Stephen Hero Read online

  — Bloody cod of a speech, said Temple … I’m a rationalist. I don’t b’lieve in any religion.

  — I think he meant part of his speech kindly, said Cranly slowly after a pause, turning his face full towards Stephen. Stephen answered his gaze, [and met] looking steadily into a pair of bright dark eyes, and at the moment when their eyes met he felt hope. There was nothing in the phrase to encourage; he doubted its justice very much: yet he knew that hope had touched him. He walked on beside the four young men, pondering. Cranly stopped before the window of a little huckster’s shop in one of the mean streets through which they passed, staring fixedly at an old yellow copy of the Daily Graphic which was hanging sideways on the glass. The illustration was a winter scene. No-one said anything and as silence seemed about to set in permanently Madden asked him what he was looking at. Cranly looked at his questioner and then looked back again at the dirty picture, towards which he nodded his head heavily:

  — What is … what is? asked Temple, who had been looking at some cold crubeens * in the next window.

  Cranly turned his vacant face again towards his questioner and pointed to the picture, saying:

  — Feuc an eis super stradam … in Liverpoolio.†

  Stephen’s family circle was now increased by Isabel’s return from her convent. For some time she had been in delicate health and the nuns had recommended that she should have home care. She came home a few days after the famous day of Stephen’s paper. Stephen was standing at the little front window that looked towards the mouth of the river when he saw his parents walking from the tram with a thin pale girl walking between them. Stephen’s father did not like the prospect of another inhabitant in his house, particularly a daughter for whom he had little affection. He was annoyed that his daughter would not avail herself of the opportunity afforded her in the convent, but his sense of public duty was real if spasmodic and he would by no means permit his wife to bring the girl home without his aid. The reflection that his daughter, instead of being a help to him would be a hindrance, and the suspicion that the burden of responsibility which he had piously imposed on his eldest son’s shoulders was beginning to irk that young man troubled his vision of the future. He had a taste for contrasts, perhaps, which led him to expect industry and sobriety in his offspring, [and] but it cannot be said that he desired any material re-exaltation. It was just this impalpable excellence which he wished his son to assert again in the teeth of circumstances which gained him a conditional pardon at Stephen’s hands. But this slight threat of union between father and son had been worn away by the usages of daily life and, by reason of its tenuity and of the [failure] gradual rustiness which had begun to consume the upper station, it bore fewer and feebler messages along it.

  Stephen’s father was quite capable of talking himself into believing what he knew to be untrue. He knew that his own ruin had been his own handiwork but he had talked himself into believing that it was the handiwork of others. He had his son’s distaste for responsibility without his son’s courage. He was one of those illogical wiseacres with whom no evidence can outreason the first impression. His wife had fulfilled her duties to him with startling literalness and yet she had never been able to expiate the offence of her blood. Misunderstanding such as this, which is accepted as natural in higher social grades, is wrongly refused recognition in the burgher class where it is often found to issue in feuds of insatiable, narrow hatred. Mr Daedalus hated his wife’s maiden name with a medieval intensity: it stunk in his nostrils. His alliance therewith was the only sin of which, in the entire honesty of his cowardice, he could accuse himself. Now that he was making for the final decades of life with the painful consciousness of having diminished comfortable goods and of having accumulated uncomfortable habits he consoled and revenged himself by tirades so prolonged and so often repeated that he was in danger of becoming a monomaniac. The hearth at night was the sacred witness of these revenges, pondered, muttered, growled and execrated. The exception which his clemency had originally made in favour of his wife was soon out of mind and she began to irritate him by her dutiful symbolism. The great disappointment of his life was accentuated by a lesser and keener loss — the loss of a coveted fame. On account of a certain income and of certain sociable gifts Mr Daedalus had been accustomed to regard himself as the centre of a little world, the darling of a little society. This position he still strove to maintain but at the cost of a reckless liberality from which his household had to suffer both in deed and in spirit. He imagined that while he strove to retain this infatuating position his home affairs would, through the agency of a son whom he made no effort to understand, in some divine manner right themselves. This hope when indulged in would sometimes embitter his affection for a son whom he thereby acknowledged as superior but, now that he was led to suspect that his hope was fatuous, an embitterment of that affection seemed likely to fix itself permanently among his emotional landmarks. His son’s notion of aristocracy was not the one which he could sympathise with and his son’s silence during the domestic battles no longer seemed to him a conveyed compliment. He was, in fact, sufficiently acute to observe here a covert menace against castellar rights and he would not have been wrong if he had imagined that his son regarded [these] assistance at these tortuous and obscene monologues as the tribute exacted by a father for affording a wayward child a base of supplies …

