There was no more tireless worker in the Republican cause. She worked all day, and for a while after her husband went she worked all night--keeping his propaganda work up to date, I suppose. Mrs. O’Grady, kneeling on a piece of newspaper before our sitting-room fire of a morning, would sniff and say, “That woman’s light is never out. That woman’s writing there all night. She’ll kill herself if she doesn’t mind. She’s that pale each morning she looks like a ghost. And what now, if the Black-and-Tans come back again and find what she’s got there?”
“Och, Mrs. O’Grady, indade and these do be terrible times,” I would answer.
When Mrs. Fitzgerald was not at work below she was in the streets, hurrying, no doubt on the business of the Republic, from house to house. She never walked, she went always at a trot. She seemed always behind time, always at the end of her tether; always ready for any new work that might have to be done. If all she did in a day were well done, she would have been one of the most useful members of the Cumann na mBan.
Yet, as was the case with numerous other prominent women, the British Government never took steps to put an end to her activities, though it was common knowledge that as the men were taken, the work fell more and more upon the shoulders of women.
For days after her husband’s arrest, Mrs. Fitzgerald kept very much to herself, partly, no doubt, because of her press of work, partly because her work was confidential; but also, I think, because she was sensitive and loth to intrude.
In the beginning it was “Good morning,” if we passed in the hall or in the street; then she came up one day to get the address of some publishers for her husband’s plays, and so the acquaintance made headway. One evening, on some errand or other, I penetrated for the first time into her sitting-room.
She was reading at the table in the small circle of light cast by the lamp, and she looked immensely lonely. It was as though there was just the circle of light where she sat reading, and outside that the dark--the dark room with high lights here and there on the bookcases, the dark city in a greater circle outside, and encircling the city the darkness one felt resting over the land, over the troubled world for that matter. I do not know if she felt as I felt about this, she looked as lonely as any creature I have seen.