No More Learning

The verses crooned in the ear of
his memory composed slowly before his remembering eyes the scene of the
hall on the night of the opening of the national theatre. He was alone
at the side of the balcony, looking out of jaded eyes at the culture of
Dublin in the stalls and at the tawdry scene-cloths and human dolls
framed by the garish lamps of the stage. A burly policeman sweated behind
him and seemed at every moment about to act. The catcalls and hisses and
mocking cries ran in rude gusts round the hall from his scattered fellow
students.

--A libel on Ireland!

--Made in Germany.

--Blasphemy!

--We never sold our faith!

--No Irish woman ever did it!

--We want no amateur atheists.

--We want no budding buddhists.

A sudden swift hiss fell from the windows above him and he knew that
the electric lamps had been switched on in the reader's room. He turned
into the pillared hall, now calmly lit, went up the staircase and
passed in through the clicking turnstile.

Cranly was sitting over near the dictionaries. A thick book, opened at
the frontispiece, lay before him on the wooden rest. He leaned back in
his chair, inclining his ear like that of a confessor to the face of
the medical student who was reading to him a problem from the chess
page of a journal. Stephen sat down at his right and the priest at the
other side of the table closed his copy of THE TABLET with an angry
snap and stood up.

Cranly gazed after him blandly and vaguely. The medical student went on
in a softer voice:

--Pawn to king's fourth.

--We had better go, Dixon, said Stephen in warning. He has gone to
complain.

Dixon folded the journal and rose with dignity, saying:

--Our men retired in good order.

--With guns and cattle, added Stephen, pointing to the titlepage of
Cranly's book on which was printed DISEASES OF THE OX.

As they passed through a lane of the tables Stephen said:

--Cranly, I want to speak to you.

Cranly did not answer or turn. He laid his book on the counter and
passed out, his well-shod feet sounding flatly on the floor. On the
staircase he paused and gazing absently at Dixon repeated:

--Pawn to king's bloody fourth.

--Put it that way if you like, Dixon said.

He had a quiet toneless voice and urbane manners and on a finger of his
plump clean hand he displayed at moments a signet ring.

As they crossed the hall a man of dwarfish stature came towards them.
Under the dome of his tiny hat his unshaven face began to smile with
pleasure and he was heard to murmur. The eyes were melancholy as those
of a monkey.

--Good evening, gentlemen, said the stubble-grown monkeyish face.

--Warm weather for March, said Cranly. They have the windows open
upstairs.

Dixon smiled and turned his ring. The blackish, monkey-puckered face
pursed its human mouth with gentle pleasure and its voice purred:

--Delightful weather for March. Simply delightful.

--There are two nice young ladies upstairs, captain, tired of waiting,
Dixon said.

Cranly smiled and said kindly:

--The captain has only one love: sir Walter Scott. Isn't that so,
captain?

--What are you reading now, captain? Dixon asked. THE BRIDE OF
LAMMERMOOR?

--I love old Scott, the flexible lips said, I think he writes something
lovely. There is no writer can touch sir Walter Scott.

He moved a thin shrunken brown hand gently in the air in time to his
praise and his thin quick eyelids beat often over his sad eyes.

Sadder to Stephen's ear was his speech: a genteel accent, low and
moist, marred by errors, and, listening to it, he wondered was the
story true and was the thin blood that flowed in his shrunken frame
noble and come of an incestuous love?

The park trees were heavy with rain; and rain fell still and ever in
the lake, lying grey like a shield. A game of swans flew there and the
water and the shore beneath were fouled with their green-white slime.
They embraced softly, impelled by the grey rainy light, the wet
silent trees, the shield-like witnessing lake, the swans. They embraced
without joy or passion, his arm about his sister's neck. A grey woollen
cloak was wrapped athwart her from her shoulder to her waist and her
fair head was bent in willing shame. He had loose red-brown hair and
tender shapely strong freckled hands. Face? There was no face seen. The
brother's face was bent upon her fair rain-fragrant hair. The hand
freckled and strong and shapely and caressing was Davin's hand.

