So spring brought rumours of peace, but did not bring peace. Attacks upon the Crown Forces had increased, and though the Republican Volunteers had returned to their old ambushing tactics, having found the open skirmishing too costly, they carried out daring coups now and then, which helped to restore the damage to their reputation caused by their tactics in the cities.
Then one day I met a neighbour who told me her greengrocer, one of the I.R.A., had announced that the six weeks to follow were to be the worst weeks of the struggle. Lo! anything might happen to anybody at any moment, and the most obscure citizen might find all in an instant that though the age of chivalry might be dead, the age of romance still existed.
One sunny day, when the wind was shaking open the lilacs across the way, a thin stream of smoke curled up into the sky over the river, and the word went round that the Customs House, the most beautiful building in Ireland, was in flames.
I turned my steps that way. The wind was high, and there was little hope for the building. I came in good time to the shabby streets, which have an end upon the quays. The stream of smoke was rolling up, filling all one part of the sky. I judged the building must be in its death throes. At last, through a gap in the streets, I saw the Customs House straight before me on the other side of the river, and on the quays on this side all the world had gathered. When I emerged from my dive into the mean streets, I came against a wedge of several thousand people. They were from all parts of the city; but swallowing up all the others were the denizens of this slum quarter.
There were women with babies, women without babies, and women who might have had babies with them had the Volunteers delayed their operations for a few weeks. There were urchins with boots and urchins without boots, and half-grown people in their fathers’ coats, and other half-grown people in their mothers’ skirts, and children who would grow up into touts, and other children who would grow up into beggar-women and flower-girls.
And here and there, like islands in a sea, were prosperous citizens; high and low all brought to a single level by their curiosity. And, of course, there were Republican Volunteers in the crowd, and perhaps agents of the British secret service.
To the man who could bide his time the crowd presented a gap here and a gap there, and I slipped into this place and slipped into that place, and presently had a front row view of what was going forward. The Liffey held us in check. It was a high tide, and the wind sent the wave-tops into the air in spray. A quay was on the farther side, and rising beyond, the lovely building of the Customs House, that morning doomed to death and now in the agony.
“Sure, and it’s the clock is still going, God save us,” said a lady on my left, drawing a shawl round her infant’s face, and giving it a jerk to send it into dreamland.
“And Lady Liberty standing up there so brave, it’s her we must see come down,” answered her crony.
“Indade, and I hear tell it’s Lady Hope up there,” retorted she of the baby.