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“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.”
This is the first description that the reader gets of the story’s other key character. The narrator’s observation highlights the old man’s haggard appearance, his advanced age, and his apparent poverty. Readers who are familiar with the other short stories in Dubliners will note that the old man is dressed in the same greenish-black attire as Father Flynn from “The Sisters.” This aesthetic link is meant to put the reader on edge because it reveals the old man’s sinister nature before he even starts to speak.
“He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him; and that would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that 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 were unfolding some elaborate mystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this world.”
The narrator is frozen to the spot as the old man, who at this point has clearly established himself as a sexual predator, fantasizes about whipping young boys. His monologue is likely triggered by Mahony’s wild behavior because the old man asks the narrator if Mahony is often whipped at school for misbehaving. It is one of the more disturbing moments in the story, and highlights the old man’s sadistic nature.
