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Ulysses

James Joyce

Section 44 of 74 - Table of Contents
Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little
fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion
with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient
point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the
obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a
questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not
achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but
contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever
done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. MAIS BIEN SUR,
noble stranger, said he cheerily, ET MILLE COMPLIMENTS. That you may and
very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity.
But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a
cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it
in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers
above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With
these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent
draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out
popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he
had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those
features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but
beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her
dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she
told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a
tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by
generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an
enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in
all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy
will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh
of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the
locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent
Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal
must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free
and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the
heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed,
sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our
sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that
foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to
think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of
us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his
forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a
MARCHAND DE CAPOTES, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as
snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut,
tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that
most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle AVEC LUI
in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape
Horn, VENTRE BICHE, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the
stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, SANS BLAGUE,
has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to
another world. Pooh! A LIVRE! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are
dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is
worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear
Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she
would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me
(blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to
snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine
blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household
word that IL Y A DEUX CHOSES for which the innocence of our original
garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest,
nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty
philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently
tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath
... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse
which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while
all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and,
having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a
profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party
of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not
less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the
most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of
ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A
monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you.
What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr
Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice.
Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I
look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any
time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in
the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest
squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me,
I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father
Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried
Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a
white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however,
rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just
then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had
been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was
ENCEINTE which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given
birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who,
without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling
profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest
power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need
were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble
exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious
incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such
an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the
astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can
befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of
the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and
where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of
Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present
on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all
and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design
which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his
bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a
horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son
of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was
always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most
particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to
a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on
with a loving heart.

To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of
some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits
of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The
young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown
children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly
understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous MOTS were
such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously
sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits
spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome
language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a
cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and
thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the
dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as
to put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain
desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the
middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand
vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man
of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a
rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution,
foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds
jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To
those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a
habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede
neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding:
while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there
remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to
beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel
with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the
gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer
expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to
pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when
she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's
words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be
owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so
auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the
mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being.

Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express
his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express
one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not
to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement
since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy
young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or
at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must
acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a
resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again
today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a
request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him
hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife,
I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old
bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to
praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade
held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the
man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant
vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the
guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis
possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting
theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere
acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of
time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art
which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further
added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress
them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh
together.

But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has
this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to
civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal
polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled?
During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with
his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to
discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will
while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he
forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from
being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if
report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from
candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of
a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue
but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his
interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been too
long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to
his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the
desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety,
who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit
intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of
society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel,
it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question
of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's
hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort
couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes
him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies
fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty
is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense
his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore
to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist
better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the
repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd
suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected
and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at
his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve
and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more
temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that
comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative.

The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial
usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior
medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation
that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women's
apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the
presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members
of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the
delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and
hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the
simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier,
broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr
Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain.
The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness
which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every
phase of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal
repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with
respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother,
the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by
the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of
the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty
touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or
dissimulated, the acardiac FOETUS IN FOETU and aprosopia due to a
congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr
Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary
knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what
the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the
prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure
on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as
exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the
matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the
womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of
the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that
distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers STURZGEBURT,
the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births
conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents--in a
word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in
his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest
problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much
animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as
the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her
movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction
upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually
entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long
usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of
harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark
and portwine stain were alleged by one as a PRIMA FACIE and natural
hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel
Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The
hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and
worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged
in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent
to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views,
with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation
between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own
avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the
genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of
his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but
shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an
allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which
none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest
object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated
argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch
regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of
one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent
was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor
Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by
preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was
invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as
some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man
to put asunder what God has joined.
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