THE WAY BACK
It was a pleasure to meet, even when they had nothing to say, and the
two men had stopped to talk.
"Still in London, Rodney."
"Yes, till the end of the week; and then I go to Italy. And you? You're
going to meet Sir Owen Asher at Marseilles."
"I am going to Ireland," and, catching sight of a look of astonishment
and disapproval on Rodney's face, Harding began to explain why he must
return to Ireland.
"The rest of your life is quite clear," said Rodney. "You knew from the
beginning that Paris was the source of all art, that everyone here who
is more distinguished than the others has been to Paris. We go to Paris
with baskets on our backs, and sticks in our hands, and bring back what
we can pick up. And having lived immersed in art till you're forty, you
return to the Catholic Celt! Your biographer will be puzzled to explain
this last episode, and, however he may explain it, it will seem a
discrepancy."
"I suppose one should think of one's biographer."
"It will be more like yourself to get Asher to land you at one of the
Italian ports. We will go to Perugia and see Raphael's first frescoes,
done when he was sixteen, and the town itself climbing down into
ravines. The streets are lonely at midday, but towards evening a breeze
blows up from both seas--Italy is very narrow there--and the people
begin to come out; and from the battlements one sees the lights of
Assisi glimmering through the dusk."
"I may never see Italy. Go on talking. I like to hear you talk about
Italy."
"There are more beautiful things in Italy than in the rest of the world
put together, and there is nothing so beautiful as Italy. Just fancy a
man like you never having seen the Campagna. I remember opening my
shutters one morning in August at Frascati. The poisonous mists lay
like clouds, but the sun came out and shone through them, and the wind
drove them before it, and every moment a hill appeared, and the great
aqueducts, and the tombs, and the wild grasses at the edge of the tombs
waving feverishly; and here and there a pine, or group of pines with
tufted heads, like Turner used to draw.... The plain itself is so
shapely. Rome lies like a little dot in the middle of it, and it is
littered with ruins. The great tomb of Cecilia Metella is there, built
out of blocks of stone as big as an ordinary room. He must have loved
her very much to raise such a tomb to her memory, and she must have
been a wonderful woman." Rodney paused a moment and then he said: "The
walls of the tombs are let in with sculpture, and there are seats for
wayfarers, and they will last as long as the world,--they are
ever-lasting."
"Of one thing I'm sure," said Harding. "I must get out of London. I
can't bear its ugliness any longer."
The two men crossed Piccadilly, and Harding told Rodney Asher's reason
for leaving London.
"He says he is subject to nightmares, and lately he has been waking up
in the middle of the night thinking that London and Liverpool had
joined. Asher is right. No town ought to be more than fifty miles long.
I like your description of Perugia. Every town should be walled round,
now we trail into endless suburbs."
"But the Green Park is beautiful, and these evening distances!"
"Never mind the Green Park; come and have a cup of tea. Asher has
bought a new picture. I'd like to show it to you. But," said Harding,
"I forgot to tell you that I met your model."
"Lucy Delaney? Where?"
"Here, I met her here," said Harding, and he took Rodney's arm so that
he might be able to talk to him more easily. "One evening, a week ago,
I was loitering, just as I was loitering to-day, and it was at the very
door of St. James's Hotel that she spoke to me."
"How did she get to London? and I didn't know that you knew her."
"A girl came up suddenly and asked me the way to the Gaiety Theatre,
and I told her, adding, however, that the Gaiety Theatre was closed.
'What shall I do?' I heard her say, and she walked on; I hesitated and
then walked after her. 'I beg your pardon,' I said, 'the Gaiety Theatre
is closed, but there are other theatres equally good. Shall I direct
you?' 'Oh, I don't know what I shall do. I have run away from home....
I have set fire to my school and have come over to London thinking that
I might go on the stage.' She had set fire to her school! I never saw
more winning eyes. But she's a girl men would look after, and not
liking to stand talking to her in Piccadilly, I asked her to come down
Berkeley Street. I was very curious to know who was this girl who had
set fire to her school and had come over to London to go on the stage;
and we walked on, she telling me that she had set fire to her school so
that she might be able to get away in the confusion. I hoped I should
not meet anyone I knew, and let her prattle on until we got to the
Square. The Square shone like a ball-room with a great plume of green
branches in the middle and every corner a niche of gaudy window boxes.
