I was looking at the burning building. “I don’t believe that dome is going to go this afternoon.”
“Neither do I, and I can’t wait for it anyhow.”
“Only a day or two. I was on other business. I’m off.”
“We’ll run across each other soon. I don’t suppose I shall be leaving Dublin again.”
I knew once 47 intended to go nothing stopped him. I gave a flourish of my hand, and he flourished his and left me.
He had not gone very long when the Auxiliaries paid us another of their intermittent visits, panic swept over us again, and we retreated to our holes to the sound of hundreds of steps pattering on the quay. These terrible men came along again, leaning over the armoured sides of the car, flashing their eyes, grinding their teeth, waving their guns and crying, “Move along there,” and then, their fury eased, they turned the car about and sped back to Butt Bridge.
The crowd had thinned a good deal since I came, and there was plenty of room to move about. This time who should I run across but Mrs. Slaney? She was standing very stiffly contemplating the burning building.
For once she appeared a little abashed. A great flurry of wind came along, and the inferno within the stone walls glowed, and flames pushed through the stone crevices here and there, leapt out of the windows, climbed through the roof, and turning into smoke, went whirling into the sky. Great pieces of charred material went floating like black birds into the air. All eyes were fixed on the clock, which continued to tick.
“It was the most beautiful building in Ireland,” Mrs. Slaney said. “Many a time I have been in there when I was a girl with my cousins, who held their heads very high on the north side of the city. It seems unfortunate that the Volunteers should have considered it necessary to burn it.” Then the old fire came back. “But England is to blame, England for what has happened. The Customs House represents to us the very heart of England. After Dublin Castle everything that is iniquitous in English rule is most strongly represented by that building. England has caused the ruin of that place just in the same way as she caused the destruction of the Post Office, another of our beautiful buildings.”
I departed before very long, vanquished. The clock was still going at the time; but it had stopped before next morning. The following afternoon I was down that way again when the dome, which seemed to be supporting the statue of Commerce, capitulated. The flames pushed through its joints, like the edges of some starving tongue thrusting up from within; it crumpled, it palpitated, it curled in agony, it disappeared. But the statue stood, defying the lust of the great crowd gathered to see it crash down to the pavement, and was standing high over the wreckage after the last spark had been quenched.