“The noise of anarchists, monsieur. All talking treason to France and to civilisation. I may consider it my duty to inform the police.”
“A prudent idea,” said Bertram.
He smiled at the lowering face of the Colossus through the glass window with its dirty lace curtains, and then went up four flights of a staircase which smelt abominably of drains and onions. The plaster on the walls was crumbling off in scabby patches, and the doors to the right and left on each landing needed new paint, badly. The door on the fourth floor to the left had a broken bellrope tied up with a string, and when Bertram tugged it, there was a sound inside like the jangle of a Bulgarian cow-bell. Through a slit in the door came the murmur of several voices, but nothing that could fairly be described as “an abominable noise.”
The door was opened to him by Susan, a pale Susan, with no Irish roses in her cheeks, as he noticed when he kissed her.
“So you’ve come!”
She spoke quietly, with no enthusiasm, but then, at the kiss of the brother who once had been her close comrade, her coldness to him seemed to melt, and putting both her hands on his shoulders and her face against his coat, she began to cry a little, silently.
“What’s the matter, Sister Susie?” he whispered, while from the end of the passage came the sound of vivacious conversation.
“Isn’t everything in the world the matter?” she asked, and then dried her tears in a comical way with the back of her hand.
“Can’t you come out to some café and have a quiet talk? I don’t feel like ‘company’ to-night.”
She told him she wanted him to meet Betty’s uncle and her good friend, Mr. Mahony, and led him by the hand into a shabbily furnished room, dimly lit by oil lamps, where Bertram saw Betty O’Brien, who rose and gave him her hand, and an elderly man with white hair, a clean-shaven, rather priestly face, and very blue eyes, in which there was a look of humour and benevolence. He was sitting back in a low chair, with broken leather, through which the stuffing protruded, talking in a philosophical strain to three young men, obviously Irish, who were sitting about the room smoking cigarettes. Bertram heard him say something about the need of sacrifice for sacred principles.