features, nor Josephine's red hair, nor that something about Josephine which made her Josephine. . . He thought about them all quite differently. . . . But he did think about them all. Bluebeard was a bad man: Father Innocent had said so, and there seemed no doubt about it. . . . He must have been a fascinating man too, or else very rich. If you were rich you could do anything, and even the most beautiful and aristocratic and virtuous ladies would give themselves to you, just as if you were a sort of god. You could do exactly as you liked if only you were rich enough. Bernard Shaw, who was a Dublin man himself, and, therefore, to be depended on, advised everybody to get rich as soon as they could, without being too scrupulous as to how they did it.

Yet Mr Macarthy told him that Shaw himself was the most scrupulous man he knew about what he did, though he thought him unscrupulous about what he said. Too whimsical, and with a blind spot of Puritanism, whatever that meant. But he was better than Oscar Wilde, better than all the other Irish writers put together, saving only A.E., the one whose hands were steady enough to speed the plough. Shaw was a fine fellow, and 'Cæsar and Cleopatra' the sort of play that Adam would like to see: but even Shaw's Cæsar would not quite understand what Adam felt about Josephine O'Meagher and Caroline Brady, and perhaps Barbara Burns and some others. Nor could Mr Macarthy help him; for, under his cavalier laugh, he was an austere man, and never kissed more than a lady's hand.

The impact with Caroline Brady woke Adam with a shock to the knowledge that, for all his great and wise and kindly friends, he was, after all, a lonely lad. And why lonely, if not for his lass? . . . And had not Fate and Nature too decreed his lass to be Caroline Brady?... .. True, she was older than he, but Josephine O'Meagher was older still, and consecrated to

a vestal life, while Caroline was in the world, and warm, and still to be enjoyed . . . By him? ... Who was the friend she said was waiting for her? Next Saturday, at the same hour, he would be there to see.

So, a fortnight from their first meeting, when the Gaiety Theatre was emptying its matinée audience, he found an excuse to be wandering up and down Grafton Street, from King to Suffolk Street, but mainly outside the closing shutters of Hollander's. And, just about a quarter past five, as Caroline Brady pranced out through the forbidding barrier, looking straight at him with recognition in her smile, a spick and span and lithe Hussar, all frogged blue tunic, cherry breeches, and jingling spurs, whisked her away before Adam's eyes. And he, pursuing, saw them upon an outside car, hailed at the corner of Stephen's Green, bowl gaily out of sight.

Adam thought she looked back at him once and waved the little bag: but he had the sense to tell himself that this was fancy, and that the Hussar had got Caroline Brady clutched as fast as his other rival had clipped Josephine O'Meagher. . . . Something bitter scored his throat as he watched the receding dust that followed their wheels, and he wished suddenly that Caroline Brady was dead.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

VISITORS FOR MRS MACFADDEN

THE thought of Josephine O'Meagher always enraged Adam against the Church: the thought of Caroline Brady temporarily turned him towards it. He told Mr Macarthy that he would like to be a priest, and Mr Macarthy said, 'Pray do, by all means.' Which was not the answer he expected. Nor was he altogether pleased when his guardian offered him every assistance. He was not yet prepared to take any active step towards the novitiate. But, making his Easter Duty at the eleventh hour that year, he did not go to confession to Father Steele, being shy, he knew not exactly why, of confiding to him his new sin. He carried this to the Church beside Westland Row Station, and told his thoughts of Caroline Brady within a biscuit throw of the point whence the pair of them had started on their delectable journey to perdition.

Adam's story was hearkened to by a fervid young priest, who asked him leading questions about his whole life, which it strained Adam's vanity to answer truly. Ultimately this sage young clerk admonished him, a little in the manner of Father Ignatius, but less tactfully, that he should beware of mere worldly wisdom, and remember that, after all, a boy's best friend must be his mother: so long, of course, as his mother was a communicant of the Catholic Church. So Adam, though half perceptive of the absurdity of his confessor's advice, paid his mother a visit on the afternoon of the Sunday he had made his Easter Duty.

In order to go there it was necessary to mystify his guardian; for Mr Macarthy, being one of the worldlywise Adam was cautioned to beware of, did not approve of his going to Pleasant Street, even to see his mother though he never referred to Mrs Macfadden at all if not with respect. She had, however, no place in their conversation, and very little in her son's mind. If the good priest at St Andrew's had not counselled it, Adam might never have seen her again. But on this particular Sunday he felt that it was his duty, as a good little Catholic, to disobey his guardian and humbug himself into a sort of tenderness for his mother.

Adam had lost all admiration for Pleasant Street: but he was gratified to note that No. 7 was certainly the best-kept house in it, with fresh paint and clean windows though the curtains were a trifle dark and gloomy, so that you could not see the red papered walls from the street, nor could the sun strike through to the mirrors that hung on them. Adam thought mirrors looked well in a room, and so did Mr O'Meagher but Mr Macarthy did not: and Herr Behre said they were only suited to a public-house. If you had a lot of glasses in a room, that made the room look bigger and the bigger the room, the finer it looked: that was common sense. But Mr Macarthy said that anything that deceived the eye was false art. . . . Even the Ha-ha at Clongowes was false art, but everyone else, even the Rector and Father Bernard James, thought it beautiful. . . . He was a very austere man, Mr Macarthy, more like a Protestant than a Catholic, and the only symbol of Christianity he had on his own walls was that ugly little crucifix over the bedroom mantelpiece.

Mr O'Toole had furnished the house in Pleasant Street, and even if he was a blackguard, which, despite his fine clothes, Adam suspected, he really had an elegant if high-pitched taste. The best rooms at No.

7 Pleasant Street, were all red and gold, like a cigar divan . . . the sort of thing you associated with the splendour of the East. Even Mrs Macfadden, promoted from the kitchen to the front parlour, had a red and gold setting to her now somewhat obese charms. But her room, between the mirrors, was hung with Holy pictures and brackets holding scarlet and gold saints, supplied by an eminent firm of saintmakers to the Pro-Cathedral, whose shop window round the corner had, so long as Adam remembered, been a great attraction to this good woman.

The widow lay in bed, suffering not only from her feet but some other disorder which Adam could not identify by her description of the symptoms: he understood that her heart was affected, and so, while the medicine bottles beside her bed were but lightly tapped, the whisky bottle under it was empty. She wore a red dressing-gown, with a red shawl over that, and another over her head, concealing any hair she may have had on it: but there was plenty on the dressing-table mixed up with candles, a greasy plate with knife and fork clinging to it, a porter bottle, and various articles more strictly appertaining to a lady's toilet. On the bed lay The Police News, the Sunday Herald, and The Life of St Kevin of Glendalough by a Nun, modestly preserving her anonymity. A beautiful book,' said Mrs Macfadden: 'he was a lovely saint, St Kevin. No one ever saw the like of him.'

'I should have thought Father Innocent was a bit like him,' Adam ventured.

His mother snorted indignantly. 'Will you look at the pictures!' she cried, pitching the book at him; 'just look at the pictures, and tell me whether a grand fellow like that was like that worm of an Innocent Feeley. What woman would go chasing Innocent Feeley, I'd like to know? Not even Emily Robinson did that, though she was always making a fool of herself over the clergy.' She pulled herself up.