Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  The miles flowed under our wheels. We had come so far that it seemed as if we might go on for another hundred miles without feeling tired, and the day, too, seemed as if it could not tire and darken into night. We passed a girl driving her cows homeward. She drew her shawl over her head, and I said that I remembered having seen her long ago in Mayo, and AE answered: Before the tumuli, she was.

  IV

  YOU’VE PUNCTURED! AE said, and I could see that he looked upon the incident as ominous. I can mend your puncture for you, but perhaps the quickest way will be to go back; the shop isn’t more than a quarter of a mile from here.

  And in it we met a young man, who advanced to meet us on long, thin legs, his blue, Celtic eyes full of inquiry; after listening, I thought sympathetically, to my mishap (he was really thinking of something else) he asked me what he could do for me, and, on my telling him again that I had punctured, he seemed to wake up sufficiently to call his partner, a thick-set man, who seized my machine and told me that he was just tightening a gentleman’s wheel for him, but it wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes. In a quarter of an hour ... could I wait that long?

  He spoke with a Lancashire burr, and I began to wonder how the Celt and the Saxon had come together, so different were they, and why the red-headed Celt lingered about the shop instead of going to the help of his fellow. And it was to escape from unpleasant thoughts of my country’s idleness that I asked him if the language movement was making progress in Dundalk; but when he told me that a branch of the Gaelic League had been started about two years ago, and that he was a constant attendant at the classes, I apologised to him, inwardly, for a hasty judgment, and, seeing in him, perhaps, a future apostle, I commenced preaching. A few people had just dropped in for a chat after dinner, and taking for my text the words that I had heard spoken on the road to Chelsea, I said:

  A few days after the voice spoke to me again, this time not out of the clouds, but within a few inches of my ear, and the words that it spoke were, Go to Ireland, go to Ireland, and not long after this second revelation, a force completely outside of myself compelled me to fall upon my knees, and I prayed for the first time for many years. But it was not to any Christian God that I prayed.

  AE looked up, hoping, no doubt, that I would not shock the young man’s Catholic susceptibilities to the point of his asking me to leave his shop; and, thinking that in saying I had not prayed to a Christian God I had said enough, I admitted that the future religion of Ireland was not our business, but one for the next generation to settle. Our business was to revive the Irish language, for the soul of Ireland was implicit in it, and, pulling out of my pocket a copy of the Claidheamh Soluis, I described the aims and ambitions of the paper. But a cloud came into the young man’s face and into the faces of the three or four people present, whom I invited to subscribe to it, and the thought dashed through my mind that I was being mistaken for an advertising agent, and to remove such sordid suspicion I told them that I had no pecuniary interest in the paper whatever, but was working for the language of our forefathers, and to support this paper (the organ of the League) seemed to me part of the work I had been sent to do in Ireland. The best way to do this was by getting advertisements for the paper, and my way of getting advertisements was simple and advantageous to all parties. I had rented a house in Dublin. The roof was leaking, and a builder had to be called in; he had been given the job of repairing the roof on condition that he advertised in the Claidheamh Soluis. The upholsterer had furnished my house under the same conditions, and as soon as I came to live in it I had gone to the butcher, the grocer, the chandler, the greengrocer, the apothecary, the baker, the tailor, the draper, the boot-maker: You shall have my custom if you advertise in the Claidheamh Soluis.... And you, sir, having bicycles to sell, might like to do business with me on the same terms.

  The young Celt agreed that he would like to do business with me, but, being somewhat slow-witted, said he must refer the matter to his partner.

  But why refer it to your partner? I answered. Everybody will advertise if he is sure of getting custom. I am the only advertising agent in the world who can insure a speedy return for the money laid out.

  As the young man hesitated, AE took me aside and reminded me that my method was not as applicable to bicycles as to furniture and food, for if I were to buy a bicycle every time I punctured I should have more machines on my hands than it would be possible for me to find use for.

  If you’ll be good enough to wait till my partner comes back, chimed in the young Celt, I’ll be able to give you your answer.

  And when the Lancashire man came in with the bicycle on his shoulders, the conditions of sale were explained to him (conditions which I could see by the partner’s face he was quite willing to accept).

  We shan’t get to Slievegullion today if you don’t hasten, AE said; but the Lancashire man, loath to lose a chance of selling a bicycle, sent the young Celt along with us, the pretext being to put us on the right road; and we all three pedalled away together, myself riding in the middle, explaining to the Celt that language wears out like a coat, and just as a man has to change his coat when it becomes threadbare, a nation has to change its language if it is to produce a new literature. There could be no doubt about this. Italy had produced a new literature because Italy had changed her language; whereas Greece had not changed hers, and there was no literature in Greece, and there could be none until the modern language had separated itself sufficiently from the ancient.

