though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the
amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him
Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in
fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of
the place, rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible,
and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours
with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged, as the
lookeron, a student of the human soul, if anything, the others seeing least
of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other
person at all, he (Bloom) couldn't help feeling, and most properly, it was
better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot
altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in
private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a
Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence - or king's now - like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that,
he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though
such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any
shape or form, he certainly did feel, and no denying it (while inwardly
remaining what he was), a certain kind of admiration for a man who had
actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political
convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing,
off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south - have her or swing
for her - when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the
two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had
the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on
his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by
plunging his knife into her until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed
Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the
outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the
ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his
skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our
friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his
welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high.
Like actresses, always farewell - positively last performance then come up
smiling again. Generous to a fault, of course, temperamental, no economising
or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So
similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of
some #. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the
congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on.
Then as for the others, he had heard not so long before the same identical
lingo, as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the
offender.
He took umbrage at something or other, that much injured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew, and in a
heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from plain facts in the
least, told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too, and all his family,
like me, though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer
turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I
not right?
He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at the soft impeachment, with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly .
-- Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is, or, after all, any
other, secundum carnem.
-- Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both
sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though
every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it
deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast
of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality? I resent violence or
intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops
anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent
absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the
corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.
-- Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen
assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.
-- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
was overwhelmingly right and the whole world was overwhelmingly full of that
sort of thing.
-- You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely.
All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood - bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to
be about a punctilio of honour and a flag - were very largely a question of
the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy,
people never knowing when to stop.
-- They accuse - remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others,
who probably... and spoke nearer to, so as the others... in case they...
-- Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused
of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History - would
you be surprised to learn? - proves up to' the hilt Spain decayed when the
Inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an
uncommonly able ruffian, who, in other respects, has much to answer for,
imported them. Why? Because they are practical and are proved to be so. I
don't want to indulge in any... because you know the standard works on the
subject, and then, orthodox as you are... But in the economic, not touching
religion, domain, the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the
war, compared with goahead America. Turks, it's in the dogma. Because if
they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to
live better - at least, so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p.'s
raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed, with dramatic force, as
good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I
want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a
comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the
neighbourhood of #300 per annum That's the vital issue at stake and it's
feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and
man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism.
Ubi patria, as we learned a small smattering of in our classical day in Alma
Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
Over his untasteable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He
could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs
about Ringsend in the morning, burrowing quickly into all colours of
different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or
seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the
words the voice he heard said - if you work.
-- Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning to work.
The eyes were surprised at this observation, because as he, the person
who owned them pro. tem. observed, or rather, his voice speaking did: All
must work, have to, together.
-- I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the thing.
Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's
work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after
all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup
yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by
your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both
belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important.
-- You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I
may be important because I belong to the faubourg Saint Patrice called
Ireland for short.
-- I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
-- But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important
because it belongs to me.
-- What belongs? queried Mr Bloom, bending, fancying he was perhaps
under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately I didn't catch the
latter portion. What was it you?...
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee, Or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding:
-- We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.
At this pertinent suggestion, Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked
down, but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to
put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind
was clearer than the other part. Needless to say, the fumes of his recent
orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way, foreign to his
sober state. Probably the home life, to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost
importance, had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised
with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside
him, whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation
remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially
reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on
the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that
promised so brilliantly, nipped in the bud of premature decay, and nobody to
blame but themselves. For instance, there was the case of O'Callaghan, for
one, the half crazy faddist, respectably connected, though of inadequate
means, with his mad vagaries, among whose other gay doings when rotto and
making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of
ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then
the usual dØnouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got
landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a
strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as
not to be made amenable under section two of the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged, for
reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting
two and two together, six sixteen, which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to,
Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the
go in the seventies or thereabouts, even In the House of Lords, because
early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other
members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the
footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of
notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the
Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely
intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy as the law stands was terribly
down on, though not for the reason they thought they were probably, whatever
it was, except women chiefly, who were always fiddling more or less at one
another, it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies
who like distinctive underclothing should, and every well tailored man must,
trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a
genuine fillip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his
and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal
islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental.
However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who
had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their
bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.
For which and further reasons he felt it was interest and duty even to
wait on and profit by the unlooked for occasion, though why, he could not
exactly tell, being, as it was, already several shillings to the bad,
having, in fact, let himself in for it. Still, to cultivate the acquaintance
of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection
would amply repay any small... Intellectual stimulation as such was, he
felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was
the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt, of the here
today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all
went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in, especially as the
lives of the submerged tenth, viz., coalminers, divers, scavengers, etc.,
were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he
wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr
Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing. Suppose he were to pen something
out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one
guinea per column, My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter.
