No More Learning

Didn't they
denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confession box?
And didn't they dishonour the ashes of Terence Bellew MacManus?

His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his
own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw
of coarse scorn.

--O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple
of God's eye!

Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:

--Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion
come first.

Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:

--Mrs Riordan, don't excite yourself answering them.

--God and religion before everything! Dante cried. God and religion
before the world.

Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with
a crash.

--Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for
Ireland!

--John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.

Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled
up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the
air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside
a cobweb.

--No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too much God In Ireland.
Away with God!

--Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost
spitting in his face.

Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again,
talking to him from both sides reasonably. He stared before him out of
his dark flaming eyes, repeating:

--Away with God, I say!

Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table, upsetting
her napkin-ring which rolled slowly along the carpet and came to rest
against the foot of an easy-chair. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and
followed her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently
and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage:

--Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!

The door slammed behind her.

Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on
his hands with a sob of pain.

--Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!

He sobbed loudly and bitterly.

Stephen, raising his terror-stricken face, saw that his father's eyes
were full of tears.


* * * * *


The fellows talked together in little groups.

One fellow said:

--They were caught near the Hill of Lyons.

--Who caught them?

--Mr Gleeson and the minister. They were on a car. The same fellow
added:

--A fellow in the higher line told me.

Fleming asked:

--But why did they run away, tell us?

--I know why, Cecil Thunder said. Because they had fecked cash out of
the rector's room.

--Who fecked it?

--Kickham's brother. And they all went shares in it.

--But that was stealing. How could they have done that?

--A fat lot you know about it, Thunder! Wells said. I know why they
scut.

--Tell us why.

--I was told not to, Wells said.

--O, go on, Wells, all said. You might tell us. We won't let it out.

Stephen bent forward his head to hear. Wells looked round to see if
anyone was coming. Then he said secretly:

--You know the altar wine they keep in the press in the sacristy?

--Yes.

--Well, they drank that and it was found out who did it by the smell.
And that's why they ran away, if you want to know.

And the fellow who had spoken first said:

--Yes, that's what I heard too from the fellow in the higher line.

The fellows all were silent. Stephen stood among them, afraid to speak,
listening. A faint sickness of awe made him feel weak. How could they
have done that? He thought of the dark silent sacristy. There were dark
wooden presses there where the crimped surplices lay quietly folded. It
was not the chapel but still you had to speak under your breath. It was
a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be
dressed as boatbearer, the evening of the Procession to the little
altar in the wood. A strange and holy place. The boy that held the
censer had swung it lifted by the middle chain to keep the coals
lighting. That was called charcoal: and it had burned quietly as the
fellow had swung it gently and had given off a weak sour smell. And
then when all were vested he had stood holding out the boat to the
rector and the rector had put a spoonful of incense in it and it had
hissed on the red coals.

The fellows were talking together in little groups here and there on
the playground. The fellows seemed to him to have grown smaller: that
was because a sprinter had knocked him down the day before, a fellow
out of second of grammar. He had been thrown by the fellow's machine
lightly on the cinder path and his spectacles had been broken in three
pieces and some of the grit of the cinders had gone into his mouth.

That was why the fellows seemed to him smaller and farther away and the
goalposts so thin and far and the soft grey sky so high up. But there
was no play on the football grounds for cricket was coming: and some
said that Barnes would be prof and some said it would be Flowers. And
all over the playgrounds they were playing rounders and bowling
twisters and lobs. And from here and from there came the sounds of the
cricket bats through the soft grey air. They said: pick, pack, pock,
puck: little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the
brimming bowl.

Athy, who had been silent, said quietly:

--You are all wrong.

All turned towards him eagerly.

--Why?

--Do you know?

--Who told you?

--Tell us, Athy.

Athy pointed across the playground to where Simon Moonan was walking by
himself kicking a stone before him.

--Ask him, he said.

The fellows looked there and then said:

--Why him?

--Is he in it?

Athy lowered his voice and said:

--Do you know why those fellows scut? I will tell you but you must not
let on you know.

--Tell us, Athy. Go on. You might if you know.

He paused for a moment and then said mysteriously:

--They were caught with Simon Moonan and Tusker Boyle in the square one
night.

The fellows looked at him and asked:

--Caught?

