Dubliners - James Joyce [32]
`Stop!'
The child stopped for an instant, had a spasm of fright and began to scream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hastily up and down the room with the child in his arms. it began to sob piteously, losing its breath for four or five seconds, and then bursting out anew. The thin walls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it, but it sobbed more convulsively. He looked at the contracted and quivering face of the child and began to be alarmed. He counted seven sobs without a break between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it died!...
The door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.
`What is it? What is it?' she cried.
The child, hearing its mother's voice, broke out into a paroxysm of sobbing.
`It's nothing, Annie... it's nothing... He began to cry... '
She flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.
`What have you done to him?' she cried, glaring into his face.
Little Chandler sustained for one moment the gaze of her eyes and his heart closed together as he met the hatred in them. He began to stammer:
`It's nothing... He... he... began to cry... I couldn't... I didn't do anything... What?'
Giving no heed to him she began to walk up and down the room, clasping the child tightly in her arms and murmuring:
`My little man! My little mannie! Was 'ou frightened, love?'... There now, love! There now!... Lambabaun! Mamma's little lamb of the world!... There now!'
Little Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back out of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the child's sobbing grew less and less; and tears of remorse started to his eyes.
Counterparts
The bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent:
`Send Farrington here!'
Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at a desk:
`Mr Alleyne wants you upstairs.'
The man muttered `Blast him!' under his breath and pushed back his chair to stand up. When he stood up he was tall and of great bulk. He had a hanging face, dark wine- coloured, with fair eyebrows and moustache: his eyes bulged forward slightly and the whites of them were dirty. He lifted up the counter and, passing by the clients, went out of the office with a heavy step.
He went heavily upstairs until he came to the second landing, where a door bore a brass plate with the inscription Mr Alleyne. Here he halted, puffing with labour and vexation, and knocked. The shrill voice cried:
`Come in!'
The man entered Mr Alleyne's room. Simultaneously Mr Alleyne, a little man wearing gold-rimmed glasses on a clean-shaven face, shot his head up over a pile of documents. The head itself was so pink and hairless it seemed like a large egg reposing on the papers. Mr Alleyne did not lose a moment:
`Farrington? What is the meaning of this? Why have I always to complain of you? May I ask you why you haven't made a copy of that contract between Bodley and Kirwan? I told you it must be ready by four o'clock.'
`But Mr Shelly said, sir--'
`Mr Shelly said, sir... Kindly attend to what I say and not to what Mr Shelly says, sir.
You have always some excuse or another for shirking work. Let me tell you that if the contract is not copied before this evening I'll lay the matter before Mr Crosbie... Do you hear me now?'
`Yes, sir.'
`Do you hear me now?... Ay and another little matter! I might as well be talking to the wall as talking to you. Understand once for all that you get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half. How many courses do you want? I'd like to know... Do you mind me now?'
`Yes, sir.'
Mr Alleyne bent his head again upon his pile of papers. The man stared fixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosbie & Alleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for a few moments and then passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of thirst. The man recognized the sensation and felt that