The pink edition, extra sporting, of the Telegraph, tell a graphic lie,
lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling
again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding
rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed to A.
Boudin, find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective
captions which came under his special province, the allembracing give us
this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to
be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or
something like that. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish #200 damages.
Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace William. Ascot
Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Captain Marshall's dark horse, Sir Hugo
, captured the blue riband at long odds. New York disaster, thousand lives
lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
So to change the subject he read about Dignam, R.I.P., which, he
reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff.
-- This morning (Hynes put it in, of course), the remains of the late
Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue,
Sandymount, for internment in Clasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most
popular and genial personality in city life and his demise, after a brief
illness, came as great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply
regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased were
present, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny)
by Messrs. H. J. O'Neill & Son, 164 North Strand road. The mourners
included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (motherinlaw), John Henry
Menton, solr., Martin Cunningham, John Power eatondph 1/8 ador dorador
douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad),
Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus, B. A., Edward J. Lambert,
Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C. P. M'Coy, - M'Intosh, and
several others.
Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line
of bitched type, but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and
Stephen Dedalus, B. A., who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their
total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh), L. Boom pointed it out to his
companion B. A., engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not
forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.
-- Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked, as soon as his
bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
-- It is, really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to
the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be
no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit
flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing the thing, there.
While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the
nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and
starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his
sidevalue 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. In specie added for entire colts and
fillies, Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway, b.h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs,
Thrale (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W.
Bass's Sceptre, 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off).
Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody's race then the
rank outsider drew to the fore got long lead, beating lord Howard de
Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile
course. Winner trained by Braine so that Lenehan's version of the business
was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1,000
sovs., with 3,000 in specie. Also ran J. de Bremond's (French horse Bantam
Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute)
Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages.
Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get
left. Of course, gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing
though, as the event turned out, the poor fool hadn't much reason to
congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced
itself to eventually.
-- There was every indication they would arrive at that, Mr Bloom said.
-- Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read,
Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in
that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was
killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time
after Committee Room No. 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to
point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their
marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he
wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of
stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake
to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.
All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their
memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels, and not
singly but in their thousands, and then complete oblivion because it was
twenty odd years. Highly unlikely, of course, there was even a shadow of
truth in the stories and, even supposing, he thought a return highly
inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his
death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his
various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether
it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots
and clothes after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a
specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid
widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they
were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course
nobody being acquainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely
no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art
thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as
Fox and Stewart, so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be
within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then, it would prey on his mind
as a born leader of men, which undoubtedly he was, and a commanding figure,
a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet,
whereas Messrs So-and-So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former
man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far
between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay. And then
seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging.
And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back - that haunting
sense kind of drew you - to show the understudy in the title râle how to. He
saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the
Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated,
and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and
he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid expression
notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the
lip - what's bred in the bone. Still, as regards return, you were a lucky
dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot
of shillyshally usually followed. Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And
then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to
produce your credentials, like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger
Charles Tichborne. Bella was the boat's name to the best of his recollection
he, the heir, went down in, as the evidence went to show, and there was a
tattoo mark too in Indian ink, Lord Bellew, was it? As he might very easily
have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up
to tally with the description given, introduce himself with, Excuse me, my
name is So-and-So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, Mr
Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished
personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of
the land first.
-- That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor
commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.
-- Fine lump of a woman, all the same, the soi-disant town-clerk, Henry
Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. I seen her picture in a barber's. Her
husband was a captain or an officer.
-- Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added. He was, and a cottonball one.
This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair
amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom, he, without the
faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and
reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest
at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the
usual affectionate letters that passed between them, full of sweet nothings.
First, it was strictly platonic till nature intervened and an attachment
sprang up between them, till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the
matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a
welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed however, who were resolved
upon encouraging his downfall though the thing was public property all along
though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently
blossomed into. Sino their names were coupled, though, since he was her
declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the
rank and file from the housetops, the fact namely, that he had shared her
bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through
the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses
swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the
act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a
ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a
fact that the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined
shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was
simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch with nothing in
common between them beyond the name and then a real man arriving on the
scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms
and forgetting home ties. The usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's
smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped
up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case,
exist between married folk? Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if
he regarded her with affection carried away by a wave of folly. A
magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, augmented obviously by gifts
of a high order as compared with the other military supernumerary, that is
(who was just the usual everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of an
individual in the light dragoons, the 18th hussars to be accurate), and
inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own
peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely
to carve his way to fame, which he almost bid fair to do till the priests
and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents and
his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural
parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that
exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his
matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head, much in the
same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind
of arrangement, all seemed a kind of dream. And the coming back was the
worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out
of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected,
Irishtown Strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years,
looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the
north side. North or south however, it was just the wellknown case of hot
passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just
bore out the very thing he was saying, as she also was Spanish or half so,
types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south,
casting every shred of decency to the winds.
