Jack McPhillip sat on the bed, with his right shoulder leaning against the pillow. One foot was almost on the floor. The other foot was on the bed. He held his right hand, palm outwards, in front of his face, as if he were trying to drive away some imaginary idea, as he talked.
“There ye are now,” he was saying; “see what that man has done for himsel’ in life. That’s what every man should aim at doin’, instead of jig actin’ and endin’ up by bringin’ disgrace on his class an’ on his family. Johnny Daly is a member o’ Parliament this day because he spent any money and time he had to spare on his education. He looked after his business and he did his best to educate and better the condition of his fellow-men. That’s what every man should do. But my son … I put him into a good job as an insurance agent an’ if he had minded himself he’d be well on his way now towards a respectable position in life for himself, but instead o’ that—”
Suddenly there was an amazing interruption that caused everybody to start. Gypo had spoken in a deep thunderous voice that filled the whole house.
“I’m sorry for yer trouble, Mrs. McPhillip,” he cried.
The sentence reechoed in the silence that followed it. It had been uttered in a shout. Gypo’s voice had suddenly broken loose from his lungs into a spontaneous expression of the emotion that shook him into a passion of feeling, looking at Mrs. McPhillip. He felt suddenly that he must express that feeling forcibly. Not by a whisper, or a plain restrained statement, but by a savage shout that would brook no contradiction. The shout wandered about in the room long after its sound had vanished. Nobody spoke. Its force was too tremendous. Everybody, for some amazing reason or other, sniffed at the smell of fried sausages that now permeated the atmosphere of the kitchen. The smell came from the pan still left on the fireplace, containing the sausages that had been cooking for Francis Joseph McPhillip’s supper when the police came. He had been so tired that he told his mother to bring his supper to him in bed. So they still remained there, on the side of the fireplace, forgotten.
Then the initial amazement wore off and everybody looked at Gypo. They saw him sitting on the floor, doubled up, bulky in his blue dungarees that clung about his thighs like a swimming suit, with his little round hat perched on his massive head, still staring at Mrs. McPhillip’s face as if drawn by a magnet, unconscious of the amazement he had caused by his shout.
And alone of all the people in the room, Mrs. McPhillip was not amazed. She had not started. She had not moved her eyes. Her lips still moved in prayer. Her mind was drawn by another magnet to the contemplation of something utterly remote from the people in that room, utterly remote from life, to the contemplation of something that had its roots in the mystic boundaries of eternity.
Then Jack McPhillip jumped to a sitting posture on the bed. He grabbed at the old tweed cap that had fallen off his grizzled grey head.
“Oh, it’s you that’s in it, is it?” he cried. “Ye son o’ damnation!”
He glared at Gypo so ferociously that his face began to twitch. His face was so burned by the sun that it was almost black at a distance. At close quarters it looked a reddish brown. He had a glass eye. The other eye looked straight across the glass one, as if guarding it. He had to look away from a man in order to see him. This distortion in his vision had always filled his wife with terror, so that now she trembled whenever he looked at her. It was so uncanny, his looking at space like that. His body was short and slight. He was fifty years old.
He jumped off the bed and stood on the floor in his grey socks, his blue waistcoat unbuttoned, the little white patch of linen on the abdomen of his grey flannel shirt puffing in and out with his heavy breathing, his throat contorting, his hands gripping and ungripping restlessly.
Mrs. McPhillip had awakened from her reverie as soon as her husband spoke. She had started up and gripped her breast over her heart with a dumb exclamation. Then she rubbed her two eyes hurriedly and looked at him. As soon as she saw him, her eyes grew dim again and her body subsided into the chair from which it had risen slightly.
“Jack,” she cried in an agonized voice, “Jack! Jack, leave him alone. He was Frankie’s friend. He was a friend of me dead boy’s. Let him alone. What’s done is done.”
“Be damned to that for a story,” cried Jack. His voice was weak and jerky, just like the voice of his dead son. “A friend d’ye call him? What kind of friend d’ye call that waster that never did a day’s work in his life? That expoliceman! He was even driven outa the police. That’s fine company for yer son, Maggie. It’s the likes o’ him that’s brought Frankie to his death an’ destruction. Them an’ their revolutions. It’s in Russia they should be where they could act the cannibal as much as they like, instead of leadin’ good honest Irishmen astray.
