Ulysses
upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but
the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but,
more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at
duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob’s
pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you
may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some
paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is
breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a
tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about
him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own
child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the
bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child
of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her
luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two
raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly!
He will never forget the name, ever remember the night: first night,
the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer
with the willed, and in an instant (_fiat!_) light shall flood the
world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath ’twas
done but—hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away
through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night.
She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and
memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was
taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is
none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over
regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey
twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields,
shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her
mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight
phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim
shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull.
They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home
of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more.
And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of
rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks
behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are
scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and
mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, _Lacus Mortis_. Ominous
revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned
and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the
giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all
their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.
Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible
gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine
portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven’s
own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo,
wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger
of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost
one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she
now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan
hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you
call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and
loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on
currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply
swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a
myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled
sign upon the forehead of Taurus.
Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at
school together in Conmee’s time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades,
Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the
past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them
into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to
my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending
bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair
with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those
leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something
more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your
genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to
see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you
Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent
Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He
could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man’s face grew dark.
All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and
of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the
noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on
Sceptre for a whim of the rider’s name: Lenehan as much more. He told
them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran
out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts
were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her
scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run
home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level,
reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her
eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover
consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some
oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking
fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three
today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous
buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it
as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said
with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this
hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do
you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today,
Vincent said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair
beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the
right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air
drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In
the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of
those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his
booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm
with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I
pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but
today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then.
Her posies too! Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we
reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who
met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the
hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty
letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature
turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight
disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very
trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo
in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he
had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor
luck with Bass’s mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more
propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and
withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label.
Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far
away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be
born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the
incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos
told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian
priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the
moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha of
the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were
therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
constellation.
However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which
was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was
not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above
was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of
animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody
that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty
speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts
he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled
by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated
amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was
certainly calculated to attract anyone’s remark on account of its
scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently
transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an
altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment
before’s observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two
or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as
mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both
their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other
was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily
determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the
neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid
sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out
with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of
attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it
about the place.
The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the
course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The
debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on
the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne’s house had never
beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old
rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so
encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at
the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing
from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to
him, was Lynch whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early
depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place
assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in
stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident
indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the
figure of Bannon in explorer’s kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide
brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred
manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the
board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of
pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of
Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated