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The Untilled Field

G >> George Moore >> The Untilled Field




"You haven't done any mowing this many a year; I don't think you'd
be of much help. You'd better go for a walk by the lake, but you
may come in the afternoon if you like and help to turn the grass
over."

Bryden was afraid he would find the lake shore very lonely, but
the magic of returning health is the sufficient distraction for
the convalescent, and the morning passed agreeably. The weather
was still and sunny. He could hear the ducks in the reeds. The
hours dreamed themselves away, and it became his habit to go to
the lake every morning. One morning he met the landlord, and they
walked together, talking of the country, of what it had been, and
the ruin it was slipping into. James Bryden told him that ill
health had brought him back to Ireland; and the landlord lent him
his boat, and Bryden rowed about the islands, and resting upon his
oars he looked at the old castles, and remembered the pre-historic
raiders that the landlord had told him about. He came across the
stones to which the lake dwellers had tied their boats, and these
signs of ancient Ireland were pleasing to Bryden in his present
mood.

As well as the great lake there was a smaller lake in the bog
where the villagers cut their turf. This lake was famous for its
pike, and the landlord allowed Bryden to fish there, and one
evening when he was looking for a frog with which to bait his line
he met Margaret Dirken driving home the cows for the milking.
Margaret was the herdsman's daughter, and she lived in a cottage
near the Big House; but she came up to the village whenever there
was a dance, and Bryden had found himself opposite to her in the
reels. But until this evening he had had little opportunity of
speaking to her, and he was glad to speak to someone, for the
evening was lonely, and they stood talking together.

"You're getting your health again," she said. "You'll soon be
leaving us."

"I'm in no hurry."

"You're grand people over there; I hear a man is paid four dollars
a day for his work."

"And how much," said James, "has he to pay for his food and for
his clothes?"

Her cheeks were bright and her teeth small, white and beautifully
even; and a woman's soul looked at Bryden out of her soft Irish
eyes. He was troubled and turned aside, and catching sight of a
frog looking at him out of a tuft of grass he said:--

"I have been looking for a frog to put upon my pike line."

The frog jumped right and left, and nearly escaped in some bushes,
but he caught it and returned with it in his hand.

"It is just the kind of frog a pike will like," he said. "Look at
its great white belly and its bright yellow back."

And without more ado he pushed the wire to which the hook was
fastened through the frog's fresh body, and dragging it through
the mouth he passed the hooks through the hind legs and tied the
line to the end of the wire.

"I think," said Margaret, "I must be looking after my cows; it's
time I got them home."

"Won't you come down to the lake while I set my line?"

She thought for a moment and said:--

"No, I'll see you from here."

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.





CHAPTER V

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.

In the beginning of the century the Irish lost their language, in
the middle of the century the characteristic aspects of their
religion. He remembered that it was Cardinal Cuilen who had
denationalised religion in Ireland. But everyone recognised his
mistake, and how could a church be nationalised better than by the
rescission of the decree? Wives and the begetting of children
would attach the priests to the soil of Ireland. It could not be
said that anyone loved his country who did not contribute to its
maintenance. He remembered that the priests leave Ireland on
foreign missions, and he said: "Every Catholic who leaves Ireland
helps to bring about the very thing that Ireland has been
struggling against for centuries--Protestantism."

This idea talked to him, and, one evening, it said, "Religion,
like everything else, must be national," and it led him to
contrast cosmopolitanism with parochialism. "Religion, like art,
came out of parishes," he said. Some great force was behind him.
He must write! He must write... .

He dropped the ink over the table and over the paper, he jotted
down his ideas in the first words that came to him until midnight;
he could see his letter in all its different parts, and when he
slept it floated through his sleep.

"I must have a clear copy of it before I begin the Latin
translation."

He had written the English text thinking of the Latin that would
come after, and very conscious of the fact that he had written no
Latin since he had left Maynooth, and that a bad translation would
discredit his ideas in the eyes of the Pope's secretary, who was
doubtless a great Latin scholar. "The Irish priests have always
been good Latinists," he murmured as he hunted through the
dictionary.

The table was littered with books, for he had found it necessary
to create a Latin atmosphere before beginning his translation. He
worked principally at night, and one morning about three he
finished his translation, and getting up from his chair he walked
to the whitening window. His eyes pained him, and he decided he
would postpone reading over what he had written till morning.

His illusions regarding his Latin were broken. He had laid his
manuscript on a table by his bedside, and on awakening he had
reached out his hand for it, but he had not read a page when he
dropped it; and the manuscript lay on the floor while he dressed.
He went into his breakfast, and when he had eaten his breakfast
his nerve failed him. He could not bring himself to fetch the
manuscript, and it was his housekeeper who brought it to him.

"Ah," he said, "it is tasteless as the gruel that poor James
Murdoch is eating." And taking a volume from the table--"St.
Augustine's Confessions"--he said, "what diet there is here!"

He stood reading. There was no idiom, he had used Latin words
instead of English. At last he was interrupted by the wheels of a
car stopping at his door. Father Meehan! Meehan could revise his
Latin! None had written such good Latin at Maynooth as Meehan.

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