Chapter Two

The Custom House, Dublin, painted by Hugh Thomson. From The Famous Cities of Ireland, 1915, by Stephen Gwynn. Source: The Internet Archive.

CHAPTER II

Read Chapter I here.

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.

—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
gunpowder, 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 creased and brushed
scrupulously 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 soundingbox: and every morning
he hummed contentedly 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

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Charles was a hale old man with a well tanned skin,
rugged features and white side whiskers. On week days
he did messages between the house in Carysfort Avenue
and those shops in the main street of the town with which
the family dealt. Stephen was glad to go with him on
these errands for uncle Charles helped him very liber-
ally to handfuls of whatever was exposed in open boxes
and barrels outside the counter. He would seize a hand-
ful of grapes and sawdust or three or four American
apples and thrust them generously into his grandnephew’s
hand while the shopman smiled uneasily; 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 Flynn 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 morning
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 gather 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

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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 lustreless 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
tobacco fell back into the pouch.

On the way home uncle Charles would often pay a
visit to the chapel and, as the font was above Stephen’s
reach, the old man would dip his hand and then sprinkle
the water briskly about Stephen’s clothes and on the
floor of the porch. While he prayed he knelt on his red
handkerchief and read above his breath from a thumb
blackened prayer-book wherein catchwords were printed
at the foot of every page. Stephen knelt at his side
respecting, though he did not share, his piety. He often
wondered what his granduncle prayed for so seriously.
Perhaps he prayed for the souls in purgatory or for the
grace of a happy death or perhaps he prayed that God
might send him back a part of the big fortune he had
squandered in Cork.

On Sundays Stephen with his father and his grand-
Uncle took their constitutional. The old man was a
nimble walker in spite of his corns and often ten or
twelve miles of the road were covered. The little village
of Stillorgan was the parting of the ways. Either they
went to the left towards the Dublin mountains or along
the Goatstown road and thence into Dundrum, coming
home by Sandyford. Trudging along the road or standing
in some grimy wayside public house his elders spoke
constantly of the subjects nearer their hearts, of Irish
politics, of Munster and of the legends of their own
family, to all of which Stephen lent an avid ear. Words

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which he did not understand he said over and over to
himself till he had learnt them by heart: and through
them he had glimpses of the real world about him. The
hour when he too would take part in the life of that
world seemed drawing near and in secret he began to
make ready for the great part which he felt awaited him
the nature of which he only dimly apprehended.

His evenings were his own; and he pored over a ragged
translation of The Count of Monte Cristo. The figure
of that dark avenger stood forth in his mind for whatever
he had heard or divined in childhood of the strange
and terrible. At night he built up on the parlour table
an image of the wonderful island cave out of transfers
and paper flowers and coloured tissue paper and strips
of the silver and golden paper in which chocolate is
wrapped. When he had broken up this scenery, weary
of its tinsel, there would come to his mind the bright
picture of Marseilles, of sunny trellises and of Mercedes.

Outside Blackrock, on the road that led to the mountains,
stood a small whitewashed house in the garden of
which grew many rosebushes: and in this house, he told
himself, another Mercedes lived. Both on the outward
and on the homeward journey he measured distance by
this landmark: and in his imagination he lived through
a long train of adventures, marvellous as those in the
book itself, towards the close of which there appeared an
image of himself, grown older and sadder, standing in a
moonlit garden with Mercedes who had so many years
before slighted his love, and with a sadly proud gesture
of refusal, saying:

—Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.

He became the ally of a boy named Aubrey Mills and
founded with him a gang of adventurers in the avenue.

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Aubrey carried a whistle dangling from his buttonhole
and a 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 unadorned 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 weedgrown 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 milkcar 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 hospital. 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 sometimes went round with the
car which delivered the evening milk: and these chilly
drives blew away his memory of the filth of the cow-

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yard and he felt no repugnance at seeing the cow hairs
and hayseeds on the milkman’s coat. Whenever 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 stubblecovered face as it bent
heavily over his long stained fingers, dissipated any
vision of the future. In a vague way he understood
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 tram-
track 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 influence into his restless heart. The noise of
children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made

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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 unsub-
stantial 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
before 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 avenue: 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
attract the flame. Uncle Charles dozed in a corner of
the half furnished uncarpeted room and near him the
family portraits leaned against the wall. The lamp on
the table shed a weak light over the boarded floor, mud-

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died by the feet of the vanmen. Stephen sat on a foot-
stool beside his father listening to a long and incoherent
monologue. He understood little or nothing of it at first
but he became slowly aware, that his father had enemies
and that some fight was going to take place. He felt,
too, that he was being enlisted for the fight, that some
duty was being laid upon his shoulders. The sudden
flight from the comfort and revery of Blackrock, the pas-
sage through the gloomy foggy city, the thought of the
bare cheerless house in which they were now to live made
his heart heavy: and again an intuition, a foreknowledge
of the future came to him. He understood also why the
servants had often whispered together in the hall and
why his father had often stood on the hearthrug, with
his back to the fire, talking loudly to uncle Charles who
urged him to sit down and eat his dinner.

— There’s a crack of the whip left in me yet, Stephen,
old chap, said Mr Dedalus, poking at the dull fire with
fierce energy. We’re not dead yet, sonny. No, by the
Lord Jesus (God forgive me) nor half dead.

Dublin was a new and complex sensation. Uncle
Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer
be sent out on errands and the disorder in settling in
the new house left Stephen freer than he had been in
Blackrock. In the beginning he contented himself with
circling timidly round the neighbouring square or, at
most, going half way down one of the side streets: but
when he had made a skeleton map of the city in his
mind he followed boldly one of its central lines until he
reached the Custom House. He passed unchallenged
among the docks and along the quays wondering at the
multitude of corks that lay bobbing on the surface of the
water in a thick yellow scum, at the crowds of quay

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porters and the rumbling carts and the ill dressed
bearded policeman. The vastness and strangeness of the
life suggested to him by the bales of merchandise stocked
along the walls or swung aloft out of the holds of
steamers wakened again in him the unrest which had
sent him wandering in the evening from garden to garden
in search of Mercedes. And amid this new bustling
life he might have fancied himself in another Marseilles
but that he missed the bright sky and the sun-warmed
trellisses of the wineshops. A vague dissatisfaction
grew up within him as he looked on the quays and on the
river and on the lowering skies and yet he continued to
wander up and down day after day as if he really sought
someone that eluded him.