Past us came the season's stream of carriages, the women resting
against the cushions looking like finely cultivated flowers. The beauty
of the Square that afternoon astonished me. I wondered how it struck
Lucy. Very likely she was only thinking of her Gaiety Theatre!"
"But how did you know her name?"
"You remember it was at the corner of Berkeley Square that Evelyn Innes
stood when she went to see Owen Asher for the first time, she used to
tell me how she stood at the curb watching London passing by her,
thinking that one day London would be going to hear her sing. As soon
as there was a break in the stream of carriages I took Lucy across. We
could talk unobserved in the Square, and she continued her story. 'I'm
nearly seventeen,' she said, 'and I was sent back to school because I
sat for a sculpture.'"
"What did you sit for?"
"For a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and a priest told on me."
"Then you're Lucy Delaney, and the sculptor you sat for is John Rodney,
one of my intimate friends."
"What an extraordinary coincidence," said Rodney. "I never thought that
Lucy would stay in Ireland. Go on with your story."
"When I found out who she was there seemed no great harm in asking her
in to have some tea. Asher will forgive you anything if there's a woman
in it; you may keep him waiting half an hour if you assure him your
appointment was with a married woman. Well, Lucy had arrived that
morning in London with threepence in her pocket, so I told the footman
to boil a couple of eggs. I should have liked to have offered her a
substantial meal, but that would have set the servants talking. Never
did a girl eat with a better appetite, and when she had finished a
second plateful of buttered toast she began to notice the pictures. I
could see that she had been in a studio and had talked about art. It is
extraordinary how quick a girl is to acquire the ideas of a man she
likes. She admired Manet's picture of Evelyn, and I told her Evelyn's
story--knowing it would interest her. 'That such a happy fate should be
a woman's and that she should reject it,' her eyes seemed to say. 'She
is now,' I said, 'singing Ave Marias at Wimbledon for the pecuniary
benefit of the nuns and the possible salvation of her own soul.' Her
walk tells the length of the limbs and the balance of the body, and my
eyes followed her as she moved about the room, and when I told her I
had seen the statue and had admired the legs, she turned and said, with
a pretty pleased look, that you always said that she had pretty legs.
When I asked her if you had made love to her, she said you had not,
that you were always too busy with your sculpture."
"One can't think of two things at the same time. If I had met her in
Paris it would have been different."
"Unfortunately I was dining out that evening. It was hard to know what
to do. At last I thought of a lodging-house kept by a praiseworthy
person, and took her round there and, cursing my dinner-party, I left
her in charge of the landlady."
"Like a pot of jam left carefully under cover... That will be all right
till to-morrow," said Rodney.
"Very likely. It is humiliating to admit it, but it is so; the
substance of our lives is woman; all other things are irrelevancies,
hypocrisies, subterfuges. We sit talking of sport and politics, and all
the while our hearts are filled with memories of women and plans for
the capture of women. Consciously or unconsciously we regard every
young woman from the one point of view, 'Will she do?' You know the
little look that passes between men and women as their hansoms cross?
Do not the eyes say: 'Yes, yes, if we were to meet we might come to an
understanding?' We're ashamed that it should be so, but it is the law
that is over us. And that night at my dinner-party, while talking to
wise mammas and their more or less guileless daughters, I thought of
the disgrace if it were found out that I had picked up a girl in the
street and put her in charge of the landlady."
"But one couldn't leave her to the mercy of the street."
"Quite so; but I'm speaking now of what was in the back of my mind."
"The pot of jam carefully covered up," said Rodney, laughing.
"Yes, the pot of jam; and while talking about the responsibilities of
Empire, I was thinking that I might send out for a canvas in the
morning and sketch something out on it; and when I got home I looked
out a photograph of some women bathing. I expected her about twelve,
and she found me hard at work.
