Page 179 - dubliners

‘And who else?’
‘Harford.’
‘Hm,’ said Mr. Cunningham.
When Mr. Cunningham made that remark, people were
silent. It was known that the speaker had secret sources
of information. In this case the monosyllable had a mor-
al intention. Mr. Harford sometimes formed one of a little
detachment which left the city shortly after noon on Sun-
day with the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at some
public-house on the outskirts of the city where its members
duly qualified themselves as bona fide travellers. But his fel-
low-travellers had never consented to overlook his origin.
He had begun life as an obscure financier by lending small
sums of money to workmen at usurious interest. Later on
he had become the partner of a very fat, short gentleman,
Mr. Goldberg, in the Liffey Loan Bank. Though he had
never embraced more than the Jewish ethical code, his fel-
low-Catholics, whenever they had smarted in person or by
proxy under his exactions, spoke of him bitterly as an Irish
Jew and an illiterate, and saw divine disapproval of usury
made manifest through the person of his idiot son. At other
times they remembered his good points.
‘I wonder where did he go to,’ said Mr. Kernan.
He wished the details of the incident to remain vague.
He wished his friends to think there had been some mis-
take, that Mr. Harford and he had missed each other. His
friends, who knew quite well Mr. Harford’s manners in
drinking were silent. Mr. Power said again:
‘All’s well that ends well.’

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