He went once or twice with his mother to visit their
relatives: and though they passed a jovial array of shops
lit up and adorned for Christmas his mood of embittered
silence did not leave him. The causes of his embitter-
ment were many, remote and near. He was angry with
himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish
impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which
was reshaping the world about him into a vision of
squalor and insincerity. Yet his anger lent nothing to
the vision. He chronicled with patience what he saw,
detaching himself from it and testing its 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 smiling picture that was set in it and said
musingly:

— The beautiful Mabel Hunter!

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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 fascinated:

— The beautiful Mabel Hunter!

As if fascinated, her eyes rested long upon those de-
murely 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 reddened 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 making tea and, as she bustled at the task,
she told in a low voice 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 following 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 door-
way. A skull appeared suspended in the gloom of the
doorway. A feeble creature like a monkey was there,
drawn there by the sound of voices at the fire. A whining
voice came from the door asking:

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—Is that Josephine?

The old bustling woman answered cheerily from the
fireplace:

— 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
Josephine, Stephen.

And, repeating this several times, she fell to laughing
feebly.

He was sitting in the midst of a children’s party at
Harold’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 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 loneliness. 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 circling of the dancers and amid the music
and laughter her glance travelled to his corner, flattering,
taunting, searching, exciting his heart.

In the hall the children who had stayed latest were
putting on their things: the party was over. She had
thrown a shawl about her and, as they went together

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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 conductor 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 together 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, forgetting to go down, and then went down.
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon
a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath
their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether
in life or revery, he had heard their tale before. He
saw her urge her vanities, her fine dress and sash and
long black stockings, and knew that he had yielded to
them a thousand times. Yet a voice within him spoke
above the noise of his dancing heart, asking him would
he take her gift to which he had only to stretch out his
hand. And he remembered the day when he and Eileen
had stood looking into the Hotel Grounds, watching the
waiters running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff
and the fox terrier scampering to and fro on the sunny
lawn, and how, all of a sudden, she had broken out into a
peal of laughter and had run down the sloping curve of
the path. Now, as then, he stood listlessly in his place,
seemingly a tranquil watcher of the scene before him.

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— She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought.
That’s why she came with me to the tram. I could
easily catch hold of her when she comes up to my step:
nobody is looking. I could hold her and kiss her.

But he did neither: and, when he was sitting alone in
the deserted tram he tore his ticket into shreds and stared
gloomily at the corrugated footboard.

The next day he sat at his table in the bare upper
room for many hours. Before him lay a new pen, a new
bottle of ink and a new emerald exercise. From force
of habit he had written at the top of the first page the
initial letters of the Jesuit motto: A.M.D.G. On the
first line of the page appeared the title of the verses he
was trying to write; To E— C—. He knew it was
right to begin so for he had seen similar titles in the
collected poems of Lord Byron. When he had written
this title and drawn an ornamental line underneath he
fell into a day dream and began to draw diagrams on
the cover of the book. He saw himself sitting at his table
in Bray the morning after the discussion at the Christmas
dinner table, trying to write a poem about Parnell
on the back of one of his father’s second moiety notices.
But his brain had then refused to grapple with the
theme and, desisting, he had covered the page with the
names and addresses of certain of his classmates:

Roderick Kickham
John Lawton
Anthony MacSwiney
Simon Moonan

Now it seemed as if he would fail again but, by dint of
brooding on the incident, he thought himself into con-

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fidence. During this process all those elements which
he deemed common and insignificant fell out of the scene.
There remained no trace of the tram itself nor of the
trammen nor of the horses: nor did he and she appear
vividly. The verses told only of the night and the balmy
breeze and the maiden lustre of the moon. Some undefined
sorrow was hidden in the hearts of the protagonists
as they stood in silence beneath the leafless trees
and when the moment of farewell had come the kiss,
which had been withheld by 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 arrange 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 Mickey Mud? No, let him
stick to the Jesuits in God’s name since he began with

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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 game-
cocks.

Mr Dedalus pushed his plate over to Stephen and bade
him finish what was on it.

— Now then, Stephen, he said, you must put your
shoulder to the wheel, old chap. You’ve had a fine
long holiday.

— O, I’m sure he’ll work very hard now, said Mrs
Dedalus, especially when he has Maurice with him.

— O, Holy Paul, I forgot about Maurice, said Mr
Dedalus. 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 of 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
account 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 chatting away quite friendly and

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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
provincial.

— Father Dolan and I, when I told them all at dinner
about it, Father Dolan and I had a great laugh over it.
You better 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
natural 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 all had a hearty laugh together
over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!

The night of the Whitsuntide play had come and
Stephen from the window of the dressing room looked
out on the small grassplot across which lines of Chinese
lanterns 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 recognise the smiling face of a priest.

The Blessed Sacrament had been removed from the
tabernacle 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 clubs; the dumb bells were piled in one cor-

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ner: and in the midst of countless hillocks of gymnasium
shoes and sweaters and singlets in untidy brown parcels
there stood the stout leatherjacketed vaulting horse waiting
its turn to be carried up on the stage and set in the
middle of the winning team at the end of the gymnastic
display.

Stephen, though in deference to his reputation for
essay writing he had been elected secretary to the gym-
nasium, had had no part in the first section of the
programme, but in the play which formed the second
section he had the chief part, that of a farcical pedagogue.
He had been cast for it on account of his stature and
grave manners for he was now at the end of his second
year at Belvedere and in number two.

A score of the younger boys in white knickers and
singlets came pattering down from the stage, through
the vestry and into the chapel. The vestry and chapel
were peopled with eager masters and boys. The plump
bald sergeant major was testing with his foot the springboard
of the vaulting horse. The lean young man in a
long overcoat, who was to give a special display of in-
tricate club swinging, stood near watching with interest,
his silver coated clubs peeping out of his deep sidepockets.
The hollow rattle of the wooden dumb bells was heard
as another team made ready to go up on the stage: and
in another moment the excited prefect was hustling the
boys through the vestry like a flock of geese, flapping the
wings of his soutane nervously and crying to the laggards
to make haste. A little troop of Neapolitan peas-
ants were practising their steps at the end of the chapel,
some circling their arms above their heads, some swaying
their baskets of paper violets and curtseying. In a dark
corner of the chapel at the gospel side of the altar a stout

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old lady knelt amid her copious black skirts. When she
stood up a pink dressed figure, wearing a curly golden
wig and an old fashioned straw sunbonnet, with black
pencilled eyebrows and cheeks delicately rouged and
powdered, was discovered. A low murmur of curiosity
ran round the chapel at the discovery of this girlish
figure. One of the prefects, smiling and nodding his
head, approached the dark corner and, having bowed to
the stout old lady, said pleasantly:

— Is this a beautiful young lady or a doll that you
have here, Mrs Tallon?

