She waited to hear Father Oliver's account of himself, but not having a story prepared, he pretended he was too tired to speak; and as he lay back in his chair he composed a little story, telling how he had been for a long walk with Father Moran, and, coming back in the dark, had missed his way on the outskirts of the wood. She began to raise some objections, but he said she was not to excite herself, and went out to see Alec, who, not being a quick-witted fellow, was easily persuaded into an acceptance of a very modified version of the incident, and Father Oliver lay back in his chair wondering if he had succeeded in deceiving Catherine. It would seem that he had, for when she came to visit him again from her kitchen she spoke of something quite different, which surprised him, for she was a very observant woman of inexhaustible curiosity. But this time, however, he had managed to keep his secret from her, and, dismissing her, he thought of Nora's letter.

From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty.

'RAPALLO, ITALY,

'December 12, 19—.

'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY,

'I received "The Imitation" to-day and your two letters, one asking me if I had got the book. We had left Munich without giving instructions about our letters, so please accept my apologies and my best thanks. The Elizabethan translation, as you point out, is beautiful English, and I am glad to have the book; it will remind me of you, and I will keep it by me even if I do not read it very often. I passed the book over to Mr. Poole; he read it for a few minutes, and then returned it to me. "A worthy man, no doubt," he said, "but prone to taking things for granted. 'The Imitation,'" he continued, "reminds me of a flower growing in the shade of a cloister, dying for lack of sun, and this is surely not the right kind of reading for you or your friend Father Oliver." I feel sure you want a change. Change of scene brings a change of mind. Why don't you come to Italy? Italy is the place for you. Italy is your proper mind. Mr. Poole says that Italy is every man's proper mind, and you're evidently thinking of Italy, for you ask for a description of where I am staying, saying that a ray of Italian sunlight will cheer you. Come to Italy. You can come here without danger of meeting us. We are leaving at the end of the month.

'But I could go on chattering page after page, telling you about gardens and orange-trees (the orange-trees are the best part of the decoration; even now the great fruit hangs in the green leaves); and when I had described Italy, and you had described all the castles and the islands, we could turn back and discuss our religious differences. But I doubt if any good would come of this correspondence. You see, I have got my work to do, and you have got yours, and, notwithstanding all you say, I do not believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. Your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the Irish climate. It is very depressing, I know. I remember how you used to attribute the history of Ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as you said once, without an accent upon it. But you are not the ordinary Irishman; there is enough vitality in you to resist the languor of the climate. Your mood will pass away.... Your letter about the hermit that lived on Church Island is most beautiful. You have struck the right note—the wistful Irish note—and if you can write a book in that strain I am sure it will meet with great success. Go on with your book, and don't write to me any more—at least, not for the present. I have got too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence. We are going to Paris, and are looking forward to spending a great deal of time reading in the National Library. Some day we may meet, or take up this correspondence again. At present I feel that it is better for you and better for me that it should cease. But you will not think hardly of me because I write you this. I am writing in your own interests, dear Father Gogarty.

'Very sincerely yours,

'NORA GLYNN.'

He read the letter slowly, pondering every sentence and every word, and when he had finished it his hand dropped upon his knee; and when the letter fell upon the hearthrug he did not stoop to pick it up, but sat looking into the fire, convinced that everything was over and done. There was nothing to look forward to; his life would drag on from day to day, from week to week, month to month, year to year, till at last he would be taken away to the grave. The grave is dreamless! But there might be a long time before he reached it, living for years without seeing or even hearing from her, for she would weary of writing to him. He began to dream of a hunt, the quarry hearing with dying ears the horns calling to each other in the distance, and cast in his chair, his arms hanging like dead arms, his senses mercifully benumbed, he lay, how long he knew not, but it must have been a long time.

Catherine came into the room with some spoons in her hands, and asked him what was the matter, and, jumping up, he answered her rudely, for her curiosity annoyed him. It was irritating to have to wait for her to leave the room, but he did not dare to begin thinking while she was there. The door closed at last; he was alone again, and his thoughts fixed themselves at once on the end of her letter, on the words, 'Go on with your book, and don't write to me any more—at least, not for the present. I have too much to do, and cannot attend to a lengthy correspondence.' The evident cruelty of her words surprised him. There was nothing like this in any of her other letters. She intended these words as a coup de grace. There was little mercy in them, for they left him living; he still lived—in a way.

There was no use trying to misunderstand her words. To do so would be foolish, even if it were possible for him to deceive himself, and the rest of her letter mattered nothing to him. The two little sentences with which she dismissed him were his sole concern; they were the keys to the whole of this correspondence which had beguiled him. Fool that he had been not to see it! Alas! we see only what we want to see. He wandered about the lake, trying to bring himself to hate her. He even stopped in his walks to address insulting words to her. Words of common abuse came to his tongue readily, but there was an unconquerable tenderness in his heart always; and one day the thought went by that it was nobler of her to make him suffer than to have meekly forgiven him, as many women would have done, because he was a priest. He stopped affrighted, and began to wonder if this were the first time her easy forgiveness of his mistake had seemed suspicious. No, he felt sure that some sort of shadow of disappointment had passed at the back of his mind when he read her first letter, and after having lain for months at the back of his mind, this idea had come to the surface. An extraordinary perversion, truly, which he could only account for by the fact that he had always looked upon her as being more like what the primitive woman must have been than anybody else in the world; and the first instinct of the primitive woman would be to revenge any slight on her sexual pride. He had misread her character, and in this new reading he found a temporary consolation.

As he sat thinking of her he heard a mouse gnawing under the boards, and every night after the mouse came to gnaw. 'The teeth of regret are the same; my life is being gnawed away. Never shall I see her.' It seemed impossible that life would close on him without his seeing her face or hearing her voice again, and he began to think how it would be if they were to meet on the other side. For he believed in heaven, and that was a good thing. Without such belief there would be nothing for him to do but to go down to the lake and make an end of himself. But believing as he did in heaven and the holy Catholic Church to be the surest way of getting there, he had a great deal to be thankful for. Poole's possession of her was but temporary, a few years at most, whereas his possession of her, if he were so fortunate as to gain heaven, and by his prayers to bring her back to the true fold, would endure for ever and ever. The wisest thing, therefore, for him to do would be to enter a Trappist monastery. But our Lord says that in heaven there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and what would heaven be to him without Nora? No more than a union of souls, and he wanted her body as well as her soul. He must pray. He knew the feeling well—a sort of mental giddiness, a delirium in the brain; and it increased rapidly, urging him to fall on his knees. If he resisted, it was because he was ashamed and feared to pray to God to reserve Nora for him. But the whirl in his brain soon deprived him of all power of resistance, and, looking round the room hurriedly to assure himself he was not watched, he fell on his knees and burst into extemporary prayer: 'O my God, whatever punishment there is to be borne, let me bear it. She sinned, no doubt, and her sins must be atoned for. Let me bear the punishment that thou, in thine infinite wisdom, must adjudge to her, poor sinful woman that she is, poor woman persecuted by men, persecuted by me. O my God, remember that I lent a willing ear to scandalmongers, that I went down that day to the school and lost my temper with her, that I spoke against her in my church. All the sins that have been committed are my sins; let me bear the punishment. O my Lord Jesus Christ, do thou intercede with thy Father and ask him to heap all the punishment on my head. Oh, dear Lord Jesus, if I had only thought of thee when I went down to the school, if I had remembered thy words, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," I should have been spared this anguish. If I had remembered thy words, she might have gone to Dublin and had her baby there, and come back to the parish. O my God, the fault is mine; all the faults that have been committed can be traced back to me, therefore I beseech of thee, I call upon thee, to let me bear all the punishment that she has earned by her sins, poor erring creature that she is. O my God, do this for me; remember that I served thee well for many years when I lived among the poor folk in the mountains. For all these years I ask this thing of thee, that thou wilt let me bear her punishment. Is it too much I am asking of thee, O my God, is it too much?'

When he rose from his knees, bells seemed to be ringing in his head, and he began to wonder if another miracle had befallen him, for it was as if someone had laid hands on him and forced him on his knees. But to ask the Almighty to extend his protection to him rather than to Mr. Poole, who was a Protestant, seemed not a little gross. Father Oliver experienced a shyness that he had never known before, and he hoped the Almighty would not be offended at the familiarity of the language, or the intimate nature of the request, for to ask for Nora's body as well as her soul did not seem altogether seemly.

It was queer to think like that. Perhaps his brain was giving way. And he pushed the plates aside; he could not eat any dinner, nor could he take any interest in his garden.