  Stephen did not consider his parents very seriously. In his opinion they had opened up misleading and unnatural relations between themselves and him and he considered their affection for him requited by a studious demeanour towards them and by a genuine goodwill to perform for them a great number of such material services as, in his present state of fierce idealism, he could look upon as trifles. The only material services he would refuse them were those which he judged to be spiritually dangerous and it is as well to admit that this exception all but nullified his charity for he had cultivated an independence of the soul which could brook very few subjections. Divine exemplars abetted him in this. The phrase which preachers elaborate into a commandment of obedience seemed to him meagre, ironical and inconclusive and the narrative of the life of Jesus did not in any way impress him [with] as the narrative of the life of one who was subject to others. When he had been a Roman Catholic in the proper sense of the term the figure of Jesus had always seemed to him too « remote and too passionless » and he had never uttered from his heart a single fervent prayer to the Redeemer: it was to Mary, as to a « weaker and more engaging vessel » of salvation, that he had entrusted his spiritual affairs. Now his enfranchisement from the discipline of the Church seemed to be coincident with an [natural] instinctive return to the Founder thereof and this impulse would have led him perhaps to a consideration of the merits of Protestantism had not another natural impulse inclined him to bring even the self-contradictory and the absurd into order. He did not know, besides, whether the « haughtiness of the Papacy was not as derivable from Jesus himself as the reluctance » to be pressed beyond “Amen: I say to you” for an account of anything but he was quite sure that behind the enigmatic utterances of Jesus there was a very much more definite conception than any which could be supposed [to] discoverable behind Protestant theology:

  — Put this in your diary, he said to transcriptive Maurice. Protestant Orthodoxy is like Lanty McHale’s dog: it goes a bit of the road with everyone.

  — It seems to me that S. Paul trained that dog, said Maurice.

  One day when Stephen had gone to the College by accident he found McCann standing in the hall holding a long testimonial. Another part of the testimonial was on the hall-table and nearly all the young men in the College were signing their names to it. McCann was speaking volubly to a little group and Stephen discovered that the testimonial was the tribute of Dublin University students to the Tsar of Russia. World-wide peace: solution of all disputes by arbitration: general disarming of the nations: these were the benefits for which the students were returning their thanks. On the hall table there were two photog
raphs, one of the Tsar of Russia, the other of the Editor of the Review of Reviews: both of the photographs were signed by the famous couple. As McCann was standing sideways to the light Stephen amused himself in tracing a resemblance between him and the pacific Emperor whose photograph had been taken in profile. The Tsar’s air of besotted Christ moved him to scorn and he turned for support to Cranly who was standing beside the door. Cranly wore a very dirty yellow straw hat of the shape of an inverted bucket in the shelter of which his face was composed to a glaucuous [sic] calm.

  — Doesn’t he look a wirrasthrue Jaysus? said Stephen pointing to the Tsar’s photograph and using the Dublin version of the name as an effective common noun.

  Cranly looked in the direction of McCann and replied, nodding his head:

  — Wirrasthrue Jaysus and hairy Jaysus.

  At that moment McCann caught sight of Stephen and signalled that he would be with him in a moment:

  — Have you signed? asked Cranly.

  — This thing? No — have you?

  Cranly hesitated and then brought out a well deliberated ‘Yes.’

  — What for?

  — What for?

  — Ay.

  — For … Pax.

  Stephen looked up under the bucket-shaped hat but could read no expression on his neighbour’s face. His eyes wandered up to the dinged vertex of the hat.

  — In the name of God what do you wear that hat for? It’s not so terribly hot, is it? he asked.

  Cranly took off the hat slowly and gazed into its depths. After a little pause he pointed into it and said:

  — Viginti-uno denarios.

  — Where? said Stephen.

  — I bought it, said Cranly very impressively and very flatly, last summer in Wickla.

  He looked back into the hat and said, « smiling with a sour affection; »

  — It’s not … too bloody bad … of a hat … D’ye know.

  And he replaced it on his head slowly, murmuring to himself, from force of habit ‘Viginti-uno denarios.’

  — Sicut bucketus est, said Stephen.

  The subject was not discussed further. Cranly produced a little grey ball from one of his pockets and began to examine it carefully, indenting the surface at many points. Stephen was watching this operation when he heard McCann addressing him.

  — I want you to sign this testimonial.

  — What about?

  — It’s a testimonial of admiration for the courage displayed by the Tsar of Russia in issuing a rescript to the Powers, advocating arbitration instead of war as a means of settling national disputes.

  Stephen shook his head. Temple who had been wandering round the hall in search of sympathy came over at this moment and said to Stephen:

  — Do you believe in peace?

  No-one answered him.

  — So you won’t sign? said McCann.

  Stephen shook his head again:

  — Why not? said McCann sharply.

  — If we must have a Jesus, answered Stephen, let us have a legitimate Jesus.

  — By hell! I said Temple laughing, that’s good. Did you hear that? he said to Cranly and McCann both of whom he seemed to regard as very hard of hearing. D’you hear that? Legitima’ Jesus!

  — I presume then you approve of war and slaughter, said McCann.

  — I did not make the world, said Stephen.

  — By hell! said Temple to Cranly. I believe in universal brotherhood. ’Scuse me, he said, turning to McCann, do you believe in universal brotherhood?

  McCann took no heed of the question but continued addressing Stephen. He began an argument in favour of peace which Temple listened to for a few moments, but, as he spoke with his back to Temple, that revolutionary young man who could not hear him very well began to wander round the hall again. Stephen did not argue with McCann but at a convenient pause he said:

  — I have no intention of signing.

  McCann halted and Cranly said, taking Stephen’s arm:

  — Nos ad manum ballum jocabimus.

  — All right, said McCann promptly, as if he was accustomed to rebuffs, if you won’t, you won’t.

  He went off to get more signatures for the Tsar while Cranly and Stephen went out into the garden. The ball-alley was deserted so they arranged a match of twenty, Cranly allowing Stephen seven points. Stephen had not had much practice at the game and so he was only seventeen when Cranly cried out ‘Game Ball.’ He lost the second game also. Cranly was a strong, accurate player but Stephen thought too heavy of foot to be a brilliant one. While they were playing Madden came into the alley and sat down on an old box. He was much more excited than either of the players and kept kicking the box with his heels and crying out “Now, Cranly! Now, Cranly!” “But it, Stevie!” Cranly who had to serve the third game put the ball over the side of the alley into Lord Iveagh’s grounds and the game had to wait while he went in search of it. Stephen sat down on his heels beside Madden and they both looked up at the figure of Cranly who was holding on to the netting and making signals to one of the gardeners from the top of the wall. Madden took out smoking materials:

  — Are you and Cranly long here?

  — Not long, said Stephen.

  Madden began to stuff very coarse tobacco into his pipe:

  — D’ye know what, Stevie?

  — What?

  — Hughes … doesn’t like you … at all. I heard him speaking of you to someone.

  — ‘Someone’ is vague.

  — He doesn’t like you at all.

  — His enthusiasm carries him away, said Stephen.

  On the evening of the Saturday before Palm Sunday Stephen found himself alone with Cranly. The two were leaning over the marble staircase of the Library, idly watching the people coming in and going out. The big windows in front of them were thrown and the mild air [entered] came through: [them]

  — Do you like the services of Holy Week? said Stephen.

  — Yes, said Cranly.