Then, bending down to peer at the smiling painted
face under the leaf of the bonnet, he exclaimed:

— No! Upon my word I believe it’s little Bertie
Tallon after all!

Stephen at his post by the window heard the old lady
and the priest laugh together and heard the boys’ murmurs
of admiration behind him as they passed forward
to see the little boy who had to dance the sunbonnet
dance by himself. A movement of impatience escaped
him. He let the edge of the blind fall and, stepping
down from the bench on which he had been standing,
walked out of the chapel.

He passed out of the schoolhouse and halted under the
shed that flanked the garden. From the theatre opposite
came the muffled noise of the audience and sudden
brazen clashes of the soldiers’ band. The light spread
upwards from the glass roof making the theatre seem a
festive ark, anchored among the hulks of houses, her
frail cables of lanterns looping her to her moorings. A
side door of the theatre opened suddenly and a shaft of
light flew across the grassplots. A sudden burst of music
issued from the ark, the prelude of a waltz: and when

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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 impatient 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 dumb bell 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, a tall overcoated figure and a hard hat.
Heron did not trouble 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 schoolmaster. It would be a ripping good joke.

[83]

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
rippingly. 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 toler-
antly. 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 closeset prominent eyes which were light and
inexpressive. The rivals were school friends. They sat
together in class, knelt together in the chapel, talked
together after beads over their lunches. As the fellows
in number one were undistinguished dullards Stephen
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
governor going in.

[84]

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
Stephen urbanely.

— Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her,
Wallis, didn’t we? And deucedly pretty she is too.
And inquisitive! 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.

A shaft of momentary anger flew through Stephen’s
mind at these indelicate allusions in the hearing of a
stranger. For him there was nothing amusing in a girl’s
interest and regard. All day he had thought of nothing
but their leavetaking on the steps of the tram at Harold’s
Cross, the stream of moody emotions it had made to
course through him, and the poem he had written about
it. All day he had imagined a new meeting with her
for he knew that she was to come to the play. The old
restless moodiness had again filled his breast as it had
done on the night of the party but had not found an out-
let in verse. The growth and knowledge of two years

[85]

of boyhood stood between them and now, forbidding such
an outlet: and all day the stream of gloomy tenderness
within him had started forth and returned upon itself
in dark courses and eddies, wearying him in the end
until the pleasantry of the prefect and the painted little
boy had drawn from him a movement of impatience.

— So you may as well admit, Heron went on, that
we’ve fairly found you out this time. You can’t play
the saint on me any more, that’s one sure five.

A soft peal of mirthless laughter escaped from his
lips and, bending down as before, he struck Stephen
lightly across the calf of the leg with his cane, as if in
jesting reproof.

Stephen’s movement of anger had already passed.
He was neither flattered nor confused but simply wished
the banter to end. He scarcely resented what had seemed
to him a silly indelicateness for he knew that the adventure
in his mind stood in no danger from these words:
and his face mirrored his rival’s false smile.

— Admit! repeated Heron, striking him again with his
cane across the calf of the leg.

The stroke was playful but not so lightly given as the
first one had been. Stephen felt the skin tingle and
glow slightly and almost painlessly; and, bowing submissively,
as if to meet his companion’s jesting mood,
began to recite the Confiteor. The episode ended well
for both Heron and Wallis laughed indulgently at the
irreverence.

The confession came only from Stephen’s lips and,
while they spoke the words, a sudden memory had
carried him to another scene called up, as if by magic,
at the moment when he had noted the faint cruel dimples
at the corners of Heron’s smiling lips and had felt the

[86]

familiar stroke of the cane against his calf and had
heard the familiar word of admonition:

— Admit.

It was towards the close of his first term in the college
when he was in number six. His sensitive nature was
still smarting under the lashes of an undivined and
squalid way of life. His soul was still disquieted and
cast down by the dull phenomenon of Dublin. He had
emerged from a two years’ spell of reverie to find himself
in the midst of a new scene, every event and figure
of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or
allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him
always with unrest and bitter thoughts. All the leisure
which his school life left him was passed in the company
of subversive writers whose gibes and violence of
speech set up a ferment in his brain before they 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 finger 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.

[87]

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 detection, of the squalor of
his own mind and home, and felt against his neck the
raw edge of his turned and jagged collar.

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 approaching 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 be-
side him, a large grin on his face, while Nash came on a

[88]

few steps behind, blowing from the pace and wagging
his great red head.

As soon as the boys had turned into Clonliffe Road
together 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 de-
clared for Captain Marryat who, he said, was the greatest
writer.

— 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 poetry at home in a book.

At this Stephen forgot the silent vows he had been
making and burst out:

— Tennyson a poet! Why, he’s only a rhymester!

[89]

— O, get out! said Heron. Everyone knows that
Tennyson is the greatest poet.

— And who do you think is the greatest poet? asked
Boland, 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.

— You, said Heron. Byron the greatest poet! He’s
only a poet for uneducated people.

— He must be a fine poet! said Boland.

— You may keep your mouth shut, said Stephen, turning
on him boldly. All you know about poetry is what
you wrote up on the slates in the yard and were going
to be sent to the loft for.

Boland, in fact, was said to have written on the slates
in the yard a couplet about a classmate of his who often
rode home from, the college on a pony:

As Tyson was riding into Jerusalem
He fell and hurt his Alec Kafoozelum.

This thrust put the two lieutenants to silence but
Heron went on:

— In any case Byron was a heretic and immoral too.

— I don’t care what he was, cried Stephen hotly.

—You don’t care whether he was a heretic or not?
said Nash.

— What do you know about it? shouted Stephen. You
never read a line of anything in your life except a trans
or Boland either.

— I know that Byron was a bad man, said Boland.