He frowned angrily upon his thought and on the shrivelled mannikin who
had called it forth. His father's jibes at the Bantry gang leaped out
of his memory. He held them at a distance and brooded uneasily on his
own thought again. Why were they not Cranly's hands? Had Davin's
simplicity and innocence stung him more secretly?

He walked on across the hall with Dixon, leaving Cranly to take leave
elaborately of the dwarf.

Under the colonnade Temple was standing in the midst of a little group
of students. One of them cried:

--Dixon, come over till you hear. Temple is in grand form.

Temple turned on him his dark gipsy eyes.

--You're a hypocrite, O'Keeffe, he said. And Dixon is a smiler. By
hell, I think that's a good literary expression.

He laughed slyly, looking in Stephen's face, repeating:

--By hell, I'm delighted with that name. A smiler.

A stout student who stood below them on the steps said:

--Come back to the mistress, Temple. We want to hear about that.

--He had, faith, Temple said. And he was a married man too. And all the
priests used to be dining there. By hell, I think they all had a touch.

--We shall call it riding a hack to spare the hunter, said Dixon.

--Tell us, Temple, O'Keeffe said, how many quarts of porter have you
in you?

--All your intellectual soul is in that phrase, O'Keeffe, said Temple
with open scorn.

He moved with a shambling gait round the group and spoke to Stephen.

--Did you know that the Forsters are the kings of Belgium? he asked.

Cranly came out through the door of the entrance hall, his hat thrust
back on the nape of his neck and picking his teeth with care.

--And here's the wiseacre, said Temple. Do you know that about the
Forsters?

He paused for an answer. Cranly dislodged a figseed from his teeth on
the point of his rude toothpick and gazed at it intently.

--The Forster family, Temple said, is descended from Baldwin the
First, king of Flanders. He was called the Forester. Forester and
Forster are the same name. A descendant of Baldwin the First, captain
Francis Forster, settled in Ireland and married the daughter of the
last chieftain of Clanbrassil. Then there are the Blake Forsters.
That's a different branch.

--From Baldhead, king of Flanders, Cranly repeated, rooting again
deliberately at his gleaming uncovered teeth.

--Where did you pick up all that history? O'Keeffe asked.

--I know all the history of your family, too, Temple said, turning to
Stephen. Do you know what Giraldus Cambrensis says about your family?

--Is he descended from Baldwin too? asked a tall consumptive student
with dark eyes.

--Baldhead, Cranly repeated, sucking at a crevice in his teeth.

--PERNOBILIS ET PERVETUSTA FAMILIA, Temple said to Stephen.

The stout student who stood below them on the steps farted briefly. Dixon
turned towards him, saying in a soft voice:

--Did an angel speak?

Cranly turned also and said vehemently but without anger:

--Goggins, you're the flamingest dirty devil I ever met, do you know.

--I had it on my mind to say that, Goggins answered firmly. It did no
one any harm, did it?

--We hope, Dixon said suavely, that it was not of the kind known to
science as a PAULO POST FUTURUM.

--Didn't I tell you he was a smiler? said Temple, turning right and
left. Didn't I give him that name?

--You did. We're not deaf, said the tall consumptive.

Cranly still frowned at the stout student below him. Then, with a snort
of disgust, he shoved him violently down the steps.

--Go away from here, he said rudely. Go away, you stinkpot. And you are a
stinkpot.

Goggins skipped down on to the gravel and at once returned to his place
with good humour. Temple turned back to Stephen and asked:

--Do you believe in the law of heredity?

--Are you drunk or what are you or what are you trying to say? asked
Cranly, facing round on him with an expression of wonder.

--The most profound sentence ever written, Temple said with
enthusiasm, is the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction is
the beginning of death.

