百度搜索 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 天涯 或 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.
Uncle Charles smoked such black twist that at last his nephew suggested to him to enjoy his m 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 smoke such villainous awful tobacco. Its like gunpowder, by God.
-- Its very nice, Simon, replied the old man. Very cool and mollifying.
Every m, therefore, uncle Charles repaired to his outhouse but not before he had greased 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 sounding-box: and every m he hummed tentedly 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 Blackrocle Charles was Stephens stant panion. Uncle 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 liberally to handfuls of whatever was exposed in open boxes and barrels outside the ter. He would seize a handful of grapes and sawdust or three or four Ameri apples and thrust them generously into his grandnephews hand while the shopman smiled uneasily; and, on Stephens feigniao take them, he would frown and say:
-- Take them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? Theyre good for your bowels.
When the order list had been booked the two would go on to the park where an old friend of Stephens father, Mike Flynn, would be foued on a bench, waiting for them. Then would begin Stephens run round the park. Mike Flynn would stand at the gate he railway station, wat hand, while Stephen ran round the tra the style Mike Flynn favoured, his head high lifted, his knees well lifted and his hands held straight down by his sides. When the m practice was over the trainer would make his ents and sometimes illustrate them by shuffling along for a yard or so ically in an old pair of blue vas shoes. A small ring of woruck children and nursemaids would gather to watch him and linger even when he and uncle Charles had sat down again aalking athletid 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 gla his trainers flabby stubble-covered face, as it bent over the long stained fihrough 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 bato the pouch.
On the way home uncle Charles would often pay a visit to the chapel and, as the font was above Stephens reach, the old man would dip his hand and then sprihe water briskly about Stephens clothes and on the floor of the porch. While he prayed he k on his red handkerchief and read above his breath from a thumb blaed prayer book wherein catchwords were pri the foot of every page. Stephe at his side respeg, though he did not share, his piety. He often wondered what his grand-uncle 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-uook their stitutional. The old man was a nimble walker in spite of his s and often ten or twelve miles of the road were covered. The little village of Stillan was the parting of the ways. Either they went to the left towards the Dublin mountains or along the Goatstown road and theo Dundrum, ing home by Sandyford. Trudging along the road or standing in some grimy wayside public house his elders spoke stantly of the subjeearer their hearts, of Irish politiunster and of the legends of their own family, to all of which Stephe an avid ear. Words which he did not uand 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 them. The hour wheoo would take part in the life of that world seemed drawing near and i 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 t of Monte Cristo. The figure of that dark aveood 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 ed. When he had broken up this sery, weary of its tihere would e to his mind the bright picture of Marseille, 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 oward 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. 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 Napoleons plain style of dress, chose to remain unadorned and thereby heightened for himself the pleasure of taking sel with his lieutenant befiving 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, ing 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 ilkman and often they drove out in the milk-car to Carries 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, sied Stephe. The cattle which had seemed so beautiful in the try on sunny days revolted him and he could not even look at the milk they yielded.
The ing of September did not trouble him this year for he was not to be sent back to gowes. The practi the park came to an end when Mike Fly 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 cowyard and he felt n seeing the cow hairs and hayseeds on the milkmans coat. Whehe car drew up before a house he waited to catch a glimpse of a well scrubbed kit 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 gis in his pocket to eat from. But the same foreknowledge which had sied his heart and made his legs sag suddenly as he raced round the park, the same intuition which had made him glah mistrust at his trainers flabby stubble-covered face as it bent heavily over his long stained fingers, dissipated any vision of the future. In a vague way he uood that his father was in trouble and that this was the reason why he himself had not bee back to gowes. For some time he had felt the slight ge in his house; and those ges in what he had deemed ungeable were so many slight shocks to his boyish ception 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 mares hoofs clattering along the tramtra the Rock Road and the great swaying and rattling behind him.
He returo Mercedes and, as he brooded upon her image, a strange u crept into his blood. Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avehe peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influeo 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 gowes, that he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wao meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so stantly 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, enter 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 magient.
________________________________________
Two great yellow caravans had halted one m before the door and men had e tramping into the house to disma. 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 painst the bars of the grate to attract the flame. Uncle Charles dozed in a er of the half furnished uncarpeted room and near him the family portraits leaned against the wall. The lamp oable shed a weak light over the boarded floor, muddied by the feet of the van-men. Stephen sat on a footstool beside his father listening to a long and i monologue. He uood 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 fort and revery of Blackrock, the passage 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 uood 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 whed him to sit down a his dinner.
