X + 

At fifteen minutes to one, Bartly Mulholland entered Biddy Burke’s kitchen and sat by the fire. Nobody addressed him. He saluted nobody. Biddy Burke was sitting on the other side of the fire, on a stool, smoking a cigarette. + 

Biddy Burke was a middle-aged woman with a lowering expression in her black eyes, with puffed-out, sallow cheeks and a swollen throat. She was of the type of Irishwoman that is prone to sudden passions, due to the habit of eating enormous meals and then suffering from digestive disorders. They are tenderhearted people, utterly lacking in an aesthetic sense, violent, quarrelsome, savage, generous, inconsistent. Biddy was dressed in a white blouse and a blue skirt. She wore her greyish hair drawn back to her poll tightly and parted in the middle according to the peasant fashion. + 

There were other people in the room, two young women who sat on chairs and Jimmy “the fancy man,” who lay on his right side, on the settle opposite the fire. + 

Mulholland looked around the room slowly. Then he spoke. + 

“Was Gypo Nolan here this evenin’, Mrs. Burke?” he said. + 

Biddy Burke slowly shook her head, carefully examining Mulholland’s face as she did so. Then, as if she suddenly remembered something important, she leaned forward and bunched her lips together. + 

“There hasn’t a man stood within me door this blessed night,” she said in her rough, croaky voice. “No, nor damn the bottle o’ stout did I sell. That’s the God’s truth. Some people find Biddy Burke all right when they’re in trouble an’ they got nothin’, but when their tune changes they give her a wide berth. I’ll soon be in the workhouse at the rate things are goin’. I never saw anythin’ like it. The country is goin’ to the wall. That’s all there’s to it. I knew they’d make a mess of it with their revolutions an’ their shootin’ the peelers. Not that I didn’t do me bit to help the boys, God bless ’em, but ’tisn’t the boys that done the fightin’ that get the jobs. So it isn’t. It never is, if ye ask Biddy Burke. It’s them publicans an’ bishops that were always top dog in this country. ’Twas that way before an’ ’tis that way now an’ ’twill be that way when Biddy Burke is goin’ to meet her God on the day of judgment. They were talkin’ about English tyrants, but sure nobody ever saw the likes o’ these tyrants with their searches an’ their raids, an’ every divil’s wart of a farmer’s son that can pull on his breeches without his mother’s help, runnin’ around an’ callin’ himself a gineral. Aw! Gypo Nolan! He’s like the rest o’ them, Bartly Mulholland. You take it from Biddy. Indeed then, he hasn’t set a foot within me door. It’s not that I haven’t heard of his goin’s on though. Huh!” + 

“What did ye hear about him?” asked Mulholland, peering at her. + 

“What did I hear about him?” cried Biddy Burke. “What d’ye take me for, Bartly Mulholland? An information bureau or what? Don’t be botherin’ me.” + 

Mulholland sighed. Then he took out his pipe and lit it. He put his back against the wall and began to smoke in apparent comfort. There was silence. Through the open street door sounds of footsteps and of voices came in through the rain now and again. They were subdued sounds. It seemed that everything was waiting for something monstrous to happen. + 

The two young women began in their gruff, cracked voices to discuss the death of Francis Joseph McPhillip. They talked casually, in whispers, indifferently. + 

Mulholland peered at them for a moment. Then he sank back into his thoughts. His thoughts just then were not at all comfortable. He had lost track of Gypo. He had been wandering about trying to find his quarry again, absolutely without success. Gypo had been swallowed up. A more nervous man than Mulholland would have not taken the matter so philosophically, so coolly. Because if Gypo could not be found again, Mulholland’s own life would be in serious danger. But Mulholland was not considering that aspect of the affair. Mulholland was a sincere revolutionist. It was the danger to the “cause” that worried him. The “cause” was his whole existence. He did not understand any other purpose in life except the achievement of an Irish Workers’ Republic. + 

Still⁠ ⁠… as he sat on the stool, stoically smoking his pipe, other worries came into his mind. If he could not find Gypo and anything serious happened to himself as a result, what would become of his wife and his six young children? He hardly ever thought of them seriously, in this way, with a view to the future. The future held a workers’ republic, somewhere in the distance, when there would be no slums, no hunger, no sick wives, no children that got the mumps and the rickets and the German measles and the whooping-cough with devilish regularity. It never worried him to think that his wife and his six children were for the moment living in a miserable slum shanty, with his wife going rapidly into a decline through hard work. That had to be. The “cause” was above all these things. Why! It was his wife who often urged him on to give all his time to the “cause” whenever he became slightly despondent or disheartened, timorous or apathetic. + 

