A breeze rose, the forest murmured, a bird sang, and the sails of the
yacht filled. The priest stood watching her pass behind a rocky
headland, knowing now that her destination was Kilronan Abbey. But was
there water enough in the strait at this season of the year? Hardly
enough to float a boat of her size. If she stuck, the picnic-party would
get into the small boat, and, thus lightened, the yacht might be floated
into the other arm of the lake. 'A pleasant day indeed for a sail,' and
in imagination he followed the yacht down the lake, past its different
castles, Castle Carra and Castle Burke and Church Island, the island on
which Marban--Marban, the famous hermit poet, had lived.
It seemed to him strange that he had never thought of visiting the
ruined church when he lived close by at the northern end of the lake.
His time used to be entirely taken up with attending to the wants of his
poor people, and the first year he spent in Garranard he had thought
only of the possibility of inducing the Government to build a bridge
across the strait. That bridge was badly wanted. All the western side of
the lake was cut off from railway communication. Tinnick was the
terminus, but to get to Tinnick one had to go round the lake, either
by. the northern or the southern end, and it was always a question which
was the longer road--round by Kilronan Abbey or by the Bridge of Keel.
Many people said the southern road was shorter, but the difference
wasn't more than a mile, if that, and Father Oliver preferred the
northern road; for it took him by his curate's house, and he could
always stop there and give his horse a feed and a rest; and he liked to
revisit the abbey in which he had said Mass for so long, and in which
Mass had always been said for a thousand years, even since Cromwell had
unroofed it, the celebrant sheltered by an arch, the congregation
kneeling under the open sky, whether it rained or snowed.
The roofing of the abbey and the bridging of the strait were the two
things that the parish was really interested in. He tried when he was in
Kilronan to obtain the Archbishop's consent and collaboration; Moran was
trying now: he did not know that he was succeeding any better; and
Father Oliver reflected a while on the peculiar temperament of their
diocesan, and jumping down from the rock on which he had been sitting,
he wandered along the sunny shore, thinking of the many letters he had
addressed to the Board of Works on the subject of the bridge. The Board
believed, or pretended to believe, that the parish could not afford the
bridge; as well might it be urged that a cripple could not afford
crutches. Without doubt a public meeting should be held; and in some
little indignation Father Oliver began to think that public opinion
should be roused and organized.
It was for him to do this: he was the people's natural leader; but for
many months he had done nothing in the matter. Why, he didn't know
himself. Perhaps he needed a holiday; perhaps he no longer believed the
Government susceptible to public opinion; perhaps he had lost faith in
the people themselves! The people were the same always; the people never
change, only individuals change.
And at the end of the sandy spit, where some pines had grown and seeded,
he stood looking across the silvery lake wondering if his parishioners
had begun to notice the change that had come over him since Nora Glynn
left the parish, and as her name came into his mind he was startled out
of his reverie by the sound of voices, and turning from the lake, he saw
two wood-gatherers coming down a little path through the juniper-bushes.
He often hid himself in the woods when he saw somebody coming, but he
couldn't do so now without betraying his intention, and he stayed where
he was. The women passed on, bent under their loads. Whether they saw
him or not he couldn't tell; they passed near enough for him to
recognize them, and he remembered that they were in church the day he
alluded to Nora in his sermon. A hundred yards further on the women
unburdened and sat down to rest a while, and Father Oliver began to
consider what their conversation might be. His habit of wandering away
by himself had no doubt been noticed, and once it was noticed it would
become a topic of conversation. 'And what they do be saying now is,
"That he has never been the same man since he preached against the
schoolmistress, for what should he be doing by the lake if he wasn't
afraid that she made away with herself?" And perhaps they are right,' he
said, and walked up the shore, hoping that as soon as he was out of
sight the women would forget to tell when they returned home that they
had seen him walking by the lake.
