by George Moore
He went down to the reedy tarn, and at his approach several snipe got up, and they flew above his head uttering sharp cries. His fishing-rod was a long hazel stick, and he threw the frog as far as he could into the lake. In doing this he roused some wild ducks; a mallard and two ducks got up, and they flew towards the larger lake. Margaret watched them; they flew in a line with an old castle; and they had not disappeared from view when Bryden came towards her, and he and she drove the cows home together that evening.
They had not met very often when she said, “James, you had better not come here so often calling to me.”
“Don’t you wish me to come?”
“Yes, I wish you to come well enough, but keeping company is not the custom of the country, and I don’t want to be talked about.”
“Are you afraid the priest would speak against us from the altar?”
“He has spoken against keeping company, but it is not so much what the priest says, for there is no harm in talking.”
“But if you are going to be married there is no harm in walking out together.”
“Well, not so much, but marriages are made differently in these parts; there is not much courting here.”
And next day it was known in the village that James was going to marry Margaret Dirken.
His desire to excel the boys in dancing had aroused much gaiety in the parish, and for some time past there had been dancing in every house where there was a floor fit to dance upon; and if the cottager had no money to pay for a barrel of beer, James Bryden, who had money, sent him a barrel, so that Margaret might get her dance. She told him that they sometimes crossed over into another parish where the priest was not so averse to dancing, and James wondered. And next morning at Mass he wondered at their simple fervour. Some of them held their hands above their heads as they prayed, and all this was very new and very old to James Bryden. But the obedience of these people to their priest surprised him. When he was a lad they had not been so obedient, or he had forgotten their obedience; and he listened in mixed anger and wonderment to the priest who was scolding his parishioners, speaking to them by name, saying that he had heard there was dancing going on in their homes. Worse than that, he said he had seen boys and girls loitering about the roads, and the talk that went on was of one kind — love. He said that newspapers containing love-stories were finding their way into the people’s houses, stories about love, in which there was nothing elevating or ennobling. The people listened, accepting the priest’s opinion without question. And their submission was pathetic. It was the submission of a primitive people clinging to religious authority, and Bryden contrasted the weakness and incompetence of the people about him with the modern restlessness and cold energy of the people he had left behind him.
One evening, as they were dancing, a knock came to the door, and the piper stopped playing, and the dancers whispered: —
“Some one has told on us; it is the priest.”
And the awe-stricken villagers crowded round the cottage fire, afraid to open the door. But the priest said that if they did not open the door he would put his shoulder to it and force it open. Bryden went towards the door, saying he would allow no one to threaten him, priest or no priest, but Margaret caught his arm and told him that if he said anything to the priest, the priest would speak against them from the altar, and they would be shunned by the neighbours. It was Mike Scully who went to the door and let the priest in, and he came in saying they were dancing their souls into hell.
“I’ve heard of your goings on,” he said— “of your beer-drinking and dancing. I will not have it in my parish. If you want that sort of thing you had better go to America.”
“If that is intended for me, sir, I will go back to-morrow. Margaret can follow.”
“It isn’t the dancing, it’s the drinking I’m opposed to,” said the priest, turning to Bryden.
“Well, no one has drunk too much, sir,” said Bryden.
“But you’ll sit here drinking all night,” and the priest’s eyes went towards the corner where the women had gathered, and Bryden felt that the priest looked on the women as more dangerous than the porter.
“It’s after midnight,” he said, taking out his watch. By Bryden’s watch it was only half-past eleven, and while they were arguing about the time Mrs. Scully offered Bryden’s umbrella to the priest, for in his hurry to stop the dancing the priest had gone out without his; and, as if to show Bryden that he bore him no ill-will, the priest accepted the loan of the umbrella, for he was thinking of the big marriage fee that Bryden would pay him.
“I shall be badly off for the umbrella to-morrow,” Bryden said, as soon as the priest was out of the house. He was going with his father-in-law to a fair. His father-in-law was learning him how to buy and sell cattle. And his father-in-law was saying that the country was mending, and that a man might become rich in Ireland if he only had a little capital. Bryden had the capital, and Margaret had an uncle on the other side of the lake who would leave her all he had, that would be fifty pounds, and never in the village of Duncannon had a young couple begun life with so much prospect of success as would James Bryden and Margaret Dirken.
Some time after Christmas was spoken of as the best time for the marriage; James Bryden said that he would not be able to get his money out of America before the spring. The delay seemed to vex him, and he seemed anxious to be married, until one day he received a letter from America, from a man who had served in the bar with him. This friend wrote to ask Bryden if he were coming back. The letter was no more than a passing wish to see Bryden again. Yet Bryden stood looking at it, and everyone wondered what could be in the letter. It seemed momentous, and they hardly believed him when he said it was from a friend who wanted to know if his health were better. He tried to forget the letter, and he looked at the worn fields, divided by walls of loose stones, and a great longing came upon him.