"Oh, I didn't know that you were a painter," she said.
"No more I am, I used to be; and thinking of Rodney's statue and what I
can see of you through that dress I thought I'd try and do something
like you."
"I'm thinner than that."
"You're not thin."
"We argued the point, and I tried to persuade her to give me a sitting.
She broke away, saying that it wasn't the same thing, and that she had
sat for you because there were no models in Dublin. 'You've been very
good to me,' she said, 'I should have had to sleep in the Park last
night if it had not been for you. Do continue to be good to me and get
me on the stage, for if you don't I shall have to go back to Dublin or
to America.' 'America,' I said. 'Do you want to go to America?' She
didn't answer, and when she was pressed for an answer, she said: 'Well,
all the Irish go to America, I didn't mean anything more; I am too
worried to know what I am saying,' and then, seeing me turn round to
look at my picture, she said, 'I will sit to you one of these days, but
I am too unhappy and frightened now. I don't like saying no; it is
always disagreeable to say no.' And seeing it would give her no
pleasure to sit, I did not ask her again."
"I'm sorry you missed seeing something very beautiful."
"I daresay she'd have sat if I'd have pressed her, but she was under my
protection, and it seemed cowardly to press her, for she could not
refuse. Suddenly we seemed to have nothing more to say to each other,
and I asked her if she'd like to see a manager, and as it seemed a pity
she should waste herself on the Gaiety Theatre I took her to see Sir
Edward Higgins. The mummer was going out to lunch with a lord and could
only think of the people he was going to meet. So we went to Dorking's
Theatre, and we found Dorking with his acting manager. The acting
manager had been listening for a long while and wasn't sorry for the
interruption. But we had not been talking for more than two or three
minutes when the call-boy brought in a bundle of newspaper cuttings,
and the mummer had not the patience to wait until he was alone--one
reads one's cuttings alone--he stuck his knees together and opened the
bundle, columns of print flowed over his knees, and after telling us
what the critics were saying about him, mention was made of Ibsen, and
we wondered if there was any chance of getting the public to come to
see a good play. You know the conversation drifts."
"You couldn't get her an engagement," said Rodney, "I should have
thought she was suited to the stage."
"If there had been time I could have done something for her; she's a
pretty girl, but you see all these things take a long time, and Lucy
wanted an engagement at once. When we left the theatre I began to
realise the absurdity of the adventure, and the danger to which I was
exposing myself. I, a man of over forty, seeking the seduction of a
girl of seventeen--for that is the plain English of it. We walked on
side by side, and I asked myself, 'What am I to her, what is she to me?
But one may argue with one's self forever."
"One may indeed," said Rodney, laughing, "one may argue, but the law
that is over us."
"Well, the law that is over us compelled me to take her to lunch, and
she enjoyed the lunch and the great restaurant. 'What a number of
butlers,' she said. After lunch the same problem confronted me: Was I
or was I not going to pursue the adventure? I only knew for certain
that I could not walk about the streets with Lucy. She is a pretty
girl, but she looked odd enough in her country clothes. Suddenly it
struck me that I might take her into the country, to Wimbledon."
"And you took her there and heard Evelyn Innes sing. And what did Lucy
think? A very pretty experiment in experimental psychology."
"The voice is getting thinner. She sang Stradella's Chanson D'Eglise,
and Lucy could hardly speak when we came out of church. 'Oh, what a
wonderful voice,' she said, 'do you think she regrets?' 'Whatever we do
we regret,' I answered, not because I thought the observation original,
but because it seemed suitable to the occasion; 'and we regret still
more what we don't do.' And I asked myself if I should write to Lucy's
people as we walked about the Common. But Lucy wanted to hear about
Owen Asher and Evelyn, and the operas she had sung, and I told the
story of Tannhauser and Tristan. She had never heard such stories
before, and, as we got up from the warm grass, she said that she could
imagine Evelyn standing in the nuns' garden with her eyes fixed on the
calm skies, getting courage from them to persevere. Wasn't it clever of
her? We dined together in a small restaurant and I spent the evening
with her in the lodging-house; the landlady let us her sitting-room.
