feet on his desk, a straw hat on his head and protruding from his mouth a thin flexible object I could not identify. I had time to become aware of these details before he dismissed me. He listened to his subordinate' report and then began to interrogate me in a tone which, from the point of view of civility, left increasingly to be desired, in my opinion. Between his questions and my answers, I mean those deserving of consideration, the intervals were more or less long and turbulent. I am so little used to being asked anything that when I am mistake I make then is this, that instead of quietly reflecting on what I have just heard, and heard distinctly, not being hard of hearing, in spite of all I have heard, I hasten to answer blindly, fearing perhaps lest my silence fan their anger to fury. I am full of fear, I have gone in fear all my life, in fear of blows. Insults, abuse, these I can easily bear, but I could never get used to blows. It' strange. Even spits still pain me. But they have only to be a little gentle. I mean refrain from hitting me, and I seldom fail to give satisfaction, in the long run. Now the sergeant, con tent to threaten me with a cylindrical ruler, was little by little rewarded for his pains by the discovery that I had no papers in the sense this word had a sense for him, nor any occupation, nor any domicile, that my surname escaped me for the moment and that I was on my way to my mother, whose charity kept me dying. As to her address, I was in the dark, but knew how to get there, even in the dark. The district? By the shambles your honour, for from my mothers room, through the closed windows, I had heard, stilling her chatter, the bellowing of the cattle, that violent raucous tremulous bellowing not of the pastures but of the towns, their shambles and cattle-markets. Yes, after all, I had perhaps gone too far in saying that my mother lived near the shambles, it could equally well have been the cattle-market, near which she lived. Never mind, said the sergeant, its the same district. I took advantage of the silence which followed these kind words to turn towards the window, blindly or nearly, for I had closed my eyes, proffering to that blandness of blue and gold my face and neck alone, and my mind empty too, or nearly, for I must have been wondering if I did not feel like sitting down, after such a long time standing, and remembering what I had learnt in that connexion, namely that the sitting posture was not for me any more, because of my short stiff leg, and that there were only two postures for me any more, the vertical, drooping between my crutches, sleeping on my feet, and the horizontal, down on the ground. And yet the desire to sit down came upon me from time to time, back upon me from a vanished world. And I did not always resist it, forewarned though I was. Yes, my mind felt it surely, this tiny sediment, incomprehensibly stirring like grit at the bottom of a puddle, while on my face and great big Adams apple the air of summer weighed and the splendid summer sky. And suddenly I remembered my name, Molloy. My name is Molloy, I cried, all of a sudden, now I remember. Nothing compelled me to give this information, but I gave it, hoping to please I suppose. They let me keep my hat on, I dont know why. Is it your mothers name? Said the sergeant, it must have been a sergeant. Molloy, I cried, my name is Molloy. Is that your mothers name? said the sergeant. What? I said. Your name is Molloy, said the sergeant. Yes, I said, now I remember. And your mother? Said the sergeant. I didnt follow. Is your mothers name Molloy too? Said the sergeant. I thought it over. Your mother, said the sergeant, is your mothers Let me think! I cried. At least I imagine thats how it was. Take your time, said the sergeant. Was mothers name Molloy? Very likely. Her name must be Molloy too, I said. They took me away, to the guardroom I suppose, and there I was told to sit down. I must have tried to explain. I wont go into it. I obtained permission, if not to lie down on a bench, at least to remain standing, propped against the wall. The room was dark and full of people hastening to and fro, malefactors, policemen, lawyers, priests and journalists I suppose. All that made a dark, dark forms crowding in a dark place. They paid no attention to me and I repaid the compliment. Then how could I know they were paying no attention to me, and how could I repay the compliment, since they were paying no attention to me? I dont know. I knew it and I did it, thats all I know.

