An Encounter
IT WAS Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had alittle library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack , Pluckand The Halfpenny Marvel . Every evening after school we met inhis back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat youngbrother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried tocarry 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 ourbouts ended with Joe Dillon's war dance of victory. His parentswent to eight- o'clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street andthe peaceful odour of Mrs. Dillon was prevalent in the hall of thehouse. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger andmore timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian when hecapered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating atin with his fist and yelling:"Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!"Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had avocation for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under itsinfluence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. Webanded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and somealmost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctantIndians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness,I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the WildWest were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doorsof escape. I liked better some American detective stories whichwere traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautifulgirls. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and thoughtheir intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretlyat school. One day when Father Butler was hearing the four pagesof Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copyof The Halfpenny Marvel ."This page or this page? This page Now, Dillon, up! 'Hardly hadthe day' ... Go on! What day? 'Hardly had the day dawned' ... Haveyou studied it? What have you there in your pocket?"Everyone's heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper andeveryone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over thepages, frowning."What is this rubbish?" he said. "The Apache Chief! Is this whatyou read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not findany more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wroteit, I suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these thingsfor a drink. I'm surprised at boys like you, educated, reading suchstuff. 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 theglory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of LeoDillon awakened one of my consciences. But when the restraininginfluence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger againfor wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles ofdisorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of theevening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of schoolin the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen tomyself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to peoplewho remain at home: they must be sought abroad.The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mindto break out of the weariness of schoollife for one day at least.With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day'smiching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten inthe morning on the Canal Bridge. Mahony's big sister was to writean excuse for him and Leo Dillon was to tell his brother to say hewas sick. We arranged to go along the Wharf Road until we cameto the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and walk out to see thePigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid we might meet Father Butleror someone out of the college; but Mahony asked, very sensibly,what would Father Butler be doing out at the Pigeon House. Wewere reassured: and I brought the first stage of the plot to an endby collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same timeshowing them my own sixpence. When we were making the lastarrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shookhands, laughing, and Mahony said:"Till tomorrow, mates!"That night I slept badly. In the morning I was firstcomer to thebridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near theashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came andhurried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in thefirst week of June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiringmy frail canvas shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnightand watching the docile horses pulling a tramload of businesspeople up the hill. All the branches of the tall trees which lined themall were gay with little light green leaves and the sunlight slantedthrough them on to the water. The granite stone of the bridge wasbeginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in timeto an air in my head. I was very happy.When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I sawMahony's grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, andclambered up beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting hebrought out the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket andexplained some improvements which he had made in it. I askedhim why he had brought it and he told me he had brought it tohave some gas with the birds. Mahony used slang freely, and spokeof Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited on for a quarter of anhour more but still there was no sign of Leo Dillon. Mahony, atlast, 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 -- abob and a tanner instead of a bob."We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the VitriolWorks and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahonybegan to play the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. Hechased a crowd of ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapultand, when two ragged boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stonesat us, he proposed that we should charge them. I objected that theboys were too small and so we walked on, the ragged troopscreaming after us: "Swaddlers! Swaddlers!" thinking that we wereProtestants because Mahony, who was dark-complexioned, worethe silver badge of a cricket club in his cap. When we came to theSmoothing Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a failure becauseyou must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on Leo Dillonby saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he wouldget at three o'clock from Mr. Ryan.We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking aboutthe noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the workingof cranes and engines and often being shouted at for ourimmobility by the drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when wereached the quays and as all the labourers seemed to be eatingtheir lunches, we bought two big currant buns and sat down to eatthem on some metal piping beside the river We pleased ourselveswith the spectacle of Dublin's commerce -- the barges signalledfrom far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishingfleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailingvessel which wasbeing discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony said it would beright 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 whichhad been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substanceunder my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us andtheir influences upon us seemed to wane.We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to betransported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with abag. We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during theshort voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed wewatched the discharging of the graceful threemaster which we hadobserved from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was aNorwegian vessel. I went to the stern and tried to decipher thelegend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined theforeign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had someconfused notion.... The sailors' eyes were blue and grey and evenblack. The only sailor whose eyes could have been called greenwas a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay by calling outcheerfully every time the planks fell:"All right! All right!"When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly intoRingsend. The day had grown sultry, and in the windows of thegrocers' shops musty biscuits lay bleaching. We bought somebiscuits and chocolate which we ate sedulously as we wanderedthrough the squalid streets where the families of the fishermenlive. We could find no dairy and so we went into a huckster's shopand bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each. Refreshed by this,Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped into a widefield. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field wemade at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we couldsee the Dodder.It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project ofvisiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o'clocklest our adventure should be discovered. Mahony lookedregretfully at his catapult and I had to suggest going home by trainbefore he regained any cheerfulness. The sun went in behind someclouds and left us to our jaded thoughts and the crumbs of ourprovisions.There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain onthe bank for some time without speaking I saw a man approachingfrom the far end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed oneof those green stems on which girls tell fortunes. He came alongby the bank slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and inthe 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 whatwe used to call a jerry hat with a high crown. He seemed to befairly old for his moustache was ashen-grey. When he passed atour 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 onfor perhaps fifty paces he turned about and began to retrace hissteps. He walked towards us very slowly, always tapping theground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he was looking forsomething in the grass.He stopped when he came level with us and bade us goodday. Weanswered him and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly andwith great care. He began to talk of the weather, saying that itwould be a very hot summer and adding that the seasons hadchanged gready since he was a boy -- a long time ago. He said thatthe happiest time of one's life was undoubtedly one's schoolboydays and that he would give anything to be young again. While heexpressed these sentiments which bored us a little we kept silent.Then he began to talk of school and of books. He asked us whetherwe had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of SirWalter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read everybook he mentioned so that in the end he said:"Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now," he added,pointing to Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, "he isdifferent; he goes in for games."He said he had all Sir Walter Scott's works and all Lord Lytton'sworks at home and never tired of reading them. "Of course," hesaid, "there were some of Lord Lytton's works which boys couldn'tread." Mahony asked why couldn't boys read them -- a questionwhich agitated and pained me because I was afraid the man wouldthink I was as stupid as Mahony. The man, however, only smiled. Isaw that he had great gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth.Then he asked us which of us had the most sweethearts. Mahonymentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked me howmany I had. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me andsaid he was sure I must have one. I was silent."Tell us," said Mahony pertly to the man, "how many have youyourself?"The man smiled as before and said that when he was our age hehad lots of sweethearts."Every boy," he said, "has a little sweetheart."His attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man ofhis age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys andsweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouthand I wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he fearedsomething or felt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that hisaccent was good. He began to speak to us about girls, saying whatnice soft hair they had and how soft their hands were and how allgirls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew.There was nothing he liked, he said, so much as looking at a niceyoung girl, at her nice white hands and her beautiful soft hair. Hegave me the impression that he was repeating something which hehad learned by heart or that, magnetised by some words of his ownspeech, his mind was slowly circling round and round in the sameorbit. At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some factthat everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spokemysteriously as if he were telling us something secret which he didnot wish others to overhear. He repeated his phrases over and overagain, varying them and surrounding them with his monotonousvoice. I continued to gaze towards the foot of the slope, listeningto him.After a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly,saying that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes,and, without changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walkingslowly away from us towards the near end of the field. Weremained silent when he had gone. After a silence of a fewminutes I heard Mahony exclaim:"I say! Look what he's doing!"As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimedagain:"I say... He's a queer old josser!"In case he asks us for our names," I said "let you be Murphy and I'llbe Smith."We said nothing further to each other. I was still consideringwhether I would go away or not when the man came back and satdown beside us again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony,catching sight of the cat which had escaped him, sprang up andpursued her across the field. The man and I watched the chase. Thecat escaped once more and Mahony began to throw stones at thewall she had escaladed. Desisting from this, he began to wanderabout the far end of the field, aimlessly.After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend wasa very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. Iwas going to reply indignantly that we were not National Schoolboys to be whipped, as he called it; but I remained silent. He beganto speak on the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as ifmagnetised again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round andround its new centre. He said that when boys were that kind theyought to be whipped and well whipped. When a boy was rough andunruly there was nothing would do him any good but a good soundwhipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good:what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was surprisedat this sentiment and involuntarily glanced up at his face. As I didso I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me fromunder a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.The man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgottenhis recent liberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking togirls or having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whiphim; and that would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if aboy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it then he wouldgive him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He saidthat there was nothing in this world he would like so well as that.He described to me how he would whip such a boy as if he wereunfolding some elaborate mystery. He would love that, he said,better than anything in this world; and his voice, as he led memonotonously through the mystery, grew almost affectionate andseemed to plead with me that I should understand him.I waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly.Lest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few momentspretending to fix my shoe properly and then, saying that I wasobliged to go, I bade him good-day. I went up the slope calmly butmy heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me bythe ankles. When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and,without looking at him, called loudly across the field:"Murphy!"My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamedof my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again beforeMahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as hecame 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 alittle.
An Encounter was featured as
TheShort Story of the Day on
Sun, Jun 12, 2016
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
