Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Five

Public Domain Tales: Ulysses: Book Five is the one-hundred-and-nineteenth book in the Public Domain Tales series.
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The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious
embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of
all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud
promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on
the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on
the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the
stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a
beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea.
The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening
scene and the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time and
oft were they wont to come there to that favourite nook to have a cosy
chat beside the sparkling waves and discuss matters feminine, Cissy
Caffrey and Edy Boardman with the baby in the pushcar and Tommy and
Jacky Caffrey, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in sailor suits
with caps to match and the name _H. M. S. Belleisle_ printed on both.
For Tommy and Jacky Caffrey were twins, scarce four years old and very
noisy and spoiled twins sometimes but for all that darling little
fellows with bright merry faces and endearing ways about them. They
were dabbling in the sand with their spades and buckets, building
castles as children do, or playing with their big coloured ball, happy
as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the chubby baby to
and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with
delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a
tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy
Caffrey bent over to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty
dimple in his chin.
—Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of
water.
And baby prattled after her:
—A jink a jink a jawbo.
Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of
children, so patient with little sufferers and Tommy Caffrey could
never be got to take his castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that
held his nose and promised him the scatty heel of the loaf or brown
bread with golden syrup on. What a persuasive power that girl had! But
to be sure baby Boardman was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in
his new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy sort,
was Cissy Caffrey. A truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life,
always with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on her
cherryripe red lips, a girl lovable in the extreme. And Edy Boardman
laughed too at the quaint language of little brother.
But just then there was a slight altercation between Master Tommy and
Master Jacky. Boys will be boys and our two twins were no exception to
this golden rule. The apple of discord was a certain castle of sand
which Master Jacky had built and Master Tommy would have it right go
wrong that it was to be architecturally improved by a frontdoor like
the Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy was headstrong Master Jacky
was selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that every little Irishman’s
house is his castle, he fell upon his hated rival and to such purpose
that the wouldbe assailant came to grief and (alas to relate!) the
coveted castle too. Needless to say the cries of discomfited Master
Tommy drew the attention of the girl friends.
—Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively. At once! And you,
Jacky, for shame to throw poor Tommy in the dirty sand. Wait till I
catch you for that.
His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at her call for
their big sister’s word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight he
was too after his misadventure. His little man-o’-war top and
unmentionables were full of sand but Cissy was a past mistress in the
art of smoothing over life’s tiny troubles and very quickly not one
speck of sand was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue
eyes were glistening with hot tears that would well up so she kissed
away the hurtness and shook her hand at Master Jacky the culprit and
said if she was near him she wouldn’t be far from him, her eyes dancing
in admonition.
—Nasty bold Jacky! she cried.
She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly:
—What’s your name? Butter and cream?
—Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is Cissy your
sweetheart?
—Nao, tearful Tommy said.
—Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried.
—Nao, Tommy said.
—I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an arch glance from
her shortsighted eyes. I know who is Tommy’s sweetheart. Gerty is
Tommy’s sweetheart.
—Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears.
Cissy’s quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered to Edy
Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the gentleman
couldn’t see and to mind he didn’t wet his new tan shoes.
But who was Gerty?
Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought,
gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a
specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was
pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said,
she was more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and
graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had
been taking of late had done her a world of good much better than the
Widow Welch’s female pills and she was much better of those discharges
she used to get and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face
was almost spiritual in its ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth
was a genuine Cupid’s bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely
veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemonjuice and
queen of ointments could make them though it was not true that she used
to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha Supple
told that once to Edy Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black
out at daggers drawn with Gerty (the girl chums had of course their
little tiffs from time to time like the rest of mortals) and she told
her not to let on whatever she did that it was her that told her or
she’d never speak to her again. No. Honour where honour is due. There
was an innate refinement, a languid queenly _hauteur_ about Gerty which
was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and higharched instep.
Had kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in
her own right and had she only received the benefit of a good education
Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside any lady in the
land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow
and patrician suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their
devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that
lent to her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed
meaning, that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful
eyes, a charm few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery?
Gerty’s were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and
dark expressive brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily
seductive. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful
page of the Princess Novelette, who had first advised her to try
eyebrowleine which gave that haunting expression to the eyes, so
becoming in leaders of fashion, and she had never regretted it. Then
there was blushing scientifically cured and how to be tall increase
your height and you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would
suit Mrs Dignam because she had a button one. But Gerty’s crowning
glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a
natural wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account of the
new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in a profusion of
luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And
just now at Edy’s words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest
rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet
girlish shyness that of a surety God’s fair land of Ireland did not
hold her equal.
For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She was
about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue.
Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity told her to be silent.
The pretty lips pouted awhile but then she glanced up and broke out
into a joyous little laugh which had in it all the freshness of a young
May morning. She knew right well, no-one better, what made squinty Edy
say that because of him cooling in his attentions when it was simply a
lovers’ quarrel. As per usual somebody’s nose was out of joint about
the boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding
up and down in front of her window. Only now his father kept him in in
the evenings studying hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate
that was on and he was going to go to Trinity college to study for a
doctor when he left the high school like his brother W. E. Wylie who
was racing in the bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little
recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart
sometimes, piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he
might learn to love her in time. They were protestants in his family
and of course Gerty knew Who came first and after Him the Blessed
Virgin and then Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an
exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman, the
shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that she would
know anywhere something off the common and the way he turned the
bicycle at the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice
perfume of those good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size
too he and she and that was why Edy Boardman thought she was so
frightfully clever because he didn’t go and ride up and down in front
of her bit of a garden.
Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of
Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be
out. A neat blouse of electric blue selftinted by dolly dyes (because
it was expected in the _Lady’s Pictorial_ that electric blue would be
worn) with a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief pocket
(in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her
favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) and a navy
threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful
figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of
wideleaved slave straw ontrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue
chenille and at the side a butterfly bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday
week afternoon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last she
found what she wanted at Clery’s summer sales, the very it, slightly
shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny.
She did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on
then, smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to
her! And when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew
that that would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes
were the newest thing in footwear (Edy Boardman prided herself that she
was very _petite_ but she never had a foot like Gerty MacDowell, a
five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just one
smart buckle over her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed
its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount
and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with
highspliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty’s
chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet
seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in
his heart to blame her? She had four dinky sets with awfully pretty
stitchery, three garments and nighties extra, and each set slotted with
different coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue, mauve and peagreen,
and she aired them herself and blued them when they came home from the
wash and ironed them and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because
she wouldn’t trust those washerwomen as far as she’d see them scorching
the things. She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her
own colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on
her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because his
father brought him in to study for the intermediate exhibition and
because she thought perhaps he might be out because when she was
dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside
out and that was for luck and lovers’ meeting if you put those things
on inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking about you so
long as it wasn’t of a Friday.
And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is
there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give
worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving
way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelings
though not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the
mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of evening falls
upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell yearns in vain.
Yes, she had known from the very first that her daydream of a marriage
has been arranged and the weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T.
C. D. (because the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs
Wylie) and in the fashionable intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was
wearing a sumptuous confection of grey trimmed with expensive blue fox
was not to be. He was too young to understand. He would not believe in
love, a woman’s birthright. The night of the party long ago in Stoer’s
(he was still in short trousers) when they were alone and he stole an
arm round her waist she went white to the very lips. He called her
little one in a strangely husky voice and snatched a half kiss (the
first!) but it was only the end of her nose and then he hastened from
the room with a remark about refreshments. Impetuous fellow! Strength
of character had never been Reggy Wylie’s strong point and he who would
woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be a man among men. But waiting,
always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and would soon be
over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and wondrous
love at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who
had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey,
and who would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her
to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort
her with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such a one she
yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of her she longs to be
his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness in
health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward.
And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind the pushcar she was
just thinking would the day ever come when she could call herself his
little wife to be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue
in the face, Bertha Supple too, and Edy, little spitfire, because she
would be twentytwo in November. She would care for him with creature
comforts too for Gerty was womanly wise and knew that a mere man liked
that feeling of hominess. Her griddlecakes done to a goldenbrown hue
and queen Ann’s pudding of delightful creaminess had won golden
opinions from all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a
fire, dredge in the fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same
direction, then cream the milk and sugar and whisk well the white of
eggs though she didn’t like the eating part when there were any people
that made her shy and often she wondered why you couldn’t eat something
poetical like violets or roses and they would have a beautifully
appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph
of grandpapa Giltrap’s lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked it was
so human and chintz covers for the chairs and that silver toastrack in
Clery’s summer jumble sales like they have in rich houses. He would be
tall with broad shoulders (she had always admired tall men for a
husband) with glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed
sweeping moustache and they would go on the continent for their
honeymoon (three wonderful weeks!) and then, when they settled down in
a nice snug and cosy little homely house, every morning they would both
have brekky, simple but perfectly served, for their own two selves and
before he went out to business he would give his dear little wifey a
good hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes.
