CHAPTER III
I COME ACROSS 47
It was past eleven o’clock when I left my wife and wandered out of the hotel and across O’Connell Bridge. The tide was high, and something about the lights that lay upon the Liffey waters, and something about the numerous bridges spanning the river, brought me dreams of Venice.
It is said there is truth in first impressions. I had a first impression of Dublin then. In that shining summer weather the city, which was at once so pleasantly conceived and so down at heels, impressed me as some likeable person fallen upon a sick bed.
Was it that I was reading into the face of the city what I expected to see? I had wondered at the suspicion of the guests in the hotel, who sat surly and apart. Now against the embankment of the river shabby men and youths leaned, cooling their heels. They smoked and spat and contemplated the traffic, which was controlled by magnificent policemen as tall as trees. There appeared to be a barbers’ strike in progress, as outside the barber’s shop loitered sundry young men who would have been the better for a shave. These people displayed a board with “Strike on Here” printed in big letters, and whenever some customer, maddened by a two months’ growth of hair, vanished into the shop, they would shout after him in raucous tones, “Strike on there!”
The crowd looked worried and suspicious of itself, and surely it was evident to him who had eyes to see that war, none the less real because waged below the surface, was going on, and nobody knew who was for this side and who for the other.
Yes, war—rumbling through the streets in the guise of heavy military waggons, tramping round the corners in parties of tin-hatted soldiers, flying up and down the quays in lorries choked with dapper-looking men wearing Balmoral bonnets, rushing up this road and that in Crossley tenders, filled with less romantic men in black uniforms and peaked caps.
I passed over O’Connell Bridge, up Westmoreland Street, and out of it between two grave stone buildings; that across the way an eloquent curving place, once a parliament, and now suffering from a changed greatness as the Bank of Ireland; this, to my left, the grave grey face of Trinity, with its arch like a mouth, through which could be seen cobbled walks removed from the wear and tear of the rest of the city.
Then to the left and up Dawson Street, past the Mansion House, an uninspired building, into one of the noble squares that the city possesses. The heart of this square was a public garden called Stephen’s Green. I crossed the road, which was wide and straight, and entered the park by a little gate in the iron railings.
The sun poured out of the sky, and the place was full of nurses and babies. Two lakes, divided by a bridge, filled all the centre of the place, and ducks and seagulls and small children disputed for bits of bread round the edges. It was the scene one meets in all city parks; but it was specially charming owing to the sun and the twisting walks.
I was looking for a chair when I discovered 47 strolling down the path. He had seen me; he always saw me first. He looked just the same as when we had said good-bye at Hyde Park Corner.