by George Moore
She heard the door close behind him, and rising to her feet her eyes fell upon the phial of poison. He had said: empty it into the mud of the street, and opening the door she did this, and awaited the return of the sisters, who came back soon after from Notre-Dame, shaking their money-box so that Héloïse could see how successful their begging had been. It matters not, she said, we are leaving Paris to-morrow; and she told them of the convent that Abélard was going to put them into, and of the hackneys that would come for them, and the long ride thither. News indeed this is, said Josiane, and our money-box might as well have returned soundless as with all this chinking of coin — she rattled it again. And they slept that night disquieted by dreams, dozing and awaking quickly, till they were awakened by the trampling of hooves under the windows and remembered that the journey would begin with their dressing. On throwing open the casement Héloïse saw Abelard on a chestnut hackney, and there were five others all of the same kin, stout, compact ponies, with large bushy tails and manes, wilful eyes, tiny hooves, and shaggy fetlocks. The five nuns rode on pillions, Abelard deeming a pillion more suitable to their religious garb and less tiring to women than riding astride. Agatha, Josiane and Paula, having little habit of horseback, would be barely able to keep astride on a pony, he said, and even when they were securely strapped in upon a pillion, he had to turn to them with words of encouragement, saying they were not to feel afraid if their ponies put back their ears, for that meant wickedness. He promised them that they should rest at noon, and in this hope the nuns rode across the Little Bridge into a silent country of shrivelled hedges and grey fields, with the hillsides shrouded in grey mist. As they ambled the hooves of the hackneys rang out from the frozen clods, and all seeming to be going well Abelard turned in his saddle, crying to them that they must not clutch at their bridles, for the ponies will not trip if you allow them to look after themselves. But my pony will go too fast if I do not hold him in, Josiane answered. And my pony will follow Josiane’s, Agatha cried out. And I shall be left all alone, for my pony is lazy, said Madelon. Your ponies will settle down to their amble, Abelard replied, and will be loath to leave each other; nor will they pass us on the road.
And when another league was accomplished without a bolt, a runaway, or a fall, Abelard felt compelled to turn in his saddle to remark that the ponies were now travelling in good order, and that they would reach an inn at noon where they would rest. He heard the three sisters speaking together and his heart smote him, for he felt it would be hard to keep silence any longer, and if he spoke to Héloïse at all he must speak of greater things than the mere accidents of the road. There was no way of escape from speaking of what was on their minds, for each knew that the journey they were engaged on was the last they would undertake together. For as soon as he had established her Abbess of the Paraclete, which he would do without doubt — the Bishop of Meaux, being a friend, would offer no opposition and would obtain sooner or later the approval of the Pope — he must return to Brittany and never ride to the Paraclete again, lest his enemies, seeing him going thither, should mock and jeer, saying in their beards: the old wether still hankers after his yoe. So they would speak of him, being pitiless, and he sought for words whereby he might break the news to Héloïse that they might hope for nothing in this world, but that God would recompense them in the next for unmerited suffering. A shade came into his face, for Héloïse had suffered, he feared, without much belief in an eternal recompense; yet she had ceded to his prayer not to take poison but to put her faith in God and live her appointed life however empty it might be. It would be lonelier for her than for him, for he still cherished the hope that divine philosophy would prevail in the end, bringing all the world into God’s fold. Faith was the antique shepherd, Reason was the new. But Héloïse had not philosophy, and if he were taken from her was he sure that she would be able to endure life? and if she were not, then indeed they would be separated. Then he put to her the question: what hast thou done with the