No More Learning

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.

--What was he? Cranly asked after a pause.

Stephen began to enumerate glibly his father's attributes.

--A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting
politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good
fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a
distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his
own past.

Cranly laughed, tightening his grip on Stephen's arm, and said:

--The distillery is damn good.

--Is there anything else you want to know? Stephen asked.

--Are you in good circumstances at present?

--Do I look it? Stephen asked bluntly.

--So then, Cranly went on musingly, you were born in the lap of luxury.

He used the phrase broadly and loudly as he often used technical
expressions, as if he wished his hearer to understand that they were
used by him without conviction.

--Your mother must have gone through a good deal of suffering, he said
then. Would you not try to save her from suffering more even if. . . or would
you?

--If I could, Stephen said, that would cost me very little.

--Then do so, Cranly said. Do as she wishes you to do. What is it for
you? You disbelieve in it. It is a form: nothing else. And you will set
her mind at rest.

He ceased and, as Stephen did not reply, remained silent. Then, as if
giving utterance to the process of his own thought, he said:

--Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a
mother's love is not. Your mother brings you into the world, carries
you first in her body. What do we know about what she feels? But
whatever she feels, it, at least, must be real. It must be. What are
our ideas or ambitions? Play. Ideas! Why, that bloody bleating goat
Temple has ideas. MacCann has ideas too. Every jackass going the roads
thinks he has ideas.

Stephen, who had been listening to the unspoken speech behind the
words, said with assumed carelessness:

--Pascal, if I remember rightly, would not suffer his mother to kiss
him as he feared the contact of her sex.

--Pascal was a pig, said Cranly.

--Aloysius Gonzaga, I think, was of the same mind, Stephen said.

--And he was another pig then, said Cranly.

--The church calls him a saint, Stephen objected.

--I don't care a flaming damn what anyone calls him, Cranly said rudely
and flatly. I call him a pig.

Stephen, preparing the words neatly in his mind, continued:

--Jesus, too, seems to have treated his mother with scant courtesy in
public but Suarez, a jesuit theologian and Spanish gentleman, has
apologized for him.

--Did the idea ever occur to you, Cranly asked, that Jesus was not
what he pretended to be?

--The first person to whom that idea occurred, Stephen answered, was
Jesus himself.

--I mean, Cranly said, hardening in his speech, did the idea ever
occur to you that he was himself a conscious hypocrite, what he called
the jews of his time, a whited sepulchre? Or, to put it more plainly,
that he was a blackguard?

--That idea never occurred to me, Stephen answered. But I am curious
to know are you trying to make a convert of me or a pervert of
yourself?

He turned towards his friend's face and saw there a raw smile which
some force of will strove to make finely significant.

Cranly asked suddenly in a plain sensible tone:

--Tell me the truth. Were you at all shocked by what I said?

--Somewhat, Stephen said.

--And why were you shocked, Cranly pressed on in the same tone, if you
feel sure that our religion is false and that Jesus was not the son of
God?

--I am not at all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of
God than a son of Mary.

--And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you
are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may be
the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? And
because you fear that it may be?

--Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I also fear it.

--I see, Cranly said.

Stephen, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at once
by saying:

--I fear many things: dogs, horses, fire-arms, the sea,
thunder-storms, machinery, the country roads at night.

--But why do you fear a bit of bread?

--I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind
those things I say I fear.

--Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics
would strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegious
communion?

--The God of the Roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fear
more than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul by
a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of
authority and veneration.

--Would you, Cranly asked, in extreme danger, commit that particular
sacrilege? For instance, if you lived in the penal days?

--I cannot answer for the past, Stephen replied. Possibly not.

--Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?

--I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I
had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake
an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is
illogical and incoherent?

They had walked on towards the township of Pembroke and now, as they
went on slowly along the avenues, the trees and the scattered lights in
the villas soothed their minds. The air of wealth and repose diffused
about them seemed to comfort their neediness. Behind a hedge of laurel
a light glimmered in the window of a kitchen and the voice of a servant
was heard singing as she sharpened knives. She sang, in short broken
bars:

Rosie O'Grady.

