Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner : so : imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.
– Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?
– Yes, sir.
In long shady strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris : subjective and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.
Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts : secrets weary of their tyranny : tyrants willing to be dethroned.
The sum was done.
– It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.
– Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.
He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his desk.
– You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he followed towards the door the boy’s graceless form.
– Yes, sir.
In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.
– Sargent !
– Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.
He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white moustache.
– What is it now? he cried continually without listening.
– Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen cried.
– Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore order here.
And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man’s voice cried sternly :
– What is the matter? What is it now?
Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides : their many forms closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.
Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog : and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles : world without end.
A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table.
– First, our little financial settlement, he said.
He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table strapping and – Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.
And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar : whelks and money, cowries and leopard shells : and this, whorled as an emir’s turban, and this, the scallop of Saint James. An old pilgrim’s hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.
A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.
– Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings, sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.
He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.
– Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right.
– Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.
– No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.
Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery.
– Don’t carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You’ll pull it out somewhere and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You’ll find them very handy.
Answer something.
– Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.
The same room and hour, the same wisdom : and I the same. Three times now. Three nooses round me here. Well. I can break them in this instant if I will.
– Because you don’t save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don’t know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse.
– Iago, Stephen murmured.
He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man’s stare.
– He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet. but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman’s mouth?
The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay : history is to blame : on me and on my words, unhating.
– That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.
– Ba ! Mr Deasy cried. That’s not English. A French Celt said that.
He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.
– I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way. Goood man, good man.
– I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you?
Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Köhler, three guineas, Mrs McKernan, five weeks’ borard. The lump I have is useless.
– For the moment, no, Stephen answered.
Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.
– I knew you couldn’t, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be just.
– I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a man in tartan fillibegs : Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
– You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connell’s time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O’Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.
Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters’ covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down.
Stephen sketched a brief gesture.
– I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I