poison? and she answered that she had emptied the phial into the street’s mud. For having obeyed thee, Abélard, always, I was moved not to disobey thee in the end, for to do so would spoil all; and he answered that she had done well, saying (knowing well that it would please her to hear him say it): heaven would not be heaven for me without thee; thou wert my heaven on earth and wilt be my heaven hereafter, if we gain heaven. As all hangs on that, let us devote, as I said before, whatever years of life remain to us to gaining heaven. It was surely wisdom to spare no pains to accomplish our love, for when we meet in heaven there will be a fulfilment of love such as has not befallen us here; though our love was very great on earth, it will be greater in heaven. Wherefore I am taking thee to the Paraclete, to the solitude by the banks of the Arduzon, for it is not in castles hung with silk, overlooking parks graced with noble trees and terraces, that the soul turns to God, but in solitude ‘mid rocks and sand where there is nothing pleasing. But be not afraid; the lands of the Paraclete are smiling, pleasant lands compared with the rocks that overhang the Western Ocean whither my lot lies. And Héloïse answered him: the banks of the Arduzon will be welcomed by me, for to my ears the echo of thy voice will linger among the rocks of the hill-side, and my eyes shall find the footsteps that the earth has allowed to pass into nothingness. For man hath a memory and an imagination, and to our ears and eyes thou wilt be present always; we shall say to each other: all that is not wilderness, for here he worked and lived. All about us is his handiwork; before he came this country was known only to robbers and wild beasts. Thy lot will be hard at first, he said, but it will become easier with time. She answered: thou wilt write and establish a rule for me and my nuns to follow? And they journeyed on again, arriving at the inn tired, all of them: Josiane, Agatha and Paula so tired that it was late next morning before they started again on their journey. A missel thrush sang on a bare bough. A song out of season, Abélard said. The moist morning deceives him; and he fell to thinking of the winter in which he and Rodeboeuf wrote the songs that they were to sing when they started forth at the end of April, stopping at the various castles for festivals of song and jousting in the lists.
At noon the sky was blue, the sun was shining; larks rose wet-winged from the fields singing, and in a little while (four hours later), the day was declining, and riding through the dusk they saw great companies of rooks flopping home through the sky, making for some rooky woods about a nobleman’s castle. The birds came in thousands, and then there was a lull, a talking, a great shuffling of the branches, as the pilgrims rode beneath them. Again the sky was filled with rooks; at every opening of the trees they caught sight of late-comers, and in the blue gloom of the wintry evening, in the hour that is not day nor night, the bats zigzagged round byre and barn, flying almost in the faces of the travellers, casting shadows on the moonlit road and then disappearing in the mist.
There were still some miles to ride before they reached the next village, and Abélard and Héloïse rode immersed in the sad belief that their lives were wasted and that their last hope was heaven. Abélard believed in heaven, therefore Héloïse believed, and, united at last, they rode to Troyes, thinking how they were to live out the few years that remained for them to live, thereby gaining an immortal happiness, the letters germinating in their minds as they rode, hints of them appearing in their talk as mile after mile went by.
But it would be vain indeed to record their lives and their talk further, for the rest of their lives and their speech are on record.
Ulick and Soracha
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
The first edition’s title page
DEAR LADY OF MY THOUGHTS, DEAR LADY CUNARD, TIME TURNS ALL THINGS INTO ANALOGUES AND SYMBOLS, AND IN THE COURSE OF THE YEARS
I HAVE COME TO THINK OF YOU AS AN EVENING FOUNTAIN UNDER EMBOSOMING TREES. THE FOUNTAIN MURMURS, SINGS, EXULTS; IT WELCOMES EVERY COMING MINUTE; AND WHEN THE DUSK DEEPENS IN THE GARDEN AND THE GALLANTS ENFOLD THEIR LADIES IN SCARVES AND VEILS AND THE ROUT DISPERSES, THE FOUNTAIN SINGS ALONE THE SORROWS OF THE WATER-LILIES TO THE MOON.
