Chapter Thirty-Two

THE PASSAGE OF THE RUBICON

THE Monday morning broke exquisitely fair, and Adam, rising early from a sleepless couch, donned a spot-new suit of white flannel which his guardian had ordered to his measure from Kennedy and MacSharry's and, although Adam did not flatter himself that he was a beautiful youth, he was confident that he looked comelier in this suit than in any other. And so, although towards midday the sky filled with clouds and it lightened and thundered a full hour, and poured in torrents for nearly three, he could not make up his mind to change; but left St George's Church behind him in a smoking drizzle of rain that soon took the novelty out of his garments and some of the black out of the ribbon on his straw hat-for Mr Macarthy had checked his desire to have one similar to Mr O'Toole's.

By the time he reached the corner of Spring Avenue he looked something between a drowned rat and Cupid masquerading as a river-god: but the sun burst from the clouds to show him his Caroline emerge from her dread fastness fairly in time for her tryst with him. She was radiant, with her own dark charm set off by a pink summer dress and hat and parasol, all new as his own and unspoiled by rain. Yet was it disappointing to hear her greeting: 'Oh, my dear! Did you fall down a drain?'

Adam answered sulkily: "You said I was to come, wet or fine.'

Amiably she protested: 'But why ever didn't you bring an umbrella?'

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'Umbrella!' Adam snorted; 'I never had an um

brella.'

To which she, of course, said: 'Why didn't you borrow Mr Macarthy's?'

Adam pooh-poohed: 'He never had such a thing no more than me.'

It was unwise of him to take that attitude with Caroline, who said: 'I noticed he never wore an overcoat. I suppose you're trying to be like

him?'

...

The corners of Adam's mouth lowered sulkily. 'I wouldn't mind being like him when I come to his age.'

'You'll never come to his age,' she retorted, 'if you go on like this. You'd better be off home to change.' Adam looked her full in the face. 'What did you say on Saturday night?' said he.

'I was only talking,' she answered: 'just a bit of fun.' She drew her right arm through his. 'Don't be cross with me; come on.'

They walked quite a long way in perfect silence, and the exercise and the strong sun glare warmed Adam's feet and dried the surface of his flannel suit.

"You look lovely in your new clothes,' she volunteered at last, and sent Adam's heart heaven-high, to fall again as she added: 'I dare say Macarthy looked like you when he was a child.'

'I don't see that I'm at all like Mr Macarthy,' he returned; 'I've hardly ever heard anyone say that before, and I don't see why you say it.'

'Why wouldn't I?' she expostulated, but with an air of indifference. 'Haven't you the same sort of eyes?'

Adam admitted: "They may be the same colour.' Miss Brady shook her head. 'It isn't that, for yours are a strong, lovely blue, and his are faded and going grey. It's the expression in them. Most fellows

with blue eyes look at you as if they'd like to humbug you if they could. But your eyes, and much more Macarthy's, look as if they could humbug you if they wanted to, but wouldn't do it for all the world.'

'Certainly,' said Adam, after pause for reflection; 'Mr Macarthy's no humbug.'

"And are you?' she asked.

'No,' said Adam. 'I won't say I feel so strongly about it as he does. For I've lived a harder life, maybe, that I couldn't have lived at all without some humbug. It was meat and drink to me when I first remember.'

'Do you mean you were very poor?' Miss Brady queried.

'Starving,' he answered in a word.

'Lor!' said Miss Brady. 'I never remember our being so poor as not to be respectable.' She enlarged on this theme. 'My mother was always a wonderful manager, and when things were at their worst she could always poke out another few shillings somewhere. You wouldn't think, to look at her now, what Ma could do a few years ago, before her hair and complexion went. . . . Having so many children, you know. . . . Then she was nearly as gay as me, in a heavier sort of way, mind you. Now she sits at home all day and grizzles. She and Pa make me quite ill between them. But he was never any use except for being quick at figures when he was young. Now he's got some sort of brain . . . leisure, do they call it?'

Adam suggested lesion.

'Whatever you say yourself,' she smirked.

'Don't

let's talk about Pa. It makes me sick to think of him. . . . If I was in that state I'd make a hole in the water.'

'Don't talk like that,' said Adam pressing closer to her. Life can be just lovely.'

'Life's just lovely for you and me to-day,' she said, 'because we're young and healthy and out for a bit of fun. . . . Don't pinch me so, and I won't call it a bit of fun if you don't like, but that's what it is all the same you know. And I wouldn't have come if you were going to be too serious about it.'

'I wouldn't have come,' said Adam, 'if I'd thought you couldn't be serious about it.' He stopped short with an air of going no farther and found they had wandered, how he knew not, so far as the canal bridge on the Drumcondra Road. It was a difficult place to talk, with people passing, and tram-cars grinding and groaning as they stopped and went on again. Yet there they stood showing to each other their inmost souls.

Miss Brady swung her little bag. 'Serious, of course, but not too serious. You can't expect a young lady of my age to be so serious as all that about a boy of fourteen or fifteen.'

'I'm not so far from sixteen,' said Adam.

"What's sixteen?' she returned. "You talk as if it were twenty-one.'

'Would you marry me if I was twenty-one?' he asked eagerly.

She retorted: 'I wouldn't marry you if you were a hundred. . . Not if you asked me a hundred times a day.'

Adam cried out against this cruel wrong. 'Why not?'

She shook her bag and her head in unison slowly and mysteriously, almost as if it were a ritual, and was a long time saying: 'I wouldn't marry any man except the one."

And Adam, bringing the movement of his stick subconsciously into rhythm with the movement of her bag, was even slower in asking: 'Do I know his name?

She stopped wagging her head to nod and then

pretended to be interested in a paper bag afloat in the canal.

Adam struck the ground with his bamboo cane. 'But you've never had anything to say or do with him,' he pointed out as if he suspected her of being unaware of it.

She only answered: 'Perhaps that's why I fancy him so. . . . If once I had a bit of fun. .

Adam groaned to hear it come out at last. But Miss Brady was too lost in her own thoughts to hear the groan. She said: 'It's a queer thing now, but I can't even imagine that.'

Adam's groan became articulate. 'No more can I.' "Of course you can't,' she laughed, 'how could you?' 'I wouldn't if I could,' said he, compressing his lips and eyeing her wistfully.

"You look very like Macarthy now,' she said, and perplexed him; for he could not conceive that his guardian had ever known the emotion filling him then. She went on: 'Would you marry me if you could?'

Snapping at the chance he cried eagerly: 'Upon my honour I would.'

"Hush!' she insisted, dropping her hand on his mouth. 'What will people think we're talking about?' 'What does it matter,' Adam blurted, 'it's nothing to be ashamed of.'

Her hand still shadowing his mouth she answered in her softer tone: 'But it's silly to talk of on a stony old bridge with trams and cars buzzing by all the time and people nudging you out of their way.' She looked round as though forgetful where exactly they were. 'Let's turn down on the canal bank past Mountjoy Prison, and if you're good we'll maybe go farther still.'

Adam said something about going to the Styx edge, which allusion Miss Brady did not follow. Meanwhile he found himself with her by the canal side; on the