II

That day the building was begun. Martin Cosgrave tackled the donkey and

drew a few loads of limestone from the nearby quarry. Some of the

neighbours who came his way found him a changed man, a silent man with

his eager face set, a man in whose eyes a new light shone, a quiet man

of the fields into whose mind a set purpose had come. He struggled up

the road with his donkey-cart, his hand gripping the shaft to hasten the

steps of the slow brute, his limbs bent to the hill, his head down at

the work. By the end of the week a pile of grey-blue stones was heaped

up on the crest of the hill. The walls of the fields had been broken

down to make a carway. Late into the night when the donkey had been fed

and tethered the neighbours would see Martin Cosgrave moving about the

pile of grey-blue stones, sorting and picking, arranging in little

groups to have ready to his hands. "A house he is going to put up on the

hill," they would say, lost in wonder.

The spring came, and with it all the strenuous work on the land. But

Martin Cosgrave went on with the building. The neighbours shook their

heads at the sight of neglect that was gathering about his holding; they

said it was flying in the face of Providence when Martin Cosgrave weaned

all the lambs from the ewes one day, long before their time, and sold

them at the fair to the first bidder that came his way. Martin Cosgrave

did so because he wanted money and was in a hurry to get back to his

building.

"What call has a man to be destroying himself like that?" the neighbours

asked each other.

Martin Cosgrave knew what the neighbours were saying about him. But what

did he care? What thought had any of them for the heart of a builder?

What did any of them know beyond putting a spade in the clay and waiting

for the seasons to send up growing things from the seed they scattered

by their hands? What did they know about the feel of the rough stone in

the hand and the shaping of it to fit into the building, the building

that day after day you saw rising up from the ground by the skill of

your hand and the art of your mind? What could they in Kilbeg know of

the ship that would plough the ocean in the harvest bearing Rose Dempsey

home to him? For all their ploughing and their sowing, what sort of a

place had any of them led a woman into? They might talk away. The joy of

the builder was his. The beech trees that made music all day beside the

building he was putting up to the sight of all the world had more

understanding of him than all the people of the parish.

Martin Cosgrave had no help. He kept to his work from such an early hour

in the morning until such a late hour of the night that the people

marvelled at his endurance. But as the work went on the people would

talk about Martin Cosgrave's building in the fields and tell strangers

of it at the markets. They said that the like of it had never been seen

in the countryside. It was to be "full of little turrets and the finest

of fancy porches and a regular sight of bulging windows." One day that

Martin Cosgrave heard a neighbour speaking about the "bulging windows"

he laughed a half-bitter, half-mocking laugh.

"Tell them," he said, "that they are cut-stone tracery windows to fit in

with the carved doors." These cut-stone windows and carved doors cost

Martin Cosgrave such a length of time that they provoked the patience of

the people. Out of big slabs of stone he had worked them, and sometimes

he would ask the neighbours to give him a hand in the shifting of these

slabs. But he was quick to resent any interference. One day a

stone-cutter from the quarry went up on the scaffold, and when Martin

Cosgrave saw him he went white to the lips and cursed so bitterly that

those standing about walked away.

When the shell of the building had been finished Martin Cosgrave hired a

carpenter to do all the woodwork. The woodwork cost money. Martin

Cosgrave did not hesitate. He sold some of his sheep, sold them

hurriedly, and as all men who sell their sheep hurriedly, he sold them

badly. When the carpentry had been finished, the roofing cost more

money. One day the neighbours discovered that all the sheep had been

sold. "He's beggared now," they said.

The farmer who turned the sod a few fields away laboured in the damp

atmosphere of growing things, his mind filled with thoughts of bursting

seeds and teeming barns. He shook his head at sight of Martin Cosgrave

above on the hill bent all day over hard stones; whenever he looked up

he only caught the glint of a trowel, or heard the harsh grind of a

chisel. But Martin Cosgrave took no stock of the men reddening the soil

beneath him. Whenever his eyes travelled down the hillside he only saw

the flock of crows that hung over the head of the digger. The study of

the veins of limestone that he turned in his hands, the slow moulding of

the crude shapes to their place in the building, the rhythm and swing of

the mallet in his arm, the zest with which he felt the impact of the

chisel on the stone, the ring of forging steel, the consciousness of

mastery over the work that lay to his hands--these were the things that

seemed to him to give life a purpose and man a destiny. He would whistle

a tune as he mixed the mortar with the broad shovel, for it gave him a

feeling of the knitting of the building with the ages. He pitied the

farmer who looked helplessly upon his corn as it was beaten to the

ground by the first storm that blew from the sea; he was upon a work

that would withstand the storms of centuries. The scent of lime and

mortar greeted his nostrils. When he moved about the splinters crunched

under his feet. Everything around him was hard and stubborn, but he was

the master of it all. In his dreams in the night he would reach out his

hands for the feel of the hard stone, a burning desire in his breast to

put it into shape, to give it nobility in the scheme of a building.

It was while Martin Cosgrave walked through the building that Ellen

Miscal came to him with the second letter from America. The carpenter

was hammering at something below. The letter said that Rose Dempsey and

her sister, Sheela, would be home in the late harvest. "With all I saw

since I left Kilbeg," Rose Dempsey wrote, "I never saw one that I

thought as much of as Martin Cosgrave."

When Ellen Miscal left him, Martin Cosgrave stood very quietly looking

through the cut-stone tracery window. The beech trees were swaying

slowly outside. Their music was in his ears.

