A PAINFUL CASE
MR. JAMES DUFFY lived
in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of
which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin
mean, modern and pretentious. He lived in an old sombre house and from his
windows he could look into the disused distillery or upwards along the shallow
river on which Dublin is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were
free from pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the
room: a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes-
rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a square table on which lay a
double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of shelves of white
wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug
covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung above the washstand and during the
day a white-shaded lamp stood as the sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The
books on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below upwards according to
bulk. A complete Wordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of
the Maynooth Catechism, sewn into the
cloth cover of a notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf. Writing materials
were always on the desk. In the desk lay a manuscript translation of
Hauptmann's Michael Kramer, the stage
directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers
held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from
time to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the
first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped -- the
fragrance of new cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of gum or of an overripe
apple which might have been left there and forgotten.
Mr. Duffy abhorred
anything which betokened physical or mental disorder. A medival doctor would
have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his
years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large
head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable
mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no
harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny
eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct
in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body,
regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses. He had an odd
autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a
short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a
predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to beggars and walked firmly,
carrying a stout hazel.
He had been for many
years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street. Every morning he came in from
Chapelizod by tram. At midday he went to Dan Burke's and took his lunch -- a
bottle of lager beer and a small trayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four o'clock
he was set free. He dined in an eating-house in George's Street where he felt
himself safe from the society o Dublin's gilded youth and where there was a
certain plain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings were spent either
before his landlady's piano or roaming about the outskirts of the city. His
liking for Mozart's music brought him sometimes to an opera or a concert: these
were the only dissipations of his life.
He had neither
companions nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his spiritual life without
any communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting
them to the cemetery when they died. He performed these two social duties for
old dignity's sake but conceded nothing further to the conventions which
regulate the civic life. He allowed himself to think that in certain
circumstances he would rob his hank but, as these circumstances never arose,
his life rolled out evenly -- an adventureless tale.
One evening he found
himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda. The house, thinly peopled and
silent, gave distressing prophecy of failure. The lady who sat next him looked
round at the deserted house once or twice and then said:
"What a pity
there is such a poor house tonight! It's so hard on people to have to sing to
empty benches."
He took the remark as
an invitation to talk. He was surprised that she seemed so little awkward.
While they talked he tried to fix her permanently in his memory. When he
learned that the young girl beside her was her daughter he judged her to be a
year or so younger than himself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had
remained intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The
eyes were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant note but
was confused by what seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris,
revealing for an instant a temperament of great sensibility. The pupil
reasserted itself quickly, this half- disclosed nature fell again under the reign
of prudence, and her astrakhan jacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fullness,
struck the note of defiance more definitely.
He met her again a
few weeks afterwards at a concert in Earlsfort Terrace and seized the moments
when her daughter's attention was diverted to become intimate. She alluded once
or twice to her husband but her tone was not such as to make the allusion a
warning. Her name was Mrs. Sinico. Her husband's great-great-grandfather had
come from Leghorn. Her husband was captain of a mercantile boat plying between
Dublin and Holland; and they had one child.
Meeting her a third
time by accident he found courage to make an appointment. She came. This was
the first of many meetings; they met always in the evening and chose the most
quiet quarters for their walks together. Mr. Duffy, however, had a distaste for
underhand ways and, finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he
forced her to ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged his visits,
thinking that his daughter's hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife so
sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone
else would take an interest in her. As the husband was often away and the
daughter out giving music lessons Mr. Duffy had many opportunities of enjoying
the lady's society. Neither he nor she had had any such adventure before and
neither was conscious of any incongruity. Little by little he entangled his
thoughts with hers. He lent her books, provided her with ideas, shared his
intellectual life with her. She listened to all.
Sometimes in return
for his theories she gave out some fact of her own life. With almost maternal
solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full: she became his
confessor. He told her that for some time he had assisted at the meetings of an
Irish Socialist Party where he had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score
of sober workmen in a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had
divided into three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret,
he had discontinued his attendances. The workmen's discussions, he said, were
too timorous; the interest they took in the question of wages was inordinate.
He felt that they were hard-featured realists and that they resented an
exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not within their reach. No social
revolution, he told her, would be likely to strike Dublin for some centuries.
She asked him why did
he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked her, with careful scorn. To
compete with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty
seconds? To submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which
entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?
He went often to her
little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent their evenings alone. Little by
little, as their thoughts entangled, they spoke of subjects less remote. Her
companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the
dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet
room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them.
This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character,
emotionalised his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to the
sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend to an
angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more
and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he
recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable loneliness. We cannot
give ourselves, it said: we are our own. The end of these discourses was that
one night during which she had shown every sign of unusual excitement, Mrs.
Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek.
Mr. Duffy was very
much surprised. Her interpretation of his words disillusioned him. He did not
visit her for a week, then he wrote to her asking her to meet him. As he did
not wish their last interview to be troubled by the influence of their ruined
confessional they meet in a little cakeshop near the Parkgate. It was cold
autumn weather but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of
the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse:
every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow. When they came out of the Park they
walked in silence towards the tram; but here she began to tremble so violently
that, fearing another collapse on her part, he bade her good-bye quickly and
left her. A few days later he received a parcel containing his books and music.
Four years passed.
Mr. Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room still bore witness of the
orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of music encumbered the music-stand in
the lower room and on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. He wrote seldom in the
sheaf of papers which lay in his desk. One of his sentences, written two months
after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is
impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between
man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse. He kept
away from concerts lest he should meet her. His father died; the junior partner
of the bank retired. And still every morning he went into the city by tram and
every evening walked home from the city after having dined moderately in
George's Street and read the evening paper for dessert.