-- Just bears out what I was saying, he with glowing bosom said to
Stephen. And, if I don't greatly mistake, she was Spanish too.
-- The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or
other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the
first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many.
-- Was she? Bloom ejaculated surprised, though not astonished by any
means. I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there it was,
as she lived there. So, Spain.
Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him
by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out his
pocketbook and, turning over the various contents rapidly, finally he.
-- Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a fades
photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?
Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large
sized lady, with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion, as she
was in the full bloom of womanhood, In evening dress cut ostentatiously low
for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision
of breasts, her full lips parted, and some perfect teeth, standing near,
ostensibly with gravity, a piano, on the rest of which was In old Madrid, a
ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's)
eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be
admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's premier photographic
artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution.
Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna, Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom
indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about '96. Very like her then.
Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his
legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian
Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer
having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet
sixteen. As for the face, it was a speaking likeness in expression but it
did not do justice to her figure, which came in for a lot of notice usually
and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup She could
without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on
certain opulent curves of the... He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his
spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so
happened, no later than that afternoon, he had seen those Grecian statues,
perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could
give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry. All the rest, yes,
Puritanism. It does though, St Joseph's sovereign... whereas no photo could,
because it simply wasn't art, in a word.
The spirit moving him, he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's
good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak
for itself on the plea he... so that the other could drink in the beauty for
himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the
camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional
etiquette so, though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet
wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm... And
he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of
inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless,
he sat tight, just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent
curves, none the worse for wear, however, and looked away thoughtfully with
the intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment
while gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact, the slight
soiling was only an added charm, like the case of linen slightly soiled,
good as new, much better, in fact, with the starch out. Suppose she was gone
when he?... I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but
merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning
littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic)
in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the
domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.
The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,
distinguØ, and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the
bunch, though you wouldn't think he had it in him... yet you would. Besides
he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was, though at
the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of
make-believe went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with
the usual splash page of letterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle
alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite
instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they
were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their
names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters
containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions, leaving no
loophole, to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at
some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal
course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's
Proctor to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made
absolute. But as for that, the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely
were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely
did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor, who filed a
petition for the party wronged in due course. He, Bloom, enjoyed the
distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the
thing occurred in the historic fracas when the fallen leader's - who
notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the
mantle of adultery - (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a
dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of
the Insuppressible or no it was United Ireland (a by no means, by the by,
appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or
something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the
facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation,
reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a
radically altered man, he was still a commanding figure, though carelessly
garbed as usual, with that look of settled purpose which went a long way
with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture
that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal, which
she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot
times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty
prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging
some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave
character. His hat (Parnell's) was inadvertently knocked off and, as a
matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush
after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it
to him he did with the utmost celerity) who, panting and hatless and whose
thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born
with a stake in the country, he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it
more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone,
instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing
what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and
thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir though in a very
different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose
headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history
repeating itself with a difference; after the burial of a mutual friend when
they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed
his remains to the grave.
On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes
of the cabmen and so on, who passed it all off as a jest, laughing
immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the
wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for
the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband
happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual
boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a
loving position locked in one another's arms drawing attention to their
illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair
one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising
to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the
aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones, with
tears in her eyes, though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the
same time, as quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being
of a sceptical bias, believed, and didn't make the smallest bones about
saying so either, that man, or men in the plural, were always hanging around
on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in
the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument,
when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life, and was
on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on
her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on
another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married women
getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous
cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.
It was a thousand pities a young fellow blessed with an allowance of
brains, as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with
profligate women, who might present him with a nice dose to last him his
lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto
himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies'
society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible
doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about Miss
Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down
to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find much
satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of
smirking misses without a penny to their names bi- or tri-weekly with the
orthodox preliminary canter of complimentpaying and walking out leading up
to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and
homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too
bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the
elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father. But
something substantial he certainly ought to eat, were it only an eggflip
made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty
Dumpty boiled.
-- At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and
tired though unwrinkled face.
-- Some time yesterday, Stephen said.
-- Yesterday, exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already
tomorrow, Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve!
-- The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.
Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence, Bloom reflected.
Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything, a certain analogy there
somehow was, as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one
train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of
years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary honours
in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which was a
source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for those
same ultra ideas. For instance, when the evicted tenants' question, then at
its first inception, bulked largely in people's minds though, it goes
without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to
its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in
principle, at all events, was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession,
as voicing the trend of modern Opinion, a partiality, however, which,
realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of, and even was
twitted with going a step further than Michael Davitt in the striking views
he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he
strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion at the
gathering of the clans in Bar