—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.
—Hello?… Are you there?… Yes, he’s here still. Come across yourself.
—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.
He flung the pages down.
—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.
—Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.
—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up before the recorder…
—O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!
—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan. Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.
His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.
Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it then?
RHYMES AND REASONS
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the same, two by two.
…………………… la tua pace
……………… che parlar ti piace
Mentre che il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet, entwining, per l’aer perso, in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fè più ardenti. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.
—Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY…
J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.
—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly’s Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.
LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE
—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!
—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example.
—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.
—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for …. But no matter.
J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly:
—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.
And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs?
—What was that? the professor asked.
ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM
—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.
—Ha.
—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence!
Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
A POLISHED PERIOD
J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words:
—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and of prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live.
His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.
—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.
—The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
—You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.
Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:
—Muchibus thankibus.
A MAN OF HIGH MORALE
—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O’Molloy said to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don’t ask.
—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarettecase aside. Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made by John F Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.
He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:
—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse.
—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour has it, on the Trinity college estates commission.
—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child’s frock. Go on. Well?
—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless.
He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.
IMPROMPTU
In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:
—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man.
His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards Stephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he said:
—When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F Taylor rose to reply. Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.
He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.
He began:
—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.
His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?
—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me.
FROM THE FATHERS
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That’s saint Augustine.
—Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.
Nile.
Child, man, effigy.
By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.
—You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples,