Lucy is charming, and her happiness is volatile and her melancholy too;
she's persuasive and insinuating as a perfume; and when I left the
house, it was as if I had come out of a moonlight garden. 'Thy green
eyes look upon me... I love the moonlight of thine eyes.'"
"Go on," said Rodney, "what happened after that?"
"The most disagreeable thing that ever happened to me in my life. You
don't know what it is to be really afraid. I didn't until a fellow came
up to me at the club and asked me if I had seen the detectives. Fear is
a terrible thing, Rodney; there is nothing so demoralising as fear. You
know my staid old club of black mahogany and low ceilings, where half a
dozen men sit dining and talking about hunting and two-year-olds. There
is a man in that club who has asked me for the last ten years what I am
going to do with my two-year-olds. He cannot remember that I never had
a two-year-old. But that night he wasn't tipsy, and his sobriety
impressed me; he sat down at my table, and after a while he leaned
across and asked me if I knew that two detectives had been asking after
me. 'You had better look to this. These things turn out devilish
unpleasantly. Of course there is nothing wrong, but you don't want to
appear in the police court,' he said."
"Had she told?"
"She was more frightened than I was when I told her what had happened,
but she had done the mischief nevertheless. She had written to her
people saying that she had met a friend of Mr. Rodney, and that he was
looking after her, and that he lived in Berkeley Square; she was quite
simple and truthful, and notwithstanding my fear I was sorry for her,
for we might have gone away together somewhere, but, of course, that
was impossible now; her folly left no course open to me except to go to
Dublin and explain everything to her parents."
"I don't see," said Rodney, "that there was anything against you."
"Yes, but I was judging myself according to inward motives, and for
some time I did not see how admirable my conduct would seem to an
unintelligent jury. There is nothing to do between London and Holyhead,
and I composed the case for the prosecution and the case for the
defence and the judge's summing up. I wrote the articles in the
newspapers next day and the paragraphs in the evening papers:... I had
met her at the corner of Berkeley Street and she had asked me the way
to the Gaiety Theatre; and, being anxious for her safety, I had asked
her why she wanted the Gaiety Theatre, for of course if the case came
to trial I should not have approved of the Gaiety, and disapproval
would have won all the Methodists. The girl had told me that she had
set fire to her school, and an excitable girl like that would soon be
lost. I don't know what expression the newspapers would use--'in the
labyrinths of London vice,' she was just the kind of girl that a little
good advice might save from ruin. She had told me that she knew you, I
was her only friend, etc. What could I do better than to take her to a
lodging-house where I had lodged myself and put her in charge of the
landlady? The landlady would be an important witness, and I think it
was at Rugby Junction that I began to hear the judge saying I had acted
with great discretion and kindness, and left the court without a stain
upon my character. Nevertheless, I should have appeared in a police
court on a charge of abducting a girl, a seventeen-year-old maiden; and
not everyone would be duped by outward appearances, many would have
guessed the truth, and, though we're all the same, every one tries to
hide the secret of our common humanity. But I had forgotten to ask Lucy
for the address. I only knew the name, and that the Delaneys were
cheese-mongers, so I had to call on every cheese-monger called Delaney.
My peregrinations were too absurd. 'Have you got a daughter? Has she
left you and gone to London? And that all day in one form or another,
for it was not until evening that I found the Delaneys I was seeking.
The shop was shutting up, but there was a light in the passage, and one
of the boys let me in and I went up the narrow stairs."
"I know them," said Rodney.
"And the room--"
"I know it," said Rodney.
"The horse-hair chairs full of holes."
"I know the rails," said Rodney, "they catch you about here, across the
thighs."
"The table in the middle of the room; the smell of the petroleum lamp
and the great chair--"
"I know," said Rodney, "the Buddah seated! An enormous head! The
smoking-cap and the tassel hanging out of it!"
"The great cheeks hanging and the little eyes, intelligent eyes, too,
under the eyebrows, the only animation in his face. He must be sixteen
stone!"
"He is eighteen."
"The long clay pipe and the fat hands with the nails bitten."
