Of Guntey I have given you some account, but not of Siff. Siff was a little stunted devil, maybe four foot six, very broad in the shoulders, with a queer twist in his left leg. He wore always a filthy brown coat much too big for him, except in the sleeves, for his arms were abnormally long. His trousers fluttered in rags round his feet, and the heels of his boots were worn down to the uppers on the outside, since he waddled like an ape. His face at first sight was for all the world like a brown apple that has been lying on a shelf for months. When you got closer, you saw that the brown, softly wrinkled skin had white and grey patches on it, and there was one awful isthmus of a patch along the jugular vein under his left ear. His ears were simian, big, thin, flat, with nibbled edges. He had small piggy eyes; you could see little of them save the glitter, and they could glitter like a snake’s. He wore an old hat that had once been hard, but the rim had lost its stiffness. He had a thin sharp squeaky voice, and commanded an astounding flow of the most acidulous language. You didn’t have to hear Siff come into a room, even into a bar room, to know he was there. He reeked of iodoform.
Siff lived in Caggen’s Court, next door to Guntey, his commander. Guntey exercised suzerainty over all the denizens of Caggen’s Court, his powers extending to the droit du seigneur. Legend had it that his eldest daughter, by one of his very first wives, was included in his harem. On Saturday night, with punctual regularity, Guntey got fiercely drunk, and as he staggered down his kingdom the natives fled before him, ballads ceased by magic, battles were postponed, marbles hastily pocketed, windows shut fast, and silence fell, broken only by Guntey. The police dreaded him almost as badly as his neighbours. His name was used to terrify recruits.
Caggen’s Court took its name from the pub at the head of it. This pub was Guntey’s palace and headquarters, and Siff, besides being his business partner, was his Secretary of State. Siff would take messages for you, get a bob on a horse for you, bring you back your winnings if you had any, or run any errand for you, however dubious, once you had received the seal of Guntey’s approval. That you needed to enter the Court at all, much less the pub. Siff’s duties for Guntey included that of procurer-general, and I think it was from some abuse of his authority in this respect that the trouble came.
One Christmas Eve Guntey reeled out of Caggen’s down his palace walk, and, halting at his portcullis, yelled for Siff. He had been on the warpath all day, and was in a flaming rage, which we knew to be directed against his henchman. All Guntey’s subjects had been keeping quiet, lest by any mischance they should divert his rage to themselves. I am not drawing on my imagination in describing this. I was there, with Johnny Sullivan, waiting in an upper room of the pub till Guntey should have drunk himself helpless, and it would be safe to go home. Johnny had been keen to visit the Court. I, knowing Guntey’s ways, had protested that it was a Saturday, but Johnny argued, and I was forced to agree, that Guntey kept sober as a rule till about half past six in the evening. It was our bad luck that his rage at being cheated in either sex or money, whatever Siff had done to him, should have made him start his potations at an earlier hour.
Guntey shattered the silence of his kingdom with an appalling yell and a volley of curses. Windows were opened with great care, and ladies peeped out from any angle that was safe. We looked out too. The scene was weird, fit for one of Doré’s illustrations of the Inferno. Caggen’s Court was a noisome cul de sac, lit by one feeble gas-lamp, the mantle of which was invariably broken, and gave a green unnatural devil’s brew sort of a light, in which the reeling giant looked like some horror from a mediaeval legend. Guntey yelled again, and Siff knew better than to emerge. But he did not know enough to move out of his room. Maybe he thought Guntey was farther gone in drink than he was. Anyway, Guntey put his head down, like a charging bull, and with a sudden agility that made the watchers’ breath hiss in horror, he dashed up the Court, and entered Siff’s stairway. We heard him plunging up, we heard him hammer on the door and yell at Siff to open. There came a crash, followed by Siff’s high animal squeal; then Guntey appeared with Siff like a rat in his mighty paws.