The dahlias were over, the chrysanthemums were beginning. Never had the country seemed so still: dead birds in the woods, and the sounds of leaves, and the fitful December sunlight on the strands—these were his distractions when he went out for a walk, and when he came in he often thought it would be well if he did not live to see another day, so heavy did the days seem, so uneventful, and in these languid autumn days the desire to write to Nora crept nearer, until it always seemed about him like some familiar animal.

From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn.

'GARRANARD, BOHOLA,

'December 30, 19—.

'DEAR MISS GLYNN,

'I should have written to you before, but I lacked courage. Do you remember saying that the loneliness of the country sometimes forced you to kneel down to pray that you might die? I think the loneliness that overcame you was the loneliness that comes at the end of an autumn day when the dusk gathers in the room. It seems to steal all one's courage away, and one looks up from one's work in despair, asking of what value is one's life. The world goes on just the same, grinding our souls away. Nobody seems to care; nothing seems to make any difference.

'Human life is a very lonely thing, and for that it is perhaps religious. But there are days when religion fails us, when we lack courage, lonesomeness being our national failing. We were always lonesome, hundreds of years ago as much as to-day. You know it, you have been through it and will sympathize. A caged bird simply beats its wings and dies, but a human being does not die of loneliness, even when he prays for death. You have experienced it all, and will know what I feel when I tell you that I spend my time watching the rain, thinking of sunshine, picture-galleries, and libraries.

'But you were right to bid me go on with the book I spoke to you about. If I had gone away, as you first suggested, I should have been unhappy; I should have thought continually of the poor people I left behind; my abandonment of them would have preyed on my mind, for the conviction is dead in me that I should have been able to return to them; we mayn't return to places where we have been unhappy. I might have been able to get a parish in England or a chaplaincy, but I should have always looked upon the desertion of my poor people as a moral delinquency. A quiet conscience is, after all, a great possession, and for the sake of a quiet conscience I will remain here, and you will be able to understand my scruple when you think how helpless my people are, and how essential is the kindly guidance of the priest.

'Without a leader, the people are helpless; they wander like sheep on a mountain-side, falling over rocks or dying amid snowdrifts. Sometimes the shepherd grows weary of watching, and the question comes, Has a man no duty towards himself? And then one begins to wonder what is one's duty and what is duty—if duty is something more than the opinions of others, something more than a convention which we would not like to hear called into question, because we feel instinctively that it is well for everyone to continue in the rut, for, after all, a rut means a road, and roads are necessary. If one lets one's self go on thinking, one very soon finds that wrong and right are indistinguishable, so perhaps it is better to follow the rut if one can. But the rut is beset with difficulties; there are big holes on either side. Sometimes the road ends nowhere, and one gets lost in spite of one's self. But why am I writing all these things to you?'

Why, indeed? If he were to send this letter she would show it to Mr. Poole, and they would laugh over it together. 'Poor priesty!' they would say, and the paper was crumpled and thrown into the fire. 'My life is unendurable, and it will grow worse,' he said, and fell to thinking how he would grow old, getting every day more like an old stereotyped plate, the Mass and the rosary at the end of his tongue, and nothing in his heart. He had seen many priests like this. Could he fall into such miserable decadence? Could such obedience to rule be any man's duty? But where should he go? It mattered little whither he went, for he would never see her any more, and she was, after all, the only real thing in the world for him.

So did he continue to suffer like an animal, mutely, instinctively, mourning his life away, forgetful of everything but his grief; unmindful of his food, and unable to sleep when he lay down, or to distinguish between familiar things—the birds about his house, the boys and girls he had baptized. Very often he had to think a moment before he knew which was Mary and which was Bridget, which was Patsy and which was Mike, and very often Catherine was in the parlour many minutes before he noticed her presence. She stood watching him, wondering of what he was thinking, for he sat in his chair, getting weaker and thinner; and soon he began to look haggard as an old man or one about to die. He seemed to grow feebler in mind; his attention wandered away every few minutes from the book he was reading. Catherine noticed the change, and, thinking that a little chat would be of help, she often came up from her kitchen to tell him the gossip of the parish; but he could not listen to her, her garrulousness seemed to him more than ever tiresome, and he kept a book by him, an old copy of 'Ivanhoe,' which he pretended he was reading when he heard her step.

Father Moran came to discuss the business of the parish with him and insisted on relieving Father Oliver of a great deal of it, saying that he wanted a rest, and he often urged Father Oliver to go away for a holiday. He was kind, but his talk was wearisome, and Father Oliver thought he would prefer to read about the fabulous Rowena than to hear any more about the Archbishop. But when Father Moran left Rowena bored him, and so completely that he could not remember at what point he had left off reading, and his thoughts wandered from the tournament to some phrase he had made use of in writing to Nora, or, it might be, some phrase of hers that would suddenly spring into his mind. He sought no longer to discover her character from her letters, nor did he criticize the many contradictions which had perplexed him: it seemed to him that he accepted her now, as the phrase goes, 'as she was,' thinking of her as he might of some supernatural being whom he had offended, and who had revenged herself. Her wickedness became in his eyes an added grace, and from the rack on which he lay he admired his executioner. Even her liking for Mr. Poole became submerged in a tide of suffering, and of longing, and weakness of spirit. He no longer had any strength to question her liking for the minor prophets: there were discrepancies in everyone, and no doubt there were in him as well as in her. He had once been very different from what he was to-day. Once he was an ardent student in Maynooth, he had been an energetic curate; and now what was he? Worse still, what was he becoming? And he allowed his thoughts to dwell on the fact that every day she was receding from him. He, too, was receding. All things were receding—becoming dimmer.

He piled the grate up with turf, and when the blaze came leaned over it, warming his hands, asking himself why she liked Mr. Poole rather than him. For he no longer tried to conceal from himself the fact that he loved her. He had played the hypocrite long enough; he had spoken about her soul, but it was herself that he wanted. This admission brought some little relief, but he felt that the relief would only be temporary. Alas! it was surrender. It was worse than surrender—it was abandonment. He could sink no deeper. But he could; we can all sink deeper. Now what would the end be? There is an end to everything; there must be an end even to humiliation, to self-abasement. It was Moran over again. Moran was ashamed of his vice, but he had to accept it, and Father Oliver thought how much it must have cost his curate to come to tell him that he wanted to lie drunk for some days in an outhouse in order to escape for a few days from the agony of living. 'That is what he called it, and I, too, would escape from it.'

His thoughts turned suddenly to a poem written by a peasant in County Cork a hundred years ago to a woman who inspired a passion that wrecked his mind altogether in the end. And he wondered if madness would be the end of his suffering, or if he would go down to the lake and find rest in it.

'Oh, succour me, dear one, give me a kiss from thy mouth, And lift me up to thee from death, Or bid them make for me a narrow bed, a coffin of boards, In the dark neighbourhood of the worm and his friends. My life is not life but death, my voice is no voice but a wind, There is no colour in me, nor life, nor richness, nor health; But in tears and sorrow and weakness, without music, without sport, without power, I go into captivity and woe, and in the pain of my love of thee.'



XI

From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn.

'GARRANARD, BOHOLA,

'March 12, 19—.

'A long time has passed without your hearing from me, and I am sure you must have said more than once: "Well, that priest has more sense than I gave him credit for. He took the hint. He understood that it would be useless for us to continue to write long letters to each other about remorse of conscience and Mr. Poole's criticism of the Bible." But the sight of my handwriting will call into question the opinion you have formed of my good sense, and you will say: "Here he is, beginning it all over again." No, I am not. I am a little ashamed of my former letters, and am writing to tell you so. My letters, if I write any, will be quite different in the future, thanks to your candour. Your letter from Rapallo cured me; like a surgeon's knife, it took out the ulcer that was eating my life away. The expression will seem exaggerated, I know; but let it remain. You no doubt felt that I was in ignorance of my own state of feelings regarding you, and you wrote just such a letter as would force me to look into my heart and to discover who I really was. You felt that you could help me to some knowledge of myself by telling me about yourself.

'The shock on reading your confession—for I look upon your Rapallo letter as one—was very great, for on reading it I felt that a good deal that I had written to you about the salvation of your soul was inspired, not by any pure fear that I had done anything that might lose a soul to God, but by pure selfishness. I did not dare to write boldly that I loved yourself, and would always love you; I wore a mask and a disguise, and in order to come to terms with myself I feel it necessary to confess to you; otherwise all the suffering I have endured would be wasted.

'But this is not all my confession; worse still remains. I have discovered that when I spoke against you in church, and said things that caused you to leave the parish, I did not do so, as I thought, because I believed that the morality of my parish must be maintained at any cost. I know now that jealousy—yes, sensual jealousy—prompted me. And when I went to my sisters to ask them to appoint you to the post of music-teacher in their school, I did not do so for their sake, but for my own, because I wished to have you back in the parish. But I do not wish you to think that when I wrote about atonement I wrote what I knew to be untrue. I did not; the truth was hidden from me. Nor did I wish to get you back to the parish in order that I might gratify my passion. All these things were very vague, and I didn't understand myself until now. I never had any experience of life till I met you. And is it not curious that one should know so little of one's self, for I might have gone down to my grave without knowing how false I was at heart, if I had not been stricken down with a great illness.

'One day, Catherine told me that the lake was frozen over, and, as I had been within doors a long while, she advised me to go out and see the boys sliding on the ice. Her advice put an idea into my head, that I might take out my skates and skate recklessly without trying to avoid the deeper portions where the ice was likely to be thin, for I was weary of life, and knowing that I could not go back upon the past, and that no one would ever love me, I wished to bring my suffering to an end. You will wonder why I did not think of the sufferings that I might have earned for myself in the next world. I had suffered so much that I could think of nothing but the present moment. God was good, and he saved me, for as I stood irresolute before a piece of ice which I knew wouldn't bear me, I felt a great sickness creeping over me. I returned home, and for several days the doctor could not say whether I would live or die. You remember Catherine, my servant? She told me that the only answer the doctor would give her was that if I were not better within a certain time there would be no hope of my recovery. At the end of the week he came into my room. Catherine was waiting outside, and I hear that she fell on her knees to thank God when the doctor said: "Yes, he is a little better; if there's no relapse he'll live."

'After a severe illness one is alone with one's self, the whole of one's life sings in one's head like a song, and listening to it, I learned that it was jealousy that prompted me to speak against you, and not any real care for the morality of my parish. I discovered, too, that my moral ideas were not my own. They were borrowed from others, and badly assimilated. I remembered, too, how at Maynooth the tradition was always to despise women, and in order to convince myself I used to exaggerate this view, and say things that made my fellow-students look at me askance, if not with suspicion. But while dozing through long convalescent hours many things hitherto obscure to me became clear, and it seems now to me to be clearly wrong to withhold our sympathy from any side of life. It seems to me that it is only by our sympathy we can do any good at all. God gave us our human nature; we may misuse and degrade our nature, but we must never forget that it came originally from God.

'What I am saying may not be in accordance with current theology, but I am not thinking of theology, but of the things that were revealed to me during my sickness. It was through my fault that you met Mr. Walter Poole, and I must pray to God that he will bring you back to the fold. I shall pray for you both. I wish you all happiness, and I thank you for the many kind things you have said, for the good advice you have given me. You are quite right: I want a change. You advise me to go to Italy, and you are right to advise me to go there, for my heart yearns for Italy. But I dare not go; for I still feel that if I left my parish I should never return to it; and if I were to go away and not return a great scandal would be caused, and I am more than ever resolved not to do anything to grieve the poor people, who have been very good to me, and whose interests I have neglected this long while.

'I send this letter to Beechwood Hall, where you will find it on your return. As I have already said, you need not answer it; no good will come by answering it. In years to come, perhaps, when we are both different, we may meet again.

'OLIVER GOGARTY.'

From Miss Nora Glynn to Father Oliver Gogarty.

'IMPERIAL HOTEL, CAIRO, EGYPT,

'May 5, 19—.

'DEAR FATHER GOGARTY,

'By the address on the top of this sheet of paper you will see that I have travelled a long way since you last heard from me, and ever since your letter has been following me about from hotel to hotel. It is lucky that it has caught me up in Egypt, for we are going East to visit countries where the postal service has not yet been introduced. We leave here to-morrow. If your letter had been a day later it would have missed me; it would have remained here unclaimed—unless, indeed, we come back this way, which is not likely. You see what a near thing it was; and as I have much to say to you, I should be sorry not to have had an opportunity of writing.

'Your last letter put many thoughts into my head, and made me anxious to explain many things which I feel sure you do not know about my conduct since I left London, and the letters I have written to you. Has it not often seemed strange to you that we go through life without ever being able to reveal the soul that is in us? Is it because we are ashamed, or is it that we do not know ourselves? It is certainly a hard task to learn the truth about ourselves, and I appreciate the courage your last letter shows; you have faced the truth, and having learned it, you write it to me in all simplicity. I like you better now, Oliver Gogarty, than I ever did before, and I always liked you. But it seems to me that to allow you to confess yourself without confessing myself, without revealing the woman's soul in me as you have revealed the man's soul in yourself, would be unworthy.

'Our destinies got somehow entangled, there was a wrench, the knot was broken, and the thread was wound upon another spool. The unravelling of the piece must have perplexed you, and you must have wondered why the shape and the pattern should have passed suddenly away into thread again, and then, after a lapse of time, why the weaving should have begun again.

'You must have wondered why I wrote to you, and you must have wondered why I forgave you for the wrong you did me. I guessed that our friendship when I was in the parish was a little more than the platonic friendship that you thought it was, so when you turned against me, and were unkind, I found an excuse for you. When my hatred was bitterest, I knew somehow, at the back of my mind—for I only allowed myself to think of it occasionally—that you acted from—there is but one word—jealousy (not a pretty word from your point of view); and it must have shocked you, as a man and as a priest, to find that the woman whom you thought so much of, and whose society gave you so much pleasure (I know the times we passed together were as pleasant to you as they were to me), should suddenly without warning appear in a totally different light, and in a light which must have seemed to you mean and sordid. The discovery that I was going to have a baby threw me suddenly down from the pedestal on which you had placed me; your idol was broken, and your feelings—for you are one of those men who feel deeply—got the better of you, and you indulged in a few incautious words in your church.

'I thought of these things sometimes, not often, I admit, in the little London lodging where I lived till my baby was born, seeing my gown in front getting shorter, and telling lies to good Mrs. Dent about the husband whom I said was abroad, whom I was expecting to return. That was a miserable time, but we won't talk of it any more. When Father O'Grady showed me the letter that you wrote him, I forgave you in a way. A woman forgives a man the wrongs he does when these wrongs are prompted by jealousy, for, after all, a woman is never really satisfied if a man is not a little jealous. His jealousy may prove inconvenient, and she may learn to hate it and think it an ugly thing and a crooked thing, but, from her point of view, love would not be complete without it.

'I smiled, of course, when I got your letter telling me that you had been to your sisters to ask them if they would take me as a schoolmistress in the convent, and I walked about smiling, thinking of your long innocent drive round the lake. I can see it all, dear man that you are, thinking you could settle everything, and that I would return to Ireland to teach barefooted little children their Catechism and their A, B, C. How often has the phrase been used in our letters! It was a pretty idea of yours to go to your sisters; you did not know then that you cared for me—you only thought of atonement. I suppose we must always be deceived. Mr. Poole says self-deception is the very law of life. We live enveloped in self-deception as in a film; now and again the film breaks like a cloud and the light shines through. We veil our eyes, for we do not like the light. It is really very difficult to tell the truth, Father Gogarty; I find it difficult now to tell you why I wrote all these letters. Because I liked you? Yes, and a little bit because I wished you to suffer; I don't think I shall ever get nearer the truth than that. But when I asked you to meet us abroad, I did so in good faith, for you are a clever man, and Mr. Poole's studies would please you. At the back of my mind I suppose I thought to meet him would do you good; I thought, perhaps, that he might redeem you from some conventions and prejudices. I don't like priests; the priest was the only thing about you I never liked. Was it in some vain, proselytizing idea that I invited you? Candidly, I don't know, and I don't think I ever shall. We know so very little about this world that it seems to me waste of time to think about the next. My notion is that the wisest plan is to follow the mood of the moment, with an object more or less definite in view.... Nothing is worth more than that. I am at the present moment genuinely interested in culture, and therefore I did not like at all the book you sent me, "The Imitation," and I wrote to tell you to put it by, to come abroad and see pictures and statues in a beautiful country where people do not drink horrid porter, but nice wine, and where Sacraments are left to the old people who have nothing else to interest them. I suppose it was a cruel, callous letter, but I did not mean it so; I merely wanted to give you a glimpse of my new life and my new point of view. As for this letter, Heaven knows how you will take it—whether you will hate me for it or like me; but since you wrote quite frankly to me, confessing yourself from end to end, I feel bound to tell you everything I know about myself—and since I left Ireland I have learned a great deal about myself and about life. Perhaps I should have gone on writing to you if Mr. Poole had not one day said that no good would come of this long correspondence; he suspected I was a disturbing influence, and, as you were determined to live in Ireland, he said it were better that you should live in conventions and prejudices, without them your life would be impossible.

