A Painful Case

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Story eleven of Dubliners. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain. A painful case. Mister James Duffy lived in
Chapelizard because he wished to live as far as possible
from the city of which he was a citizen, and
because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean
modern and pretentious. He lived in an old somber house,

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and from his windows he could look into the disused
distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Dublin
is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were
free from pictures. He had himself bought every article of
furniture in the room, a black iron bedstead, an iron washstand,
four cane chairs, a clothes rack, a cold scuttle, a

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fender and irons, and a square table on which lay
a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an
alcove by means of shelves of white wood. The bed
was clothed in white bedclothes, and a black and scarlet
rug over the foot. A little hand mirror hung above
the washstand, and during the day a white shaded lamp
stood as the sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books

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on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below upwards.
According to Bulk, a complete wordsworth stood at one end
of the lowest shelf, and a copy of the Minute Catechism,
sewn into the cloth cover of a note book, stood
at one end of the top shelf. Writing materials were
always on the desk. In the desk lay a manuscript
translation of Hoffmann's Michael Kramer, the stage directions of which

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were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of
papers held together by a brass pen. In these sheets
a sentence was inscribed from time to time, and in
an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for bile
beans had been pasted on to the first sheet. On
lifting the lid of the desk, a faint fragrance escaped,

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the fragrance of new cedarwood pencils, or of a bottle
of gold, or of an overripe apple, which might have
been left there and forgotten. Mister Duffy abhorred anything which
betokened physical or mental disorder. A medieval doctor would have
called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale
of his years, was of the brown tint of dublin

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streets on his long and rather large head. Grew dry
black hair, and a tawny mustache did not quite cover
an unamiable mouth. His cheek bones also gave his face
a harsh character, but there was no harshness in the eyes, which,
looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave
the impression of a man ever alert to greet a

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redeeming instinct in others, but often disappointed. He lived at
a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts
with doubtful side glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit,
which led him to compose in his mind from time
to time a short sentence about himself, containing a subjet
in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.

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He never gave alms to beggars and walked firmly carrying
a stout hazel. He had been for many years cashier
of a private bank in Baggett Street. Every morning he
came in from Chapelizad by tram. At midday he went
to Danburg's and tuck his lunch a bottle of lager
beer and a small trayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four

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o'clock he was set free. He dined in an eating
house in George's Street, where he felt himself safe from
the society of Dublin's gilded youth, and where there was
a certain plain honesty in the bill of fare. His
evenings were spent either before his landlady's piano or roaming
about the outskirts of the city. His liking for Mozart's

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music brought him sometimes to an opera or a concert.
These were the only dissipations of his life. He had
neither companions, nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his
spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his relatives
at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they died.
He performed these two social duties for old Dignity's sake,

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but conceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the
civic life. He allowed himself to think that in certain
circumstances he would rob his bank, but as these circumstances
never arose, his life rolled out evenly an adventureless tale.
One evening, he found himself sitting beside two ladies in

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the rotunda the house thinly peopled and silent, gave distressing
prophecy of failure. The lady who sat next to him
looked round at the deserted house once or twice, and
then said, what a pity there is such a poor
house to night. It is so hard on people to
have to sing to empty benches. He took the remark

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as an invitation to talk. He was surprised that she
seemed so little awkward. While they talked, he tried to
fix her permanently in his memory. When he learned that
the young girl beside her was her daughter, he judged
her to be a year or so younger than himself.
Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained intelligent.

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It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The
eyes were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began
with a defiant note, but was confused by what seemed
the deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris, revealing
for an instant a temperament of great sensibility. The pupil
reasserted itself quickly. This half disclosed nature fell again under

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the reign of prudence and her astrakhand jacket, molding a
bosom of a certain fullness struck the note of defiance
more definitely. He met her again a few weeks afterwards
at a concert in Herlsford Terrace, and seized the moments
when her daughter's attention was diverted to become intimate. She
alluded once or twice to her husband, but her tone

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was not such as to make the illusion a warning.
Her name was missus Sinnic, Her husband's great great grandfather
had come from Leghorn. Her husband was captain of a
mercantile boat plying between Dublin and Holland, and they had
one child. Meeting her a third time by accident, he
found courage to make an appointment. She came. This was

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the first of many meetings. They metal was in the
evening and chose the most quiet quarters for their walks together.
Mister Duffy, however, had a distaste for underhand ways, and
finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he forced
her to ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged
his visits, thinking that his daughter's hand was in question.

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He had dismissed his wife so sincerely from his gallery
of pleasures that he did not suspect that any one
else would take an interest in her. As the husband
was often away and the daughter out giving music lessons,
mister Duffy had many opportunities of enjoying the ladies society.
Neither he nor she had had any such adventure before,
and neither was conscious of any incongruity. Little by little

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he entangled his thoughts with hers. He lent her books,
provided her with ideas, shared his intellectual life with her.
She listened to all. Sometimes in return for his theories,
she gave out some fact of her own life. With
almost maternal solicitude. She urged them to let his nature
open to the full. She became his confessor. He told

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her that for some time he had assisted at the
meetings of an Irish socialist party, where he had felt
himself a unique figure amidst the score of sober workmen
in a garret lit by an inefficient oil lamp. When
the party had divided into three sections, each under its
own leader and in its own garret, he had discontinued
his attendances. The workmen's discussions, he said, were too timorous.

