Athy, who had been silent, said quietly:
— You are all wrong.
All turned towards him eagerly.
— Why?
— Do you know?
— Who told you?
— Tell us, Athy.
Athy pointed across the playground to where Simon Moonan was walking by himself kicking a stone before him.
— Ask him, he said.
The fellows looked there and then said:
— Why him?
— Is he in it?
Athy lowered his voice and said:
— Do you know why those fellows scut? I will tell you but you must not let on you know.
— Tell us, Athy. Go on. You might if you know.
He paused for a moment and then said mysteriously:
— They were caught with Simon Moonan and Tusker Boyle in the square one night.
The fellows looked at him and asked:
— Caught?
— What doing?
Athy said:
— Smugging.
All the fellows were silent: and Athy said:
— And that’s why.
Stephen looked at the faces of the fellows but they were all looking across the playground. He wanted to ask somebody about it. What did that mean about the smugging in the square? Why did the five fellows out of the higher line run away for that? It was a joke, he thought. Simon Moonan had nice clothes and one night he had shown him a ball of creamy sweets that the fellows of the football fifteen had rolled down to him along the carpet in the middle of the refectory when he was at the door. It was the night of the match against the Bective Rangers; and the ball was made just like a red and green apple only it opened and it was full of the creamy sweets. And one day Boyle had said that art elephant had two tuskers instead of two tusks and that was why he was called Tusker Boyle but some fellows called him Lady Boyle because he was always at his nails, paring them.
Eileen had long thin cool white hands too because she was a girl. They were like ivory; only soft. That was the meaning of Tower of Ivory but protestants could not understand it and made fun of it. One day he had stood beside her looking into the hotel grounds. A waiter was running up a trail of bunting on the flagstaff and a fox terrier was scampering to and fro on the sunny lawn. She had put her hand into his pocket where his hand was and he had felt how cool and thin and soft her hand was. She had said that pockets were funny things to have: and then all of a sudden she had broken away and had run laughing down the sloping curve of the path. Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the sun. Tower of Ivory. House of Gold. By thinking of things you could understand them.
But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something. It was all thick slabs of slate and water trickled all day out of tiny pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind the door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red pencil of a bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath was the name of the drawing:
Balbus was building a wall.
Some fellow had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it was very like a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet there was written in backhand in beautiful writing:
Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly.
Perhaps that was why they were there because it was a place where some fellows wrote things for cod. But all the same it was queer what Athy said and the way he said it. It was not a cod because they had run away. He looked with the others across the playground and began to feel afraid.
At last Fleming said:
— And we are all to be punished for what other fellows did?
— I won’t come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said. Three days’ silence in the refectory and sending us up for six and eight every minute.
— Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way of twisting the note so that you can’t open it and fold it again to see how many ferulae you are to get. I won’t come back too.
— Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studies was in second of grammar this morning.
— Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we?
All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent and you could hear the cricket bats but more slowly than before: pick, pock.
Wells asked:
— What is going to be done to them?
— Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged, Athy said, and the fellows in the higher line got their choice of flogging or being expelled.
— And which are they taking? asked the fellow who had spoken first.
— All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy answered. He’s going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson.
— I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and the other fellows are wrong because a flogging wears off after a bit but a fellow that has been expelled from college is known all his life on account of it. Besides Gleeson won’t flog him hard.
— It’s best of his play not to, Fleming said.
— I wouldn’t like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker Cecil Thunder said. But I don’t believe they will be flogged. Perhaps they will be sent up for twice nine.
— No, no, said Athy. They’ll both get it on the vital spot.
Wells rubbed himself and said in a crying voice:
— Please, sir, let me off!
Athy grinned and turned up the sleeves of his jacket, saying:
It can't be helped;
It must be done.
So down with your breeches
And out with your bum.The fellows laughed; but he felt that they were a little afraid. In the silence of the soft grey air he heard the cricket bats from here and from there: pock. That was a sound to hear but if you were hit then you would feel a pain. The pandybat made a sound too but not like that. The fellows said it was made of whalebone and leather with lead inside: and he wondered what was the pain like. There were different kinds of sounds. A long thin cane would have a high whistling sound and he wondered what was that pain like. It made him shivery to think of it and cold: and what Athy said too. But what was there to laugh at in it? It made him shivery: but that was because you always felt like a shiver when you let down your trousers. It was the same in the bath when you undressed yourself. He wondered who had to let them down, the master or the boy himself. O how could they laugh about it that way?
He looked at Athy’s rolled-up sleeves and knuckly inky hands. He had rolled up his sleeves to show how Mr Gleeson would roll up his sleeves. But Mr Gleeson had round shiny cuffs and clean white wrists and fattish white hands and the nails of them were long and pointed. Perhaps he pared them too like Lady Boyle. But they were terribly long and pointed nails. So long and cruel they were, though the white fattish hands were not cruel but gentle. And though he trembled with cold and fright to think of the cruel long nails and of the high whistling sound of the cane and of the chill you felt at the end of your shirt when you undressed yourself yet he felt a feeling of queer quiet pleasure inside him to think of the white fattish hands, clean and strong and gentle. And he thought of what Cecil Thunder had said: that Mr Gleeson would not flog Corrigan hard. And Fleming had said he would not because it was best of his play not to. But that was not why.
A voice from far out on the playground cried:
— All in!
And other voices cried:
— All in! All in!
During the writing lesson he sat with his arms folded, listening to the slow scraping of the pens. Mr Harford went to and fro making little signs in red pencil and sometimes sitting beside the boy to show him how to hold his pen. He had tried to spell out the headline for himself though he knew already what it was for it was the last of the book. Zeal without prudence is like a ship adrift. But the lines of the letters were like fine invisible threads and it was only by closing his right eye tight and staring out of the left eye that he could make out the full curves of the capital.
But Mr Harford was very decent and never got into a wax. All the other masters got into dreadful waxes. But why were they to suffer for what fellows in the higher line did? Wells had said that they had drunk some of the altar wine out of the press in the sacristy and that it had been found out who had done it by the smell. Perhaps they had stolen a monstrance to run away with and sell it somewhere. That must have been a terrible sin, to go in there quietly at night, to open the dark press and steal the flashing gold thing into which God was put on the altar in the middle of flowers and candles at benediction while
