With the close of 2025 approaching and after that the one-year mark of the Second Donald Trump Presidency, cities and local public officials in San Bernardino County continue to buck the trend among well over 100 cities throughout California that have proven hostile to the stepped-up federal immigration law enforcement.
Perhaps the major hallmark of Donald Trump’s second go-round as the nation’s chief executive has been the green light he has given the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Border Patrol, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the State Department, the Department of Enforcement, the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Labor in preventing those from other countries coming into the Unitied States without visas, work permits or being registered along with efforts to rounding up the more than 20 million illegal aliens already in the country. The administration’s stated goal is to deport as many of those 20 million as possible by the end of Trump’s current four-year term, to include as many of the 2.2 million undocumented aliens estimated to be in California.
On September 23, the Department of Homeland Security announced that in the eight months between Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration and September 20, two million illegal aliens had been removed from the country or had self-deported. Based on that statistic, the immigration enforcement effort was on a trajectory to deport 12 million by January 2029, when Trump is scheduled to leave office. That projection, however, is based on the limitations on manpower and assets devoted to immigration enforcement that were in place when the current administration began. Since January, the federal government has beefed up the assets utilized by those various agencies in the mission to round up those in the country illegally. Moreover, the federal government late last spring initiated a recruitment effort to increase the number of Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Department of Enforcement agents. Based on the expansion in the number of agents and the federal government’s overall enforcement capability, together with evolving detection and apprehension tactics, it is anticipated that 80 percent of President Trump’s stated goal of removing 20 million illegal aliens from the country will be achieved during his second term in office. Continue reading →

Adelanto Councilwoman Stevevonna Evans is on a trajectory to be fined $76,500 by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for having consistently failed to provide accounting for four of her political campaigns going back to her initial election to the city council in 2018.
In their report to the Fair Political Practices Commission for Item 6 on the commission’s November 20, 2025 meeting, Marissa Corona, the senior counsel to the commission, and Jay Gehres, the commission’s special investigator, state that “Stevevonna Evans was a successful candidate for Adelanto City Council in the November 6, 2018 General Election, an unsuccessful candidate for San Bernardino County Board of Supervisor in the March 3, 2020 Primary Election, an unsuccessful candidate for Mayor of Adelanto in the November 8, 2022 General Election, a successful candidate for Adelanto City Council in the November 5, 2024 General Election, and is currently in office as a member of the Adelanto City Council. Committee to Elect Stevevonna Evans 2018 Adelanto City Council (the “2018 Committee”) was Evans’ candidate-controlled committee during the November 6, 2018 General Election and Stevevonna Evans for Board of Supervisors 2020 (the “2020 Committee”) was Evan’s candidate-controlled committee during the March 3, 2020 Primary Election. Evans did not establish a candidate-controlled committee for the November 8, 2022, and November 5, 2024 General Elections.”
According to Corona and Gehres, Evans is being charged with 27 total counts of violating various sections of the California Government Code pertaining to accounting for both the money donated to her political war chests and expenditures made from those campaign coffers in support of her electioneering efforts. Continue reading →

San Bernardino County this week entered into two separate no-bid contracts in a total amount exceeding $22.5 million for the provision of psychiatric and mental health care for mentally disturbed county residents including criminal defendants who have been institutionalized in lieu of standing trial.
In response to a report and recommendation from Georgina Yoshioka, the director of the county’s department of behavioral health, the board of supervisors on Tuesday December 16 unanimously approved entering into a $17,803,500 contract with Helping Hearts Kern, LLC for enhanced adult residential facility services.
According to Yoshioka’s report, which was presented to the board of supervisors by the behavioral health department’s assistant direction, Jennifer Alsina, the expenditure of the $17,803,500 will secure the services of Helping Hearts Kern, LLC for a period of not quite three months less than five years, running from December 16, 2025, through September 30, 2030.
Yoshioka and Alsina told the supervisors the will not come from the county’s operational budget but will be funded by revenue made available through the State of California’s Mental Health Services Act approved by California voters’ passage of Proposition 63 in 2004, which called for setting aside money for mental health programs through the imposition of an additional one percent tax on individual income in excess of one million dollars. Continue reading →

For Sale:
Pair of Baby Shoes.
Never worn.

