I'd bring in his soup to him there, I'd find him with his breviary fallen to the floor,
lying back in the chair and his mouth open.'
She laid a finger against her nose and frowned; then she continued:
`But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over he'd go out for a
drive one fine day just to see the old house again where we were all born down in
Irishtown, and take me and Nannie with him. If we could only get one of them new-
fangled carriages that makes no noise that Father O'Rourke told him about, them with
the rheumatic wheels, for the day cheap - he said, at Johnny Rush's over the way there
and drive out the three of us together of a Sunday evening. He had his mind set on
that... Poor James!'
`The Lord have mercy on his soul!' said my aunt.
Eliza took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it. Then she put it back again
in her pocket and gazed into the empty grate for some time without speaking.
`He was too scrupulous always,' she said. `The duties of the priesthood was too much
for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.'
`Yes,' said my aunt. `He was a disappointed man. You could see that.'
A silence took possession of the little room and, under cover of it, I approached the
table and tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to my chair in the corner. Eliza
seemed to have fallen into a deep reverie. We waited respectfully for her to break the
silence: and after a long pause she said slowly:
`It was that chalice he broke... That was the beginning of it. Of course, they say it was
all right, that it contained nothing, I mean. But still... They say it was the boy's fault.
But poor James was so nervous, God be merciful to him!'
`And was that it?' said my aunt. `I heard something... '.
Eliza nodded.
`That affected his mind,' she said. `After that he began to mope by himself, talking to
no one and wandering about by himself. So one night he was wanted for to go on a
call and they couldn't find him anywhere. They looked high up and low down; and
still they couldn't see a sight of him anywhere. So then the clerk suggested to try the
chapel. So then they got the keys and opened the chapel, and the clerk and Father
O'Rourke and another priest that was there brought in a light for to look for him...
And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by himself in the dark in his
confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like softly to himself?'
She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no sound in the
house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had seen him,
solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.
Eliza resumed:
`Wide-awake and laughing-like to himself... So then, of course, when they saw that,
that made them think that there was something gone wrong with him... '
An Encounter
It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up
of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck, and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening
after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat
young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by
storm; or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we fought, we
never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon's war dance of
victory. His parents went to eight o'clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and
the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played
too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an
Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin
with his fist and yelling:
`Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!'
Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the
priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.
A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of
culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some boldly,
some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant
Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The
adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but,
at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better some American detective stories
which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though
there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes
literary, they were circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was
hearing the four pages of Roman History, clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a
copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.
`This page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up. "Hardly had the day"... Go on!
What day? "Hardly had the day dawned"... Have you studied it? What have you there
in your pocket?'
Everyone's heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed
an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages, frowning.
`What is this rubbish?' he said. `The Apache Chief! Is this what you read instead of
studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this
college. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes
these things for a drink. I'm surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff! I
could understand it if you were... National School boys. Now, Dillon, I advise you
strongly, get at your work or... '
This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild
West for me, and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my
consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I
began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which these chronicles of
disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the evening became at last
as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real
adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to
people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.
The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the
weariness of school life for one day at least. With Leo Dillon and a boy named
Mahony I planned a day's miching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at
ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge. Mahony's big sister was to write an excuse
for him and Leo Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go
along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and
walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid we might meet Father Butler
or someone out of the college; but Mahony asked, very sensibly, what would Father
Butler be doing out at the Pigeon House. We were reassured, and I brought the first
stage of the plot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same time
showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last arrangements on the
eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands, laughing, and Mahony said:
`Till tomorrow, mates.'
That night I slept badly. In the morning I was firstcomer to the bridge, as I lived
nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the ashpit at the end of the garden
where nobody ever came, and hurried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny
morning in the first week of June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge, admiring my
frail canvas shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight and watching the
docile horses pulling a tramload of business people up the hill. All the branches of the
tall trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves, and the sunlight
slanted through them on to the water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to
be warm, and I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was very
happy.
When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony's grey suit
approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered up beside me on the bridge.
While we were waiting he brought out the catapult which bulged from his inner
pocket and explained some improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why
he had brought it, and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds.
Mahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited on
for a quarter of an hour more, but still there was no sign of Leo Dillon. Mahony, at
last, jumped down and said:
`Come along. I knew Fatty'd funk it.'
`And his sixpence... ' I said.
`That's forfeit,' said Mahony. `And so much the better for us - a bob and a tanner
instead of a bob.'
We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then
turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play the Indian as soon as
we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd of ragged girls, brandishing his
unloaded catapult and, when two ragged boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at
us, he proposed that we should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small,
and so we walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us `Swaddlers! Swaddlers!'
thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was dark-complexioned,
wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap. When we came to the Smoothing
Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a failure because you must have at least three. We
revenged ourselves on Leo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how
many he would get at three o'clock from Mr Ryan.
We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the noisy streets
flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often
being shouted at for our immobility by the drivers of groaning carts. It was noon
when we reached the quays and, as all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches,
we bought two big currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping
beside the river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin's commerce - the
barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet
beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing vessel which was being discharged on the
opposite quay. Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those
big ships, and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography
which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my
eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed
to wane.
We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be transported in the
company of two labourers and a little Jew with a bag. We were serious to the point of
solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we
landed we watched the discharging of the graceful three-master which we had
observed from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel.
I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came
back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes, for I had
some confused notion... The sailors' eyes were blue, and grey, and even black. The
only sailor whose eyes could have been called green was a tall man who amused the
crowd on the quay by calling out cheerfully every time the planks fell:
`All right! All right!'
When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The day had
grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers' shops musty biscuits lay bleaching.
We bought some biscuits and chocolate, which we ate sedulously as we wandered
through the squalid streets where the families of the fishermen live. We could find no
dairy and so we went into a huckster's shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade
each. Refreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped into a
wide field. We both felt rather tired, and when we reached the field we made at once
for a sloping bank, over the ridge of which we could see the Dodder.
It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of visiting the Pigeon
House. We had to be home before four o clock, lest our adventure should be
discovered. Mahony looked regretfully at his catapult, and I had to suggest going
home by train before he regained any cheerfulness. The sun went in behind some
clouds and left us to our jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.
There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the bank for some
time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the far end of the field. I
watched him lazily as I chewed one of those green stems on which girls tell fortunes.
He came along by the bank slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the
other hand he held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily
dressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a
high crown. He seemed to be fairly old, for his moustache was ashen-grey. When he
passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then continued his way. We
followed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces
he turned about and began to retrace his steps. He walked towards us very slowly,
always tapping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he was looking for
something in the grass.
He stopped when he came level with us, and bade us good-day. We answered him,
and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly and with great care. He began to talk of
the weather, saying that it would be a very hot summer and adding that the seasons
had changed greatly since he was a boy - a long time ago. He said that the happiest
time of one's life was undoubtedly one's schoolboy days, and that he would give
anything to be young again. While he expressed these sentiments, which bored us a
little, we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He asked us
whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of Sir Walter Scott
