Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  Now, Canon, it is always the same with you, no change, always the same, the sturdy and courageous little Breton replied. After doubts and fears lest you might disturb your niece’s vocation you sent for her, but instead of leaving the poor child at home to read, you want to take her to the Cathedral for your own pleasure. If she is only to be here for a few days why not let her enjoy them in her own fashion, according to her whim? Her whim is reading, like your own. Madelon, I will not have thee come, as I have told thee before many times — Told me what, Canon? Giving advice that is not asked for. But you are always asking my advice, Canon, and though you do not always like it, you often take it. And now let the poor child have her read and go yourself to the Cathedral and let me look after the supper; which I swear will be to your taste this evening. Now what is it going to be? the Canon asked, and they went down talking amiably, leaving Héloïse with the volume in her hand, eager to read in the pleasant company-room, by its window over-looking the river, the soft airs coming up through the willow-trees, tossing her hair as she sat, won almost at once by the romantic story of the Trojan who fled with his comrades in a galley while Troy was still smoking, to meet with many adventures by sea and land, in deserts and in caves, before arriving in Carthage to love Dido and to abandon her in obedience to the gods, who bade him depart for Italy, their will being the greatest and the world’s need being Rome.

  And for long hours Héloïse sat reading, and was soothed by Virgil’s evident sorrow for Dido, though the gods had bidden the flight of Æneas for their great purposes. Even a goddess pities her, she said, Iris, her wings showing a thousand colours in the sun as she wheels above the smoke of the pyre, preparing to liberate the soul from the body. But to give way like this is silly, she said, and after a brief effort to master her feelings she rose to her feet, and after walking back and forth she said: I must go and speak to somebody. And descending the stairs, she talked with Madelon, telling her the story she had been reading, to which Madelon gave all the attention she could spare from the vegetables. But such casual attention did not satisfy Héloïse’s enthusiasm and, disappointed, she returned to the window overlooking the Seine; and unable to take up the book again, she fell to thinking instead of the poet whom Christianity unites with paganism in honouring, trying to conclude that Christianity had prepared the world for a better understanding for Virgil than any he had yet found in the century he lived in, and reasoning gently with herself but never able to convince herself that this was so. For it seemed to her easier to believe that the world was returning whence it came, not to paganism but to a sympathy with our life in this world, which we would do well to lead without repining; and her eyes returning to the page, she reread that Iris, with her wings showing a thousand colours in the sun, descended to liberate the soul from the body. But why liberate the soul from the body? she asked, since the two are inseparable as we know them; and putting this question of liberation aside, she gave thanks to Virgil for his recognition of the soul, more intimate than of any other pagan writer. But why consider the soul or the body? The beauty of Latin itself is enough, she said, and sat asking herself why Virgil’s skies and seas should please her more than St. Augustine’s exordiums of faith; and little by little she fell to thinking that though the decrees of the ancient gods seemed hard to Virgil they were less stern in his mind than St. Augustine’s conception of his duty to Christ, till forgetful of gods and goddesses, she said: the language he writes is born of his subject. His story is of the world’s beauty, of the skies by day and night and of the seas, and of the heroes, who, returning from Troy in their galleys, were driven almost on to the coasts where the Cyclopes would have devoured them had not a man, worn with uttermost hunger and of piteous mien, stretched suppliant hands to them from the shore and told them that he came from the land of Ithaca, a luckless companion of Ulysses, left behind when Ulysses escaped with his band from the ogre’s cavern. Nor had he done speaking when the ogre came down from the mountain, followed by his flocks, his only joy, guiding himself to the well-known shore with his staff, a young pine-tree lately lopped, and began to wash his wound. But the splashing of the oars reached his ears and he strode into the sea seeking the galley, and not finding it he let off a mighty roar, rousing the Cyclopes till they rushed to the harbour and thronged the shores.