'Then came your last letter, and it showed me how right Mr. Poole was. Nothing remains now but to beg your forgiveness for having disturbed your life. The disturbance is, perhaps, only a passing one. You may recover your ideas—the ideas that are necessary to you—or you may go on discovering the truth, and in the end may perhaps find a way whereby you may leave your parish without causing scandal. To be quite truthful, that is what I hope will happen. However this may be, I hope if we ever meet again it will not be till you have ceased to be a priest. But all this is a long way ahead. We are going East, and shall not be back for many months; we are going to visit the buried cities in Turkestan. I do not know if you have ever heard about these cities. They were buried in sand somewhere about a thousand years ago, and some parts have been disinterred lately. Vaults were broken into in search of treasure. Gold and precious stones were discovered, but far more valuable than the gold and silver, so says Mr. Poole, are certain papyri now being deciphered by the learned professors of Berlin.

'You know the name of Mr. Poole's book, "The Source of the Christian River"? He had not suspected that its source went further back than Palestine, but now he says that some papyri may be found that will take it far back into Central Asia.

'I am going with him on this quest. It sounds a little absurd, doesn't it? my going in quest of the Christian river? But if one thinks for a moment, one thing is as absurd as another. Do you know, I find it difficult to take life seriously, and I walk about the streets thinking of you, Father Gogarty, and the smile that will come over your face, half angry, half pleased, when you read that your schoolmistress is going to Central Asia in quest of the Christian river. What will you be doing all this time? You say that you cannot leave your parish because you fear to give scandal; you fear to pain the poor people, who have been good to you and who have given you money, and your scruple is a noble one; I appreciate and respect it. But we must not think entirely of our duties to others; we must think of our duties to ourselves. Each one must try to realize himself—I mean that we must try to bring the gifts that Nature gave us to fruition. Nature has given you many gifts: I wonder what will become of you?

'Very sincerely yours,

'NORA GLYNN.'

'Good God, how I love that woman!' the priest said, awaking from his reverie, for the clock told him that he had sat for nearly three-quarters of an hour, her letter in his hand, after having read it. And lying back in his armchair, his hands clasped, his eyes fixed on the window, listening to the birds singing in the vine—it was already in leaf, and the shadows of the leaves danced across the carpet—he sought to define that sense of delight—he could find no other words for it—which she exhaled unconsciously as a flower exhales its perfume, that joy of life which she scattered with as little premeditation as the birds scattered their songs. But though he was constantly seeking some new form of expression of her charm, he always came back to the words 'sense of delight.' Sometimes he added that sense of delight which we experience when we go out of the house on an April morning and find everything growing about us, the sky wilful and blue, and the clouds going by, saying, 'Be happy, as we are.'

She was so different from every other woman. All other women were plain instincts, come into the world for the accomplishment of things that women had accomplished for thousands of years. Other women think as their mothers thought, and as their daughters will think, expressing the thoughts of the countless generations behind and in front of them. But this woman was moved merely by impulses; and what is more inexplicable than an impulse? What is the spring but an impulse? and this woman was mysterious, evanescent as its breath, with the same irresponsible seduction. He was certain that she was at last clear to him, though she might become dark to him again. One day she had come to gather flowers, and while arranging her posy she said casually: 'You are a ruler in this parish; you direct it, the administration of the parish is your business, and I am the little amusement that you turn to when your business is done.' He had not known how to answer her. In this way her remarks often covered him with confusion. She just thought as she pleased, and spoke as she pleased, and he returned to his idea that she was more like the primitive woman than anybody else.

Pondering on her words for the hundredth time, they seemed to him stranger than ever. That any human being should admit that she was but the delight of another's life seemed at first only extraordinary, but if one considered her words, it seemed to signify knowledge—latent, no doubt—that her beauty was part of the great agency. Her words implied that she was aware of her mission. It was her unconscious self that spoke, and it was that which gave significance to her words.

His thoughts melted into nothingness, and when he awoke from his reverie he was thinking that Nora Glynn had come into his life like a fountain, shedding living water upon it, awakening it. And taking pleasure in the simile, he said, 'A fountain better than anything else expresses this natural woman,' controlled, no doubt, by a law, but one hidden from him. 'A fountain springs out of earth into air; it sings a tune that cannot be caught and written down in notes; the rising and falling water is full of iridescent colour, and to the wilting roses the fountain must seem not a natural thing, but a spirit, and I too think of her as a spirit.' And his thoughts falling away again he became vaguely but intensely conscious of all the beauty and grace and the enchantment of the senses that appeared to him in the name of Nora Glynn.

At that moment Catherine came into the room. 'No, not now,' he said; and he went into the garden and through the wicket at the other end, thinking tenderly how he had gone out last year on a day just like the present day, trying to keep thoughts of her out of his mind.

The same fifteenth of May! But last year the sky was low and full of cotton-like clouds; and he remembered how the lake warbled about the smooth limestone shingle, and how the ducks talked in the reeds, how the reeds themselves seemed to be talking. This year the clouds lifted; there was more blue in the sky, less mist upon the water, and it was this day last year that sorrow began to lap about his heart like soft lakewater. He thought then that he was grieving deeply, but since last year he had learned all that a man could know of grief. For last year he was able to take an interest in the spring, to watch for the hawthorn-bloom; but this year he did not trouble to look their way. What matter whether they bloomed a week earlier or a week later? As a matter of fact they were late, the frost having thrown them back, and there would be no flowers till June. How beautifully the tasselled branches of the larches swayed, throwing shadows on the long May grass! 'And they are not less beautiful this year, though they are less interesting to me,' he said.

He wandered through the woods, over the country, noting the different signs of spring, for, in spite of his sorrow, he could not but admire the slender spring. He could not tell why, perhaps because he had always associated Nora with the gaiety of the spring-time. She was thin like the spring, and her laughter was blithe like the spring. She seemed to him like a spirit, and isn't the spring like a spirit? She was there in the cow-parsley just coming up, and the sight of the campions between the white spangles reminded him of the pink flowers she wore in her hat. The underwood was full of bluebells, but her eyes were not blue. The aspens were still brown, but in a month the dull green leaves, silvery underneath, would be fluttering at the end of their long stems. And the continual agitation of the aspen-leaf seemed to him rather foolish, reminding him of a weak-minded woman clamouring for sympathy always. The aspen was an untidy tree; he was not sure that he liked the tree, and if one is in doubt whether one likes or dislikes, the chances are that one dislikes. Who would think of asking himself if he liked beech-trees, or larches, or willows? A little later he stood lost in admiration of a line of willows all a-row in front of a stream; they seemed to him like girls curtseying, and the delicacy of the green and yellow buds induced him to meditate on the mysteries that common things disclose.

Seeing a bird disappear into a hole in the wall, he climbed up. The bird pecked at him, for she was hatching. 'A starling,' he said. In the field behind his house, under the old hawthorn-tree, an amiable-looking donkey had given birth to a foal, and he watched the little thing, no bigger than a sheep, covered with long gray hair ... There were some parishioners he would be sorry to part with, and there was Catherine. If he went away he would never see her again, nor those who lived in the village. All this present reality would fade, his old church, surrounded with gravestones and stunted Scotch firs, would become like a dream, every year losing a little in colour and outline. He was going, he did not know when, but he was going. For a long time the feeling had been gathering in him that he was going, and her letter increased that feeling. He would go just as soon as a reputable way of leaving his parish was revealed to him.

By the help of his reason he could not hope to find out the way. Nothing seemed more impossible than that a way should be found for him to leave his parish without giving scandal; but however impossible things may seem to us, nothing is impossible to Nature. He must put his confidence in Nature; he must listen to her. She would tell him. And he lay all the afternoon listening to the reeds and the ducks talking together in the lake. Very often the wood was like a harp; a breeze touched the strings, and every now and then the murmur seemed about to break into a little tune, and as if in emulation, or because he remembered his part in the music, a blackbird, perched near to his mate, whose nest was in the hawthorns growing out of the tumbled wall, began to sing a joyful lay in a rich round contralto, soft and deep as velvet. 'All nature,' he said, 'is talking or singing. This is talking and singing time. But my heart can speak to no one, and I seek places where no one will come.' And he began to ask if God would answer his prayer if he prayed that he might die.

The sunlit grass, already long and almost ready for the scythe, was swept by shadows of the larches, those long, shelving boughs hung with green tassels, moving mysteriously above him. Birds came and went, each on its special errand. Never was Nature more inveigling, more restful. He shut his eyes, shapes passed, dreams filled the interspaces. Little thoughts began. Why had he never brought her here? A memory of her walking under these larches would be delightful. The murmur of the boughs dissipated his dreams or changed them, or brought new ones; his consciousness grew fainter, and he could not remember what his last thoughts were when he opened his eyes.