--What doing?

Athy said:

--Smugging.

All the fellows were silent: and Athy said:

--And that's why.

Stephen looked at the faces of the fellows but they were all looking
across the playground. He wanted to ask somebody about it. What did
that mean about the smugging in the square? Why did the five fellows
out of the higher line run away for that? It was a joke, he thought.
Simon Moonan had nice clothes and one night he had shown him a ball of
creamy sweets that the fellows of the football fifteen had rolled down
to him along the carpet in the middle of the refectory when he was at
the door. It was the night of the match against the Bective Rangers;
and the ball was made just like a red and green apple only it opened
and it was full of the creamy sweets. And one day Boyle had said that
an elephant had two tuskers instead of two tusks and that was why he
was called Tusker Boyle but some fellows called him Lady Boyle because
he was always at his nails, paring them.

Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she was a girl. They
were like ivory; only soft. That was the meaning of TOWER OF IVORY but
protestants could not understand it and made fun of it. One day he had
stood beside her looking into the hotel grounds. A waiter was running
up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and a fox terrier was scampering
to and fro on the sunny lawn. She had put her hand into his pocket
where his hand was and he had felt how cool and thin and soft her hand
was. She had said that pockets were funny things to have: and then all
of a sudden she had broken away and had run laughing down the sloping
curve of the path. Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold
in the sun. TOWER OF IVORY. HOUSE OF GOLD. By thinking of things you
could understand them.

But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something.
It was all thick slabs of slate and water trickled all day out of tiny
pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind
the door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red pencil of a
bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath
was the name of the drawing:


Balbus was building a wall.


Some fellow had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it
was very like a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet
there was written in backhand in beautiful writing:


Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly.


Perhaps that was why they were there because it was a place where some
fellows wrote things for cod. But all the same it was queer what Athy
said and the way he said it. It was not a cod because they had run
away. He looked with the others across the playground and began to feel
afraid.

At last Fleming said:

--And we are all to be punished for what other fellows did?

--I won't come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said. Three days' silence
in the refectory and sending us up for six and eight every minute.

--Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way of twisting the note
so that you can't open it and fold it again to see how many ferulae you
are to get. I won't come back too.

--Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studies was in second of
grammar this morning.

--Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we?

All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent and you could hear
the cricket bats but more slowly than before: pick, pock.

Wells asked:

--What is going to be done to them?

--Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged, Athy said, and the
fellows in the higher line got their choice of flogging or being
expelled.

--And which are they taking? asked the fellow who had spoken first.

--All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy answered. He's going
to be flogged by Mr Gleeson.

--I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and the other fellows
are wrong because a flogging wears off after a bit but a fellow that
has been expelled from college is known all his life on account of it.
Besides Gleeson won't flog him hard.

--It's best of his play not to, Fleming said.

--I wouldn't like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker, Cecil Thunder said.
But I don't believe they will be flogged. Perhaps they will be sent up
for twice nine.

--No, no, said Athy. They'll both get it on the vital spot. Wells
rubbed himself and said in a crying voice:

--Please, sir, let me off!

Athy grinned and turned up the sleeves of his jacket, saying:

It can't be helped;
It must be done.
So down with your breeches
And out with your bum.

The fellows laughed; but he felt that they were a little afraid. In the
silence of the soft grey air he heard the cricket bats from here and
from there: pock. That was a sound to hear but if you were hit then you
would feel a pain. The pandybat made a sound too but not like that. The
fellows said it was made of whalebone and leather with lead inside: and
he wondered what was the pain like. There were different kinds of
sounds. A long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he
wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery to think of it
and cold: and what Athy said too. But what was there to laugh at in it?
It made him shivery: but that was because you always felt like a shiver
when you let down your trousers. It was the same in the bath when you
undressed yourself. He wondered who had to let them down, the master or
the boy himself. O how could they laugh about it that way?

He looked at Athy's rolled-up sleeves and knuckly inky hands. He had
rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves.
But Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish
white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed. Perhaps he
pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they were terribly long and pointed
nails. So long and cruel they were, though the white fattish hands were
not cruel but gentle. And though he trembled with cold and fright to
think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane
and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undressed
yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think
of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle. And he thought of
what Cecil Thunder had said: that Mr Gleeson would not flog Corrigan hard.
And Fleming had said he would not because it was best of his play not
to. But that was not why

A voice from far out on the playground cried:

--All in!