He touched Stephen timidly at the elbow and said eagerly:

--Do you feel how profound that is because you are a poet?

Cranly pointed his long forefinger.

--Look at him! he said with scorn to the others. Look at Ireland's hope!

They laughed at his words and gesture. Temple turned on him bravely,
saying:

--Cranly, you're always sneering at me. I can see that. But I am as
good as you any day. Do you know what I think about you now as compared
with myself?

--My dear man, said Cranly urbanely, you are incapable, do you know,
absolutely incapable of thinking.

--But do you know, Temple went on, what I think of you and of myself
compared together?

--Out with it, Temple! the stout student cried from the steps. Get it
out in bits!

Temple turned right and left, making sudden feeble gestures as he spoke.

--I'm a ballocks, he said, shaking his head in despair. I am and I
know I am. And I admit it that I am.

Dixon patted him lightly on the shoulder and said mildly:

--And it does you every credit, Temple.

--But he, Temple said, pointing to Cranly, he is a ballocks, too, like
me. Only he doesn't know it. And that's the only difference I see.

A burst of laughter covered his words. But he turned again to Stephen
and said with a sudden eagerness:

--That word is a most interesting word. That's the only English dual
number. Did you know?

--Is it? Stephen said vaguely.

He was watching Cranly's firm-featured suffering face, lit up now by a
smile of false patience. The gross name had passed over it like foul
water poured over an old stone image, patient of injuries; and, as he
watched him, he saw him raise his hat in salute and uncover the black
hair that stood stiffly from his forehead like an iron crown.

She passed out from the porch of the library and bowed across Stephen
in reply to Cranly's greeting. He also? Was there not a slight flush on
Cranly's cheek? Or had it come forth at Temple's words? The light had
waned. He could not see.

Did that explain his friend's listless silence, his harsh comments, the
sudden intrusions of rude speech with which he had shattered so often
Stephen's ardent wayward confessions? Stephen had forgiven freely for
he had found this rudeness also in himself. And he remembered an
evening when he had dismounted from a borrowed creaking bicycle to pray
to God in a wood near Malahide. He had lifted up his arms and spoken in
ecstasy to the sombre nave of the trees, knowing that he stood on holy
ground and in a holy hour. And when two constabulary men had come into
sight round a bend in the gloomy road he had broken off his prayer to
whistle loudly an air from the last pantomime.

He began to beat the frayed end of his ashplant against the base of a
pillar. Had Cranly not heard him? Yet he could wait. The talk about him
ceased for a moment and a soft hiss fell again from a window above. But
no other sound was in the air and the swallows whose flight he had
followed with idle eyes were sleeping.

She had passed through the dusk. And therefore the air was silent save
for one soft hiss that fell. And therefore the tongues about him had
ceased their babble. Darkness was falling.

Darkness falls from the air.

A trembling joy, lambent as a faint light, played like a fairy host
around him. But why? Her passage through the darkening air or the verse
with its black vowels and its opening sound, rich and lutelike?

He walked away slowly towards the deeper shadows at the end of the
colonnade, beating the stone softly with his stick to hide his revery
from the students whom he had left: and allowed his mind to summon back
to itself the age of Dowland and Byrd and Nash.

Eyes, opening from the darkness of desire, eyes that dimmed the
breaking east. What was their languid grace but the softness of
chambering? And what was their shimmer but the shimmer of the scum that
mantled the cesspool of the court of a slobbering Stuart. And he tasted
in the language of memory ambered wines, dying fallings of sweet airs,
the proud pavan, and saw with the eyes of memory kind gentlewomen in
Covent Garden wooing from their balconies with sucking mouths and the
pox-fouled wenches of the taverns and young wives that, gaily yielding
to their ravishers, clipped and clipped again.