By Ernest Hemingway
An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge across the river and carts, trucks, and men, women and children were crossing it. The mule-drawn carts staggered up the steep bank from the bridge with soldiers helping push against the spokes of the wheels. The trucks ground up and away heading out of it all and the peasants plodded along in the ankle deep dust. But the old man sat there without moving. He was too tired to go any farther.
It was my business to cross the bridge, explore the bridgehead beyond and find out to what point the enemy had advanced. I did this and returned over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there.
“Where do you come from?” I asked him.
“From San Carlos,” he said, and smiled.
That was his native town and so it gave him pleasure to mention it and he smiled.
“I was taking care of animals,” he explained. “Oh,” I said, not quite understanding.
“Yes,” he said, “I stayed, you see, taking care of animals. I was the last one to leave the town of San Carlos.”
He did not look like a shepherd nor a herdsman and I looked at his black dusty clothes and his gray dusty face and his steel rimmed spectacles and said, “What animals were they?”
“Various animals,” he said, and shook his head. “I had to leave them.”
I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event called contact, and the old man still sat there.
“What animals were they?” I asked.
“There were three animals altogether,” he explained. “There were two goats and a cat and then there were four pairs of pigeons.”
“And you had to leave them?” I asked.
“Yes. Because of the artillery. The captain told me to go because of the artillery.”
“And you have no family?” I asked, watching the far end of the bridge where a few last carts were hurrying down the slope of the bank.
“No,” he said, “only the animals I stated. The cat, of course, will be all right. A cat can look out for itself, but I cannot think what will become of the others.”
“What politics have you?” I asked.
“I am without politics,” he said. “I am seventy-six years old. I have come twelve kilometers now and I think now I can go no further.” “This is not a good place to stop,” I said. “If you can make it, there are trucks up the road where it forks for Tortosa.”
“I will wait a while,” he said, “and then I will go. Where do the trucks go?”
“Towards Barcelona,” I told him.
“I know no one in that direction,” he said, “but thank you very much. Thank you again very much.”
He looked at me very blankly and tiredly, then said, having to share his worry with some one, “The cat will be all right, I am sure. There is no need to be unquiet about the cat. But the others. Now what do you think about the others?”
“Why they’ll probably come through it all right.” “You think so?”
“Why not,” I said, watching the far bank where now there were no carts.
“But what will they do under the artillery when I was told to leave because of the artillery?”
“Did you leave the dove cage unlocked?” I asked. “Yes.”
“Then they’ll fly.”
“Yes, certainly they’ll fly. But the others. It’s better not to think about the others,” he said.
“If you are rested I would go,” I urged. “Get up and try to walk now.”
“Thank you,” he said and got to his feet, swayed from side to side and then sat down backwards in the dust.
“I was taking care of animals,” he said dully, but no longer to me. “I was only taking care of animals.”
There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.

By Guy de Maupassant
She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as if by an error of fate,
into a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of
becoming known, understood, loved or wedded by a man of wealth and
distinction; and so she let herself be married to a minor official at the
Ministry of Education.
She dressed plainly because she had never been able to afford anything
better, but she was as unhappy as if she had once been wealthy. Women don’t
belong to a caste or class; their beauty, grace, and natural charm take the
place of birth and family. Natural delicacy, instinctive elegance and a quick
wit determine their place in society, and make the daughters of commoners
the equals of the very finest ladies.
She suffered endlessly, feeling she was entitled to all the delicacies and
luxuries of life. She suffered because of the poorness of her house as she
looked at the dirty walls, the wornout chairs and the ugly curtains. All these
things that another woman of her class would not even have noticed,
tormented her and made her resentful. The sight of the little Brenton girl who
did her housework filled her with terrible regrets and hopeless fantasies. She
dreamed of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestries, lit from above
by torches in bronze holders, while two tall footmen in kneelength breeches
napped in huge armchairs, sleepy from the stove’s oppressive warmth. She
dreamed of vast living rooms furnished in rare old silks, elegant furniture
loaded with priceless ornaments, and inviting smaller rooms, perfumed, made
for afternoon chats with close friends famous, sought after men, who all
women envy and desire.