  Héloïse sat thinking, asking herself if it were all true. If in the olden time Cyclopes haunted the Sicilian coasts; if Polyphemus ate human flesh; if Ulysses drove out his single eye with a stake hardened in the fire; asking herself if the story were a fable or if life had changed, becoming smaller and meaner than it was. If there were Cyclopes they must have left their bones behind. But Troy was, Æneas loved Dido and left her to found Rome in obedience to the will of the gods. Whereat she fell to seeking for the first time a meaning in life, asking herself whence it came and whither it went. She had accepted the daily doings of the convent as life and received the life she found in her uncle’s house as thoughtlessly. The Canon went to the Cathedral and returned from it every morning, reminding her of her father, who started forth at the same hour to see his patients. But Virgil put the thought into her mind that the hearth and the home were not the whole of life, and that another life followed the quiet, uneventful, religious and domestic life, with which she was acquainted, like a shadow, met it at every turn like a reflection. Was not her father a hero like Æneas when he enlisted in Raymond’s army? Heroism was not over and done with, but Virgil’s story of the fugitives from Troy kindled her imagination, and she could not tell whether the spell was one of language or a sudden sympathy for adventure. And she was so absorbed in her dream that neither the opening of the door nor her uncle’s footsteps awakened her.

  Héloïse, of what art thou thinking? She uttered a little cry. How thou didst frighten me, uncle! for I was far away in Carthage. Ah, but thou must read from the beginning and not skip, else thou’lt miss the chief beauty, the unfolding of the story, clouds rising out of clouds and melting into clouds. But there are no rules for reading. I begin at the beginning of a book and read line by line, and however tiresome the book may be I should have a scruple in laying it aside when halfway through. Each must love the Mantuan according to his mind, and read him, too, in the same accordance. But why, uncle, do we not write as the pagans wrote? On the subject of the difference between their Latin and the Latin of the Roman poets there was much to say, and they talked till it was time to go down to supper, and they descended the stairs talking in Latin. Héloïse tried to turn the conversation into jargon many times unsuccessfully, for without noticing the change the Canon continued in Latin, thinking intently of what he was eating and drinking and casually of the evening he was going to spend with his niece upstairs reading Latin, talking Latin, helping her, perchance, with some construction foreign to Christian Latin, saying: come read me the passage aloud and thou’lt understand it, and if that method did not prevail and Héloïse still found the passage dark, going over to her and standing behind her chair helping away the difficult constructions, his finger on the text and a word of explanation on his tongue. Besides certain constructions difficult for one unacquainted with the ancient language there were the mythology and the ritual that Virgil has made part of the poetic substance of his poem as much as the story he tells; the story of Pentheus seeing two suns and a double Thebes would have to be explained to Héloïse, else she would lose a great part of the beauty of the poem, and the dreams too of Dido in which Æneas appears to her with cruel aspect and she is compared to Pentheus or Orestes agitated by the Furies.

  To talk of these things was always delightful to the Canon, and to tell her that all the Roman poets knew Greek was an added pleasure, and when they went upstairs he watched her face lighting up and envied the pleasures in store for her, for though Virgil was the greatest of all poets, there were others, and he was fortunate to possess them all. She must remain with him till she had read Virgil, Ovid and Tibullus. His thoughts seemed to melt away, and to bring him back from his dreams, whatev
er they might be, she asked him if the stars knew the destinies they bring. Most of the ancient poets and philosophers, he answered, thought they were animated beings with minds of moral intelligence, a mistake, no doubt, but —

  But what, uncle? With the exception of Virgil, he replied, who may be regarded as a Christian prophet, we must not ask more of paganism than it can give; its gift is beauty. But thou’lt soon have learned all that I can teach thee; in another six months thou’lt have no questions to ask me. There was a little sadness in this, and Héloïse thought it well to say: in six months I shall understand Virgil’s Latin, but he is not the only poet, and I have heard you say that Horace’s Latin is more difficult than Virgil’s. There are Tibullus and Ovid, too, the Canon answered — and he wandered to the table to refill his goblet — and Cicero is more difficult than any. Héloïse’s hope was that he might not again drink too much wine, and to distract his thoughts from the flagons she came over with a passage that needed no explanation or comment.

  CHAP. IV.