And while saying to myself that time was running out, and that soon it would be too late, was perhaps too late already, to settle the matter in question, I felt myself drifting towards other cares, other phantoms. And far more than to know what I was in, my haste was now to leave it, even were it the right one, where my mother had waited so long and perhaps was waiting still. And it seemed to me that if I kept on in a straight line I was bound to leave it, sooner or later. So I set myself to this as best I could, making allowance for the drift to the right of the feeble light that was my guide. And my pertinacity was such that I did indeed come to the ramparts as night was falling, having described a good quarter of a circle, through bad navigation. It is true I stopped many times, to rest, but not for long, for I felt harried, wrongly perhaps. But in the country there is another justice, other judges, at first. And having cleared the ramparts I had to confess the sky was clearing, prior to its winding in the other shroud, night. Yes, the great cloud was ravelling, discovering here and there a pale and dying sky, and the sun, already down, was manifest in the living tongue of fire darting towards the zenith, falling and darting again, ever more pale and languid, and doomed no sooner lit to be extinguished. This phenomenon, if I remember rightly, was characteristic of my region. Things are perhaps different today. Though I fail to see, never having left my region, what right I have to speak of its characteristics. No, I never escaped, and even the limits of my region were unknown to me. But I felt they were far away. But this feeling was based on nothing serious, it was a simple feeling. For if my region had ended no further than my feet could carry me, surely would have left it changing slowly. For regions do not suddenly end, as far as I know, but gradually merge into one another. And I never notice anything of the kind, but however far I went, and in no matter what direction, it was always the same sky, always the same earth, precisely, day after day and night after night. On the other hand, if it is true that regions gradually merge into one another, and this remains to be proved, then I may well have left mine many times, thinking I was still within it. But I preferred to abide by my simple feeling and its voice that said, Molloy, your region is vast, you have never left it and you never shall. And wheresoever you wander, within its distant limits, things will always be the same, precisely. It would thus appear, if this is so, that my movements owed nothing to the places they caused to vanish, but were due to something else, to the buckled wheel that carried me, in unforeseeable jerks, from fatigue to rest, any inversely, for example. But now I do not wander any more, anywhere any more, and indeed I scarcely stir at all, and yet nothing is changed. And the confines of my room, of my bed, of my body, are as remote from me as were those of my region, in the day of my splendour. And the cycle continues, joltingly, of flight and bivouac, in an Egypt without bounds, without infant, without mother. And when I see my hands, on the sheet, which they love to floccillate already, they are not mine, less than ever mine, I have no arms, they are a couple, they play with the sheet, love-play perhaps, trying to get up perhaps, one on top of the other. But it doesnt them back, little by little, towards me, its resting time. And with my feet its the same, sometimes, when I see them at the foot of the bed, one with toes, the other without. And that is more deserving of mention. For my legs, corresponding here to my arms of a moment ago, are both stiff now and very sore, and I shouldnt be able to forget them as I can my arms, which are more or less sound and well. And yet I do forget them and I watch the couple as they watch each other, a great way off. But my feet are not like my hands, I do not bring them back to me, when they become my feet again, for I cannot, but they stay there, far from me, but not so far as before. End of the recall. But you' think that once well clear of the town, and having turned to look at it, what there was to see of it, you' think that then I should have realized whether it was really my town or not. But no, I looked at it in vain, and perhaps unquestioningly, and simply to give the gods a chance, by turning round. Perhaps I only made a show of looking at it. I didnt feel I missed my bicycle, no, not really, I didnt mind going on my way the way I said, swinging low in the dark over the earth, along the little empty country roads. And I said there was little likelihood of my being molested and that it was more likely I should molest them, if they saw me. Morning is the time to hide. They wake up, hale and hearty, their tongues hanging out for order, beauty and justice, baying for their due. Yes, from eight or nine till noon is the dangerous time. But towards noon things quiet down, the most implacable are sated, they go home, it might have been better but theyve done a good job, there have been a few survivors but theyll give no more trouble, each man counts his rats. It may begin again in the early afternoon, after the banquet, the celebrations, the congratulations, the orations, but its nothing compared to the morning, mere fun. Coming up to four of five of course there is the night-shift, the watchmen, beginning to bestir themselves. But already the day is over, the shadows lengthen, the walls multiply, you hug the walls, bowed down like a good boy, cozing with obsequiousness, nothing to hide, hiding from mere terror, looking neither right nor left, hiding but not provocatively, ready to come out, to smile, to listen, to crawl, nauseating but not pestilent, less rat than toad. Then the true night, perilous too but sweet to him who knows it, who can open to it like the flower to the sun, who himself is night, day and night. No there is not much to be said for the night either, but compared to the day there is much to be said for it, and notably compared to the morning there is everything to be said for it. For the night ourge is in the hands of technicians, for the most part. They do nothing else, the bulk of the population have no part in it, preferring their warm beds, all things considered. Day is the time for lynching, for sleep is sacred, and especially in the morning, between breakfast and lunch. My first care then, after a few miles in the desert dawn, was to look for a place to sleep, for sleep too is a kind of protection, strange as it may seem. For sleep, if it excites the lust to capture, sems to appease the lust to kill, there and then and bloodily, any hunter will tell you that. For the monster on the move, or on the watch, lurking in his lair, there is no mercy, whereas he taken unawares, in his sleep, may sometimes get the benefit of milder feelings, which deflect the barrel, sheathe the kirs. For the hunter is weak at heart and sentimental, overflowing with repressed treasure of gentleness and compassion. And it is thanks to this sweet sleep of terror or exhaustion that many a foul beast, and worthy of extermination, can live on till he dies in the peace and quit of our zoological gardens, broken only by the innocent laughter, the knowing laughter, of children and their elders, on Sundays and Bank Holidays. And I for my part have always preferred slavery to death, I mean being put to death. For death is a condition I have never been able to conceive to my satisfaction and which therefore cannot go down in the ledger of weal and woe. Whereas my notions on being put to death inspired me with confidence, rightly or wrongly, and I felt I was entitled to act on them, in certain emergencies. Oh they werent notions like yours, they were notions like mine, all spasm, sweat and trembling, without an atom of common sense or lucidity. But they were the best I had. Yes, the confusion of my ideas on the subject of death was such that I sometimes wondered, believe me or not, if it wasnt a state of being even worse than life. So I found it natural not to rush into it and, when I forgot myself to the point of trying, to stop in time. Its my only excuse. So I crawled into some hole somewhere I suppose and waited, half sighing, groaning and laughing, or feeling my body, to see if anything had changed, for the morning frenzy to abate. Then I resumed my spirals. And as to saying what became of me, and where I went, in the months and perhaps the years that followed, no. For I weary of these inventions and others beckon to me. But in order to blacken a few more pages may I say I spent some time at the seaside, without incident. There are people the sea doesnt suit, who prefer the mountains or the plain. Personally I feel no worse there than anywhere else. Much of my life has ebbed away before this shivering expanse, to the sound of the waves is storm and calm, and the claws of the surf, Before, no, more than before, one with, spread on the sand, or in a cave. In the sand I was in my element, letting it trikle between my fingers, scooping holes that I filled in a moment later or that filled themselves in, flinging it in the air by handfuls, rolling in it. And in the cave, lit by the beacons at night, I knew what to do in order to be no worse off than elsewhere. And that my land went no further, in one direction at least, did not displease me. And to feel there was one direction at least in which I could go no further, without first getting wet, then drowned, was a blessing. For I have always said, first learn to walk, then you can take swimming lessons. But dont imagine my region ended at the coast, that would be a grave mistake. For it was this sea too, its reefs and distant islands, and its hidden depths. And I too once went forth on it, in a sort of oarless skiff, but I paddled with an old bit of driftwood. And I sometimes wonder if I ever came back, from that voyage. For if I see myself putting to sea, and the long hourd without landfall, I do not see the return, the tossing on the breakers, and I do not hear the frail keel grating on the shore. I took advantage of being at the seaside to lay in a store of sucking-stones. They were pebbles but I call them stones. Yes, on this occasion I laid in a considerable store. I distributed them equally among my four pockets, and sucked them turn and turn about. This raised a problem which I first solved in the following way. I had say sixteen stones, for in each of my four pockets these being the two pockets of my trousers and the two pockets of my greatcoat. Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, Which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocked of my greatcoat, which I replaced by the stone which was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones. And when the desire to suck took hold of me again, I drew again on the right pocket of my greatcoat, certain of not taking the same stone as the last time. And while I sucked it I rearranged the other stones in the way I have just described. And so on. But this solution did not satisfy me fully. For it did not escape me that, by an extraordinary hazard, the four stones circulating thus might always be the same four. In which case, far from sucking the sixteen stones turn about, I was really only sucking four, always the same, turn and turn about. But I shuffled them well in my pockets, before I began to suck, and again, while I sucked, before transferring them, in the hope of obtaining a more general circulation of the stones from pocket to pocket. But this was only a makeshift that could not long content a man like me. So I began to look for something else. And the first thing I hit upon was that I might do better to transfer the stones four by four, instead of one by one, that is to say, during the sucking, to take the three stones remaining in the right pocket of my greatcoat and replace them by the four in the right pocket of my trousers, and these by the four in the left pocket of my trousers, and these by the four in the left pocket of my greatcoat, and finally these by the three from the right pocket of my greatcoat, plus the one, as soon as I had finished sucking it, which was in my mouth. Yes, it seemed to me at first that by so doing I would arrive at a better result. But on further reflection I had to change my mind and confess that the circulation of the stones four by four came to exactly the same thing as their circulation one by one. For if I was certain of finding each time, in the right pocket of my greatcoat, four stones totally different from their immediate predecessors, the possibility nevertheless remained, of my always chancing on the same stone, within each group of four, and consequently of my sucking, not the sixteen turn and turn about as I wished, but in fact four only, always the same, turn and turn about. So I had to seek elsewhere than in the mode of circulation. For no matter how I caused the stones to circulate, I always ran the same risk. It was obvious that by increasing the number of my pockets I was bound to increase my chances of enjoying my stones in the way I planned, That is to say one after the other until their number was exhausted. Had I had eight pockets, for example, instead of the four I did have, then even the most diabolical hazard could not have prevented me from sucking at least eight of my sixteen stones, turn and turn about. The truth is I should have needed sixteen pockets in order to be quite easy in my mind. And for a long time I could see no other conclusion than this, that short of having sixteen pockets, each with its stone, I could never reach the goal I had set myself, short of an extraordinary hazard. And if at a pitch I could double the number of my pockets, were it only by dividing each pocket in two, with the help of a few safety-pins let us say, to quadruple them seemed to be more than I could manage. And I did not feel inclined to take all that trouble for a half-measure. For I was beginning to lose all sense of measure, after all this wrestling and wrangling, and to say, All or nothing. And if I was tempted for an instant to establish a more equitable proportion between my stones and my pockets, by reducing the former to the number of the latter, it was only for an instant. For it would have been an admission of defeat. And sitting on the shore, before the sea, the sixteen stones spread out before my eyes, I gazed at them in anger and perplexity. For just as I had difficulty in sitting on a chair, or in an arm-chair, because of my stiff leg you understand, so I had none in sitting on the ground, because of my stiff leg, for it was about this time that my good leg, good in the sense that it was not stiff, began to stiffen. I needed a prop under the ham you understand, and even under the whole length of the leg, the prop of the earth. And while I gazed thus at my stones, revolving interminable martingales all equally defective, and crushing handfuls of sand, so that the sand ran through my fingers and feel back on the strand, yes, while thus I lulled my mind and part of my body, one day suddenly it dawned on the former, dimly, that I might perhaps achieve my purpose without increasing the number of my pockets, or reducing the number of my stones, but simply by sacrificing the principle of trim. The meaning of this illumination, which suddenly began to sing within me, like a verse of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, I did not penetrate at once, and notably the word trim, which I had never met with, in this sense, long remained obscure. Finally I seemed to grasp that this word trim could not here mean anything else, anything better, than the distribution of the sixteen stones in four groups of four, one group in each pocket, and that it was my refusal to consider any distribution other than this that had vitiated my calculations until then and rendered the problem literally insoluble. And it was on the basis of this interpretation, whether right or wrong, that I finally reached a solution, inelegant assuredly, but sound, sound.

