I have long ceased to trouble myself as to whether these reactions were contemptible. My concern is with the truth. They were the reactions of an immature young male, of the upbringing and circumstances here set down, confronted with an experience for which he was in no way ready.
I slept sound and deep that night, and woke calm: but soon I was all in a fever for Muriel’s answer. It could not be there before the next evening, since, to minimise the chance of being caught out, we had bound ourselves never to post except under cover of darkness. What we should do when summer came we had not yet bothered to think. As the hours went slowly by, I felt a rising need to confide in someone. But whom could I tell? Certainly none of my daily associates. Billy or Johnny would either laugh or be jealous of me. In any case, they were no more competent to pronounce on the position than I was. Uncle John? Impossible, I told myself fiercely, after the way he had spoken of Muriel. I had to say it firmly, since my heart yearned for him. He told you, said myself to me, to go to him if ever you were in a scrape. A scrape, said I to myself, half a second too late: you dare to call the best thing that ever happened to you a scrape?
The moment I got free from the office, I hurried round to the posting place. I hesitated before putting my hand in. Yes! there it was, a great fat packet of it. This time I couldn’t wait. I ran two streets away, and stood reading it under a lamp. Incoherent, sprawling, wild with joy, it was a torrent of feeling so powerful, so naive, that while it shocked me it swept me off my feet. I walked the streets in a daze. For a while, so impassioned was Muriel’s outpouring, I believed I felt with a strength to equal hers. It was a letter of extraordinary candour, in which a passionate nature exulted, after years of suppression, at the innocent removal of all bars. I cannot transcribe it here, even in the interests of truth. It would not be decent, for the good reason that the girl who wrote it did not realise what she was doing. If the first letter had flooded me, this swept me far out to sea. But the violence left in me the seed of a resentment all the more deadly because it was unconscious. The poor girl was right in her first letter. She had betrayed me, she had broken the pledge. The idol had come down from her pedestal and shown ten times more earthly passion than her worshipper. That is a terrible injury, seldom forgiven.
I awoke at last to my surroundings, and found myself somewhere in Lower Baggot Street. A clock said five and twenty to eight. I could not go home. Still less could I go and have dinner somewhere in the town. A mad resolve leaped into my mind. Without stopping to question it, I hurried down to Merrion Square and boarded a Dalkey tram. I would go to Newtown Smith and see the Doctor.
Fifty minutes later I was at his door. Mary Kate peered at me in the dim light, and at first did not recognise me. She was taller, and, as far as I could see, dirtier, but her grin was as friendly as ever.
The Doctor was sitting motionless by the range. Only four of the globes were alight. He did not move, nor did he seem particularly pleased to see me.
“Hullo,” he said. “So it’s you.”
“Yes, Doctor.” I sat down and tried to feel at ease. “And how are you these days?”
“How would I be.”
He didn’t look too well. He was pale, and wore two coats and a muffler, in spite of the heat of the room. I ignored his ill-humour, and gradually coaxed him to talk a little, but he was morose, falling into long silences, and only emerging from them to complain or curse somebody. When he reached out for the tantalus, his hand shook so that the lip rattled on the glass.
“Don’t stare at a man,” he burst out. “Have you lost all your manners, since you went to live in the city?”
I made some pacific reply, and began to tell him of my work, making clear, without actually saying so, that I got very little time to see anyone.
“I haven’t seen Martin for months,” I wound up.
That seemed to please him, though he said nothing. He smoked for a while, pulling the string that lifted the lid of the range and spitting several times on the coals. I relaxed, and looked round the room. It was all as before, but perhaps a shade dirtier and more untidy: still the remains of food, still the pile of coal and firewood on the floor by the range, and, a new adornment, one of the Doctor’s boots upon the mantelpiece, much mutilated. I glanced from it to him, and saw that his left foot was in a bedroom slipper. I looked at the picture, or as much of it as I could see for the globes. The light was concentrated on the drunken ravens, or whatever they were, that flew about on top. I wondered for the hundredth time who could have painted the picture, and what must have been his state of mind. It is good being back again, I thought to myself. I must come more often.