When she sat down to dinner at a round table covered with a threedayold
cloth opposite her husband who, lifting the lid off the soup, shouted excitedly,
“Ah! Beef stew! What could be better,” she dreamed of fine dinners, of
shining silverware, of tapestries which peopled the walls with figures from
another time and strange birds in fairy forests; she dreamed of delicious
dishes served on wonderful plates, of whispered gallantries listened to with
an inscrutable smile as one ate the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of a
quail.
She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing; and these were the only things she
loved. She felt she was made for them alone. She wanted so much to charm,
to be envied, to be desired and sought after.
She had a rich friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, whom she no
longer wanted to visit because she suffered so much when she came home.
For whole days afterwards she would weep with sorrow, regret, despair and
misery.
*
One evening her husband came home with an air of triumph, holding a large
envelope in his hand.
“Look,” he said, “here’s something for you.”
She tore open the paper and drew out a card, on which was printed the
words:
“The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau request the
pleasure of M. and Mme. Loisel’s company at the Ministry, on the evening of
Monday January 18th.”
Instead of being delighted, as her husband had hoped, she threw the
invitation on the table resentfully, and muttered:
“What do you want me to do with that?”
“But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and it
will be such a lovely occasion! I had awful trouble getting it. Every one
wants to go; it is very exclusive, and they’re not giving many invitations to
clerks. The whole ministry will be there.”
She stared at him angrily, and said, impatiently:
“And what do you expect me to wear if I go?”
He hadn’t thought of that. He stammered:
“Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It seems very nice to me …”
He stopped, stunned, distressed to see his wife crying. Two large tears ran
slowly from the corners of her eyes towards the corners of her mouth. He
stuttered:
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”
With great effort she overcame her grief and replied in a calm voice, as
she wiped her wet cheeks:
“Nothing. Only I have no dress and so I can’t go to this party. Give your
invitation to a friend whose wife has better clothes than I do.”
He was distraught, but tried again:
“Let’s see, Mathilde. How much would a suitable dress cost, one which
you could use again on other occasions, something very simple?”
She thought for a moment, computing the cost, and also wondering what
amount she could ask for without an immediate refusal and an alarmed
exclamation from the thrifty clerk.
At last she answered hesitantly:
“I don’t know exactly, but I think I could do it with four hundred francs.”
He turned a little pale, because he had been saving that exact amount to
buy a gun and treat himself to a hunting trip the following summer, in the
country near Nanterre, with a few friends who went larkshooting there on
Sundays.
However, he said:
“Very well, I can give you four hundred francs. But try and get a really
beautiful dress.”
*
The day of the party drew near, and Madame Loisel seemed sad, restless,
anxious. Her dress was ready, however. One evening her husband said to her:
“What’s the matter? You’ve been acting strange these last three days.”
She replied: “I’m upset that I have no jewels, not a single stone to wear. I
will look cheap. I would almost rather not go to the party.”
“You could wear flowers, ” he said, “They are very fashionable at this time
of year. For ten francs you could get two or three magnificent roses.”
She was not convinced.
“No; there is nothing more humiliating than looking poor in the middle of
a lot of rich women.”
“How stupid you are!” her husband cried. “Go and see your friend
Madame Forestier and ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her well
enough for that.”
She uttered a cry of joy.
“Of course. I had not thought of that.”
The next day she went to her friend’s house and told her of her distress.
Madame Forestier went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large box,
brought it back, opened it, and said to Madame Loisel:
“Choose, my dear.”
First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a gold Venetian
cross set with precious stones, of exquisite craftsmanship. She tried on the
jewelry in the mirror, hesitated, could not bear to part with them, to give them
back. She kept asking:
“You have nothing else?”
“Why, yes. But I don’t know what you like.”
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box, a superb diamond necklace,
and her heart began to beat with uncontrolled desire. Her hands trembled as
she took it. She fastened it around her neck, over her highnecked dress, and
stood lost in ecstasy as she looked at herself.
Then she asked anxiously, hesitating:
“Would you lend me this, just this?”
“Why, yes, of course.”
She threw her arms around her friend’s neck, embraced her rapturously,
then fled with her treasure.

*
The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was prettier
than all the other women, elegant, gracious, smiling, and full of joy. All the
men stared at her, asked her name, tried to be introduced. All the cabinet
officials wanted to waltz with her. The minister noticed her.