And then he wandered out of the wood, into the sunlit country, along the dusty road, trying to take an interest in everyone whom he met. It was fairday. He met drovers and chatted to them about the cattle; he heard a wonderful story about a heifer that one of them had sold, and that found her way back home again, twenty-five miles, and a little further on a man came across the fields towards him with a sheep-dog at his heels, a beautiful bitch who showed her teeth prettily when she was spoken to; she had long gold hair, and it was easy to see that she liked to be admired.

'They're all alike, the feminine sex,' the priest thought. 'She's as pretty as Nora, and acts very much the same.'

He walked on again, stopping to speak with everybody, glad to listen to every story. One was of a man who lived by poaching. He hadn't slept in a bed for years, but lay down in the mountains and the woods. He trapped rabbits and beat people; sometimes he enticed boys far away, and then turned upon them savagely. Well, the police had caught him again, and this time he wouldn't get off with less than five years. Listening to Mike Mulroy's talk, Father Oliver forgot his own grief. A little further on they came upon a cart filled with pigs. The cart broke down suddenly, and the pigs escaped in all directions, and the efforts of a great number of country people were directed to collecting them. Father Oliver joined in the chase, and it proved a difficult one, owing to the density of the wood that the pigs had taken refuge in. At last he saw them driven along the road, for it had been found impossible to mend the cart, and at this moment Father Oliver began to think that he would like to be a pig-driver, or better still, a poacher like Carmody. A wandering mood was upon him. Anything were better than to return to his parish, and the thought of the confessions he would have to hear on Saturday night and of the Mass he would have to say on Sunday was bitter indeed, for he had ceased to believe in these things. To say Mass, believing the Mass to be but a mummery, was detestable. To remain in his parish meant a constant degradation of himself. When a parishioner sent to ask him to attend a sick call, he could barely bring himself to anoint the dying man. Some way out of the dilemma must be found, and stopping suddenly so that he might think more clearly, he asked himself why he did not wander out of the parish instead of following the path which led him back to the lake? thinking that it was because it is hard to break with habits, convictions, prejudices. The beautiful evening did not engage his thoughts, and he barely listened to the cuckoo, and altogether forgot to notice the bluebells, campions, and cow-parsley; and it was not till he stood on the hilltop overlooking the lake that he began to recover his self-possession.

'The hills,' he said, 'are turned hither and thither, not all seen in profile, and that is why they are so beautiful.'

The sunlit crests and the shadow-filled valleys roused him. In the sky a lake was forming, the very image and likeness of the lake under the hill. One glittered like silver, the other like gold, and so wonderful was this celestial lake that he began to think of immortals, of an assembly of goddesses waiting for their gods, or a goddess waiting on an island for some mortal, sending bird messengers to him. A sort of pagan enchantment was put upon him, and he rose up from the ferns to see an evening as fair as Nora and as fragrant. He tried to think of the colour of her eyes, which were fervid and oracular, and of her hands, which were long and curved, with fragile fingers, of her breath, which was sweet, and her white, even teeth. The evening was like her, as subtle and as persuasive, and the sensation of her presence became so clear that he shut his eyes, feeling her about him—as near to him as if she lay in his arms, just as he had felt her that night in the wood, but then she was colder and more remote. He walked along the foreshore feeling like an instrument that had been tuned. His perception seemed to have been indefinitely increased, and it seemed to him as if he were in communion with the stones in the earth and the clouds in heaven; it seemed to him as if the past and the future had become one.

The moment was one of extraordinary sweetness; never might such a moment happen in his life again. And he watched the earth and sky enfolded in one tender harmony of rose and blue—blue fading to gray, and the lake afloat amid vague shores, receding like a dream through sleep.



XII

From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn.

'GARRANARD, BOHOLA,

'June 18, 19—.

'Thoughts are rising up in my mind, and I am eager to write them down quickly, and with as little consideration as possible. Perhaps my thoughts will seem trivial when I have written them, but the emotion that inspired them was very wonderful and overpowering. I am, as it were, propelled to my writing-table. I must write: my emotion must find expression. Even if I were sure you would not get this letter for months, I should write it. I believe if I knew you would never get it, I should write. But if I send it to Beechwood Hall it will be forwarded, I suppose, for you will not remain whole months without hearing from Europe.... In any case, you will get this letter on your return, and it will ease my heart to write it. Above all things, I would have you know that the report that I was drowned while bathing is not true, for a report to this effect will certainly find its way into the local papers, and in these days, once a piece of news gets reported, it flies along from newspaper to newspaper, and newspapers have a knack of straying into our hands when they contain a disagreeable item of news.

'You will remember how the interview with Mr. Poole, published in Illustrated England, came into my hands. That was the first number of Illustrated England I had seen. Father O'Grady brought it here and left it upon the table, and only the fate that is over us knows why. In the same way, a paper containing a report of my supposed drowning may reach you when you return to England, and, as I do not want you to think that I have gone out of this life, I am writing to tell you that the report of my death is untrue, or, to speak more exactly, it will not be true, if my arms and legs can make it a false report. These lines will set you wondering if I have taken leave of my senses. Read on, and my sanity will become manifest. Some day next month I intend to swim across the lake, and you will, I think, appreciate this adventure. You praised my decision not to leave my parish because of the pain it would give the poor people. You said that you liked me better for it, and it is just because my resolve has not wavered that I have decided to swim across the lake. Only in this way can I quit my parish without leaving a scandalous name behind me. Moreover, the means whereby I was enlightened are so strange that I find it difficult to believe that Providence is not on my side.

'Have not men always believed in bird augury from the beginning of time? and have not prognostications a knack of coming true? I feel sure that you would think as I do if what had happened to me happened to you. Yet when you read this letter you will say, "No sooner has he disentangled himself from one superstition than he drops into another!" However this may be, I cannot get it out of my head that the strangely ill-fated bird that came out of the wood last February was sent for a purpose. But I have not told you about that bird. In my last letter my mind was occupied by other things, and there was no reason why I should have mentioned it, for it seemed at the time merely a curious accident—no more curious than the hundred and one accidents that happen every day. I believe these things are called coincidences. But to the story. The day I went out skating there was a shooting-party in Derrinrush, and at the close of day, in the dusk, a bird got up from the sedge, and one of the shooters, mistaking it for a woodcock, fired, wounding the bird.

'We watched it till we saw it fall on the shore of Castle Island, and, thinking that it would linger there for days, dying by inches, I started off with the intention of saving it from a lingering death, but a shot had done that. One pellet would have been enough, for the bird was but a heap of skin and feathers, not to be wondered at, its legs being tied together with a piece of stout string, twisted and tied so that it would last for years. And this strangely ill-fated curlew set me thinking if it were a tame bird escaped from captivity, but tame birds lose quickly their instinct of finding food. "It must have been freed yesterday or the day before," I said to myself, and in pondering how far a bird might fly in the night, this curlew came to occupy a sort of symbolic relation towards my past and my future life, and it was in thinking of it that the idea occurred to me that, if I could cross the lake on the ice, I might swim it in the summer-time when the weather was warm, having, of course, hidden a bundle of clothes amid the rocks on the Joycetown side. My clerical clothes will be found on this side, and the assumption will be, of course, that I swam out too far.

'This way of escape seemed at first fantastic and unreal, but it has come to seem to me the only practical way out of my difficulty. In no other way can I leave the parish without giving pain to the poor people, who have been very good to me. And you, who appreciated my scruples on this point, will, I am sure, understand the great pain it would give my sisters if I were to leave the Church. It would give them so much pain that I shrink from trying to imagine it. They would look upon themselves as disgraced, and the whole family. My disappearance from the parish would ever do them harm—Eliza's school would suffer for sure. This may seem an exaggeration, but certainly Eliza would never quite get over it. If this way of escape had not been revealed to me, I don't think I ever should have found courage to leave, and if I didn't leave I should die. Life is so ordered that a trace remains of every act, but the trace is not always discovered, and I trust you implicitly. You will never show this letter to anyone; you will never tell anyone.

'The Church would allow me, no doubt, to pick up a living as best I could, and would not interfere with me till I said something or wrote something that the Church thought would lessen its power; then the cry of unfrocked priest would be raised against me, and calumny, the great ecclesiastical weapon, would be used. I do not know what my future life will be: my past has been so beset with misfortune that, once I reach the other side, I shall never look back. I cannot find words to tell you of the impatience with which I wait the summer-time, the fifteenth of July, when the moon will be full. I cannot think what would have happened to me if I had stayed at home the afternoon that the curlew was shot; something would have happened, for we cannot go on always sacrificing ourselves. We can sacrifice ourselves for a time, but we cannot sacrifice ourselves all our life long, unless we begin to take pleasure in the immolation of self, and then it is no longer sacrifice. Something must have happened, or I should have gone mad.

