In a quiet
bystreet a German band of five players in faded uniforms and with
battered brass instruments was playing to an audience of street arabs
and leisurely messenger boys. A maid in a white cap and apron was
watering a box of plants on a sill which shone like a slab of limestone
in the warm glare. From another window open to the air came the sound
of a piano, scale after scale rising into the treble.
Stephen walked on at his father's side, listening to stories he had
heard before, hearing again the names of the scattered and dead
revellers who had been the companions of his father's youth. And a
faint sickness sighed in his heart.
He recalled his own equivocal position in Belvedere, a free boy, a
leader afraid of his own authority, proud and sensitive and suspicious,
battling against the squalor of his life and against the riot of his
mind. The letters cut in the stained wood of the desk stared upon him,
mocking his bodily weakness and futile enthusiasms and making him
loathe himself for his own mad and filthy orgies. The spittle in his
throat grew bitter and foul to swallow and the faint sickness climbed
to his brain so that for a moment he closed his eyes and walked on in
darkness.
He could still hear his father's voice--
--When you kick out for yourself, Stephen--as I daresay you will one
of these days--remember, whatever you do, to mix with gentlemen.
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