The Rector came round the gable of the church. He walked down the sanded
path that curved to the road. Half-way down he paused, meditated, then
turning gazed at the building. It was square and solid, bulky against
the background of the hills. The Rector hitched up his cuffs as he gazed
at the structure. Critical puckers gathered in little lines across the
preserved, peach-like cheeks. He put his small, nicely-shaped head to
one side. There was a proprietorial, concerned air in his attitude. One
knew that he was thinking of the repairs to the church, anxious about
the gutters, the downpipe, the missing slates on the roof, the painting
of the doors and windows. He struck an attitude as he pondered the
problem of the cracks on the pebble-dashed walls. His umbrella grounded
on the sand with decision. He leaned out a little on it with
deliberation, his lips unconsciously shaping the words of the ultimatum
he should deliver to the Select Vestry. His figure was slight, he looked
old-world, almost funereal, something that had become detached, that
was an outpost, half-forgotten, lonely; a man who had sunk into a parish
where there was nothing to do. He mumbled a little to himself as he came
down to the gate in the high wall that enclosed the church grounds.
A group of peasants was coming along the yellow, lonely road, talking
and laughing. The bare-footed women stepped with great active strides,
bearing themselves with energy. They carried heavy baskets from the
market town, but were not conscious of their weight. The carded-wool
petticoats, dyed a robust red, brought a patch of vividness to the
landscape. The white "bauneens" and soft black hats of the men afforded
a contrast. The Rector's eyes gazed upon the group with a schooled
detachment. It was the look of a man who stood outside of their lives,
who did not expect to be recognised, and who did not feel called upon to
seem conscious of these peasant folk. The eyes of the peasants were
unmoved, uninterested, as they were lifted to the dark figure that stood
at the rusty iron gate leading into the enclosed church grounds. He
gave them no salutation. Their conversation voluble, noisy, dropped for
a moment, half through embarrassment, half through a feeling that
something alive stood by the wayside. A vagueness in expression on both
sides was the outward signal that two conservative forces had met for a
moment and refused to compromise.
One young girl, whose figure and movements would have kindled the eye of
an artist, looked up and appeared as if she would smile. The Rector was
conscious of her vivid face, framed in a fringe of black hair, of a
mischievousness in her beauty, some careless abandon in the swing of her
limbs. But something in the level dark brows of the Rector, something
that was dour, forbade her smile. It died in a little flush of
confusion. The peasants passed and the Rector gave them time to make
some headway before he resumed his walk to the Rectory.
He looked up at the range of hills, great in their extent, mighty in
their rhythm, beautiful in the play of light and mist upon them. But to
the mind of the Rector they expressed something foreign, they were part
of a place that was condemned and lost. He began to think of the young
girl who, in her innocence, had half-smiled at him. Why did she not
smile? Was she afraid? Of what was she afraid? What evil thing had come
between her and that impulse of youth? Some consciousness--of what? The
Rector sighed. He had, he was afraid, knowledge of what it was. And that
knowledge set his thoughts racing over their accustomed course. He ran
over the long tradition of his grievances--grievances that had submerged
him in a life that had not even a place in this wayside countryside. His
mind worked its way down through all the stages of complaint until it
arrived at the _Ne Temere_ decree. The lips of the Rector no longer
formed half-spoken words; they became two straight, tight little thin
lines across the teeth. They would remain that way all the afternoon,
held in position while he read the letters in the _Irish Times_. He
would give himself up to thoughts of politics, of the deeds of wicked
men, of the transactions that go on within and without governments,
doping his mind with the drug of class opiates until it was time to go
to bed.
Meantime he had to pass a man who was breaking stones in a ditch by the
roadside. The hard cracks of the hammer were resounding on the still
air. The man looked up from his work as the Rector came along; the grey
face of the stone-breaker had a melancholy familiarity for him. The
Rector had an impulse--it was seldom he had one. He stood in the centre
of the road. The _Ne Temere_ decree went from his mind.
"Good-day, my man," he said, feeling that he had made another
concession, and that it would be futile as all the others.
