by George Moore
“And you discovered from his papers that his agitation was directed against religion?”
Ellen nodded.
“I cannot think of anything more unfortunate,” said the priest.
Father Brennan was a little fat man with small eyes and a punctilious deferential manner, and his voice was slightly falsetto.
“I cannot understand how your husband can be so unwise. I know very little of him, but I did not think he was capable of making so grave a mistake. The country is striving to unite itself, and we have been uniting, and now that we have a united Ireland, or very nearly, it appears that Mr. Carmady has come from America to divide us again. What can he gain by these tactics? If he tells the clergy that the moment Home Rule is granted an anti-religious party will rise up and drive them out of the country, he will set them against Home Rule, and if the clergy are not in favour of Home Rule who, I would ask Mr. Carmady, who will be in favour of it? And I will ask you, my dear child, to ask him — I suggest that you should ask him to what quarter he looks for support.”
“Ned and I never talk politics; we used to, but that is a long time ago.”
“He will only ruin himself. But I think you said you came to consult me about something.”
“Yes. You see a very large part of my money is spent in politics and I am not certain that I should not withdraw my money. It is for that I have come to consult you.”
Ellen had been addressing the little outline of the priest’s profile, but when he heard the subject on which she had come to consult him he turned and she saw his large face, round and mottled. A little light gathered in his wise and kindly eyes, and Ellen guessed that he had begun to see his way out of the difficulty, and she was glad of it, for she reckoned her responsibility at a number of souls. The priest spoke very kindly, he seemed to understand how difficult it would be for her to tell her husband that she could not give him any more money unless he promised not to attack the clergy or religion, but she must do so. He pointed out that to attack one was to attack the other, for the greater mass of mankind understands religion only through the clergy.
“You must not only withdraw your money,” he said, “but you must use your influence to dissuade him.”
“I am afraid,” said Ellen, “that when I tell him that I must withdraw my money, and that you have told me to do so—”
“You need not say that I told you to do so.”
“I cannot keep anything back from my husband. I must tell him the whole truth,” she said. “And when I tell him everything, I shall not only lose any influence that may remain, but I doubt very much if my husband will continue to live with me.”
“But your marriage was a love marriage?”
“Yes, but that is a long time ago. It is four years ago.”
“I don’t think your husband will separate himself from you, but even so I think—”
“You will give me absolution?”
She said this a little defiantly, and the priest wondered, and she left the confessional perplexed and a little ashamed and very much terrified.
There was nothing for her to do in Dublin, she must go home and wait for her husband. He was not coming home until evening, and she rode home wondering how the day would pass, thinking the best time to tell him would be after dinner when he left the piano. If he were very angry with her she would go to her room. He would not go on living with her, she was sure of that, and her heart seemed to stand still when she entered the house and saw the study door open and Ned looking through the papers.
“I have come back to look for some papers,” he said. “It is very annoying. I have lost half the day,” and he went on looking among his papers and she could see that he suspected nothing. “Do you know when is the next train?”
She looked out the trains for him, and after he had found the papers he wanted they went into the garden.
She talked of her flowers with the same interest as she had done many times before, and when he asked her to go for a walk with him on the hill she consented, although it was almost unbearable to walk with him for the last time through the places where they had walked so often, thinking that their lives would move on to the end unchanged; and they walked about the hill talking of Irish history, their eyes often resting on the slender outlines of Howth, until it was time for Ned to go to the station.
“I shall be back in time for dinner. You will wait dinner a little for me, I may have to come back by a later train.”
And they walked down the hill together, Ned bidding her good-bye at the garden gate, saying she had walked enough that day, and she feeling the moment was at hand.
“But, Ned, why are you going to Dublin? You are only going to see people who are anti-Catholic, who hate our religion, who are prejudiced against it.”
“But,” he said, “why do you talk of these things. We have got on very much better since we have ceased to discuss politics together. We are agreed in everything else.”
She did not answer for a long time and then she said: —
“But I don’t see how we are to avoid discussing them, for it is my money that supports the agitation.”
“I never thought of that. So it is. Do you wish to withdraw it?”
“You are not angry with me, Ned? You won’t think it mean of me to withdraw my money? How are you going to go on without my money? You see I am wrecking your political career.”
“Oh,” he said, “I shall be able to get on without it. Now, good-bye.”
“May I go to the station with you?”
“If you like, only let us talk of something else. Everyone’s conscience is his own law and you must act accordingly.”
She trotted by his side, and she begged of him not to laugh at her when he said that to be truly logical she would have to turn him out of the house, or at least to charge him for his board and lodging.
The intonation of his voice laid her heart waste; she felt she was done for, and she walked home repeating the words, “I am done for.”
As she passed through her garden she saw that her flowers were dying for want of water, and she gave them a few cans of water; but she could not do much work, and though the cans were heavy, they were not as heavy as her heart. She sat down under the apple-tree and remembered her life. Her best days were her school-days. Then life was beginning. Now it seemed to her nearly over, and she only five-and-twenty. She never could take the same interest in politics as she had once taken, nor in books. She felt that her intelligence had declined. She was cleverer as a girl than she was as a woman.