The Doctor broke in upon my thoughts.
“And what has procured me the honour of your visit tonight?”
I looked at him, and decided.
“I’ve come to ask your advice, Doctor.”
“Does that mean, you want money?”
“No, thanks, Doctor.”
“It’s as well, for you wouldn’t get it. I haven’t any.”
“No. It’s not money. I——”
“I might have known you wanted something, or you Wouldn’t have come. Get on, man. What is it? A girl?”
“Well—yes, in a way.”
“In a way! What do you mean, in a way! There’s only one way.”
“No there isn’t,” I replied, with spirit: and I proceeded to tell him the whole story, up to my reply to Muriel’s declaration. He listened in silence. My rôle grew in the telling, and by the end I was warm with self-approval. I blush when I remember it.
“At any rate,” I wound up, “whatever you think, you’ll agree I acted like a gentleman.”
He pulled his string, the lid of the range rose, and he spat viciously.
“Do you want my opinion?”
“Yes, Doctor. That’s why I’ve told you.”
“Whether you acted like a gentleman I can’t pretend to tell. I have long since lost touch with the breed. But you certainly acted like a bloody fool.”
I sat back, startled, affronted. He fixed me with his eye. Magnified by the two pairs of pince-nez, it gleamed sharp and cold.
“She has taken you in and done for you. She’ll eat you alive. I’m sorry for you.” He kicked irritably with his sound foot. “For God’s sake, Mangan! if you were going to ask my advice, why the hell didn’t you come before you answered her letter?”
I stared at him.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “You don’t realise what sort of girl she is.”
He swore obscenely.
“I realise exactly what sort she is. You don’t. She doesn’t. Look here—in your answer, did you say you would marry her?”
“Not in so many words. But——”
“Did you say or hint or suggest anything about it?”
“No. It wasn’t necessary.”
“Good.” He sat back violently in his chair. “You can still get out of it. Write at once and tell her it’s all a mistake. Tell her you’ve thought it over, and come to the conclusion she was right after all, and you’d better not meet any more.”
“I couldn’t do that, Doctor.” I heard my own voice with a surprised respect, quiet and clear. “I’ve given my word, and I can’t go back on it.”
The Doctor sat dead still for a moment. He opened his eyes wide, then gave a violent shrug.
“Very good,” he said. “Go to hell in your own way.”
He emptied his glass, and poured himself out another.
“Go on,” he said. “What are you waiting for? You’ve got what you came for. Now get out.”
I got up, really hurt. “I’m sorry, Doctor, you feel like that.”
“Don’t be such a sickening hypocrite. You stay away from the place for months, and then, when you want something, you come out and expect the fatted calf.”
“That’s not fair, Doctor.”
“You come when it suits you, because you want advice. Well—you’ve got your advice. Go.”
I picke
d up my hat and coat, and turned to the door. The sorrowful dignity of my exit was rather spoiled by my getting tangled up in one of the ubiquitous globes. As I reached the door, he spoke again.
“I’m disappointed in you, Mangan. You’re as selfish as the rest. And a bloody fool into the bargain.”
I turned and faced him.
“Doctor,” I said, “you have been my good friend for many years, and I’ll always be grateful to you. If I have offended you or neglected you——”
“Neglected me. The conceit of the pup.”
“—or fallen short in my duty to you, or been thoughtless, I’m truly sorry. I’ve had so many happy times in this room that I’m not going away on unfriendly terms. I’m not going while you’re out with me like this.”
He said nothing at all. Encouraged, I stepped back into the room.
“Come on, Doctor. Fair do’s. You’ve said hard things about my girl, and told me I’m a bloody fool.”
“You are a bloody fool.”
