No More Learning

Ay,
bedad.

He turned to Dante and said:

--You didn't stir out at all, Mrs Riordan?

Dante frowned and said shortly:

--No.

Mr Dedalus dropped his coat-tails and went over to the sideboard. He
brought forth a great stone jar of whisky from the locker and filled
the decanter slowly, bending now and then to see how much he had poured
in. Then replacing the jar in the locker he poured a little of the
whisky into two glasses, added a little water and came back with them
to the fireplace.

--A thimbleful, John, he said, just to whet your appetite.

Mr Casey took the glass, drank, and placed it near him on the
mantelpiece. Then he said:

--Well, I can't help thinking of our friend Christopher manufacturing. . .

He broke into a fit of laughter and coughing and added:

--. . . manufacturing that champagne for those fellows.

Mr Dedalus laughed loudly.

--Is it Christy? he said. There's more cunning in one of those warts
on his bald head than in a pack of jack foxes.

He inclined his head, closed his eyes, and, licking his lips profusely,
began to speak with the voice of the hotel keeper.

--And he has such a soft mouth when he's speaking to you, don't you
know. He's very moist and watery about the dewlaps, God bless him.

Mr Casey was still struggling through his fit of coughing and laughter.
Stephen, seeing and hearing the hotel keeper through his father's face
and voice, laughed.

Mr Dedalus put up his eyeglass and, staring down at him, said quietly
and kindly:

--What are you laughing at, you little puppy, you?

The servants entered and placed the dishes on the table. Mrs Dedalus
followed and the places were arranged.

--Sit over, she said.

Mr Dedalus went to the end of the table and said:

--Now, Mrs Riordan, sit over. John, sit you down, my hearty.

He looked round to where uncle Charles sat and said:

--Now then, sir, there's a bird here waiting for you.

When all had taken their seats he laid his hand on the cover and then
said quickly, withdrawing it:

--Now, Stephen.

Stephen stood up in his place to say the grace before meals:


Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which through
Thy bounty we are about to receive through Christ our
Lord. Amen.


All blessed themselves and Mr Dedalus with a sigh of pleasure lifted
from the dish the heavy cover pearled around the edge with glistening
drops.

Stephen looked at the plump turkey which had lain, trussed and
skewered, on the kitchen table. He knew that his father had paid a
guinea for it in Dunn's of D'Olier Street and that the man had prodded
it often at the breastbone to show how good it was: and he remembered
the man's voice when he had said:

--Take that one, sir. That's the real Ally Daly.

Why did Mr Barrett in Clongowes call his pandybat a turkey? But
Clongowes was far away: and the warm heavy smell of turkey and ham and
celery rose from the plates and dishes and the great fire was banked
high and red in the grate and the green ivy and red holly made you feel
so happy and when dinner was ended the big plum pudding would be
carried in, studded with peeled almonds and sprigs of holly, with
bluish fire running around it and a little green flag flying from the
top.

It was his first Christmas dinner and he thought of his little brothers
and sisters who were waiting in the nursery, as he had often waited,
till the pudding came. The deep low collar and the Eton jacket made him
feel queer and oldish: and that morning when his mother had brought him
down to the parlour, dressed for mass, his father had cried. That was
because he was thinking of his own father. And uncle Charles had said
so too.

Mr Dedalus covered the dish and began to eat hungrily. Then he said:

--Poor old Christy, he's nearly lopsided now with roguery.

--Simon, said Mrs Dedalus, you haven't given Mrs Riordan any sauce.

Mr Dedalus seized the sauceboat.

--Haven't I? he cried. Mrs Riordan, pity the poor blind. Dante covered
her plate with her hands and said:

--No, thanks.

Mr Dedalus turned to uncle Charles.

--How are you off, sir?

--Right as the mail, Simon.

--You, John?

--I'm all right. Go on yourself.

--Mary? Here, Stephen, here's something to make your hair curl.