The images he had summoned gave him no pleasure. They were secret and
inflaming but her image was not entangled by them. That was not the way
to think of her. It was not even the way in which he thought of her.
Could his mind then not trust itself? Old phrases, sweet only with a
disinterred sweetness like the figseeds Cranly rooted out of his
gleaming teeth.

It was not thought nor vision though he knew vaguely that her figure
was passing homeward through the city. Vaguely first and then more
sharply he smelt her body. A conscious unrest seethed in his blood.
Yes, it was her body he smelt, a wild and languid smell, the tepid
limbs over which his music had flowed desirously and the secret soft
linen upon which her flesh distilled odour and a dew.

A louse crawled over the nape of his neck and, putting his thumb and
forefinger deftly beneath his loose collar, he caught it. He rolled its
body, tender yet brittle as a grain of rice, between thumb and finger
for an instant before he let it fall from him and wondered would it
live or die. There came to his mind a curious phrase from CORNELIUS A
LAPIDE which said that the lice born of human sweat were not created by
God with the other animals on the sixth day.
But the tickling of the
skin of his neck made his mind raw and red. The life of his body, ill
clad, ill fed, louse-eaten, made him close his eyelids in a sudden
spasm of despair and in the darkness he saw the brittle bright bodies
of lice falling from the air and turning often as they fell. Yes, and
it was not darkness that fell from the air. It was brightness.

Brightness falls from the air.

He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line. All the images it had
awakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice born
of the sweat of sloth.

He came back quickly along the colonnade towards the group of students.
Well then, let her go and be damned to her! She could love some clean
athlete who washed himself every morning to the waist and had black
hair on his chest. Let her.

Cranly had taken another dried fig from the supply in his pocket and
was eating it slowly and noisily. Temple sat on the pediment of a
pillar, leaning back, his cap pulled down on his sleepy eyes. A squat
young man came out of the porch, a leather portfolio tucked under his
armpit. He marched towards the group, striking the flags with the heels
of his boots and with the ferrule of his heavy umbrella. Then, raising
the umbrella in salute, he said to all:

--Good evening, sirs.

He struck the flags again and tittered while his head trembled with a
slight nervous movement. The tall consumptive student and Dixon and
O'Keeffe were speaking in Irish and did not answer him. Then, turning
to Cranly, he said:

--Good evening, particularly to you.

He moved the umbrella in indication and tittered again. Cranly, who was
still chewing the fig, answered with loud movements of his jaws.

--Good? Yes. It is a good evening.

The squat student looked at him seriously and shook his umbrella gently
and reprovingly.

--I can see, he said, that you are about to make obvious remarks.

--Um, Cranly answered, holding out what remained of the half chewed
fig and jerking it towards the squat student's mouth in sign that he
should eat.

The squat student did not eat it but, indulging his special humour,
said gravely, still tittering and prodding his phrase with his
umbrella:

--Do you intend that. . . ?

He broke off, pointed bluntly to the munched pulp of the fig, and said
loudly:

--I allude to that.

--Um, Cranly said as before.

--Do you intend that now, the squat student said, as IPSO FACTO or,
let us say, as so to speak?

Dixon turned aside from his group, saying:

--Goggins was waiting for you, Glynn. He has gone round to the Adelphi
to look for you and Moynihan. What have you there? he asked, tapping
the portfolio under Glynn's arm.

--Examination papers, Glynn answered. I give them monthly examinations
to see that they are profiting by my tuition.

He also tapped the portfolio and coughed gently and smiled.

--Tuition! said Cranly rudely. I suppose you mean the barefooted
children that are taught by a bloody ape like you. God help them!

He bit off the rest of the fig and flung away the butt.

--I suffer little children to come unto me, Glynn said amiably.

--A bloody ape, Cranly repeated with emphasis, and a blasphemous
bloody ape!

Temple stood up and, pushing past Cranly, addressed Glynn:

--That phrase you said now, he said, is from the new testament about
suffer the children to come to me.

--Go to sleep again, Temple, said O'Keeffe.