'I had suffered so much in the parish. I think the places in which we have suffered become distasteful to us, and the instinct to wander takes us. A migratory bird goes, or dies of home-sickness; home is not always where we are born—it is among ideas that are dear to us: and it is exile to live among people who do not share our ideas. Something must have happened to me. I can think of nothing except suicide or what did happen, for I could never have made up my mind to give pain to the poor people and to leave a scandalous name behind; still less could I continue to administer Sacraments that I ceased to believe in. I can imagine nothing more shameful than the life of a man who continues his administrations after he has ceased to believe in them, especially a Catholic priest, so precise and explicit are the Roman Sacraments. A very abject life it is to murmur Absolve te over the heads of parishioners, and to place wafers on their tongues, when we have ceased to believe that we have power to forgive sins and to turn biscuits into God. A layman may have doubts, and continue to live his life as before, without troubling to take the world into his confidence, but a priest may not. The priest is a paid agent and the money an unbelieving priest receives, if he be not inconceivably hardened in sin, must be hateful to him, and his conscience can leave him no rest.

'At first I used to suspect my conversion, and began to think it unseemly that a man should cease to believe that we must renounce this life in order to gain another, without much preliminary study of the Scriptures; I began to look upon myself as a somewhat superficial person whose religious beliefs yielded before the charm of a pretty face and winsome personality, but this view of the question no longer seems superficial. I believe now that the superficial ones are those who think that it is only in the Scriptures that we may discover whether we have a right to live. Our belief in books rather than in Nature is one of humanity's most curious characteristics, and a very irreligious one, it seems to me; and I am glad to think that it was your sunny face that raised up my crushed instincts, that brought me back to life, and ever since you have been associated in my mind with the sun and the spring-tide.

'One day in the beginning of March, coming back from a long walk on the hills, I heard the bleat of the lamb and the impatient cawing of the rook that could not put its nest together in the windy branches, and as I stopped to listen it seemed to me that something passed by in the dusk: the spring-tide itself seemed to be fleeting across the tillage towards the scant fields. As the spring-tide advanced I discovered a new likeness to you in the daffodil; it is so shapely a flower. I should be puzzled to give a reason, but it reminds me of antiquity, and you were always a thing divorced from the Christian ideal. While mourning you, my poor instincts discovered you in the wind-shaken trees, and in the gaiety of the sun, and the flowers that May gives us. I shall be gone at the end of July, when the carnations are in bloom, but were I here I am certain many of them would remind me of you. There have been saints who have loved Nature, but I always wondered how it was so, for Nature is like a woman. I might have read the Scriptures again and again, and all the arguments that Mr. Poole can put forward, without my faith being in the least shaken. When the brain alone thinks, the thinking is very thin and impoverished. It seems to me that the best thinking is done when the whole man thinks, the flesh and the brain together, and for the whole man to think the whole man must live; and the life I have lived hitherto has been a thin life, for my body lived only. And not even all my body. My mind and body were separated: neither were of any use to me. I owe everything to you. My case cannot be defined merely as that of a priest who gave up his religion because a pretty woman came by. He who says that does not try to understand; he merely contents himself with uttering facile commonplace. What he has to learn is the great oneness in Nature. There is but one element, and we but one of its many manifestations. If this were not so, why should your whiteness and colour and gaiety remind me always of the spring-time?

'My pen is running fast, I hardly know what I am writing, but it seems to me that I am beginning to see much clearer. The mists are dissolving, and life emerges like the world at daybreak. I am thinking now of an old decrepit house with sagging roof and lichen-covered walls, and all the doors and windows nailed up. Every generation nailed up a door or a window till all were nailed up. In the dusty twilight creatures wilt and pray. About the house the sound of shutters creaking on rusty hinges never ceases. Your hand touched one, and the shutters fell, and I found myself looking upon the splendid sun shining on hills and fields, wooded prospects with rivers winding through the great green expanses. At first I dared not look, and withdrew into the shadow tremblingly; but the light drew me forth again, and now I look upon the world without fear. I am going to leave that decrepit dusty house and mix with my fellows, and maybe blow a horn on the hillside to call comrades together. My hands and eyes are eager to know what I have become possessed of. I owe to you my liberation from prejudices and conventions. Ideas are passed on. We learn more from each other than from books. I was unconsciously affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my vocation when you left the parish.

'I remember walking by the lake just this time last year, with the story of my life singing in my head, and you in the background beating the time. You know, we had a shop in Tinnick, and I had seen my father standing before a high desk by a dusty window year after year, selling half-pounds of tea, hanks of onions, and farm implements, and felt that if I married my cousin, Annie McGrath, our lives would reproduce those of my father and mother in every detail. I couldn't undertake the job, and for that began to believe I had a vocation for the priesthood; but I can see now that it was not piety that sent me to Maynooth, but a certain spirit of adventure, a dislike of the commonplace, of the prosaic—that is to say, of the repetition of the same things. I was interested in myself, in my own soul, and I did not want to accept something that was outside of myself, such as the life of a shopman behind a counter, or that of a clerk of the petty sessions, or the habit of a policeman. These were the careers that were open to me, and when I was hesitating, wondering if I should be able to buy up the old mills and revive the trade in Tinnick, my sister Eliza reminded me that there had always been a priest in the family. The priesthood seemed to offer opportunities of realizing myself, of preserving the spirit within me. It offered no such opportunities to me. I might as well have become a policeman, and all that I have learned since is that everyone must try to cling to his own soul; that is the only binding law. If we are here for anything, it is surely for that.

'But one does not free one's self from habits and ideas, that have grown almost inveterate, without much pain and struggle; one falls back many times, and there are always good reasons for following the rut. We believe that the rutted way leads us somewhere: it leads us nowhere, the rutted way is only a seeming; for each man received his truth in the womb. You say in your letter that our destinies got entangled, and that the piece that was being woven ran out into thread, and was rewound upon another spool. It seemed to you and it seemed to me that there is no pattern; we think there is none because Nature's pattern is undistinguishable to our eyes, her looms are so vast, but sometimes even our little sight can follow a design here and there. And does it not seem to you that, after all, there was some design in what has happened? You came and released me from conventions, just as the spring releases the world from winter rust.

'A strange idea has come into my mind, and I cannot help smiling at the topsyturvydom of Nature, or what seems to be topsyturvydom. You, who began by living in your instincts, are now wandering beyond Palestine in search of scrolls; and I, who began my life in scrolls, am now going to try to pick up the lost thread of my instincts in some great commercial town, in London or New York. My life for a long time will be that of some poor clerk or some hack journalist, picking up thirty shillings a week when he is in luck. I imagine myself in a threadbare suit of clothes edging my way along the pavement, nearing a great building, and making my way to my desk, and, when the day's work is done, returning home along the same pavement to a room high up among the rafters, close to the sky, in some cheap quarter.

'I do not doubt my ability to pick up a living—it will be a shameful thing indeed if I cannot; for the poor curlew with its legs tied together managed to live somehow, and cannot I do as much? And I have taken care that no fetters shall be placed upon my legs or chain about my neck. Anything may happen—life is full of possibilities—but my first concern must be how I may earn my living. To earn one's living is an obligation that can only be dispensed with at one's own great risk. What may happen afterwards, Heaven knows! I may meet you, or I may meet another woman, or I may remain unmarried. I do not intend to allow myself to think of these things; my thoughts are set on one thing only—how to get to New York, and how I shall pick up a living when I get there. Again I thank you for what you have done for me, for the liberation you have brought me of body and mind. I need not have added the words "body and mind," for these are not two things, but one thing. And that is the lesson I have learned. Good-bye.

'OLIVER GOGARTY.'



XIII

It would be a full moon on the fifteenth of July, and every night he went out on the hillside to watch the horned moon swelling to a disc.

And on the fifteenth, the day he had settled for his departure, as he sat thinking how he would go down to the lake in a few hours, a letter started to his mind which, as well as he could remember, was written in a foolish, vainglorious mood—a stupid letter that must have made him appear a fool in her eyes. Had he not said something about—The thought eluded him; he could only remember the general tone of his letter, and in it he seemed to consider Nora as a sort of medicine—a cure for religion.

He should have written her a simple little letter, telling her that he was leaving Ireland because he had suffered a great deal, and would write to her from New York, whereas he had written her the letter of a booby. And feeling he must do something to rectify his mistake, he went to his writing-table, but he had hardly put the pen to the paper when he heard a step on the gravel outside his door.

'Father Moran, your reverence.'

'I see that I'm interrupting you. You're writing.'

'No, I assure you.'

'But you've got a pen in your hand.'

'It can wait—a matter of no importance. Sit down.'

'Now, you'll tell me if I'm in the way?'

'My good man, why are you talking like that? Why should you be in the way?'

'Well, if you're sure you've nothing to do, may I stay to supper?'