-- Theres a crack of the whip left i, Stephen, old chap, said Mr Dedalus, poking at the dull fire with fierergy. Were not dead yet, sonny. No, by the Lord Jesus (God five me) not half dead.
Dublin was a new and plex sensation. Uncle Charles had grown so witless that he could no longer be sent out on errands and the disorder iling in the new house left Stephehan he had been in Blackrock. In the beginning he tented himself with cirg timidly round the neighb 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 tral lines until he reached the house. He passed unchallenged among the docks and along the quays w at the multitude of corks that lay bobbing on the surface of the water in a thick yellow scum, at the crowds of quay porters and the rumbling carts and the ill-dressed bearded poli. The vastness and strangeness of the life suggested to him by the bales of merdise stocked along the walls or swung aloft out of the holds of steamers wakened again in him the u which had sent him wandering in the evening from garden to garden in searercedes. And amid this new bustling life he might have fancied himself in another Marseille but that he missed the bright sky and the sum-warmed trellises of the wineshops. A vague dissatisfa grew up within him as he looked on the quays and on the river and on the l skies a he tio wander up and down day after day as if he really sought someohat 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 embitterment were many, remote and near. He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the ge of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insiy. Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision. He icled with patience what he saw, detag himself from it and tasting its mortifying flavour i.
He was sitting on the backless chair in his aunts kit. A lamp with a reflector hung on the japanned wall of the fireplad 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!
A ried 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 ried head against her mothers sleeve, gazing on the picture, and murmured as if fasated:
-- The beautiful Mabel Hunter!
As if fasated, her eyes rested long upon those demurely taunting eyes and she murmured devotedly:
-- Isnt 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 blaed hands, shouldering her aside and plaining 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 windoectral 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 ges 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 advehat 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 fireplace:
-- No, Ellen, its Stephen.
-- OO, good evening, Stephen.
He answered the greeting and saw a silly smile break over the fa the doorway.
-- Do you want anything, Ellen? asked the old woman at the fire.
But she did not ahe question and said:
-- I thought it was Josephine. I thought you were Josephiephen.
And, repeating this several times, she fell to laughing feebly.
He was sitting in the midst of a childrens party at Harolds Cross. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him aook little part in >?９9ｌib?</a>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 sunbos.
But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug er of the room he began to taste the joy of his loneliness. The mirth, whi 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 cirg of the dancers and amid the musid laughter her glaravelled to his er, flattering, taunting, searg, exg his heart.
In the hall the children who had stayed latest were putting ohings: 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 k and shook their bells to the clear night in admonition. The 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 ogether 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 a down taiween their phrases and once or twice stood close beside him for some moments on the upper step, fetting to go down, and the down. His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beh their cowl and khat 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 stogs, and khat he had yielded to them a thousand times. Yet a voice within him spoke above the noise of his dang 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, watg 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 theood listlessly in his place, seemingly a tranquil watcher of the se before him.
-- She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. Thats why she came with me to the tram. I could easily catch hold Of her when she es up to my step: nobody is looking. I could hold her and kiss her.
But he did her: and, when he was sitting alone in the deserted tram, he tore his ticket into shreds and stared gloomily at the cated footboard.
The day he sat at his table in the bare upper room for many hours. Before him la<bdi>藏书网</bdi>y 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 k 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 oral line underh he fell into a daydream and began to draw diagrams on the cover of the book. He saw himself sitting at his table in Bray the m after the discussion at the Christmas diable, trying to write a poem about Parnell on the back of one of his fathers seoiety 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 Maey
Simon Moonan
Now it seemed as if he would fail again but, by dint of brooding on the i, he thought himself into fidence. During this process all those elements which he deemed on and insignifit fell out of the se. There remained no trace of the tram itself nor of the tram-men 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 beh the leafless trees and when the moment of farewell had e 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 mothers 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 fathers return for there had been mutton hash that day and he khat his father would make him dip his bread in the gravy. But he did not relish the hash for the mention of gowes had coated his palate with a scum of disgust.
-- I walked bang into him, said Mr Dedalus for the fourth time, just at the er of the square.
-- Then I suppose, said Mrs Dedalus, he will be able te it. I mean about Belvedere.