Edy Boardman asked Tommy Caffrey was he done and he said yes so then
she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and told him to run
off and play with Jacky and to be good now and not to fight. But Tommy
said he wanted the ball and Edy told him no that baby was playing with
the ball and if he took it there’d be wigs on the green but Tommy said
it was his ball and he wanted his ball and he pranced on the ground, if
you please. The temper of him! O, he was a man already was little Tommy
Caffrey since he was out of pinnies. Edy told him no, no and to be off
now with him and she told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to him.
—You’re not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It’s my ball.
But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look up high at her
finger and she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the sand
and Tommy after it in full career, having won the day.
—Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss.
And she tickled tiny tot’s two cheeks to make him forget and played
here’s the lord mayor, here’s his two horses, here’s his gingerbread
carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper
chin. But Edy got as cross as two sticks about him getting his own way
like that from everyone always petting him.
—I’d like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won’t
say.
—On the beeoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily.
Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy
saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she’d be ashamed of her
life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was
sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. But not a pin cared
Ciss.
—Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of
her nose. Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I’d look at
him.
Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her sometimes.
For instance when she asked you would you have some more Chinese tea
and jaspberry ram and when she drew the jugs too and the men’s faces on
her nails with red ink make you split your sides or when she wanted to
go where you know she said she wanted to run and pay a visit to the
Miss White. That was just like Cissycums. O, and will you ever forget
her the evening she dressed up in her father’s suit and hat and the
burned cork moustache and walked down Tritonville road, smoking a
cigarette. There was none to come up to her for fun. But she was
sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever
made, not one of your twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome.
And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the
pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men’s temperance retreat
conducted by the missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary,
sermon and benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there
gathered together without distinction of social class (and a most
edifying spectacle it was to see) in that simple fane beside the waves,
after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the
immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching her
to intercede for them, the old familiar words, holy Mary, holy virgin
of virgins. How sad to poor Gerty’s ears! Had her father only avoided
the clutches of the demon drink, by taking the pledge or those powders
the drink habit cured in Pearson’s Weekly, she might now be rolling in
her carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told herself that
as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study without the lamp
because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing out of the window
dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on the rusty bucket, thinking.
But that vile decoction which has ruined so many hearths and homes had
cast its shadow over her childhood days. Nay, she had even witnessed in
the home circle deeds of violence caused by intemperance and had seen
her own father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication, forget himself
completely for if there was one thing of all things that Gerty knew it
was that the man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of
kindness, deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low.
And still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful,
Virgin most merciful. And Gerty, rapt in thought, scarce saw or heard
her companions or the twins at their boyish gambols or the gentleman
off Sandymount green that Cissy Caffrey called the man that was so like
himself passing along the strand taking a short walk. You never saw him
any way screwed but still and for all that she would not like him for a
father because he was too old or something or on account of his face
(it was a palpable case of Doctor Fell) or his carbuncly nose with the
pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose. Poor
father! With all his faults she loved him still when he sang _Tell me,
Mary, how to woo thee_ or _My love and cottage near Rochelle_ and they
had stewed cockles and lettuce with Lazenby’s salad dressing for supper
and when he sang _The moon hath raised_ with Mr Dignam that died
suddenly and was buried, God have mercy on him, from a stroke. Her
mother’s birthday that was and Charley was home on his holidays and Tom
and Mr Dignam and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Dignam and they were to have
had a group taken. No-one would have thought the end was so near. Now
he was laid to rest. And her mother said to him to let that be a
warning to him for the rest of his days and he couldn’t even go to the
funeral on account of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him
the letters and samples from his office about Catesby’s cork lino,
artistic, standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and
always bright and cheery in the home.
A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second mother in the
house, a ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in
gold. And when her mother had those raging splitting headaches who was
it rubbed the menthol cone on her forehead but Gerty though she didn’t
like her mother’s taking pinches of snuff and that was the only single
thing they ever had words about, taking snuff. Everyone thought the
world of her for her gentle ways. It was Gerty who turned off the gas
at the main every night and it was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of
that place where she never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime
Mr Tunney the grocer’s christmas almanac, the picture of halcyon days
where a young gentleman in the costume they used to wear then with a
threecornered hat was offering a bunch of flowers to his ladylove with
oldtime chivalry through her lattice window. You could see there was a
story behind it. The colours were done something lovely. She was in a
soft clinging white in a studied attitude and the gentleman was in
chocolate and he looked a thorough aristocrat. She often looked at them
dreamily when she went there for a certain purpose and felt her own
arms that were white and soft just like hers with the sleeves back and
thought about those times because she had found out in Walker’s
pronouncing dictionary that belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the
halcyon days what they meant.
The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion till
at last Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there was no
getting behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he
could down towards the seaweedy rocks. Needless to say poor Tommy was
not slow to voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who was
sitting there by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted
the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything with lusty cries
and to avoid trouble Cissy Caffrey called to the gentleman to throw it
to her please. The gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then
threw it up the strand towards Cissy Caffrey but it rolled down the
slope and stopped right under Gerty’s skirt near the little pool by the
rock. The twins clamoured again for it and Cissy told her to kick it
away and let them fight for it so Gerty drew back her foot but she
wished their stupid ball hadn’t come rolling down to her and she gave a
kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy laughed.
—If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said.
Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her
pretty cheek but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted
her skirt a little but just enough and took good aim and gave the ball
a jolly good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it
down towards the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else
to draw attention on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She
felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell,
surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged
glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she
ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze there in the
twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had
ever seen.
Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted
and with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain
of original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray
for us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And
careworn hearts were there and toilers for their daily bread and many
who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but for all
that bright with hope for the reverend father Father Hughes had told
them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary,
the most pious Virgin’s intercessory power that it was not recorded in
any age that those who implored her powerful protection were ever
abandoned by her.
The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of
childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy Caffrey played with
baby Boardman till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air.
Peep she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where was
Cissy gone and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah! and, my
word, didn’t the little chap enjoy that! And then she told him to say
papa.
—Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.
And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for
eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of
health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out
to be something great, they said.
—Haja ja ja haja.
Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to
sit up properly and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried
out, holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half
blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most
obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it:
—Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa.
And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all
no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the
geegee and where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave
him in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen
was quickly appeased.
Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out
of that and not get on her nerves, no hour to be out, and the little
brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the
paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured
chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out,
the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and
to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they
burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart
went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at, and there was meaning
in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her
through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were,
superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so queer.
She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face
that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin
Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the moustache which she preferred
because she wasn’t stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that wanted they
two to always dress the same on account of a play but she could not see
whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly _retroussé_ from where he
was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the story
of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given
worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still,
and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel
buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the
toes down. She was glad that something told her to put on the
transparent stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that was
far away. Here was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he
who mattered and there was joy on her face because she wanted him
because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very
heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she
knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against
than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked
man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could
convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted
healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty
girls unfeminine he had known, those cyclists showing off what they
hadn’t got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she
could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory of the
past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man,
crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, for
herself alone.
Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. _Ora pro nobis_. Well
has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy
can never be lost or cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge
for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her
own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the
stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue
banners of the blessed Virgin’s sodality and Father Conroy was helping
Canon O’Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes
cast down. He looked almost a saint and his confessionbox was so quiet
and clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever
she became a Dominican nun in their white habit perhaps he might come
to the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her that time
when she told him about that in confession, crimsoning up to the roots
of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was
only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature’s laws, he
said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the
nature of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady
herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to
Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and
thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design
for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the
mantelpiece white and gold with a canarybird that came out of a little
house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the
forty hours’ adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a
present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or
some place.
The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky
threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little
monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them
a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of
them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because they
were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned.
—Jacky! Tommy!
Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it was the very
last time she’d ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and
she ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had
a good enough colour if there had been more of it but with all the
thingamerry she was always rubbing into it she couldn’t get it to grow
long because it wasn’t natural so she could just go and throw her hat
at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder she didn’t rip
up her skirt at the side that was too tight on her because there was a
lot of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey and she was a forward piece
whenever she thought she had a good opportunity to show off and just
because she was a good runner she ran like that so that he could see
all the end of her petticoat running and her skinny shanks up as far as
possible. It would have served her just right if she had tripped up
over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French
heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. _Tableau!_
That would have been a very charming exposé for a gentleman like that
to witness.
Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints,
they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy
handed the thurible to Canon O’Hanlon and he put in the incense and
censed the Blessed Sacrament and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and
she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she
didn’t because she thought he might be watching but she never made a
bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see without looking
that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon O’Hanlon handed
the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the
Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing the _Tantum ergo_ and she
just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to
the _Tantumer gosa cramen tum_. Three and eleven she paid for those
stockings in Sparrow’s of George’s street on the Tuesday, no the Monday
before Easter and there wasn’t a brack on them and that was what he was
looking at, transparent, and not at her insignificant ones that had
neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in his
head to see the difference for himself.
Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with
her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a
streel tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought
only a fortnight before like a rag on her back and a bit of her
petticoat hanging like a caricature. Gerty just took off her hat for a
moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown
tresses was never seen on a girl’s shoulders—a radiant little vision,
in sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel
many a long mile before you found a head of hair the like of that. She
could almost see the swift answering flash of admiration in his eyes
that set her tingling in every nerve. She put on her hat so that she
could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster
for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He was
eying her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman’s instinct told her that
she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet
swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a
glorious rose.
Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting at Gerty,
half smiling, with her specs like an old maid, pretending to nurse the
baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and that was
why no-one could get on with her poking her nose into what was no
concern of hers. And she said to Gerty:
—A penny for your thoughts.
—What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whitest of teeth. I
was only wondering was it late.
Because she wished to goodness they’d take the snottynosed twins and
their babby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just
gave a gentle hint about its being late. And when Cissy came up Edy
asked her the time and Miss Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was
half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know
because they were told to be in early.
—Wait, said Cissy, I’ll run ask my uncle Peter over there what’s the
time by his conundrum.
So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his
hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his
watchchain, looking up at the church. Passionate nature though he was
Gerty could see that he had enormous control over himself. One moment
he had been there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, and
the next moment it was the quiet gravefaced gentleman, selfcontrol
expressed in every line of his distinguishedlooking figure.
Cissy said to excuse her would he mind please telling her what was the
right time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to
it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry
his watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the
sun was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in
measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the mellow tones.
Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out and said uncle said
his waterworks were out of order.
Then they sang the second verse of the _Tantum ergo_ and Canon O’Hanlon
got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and he
told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire
to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and
she could see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the
works and she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was getting
darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that he was
winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he put it
back and put his hands back into his pockets. She felt a kind of a
sensation rushing all over her and she knew by the feel of her scalp
and that irritation against her stays that that thing must be coming on
because the last time too was when she clipped her hair on account of
the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking in her
every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If ever there was
undisguised admiration in a man’s passionate gaze it was there plain to
be seen on that man’s face. It is for you, Gertrude MacDowell, and you
know it.
Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and Gerty
noticed that that little hint she gave had had the desired effect
because it was a long way along the strand to where there was the place
to push up the pushcar and Cissy took off the twins’ caps and tidied
their hair to make herself attractive of course and Canon O’Hanlon
stood up with his cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy handed
him the card to read off and he read out _Panem de coelo praestitisti
eis_ and Edy and Cissy were talking about the time all the time and
asking her but Gerty could pay them back in their own coin and she just
answered with scathing politeness when Edy asked her was she
heartbroken about her best boy throwing her over. Gerty winced sharply.
A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn
immeasurable. It hurt—O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her own quiet
way of saying things like that she knew would wound like the confounded
little cat she was. Gerty’s lips parted swiftly to frame the word but
she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless,
so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of.
She had loved him better than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle
like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and
for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears.
Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but with a brave effort she
sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for them
to see.
—O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head
flashed up. I can throw my cap at who I like because it’s leap year.
Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the
ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her young
voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with. As
for Mr Reggy with his swank and his bit of money she could just chuck
him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she cast as
much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a
dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could give him
one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot.
Miss puny little Edy’s countenance fell to no slight extent and Gerty
could see by her looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a
towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft
had struck home for her petty jealousy and they both knew that she was
something aloof, apart, in another sphere, that she was not of them and
never would be and there was somebody else too that knew it and saw it
so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it.
Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy tucked
in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too because
the sandman was on his way for Master Boardman junior. And Cissy told
him too that billy winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and
baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, and
Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy and baby,
without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments to all and
sundry on to his brandnew dribbling bib.
—O my! Puddeny pie! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed.
The slight _contretemps_ claimed her attention but in two twos she set
that little matter to rights.
Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and Edy
asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was
flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed
it off with consummate tact by saying that that was the benediction
because just then the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet
seashore because Canon O’Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil that
Father Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction with the
Blessed Sacrament in his hands.
How moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last glimpse
of Erin, the touching chime of those evening bells and at the same time
a bat flew forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk, hither,
thither, with a tiny lost cry. And she could see far away the lights of
the lighthouses so picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of
paints because it was easier than to make a man and soon the
lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyterian church
grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where the couples walked
and lighting the lamp near her window where Reggy Wylie used to turn
his freewheel like she read in that book _The Lamplighter_ by Miss
Cummins, author of _Mabel Vaughan_ and other tales. For Gerty had her
dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she got a
keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the
coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of
her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was
scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasure
trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose
scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to
change when her things came home from the wash and there were some
beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that she bought in
Hely’s of Dame Street for she felt that she too could write poetry if
she could only express herself like that poem that appealed to her so
deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening
round the potherbs. _Art thou real, my ideal?_ it was called by Louis J
Walsh, Magherafelt, and after there was something about _twilight, wilt
thou ever?_ and ofttimes the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient
loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears for she felt that the
years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but for that one
shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an
accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it.
But it must end, she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there
would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would
make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his
thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to him and gild his
days with happiness. There was the allimportant question and she was
dying to know was he a married man or a widower who had lost his wife
or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land
of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But
even if—what then? Would it make a very great difference? From
everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively
recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the
accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and
coarse men with no respect for a girl’s honour, degrading the sex and
being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be
just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other
in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was
an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She
thought she understood. She would try to understand him because men
were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little white
hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would
follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he
was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was
the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be
wild, untrammelled, free.
Canon O’Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and
genuflected and the choir sang _Laudate Dominum omnes gentes_ and then
he locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and
Father Conroy handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked
wasn’t she coming but Jacky Caffrey called out:
—O, look, Cissy!
And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over
the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple.
—It’s fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said.
And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church,
helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and Cissy
holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn’t fall running.
—Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It’s the bazaar fireworks.
But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and
call. If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she
could see from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set
her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance,
and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face,
passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were
left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he
could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of
inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working
and a tremour went over her. She leaned back far to look up where the
fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall
back looking up and there was no-one to see only him and her when she
revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply
soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his
heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about the passion of
men like that, hotblooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead
secret and made her swear she’d never about the gentleman lodger that
was staying with them out of the Congested Districts Board that had
pictures cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and
she said he used to do something not very nice that you could imagine
sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether different from a thing
like that because there was all the difference because she could almost
feel him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his
handsome lips. Besides there was absolution so long as you didn’t do
the other thing before being married and there ought to be women
priests that would understand without your telling out and Cissy
Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look in her eyes
so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so mad about actors’
photographs and besides it was on account of that other thing coming on
the way it did.
And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned
back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent
and they all saw it and they all shouted to look, look, there it was
and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something
queer was flying through the air, a soft thing, to and fro, dark. And
she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in
the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went
higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up
after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused
with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see
her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the
skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven,
on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and
then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was
trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that he had a full
view high up above her knee where no-one ever not even on the swing or
wading and she wasn’t ashamed and he wasn’t either to look in that
immodest way like that because he couldn’t resist the sight of the
wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so
immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She
would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms
to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a
young girl’s love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry
that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot
blind blank and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh
of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a
stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all
greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet,
soft!
Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She
glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of
piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl.
He was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is
he) stands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes.
What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called
to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he
had been! He of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in
those eyes, for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and
sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That
was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there
was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly
through the evening to and fro and little bats don’t tell.
Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to
show what a great person she was: and then she cried:
—Gerty! Gerty! We’re going. Come on. We can see from farther up.
Gerty had an idea, one of love’s little ruses. She slipped a hand into
her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of
course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he’s too
far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet
again, there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her
dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their
souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her
heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet
flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile,
a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.
Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy,
to Edy to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was
darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and
slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic
of her but with care and very slowly because—because Gerty MacDowell
was...
Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!
Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s why she’s
left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was
wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse
in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn’t know it when she was
on show. Hot little devil all the same. I wouldn’t mind. Curiosity like
a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is
delicate. Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I
have such a bad headache today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all
right. All kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla
convent that nun told me liked to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the
end I suppose. Sister? How many women in Dublin have it today? Martha,
she. Something in the air. That’s the moon. But then why don’t all
women menstruate at the same time with the same moon, I mean? Depends
on the time they were born I suppose. Or all start scratch then get out
of step. Sometimes Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best of
that. Damned glad I didn’t do it in the bath this morning over her
silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this
morning. That gouger M’Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife
engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for
small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it
themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured
out of offices. Reserve better. Don’t want it they throw it at you.
Catch em alive, O. Pity they can’t see themselves. A dream of
wellfilled hose. Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel
street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy’s hat and what the girls did
with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? _Lingerie_
does it. Felt for the curves inside her _déshabillé._ Excites them also
when they’re. I’m all clean come and dirty me. And they like dressing
one another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly’s new blouse.