"I see you have been observing him," said Rodney.
"The brown waistcoat with the white bone buttons, curving over the
belly, and the belly shelving down into the short fat thighs, and the
great feet wrapped in woollen slippers!"
"He suffers terribly, and hardly dares to stir out of that chair on
account of the stone in the bladder, which he won't have removed."
"How characteristic the room seemed to me," said Harding. "The piano
against the wall near the window."
"I know," said Rodney. "Lucy used to sit there playing. She plays
beautifully."
"Yes, she plays very well."
"Go on," said Rodney, "what happened?"
"You know the mother, the thin woman with a pretty figure and the faded
hair and the features like Lucy's."
"Yes."
"I had just begun my little explanation about the top of Berkeley
Square, how a girl came up to me and asked me the way to the Gaiety
Theatre, when this little woman rushed forward and, taking hold of both
my hands, said: 'We are so much obliged to you; and we do not know how
much to thank you.' A chair was pushed forward--"
"Which chair?" said Rodney. "I know them all. Was it the one with the
hole in the middle, or was the hole in the side?"
"'If it hadn't been for you,' said Mrs. Delaney, 'I don't know what
would have happened.' 'We've much to thank you for,' said the big man,
and he begged to be excused for not getting up. His wife interrupted
him in an explanation regarding his illness, and gradually I began to
see that, from their point of view, I was Lucy's saviour, a white
Knight, a modern Sir Galahad. They hoped I had suffered no
inconvenience when the detectives called at the Club. They had
communicated with Scotland Yard, not because they suspected me of
wishing to abduct their daughter, but because they wished to recover
their daughter, and it was important that she should be recovered at
once, for she was engaged to be married to a mathematical instrument
maker who was on his way from Chicago; he was expected in a few days;
he was at that moment on the Atlantic, and if it had not been for my
admirable conduct, Mrs. Delaney did not know what story she could have
told Mr. Wainscott."
"So Lucy is going to marry a mathematical instrument maker in Chicago?"
"Yes," said Harding, "and she is probably married to him by now. It
went to my heart to tell her that her mother was coming over to fetch
her, and that the mathematical instrument maker would arrive early next
week. But I had to tell her these unpleasant things, for I could not
take her away in Owen Asher's yacht, her age and the circumstances
forbade an agreeable episode among the Greek Islands. She is
charming.... Poor Lucy! She slipped down on the floor very prettily and
her hair fell on my knees. 'It isn't fair, you're going away on a
yacht, and I am going to Chicago.' And when I lifted her up she sat
upon my knees and wept. 'Why don't you take me away?' she said. 'My
dear Lucy, I'm forty and you're seventeen.' Her eyes grew enigmatic. 'I
shall never live with him,' she said."
"Did you kiss her?"
"We spent the evening together and I was sorry for her."
"But you don't know for certain that she married Wainscott."
"Yes. Wainscott wrote me a letter," and after some searching in his
pockets Harding found the letter.
"'DEAR SIR,--Mr. and Mrs. Delaney have told me of your kindness to
Lucy, and Lucy has told me of the trouble you took trying to get her an
engagement, and I write to thank you. Lucy did not know at the time
that I had become a partner in the firm of Sheldon & Flint, and she
thought that she might go on the stage and make money by singing, for
she has a pretty voice, to help me to buy a partnership in the business
of Sheldon & Flint. It was a kind thought. Lucy's heart is in the right
place, and it was kind of you, sir, to take her to different managers.
She has given me an exact account of all you did for her.
"'We are going to be married to-morrow, and next week we sail for the
States. I live, sir, in Chicago City, and if you are ever in America
Lucy and myself will esteem it an honour if you will come to see us.
"'Lucy would write to you herself if she were not tired, having had to
look after many things.
"'I am, dear sir,
"'Very sincerely yours,
"'JAMES WAINSCOTT.'"
"Lucy wanted life," said Rodney, "and she will find her adventure
sooner or later. Poor Lucy!"
"Lucy is the stuff the great women are made of and will make a noise in
the world yet."
