A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Schemes and Mind Maps of Voice

Download A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and more Schemes and Mind Maps Voice in PDF only on Docsity! A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man By By James Joycew Published by Planet eBook. Visit the site to download free eBooks of classic literature, books and novels. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. 5Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com shouting and the prefects urged them on with strong cries. The evening air was pale and chilly and after every charge and thud of the footballers the greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light. He kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. He felt his body small and weak amid the throng of the players and his eyes were weak and watery. Rody Kickham was not like that: he would be captain of the third line all the fellows said. Rody Kickham was a decent fellow but Nasty Roche was a stink. Rody Kickham had greaves in his number and a hamper in the refectory. Nasty Roche had big hands. He called the Friday pudding dog-in-the-blanket. And one day he had asked: —What is your name? Stephen had answered: Stephen Dedalus. Then Nasty Roche had said: —What kind of a name is that? And when Stephen had not been able to answer Nasty Roche had asked: —What is your father? Stephen had answered: —A gentleman. Then Nasty Roche had asked: —Is he a magistrate? He crept about from point to point on the fringe of his line, making little runs now and then. But his hands were bluish with cold. He kept his hands in the side pockets of his belted grey suit. That was a belt round his pocket. And A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man6 belt was also to give a fellow a belt. One day a fellow said to Cantwell: —I’d give you such a belt in a second. Cantwell had answered: —Go and fight your match. Give Cecil Thunder a belt. I’d like to see you. He’d give you a toe in the rump for your- self. That was not a nice expression. His mother had told him not to speak with the rough boys in the college. Nice moth- er! The first day in the hall of the castle when she had said goodbye she had put up her veil double to her nose to kiss him: and her nose and eyes were red. But he had pretended not to see that she was going to cry. She was a nice mother but she was not so nice when she cried. And his father had given him two five-shilling pieces for pocket money. And his father had told him if he wanted anything to write home to him and, whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow. Then at the door of the castle the rector had shaken hands with his father and mother, his soutane fluttering in the breeze, and the car had driven off with his father and mother on it. They had cried to him from the car, waving their hands: —Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye! —Goodbye, Stephen, goodbye! He was caught in the whirl of a scrimmage and, fearful of the flashing eyes and muddy boots, bent down to look through the legs. The fellows were struggling and groan- ing and their legs were rubbing and kicking and stamping. Then Jack Lawton’s yellow boots dodged out the ball and all the other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little 7Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com way and then stopped. It was useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for the holidays. After supper in the study hall he would change the number pasted up inside his desk from seventy-seven to seventy-six. It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold. The sky was pale and cold but there were lights in the castle. He wondered from which window Hamilton Rowan had thrown his hat on the ha-ha and had there been flowerbeds at that time under the windows. One day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the marks of the soldiers’ slugs in the wood of the door and had given him a piece of shortbread that the community ate. It was nice and warm to see the lights in the castle. It was like something in a book. Perhaps Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were nice sentences in Doctor Corn- well’s Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were only sentences to learn the spelling from. Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey Where the abbots buried him. Canker is a disease of plants, Cancer one of animals. It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands, and think on those sen- tences. He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next his skin. That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells’s seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of for- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man10 badge with the red rose on it looked very rich because he had a blue sailor top on. Stephen felt his own face red too, thinking of all the bets about who would get first place in elements, Jack Lawton or he. Some weeks Jack Lawton got the card for first and some weeks he got the card for first. His white silk badge fluttered and fluttered as he worked at the next sum and heard Father Arnall’s voice. Then all his eagerness passed away and he felt his face quite cool. He thought his face must be white because it felt so cool. He could not get out the answer for the sum but it did not mat- ter. White roses and red roses: those were beautiful colours to think of. And the cards for first place and second place and third place were beautiful colours too: pink and cream and lavender. Lavender and cream and pink roses were beautiful to think of. Perhaps a wild rose might be like those colours and he remembered the song about the wild rose blossoms on the little green place. But you could not have a green rose. But perhaps somewhere in the world you could. The bell rang and then the classes began to file out of the rooms and along the corridors towards the refectory. He sat looking at the two prints of butter on his plate but could not eat the damp bread. The tablecloth was damp and limp. But he drank off the hot weak tea which the clumsy scullion, girt with a white apron, poured into his cup. He wondered whether the scullion’s apron was damp too or whether all white things were cold and damp. Nasty Roche and Saurin drank cocoa that their people sent them in tins. They said they could not drink the tea; that it was hogwash. Their fa- thers were magistrates, the fellows said. 11Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com All the boys seemed to him very strange. They had all fathers and mothers and different clothes and voices. He longed to be at home and lay his head on his mother’s lap. But he could not: and so he longed for the play and study and prayers to be over and to be in bed. He drank another cup of hot tea and Fleming said: —What’s up? Have you a pain or what’s up with you? —I don’t know, Stephen said. —Sick in your breadbasket, Fleming said, because your face looks white. It will go away. —O yes, Stephen said. But he was not sick there. He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place. Fleming was very decent to ask him. He wanted to cry. He leaned his elbows on the table and shut and opened the flaps of his ears. Then he heard the noise of the refectory every time he opened the flaps of his ears. It made a roar like a train at night. And when he closed the flaps the roar was shut off like a train go- ing into a tunnel. That night at Dalkey the train had roared like that and then, when it went into the tunnel, the roar stopped. He closed his eyes and the train went on, roaring and then stopping; roaring again, stopping. It was nice to hear it roar and stop and then roar out of the tunnel again and then stop. Then the higher line fellows began to come down along the matting in the middle of the refectory, Paddy Rath and Jimmy Magee and the Spaniard who was allowed to smoke cigars and the little Portuguese who wore the woolly cap. And then the lower line tables and the tables of the third A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man12 line. And every single fellow had a different way of walk- ing. He sat in a corner of the playroom pretending to watch a game of dominoes and once or twice he was able to hear for an instant the little song of the gas. The prefect was at the door with some boys and Simon Moonan was knotting his false sleeves. He was telling them something about Tul- labeg. Then he went away from the door and Wells came over to Stephen and said: —Tell us, Dedalus, do you kiss your mother before you go to bed? Stephen answered: —I do. Wells turned to the other fellows and said: —O, I say, here’s a fellow says he kisses his mother every night before he goes to bed. The other fellows stopped their game and turned round, laughing. Stephen blushed under their eyes and said: —I do not. Wells said: —O, I say, here’s a fellow says he doesn’t kiss his mother before he goes to bed. They all laughed again. Stephen tried to laugh with them. He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment. What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed. But Wells must know the right answer for he was in third of grammar. He tried to think of Wells’s mother but he did not dare to raise his eyes to Wells’s face. 15Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com He read the verses backwards but then they were not po- etry. Then he read the flyleaf from the bottom to the top till he came to his own name. That was he: and he read down the page again. What was after the universe? Nothing. But was there anything round the universe to show where it stopped before the nothing place began? It could not be a wall; but there could be a thin thin line there all round everything. It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be; but he could only think of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. DIEU was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said DIEU then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But, though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their dif- ferent languages, still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God. It