At first. Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I bought her
the violet garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and
turnedup trousers. He wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we
met. His lovely shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman
loses a charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O, Mairy
lost the pin of her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody. Fashion part
of their charm. Just changes when you’re on the track of the secret.
Except the east: Mary, Martha: now as then. No reasonable offer
refused. She wasn’t in a hurry either. Always off to a fellow when they
are. They never forget an appointment. Out on spec probably. They
believe in chance because like themselves. And the others inclined to
give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school, arms round each other’s
necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and whispering secrets about
nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with whitewashed faces, cool coifs
and their rosaries going up and down, vindictive too for what they
can’t get. Barbed wire. Be sure now and write to me. And I’ll write to
you. Now won’t you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along,
then meet once in a blue moon. _Tableau!_ O, look who it is for the
love of God! How are you at all? What have you been doing with
yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking holes in
each other’s appearance. You’re looking splendid. Sister souls. Showing
their teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn’t lend each
other a pinch of salt.
Ah!
Devils they are when that’s coming on them. Dark devilish appearance.
Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of my
foot. O that way! O, that’s exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest
once in a way. Wonder if it’s bad to go with them then. Safe in one
way. Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering
plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she
wears she’s a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt I. When you feel like
that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look
at. Always know a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. Well cocks and
lions do the same and stags. Same time might prefer a tie undone or
something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike
rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell. Saw something in me.
Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with
bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid
gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn’t
let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly
men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can’t be so if Molly.
Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim. Bought to hide her face,
meeting someone might know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers
to smell. Hair strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly’s combings when
we were on the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave her
money. Why not? All a prejudice. She’s worth ten, fifteen, more, a
pound. What? I think so. All that for nothing. Bold hand: Mrs Marion.
Did I forget to write address on that letter like the postcard I sent
to Flynn? And the day I went to Drimmie’s without a necktie. Wrangle
with Molly it was put me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding: he’s
another. Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch stopped at half past four.
Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean. Could do it myself. Save. Was
that just when he, she?
O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.
Ah!
Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that
little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. Aftereffect not
pleasant. Still you have to get rid of it someway. They don’t care.
Complimented perhaps. Go home to nicey bread and milky and say night
prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren’t they? See her as she is spoil
all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music.
The name too. _Amours_ of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud
Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered
with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart come and kiss me. Still, I feel.
The strength it gives a man. That’s the secret of it. Good job I let
off there behind the wall coming out of Dignam’s. Cider that was.
Otherwise I couldn’t have. Makes you want to sing after. _Lacaus esant
taratara_. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? Bad plan however if you
don’t know how to end the conversation. Ask them a question they ask
you another. Good idea if you’re stuck. Gain time. But then you’re in a
cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and you see she’s
on for it: good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I
nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl in Meath
street that night. All the dirty things I made her say. All wrong of
course. My arks she called it. It’s so hard to find one who. Aho! If
you don’t answer when they solicit must be horrible for them till they
harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two shillings.
Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn’t
called me sir. O, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with a
single girl! That’s what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman.
Or even hear of it. Different with me. Glad to get away from other
chap’s wife. Eating off his cold plate. Chap in the Burton today
spitting back gumchewed gristle. French letter still in my pocketbook.
Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I don’t think.
Come in, all is prepared. I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they
change the venue when it’s not what they like. Ask you do you like
mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman who. Or ask you what
someone was going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I
went the whole hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did.
She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something
awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must have been
thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she came
to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss does the trick. The
propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by
their eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till
their dying day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the
Moorish wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts
were developed. Fell asleep then. After Glencree dinner that was when
we drove home. Featherbed mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord
mayor had his eye on her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic.
There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. Up
like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be,
waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in
mother’s clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world.
And the dark one with the mop head and the slave mouth. I knew she
could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Molly. Why that highclass
whore in Jammet’s wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind,
please, telling me the right time? I’ll tell you the right time up a
dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times every morning, cure for
fat lips. Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game.
Of course they understand birds, animals, babies. In their line.
Didn’t look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn’t give that
satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls.
Fine eyes she had, clear. It’s the white of the eye brings that out not
so much the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting
beyond a dog’s jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high
school drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call
that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has her work cut out for her.
Never see them sit on a bench marked _Wet Paint_. Eyes all over them.
Look under the bed for what’s not there. Longing to get the fright of
their lives. Sharp as needles they are. When I said to Molly the man at
the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like,
twigged at once he had a false arm. Had, too. Where do they get that?
Typist going up Roger Greene’s stairs two at a time to show her
understandings. Handed down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean.
Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the
mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman’s eye
on a mirror. And when I sent her for Molly’s Paisley shawl to
Prescott’s by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her
stocking! Clever little minx. I never told her. Neat way she carries
parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand,
shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who did you
learn that from? Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don’t they
know! Three years old she was in front of Molly’s dressingtable, just
before we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who
knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway
not like the other. Still she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are.
Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point.
Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in
Grafton street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel.
A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads
and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy and Jacky ran out to see
and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the
rocks. Will she? Watch! Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion.
Darling, I saw, your. I saw all.
Lord!
Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan’s, Dignam’s. For
this relief much thanks. In _Hamlet,_ that is. Lord! It was all things
combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of
my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He’s right. Might have made a
worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I
will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It
couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name however
like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.
 Her maiden name was Jemina Brown
 And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush.
Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if
it understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw
anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram’s horn. Sad however
because it lasts only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping
and papa’s pants will soon fit Willy and fuller’s earth for the baby
when they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them
out of harm’s way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam.
Children’s hands always round them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even
closed at first, sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds.
Oughtn’t to have given that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up
with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is
nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some nights when Molly
was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O’Hare I noticed her
brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too,
marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City
Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat.
Have that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in
the morning: was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the
husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like
glue. Maybe the women’s fault also. That’s where Molly can knock spots
off them. It’s the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the
figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those
others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to
introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript,
wouldn’t know what to call her. Always see a fellow’s weak point in his
wife. Still there’s destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own
secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman
didn’t take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a
shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched
them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one.
Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent
in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is
not back. Better detach.
Ow!
Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the
short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.
Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic
influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I
suppose, at once. Cat’s away, the mice will play. I remember looking in
Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism.
Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement.
And time, well that’s the time the movement takes. Then if one thing
stopped the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it’s all
arranged. Magnetic needle tells you what’s going on in the sun, the
stars. Little piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come.
Come. Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up
and look and suggest and let you see and see more and defy you if
you’re a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs, look, look
and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let fly.
Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third
person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her underjaw
stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at
the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine
voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like
flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the
paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her
slipper on the floor so they wouldn’t hear. But lots of them can’t kick
the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all
round over me and half down my back.
Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That’s her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave
you this to think of me when I’m far away on the pillow. What is it?
Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She’d like scent of that
kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her,
with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the
dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She
was wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good
conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there’s some connection.
For instance if you go into a cellar where it’s dark. Mysterious thing
too. Why did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself,
slow but sure. Suppose it’s ever so many millions of tiny grains blown
across. Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this
morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It’s like a fine
fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you
call it gossamer, and they’re always spinning it out of them, fine as
anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything
she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little
kick, taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff
in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too.
Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There
or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes
and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something.
Muskrat. Bag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years.
Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm.
Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that
way. We’re the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have
their period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on.
Like what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the
grass.
Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long
John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink
gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because
priests that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like
flies round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The
tree of forbidden priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to.
That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life.
And it’s extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me.
Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat.
Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that’s the soap.
O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never
went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag
this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could
mention Meagher’s just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph.
Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he’ll have. Call tomorrow. How much do
I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving
credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run
up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into
somewhere else.
Here’s this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as
far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had
a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper
walk a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government
sit. Walk after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today.
Still you learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as
women don’t mock what matter? That’s the way to find out. Ask yourself
who is he now. _The Mystery Man on the Beach_, prize titbit story by Mr
Leopold Bloom. Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that
fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his
kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain
they say. Must be some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body
feels the atmosphere. Old Betty’s joints are on the rack. Mother
Shipton’s prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the
twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills
seem coming nigh.
Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or
they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of
the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds
flash better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt
you. Better now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through
the small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against.
Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in
the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest.
Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet. A star I see. Venus? Can’t tell yet. Two. When three it’s
night. Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom
ship. No. Wait. Trees are they? An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of
the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native
land, goodnight.
Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white
fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his
way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold,
sore on the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the
position. Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don’t
know how nice you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green
apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it’s the only time we cross
legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl graduates. Happy
chairs under them. But it’s the evening influence. They feel all that.
Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes,
in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock in Mat
Dillon’s garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length
oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns.
History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I’m with you once again.
Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her
lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity.
They take advantage.
All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The
rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the
plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change:
that’s all. Lovers: yum yum.
Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of
me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it
comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the
same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing
new under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin’s Barn. Are you not happy in
your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke Doyle’s
house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy,
Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the
old major, partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I
an only child. So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into
yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he
and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip:
tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle:
cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She
leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in
Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty
from the dew.
Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I’m a
tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you
could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he
goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very
likely. Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him
out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray
for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition.
Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there’s the
light in the priest’s house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the
mistake in the valuation when I was in Thom’s. Twentyeight it is. Two
houses they have. Gabriel Conroy’s brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder
why they come out at night like mice. They’re a mixed breed. Birds are
like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit
still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of
a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with
tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey
white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example
like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants
to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning
on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with
three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the
_City Arms_ with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different
colours. Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That’s how that
wise man what’s his name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes
on fire. It can’t be tourists’ matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry
rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles in the furze act
as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My memory’s not
so bad.
Ba. Who knows what they’re always flying for. Insects? That bee last
week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be
the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what
they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they
have to fly over the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms,
telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of
oceangoing steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like
seacows. _Faugh a ballagh!_ Out of that, bloody curse to you! Others in
vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake
when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at
the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it’s round.
Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till
Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail
end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor’s
weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well.
And the tephilim no what’s this they call it poor papa’s father had on
his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into
the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when
you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of
a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and
that’s the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish
ever get seasick?
Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones’ locker, moon looking down so
peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum.
A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of
funds for Mercer’s hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of
violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The
shepherd’s hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to
house, giving his everwelcome double knock, went the nine o’clock
postman, the glowworm’s lamp at his belt gleaming here and there
through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted
lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy’s terrace. By screens of lighted
windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: _Evening
Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold Cup races!_ and from
the door of Dignam’s house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the bat
flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf crept,
grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days, of yumyum
rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift,
ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep
and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the
anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom.
Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and
breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in
the Erin’s King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the
zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking
overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in
their faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing.
Don’t know what death is at that age. And then their stomachs clean.
But being lost they fear. When we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I
didn’t want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in the wood. Frightening them with
masks too. Throwing them up in the air to catch them. I’ll murder you.
Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can
people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off. Poor kids! Only
troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her for that.
After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has. What
do they love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with
the umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking.
Little hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when
you touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I
remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is
more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart? Padding themselves
out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling, wakening
me. Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child!
Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar.
Looking from Buena Vista. O’Hara’s tower. The seabirds screaming. Old
Barbary ape that gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men
to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea she told me. Evening like
this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I’d marry a lord or a rich
gentleman coming with a private yacht. _Buenas noches, señorita. El
hombre ama la muchacha hermosa_. Why me? Because you were so foreign
from the others.
Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you
dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for
_Leah, Lily of Killarney._ No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital
to see. Hope she’s over. Long day I’ve had. Martha, the bath, funeral,
house of Keyes, museum with those goddesses, Dedalus’ song. Then that
bawler in Barney Kiernan’s. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what
I said about his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought
to go home and laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in
company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me.
Look at it other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he
meant. Three cheers for Israel. Three cheers for the sister-in-law he
hawked about, three fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty.
Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. The sister of the wife of
the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in the early
morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he
kissed the cow. But Dignam’s put the boots on it. Houses of mourning so
depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must
call to those Scottish Widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for
granted we’re going to pop off first. That widow on Monday was it
outside Cramer’s that looked at me. Buried the poor husband but
progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow’s mite. Well? What do
you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along. Widower I hate to
see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O’Connor wife and five children
poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good matronly
woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter face and
a large apron. Ladies’ grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a
pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say.
Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we
die. See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the
trick. U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed.
Curse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She
had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does?
Would I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti’s gone.
Mailboat. Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes’s. Work
Hynes and Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in
them. What’s that? Might be money.
Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He
brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can’t read. Better go.
Better. I’m tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and
pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with
story of a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children
always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the
waters. What’s this? Bit of stick.
O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here
tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers
do. Will I?
Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write
a message for her. Might remain. What?
I.
Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide
comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark
mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and
letters. O, those transparent! Besides they don’t know. What is the
meaning of that other world. I called you naughty boy because I do not
like.
AM. A.
No room. Let it go.
Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand.
Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here.
Except Guinness’s barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by
design.
He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck. Now
if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn’t. Chance.
We’ll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made
me feel so young.
Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long gone.
Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast. I
won’t go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a
moment. Won’t sleep, though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat
again. No harm in him. Just a few.
O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me
do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed
met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair
heave under embon _señorita_ young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan
Winkle red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail
end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return
next in her next her next.
A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr Bloom
with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed. Just
for a few
 Cuckoo
 Cuckoo
 Cuckoo.
The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest’s house cooed where Canon
O’Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were
taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup
and talking about
 Cuckoo
 Cuckoo
 Cuckoo.
Because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to
tell the time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there
because she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty
MacDowell, and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was
sitting on the rocks looking was
 Cuckoo
 Cuckoo
 Cuckoo.
[ 14 ]
Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.
Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send
us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us
bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!
Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive
concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by
mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that
which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in
them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain
when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being
equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more
efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have
progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent
continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when
fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent
nature’s incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some
significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior
splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or
on the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive
that as no nature’s boon can contend against the bounty of increase so
it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and
admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past
been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not
with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have
gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to
that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who
would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence
can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel
simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy
of abundance or with diminution’s menace that exalted of reiteratedly
procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?
It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians
relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature
admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured.
Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves,
their greatest doctors, the O’Shiels, the O’Hickeys, the O’Lees, have
sedulously set down the divers methods by which the sick and the
relapsed found again health whether the malady had been the trembling
withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work
which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with
importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted
(whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it
is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent
inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest)
whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that
whatever care the patient in that allhardest of woman hour chiefly
required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who
not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely
could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was
provided.
To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be
molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent
mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received
eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the
case was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying
desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be
received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in
being seen but also even in being related worthy of being praised that
they her by anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly
to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt!
Before born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in
that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended
with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though
forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no
less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are
pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting
spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together
with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct
females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright
wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and
reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up.
Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night’s oncoming. Of
Israel’s folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark
ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.
Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming
mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale
so God’s angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters
in ward sleepless. Smarts they still, sickness soothing: in twelve
moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne
holding wariest ward.
In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft rising
with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping
lightens in eyeblink Ireland’s westward welkin. Full she drad that God
the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins.
Christ’s rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe
infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in
Horne’s house.
Loth to irk in Horne’s hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow
he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over
land and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once her in
townhithe meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he
craved with good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face,
hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of
blushes his word winning.
As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. Glad
after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O’Hare Doctor
tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered
that O’Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear
that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing
death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God’s rightwiseness to
withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God His
goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men’s oil
to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked the nun of which death
the dead man was died and the nun answered him and said that he was
died in Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas
and she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul in his
undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. So
stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing one with other.
Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the
dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came
naked forth from his mother’s womb so naked shall he wend him at the
last for to go as he came.
The man that was come in to the house then spoke to the nursingwoman
and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in
childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in
throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to
bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she
had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that
woman’s birth. Then she set it all forth to him for because she knew
the man that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to
her words for he felt with wonder women’s woe in the travail that they
have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair
face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a
handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.
And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there
nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there
came against the place as they stood a young learningknight yclept
Dixon. And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed
that they had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where
this learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be
healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a
horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a
salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he
said now that he should go in to that castle for to make merry with
them that were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go
otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady
was of his avis and repreved the learningknight though she trowed well
that the traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But
the learningknight would not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have
him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it was a
marvellous castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for
to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches
environing in divers lands and sometime venery.
And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy
and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not
move more for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and
knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white
flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags that there
abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by magic
of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that
he blases in to them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich was
on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there
was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay
strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be
possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these
fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of
the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress. And
also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a
compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of
certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like
to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine
themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of
these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead.
And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp
thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe
Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat
in amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and
anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and
his neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat down in that castle
with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God.
This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at
the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave their wassailing
for there was above one quick with child, a gentle dame, whose time
hied fast. Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered
what cry that it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he,
that it be not come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware
and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was
older than any of the tother and for that they both were knights
virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke
to him full gently. But, said he, or it be long too she will bring
forth by God His bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath
waited marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said,
Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he took the cup that stood
tofore him for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to
drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far
as he might to their both’s health for he was a passing good man of his
lustiness. And sir Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat
in scholars’ hall and that was the meekest man and the kindest that
ever laid husbandly hand under hen and that was the very truest knight
of the world one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged
him courtly in the cup. Woman’s woe with wonder pondering.
Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be
drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side
the board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary
Merciable’s with other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of
medicine, and the franklin that hight Lenehan and one from Alba Longa,
one Crotthers, and young Stephen that had mien of a frere that was at
head of the board and Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long
of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them, reserved young
Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded still of more mead) and
beside the meek sir Leopold. But on young Malachi they waited for that
he promised to have come and such as intended to no goodness said how
he had broke his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for he bore fast
friendship to sir Simon and to this his son young Stephen and for that
his languor becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as
they feasted him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red
him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.
For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each
gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining
that put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen
out a matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne’s house
that now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next
before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her
case). And they said farther she should live because in the beginning,
they said, the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they that
were of this imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for
he had conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young
Lynch were in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it
was never other howbeit the mean people believed it otherwise but the
law nor his judges did provide no remedy. A redress God grant. This was
scant said but all cried with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother,
the wife should live and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed
hot upon that head what with argument and what for their drinking but
the franklin Lenehan was prompt each when to pour them ale so that at
the least way mirth might not lack. Then young Madden showed all the
whole affair and said how that she was dead and how for holy religion
sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint
Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her death whereby
they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words
following: Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and
parent now glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in
purgefire. But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we
nightly impossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very
God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We
are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends
than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends.
But he had overmuch drunken and the best word he could have of him was
that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or
leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead.
Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi’s praise of that
beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn, the
other all this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they
did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his
engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to
do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen and sir
Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange humour
which he would not bewray and also for that he rued for her that bare
whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spake young Stephen orgulous of
mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons,
of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of
brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius
saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or
an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, _effectu
secuto_, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of
Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the
second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother
foldeth ever souls for God’s greater glory whereas that earthly mother
which was but a dam to bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he
that holdeth the fisherman’s seal, even that blessed Peter on which
rock was holy church for all ages founded. All they bachelors then
asked of sir Leopold would he in like case so jeopard her person as
risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted
all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that
as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a
layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an
accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had
birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their
questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant
word. Which hearing young Stephen was a marvellous glad man and he
averred that he who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord for he
was of a wild manner when he was drunken and that he was now in that
taking it appeared eftsoons.
But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had
pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and
as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only
manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art
could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart
for that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of
lamb’s wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and
lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and now sir
Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him
his friend’s son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness
and as sad as he was that him failed a son of such gentle courage (for
all accounted him of real parts) so grieved he also in no less measure
for young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and
murdered his goods with whores.
About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty
so as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed
their approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying
for the intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge
the vicar of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink
we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed
parcel of my body but my soul’s bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to
them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for
this will comfort more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he
showed them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the
worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song
which he writ. They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such
dearth of money as was herebefore. His words were then these as
followeth: Know all men, he said, time’s ruins build eternity’s
mansions. What means this? Desire’s wind blasts the thorntree but after
it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark
me now. In woman’s womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the
maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away.
This is the postcreation. _Omnis caro ad te veniet_. No question but
her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse of our Agenbuyer,
Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most venerable and
Bernardus saith aptly that She hath an _omnipotentiam deiparae
supplicem_, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because she is
the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other,
our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis of
navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a penny pippin.
But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I say, and was
but creature of her creature, _vergine madre, figlia di tuo figlio_, or
she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or ignorancy
with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and with
Joseph the joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages,
_parceque M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l’avait mise dans cette
fichue position c’était le sacré pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Entweder_
transubstantiality _oder_ consubstantiality but in no case
subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy word. A
pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without
blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour
worship. With will will we withstand, withsay.
Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would
sing a bawdy catch _Staboo Stabella_ about a wench that was put in pod
of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did straightways now attack:
_The first three months she was not well, Staboo,_ when here nurse
Quigley from the door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was
it not meet as she remembered them being her mind was to have all
orderly against lord Andrew came for because she was jealous that no
gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was an
ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian walking, in
habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her
hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of
them all embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness
some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others whiles they all
chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at,
thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou
chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou,
to shut up his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape, the
good sir Leopold that had for his cognisance the flower of quiet,
margerain gentle, advising also the time’s occasion as most sacred and
most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne’s house rest should reign.
To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in
Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he
had not cided to take friar’s vows and he answered him obedience in the
womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master
Lenehan at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds
and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue
of a confiding female which was corruption of minors and they all
intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he
said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was
the eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more
and they rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing
and deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island,
she to be in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain,
with burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries
and the anthem _Ut novetur sexus omnis corporis mysterium_ till she was
there unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen minim by those
delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is
in their _Maid’s Tragedy_ that was writ for a like twining of lovers:
_To bed, to bed_ was the burden of it to be played with accompanable
concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most
mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous
flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium
of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed,
but, harkee, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher
for, by my troth, of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen
said indeed to his best remembrance they had but the one doxy between
them and she of the stews to make shift with in delights amorous for
life ran very high in those days and the custom of the country approved
with it. Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay
down his wife for his friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words
to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French
letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to
whom mankind was more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it
will go hard but thou wilt have the secondbest bed. _Orate, fratres,
pro memetipso_. And all the people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy
generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by me and by
my word and broughtedst in a stranger to my gates to commit fornication
in my sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou
sinned against my light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of
servants. Return, return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why
hast thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for
a merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to the Roman and to the Indian
of dark speech with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth
now, my people, upon the land of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo
and from Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with
milk and money. But thou hast suckled me with a bitter milk: my moon
and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. And thou hast left me alone for
ever in the dark ways of my bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast
thou kissed my mouth. This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to
say, hath not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint nor so much
as mentioned for the Orient from on high which brake hell’s gates
visited a darkness that was foraneous. Assuefaction minorates
atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics) and Hamlet his father
showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The adiaphane in the noon
of life is an Egypt’s plague which in the nights of prenativity and
postmortemity is their most proper _ubi_ and _quomodo_. And as the ends
and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their
inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads
forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis
that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto
nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into
life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over
us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among
bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a
mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat
and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor
to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or
to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see
from what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched
his whenceness.
Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly _Etienne chanson_ but he
loudly bid them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast
majestic longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all
in applepie order, a penny for him who finds the pea.
 Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack
 See the malt stored in many a refluent sack,
 In the proud cirque of Jackjohn’s bivouac.
A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on
left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the
storm that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to
flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and
paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as
they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before
so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart
shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that
storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard
again to his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he
was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the
braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was
muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was
only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne’s hall. He
drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it
thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden,
being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of
doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart’s side, spoke to him calming
words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing
but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the
thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a
natural phenomenon.
But was young Boasthard’s fear vanquished by Calmer’s words? No, for he
had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be
done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the
other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But
could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the
bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not
there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the
god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard?
Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube
Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw
that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one
day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not
accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he though
he must nor would he make more shows according as men do with wives
which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted
he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the
land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for
ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering
at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told
him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason
was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing
exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him
wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as,
Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave
place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot
which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal
Concupiscence.
This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of
Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore
Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a
wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and
know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but
notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first,
Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and
in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words
printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by
Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they
cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of
oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring
that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was
named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr
Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon,
Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company,
were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a
very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill
their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them
contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.
So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and
after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a
fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won’t sprout, fields
athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.
Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without
sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The
rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought
but dry flag and woodcuts at would catch at first fire. All the world
saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that
did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness.
But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in
the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and
the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first
and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder
and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the
smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or
kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the
pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke’s lawn, thence through
Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was
before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no
more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon’s door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the
college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman’s gentleman that had but come
from Mr Moore’s the writer’s (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a
good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are
now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from
Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M’s brother will stay a
month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there,
he bound home and he to Andrew Horne’s being stayed for to crush a cup
of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of
her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and
so both together on to Horne’s. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford’s journal
sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon
jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy’s, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will.
Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and Stephen D.
Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, he having
dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers
on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be
for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading
her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term,
the midwives sore put to it and can’t deliver, she queasy for a bowl of
riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very
heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they
say, but God give her soon issue. ’Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear,
and Lady day bit off her last chick’s nails that was then a twelvemonth
and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand
in the king’s bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the
sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys
off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in
a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag,
I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and
will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and
water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi’s almanac (and I
hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out
of the Hindustanish for his farmer’s gazette) to have three things in
all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and
bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their
queerities no telling how.
With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the
letter was in that night’s gazette and he made a show to find it about
him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but
on Stephen’s persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit
near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman
that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of
women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he
was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the
coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul’s men,
runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues
of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at
nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much
loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook’s and if he had but
gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a
bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his
tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every
mother’s son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that
is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he
says, Frank (that was his name), ’tis all about Kerry cows that are to
be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a
wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. There’s as good fish
in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take
of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the
meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his
embassy as he was sharpset. _Mort aux vaches_, says Frank then in the
French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a
winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a
child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough,
who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of
the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but
he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar
with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One
time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought
would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for
the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk,
kidnapping a squire’s heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids’
linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times
as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to
his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw
him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to
know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but
this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce
believe ’tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood
beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been
some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster
that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr
Gavin Low’s yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he.