"Good-day, sir," the stone-breaker made answer, hitching himself upon
the sack he had put under his haunches, like one very ready for a
conversation.
There was a pause. The Rector did not know very well how to continue. He
should, he knew, speak with some sense of colloquialism if he was to get
on with this stonebreaker, a person for whom he had a certain removed
sympathy. The manner of these people's speech was really a part of the
grievances of the Rector. Their conversation, he often secretly assured
himself, was peppered with Romish propaganda. But the Rector made
another concession.
"It's a fine day, thank God," he said. He spoke like one who was
delivering a message in an unfamiliar language. "Thank God" was local,
and might lend itself to an interpretation that could not be approved.
But the Rector imported something into the words that was a protection,
something that was of the pulpit, that held a solemnity in its
pessimism.
"A fine day, indeed, glory be to God!" the stonebreaker made answer.
There was a freshness in his expression, a cheerfulness in the prayer,
that made of it an optimism.
The Rector was so conscious of the contrast that it gave him pause
again. The peach-like colourings on the cheeks brightened, for a
suspicion occurred to him. Could the fellow have meant anything? Had he
deliberately set up an optimistic Deity in opposition to the pessimistic
Deity of the Rector? The Rector hitched up the white cuffs under his
dark sleeves, swung his umbrella, and resumed his way, his lips
puckered, a little feverish agitation seizing him.
"A strange, down-hearted kind of a man," the stonebreaker said to
himself, as he reached out for a lump of lime-stone and raised his
hammer. A redbreast, perched on an old thorn bush, looking out on the
scene with curious eyes, stretched his wing and his leg, as much as to
say, "Ah, well," sharpened his beak on a twig, and dropped into the
ditch to pick up such gifts as the good earth yielded.
The Rector walked along the road pensive, but steadfast, his eyes upon
the alien hills, his mind travelling over ridges of problems that never
afforded the gleam of solution. He heard a shout of a laugh. Above the
local accents that held a cadence of the Gaelic speech he heard the
sharp clipping Northern accent of his own gardener and general factotum.
He had brought the man with him when he first came to Connacht, half as
a mild form of colonisation, half through a suspicion of local honesty.
He now saw the man's shaggy head over the Rectory garden wall, and
outside it were the peasants.
How was it that the gardener got on with the local people? How was it
that they stood on the road to speak with him, shouting their
extravagant laughter at his keen, dry Northern humour?
When he first came the gardener had been more grimly hostile to the
place than the Rector himself. There had been an ugly row on the road,
and blows had been struck. But that was some years ago. The gardener now
appeared very much merged in the life of the place; the gathering
outside the Rectory garden was friendly, almost a family party. How was
it to be accounted for? Once or twice the Rector found himself
suspecting that at the bottom of the phenomenon there might be all
unconscious among these people a spirit of common country, of a common
democracy, a common humanity, that forced itself to the surface in
course of time. The Rector stood, his lips working, his nicely-shaped
little head quivering with a sudden agitation. For he found himself
thinking along unusual lines, and for that very reason dangerous
lines--frightfully dangerous lines, he told himself, as an ugly
enlightenment broke across his mind, warming it up for a few moments and
no more. As he turned in the gate at the Rectory it was a relief to
him--for his own thoughts were frightening him--to see the peasants
moving away and the head of the gardener disappear behind the wall. He
walked up the path to the Rectory, the lawn dotted over with sombre yew
trees all clipped into the shape of torpedoes, all trained directly upon
the forts of Heaven! The house was large and comfortable, the walls a
faded yellow. Like the church, it was thrown up against the background
of the hills. It had all the sombre exclusiveness that made appeal to
the Rector. The sight of it comforted him at the moment, and his mental
agitation died down. He became normal enough to resume his accustomed
outlook, and before he had reached the end of the path his mind had
become obsessed again by the thought of the _Ne Temere_ decree.
Something should, he felt convinced, be done, and done at once.
He ground his umbrella on the step in front of the Rectory door and
pondered. At last he came to a conclusion, inspiration lighting up his
faded eyes. He tossed his head upwards.
"I must write a letter to the papers," he said. "Ireland is lost."