-- Of course he will, said Mr Dedalus. Dont I tell you hes 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 Gods name since he began with them. Theyll be of servi in after years. Those are the fellows that get you a position.
-- And theyre a very rich order, arent they, Simon?
-- Rather. They live well, I tell you. You saw their table at gowes. Fed up, by God, like gamecocks.
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. Youve had a fine long holiday.
-- O, Im sure hell work very hard now, said Mrs Dedalus, especially when he has Maurice with him.
-- O, Holy Paul, I fot about Maurice, said Mr Dedalus. Here, Maurice! e here, you thick-headed ruffian! Do you know Im going to send you to a college where theyll teach you to spell c.a.t. cat. And Ill buy you a tle penny handkerchief to keep your nose dry. Wont that be grand fun?
Maurice gri 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 fathers gaze.
-- By the bye, said Mr Dedalus at length, the rector, or provincial rather, was tellihat story about you and Father Dolan. Youre an impudent thief, he said.
-- O, he didnt, Simon!
-- Not he! said Mr Dedalus. But he gave me a great at of the whole affair. We were chatting, you know, and one word borrowed another. And, by the way, who do you thiold me will get that job in the corporation? But I `Il tell you that after. Well, as I was saying, we were chatting away quite friendly and he asked me did our friend here wear glasses still, and theold me the whole story.
-- And was he annoyed, Simon?
-- Annoyed? Not he! Manly little chap! he said.
Mr Dedalus imitated the ming 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 twiine. We had a famous laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Mr Dedalus turo 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 provincials void 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 e and Stephen from the window of the dressing-room looked out on the small grass-plot across which lines of ese lanterns were stretched. He watched the visitors e doweps from the house and pass into the theatre. Stewards in evening dress, old Belvedereans, loitered in groups about the entrao the theatre and ushered in the visitors with Ceremony. Uhe sudden glow of a lantern he could reize 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 panies of barbells and Indian clubs; the dumbbells were piled in one er: and in the midst of tless hillocks of gymnasium shoes and sweaters and sis in untidy brown parcels there stood the stout leather-jacketed vaulting horse waiting its turn to be carried up oage a in the middle of the winning team at the end of the gymnastic display.
Stephen, though in defereo his reputation for essay writing he had beeed secretary to the gymnasium, had had no part in the first se of the programme but in the play whied the sed se he had the chief part, that of a farcical pedagogue. He had been cast for it on at of his stature and grave manners for he was now at the end of his sed year at Belvedere and in wo.
A score of the younger boys in white knickers and sis came pattering down from the stage, through the vestry and to 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 intricate club swinging, stood near watg with i, his silver-coated clubs peeping out of his deep side-pockets. The hollow rattle of the wooden dumbbells was heard as aeam made ready to go up oage: 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 g to the laggards to make haste. A little troop of Neapolitan peasants were practising their steps at the end of the chapel, some cirg their arms above their heads, some swaying their baskets of paper violets and curtsying. In a dark er of the chapel at the gospel side of the altar a stout old lady k amid her copious black skirts. Wheood up a pink-dressed figure, wearing a curly golden wig and an old-fashioraw sunbo, 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 er 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 fader the leaf of the bo, he exclaimed:
-- No! Upon my word I believe its 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 dahe sunbo dance by himself. A movement of impatience escaped him. He let the edge of the blind fall and, stepping down from the ben which he had been standing, walked out of the chapel.
He passed out of the schoolhouse and halted uhe shed that flahe garden. From the theatre opposite came the muffled noise of the audiend 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 loopio her ms. 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 se of the opening bars, their languor and supple movement, evoked the inunicable emotion which had been the cause of all his days u and of his impatient movement of a moment before. His u issued from him like a wave of sound: and oide 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 oage.
At the far end of the shed he 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 reised Heron by his voice.
-- Here es the noble Dedalus! cried a high throaty voice. Wele to our trusty friend!
This wele ended in a soft peal of mirthless laughter as Heron salaamed and then began to poke the ground with his e.
-- Here I am, said Stephen, halting and glang from Heron to his friend.
The latter was a strao 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 introdu 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 saster. It would be a ripping good joke.
Heron made a poor attempt to imitate for his friend Wallis the rectors pedantic bass and then,<big>..</big> laughing at his failure, asked Stephen to do it.
-- Go on, Dedalus, he urged, you take him off rippingly. He that will not hear the churcha let him be to theea as the heathena and the publia.