I had a certain number of encounters in this forest, naturally, where does one not. I notably encountered a charcoal burner. He was all over me, begging me to share his hut, believe it or not. A total stranger. Sick with solitude probably. I say charcoal-burner, but I really dont know. I see smoke somewhere. Thats something that never escapes me, smoke. A long dialogue ensued, interspersed with groans. I could not ask him the way to my town, the name of which escaped me still. I asked him the way to the nearest town, I found the necessary words, and accents. He did not know. He was born in the forest probably and had spent his whole life there. I asked him to show me the nearest way out of the forest. I grew eloquent. His reply was exceedingly confused. Either I didnt understand a word he said, or he didnt understand a word I said, or he knew nothing, or he wanted to keep me near him. It was towards this fourth hypothesis that in all modesty I leaned, for when I made to go, he held me back by the sleeve. So I smartly freed a crutch and dealt him a good dint on the skull. That calmed him. The dirty old brute. I got up and went on. But I hadnt gone more than a few paces, and for me at this time a few paces meant something, when I turned and went back to where he lay, to examine him. Seeing he had not ceased to breathe I contented myself with giving him a few warm kicks in the ribs, with my heels. This is how I went about it. I carefully chose the most favourable position, a few paces from the body, with my back of course turned to it. Then, nicely balanced on my crutches, I began to swing, backwards, forwards, feet pressed together, or rather legs pressed together, for how could I press my feet together, with my legs in the state they were? But how could I press my legs together, in the state they were? I pressed them together, thats all I can tell you. Take it or leave it. Or I didnt press them together. What can that possibly matter? I swung, thats all that matters, in an everwidening arc, until I decided the moment had come and launched myself forward with all my strength and consequently, a moment later, backward, which gave the desired result. Where did I get this access of vigour? From my weakness perhaps. The shock knocked me down. Naturally. I came a cropper. You cant have everything. Ive often noticed it. I rested a moment, then got up, picked up my crutches, took up my position on the other side of the body and applied myself with method to the same exercise. I always had a mania for symmetry. But I must have aimed a little low and one of my heels sank in something soft. However. For it I had missed the ribs, with that heel, I had no doubt landed in the kidney, oh not hard enough to burst it, no, I fancy not. People imagine, because you are old, poor, crippled, terrified, that you cant stand up for yourself, and generally soaking that is so. But given favourable conditions, a feeble and awkward assailant, in your own class what, and a lonely place, and you have a good chance of showing what stuff you are made of. And it is doubtless in order to revive interest in this possibility, too often forgotten, that I have delayed over an incident of no interest in itself, like all that has a moral. But did I at least eat, from time to time? Perforce, perforce, roots, berries, sometimes a little mulberry, a mushroom from time to time, trembling, knowing nothing about mushrooms. What else, ah yes, carobs, so dear to goats. In a word whatever I could find, forests abound in good things. And having heard, or more probably read somewhere, in the days when I thought I would be well advised to educate myself, or amuse myself, or stupefy myself, or kill time, that when a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping in this way to go in a straight line. For I stopped being half-witted and became sly, whenever I took the trouble. And my head was a storehouse of useful knowledge. And if I did not go in a rigorously straight line, with my system of going in a circle, at least I did not go in a circle, and that was something. And by going on doing this, day after day, and night after night, I looked forward to getting out of the forest, some day. For my region was not all forest, far from it. But there were plains too, mountains and sea, and some towns and villages, connected by highways and byways. And I was all the more convinced that I would get out of the forest some day as I had already got of it, more than once, and I knew how difficult it was not to do again what you have done before. But things had been rather different then. And yet I did not despair of seeing the light tremble, some day, through the still bogs, the strange light of the plain, its pale wild eddies, through the bronze-still boughs, which no breath ever stirred. But it was a day I dreaded too. So that I was sure it would come sooner or later. For it was not bad being in the forest, could imagine worse, and I could have stayed there till I died, unrepining, yes, without pining for the light and the plain and the other amenities of my region. For I knew them well, the amenities of my region, and I considered that the forest was no worse. And it was not only no worse, to my mind, but it was better, in this sense, that I was there. That is a strange way, is it not, of looking at things. Perhaps less strange than it seems. For being in the forest a place neither worse not better than the others, and being free to stay there, was it not natural I should think highly of it, not because of what it was, but because I was there. For I was there. And being there I did not have to go there, and that was not to be despised, seeing the state of my legs and my body in general. That is all I wished to say, and if I did not say it at the outset it is simply that something was against it. But I could not, stay in the forest I mean, I was not free to. That is to say I could have, physically nothing could have been, but I was not purely physical, I lacked something, and I would have had the feeling, if I had stayed in the forest, of going against an imperative, at least I had that impression. But perhaps I was mistaken, perhaps I would have been better advised to stay in the forest, perhaps I could have stayed there, without remorse, without the painful impression of committing a fault, almost a sin. For I have greatly sinned, at all times, greatly sinned against my prompters. And if I cannot decently be proud of this I see no reason either to be sorry. But imperatives are a little different, and I have always been inclined to submit to them, I dont know why. For they never led me anywhere, but tore me from places where, if all was not well, all was no worse than anywhere else, and then went silent, leaving me stranded. So I knew my imperatives well, and yet I submitted to them. It had become a habit. It is true they nearly all bore on the same question, that of my relations, with my mother, and on the importance of bringing as soon as possible some light to bear on these and even on the kind of light that should be brought to bear and the most effective means of doing so. Yes, these imperatives were quite explicit and even detailed until, having set me in motion at last, they began to falter, then went silent, leaving me there like a fool who neither knows where he is going nor why he is going there. And they nearly all bore, as I may said already, on the same painful and thorny question. And I do not think I could mention even one having a different purport. And the one enjoining me then to leave the forest without delay was in no way different from those I was used to, as to its meaning . For in its framing I thought I notice something new. For after the usual blarney there followed this solemn warning, Perhaps it is already too late. It was in Latin, nimmis sero, I think thats Latin. Charming things, hypothetical imperatives. But if I had never succeeded in liquidating this matter of my mother, the fault must not be imputed solely to that voice which deserted me, prematurely. It was partly to blame, thats all it can be reproached with. For the outer world opposed my succeeding too, whit its wiles, I have given some examples. And even if the voice could have harried me to the very scene of action, even then I might well have succeeded no better, because of the other obstacles barring my way. And in this command which faltered, then died, it was hard not to hear the unspoken entreaty, Dont do it, Molloy. In forever reminding me thus of my duty was its purpose to show me the folly of it? Perhaps. Fortunately it did no more than stress, the better to mock if you like, an innate velleity. And of myself, all my life, I think I had been going to my mother, with the purpose of establishing our relations on a less precarious footing. And when I was with her, and I often succeeded, I left her without having done anything. And when I was no longer with her I was again on my way to her, hoping to do better the next time. And when I appeared to give up and to busy myself with something else, or with nothing at all any more, in reality I was hatching my plans and seeking the way to her house. This is taking a queer turn. So even without this so-called imperative I impugn, it would have been difficult for me to stay in the forest, since I was forced to assume my mother was no there. And yet it might have been better for me to try and stay. But I also said, Yet a little while, at the rate things are going, and I wont be able to move, but will have to