— Here, catch hold of this heretic, Heron called out.

[90]

In a moment Stephen was a prisoner.

— Tate made you buck up the other day, Heron went
on, about the heresy in your essay.

— I’ll tell him tomorrow, said Boland.

— Will you? said Stephen. You’d be afraid to open
your lips.

— Afraid?

— Ay. Afraid of your life.

— Behave yourself! cried Heron, cutting at Stephen’s
legs with his cane.

It was the signal for their onset. Nash pinioned his
arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump
which was lying in the gutter. Struggling and kicking
under the cuts of the cane and the blows of the knotty
stump Stephen was borne back against a barbed wire
fence.

— Admit that Byron was no good.

— No.

— Admit.

— No.

— Admit.

— No. No.

At last after a fury of plunges he wrenched himself
free. His tormentors set off towards Jones’s Road,
laughing and jeering at him, while he, half blinded with
tears, stumbled on, clenching his fists madly and sobbing.

While he was still repeating the Confiteor amid the
indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the scenes
of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and
swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no
malice now to those who had tormented him. He had
not forgotten a whit of their cowardice and cruelty but
the memory of it called forth no anger from him. All

[91]

the description of fierce love and hatred which he had
met in books had seemed to him therefore unreal. Even
that night as he stumbled homewards along Jones’s Road
he had felt that some power was divesting him of that
sudden woven anger as easily as a fruit is divested of its
soft ripe peel.

He remained standing with his two companions at the
end of the shed listening idly to their talk or to the bursts
of applause in the theatre. She was sitting there among
the others perhaps waiting for him to appear. He tried
to recall her appearance but could not. He could re-
member only that she had worn a shawl about her head
like a cowl and that her dark eyes had invited and un-
nerved him. He wondered had he been in her thoughts
or she had been in his. Then in the dark and unseen by
the other two he rested the tips of the fingers of one
hand upon the palm of the other hand, scarcely touching
it lightly. But the pressure of her fingers had been
lighter and steadier: and suddenly the memory of their
touch traversed his brain and body like an invisible wave.

A boy came towards them, running along under the
shed. He was excited and breathless.

— O, Dedalus, he cried, Doyle is in a great bake about
you. You’re to go in at once and get dressed for the
play. Hurry up, you better.

— He’s coming now, said Heron to the messenger with
a haughty drawl, when he wants to.

The boy turned to Heron and repeated:

— But Doyle is in an awful bake.

— Will you tell Doyle with my best compliments that
I damned his eyes? answered Heron.

— Well, I must go now, said Stephen, who cared little
for such points of honour.

[92]

— I wouldn’t, said Heron, damn me if I would.
That’s no way to send for one of the senior boys. In
a bake, indeed! I think it’s quite enough that you’re
taking a part in his bally old play.

This spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had
observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from
his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the tur-
bulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship
which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood.
The question of honour here raised was, like all such
questions, trivial to him. While his mind had been pur-
suing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution
from such pursuit he had heard about him the constant
voices of his father and of his masters, urging him to be
a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a
good catholic above all things. These voices had now
come to be hollow sounding in his ears. When the gym-
nasium had been opened he had heard another voice
urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when
the movement towards national revival had begun to be
felt in the college yet another voice had bidden him be
true to his country and help to raise up her language
and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a
worldly voice would bid him raise up his father’s fallen
state by his labours and, meanwhile, the voice of his
school-comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield
others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best
to get free days for the school. And it was the din of
all these hollowsounding voices that made him halt
irresolutely in the pursuit of phantoms. He gave them
ear only for a time but he was happy only when he was
far from them, beyond their call, alone or in the company
of phantasmal comrades.

[93]

In the vestry a plump freshfaced Jesuit and an elderly
man, in shabby blue clothes, were dabbling in a case of
paints and chalks. The boys who had been painted
walked about or stood still awkwardly, touching their
faces in a gingerly fashion with their furtive fingertips.
In the middle of the vestry a young Jesuit, who was then
on a visit to the college, stood rocking himself rhythmically
from the tips of his toes to his heels and back again,
his hands thrust well forward into his side pockets. His
small head set off with glossy red curls and his newly
shaven face agreed well with the spotless decency of his
soutane and with his spotless shoes.

As he watched this swaying form and tried to read
for himself the legend of the priest’s mocking smile there
came into Stephen’s memory a saying which he had heard
from his father before he had been sent to Clongowes,
that you could always tell a Jesuit by the style of his
clothes. At the same moment he thought he saw a likeness
between his father’s mind and that of this smiling
welldressed priest: and he was aware of some desecration
of the priest’s office or of the vestry itself whose silence
was now routed by loud talk and joking and its air
pungent with the smells of the gasjets and the grease.

While his forehead was being wrinkled and his jaws
painted black and blue by the elderly man he listened
distractedly to the voice of the plump young Jesuit which
bade him speak up and make his points clearly. He
could hear the band playing The Lily of Killarney and
knew that in a few moments the curtain would go up.
He felt no stage fright but the thought of the part he
had to play humiliated him. A remembrance of some
of his lines made a sudden flush rise to his painted
cheeks. He saw her serious alluring eyes watching him

[94]

from among the audience and their image at once swept
away his scruples, leaving his will compact. Another
nature seemed to have been lent him: the infection of the
excitement and youth about him entered into and trans-
formed his moody mistrustfulness. For one rare mo-
ment he seemed to be clothed in the real apparel of boy-
hood: and, as he stood in the wings among the other
players, he shared the common mirth amid which the
drop scene was hauled upwards by two ablebodied priests
with violent jerks and all awry.

A few moments after he found himself on the stage
amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before
the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to
see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a
disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of
its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow
actors aiding it with their parts. When the curtain fell
on the last scene he heard the void filled with applause
and, through a rift in a side scene, saw the simple body
before which he had acted magically deformed, the void
of faces breaking at all points and falling asunder into
busy groups.

He left the stage quickly and rid himself of his mummery
and passed out through the chapel into the college
garden. Now that the play was over his nerves cried
for some further adventure. He hurried onwards as if
to overtake it. The doors of the theatre were all open
and the audience had emptied out. On the lines which
he had fancied the moorings of an ark a few lanterns
swung in the night breeze, flickering cheerlessly. He
mounted the steps from the garden in haste, eager that
some prey should not elude him, and forced his way
through the crowd in the hall and past the two Jesuits

[95]

who stood watching the exodus and bowing and shaking
hands with the visitors. He pushed onward nervously,
feigning a still greater haste and faintly conscious of the
smiles and stares and nudges which his powdered head
left in its wake.