The imitation revented by a mild expression of anger from Wallis in whose mouthpiece the cigarette had bee too tightly wedged.
-- Damn this blay blank holder, he said, taking it from his mouth and smiling and frowning upon it tolerantly. Its always getting stuck like that. Do you use a holder?
-- I dont smoke, answered Stephen.
-- No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesnt smoke and he doesnt go to bazaars and he doesnt flirt and he doesnt damn anything or damn all.
Stephen shook his head and smiled in his rivals flushed and mobile face, beaked like a birds. He had often thought it strahat Vi Heron had a birds face as well as a birds name. A shock of pale hair lay on the forehead like a ruffled crest: the forehead was narrow and bony and a thin hooked ood out between the close-set promi eyes which were light and inexpressive. The rivals were school friends. They sat together in class, kogether 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 rectether to ask for a free day or to get a fellow off.
-- O by the way, said Heron suddenly, I saw yovernoing in.
The smile waned on Stephens 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 sileo hear what Heron might say . Heron, however, nudged him expressively with his elbow and said:
-- Youre a sly dog.
-- Why so? said Stephen.
-- Youd think butter would in your mouth said Heron. But Im afraid youre a sly dog.
-- Might I ask you what you are talking about? said Stephen urbanely.
-- Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her, Wallis, didnt we? And deucedly pretty she is too. And inquisitive! And art does Stephen take, Mr Dedalus? And will Stephen not sing, Mr Dedalus? Yovernor 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 wouldnt care a bit, by Jove. Shes ripping, isnt she, Wallis?
-- Not half bad, answered Wallis quietly as he placed his holder once more in a er of his mouth.
A shaft of momentary anger flew through Stephens mind at these indelicate allusions in the hearing of a stranger. For him there was nothing amusing in a girls i and regard. All day he had thought of nothing but their leave-taking oeps of the tram at Harolds 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 khat she was to e 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 outlet in verse. The growth and knowledge of two years of boyhood stood between then and now, forbidding su outlet: and all day the stream of gloomy tenderness within him had started forth aurned upon itself in dark courses and eddies, wearying him in the end until the pleasantry of the prefed the painted little boy had drawn from him a movement of impatience.
-- So you may as well admit, Hero on, that weve fairly found you out this time. You t play the saint on me any more, thats 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 e, as if iing reproof.
Stephens moment of anger had already passed. He was her flattered nor fused, but simply wished the bao end. He scarcely resented what had seemed to him a silly indeliess for he khat the adventure in his mind stood in no danger from these words: and his face mirrored his rivals false smile.
-- Admit! repeated Heron, striking him again with his e across the calf of the leg.
The stroke layful but not so lightly given as the first one had been. Stephehe skin tingle and glow slightly and almost painlessly; and, bowing submissively, as if to meet his panioing mood, began to recite the fiteor. The episode ended well, for both Heron and Wallis laughed indulgently at the irreverence.
The fession came only from Stephens lips and, while they spoke the words, a sudden memory had carried him to another se called up, as if by magic, at the moment when he had he faint cruel dimples at the ers of Herons smiling lips and had felt the familiar stroke of the e 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 uhe 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 revery to find himself in the midst of a new se, every event and figure of which affected him intimately, disheartened him or allured and, whether alluring or disheartening, filled him always with u and bitter thoughts. All the leisure which his school life left him assed in the pany of subversive writers whose jibes 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 is of the itting himself against some figure ahead of him and quiing 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 fi 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 haween his thighs while his heavily starched linen creaked about his ned wrists. Stephen did not look up. It was a raw spring m and his eyes were still smarting and weak. He was scious of failure and of dete, of the squalor of his own mind and home, a against his he raw edge of his turned and jagged collar.
A short loud laugh from Mr Tate set the class more at ease.
-- Perhaps you didnt know that, he said.
-- Where? asked Stephen.
Mr Tate withdrew his delving hand and spread out the essay.
-- Here. Its about the Creator and the soul. Rrmrrm rrmAh! without a possibility of ever approag hats heresy.
Stephen murmured:
-- I meant without a possibility of ever reag.
It was a submission and Mr Tate, appeased, folded up the essay and passed it across to him, saying:
-- OAh! ever reag. Thats aory.
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 Drumdra Road when he heard a voice cry:
-- Halt!
He turned and saw three boys of his own class ing 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 e 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 pad wagging his great red head.