  The young man seemed to wish to interpose a remark, but I dashed into a new theory. Ideas were climatic; the climate of Ireland had produced certain modes of thought, and these could only transpire in the language of the country, for of course language is only the echo of the mind. The young man again tried to interpose a remark, and AE tried too, but neither succeeded in getting heard, for it seemed to me of primary importance to convince the young man that literary genius depended upon the language as much as upon the writer, and Ireland was proof of it, for, though Irishmen had been speaking English for centuries, they had never mastered that language.

  If Irishmen would only read English literature, AE shouted from the other side of the road, but they read the daily paper.

  But, AE, a nation reads the literature that itself produces. Ireland cannot be as much interested in Shakespeare as England is, or in the Bible, Ireland having accepted the Church of Rome, and the two ways of learning English are through the Bible and Shakespeare.

  But there is an excellent Irish translation of the Bible, nearly as good as the English Bible, and AE appealed to the young Celt, who admitted that he had heard that Bedell’s Bible was in very good Irish.

  But it isn’t read in the classes.

  And why isn’t it read in the classes? I asked.

  Well, you see, it was done by a Protestant.

  I screamed at him that it was ridiculous to reject good Irish because a Protestant wrote it.

  You are a native speaker, sir?

  No, I answered, I don’t know any Irish.

  The young man gazed at me, and AE began to laugh.

  You should begin to learn, and I hope you won’t mind taking this little book from me; it is O’Growney’s. I am in the fifth. And now, he said, I don’t think I can go any farther with you. The cromlech — you can’t miss it when you come to the first gate on the left.

  He left us so abruptly that I could not return the book to him, and had to put it into my pocket; and the incident amused AE until we came to a gate about half a mile up the road, which we passed through, coming upon the altar of our forefathers in the middle of a large green field — a great rock poised upon three or four upright stones, nine or ten feet high, and one stone worn away at the base, but rebuilt by some pious hand, for the belief abides that Diarmuid and Grania slept under the cromlech in their flight from Finn.

  Traditions are often more truthful than scripts, AE said, and, believing in this as in everything he says, I walked round the cromlech three times, prayi
ng, and when my devotions were finished, I returned to AE, who was putting the last touches to a beautiful drawing of the altar, a little nervous lest he should question me as to the prayers I had offered up. But instead of groping in any one’s religious belief AE talks sympathetically of Gods ascending and descending in many-coloured spirals of flame, and of the ages before men turned from the reading of earth to the reading of scrolls, and of the earth herself, the origin of all things and the miracle of miracles. AE is extraordinarily forthcoming, and while speaking on a subject that interests him, nothing of himself remains behind, the revelation is continuous, and the belief imminent that he comes of Divine stock, and has been sent into the world on an errand.

  I watched him packing up his pastels, and we went together to the warrior’s grave at the other end of the field, and stood by it, wondering in the beautiful summer weather what his story might be. And then my memory disappears. It emerges again some miles farther on, for we were brought to a standstill by another puncture, and this second puncture so greatly stirred AE’s fears lest the Gods did not wish to see me on the top of their mountain, that it was difficult for me to persuade him to go into the cottage for a basin of water. At last he consented, and, while he worked hard, heaving the tyre from off the wheel with many curious instruments, which he extracted from a leather pocket behind the saddle of his machine, I talked to him of Ireland, hoping thereby to distract his attention from the heat of the day. It was not difficult to do this, for AE, like Dujardin, can be interested in ideas at any time of the day or night, though the sweat pours from his forehead; and I could see that he was listening while I told him that we should have room to dream and think in Ireland when America had drawn from us another million and a half of the population.

  Two millions is the ideal population for Ireland and about four for England. Do you know, AE, there could not have been more than two million people in England when Robin Hood and his merry men haunted Sherwood Forest. How much more variegated the world was then! At any moment one might come upon an archer who had just split a willow wand distant a hundred yards, or upon charcoal-burners with their fingers and thumbs cut off for shooting deer, or jugglers standing on each other’s heads in the middle of sunlit interspaces! A little later, on the fringe of the forest, the wayfarer stops to listen to the hymn of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury! Oh, how beautiful is the world of vagrancy lost to us for ever, AE!

  There is plenty of vagrancy still in Ireland, he answered, and we spoke seriously of the destiny of the two countries. As England had undertaken to supply Ireland with hardware, he would not hang the pall cloud of Wolverhampton over Dundalk. The economic conditions of the two countries are quite different, he said, and many other interesting things which would have gladdened Plunkett’s heart, but my memory curls and rushes into darkness at the word economic, and a considerable time must have elapsed, for we were well on our way when I heard my own voice saying:

  Will this hill never cease?

  We’re going to Slievegullion.