She danced wildly, with passion, drunk on pleasure, forgetting everything
in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of
happiness, made up of all this respect, all this admiration, all these awakened
desires, of that sense of triumph that is so sweet to a woman’s heart.
She left at about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been
dozing since midnight in a little deserted anteroom with three other
gentlemen whose wives were having a good time.
He threw over her shoulders the clothes he had brought for her to go
outside in, the modest clothes of an ordinary life, whose poverty contrasted
sharply with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wanted to run
away, so she wouldn’t be noticed by the other women who were wrapping
themselves in expensive furs.
Loisel held her back.
“Wait a moment, you’ll catch a cold outside. I’ll go and find a cab.”
But she would not listen to him, and ran down the stairs. When they were
finally in the street, they could not find a cab, and began to look for one,
shouting at the cabmen they saw passing in the distance.
They walked down toward the Seine in despair, shivering with cold. At
last they found on the quay one of those old night cabs that one sees in Paris
only after dark, as if they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during the
day.
They were dropped off at their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly
walked up the steps to their apartment. It was all over, for her. And he was
remembering that he had to be back at his office at ten o’clock.
In front of the mirror, she took off the clothes around her shoulders, taking
a final look at herself in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no
longer had the necklace round her neck!
“What is the matter?” asked her husband, already half undressed.
She turned towards him, panicstricken.
“I have … I have … I no longer have Madame Forestier’s necklace.”
He stood up, distraught.
“What! … how! … That’s impossible!”
They looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in her
pockets, everywhere. But they could not find it.
“Are you sure you still had it on when you left the ball?” he asked.
“Yes. I touched it in the hall at the Ministry.”
“But if you had lost it in the street we would have heard it fall. It must be
in the cab.”
“Yes. That’s probably it. Did you take his number?”
“No. And you, didn’t you notice it?”
“No.”
They stared at each other, stunned. At last Loisel put his clothes on again.
“I’m going back,” he said, “over the whole route we walked, see if I can
find it.”
He left. She remained in her ball dress all evening, without the strength to
go to bed, sitting on a chair, with no fire, her mind blank.
Her husband returned at about seven o’clock. He had found nothing.
He went to the police, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab
companies, everywhere the tiniest glimmer of hope led him.
She waited all day, in the same state of blank despair from before this
frightful disaster.
Loisel returned in the evening, a hollow, pale figure; he had found
nothing.
“You must write to your friend,” he said, “tell her you have broken the
clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended. It will give us time
to look some more.”
She wrote as he dictated.
*
At the end of one week they had lost all hope.
And Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
“We must consider how to replace the jewel.”
The next day they took the box which had held it, and went to the jeweler
whose name they found inside. He consulted his books.
“It was not I, madame, who sold the necklace; I must simply have
supplied the case.”
And so they went from jeweler to jeweler, looking for an necklace like the
other one, consulting their memories, both sick with grief and anguish.
In a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string of diamonds which
seemed to be exactly what they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand
francs. They could have it for thirtysix thousand.
So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they made an
arrangement that he would take it back for thirtyfour thousand francs if the
other necklace was found before the end of February.
Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He
would borrow the rest.
And he did borrow, asking for a thousand francs from one man, five
hundred from another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, made
ruinous agreements, dealt with usurers, with every type of moneylender. He
compromised the rest of his life, risked signing notes without knowing if he
could ever honor them, and, terrified by the anguish still to come, by the
black misery about to fall on him, by the prospect of every physical privation
and every moral torture he was about to suffer, he went to get the new
necklace, and laid down on the jeweler’s counter thirtysix thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took the necklace back, Madame Forestier said
coldly:
“You should have returned it sooner, I might have needed it.”
To the relief of her friend, she did not open the case. If she had detected
the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said?
Would she have taken her friend for a thief?
*
From then on, Madame Loisel knew the horrible life of the very poor. But she
played her part heroically. The dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it.
They dismissed their maid; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret
under the roof.
She came to know the drudgery of housework, the odious labors of the
kitchen. She washed the dishes, staining her rosy nails on greasy pots and the
bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and the dishcloths,
which she hung to dry on a line; she carried the garbage down to the street
every morning, and carried up the water, stopping at each landing to catch her
breath. And, dressed like a commoner, she went to the fruiterer’s, the grocer’s,
the butcher’s, her basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting over every
miserable sou.