All the morning he had been trying to keep Nora Glynn out of his mind,
but now, as he rambled, he could not put back the memory of the day he
met her for the first time, nearly two years ago, for to-day was the
fifteenth of May; it was about that time a little later in the year; it
must have been in June, for the day was very hot, and he had been riding
fast, not wishing to keep Catherine's dinner waiting, and as he pushed
his bicycle through the gate, he saw the great cheery man, Father Peter,
with a face like an apple, walking up and down under the sycamores
reading his breviary. It must have been in June, for the mowers were in
the field opposite, in the field known as the priest's field, though
Father Peter had never rented it. There had never been such weather in
Ireland before, and the day he rode his bicycle over to see Father Peter
seemed to him the hottest day of all. But he had heard of the new
schoolmistress's musical talents, and despite the heat of the day had
ridden over, so anxious was he to hear if Father Peter were satisfied
with her in all other respects. 'We shall be able to talk better in the
shade of the sycamores,' Father Peter said, and on this they crossed the
lawn, but not many steps were taken back and forth before Father Peter
began to throw out hints that he didn't think Miss Glynn was altogether
suited to the parish.
'But if you're satisfied with her discipline,' Father Oliver jerked out,
and it was all he could do to check himself from further snaps at the
parish priest, a great burly man who could not tell a minor from a major
chord, yet was venting the opinion that good singing distracted the
attention of the congregation at their prayers. He would have liked to
ask him if he was to understand that bad singing tended to a devotional
mood, but wishing to remain on good terms with his superior, he said
nothing and waited for Father Peter to state his case against the new
schoolmistress, which he seemed to think could be done by speaking of
the danger of young unmarried women in the parish. It was when they came
to the break in the trees that Father Peter nudged him and said under
his breath:
'Here is the young woman herself coming across the fields.'
He looked that way and saw a small, thin girl coming towards the stile.
She hopped over it as if she enjoyed the little jump into the road.
Father Peter called to her and engaged her in conversation; and he
continued to talk to her of indifferent things, no doubt with the view
to giving him an opportunity of observing her. But they saw her with
different eyes: whereas Father Peter descried in her one that might
become a mischief in the parish, he could discover no dangerous beauty
in her, merely a crumpled little face that nobody would notice were it
not for the eyes and forehead. The forehead was broad and well shapen
and promised an intelligence that the eyes were quick to confirm; round,
gray, intelligent eyes, smiling, welcoming eyes. Her accent caressed the
ear, it was a very sweet one, only faintly Irish, and she talked easily
and correctly, like one who enjoyed talking, laughing gaily, taking, he
was afraid, undue pleasure in Father Peter's rough sallies, without
heeding that he was trying to entrap her into some slight indiscretion
of speech that he could make use of afterwards, for he must needs
justify himself to himself if he decided to dismiss her.
As he had been asked to notice her he remarked her shining brown hair.
It frizzled like a furze-bush about her tiny face, and curled over her
forehead. Her white even teeth showed prettily between her lips. She was
not without points, but notwithstanding these it could not be said that
she deserved the adjective pretty; and he was already convinced that it
was not good looks that prejudiced her in Father Peter's eyes. Nor was
the excuse that her singing attracted too much attention an honest one.
What Father Peter did not like about the girl was her independent mind,
which displayed itself in every gesture, in the way she hopped over the
stile, and the manner with which she toyed with her parasol--a parasol
that seemed a little out of keeping with her position, it is true. A
very fine parasol it was; a blue silk parasol. Her independence betrayed
itself in her voice: she talked to the parish priest with due respect,
but her independent mind informed every sentence, even the smallest,
and that was why she was going to be dismissed from her post. It was
shameful that a grave injustice should be done to a girl who was
admittedly competent in the fulfilment of all her duties, and he had not
tried to conceal his opinion from Father Peter during dinner and after
dinner, leaving him somewhat earlier than usual, for nothing affronted
him more than injustice, especially ecclesiastical injustice.
As he rode his bicycle down the lonely road to Bridget's cottage, the
thought passed through his mind that if Nora Glynn were a stupid,
intelligent woman no objection would have been raised against her. 'An
independent mind is very objectionable to the ecclesiastic,' he said to
himself as he leaped off his bicycle.... 'Nora Glynn. How well suited
the name is to her. There is a smack in the name. Glynn, Nora Glynn,' he
repeated, and it seemed to him that the name belonged exclusively to
her.