Ned was coming home for dinner, and some time that evening she would have to tell him that she had read his manuscript. She would have liked to meet him at the station, but thought it would be better not to go. The day wore away. Ned was in his best humour, and when she told him why she did not go to the station to meet him, he said it was foolish of her not to have come, for there was nothing he liked better than to stroll home with her in the evening, the road was so pleasant, etc.
She could see that he had not noticed her dress or what he was eating, and it was irritating to see him sitting there with his spoon full of soup telling her how the Irish people would have to reduce their expenditure and think a little less of priests — for a while, at least — unless they were minded to pass away, to become absorbed in America.
“I like Brennan,” he said, throwing himself back in his chair. “He is a clever man. Brennan knows as well as I do there’s too much money spent upon religion in Ireland. But, tell me, did he tell you explicitly that you should give me no more money?”
“Yes. But, Ned—”
“No, no, I am not in the least angry,” he said, “I shall always get money to carry on politics. But what a game it is! And I suppose, Ellen, you consult him on every detail of your life?”
Her admission that Father Brennan had taken down books and put on his spectacles delighted him.
“Taking down tomes!” he said. “Splendid! Some of these gentlemen would discuss theology with
God. I can see Father Brennan getting up: ‘Sire, my reason for entering the said sin as a venal sin, etc.’”
Very often during the evening the sewing dropped from her hands, and she sat thinking. Sooner or later she would nave to tell Ned she had read his manuscript. He would not mind her reading his manuscript, and though he hated the idea that anyone should turn to a priest and ask him for his interpretation regarding right and wrong, he had not, on the whole, been as angry as she had expected.
At last she got up. “I am going to bed, Ned.”
“Isn’t it very early?”
“There is no use my stopping here. You don’t want to talk to me; you’ll go on playing till midnight.”
“Now, why this petulancy, Ellen? I think it shows a good deal of forgiveness for me to kiss you after the way you have behaved.”
She held a long string of grease in her fingers, and was melting it, and when she could no longer hold it in her fingers, she threw the end into the flame.
“I’ve forgiven you, Ellen.... You never tell me anything of your ideas now; we never talk to each other, and if this last relation is broken there will be nothing ... will there?”
“I sought Father Brennan’s advice under the seal of confession, that was all. You don’t think that—”
“There are plenty of indirect ways in which he will be able to make use of the information he has got from you.”
“You have not yet heard how it happened, and perhaps when you do you will think worse of me. I went into your room to see what books you were reading. There was no harm in looking at a book; but you had put the books so far into the bookcase that I could not see the name of the author. I took up the manuscript from the table and glanced through it. I suppose I ought not to have done that: a manuscript is not the same as a book. And now goodnight.”
She had gone to her room and did not expect him. Well, the sensual coil was broken, and if he did not follow her now she would understand that it was broken. He had wanted freedom this long while. They had come to the end of the second period, and there are three — a year of mystery and passion, and then some years of passion without mystery. The third period is one of resignation. The lives of the parents pass into the children, and the mated journey on, carrying their packs. Seldom, indeed, the man and the woman weary of the life of passion at the same time and turn instinctively into the way of resignation like animals. Sometimes it is the man who turns first, sometimes it is the woman. In this case it was the man. He had his work to do, and Ellen had her child to think of, and each must think of his and her task from henceforth. Their tasks were not the same. Each had a different task; she had thrown, or tried to throw, his pack from his shoulders. She had thwarted him, or, tried to thwart him. He grew angry as he thought of what she had done. She had gone into his study and read his papers, and she had then betrayed him to a priest. He lay awake thinking how he had been deceived by Ellen; thinking that he had been mistaken; that her character was not the noble character he had imagined. But at the bottom of his heart he was true to the noble soul that religion could not extinguish nor even his neglect.
She said one day: “Is it because I read your manuscript and told the priest, that you would not come to my room, or is it because you are tired of me?”
“I cannot tell you; and, really, this conversation is very painful. I am engaged upon my work, and I have no thoughts for anything but it.” Another time when he came from the piano and sat opposite to her she raised her eyes from her sewing and sat looking at him, and then getting up suddenly she put her hands to her forehead and said to herself: “I will conquer this,” and she went out of the room.
And from that day she did not trouble him with love. She obtained control over herself, and he remembered a mistress who had ceased to love him, and he had persecuted her for a long while with supplication. “She is at one with herself always,” he said, and he tried to understand her. “She is one of those whose course through life is straight, and not zig-zag, as mine is.” He liked to see her turn and look at the baby, and he said, “That love is the permanent and original element of things, it is the universal substance;” and he could trace Ellen’s love of her child in her love of him; these loves were not two loves, but one love. And when walking one evening through the shadows, as they spoke about the destiny we can trace in our lives, about life and its loneliness, the conversation verged on the personal, and she said, with a little accent of regret, but not reproachfully: —
“But, Ned, you could not live with anyone, at least not always. I think you would sooner not live with anyone.”
