Complete Works of James Joyce Read Online Free PDF Page B

cabbage of a cold winter’s day. O Johnny!
    He twisted his features into a grimace of heavy bestiality and made a lapping noise with his lips.
      — Really, Simon, you should not speak that way before Stephen. It’s not right.
      — O, he’ll remember all this when he grows up, said Dante hotly — the language he heard against God and religion and priests in his own home.
      — Let him remember too, cried Mr Casey to her from across the table, the language with which the priests and the priests’ pawns broke Parnell’s heart and hounded him into his grave. Let him remember that too when he grows up.
      — Sons of bitches! cried Mr Dedalus. When he was down they turned on him to betray him and rend him like rats in a sewer. Low-lived dogs! And they look it! By Christ, they look it!
      — They behaved rightly, cried Dante. They obeyed their bishops and their priests. Honour to them!
      — Well, it is perfectly dreadful to say that not even for one day in the year, said Mrs Dedalus, can we be free from these dreadful disputes!
    Uncle Charles raised his hands mildly and said:
      — Come now, come now, come now! Can we not have our opinions whatever they are without this bad temper and this bad language? It is too bad surely.
    Mrs Dedalus spoke to Dante in a low voice but Dante said loudly:
      — I will not say nothing. I will defend my church and my religion when it is insulted and spit on by renegade catholics.
    Mr Casey pushed his plate rudely into the middle of the table and, resting his elbows before him, said in a hoarse voice to his host:
      — Tell me, did I tell you that story about a very famous spit?
      — You did not, John, said Mr Dedalus.
      — Why then, said Mr Casey, it is a most instructive story. It happened not long ago in the county Wicklow where we are now.
    He broke off and, turning towards Dante, said with quiet indignation:
      — And I may tell you, ma’am, that I, if you mean me, am no renegade catholic. I am a catholic as my father was and his father before him and his father before him again, when we gave up our lives rather than sell our faith.
      — The more shame to you now, Dante said, to speak as you do.
      — The story, John, said Mr Dedalus smiling. Let us have the story anyhow.
      — Catholic indeed! repeated Dante ironically. The blackest protestant in the land would not speak the language I have heard this evening.
    Mr Dedalus began to sway his head to and fro, crooning like a country singer.
      — I am no protestant, I tell you again, said Mr Casey, flushing.
    Mr Dedalus, still crooning and swaying his head, began to sing in a grunting nasal tone:
     
    O, come all you Roman catholics That never went to mass.
     
    He took up his knife and fork again in good humour and set to eating, saying to Mr Casey:
      — Let us have the story, John. It will help us to digest.
    Stephen looked with affection at Mr Casey’s face which stared across the table over his joined hands. He liked to sit near him at the fire, looking up at his dark fierce face. But his dark eyes were never fierce and his slow voice was good to listen to. But why was he then against the priests? Because Dante must be right then. But he had heard his father say that she was a spoiled nun and that she had come out of the convent in the Alleghanies when her brother had got the money from the savages for the trinkets and the chainies. Perhaps that made her severe against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because Eileen was a protestant and when she was young she knew children that used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of the litany of the Blessed Virgin. TOWER OF IVORY, they used to say, HOUSE OF GOLD! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then? And he remembered the evening in the infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead and the moan of sorrow from the people when they had heard.
    Eileen had