We saw very little of her at first after that evening. She lived
underneath us with a nurse and the infant son, Fergus. There were two
other boys at school.
There was no more tireless worker in the Republican cause. She worked
all day, and for a while after her husband went she worked all
night--keeping his propaganda work up to date, I suppose. Mrs. O’Grady,
kneeling on a piece of newspaper before our sitting-room fire of a
morning, would sniff and say, “That woman’s light is never out. That
woman’s writing there all night. She’ll kill herself if she doesn’t
mind. She’s that pale each morning she looks like a ghost. And what
now, if the Black-and-Tans come back again and find what she’s got
there?”
“Och, Mrs. O’Grady, indade and these do be terrible times,” I would
answer.
When Mrs. Fitzgerald was not at work below she was in the streets,
hurrying, no doubt on the business of the Republic, from house to
house. She never walked, she went always at a trot. She seemed always
behind time, always at the end of her tether; always ready for any new
work that might have to be done. If all she did in a day were well
done, she would have been one of the most useful members of the Cumann
na mBan.
Yet, as was the case with numerous other prominent women, the British
Government never took steps to put an end to her activities, though it
was common knowledge that as the men were taken, the work fell more and
more upon the shoulders of women.
For days after her husband’s arrest, Mrs. Fitzgerald kept very much to
herself, partly, no doubt, because of her press of work, partly because
her work was confidential; but also, I think, because she was sensitive
and loth to intrude.
In the beginning it was “Good morning,” if we passed in the hall or
in the street; then she came up one day to get the address of some
publishers for her husband’s plays, and so the acquaintance made
headway. One evening, on some errand or other, I penetrated for the
first time into her sitting-room.
She was reading at the table in the small circle of light cast by the
lamp, and she looked immensely lonely. It was as though there was
just the circle of light where she sat reading, and outside that the
dark--the dark room with high lights here and there on the bookcases,
the dark city in a greater circle outside, and encircling the city the
darkness one felt resting over the land, over the troubled world for
that matter. I do not know if she felt as I felt about this, she looked
as lonely as any creature I have seen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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