made him very tired to think that way. It made him feel his head very big. He turned over the flyleaf and looked wearily at the green round earth in the middle of the ma- roon clouds. He wondered which was right, to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had ripped the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day with her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered if they were arguing at home about that. That was called politics. There were two sides in it: Dante was on one side and his father and Mr Casey were on the A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man16 other side but his mother and uncle Charles were on no side. Every day there was something in the paper about it. It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in poetry and rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry. That was very far away. First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation again and then again another term and then again the vaca- tion. It was like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got hot and then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to yawn. The bell rang for night prayers and he filed out of the study hall after the others and down the staircase and along the corridors to the chapel. The corridors were darkly lit and the chapel was darkly lit. Soon all would be dark and sleep- ing. There was cold night air in the chapel and the marbles were the colour the sea was at night. The sea was cold day 17Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com and night: but it was colder at night. It was cold and dark under the seawall beside his father’s house. But the kettle would be on the hob to make punch. The prefect of the chapel prayed above his head and his memory knew the responses: O Lord open our lips And our mouths shall announce Thy praise. Incline unto our aid, O God! O Lord make haste to help us! There was a cold night smell in the chapel. But it was a holy smell. It was not like the smell of the old peasants who knelt at the back of the chapel at Sunday mass. That was a smell of air and rain and turf and corduroy. But they were very holy peasants. They breathed behind him on his neck and sighed as they prayed. They lived in Clane, a fellow said: there were little cottages there and he had seen a woman standing at the half-door of a cottage with a child in her arms as the cars had come past from Sallins. It would be lovely to sleep for one night in that cottage before the fire of smoking turf, in the dark lit by the fire, in the warm dark, breathing the smell of the peasants, air and rain and turf and corduroy. But O, the road there between the trees was dark! You would be lost in the dark. It made him afraid to think of how it was. He heard the voice of the prefect of the chapel saying the last prayers. He prayed it too against the dark outside under the trees. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man20 Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! The cars drove past the chapel and all caps were raised. They drove merrily along the country roads. The driv- ers pointed with their whips to Bodenstown. The fellows cheered. They passed the farmhouse of the Jolly Farmer. Cheer after cheer after cheer. Through Clane they drove, cheering and cheered. The peasant women stood at the half- doors, the men stood here and there. The lovely smell there was in the wintry air: the smell of Clane: rain and wintry air and turf smouldering and corduroy. The train was full of fellows: a long long chocolate train with cream facings. The guards went to and fro opening, closing, locking, unlocking the doors. They were men in dark blue and silver; they had silvery whistles and their keys made a quick music: click, click: click, click. And the train raced on over the flat lands and past the Hill of Allen. The telegraph poles were passing, passing. The train went on and on. It knew. There were lanterns in the hall of his father’s house and ropes of green branches. There were holly and ivy round the pierglass and holly and ivy, green and red, twined round the chandeliers. There were red holly and green ivy round the old portraits on the walls. Holly and ivy for him and for Christmas. Lovely... All the people. Welcome home, Stephen! Noises of wel- come. His mother kissed him. Was that right? His father was a marshal now: higher than a magistrate. Welcome home, Stephen! Noises... 21Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com There was a noise of curtain-rings running back along the rods, of water being splashed in the basins. There was a noise of rising and dressing and washing in the dormitory: a noise of clapping of hands as the prefect went up and down telling the fellows to look sharp. A pale sunlight showed the yellow curtains drawn back, the tossed beds. His bed was very hot and his face and body were very hot. He got up and sat on the side of his bed. He was weak. He tried to pull on his stocking. It had a horrid rough feel. The sunlight was queer and cold. Fleming said: —Are you not well? He did not know; and Fleming said: —Get back into bed. I’ll tell McGlade you’re not well. —He’s sick. —Who is? —Tell McGlade. —Get back into bed. —Is he sick? A fellow held his arms while he loosened the stocking clinging to his foot and climbed back into the hot bed. He crouched down between the sheets, glad of their tep- id glow. He heard the fellows talk among themselves about him as they dressed for mass. It was a mean thing to do, to shoulder him into the square ditch, they were saying. Then their voices ceased; they had gone. A voice at his bed said: —Dedalus, don’t spy on us, sure you won’t? Wells’s face was there. He looked at it and saw that Wells A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man22 was afraid. —I didn’t mean to. Sure you won’t? His father had told him, whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow. He shook his head and answered no and felt glad. Wells said: —I didn’t mean to, honour bright. It was only for cod. I’m sorry. The face and the voice went away. Sorry because he was afraid. Afraid that it was some disease. Canker was a disease of plants and cancer one of animals: or another different. That was a long time ago then out on the playgrounds in the evening light, creeping from point to point on the fringe of his line, a heavy bird flying low through the grey light. Le- icester Abbey lit up. Wolsey died there. The abbots buried him themselves. It was not Wells’s face, it was the prefect’s. He was not foxing. No, no: he was sick really. He was not foxing. And he felt the prefect’s hand on his forehead; and he felt his fore- head warm and damp against the prefect’s cold damp hand. That was the way a rat felt, slimy and damp and cold. Every rat had two eyes to look out of. Sleek slimy coats, little little feet tucked up to jump, black slimy eyes to look out of. They could understand how to jump. But the minds of rats could not understand trigonometry. When they were dead they lay on their sides. Their coats dried then. They were only dead things. The prefect was there again and it was his voice that was saying that he was to get up, that Father Minister had said 25Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com How far away they were! There was cold sunlight outside the window. He wondered if he would die. You could die just the same on a sunny day. He might die before his moth- er came. Then he would have a dead mass in the chapel like the way the fellows had told him it was when Little had died. All the fellows would be at the mass, dressed in black, all with sad faces. Wells too would be there but no fellow would look at him. The rector would be there in a cope of black and gold and there would be tall yellow candles on the altar and round the catafalque. And they would carry the coffin out of the chapel slowly and he would be buried in the little graveyard of the community off the main avenue of limes. And Wells would be sorry then for what he had done. And the bell would toll slowly. He could hear the tolling. He said over to himself the song that Brigid had taught him. Dingdong! The castle bell! Farewell, my mother! Bury me in the old churchyard Beside my eldest brother. My coffin shall be black, Six angels at my back, Two to sing and two to pray And two to carry my soul away. How beautiful and sad that was! How beautiful the words were where they said BURY ME IN THE OLD CHURCH- YARD! A tremor passed over his body. How sad and how A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man26 beautiful! He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music. The bell! The bell! Farewell! O farewell! The cold sunlight was weaker and Brother Michael was standing at his bedside with a bowl of beef-tea. He was glad for his mouth was hot and dry. He could hear them playing in the playgrounds. And the day was going on in the college just as if he were there. Then Brother Michael was going away and the fellow out of the third of grammar told him to be sure and come back and tell him all the news in the paper. He told Stephen that his name was Athy and that his father kept a lot of racehors- es that were spiffing jumpers and that his father would give a good tip to Brother Michael any time he wanted it because Brother Michael was very decent and always told him the news out of the paper they got every day up in the castle. There was every kind of news in the paper: accidents, ship- wrecks, sports, and politics. —Now it is all about politics in the papers, he said. Do your people talk about that too? —Yes, Stephen said. —Mine too, he said. Then he thought for a moment and said: —You have a queer name, Dedalus, and I have a queer name too, Athy. My name is the name of a town. Your name is like Latin. Then he asked: —Are you good at riddles? Stephen answered: 27Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Not very good. Then he said: —Can you answer me this one? Why is the county of Kildare like the leg of a fellow’s breeches? Stephen thought what could be the answer and then said: —I give it up. —Because there is a thigh in it, he said. Do you see the joke? Athy is the town in