When he came out on the steps he saw his family
waiting for him at the first lamp. In a glance he noted
that every figure of the group was familiar and ran down
the steps angrily.

— I have to leave a message down in George’s Street,
he said to his father quickly. I’ll be home after you.
Without waiting for his father’s questions he ran
across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed
down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking.
Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart
sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes
of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of
suddenrisen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope
and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his
anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and
passed away above him till at last the air was clear and
cold again.

A film still veiled his eyes but they burned no longer.
A power, akin to that which had often made anger or
resentment fall from him, brought his steps to rest. He
stood still and gazed up at the sombre porch of the
morgue and from that to the dark cobbled laneway at
its side. He saw the word Lotts on the wall of the lane
and breathed slowly the rank heavy air.

— That is horse piss and rotted straw, he thought.
It is a good odour to breathe. It will calm my heart.
My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.

****

[96]

Stephen was once again seated beside his father in the
corner of a railway carriage at Kingsbridge. He was
travelling with his father by the night mail to Cork.
As the train steamed out of the station he recalled his
childish wonder of years before and every event of his
first day at Clongowes. But he felt no wonder now. He
saw the darkening lands slipping away past him, the
silent telegraphpoles passing his window swiftly every
four seconds, the little glimmering stations, manned by a
few silent sentries, flung by the mail behind her and
twinkling for a moment in the darkness like fiery grains
flung backwards by a runner.

He listened without sympathy to his father’s evoca-
tion of Cork and of scenes of his youth — a tale broken
by sighs or draughts from his pocket flask whenever the
image of some dead friend appeared in it, or whenever
the evoker remembered suddenly the purpose of his
actual visit. Stephen heard, but could feel no pity.
The images of the dead were all strangers to him save
that of Uncle Charles, an image which had lately been
fading out of memory. He knew, however, that his
father’s property was going to be sold by auction and
in the manner of his own dispossession he felt the world
give the lie rudely to his phantasy.

At Maryborough he fell asleep. When he awoke the
train had passed out of Mallow and his father was
stretched asleep on the other seat. The cold light of
the dawn lay over the country, over the unpeopled fields
and the closed cottages. The terror of sleep fascinated
his mind as he watched the silent country or heard from
time to time his father’s deep breath or sudden sleepy
movement. The neighbourhood of unseen sleepers filled
him with strange dread, as though they could harm him,

[97]

and he prayed that the day might come quickly. His
prayer, addressed neither to God nor saint, began with a
shiver, as the chilly morning breeze crept through the
chink of the carriage door to his feet, and ended in a
trail of foolish words which he made to fit the insistent
rhythm of the train; and silently, at intervals of four
seconds, the telegraphpoles held the galloping notes of
the music between punctual bars. This furious music
allayed his dread and, leaning against the window ledge,
he let his eyelids close again.

They drove in a jingle across Cork while it was still
early morning and Stephen finished his sleep in a bed-
room of the Victoria Hotel. The bright warm sunlight
was streaming through the window and he could hear the
din of traffic. His father was standing before the
dressingtable, examining his hair and face and moustache
with great care, craning his neck across the water jug
and drawing it back sideways to see the better. While
he did so he sang softly to himself with quaint accent and
phrasing:

“Tis youth and folly
Makes young men marry.
So here, my love. I’ll
No longer stay.
What can’t be cured, sure,
Must be injured, sure,
So I’ll go to Amerikay.

“My love she’s handsome,
My love she’s bony:
She’s like good whisky
When it is new;

[98]

But when ’tis old
And growing cold
It fades and dies like
The mountain dew.”

The consciousness of the warm sunny city outside his
window and the tender tremors with which his father’s
voice festooned the strange sad happy air, drove off all
the mists of the night’s ill humour from Stephen’s brain.
He got up quickly to dress and, when the song had
ended, said:

— That’s much prettier than any of your other come-
all-yous.

— Do you think so? asked Mr Dedalus.

— I like it, said Stephen.

— It’s a pretty old air, said Mr Dedalus, twirling the
points of his moustache. Ah, but you should have heard
Mick Lacy sing it! Poor Mick Lacy! He had little
turns for it, grace notes he used to put in that I haven’t
got. That was the boy who could sing a come-all-you,
if you like.

Mr Dedalus had ordered drisheens for breakfast and
during the meal he cross-examined the waiter for local
news. For the most part they spoke at cross purposes
when a name was mentioned, the waiter having in mind
the present holder and Mr Dedalus his father or perhaps
his grandfather.

Well, I hope they haven’t moved the Queen’s College
anyhow, said Mr Dedalus, for I want to show it to this
youngster of mine.

Along the Mardyke the trees were in bloom. They
entered the grounds of the college and were led by the
garrulous porter across the quadrangle. But their

[99]

progress across the gravel was brought to a halt after
every dozen or so paces by some reply of the porter’s —

— Ah, do you tell me so? And is poor Pottlebelly
dead?

— Yes, sir. Dead, sir.

During these halts Stephen stood awkwardly behind
the two men, weary of the subject and waiting restlessly
for the slow march to begin again. By the time they
had crossed the quadrangle his restlessness had risen to
fever. He wondered how his father, whom he knew for
a shrewd suspicious man, could be duped by the servile
manners of the porter; and the lively southern speech
which had entertained him all the morning now irritated
his ears.

They passed into the anatomy theatre where Mr
Dedalus, the porter aiding him, searched the desks for
his initials. Stephen remained in the background, de-
pressed more than ever by the darkness and silence of
the theatre and by the air it wore of jaded and formal
study. On the desk he read the word Foetus cut several
times in the dark stained wood. The sudden legend
startled his blood: he seemed to feel the absent students
of the college about him and to shrink from their
company. A vision of their life, which his father’s
words had been powerless to evoke, sprang up before
him out of the word cut in the desk. A broad shouldered
student with a moustache was cutting in the letters with
a jack knife, seriously. Other students stood or sat near
him laughing at his handiwork. One jogged his elbow.
The big student turned on him, frowning. He was
dressed in loose grey clothes and had tan boots.

