“Who’s it now?”
“God forgive her for having a man like that in the house these times. Risking us all! There’s my man downstairs, he says the Black-and-Tans have only got to know there’s some one here, and they’ll come and take every man in the house off to the Castle, and perhaps burn the house down.”
“If that’s the case, Mrs. O’Grady, these do indeed be terrible times.”
“That woman doesn’t know how to treat decent people when she do get them in the house,” went on Mrs. O’Grady, passing over my wit. “Now, what right has she got to have a man like that with you here? Now you’re what I call class. I said to himself downstairs, I said those new people that have taken the drawing-room flat, they’re class. They’re the nicest lady and gentleman we’ve ever had here. They’re class.”
We changed the conversation.
But I was in some part to solve the mystery that evening, for this time Mrs. Slaney had arranged to leave the hall door on the latch. Our visitor must have come in unheard and gone upstairs. Mrs. Slaney, strangely enough, was spending the evening in our rooms, and had brought down, as far as I remember, a tray with coffee things on. When she proposed retiring, I carried this up for her, and going ahead into the sitting-room, found there, in a corner by the fire as if he had been warming his hands at it, and still with his overcoat on, the mysterious visitor. He looked round like an animal caught in a trap, and then he said good night in answer to my good night. I was only a moment putting the tray down and going.
I tell this story because this man’s advent was to be my downfall later on. I did not then know who he was; but his identity leaked out in time.
He bore the most picturesque name in Ireland—Darrel Figgis—and he wore the most romantic beard. He looked like some mediæval personage stepped out of a picture. He was a novelist, a poet, a dramatic critic, and other things. Not very long before he had been nearly hanged at a drumhead court-martial held by some irresponsible, and it was whispered among the philistines that he went about the country afterwards selling pieces of the true rope. He was not one of the recognised Sinn Fein leaders; but he had been fairly prominent in the cause, doing propaganda work, and he had been imprisoned. There was only one such beard as his in Dublin—his own—and it was said he refused to part with it, even when he went on the run, although by so doing he added materially to the chances of capture.
He visited us three or four nights, and then departed as unostentatiously as he came.
So every day brought its new event, and the weeks stalked by in grim procession.