the county Kildare and a thigh is the other thigh. —Oh, I see, Stephen said. —That’s an old riddle, he said. After a moment he said: —I say! —What? asked Stephen. —You know, he said, you can ask that riddle another way. —Can you? said Stephen. —The same riddle, he said. Do you know the other way to ask it? —No, said Stephen. —Can you not think of the other way? he said. He looked at Stephen over the bedclothes as he spoke. Then he lay back on the pillow and said: —There is another way but I won’t tell you what it is. Why did he not tell it? His father, who kept the racehors- es, must be a magistrate too like Saurin’s father and Nasty Roche’s father. He thought of his own father, of how he sang songs while his mother played and of how he always gave A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man30 easy-chairs at either side of the hearth, Stephen, seated on a chair between them, his feet resting on the toasted boss. Mr Dedalus looked at himself in the pierglass above the man- telpiece, waxed out his moustache ends and then, parting his coat-tails, stood with his back to the glowing fire: and still from time to time he withdrew a hand from his coat- tail to wax out one of his moustache ends. Mr Casey leaned his head to one side and, smiling, tapped the gland of his neck with his fingers. And Stephen smiled too for he knew now that it was not true that Mr Casey had a purse of sil- ver in his throat. He smiled to think how the silvery noise which Mr Casey used to make had deceived him. And when he had tried to open Mr Casey’s hand to see if the purse of silver was hidden there he had seen that the fingers could not be straightened out: and Mr Casey had told him that he had got those three cramped fingers making a birthday present for Queen Victoria. Mr Casey tapped the gland of his neck and smiled at Stephen with sleepy eyes: and Mr Dedalus said to him: —Yes. Well now, that’s all right. O, we had a good walk, hadn’t we, John? Yes... I wonder if there’s any likelihood of dinner this evening. Yes... O, well now, we got a good breath of ozone round the Head today. Ay, bedad. He turned to Dante and said: —You didn’t stir out at all, Mrs Riordan? Dante frowned and said shortly: —No. Mr Dedalus dropped his coat-tails and went over to the sideboard. He brought forth a great stone jar of whisky from 31Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com the locker and filled the decanter slowly, bending now and then to see how much he had poured in. Then replacing the jar in the locker he poured a little of the whisky into two glasses, added a little water and came back with them to the fireplace. —A thimbleful, John, he said, just to whet your appe- tite. Mr Casey took the glass, drank, and placed it near him on the mantelpiece. Then he said: —Well, I can’t help thinking of our friend Christopher manufacturing... He broke into a fit of laughter and coughing and added: —...manufacturing that champagne for those fellows. Mr Dedalus laughed loudly. —Is it Christy? he said. There’s more cunning in one of those warts on his bald head than in a pack of jack foxes. He inclined his head, closed his eyes, and, licking his lips profusely, began to speak with the voice of the hotel keep- er. —And he has such a soft mouth when he’s speaking to you, don’t you know. He’s very moist and watery about the dewlaps, God bless him. Mr Casey was still struggling through his fit of coughing and laughter. Stephen, seeing and hearing the hotel keeper through his father’s face and voice, laughed. Mr Dedalus put up his eyeglass and, staring down at him, said quietly and kindly: —What are you laughing at, you little puppy, you? The servants entered and placed the dishes on the table. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man32 Mrs Dedalus followed and the places were arranged. —Sit over, she said. Mr Dedalus went to the end of the table and said: —Now, Mrs Riordan, sit over. John, sit you down, my hearty. He looked round to where uncle Charles sat and said: —Now then, sir, there’s a bird here waiting for you. When all had taken their seats he laid his hand on the cover and then said quickly, withdrawing it: —Now, Stephen. Stephen stood up in his place to say the grace before meals: Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which through Thy bounty we are about to receive through Christ our Lord. Amen. All blessed themselves and Mr Dedalus with a sigh of pleasure lifted from the dish the heavy cover pearled around the edge with glistening drops. Stephen looked at the plump turkey which had lain, trussed and skewered, on the kitchen table. He knew that his father had paid a guinea for it in Dunn’s of D’Olier Street and that the man had prodded it often at the breastbone to show how good it was: and he remembered the man’s voice when he had said: —Take that one, sir. That’s the real Ally Daly. Why did Mr Barrett in Clongowes call his pandybat a turkey? But Clongowes was far away: and the warm heavy smell of turkey and ham and celery rose from the plates and dishes and the great fire was banked high and red in the 35Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —For pity sake and for pity sake let us have no political discussion on this day of all days in the year. —Quite right, ma’am, said uncle Charles. Now, Simon, that’s quite enough now. Not another word now. —Yes, yes, said Mr Dedalus quickly. He uncovered the dish boldly and said: —Now then, who’s for more turkey? Nobody answered. Dante said: —Nice language for any catholic to use! —Mrs Riordan, I appeal to you, said Mrs Dedalus, to let the matter drop now. Dante turned on her and said: —And am I to sit here and listen to the pastors of my church being flouted? —Nobody is saying a word against them, said Mr Ded- alus, so long as they don’t meddle in politics. —The bishops and priests of Ireland have spoken, said Dante, and they must be obeyed. —Let them leave politics alone, said Mr Casey, or the people may leave their church alone. —You hear? said Dante, turning to Mrs Dedalus. —Mr Casey! Simon! said Mrs Dedalus, let it end now. —Too bad! Too bad! said uncle Charles. —What? cried Mr Dedalus. Were we to desert him at the bidding of the English people? —He was no longer worthy to lead, said Dante. He was a public sinner. —We are all sinners and black sinners, said Mr Casey coldly. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man36 —WOE BE TO THE MAN BY WHOM THE SCAN- DAL COMETH! said Mrs Riordan. IT WOULD BE BETTER FOR HIM THAT A MILLSTONE WERE TIED ABOUT HIS NECK AND THAT HE WERE CAST INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA RATHER THAN THAT HE SHOULD SCANDALIZE ONE OF THESE, MY LEAST LITTLE ONES. That is the language of the Holy Ghost. —And very bad language if you ask me, said Mr Ded- alus coolly. —Simon! Simon! said uncle Charles. The boy. —Yes, yes, said Mr Dedalus. I meant about the... I was thinking about the bad language of the railway porter. Well now, that’s all right. Here, Stephen, show me your plate, old chap. Eat away now. Here. He heaped up the food on Stephen’s plate and served uncle Charles and Mr Casey to large pieces of turkey and splashes of sauce. Mrs Dedalus was eating little and Dante sat with her hands in her lap. She was red in the face. Mr Dedalus rooted with the carvers at the end of the dish and said: —There’s a tasty bit here we call the pope’s nose. If any lady or gentleman... He held a piece of fowl up on the prong of the carving fork. Nobody spoke. He put it on his own plate, saying: —Well, you can’t say but you were asked. I think I had better eat it myself because I’m not well in my health lately. He winked at Stephen and, replacing the dish-cover, be- gan to eat again. There was a silence while he ate. Then he said: 37Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Well now, the day kept up fine after all. There were plenty of strangers down too. Nobody spoke. He said again: —I think there were more strangers down than last Christmas. He looked round at the others whose faces were bent towards their plates and, receiving no reply, waited for a moment and said bitterly: —Well, my Christmas dinner has been spoiled anyhow. —There could be neither luck nor grace, Dante said, in a house where there is no respect for the pastors of the church. Mr Dedalus threw his knife and fork noisily on his plate. —Respect! he said. Is it for Billy with the lip or for the tub of guts up in Armagh? Respect! —Princes of the church, said Mr Casey with slow scorn. —Lord Leitrim’s coachman, yes, said Mr Dedalus. —They are the Lord’s anointed, Dante said. They are an honour to their country. —Tub of guts, said Mr Dedalus coarsely. He has a hand- some face, mind you, in repose. You should see that fellow lapping up his bacon and cabbage of a cold winter’s day. O Johnny! He twisted his features into a grimace of heavy bestiality and made a lapping noise with his lips. —Really, Simon, you should not speak that way before Stephen. It’s not right. —O, he’ll remember all this when he grows up, said A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man40 stared across the table over his joined hands. He liked to sit near him at the fire, looking up at his dark fierce face. But his dark eyes were never fierce and his slow voice was good to listen to. But why was he then against the priests? Because Dante must be right then. But he had heard his father say that she was a spoiled nun and that she had come out of the convent in the Alleghanies when her brother had got the money from the savages for the trinkets and the chainies. Perhaps that made her severe against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because Eileen was a protes- tant and when she was young she knew children that used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of the litany of the Blessed Virgin. TOWER OF IVORY, they used to say, HOUSE OF GOLD! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then? And he remembered the evening in the infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead and the moan of sorrow from the people when they had heard. Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of TOWER OF IVORY. —The story is very short and sweet, Mr Casey said. It was one day down in Arklow, a cold bitter day, not long before the chief died. May God have mercy on him! He closed his eyes wearily and paused. Mr Dedalus took a bone from his plate and tore some meat from it with his teeth, saying: —Before he was killed, you mean. 41Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com Mr Casey opened his eyes, sighed and went on: —It was down in Arklow one day. We were down there at a meeting and after the meeting was over we had to make our way to the railway station through the crowd. Such boo- ing and baaing, man, you never heard. They called us all the names in the world. Well there was one old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was surely, that paid all her at- tention to me. She kept dancing along beside me in the mud bawling and screaming into my face: PRIEST-HUNTER! THE PARIS FUNDS! MR FOX! KITTY O’SHEA! —And what did you do, John? asked Mr Dedalus. —I let her bawl away, said Mr Casey. It was a cold day and to keep up my heart I had (saving your presence, ma’am) a quid of Tullamore in my mouth and sure I couldn’t say a word in any case because my mouth was full of tobacco juice. —Well, John? —Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart’s content, KITTY O’SHEA and the rest of it till at last she called that lady a name that I won’t sully this Christmas board nor your ears, ma’am, nor my own lips by repeating. He paused. Mr Dedalus, lifting his head from the bone, asked: —And what did you do, John? —Do! said Mr Casey. She stuck her ugly old face up at me when she said it and I had my mouth full of tobacco juice. I bent down to her and PHTH! says I to her like that. He turned aside and made the act of spitting. —PHTH! says I to her like that, right into her eye. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man42 He clapped his hand to his eye and gave a hoarse scream of pain. —O JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH! says she. I’M BLIND- ED! I’M BLINDED AND DROWNDED! He stopped in a fit of coughing and laughter, repeating: —I’M BLINDED ENTIRELY. Mr Dedalus laughed loudly and lay back in his chair while uncle Charles swayed his head to and fro. Dante looked terribly angry and repeated while they laughed: —Very nice! Ha! Very nice! It was not nice about the spit in the woman’s eye. But what was the name the woman had called Kit- ty O’Shea that Mr Casey would not repeat? He thought of Mr Casey walking through the crowds of people and mak- ing speeches from a wagonette. That was what he had been in prison for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O’Neill had come to the house and had stood in the hall, talking in a low voice with his father and chewing nervous- ly at the chinstrap of his cap. And that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but a car had come to the door and he had heard his father say something about the Cab- inteely road. He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentleman on the head with her umbrella be- cause he had taken off his hat when the band played GOD SAVE THE QUEEN at the end. Mr Dedalus gave a snort of contempt. 45Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost spitting in his face. Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again, talking to him from both sides rea- sonably. He stared before him out of his dark flaming eyes, repeating: —Away with God, I say! Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table, upsetting her napkin-ring which rolled slowly along the car- pet and came to rest against the foot of an easy-chair. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage: —Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend! The door slammed behind her. Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on his hands with a sob of pain. —Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king! He sobbed loudly and bitterly. Stephen, raising his terror-stricken face, saw that his fa- ther’s eyes were full of tears. ***** The fellows talked together in little groups. One fellow said: —They were caught near the Hill of Lyons. —Who caught them? —Mr Gleeson and the minister. They were on a car. The same fellow added: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man46 —A fellow in the higher line told me. Fleming asked: —But why did they run away, tell us? —I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of the rector’s room. —Who fecked it? —Kickham’s brother. And they all went shares in it. —But that was stealing. How could they have done that? —A fat lot you know about it, Thunder! Wells said. I know why they scut. —Tell us why. —I was told not to, Wells said. —O, go on, Wells, all said. You might tell us. We won’t let it out. Stephen bent forward his head to hear. Wells looked round to see if anyone was coming. Then he said secretly: —You know the altar wine they keep in the press in the sacristy? —Yes. —Well, they drank that and it was found out who did it by the smell. And that’s why they ran away, if you want to know. And the fellow who had spoken first said: —Yes, that’s what I heard too from the fellow in the high- er line. The fellows all were silent. Stephen stood among them, afraid to speak, listening. A faint sickness of awe made him feel weak. How could they have done that? He thought of the dark silent sacristy. There were dark wooden presses 47Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com there where the crimped surplices lay quietly folded. It was not the chapel but still you had to speak under your breath. It was a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be dressed as boatbearer, the evening of the Procession to the little altar in the wood. A strange and holy place. The boy that held the censer had swung it lift- ed by the middle chain to keep the coals lighting. That was called charcoal: and it had burned quietly as the fellow had swung it gently and had given off a weak sour smell. And then when all were vested he had stood holding out the boat to the rector and the rector had put a spoonful of incense in it and it had hissed on the red coals. The fellows were talking together in little groups here and there on the playground. The fellows seemed to him to have grown smaller: that was because a sprinter had knocked him down the day before, a fellow out of second of grammar. He had been thrown by the fellow’s machine lightly on the cinder path and his spectacles had been bro- ken in three pieces and some of the grit of the cinders had gone into his mouth. That was why the fellows seemed to him smaller and farther away and the goalposts so thin and far and the soft grey sky so high up. But there was no play on the football grounds for cricket was coming: and some said that Barnes would be prof and some said it would be Flowers. And all over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowl- ing twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came the sounds of the cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock, puck: little drops of water in a foun- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man50 thinking of things you could understand them. But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something. It was all thick slabs of slate and water trickled all day out of tiny pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind the door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red pencil of a bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath was the name of the drawing: Balbus was building a wall. Some fellow had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it was very like a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet there was written in backhand in beauti- ful writing: Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly. Perhaps that was why they were there because it was a place where some fellows wrote things for cod. But all the same it was queer what Athy said and the way he said it. It was not a cod because they had run away. He looked with the others across the playground and began to feel afraid. At last Fleming said: —And we are all to be punished for what other fellows did? —I won’t come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said. Three days’ silence in the refectory and sending us up for six and eight every minute. —Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way of twist- ing the note so that you can’t open it and fold it again to see how many ferulae you are to get. I won’t come back too. —Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studies was 51Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com in second of grammar this morning. —Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we? All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent and you could hear the cricket bats but more slowly than before: pick, pock. Wells asked: —What is going to be done to them? —Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged, Athy said, and the fellows in the higher line got their choice of flogging or being expelled. —And which are they taking? asked the fellow who had spoken first. —All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy an- swered. He’s going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson. —I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and the other fellows are wrong because a flogging wears off after a bit but a fellow that has been expelled from college is known all his life on account of it. Besides Gleeson won’t flog him hard. —It’s best of his play not to, Fleming said. —I wouldn’t like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker Cecil Thunder said. But I don’t believe they will be flogged. Per- haps they will be sent up for twice nine. —No, no, said Athy. They’ll both get it on the vital spot. Wells rubbed himself and said in a crying voice: —Please, sir, let me off! Athy grinned and turned up the sleeves of his jacket, say- ing: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man52 It can’t be helped; It must be done. So down with your breeches And out with your bum. The fellows laughed; but he felt that they were a little afraid. In the silence of the soft grey air he heard the cricket bats from here and from there: pock. That