The smell of the Bowery slum had come across the Atlantic, and had found him out in this western headland; and one night he awoke from a dream in which he was hurling some drunken customer through the open doors into the darkness. He had seen his friend in his white duck jacket throwing drink from glass into glass amid the din of voices and strange accents; he had heard the clang of money as it was swept into the till, and his sense sickened for the bar-room. But how should he tell Margaret Dirken that he could not marry her? She had built her life upon this marriage. He could not tell her that he would not marry her... yet he must go. He felt as if he were being hunted; the thought that he must tell Margaret that he could not marry her hunted him day after day as a weasel hunts a rabbit. Again and again he went to meet her with the intention of telling her that he did not love her, that their lives were not for one another, that it had all been a mistake, and that happily he had found out it was a mistake soon enough. But Margaret, as if she guessed what he was about to speak of, threw her arms about him and begged him to say he loved her, and that they would be married at once. He agreed that he loved her, and that they would be married at once. But he had not left her many minutes before the feeling came upon him that he could not marry her — that he must go away. The smell of the bar-room hunted him down. Was it for the sake of the money that he might make there that he wished to go back? No, it was not the money. What then? His eyes fell on the bleak country, on the little fields divided by bleak walls; he remembered the pathetic ignorance of the people, and it was these things that he could not endure. It was the priest who came to forbid the dancing. Yes, it was the priest. As he stood looking at the line of the hills the bar-room seemed by him. He heard the politicians, and the excitement of politics was in his blood again. He must go away from this place — he must get back to the bar-room. Looking up he saw the scanty orchard, and he hated the spare road that led to the village, and he hated the little hill at the top of which the village began, and he hated more than all other places the house where he was to live with Margaret Dirken — if he married her. He could see it from where he stood — by the edge
of the lake, with twenty acres of pasture land about it, for the landlord had given up part of his demesne land to them.
He caught sight of Margaret, and he called to her to come through the stile.
“I have just had a letter from America.”
“About the money?” she said.
“Yes, about the money. But I shall have to go over there.”
He stood looking at her, seeking for words; and she guessed from his embarrassment that he would say to her that he must go to America before they were married.
“Do you mean, James, you will have to go at once?”
“Yes,” he said, “at once. But I shall come back in time to be married in August. It will only mean delaying our marriage a month.”
They walked on a little way talking; every step he took James felt that he was a step nearer the Bowery slum. And when they came to the gate Bryden said: —
“I must hasten or I shall miss the train.”
“But,” she said, “you are not going now — you are not going to-day?”
“Yes, this morning. It is seven miles. I shall have to hurry not to miss the train.”
And then she asked him if he would ever come back.
“Yes,” he said, “I am coming back.”
“If you are coming back, James, why not let me go with you?”
“You could not walk fast enough. We should miss the train.”
“One moment, James. Don’t make me suffer; tell me the truth. You are not coming back. Your clothes — where shall I send them?”
He hurried away, hoping he would come back. He tried to think that he liked the country he was leaving, that it would be better to have a farmhouse and live there with Margaret Dirken than to serve drinks behind a counter in the Bowery. He did not think he was telling her a lie when he said he was coming back. Her offer to forward his clothes touched his heart, and at the end of the road he stood and asked himself if he should go back to her. He would miss the train if he waited another minute, and he ran on. And he would have missed the train if he had not met a car. Once he was on the car he felt himself safe — the country was already behind him. The train and the boat at Cork were mere formulae; he was already in America.
The moment he landed he felt the thrill of home that he had not found in his native village, and he wondered how it was that the smell of the bar seemed more natural than the smell of the fields, and the roar of crowds more welcome than the silence of the lake’s edge. However, he offered up a thanksgiving for his escape, and entered into negotiations for the purchase of the bar-room.
He took a wife, she bore him sons and daughters, the bar-room prospered, property came and went; he grew old, his wife died, he retired from business, and reached the age when a man begins to feel there are not many years in front of him, and that all he has had to do in life has been done. His children married, lonesomeness began to creep about him; in the evening, when he looked into the fire-light, a vague, tender reverie floated up, and Margaret’s soft eyes and name vivified the dusk. His wife and children passed out of mind, and it seemed to him that a memory was the only real thing he possessed, and the desire to see Margaret again grew intense. But she was an old woman, she had married, maybe she was dead. Well, he would like to be buried in the village where he was born.
There is an unchanging, silent life within every man that none knows but himself, and his unchanging, silent life was his memory of Margaret Dirken. The bar-room was forgotten and all that concerned it, and the things he saw most clearly were the green hillside, and the bog lake and the rushes about it, and the greater lake in the distance, and behind it the blue lines of wandering hills.
A LETTER TO ROME
ONE MORNING THE priest’s housekeeper mentioned as she gathered up the breakfast things, that Mike Mulhare had refused to let his daughter Catherine marry James Murdoch until he had earned the price of a pig.
“This is bad news,” said the priest, and he laid down the newspaper.
“And he waited for her all the summer! Wasn’t it in February last that he came out of the poor-house? And the fine cabin he has built for her! He’ll be that lonesome, he’ll be going to America.”
“To America!” said the priest.