"It is well she has gone; for it is many years since there was honour
in Ireland for a Grania."
"Maybe you'll meet her in Paris and will do another statue from her."
"It wouldn't be the same thing. Ah! my statue, my poor statue. Nothing
but a lump of clay. I nearly went out of my mind. At first I thought it
was the priest who ordered it to be broken. But no, two little boys who
heard a priest talking. They tell strange stories in Dublin about that
statue. It appears that, after seeing it, Father McCabe went straight
to Father Brennan, and the priests sat till midnight, sipping their
punch and considering this fine point of theology--if a man may ask a
woman to sit naked to him; and then if it would be justifiable to
employ a naked woman for a statue of the Virgin. Father Brennan said,
'Nakedness is not a sin,' and Father McCabe said, 'Nakedness may not be
in itself a sin, but it leads to sin, and is therefore unjustifiable.'
At their third tumbler of punch they had reached Raphael, and at the
fourth Father McCabe held that bad statues were more likely to excite
devotional feelings than good ones, bad statues being further removed
from perilous Nature."
"I can see the two priests, I can hear them. If an exception be made in
favour of the Virgin, would the sculptor be justified in employing a
model to do a statue of a saint?"
"No one supposes that Rubens did not employ a model for his descent
from the Cross," said Rodney.
"A man is different, that's what the priests would say."
"Yet, that slender body, slipping like a cut flower into women's hands,
has inspired more love in woman than the Virgin has in men."
"I can see these two obtuse priests. I can hear them. I should like to
write the scene," said Harding.
The footman brought in the tea, and Harding told him that if Mr.
Carmady called he was to show him in, and it was not long after that a
knock came at the front door.
"You have come in time for a cup of tea, Carmady. You know Rodney?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Carmady used to come to my studio. Many's the time we've had about the
possibility of a neo-pagan Celtic renaissance. But I did not know you
were in London. When did you arrive?"
"Yesterday. I'm going to South Africa. There's fighting going on there,
and it is a brand new country."
"Three Irishmen meet," said Rodney; "one seeking a country with a
future, one seeking a country with a past, and one thinking of going
back to a country without past or future."
"Is Harding going back to Ireland?" said Carmady.
"Yes," said Rodney. "You tried to snuff out the Catholic candle, but
Harding hopes to trim it."
"I'm tired of talking about Ireland. I've talked enough."
"This is the last time, Carmady, you'll be called to talk about
Ireland. We'd like to hear you."
"There is no free thought, and where there is no free thought there is
no intellectual life. The priests take their ideas from Rome cut and
dried like tobacco and the people take their ideas from the priests cut
and dried like tobacco. Ireland is a terrifying example of what becomes
of a country when it accepts prejudices and conventions and ceases to
inquire out the truth."
"You don't believe," said Harding, "in the possibility of a Celtic
renaissance--that with the revival of the languages?"
"I do not believe in Catholics. The Catholic kneels like the camel that
burdens may be laid upon him. You know as well as I do, Harding, that
the art and literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were
due to a sudden dispersal, a sudden shedding of the prejudices and
conventions of the middle ages; the renaissance was a joyous returning
to Hellenism, the source of all beauty. There is as little free love in
Ireland as there is free thought; men have ceased to care for women and
women to care for men. Nothing thrives in Ireland but the celibate, the
priest, the nun, and the ox. There is no unfaith, and the violence of
the priest is against any sensual transgression. A girl marries at once
or becomes a nun--a free girl is a danger. There is no courtship, there
is no walking out, and the passion which is the direct inspiration of
all the world's music and art is reduced to the mere act of begetting
children."
"Love books his passage in the emigrant ship," said Rodney. "You speak
truly. There are no bastards in Ireland; and the bastard is the outward
sign of inward grace."
"That which tends to weaken life is the only evil, that which
strengthens life the only good, and the result of this puritanical
Catholicism will be an empty Ireland."
"Dead beyond hope of resurrection," said Rodney.
"I don't say that; a wave of paganism may arise, and only a pagan
revival can save Ireland."
"Ah, the beautiful pagan world!" said Rodney; "morality is but a dream,
an academic discussion, but beauty is a reality."