'To supper?'

'But I see that I'm in the way.'

'No; I tell you you're not in the way. And you're going to stay to supper.'

Father Oliver flung himself between Father Moran and the door; Father Moran allowed himself to be led back to the armchair. Father Oliver took the chair opposite him, for he couldn't send Moran away; he mustn't do anything that would give rise to suspicion.

'You're quite sure I'm not in the way—I'm not interfering with any plans?'

'Quite sure. I'm glad you have come this evening.'

'Are you? Well, I had to come.'

'You had to come!'

'Yes, I had to come; I had to come to see if anything had happened. You needn't look at me like that; I haven't been drinking, and I haven't gone out of my mind. I can only tell you that I had to come to see you this evening.'

'And you don't know why?'

'No, I don't; I can't tell you exactly why I've come. As I was reading my breviary, walking up and down the road in front of the house, I felt that I must see you. I never felt anything like it in my life before. I had to come.'

'And you didn't expect to find me?'

'Well, I didn't. How did you guess that?'

'You'd have hardly come all that way to find me sitting here in this armchair.'

'That's right. It wasn't sitting in that chair I expected to see you; I didn't expect to see you at all—at least, I don't think I did. You see, it was all very queer, for it was as if somebody had got me by the shoulders. It was as if I were being pushed every yard of the road. Something was running in my mind that I shouldn't see you again, or if I did see you that it would be for the last time. You seemed to me as if you were going away on a long journey.'

'Was it dying or dead you saw me?'

'That I can't say. If I said any more I shouldn't be telling the truth. No, it wasn't the same feeling when I came to tell you I couldn't put up with the loneliness any more—the night I came here roaring for drink. I was thinking of myself then, and that you might save me or do something for me—give me drink or cure me. I don't know which thought it was that was running in my head, but I had to come to you all the same, just as I had to come to you to-day. I say it was different, because then I was on my own business; but this time it seemed to me that I was on yours. One good turn deserves another, as they say; and something was beating in my head that I could help you, serve as a stay; so I had to come. Where should I be now if it were not for you? I can see you're thinking that it was only nonsense that was running in my head, but you won't be saying it was nonsense that brought me the night I came like a madman roaring for drink. If there was a miracle that night, why shouldn't there be a miracle to-night? And if a miracle ever happened in the world, it happened that night, I'm thinking. Do you remember the dark gray clouds tearing across the sky, and we walking side by side, I trying to get away from you? I was that mad that I might have thrown you into the bog-hole if the craving had not passed from me. And it was just lifted from me as one might take the cap off one's head. You remember the prayer we said, leaning over the bit of wall looking across the bog? There was no lonesomeness that night coming home, Gogarty, though a curlew might have felt a bit.'

'A curlew!'

'Well, there were curlews and plovers about, and a starving ass picking grass between the road and the bog-hole. That night will be ever in my mind. Where would I be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me and brought me back, cured? It wouldn't be a cassock that would be on my back, but some old rag of a coat. There's nothing in this world, Gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. I think I can see myself in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached to a cab-rank.'

'Lord of Heaven, Moran! what are you coming here to talk to me in this way for? The night you're speaking of was bad enough, but your memory of it is worse. Nothing of what you're saying would have happened; a man like you would be always able to pick up a living.'

'And where would I be picking up a living if it weren't on a cab-rank, or you either?'

'Well, 'tis melancholy enough you are this evening.'

'And all for nothing, for there you are, sitting in your old chair. I see I've made a fool of myself.'

'That doesn't matter. You see, if one didn't do what one felt like doing, one would have remorse of conscience for ever after.'

'I suppose so. It was very kind of you, Moran, to come all this way.'

'What is it but a step? Three miles—'

'And a half.'

Moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, Father Oliver got up from his chair.

'Now, Moran, isn't it strange? I wonder how it was that you should have come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. You said you were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you didn't think of giving up the priesthood.'

'What are you saying, Gogarty? Don't you know well enough I'd have been suspended? Didn't I tell you that drink had taken that power over me that, if roaring hell were open, and I sitting on the brink of it and a table beside me with whisky on it, I should fill myself a glass?'

'And knowing you were going down to hell?'

'Yes, that night nothing would have stopped me. But, talking of hell, I heard a good story yesterday. Pat Carabine was telling his flock last Sunday of the tortures of the damned, and having said all he could about devils and pitchforks and caldrons, he came to a sudden pause—a blank look came into his face, and, looking round the church and seeing the sunlight streaming through the door, his thoughts went off at a tangent. "Now, boys," he said, "if this fine weather continues, I hope you'll be all out in the bog next Tuesday bringing home my turf."'

Father Oliver laughed, but his laughter did not satisfy Father Moran, and he told how on another occasion Father Pat had finished his sermon on hell by telling his parishioners that the devil was the landlord of hell. 'And I leave yourself to imagine the groaning that was heard in the church that morning, for weren't they all small tenants? But I'm afraid my visit has upset you, Gogarty.'

'How is that?'

'You don't seem to enjoy a laugh like you used to.'

'Well, I was thinking at that moment that I've heard you say that, even though you gave way to drink, you never had any doubts about the reality of the hell that awaited you for your sins.'

'That's the way it is, Gogarty, one believes, but one doesn't act up to one's belief. Human nature is inconsistent. Nothing is queerer than human nature, and will you be surprised if I tell you that I believe I was a better priest when I was drinking than I am now that I'm sober? I was saying that human nature is very queer; and it used to seem queer to myself. I looked upon drink as a sort of blackmail I paid to the devil so that he might let me be a good priest in everything else. That's the way it was with me, and there was more sense in the idea than you'd be thinking, for when the drunken fit was over I used to pray as I have never prayed since. If there was not a bit of wickedness in the world, there would be no goodness. And as for faith, drink never does any harm to one's faith whatsoever; there's only one thing that takes a man's faith from him, and that is woman. You remember the expulsions at Maynooth, and you know what they were for. Well, that sin is a bad one, but I don't think it affects a man's faith any more than drink does. It is woman that kills the faith in men.'

'I think you're right: woman is the danger. The Church dreads her. Woman is life.'

'I don't quite understand you.'

Catherine came into the room to lay the cloth, and Father Oliver asked Father Moran to come out into the garden. It was now nearing its prime. In a few days more the carnations would be all in bloom, and Father Oliver pondered that very soon it would begin to look neglected. 'In a year or two it will have drifted back to the original wilderness, to briar and weed,' he said to himself; and he dwelt on his love of this tiny plot of ground, with a wide path running down the centre, flower borders on each side, and a narrow path round the garden beside the hedge. The potato ridges, and the runners, and the cabbages came in the middle. Gooseberry-bushes and currant-bushes grew thickly, there were little apple-trees here and there, and in one corner the two large apple-trees under which he sat and smoked his pipe in the evenings.

'You're very snug here, smoking your pipe under your apple-trees.'

'Yes, in a way; but I think I was happier where you are.'

'The past is always pleasant to look upon.'

'You think so?'

The priests walked to the end of the garden, and, leaning on the wicket, Father Moran said:

'We've had queer weather lately—dull heavy weather. See how low the swallows are flying. When I came up the drive, the gravel space in front of the house was covered with them, the old birds feeding the young ones.'

'And you were noticing these things, and believing that Providence had sent you here to bid me good-bye.'

'Isn't it when the nerves are on a stretch that we notice little things that don't concern us at all?'

'Yes, Moran; you are right. I've never known you as wise as you are this evening.'

Catherine appeared in the kitchen door. She had come to tell them their supper was ready. During the meal the conversation turned on the roofing of the abbey and the price of timber, and when the tablecloth had been removed the conversation swayed between the price of building materials and the Archbishop's fear lest he should meet a violent death, as it had been prophesied if he allowed a roof to be put upon Kilronan.

'You know I don't altogether blame him, and I don't think anyone does at the bottom of his heart, for what has been foretold generally comes to pass sooner or later.'

'The Archbishop is a good Catholic who believes in everything the Church teaches—in the Divinity of our Lord, the Immaculate Conception, and the Pope's indulgences. And why should he be disbelieving in that which has been prophesied for generations about the Abbot of Kilronan?'

'Don't you believe in these things?'

'Does anyone know exactly what he believes? Does the Archbishop really believe every day of the year and every hour of every day that the Abbot of Kilronan will be slain on the highroad when a De Stanton is again Abbot?' Father Oliver was thinking of the slip of the tongue he had been guilty of before supper, when he said that the Church looks upon woman as the real danger, because she is the life of the world. He shouldn't have made that remark, for it might be remembered against him, and he fell to thinking of something to say that would explain it away.

