Ireland -- Emigration and Immigration -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
There was nothing for her to do in Dublin, she must go home and wait
for her husband. He was not coming home until evening, and she rode
home wondering how the day would pass, thinking the best time to tell
him would be after dinner when he left the piano. If he were very angry
with her she would go to her room. He would not go on living with her,
she was sure of that, and her heart seemed to stand still when she
entered the house and saw the study door open and Ned looking through
the papers.
"I have come back to look for some papers," he said. "It is very
annoying. I have lost half the day," and he went on looking among his
papers and she could see that he suspected nothing. "Do you know when
is the next train?"
She looked out the trains for him, and after he had found the papers he
wanted they went into the garden.
She talked of her flowers with the same interest as she had done many
times before, and when he asked her to go for a walk with him on the
hill she consented, although it was almost unbearable to walk with him
for the last time through the places where they had walked so often,
thinking that their lives would move on to the end unchanged; and they
walked about the hill talking of Irish history, their eyes often
resting on the slender outlines of Howth, until it was time for Ned to
go to the station.
"I shall be back in time for dinner. You will wait dinner a little for
me, I may have to come back by a later train."
And they walked down the hill together, Ned bidding her good-bye at the
garden gate, saying she had walked enough that day, and she feeling the
moment was at hand.
"But, Ned, why are you going to Dublin? You are only going to see
people who are anti-Catholic, who hate our religion, who are prejudiced
against it."
"But," he said, "why do you talk of these things. We have got on very
much better since we have ceased to discuss politics together. We are
agreed in everything else."
She did not answer for a long time and then she said:--
"But I don't see how we are to avoid discussing them, for it is my
money that supports the agitation."
"I never thought of that. So it is. Do you wish to withdraw it?"
"You are not angry with me, Ned? You won't think it mean of me to
withdraw my money? How are you going to go on without my money? You see
I am wrecking your political career."
"Oh," he said, "I shall be able to get on without it. Now, good-bye."
"May I go to the station with you?"
"If you like, only let us talk of something else. Everyone's conscience
is his own law and you must act accordingly."
She trotted by his side, and she begged of him not to laugh at her when
he said that to be truly logical she would have to turn him out of the
house, or at least to charge him for his board and lodging.
The intonation of his voice laid her heart waste; she felt she was done
for, and she walked home repeating the words, "I am done for."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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