Complete Works of James Joyce (264 page)

Stephen had lent his essay to Lynch as he had promised to do and this loan had led to a certain intimacy. Lynch had almost taken the final vows in the order of the discontented but Stephen’s unapologetic egoism, his remorseless lack of sentiment for himself no less than for others, gave him pause. His taste for fine arts, which had always seemed to him a taste which should be carefully hidden away, now began to encourage itself timidly. He was also very much relieved to find Stephen’s estheticism united with a sane and conscienceless acceptance of the animal needs of young men for, being a shrewd animal himself, he had begun to suspect from Stephen’s zeal and loftiness of discourse at least an assertion of that incorrigible virginity which the Irish race demands alike from any John who would baptise it or from any Joan who would set it free as the first heavenly proof of fitness for such high offices. Daniel’s household had become so wearisome to Stephen that he had discontinued his Sunday visits there and had substituted rambles with Lynch through the city. They made their way with difficulty along the crowded streets where underpaid young men and flaunting girls were promenading in bands. After a few of these rambles Lynch had absorbed the new terms which expressed the new point of view and he began to feel that he was justifying the contempt to which the spectacle of Dublin manners had always moved him. Many times they stopped to confer in scrupulous slang with the foolish virgins of the city, whose souls were almost terrified out of their naughty intentions by the profundity of the tones of the elder of the young men, and Lynch, sunning himself in a companionship which was so alert and liberal, so free from a taint of secret competition or patronage, began to wonder how he could ever have thought Stephen an affected young man. Everyone, he thought now, who has a character to preserve must have a manner to preserve it with.

One evening as Stephen was coming down the Library staircase after idling away a half-hour at [a dictionary of music] a medical treatise on singing, he heard a dress brushing the steps behind him. The dress belonged to Emma Clery who, of course, was very much surprised at seeing Stephen. She had just been working at some old Irish and now she was going home: her father didn’t like her to stay in the Library until ten o’clock as she had no escort. The night was so fine that she thought she would not take the tram. Stephen asked her might he not see her home. They stood under the porch for a few minutes, talking. Stephen took out a cigarette and lit it but at once knocked off the lighted end [very] meditatively and put the cigarette back into his case: her eyes were very bright.

They went up Kildare St and when they came to the corner of the Green she crossed the road and they continued to walk, but not quite so quickly, along the gravel path beside the chains. The chains bore their nightly burden of amorousness. He offered her his arm which she took, leaning appreciably upon it. They talked gossip. She discussed the likelihood of McCann’s marrying the eldest of Mr Daniel’s daughters. She seemed to think it very amusing that McCann should have a desire for matrimony but she added quite seriously that Annie Daniel was certainly a nice girl. A feminine voice called out from the dusky region of the couples “Don’t!”

—’Don’t,’ said Emma. Isn’t that Mr Punch’s advice to young men who are about to marry . . . I hear you are quite a woman-hater now, Stephen.

 
— Wouldn’t that be a change?

 
— And I heard you read a dreadful paper in the college — all kinds of ideas in it. Isn’t that so?

 
— Please don’t mention that paper.

 
— But I’m sure you’re a woman-hater. You’ve got so standoffish, you know, so reserved. Perhaps you don’t like ladies’ company?

Stephen pressed her arm a little by way of a disclaimer.

 
— Are you a believer in the emancipation of women too? she asked.

 
— To be sure! said Stephen.

 
— Well, I’m glad to hear you say that, at any rate. I didn’t think you were in favour of women.

 
— O, I am very liberal — like Father Dillon — he is very liberal-minded.

 
— Yes? Isn’t he? she said in a puzzled manner . . . Why do you never go to Daniel’s now?

 
— I . . . don’t know.

 
— What do you do with yourself on Sunday evenings?

 
— I . . . stay at home, said Stephen.

 
— You must be morose when you’re at home.

 
— Not I. I’m as happy as if the divil had me.

 
— I want to hear you sing again.

 
— O, thanks . . . Some time, perhaps . . .

 
— Why don’t you study music? Have Your voice trained?

 
— Strange to say I was reading a book on singing tonight. It is called . . .

 
— I am sure you would make a success with your voice, she said quickly, evidently afraid to allow him control of the conversation . . . Have you ever heard Father Moran sing?

 
— No. Has he a good voice?

 
— O, very nice: he sings with such taste. He’s an awfully nice man, don’t you think?

 
— Very nice indeed. Do you go to confession to him?

She leaned a little more appreciably on his arm and said:

 
— Now, don’t be bold, Stephen.

 
— I wish you would go to confession to me, Emma, said Stephen from his heart.

 
— That’s a dreadful thing to say . . . Why would you like that?

 
— To hear your sins.

 
— Stephen!

 
— To hear you murmur them into my ear and say you were sorry and would never [do] commit them again and ask me to forgive you. And I would forgive you and make you promise to commit them every time you liked and say “God bless you, my dear child.”

 
— O, for shame, Stephen! Such a way to talk of the sacraments!

Stephen had expected that she would blush but her cheek maintained its innocence and her eyes grew brighter and brighter.

 
— You’d get tired of that too.

 
— Do you think so? said Stephen making an effort not to be surprised at such an intelligent remark.

 
— You’d be a dreadful flirt, I’m sure. You get tired of everything so quickly — just the way you did in the Gaelic League.

 
— People should not think of the end in the beginning of flirtations, should they?

 
— Perhaps not.