Ever struggling without reward! + 

So he thought suddenly. But almost as soon as the thought entered his brain another thought came in mad, bloodshot pursuit. He pulled savagely at his pipe and ejected the first thought in terror. + 

Even “mentally” it was dangerous to think of leaving the Organization without being expelled. After all⁠ ⁠… terror was the foundation of his zeal. + 

He forced himself into his habitual calm. His face assumed the impenetrable aspect which he had developed during five years of constant practice. He turned to Biddy Burke again. + 

“Where did ye say ye saw Gypo carrying on?” he said casually. + 

Biddy Burke looked at him ferociously, emitting two columns of cigarette smoke through her fat nostrils. + 

“I didn’t say I saw him carryin’ on anywhere, Bartly Mulholland,” she said angrily. “Be the holy! These late years every one o’ ye is as smart as a corporation lawyer. Now look here, Bartly. I don’t want to have any truck atall with ye or yer crowd. Ye know that too. I know ye, me fine bucko, an’ I don’t think⁠ ⁠… eh⁠ ⁠… well o’ course, Bartly⁠ ⁠… ye know what I mane.⁠ ⁠… It’s not⁠ ⁠… uh⁠ ⁠… that I mane any harm⁠ ⁠… but a poor woman like mesel’⁠ ⁠… o’ course I’m ready as I said before to do me duty for me fellow-men⁠ ⁠… but it’s like this⁠ ⁠… what does a woman like me gain be gettin’ mixed up in politics⁠ ⁠… that is o’ course⁠ ⁠… look here,” she continued in a lower voice, “I heard he was up in Aunt Betty’s, raisin’ hell up there. He was one o’ your crowd, wasn’t he?” + 

Mulholland looked at her sombrely. She drew back immediately. + 

“Well, ye know me well, Bartly,” she muttered apologetically and nervously. “I’m not sayin’ anythin’ out o’ place. Am I, girls? Sure⁠—” + 

Just then an interruption came from outside. Footsteps came rushing to the door. Then gasps were heard. Then a panting sound became audible. Then Katie Fox burst into the room, with her right hand on her hip, her eyes glittering, looking about her wildly. She rushed up to Biddy Burke. She bent down from the hips towards her and began to speak immediately, gasping after each word. + 

“What d’ye think of it, Biddy?” she cried. “D’ye know where I found him? D’ye know where I found him? The big hulkin’ waster! An’ she that’s not to fit to walk the same street as me with her big, ugly arms around his neck! She laughed in me face. She laughed”⁠—screaming⁠—“in me face! I wish to God I had hit her with the bottle I threw. That ud spoil her mug. Though it was spoiled enough the day she was born. Who was she, may I ask? Who was she, Biddy Burke? I’m askin’ ye. Ye don’t know an’ ye’d never guess in a thousand years. Who would she be but me bould Connemara Maggie! That imperent trapster that came up here last year as a skivvy in a Gaelic Leaguer’s house, one o’ them crazy fellahs that goes around in kilts. She came up here an’ before she was three months in town she was put in the family way be a soldier. Then she comes down here, with her curly locks an’ her big face like a heifer, savin’ the comparison. I pushed up past Aunt Betty in the hall an’ she shoutin’ after me. I bust into the room an’ there he was, sittin’ on the floor, with his legs spread out, drinkin’ outa the neck of a bottle, laughin’ like a fool, with her sittin’ beside him. ‘Hello, Katie,’ says he, ‘d’ye want a drink?’ ‘ ’Twill do ye good,’ says she with a giggle. Me curse on her! I gave him a bit o’ me mind an’⁠ ⁠… Biddy, for God’s sake, gimme a drink o’ water. Biddy, listen.” + 

She threw herself suddenly at Biddy’s feet and began to moan. But almost immediately she jumped to her feet again and cried out: + 

“An’ what’s more he gave three quid to that swank of an Englishwoman. He gave her three quid and he paid two quid more to Aunt Betty, money that was owin’ to her for board, an’ he never gave me a penny. Me that kept him for the last six months when I hadn’t a bite mesel’. But I’ll tell everybody. I’ll tell.” + 