stay, where I happen to be unless someone comes and carries me. Oh I did not say it in such limpid language. And when I say I said, etc., all I mean is that I knew confusedly things were so, without knowing exactly what it was all about. And every time I say, I said this, or I said that, or speak of a voice saying, far away inside me, Molloy, and then a fine phrase more or less clear and simple, or find myself compelled to attribute to others intelligible words, or hear my own voice uttering to others more or less articulate sounds, I am merely complying with the convention that demands you either lie or hold your peace. For what really happened was quite different. And I did nousay, Yet a little while, at the rate thing are going, etc., but that resembled perhaps what I would have said, if I had been able. In reality I said nothing at all, but I heard a murmur, something gone wrong with the silence, and I pricked up my ears, like an animal I imagine, which gives a start and pretends to be dead. And then sometimes there arose within me, confusedly, a kind of consciousness, which I express by saying, I said, etc., or, Dont do it Molloy, or, Is that your mothers name? Said the sergeant, I quote from memory. Or which I express without sinking to the level of oratio recta, but by means of other figures quite as deceitful, as for example, It seemed to me that, etc., or, I had the impression that, etc.,for it seemed to me nothing at all, and I had no impression of any kind, but simply somewhere something had changed, so that I too had to change, or the world too had to change, in order for nothing to be changed. And it was these little adjustments, as between Galileos vessels, that I can only express by saying, I feared that, or, I hoped that, or, Is that your mothers name? Said the sergeant, for example, and that I might doubtless have expressed otherwise and better, if I had gone to the trouble. And so I shall perhaps some day when I have less horror of trouble than today. But I think not. So I said, Yet a little while, at the rate things are going, and I wont be able to move, but will have to stay, where I happen to be, unless some kind person comes and carries me. For my marches got shorter and shorter and my halts in consequence more and more frequent and I may add prolonged. For the notion of the long halt does not necessarily follow from that of the short march, nor that of the frequent halt either, when you come to think of it, unless you give frequent a meaning it does not possess, and I could never bring myself to do a thing like that. And it seemed to me all the more important to get out of this forest with all possible speed as I would very soon be powerless to get out of anything whatsoever, were it but a bower. It was winter, and not only many trees had lost their leaves, but these lost leaves had gone all black and my crutches sank into them, in places right up to the fork. Strange to say I felt no colder than usual. Perhaps it was only autumn. But I was never very sensitive to changes of temperature. And the gloom, if it seemed less blue than before, was as thick as ever. Which made me say in the end, It is less blue because there is less green, but it is no less thick thanks to the leaden winter sky. Then something about the black dripping from the black bough, something in that line. The black slush of leaves slowed me down even more. But leaves or no leaves I would have abandoned erect motion, that of man. And I still remember the day when, flat on my face by way or rest, in defiance of the rules, I suddenly cried, striking my brow, Christ, theres crawling, I never thought of that. But could I crawl, with my legs in such a state, and my trunk? And my head. But before I go on, a word about the forest murmurs. It was in vain I listened, I could hear nothing of the kind. But rather, with much goodwill and a little imagination, at long intervals, a distant gong. A horn goes well with the forest, you expect it. It is the huntsman. But a gong! Even a tom-tom, at a pinch, would not have shocked me. But a gong! It was mortifying, to have been looking forward to the celebrated murmurs if to nothing else, and to succeed only in hearing, at long intervals, in the far distance, a gong. For a moment I dared hope it was only my heart, still beating. But only for a moment. For it does not beat, not my heart, Id have to refer you to hydraulics for the squelch that old pump makes. To the leaves too I listened, before their fall, attentively in vain. They made no sound, motionless and rigid, like brass, have I said that before? So much for the forest murmurs. From time to time I blew my horn, through the cloth of my pocket. Its hoot was fainter every time. I had taken it off my bicycle. When? I dont know. And now, let us have done. Flat on my belly, using my crutches like grapnels, I punged them ahead of me into the undergrowth, and when I felt they had a hold, I pulled myself forward, with an effort of the wrist. For my wrists were still quite strong, fortunately, in spite of my decrepitude, though all swollen and racked by a kind of chronic arthritis probably. That then briefly is how I went about it. The advantage of this mode of locomotion compared to others, I mean those I have tried, is this, that when you want to rest you stop and rest, without further ado. For standing there is no rest, nor sitting either. And there are men who move about sitting, and even kneeling, hauling themselves to right and left, forward and backward, with the help of hooks. But he who moves in this way, crawling on his belly, like a reptile, no sooner comes to rest than he begins to rest, and even the very movement is a kind of rest, compared to other movements, I mean those that have worn me out. And in this way I moved onward in the forest, slowly, but with a certain regularity, and I covered my fifteen paces, day in, day out, without killing myself. And I even crawled on my back, plunging my crutches blindly behind me into the thickets, and with the black boughs for to my closing eyes. I was on my way to mother. And from time to time I said, Mother, to encourage me I suppose. I kept losing my hat, the lace had broken long ago, until in a fit of temper I banged it down on my skull with such violence that I couldnt get it off again. And if I had met any lady friends, if I had any lady friends, I would have been powerless to salute them correctly. But there was always present to my mind, which was still working, if laboriously, the need to turn, to keep on turning, and every three of four jerks I altered course, which permitted me to describe, if not a circle, at least a great polygon, perfection is not of this world, and to hope that I was going forward in a straight line, in spite of everything, day and night, towards my mother. And true enough the day came when the forest ended and I saw the light, the light of the plain, exactly as I had foreseen. But I did not see it from afar, trembling beyond the harsh trunks, as I had foreseen, but suddenly I was in it, I opened my eyes and saw I had arrived. And the reason for that was probably this, that for some time past I had not opened my eyes, or seldom. And every my little changes of course were made blindly, in the dark. The forest ended in a ditch, I dont know why, and it was in this ditch that I became aware of what had happened to me. I suppose it was the fall into the ditch that opened my eyes, for why would they have opened otherwise? I looked at the plain rolling away as far as the eye could see. No, not quite so far as that. For my eyes having got used to the light I fancied I saw, faintly outlined against the horizon, the towers and steeples of a town, which of course I could not assume was mine, on such slight evidence. It is true the plain seemed familiar, but in my region all the plains looked alike, when you knew one you knew them all. In any case, whether it was my town or not, whether somewhere under that faint haze my mother panted on or whether she poisoned the air a hundred miles away, were ludicrously idle questions for a man in my position, though of undeniable interest on the plane of pure knowledge. For how could I drag myself over that vast moor, where my crutches would fumble in vain. Rolling perhaps. And then? Would they let me roll on to my mothers door? Fortunately for me at this painful juncture, which I had vaguely foreseen, but not in all its bitterness, I heard a voice telling me not to fret, that help was coming. Literally. These words struck it is not too much to say as clearly on my ear, and on my understanding, as the urchins thanks I suppose when I stopped and picked up his marble. Dont fret Molloy, were coming. Well, I suppose you have to try everything once, succour included, to get a complete picture of the resource of their planet. I lapsed down to the bottom of the ditch. It must have been spring, a morning in spring. I thought I heard birds, skylarks perhaps. I had not heard a bird for a long time. How was it I had not heard any in the forest? Nor seen any. It had not seemed strange to me. Had I heard any at the seaside? Mews? I could not remember. I remembered the corn-crakes. The two travelers came back to my memory. One had a club. I had forgotten them. I saw the sheep again. Or so I say now. I did not fret, other scenes of my life came back to me. There seemed to be rain, then sunshine, turn about. Real spring weather. I longed to go back into the forest. Oh not a real longing. Molloy could stay, where he happened to be.