“Maybe it will be going back to the poor-house he’ll be, for he’ll never earn the price of his passage at the relief works.”
The priest looked at her for a moment as if he did not catch her meaning, and then a knock came at the door, and he said: —
“The inspector is here, and there are people waiting for me.”
And while he was distributing the clothes he had received from Manchester, he argued with the inspector as to the direction the new road should take; and when he came back from the relief works, there was his dinner. He was busy writing letters all the afternoon; it was not until he had handed them to the post-mistress that his mind was free to think of poor James Murdoch, who had built a cabin at the end of one of the famine roads in a hollow out of the way of the wind. From a long way off the priest could see him digging his patch of bog.
And when he caught sight of the priest he stuck his spade in the ground and came to meet him. He wore a pair of torn corduroy trousers out of which two long naked feet appeared; and there was a shirt, but it was torn, the wind thrilled in a naked breast, and the priest thought his housekeeper was right, that James must go back to the poor-house. There was a wild look in his eyes, and he seemed to the priest like some lonely animal just come out of its burrow. His mud cabin was full of peat smoke, there were pools of green water about it, but it had been dry, he said, all the summer; and he had intended to make a drain.
“It’s hard luck, your reverence, and after building this house for her. There’s a bit of smoke in the house now, but if I got Catherine I wouldn’t be long making a chimney. I told Mike he should give Catherine a pig for her fortune, but he said he would give her a calf when I bought the pig, and I said, ‘Haven’t I built a fine house and wouldn’t it be a fine one to rear him in.’”
And they walked through the bog, James talking to the priest all the way, for it was seldom he had anyone to talk to.
“Now I must not take you any further from your digging.”
“Sure there’s time enough,” said James, “amn’t I there all day.”
“I’ll go and see Mike Mulhare myself,” said the priest.
“Long life to your reverence.”
“And I will try to get you the price of the pig.”
“Ah,’tis your reverence that’s good to us.”
The priest stood looking after him, wondering if he would give up life as a bad job and go back to the poor-house. But while thinking of James Murdoch, he was conscious of an idea; it was still dim and distant, but every moment it emerged, it was taking shape.
Ireland was passing away. In five-and-twenty years, if some great change did not take place, Ireland would be a Protestant country. “There is no one in this parish except myself who has a decent house to live in,” he murmured; and then an idea broke suddenly in his mind. The Greek priests were married. They had been allowed to retain their wives in order to avoid a schism. Rome had always known how to adapt herself to circumstances, and there was no doubt that if Rome knew Ireland’s need of children Rome would consider the revocation of the decree — the clergy must marry.
He walked very slowly, and looking through the peat stacks he saw St. Peter’s rising above a rim of pearl-coloured mountains, and before he was aware of it he had begun to consider how he might write a letter to Rome. Was it not a fact that celibacy had only been made obligatory in Ireland in the twelfth century?
When he returned home, his housekeeper was anxious to hear about James Murdoch, but the priest sat possessed by the thought of Ireland becoming a Protestant country; and he had not moved out of his chair when the servant came in with his tea. He drank his tea mechanically, and walked up and down the room, and it was a long time before he took up his knitting. But that evening he could not knit, and
he laid the stocking aside so that he might think.
Of what good would his letter be? A letter from a poor parish priest asking that one of the most ancient decrees should be revoked! The Pope’s secretary would pitch his letter into the waste paper basket. The Pope would be only told of its contents! The cardinals are men whose thoughts move up and down certain narrow ways, clever men no doubt, but clever men are often the dupes of conventions. All men who live in the world accept the conventions as truths. And the idea of this change in ecclesiastical law had come to him because he lived in a waste bog.
But was he going to write the letter? He could not answer the question! Yes, he knew that sooner or later he must write this letter. “Instinct,” he said, “is a surer guide than logic. My letter to Rome was a sudden revelation.” The idea had fallen as it were out of the air, and now as he sat knitting by his own fireside it seemed to come out of the corners of the room.
“When you were at Rathowen,” his idea said, “you heard the clergy lament that the people were leaving the country. You heard the Bishop and many eloquent men speak on the subject, but their words meant little, but on the bog road the remedy was revealed to you.
“The remedy lies with the priesthood. If each priest were to take a wife about four thousand children would be born within the year, forty thousand children would be added to the birth-rate in ten years. Ireland would be saved by her priesthood!”
The truth of this estimate seemed beyond question, nevertheless, Father MacTurnan found it difficult to reconcile himself to the idea of a married clergy. One is always the dupe of prejudice. He knew that and went on thinking. The priests live in the best houses, eat the best food, wear the best clothes; they are indeed the flower of the nation, and would produce magnificent sons and daughters. And who could bring up their children according to the teaching of our holy church as well as priests?
So did his idea speak to him, unfolding itself in rich variety every evening. Very soon he realised that other advantages would accrue, beyond the addition of forty thousand children to the birth-rate, and one advantage that seemed to him to exceed the original advantage would be the nationalisation of religion, the formation of an Irish Catholicism suited to the ideas and needs of the Irish people.