'Well, Moran, we've had a pleasant evening; we've talked a good deal, and you've said many pleasant things and many wise ones. We've never had a talk that I enjoyed more, and I shall not forget it easily.'

'How is that?'

'Didn't you say that it isn't drink that destroys a man's faith, but woman? And you said rightly, for woman is life.'

'I was just about to ask you what you meant, when Catherine came in and interrupted us.'

'Love of woman means estrangement from the Church, because you have to protect her and her children.'

'Yes, that is so; that's how it works out. Now you won't be thinking me a fool for having come to see you this evening, Gogarty? One never knows when one's impulses are true and when they're false. If I hadn't come the night when the drink craving was upon me, I shouldn't have been here now.'

'You did quite right to come, Moran; we've talked of a great many things.'

'I've never talked so plainly to anyone before; I wonder what made me talk as I've been talking. We never talked like this before, did we, Gogarty? And I wouldn't have talked to another as I've talked to you. I shall never forget what I owe to you.'

'You said you were going to leave the parish.'

'I don't think I thought of anything except to burn myself up with drink. I wanted to forget, and I saw myself walking ahead day after day, drinking at every public-house.'

'And just because I saved you, you thought you would come to save me?'

'There was something of that in it. Gad! it's very queer; there's no saying where things will begin and end. Pass me the tobacco, will you?'

Father Moran began to fill his pipe, and when he had finished filling it, he said:

'Now I must be going, and don't be trying to keep me; I've stopped long enough. If I were sent for a purpose—'

'But you don't believe seriously, Moran, that you were sent for a purpose?' Moran didn't answer, and his silence irritated Father Oliver, and, determined to probe his curate's conscience, he said: 'Aren't you satisfied now that it was only an idea of your own? You thought to find me gone, and here I am sitting before you.' After waiting for some time for Moran to speak, he said: 'You haven't answered me.'

'What should I be answering?'

'Do you still think you were sent for a purpose?'

'Well, I do.'

'You do?'

The priests stood looking at each other for a while.

'Can't you give a reason?'

'No; I can give no reason. It's a feeling. I know I haven't reason on my side. There you are before me.'

'It's very queer.'

He would have liked to have called back Moran. It seemed a pity to let him go without having probed this matter to the bottom. He hadn't asked him if he had any idea in his mind about the future, as to what was going to happen; but it was too late now. 'Why did he come here disturbing me with his beliefs,' he cried out, 'poisoning my will?' for he had already begun to fear that Moran's visit might come between him and his project. The wind sighed a little louder, and Father Oliver said: 'I wouldn't be minding his coming here to warn me, though he did say that it wasn't of his own will that he came, but something from the outside that kept pushing him along the road—I wouldn't be minding all that if this wind hadn't risen. But the omen may be a double one.' At that moment the wind shook the trees about the house, and he fell to thinking that if he had started to swim the lake that night he would be now somewhere between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore, in the deepest and windiest part of the lake. 'And pretty well tired I'd be at the time. If I'd started to-night a corpse would be floating about by now.' The wind grew louder. Father Oliver imagined the waves slapping in his face, and then he imagined them slapping about the face of a corpse drifting towards the Joycetown shore.



XIV

There was little sleep in him that night, and turning on his pillow, he sought sleep vainly, getting up at last when the dawn looked through the curtains. A wind was shaking the apple-trees, and he went back to bed, thinking that if it did not drop suddenly he would not be able to swim across the lake that evening. The hours passed between sleeping and waking, thinking of the newspaper articles he would write when he got to America, and dreaming of a fight between himself and an otter on the shore of Castle Island. Awaking with a cry, he sat up, afraid to seek sleep again lest he might dream of drowning men. 'A dream robs a man of all courage,' and then falling back on his pillow, he said, 'Whatever my dreams may be I shall go. Anything were better than to remain taking money from the poor people, playing the part of a hypocrite.'

And telling Catherine that he could not look through her accounts that morning, he went out of the house to see what the lake was like. 'Boisterous enough; it would take a good swimmer to get across to-day. Maybe the wind will drop in the afternoon.'

The wind continued to rise, and next day he could only see white waves, tossing trees, and clouds tumbling over the mountains. He sat alone in his study staring at the lamp, the wind often awaking him from his reverie; and one night he remembered suddenly that it was no longer possible for him to cross the lake that month, even if the wind should cease, for he required not only a calm, but a moonlight night. And going out of the house, he walked about the hilltop, about the old thorn-bush, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood watching the moon setting high above the south-western horizon. But the lake—where was it? Had he not known that a lake was there, he would hardly have been able to discover one. All faint traces of one had disappeared, every shape was lost in blue shadow, and he wondered if his desire to go had gone with the lake. 'The lake will return,' he said, and next night he was on the hillside waiting for the lake to reappear. And every night it emerged from the shadow, growing clearer, till he could follow its winding shores. 'In a few days, if this weather lasts, I shall be swimming out there.' The thought crossed his mind that if the wind should rise again about the time of the full moon he would not be able to cross that year, for in September the water would be too cold for so long a swim. 'But it isn't likely,' he said; 'the weather seems settled.'

And the same close, blue weather that had prevailed before the storm returned, the same diffused sunlight.

'There is nothing so depressing,' the priest said, 'as seeing swallows flying a few feet from the ground.'

It was about eight o'clock—the day had begun to droop in his garden—that he walked up and down the beds admiring his carnations. Every now and again the swallows collected into groups of some six or seven, and fled round the gables of his house shrieking. 'This is their dinner-hour; the moths are about.' He wondered on, thinking Nora lacking; for she had never appreciated that beautiful flower Miss Shifner. But her ear was finer than his; she found her delight in music.

A thought broke through his memories. He had forgotten to tell her he would write if he succeeded in crossing the lake, and if he didn't write she would never know whether he was living or dead. Perhaps it would be better so. After hesitating a moment, the desire to write to her took strong hold upon him, and he sought an excuse for writing. If he didn't write, she might think that he remained in Garranard. She knew nothing of Moran's visit, nor of the rising of the wind, nor of the waning of the moon; and he must write to her about these things, for if he were drowned she would think that God had willed it. But if he believed in God's intervention, he should stay in his parish and pray that grace might be given to him. 'God doesn't bother himself about such trifles as my staying or my going,' he muttered as he hastened towards his house, overcome by an immense joy. For he was happy only when he was thinking of her, or doing something connected with her, and to tell her of the fatality that seemed to pursue him would occupy an evening.

From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn.

'GARRANARD, BOHOLA,

'July 25, 19—.

'You will be surprised to hear from me so soon again, but I forgot to say in my last letter that, if I succeeded in crossing the lake, I would write to you from New York. And since then many things have happened, strange and significant coincidences.'

And when he had related the circumstance of Father Moran's visit and the storm, he sought to excuse his half-beliefs that these were part of God's providence sent to warn him against leaving his parish.

'Only time can rid us of ideas that have been implanted in us in our youth, and that have grown up in our flesh and in our mind. A sudden influence may impel us to tear them up and cast them aside, but the seed is in us always, and it grows again. "One year's seed, seven years' weed." And behind imported Palestinian supernature, if I may be permitted to drop into Mr. Poole's style, or what I imagine to be his style, there is the home belief in fairies, spirits, and ghosts, and the reading of omens. Who amongst us does not remember the old nurse who told him stories of magic and witchcraft? Nor can it be denied that things happen that seem in contradiction to all we know of Nature's laws. Moreover, these unusual occurrences have a knack of happening to men at the moment of their setting out on some irrevocable enterprise.

'You who are so sympathetic will understand how my will has been affected by Father Moran's visit. Had you heard him tell how he was propelled, as it were, out of his house towards me, you, too, would believe that he was a messenger. He stopped on his threshold to try to find a reason for coming to see me; he couldn't find any, and he walked on, feeling that something had happened. He must have thought himself a fool when he found me sitting here in the thick flesh. But what he said did not seem nonsense to me; it seemed like some immortal wisdom come from another world. Remember that I was on the point of going. Nor is this all. If nothing else had happened, I might have looked upon Father Moran's visit as a coincidence. But why should the wind rise? So far as I can make out, it began to rise between eleven and twelve, at the very time I should have been swimming between Castle Island and the Joycetown shore. I know that belief in signs and omens and prognostics can be laughed at; nothing is more ridiculous than the belief that man's fate is governed by the flight of birds, yet men have believed in bird augury from the beginning of the world.

'I wrote to you about a curlew (I can still see it in the air, its beautifully shapen body and wings, its long beak, and its trailing legs; it staggered a little in its flight when the shot was fired, but it had strength enough to reach Castle Island: it then toppled over, falling dead on the shore); and I ask you if it is wonderful that I should have been impressed? Such a thing was never heard of before—a wild bird with its legs tied together!