James Joyce

The Dead

Lily, the caretakers 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 Morkans annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julias choir, any of Kates pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Janes 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 Ushers 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 Antient 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 Eves, 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 caretakers daughter, did housemaids 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 oclock 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 Janes 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.

Ill 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, heres Mrs. Conroy.

Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed Gabriels 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. Ill 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 were 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. Im done schooling this year and more.

O, then, said Gabriel gaily, I suppose well 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, its Christmas-time, isnt it? Justheres a little

He walked rapidly towards the door.

O no, sir! cried the girl, following him. Really, sir, I wouldnt take it.

Christmas-time! Christmas-time! said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation.

The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him:

Well, thank you, sir.

He waited outside the drawing-room until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girls bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the mens shoes and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure.

Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies dressing-room. His aunts were two small, plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know who she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sisters, was all puckers and creases, like a shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned way, had not lost its ripe nut colour.

They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T.J. Conroy of the Port and Docks.

Gretta tells me youre not going to take a cab back to Monkstown tonight, Gabriel, said Aunt Kate.

No, said Gabriel, turning to his wife, we had quite enough of that last year, hadnt we? Dont you remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a dreadful cold.

Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.

Quite right, Gabriel, quite right, she said. You cant be too careful.

But as for Gretta there, said Gabriel, shed walk home in the snow if she were let.

Mrs. Conroy laughed.

Dont mind him, Aunt Kate, she said. Hes really an awful bother, what with green shades for Toms eyes at night and making him do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And she simply hates the sight of it! O, but youll never guess what he makes me wear now!

She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily, too, for Gabriels solicitude was a standing joke with them.

Goloshes! said Mrs. Conroy. Thats the latest. Whenever its wet underfoot I must put on my goloshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldnt. The next thing hell buy me will be a diving-suit.

Gabriel laughed nervously and patted hid tie reassuringly, while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julias face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephews face. After a pause she asked:

And what are goloshes, Gabriel?

Goloshes, Julia! exclaimed her sister. Goodness me, dont you know what goloshes are? You wear them over your over your boots, Gretta, isnt it?

Yes, said Mrs. Conroy. Gutta-percha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the Continent.

O, on the Continent, murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.

Gabriel knitted his eyebrows and said, as if he were slightly angered:

Its nothing very wonderful, but Gretta thinks it very funny because she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels.

But tell me, Gabriel, said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. Of course, youve seen about the room. Gretta was saying

O, the room is all right, replied Gabriel. Ive taken one in the Gresham.

To be sure, said Aunt Kate, by far the best thing to do. And the children, Gretta, youre not anxious about them?

O, for one night, said Mrs. Conroy. Besides, Bessie will look after them.

To be sure, said Aunt Kate again. What a comfort it is to have a girl like that, one you can depend on! Theres that Lily, Im sure I dont know what has come over her lately. Shes not the girl she was at all.

Gabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point, but she broke off suddenly to gaze after her sister, who had wandered down the stairs and was craning her neck over the banisters.

Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece, full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He liked music, but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they had begged Mary Jane to play something. Four young men, who had come from the refreshment-room to stand in the doorway at the sound of the piano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only persons who seemed to follow the music were Mary Jane herself, her hands racing along the keyboard or lifted from it at the pauses like those of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing at her elbow to turn the page.

