specially adapted for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the
world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings. It was a
text for business men and professional men. Jesus Christ, with His divine
understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not
called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the
world, and, to a certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to give
them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those
very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in matters
religious.
He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant
purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men. He came to speak to
business men and he would speak to them in a business-like way. If he might use the
metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every
one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they
tallied accurately with conscience.
Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little failings, understood
the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life. We
might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations: we might have, we all
had, our failings. But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that
was: to be straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every point to say:
`Well, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.'
But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank
and say like a man:
`Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with
God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts.'
The Dead
Lily, the caretaker's 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 Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew
them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of
Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary
Jane's 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 Usher's 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 Ancient 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 Eve's, 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
caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's 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 o'clock 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 Jane's 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.'
`I'll 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, here's Mrs Conroy.'
Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed
Gabriel's 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. I'll 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 we're 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. `I'm done schooling this year and more.'
`O, then,' said Gabriel gaily, `I suppose we'll 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, `it's Christmastime, isn't it? Just... here's a
little... '
He walked rapidly towards the door.
`O no, sir!' cried the girl, following him. `Really, sir, I wouldn't 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 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 girl's 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 recognize from Shakespeare
or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's 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 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
where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face,
healthier than her sister's, 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 you're 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, hadn't
we? Don't 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 can't be too careful.'
`But as for Gretta there,' said Gabriel, `she'd walk home in the snow if she were let.'
Mrs Conroy laughed.
`Don't mind him, Aunt Kate,' she said. `He's really an awful bother, what with green
shades for Tom's 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 you'll
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 Gabriel's solicitude was a standing joke with them.
`Goloshes!' said Mrs Conroy. `That's the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot I must
put on my goloshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The
next thing he'll buy me will be a diving suit.'
Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly, while Aunt Kate nearly
doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt
Julia's face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephew's face. After a
pause she asked:
`And what are goloshes, Gabriel?'
`Goloshes, Julia!' exclaimed her sister. `Goodness me, don't you know what goloshes
are? You wear them over your... over your boots, Gretta, isn't 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 brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:
`It's 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, you've seen about
the room. Gretta was saying... '
`O, the room is all right,' replied Gabriel. `I've taken one in the Gresham.'
`To be sure,' said Aunt Kate, `by far the best thing to do. And the children, Gretta,
you're 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! There's that Lily, I'm sure I don't know what has come over her
lately. She's 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.
`Now, I ask you,'she said almost testily, `where is Julia going? Julia! Julia! Where are
you going?'
Julia, who had gone half-way down one flight, came back and announced blandly:
`Here's Freddy.'
At the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the pianist told that
the waltz had ended. The drawing-room door was opened from within and some
couples came out. Aunt Kate drew Gabriel aside hurriedly and whispered into his ear:
`Slip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he's all right, and don't let him up if
he's screwed. I'm sure he's screwed. I'm sure he is.'
Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could hear two persons
talking in the pantry. Then he recognized Freddy Malins' laugh. He went down the
stairs noisily.
`It's such a relief,' said Aunt Kate to Mrs Conroy, `that Gabriel is here. I always feel
easier in my mind when he's here... Julia, there's Miss Daly and Miss Power will take
some refreshment. Thanks for your beautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time.'
A tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy skin, who was
passing out with his partner, said:
`And may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?'
`Julia,' said Aunt Kate summarily, `and here's Mr Browne and Miss Furlong. Take
them in, Julia, with Miss Daly and Miss Power.'
`I'm the man for the ladies,' said Mr Browne, pursing his lips until his moustache
bristled, and smiling in all his wrinkles. `You know, Miss Morkan, the reason they are
so fond of me is--'
He did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of earshot, at once
led the three young ladies into the back room. The middle of the room was occupied
by two square tables placed end to end, and on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker
were straightening and smoothing a large cloth. On the sideboard were arrayed dishes
and plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top of the
closed Square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and sweets. At a smaller
sideboard in one corner two young men were standing, drinking hop-bitters.
Mr Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to some ladies' punch,
hot, strong, and sweet. As they said they never took anything strong, he opened three
bottles of lemonade for them. Then he asked one of the young men to move aside,
and, taking hold of the decanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky.
The young men eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip.
`God help me,' he said, smiling, `it's the doctor's order.'
His wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies laughed in
musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and fro, with nervous jerks of
their shoulders. The boldest said:
`O, now, Mr Browne, I'm sure the doctor never ordered anything of the kind.'
Mr Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling mimicry:
`Well, you see, I'm the famous Mrs Cassidy, who is reported to have said: "Now,
Mary Grimes, if I don't take it, make me take it, for I feel I want it."'
His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had assumed a very
low Dublin accent, so that the young ladies, with one instinct, received his speech in