was a sound to hear but if you were hit then you would feel a pain. The pan- dybat made a sound too but not like that. The fellows said it was made of whalebone and leather with lead inside: and he wondered what was the pain like. There were different kinds of sounds. A long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery to think of it and cold: and what Athy said too. But what was there to laugh at in it? It made him shivery: but that was because you always felt like a shiver when you let down your trousers. It was the same in the bath when you undressed yourself. He wondered who had to let them down, the master or the boy himself. O how could they laugh about it that way? He looked at Athy’s rolled-up sleeves and knuckly inky hands. He had rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves. But Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed. Perhaps he pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they were terribly long and pointed nails. So long and cruel they were, though the white fattish hands were not cruel but gentle. And though he trembled 55Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Gentlemen, the happiest day of my life was the day on which I made my first holy communion. Father Arnall came in and the Latin lesson began and he remained still, leaning on the desk with his arms folded. Father Arnall gave out the theme-books and he said that they were scandalous and that they were all to be written out again with the corrections at once. But the worst of all was Fleming’s theme because the pages were stuck together by a blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said it was an insult to any master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked Jack Lawton to decline the noun MARE and Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative singular and could not go on with the plural. —You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall sternly. You, the leader of the class! Then he asked the next boy and the next and the next. Nobody knew. Father Arnall became very quiet, more and more quiet as each boy tried to answer it and could not. But his face was black-looking and his eyes were staring though his voice was so quiet. Then he asked Fleming and Fleming said that the word had no plural. Father Arnall suddenly shut the book and shouted at him: —Kneel out there in the middle of the class. You are one of the idlest boys I ever met. Copy out your themes again the rest of you. Fleming moved heavily out of his place and knelt be- tween the two last benches. The other boys bent over their theme-books and began to write. A silence filled the class- room and Stephen, glancing timidly at Father Arnall’s dark A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man56 face, saw that it was a little red from the wax he was in. Was that a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to get into a wax when the boys were idle because that made them study better or was he only letting on to be in a wax? It was because he was allowed, because a priest would know what a sin was and would not do it. But if he did it one time by mistake what would he do to go to con- fession? Perhaps he would go to confession to the minister. And if the minister did it he would go to the rector: and the rector to the provincial: and the provincial to the general of the jesuits. That was called the order: and he had heard his father say that they were all clever men. They could all have become high-up people in the world if they had not become jesuits. And he wondered what Father Arnall and Paddy Barrett would have become and what Mr McGlade and Mr Gleeson would have become if they had not become jesuits. It was hard to think what because you would have to think of them in a different way with different coloured coats and trousers and with beards and moustaches and dif- ferent kinds of hats. The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper ran through the class: the prefect of studies. There was an in- stant of dead silence and then the loud crack of a pandybat on the last desk. Stephen’s heart leapt up in fear. —Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? cried the prefect of studies. Any lazy idle loafers that want flogging in this class? He came to the middle of the class and saw Fleming on his knees. 57Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Hoho! he cried. Who is this boy? Why is he on his knees? What is your name, boy? —Fleming, sir. —Hoho, Fleming! An idler of course. I can see it in your eye. Why is he on his knees, Father Arnall? —He wrote a bad Latin theme, Father Arnall said, and he missed all the questions in grammar. —Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of course he did! A born idler! I can see it in the corner of his eye. He banged his pandybat down on the desk and cried: —Up, Fleming! Up, my boy! Fleming stood up slowly. —Hold out! cried the prefect of studies. Fleming held out his hand. The pandybat came down on it with a loud smacking sound: one, two, three, four, five, six. —Other hand! The pandybat came down again in six loud quick smacks. —Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies. Fleming knelt down, squeezing his hands under his arm- pits, his face contorted with pain; but Stephen knew how hard his hands were because Fleming was always rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible. Stephen’s heart was beat- ing and fluttering. —At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of studies. We want no lazy idle loafers here, lazy idle little schemers. At your work, I tell you. Father Dolan will be in to see you A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man60 shaking arm in terror and burst out into a whine of pain. His body shook with a palsy of fright and in shame and rage he felt the scalding cry come from his throat and the scalding tears falling out of his eyes and down his flaming cheeks. —Kneel down, cried the prefect of studies. Stephen knelt down quickly pressing his beaten hands to his sides. To think of them beaten and swollen with pain all in a moment made him feel so sorry for them as if they were not his own but someone else’s that he felt sorry for. And as he knelt, calming the last sobs in his throat and feeling the burning tingling pain pressed into his sides, he thought of the hands which he had held out in the air with the palms up and of the firm touch of the prefect of studies when he had steadied the shaking fingers and of the beaten swollen reddened mass of palm and fingers that shook helplessly in the air. —Get at your work, all of you, cried the prefect of stud- ies from the door. Father Dolan will be in every day to see if any boy, any lazy idle little loafer wants flogging. Every day. Every day. The door closed behind him. The hushed class continued to copy out the themes. Fa- ther Arnall rose from his seat and went among them, helping the boys with gentle words and telling them the mistakes they had made. His voice was very gentle and soft. Then he returned to his seat and said to Fleming and Stephen: —You may return to your places, you two. Fleming and Stephen rose and, walking to their seats, sat 61Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com down. Stephen, scarlet with shame, opened a book quickly with one weak hand and bent down upon it, his face close to the page. It was unfair and cruel because the doctor had told him not to read without glasses and he had written home to his father that morning to send him a new pair. And Father Arnall had said that he need not study till the new glasses came. Then to be called a schemer before the class and to be pandied when he always got the card for first or second and was the leader of the Yorkists! How could the prefect of studies know that it was a trick? He felt the touch of the prefect’s fingers as they had steadied his hand and at first he had thought he was going to shake hands with him because the fingers were soft and firm: but then in an instant he had heard the swish of the soutane sleeve and the crash. It was cruel and unfair to make him kneel in the middle of the class then: and Father Arnall had told them both that they might return to their places without making any difference between them. He listened to Father Arnall’s low and gentle voice as he corrected the themes. Perhaps he was sorry now and wanted to be decent. But it was unfair and cruel. The prefect of studies was a priest but that was cruel and unfair. And his white-grey face and the no-coloured eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles were cruel looking because he had steadied the hand first with his firm soft fingers and that was to hit it better and louder. —It’s a stinking mean thing, that’s what it is, said Flem- ing in the corridor as the classes were passing out in file to the refectory, to pandy a fellow for what is not his fault. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man62 —You really broke your glasses by accident, didn’t you? Nasty Roche asked. Stephen felt his heart filled by Fleming’s words and did not answer. —Of course he did! said Fleming. I wouldn’t stand it. I’d go up and tell the rector on him. —Yes, said Cecil Thunder eagerly, and I saw him lift the pandy-bat over his shoulder and he’s not allowed to do that. —Did they hurt you much? Nasty Roche asked. —Very much, Stephen said. —I wouldn’t stand it, Fleming repeated, from Baldyhead or any other Baldyhead. It’s a stinking mean low trick, that’s what it is. I’d go straight up to the rector and tell him about it after dinner. —Yes, do. Yes, do, said Cecil Thunder. —Yes, do. Yes, go up and tell the rector on him, Dedalus, said Nasty Roche, because he said that he’d come in tomor- row again and pandy you. —Yes, yes. Tell the rector, all said. And there were some fellows out of second of grammar listening and one of them said: —The senate and the Roman people declared that Ded- alus had been wrongly punished. It was wrong; it was unfair and cruel; and, as he sat in the refectory, he suffered time after time in memory the same humiliation until he began to wonder whether it might not really be that there was something in his face which made him look like a schemer and he wished he had a little mirror 65Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com were small and young you could often escape that way. The fellows at his table stood up. He stood up and passed out among them in the file. He had to decide. He was com- ing near the door. If he went on with the fellows he could never go up to the rector because he could not leave the playground for that. And if he went and was pandied all the same all the fellows would make fun and talk about young Dedalus going up to the rector to tell on the prefect of stud- ies. He was walking down along the matting and he saw the door before him. It was impossible: he could not. He thought of the baldy head of the prefect of studies with the cruel no-coloured eyes looking at him and he heard the voice of the prefect of studies asking him twice what his name was. Why could he not remember the name when he was told the first time? Was he not listening the first time or was it to make fun out of the name? The great men in the history had names like that and nobody made fun of them. It was his own name that he should have made fun of if he wanted to make fun. Dolan: it was like the name of a woman who washed clothes. He had reached the door and, turning quickly up to the right, walked up the stairs and, before he could make up his mind to come back, he had entered the low dark narrow corridor that led to the castle. And as he crossed the thresh- old of the door of the corridor he saw, without turning his head to look, that all the fellows were looking after him as they went filing by. He passed along the narrow dark corridor, passing little A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man66 doors that were the doors of the rooms of the community. He peered in front of him and right and left through the gloom and thought that those must be portraits. It was dark and silent and his eyes were weak and tired with tears so that he could not see. But he thought they were the portraits of the saints and great men of the order who were looking down on him silently as he passed: saint Ignatius Loyola holding an open book and pointing to the words AD MA- JOREM DEI GLORIAM in it; saint Francis Xavier pointing to his chest; Lorenzo Ricci with his berretta on his head like one of the prefects of the lines, the three patrons of holy youth—saint Stanislaus Kostka, saint Aloysius Gonzago, and Blessed John Berchmans, all with young faces because they died when they were young, and Father Peter Kenny sitting in a chair wrapped in a big cloak. He came out on the landing above the entrance hall and looked about him. That was where Hamilton Rowan had passed and the marks of the soldiers’ slugs were there. And it was there that the old servants had seen the ghost in the white cloak of a marshal. An old servant was sweeping at the end of the landing. He asked him where was the rector’s room and the old ser- vant pointed to the door at the far end and looked after him as he went on to it and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again more loudly and his heart jumped when he heard a muffled voice say: —Come in! He turned the handle and opened the door and fumbled for the handle of the green baize door inside. He found it 67Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com and pushed it open and went in. He saw the rector sitting at a desk writing. There was a skull on the desk and a strange solemn smell in the room like the old leather of chairs. His heart was beating fast on account of the solemn place he was in and the silence of the room: and he looked at the skull and at the rector’s kind-looking face. —Well, my little man, said the rector, what is it? Stephen swallowed down the thing in his throat and said: —I broke my glasses, sir. The rector opened his mouth and said: —O! Then he smiled and said: —Well, if we broke our glasses we must write home for a new pair. —I wrote home, sir, said Stephen, and Father Arnall said I am not to study till they come. —Quite right! said the rector. Stephen swallowed down the thing again and tried to keep his legs and his voice from shaking. —But, sir— —Yes? —Father Dolan came in today and pandied me because I was not writing my theme. The rector looked at him in silence and he could feel the blood rising to his face and the tears about to rise to his eyes. The rector said: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man70 him up among them and carried him along till he struggled to get free. And when he had escaped from them they broke away in all directions, flinging their caps again into the air and whistling as they went spinning up and crying: —Hurroo! And they gave three groans for Baldyhead Dolan and three cheers for Conmee and they said he was the decentest rector that was ever in Clongowes. The cheers died away in the soft grey air. He was alone. He was happy and free; but he would not be anyway proud with Father Dolan. He would be very quiet and obedient: and he wished that he could do something kind for him to show him that he was not proud. The air was soft and grey and mild and evening was com- ing. There was the smell of evening in the air, the smell of the fields in the country where they digged up turnips to peel them and eat them when they went out for a walk to Major Barton’s, the smell there was in the little wood be- yond the pavilion where the gallnuts were. The fellows were practising long shies and bowling lobs and slow twisters. In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl. Chapter 2 Uncle Charles smoked such black twist that at last his nephew suggested to him to enjoy his morning smoke in a little outhouse at the end of the garden. 71Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Very good, Simon. All serene, Simon, said the old man tranquilly. Anywhere you like. The outhouse will do me nicely: it will be more salubrious. —Damn me, said Mr Dedalus frankly, if I know how you can smoke such villainous awful tobacco. It’s like gunpow- der, by God. —It’s very nice, Simon, replied the old man. Very cool and mollifying. Every morning, therefore, uncle Charles repaired to his outhouse but not before he had greased and brushed scru- pulously his back hair and brushed and put on his tall hat. While he smoked the brim of his tall hat and the bowl of his pipe were just visible beyond the jambs of the outhouse door. His arbour, as he called the reeking outhouse which he shared with the cat and the garden tools, served him also as a sounding-box: and every morning he hummed content- edly one of his favourite songs: O, TWINE ME A BOWER or BLUE EYES AND GOLDEN HAIR or THE GROVES OF BLARNEY while the grey and blue coils of smoke rose slowly from his pipe and vanished in the pure air. During the first part of the summer in Blackrock uncle Charles was Stephen’s constant companion. Uncle Charles was a hale old man with a well tanned skin, rugged features and white side whiskers. On week days he did messages be- tween the house in Carysfort Avenue and those shops in the main street of the town with which the family dealt. Ste- phen was glad to go with him on these errands for uncle Charles helped him very liberally to handfuls of whatever was exposed in open boxes and barrels outside the counter. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man72 He would seize a handful of grapes and sawdust or three or four American apples and thrust them generously into his grandnephew’s hand while the shopman smiled uneas- ily; and, on Stephen’s feigning reluctance to take them, he would frown and say: —Take them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? They’re good for your bowels. When the order list had been booked the two would go on to the park where an old friend of Stephen’s father, Mike Flynn, would be found seated on a bench, waiting for them. Then would begin Stephen’s run round the park. Mike Fly- nn would stand at the gate near the railway station, watch in hand, while Stephen ran round the track in the style Mike Flynn favoured, his head high lifted, his knees well lifted and his hands held straight down by his sides. When the morn- ing practice was over the trainer would make his comments and sometimes illustrate them by shuffling along for a yard or so comically in an old pair of blue canvas shoes. A small ring of wonderstruck children and nursemaids would gath- er to watch him and linger even when he and uncle Charles had sat down again and were talking athletics and politics. Though he had heard his father say that Mike Flynn had put some of the best runners of modern times through his hands Stephen often glanced at his trainer’s flabby stubble- covered face, as it bent over the long stained fingers through which he rolled his cigarette, and with pity at the mild lus- treless blue eyes which would look up suddenly from the task and gaze vaguely into the blue distance while the long swollen fingers ceased their rolling and grains and fibres of 75Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com bicycle lamp attached to his belt while the others had short sticks thrust daggerwise through theirs. Stephen, who had read of Napoleon’s plain style of dress, chose to remain un- adorned and thereby heightened for himself the pleasure of taking counsel with his lieutenant before giving orders. The gang made forays into the gardens of old maids or went down to the castle and fought a battle on the shaggy weed- grown rocks, coming home after it weary stragglers with the stale odours of the foreshore in their nostrils and the rank oils of the seawrack upon their hands and in their hair. Aubrey and Stephen had a common milkman and often they drove out in the milk-car to Carrickmines where the cows were at grass. While the men were milking the boys would take turns in riding the tractable mare round the field. But when autumn came the cows were driven home from the grass: and the first sight of the filthy cowyard at Stradbrook with its foul green puddles and clots of liquid dung and steaming bran troughs, sickened Stephen’s heart. The cattle which had seemed so beautiful in the country on sunny days revolted him and he could not even look at the milk they yielded. The