Complete Works of George Moore, page 869
Not a living thing in sight, not even a stray sheep in the wintry hollow, I said, and turned my horse’s head towards Freshcombe, asking myself how I ever could have thought the downs beautiful. By what distortion of sight? By what trick of the brain? Because of her? And I rode thinking of her presence in one room and in another, until the day described in A Remembrance floated by, and we following all that remained of her to Shoreham churchyard.
Death is in such strange contradiction to life that it is no matter for wonder that we recoil from it, and turn to remembrances, and find recompense in perceiving that those we have loved live in our memories as intensely as if they were still before our eyes; and it would seem, therefore, that we should garner and treasure our past and forbear to regret partings with too much grief, however dear our friends may be; for in parting from us all their imperfections will pass out of sight, and they will become dearer and nearer to us. The present is no more than a little arid sand dribbling through the neck of an hour-glass; but the past may be compared to a shrine in the coign of some sea-cliff, whither the white birds of recollections come to roost and rest awhile, and fly away again into the darkness. But the shrine is never deserted. Far away up from the horizon’s line other white birds come, wheeling and circling, to take the place of those that have left and are leaving. So did my memories of her seem to me as they came to me over the downs; her unforgettable winsomeness, her affection for me, her love of her husband and of her children, were remembered, and the atrocious war which forbade me to love them in the present could not prevent me from loving them in the past.
The scratched and deserted appearance of the hillside interrupted my meditations, and on looking through the iron hurdles I could see that what the squire had said was true, for in trying to find the most profitable way of catching his rabbits Colville had allowed too many to remain on the ground. Every stoat had been destroyed, and the foxes driven out, but one cannot disturb the balance of Nature with impunity. After eating all the grass the rabbits had gnawed the bark of the furze, and afterwards the thorn trees. These thorns will never blossom again, I said, as I rode amid sand-heaps and burrows innumerable, without, however, seeing anywhere a white scut. Only rabbits can destroy rabbits; and the Belgian hares — what has become of them? I asked, remembering how haplessly they used to hop about after the keeper, every season seeing fewer of them; none had mated with the wild rabbit, and all our labour in the backyard had been in vain.
The lambs bleated after the yoes, a raven balanced himself in the blast on the lookout for carrion, and after watching the bird for some time I rode along the iron fence. The lodge seemed deserted, and I asked myself what would become of the iron hurdles. Will he sell them as scrap-iron and allow Nature to redeem the hills from trace of our ambitions? I wondered, and rode away upon my own errand, which, I reminded myself, was not to muse over the destruction of Freshcombe, but to discover if there were one spot on the downs which still appealed to my sympathies. An ugly, rolling country it all seemed: hill after hill rolled up from the sea with deep valleys set between, in which the flock follows the bell-wether. Yet these valleys had once inspired thoughts of the patriarchal ages.
But if the downs didn’t please me the weald would, and I rode by the windmill, its great arms roaring as they went round in the blast, frightening my horse, and sat for a long time studying, with hatred, the dim blue expanse that lay before me like a map: Beading, Edburton, Poynings, New Horton, I knew well: Folking and Newtimber far away lost in violet haze. And I could see, or fancied I could see, the brook which Colville had jumped years ago. A landscape, I said, that Rubens might have thought worth painting, but which Ruysdael would have turned from, it being without a blue hill or melancholy scarp or torrent, or anything that raises the soul out of an engulfing materialism; and all the things that I used to love — a red-tiled cottage at the end of a lane with a ponderous team coming through a gateway, followed by a yokel in a smock frock — I hated, and in pursuit of my hatred I resolved to visit Beading, a town that I had once loved.
But of what use to descend into it? I asked myself; and without knowing why I was going there, I let my mare slide herself down the steep chalk path on her haunches. A straggling village street was all I could discover in Beading, an ugly brick village; and interested in my unrelenting humour, I began the ascent of the downs instead of returning home by the road, so that I might give the restive mare the gallop she was craving for. She plunged her way up the hillside. Lord Leconfield’s lands were crossed at a hand-gallop, and looking back at the windmill, I cursed it as an ugly thing, and remembering with satisfaction that there are few in Ireland, I reined up and overlooked the great space from Chanctonbury Ring past Lancing, whither Worthing lies, seeking to discover the reason why I liked the downs no longer. The names of the different fields as they came up in my mind irritated me. What name more absurd for that old barn than Thunders Barrow Barn? A few minutes later I was on the crest above Anchor Hollow, whither ships came in the old days, so it was said, and, but for the fact that my friends would lose their land, I doubt if I should have found any great cause for regret in the news that they were certain to come there again. I remembered how the coast towns light up in the evening: garlands of light reaching from Worthing to Lancing, to Amberley, to Shoreham, to Southwick, and on to Brighton. There is no country in England; even the downs are encircled with lights; and my thoughts turned from them to the dim waste about Lough Carra, only lighted here and there by tallow dips. Passing from Mayo to Galway, I remembered Edward’s castle and the Burran Mountains, and the lake out of which thirty-six wild swans had risen while Yeats told me of The-Shadowy Waters; and with such distant lands and such vague, primeval people in my mind, it was impossible for me to appreciate any longer the sight of ploughing on the downs. Yet I once watched old Rogers lift the coulter from the vore when he came to the headland, and the great horses turn, the ploughboy yarking and lashing his whip all the time; but now my humour was such that I could hardly answer his cheery Good day, sir; and when the squire asked me how the mare had carried me, I said that she didn’t like the ploughboy’s whip, and very nearly got me off her ba’ack, as old Rogers would say. He was just at the end of his vore, and the horses were just a-comin’ round. So you no longer care about our down speech, the squire said, and he would have wished me to stay on for a few days, for the sake of his billiards in the evening. But Dulcie said that it would be better if I went away and came down again, and Florence seemed to agree with her that I had not been as nice this time as I had been on other occasions. So I am certain that there must have been a mingled sadness and perplexity in my eyes on bidding these dear friends of mine goodbye. I must have known that the friendship of many years — one that meant much to all of us — was now over, ended, done to death by an idea that had come into my life some months ago, without warning, undesired, uncalled for. It had been repulsed more than once, and with all the strength I was capable of, but it had gotten possession of me all the same, and it was now my master, making me hate all that I had once loved.