More like ’tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little
moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had
dispatches from the emperor’s chief tailtickler thanking him for the
hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted
cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the
bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He’ll
find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that’s
Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and
he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I
conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our
island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with
an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the
table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a
portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a
coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his
nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and
rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.
What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas
that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who
were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my
cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer’s blessing,
and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and
the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he
taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess
and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the
month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the
nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young
ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his
word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat
with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his
forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables
for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of
the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his
heart’s content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they
called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To
remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in
their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on
his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow
out of him in bulls’ language and they all after him. Ay, says another,
and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the
land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his
mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the
island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the
grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got
scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a
husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or
a bag of rapeseed out he’d run amok over half the countryside rooting
up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry’s orders.
There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the
lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an
old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I’ll meddle in
his matters, says he. I’ll make that animal smell hell, says he, with
the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says
Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to
dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the
first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and
on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he
found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous
champion bull of the Romans, _Bos Bovum_, which is good bog Latin for
boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his
head into a cow’s drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers
and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the
water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had
belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls’ language
to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first
personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if
ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write
it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or
a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland
were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr
Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was
toward, as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft,
loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all
masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread
three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed
anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times
three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea
to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr
Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:
_—Pope Peter’s but a pissabed.
A man’s a man for a’ that._
Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell’s bearing a legend
printed in fair italics: _Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and
Incubator. Lambay Island_. His project, as he went on to expound, was
to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief
business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and
to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has
been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I
make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. ’Tis as
cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and,
expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into
this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the
inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were
due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as
whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from
proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the
nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so
many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest
bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial
cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some
unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness,
sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty
fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart
weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a
suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of
worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in
fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord
Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our
ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising
farm to be named _Omphalos_ with an obelisk hewn and erected after the
fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the
fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there
direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her
natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for
his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of
fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his
nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet
of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these
latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both
broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum
chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of
asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief
with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken
by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as
might be observed by Mr Mulligan’s smallclothes of a hodden grey which
was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably
entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr
Dixon of Mary’s excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he
purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made
court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as
it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of
his contention: _Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut
matresfamiliarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici
titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus
centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt_, while for those of ruder
wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more
suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the
farmyard drake and duck.
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper
man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics
while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had
advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a
passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his
nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for
whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him
a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very
heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he
was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne’s house, that was
in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman’s woe (and here he
fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr
Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether
his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an
ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due,
as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the
stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls,
smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable
droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex
though ’tis pity she’s a trollop): There’s a belly that never bore a
bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth
and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight.
The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some
larum in the antechamber.
Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little
fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion
with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient
point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the
obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by
a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had
not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but
contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was
ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. _Mais bien
sûr_, noble stranger, said he cheerily, _et mille compliments_. That
you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to
crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in
my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept
of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give
thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver
of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips,
took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening
his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very
picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein.
Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he
said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting
instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her
feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so
melting a tenderness, ’pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been
impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands
of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never
so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days!
Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her
favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having
replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again.
Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great
and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in
thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished
coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of
maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled
and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in
anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my
cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured
seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me,
he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day
and, thousand thunders, I know of a _marchand de capotes_, Monsieur
Poyntz, from whom I can have for a _livre_ as snug a cloak of the
French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le
Fécondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most
accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle _avec lui_ in
a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape
Horn, _ventre biche_, they have a rain that will wet through any, even
the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, _sans
blague_, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest
posthaste to another world. Pooh! A _livre!_ cries Monsieur Lynch. The
clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a
fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would
wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge
before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she
reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there
was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the
divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a
household word that _il y a deux choses_ for which the innocence of our
original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is
the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my
pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my
attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear),
the first is a bath... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall
cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of
our store of knowledge.
Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while
all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and,
having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with
a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a
party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and
not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of
the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of
ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled.
A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I’ll be sworn she has rendezvoused
you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad’s bud, immensely so,
said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater
hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O’Gargle chuck the nuns there under the
chin. As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been
wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried
the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and
with immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the
man! Bless me, I’m all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you’re as bad as dear
little Father Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half
choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady
what’s got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young
surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as
the nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward.
Merciful providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings
of the lady who was _enceinte_ which she had borne with a laudable
fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience,
said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or learning to
instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence
due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I
am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of
witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far
from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human
breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable
Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of
ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child
of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race
where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right
reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having
delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and
repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were
for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design which would have
been effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts had
he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a horrid
imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of
the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was
always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most
particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand
to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks
back on with a loving heart.
To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of
some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits
of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity.
The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as
overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were
difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and
outrageous _mots_ were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were
they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of
strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr
Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch
that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born
out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into
the world, which the dint of the surgeon’s pliers in his skull lent
indeed a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link of
creation’s chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was
now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had
passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a
wary ascendancy and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his
heart to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting
them with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that
plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn
and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create
themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which
he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the
name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such
that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the
sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a
precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with
mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the
gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy
Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far
forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a
gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while
from the sister’s words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was,
however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence
that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now
testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the
Supreme Being.
Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express
his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to
express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid
genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her
confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers.
The dressy young blade said it was her husband’s that put her in that
expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian
matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table
so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum
was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring
through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he
calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event
would burst anon. ’Slife, I’ll be round with you. I cannot but extol
the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another
child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own
fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that
another than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in
orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed
in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the
wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that
the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the
seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic
titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of
levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise
eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap
to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have
more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together.
But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron,
has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted
to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal
polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have
counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary
advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that
moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a
tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per
cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is
it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own
dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer?
Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady,
the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant
reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it
was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy
woman, she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate
prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than
the derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very
pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of
nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn
from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy’s scouringbrush
not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with
Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish
asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe’s hearing brought upon him from
an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as
straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that
gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the
want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second
nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm
of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to
health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist
better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is
the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The
lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort
neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of
ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native
orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but,
transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their
quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant,
acid and inoperative.
The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial
usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the
junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the
delegation that an heir had been born. When he had betaken himself to
the women’s apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the
afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic
affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous
exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and
solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would
palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and
obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of
tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring
to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious for the
display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union
among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was
successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers,
the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that
rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as
the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr
Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused,
the rights of primogeniture and king’s bounty touching twins and
triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the
acardiac _foetus in foetu_ and aprosopia due to a congestion, the
agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan)
in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the
medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other
spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation
of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the
vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in
the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix,
artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb
consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the
species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that
distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers
_Sturzgeburt,_ the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and
monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of
consanguineous parents—in a word all the cases of human nativity which
Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic
illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine
were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the
state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step
over a countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should
strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a
yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand
against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the
seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole,
supernumerary digits, negro’s inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain
were alleged by one as a _prima facie_ and natural hypothetical
explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens
was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and
worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for,
envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some
stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against
both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the
theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his
authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of
the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down
to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his
words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had
been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of
pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as
the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously,
a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr
Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created
in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty
by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant
submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the
better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the
garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he
delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the
ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has
joined.
But Malachias’ tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up
the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back
and in the recess appeared... Haines! Which of us did not feel his
flesh creep! He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand,
in the other a phial marked _Poison._ Surprise, horror, loathing were
depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I
anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for
which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the
murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no
terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what
way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping
Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the
like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland’s, is in this
life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions,
rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised
the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me.
Dope is my only hope... Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry
he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head
appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row station
at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the
dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The
vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: _Lex talionis_. The
sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense
debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased.
The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name
was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father.
He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely
house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The
spider pitches her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from
his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted. Murderer’s ground.
What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the
chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the
merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as
her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing
the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a
modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is
young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror
within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure
of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from
the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel
on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a
mother’s thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in
his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a
fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook,
a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright
trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of
compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out
upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but
the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but,
more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at
duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob’s
pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you
may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some
paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is
breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a
tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about
him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own
child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the
bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child
of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her
luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two
raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly!
He will never forget the name, ever remember the night: first night,
the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer
with the willed, and in an instant (_fiat!_) light shall flood the
world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath ’twas
done but—hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away
through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night.
She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and
memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was
taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is
none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over
regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey
twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields,
shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her
mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight
phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim
shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull.
They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home
of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more.
And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of
rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks
behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are
scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and
mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, _Lacus Mortis_. Ominous
revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned
and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the
giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all
their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.
Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine
portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven’s
own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo,
wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger
of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost
one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she
now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan
hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you
call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and
loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on
currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply
swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a
myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled
sign upon the forehead of Taurus.
Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at
school together in Conmee’s time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the
past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them
into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to
my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending
bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair
with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those
leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something
more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your
genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to
see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you
Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent
Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He
could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man’s face grew dark.
All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and
of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the
noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on
Sceptre for a whim of the rider’s name: Lenehan as much more. He told
them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran
out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts
were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her
scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run
home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level,
reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her
eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover
consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some
oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking
fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three
today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous
buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it
as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said
with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this
hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do
you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today,
Vincent said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair
beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the
right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air
drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In
the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of
those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his
booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm
with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I
pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but
today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then.
Her posies too! Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we
reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who
met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the
hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty
letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature
turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight
disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very
trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo
in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he
had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor
luck with Bass’s mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more
propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and
withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label.
Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far
away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be
born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the
incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos
told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian
priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the
moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha of
the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were
therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
constellation.
However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which
was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was
not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above
was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of
animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody
that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty
speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts
he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled
by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated
amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was
certainly calculated to attract anyone’s remark on account of its
scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently
transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an
altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment
before’s observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two
or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as
mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both
their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other
was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily
determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the
neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid
sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out
with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of
attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it
about the place.
The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The
debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on
the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne’s house had never
beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old
rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so
encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at
the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing
from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to
him, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early
depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place
assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in
stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident
indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the
figure of Bannon in explorer’s kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide
brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred
manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the
board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of
pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of
Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated
the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that
vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained
by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and
constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever
efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired
pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.
It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted
transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. Scep.) contentions
would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter
to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often
repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the
man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked
and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some
questions which science cannot answer—at present—such as the first
problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future
determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of
Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert
others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long
neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is
it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper,
Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture
of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature’s
favourite devices) between the _nisus formativus_ of the nemasperm on
the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, _succubitus
felix_, of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same
inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting
because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but
we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames
the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract
adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk
in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles
offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers
of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic
cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors
and unfructified duennas—these, he said, were accountable for any and
every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied,
would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely
good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive
pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as
Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all
these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular
condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr
J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to
abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy
labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by
far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in
the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or
in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are
thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of
nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too
rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder
is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do,
all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which
often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that
thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and
mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal
movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general,
everything, in fine, in nature’s vast workshop from the extinction of
some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which
beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet
unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of
normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly
looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other
children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet’s
words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and
cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths
are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous
germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively
shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend
to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an
arrangement which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings
(notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long
run beneficial to the race in general in securing thereby the survival
of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be
called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate,
deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with
pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous
females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not
to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly
find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals
as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above
alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately
acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this
morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening
bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid
from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated
that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed
victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly
dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L.
Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons’ hall of the
National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as
is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the
able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having
stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete’s
allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of
all nature’s processes—the act of sexual congress) she must let it out
again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk
of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the
less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was
delivered.
Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a
happy _accouchement._ It had been a weary weary while both for patient
and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave
woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and
now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone
before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching
scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the
motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty
sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood,
breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal
Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one
blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy,
to lay in his arms that mite of God’s clay, the fruit of their lawful
embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle
stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity
has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank,
College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now,
it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old
shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now
across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her
imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice,
Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances),
Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our
famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and
Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever
there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be
christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr
Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer’s office, Dublin Castle. And so
time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no
sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the
ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the
curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light
whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so
with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His
own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally
your man’s part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful
servant!
There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil
memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the
heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow
dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade
himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance
word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront
him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while
timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility
of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with
wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies
under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but
shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote,
reproachful.
The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of
that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied
trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an
unhealthiness, a _flair,_ for the cruder things of life. A scene
disengages itself in the observer’s memory, evoked, it would seem, by a
word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present
there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space
of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at
Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game
but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward
over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief
alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at
times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood,
Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of
arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of
them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin
so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in
linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth
when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the
urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little
just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment
of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother
watches from the _piazzetta_ giving upon the flowerclose with a faint
shadow of remoteness or of reproach (_alles Vergängliche_) in her glad
look.
Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that
antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their
faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of
custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant
watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long
ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with
preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended,
compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched
field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in
an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of
the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was
the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of
the word.
Burke’s! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and
bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor,
punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear,
ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and
what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse
Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon
coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a
milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out,
tumultuously, off for a minute’s race, all bravely legging it, Burke’s
of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them
sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with
nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up
there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward
of watching in Horne’s house has told its tale in that washedout
pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers
close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?
The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny _coelum._
God’s air, the Allfather’s air, scintillant circumambient cessile air.
Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done
a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest
progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most
farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven
preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of
man’s work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog
and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their
daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher’s
bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up!
For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See,
thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A
canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell
thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not
worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I!
Herod’s slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables,
forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw,
bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps,
quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney,
Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet,
varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all
such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not.
With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and
never—do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to
cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? _Deine Kuh
Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters_. See! it
displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s
milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning
stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those
rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the
honeymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her
milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich
bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! _Per deam Partulam et
Pertundam nunc est bibendum!_
All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides.
Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole
Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Henry Nevil’s
sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one o’ me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward
to the ribbon counter. Where’s Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the
drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal! _Benedicat vos
omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius_. A make, mister. The Denzille lane
boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the
bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou
heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. _En avant, mes enfants!_ Fire
away number one on the gun. Burke’s! Burke’s! Thence they advanced five
parasangs. Slattery’s mounted foot. Where’s that bleeding awfur? Parson
Steve, apostates’ creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead.
Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What’s on you? _Ma
mère m’a mariée._ British Beatitudes! _Retamplatan digidi boumboum_.
Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two
designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art
shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. _Silentium!_
Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex
liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are (attitudes!)
parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery
and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the
bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation!
Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt!
Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You
hurt? Most amazingly sorry!
Query. Who’s astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall.
Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me
this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the _Übermensch._
Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the
cabby’s caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped
short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy?
_Caramba!_ Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular’s got
my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don’t mention it. Got a pectoral
trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus
settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he
is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her
dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine,
not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look
slippery. If you fall don’t wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine!
Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her
anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and
allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the
rheumatiz? All poppycock, you’ll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I
vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your
corporosity sagaciating O K? How’s the squaws and papooses? Womanbody
after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There’s hair.
Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye,
boss! Mummer’s wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised,
polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine’s writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen
lead astray goodygood Malachi.
Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw
Hielentman’s your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot
boil! My tipple. _Merci._ Here’s to us. How’s that? Leg before wicket.
Don’t stain my brandnew sitinems. Give’s a shake of peppe, you there.
Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence.
Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. _Les petites femmes_.
Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her.
Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who
seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence?
Machree, macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all
together. _Ex!_
Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like,
seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He’ve got the
chink _ad lib_. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn.
Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the
oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy
bilks? Won’t wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de
cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae
fou. We’re nae tha fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.
’Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir.
Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a
glint, do. Gum, I’m jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for
words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he’d like? Rose of
Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at
Bantam’s flowers. Gemini. He’s going to holler. The colleen bawn. My
colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm
hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin
cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a
telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey
and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a
cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure
thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game.
Madden back Madden’s a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our
strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my
blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam.
Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide.
Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse.
No fake, old man Leo. S’elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I
had. There’s a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses,
if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through
yerd our lord, Amen.
You move a motion? Steve boy, you’re going it some. More bluggy
drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of
most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate
one expensive inaugurated libation? Give’s a breather. Landlord,
landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree.
Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. _Nos omnes
biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria_.
Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say
onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo’s papli, by all that’s gorgeous. Play
low, pardner. Slide. _Bonsoir la compagnie_. And snares of the
poxfiend. Where’s the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye
maun e’en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil
yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu
lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I’m about sprung. Tarnally dog
gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item,
curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot’s plood and prandypalls,
none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him
those other licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the
world. Health all! _À la vôtre_!
Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep
at his wearables. By mighty! What’s he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by
James. Wants it real bad. D’ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the
Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.
Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a
prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all
forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking
Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for
the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o’ yourn passed
in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou’ll no be telling me
thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was
took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I
never see the like since I was born. _Tiens, tiens_, but it is well
sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live
axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well
hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse
for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There’s eleven of them.
Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the
Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.
Your attention! We’re nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The
least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable
regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love.
Ook.
Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.
Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not
come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!
Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for
Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.
Righto, any old time. _Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis_. You coming long?
Whisper, who the sooty hell’s the johnny in the black duds? Hush!
Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall
come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! _Ut implerentur scripturae_.
Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical
Davy. Christicle, who’s this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion
hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you
winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you
dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained,
weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you
triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name,
that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to
Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you
that He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s
the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King
Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you
want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a
coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket.
Just you try it on.
Category:Books