Dubliners | Page 3

I
remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging
lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some
land where the customs were strange--in Persia, I thought.... But I could
not remember the end of the dream.
In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning.
It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to
the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie
received us in the hall; and, as it would have been unseemly to have
shouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman
pointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt's nodding, proceeded
to toil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely
above the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped and
beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the
dead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated
to enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.
I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was
suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like
pale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we
three knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I could
not gather my thoughts because the old woman's mutterings distracted
me. I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back and how

the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side. The
fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his
coffin.
But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he
was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the
altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very
truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled
by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room--the
flowers.
We crossed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we
found Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards
my usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and
brought out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these
on the table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at her
sister's bidding, she filled out the sherry into the glasses and passed
them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but I
declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them.
She seemed to be somewhat disappointed at my refusal and went over
quietly to the sofa where she sat down behind her sister. No one spoke:
we all gazed at the empty fireplace.
My aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:
"Ah, well, he's gone to a better world."
Eliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the
stem of her wine-glass before sipping a little.
"Did he... peacefully?" she asked.
"Oh, quite peacefully, ma'am," said Eliza. "You couldn't tell when the
breath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised."
"And everything...?"
"Father O'Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and

prepared him and all."
"He knew then?"
"He was quite resigned."
"He looks quite resigned," said my aunt.
"That's what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just
looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No
one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse."
"Yes, indeed," said my aunt.
She sipped a little more from her glass and said:
"Well, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great comfort for you to
know that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to
him, I must say."
Eliza smoothed her dress over her knees.
"Ah, poor James!" she said. "God knows we done all we could, as poor
as we are--we wouldn't see him want anything while he was in it."
Nannie had leaned her head against the sofa-pillow and seemed about
to fall asleep.
"There's poor Nannie," said Eliza, looking at her, "she's wore out. All
the work we had, she and me, getting in the woman to wash him and
then laying him out and then the coffin and then arranging about the
Mass in the chapel. Only for Father O'Rourke I don't know what we'd
done at all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two
candlesticks out of