“All right, maybe I am.” I sat down. “But that’s no reason for sending me away with a flea in my car.”
“I don’t take back a single word I said to you.” He tilted his head back, and glared at me belligerently. “If you like to stay after that, you can.”
I grinned at him. “I do like to stay,” I said: and for the next hour I sat there, talking to him, drawing him out, doing all in my power to make amends: for I had hurt him by not coming oftener to see him, I saw that. I’d forgotten how touchy and sensitive he was. Indeed, I’d forgotten everything.
He responded grudgingly, he delivered some of his old characteristic stabs of truculent wit, but I could not help seeing that his general state had worsened. He was drinking more, and his mood varied dangerously. Then, just as I was getting up to go, he softened, and said I should not go so soon: and I saw, incredulously, that he was lonely and frightened and did not want to be left alone. The instant I sat down again, he insulted me, in case I should dare to pity him. He grew very drunk, and begged me not to leave him. He tried to give Malvolio’s speech, but broke off in the middle.
“My memory’s leaky,” he said, “but I’ll have it again tomorrow”: and he looked at me anxiously.
“Of course you will,” I said.
“Your uncle knows his Shakespeare,” he said. “Though, mind you, he’s not word perfect, by any means. He makes mistakes.”
“He’s very fond of it,” I said.
“We had a great time, that night you brought him here first. We spouted half the bloody Bard, between us. Why the hell didn’t you bring him here sooner?”
“I tried to, Doctor. But either he or you——”
“Ashamed of me, I suppose. Ashamed of me because I’m a boozer. Huh! Your uncle’s a boozer too. Let me tell you that, Mr. bloody gentleman Mangan.”
He slowly closed his eyes.
“’Acted like a gentleman’! God! Well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
It was half past two when I got him to bed, and set out to walk home. The streets were deserted. The lights revealed their emptiness. Here and there a cat walked daintily, and once a woman in a shawl stopped me and muttered something. The sea sounded all along the shore at Merrion, and a goods train clanked and puffed along, unseen but for the engine lamp and a dim black disturbance. The Bailey light popped, regular and friendly, across the bay, and from Glontarf inward the lights were steady along the arm of the shore. I must be out more at night, I thought. The solitude and the exercise sharpened my perceptions till I felt I could bring the whole of my experience into focus. Never had I felt so grown up, so mature. And rightly, I said to myself, for you are entering now upon grown up life. I saw all my previous life, Uncle John, the Doctor, Martin, as suspended, belonging to a previous epoch. Good, but done with. They were of the world from which Providence had pleased to raise me. Naturally they could not understand nor sympathise with what belonged to the new world. I blessed them, and set my face toward the future.
I received every encouragement to do so. Nothing happened that day, except that I was very sleepy, and grew depressed towards nightfall. But the next day I was petrified to receive a curt letter from Mr. Travers, requiring me to call in the evening. This effectively broke up my new mood of resolution. Adulthood fell from me like a wet cloak, and I became a schoolboy summoned before his headmaster. The extent of my dependence on the grown up world, my deference to it, was made horribly clear to me in the hours during which I waited for my visit to Mr. Travers. Such was my mood, that I was hardly able to heed when. my superior in the office, a testy middle-aged man from Westport, gave me a furious rating for some mistake.
“I don’t know what’s come to yee,” he said. “Yesterda’ yee were asleep, and today yee are bewitched.”
Normally I would have been scared and cast down: I was still young enough to care disproportionately if anyone found fault with my work: but what lay ahead scared me so much more that this was merely incidental. By the time I presented myself at the house, I was shaking with fright, and had had to stop on the way out and go to a public house to ease my bowels.
