The dead by anushka (james )

The Dead (1914)

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 Antient Concert Rooms. 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 theywould recognise 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 galoshes. 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. "Guttapercha 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. . . ."

"0, 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?"

"0, 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 Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could hear two persons

talking in the pantry. Then he recognised 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 thedecanter, 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 orders."

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 like 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 silence. Miss

Furlong, who was one of Mary Jane's pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty

waltz she had played; and Mr. Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned promptly to the two

young men who were more appreciative.

A red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room, excitedly clapping her

hands and crying:

"Quadrilles! Quadrilles!"

Close on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying:

"Two gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!"

"O, here's Mr. Bergin and Mr. Kerrigan," said Mary Jane. "Mr. Kerrigan, will you take

Miss Power? Miss Furlong, may I get you a partner, Mr. Bergin. O, that'll just do now.""Three ladies, Mary Jane," said Aunt Kate.

The two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the pleasure, and Mary

Jane turned to Miss Daly.

"O, Miss Daly, you're really awfully good, after playing for the last two dances, but really

we're so short of ladies tonight."

"I don't mind in the least, Miss Morkan."

"But I've a nice partner for you, Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, the tenor. I'll get him to sing later on.

All Dublin is raving about him."

"Lovely voice, lovely voice!" said Aunt Kate.

As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane led her recruits

quickly from the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt Julia wandered slowly into the room,

looking behind her at something.

"What is the matter, Julia?" asked Aunt Kate anxiously. "Who is it?"

Julia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her sister and said,

simply, as if the question had surprised her:

"It's only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him."

In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing.

The latter, a young man of about forty, was of Gabriel's size and build, with very round

shoulders. His face was fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes of

his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse features, a blunt nose, a convex and

receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty

hair made him look sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had beentelling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the knuckles of his left fist backwards

and forwards into his left eye.

"Good-evening, Freddy," said Aunt Julia.

Freddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an offhand fashion

by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then, seeing that Mr. Browne was grinning at him

from the sideboard, crossed the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone

the story he had just told to Gabriel.

"He's not so bad, is he?" said Aunt Kate to Gabriel.

Gabriel's brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered:

"O, no, hardly noticeable."

"Now, isn't he a terrible fellow!" she said. "And his poor mother made him take the

pledge on New Year's Eve. But come on, Gabriel, into the drawing-room."

Before leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr. Browne by frowning and

shaking her forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr. Browne nodded in answer and, when she had

gone, said to Freddy Malins:

"Now, then, Teddy, I'm going to fill you out a good glass of lemonade just to buck you

up."

Freddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer aside

impatiently but Mr. Browne, having first called Freddy Malins' attention to a disarray in his

dress, filled out and handed him a full glass of lemonade. Freddy Malins' left hand accepted the

glass mechanically, his right hand being engaged in the mechanical readjustment of his dress.

Mr. Browne, whose face was once more wrinkling with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of

whisky while Freddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his story ... That's it for now 🥸🥸🥸