--Very well, then, Temple continued, still addressing Glynn, and if
Jesus suffered the children to come why does the church send them all
to hell if they die unbaptized? Why is that?

--Were you baptized yourself, Temple? the consumptive student asked.

--But why are they sent to hell if Jesus said they were all to come?
Temple said, his eyes searching Glynn's eyes.

Glynn coughed and said gently, holding back with difficulty the nervous
titter in his voice and moving his umbrella at every word:

--And, as you remark, if it is thus, I ask emphatically whence comes
this thusness.

--Because the church is cruel like all old sinners, Temple said.

--Are you quite orthodox on that point, Temple? Dixon said suavely.

--Saint Augustine says that about unbaptized children going to hell,
Temple answered, because he was a cruel old sinner too.

--I bow to you, Dixon said, but I had the impression that limbo
existed for such cases.

--Don't argue with him, Dixon, Cranly said brutally. Don't talk to him
or look at him. Lead him home with a sugan the way you'd lead a
bleating goat.

--Limbo! Temple cried. That's a fine invention too. Like hell.

--But with the unpleasantness left out, Dixon said.

He turned smiling to the others and said:

--I think I am voicing the opinions of all present in saying so much.

--You are, Glynn said in a firm tone. On that point Ireland is united.

He struck the ferrule of his umbrella on the stone floor of the
colonnade.

--Hell, Temple said. I can respect that invention of the grey spouse
of Satan. Hell is Roman, like the walls of the Romans, strong and ugly.
But what is limbo?

--Put him back into the perambulator, Cranly, O'Keeffe called out.

Cranly made a swift step towards Temple, halted, stamping his foot,
crying as if to a fowl:

--Hoosh!

Temple moved away nimbly.

--Do you know what limbo is? he cried. Do you know what we call a
notion like that in Roscommon?

--Hoosh! Blast you! Cranly cried, clapping his hands.

--Neither my arse nor my elbow! Temple cried out scornfully. And
that's what I call limbo.

--Give us that stick here, Cranly said.

He snatched the ashplant roughly from Stephen's hand and sprang down
the steps: but Temple, hearing him move in pursuit, fled through the
dusk like a wild creature, nimble and fleet-footed. Cranly's heavy
boots were heard loudly charging across the quadrangle and then
returning heavily, foiled and spurning the gravel at each step.

His step was angry and with an angry abrupt gesture he thrust the stick
back into Stephen's hand. Stephen felt that his anger had another cause
but, feigning patience, touched his arm slightly and said quietly:

--Cranly, I told you I wanted to speak to you. Come away.

Cranly looked at him for a few moments and asked:

--Now?

--Yes, now, Stephen said. We can't speak here. Come away.

They crossed the quadrangle together without speaking. The bird call
from SIEGFRIED whistled softly followed them from the steps of the
porch. Cranly turned, and Dixon, who had whistled, called out:

--Where are you fellows off to? What about that game, Cranly?

They parleyed in shouts across the still air about a game of billiards
to be played in the Adelphi hotel. Stephen walked on alone and out into
the quiet of Kildare Street opposite Maple's hotel he stood to wait,
patient again. The name of the hotel, a colourless polished wood, and
its colourless front stung him like a glance of polite disdain. He
stared angrily back at the softly lit drawing-room of the hotel in
which he imagined the sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housed
in calm. They thought of army commissions and land agents: peasants
greeted them along the roads in the country; they knew the names of
certain French dishes and gave orders to jarvies in high-pitched
provincial voices which pierced through their skin-tight accents.

How could he hit their conscience or how cast his shadow over the
imaginations of their daughters, before their squires begat upon them,
that they might breed a race less ignoble than their own? And under the
deepened dusk he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which he
belonged flitting like bats across the dark country lanes, under trees
by the edges of streams and near the pool-mottled bogs. A woman had
waited in the doorway as Davin had passed by at night and, offering him
a cup of milk, had all but wooed him to her bed; for Davin had the mild
eyes of one who could be secret. But him no woman's eyes had wooed.

