A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
—Now then, Stephen, he said, you must put your shoulder to the wheel,
old chap. You’ve had a fine long holiday.
—O, I’m sure he’ll work very hard now, said Mrs Dedalus, especially
when he has Maurice with him.
—O, Holy Paul, I forgot about Maurice, said Mr Dedalus. Here, Maurice!
Come here, you thick-headed ruffian! Do you know I’m going to send you
to a college where they’ll teach you to spell c.a.t. cat. And I’ll buy
you a nice little penny handkerchief to keep your nose dry. Won’t that
be grand fun?
Maurice grinned at his father and then at his brother.
Mr Dedalus screwed his glass into his eye and stared hard at both his
sons. Stephen mumbled his bread without answering his father’s gaze.
—By the bye, said Mr Dedalus at length, the rector, or provincial
rather, was telling me that story about you and Father Dolan. You’re an
impudent thief, he said.
—O, he didn’t, Simon!
—Not he! said Mr Dedalus. But he gave me a great account of the whole
affair. We were chatting, you know, and one word borrowed another. And,
by the way, who do you think he told me will get that job in the
corporation? But I’ll tell you that after. Well, as I was saying, we
were chatting away quite friendly and he asked me did our friend here
wear glasses still, and then he told me the whole story.
—And was he annoyed, Simon?
—Annoyed? Not he! _Manly little chap!_ he said.
Mr Dedalus imitated the mincing nasal tone of the provincial.
Father Dolan and I, when I told them all at dinner about it, Father
Dolan and I had a great laugh over it. _You better mind yourself,
Father Dolan_, said I, _or young Dedalus will send you up for twice
nine_. We had a famous laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Mr Dedalus turned to his wife and interjected in his natural voice:
—Shows you the spirit in which they take the boys there. O, a jesuit
for your life, for diplomacy!
He reassumed the provincial’s voice and repeated:
—I told them all at dinner about it and Father Dolan and I and all of
us we had a hearty laugh together over it. Ha! Ha! Ha!
The night of the Whitsuntide play had come and Stephen from the window
of the dressingroom looked out on the small grassplot across which
lines of Chinese lanterns were stretched. He watched the visitors come
down the steps from the house and pass into the theatre. Stewards in
evening dress, old Belvedereans, loitered in groups about the entrance
to the theatre and ushered in the visitors with ceremony. Under the
sudden glow of a lantern he could recognise the smiling face of a
priest.
The Blessed Sacrament had been removed from the tabernacle and the
first benches had been driven back so as to leave the dais of the altar
and the space before it free. Against the walls stood companies of
barbells and Indian clubs; the dumbbells were piled in one corner: and
in the midst of countless hillocks of gymnasium shoes and sweaters and
singlets in untidy brown parcels there stood the stout leatherjacketed
vaulting horse waiting its turn to be carried up on the stage and set
in the middle of the winning team at the end of the gymnastic display.
Stephen, though in deference to his reputation for essay writing he had
been elected secretary to the gymnasium, had had no part in the first
section of the programme but in the play which formed the second
section he had the chief part, that of a farcical pedagogue. He had
been cast for it on account of his stature and grave manners for he was
now at the end of his second year at Belvedere and in number two.
A score of the younger boys in white knickers and singlets came
pattering down from the stage, through the vestry and into the chapel.
The vestry and chapel were peopled with eager masters and boys. The
plump bald sergeant major was testing with his foot the springboard of
the vaulting horse. The lean young man in a long overcoat, who was to
give a special display of intricate club swinging, stood near watching
with interest, his silver-coated clubs peeping out of his deep
sidepockets. The hollow rattle of the wooden dumbbells was heard as
another team made ready to go up on the stage: and in another moment
the excited prefect was hustling the boys through the vestry like a
flock of geese, flapping the wings of his soutane nervously and crying
to the laggards to make haste. A little troop of Neapolitan peasants
were practising their steps at the end of the chapel, some circling
their arms above their heads, some swaying their baskets of paper
violets and curtseying. In a dark corner of the chapel at the gospel
side of the altar a stout old lady knelt amid her copious black skirts.
When she stood up a pinkdressed figure, wearing a curly golden wig and
an oldfashioned straw sunbonnet, with black pencilled eyebrows and
cheeks delicately rouged and powdered, was discovered. A low murmur of
curiosity ran round the chapel at the discovery of this girlish figure.
One of the prefects, smiling and nodding his head, approached the dark
corner and, having bowed to the stout old lady, said pleasantly:
—Is this a beautiful young lady or a doll that you have here, Mrs
Tallon?
Then, bending down to peer at the smiling painted face under the leaf
of the bonnet, he exclaimed:
—No! Upon my word I believe it’s little Bertie Tallon after all!
Stephen at his post by the window heard the old lady and the priest
laugh together and heard the boys’ murmurs of admiration behind him as
they passed forward to see the little boy who had to dance the
sunbonnet dance by himself. A movement of impatience escaped him. He
let the edge of the blind fall and, stepping down from the bench on
which he had been standing, walked out of the chapel.