Stephen’s name was called. He hurried down the
steps of the theatre so as to be as far away from the

[100]

vision as he could be and, peering closely at his father’s
initials, hid his flushed face.

But the word and the vision capered before his eyes
as he walked back across the quadrangle and towards
the college gate. It shocked him to find in the outer
world a trace of what he had deemed till then a brutish
and individual malady of his own mind. His monstrous
reveries came thronging into his memory. They too
had sprung up before him, suddenly and furiously, out
of mere words. He had soon given in to them, and
allowed them to sweep across and abase his intellect,
wondering always where they came from, from what den
of monstrous images, and always weak and humble to-
wards others, restless and sickened of himself when they
had swept over him.

— Ay, bedad! And there’s the Groceries sure
enough! cried Mr Dedalus. You often heard me speak
of the Groceries, didn’t you, Stephen. Many’s the time
we went down there when our names had been marked,
a crowd of us, Harry Peard and little Jack Mountain
and Bob Dyas and Maurice Moriarty, the Frenchman,
and Tom ‘Grady and Mick Lacy that I told you of
this morning and Joey Corbet and poor little good
hearted Johnny Keevers of the Tantiles.

The leaves of the trees along the Mardyke were astir
and whispering in the sunlight. A team of cricketers
passed, agile young men in flannels and blazers, one of
them carrying the long green wicket bag. In a quiet
by street a German band of five players in faded uniforms
and with battered brass instruments was playing
to an audience of street arabs and leisurely messenger
boys. A maid in a white cap and apron was watering
a box of plants on a sill which shone like a slab of lime-

[101]

stone in the warm glare. From another window open
to the air came the sound of a piano, scale after scale
rising into the treble.

Stephen walked on at his father’s side, listening to
stories he had heard before, hearing again the names
of the scattered and dead revellers who had been the
companions of his father’s youth. And a faint sickness
sighed in his heart. He recalled his own equivocal pos-
ition in Belvedere, a free boy, a leader afraid of his own
authority, proud and sensitive and suspicious, battling
against the squalor of his life and against the riot of his
mind. The letters cut in the stained wood of the desk
stared upon him, mocking his bodily weakness and futile
enthusiasms and making him loathe himself for his own
mad and filthy orgies. The spittle in his throat grew
bitter and foul to swallow and the faint sickness climbed
to his brain so that for a moment he closed his eyes and
walked on in darkness.

He could still hear his father’s voice —

— When you kick out for yourself, Stephen — as I
daresay you will one of those days — remember, whatever
you do, to mix with gentlemen. When I was a
young fellow I tell you I enjoyed myself. I mixed with
fine decent fellows. Everyone of us could do something.
One fellow had a good voice, another fellow was a good
actor, another could sing a good comic song, another
was a good oarsman or a good racket player, another
could tell a good story and so on. We kept the ball
rolling anyhow and enjoyed ourselves and saw a bit of
life and we were none the worse of it either. But we
were all gentlemen, Stephen—at least I hope we were —
and bloody good honest Irishmen too. That’s the kind
of fellows I want you to associate with, fellows of the

[102]

right kidney. I’m talking to you as a friend, Stephen.
I don’t believe a son should be afraid of his father. No,
I treat you as your grandfather treated me when I was
a young chap. We were more like brothers than father
and son. I’ll never forget the first day he caught me
smoking. I was standing at the end of the South
Terrace one day with some maneens like myself and
sure we thought we were grand fellows because we had
pipes stuck in the corners of our mouths. Suddenly the
governor passed. He didn’t say a word, or stop even.
But the next day, Sunday, we were out for a walk
together and when we were coming home he took out
his cigar case and said: — By the by, Simon, I didn’t
know you smoked, or something like that. Of course I
tried to carry it off as best I could. — If you want a
good smoke, he said, try one of these cigars. An American
captain made me a present of them last night in
Queenstown.

Stephen heard his father’s voice break into a laugh
which was almost a sob.

— He was the handsomest man in Cork at that time,
by God he was! The women used to stand to look after
him in the street.

He heard the sob passing loudly down his father’s
throat and opened his eyes with a nervous impulse.
The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight turned the
sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses
with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light. His very brain
was sick and powerless. He could scarcely interpret
the letters of the signboards of the shops. By his
monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself
beyond the limits of reality. Nothing moved him or
spoke to him from the real world unless he heard in it

[103]

an echo of the infuriated cries within him. He could
respond to no earthly or human appeal, dumb and in-
sensible to the call of summer and gladness and companionship,
wearied and dejected by his father’s voice.
He could scarcely recognise as his his own thoughts, and
repeated slowly to himself:

— I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my
father whose name is Simon Dedalus. We are in Cork,
in Ireland. Cork is a city. Our room is in the Victoria
Hotel. Victoria and Stephen and Simon. Simon and
Stephen and Victoria. Names.

The memory of his childhood suddenly grew dim. He
tried to call forth some of its vivid moments but could
not. He recalled only names. Dante, Parnell, Clane,
Clongowes. A little boy had been taught geography by
an old woman who kept two brushes in her wardrobe.
Then he had been sent away from home to a college, he
had made his first communion and eaten slim jim out
of his cricket cap and watched the firelight leaping and
dancing on the wall of a little bedroom in the infirmary
and dreamed of being dead, of mass being said for him
by the rector in a black and gold cope, of being buried
then in the little graveyard of the community off the
main avenue of lines. But he had not died then. Parnell
had died. There had been no mass for the dead in
the chapel, and no procession. He had not died but he
had faded out like a film in the sun. He had been lost
or had wandered out of existence for he no longer
existed. How strange to think of him passing out of
existence in such a way, not by death, but by fading
out in the sun or by being lost and forgotten somewhere
in the universe! It was strange to see his small body
appear again for a moment: a little boy in a grey belted

[104]

suit. His hands were in his side pockets and his
trousers were tucked in at the knees by elastic bands.

On the evening of the day on which the property was
sold Stephen followed his father meekly about the city
from bar to bar. To the sellers in the market, to the
barmen and barmaids, to the beggars who importuned
him for a lob Mr Dedalus told the same tale, that he
was an old Corkonian, that he had been trying for thirty
years to get rid of his Cork accent up in Dublin and
that Peter Pickackafax beside him was his eldest son
but that he was only a Dublin jackeen.