I
A FEW DAYS after my telling of the Garden of Eden I caught sight of Alec under the walls of the old mill looking out for a safe place to cross the river, and whilst watching him jump from boulder to boulder I began to wonder if the new story he was coming to tell me would be about a monk or a nun or a hermit. As soon as he was up the high bank I asked if it were a long one and he answered that it was a good-bye he’d come to bid me, having heard in the town that I was leaving Westport at the end of the week. But I won’t be delaying the work, your honour, he said, and on my calling to him he came back saying that there was no place for the imagining of stories like a seat by a brook. Like water they do be coming up, foaming and swirling as if they couldn’t get on fast enough. The old story-tellers always looked for their stories by running water, I replied, and asked him if he were sure he hadn’t one about him. Well, no, your honour, it’s the other way round this time; I thought I’d come to you for a story — the like o’ them the publishers do be ferreting in their pockets for the notes and the gold to pay you for. I’d like to be hearing one of them just as it comes out of your head for the first time. I think you must take me for a keg, Alec, always on tap as soon as the spigot has been driven in. Isn’t every shanachie like that? he answered, and don’t the country people be asking me for stories till the last sod of turf is dwindled down into ash? A story, Alec, without Iahveh or fairies, not even a priest in it nor devils, not so much as a serpent — an English or an Irish story, which? I wouldn’t stick your honour to one country, Alec answered, but I might get the hang of an Irish story better than an English one. And sure an Irishman the like of yourself wouldn’t be hard put to tell an Irish story. If he have one to tell, Alec. Aren’t stories always buzzing in a shanachie’s head, trying to get out, the way flies do be on a pane? A Connaught story, Alec? And why for not? Aren’t you out of Connaught yourself, and out of the heart of it, out of the county of Mayo, like myself? Faith, it’ll be the Ballinrobe cock against the Westport rooster! I don’t know that I can think of an Irish story, Alec, unless... Unless what, your honour? Unless! Start out of an old memory. The best stories are hatched out of old memories, he answered. An old dog for the road, and an old memory for a tale. Perhaps you are right, Alec. I have a story that I heard bits of from an old man of Kiltamagh, whom I used to meet coming up the drive muttering to himself. He had a story that I never heard the end of, for there never was time to tell it all. My governess or my father or mother would always call me away before the end, and so I never heard what became of Tadhg... a long story, Alec. No good story is a long story, he answered, and the day is all in front. I’m afraid the telling will take more than a day. Sure, if it does your honour can be telling it in chapters till the end of time, or a week itself. It is a long story for telling — A story for reading? he asked, and a little disheartened, for I felt the words: for reading, to be a disparagement, I reminded Alec of his words: Stories ripen in the mouth like apples on a sunny shelf. They do so, he answered; they do indeed. Trust a good tongue to put a good skin on its stuff. In the third or the fourth telling the pink comes out on it, and from that on ’tis as juicy in the mouth as a blackberry in Samhain.
You’ve heard of Richard de Burgo, second Earl of Ulster? I have, and troth, as often nearly as I’ve heard tell of Oliver Crummel, the curse of himself on him. But I can’t say that I know much more about De Burgo than I do about Crummel, for every time the uncle was about to tell me of the Great Earl the pipe broke under his teeth or he’d say: It’s as dirty as the bottom of a bog! and by the time he’d cleaned the pipe De Burgo and his red head were forgotten. So now on with you! I have no story to tell of the Earl, Alec, but of Ulick, his son by a Frenchwoman who came over to Ireland with a troop of French singers. A bastard! said Alec. And what of that? I asked. No more than that I never heard the uncle tell of a De Burgo bastard. A man may have had a bastard without your uncle hearing of it. Sure he may and welcome, and unbeknownst to the priest himself for that matter, though ’twould be a job as long as Father M’Loughlin is in the county of Mayo. Or it may be, Alec, that my story is a Mayo story and never got across into Galway. All the same, it was from Timothy Moran of Kiltamagh I got it, or the best part of it. A fine old story-teller he was, and I am not going too far if I say there never was a story-teller in Galway that couldn’t learn something from Timothy, whether in the telling of stories or the making of them. I can see him still when I look back into the past, a tall, lean man, well known along the road winding through Mayo from beyond Westport to Castlebar and on to Cong — a familiar figure in our walks, who often met us, garrulous and courteous, and followed us a little way, his old caubeen in his hand, his grey hair floating in the wind; or it might be he would pass without seeing us, walking with bent knees, bobbing his head, composing, my governess told me, and forbade me to run after him, saying that my interruption might cost him a fine bit of story. But one day we came upon him as we approached our gates, which he opened for us, asking if he had my leave to take a short cut across the demesne. It will save me a mile of road, he said, for I’m on my way to Ballyholly. Ballyholly was one of our villages, and he shuffled along with us up the drive and across the park till we came to the bridge that my great-grandfather built when he came back from Spain, a tall, peaked, three-span bridge, out of proportion to the tiny stream that flows beneath. When your grandfather built that bridge, said Alec, there was more water in the lake than there is now. Lough Carra isn’t half the size it was since the drainage. It may be so, Alec; but I’m thinking now more of Timothy Moran than of the water that was taken out of Lough Carra, and he was half-way up the bridge when I called after him, remembering suddenly that a ten-mile walk makes a man hungry; he had come from Castlebar; so I invited him to the kitchen, saying: The cook will give you your dinner, Tim, and I’ll ask a shilling from father, who if he’s out with the racehorses will give it to you next time you come.