Gabriels eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax under the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A picture of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet hung there and beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which Aunt Julia had worked in red, blue, and brown wools when she was a girl. Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had been taught for one year. His mother had worked for him as a birthday present a waistcoat of purple tabinet, with little foxes heads upon it, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was strange that his mother had had no musical talent, though Aunt Kate used to call her the brains carrier of the Morkan family. Both she and Julia had always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister. Her photograph stood before the pier-glass. She held an open book on her knees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed in a man-o-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the names of her sons, for she was very sensible of the dignity of family life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbriggan and, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal University. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen opposition to his marriage. Some slighting phrases she had used still rankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country cute and that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had nursed her during all her last long illness in their house at Monkstown.

He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece, for she was playing again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar, and while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart. The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep octave in the bass. Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had gone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had come back when the piano had stopped.

Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors. She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice, and the large brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bone bore on it the Irish device and motto.

When they had taken their places she said abruptly:

I have a crow to pluck with you.

With me? said Gabriel.

She nodded her head gravely.

What is it? asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.

Who is G. C.? answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.

Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not understand, when she said bluntly:

O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for the Daily Express. Now, arent you ashamed of yourself?

Why should I be ashamed of myself? asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying to smile.

Well, Im ashamed of you, said Miss Ivors frankly. To say youd write for a paper like that. I didnt think you were a West Briton.

A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriels face. It was true that he wrote a literary column every Wednesday in the Daily Express, for which he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West Briton surely. The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his teaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand booksellers, to Hickeys on Bachelors Walk, to Webbs or Masseys on Astons Quay, or to OClohisseys in the by-street. He did not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above politics. But they were friends of years standing and their careers had been parallel, first at the University and then as teachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books.

When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and inattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said in a soft, friendly tone:

Of course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now.

When they were together again she spoke of the University question and Gabriel felt more at ease. A friend of hers had shown her his review of Brownings poems. That was how she had found out the secret: but she liked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly:

O, Mr. Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this summer? Were going to stay a whole month. It will be splendid out in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr. Clancy is coming, and Mr. Kilkelly and Katherine Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if shed come. Shes from Connacht, isnt she?

Her people are, said Gabriel shortly.

But you will come, wont you? said Miss Ivors, laying her warm hand eagerly on his arm.

The fact is, said Gabriel, I have just arranged to go

Go where? asked Miss Ivors.

Well, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows and so

But where? asked Miss Ivors.

Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany, said Gabriel awkwardly.

And why do you go to France and Belgium, said Miss Ivors, instead of visiting your own land?

Well, said Gabriel, its partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change.

And havent you your own language to keep in touch with Irish? asked Miss Ivors.

Well, said Gabriel, if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language.

Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross-examination. Gabriel glanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour under the ordeal, which was making a blush invade his forehead.

And havent you your own land to visit, continued Miss Ivors, that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?

O, to tell you the truth, retorted Gabriel suddenly, Im sick of my own country, sick of it!

Why? asked Miss Ivors.

Gabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him.

Why? repeated Miss Ivors.

They had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss Ivors said warmly:

Of course, youve no answer.

Gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with great energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a moment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about to start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear:

West Briton!

When the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the room where Freddy Malins mother was sitting. She was a stout, feeble old woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her sons and she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and that he was nearly all right. Gabriel asked her whether she had had a good crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and came to Dublin on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had had a beautiful crossing and that the captain had been most attentive to her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in Glasgow, and of all the friends they had there. While her tongue rambled on Gabriel tried to banish from his mind all memory of the unpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl, or woman, or whatever she was, was an enthusiast, but there was a time for all things. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like that. But she had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbits eyes.

He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing couples. When she reached him she said into his ear:

Gabriel, Aunt Kate wants to know wont you carve the goose as usual. Miss Daly will carve the ham and Ill do the pudding.

All right, said Gabriel.

Shes sending in the younger ones as soon as this waltz is over so that well have the table to ourselves.

Were you dancing? asked Gabriel.

Of course I was. Didnt you see me? What row had you with Molly Ivors?

No row. Why? Did she say so?

Something like that. Im trying to get that Mr. DArcy to sing. Hes full of conceit, I think.

There was no row, said Gabriel moodily, only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldnt.

His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.

O, do go, Gabriel, she cried. Id love to see Galway again.

You can go if you like, said Gabriel coldly.

At the moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost wringing her hands in despair.

Where is Gabriel? she cried. Where on earth is Gabriel? Theres everyone waiting in there, stage to let, and nobody to carve the goose!

Here I am, Aunt Kate! cried Gabriel, with sudden animation, ready to carve a flock of geese, if necessary.

A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin, and beside this was a round of spiced beef.

Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the center of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and the smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.

Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.

Miss Furlong, what shall I send you? he asked. A wing or a slice of the breast?

Just a small slice of the breast.

Miss Higgins, what for you?

O, anything at all, Mr. Conroy.

While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham and spiced beef, Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Janes idea and she had also suggested apple sauce for the goose, but Aunt Kate had said that plain roast goose without any apple sauce had always been good enough for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane waited on her pupils and saw that they got the best slices, and Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia opened and carried across from the piano bottles of stout and ale for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies. There was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise of orders and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and glass-stoppers. Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he had finished the first run without serving himself. Everyone protested loudly so that he compromised by taking a long draught of stout, for he had found the carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down quietly to her supper, but Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling round the table walking on each others heels, getting in each others way and giving each other unheeded orders. Mr. Browne begged of them to sit down and eat their suppers and so did Gabriel, but they said there was time enough, so that, at last, Freddy Malins stood up and, capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her down on her chair amid general laughter.

When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling:

Now, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call stuffing let him or her speak.

A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper, and Lily came forward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him.

Very well, said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory draught, kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few minutes.

He sat to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which the table covered Lilys removal of the plates. The subject of talk was the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr. Bartell DArcy, the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart moustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company, but Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production. Freddy Malins said there was a Negro chieftain singing in the second part of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he had ever herd.

Have you heard him? he asked Mr. Bartell DArcy across the table.

No, answered Mr. Bartell DArcy carelessly.

Because, Freddy Malins explained, now Id be curious to hear your opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice.

It takes Teddy to find out the really good things, said Mr. Browne familiarly to the table.

And why couldnt he have a voice too? asked Freddy Malins sharply. Is it because hes only a black?

Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for Mignon. Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor Georgina Burns. Mr. Browne could go back further still, to the old Italian companies that used to come to Dublin Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka, Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung five encores to Let me like a Soldier fall, introducing a high C every time, and how the gallery boys would sometimes in their enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them: that was why.

O, well, said Mr. Bartell DArcy, I presume there are as good singers today as there were then.

Where are they? asked Mr. Browne defiantly.