Each month they had to pay some notes, renew others, get more time.
Her husband worked every evening, doing accounts for a tradesman, and
often, late into the night, he sat copying a manuscript at five sous a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years they had paid off everything, everything, at
usurer’s rates and with the accumulations of compound interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become strong, hard and rough
like all women of impoverished households. With hair half combed, with
skirts awry, and reddened hands, she talked loudly as she washed the floor
with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the
office, she sat down near the window and thought of that evening at the ball
so long ago, when she had been so beautiful and so admired.
What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows,
who knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed for one to
be ruined or saved!
*
One Sunday, as she was walking in the Champs Élysées to refresh herself
after the week’s work, suddenly she saw a woman walking with a child. It
was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.
Madame Loisel felt emotional. Should she speak to her? Yes, of course.
And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?
She went up to her.
“Good morning, Jeanne.”
The other, astonished to be addressed so familiarly by this common
woman, did not recognize her. She stammered:
“But madame I don’t know. You must have made a mistake.”
“No, I am Mathilde Loisel.”
Her friend uttered a cry.
“Oh! … my poor Mathilde, how you’ve changed! …”
“Yes, I have had some hard times since I last saw you, and many miseries
… and all because of you! …”
“Me? How can that be?”
“You remember that diamond necklace that you lent me to wear to the
Ministry party?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, I lost it.”
“What do you mean? You brought it back.”
“I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years
to pay for it. It wasn’t easy for us, we had very little. But at last it is over, and
I am very glad.”
Madame Forestier was stunned.
“You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?”
“Yes; you didn’t notice then? They were very similar.”
And she smiled with proud and innocent pleasure.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.
“Oh, my poor Mathilde! Mine was an imitation! It was worth five hundred
francs at most! …

By James Joyce
MR. JAMES DUFFY lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of
which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and
pretentious. He lived in an old sombre house and from his windows he could look into the disused
distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Dublin is built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted
room were free from pictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room: a black iron
bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a clothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a
square table on which lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means of shelves
of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and a black and scarlet rug covered the foot.
A little hand-mirror hung above the washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the
sole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves were arranged from below
upwards according to bulk. A complete Wordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of
the Maynooth Catechism, sewn into the cloth cover of a notebook, stood at one end of the top shelf.
Writing materials were always on the desk. In the desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann’s
Michael Kramer, the stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little sheaf of papers
held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an
ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet.
On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance escaped—the fragrance of new cedarwood pencils or of a
bottle of gum or of an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten.
Mr. Duffy abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder. A mediaeval doctor would
have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of
Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not
quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones also gave his face a harsh character; but there was no
harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the
impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived
at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd
autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about
himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to
beggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.
He had been for many years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street. Every morning he came in from
Chapelizod by tram. At midday he went to Dan Burke’s and took his lunch—a bottle of lager beer and a
small trayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four o’clock he was set free. He dined in an eating-house in
George’s Street where he felt himself safe from the society of Dublin’s gilded youth and where there
was a certain plain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings were spent either before his landlady’s piano
or roaming about the outskirts of the city. His liking for Mozart’s music brought him sometimes to an
opera or a concert: these were the only dissipations of his life.
He had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his spiritual life without any
communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when
they died. He performed these two social duties for old dignity’s sake but conceded nothing further to
the conventions which regulate the civic life. He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances
he would rob his hank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life rolled out evenly—an
adventureless tale.
One evening he found himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda. The house, thinly peopled and
silent, gave distressing prophecy of failure. The lady who sat next him looked round at the deserted
house once or twice and then said:
“What a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It’s so hard on people to have to sing to empty
benches.”
He took the remark as an invitation to talk. He was surprised that she seemed so little awkward. While
they talked he tried to fix her permanently in his memory. When he learned that the young girl beside
her was her daughter he judged her to be a year or so younger than himself. Her face, which must have
been handsome, had remained intelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The eyes
were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant note but was confused by what seemed
a deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris, revealing for an instant a temperament of great sensibility.
The pupil reasserted itself quickly, this half-disclosed nature fell again under the reign of prudence, and
her astrakhan jacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fullness, struck the note of defiance more
definitely.