A few days after this first meeting he met her about two miles from
Garranard; he was on his bicycle, she was on hers, and they both leaped
instinctively from their machines. What impressed him this time far more
than her looks was her happy, original mind. While walking beside her he
caught himself thinking that he had never seen a really happy face
before. But she was going to be sent away because she was happy and wore
her soul in her face.
They had seemed unable to get away from each other, so much had they to
say. He mentioned his brother James, who was doing well in America and
would perhaps one day send them the price of a harmonium. She told him
she couldn't play on the wheezy old thing at Garranard, and at the
moment he clean forgot that the new harmonium would avail her little,
since Father Peter was going to get rid of her; he only remembered it as
he got on his bicycle, and he returned home ready to espouse her cause
against anybody.
She must write to the Archbishop, and if he wouldn't do anything she
must write to the papers. Influence must be brought to bear, and Father
Peter must be prevented from perpetrating a gross injustice. He felt
that it would be impossible for him to remain Father Peter's curate if
the schoolmistress were sent away for no fault of hers, merely because
she wore a happy face. What Father Peter would have done if he had lived
no one would ever know. He might have dismissed her; even so the
injustice would have been slight compared with what had happened to her;
and the memory of the wrong that had been done to her put such a pain
into his heart that he seemed to lose sight of everything, till a fish
leaping in the languid lake awoke him, and he walked on, absorbed in the
memory of his mistake, his thoughts swinging back to the day he had met
her on the roadside, and to the events that succeeded their meeting.
Father Peter was taken ill, two days after he was dead, before the end
of the week he was in his coffin; and it was left to him to turn Nora
Glynn out of the parish. No doubt other men had committed faults as
grave as his; but they had the strength to leave the matter in the
hands of God, to say: 'I can do nothing, I must put myself in the hands
of God; let him judge. He is all wise.' He hadn't their force of
character. He believed as firmly as they did, but, for some reason which
he couldn't explain to himself, he was unable to leave the matter in
God's hands, and was always thinking how he could get news of her.
If it hadn't been for that woman, for that detestable Mrs. O'Mara, who
was the cause of so much evil-speaking in the parish!... And with his
heart full of hatred so black that it surprised him, he asked himself if
he could forgive that woman. God might, he couldn't. And he fell to
thinking how Mrs. O'Mara had long been a curse upon the parish. Father
Peter was more than once compelled to speak about her from the altar,
and to make plain that the stories she set going were untrue. Father
Peter had warned him, but warnings are no good; he had listened to her
convinced at the time that it was wrong and foolish to listen to
scandalmongers, but unable to resist that beguiling tongue, for Mrs.
O'Mara had a beguiling tongue--fool that he was, that he had been. There
was no use going over the wretched story again; he was weary of going
over it, and he tried to put it out of his mind. But it wouldn't be put
out of his mind, and in spite of himself he began to recall the events
of the fatal day. He had been out all the morning, walking about with an
engineer who was sent down by the Board of Works to consider the
possibility of building the bridge, and had just come in to rest.
Catherine had brought him a cup of tea; he was sitting by the window,
almost too tired to drink it. The door was flung open. If Catherine had
only asked him if he were at home to visitors, he would have said he
wasn't at home to Mrs. O'Mara, but he wasn't asked; the door was flung
open, and he found himself face to face with the parish magpie. And
before he could bless himself she began to talk to him about the bridge,
saying that she knew all about the engineer, how he had gotten his
appointment, and what his qualifications were. It is easy to say one
shouldn't listen to such gossips, but it is hard to shut one's ears or
to let what one hears with one ear out the other ear, for she might be
bringing him information that might be of use to him. So he listened,
and when the bridge, and the advantage of it, had been discussed, she
told him she had been staying at the convent. She had tales to tell
about all the nuns and about all the pupils. She told him that half the
Catholic families in Ireland had promised to send their daughters to
Tinnick if Eliza succeeded in finding somebody who could teach music and
singing. But Eliza didn't think there was anyone in the country
qualified for the post but Nora Glynn. If Mrs. O'Mara could be believed,
Eliza said that she could offer Nora Glynn more money than she was
earning in Garranard. Until then he had only half listened to Mrs.