As soon as the boys had turned into liffe 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 listeo them in some wonderment for Boland was the dund 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.
-- Fudge! said Heron. Ask Dedalus. Who is the greatest writer, Dedalus?
Stephen he 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 Nashs freckled face as he turo 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 hes 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 fot the silent vows he had been making and burst out:
-- Tennyson a poet! Why, hes 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 Boland, nudging his neighbour.
-- Byron, of course, answered Stephen.
Heron gave the lead and all three joined in a sful laugh.
-- What are you laughing at? asked Stephen.
-- You, said Heron. Byron the greatest poet! Hes 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 sile Hero on:
-- In any case Byron was a heretid immoral too.
-- I dont care what he was, cried Stephen hotly.
-- You dont 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 Bolaher.
-- I know that Byron was a bad man, said Boland.
-- Here, catch hold of this heretic, Heron called out. In a moment Stephen risoner.
-- Tate made you buck up the other day, Hero on, about the heresy in your essay.
-- Ill tell him tomorrow, said Boland.
-- Will you? said Stephen. Youd be afraid to open your lips.
-- Afraid?
-- Ay. Afraid of your life.
-- Behave yourself! cried Heron, cutting at Stephens legs with his e.
It was the signal for their o. Nash pinioned his arms behind while Boland seized a long cabbage stump which was lying iter. Struggling and kig uhe cuts of the e 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 Joness Road, laughing and jeering at him, while he, half blinded with tears, stumbled on, g his fists madly and sobbing.
While he was still repeating the fiteor amid the indulgent laughter of his hearers and while the ses of that malignant episode were still passing sharply and swiftly before his mind he wondered why he bore no maliow to those who had tormented him. He had not fotten a whit of their cowardid cruelty but the memory of it called forth no anger from him. All the descriptions 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 Joness 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 remaianding with his two panions at the end of the shed listening idly to their talk or to the bursts of applause iheatre. She was sitting there among the others perhaps waiting for him to appear. He tried to recall her appeara could not. He could remember only that she had worn a shawl about her head like a cowl and that her dark eyes had invited and unnerved him. He wondered had he been ihoughts as 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 toug 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 uhe shed. He was excited and breathless.
-- O, Dedalus, he cried, Doyle is in a great bake about you. Youre to go in at ond get dressed for the play. Hurry up, you better.
-- Hes ing now, said Heron to the messenger with a haughty drawl, when he wants to.
The boy turo Heron aed:
-- But Doyle is in an awful bake.
-- Will you tell Doyle with my best pliments that I damned his eyes? answered Heron.
-- Well, I must go now, said Stephen, who cared little for such points of honour.
-- I wouldnt, said Heron, damn me if I would. Thats no way to send for one of the senior boys. In a bake, indeed! I think its quite enough that youre taking a part in his bally old play.
This spirit of quarrelsome radeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulend doubted the siy of suradeship 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 pursuing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution from such pursuit he had heard about him the stant 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 e to be hollow-sounding in his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly ahy 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 try ao raise up her language and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise up his fathers fallen state by his labours and, meanwhile, the voice of his school rades urged him to be a det 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 hollow-sounding 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 pany of phantasmal rades.
In the vestry a plump fresh-faced 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, toug their faces in a gingerly fashion with their furtive fiips. In the middle of the vestry a you, who was then on a visit to the college, stood rog 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 decy of his soutane and with his spotless shoes.
As he watched this swaying form and tried to read for himself the legend of the priests mog smile there came into Stephens memory a saying which he had heard from his father before he had beeo gowes, that you could always tell a jesuit by the style of his clothes. At the same momehought he saw a likeness between his fathers mind and that of this smiling well-dressed priest: and he was aware of some desecration of the priests office or of the vestry itself whose silence was now routed by loud talk and joking and its air pu with the smells of the gas-jets and the grease.
While his forehead was being wrinkled and his jaws painted blad blue by the elderly man, he listened distractedly to the voice of the plump you which bade him speak up and make his points clearly. He could hear the band playing The Lily of Killarney and khat 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 watg him from among the audiend their image at once swept away his scruples, leaving his will pact. Another nature seemed to have bee him: the iion of the excitement and youth about him entered into and transformed his moody mistrustfulness. For one rare moment he seemed to be clothed in the real apparel of boyhood: and, as he stood in the wings among the other players, he shared the irth amid which the drop se was hauled upwards by two able-bodied priests with violent jerks and all awry.