He poured sauce freely over Stephen's plate and set the boat again on
the table. Then he asked uncle Charles was it tender. Uncle Charles
could not speak because his mouth was full; but he nodded that it was.

--That was a good answer our friend made to the canon. What? said Mr
Dedalus.

--I didn't think he had that much in him, said Mr Casey.

--I'LL PAY YOUR DUES, FATHER, WHEN YOU CEASE TURNING THE HOUSE OF GOD
INTO A POLLING-BOOTH.

--A nice answer, said Dante, for any man calling himself a catholic to
give to his priest.

--They have only themselves to blame, said Mr Dedalus suavely. If they
took a fool's advice they would confine their attention to religion.

--It is religion, Dante said. They are doing their duty in warning the
people.

--We go to the house of God, Mr Casey said, in all humility to pray to
our Maker and not to hear election addresses.

--It is religion, Dante said again. They are right. They must direct
their flocks.

--And preach politics from the altar, is it? asked Mr Dedalus.

--Certainly, said Dante. It is a question of public morality. A priest
would not be a priest if he did not tell his flock what is right and
what is wrong.

Mrs Dedalus laid down her knife and fork, saying:

--For pity sake and for pity sake let us have no political discussion
on this day of all days in the year.

--Quite right, ma'am, said uncle Charles. Now, Simon, that's quite
enough now. Not another word now.

--Yes, yes, said Mr Dedalus quickly.

He uncovered the dish boldly and said:

--Now then, who's for more turkey?

Nobody answered. Dante said:

--Nice language for any catholic to use!

--Mrs Riordan, I appeal to you, said Mrs Dedalus, to let the matter
drop now.

Dante turned on her and said:

--And am I to sit here and listen to the pastors of my church being
flouted?

--Nobody is saying a word against them, said Mr Dedalus, so long as
they don't meddle in politics.

--The bishops and priests of Ireland have spoken, said Dante, and they
must be obeyed.

--Let them leave politics alone, said Mr Casey, or the people may
leave their church alone.

--You hear? said Dante, turning to Mrs Dedalus.

--Mr Casey! Simon! said Mrs Dedalus, let it end now.

--Too bad! Too bad! said uncle Charles.

--What? cried Mr Dedalus. Were we to desert him at the bidding of the
English people?

--He was no longer worthy to lead, said Dante. He was a public sinner.

--We are all sinners and black sinners, said Mr Casey coldly.

--WOE BE TO THE MAN BY WHOM THE SCANDAL COMETH! said Mrs Riordan. IT
WOULD BE BETTER FOR HIM THAT A MILLSTONE WERE TIED ABOUT HIS NECK AND
THAT HE WERE CAST INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA RATHER THAN THAT HE SHOULD
SCANDALIZE ONE OF THESE, MY LEAST LITTLE ONES. That is the language of
the Holy Ghost.

--And very bad language if you ask me, said Mr Dedalus coolly.

--Simon! Simon! said uncle Charles. The boy.

--Yes, yes, said Mr Dedalus. I meant about the. . . I was thinking about the
bad language of the railway porter. Well now, that's all right. Here,
Stephen, show me your plate, old chap. Eat away now. Here.

He heaped up the food on Stephen's plate and served uncle Charles and
Mr Casey to large pieces of turkey and splashes of sauce. Mrs Dedalus
was eating little and Dante sat with her hands in her lap. She was red
in the face. Mr Dedalus rooted with the carvers at the end of the dish
and said:

--There's a tasty bit here we call the pope's nose. If any lady or
gentleman. . .

He held a piece of fowl up on the prong of the carving fork. Nobody
spoke. He put it on his own plate, saying:

--Well, you can't say but you were asked. I think I had better eat it
myself because I'm not well in my health lately.

He winked at Stephen and, replacing the dish-cover, began to eat again.

There was a silence while he ate. Then he said:

--Well now, the day kept up fine after all. There were plenty of
strangers down too.

Nobody spoke. He said again:

--I think there were more strangers down than last Christmas.

