Chapter 2

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_ CHAPTER II

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. _

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