O'Mara's chatter, for he disliked the woman--her chatter amused him only
as the chatter of a bird might; but when he heard that his sister was
trying to get his schoolmistress away from him he had flared up. 'Oh,
but I don't think that your schoolmistress would suit a convent school.
I shouldn't like my daughter--' 'What do you mean?' Her face changed
expression, and in her nasty mincing manner she began to throw out hints
that Nora Glynn would not suit the nuns. He could see that she was
concealing something--there was something at the back of her mind. Women
of her sort want to be persuaded; their bits of scandal must be dragged
from them by force; they are the unwilling victims who would say nothing
if they could help it. She had said enough to oblige him to ask her to
speak out, and she began to throw out hints about a man whom Nora used
to meet on the hillside (she wouldn't give the man's name, she was too
clever for that). She would only say that Nora had been seen on the
hillside walking in lonely places with a man. Truly a detestable woman!
His thoughts strayed from her for a moment, for it gave him pleasure to
recollect that he had defended his schoolmistress. Didn't he say: 'Now,
then, Mrs. O'Mara, if you have anything definite to say, say it, but I
won't listen to vague charges.' 'Charges--who is making charges?' she
asked, and he had unfortunately called her a liar. In the middle of the
row she dropped a phrase: 'Anyhow, her appearance is against her.' And
it was true that Nora Glynn's appearance had changed in the last few
months. Seeing that her words had a certain effect, Mrs. O'Mara quieted
down; and while he stood wondering if it could possibly be true that
Nora had deceived them, that she had been living in sin all these
months, he suddenly heard Mrs. O'Mara saying that he was lacking in
experience--which was quite true, but her way of saying it had roused
the devil in him. Who was she that she should come telling him that he
lacked experience? To be sure, he wasn't an old midwife, and that's what
Mrs. O'Mara looked like, sitting before him.
He had lost control of himself, saying, 'Now, will you get out of this
house, you old scandalmonger, or I'll take you by the shoulders and put
you out!' And he had thrown the front-door open. What a look she gave
him as she passed out! At that moment the clock struck three and he
remembered suddenly that the children were coming out of school at that
moment. It would have been better if he had waited. But he couldn't
wait: he'd have gone mad if he had waited; and he recalled how he had
jumped into the road, squeezed through the stile, and run across the
field. 'Why all this hurry?' he had asked himself.
She was locking up the desks; the children went by him, curtseying, and
he had to wait till the last one was past the door. Nora must have
guessed his errand, for her face noticeably hardened. 'I've seen Mrs.
O'Mara,' he blurted out, 'and she tells me that you've been seen walking
with some man on the hillside in lonely places.... Don't deny it if it
is true.' 'I'm not going to deny anything that is true.' How brave she
was! Her courage attracted him and softened his heart. But everything
was true, alas! Everything. She told him that her plans were to steal
out of the parish without saying a word to anyone, for she was
determined not to disgrace him or the parish. She was thinking of him in
all her trouble, and everything might have ended well if he had not
asked her who the man was. She would not say, nor give any reasons why
she wouldn't do so. Only this, that if the man had deserted her she
didn't want anybody to bring him back, if he could be brought back; if
the man were dead it were better to say nothing about him. 'But if it
were his fault?' 'I don't see that that would make any difference.'
They went out of the school-house talking in quite a friendly way. There
was a little drizzle in the air, and, opening her umbrella, she said,
'I'm afraid you'll get wet.' 'Get wet, get wet! what matter?' he had
answered impatiently, for the remark annoyed him. By the hawthorn-bush
he began to tell her again that it would relieve his mind to know who
the man was. She tried to get away from him, but he wouldn't let her go;
and catching her by the arm he besought her, saying that it would
relieve his mind. How many times had he said that? But he wasn't able to
persuade her, notwithstanding his insistence that as a priest of the
parish he had a right to know. No doubt she had some very deep reason
for keeping her secret, or perhaps his authoritative manner was the
cause of her silence. However this might be, any words would have been
better than 'it would relieve my mind to know who the man was.' 'Stupid,
stupid, stupid!' he muttered to himself, and he wandered from the
cart-track into the wood.
