He was rushing across the floor at Gypo, but the three men had jumped up and caught him. They held him back. Gypo stared at him, as if in perplexity, without moving. But the muscles of his shoulders stiffened, almost unconsciously. His eyes wandered slowly from the fuming husband to the sobbing wife, who had again turned to the fire.
Then the people from the parlour rushed into the kitchen, attracted by the shouting. They were headed by Mary McPhillip, the daughter of the house. She was a handsome young woman, with a full figure, plump, with red cheeks, a firm jaw, auburn hair cropped in the current fashion, blue eyes that had a “sensible” look in them and a rather large mouth that was opened wide by her excitement. Every bit of her except her mouth belonged to an average Irishwoman of the middle class. The mouth was a product of the slums. Its size and its propensity for disclosing the state of the mind by exaggerated movement, which is the hallmark of the slum girl, belied the neat elegance of the rest of the body and of all the clothes. She was still dressed just as she had arrived from the office, in a smart navy-blue costume which she had made herself. The skirt was rather short, in the current fashion, and she stood with her feet fairly wide apart, in the arrogant posture of a woman of good family. Her well-shaped calves were covered with thin black silk stockings. But she had her hands on her hips, unconsciously, as she stood in front of the indiscriminate crowd that had followed her in from the parlour, to find out what had caused the disturbance in the kitchen.
“What’s the row about, father?” she said.
The accent was good, but a little too good. It was too refined. The pronunciation of the words was too correct. It had not that careless certainty of the born lady. She spoke in an angry tenor voice, in the rich soft tones of the Midlands, her mother’s birthplace. Her voice had the softness of butter, that voice which patriotic Irishmen always associate with kindness and unassailable innocence and virtue, but which is really the natural mask of a stern, resolute character.
“Aren’t we bad enough,” she continued, “without your acting like a drunken tramp? Shut up and don’t disgrace yourself.” She stamped her right foot and cried again: “Shut up.”
The father relaxed immediately. He began to tremble slightly. He was very much afraid of his daughter. In spite of the power of vituperation which he undoubtedly possessed, he had been afraid of both his children. When Francis had become discontented and joined the Revolutionary Organization, the father had poured out threats and abuse for hours, almost every night, for the edification of his wife, but when the son came in he said nothing. He was a weak, nervous character, slightly hysterical, capable of committing any act on the spur of the moment, but incapable of pursuing a logical course of action resolutely. But his children were resolute. The son was resolute in his hatred of existing conditions of society. He was a resolute, determined revolutionary, with his father’s energy. The daughter was resolute in her determination to get out of the slums.
The father slipped out of the hands of the men that were holding him and moved backwards until he reached the bed. He sat down on it without looking at it. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve although it was perfectly dry. But it had a prickly feeling in it, as if scores of needles had thrust themselves out from his brain through it. He always felt like that when he got an attack of nerves, especially since his son became a revolutionary, and it became known that his activities were being watched at police headquarters.
He looked at his daughter, at first in a cowed fashion. He was afraid of her, because she had become what he had urged her from her infancy to become, “a lady.” He was afraid of her because she was so well educated, because she had such “swell” friends, because she dressed so well, because she washed herself several times a day, because she spoke properly. But then he became irritated with all this and remembered that he himself was a Socialist, the chairman of his branch of the trade union, a political leader in the district, that all men were free and equal and … all the pet phrases with which respectable Socialists delude themselves into the belief that they are philosophers and men of principle. He spoke with a ring of indignation and of warning in his voice.
“Am I to be called a tramp by me own daughter in me own house,” he cried, “when I tell this ruffian his true character? Yes, an’ every other ruffian that’s the curse o’ the workin’-class movement with their talk of violence an’ murder an’ revolution. All me life I have stood straight for the cause of me fellow-workers. I was one o’ the first men to stand up for Connolly an’ the cause o’ Socialism, but I always said that the greatest enemies o’ the workin’ class were those o’ their own kind that advocated violence. I …”
“I told you to shut up,” said Mary in a calm, low voice, as she walked over to the bed, with her hands still on her hips. “It’s just like you,” she almost hissed, putting her doubled fists into the little pockets of her jacket. “It’s just like you to go back on your own son.”
She did not know why she was saying this, but she felt some force driving her on