One evening as he was
about to put a morsel of corned beef and cabbage into his mouth his hand
stopped. His eyes fixed themselves on a paragraph in the evening paper which he
had propped against the water-carafe. He replaced the morsel of food on his
plate and read the paragraph attentively. Then he drank a glass of water,
pushed his plate to one side, doubled the paper down before him between his
elbows and read the paragraph over and over again. The cabbage began to deposit
a cold white grease on his plate. The girl came over to him to ask was his
dinner not properly cooked. He said it was very good and ate a few mouthfuls of
it with difficulty. Then he paid his bill and went out.
He walked along
quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel stick striking the
ground regularly, the fringe of the buff Mail peeping out of a side-pocket of
his tight reefer overcoat. On the lonely road which leads from the Parkgate to
Chapelizod he slackened his pace. His stick struck the ground less emphatically
and his breath, issuing irregularly, almost with a sighing sound, condensed in
the wintry air. When he reached his house he went up at once to his bedroom
and, taking the paper from his pocket, read the paragraph again by the failing
light of the window. He read it not aloud, but moving his lips as a priest does
when he reads the prayers Secreto. This was the paragraph:
DEATH OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE
A PAINFUL CASE
Today at the City of Dublin Hospital the Deputy Coroner (in the absence of Mr. Leverett) held an inquest on the body of Mrs. Emily Sinico, aged forty-three years, who was killed at Sydney Parade Station yesterday evening. The evidence showed that the deceased lady, while attempting to cross the line, was knocked down by the engine of the ten o'clock slow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of the head and right side which led to her death.
James
Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had been in the employment of the
railway company for fifteen years. On hearing the guard's whistle he set the
train in motion and a second or two afterwards brought it to rest in response
to loud cries. The train was going slowly.
P.
Dunne, railway porter, stated that as the train was about to start he observed
a woman attempting to cross the lines. He ran towards her and shouted, but,
before he could reach her, she was caught by the buffer of the engine and fell
to the ground.
A
juror. "You saw the lady fall?"
Witness.
"Yes."
Police
Sergeant Croly deposed that when he arrived he found the deceased lying on the
platform apparently dead. He had the body taken to the waiting-room pending the
arrival of the ambulance.
Constable
57 corroborated.
Dr.
Halpin, assistant house surgeon of the City of Dublin Hospital, stated that the
deceased had two lower ribs fractured and had sustained severe contusions of
the right shoulder. The right side of the head had been injured in the fall.
The injuries were not sufficient to have caused death in a normal person.
Death, in his opinion, had been probably due to shock and sudden failure of the
heart's action.
Mr.
H. B. Patterson Finlay, on behalf of the railway company, expressed his deep
regret at the accident. The company had always taken every precaution to
prevent people crossing the lines except by the bridges, both by placing
notices in every station and by the use of patent spring gates at level
crossings. The deceased had been in the habit of crossing the lines late at
night from platform to platform and, in view of certain other circumstances of
the case, he did not think the railway officials were to blame.
Captain
Sinico, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased, also gave
evidence. He stated that the deceased was his wife. He was not in Dublin at the
time of the accident as he had arrived only that morning from Rotterdam. They
had been married for twenty-two years and had lived happily until about two
years ago when his wife began to be rather intemperate in her habits.
Miss
Mary Sinico said that of late her mother had been in the habit of going out at
night to buy spirits. She, witness, had often tried to reason with her mother
and had induced her to join a League. She was not at home until an hour after
the accident. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical
evidence and exonerated Lennon from all blame.
The
Deputy Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed great sympathy
with Captain Sinico and his daughter. He urged on the railway company to take
strong measures to prevent the possibility of similar accidents in the future.
No blame attached to anyone.
Mr. Duffy raised his
eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on the cheerless evening
landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty distillery and from time to
time a light appeared in some house on the Lucan road. What an end! The whole
narrative of her death revolted him and it revolted him to think that he had
ever spoken to her of what he held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane
expressions of sympathy, the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal
the details of a commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had
she degraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her
vice, miserable and malodorous. His soul's companion! He thought of the
hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to be filled by
the barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been unfit to live,
without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on
which civilisation has been reared. But that she could have sunk so low! Was it
possible he had deceived himself so utterly about her? He remembered her
outburst of that night and interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever
done. He had no difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.
As the light failed
and his memory began to wander he thought her hand touched his. The shock which
had first attacked his stomach was now attacking his nerves. He put on his
overcoat and hat quickly and went out. The cold air met him on the threshold;
it crept into the sleeves of his coat. When he came to the public-house at
Chapelizod Bridge he went in and ordered a hot punch.
The proprietor served
him obsequiously but did not venture to talk. There were five or six workingmen
in the shop discussing the value of a gentleman's estate in County Kildare They
drank at intervals from their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on
the floor and sometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their heavy
boots. Mr. Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or hearing
them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He sat a
long time over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor sprawled on the
counter reading the Herald and
yawning. Now and again a tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.
As he sat there,
living over his life with her and evoking alternately the two images in which
he now conceived her, he realised that she was dead, that she had ceased to
exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked
himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of
deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what
seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood
how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that
room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became
a memory -- if anyone remembered him.
It was after nine
o'clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and gloomy. He entered the
Park by the first gate and walked along under the gaunt trees. He walked
through the bleak alleys where they had walked four years before. She seemed to
be near him in the darkness. At moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his
ear, her hand touch his. He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life
from her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling
to pieces.
When he gained the
crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked along the river towards Dublin,
the lights of which burned redly and hospitably in the cold night. He looked
down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw
some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with
despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast
from life's feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her
life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew
that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him
gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast. He turned his eyes
to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river he
saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery
head winding through the darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed
slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the
engine reiterating the syllables of her name.
He turned back the
way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He began to
doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed
the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her
voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear
nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent.
He felt that he was alone.
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