A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Page 5

were rubbing and kicking and stamping. Then Jack Lawton's yellow boots
dodged out the ball and all the other boots and legs ran after. He ran after them a little
way and then stopped. It was useless to run on. Soon they would be going home for the
holidays. After supper in the study hall he would change the number pasted up inside his
desk from seventy-seven to seventy-six.
It would be better to be in the study hall than out there in the cold. The sky was pale and
cold but there were lights in the castle. He wondered from which window Hamilton
Rowan had thrown his hat on the ha-ha and had there been flowerbeds at that time under
the windows. One day when he had been called to the castle the butler had shown him the
marks of the soldiers' slugs in the wood of the door and had given him a piece of
shortbread that the community ate. It was nice and warm to see the lights in the castle. It
was like something in a book. Perhaps Leicester Abbey was like that. And there were
nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell's Spelling Book. They were like poetry but they were
only sentences to learn the spelling from.
Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey Where the abbots buried him. Canker is a disease of
plants, Cancer one of animals.
It would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands,
and think on those sentences. He shivered as if he had cold slimy water next his skin.
That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop
his little snuff box for Wells's seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How
cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the scum.
Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting for Brigid to bring in the tea. She had
her feet on the fender and her jewelly slippers were so hot and they had such a lovely
warm smell! Dante knew a lot of things. She had taught him where the Mozambique
Channel was and what was the longest river in America and what was the name of the
highest mountain in the moon. Father Arnall knew more than Dante because he was a
priest but both his father and uncle Charles said that Dante was a clever woman and a

well-read woman. And when Dante made that noise after dinner and then put up her hand
to her mouth: that was heartburn.
A voice cried far out on the playground:
--All in!
Then other voices cried from the lower and third lines:
--All in! All in!
The players closed around, flushed and muddy, and he went among them, glad to go in.
Rody Kickham held the ball by its greasy lace. A fellow asked him to give it one last: but
he walked on without even answering the fellow. Simon Moonan told him not to because
the prefect was looking. The fellow turned to Simon Moonan and said:
--We all know why you speak. You are McGlade's suck.
Suck was a queer word. The fellow called Simon Moonan that name because Simon
Moonan used to tie the prefect's false sleeves behind his back and the prefect used to let
on to be angry. But the sound was ugly. Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of
the Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty
water went down through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down slowly the
hole in the basin had made a sound like that: suck. Only louder.
To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him feel cold and then hot.
There were two cocks that you turned and water came out: cold and hot. He felt cold and
then a little hot: and he could see the names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer
thing.
And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was queer and wettish. But soon the gas
would be lit and in burning it made a light noise like a little song. Always the same: and
when the fellows stopped talking in the playroom you could hear it.
It was the hour for sums. Father Arnall wrote a hard sum on the board and then said:
--Now then, who will win? Go ahead, York! Go ahead, Lancaster!
Stephen tried his best, but the sum was too hard and he felt confused. The little silk badge
with the white rose on it that was pinned on the breast of his jacket began to flutter.