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The interests they took in the question of wages was inordinate.
He felt that they were hard featured realists, and that
they resented an exactitude which was the produce of a
leisure not within their reach. No social revolution, he told her,
would be likely to strike Dublin for some centuries. She
asked them why he did not write out his thoughts

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For what he asked her, with careful scorn, To compete
with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty seconds, To
submit himself to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class
which entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts
to impresarios. He went often to a little cottage outside Dublin.

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Often they spent their evenings alone. Little by little, as
their thoughts entangled, they spoke of subjects less remote. Her
companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic Many
times she allowed the dark to fall upon them, refraining
from lighting the lamp. The dark, discreet room their isolation.

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The music that still vibraided in their ears united them.
This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of
his character, emotionalized his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself
listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought
that in her eyes, he would ascend to an angelical stature.
And as he attached the fervent nature of his companion

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more and more closely to him, he heard the strange,
impersonal voice, which he recognized as his own, insisting on
the soul's incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said,
we are our own. The end of these discourses was
that one night, during which he had shown every sign
of unusual excitement, Missus Sinico caught up his hand passionately

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and pressed it to her cheek. Mister Duffy was very
much surprised. Her interpretation of his words disillusioned him. He
did not visit her for a week. Then he wrote
to her, asking her to meet him, as he did
not wish their last interview to be troubled by the
influence of their ruined confessional. They met in a little
cake shop near the park gate. It was cold autumn weather,

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but in spite of the cold, they wandered up and
down the roads of the park for nearly three hours.
They agreed to break off their intercourse. Every bond, he said,
is a bond to sorrow. When they came out of
the park, they walked in silence, towards the tram. But
here she began to tremble so violently that, fearing another
collapse on her part, he bade her good bye quickly

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and left her. A few days later he received a
parcel containing his books and music. Four years past, mister
Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room
still bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some
new pieces of music encumbered the music stand in the
lower room, and on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche.

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Thus spake Zarathustra and the Gay Science. He wrote seldom
in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk.
One of his sentences, written two months after his last
interview with me Cinico, read, love between man and man
is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse. And
friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must

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be sexual intercourse. He kept away from concerts lest he
should meet her. His father died, the junior partner of
the bank retired, and still every morning he went into
the city by tram, and every evening walked home from
the city after having dined moderately in George's Street, and
read the evening paper For dessert. One evening, as he

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was about to put a morsel of corned beef and
cabbage into his mouth, his hands stopped. His eyes fixed
themselves on a paragraph in the evening paper, which he
had propped against the water caraffe. He replaced the morsel
of food on his plate and read the paragraph attentively.
Then he drank a glass of water, pushed his plate
to one side, doubled the paper down before him between

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his elbows, and read the paragraph over and over again.
The cabbage began to deposit a cold white grease on
his plate. The girl came over to him to ask
was his dinner not properly cooked? He said it was
very good, and ate a few mouthfuls of it with difficulty.
Then he paid his bill and went out. He walked
along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel stick

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striking the ground regularly, the fringe of the buff mail
peeping out of a side pocket of his tight reefer overcoat.
On the lonely road which leads from the Parquet to
Chapel Lizard, he slackened his pace, his stick struck the
ground bless emphatically, and his breath issuing irregularly, almost with
a sighing sound condensed in the wintry air. When he

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reached his house, he went up at once to his bedroom, and,
taking the paper from his pocket, read the paragraph again
by the failing light of the window. He read it,
not aloud, but moving his lips as a priest does
when he reads the prayer's secredo. This was the paragraph.
Death of a Lady at Sidney Parade a painful case.

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Today at the City of Dublin Hospital, the Deputy Coroner,
in the absence of mister Laverett, held an inquest on
the body of missus Emily Sinico, aged forty three years,
who was killed at Sydney Parade station yesterday evening. The
evidence showed that the deceased lady, while attempting to cross
the line, was knocked down by the engine of the

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ten o'clock slow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of
the head and right side which led to her death.
James Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had
been in the employment of the railway company for fifteen years.
On hearing the guard's whistle, he set the train in motion,
and the second or two afterwards brought it to rest

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in response to loud cries. The train was going slowly.
Pedon railway porter stated that as the train was about
to start, he observed a woman attempting to cross the lines.
He ran towards her and shouted, but before he could
reach her, she was caught by the buffer of the
engine and fell to the ground. A jurer, you saw

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the lady fall? Witness yes. Police Sergent Chlowley deposed that
when he arrived he found the deceased lying on the platform,
apparently dead. He had the body taken to the waiting
room pending the arrival of the ambulance. Constable fifty seven
E corroborated. Doctor Halpon, Assistant house surgeon of the City

