Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/575

572 him no small effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father’s, Gumley. To avoid a meeting be drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.

Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.

A figure of middle height on the prowl, evidently, under the arches saluted again, calling : Night! Stephen, of course, started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. Mr Bloom, actuated by motives of inherent delicacy, inasmuch as he always believed in minding his own business, moved off but nevertheless remained on the qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least. Although unusual in the Dublin area, he knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be about waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment’s notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he was not in any over sober state himself, recognised Corley’s breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called him, and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of Inspector Corley of the G Division, lately deceased, who had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather, Patrick Michael Corley, of New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it, though not proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide, in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind and well worth seeing, his mother or aunt or some relative had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.

Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night’s lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore, he had a row with Leneban and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of other uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him where on God’s earth he could get something, anything at all to do. No, it was the daughter of the