He met her again a few weeks afterwards at a concert in Earlsfort Terrace and seized the moments
when her daughter’s attention was diverted to become intimate. She alluded once or twice to her
husband but her tone was not such as to make the allusion a warning. Her name was Mrs. Sinico. Her
husband’s great-great-grandfather had come from Leghorn. Her husband was captain of a mercantile
boat plying between Dublin and Holland; and they had one child.
Meeting her a third time by accident he found courage to make an appointment. She came. This was the
first of many meetings; they met always in the evening and chose the most quiet quarters for their
walks together. Mr. Duffy, however, had a distaste for underhand ways and, finding that they were
compelled to meet stealthily, he forced her to ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged his
visits, thinking that his daughter’s hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife so sincerely from
his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone else would take an interest in her. As the
husband was often away and the daughter out giving music lessons Mr. Duffy had many opportunities
of enjoying the lady’s society. Neither he nor she had had any such adventure before and neither was
conscious of any incongruity. Little by little he entangled his thoughts with hers. He lent her books,
provided her with ideas, shared his intellectual life with her. She listened to all.
Sometimes in return for his theories she gave out some fact of her own life. With almost maternal
solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full: she became his confessor. He told her that for
some time he had assisted at the meetings of an Irish Socialist Party where he had felt himself a unique
figure amidst a score of sober workmen in a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had
divided into three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret, he had discontinued his
attendances. The workmen’s discussions, he said, were too timorous; the interest they took in the
question of wages was inordinate. He felt that they were hard-featured realists and that they resented an
exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not within their reach. No social revolution, he told her,
would be likely to strike Dublin for some centuries.
She asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked her, with careful scorn. To
compete with phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself
to the criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to policemen and its fine arts to
impresarios?
He went often to her little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent their evenings alone. Little by little,
as their thoughts entangled, they spoke of subjects less remote. Her companionship was like a warm
soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the
lamp. The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them. This
union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character, emotionalised his mental life.
Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he
would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and
more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting
on the soul’s incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own. The end of these
discourses was that one night during which she had shown every sign of unusual excitement, Mrs.
Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek.
Mr. Duffy was very much surprised. Her interpretation of his words disillusioned him. He did not visit
her for a week, then he wrote to her asking her to meet him. As he did not wish their last interview to
be troubled by the influence of their ruined confessional they met in a little cakeshop near the Parkgate.
It was cold autumn weather but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park
for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse: every bond, he said, is a bond to
sorrow. When they came out of the Park they walked in silence towards the tram; but here she began to
tremble so violently that, fearing another collapse on her part, he bade her good-bye quickly and left
her. A few days later he received a parcel containing his books and music.
Four years passed. Mr. Duffy returned to his even way of life. His room still bore witness of the
orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of music encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and
on his shelves stood two volumes by Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. He
wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk. One of his sentences, written two months
after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there
must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there
must be sexual intercourse. He kept away from concerts lest he should meet her. His father died; the
junior partner of the bank retired. And still every morning he went into the city by tram and every
evening walked home from the city after having dined moderately in George’s Street and read the
evening paper for dessert.
One evening as he was about to put a morsel of corned beef and cabbage into his mouth his hand
stopped. His eyes fixed themselves on a paragraph in the evening paper which he had propped against
the water-carafe. He replaced the morsel of food on his plate and read the paragraph attentively. Then
he drank a glass of water, pushed his plate to one side, doubled the paper down before him between his
elbows and read the paragraph over and over again. The cabbage began to deposit a cold white grease
on his plate. The girl came over to him to ask was his dinner not properly cooked. He said it was very
good and ate a few mouthfuls of it with difficulty. Then he paid his bill and went out.
He walked along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel stick striking the ground
regularly, the fringe of the buff Mail peeping out of a side-pocket of his tight reefer overcoat. On the
lonely road which leads from the Parkgate to Chapelizod he slackened his pace. His stick struck the
ground less emphatically and his breath, issuing irregularly, almost with a sighing sound, condensed in
the wintry air. When he reached his house he went up at once to his bedroom and, taking the paper
from his pocket, read the paragraph again by the failing light of the window. He read it not aloud, but
moving his lips as a priest does when he reads the prayers Secreto. This was the paragraph:
DEATH OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE
A PAINFUL CASE
Today at the City of Dublin Hospital the Deputy Coroner (in the absence of Mr. Leverett) held an
inquest on the body of Mrs. Emily Sinico, aged forty-three years, who was killed at Sydney Parade
Station yesterday evening. The evidence showed that the deceased lady, while attempting to cross the
line, was knocked down by the engine of the ten o’clock slow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining
injuries of the head and right side which led to her death.
James Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had been in the employment of the railway company
for fifteen years. On hearing the guard’s whistle he set the train in motion and a second or two
afterwards brought it to rest in response to loud cries. The train was going slowly.
P. Dunne, railway porter, stated that as the train was about to start he observed a woman attempting to
cross the lines. He ran towards her and shouted, but, before he could reach her, she was caught by the
buffer of the engine and fell to the ground.
A juror. “You saw the lady fall?”
Witness. “Yes.”
Police Sergeant Croly deposed that when he arrived he found the deceased lying on the platform
apparently dead. He had the body taken to the waiting-room pending the arrival of the ambulance.
Constable 57E corroborated.
Dr. Halpin, assistant house surgeon of the City of Dublin Hospital, stated that the deceased had two
lower ribs fractured and had sustained severe contusions of the right shoulder. The right side of the
head had been injured in the fall. The injuries were not sufficient to have caused death in a normal
person. Death, in his opinion, had been probably due to shock and sudden failure of the heart’s action.
Mr. H. B. Patterson Finlay, on behalf of the railway company, expressed his deep regret at the accident.
The company had always taken every precaution to prevent people crossing the lines except by the
bridges, both by placing notices in every station and by the use of patent spring gates at level crossings.
The deceased had been in the habit of crossing the lines late at night from platform to platform and, in
view of certain other circumstances of the case, he did not think the railway officials were to blame.
Captain Sinico, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased, also gave evidence. He stated
that the deceased was his wife. He was not in Dublin at the time of the accident as he had arrived only
that morning from Rotterdam. They had been married for twenty-two years and had lived happily until
about two years ago when his wife began to be rather intemperate in her habits.
Miss Mary Sinico said that of late her mother had been in the habit of going out at night to buy spirits.
She, witness, had often tried to reason with her mother and had induced her to join a league. She was
not at home until an hour after the accident. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical
evidence and exonerated Lennon from all blame.
The Deputy Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed great sympathy with Captain Sinico
and his daughter. He urged on the railway company to take strong measures to prevent the possibility of
similar accidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.
Mr. Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on the cheerless evening
landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty distillery and from time to time a light appeared in
some house on the Lucan road. What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him and it
revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the
inane expressions of sympathy, the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of a
commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she degraded herself; she had
degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her vice, miserable and malodorous. His soul’s companion!
He thought of the hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to be filled by the
barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been unfit to live, without any strength of purpose,
an easy prey to habits, one of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared. But that she could have
sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself so utterly about her? He remembered her outburst
of that night and interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no difficulty now in
approving of the course he had taken.
As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand touched his. The shock which
had first attacked his stomach was now attacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat quickly and
went out. The cold air met him on the threshold; it crept into the sleeves of his coat. When he came to
the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he went in and ordered a hot punch.
The proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk. There were five or six workingmen
in the shop discussing the value of a gentleman’s estate in County Kildare They drank at intervals from
their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on the floor and sometimes dragging the sawdust
over their spits with their heavy boots. Mr. Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or
hearing them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He sat a long time over it.
The shop was very quiet. The proprietor sprawled on the counter reading the Herald and yawning. Now
and again a tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.
As he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately the two images in which he now
conceived her, he realised that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a
memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not
have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done
what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her
life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. His life would be lonely too until he,
too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory—if anyone remembered him.
It was after nine o’clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and gloomy. He entered the Park by
the first gate and walked along under the gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they
had walked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At moments he seemed to
feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his. He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from
her? Why had he sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.
When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked along the river towards Dublin, the
lights of which burned redly and hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the
base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive
loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from
life’s feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he had
sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall
were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s feast. He
turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a
goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the
darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his ears the
laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name.
He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He began to doubt
the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He
could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes
listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He
felt that he was alone.