A great old story-teller was Timothy, and many legends I heard from him in the stable-yard, whither I was forbidden to go, and in the woods hiding from my governess — legends long passed out of my mind and out of the mind of the world. However closely I search my memory, I come on names only, a phrase, mayhap a broken outline. But of one story I have a beginning, a middle, and an end, a bare, meagre outline, it is true, but an outline, however thin, is enough for a story-teller, and I remember that it commenced well with an account of a ship bringing a troupe of gleemen and gleemaidens from Honfleur to Galway — May I be interrupting your honour to ask what are gleemen and gleemaidens? The English word, Alec, for mummers. When I was a child the lads in Mayo would be about in the weeks before Christmas gathering up every bit of ribbon; and cross-gartered and with streamers in their hats, they’d go from big house to big house dancing and singing: The wren, the wren, the king of all birds! No more than that do I know about our Mayo mummers. Enough, your honour, for me to understand that the gleemen and maidens that came over from France were like our own mummers, crossgartered fellows. Yes and no, Alec; there were lots of queer leggings and some petticoats among them, but they came with lutes, gitterns and rebecks instead of whistles and bagpipes. I beg your honour’s pardon for breaking in on you with a question. The fault is not yours, Alec; had I kept to Timothy’s own words and spoken of mummers, you would have understood at once — And would have had no need to interrupt your honour, just as you interrupted Timothy. No doubt I interrupted Timothy often, and to his great discomfort, for Timothy did not like being stopped in a story to answer questions. He liked better to let his tongue run on, his hearers picking up as much as they could without finding fault with what they heard, leastways not till his back was turned and he was beyond the door.
I am that way myself very often, said Alec, for there’s nothing that spoils a story more than a snorter in the corner, butting in again and again. So be it, Alec; and in my turn I’ll get on with the story, saying that when I pressed Timothy to tell which were the better: our mummers or the French, he’d answer that there was nobody alive now with any knowledge of the mummers that came from France in the beautiful ship with the carven prow in the days of the great Red Earl, and if I pressed him still further, he’d say: I’d like to be getting on with my story, young master. Then begin, Timothy, with the carven prow and tell us again how the sea-woman’s breasts looked out over the waves, just as you did last time, and then go on to the Norman nobles who welcomed the mummers with the best of everything in their castles. Whereupon Timothy would break in with a bit of history, telling that the Normans did not conquer Ireland as easily as they did England; and being as good a patriot as he was a story-teller, he was apt to become long-winded in his account of William’s victory, saying that he would never have got one if the arrow hadn’t fallen into Harold’s eye. I always wished that Timothy would skip the battle of Hastings, and now I’ll skip it myself, telling you no more than that Timothy believed the mummers were brought over from France much more for the fine reports they would spread of the riches of Ireland than for their jiggings and jugglings. And rightly or wrongly, Timothy would have it that it was touch and go with the Normans in Ireland in the beginning of the fourteenth century. They wore us down, he’d say, for whilst we had but one country they had three, getting soldiers and armour from France and Flanders and England; and in our linen tunics we could do nothing against men in armour, for if we did get a battle we couldn’t follow them into their castles, so it was all the same whether we lost or won in the field; we were bet in the end. I often wondered how he would get back from castles, shields, breastplates and swords, to the cross-gartered mummers I was waiting to hear about. He was a long time getting back, but he got back at last, and very ingeniously, saying that if it took William five hours of an afternoon to conquer England, it didn’t take Louise Chastel, the lutanist, more than the same number of minutes to capture the Earl. Go on telling about Louise, I’d cry; you didn’t tell us enough last time. Even in those days I had an exceeding relish for Louise Chattel’s victory in the Galway castle, and did not wish Timothy to skip a single word of it.