He passed out of the schoolhouse and halted under the shed that flanked
the garden. From the theatre opposite came the muffled noise of the
audience and sudden brazen clashes of the soldiers’ band. The light
spread upwards from the glass roof making the theatre seem a festive
ark, anchored among the hulks of houses, her frail cables of lanterns
looping her to her moorings. A side door of the theatre opened suddenly
and a shaft of light flew across the grassplots. A sudden burst of
music issued from the ark, the prelude of a waltz: and when the side
door closed again the listener could hear the faint rhythm of the
music. The sentiment of the opening bars, their languor and supple
movement, evoked the incommunicable emotion which had been the cause of
all his day’s unrest and of his impatient movement of a moment before.
His unrest issued from him like a wave of sound: and on the tide of
flowing music the ark was journeying, trailing her cables of lanterns
in her wake. Then a noise like dwarf artillery broke the movement. It
was the clapping that greeted the entry of the dumbbell team on the
stage.
At the far end of the shed near the street a speck of pink light showed
in the darkness and as he walked towards it he became aware of a faint
aromatic odour. Two boys were standing in the shelter of a doorway,
smoking, and before he reached them he had recognised Heron by his
voice.
—Here comes the noble Dedalus! cried a high throaty voice. Welcome to
our trusty friend!
This welcome ended in a soft peal of mirthless laughter as Heron
salaamed and then began to poke the ground with his cane.
—Here I am, said Stephen, halting and glancing from Heron to his
friend.
The latter was a stranger to him but in the darkness, by the aid of the
glowing cigarette tips, he could make out a pale dandyish face over
which a smile was travelling slowly, a tall overcoated figure and a
hard hat. Heron did not trouble himself about an introduction but said
instead:
—I was just telling my friend Wallis what a lark it would be tonight if
you took off the rector in the part of the schoolmaster. It would be a
ripping good joke.
Heron made a poor attempt to imitate for his friend Wallis the rector’s
pedantic bass and then, laughing at his failure, asked Stephen to do
it.
—Go on, Dedalus, he urged, you can take him off rippingly. _He that
will not hear the churcha let him be to theea as the heathena and the
publicana._
The imitation was prevented by a mild expression of anger from Wallis
in whose mouthpiece the cigarette had become too tightly wedged.
—Damn this blankety blank holder, he said, taking it from his mouth and
smiling and frowning upon it tolerantly. It’s always getting stuck like
that. Do you use a holder?
—I don’t smoke, answered Stephen.
—No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesn’t smoke and he
doesn’t go to bazaars and he doesn’t flirt and he doesn’t damn anything
or damn all.
Stephen shook his head and smiled in his rival’s flushed and mobile
face, beaked like a bird’s. He had often thought it strange that
Vincent Heron had a bird’s face as well as a bird’s name. A shock of
pale hair lay on the forehead like a ruffled crest: the forehead was
narrow and bony and a thin hooked nose stood out between the closeset
prominent eyes which were light and inexpressive. The rivals were
school friends. They sat together in class, knelt together in the
chapel, talked together after beads over their lunches. As the fellows
in number one were undistinguished dullards, Stephen and Heron had been
during the year the virtual heads of the school. It was they who went
up to the rector together to ask for a free day or to get a fellow off.
—O by the way, said Heron suddenly, I saw your governor going in.
The smile waned on Stephen’s face. Any allusion made to his father by a
fellow or by a master put his calm to rout in a moment. He waited in
timorous silence to hear what Heron might say next. Heron, however,
nudged him expressively with his elbow and said:
—You’re a sly dog.
—Why so? said Stephen.
—You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, said Heron. But I’m
afraid you’re a sly dog.
—Might I ask you what you are talking about? said Stephen urbanely.
—Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her, Wallis, didn’t we? And
deucedly pretty she is too. And inquisitive! _And what part does
Stephen take, Mr Dedalus? And will Stephen not sing, Mr Dedalus?_ Your
governor was staring at her through that eyeglass of his for all he was
worth so that I think the old man has found you out too. I wouldn’t
care a bit, by Jove. She’s ripping, isn’t she, Wallis?
—Not half bad, answered Wallis quietly as he placed his holder once
more in a corner of his mouth.
A shaft of momentary anger flew through Stephen’s mind at these
indelicate allusions in the hearing of a stranger. For him there was
nothing amusing in a girl’s interest and regard. All day he had thought
of nothing but their leavetaking on the steps of the tram at Harold’s
Cross, the stream of moody emotions it had made to course through him
and the poem he had written about it. All day he had imagined a new
meeting with her for he knew that she was to come to the play. The old
restless moodiness had again filled his breast as it had done on the
night of the party, but had not found an outlet in verse. The growth
and knowledge of two years of boyhood stood between then and now,
forbidding such an outlet: and all day the stream of gloomy tenderness
within him had started forth and returned upon itself in dark courses
and eddies, wearying him in the end until the pleasantry of the prefect
and the painted little boy had drawn from him a movement of impatience.
—So you may as well admit, Heron went on, that we’ve fairly found you
out this time. You can’t play the saint on me any more, that’s one sure
five.
A soft peal of mirthless laughter escaped from his lips and, bending
down as before, he struck Stephen lightly across the calf of the leg
with his cane, as if in jesting reproof.