In London, Paris, Milan, said Mr. Bartell DArcy warmly. I suppose Caruso, for example, is quite good, if not better than any of the men you have mentioned.

Maybe so, said Mr. Browne. But I may tell you I doubt it strongly.

O, Id give anything to hear Caruso sing, said Mary Jane.

For me, said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, there was only one tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard of him.

Who is he, Miss Morkan? asked Mr. Bartell DArcy politely.

His name, said Aunt Kate, was Parkinson. I heard him when he was in his prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was ever put into a mans throat.

Strange, said Mr. Bartell DArcy. I never even heard of him.

Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right, said Mr. Brown. I remember hearing of old Parkinson, but hes too far back for me.

A beautiful, pure, sweet mellow English tenor, said Aunt Kate with enthusiasm.

Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table. The clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriels wife served out spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with raspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was of Aunt Julias making, and received praises for it from all quarters. She herself said that it was not quite brown enough.

Well, I hope, Miss Morkan, said Mr. Browne, that Im brown enough for you because, you know, Im all brown.

All the gentlemen, except Gabriel ate, some of the pudding out of compliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery was left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for the blood and he was just then under doctors care. Mrs. Malins, who had been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray, how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.

And do you mean to say, asked Mr. Browne, incredulously, that a chap can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?

O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave, said Mary Jane.

I wish we had an institution like that in our Church, said Mr. Brown candidly.

He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.

Thats the rule of the order, said Aunt Kate firmly.

Yes, but why? asked Mr. Brown.

Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule that was all. Mr. Brown still seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very clear for Mr. Brown grinned and said:

I like that idea very much, but wouldnt a comfortable spring bed do them as well as a coffin?

The coffin, said Mary Jane, is to remind them of their last end.

As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in the silence of the table, during which Mrs. Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in an indistinct undertone:

They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.

The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates and sweets were now passed around the table and Aunt Julia invited all the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr. Bartell DArcy refused to take either, but one of his neighbours nudged him and whispered something to him, upon which he allowed his glass to be filled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the conversation ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the wine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked down at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few gentlemen patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence came and Gabriel pushed back his chair and stood up.

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westwards over the white field of Fifteen Acres.

He began:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in the years past to perform a very pleasing task, but a task for which Im afraid my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate.

No, no! said Mr. Brown.

But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will for the deed, and to lend me your attention for a few moments while I endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this occasion.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered together under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It is not the first time that we have been the recipients or perhaps, I had better say, the victims of the hospitality of certain good ladies.

He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Every one laughed or smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned crimson with pleasure. Gabriel went on boldly:

I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing then anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, Im sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us.

A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through Gabriels mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone away discourteously: as he said with confidence in himself:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its new enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated and hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone behind recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.

Hear, hear! said Mr. Brown loudly.

But yet, continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer inflection, there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.

Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine. We are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of camaraderie, and as the guests of what shall I shall them? the Three Graces of the Dublin musical world.

The table burst into applause and laughter at this allusion. Aunt Julia vainly asked each of her neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel had said.

He says we are the graces the Three Graces, Aunt Julia, said Mary Jane.

Aunt Julia did not understand, but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel, who continued in the same vein:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I will not attempt to play tonight the part that Paris played on another occasion. I will not attempt to choose between them. The task would be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I view them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good heart, whose too good heart, has become a byword with all who know her; or her sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and whose singing must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all tonight; or, last but not least, when I consider our youngest hostess, talented, cheerful, hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and Gentlemen, that I do not know to which of them I should award the prize.

Gabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt Julias face and the tears which had risen to Aunt Kates eyes, hastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while every member of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said loudly:

Let us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health, wealth, long life, happiness, and prosperity, and may they long continue to hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their profession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in our hearts.

All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three seated ladies, sung in unison, with Mr. Browne as leader:

For they are jolly gay fellows,

For they are jolly gay fellows,

For they are jolly gay fellows,

Which nobody can deny.

Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia seemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference, while they sang with emphasis:

Unless he tells a lie,

Unless he tells a lie,

Then, turning once more towards their hostess, they sang:

For they are jolly gay fellows,

For they are jolly gay fellows,

For they are jolly gay fellows,

Which nobody can deny.

The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time, Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high.

The piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so that Aunt Kate said:

Close the door, somebody. Mrs. Malins will get her death of cold.

Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terra-cotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a mans voice singing.

He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the painting if he were a painter.

The hall door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia, and Mary Jane came down the hall, still laughing.

Well, isnt Freddy terrible? said Mary Jane. Hes really terrible.

Gabriel said nothing, but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife was standing. Now that the hall door was closed the voice and the piano could be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be silent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice, made plaintive by distance and by the singers hoarseness, faintly illuminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:

O, the rain falls on my heavy locks

And the dew wets my skin,

My babe lies cold

O, exclaimed Mary Jane. Its Bartel DArcy singing and he wouldnt sing all the night. O, Ill get him to sing a song before he goes.

O, do, Mary Jane, said Aunt Kate.

Mary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase, but before she reached it the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.

O, what a pity! she cried. Is he coming down, Gretta?

Gabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A few steps behind her were Mr. Bartel DArcy and Miss OCallaghan.

O, Mr. DArcy, cried Mary Jane, its downright mean of you to break off like that when we were all in raptures listening to you.

I have been at him all the evening, said Miss OCallaghan, and Mrs. Conroy, too, and he told us he had a dreadful cold and couldnt sing.

O, Mr. DArcy, said Aunt Kate, now that was a great fib to tell.

Cant you see that Im as hoarse as a crow? said Mr. DArcy roughly.

He went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others, taken aback by his rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate wrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr. DArcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.

Its the weather, said Aunt Julia, after a pause.

Yes, everybody has colds, said Aunt Kate readily, everybody.

They say, said Mary Jane, we havent had snow like it for thirty years; and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is general all over Ireland.

I love the look of snow, said Aunt Julia sadly.

So do I, said Miss OCallaghan. I think Christmas is never really Christmas until we have the snow on the ground.

But poor Mr. DArcy doesnt like the snow, said Aunt Kate, smiling.

Mr. DArcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a repentant tone told them the history of his cold. Every one gave him advice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of his throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife, who did not join in the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty fanlight and the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair, which he had seen her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same attitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her. At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart.

Mr. DArcy, she said, what is the name of that song you were singing?

Its called The Lass of Aughrim, said Mr. DArcy, but I couldnt remember it properly. Why? Do you know it?

The Lass of Aughrim, she repeated. I couldnt think of the name.

It a very nice air, said Mary Jane. Im sorry you were not in voice tonight.

Now, Mary Jane, said Aunt Kate, dont annoy Mr. DArcy. I wont have him annoyed.

Seeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door, where good night was said:

Well, good night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening.

Good night, Gabriel. Good night, Gretta!

Good night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Good night, Aunt Julia.