His arm was taken in a strong grip and Cranly's voice said:

--Let us eke go.

They walked southward in silence. Then Cranly said:

--That blithering idiot, Temple! I swear to Moses, do you know, that
I'll be the death of that fellow one time.

But his voice was no longer angry and Stephen wondered was he thinking
of her greeting to him under the porch.

They turned to the left and walked on as before. When they had gone on
so for some time Stephen said:

--Cranly, I had an unpleasant quarrel this evening.

--With your people? Cranly asked.

--With my mother.

--About religion?

--Yes, Stephen answered.

After a pause Cranly asked:

--What age is your mother?

--Not old, Stephen said. She wishes me to make my easter duty.

--And will you?

--I will not, Stephen said.

--Why not? Cranly said.

--I will not serve, answered Stephen.

--That remark was made before, Cranly said calmly.

--It is made behind now, said Stephen hotly.

Cranly pressed Stephen's arm, saying:

--Go easy, my dear man. You're an excitable bloody man, do you know.

He laughed nervously as he spoke and, looking up into Stephen's face
with moved and friendly eyes, said:

--Do you know that you are an excitable man?

--I daresay I am, said Stephen, laughing also.

Their minds, lately estranged, seemed suddenly to have been drawn
closer, one to the other.

--Do you believe in the eucharist? Cranly asked.

--I do not, Stephen said.

--Do you disbelieve then?

--I neither believe in it nor disbelieve in it, Stephen answered.

--Many persons have doubts, even religious persons, yet they overcome
them or put them aside, Cranly said. Are your doubts on that point too
strong?

--I do not wish to overcome them, Stephen answered.

Cranly, embarrassed for a moment, took another fig from his pocket and
was about to eat it when Stephen said:

--Don't, please. You cannot discuss this question with your mouth full
of chewed fig.

Cranly examined the fig by the light of a lamp under which he halted.
Then he smelt it with both nostrils, bit a tiny piece, spat it out and
threw the fig rudely into the gutter.

Addressing it as it lay, he said:

--Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!

Taking Stephen's arm, he went on again and said:

--Do you not fear that those words may be spoken to you on the day of
Judgement?

--What is offered me on the other hand? Stephen asked. An eternity of
bliss in the company of the dean of studies?

--Remember, Cranly said, that he would be glorified.

--Ay, Stephen said somewhat bitterly, bright, agile, impassible and,
above all, subtle.

--It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how
your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you
disbelieve. Did you believe in it when you were at school? I bet you
did.

--I did, Stephen answered.

--And were you happier then? Cranly asked softly, happier than you are
now, for instance?

--Often happy, Stephen said, and often unhappy. I was someone else
then.

--How someone else? What do you mean by that statement?

--I mean, said Stephen, that I was not myself as I am now, as I had to
become.

--Not as you are now, not as you had to become, Cranly repeated. Let
me ask you a question. Do you love your mother?

Stephen shook his head slowly.

--I don't know what your words mean, he said simply.

--Have you never loved anyone? Cranly asked.

--Do you mean women?

--I am not speaking of that, Cranly said in a colder tone. I ask you
if you ever felt love towards anyone or anything?

Stephen walked on beside his friend, staring gloomily at the footpath.

--I tried to love God, he said at length. It seems now I failed. It is
very difficult. I tried to unite my will with the will of God instant
by instant. In that I did not always fail. I could perhaps do that
still--

Cranly cut him short by asking:

--Has your mother had a happy life?

--How do I know? Stephen said.

--How many children had she?

--Nine or ten, Stephen answered. Some died.

--Was your father. . . Cranly interrupted himself for an instant, and then
said: I don't want to pry into your family affairs. But was your father
what is called well-to-do? I mean, when you were growing up?

--Yes, Stephen said.