What followed was short but had the horror of nightmare. I have seen murderous violence many times since, but never such as this. It was all the worse for the green unnatural light in which it happened. Guntey belted Siff to bits. He smashed him up against the wall, he kicked him about till the dwarf was like a bag of wet clothes and his squeals sank to a shrill bubbling, then to silence. He kept picking up the shapeless bundle and slinging it about the court, as I’ve seen boys throw a dead cat. Then, as he picked him up yet again, Guntey let a yell, and dropped Siff as if he were an adder: and some hero took the opportunity to put a brick through the lamp.
I don’t know who fetched Siff away. We waited a long time, sick with horror and fright. Johnny Sullivan, who was in his second year at the hospital, said he must go and give Siff first aid. We held him back, lest Guntey be hiding anywhere, and serve him the same way. He wasn’t sorry to be held back, and you couldn’t blame him, after what we’d seen. After three quarters of an hour of total silence, we stole down; and were deeply relieved to find the Court empty. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept seeing Guntey bash the madly struggling bundle of clothes against the wall, I kept hearing those high inhuman squeals of agony. There are some things the mind recoils from, and I was quite unable to connect the savage monster in the gaslight with the great genial oaf who had come into Ann Dunn’s kitchen in Fitzwilliam Street to shift her furniture.
Next day, Christmas Day, we heard that Siff had been taken —strange irony!—to St. Brigid’s, and went to enquire for him. We were too late to see him alive. He was in the morgue, stone dead, and all we saw was the sheet over him. He wouldn’t have been good to see, for the Assistant Master, who knew Johnny and entertained us very generously in his comfortable room, told us he had never seen a man so injured by human agency. Siff was broken as if he had been in a train crash.
Naturally, the police could get no evidence from the denizens of Caggen’s Court: and they did not know Johnny and I had been there. Tradition was too strong with me in any case. No one who had spent his evenings in Martin’s would give the police any information whatever. Johnny, who had no such training, might have had a stiffer moral conflict, so it was well they knew nothing of us.
But a judgment fell on Guntey more terrible than the rope. When I saw him next, he was pale of face, entirely sober, waiting in the queue at the Outpatients’ door of Steven’s Hospital. Soon he haunted that door. From a huge strong ranting roaring bull of a man he became subdued and sulky and scared. He got thinner and balder and greyer and sicker and sulkier, till you could lead him around with a bootlace. He had to have a man to help him with his sacks of grain, and his black horse grew sleek and fat and perky, now that Guntey couldn’t kick him in the belly any more. It was the most dramatic vengeance, the swiftest decomposition of a man I’ve ever seen. There was no salvarsan in those days. Guntey dwindled before our eyes. His fingers rotted from the nails down. He was seen then with his face all bandaged, walking with a big stick. He turned religious, and went to early Mass. Caggen’s Court was an abode of peace, the women preened themselves at their doorsteps, and a new ruler arose, one Shoveller Brady, who one day stood in Guntey’s way and taunted him and got only a surly mumble in reply.
Then Guntey disappeared. He died in St. Brigid’s ward, a couple of beds away from the one where Siff had died. The source of his infection was a bite on the thumb. Siff had not been called Siff for nothing.
So you can see I got a new dread of infection to keep me away from the quayside girls. After this object lesson, I wouldn’t even let Eily kiss me. She looked at me in hurt reproach when I held her off. Then understanding dawned in her eyes, and she drew away gently, the hurt deeper than ever. I felt a worm, I writhed on my bed in misery, for I hated above all things to hurt a person’s feelings, and I was truly fond of Eily. But the conflict was too deep, and a wise instinct kept me off, for if I had gone on kissing
her I might have developed an aversion from all kisses, the sort of thing that nowadays they call a complex.
Well—there I was, and that was the sort I was, when I first met Muriel. Often, I think, we make an unconscious struggle to avoid our destiny. It’s as if a kind but ill-advised and ineffective fairy were trying, like a doting grandmother, to keep from us something we have to go through for our soul’s good. I knew Muriel’s brother slightly, he was a friend of Johnny, and one week-end he invited the two of us to his parents’ house to tea. I’d inevitably have met Muriel there, but I developed such a bad cold that I excused myself and stayed in all Saturday and Sunday in an effort to get rid of it. That cold was the kind fairy’s doing. She saw what was coming.