O, good night, Gretta, I didnt see you.

Good night, Mr. DArcy. Good night, Miss OCallaghan.

Good night, Miss Morkan.

Good night, again.

Good night, all. Safe home.

Good night. Good night.

The morning was still dark. A dull, yellow light brooded over the houses and the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on the parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still burning redly in the murky air and, across the river, the palace of the Four Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky.

She was walking on before him with Mr. Bartell DArcy, her shoes in a brown parcel tucked under one arm and her hands holding her skirt up from the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude, but Gabriels eyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along his veins; and the thoughts went rioting through his brain, proud, joyful, tender, valorous.

She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was standing with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a man making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face, fragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he called out to the man at the furnace:

Is the fire hot, sir?

But the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just as well. He might have answered rudely.

A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke up and illuminated his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When the others had gone away, when he and she were in the room in the hotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:

Gretta!

Perhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then something in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at him

At the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its rattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out of the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words, pointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily under the murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his heels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the boat, galloping to their honeymoon.

As the cab drove across OConnell Bridge Miss OCallaghan said:

They say you never cross OConnell Bridge without seeing a white horse.

I see a white man this time, said Gabriel.

Where? asked Mr. Bartell DArcy.

Gabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he nodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.

Good night, Dan, he said gaily.

When the cab drew up before the hotel, Gabriel jumped out and, in spite of Mr. Bartell DArcys protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a shilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:

A prosperous New Year to you sir, sir.

The same to you, said Gabriel cordially.

She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while standing at the kerbstone, bidding the others good night. She leaned lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few hours ago. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his, proud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure.

An old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a candle in the office and went before them to the stairs. They followed him in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly carpeted stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head bowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her skirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her hips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to seize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his hands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on the stairs to settle his guttering candle. They halted, too, on the steps below him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten wax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.

The porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his unstable candle down a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were to be called in the morning.

Eight, said Gabriel.

The porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a muttered apology, but Gabriel cut him short.

We dont want any light. We have light enough from the street. And I say, he added, pointing to the candle, you might remove that handsome article, like a good man.

The porter took up his candle again and, but slowly, for he was surprised by such a novel idea. Then he mumbled good night and went out. Gabriel shot the lock to.

A ghastly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one window to the door. Gabriel threw his overcoat and hat on a couch and crossed the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in order that his emotion might calm a little, then he turned and leaned against a chest of drawers with his back to the light. She had taken off her hat and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror, unhooking her waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her, and then said:

Gretta!

She turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of light towards him. Her face looked so serious and weary that the words would not pass Gabriels lips. No, it was not the moment yet.

You look tired, he said.

I am a little, she answered.

You dont feel ill or weak?

No, tired: thats all.

She went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited again and then, fearing that diffidence was about to conquer him, he said abruptly:

By the way, Gretta!

What is it?

You know that poor fellow Malins? he said quickly.

Yes. What about him?

Well, poor fellow, hes a decent sort of chap, after all, continued Gabriel in a false voice. He gave me back that sovereign I lent him, and I didnt expect it, really. Its a pity he wouldnt keep away from that Browne, because hes not a bad fellow, really.

He was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He did not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something? If she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take her as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardor in her eyes first. He longed to be master of her strange mood.

When did you lend him the pound? she asked, after a pause.

Gabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal language about the sottish Malins and his pound. He longed to cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her. But he said:

O, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas-card shop in Henry Street.

He was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come from the window. She stood before him for an instant, looking at him strangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her hands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.

You are a very generous person, Gabriel, she said.

Gabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the quaintness of her phrase, put his hands on her hair and began smoothing it back, scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it fine and brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just when he was wishing for it she had come to him of her own accord. Perhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt the impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had come upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered why he had been so diffident.

He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm swiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:

Gretta, dear, what are you thinking about?

She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:

Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I know?

She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:

O, Im thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim.

She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms across the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stock-still for a moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way of the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always puzzled him when he saw it in a mirror, and his glimmering gilt-rimmed eyeglasses. He halted a few paces from her and said:

What about the song? Why does that make you cry?

She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of her hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his voice.

Why, Gretta? he asked.

I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song.

And who was the person long ago? asked Gabriel smiling.

It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my grandmother, she said.

The smile passed away from Gabriels face. A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to grow angrily in his veins.

Someone you were in love with? he asked ironically.

It was a young boy I used to know, she answered, named Michael Furey. He used to sing that song, The Lass of Aughrim. He was very delicate.

Gabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested in this delicate boy.

I can see him so plainly, she said after a moment. Such eyes as he had: big, dark eyes! And such an expression in them an expression!

O, then, you are in love with him? said Gabriel.

I used to go out walking with him, she said, when I was in Galway.

A thought flew across Gabriels mind.

Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl? he said coldly.

She looked at him and asked in surprise:

What for?

Her eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:

How do I know? To see him, perhaps.

She looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in silence.

He is dead, she said at length. He died when he was only seventeen. Isnt it a terrible thing to die so young as that?

What was he? asked Gabriel, still ironically.

He was in the gasworks, she said.

Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead.

He tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when he spoke was humble and indifferent.

I suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta, he said.

I was great with him at that time, she said.

Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands and said, also sadly:

And what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?

I think he died for me, she answered.

A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer, as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world. But he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued to caress her hand. He did not question her again, for he felt that she would tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not respond to his touch, but he continued to caress it just as he had caressed her first letter to him that spring morning.

It was in the winter, she said, about the beginning of the winter when I was going to leave my grandmothers and come up here to the convent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and wouldnt be let out, and his people in Oughterard were written to. He was in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew rightly.

She paused for a moment and sighed.

Poor fellow, she said. He was very fond of me and he was such a gentle boy. We used to go out together, walking, you know, Gabriel, like the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing only for his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey.

Well; and then? asked Gabriel.

And then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up to the convent he was much worse and I wouldnt be let see him so I wrote him a letter saying I was going up to Dublin and would be back in the summer, and hoping he would be better then.

She paused for a moment to get her voice under control, and then went on:

Then the night before I left, I was in my grandmothers house in Nuns Island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldnt see, so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden, shivering.

And did you not tell him to go back? asked Gabriel.

I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his eyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where there was a tree.

And did he go home? asked Gabriel.

Yes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died and he was buried in Oughterard, where his people came from. O, the day I heard that, that he was dead!

She stopped, choking with sobs, and, overcome by emotion, flung herself face downwards on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand for a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her grief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.

She was fast asleep.

Gabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully on her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn breath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband had played in her life. He watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious eyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty, a strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death.

Perhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had he proceeded? From his aunts supper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the merry-making when saying good night in the hall, the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon be a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had caught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He would cast about in his mind for some words that might console her and would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very soon.

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lovers eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriels eyes. He had never felt that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westwards. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descendent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.