coming of September did not trouble him this year for he was not to be sent back to Clongowes. The practice in the park came to an end when Mike Flynn went into hos- pital. Aubrey was at school and had only an hour or two free in the evening. The gang fell asunder and there were no more nightly forays or battles on the rocks. Stephen some- times went round with the car which delivered the evening milk and these chilly drives blew away his memory of the A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man76 filth of the cowyard and he felt no repugnance at seeing the cow hairs and hayseeds on the milkman’s coat. When- ever the car drew up before a house he waited to catch a glimpse of a well scrubbed kitchen or of a softly lighted hall and to see how the servant would hold the jug and how she would close the door. He thought it should be a pleasant life enough, driving along the roads every evening to deliver milk, if he had warm gloves and a fat bag of gingernuts in his pocket to eat from. But the same foreknowledge which had sickened his heart and made his legs sag suddenly as he raced round the park, the same intuition which had made him glance with mistrust at his trainer’s flabby stubble- covered face as it bent heavily over his long stained fingers, dissipated any vision of the future. In a vague way he un- derstood that his father was in trouble and that this was the reason why he himself had not been sent back to Clongowes. For some time he had felt the slight change in his house; and those changes in what he had deemed unchangeable were so many slight shocks to his boyish conception of the world. The ambition which he felt astir at times in the darkness of his soul sought no outlet. A dusk like that of the outer world obscured his mind as he heard the mare’s hoofs clattering along the tramtrack on the Rock Road and the great can swaying and rattling behind him. He returned to Mercedes and, as he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood. Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender in- 77Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com fluence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than he had felt at Clongowes, that he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured. He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that magic moment. ***** Two great yellow caravans had halted one morning be- fore the door and men had come tramping into the house to dismantle it. The furniture had been hustled out through the front garden which was strewn with wisps of straw and rope ends and into the huge vans at the gate. When all had been safely stowed the vans had set off noisily down the ave- nue: and from the window of the railway carriage, in which he had sat with his red-eyed mother, Stephen had seen them lumbering along the Merrion Road. The parlour fire would not draw that evening and Mr Dedalus rested the poker against the bars of the grate to at- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man80 mortifying flavour in secret. He was sitting on the backless chair in his aunt’s kitchen. A lamp with a reflector hung on the japanned wall of the fireplace and by its light his aunt was reading the evening paper that lay on her knees. She looked a long time at a smil- ing picture that was set in it and said musingly: —The beautiful Mabel Hunter! A ringletted girl stood on tiptoe to peer at the picture and said softly: —What is she in, mud? —In a pantomime, love. The child leaned her ringletted head against her mother’s sleeve, gazing on the picture, and murmured as if fascinat- ed: —The beautiful Mabel Hunter! As if fascinated, her eyes rested long upon those demure- ly taunting eyes and she murmured devotedly: —Isn’t she an exquisite creature? And the boy who came in from the street, stamping crookedly under his stone of coal, heard her words. He dropped his load promptly on the floor and hurried to her side to see. He mauled the edges of the paper with his red- dened and blackened hands, shouldering her aside and complaining that he could not see. He was sitting in the narrow breakfast room high up in the old dark-windowed house. The firelight flickered on the wall and beyond the window a spectral dusk was gathering upon the river. Before the fire an old woman was busy mak- ing tea and, as she bustled at the task, she told in a low voice 81Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com of what the priest and the doctor had said. She told too of certain changes they had seen in her of late and of her odd ways and sayings. He sat listening to the words and follow- ing the ways of adventure that lay open in the coals, arches and vaults and winding galleries and jagged caverns. Suddenly he became aware of something in the doorway. A skull appeared suspended in the gloom of the doorway. A feeble creature like a monkey was there, drawn thither by the sound of voices at the fire. A whining voice came from the door asking: —Is that Josephine? The old bustling woman answered cheerily from the fire- place: —No, Ellen, it’s Stephen. —O... O, good evening, Stephen. He answered the greeting and saw a silly smile break over the face in the doorway. —Do you want anything, Ellen? asked the old woman at the fire. But she did not answer the question and said: —I thought it was Josephine. I thought you were Jose- phine, Stephen. And, repeating this several times, she fell to laughing feebly. He was sitting in the midst of a children’s party at Har- old’s Cross. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him and he took little part in the games. The children, wearing the spoils of their crackers, danced and romped noisily and, though he tried to share their merriment, he A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man82 felt himself a gloomy figure amid the gay cocked hats and sunbonnets. But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug corner of the room he began to taste the joy of his lone- liness. The mirth, which in the beginning of the evening had seemed to him false and trivial, was like a soothing air to him, passing gaily by his senses, hiding from other eyes the feverish agitation of his blood while through the cir- cling of the dancers and amid the music and laughter her glance travelled to his corner, flattering, taunting, search- ing, exciting his heart. In the hall the children who had stayed latest were put- ting on their things: the party was over. She had thrown a shawl about her and, as they went together towards the tram, sprays of her fresh warm breath flew gaily above her cowled head and her shoes tapped blithely on the glassy road. It was the last tram. The lank brown horses knew it and shook their bells to the clear night in admonition. The con- ductor talked with the driver, both nodding often in the green light of the lamp. On the empty seats of the tram were scattered a few coloured tickets. No sound of footsteps came up or down the road. No sound broke the peace of the night save when the lank brown horses rubbed their noses togeth- er and shook their bells. They seemed to listen, he on the upper step and she on the lower. She came up to his step many times and went down to hers again between their phrases and once or twice stood close beside him for some moments on the upper step, for- getting to go down, and then went down. His heart danced 85Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com one, was given by both. After this the letters L. D. S. were written at the foot of the page, and, having hidden the book, he went into his mother’s bedroom and gazed at his face for a long time in the mirror of her dressing-table. But his long spell of leisure and liberty was drawing to its end. One evening his father came home full of news which kept his tongue busy all through dinner. Stephen had been awaiting his father’s return for there had been mutton hash that day and he knew that his father would make him dip his bread in the gravy. But he did not relish the hash for the mention of Clongowes had coated his palate with a scum of disgust. —I walked bang into him, said Mr Dedalus for the fourth time, just at the corner of the square. —Then I suppose, said Mrs Dedalus, he will be able to ar- range it. I mean about Belvedere. —Of course he will, said Mr Dedalus. Don’t I tell you he’s provincial of the order now? —I never liked the idea of sending him to the christian brothers myself, said Mrs Dedalus. —Christian brothers be damned! said Mr Dedalus. Is it with Paddy Stink and Micky Mud? No, let him stick to the jesuits in God’s name since he began with them. They’ll be of service to him in after years. Those are the fellows that can get you a position. —And they’re a very rich order, aren’t they, Simon? —Rather. They live well, I tell you. You saw their table at Clongowes. Fed up, by God, like gamecocks. Mr Dedalus pushed his plate over to Stephen and bade A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man86 him finish what was on it. —Now then, Stephen, he said, you must put your shoul- der to the wheel, old chap. You’ve had a fine long holiday. —O, I’m sure he’ll work very hard now, said Mrs Ded- alus, especially when he has Maurice with him. —O, Holy Paul, I forgot about Maurice, said Mr Ded- alus. Here, Maurice! Come here, you thick-headed ruffian! Do you know I’m going to send you to a college where they’ll teach you to spell c.a.t. cat. And I’ll buy you a nice little penny handkerchief to keep your nose dry. Won’t that be grand fun? Maurice grinned at his father and then at his brother. Mr Dedalus screwed his glass into his eye and stared hard at both his sons. Stephen mumbled his bread without answering his father’s gaze. —By the bye, said Mr Dedalus at length, the rector, or provincial rather, was telling me that story about you and Father Dolan. You’re an impudent thief, he said. —O, he didn’t, Simon! —Not he! said Mr Dedalus. But he gave me a great ac- count of the whole affair. We were chatting, you know, and one word borrowed another. And, by the way, who do you think he told me will get that job in the corporation? But I’ll tell you that after. Well, as I was saying, we were chat- ting away quite friendly and he asked me