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Davin knocked the ashes from his pipe. Too deep for me, Stevie, he said. But a man's country comes first. Ireland first, Stevie. You can be a poet or a mystic after. Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with cold violence. Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. Davin rose from his box and went towards the players, shaking his head sadly.
No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those of Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd see you damned first. They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come yet, believe me.
The heavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stone through a quagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling its heaviness depress his heart. Cranly's speech, unlike that of Davin, had neither rare phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned versions of Irish idioms.
You're a born sneerer, Stevie. When you make the next rebellion with hurleysticks, said Stephen, and want the indispensable informer, tell me. I can find you a few in this college. I can't understand you, said Davin. One time I hear you talk against English literature. Now you talk against the Irish informers. What with your name and your ideas Are you Irish at all?
My ancestors threw off their language and took another Stephen said. They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for? For our freedom, said Davin.
Thanks, said Stephen. You mean I am a monster. No, said Davin. But I wish you had not told me. A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen's friendliness. This race and this country and this life produced me, he said I shall express myself as I am. Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In heart you are an Irish man but your pride is too powerful.
I heard in the House of Commons at Ottawa the most curious peroration I have ever listened to. It came from the late Nicholas Flood Davin, a member of Irish extraction who sat for a Far-Western constituency. The House was debating a dull Bill relating to the lumber industry, when Davin, who may possibly have been under the influence of temporary excitement, insisted on speaking.
Side by side with his memory of the deeds of prowess of his uncle Mat Davin, the athlete, the young peasant worshipped the sorrowful legend of Ireland. The gossip of his fellow-students which strove to render the flat life of the college significant at any cost loved to think of him as a young fenian.
Come with me now to the office of arms and I will show you the tree of my family, said Stephen. Then be one of us, said Davin. Why don't you learn Irish? Why did you drop out of the league class after the first lesson? You know one reason why, answered Stephen. Davin tossed his head and laughed. Oh, come now, he said. Is it on account of that certain young lady and Father Moran?
Told him the shortest way to Tara was VIA Holyhead. Just then my father came up. Introduction. Father polite and observant. Asked Davin if he might offer him some refreshment. Davin could not, was going to a meeting. When we came away father told me he had a good honest eye. Asked me why I did not join a rowing club. I pretended to think it over. Told me then how he broke Pennyfeather's heart.
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