When they came to the corner of her terrace she stopped and said:

 
— Thanks ever so much.

 
— Thank you.

 
— Well, you must reform, won’t you, and come next Sunday to Daniel’s.

 
— If you expressly .

 
— Yes, I insist.

 
— Very good, Emma. ln that case, I’ll go.

 
— Mind. I expect you to obey me.

 
— Very good.

 
— Thanks again for your kindness coming across with me.

 
— Good night.

He waited till he had seen her enter the fourth garden of the terrace. She did not turn her head to see if he was watching but he was not cast down because he knew she had a trick of seeing things without using her eyes frankly.

Of course when Lynch heard of this incident he rubbed his hands together and prophesied. By his advice Stephen went to Daniel’s on the following Sunday. The old horsehair sofa was there, the picture of the Sacred Heart was there, she was there. The prodigal was welcomed. She spoke to him very little during the evening and seemed to be in deep conversation with Hughes, who had lately been honoured by an invitation. She was dressed in cream colour and the great mass of her hair lay heavily upon her cream-coloured neck. She asked him to sing and when he had sung a song of Dowland’s she asked him would he not sing them an Irish song. Stephen glanced from her eyes to Hughes’s face and sat down again at the piano. He sang her one of the few Irish melodies which he knew “My love she was born in the North Countree.” When his song was over she applauded loudly and so did Hughes.

 
— I love the Irish music, she said a few minutes afterwards, inclining herself towards him with an air of oblivion, it is so soul-stirring.

Stephen said nothing. He remembered almost every word she had said from the first time he had met her and he strove to recall any word which revealed the presence of a spiritual principle in her worthy of so significant a name as soul. He submitted himself to the perfumes of her body and strove to locate a spiritual principle in it: but he could not. She seemed to conform to the Catholic belief, to obey the commandments and the precepts. By all outward signs he was compelled to esteem her holy. But he could not so stultify himself as to misread the gleam in her eyes as holy or to interpret the [motions] rise and fall of her bosom as a movement of a sacred intention. He thought of his own [fervid religiousness] spendthrift religiousness and airs of the cloister, he remembered having astonished a labourer in a wood near Malahide by an ecstasy of oriental posture and no more than half-conscious under the influence of her charm he wondered whether the God of the Roman Catholics would put him into hell because he had failed to understand that most marketable goodness which makes it possible to give comfortable assent to propositions without in the least ordering one’s life in accordance with them and had failed to appreciate the digestive value of the sacraments.

Among the guests was an elder brother of Mrs Daniel’s, Father Healy. He had just come back from the United States of America where he had been for seven years collecting money to build a chapel near Enniscorthy. He was being feted on his home-coming. He sat in the armchair which Mr Daniel insisted on giving him and joined the tips of his fingers lightly together and smiled on the company. He was a little fat white priest whose body reminded one of a new tennis-ball and as he sat in his chair with one leg thrown smartly over the other he kept agitating quickly a fat little foot which was encased in a fat little creaky leather shoe. He spoke with a judicious American accent and when he spoke the room was all ears. He was greatly interested in the new Gaelic revival and in the new literary movement in Ireland. He paid particular attention to McCann and to Stephen, asking both of them many questions. He agreed with McCann that Gladstone was the greatest man of the nineteenth century and then Mr Daniel, who was glowing with pride at the honour he was paying so honourable a guest, told a dignified story of Gladstone and Sir Ashmead Bartlett and deepened his voice to reproduce the oratory of the grand old man. During the charades [he] Father Healy kept asking Mr Daniel to repeat to him the witticisms of the players and very often he shook laughing when Mr Daniel had told him what a player had said. He let no opportunity for increasing his knowledge of the interior life of the University escape him and every allusion was beaten out into an unmistakeable flatness before he nodded a head in satisfaction. Attacking Stephen on the literary side he began a monologue on the writings of John Boyle O’Reilly but finding Stephen too polite he began to depreciate an exclusively literary training for young men. Stephen thereupon began to tell him of the alley in the college and of the hand-ball tournament and all with discreet earnestness.

 
— I am sure now, said Father Healy putting his head shrewdly on one side and looking genially at the youth, I am sure you would make a good player. You’re just the build.

 
— O, no, said Stephen longing for Cranly’s presence, I’m a poor player.

 
— So you say, said Father Healy laughing, so you say.

 
— Really, said Stephen, smiling at this clever detection of [the] his merits as a handball-player and at the recollection of Cranly’s execrations at his play.

At last Father Healy began to yawn a little and this was taken as a signal for handing round cups of milk and slices of bread and butter to the young men and women, none of whom took anything stronger. Hughes, indeed, was so frugal that he declined to eat or drink anything at all whereat Stephen was somewhat disappointed as he could have had a good view of the idealist. McCann who represented the practical view of life ate rather noisily and asked for jam. This remark made Father Healy, who had never heard it before, laugh very heartily and made the others smile but Hughes and Stephen looked at each other very gravely across the uninhabited tablecloth. The young women were all sitting at one end of the table and the young men at the other end with the result that one end of the table was very lively and the other end very serious. Stephen after having failed to engage in conversation a maiden aunt of the family who had fulfilled her office by bringing in two tumblers of punch, one for Father Healy and the other for Mr Daniel, retired silently to the piano where he began to strum old airs and hum them to himself until someone at the table said “Do sing us something” and then he left the piano and returned to the horsehair sofa.