She looked around her wildly. She saw Mulholland. She came up to him and bent down close to his face. Her hat trailed off. Her hair fell down over her eyes. She swayed. She pointed her right forefinger menacingly at Mulholland’s forehead. + 

“Listen to me, Bartly,” she said. “You remember me when I was a good girl an’ when I was a member o’⁠ ⁠… ye know yersel’⁠ ⁠… Well, so was he, wasn’t he? Well, can ye tell me how did Frankie McPhillip get plugged? Who got the twenty quid that the Farmers’ Union gave out? Where did he get the money? I’m not shoutin’ any names. No names, no pack drills. But ye can guess for yersel’. Where did he get his money from? Was it be robbin’ a sailor at the back o’ Cassidy’s same as he told me in the pub? Was it?” She suddenly threw her hands over her head and clawed the air, shrieking. They jumped up and caught her. + 

Mulholland got to his feet quietly. He stole out into the street, avoiding the people who came rushing up to Biddy Burke’s door, attracted by the screaming. + 

Mulholland chuckled as he crossed the street. He would have plenty of news for Gallagher. After this there would be little difficulty in his getting McPhillip’s job on the Headquarters Staff. He stole quietly into the hallway of Aunt Betty’s house. He went noiselessly up the stairs without attracting the attention of the revellers who were still “on the tear.” He reached the landing. There were three doors, with light streaming through each of them. He listened at each door. The third was the right one. He stood straight. He lifted the latch suddenly and strode into the room. He called out as he did so dramatically: + 

“Come on, Gypo, it’s time for ye to be comin’ with me.” + 

For a moment he could see nobody, owing to his excitement and the thick mist of smoke and unescaped vapours which filled the room. He stood within the door with his feet spread out wide on the bare moth-eaten boards of the floor, with his right hand in his pocket fingering his revolver. His heart was beating wildly. Then he became aware of Gypo’s presence. He felt that peculiar movement in his head that the realization of Gypo’s presence always caused, a little snapping movement of unreasoning terror. Then he heard Gypo’s voice, heavy and hoarse with drunkenness, but cordial and friendly and distinctly patronizing. + 

“Hello, Bartly. Sit down an’ have a drink. Plenty time yet.” + 

Then he turned his head towards the fireplace and saw Gypo. + 

Gypo was sitting on the floor to the right of the fire, in a corner, in half-darkness, bare to the waist, with his trousered legs stretched out at a wide angle, sitting bolt upright, a bottle gripped in his right hand between his knees, his feet bare. + 

Connemara Maggie was standing by the fire drying Gypo’s shirt, his jacket and his socks. The big boots were resting on a fender before the fire, steaming. She took no notice of Mulholland’s entrance. With her golden hair hanging in disorder over her face, with her blouse undone, with her strong, heavy-boned face covered with perspiration, with her great, soft eyes swollen and gentle like the eyes of a heifer, she busied herself tending her man, just as if she had never left the purity of her Connemara hills and she were tending her peasant spouse after a hard day’s work in the fields; instead of tending a casual lover in the sordid environment of a brothel. There was no hint of vice or of libidinous pleasure in her face or in her movements. She seemed to be, like Gypo himself, a child of the earth, unconscious of the artificial sins that are the handiwork of the city. In her two brawny arms she held the steaming shirt to the blaze. She stood silent and immovable. + 

There was little else in the small, whitewashed, low-ceilinged room. A bed with the clothes tousled on it, a quilt that lay on the floor by the bed, a chair on three legs and a weatherbeaten washstand, containing a basin and a broken jug, comprised the furniture. + 

Mulholland looked around at all this before he spoke. It was as well to get the correct details in case identification were necessary. Gypo might deny it. Then he spoke. He had recovered his nerve. + 

“No,” he said. “I don’t want a drink. It’s time for ye to be comin’.” + 

“Be off with ye, ye little divil,” yelled Gypo, suddenly jumping to his feet, with a great scraping and slapping noise. “Who are ye givin’ orders to?” + 

He took a pace forward and reached out his right hand, but Mulholland had drawn his revolver and taken a pace to his rear. At the same time he called out in a hissing whisper: + 

“It’s not me orders. It’s the Commandant’s orders, an’ ye better be careful about disobeyin’ them.” + 