They had set out early in the morning from New-
combe’s coffeehouse, where Mr Dedalus’ cup had rattled
noisily against its saucer, and Stephen had tried to cover
that shameful sign of his father’s drinking-bout of the
night before by moving his chair and coughing. One
humiliation had succeeded another — the false smiles of
the market sellers, the curvetings and oglings of the barmaids
with whom his father flirted, the compliments and
encouraging words of his father’s friends. They had
told him that he had a great look of his grandfather and
Mr Dedalus had agreed that he was an ugly likeness.
They had unearthed traces of a Cork accent in his speech
and made him admit that the Lee was a much finer river
than the Liffey. One of them, in order to put his Latin
to the proof, had made him translate short passages from
Dilectus, and asked him whether it was correct to say:
Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis, or Tempora
mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Another, a brisk old
man, whom Mr Dedalus called Johnny Cashman, had
covered him with confusion by asking him to say which
were prettier, the Dublin girls or the Cork girls.

— He’s not that way built, said Mr Dedalus. Leave

[105]

him alone. He’s a levelheaded thinking boy who doesn’t
bother his head about that kind of nonsense.

— Then he’s not his father’s son, said the little old
man.

— I don’t know, I’m sure, said Mr Dedalus, smiling
complacently.

— Your father, said the little old man to Stephen,
was the boldest flirt in the city of Cork in his day. Do
you know that?

Stephen looked down and studied the tiled floor of
the bar into which they had drifted.

— Now don’t be putting ideas into his head, said Mr
Dedalus. Leave him to his Maker.

— Yerra, sure I wouldn’t put any ideas into his head.
I’m old enough to be his grandfather. And I am a
grandfather, said the little old man to Stephen. Do you
know that?

— Are you? asked Stephen.

— Bedad I am, said the little old man. I have two
bouncing grandchildren out at Sunday’s Well. Now,
then! What age do you think I am! And I remember
seeing your grandfather in his red coat riding out to
hounds. That was before you were born.

— Ay, or thought of, said Mr Dedalus.

— Bedad I did, repeated the little old man. And,
more than that, I can remember even your great grandfather,
old John Stephen Dedalus, and a fierce old fire-
eater he was. Now, then! There’s a memory for you!

— That’s three generations — four generations, said
another of the company. Why, Johnny Cashman, you
must be nearing the century.

— Well, I’ll tell you the truth, said the little old man.
I’m just twentyseven years of age.

[106]

— We’re as old as we feel, Johnny, said Mr Dedalus.

— And just finish what you have there, and we’ll have
another. Here, Tim or Tom or whatever your name is,
give us the same again here. By God, I don’t feel more
than eighteen myself. There’s that son of mine there
not half my age and I’m a better man than he is any
day of the week.

— Draw it mild now, Dedalus. I think it’s time for
you to take a back seat, said the gentleman who had
spoken before.

— No, by God! asserted Mr Dedalus. I’ll sing a tenor
song against him or I’ll vault a fire-barred gate against
him or I’ll run with him after the hounds across the
country as I did thirty years ago along with the Kerry
Boy and the best man for it.

— But he’ll beat you here, said the little old man,
tapping his forehead and raising his glass to drain it.

— Well, I hope he’ll be as good a man as his father.
That’s all I can say, said Mr Dedalus.

— If he is, he’ll do, said the little old man.

— And thanks be to God, Johnny, said Mr Dedalus,
that we lived so long and did so little harm.

— But did so much good, Simon, said the little old
man gravely. Thanks be to God we lived so long and
did so much good.

Stephen watched the three glasses being raised from
the counter as his father and his two cronies drank to
the memory of their past. An abyss of fortune or of
temperament sundered him from them. His mind
seemed older than theirs: it shone coldly on their strifes
and happiness and regrets like a moon upon a younger
earth. No life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred
in them. He had known neither the pleasure of com-

[107]

panionship with others nor the vigour of rude male
health nor filial piety. Nothing stirred within his soul
but a cold and cruel and loveless lust. His childhood
was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simple
joys and he was drifting amid life like the barren shell
of the moon.

“Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless? …”

He repeated to himself the lines of Shelley’s fragment.
Its alternation of sad human ineffectualness with vast in-
human cycles of activity chilled him, and he forgot his
own human and ineffectual grieving.

****

Stephen’s mother and his brother and one of his
Cousins waited at the corner of quiet Foster Place while
he and his father went up the steps and along the
colonnade where the Highland sentry was parading.
When they had passed into the great hall and stood at
the counter Stephen drew forth his orders on the gov-
ernor of the bank of Ireland for thirty and three
pounds; and these sums, the moneys of his exhibition
and essay prize, were paid over to him rapidly by the
teller in notes and in coin respectively. He bestowed
them in his pockets with feigned composure and suffered
the friendly teller, to whom his father chatted, to take
his hand across the broad counter and wish him a brilliant
career in after life. He was impatient of their
voices and could not keep his feet at rest. But the teller
still deferred the serving of others to say he was living
in changed times and that there was nothing like giving

[108]

a boy the best education that money could buy. Mr
Dedalus lingered in the hall gazing about him and up at
the roof and telling Stephen, who urged him to come
out, that they were standing in the house of commons
of the old Irish parliament.

— God help us! he said piously, to think of the men
of those times, Stephen, Hely Hutchinson and Flood and
Henry Grattan and Charles Kendal Bushe, and the
noblemen we have now, leaders of the Irish people at
home and abroad. Why, by God, they wouldn’t be seen
dead in a ten acre field with them. No, Stephen, old
chap, I’m sorry to say that they are only as I roved out
one fine May morning in the merry month of sweet July.

A keen October wind was blowing round the bank.
The three figures standing at the edge of the muddy
path had pinched cheeks and watery eyes. Stephen
looked at his thinly clad mother and remembered that
a few days before he had seen a mantle priced at twenty
guineas in the windows of Barnardo’s.

— Well that’s done, said Mr Dedalus.

— We had better go to dinner, said Stephen. Where?

— Dinner? said Mr Dedalus. Well, I suppose we had
better, what?

— Some place that’s not too dear, said Mrs Dedalus.

— Underdone’s?

— Yes. Some quiet place.

— Come along, said Stephen quickly. It doesn’t
matter about the dearness.

