“It is the wish,” said Doyle. “Didn’t you say yourself that the people was unanimous about it after the meeting in the market square?”
Gallagher rose from his chair and pushed his papers back on the table. He crushed his soft hat down on the back of his head and turned to the door.
“Come on,” he said.
“I knew well,” said Doyle, “that you’d do whatever was right in the latter end. And as for the tune that was troubling you, it’s even money that the band will never play it. Father McCormack was telling me yesterday that the big drum’s broke on them on account of one of the boys giving it a kind of a slit with the point of a knife. The band will hardly ever be able to play that tune or any other tune when they haven’t got a big drum.”
CHAPTER XIII
Major Kent passed through the narrow hall of the hotel, went up a flight of stairs and entered the commercial room. Mary Ellen was on her hands and knees under the table which stood in the middle of the room. She was collecting the corks which had offended Doyle’s eye. There were more than three of them. She had four in her left hand, and was stretching out to grasp two more when the Major entered the room. As soon as she saw him she abandoned the pursuit of the corks, crept out from underneath the table, and stood looking at the Major. She expected him to order a drink of some sort. Most people who entered Doyle’s commercial room ordered drinks. The Major was slightly embarrassed. Mary Ellen evidently expected him to say something to her, and he did not know what to say. He did not want a drink, and he could not think of any subject of conversation likely to interest a tousled girl who had just been crawling about the floor on her hands and knees. At last he said “Good morning.” Mary Ellen gaped at him and then smiled. The Major, recollecting that it was half-past one o’clock, and therefore no longer morning, said that it was a fine evening. Mary Ellen’s smile broadened. The Major expressed a polite hope that she was quite well. He thought of shaking hands with her, and wished that he had brought a pair of gloves with him, Mary Ellen’s hands were certainly dirty and they looked hot. But he was not obliged to shake hands. Mary Ellen realised that he was a kind of man new to her, one who did not want a drink. She left the room, came back again almost at once for the broom which she had forgotten, and then left decisively, slamming the door.
The Major crossed the room and looked out of the window. He saw Doyle and Gallagher go into Kerrigan’s shop, and wondered vaguely what they wanted there. He saw Constable Moriarty telling a story, evidently of a humorous kind, to Sergeant Colgan, at the door of the police barrack. The story—he judged from Moriarty’s gestures—had something to do with Doyle and Gallagher. He wondered, without much real interest, what the story was. There was nothing else of an exciting kind to be seen from the window. The Major turned and walked to the opposite corner of the room. He stood in front of a small square mahogany table. On it was a stuffed fox in a glass case. The Major looked at it carefully from several points of view. It was a very ordinary fox, and appeared to have been stuffed a long time. Moths had eaten the fur off its back in several places, and one of its eyes, which were made of bright brown beads, was hanging from the socket by a thread. The glass of the case was exceedingly dusty. The Major, finding the fox dull and rather disgusting, left it and went over to the fireplace. Over the chimney piece hung a portrait of a very self-satisfied priest who looked as if he had just dined well. A gold Latin cross, attached to a black ribbon watch guard, rested gracefully on the large stomach of the man. The stomach struck the Major as one which was usually distended to its utmost capacity. The portrait was remarkable for that fuzziness of outline which seems to be inevitable in enlarged photographs. The frame was a very handsome one, elaborately carved and gilt.
Next the picture of the priest, unframed and attached to the wall with tacks, was a large coloured supplement, taken from an American paper. It presented a famous boxer stripped to the waist in the act of shaking hands with a dejected-looking opponent. Underneath his large picture was a list of the boxer’s most famous conflicts, with date and a note of the number of rounds which each victim had survived. Round the central picture were twelve small ones, in which the hero appeared in the act of felling other fighters, not so heroic or less muscular. The Major, who had done some boxing in his day, looked at the picture with critical interest. Then Father McCormack entered the room.
“I’m in good time after all,” he said. “I was afraid, maybe, the meeting might be over when I saw Doyle and Thady Gallagher going into the office of the Connacht Eagle after leaving Kerrigan’s shop.”