ch18c

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chapel

He nodded at Stephen for a temporary farewell and sprang up the steps. Stephen wandered on towards the chapel meditatively kicking a white flat stone along the grey pebbly path. He was not likely to be deceived by Wells' words into an acceptance of that young man as a quite vicious person. He knew that Wells had exaggerated his airs in order to hide his internal sense of mortification at meeting one who had not forsaken the world, the flesh and the devil and he suspected that, if there were any tendency to oscillation in the soul of the free-spoken young student, the iron hand of the discipline of the Church would firmly intervene to restore equipoise. At the same time Stephen felt somewhat indignant that anyone should expect him to entrust spiritual difficulties to such a confessor or to receive with pious feelings any sacrament or benediction from the hands of the young students whom he saw walking through the grounds. It was not any personal pride which would prevent him but a recognition of the incompatibility of two natures, one trained to repressive enforcement of a creed, the other equipped with a vision the angle of which would never adjust itself for the reception of hallucinations and with an intelligence which was as much in love with laughter as with combat.



The mist of the evening had begun to thicken into slow fine rain and Stephen halted at the end of a narrow path beside a few laurel bushes, watching at the end of a leaf a tiny point of rain form and twinkle and hesitate and finally take the plunge into the sodden clay beneath. He wondered was it raining in Westmeath. He remembered seeing the cattle standing together patiently in the hedges and reeking in the rain. A little band of students passed at the other side of the laurel bushes: they were talking among themselves:



— But did you see Mrs Bergin?



— O, I saw her... with a black and white boa.

ostrich feathers

— And the two Miss Kennedys were there.



— Where?



— Right behind the Archbishop's Throne.

Archbishop William Walsh [wiki]

1901

— O, I saw her — one of them. Hadn't she a grey hat with a bird in it?

— That was her! She's very lady-like, isn't she.



The little band went down the path. In a few minutes another little band passed behind the bushes. One student was talking and the others were listening.



— Yes and an astronomer too: that's why he had that observatory built over there at the side of the palace. I heard a priest say once that the three greatest men in Europe were Gladstone, Bismarck (the great German statesman) and our own Archbishop — as all-round men. He knew him at Maynooth. He said that in Maynooth...

in 1891 Pope Leo XIII built an observatory at the Vatican [wiki]


The speaker's words were lost in the crunch of the heavy boots on the gravel. The rain was spreading and increasing and the vagrant bands of students were all turning their steps towards the college. Stephen still waited at his post and at last saw Wells coming down the path quickly: he had changed his outdoor dress for a soutane. He was very apologetic and not quite so familiar in manner. Stephen wanted him to go in with the others but he insisted on seeing his visitor to the gate. They took a short cut down beside the wall and were soon opposite the lodge. The side-door was shut and Wells called out loudly to the lodge-woman to open it and let the gentleman out. Then he shook hands with Stephen and pressed him to come again. The lodge-woman opened the side-door and Wells looked out for a second or two almost enviously. Then he said:



— Well, goodbye, old man. Must run in now. Awfully glad to see you again — see any of the old Clongowes set, you know. Be good now: I must run. Goodbye.



As he tucked up his soutane high and ran awkwardly up the drive he looked a strange, almost criminal, fugitive in the dreary dusk. Stephen's eyes followed the running figure for a moment: and as he passed through the door into the lamplit street he smiled at his own impulse of pity.





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