And other voices cried:

--All in! All in!

During the writing lesson he sat with his arms folded, listening to the
slow scraping of the pens. Mr Harford went to and fro making little
signs in red pencil and sometimes sitting beside the boy to show him
how to hold his pen. He had tried to spell out the headline for himself
though he knew already what it was for it was the last of the book.
ZEAL WITHOUT PRUDENCE IS LIKE A SHIP ADRIFT. But the lines of the
letters were like fine invisible threads and it was only by closing his
right eye tight and staring out of the left eye that he could make out
the full curves of the capital.

But Mr Harford was very decent and never got into a wax. All the other
masters got into dreadful waxes. But why were they to suffer for what
fellows in the higher line did? Wells had said that they had drunk some
of the altar wine out of the press in the sacristy and that it had been
found out who had done it by the smell. Perhaps they had stolen a
monstrance to run away with and sell it somewhere. That must have been
a terrible sin, to go in there quietly at night, to open the dark press
and steal the flashing gold thing into which God was put on the altar
in the middle of flowers and candles at benediction while the incense
went up in clouds at both sides as the fellow swung the censer and
Dominic Kelly sang the first part by himself in the choir. But God was
not in it of course when they stole it. But still it was a strange and
a great sin even to touch it. He thought of it with deep awe; a
terrible and strange sin: it thrilled him to think of it in the silence
when the pens scraped lightly. But to drink the altar wine out of the
press and be found out by the smell was a sin too: but it was not
terrible and strange. It only made you feel a little sickish on account
of the smell of the wine. Because on the day when he had made his first
holy communion in the chapel he had shut his eyes and opened his mouth
and put out his tongue a little: and when the rector had stooped down
to give him the holy communion he had smelt a faint winy smell off the
rector's breath after the wine of the mass. The word was beautiful:
wine. It made you think of dark purple because the grapes were dark
purple that grew in Greece outside houses like white temples. But the
faint smell of the rector's breath had made him feel a sick feeling on
the morning of his first communion. The day of your first communion was
the happiest day of your life. And once a lot of generals had asked
Napoleon what was the happiest day of his life. They thought he would
say the day he won some great battle or the day he was made an emperor.
But he said:

--Gentlemen, the happiest day of my life was the day on which I made
my first holy communion.

Father Arnall came in and the Latin lesson began and he remained still,
leaning on the desk with his arms folded. Father Arnall gave out the
theme-books and he said that they were scandalous and that they were
all to be written out again with the corrections at once. But the worst
of all was Fleming's theme because the pages were stuck together by a
blot: and Father Arnall held it up by a corner and said it was an
insult to any master to send him up such a theme. Then he asked Jack
Lawton to decline the noun MARE and Jack Lawton stopped at the ablative
singular and could not go on with the plural.

--You should be ashamed of yourself, said Father Arnall sternly. You,
the leader of the class!

Then he asked the next boy and the next and the next. Nobody knew.
Father Arnall became very quiet, more and more quiet as each boy tried
to answer it and could not. But his face was black-looking and
his eyes were staring though his voice was so quiet. Then he asked
Fleming and Fleming said that the word had no plural. Father Arnall
suddenly shut the book and shouted at him:

--Kneel out there in the middle of the class. You are one of the
idlest boys I ever met. Copy out your themes again the rest of you.

Fleming moved heavily out of his place and knelt between the two last
benches. The other boys bent over their theme-books and began to write.
A silence filled the classroom and Stephen, glancing timidly at Father
Arnall's dark face, saw that it was a little red from the wax he was in.

Was that a sin for Father Arnall to be in a wax or was he allowed to
get into a wax when the boys were idle because that made them study
better or was he only letting on to be in a wax? It was because he was
allowed, because a priest would know what a sin was and would not do
it. But if he did it one time by mistake what would he do to go to
confession? Perhaps he would go to confession to the minister. And if
the minister did it he would go to the rector: and the rector to the
provincial: and the provincial to the general of the jesuits. That was
called the order: and he had heard his father say that they were all
clever men. They could all have become high-up people in the world if
they had not become jesuits. And he wondered what Father Arnall and
Paddy Barrett would have become and what Mr McGlade and Mr Gleeson
would have become if they had not become jesuits. It was hard to think
what because you would have to think of them in a different way with
different coloured coats and trousers and with beards and moustaches
and different kinds of hats.