It was impossible to say now why he had wished to press her secret from
her. It would be unpleasant for him, as priest of the parish, to know
that the man was living in the parish; but it would be still more
unpleasant if he knew who the man was. Nora's seducer could be none
other than one of the young soldiers who had taken the fishing-lodge at
the head of the lake. Mrs. O'Mara had hinted that Nora had been seen
with one of them on the hill, and he thought how on a day like this she
might have been led away among the ferns. At that moment there came out
of the thicket a floating ball of thistle-down. 'It bloweth where it
listeth,' he said. 'Soldier or shepherd, what matter now she is gone?'
and rising to his feet and coming down the sloping lawn, overflowing
with the shade of the larches, he climbed through the hawthorns growing
out of a crumbled wall, and once at the edge of the lake, he stood
waiting for nothing seemingly but to hear the tiresome clanking call of
the stonechat, and he compared its reiterated call with the words
'atonement,' 'forgiveness,' 'death,' 'calamity,' words always clanking
in his heart, for she might be lying at the bottom of the lake, and some
day a white phantom would rise from the water and claim him.
His thoughts broke away, and he re-lived in memory the very agony of
mind he had endured when he went home after her admission that she was
with child. All that night, all next day, and for how many days? Would
the time ever come when he could think of her without a pain in his
heart? It is said that time brings forgetfulness. Does it? On Saturday
morning he had sat at his window, asking himself if he should go down
to see her or if he should send for her. There were confessions in the
afternoon, and expecting that she would come to confess to him, he had
not sent for her. One never knows; perhaps it was her absence from
confession that had angered him. His temper took a different turn that
evening. All night he had lain awake; he must have been a little mad
that night, for he could only think of the loss of a soul to God, and of
God's love of chastity. All night long he had repeated with variations
that it were better that all which our eyes see--this earth and the
stars that are in being--should perish utterly, be crushed into dust,
rather than a mortal sin should be committed; in an extraordinary
lucidity of mind he continued to ponder on God's anger and his own
responsibility towards God, and feeling all the while that there are
times when we lose control of our minds, when we are a little mad. He
foresaw his danger, but he could not do else than rise from his bed and
begin to prepare his sermon, for he had to preach, and he could only
preach on chastity and the displeasure sins against chastity cause to
God. He could think but of this one thing, the displeasure God must feel
against Nora and the seducer who had robbed her of the virtue God prized
most in her. He must have said things that he would not have said at any
other time. His brain was on fire that morning, and words rose to his
lips--he knew not whence nor how they came, and he had no idea now of
what he had said. He only knew that she left the church during his
sermon; at what moment he did not know, nor did he know that she had
left the parish till next day, when the children came up to tell him
there was no schoolmistress. And from that day to this no news of her,
nor any way of getting news of her.
His thoughts went to the hawthorn-trees, for he could not think of her
any more for the moment, and it relieved his mind to examine the green
pips that were beginning to appear among the leaves. 'The hawthorns will
be in flower in another week,' he said; and he began to wonder at the
beautiful order of the spring. The pear and the cherry were the first;
these were followed by the apple, and after the apple came the lilac,
the chestnut, and the laburnum. The forest trees, too, had their order.
The ash was still leafless, but it was shedding its catkins, and in
another fifteen days its light foliage would be dancing in the breeze.
The oak was last of all. At that moment a swallow flitted from stone to
stone, too tired to fly far, and he wondered whence it had come. A
cuckoo called from a distant hill; it, too, had been away and had come
back.
His eyes dwelt on the lake, refined and wistful, with reflections of
islands and reeds, mysteriously still. Rose-coloured clouds descended,
revealing many new and beautiful mountain forms, every pass and every
crest distinguishable. It was the hour when the cormorants come home to
roost, and he saw three black specks flying low about the glittering
surface; rising from the water, they alighted with a flutter of wings on
the corner wall of what remained of Castle Hag, 'and they will sleep
there till morning,' he said, as he toiled up a little path, twisting
through ferns and thorn-bushes. At the top of the hill was his house,
the house Father Peter had built. Its appearance displeased him, and he
stood for a long time watching the evening darkening, and the yacht
being towed home, her sails lowered, the sailors in the rowing-boat.
'They will be well tired before they get her back to Tinnick;' and he
turned and entered his house abruptly.