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.
[...]
One evening he found
himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda Concert Hall]. 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! Its 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 [...] 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 [her husband] encouraged his visits, thinking that his
daughters 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 ladys 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.
[...]
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 recognized as his
own, insisting on the souls incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves,
it said: we are our own. The end of these discourses was that one night,
during which she had shown every sign of unusual excitement, Mrs Sinico
caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek.
Mr Duffy was very
much surprised. Her interpretation of his words disillusioned him. He
did not visit her for a week; then he wrote to her asking her to meet
him. As he did not wish their last interview to be troubled by the influence
of their ruined confessional they met in a little cakeshop near the Parkgate.
It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up
and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to
break off their intercourse: every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.
When they came out of the Park they walked in silence towards the tram;
but here she began to tremble so violently that, fearing another collapse
on her part, he bade her good-bye quickly and left her. A few days later
he received a parcel containing his books and music.
[...]
One evening [...
h]is eyes fixed themselves on a paragraph in the evening paper which he
had propped against the water-carafe. [...]:
DEATH
OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE
A PAINFUL
CASE
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[...] 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 souls
companion! He thought of the hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying
cans and bottles to be filled by the barman.
[...; later, he walks in the Phoenix Park.]
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. [...] 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 lifes 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 lifes feast.
[...]
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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