Immediately Gypo drew himself up and let his hands drop to his sides. His face, which had lit up with anger, dropped into that peculiar wondering expression, which he wore when he was musing on the river bank before he went into the police-station. He looked at Mulholland in amazement. His forehead wrinkled. His nostrils expanded and contracted. His thick lips moved backwards and forwards, up and down. His face and his cropped skull shone in the light of the paraffin lamp that rested on the mantelpiece over the fire. The light also shone across his body, over a bulging bare shoulder that stood out white and massive and round below his brown neck. The shoulder muscles were immense. His body was white and hairless. His skin was perfectly smooth. But everywhere the muscles strained against the skin, in irregular, moving mounds. They swelled out on his breasts, at his biceps, above his hips, on his shoulders, just as if his head and neck were a massive tree growth and the body muscles were its roots, sunk into the body promiscuously and afar, during centuries of life. + 

He looked at Mulholland for some seconds. Then he turned to Maggie. + 

“Gimme me clothes, Maggie,” he said quietly. + 

She handed them to him in silence. He dressed. He put on his little tattered round hat. Then he put his hand in his trousers pocket. He took out all the money he had left. Two pounds four and sixpence. He put the four and sixpence back into his pocket. He handed the two pound notes to Maggie. + 

“Keep one an’ give the other to Katie Fox,” he said. “Ye’ll find her down at Biddy Burke’s.” + 

She nodded and put the notes within her blouse. + 

“So long, Maggie. See you again,” he said, going to the door. + 

“So long,” she called after him quietly. + 

Gypo stalked out unsteady, followed by Mulholland. + 

After a little while Connemara Maggie also left the room. She went down to Biddy Burke’s. + 

Biddy Burke’s was now thronged with people. They were mostly women of the district and their men. They had been talking at a terrific rate when Maggie came in, but a strange silence fell upon them when she appeared. She did not take any notice of them. Going up to Katie Fox, who sat by the hearth, on the seat occupied recently by Mulholland, she took out the pound note and offered it to her. + 

“Gypo Nolan gave me this for ye,” she said quietly. + 

Katie Fox looked at the note. Then she looked at Maggie. Her under lip was quivering. Her eyes opened and narrowed spasmodically. She was moved by some complex emotion that she could not master for the moment. She did not speak. Others began to whisper. Some spoke out loud and sharply: + 

“Don’t take it, Katie. It’s blood money,” said one. + 

“Take it,” said Biddy Burke indignantly. “A pound note doesn’t smell when it’s changed.” + 

“Money is the common whore of all humanity,” stuttered a tall, lean, drunken gentleman, who dozed by the window with his head dangling. + 

“I bet she got more than that to give ye,” said another woman. + 

“Yes, I bet she has,” cried Katie Fox, suddenly settling the matter that was agitating her mind, whatever it was. “I know her. Out with it, Connemara Maggie,” she screamed, jumping to her feet and squaring herself. “Out with it an’ don’t stand there tryin’ to melt butter in me mouth with yer soft looks. How much did he give ye for me? Don’t tell me he only gave me one quid. Yer a liar before ye open yer mouth to say so. Ye⁠—” + 

“Well of all the stories⁠—” cried Connemara Maggie in amazement. + 

“Don’t put on airs, Maggie,” said a woman beside her. “Don’t put on airs.” + 

“Out with the rest o’ the money,” cried Katie Fox. + 

“Yer a pack o’ dogs,” cried Connemara Maggie furiously. “Yer a pack o’⁠—” + 

She gasped and could say no more, astounded and hurt bitterly by the slanderous attack from Katie Fox, to whom she had never spoken in her life before, except to say good morning. She fumbled at her blouse and took out the other pound note that Gypo had given her for herself. Then she took a purse from a hiding-place on her left thigh. She abstracted another note from that. She put back the purse again. She threw the three notes at Katie Fox. + 

“There ye” she hissed. “That’s all his money. Take it. Maybe it’s dirty like yersel’. I am well rid of ye. If he’s yer man, keep him.” + 

She spat and strode out of the room, swinging her arms and knocking out of her way all who came in front of her. + 

Some stared after her and swore. Others looked at Katie Fox. Katie had the three pound notes in her hands and her lips were moving. Then Biddy Burke whispered something to her. Immediately Katie sighed and clutched the three notes in her hand, desperately, staring at the floor. Then she held them out to Biddy Burke rapidly, without looking in their direction. They lay crumpled in a ball on her quivering thin palm. + 

“Take them, Biddy,” she whispered. Then she suddenly raised her voice to an hysterical shriek. “Take them, but for God’s sake hurry and give me something at once. Quick, quick. Give it to me, Biddy. Give it to me.” + 