  — They are wonderful, said Stephen. Tenebrae — it’s so damned childish to frighten us by knocking prayerbooks on a bench. Isn’t it strange to see the Mass of the Presanctified — no lights or vestments, the altar naked, the door of the tabernacle gaping open, the priests lying prostrate on the altar steps?

  — Yes, said Cranly.

  — Don’t you think the Reader who begins the mass is a strange person. No-one knows where he comes from: he has no connection with the mass. He comes out by himself and opens a book at the right hand side of the altar and when he has read the lesson he closes the book and goes away as he came. Isn’t he strange?

  — Yes, said Cranly.

  — You know how his lesson begins? Dixit enim Dominus: * in tribulatione sua consurgent ad me; venite et revertamur ad Dominum.

  He chanted the opening of the lesson in mezza voce and his voice went flowing down the staircase and round the circular hall, each tone coming back upon the ear enriched and softened.

  — He pleads, said Stephen. He is what that chalk-faced chap was for me, advocatus diaboli. Jesus has no friend on Good Friday. Do you know what kind of a figure rises before me on Good Friday?

  — What kind?

  — An ugly little man who has taken into his body the sins of the world.* Something between Socrates and a Gnostic Christ — A Christ of the Dark Ages. That’s what his mission of redemption has got for him: a crooked ugly body for which neither God nor man have pity. Jesus is on strange terms with that father of his. His father seems to me something of a snob. Do you notice that he never notices his son publicly but once — when Jesus is in full dress on the top of Thabor?

  — I don’t like Holy Thursday much, said Cranly.

  — Neither do I. There are too many mammas and daughters going chapel-hunting. The chapel smells too much of flowers and hot candles and women. Besides girls praying put me off my stroke.

  — Do you like Holy Saturday?

  — The service is always too early but I like it.

  — I like it.
r />   — Yes, the Church seems to have thought the matter over and to be saying “Well, after all, you see, it’s morning now and he wasn’t so dead as we thought he was.” The corpse has become a paschal candle with five grains of incense stuck in it instead of its five wounds. The three faithful Mary’s too who thought all was over on Friday have a candle each. The bells ring and the service is full of irrelevant alleluias.† It’s rather a technical affair, blessing this, that and the other but it’s cheerfully ceremonious.

  — But you don’t imagine the damned fools of people see anything in these services, do you?

  — Do they not? said Stephen.

  — Bah, said Cranly.

  One of Cranly’s friends came up the stairs while they were talking. He was a young man who was by day a clerk in Guinness’s Brewery and by night a student of mental and moral philosophy in the night classes of the College. It was, of course, Cranly who had induced him to attend. This young man, who was named Glynn, was unable to keep his head steady as he suffered from inherited nervousness and his hands trembled very much whenever he tried to do anything with them. He spoke with nervous hesitations and seemed to obtain satisfaction only in the methodic stamp of his feet. He was a low-sized young man, with a nigger’s face and the curly black head of a nigger. He usually carried an umbrella and his conversation was for the most part a translation of commonplaces into polysyllabic phrases. This habit he cultivated partly because it saved him from the inconvenience of cerebrating at the normal rate and perhaps because he considered it was the channel best fitted for his peculiar humour.

  — Here is Professor Bloody-Big-Umbrella Glynn, said Cranly.

  — Good evening, Gentlemen, said Glynn, bowing.

  — Good … evening, said Cranly vacantly. Well, yes … it is a good evening.

  — I can see, said Glynn shaking a trembling forefinger in reproof, I can see that you are about to make obvious remarks.

  On Spy Wednesday night Cranly and Stephen attended the office of Tenebrae in the Pro-Cathedral. They went round to the back of the altar and knelt behind the students from Clonliffe who were chanting the office. Stephen was right opposite Wells and he observed the great change which a surplice made in that young man’s appearance. Stephen did not like the office which was gabbled over quickly. He said to Cranly that the chapel with its polished benches and incandescent lamps reminded him of an insurance office. Cranly arranged that on Good Friday they should attend the office in the Carmelite Church, Whitefriar’s St where, he said, the office was much more homely. Cranly accompanied Stephen part of the way home and explained very minutely, using his large hands for the purpose, all the merits of Wicklow bacon.