He walked on before them with short nervous steps,
smiling. They tried to keep up with him, smiling also
at his eagerness.

— Take it easy like a good young fellow, said his
father. We’re not out for the half mile, are we?

[109]

For a swift season of merrymaking the money of his
prizes ran through Stephen’s fingers. Great parcels of
groceries and delicacies and dried fruits arrived from
the city. Every day he drew up a bill of fare for the
family and every night led a party of three or four to
the theatre to see Ingomar or The Lady of Lyons. In
his coat pockets he carried squares of Vienna chocolate
for his guests while his trousers’ pockets bulged with
masses of silver and copper coins. He bought presents
for everyone, overhauled his room, wrote out resolutions,
marshalled his books up and down their shelves, pored
upon all kinds of price lists, drew up a form of common-
wealth for the household by which every member of it
held some office, opened a loan bank for his family and
pressed loans on willing borrowers so that he might have
the pleasure of making out receipts and reckoning the
interests on the sums lent. When he could do no more
he drove up and down the city in trams. Then the
season of pleasure came to an end. The pot of pink
enamel paint gave out and the wainscot of his bedroom
remained with its unfinished and ill plastered coat.

His household returned to its usual way of life. His
mother had no further occasion to upbraid him for
squandering his money. He, too, returned to his old life
at school and all his novel enterprises fell to pieces.
The commonwealth fell, the loan bank closed its coffers
and its books on a sensible loss, the rules of life which
he had drawn about himself fell into desuetude.

How foolish his aim had been! He had tried to build
a breakwater of order and elegance against the sordid
tide of life without him and to dam up, by rules of
conduct and active interests and new filial relations, the
powerful recurrence of the tide within him. Useless.

[110]

From without as from within the water had flowed over
his barriers: their tides began once more to jostle fiercely
above the crumbled mole.

He saw clearly, too, his own futile isolation. He had
not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to
approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour
that had divided him from mother and brother and
sister. He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with
them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of
fosterage, foster child and foster brother.

He turned to appease the fierce longings of his heart
before which everything else was idle and alien. He
cared little that he was in mortal sin, that his life had
grown to be a tissue of subterfuge and falsehood. Be-
side the savage desire within him to realise the enor-
mities which he brooded on nothing was sacred. He
bore cynicially  with the shameful details of his secret
riots in which he exulted to defile with patience what-
ever image had attracted his eyes. By day and by night
he moved among distorted images of the outer world. A
figure that had seemed to him by day demure and inno-
cent came towards him by night through the winding
darkness of sleep, her face transfigured by a lecherous
cunning, her eyes bright with brutish joy. Only the
morning pained him with its dim memory of dark orgi-
astic riot, its keen and humiliating sense of transgression.

He returned to his wanderings. The veiled autumnal
evenings led him from street to street as they had led
him years before along the quiet avenues of Blackrock.
But no vision of trim front gardens or of kindly lights
in the windows poured a tender influence upon him now.
Only at times, in the pauses of his desire, when the lux-
ury that was wasting him gave room to a softer languor,

[111]

the image of Mercedes traversed the background of his
memory. He saw again the small white house and the
garden of rosebushes on the road that led to the moun-
tains and he remembered the sadly proud gesture of re-
fusal which he was to make there, standing with her in
the moonlit garden after years of estrangement and ad-
venture. At those moments the soft speeches of Claude
Melnotte rose to his lips and eased his unrest. A tender
premonition touched him of the tryst he had then looked
forward to and, in spite of the horrible reality which lay
between his hope of then and now, of the holy encounter
he had then imagined at which weakness and timidity
and inexperience were to fall from him.

Such moments passed and the wasting fires of lust
sprang up again. The verses passed from his lips and
the inarticulate cries and the unspoken brutal words
rushed forth from his brain to force a passage. His
blood was in revolt. He wandered up and down the
dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and
doorways, listening eagerly for any sound. He moaned
to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted
to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to
sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some
dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the
darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood
filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his
ears like the murmur of some multitude in sleep; its
subtle streams penetrated his being. His hands clenched
convulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the
agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in
the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that
eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had
strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips.

[112]

It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of
sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry
for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the
echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the ooz-
ing wall of a urinal.

He had wandered into a maze of narrow and dirty
streets. From the foul laneways he heard bursts of
hoarse riot and wrangling and the drawling of drunken
singers. He walked onward, undismayed, wondering
whether he had strayed into the quarter of the Jews.
Women and girls dressed in long vivid gowns traversed
the street from house to house. They were leisurely and
perfumed. A trembling seized him and his eyes grew
dim. The yellow gasflames arose before his troubled
vision against the vapoury sky, burning as if before an
altar. Before the doors and in the lighted halls groups
were gathered arrayed as for some rite. He was in
another world: he had awakened from a slumber of
centuries.

He stood still in the middle of the roadway, his heart
clamouring against his bosom in a tumult. A young
woman dressed in a long pink gown laid her hand on
his arm to detain him and gazed into his face. She
said gaily:

— Good night, Willie dear!

Her room was warm and lightsome. A huge doll sat
with her legs apart in the copious easychair beside the
bed. He tried to bid his tongue speak that he might
seem at ease, watching her as she undid her gown, noting
the proud conscious movements of her perfumed
head.

As he stood silent in the middle of the room she came
over to him and embraced him gaily and gravely. Her

[113]

round arms held him firmly to her and he, seeing her
face lifted to him in serious calm and feeling the warm
calm rise and fall of her breast, all but burst into
hysterical weeping. Tears of joy and relief shone in his de-
lighted eyes and his lips parted though they would not
speak.

She passed her tinkling hand through his hair, calling
him a little rascal.

— Give me a kiss, she said.

His lips would not bend to kiss her. He wanted to be
held firmly in her arms, to be caressed slowly, slowly,
slowly. In her arms he felt that he had suddenly become
strong and fearless and sure of himself. But his lips
would not bend to kiss her.

With a sudden movement she bowed his head and
joined her lips to his and he read the meaning of her
movements in her frank uplifted eyes. It was too much
for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to
her, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world
but the dark pressure of her softly parting lips. They
pressed upon his brain as upon his lips as though they
were the vehicle of a vague speech; and between them he
felt an unknown and timid pressure, darker than the
swoon of sin, softer than sound or odour.

[114]

CHAPTER III.

 

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