did our friend here wear glasses still, and then he told me the whole story. —And was he annoyed, Simon? —Annoyed? Not he! MANLY LITTLE CHAP! he said. Mr Dedalus imitated the mincing nasal tone of the pro- 87Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com vincial. Father Dolan and I, when I told them all at dinner about it, Father Dolan and I had a great laugh over it. YOU BET- TER MIND YOURSELF FATHER DOLAN, said I, OR YOUNG DEDALUS WILL SEND YOU UP FOR TWICE NINE. We had a famous laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha! Mr Dedalus turned to his wife and interjected in his nat- ural voice: —Shows you the spirit in which they take the boys there. O, a jesuit for your life, for diplomacy! He reassumed the provincial’s voice and repeated: —I TOLD THEM ALL AT DINNER ABOUT IT AND FATHER DOLAN AND I AND ALL OF US WE HAD A HEARTY LAUGH TOGETHER OVER IT. HA! HA! HA! ***** The night of the Whitsuntide play had come and Ste- phen from the window of the dressing-room looked out on the small grass-plot across which lines of Chinese lan- terns were stretched. He watched the visitors come down the steps from the house and pass into the theatre. Stewards in evening dress, old Belvedereans, loitered in groups about the entrance to the theatre and ushered in the visitors with ceremony. Under the sudden glow of a lantern he could rec- ognize the smiling face of a priest. The Blessed Sacrament had been removed from the tab- ernacle and the first benches had been driven back so as to leave the dais of the altar and the space before it free. Against the walls stood companies of barbells and Indian A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man90 of lanterns looping her to her moorings. A side door of the theatre opened suddenly and a shaft of light flew across the grass plots. A sudden burst of music issued from the ark, the prelude of a waltz: and when the side door closed again the listener could hear the faint rhythm of the music. The sentiment of the opening bars, their languor and supple movement, evoked the incommunicable emotion which had been the cause of all his day’s unrest and of his impa- tient movement of a moment before. His unrest issued from him like a wave of sound: and on the tide of flowing music the ark was journeying, trailing her cables of lanterns in her wake. Then a noise like dwarf artillery broke the movement. It was the clapping that greeted the entry of the dumbbell team on the stage. At the far end of the shed near the street a speck of pink light showed in the darkness and as he walked towards it he became aware of a faint aromatic odour. Two boys were standing in the shelter of a doorway, smoking, and before he reached them he had recognised Heron by his voice. —Here comes the noble Dedalus! cried a high throaty voice. Welcome to our trusty friend! This welcome ended in a soft peal of mirthless laughter as Heron salaamed and then began to poke the ground with his cane. —Here I am, said Stephen, halting and glancing from Heron to his friend. The latter was a stranger to him but in the darkness, by the aid of the glowing cigarette tips, he could make out a pale dandyish face over which a smile was travelling slowly, 91Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com a tall overcoated figure and a hard hat. Heron did not trou- ble himself about an introduction but said instead: —I was just telling my friend Wallis what a lark it would be tonight if you took off the rector in the part of the school- master. It would be a ripping good joke. Heron made a poor attempt to imitate for his friend Wallis the rector’s pedantic bass and then, laughing at his failure, asked Stephen to do it. —Go on, Dedalus, he urged, you can take him off rip- pingly. HE THAT WILL NOT HEAR THE CHURCHA LET HIM BE TO THEEA AS THE HEATHENA AND THE PUBLICANA. The imitation was prevented by a mild expression of anger from Wallis in whose mouthpiece the cigarette had become too tightly wedged. —Damn this blankety blank holder, he said, taking it from his mouth and smiling and frowning upon it tolerant- ly. It’s always getting stuck like that. Do you use a holder? —I don’t smoke, answered Stephen. —No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t go to bazaars and he doesn’t flirt and he doesn’t damn anything or damn all. Stephen shook his head and smiled in his rival’s flushed and mobile face, beaked like a bird’s. He had often thought it strange that Vincent Heron had a bird’s face as well as a bird’s name. A shock of pale hair lay on the forehead like a ruffled crest: the forehead was narrow and bony and a thin hooked nose stood out between the close-set prominent eyes which were light and inexpressive. The rivals were school A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man92 friends. They sat together in class, knelt together in the cha- pel, talked together after beads over their lunches. As the fellows in number one were undistinguished dullards, Ste- phen and Heron had been during the year the virtual heads of the school. It was they who went up to the rector together to ask for a free day or to get a fellow off. —O by the way, said Heron suddenly, I saw your gover- nor going in. The smile waned on Stephen’s face. Any allusion made to his father by a fellow or by a master put his calm to rout in a moment. He waited in timorous silence to hear what Heron might say next. Heron, however, nudged him expressively with his elbow and said: —You’re a sly dog. —Why so? said Stephen. —You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth said Heron. But I’m afraid you’re a sly dog. —Might I ask you what you are talking about? said Ste- phen urbanely. —Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her, Wallis, didn’t we? And deucedly pretty she is too. And in- quisitive! AND WHAT PART DOES STEPHEN TAKE, MR DEDALUS? AND WILL STEPHEN NOT SING, MR DEDALUS? Your governor was staring at her through that eyeglass of his for all he was worth so that I think the old man has found you out too. I wouldn’t care a bit, by Jove. She’s ripping, isn’t she, Wallis? —Not half bad, answered Wallis quietly as he placed his holder once more in a corner of his mouth. 95Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com passed out of it into his crude writings. The essay was for him the chief labour of his week and every Tuesday, as he marched from home to the school, he read his fate in the incidents of the way, pitting himself against some figure ahead of him and quickening his pace to outstrip it before a certain goal was reached or planting his steps scrupulously in the spaces of the patchwork of the pathway and telling himself that he would be first and not first in the weekly essay. On a certain Tuesday the course of his triumphs was rudely broken. Mr Tate, the English master, pointed his fin- ger at him and said bluntly: —This fellow has heresy in his essay. A hush fell on the class. Mr Tate did not break it but dug with his hand between his thighs while his heavily starched linen creaked about his neck and wrists. Stephen did not look up. It was a raw spring morning and his eyes were still smarting and weak. He was conscious of failure and of de- tection, of the squalor of his own mind and home, and felt against his neck the raw edge of his turned and jagged col- lar. A short loud laugh from Mr Tate set the class more at ease. —Perhaps you didn’t know that, he said. —Where? asked Stephen. Mr Tate withdrew his delving hand and spread out the essay. —Here. It’s about the Creator and the soul. Rrm...rrm... rrm...Ah! WITHOUT A POSSIBILITY OF EVER AP- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man96 PROACHING NEARER. That’s heresy. Stephen murmured: —I meant WITHOUT A POSSIBILITY OF EVER REACHING. It was a submission and Mr Tate, appeased, folded up the essay and passed it across to him, saying: —O...Ah! EVER REACHING. That’s another story. But the class was not so soon appeased. Though nobody spoke to him of the affair after class he could feel about him a vague general malignant joy. A few nights after this public chiding he was walking with a letter along the Drumcondra Road when he heard a voice cry: —Halt! He turned and saw three boys of his own class coming towards him in the dusk. It was Heron who had called out and, as he marched forward between his two attendants, he cleft the air before him with a thin cane in time to their steps. Boland, his friend, marched beside him, a large grin on his face, while Nash came on a few steps behind, blowing from the pace and wagging his great red head. As soon as the boys had turned into Clonliffe Road to- gether they began to speak about books and writers, saying what books they were reading and how many books there were in their fathers’ bookcases at home. Stephen listened to them in some wonderment for Boland was the dunce and Nash the idler of the class. In fact, after some talk about their favourite writers, Nash declared for Captain Marryat who, he said, was the greatest writer. 97Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com —Fudge! said Heron. Ask Dedalus. Who is the greatest writer, Dedalus? Stephen noted the mockery in the question and said: —Of prose do you mean? —Yes. —Newman, I think. —Is it Cardinal Newman? asked Boland. —Yes, answered Stephen. The grin broadened on Nash’s freckled face as he turned to Stephen and said: —And do you like Cardinal Newman, Dedalus? —O, many say that Newman has the best prose style, Heron said to the other two in explanation, of course he’s not a poet. —And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland. —Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron. —O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash. We have all his po- etry at home in a book. At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been mak- ing and burst out: —Tennyson a poet! Why, he’s only a rhymester! —O, get out! said Heron. Everyone knows that Tennyson is the greatest poet. —And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked Bo- land, nudging his neighbour. —Byron, of course, answered Stephen. Heron gave the lead and all three joined in a scornful laugh. —What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.