  AS SHE SAT in the company-room reading in her favourite seat by the window her thoughts were one day startled from her book by a chittering of agitated birds, and looking up she saw seven or eight swallows striving against the pane and so strangely that she could not but think that they were seeking her help. The birds did not leave the sill at her approach, but redoubled their pathetic cries, and not till the casement was ajar did they fly away, leaving behind the seventh or eighth, whichever it might be, an ailing bird that yielded himself to her, lifting his wings so that she might search his feathers and see what ailed him, some seven or eight great white lice; and when she had freed him from these pests, he seemed to know that he was cleansed. She placed him upon the sill, and after shrilling his gratitude, his wings took the air, and a moment after she saw him hawking flies up and down the river, according to his wont. Poor little fellow, she said, already forgetful that he was sick, forgetful of me; and then, the swallow passing out of her mind as she had passed out of his, she stood for a long time looking at the landscape before her, wondering at the beauty of the willows, now shedding their long, slender leaves. One after another the leaves faded, discoloured, detached themselves from the stems, fluttered and fell into the stream and were borne away. And turning her eyes from the willows to the fields, she noticed how quiet and reposeful they were, as if weary and glad to dream a little while before the white oxen came forth again to turn them into tilth, preparing them for the sower who would come after the plough. The death of the year, she said, just as Virgil described it a thousand years gone by. A year dies every year and is born again, and that for ever and ever. Her eyes followed the clouds, bringing a little dimness as they passed over the sun that she welcomed, and while admiring the fields she asked herself how it was that she had never perceived how beautiful they were before, though she had been looking at them ever since she returned from Argenteuil, the same fields under, different aspects and signs, always beautiful under dark skies or somnolent blue. It was Virgil that opened her eyes and gave her sight to see the world and remembrance of much that she had seen and almost forgotten (she had seen without thinking), and now recalling the great grey valley of the Seine, and the river looping through it, with poplar-trees stark against the sky, she fell to thinking that for six years she had lived in Argenteuil without seeing anything but wide spaces of earth and sky.

  How beautiful, she said, is the dark cloud now at poise over the next parish, drenching the ploughman there, and in a few minutes it will drench him in the field yonder bending over the stilts as the white oxen fare to the headland slowly step by step, so slowly that it seems they will never reach it. But they have reached it and have stopped, good, patient beasts, she said, for the ploughman to lift the share out of the furrow. Again they come down the field, accomplishing another furrow, and again another, and so on till the hour comes for the ploughman to unyoke and lead them to the byre. The same white oxen that we read of in Virgil are before me now, the same oxen, their sides showing against the tilth; and were I to go down to the river I would find among the willows the swarm of bees about which he wrote, murmuring in and out of a hollow tree.

  If it had not been for Virgil I should only have known the story of the world as told in relations of martyrdoms and miracles, and have seen the world only in relics of the saints. But he unsealed my eyes, and by night and day the skies and seas will be beautiful to me, and along the coasts that the galleys drove against in their flight from smoking Troy I shall see wreckage and Dido, the unfortunate Queen whose lover the gods raped from her, Æneas being chosen by them for their condign purpose. The smoke from the pyre trailing over the sea in the wake of the departing galleys appeared to her, and she fell to thinking that greater than the gift of vision was Virgil’s revelation of human love, love of woman for man and man for woman; and the story with all its sorrow seemed to her so beautiful that she would have changed places with Dido or with Æneas, for on leaving Dido his heart, too, was wrung, but he obeyed the gods and founded Rome. If it had not been for Virgil, she repeated, all I should have known of love was the fact that Sister Paula had had a baby and put it out to nurse in the village — a mere physical experience that befell her as it might any animal; on returning to Paris I saw for the first time a man tipsy, another physical fact but no more, and the physical side of our nature was known to me in the convent, but of the spiritual I apprehended nothing, nothing till a heathen poet without the knowledge of true religion, that has since been vouch safed to us by Christ himself, the Son of the living God, was put into my hands. And her thoughts running on incontinently, she said to herself: the knowledge that this heathen had is new to us and good for us, since he reveals God’s world to us, for if God made the world beautiful it was because he wished us to see it beautiful; and if the Christian writers were blind to the beauty of the world it was because they were too busy considering spiritual beliefs, and striving to purge faith from error. But now that the faith is secure —