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.