But kind fairies are no sort of a match for destiny. Muriel was in my stars, and in less than a month I met her by what looked like the veriest accident. I went to a place I never went to at other times, I stepped into her orbit, I walked into her parlour—except that she was helpless too, and it was as much a fluke for her as for me.
Chapter VII
I met Muriel, of all places, at the Scalp. When I walked in the country, I liked to get right away, and to avoid the beaten track of picnic places. I had no objection to the far side of Kattygollagher, and there wasn’t much you could teach me about Ballycorus and that landmark of an outmoded industry, the Shot Tower. But, even in those early days, the Scalp was getting popular with the crowds who wanted just to sample the edge of the country, like ladies paddling in the sea and trying it with their toe. So Billy and Johnny and I, when the fit took us to walk, made for Three Rock or Roundwood or some place well away, and let the waggonettes and the jaunting cars clop their way down the narrow road and the parties in them utter genteel exclamations at the rocks above them, and take tea in the cottage gardens that were already set out to cater for them. We felt ourselves superior. Small gangs of students used often to go off into the hills in those days, and spend a whole Sunday walking, calling themselves “the mountainy men” or some such nonsense. I expect they still do. We were a little more realistic than that, but we looked down on the trippers at the Scalp.
One day, calling in famished at a favourite cottage, we ound it shut. There was nowhere nearer than the Scalp. We consulted ruefully, and decided that hunger was more important than our principles. So, feeling somewhat ashamed, we arrived at one of the tea gardens, and, after having to wait a bit, we made, I must confess, a very good tea.
While we were at our tea I noticed a girl at a table close by, sitting with a young man and two grown ups. I noticed her first when she raised her voice, and was shushed by the grown ups, who looked around in horror to see if everyone’s attention had been drawn, just as if she had used bad language. She was in fear of a wasp, which kept buzzing round. Her father, as I supposed him to be, spoke sharply to her, ordering her to sit still, and it would not hurt her.
“Let it settle,” he kept saying. “Let it settle. Then Claude can kill it.”
The young man, a severe expression on his face, sat stiffly, holding a spoon, with which he prepared to crush the wasp as soon as it should settle. Instead, it flew close to the girl’s face. She craned away, wrinkling her nose in fear, and half rose from her seat.
“Muriel!” said her mother reprovingly.
“I can’t help it. Oh, kill it, Claude, please! I do hate them so.”
She was almost in tears, but she got no sympathy at all, her father telling her not to make an exhibition of herself. Then the wasp flew away, and she was able to go on with her tea, flushed, laughing nervously.
I studied her as I ate. She was pretty, in a pink and white way more popular then than now. She had the kind of looks that old men go in raptures over: soft skin, blue eyes with long fair lashes, and a profusion of soft hair of reddish yellow, piled up and braided in a sort of bird’s nest, and always a little untidy, with what the old men would call stray tendrils escaping here and there. Her nose was straight and bold, her mouth good. The features individually had character, but the total was pretty only. When presently her parents relaxed, and her father and Claude began to tease her about the wasp, she flushed again and laughed, and then she was strikingly pretty. Many eyes were on her as the party rose.
As soon as my tea had settled, I looked up at the rocks, and thought I would like to explore them. The others exclaimed profanely that I could do so by myself. They would sit and smoke. Not ill pleased, I climbed up above, and presently stood on the big boulder that overhangs thé valley. I had to acknowledge to myself that the view was grand—if only there weren’t so many visitors.
Well—I must be getting back to the others. We had a good way to walk to the train. I set off downwards, singing to myself, and watching carefully where I put my feet. All at once my sixth sense told me that I was being observed. I looked up, and saw the pretty girl sitting on a rock, with Claude standing awkwardly at her side. She was holding a shoe in her hand.
Her eyes were on me, and there was an expectant look in them, almost the shy beginnings of a smile. The thought came to me that she had maybe hurt her ankle.
“Can I be of any help?”
Normally, I should have been far too bashful, but the idea that she was in difficulties loosed my tongue.