Then he remembered that he was standing in the room where he would take

Rose Dempsey in his arms. It was here he would tell her of all the

bitter things he had locked up in his heart when she had gone away from

him. It was here he would tell her of the day of resurrection, when all

the bitter thoughts had burst into flower at the few words that told of

her return. It was that day of great tumult within him that thought of

the building had come into his mind.

When Martin Cosgrave walked out of the room the carpenter and a

neighbour boy were arguing about something at the foot of the stairs.

"It's too steep, I'm telling you," the boy was saying.

"What do you know about it?"

"I know this much about it, that if a little child came running down

that stairs he'd be apt to fall and break his neck."

Then the two men went out, still arguing.

Martin Cosgrave sat down on one of the steps of the stairs. A child

running down the steps! His child! A child bearing his name! He would be

prattling about the building. He would run across that landing, swaying

and tottering. His little voice would fill the building. Arms would be

reaching out to him. They would be the soft white arms of Rose Dempsey,

or maybe, they would be the arms that raised up the building--his own

strong arms. Or it might be that he would be carrying down the child

and handing him over the rails there into the outspread arms of Rose

Dempsey. She would be reaching out for the child with the newly-kindled

light of motherhood in her eyes, the passion of a young mother in her

welcoming voice. A child with his very name--a child that would grow up

to be a man and hand down the name to another, and so on during the

generations. And with the name would go down the building, the building

that would endure, that would live, that was immortal. Did it all come

to him as a sudden revelation, springing from the idle talk of a

neighbour boy brought up to work from one season to another? Or was it

the same thing that was behind the forces that had fired him while he

had worked at the building? Had it not all come into his life the

evening he stood among his fields with his eyes on the crest of the

hill?

Ah, there had been a great building surely, a building standing up on

the hill, a great, a splendid building raised up to the sight of all the

world, and with it a greater building, a building raised up from the

sight of all men, the building of a name, the moulding of hearts that

would beat while Time was, a building of immortal souls, a building into

which God would breathe His breath, a building which would be heard of

in Heaven, among the angels, through all the eternities, a building

living on when all the light was gone out of the sun, when oceans were

as if they had never been, a name, a building, living when the story of

all the worlds and all the generations would be held written upon a

scroll in the lap of God.... The face of the dreamer as he abandoned

himself to his thoughts was pallid with a half-fanatical emotion.

The neighbours were more awed than shocked at the change they saw

increasing in Martin Cosgrave. He had grown paler and thinner, but his

eyes were more tense, had in them, some of the neighbours said, the

colour of the limestone. He was more and more removed from the old life.

He walked his fields without seeing the things that made up the old

companionship. His whole attitude was one of detachment from everything

that did not savour of the crunch of stone, the ring of steel on the

walls of a building. He only talked rationally when the neighbours spoke

to him of the building. They had heard that he had gone to the

money-lender, and mortgaged every perch of his land. "It was easy to

know how work of the like would end," they said.

One day a stranger was driving by on his car, and when he saw the

building he got down, walked up the hill, and made a long study of it.

On his way down he met Martin Cosgrave.

"Who built the house on the hill?" he asked.

"A simple man in the neighbourhood," Martin Cosgrave made answer, after

a little pause.

"A simple man!" the stranger exclaimed, looking at Martin Cosgrave with

some disapproval. "Well, he has attempted something anyway. He may not

have, succeeded, but the artist is in him somewhere. He has created a

sort of--well, lyric--in stone on that hill. Extraordinary!"

The stranger hesitated before he hit on the word lyric. He got up on his

car and drove away muttering something under his breath.

Martin Cosgrave could have run up the hill and shouted. He could have

called all the neighbours together and told them of the strange man who

had praised the building.

But he did none of these things. He had work waiting to his hand. A

hunger was upon him to feel his pulse beating to the throb of steel on

stone. From the road he made a sweep of a drive up to the building. The

neighbours looked open-mouthed at the work for the days it went on.

"Well, that finishes Martin Cosgrave anyway," they said.

Martin Cosgrave rushed the making of the drive; he took all the help he

could get. The boys would come up after their day's work and give him a

hand. While they worked he was busy with his chisel upon the boulders of

limestone which he had set up on either side of the entrance gate. Once

more he felt the glamour of life--the impact of forging steel on stone

was thrilling through his arms, the stone was being moulded to the

direction of his exulting mind.

When he had finished with the boulders at the entrance gate the people

marvelled. The gate had a glory of its own, and yet it was connected

with the scheme of the building on the hill palpably enough for even

their minds to grasp it. When the people looked upon it they forgot to

make complaint of the good land that was given to ruin. One of them had

expressed the general vague sentiment when he said, "Well, the kite has

got its tail."

In the late harvest Martin Cosgrave carried up all the little sticks of

furniture from his cabin and put it in the building. Then he sent for

Ellen Miscal. When the woman came she looked about the place in

amazement.

"Well, of all the sights in the world!" she exclaimed.

Martin Cosgrave was irritated at the woman's attitude.

"We'll have to make the best of it," he said, looking at the furniture.

"I will be marrying Rose Dempsey in the town some days after she lands."

"Rose would never like the suddenness of that," her aunt protested. "She

can be staying with me and marrying from my house.

"I saw the priest about it," Martin Cosgrave said impatiently. "I will

have my way, Ellen Miscal. Rose Dempsey will come up to Kilbeg my wife.

We will come in the gate together, we will walk in to the building

together. I will have my way."

Martin Cosgrave spoke of having his way in the impassioned voice of the

fanatic, of his home-coming with his bride in the half-dreamy voice of

the visionary.

"Have your way, Martin, have your way," the woman said. "And," she

added, rising, "I will be bringing up a few things to put into your

house."