A few moments after he found himself oage amid the garish gas and the dim sery, ag 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 se he heard the void filled with applause and, through a rift in a side se, 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 fahe ms of an ark a few lanterns swung in the night breeze, flickering cheerlessly. He mouhe 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 who stood watg the exodus and bowing and shaking hands with the visitors. He pushed onward nervously, feigning a still greater haste and faintly scious of the smiles and stares and nudges which his powdered head left in its wake.
When he came out oeps he saw his family waiting for him at the first lamp. In a glance he hat every figure of the group was familiar and ran doweps angrily.
-- I have to leave a message down in Gees Street, he said to his father quickly. Ill be home after you.
Without waiting for his fathers 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 inse before the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden-risen 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 rese fall from him, brought his steps to rest. He stood still and gazed up at the sombre porch of the mue 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.
Stephen was once agaied beside his father in the er 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 gowes. But he felt no wonder now. He saw the darkening lands slipping aast him, the silent telegraph-poles passing his window swiftly every four seds, the little glimmering stations, manned by a few sileries, 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 fathers evocation of Cork and of ses of his youth, a tale broken by sighs hts from his pocket flask whehe image of some dead friend appeared in it or whehe evoker remembered suddenly the purpose of his actual visit. Stephen heard but could feel no pity. The images of the dead were all strao him save that of uncle Charles, an image which had lately been fading out of memory. He knew, however, that his fathers property was going to be sold by au, and in the manner of his own dispossession he felt the wive the lie rudely to his phantasy.
At Marybh he fell asleep. When he awoke the train had passed out of Mallow and his father was stretched asleep oher seat. The cold light of the dawn lay over the try, over the unpeopled fields and the closed cottages. The terror of sleep fasated his mind as he watched the silent try or heard from time to time his fathers deep breath or sudden sleepy movement. The neighbourhood of unseen sleepers filled him with strange dread, as though they could harm him, and he prayed that the day might e quickly. His prayer, addressed her to God nor saint, began with a shiver, as the chilly m breeze crept through the k 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 seds, the telegraph-poles held the galloping notes of the music between punctual bars. This furious music allayed his dread and, leaning against the windowledge, he let his eyelids close again.
They drove in a jingle across Cork while it was still early m and Stephen finished his sleep in a bedroom 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 dressing-table, examining his hair and fad moustache with great care, ing 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 at and phrasing:
`Tis youth and folly
Makes young men marry,
So here, my love, Ill
No loay.
What t be cured, sure,
Must be injured, sure,
So Ill go to
Amerikay.
`My love shes handsome,
My love shes bony:
Shes like good whisky
When it is new;
But when tis old
And growing cold
It fades and dies like
The mountain dew.
The sciousness of the warm sunny city outside his window and the teremors with which his fathers voice festoohe strange sad happy air, drove off all the mists of the nights ill humour from Stephens brai up quickly to dress and, when the song had ended, said:
-- Thats much prettier than any of your other e-all-yous.
-- Do you think so? asked Mr Dedalus.
-- I like it, said Stephen.
-- Its 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, graotes that he used to put in that I havent got. That was the boy who could sing a e-all-you, if you like.
Mr Dedalus had ordered drisheens for breakfast and during the meal he cross-examihe waiter for loews. For the most part they spoke at cross purposes when a name was mentiohe waiter having in mind the present holder and Mr Dedalus his father or perhaps his grandfather.
-- Well, I hope they havent moved the Queens 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 ehe grounds of the college and were led by the garrulous porter across the quadrangle. But their progress across the gravel was brought to a halt after every dozen or so paces by some reply of the porters.
-- 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 subjed waitilessly 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 suspian, could be duped by the servile manners of the porter; and the lively southern speech which had eained him all the m 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, depressed 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 pany. A vision of their life, which his fathers 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 iters with a jaife, 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.
Stephens name was called. He hurried doweps of the theatre so as to be as far away from the vision as he could be and, peering closely at his fathers 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 ier 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, w always where they came from, from what den of monstrous images, and always weak and humble towards others, restless and sied of himself when they had swept over him.
