wer. How my heart beat as he came running across the
field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my
heart I had always despised him a little.
ARABY
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
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