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of Dublin Hospital, stated that the deceased had two lower
ribs fractured and had sustained severe contusions of the right shoulder.
The right side of the head had been injured in
the fall. The injuries were not sufficient to have caused
death in a normal person. Death, in his opinion, had
been probably due to shock and sudden failure of the

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heart's action. Mister H. B. Patterson Finley, On, behalf of
the railway company, expressed his deep regret at the accident.
The company had always taken every precaution to prevent people
crossing the line ends except by the bridges, both by
placing notices in every station and by the use of
peyton spring gates at level crossings. The deceased had been

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in the habit of crossing the lines late at night
from platform to platform, and in view of certain other
circumstances of the case, he did not think the railway
officials were to blame. Captain Sinico of Leovel Sydney Parade,
husband of the deceased, also gave evidence. He stated that
the deceased was his wife. He was not in Dublin

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at the time of the accident, as yet arrived only
that morning from Rotterdam. They had remarried for twenty two
years and had lived happily until about two years ago,
when his wife began to be rather intemperate in her habits.
Miss Mary Cinico said that of late her mother had
been in the habit of going out at night to
buy spirits. She witness had often tried to reason with

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her mother and had induced her to join a league.
She was not at home until an hour after the accident.
The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical
evidence and exonerated Lenin from all blame. The deputy coroner
said it was a most painful case and expressed great
sympathy with Captain Sinico and his daughter. He urged the

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railway company to take strong measures to prevent the possibility
of similar accidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.
Mister Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed
out of his window on the cheerless evening landscape. The
river lay quiet beside the empty distillery, and from time
to time a light appeared in some house on the

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Lucan Road. What an end. The whole narrative of her
death revolted him, and it revolted him to think that
he had ever spoken to her of what he held sacred.
The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of sympathy, the cautious
words of her reporter won over to conceal the details
of a commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely

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had she degraded herself, she had degraded him. He saw
the squalid tract of her vice, miserable and melodorous, his
soul's companion. He thought of the hobbling wretches whom he
had seen carrying cans and bottles to be filled by
the barman. Just God, what an end. Evidently she had
been unfit to live without any strength of purpose, and

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easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on which
civilization has been reared. But that she could have sunk
so low? Was it possible he had deceived himself so
utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night
and interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had
ever done. He had no difficulty now in approving of

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the course he had taken. As the light failed and
his memory began to wander, he thought her hand touched his.
The shock which had first attacked his stomach, was now
attacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat
quickly and went out. The cold air met him on
the threshold. It crept into the sleeves of his coat.

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When he came to the public house at chapeliz at Bridge,
he went in and ordered a hot punch. The proprietor
served him obsequiously, but did not venture to talk. There
were five or six working men in the shop, discussing
the value of a gentleman's estate and County Kildare. They
drank at intervals from their huge pink tumblers and smoked,

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spitting off and on the floor, and sometimes dragging the
sawdust over their spits with their heavy boots. Mister Duffy
sat on a stool and gazed at them, without seeing
or hearing them. After a while they went out, and
he called for another punch. He sat a long time
over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor sprawled

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on the counter, reading the Herald and yawning. Now and again.
A tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.
As he sat there, living over his life with her
and evoking alternately the two images in which he now concealed,
he realized that she was dead, that she had ceased
to exist, that she had become a memory. He began

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to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else
could he have done. He could not have carried on
a comedy of deception with her, He could not have
lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to
him best. How was he to blame now that she
was gone. He understood how lonely her life must have been,
sitting night after night alone in that room. His life

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would be lonely too, until he too died, ceased to exist,
became a memory if anyone remembered him. It was after
nine o'clock when he left the shop. The night was
cold and gloomy. He entered the park by the first
gate and walked along under the gaunt trees. He walked
through the bleak alleys where they had walked four years before.

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She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At
moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear,
her hand touched his. He stood still to listen. Why
had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced
her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.
When he gained the crest of the magazine hill, he

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halted and looked along the river towards Dublin, the lights
of which burned redly and hospitably in the cold night.
He looked down the slope and at the base, in
the shadow of the wall of the park, he saw
some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled
him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life.

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He felt that he had been outcast from life's feast.
One human being had seemed to love him, and he
had denied her life and happiness. He had sentenced her
to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the
prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and
wished him gone. No one wanted them. He was outcast
from life's feast. He turned his eyes to the gray,

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gleaming river winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river, he
saw a Goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like
a worm with her fiery head, winding through the darkness,
obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight, but
still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of
the engine, reiterating the syllables of her name. He turned

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back the way he had come, the rhythm of the
engine pounding in his ears. He began to doubt the
reality of what memory told him. He halted under a
tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could
not feel her near him in the darkness, nor her
voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes, listening.
He could hear nothing. The night was perfectly silent. He

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listened again, perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.
End of story eleven A painful case