-- Ay, bedad! And theres the Groceries sure enough! cried Mr Dedalus. You often heard me speak of the Groceries, didnt you, Stephen. Manys 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 Fren, and Tom OGrady and Mick Lacy that I told you of this m 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 bystreet a German band of five players in faded uniforms and with battered brass instruments laying 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 limestone 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 fathers side, listening to stories he had heard before, hearing again the names of the scattered and dead revellers who had been the panions of his fathers youth. And a faint siess sighed in his heart.
He recalled his own equivocal position in Belvedere, a free boy, a leader afraid of his own authority, proud aive and suspicious, battling against the squalor of his life and against the riot of his mind. The letters cut iained wood of the desk stared upon him, mog his bodily weakness and futile enthusiasms and making him loathe himself for his own mad and filthy ies. The spittle in his throat grew bitter and foul to swallow and the faint siess climbed to his brain so that for a moment he closed his eyes and walked on in darkness.
He could still hear his fathers voice--
-- When you kick out for yourself, Stephen - as I daresay you will one of these days - remember, whatever you do, to mix with gentlemen. When I was a young fellow I tell you I enjoyed myself. I mixed with fi fellows. Everyone of us could lo something. One fellow had a good voice, another fellow was a good actor, another could sing a good ig, another was a good oarsman ood 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 he worse of it either. But we were all gentlemen, Stephen - at least I hope we were - and bloody good ho Irishmen too. Thats the kind of fellows I want you to associate with, fellows of the right kidney. Im talking to you as a friend, Stephen. I dont believe a son should be afraid of his father. No, I treat you as yrandfather treated me when I was a young chap. We were more like brothers than father and son. I `Il never fet the first day he caught me smoking. I was standing at the end of the South Terrae day with some maneens like myself and sure we thought we were grand fellows because ipes stu the ers of our mouths. Suddenly the governor passed. He didnt say a word, or stop even. But the day, Sunday, we were out for a walk together and when we were ing home he took out his cigar case and said: - By the by, Simon, I didnt know you smoked, or something like tha<var></var>t. - 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 Ameri captain made me a present of them last night iown.
Stephen heard his fathers 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 womeo stand to look after him ireet.
He heard the sob passing loudly down his fathers throat and opened his eyes with a nervous impulse. The sunlight breaking-suddenly on his sight turhe sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light. His very brain was sid 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 an echo of the infuriated cries within him. He could respond to hly or human appeal, dumb and insensible to the call of summer and gladness and panionship, wearied aed by his fathers voice. He could scarcely reize as his own thoughts, aed 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, e, gowes. A little boy had been taught geography by an old woman who kept two brushes in her wardrobe. Then he had bee away from home to a college, he had made his first union aen slim jim out of his cricket cap and watched the firelight leaping and dang 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 blad gold cope, of being buried then itle graveyard of the unity off the main avenue of limes. 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 strao think of him passing out of existen such a way, not by death but by fading out in the sun or by being lost and fotten somewhere in the universe! It was strao see his small body appear again for a moment: a little boy in a grey belted suit. His hands were in his side-pockets and his trousers were tucked in at the knees by elastids.
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 at up in Dublin and that Peter Pickackafax beside him was his eldest son but that he was only a Dublin ja.
They had set out early in the m from Newbes coffee-house, where Mr Dedaluss cup had rattled noisily against its saucer, and Stephen had tried to cover that shameful sign of his fathers 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 pliments and encing words of his fathers 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 uhed traces of a Cork at in his speed 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 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 fusion by asking him to say which were prettier, the Dublin girls or the Cirls.
-- Hes not that way built, said Mr Dedalus. Leave him alone. Hes a level-headed thinking boy who doesnt bother his head about that kind of nonsense.
-- Then hes not his fathers son, said the little old man.
-- I dont know, Im sure, said Mr Dedalus, smiling platly.
-- Your father, said the little old man to Stephen, was the boldest flirt iy 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 doting ideas into his head, said Mr Dedalus Leave him to his Maker.
-- Yerra, sure I wouldnt put any ideas into his head. Im 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 boung grandchildren out at Sundays Well. Now, then! What age do you think I am? And I remember seeing yrandfather 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 remember even yreat-grandfather, old John Stephen Dedalus, and a fierce old fire-eater he was. Now, then! Theres a memory for you!
-- Thats three geions - feions, said another of the pany. Why, Johnny Cashman, you must be nearing the tury.
-- Well, Ill tell you the truth, said the little old man. Im just twenty-seven years of age.