The door opened quietly and closed. A quick whisper ran through the
class: the prefect of studies. There was an instant of dead silence and
then the loud crack of a pandybat on the last desk. Stephen's heart
leapt up in fear.

--Any boys want flogging here, Father Arnall? cried the prefect of
studies. Any lazy idle loafers that want flogging in this class?

He came to the middle of the class and saw Fleming on his knees.

--Hoho! he cried. Who is this boy? Why is he on his knees? What is
your name, boy?

--Fleming, sir.

--Hoho, Fleming! An idler of course. I can see it in your eye. Why is
he on his knees, Father Arnall?

--He wrote a bad Latin theme, Father Arnall said, and he missed all
the questions in grammar.

--Of course he did! cried the prefect of studies, of course he did! A
born idler! I can see it in the corner of his eye.

He banged his pandybat down on the desk and cried:

--Up, Fleming! Up, my boy!

Fleming stood up slowly.

--Hold out! cried the prefect of studies.

Fleming held out his hand. The pandybat came down on it with a loud
smacking sound: one, two, three, four, five, six.

--Other hand!

The pandybat came down again in six loud quick smacks.

--Kneel down! cried the prefect of studies.

Fleming knelt down, squeezing his hands under his armpits, his face
contorted with pain; but Stephen knew how hard his hands were because
Fleming was always rubbing rosin into them. But perhaps he was in great
pain for the noise of the pandybat was terrible. Stephen's heart was
beating and fluttering.

--At your work, all of you! shouted the prefect of studies. We want no
lazy idle loafers here, lazy idle little schemers. At your work, I tell
you. Father Dolan will be in to see you every day. Father Dolan will be
in tomorrow.

He poked one of the boys in the side with his pandybat, saying:

--You, boy! When will Father Dolan be in again?

--Tomorrow, sir, said Tom Furlong's voice.

--Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, said the prefect of studies.
Make up your minds for that. Every day Father Dolan. Write away. You,
boy, who are you?

Stephen's heart jumped suddenly.

--Dedalus, sir.

--Why are you not writing like the others?

--I. . . my. . .

He could not speak with fright.

--Why is he not writing, Father Arnall?

--He broke his glasses, said Father Arnall, and I exempted him from
work.

--Broke? What is this I hear? What is this? Your name is! said the
prefect of studies.

--Dedalus, sir.

--Out here, Dedalus. Lazy little schemer. I see schemer in your face.
Where did you break your glasses?

Stephen stumbled into the middle of the class, blinded by fear and haste.

--Where did you break your glasses? repeated the prefect of studies.

--The cinder-path, sir.

--Hoho! The cinder-path! cried the prefect of studies. I know that trick.

Stephen lifted his eyes in wonder and saw for a moment Father Dolan's
white-grey not young face, his baldy white-grey head with fluff at the
sides of it, the steel rims of his spectacles and his no-coloured eyes
looking through the glasses. Why did he say he knew that trick?

--Lazy idle little loafer! cried the prefect of studies. Broke my
glasses! An old schoolboy trick! Out with your hand this moment!

Stephen closed his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with
the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment
at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the
soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging
tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling
hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound and the
pain scalding tears were driven into his eyes. His whole body was shaking
with fright, his arm was shaking and his crumpled burning livid hand shook
like a loose leaf in the air. A cry sprang to his lips, a prayer to be let
off. But though the tears scalded his eyes and his limbs quivered with
pain and fright he held back the hot tears and the cry that scalded his
throat.

--Other hand! shouted the prefect of studies.

Stephen drew back his maimed and quivering right arm and held out his
left hand. The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted
and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning pain
made his hand shrink together with the palms and fingers in a livid
quivering mass. The scalding water burst forth from his eyes and,
burning with shame and agony and fear, he drew back his shaking arm in
terror and burst out into a whine of pain. His body shook with a palsy
of fright and in shame and rage he felt the scalding cry come from his
throat and the scalding tears falling out of his eyes and down his
flaming cheeks.