He did not dare to contradict her; he knew that she had spoken the truth; and Ned was sorry he was giving pain to Ellen, for there was no one he would have liked to please better. He regretted that he was what he was, that his course was zig-zag. For a moment he regretted that such a fate should have befallen Ellen. “I am not the husband that would have suited her,” he said.... And then, after a moment’s reflection, “I was her instinct; another would not have satisfied her instinct; constancy is not everything. It’s a pity I cannot love her always, for none is more worthy of being loved.”
They became friends; he knew there was no danger of her betraying him again. Her responsibility ended with her money, and he told her how the agitation was progressing.
“Oh, Ned, if I were only sure that your agitation was not directed against religion I would follow you. But you will never believe in me.”
“Yes, I believe in you. Come to Dublin with me; come to the meeting. I’d like you to hear my speech.”
“I would like to hear you speak, Ned; but I don’t think I can go to the meeting.”
They were on their way to the station, and they walked some time without speaking. Then, speaking suddenly and gravely as if prompted by some deep instinct, Ellen said: —
“But if you fail, Ned, you will be an outcast in Ireland, and if that happens you will go away, and I shall never see you again.”
He turned and stood looking at her. That he should fail and become an outcast were not at all unlikely. Her words seemed to him like a divination! But it is the unexpected that happens, she said to herself, and the train came up to the station, and he bade her good-bye, and settled himself down in a seat to consider his speech for the last time.
“I shall say everything I dare, the moment is ripe; and the threat to hold out is that Ireland is becoming a Protestant country. And the argument to use is that the Catholics are leaving because there is no joy in Ireland.”
He went through the different sections of his speech introducing the word joy: Is Ireland going to become joyous? She has dreamed long enough among dead bones and ancient formulae. The little stations went by and the train rolled into Harcourt Street. He called a car. He was speaking at the Rotunda.
He was speaking on the depopulation question, and he said that this question came before every other question. Ireland was now confronted with the possibility that in five-and-twenty years the last of Ireland would have disappeared in America. There were some who attributed the Irish emigration to economic causes: that was a simple and obvious explanation, one that could be understood by everybody; but these simple and obvious explanations are not often, if they are ever, the true ones. The first part of Ned’s speech was taken up with the examination of the economic causes, and proving that these were not the origin of the evil. The country was joyless; man’s life is joyless in Ireland. In every other country there were merry-makings. “You have only to go into the National Gallery,” he said, “to see how much time the Dutch spent in merry-makings.” All their pictures with the exception of Rembrandt’s treated of joyful subjects, of peasants dancing under trees, peasants drinking and singing songs in taverns, and caressing servant girls. Some of their merry-makings were not of a very refined character, but the ordinary man is not refined, and in the most refined men there is often admiration and desire for common pleasure. In the country districts Irish life is one of stagnant melancholy, the only
aspiration that comes into their lives is a religious one. “Of course it will be said that the Irish are too poor to pay for pleasure, but they are not too poor to spend fifteen millions a year upon religion.” He was the last man in the world who would say that religion was not necessary, but if he were right in saying that numbers were leaving Ireland because Ireland was joyless he was right in saying that it was the duty of every Irishman to spend his money in making Ireland a joyful country. He was speaking now in the interests of religion. A country is antecedent to religion. To have religion you must first have a country, and if Ireland was not made joyful Ireland would become a Protestant country in about twenty-five years. In support of this contention he produced figures showing the rate at which the Catholics were emigrating. But not only were the Catholics emigrating — those who remained were becoming nuns and priests. As the lay population declined the clerics became more numerous. “Now,” he said, “there must be a laity. It is a very commonplace thing to say, but this very commonplace truth is forgotten or ignored, and I come here to plead to-day for the harmless and the necessary laity.” He knew that these words would get a laugh, and that the laugh would get him at least two or three minutes’ grace, and these two or three minutes could not be better employed than with statistics, and he produced some astonishing figures. These figures were compiled, he said, by a prelate bearing an Irish name, but whose object in Ireland was to induce Irishmen and Irishwomen to leave Ireland. This would not be denied, though the pretext on which he wished Irish men and women to leave Ireland would be pleaded as justification. “But of this I shall speak,” Ned said, “presently. I want you first to give your attention to the figures which this prelate produced, and with approbation. According to him there were ten convents and one hundred nuns in the beginning of the century, now there were twelve hundred convents and twenty thousand nuns. The prelate thinks that this is a matter for us to congratulate ourselves on. In view of our declining population I cannot agree, and I regret that prelates should make such thoughtless observations. Again I have to remind you of a fact that cannot be denied, but which is ignored, and it is that a celibate clergy cannot continue the population, and that if the population be not continued the tail of the race will disappear in America in about twenty-five years.... Not only does this prelate think that we should congratulate ourselves on the fact that while the lay population is decreasing the clerical population is increasing, but he thinks that Ireland should still furnish foreign missions. He came to Ireland to get recruits, to beseech Irishmen and Irishwomen to continue their noble work of the conversion of the world. No doubt the conversion of the world is a noble work. My point now is that Ireland has done her share in this noble work, and that Ireland can no longer spare one single lay Irishman or cleric or any Irishwoman. If the foreign mission is to be recruited it must be recruited at the expense of some other country.”