Cranly stopped to listen, saying:

--MULIER CANTAT.

The soft beauty of the Latin word touched with an enchanting touch the
dark of the evening, with a touch fainter and more persuading than the
touch of music or of a woman's hand. The strife of their minds was
quelled. The figure of a woman as she appears in the liturgy of the
church passed silently through the darkness: a white-robed figure,
small and slender as a boy, and with a falling girdle. Her voice, frail
and high as a boy's, was heard intoning from a distant choir the first
words of a woman which pierce the gloom and clamour of the first
chanting of the passion:

--ET TU CUM JESU GALILAEO ERAS.

And all hearts were touched and turned to her voice, shining like a
young star, shining clearer as the voice intoned the proparoxytone and
more faintly as the cadence died.

The singing ceased. They went on together, Cranly repeating in strongly
stressed rhythm the end of the refrain:

And when we are married,
O, how happy we'll be
For I love sweet Rosie O'Grady
And Rosie O'Grady loves me.

--There's real poetry for you, he said. There's real love.

He glanced sideways at Stephen with a strange smile and said:

--Do you consider that poetry? Or do you know what the words mean?

--I want to see Rosie first, said Stephen.

--She's easy to find, Cranly said.

His hat had come down on his forehead. He shoved it back and in the
shadow of the trees Stephen saw his pale face, framed by the dark, and
his large dark eyes. Yes. His face was handsome and his body was strong
and hard. He had spoken of a mother's love. He felt then the sufferings
of women, the weaknesses of their bodies and souls: and would shield
them with a strong and resolute arm and bow his mind to them.

Away then: it is time to go. A voice spoke softly to Stephen's lonely
heart, bidding him go and telling him that his friendship was coming to
an end. Yes; he would go. He could not strive against another. He knew
his part.

--Probably I shall go away, he said.

--Where? Cranly asked.

--Where I can, Stephen said.

--Yes, Cranly said. It might be difficult for you to live here now.
But is it that makes you go?

--I have to go, Stephen answered.

--Because, Cranly continued, you need not look upon yourself as driven
away if you do not wish to go or as a heretic or an outlaw. There are
many good believers who think as you do. Would that surprise you? The
church is not the stone building nor even the clergy and their dogmas.
It is the whole mass of those born into it. I don't know what you wish
to do in life. Is it what you told me the night we were standing
outside Harcourt Street station?

--Yes, Stephen said, smiling in spite of himself at Cranly's way of
remembering thoughts in connexion with places. The night you spent half
an hour wrangling with Doherty about the shortest way from Sallygap to
Larras.

--Pothead! Cranly said with calm contempt. What does he know about the
way from Sallygap to Larras? Or what does he know about anything for
that matter? And the big slobbering washing-pot head of him!

He broke into a loud long laugh.

--Well? Stephen said. Do you remember the rest?

--What you said, is it? Cranly asked. Yes, I remember it. To discover the
mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in
unfettered freedom.

Stephen raised his hat in acknowledgement.

--Freedom! Cranly repeated. But you are not free enough yet to commit
a sacrilege. Tell me would you rob?

--I would beg first, Stephen said.

--And if you got nothing, would you rob?

--You wish me to say, Stephen answered, that the rights of property
are provisional, and that in certain circumstances it is not unlawful
to rob. Everyone would act in that belief. So I will not make you that
answer. Apply to the jesuit theologian, Juan Mariana de Talavera, who
will also explain to you in what circumstances you may lawfully kill
your king and whether you had better hand him his poison in a goblet or
smear it for him upon his robe or his saddlebow. Ask me rather would I
suffer others to rob me, or if they did, would I call down upon them
what I believe is called the chastisement of the secular arm?

--And would you?

--I think, Stephen said, it would pain me as much to do so as to be
robbed.

--I see, Cranly said.

He produced his match and began to clean the crevice between two teeth.
Then he said carelessly:

--Tell me, for example, would you deflower a virgin?