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.
[ 15 ]
_(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an
uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping
doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice
gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which
are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter
slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on
through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and
answer.)_
THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.
THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.
_(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus’ dance. A chain of children ’s hands
imprisons him.)_
THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!
THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.)_ Grhahute!
THE CHILDREN: Where’s the great light?
THE IDIOT: _(Gobbling.)_ Ghaghahest.
_(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung
between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and
muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and
snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to
shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky
oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his
booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone
makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the
doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts,
clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands
the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch
in shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar,
mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit
by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the
hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey’s voice, still young, sings
shrill from a lane.)_