North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the
hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. An
uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from
its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street,
conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown
imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back
drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the
rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old
useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages
of which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq.
I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden
behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling
bushes, under one of which I found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump.
He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his
money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten
our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The
space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards
it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air
stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the
silent street. The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy
lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes
from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where
odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a
coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music from the buckled
harness. When we returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows
had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in
the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's sister
came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched
her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see
whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our
shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting for
us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her
brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the railings
looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope
of her hair tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door.
The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could
not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran
to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure
always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways
diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning
after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words,
and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On
Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some
of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by
drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the
shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs'
cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you
about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native
land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I
imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her
name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I
myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could
not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself
out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know
whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I
could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and
her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
...
