Two Gallants

								
The grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild
warm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets,
shuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured
crowd. Like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their
tall poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue
unceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging
unceasing murmur.

Two young men came down the hill of Rutland Square. One of them was
just bringing a long monologue to a close. The other, who walked on the
verge of the path and was at times obliged to step on to the road,
owing to his companion’s rudeness, wore an amused listening face. He
was squat and ruddy. A yachting cap was shoved far back from his
forehead and the narrative to which he listened made constant waves of
expression break forth over his face from the corners of his nose and
eyes and mouth. Little jets of wheezing laughter followed one another
out of his convulsed body. His eyes, twinkling with cunning enjoyment,
glanced at every moment towards his companion’s face. Once or twice he
rearranged the light waterproof which he had slung over one shoulder in
toreador fashion. His breeches, his white rubber shoes and his jauntily
slung waterproof expressed youth. But his figure fell into rotundity at
the waist, his hair was scant and grey and his face, when the waves of
expression had passed over it, had a ravaged look.

When he was quite sure that the narrative had ended he laughed
noiselessly for fully half a minute. Then he said:

“Well!... That takes the biscuit!”

His voice seemed winnowed of vigour; and to enforce his words he added
with humour:

“That takes the solitary, unique, and, if I may so call it, recherché
biscuit!”

He became serious and silent when he had said this. His tongue was
tired for he had been talking all the afternoon in a public-house in
Dorset Street. Most people considered Lenehan a leech but, in spite of
this reputation, his adroitness and eloquence had always prevented his
friends from forming any general policy against him. He had a brave
manner of coming up to a party of them in a bar and of holding himself
nimbly at the borders of the company until he was included in a round.
He was a sporting vagrant armed with a vast stock of stories, limericks
and riddles. He was insensitive to all kinds of discourtesy. No one
knew how he achieved the stern task of living, but his name was vaguely
associated with racing tissues.

“And where did you pick her up, Corley?” he asked.

Corley ran his tongue swiftly along his upper lip.

“One night, man,” he said, “I was going along Dame Street and I spotted
a fine tart under Waterhouse’s clock and said good-night, you know. So
we went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a slavey
in a house in Baggot Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed her a
bit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by appointment. We
went out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told
me she used to go with a dairyman.... It was fine, man. Cigarettes
every night she’d bring me and paying the tram out and back. And one
night she brought me two bloody fine cigars—O, the real cheese, you
know, that the old fellow used to smoke.... I was afraid, man, she’d
get in the family way. But she’s up to the dodge.”

“Maybe she thinks you’ll marry her,” said Lenehan.

“I told her I was out of a job,” said Corley. “I told her I was in
Pim’s. She doesn’t know my name. I was too hairy to tell her that. But
she thinks I’m a bit of class, you know.”

Lenehan laughed again, noiselessly.

“Of all the good ones ever I heard,” he said, “that emphatically takes
the biscuit.”

Corley’s stride acknowledged the compliment. The swing of his burly
body made his friend execute a few light skips from the path to the
roadway and back again. Corley was the son of an inspector of police
and he had inherited his father’s frame and gait. He walked with his
hands by his sides, holding himself erect and swaying his head from
side to side. His head was large, globular and oily; it sweated in all
weathers; and his large round hat, set upon it sideways, looked like a
bulb which had grown out of another. He always stared straight before
him as if he were on parade and, when he wished to gaze after someone
in the street, it was necessary for him to move his body from the hips.
At present he was about town. Whenever any job was vacant a friend was
always ready to give him the hard word. He was often to be seen walking
with policemen in plain clothes, talking earnestly. He knew the inner
side of all affairs and was fond of delivering final judgments. He
spoke without listening to the speech of his companions. His
conversation was mainly about himself: what he had said to such a
person and what such a person had said to him and what he had said to
settle the matter. When he reported these dialogues he aspirated the
first letter of his name after the manner of Florentines.

Lenehan offered his friend a cigarette. As the two young men walked on
through the crowd Corley occasionally turned to smile at some of the
passing girls but Lenehan’s gaze was fixed on the large faint moon
circled with a double halo. He watched earnestly the passing of the
grey web of twilight across its face. At length he said:

“Well ... tell me, Corley, I suppose you’ll be able to pull it off all
right, eh?”

Corley closed one eye expressively as an answer.

“Is she game for that?” asked Lenehan dubiously. “You can never know
women.”

“She’s all right,” said Corley. “I know the way to get around her, man.
She’s a bit gone on me.”

“You’re what I call a gay Lothario,” said Lenehan. “And the proper kind
of a Lothario, too!”

A shade of mockery relieved the servility of his manner. To save
himself he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the
interpretation of raillery. But Corley had not a subtle mind.

“There’s nothing to touch a good slavey,” he affirmed. “Take my tip for

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