Eileen had long white hands. One evening when playing tig she had put her hands over his eyes: long and white and thin and cold and soft. That was ivory: a cold white thing. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory.
— The story is very short and sweet, Mr Casey said. It was one day down in Arklow, a cold bitter day, not long before the chief died. May God have mercy on him!
He closed his eyes wearily and paused. Mr Dedalus took a bone from his plate and tore some meat from it with his teeth, saying:
— Before he was killed, you mean.
Mr Casey opened his eyes, sighed and went on:
— It was down in Arklow one day. We were down there at a meeting and after the meeting was over we had to make our way to the railway station through the crowd. Such booing and baaing, man, you never heard. They called us all the names in the world. Well there was one old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was surely, that paid all her attention to me. She kept dancing along beside me in the mud bawling and screaming into my face: Priesthunter! The Paris Funds! Mr Fox! Kitty O’Shea!
— And what did you do, John? asked Mr Dedalus.
— I let her bawl away, said Mr Casey. It was a cold day and to keep up my heart I had (saving your presence, ma’am) a quid of Tullamore in my mouth and sure I couldn’t say a word in any case because my mouth was full of tobacco juice.
— Well, John?
— Well. I let her bawl away to her heart’s content, Kitty O’Shea and the rest of it till at last she called that lady a name that I won’t sully this Christmas board nor your ears, ma’am, nor my own lips by repeating.
He paused. Mr Dedalus, lifting his head from the bone, asked:
— And what did you do, John?
— Do! said Mr Casey. She stuck her ugly old face up at me when she said it and I had my mouth full of tobacco juice. I bent down to her and Phth! says I to her like that.
He turned aside and made the act of spitting.
— Phth! says I to her like that, right into her eye.
He clapped his hand to his eye and gave a hoarse scream of pain.
— O Jesus, Mary and Joseph! says she. I’m blinded! I’m blinded and drownded!
He stopped in a fit of coughing and laughter, repeating:
— I’m blinded entirely.
Mr Dedalus laughed loudly and lay back in his chair while uncle Charles swayed his head to and fro.
Dante looked terribly angry and repeated while they laughed:
— Very nice! Ha! Very nice!
It was not nice about the spit in the woman’s eye. But what was the name the woman had called Kitty O’Shea that Mr Casey would not repeat? He thought of Mr Casey walking through the crowds of people and making speeches from a wagonette. That was what he had been in prison for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O’Neill had come to the house and had stood in the hall, talking in a low voice with his father and chewing nervously at the chinstrap of his cap. And that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but a car had come to the door and he had heard his father say something about the Cabinteely road.
He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentleman on the head with her umbrella because he had taken off his hat when the band played God save the Queen at the end.
Mr Dedalus gave a snort of contempt.
— Ah, John, he said. It is true for them. We are an unfortunate priestridden race and always were and always will be till the end of the chapter.
Uncle Charles shook his head, saying:
— A bad business! A bad business!
Mr Dedalus repeated:
— A priestridden Godforsaken race!
He pointed to the portrait of his grandfather on the wall to his right.
— Do you see that old chap up there, John? he said. He was a good Irishman when there was no money in the job. He was condemned to death as a whiteboy. But he had a saying about our clerical friends, that he would never let one of them put his two feet under his mahogany.
Dante broke in angrily:
— If we are a priestridden race we ought to be proud of it! They are the apple of God’s eye. Touch them not, says Christ, for they are the apple of My eye.
— And can we not love our country then? asked Mr Casey. Are we not to follow the man that was born to lead us?
— A traitor to his country! replied Dante. A traitor, an adulterer! The priests were right to abandon him. The priests were always the true friends of Ireland.
— Were they, faith? said Mr Casey.
He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily, protruded one finger after another.
— Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union when bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confessionbox? And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of Terence Bellew MacManus?
His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw of coarse scorn.
— O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of God’s eye!
Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:
— Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion come first.
Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:
— Mrs Riordan, don’t excite yourself answering them.
— God and religion before everything! Dante cried. God and religion before the world!
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.
— Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!
— John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coatsleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.
— No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too much God In Ireland. Away with God!
— Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost spitting in his face.
Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again, talking to him from both sides reasonably. He stared before him out of his dark flaming eyes, repeating:
— Away with God, I say!
Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table,