"Out of the billions of men that have been born into the world," said
Carmady, "I am only sure that two would have been better unborn; and
the second was but a reincarnation of the first."
"And who were they?" said Rodney.
"St. Paul and Luther. Had it not been for Paul, the whole ghostly
theory would have been a failure, and had it not been for Luther the
name of Christ would be forgotten now. When the acetic monk,
barefooted, ragged, with prayer-haunted eyes, went to Rome, Rome had
reverted to her ancient paganism, statues took the place of sacraments,
and the cardinals drove about Rome with their mistresses."
"The Pope, too," said Rodney.
"Everything was for the best when the pilgrim monk turned in shame and
horror from the awakening; the kingdom of the earth was cursed. We
certainly owe the last four hundred years of Christianity to Luther."
"I wonder if that is so," said Rodney.
After a pause, Carmady continued, "Belief is declining, but those who
disavow the divinity of Christ eagerly insist that they retain his
morality--the cowardly morality of the weak who demand a redeemer to
redeem them. The morality of the Ghetto prevails; Christians are
children of the Ghetto."
"It is given to men to choose between sacraments and statues," said
Rodney. "Beauty is a reality, morality is a myth, and Ireland has
always struck me as a place for which God had intended to do something,
but He changed his mind and that change of mind happened about a
thousand years ago. Quite true that the Gael was hunted as if he were
vermin for centuries, and had to think how to save his life. But there
is no use thinking what the Gael might have done. It is quite certain
he'll never do it now--the time has gone by; everything has been done
and gloriously."
And for a long while Rodney spoke of Italy.
"I'll show you a city," he said, "no bigger than Rathmines, and in it
Michael Angelo, Donatello, Del Sarto, and Da Vinci lived, and lived
contemporaneously. Now what have these great pagans left the poor
Catholic Celt to do? All that he was intended to do he did in the tenth
century. Since then he has produced an incredible number of priests and
policemen, some fine prize-fighters, and some clever lawyers; but
nothing more serious. Ireland is too far north. Sculpture does not get
farther north than Paris--oranges and sculpture! the orange zone and
its long cigars, cigars eight inches long, a penny each, and lasting
the whole day. They are lighted from a taper that is passed round in
the cafes. The fruit that one can buy for three halfpence, enough for a
meal! And the eating of the fruit by the edge of the canal--seeing
beautiful things all the while. But, Harding, you sit there saying
nothing. No, you're not going back to Ireland. Before you came in,
Carmady, I was telling Harding that he was not acting fairly towards
his biographer. The poor man will not be able to explain this Celtic
episode satisfactorily. Nothing short of a Balzac could make it
convincing."
Rodney laughed loudly; the idea amused him, and he could imagine a man
refraining from any excess that might disturb and perplex or confuse
his biographer.
"How did the Celtic idea come to you, Harding? Do you remember?"
"How do ideas come to anyone?" said Harding. "A thought passes. A
sudden feeling comes over you, and you're never the same again. Looking
across a park with a view of the mountains in the distance, I perceived
a pathetic beauty in the country itself that I had not perceived
before; and a year afterwards I was driving about the Dublin mountains,
and met two women on the road; there was something pathetic and wistful
about them, something dear, something intimate, and I felt drawn
towards them. I felt I should like to live among these people again.
There is a proverb in Irish which says that no man ever wanders far
from his grave sod. We are thrown out, and we circle a while in the
air, and return to the feet of the thrower. But what astonished me is
the interest that everybody takes in my departure. Everyone seems
agreed that nothing could be more foolish, nothing more mad. But if I
were to go to meet Asher at Marseilles, and cruise with him in the
Greek Islands, and go on to Cairo, and spend the winter talking to
wearisome society, everyone would consider my conduct most rational.
You, my dear friend, Rodney, you tempt me with Italy and conversations
about yellowing marbles; and you won't be angry with me when I tell you
that all your interesting utterances about the Italian renaissance
would not interest me half so much as what Paddy Durkin and Father Pat
will say to me on the roadside."