She looked up at Claude, as if referring the whole matter to him. She didn’t know if it was proper to speak to a stranger.
Claude considered me haughtily. He was perhaps three or four years my senior, and I took an immediate dislike to him.
“I am afraid you cannot,” he said. “That is, unless you are a shoemaker.” He smiled at this, and glanced at her for applause at the witticism. “The young lady has lost the heel of one of her shoes.”
“It’s so absurd.” She gave me a warm smile, as if to atone for his manner. “I can’t walk on these rocks.”
I came up to her. All my hesitation had gone.
“Have you the heel? Or is it lost?”
“No. I have it here.”
I held out my hand. She gave another side glance at Claude, then handed me the shoe and the heel. It was a nice shoe, of good quality, rather on the solid, sensible side. But then, her clothes and her hat were rather like that, too old for her. I examined the shoe. The holding nails were still in the upper, but one had been bent aside. It was the simplest matter to put on the heel. Heaven knows, at the barber’s I had seen and learned to make far more drastic repairs.
I sat down, took out my knife, one of those heavy composite affairs so dear to boys. The Doctor had given it to me in a fit of generosity one Christmas. With the pincers I straightened the crooked nail, and fixed the other. Five minutes’ work, a little hammering with a suitable stone, and the job was done.
“There,” I said, “I think you’ll find that will hold, at any rate till you get home.”
She was profuse in her gratitude, and flushed most becomingly. “Isn’t that clever of him, Claude?” she exclaimed.
“Very,” said Claude. He was ill pleased. “Are you a shoemaker?” he asked me.
“I am not.”
It was a silly answer, and my tone was even sillier. I felt myself redden. He turned away. The girl, in an access of modesty, turned her back to put on her shoe, and we, as became gentlemen, gazed fixedly at the view until the shoe was in place. She stood up.
“That’s lovely,” she said, and flashed me a grateful glance. “It’s as good as ever.”
“Mind it doesn’t come off on the way down,” Claude warned her.
“I’m sure it won’t,” she said.
And it didn’t. Falling discreetly behind, I saw that much before I rejoined Billy and Johnny in the garden.
They still weren’t ready to start, but we got up presently, and went out of the garden gate. There I pulled up in confusion, for the girl and her party were just getting into a waggonette, and with them was Johnny’s friend, Lance Travers. He nodded to us, rather reservedly, for he didn’t like Billy Daniels, and at that moment the girl looked up. She flushed, nodded her he
ad towards me, and said something to Lance. Now they were all looking at me, parents and all.
Johnny stood still. “What the blazes-?” he began, and broke off as Lance jumped down, and walked over to us.
“Hullo, Sullivan. Hullo, Mangan. Come over and be introduced. My father wants to meet you and thank you for what you did for Muriel.’’
So that was who they were! As I walked over to the waggonette, I kept my eyes on their faces. If my cheeks were ever redder than by the time I got there, I don’t know when it can have been.
They stooped down and shook hands with me. Muriel gave me a special smile, and Claude, I was glad to see, looked sicker than ever. I stood there a minute or so talking, till Mr. Travers judged that the civilities of the occasion were exhausted, and pulled out his watch.
“We must be going,” he said authoritatively. “Jump up, Lance. Good-bye, Mr. Mangan. And thank you once more.”
Lance jumped up, the waggonette started with a jerk and drew off in a swirl of dust, leaving me staring after it. I recovered myself, and went back to my friends. Johnny looked at me oddly.
“What was all that?” he asked. “Why the enthusiasm to make your acquaintance?”
“You weren’t included, I notice,” Billy put in to him.
I explained what had happened, feeling their eyes on me.
“Well,” said Johnny drily, “you don’t know how privileged you are. It’s not many people they let her speak to.”
“Bloody set of Rathmines snobs,” commented Billy, kicking a stone off the road.
“That fella Lance,” Johnny said. “He angers me sometimes. Did you see the way he just gave me a nod, and then asked you to come over to speak with them?”
“Like a bloody royal summons,” said Billy. “Who are they, anyway?”
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