He looked round at the others whose faces were bent towards their
plates and, receiving no reply, waited for a moment and said bitterly:

--Well, my Christmas dinner has been spoiled anyhow.

--There could be neither luck nor grace, Dante said, in a house where
there is no respect for the pastors of the church.

Mr Dedalus threw his knife and fork noisily on his plate.

--Respect! he said. Is it for Billy with the lip or for the tub of
guts up in Armagh? Respect!

--Princes of the church, said Mr Casey with slow scorn.

--Lord Leitrim's coachman, yes, said Mr Dedalus.

--They are the Lord's anointed, Dante said. They are an honour to their
country.

--Tub of guts, said Mr Dedalus coarsely. He has a handsome face, mind
you, in repose. You should see that fellow lapping up his bacon and
cabbage of a cold winter's day. O Johnny!

He twisted his features into a grimace of heavy bestiality and made a
lapping noise with his lips.

--Really, Simon, you should not speak that way before Stephen. It's
not right.

--O, he'll remember all this when he grows up, said Dante hotly--the
language he heard against God and religion and priests in his own home.

--Let him remember too, cried Mr Casey to her from across the table,
the language with which the priests and the priests' pawns broke
Parnell's heart and hounded him into his grave. Let him remember that
too when he grows up.

--Sons of bitches! cried Mr Dedalus. When he was down they turned on
him to betray him and rend him like rats in a sewer. Low-lived dogs!
And they look it! By Christ, they look it!

--They behaved rightly, cried Dante. They obeyed their bishops and
their priests. Honour to them!

--Well, it is perfectly dreadful to say that not even for one day in
the year, said Mrs Dedalus, can we be free from these dreadful
disputes!

Uncle Charles raised his hands mildly and said:

--Come now, come now, come now! Can we not have our opinions whatever
they are without this bad temper and this bad language? It is too bad
surely.

Mrs Dedalus spoke to Dante in a low voice but Dante said loudly:

--I will not say nothing. I will defend my church and my religion when
it is insulted and spit on by renegade catholics.

Mr Casey pushed his plate rudely into the middle of the table and,
resting his elbows before him, said in a hoarse voice to his host:

--Tell me, did I tell you that story about a very famous spit?

--You did not, John, said Mr Dedalus.

--Why then, said Mr Casey, it is a most instructive story. It happened
not long ago in the county Wicklow where we are now.

He broke off and, turning towards Dante, said with quiet indignation:

--And I may tell you, ma'am, that I, if you mean me, am no renegade
catholic. I am a catholic as my father was and his father before him
and his father before him again, when we gave up our lives rather than
sell our faith.

--The more shame to you now, Dante said, to speak as you do.

--The story, John, said Mr Dedalus smiling. Let us have the story
anyhow.

--Catholic indeed! repeated Dante ironically. The blackest protestant
in the land would not speak the language I have heard this evening.

Mr Dedalus began to sway his head to and fro, crooning like a country
singer.

--I am no protestant, I tell you again, said Mr Casey, flushing.

Mr Dedalus, still crooning and swaying his head, began to sing in a
grunting nasal tone:


O, come all you Roman catholics
That never went to mass.


He took up his knife and fork again in good humour and set to eating,
saying to Mr Casey:

--Let us have the story, John. It will help us to digest.

Stephen looked with affection at Mr Casey's face which stared across
the table over his joined hands. He liked to sit near him at the fire,
looking up at his dark fierce face. But his dark eyes were never fierce
and his slow voice was good to listen to.
But why was he then against
the priests? Because Dante must be right then. But he had heard his
father say that she was a spoiled nun and that she had come out of the
convent in the Alleghanies when her brother had got the money from the
savages for the trinkets and the chainies. Perhaps that made her severe
against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because
Eileen was a protestant and when she was young she knew children that
used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of
the litany of the Blessed Virgin. TOWER OF IVORY, they used to say,
HOUSE OF GOLD! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of
gold? Who was right then? And he remembered the evening in the
infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead and
the moan of sorrow from the people when they had heard.

Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put
her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft.
That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of TOWER OF
IVORY.

--The story is very short and sweet, Mr Casey said. It was one day
down in Arklow, a cold bitter day, not long before the chief died. May
God have mercy on him!

He closed his eyes wearily and paused. Mr Dedalus took a bone from his
plate and tore some meat from it with his teeth, saying:

--Before he was killed, you mean.

Mr Casey opened his eyes, sighed and went on:

--It was down in Arklow one day. We were down there at a meeting and
after the meeting was over we had to make our way to the railway
station through the crowd. Such booing and baaing, man, you never
heard. They called us all the names in the world. Well there was one
old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was surely, that paid all her
attention to me. She kept dancing along beside me in the mud bawling
and screaming into my face: PRIEST-HUNTER! THE PARIS FUNDS! MR FOX!
KITTY O'SHEA!

--And what did you do, John? asked Mr Dedalus.

--I let her bawl away, said Mr Casey. It was a cold day and to keep up
my heart I had (saving your presence, ma'am) a quid of Tullamore in my
mouth and sure I couldn't say a word in any case because my mouth was
full of tobacco juice.

--Well, John?

--Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart's content, KITTY O'SHEA and
the rest of it till at last she called that lady a name that I won't
sully this Christmas board nor your ears, ma'am, nor my own lips by
repeating.

He paused. Mr Dedalus, lifting his head from the bone, asked:

--And what did you do, John?

--Do! said Mr Casey. She stuck her ugly old face up at me when she
said it and I had my mouth full of tobacco juice. I bent down to her
and PHTH! says I to her like that.

He turned aside and made the act of spitting.

--PHTH! says I to her like that, right into her eye.

He clapped his hand to his eye and gave a hoarse scream of pain.

--O JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH! says she. I'M BLINDED! I'M BLINDED AND
DROWNDED!

He stopped in a fit of coughing and laughter, repeating:

--I'M BLINDED ENTIRELY.

Mr Dedalus laughed loudly and lay back in his chair while uncle Charles
swayed his head to and fro.

Dante looked terribly angry and repeated while they laughed:

--Very nice! Ha! Very nice!

It was not nice about the spit in the woman's eye.

But what was the name the woman had called Kitty O'Shea that Mr Casey
would not repeat? He thought of Mr Casey walking through the crowds of
people and making speeches from a wagonette. That was what he had been
in prison for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O'Neill had
come to the house and had stood in the hall, talking in a low voice
with his father and chewing nervously at the chinstrap of his cap. And
that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but a car had come
to the door and he had heard his father say something about the
Cabinteely road.

He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante
too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentleman
on the head with her umbrella because he had taken off his hat when the
band played GOD SAVE THE QUEEN at the end.

Mr Dedalus gave a snort of contempt.

--Ah, John, he said. It is true for them. We are an unfortunate
priest-ridden race and always were and always will be till the end of
the chapter.

Uncle Charles shook his head, saying:

--A bad business! A bad business!

Mr Dedalus repeated:

--A priest-ridden Godforsaken race!

He pointed to the portrait of his grandfather on the wall to his right.

--Do you see that old chap up there, John? he said. He was a good
Irishman when there was no money in the job. He was condemned to death
as a whiteboy. But he had a saying about our clerical friends, that he
would never let one of them put his two feet under his mahogany.

Dante broke in angrily:

--If we are a priest-ridden race we ought to be proud of it! They are the
apple of God's eye. TOUCH THEM NOT, says Christ, FOR THEY ARE THE APPLE
OF MY EYE.

--And can we not love our country then? asked Mr Casey. Are we not to
follow the man that was born to lead us?

--A traitor to his country! replied Dante. A traitor, an adulterer!
The priests were right to abandon him. The priests were always the true
friends of Ireland.

--Were they, faith? said Mr Casey.

He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily, protruded one
finger after another.

--Didn't the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union
when Bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess
Cornwallis? Didn't the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of
their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? 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.