-- Were as old as we feel, Johnny, said Mr Dedalus. And just finish what you have there and well have another. Here, Tim or Tom or whatever your name is, give us the same again here. By God, I dont feel more thaeen myself. Theres that son of mihere not half my age and Im a better man than he is any day of the week.
-- Draw it mild now, Dedalus. I think its time for you to take a back seat, said the gentleman who had spoken before.
-- No, by God! asserted Mr Dedalus. Ill sing a tenor song against him or Ill vault a five-barred gate against him or Ill run with him after the hounds across the try as I did thirty years ago along with the Kerry Boy and the best man for it.
-- But hell beat you here, said the little old man, tapping his forehead and raising his glass to drain it.
-- Well, I hope hell be as good a man as his father. Thats all I say, said Mr Dedalus.
-- If he is, hell 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 ter as his father and his two ies 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 as like a moon upon a younger earth. No life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred in them. He had knowher the pleasure of 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 panionless?
He repeated to himself the lines of Shelleys fragment. Its alternation of sad human iiveness with vast inhuman cycles of activity chilled him and he fot his own human and iual grieving.
Stephens mother and his brother and one of his cousins waited at the er of quiet Foster Place while he and his father went up the steps and along the nade where the Highlary arading. When they had passed into the great hall and stood at the ter Stephen drew forth his orders on the governor 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 respectively. He bestowed them in his pockets with feigned posure and suffered the friendly teller, to whom his father chatted, to take hi<q>..</q>s hand across the broad ter 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 ged times and that there was nothing like giving 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, whed him to e out, that they were standing in the house of ons of the old Irish parliament.
-- God help us! he said piously, to think of the men of those times, Stephen, Hely Hutson 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 wouldnt be seen dead in a ten-acre field with them. No, Stephen, old chap, Im sorry to say that they are only as I roved out one fine May m 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 Barnardos.
-- Well thats 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 thats not too dear, said Mrs Dedalus.
-- Underdones?
-- Yes. Some quiet place.
-- e along, said Stephen quickly. It doesnt 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. Were hot out for the half mile, are we?
For a swift season of merrymaking the money of his prizes ran through Stephens 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 pocket bulged with masses of silver and copper s. 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 oh 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 reing the is on the sums lent. When he could do no more he drove up and dowy 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 returo its usual way of life. His mother had no further occasion to upbraid him for squandering his money. He too returo his old life at school and all his novel enterprises fell to pieces. The oh 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 break-water of order and elegance against the sordid tide of life without him and to dam up, by rules of dud active i and new filial relations, the powerful recurrence of the tides within him. Useless. From without as from withiers 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 oep he lives he had sought to approaed 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 fe, fosterchild and fosterbrother.
He turo 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. Beside the savage desire within him to realize the enormities which he brooded on nothing was sacred. He bore ically with the shameful details of his secret riots in which he exulted to defile with patience whatever 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 i came towards him by night through the winding darkness of sleep, her face transfigured by a lecherous ing, her eyes bright with brutish joy. Only the m pained him with its dim memory of dark iastic riot, its keen and humiliating sense ression.
He returo 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 luxury that was wasting him gave room to a softer languor, the image of Mercedes traversed the background of his memory. He saw again the small white house and the garden of rose-bushes on the road that led to the mountains and he remembered the sadly proud gesture of refusal which he was to make there, standing with her in the moonlit garden after years of estra and adve those moments the soft speeches of Claude Melnotte rose to his lips and eased his u. 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 enter he had then imagi which weakness and timidity and inexperience were to fall from him.
Suents 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 i. He wandered up and down the dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening eagerly for any sound. He moao himself like some baffled prowli. He wao sin with another of his kind, to forother 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 peed his being. His hands ched vulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the agony of its peioretched out his arms ireet 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. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious ey, a cry for an iniquitous abando, a cry which was but the echo of an obse scrawl which he had read on the oozing 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, dismayed, w 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 gas-flames 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 turies.
He stood still in the middle of the roadway, his heart clam 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 easy-chair beside the bed. He tried to bid his tongue speak that he might seem at ease, watg her as she undid her gown, noting the proud sovements 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 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 delighted 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 wao be held firmly in her arms, to be caressed slowly, slowly, slowly. In her arms he felt that he had suddenly bee 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, scious 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; aween them he felt an unknown and timid pressure, darker than the swoon of sin, softer than sound or odour.
百度搜索 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 天涯 或 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.