--Kneel down, cried the prefect of studies.

Stephen knelt down quickly pressing his beaten hands to his sides. To
think of them beaten and swollen with pain all in a moment made him
feel so sorry for them as if they were not his own but someone else's
that he felt sorry for. And as he knelt, calming the last sobs in his
throat and feeling the burning tingling pain pressed into his sides, he
thought of the hands which he had held out in the air with the palms up
and of the firm touch of the prefect of studies when he had steadied
the shaking fingers and of the beaten swollen reddened mass of palm and
fingers that shook helplessly in the air.

--Get at your work, all of you, cried the prefect of studies from the
door. Father Dolan will be in every day to see if any boy, any lazy
idle little loafer wants flogging. Every day. Every day.

The door closed behind him.

The hushed class continued to copy out the themes. Father Arnall rose
from his seat and went among them, helping the boys with gentle words
and telling them the mistakes they had made. His voice was very gentle
and soft. Then he returned to his seat and said to Fleming and Stephen:

--You may return to your places, you two.

Fleming and Stephen rose and, walking to their seats, sat down.
Stephen, scarlet with shame, opened a book quickly with one weak hand
and bent down upon it, his face close to the page.

It was unfair and cruel because the doctor had told him not to read
without glasses and he had written home to his father that morning to
send him a new pair. And Father Arnall had said that he need not study
till the new glasses came. Then to be called a schemer before the class
and to be pandied when he always got the card for first or second and
was the leader of the Yorkists! How could the prefect of studies know
that it was a trick? He felt the touch of the prefect's fingers as they
had steadied his hand and at first he had thought he was going to shake
hands with him because the fingers were soft and firm: but then in an
instant he had heard the swish of the soutane sleeve and the crash. It
was cruel and unfair to make him kneel in the middle of the class then:
and Father Arnall had told them both that they might return to their
places without making any difference between them. He listened to
Father Arnall's low and gentle voice as he corrected the themes.
Perhaps he was sorry now and wanted to be decent. But it was unfair and
cruel. The prefect of studies was a priest but that was cruel and
unfair. And his white-grey face and the no-coloured eyes behind the
steel-rimmed spectacles were cruel looking because he had steadied the
hand first with his firm soft fingers and that was to hit it better and
louder.

--It's a stinking mean thing, that's what it is, said Fleming in the
corridor as the classes were passing out in file to the refectory, to
pandy a fellow for what is not his fault.

--You really broke your glasses by accident, didn't you? Nasty Roche
asked.

Stephen felt his heart filled by Fleming's words and did not answer.

--Of course he did! said Fleming. I wouldn't stand it. I'd go up and
tell the rector on him.

--Yes, said Cecil Thunder eagerly, and I saw him lift the pandy-bat
over his shoulder and he's not allowed to do that.

--Did they hurt you much? Nasty Roche asked.

--Very much, Stephen said.

--I wouldn't stand it, Fleming repeated, from Baldyhead or any other
Baldyhead. It's a stinking mean low trick, that's what it is. I'd go
straight up to the rector and tell him about it after dinner.

--Yes, do. Yes, do, said Cecil Thunder.

--Yes, do. Yes, go up and tell the rector on him, Dedalus, said Nasty
Roche, because he said that he'd come in tomorrow again and pandy you.

--Yes, yes. Tell the rector, all said.

And there were some fellows out of second of grammar listening and one
of them said:

--The senate and the Roman people declared that Dedalus had been
wrongly punished.

It was wrong; it was unfair and cruel; and, as he sat in the refectory,
he suffered time after time in memory the same humiliation until he
began to wonder whether it might not really be that there was something
in his face which made him look like a schemer and he wished he had a
little mirror to see. But there could not be; and it was unjust and
cruel and unfair.

He could not eat the blackish fish fritters they got on Wednesdays in
lent and one of his potatoes had the mark of the spade in it. Yes, he
would do what the fellows had told him. He would go up and tell the
rector that he had been wrongly punished. A thing like that had been
done before by somebody in history, by some great person whose head was
in the books of history.