XIV
THE BEST FRIENDS a man ever had, yet they had been blown away like thistledown; and leaning back in my seat, I began to rejoice that the Irish Literary Theatre was going over to Dublin with three plays — The Bending of the Bough (my rewritten version of Edward’s play, The Tale of a Town), Edward’s own beautiful play Maeve, and a small play, The Last Feast of the Fianna, by Miss Milligan, and that Edward, who had cast himself again for baggage-man, was going to take the company over. We were to follow him — Lady Gregory, Yeats, and myself — a day later, and our happy travelling is remembered by me, even to the hop into the carriage after them and the pleasure I took in their soft western accent. Our project drew us together; we were delightfully intimate that morning; and I can recall my elation while watching Yeats reading the paper I had written on the literary necessity of small languages. It was to be read by me at a lunch that the Irish Literary Society was giving in our honour, and in it some ideas especially dear to Yeats had been evolved: that language after a time becomes like a coin too long current — the English language had become defaced, and to write in English it was necessary to return to the dialects. Language rises like a spring among the mountains; it increases into a rivulet; then it becomes a river (the water is still unpolluted), but when the river has passed through a town the water must be filtered. And Milton was mentioned as the first filter, the first stylist.
Never did I hear so deep a note of earnestness in Yeats’s voice as when he begged of me not to go back upon these opinions. They were his deepest nature, but in me they were merely intellectual, invented so that the Gaelic League should be able to justify its existence with reasonable, literary argument. Lady Gregory sat in the corner, a little sore, I think, feeling, and not unnaturally, that this fine defence of the revival of the Irish language should come from her poet, instead of coming, as it did, from me. In this she was right, but an apology for the prominent part I was taking in this literary and national adventure would make matters worse. The most I could do to make my intrusion acceptable to her was to welcome all Yeats’s emendations of my text with enthusiasm.
There were passages in this lecture intended to capture the popular ear, and they succeeded in doing this in spite of the noise of coffee-cups (as soon as the orator rises the waiters become unnaturally interested in their work); but I can shout, and when I had shouted above the rattle that I had arranged to disinherit my nephews if they did not learn Irish from the nurse that had been brought from Arran, everybody was delighted. The phrase that Ireland’s need was not a Catholic, but a Gaelic University, brought a cloud into the face of a priest. Edward agreed with me, adding, however, that Gaelic and Catholicism went hand in hand — a remark which I did not understand at the time, but I learnt to appreciate it afterwards. There were some cynics present, Gaelic Leaguers, who, while approving, held doubts, asking each other if my sincerity were more than skin-deep; and it was whispered at Edward’s table that I had come over to write about the country and its ideas, and would make fun of them all when it suited my purpose to do so. It would take years for me to obtain forgiveness for a certain book of mine, Edward said, and reminded me that Irish memories are long. But in time, in time.
