The Dead
LILY, THE CARETAKERāS 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 ladiesā 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 Morkanās annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Juliaās choir, any of Kateās pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Janeās 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 Usherās Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr. Fulham, the cornfactor 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 pupilsā 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 Eveās, 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 caretakerās daughter, did housemaidās 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 oāclock 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 Janeās 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.
āO, Mr. Conroy,ā said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, āMiss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good-night, Mrs. Conroy.ā
āIāll engage they did,ā said Gabriel, ābut they forget that my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself.ā
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:
āMiss Kate, hereās Mrs. Conroy.ā
Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed Gabrielās wife, said she must be perished alive, and asked was Gabriel with her.
āHere I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. Iāll follow,ā called out Gabriel from the dark.
He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs, laughing, to the ladiesā 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.
āIs it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?ā 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.
āYes, Lily,ā he answered, āand I think weāre in for a night of it.ā
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.
āTell me, Lily,ā he said in a friendly tone, ādo you still go to school?ā
āO no, sir,ā she answered. āIām done schooling this year and more.ā
āO, then,ā said Gabriel gaily, āI suppose weāll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?ā
The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness:
āThe men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.ā
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.
āO Lily,ā he said, thrusting it into her hands, āitās Christmastime, isnāt it? Just . . . hereās a little. . . .ā
He walked rapidly towards the door.
āO no, sir!ā cried the girl, following him. āReally, sir, I wouldnāt take it.ā
āChristmas-time! Christmas-time!ā 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:
āWell, thank you, sir.ā
He waited outside the drawing-room door 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 girlās 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 menās heels 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 ladiesā 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 where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sisterās, 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.
āGretta tells me youāre not going to take a cab back to Monkstown tonight, Gabriel,ā said Aunt Kate.
āNo,ā said Gabriel, turning to his wife, āwe had quite enough of that last year, hadnāt we? Donāt 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.ā
Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.
āQuite right, Gabriel, quite right,ā she said. āYou canāt be too careful.ā
āBut as for Gretta there,ā said Gabriel, āsheād walk home in the snow if she were let.ā
Mrs. Conroy laughed.
āDonāt mind him, Aunt Kate,ā she said. āHeās really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tomās 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 youāll never guess what he makes me wear now!ā
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 Gabrielās solicitude was a standing joke with them.
āGoloshes!ā said Mrs. Conroy. āThatās the latest. Whenever itās wet underfoot I must put on my goloshes. To-night even, he wanted me to put them ...