I was shown, not into the parlour, but into Mr. Travers’ study. It was empty, cold, fireless, and smelt of stale tobacco. There was no colour in it. The bookshelves held dully bound magazines of the ‘eighties. There was a candle with an elaborate metal shade, like a lantern, which projected the light upon one’s book or paper. There was an old praying chair with sockets for the sconces, but the sconces were gone. One of the arms was cracked, and had been repaired badly with another wood, stained unsuccessfully to counterfeit the original colour. Under the desk were a pair of worn leather slippers, placed neatly together. I stood, half consciously noting these things, sick with misery and anticipation. It shows how uncertain I must have been in my own mind that the only interview I could envisage was one in which I was blamed and abused. As for standing up to him and demanding his daughter’s hand in marriage—I often wonder if any man had a more inglorious and abject beginning to his romance (God save the word) than I.
The door opened suddenly, and Mr. Travers came in. I gasped with shock at the sight of him. The man looked ghastly. His face was white and yellow, there were bags under his eyes, and the whites were bloodshot.
“Sit down.”
I sat down. He stood for a few seconds, looking at me, biting the fringe of his moustache. Then he went to the window, and stood by the drawn curtains.
“I have heard something which I cannot, which I will not believe. At least—I would give anything—anything—for it not to be true.” He shot a look at me, then looked away again. “What gave you the hardihood to propose marriage to my daughter?”
“I didn’t propose to her, sir.”
He drew in his breath. “I don’t want to quibble with you. What gave you the hardihood to tell her you loved her?”
I hesitated, swallowed, and betrayed her.
“I didn’t. At least——”
“I have your letter here.” He took it from his pocket. “I want you to tell me—— Its wording——” The man was in agony. “What induced you to write her such a letter?”
“I wrote it in answer to hers.”
“Ah!” The cry made me jump. “She—she wrote to you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me she had fallen in love with me.”
He began to shake all over. His eyes rolled like a dog’s: his face was convulsed. I half rose, terrified he was going to have a fit. With a quick gesture, he bade me remain in my chair. At last he spoke, in the voice of a man pressed between heavy weights.
“Can you show me—this letter?”
In silence I took it out and handed it to him. He read it, breathing harshly through his nose. At the end he made a queer grimace of despair, and passed the back of his hand across his forehead. Then, fiercely, he handed it back to me.
“Put it away,” he shouted. “Never let me see it again.”
I put it away. He walked across the room. Then he came back, pulled up a chair, and sat down.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
I could not have been more flabbergasted. I stared at him in total incredulity.
“I would never have believed that a daughter of mine could so forget her sex, her modesty, could so utterly disgrace herself. You, of course, had no alternative. Or no. I wrong you. You had. You could have rebuked her and cast her off as a wanton. Instead, you chose to protect her from the full consequence of what she had done, to save her good name. I could not have complained if you had published her shame on every hoarding in Dublin. You did not. For that, I am grateful to you.”
I decided that he had gone mad. He looked at me under his ragged eyebrows.
“Well,” he said harshly, “what are we going to do now? You have pitied her, and helped us to hide her disgrace. She has put you in this terrible position. How are we to get you out?”
“But, Mr. Travers, I don’t want to be got out. You see, I do love her. I loved her all the time; only, of course, I would never have dared to say so.”
He looked at me for a long time, and his face gradually relaxed into something like approval.
“You are an honest fellow. At least”—he scowled—“you deceived me in one thing. You carried on a clandestine correspondence behind my back, of which you knew I must disapprove. But I realise Muriel is the instigator. This unnatural girl——”
“No, sir. Truly. I began it.”
“She is four years your senior. She has had the advantages of an upbringing and a Christian home such as you have not. In anything between you, she must be the instigator. No, sir— not another word. It is well meant to try and exculpate her. But you cannot. No one can. No one ever shall. I can never, never forgive her, nor feel the same to her. To write—to tell a man she loved him—-to forget all the modesty and delicacy of her sex——”
He was livid again.
“Sir,” I besought him. “It’s all right, really it is. No one knows but me.” I suddenly remembered the Doctor, with a sick pang of guilt, but I carried bravely on. “And, since I love her too——”
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