When I am a grey-headed old man, I answered; and I went back to England. Irish speakers are dying daily or going to America, and the League will not avail itself of my services. The folly of it! The folly of it! I muttered over my fire for the next three months, until one morning a telegram was handed to me. It was from the League’s secretary. Your presence is requested at a meeting to be held in the Rotunda to protest against —
What the League would protest against on that occasion has been forgotten, but my emotion on reading that telegram will never be forgotten. Ireland had not kept me out in the cold, looking over the half-door for years, as Edward had anticipated — only three months. The telegram must be understood to mean complete forgiveness. But they will want a speech from me, and I am the only living Irishman that cannot speak for ten minutes. A speech of ten minutes means two thousand words, and every morning I fail to dictate two thousand words. My dictations are only so much rigmarole, mere incentives to work, and have to be all rewritten. On the edge of a platform one cannot say, Forget what I have said; I’ll begin again. One cannot transpose a paragraph, or revise a sentence. I can’t go, I can’t go; and my feet moved towards the writing-table. But it was as difficult for me to write No as it was to write Yes. The only Irishman living who cannot make a speech, the only one that ever lived, I added, and sank into an armchair, awakened from a painful lethargy by the sudden thought that perhaps the secretary of the Gaelic League might be persuaded to allow me to read a paper at the meeting. I could do that. But time was lacking to write the paper. Midday! And the train left Euston at eight forty-five. Evelyn Innes would have to be abandoned. The secretary should have given longer notice. A man of letters cannot uproot himself at a moment’s notice. Leave Owen Asher in the middle of Evelyn’s bed to write an argument on the literary necessity of small languages! Impossible! All the same, I could not spend the evening in Victoria Street while my kinsmen were engaged in protesting against the language of the Saxon. A worn-out, defaced coin; and I sought for an old shilling in my pocket, and finding one of George the Third, and looking at the blunted image, I said: That is the English language, a language of commerce. But the Irish language is what the Italian language was when Dante decided to abandon the Latin. I thought of the train rattling through the shires, through Rugby, Crewe, and Chester; I saw it in my thoughts circling through Aber, where Stella was painting flocks and herds. Bangor is but a few miles farther on, and the simplest plan would be to meet her on board the boat. Let Stella be the die that shall decide whether I go or stay. An act relieves the mind from the strain of thinking, and I believed everything to be settled until her telegram arrived, saying she would meet me on board the boat; and my indecisions continued until evening, expressing themselves in five telegrams.
Five telegrams, she said, when I came up the gangway. Two asking me to come, two telling me not to come, and the last one reaching me only in time. You have a servant to pack your things, but in lodgings —
Stella dear, I know, but the fault isn’t mine. I came into the world unable to decide whether I should catch the train or remain at home. But don’t think my many changes of mind came from selfishness. Agonies were endured while walking up and down Victoria Street between my flat and the post-office; the sending of each telegram seemed to settle the matter, but half-way down the street I would stop, asking myself if I should go or stay, and all the time knowing, I suppose, in some sort of unconscious way, that my love of you would not allow me to miss the pleasure of finding you, a lonely, dark figure, leaning over the bulwarks. How good of you to come!
Yes, it was good of me, for, really, five telegrams! Would you like to see them?
No, no; throw them away.
She crushed the telegrams in her hand and dropped them into the sea.
You were vexed and perplexed, but I suffered agonies. About some things I am will-less, and for half my life I believed myself to be the most weak-minded person in the world.
But you are not weak-minded. I never knew any one more determined about some things. Your writing —
Aren’t you as determined about your painting? You have sent me out of your studio, preferring your painting to me. But we haven’t met under that moon to wrangle. Here you are and here am I, and we going to Ireland together.
The boat moved away from the pier, steaming slowly down the long winding harbour, round the great headland into the sea; and finding that we were nearly the only passengers on board, and that the saloon was empty, we ensconced ourselves at the writing-table, and while dictating to her, I admired her hand, slender, with strong fingers that held the pen, accomplishing a large, steady, somewhat formal writing, which would suggest to one learned in handwriting a calm, clear mind, never fretted by small, mean interests; and if he were to add, a mind contented with the broad aspect of things, he would prove to me that her soul was reflected in her manuscript as clearly as in her pictures. And it was on board the boat and next morning, when, uncomplaining, she followed me to the writing-table, that I realised how beautiful her disposition was. And when the last sentences were written, it seemed that the time had come for me to consider her pleasure. For she had never been in Dublin before, and would like to see the National Gallery. We hung together over the railings, admiring a Mantegna in the long room, and afterwards a Hogarth — a beautiful sketch of George the Third sitting under a canopy with his family. We talked of these and stood a long time before Millais’ Hearts are Trumps, Stella explaining the painting and exhibiting her mind in many appreciative subtleties. No one talked painting better than she, and it was always a delight to me to listen to her; but that day my attention was distracted from her and from the pictures by an intolerable agony of nerves. The repose, the unconsciousness of my animal nature, seemed withdrawn, leaving me nothing but a mere mentality. In a nervous crisis one seems to be aware of one’s whole being, of one’s fingernails, of the roots of one’s hair, of the movements of one’s very entrails. One’s suffering seems, curiously enough, in the stomach, a sort of tremor of the entrails. There, I have got it at last, or the physical side of it! Added to which is the throb of cerebral perplexity. Why not run away and escape from this sickness? And the sensation of one’s inability to run away is not the least part of one’s suffering. One rolls like a stone that has become conscious, and often on my way to the Rotunda the thought passed through my mind that I must love Ireland very much to endure so much for her sake. Yet I was by no means sure that I loved Ireland at all. Before this point could be decided I had lost my way in many dark passages. But the platform was at last discovered, and there was Hyde, to whom I told that I had come over at the request of the secretary, having received a wire yestermorning from him, saying my presence was indispensable at the meeting. He was taken aback when I read out the telegram I received from the secretary, and said he was sorry I had been put to so much trouble, trying to hide his indifference under an excessive effusion which seemed to aggravate my disappointment.