  True for you, I said, for at every half-mile the road gets steeper, which I suppose is always the case when one is going towards a mountain. But, despite the steepness which should have left no doubt upon his mind, AE was not satisfied that we were in the right road, and he jumped off his bicycle to call to a man, who left his work willingly to come to our assistance, whether from Irish politeness or because of the heat of the day, I am still in doubt. As he came towards us his pale and perplexed eyes attracted my attention; they recalled to mind the ratlike faces with the long upper lip that used to come from the mountains to Moore Hall, with bank-notes in their tall hats, a little decaying race in knee-breeches, worsted stockings, and heavy shoon, whom our wont was to despise because they could not speak English. Now it was the other way round; I was angry with this little fellow because he had no Irish. His father, he said, was a great Irish speaker, and he would have told us the story of the decline of the language in the district if AE had not suddenly interrupted him with questions regarding the distance to Slievegullion.

  If it’s to the tip-top you’re thinking of going, about another four miles, and he told us we would come upon a cabin about half a mile up the road, and the woman in it would mind our bicycles while we were at the top of the hill, and from her house he had always heard that it was three miles to the top of the mountain; that was how he reckoned it was four miles from where we stood to the lake. He had never been to the top of Slievegullion himself, but he had heard of the lake from those that had been up there, and he thought that he had heard of Finn from his father, but he disremembered if Finn had plunged into the lake after some beautiful queen.

  Those who have lived too long in the same place become melancholy, AE. Let him emigrate. He has forgotten his Irish and the old stories that carried the soul of the ancient Gael right down to the present generation. I’m afraid, AE, that ancient Ireland died at the beginning of the nineteenth century and beyond hope of resurrection.

  AE was thinking at that moment if the peasant had directed us rightly, and impatient for an answer I continued:

  Can the dreams, the aspirations and traditions of the ancient Gael be translated into English? And being easily cast down, I asked if the beliefs of the ancient Gael were not a part of his civilisation and have lost all meaning for us?

  That would be so, AE answered, if truth were a casual thing of today and tomorrow, but men knew the great truths thousand of years ago, and it seems to me that these truths are returning, and that we shall soon possess them, not perhaps exactly as the ancient Gael —

  I hope that you are right, for all my life is engaged in this adventure, and I think you are right, and that the ancient Gael was nearer to Nature than we have ever been since we turned for inspiration to Galilee.

  The fault I find with Christianity is that it is no more than a code of morals, whereas three things are required for a religion — a cosmogony, a psychology, and a moral code.

  I’m sure you’re right, AE, but the heat is so great that I feel I cannot push this bicycle up the hill any farther. You must wait for me till I take off my drawers. And behind a hedge I rid myself of them. You were telling me that the dreams and aspirations and visions of the Celtic race have lost none of their ancient power as they descended from generation to generation.

  I don’t think they have. And I listened to him telling how these have crept through dream after dream of the manifold nature of man, and how each dream, heroism, or beauty, has laid itself nigh the Divine power it represents. Deirdre was like Helen.... It went to my heart to interrupt him, but the heat was so great that to listen to him with all my soul I must rid myself of the rest of my hosiery, and so once more I retired behind a hedge, and, returning with nothing on my moist body but a pair of trousers and a shirt, I leaned over the handle-bars, and by putting forth all my strength, mental as well as physical, contrived to reach the cottage.

  We left our bicycles with the woman of the house and started for the top of the mountain. The spare, scant fields were cracked and hot underfoot, but AE seemed unaware of any physical discomfort. Miraculously sustained by the hope of reaching the sacred lake, he hopped over the walls dividing the fields like a goat, though these were built out of loose stones, every one as hot as if it had just come out of a fire; and I heard him say, as I fell back exhausted among some brambles, that man was not a momentary seeming but a pilgrim of eternity.

  What is the matter, Moore? Can’t you get up?

  I am unbearably tired, and the heat is so great that I can’t get over this wall.

  Take a little rest, and then you’ll be able to come along with me.

  No, no, I’m certain that today it would be impossible, all the way up that mountain, a long struggle over stones and through heather. No, no! If a donkey or a pony were handy!

  He conjured me to rise.

  It is very unfortunate, for you will see Finn, and I might see him, too, whether in the spirit or in the flesh I know not; and having seen h
im, we should come down from that mountain different beings, that I know; but it’s impossible.

  Get up. I tell you to get up. You must get up.

  A lithe figure in grey clothes and an old brown hat bade me arise and walk; his shining grey eyes were filled with all the will he had taught himself to concentrate when, after a long day’s work at Pim’s as accountant, he retired to his little room and communicated with Weekes and Johnson, though they were miles away; but, great as the force of his will undoubtedly is, he could not infuse in me enough energy to proceed; my body remained inert, and he left me, saying that alone he would climb the mountain, and I saw him going away, and the gritty and grimy mountain showing aloft in ugly outline upon a burning sky.

  Going to see Finn, I murmured, and had I strength I would sit with him by the holy lake waiting for the vision; but I may not. He’ll certainly spend an hour by the lake, and he will take two hours to come back, and all that time I shall sit in a baking field where there is no shade to speak of. I had struggled into a hazel-copse, but my feet were burnt by the sun and my tongue was like a dry stick. The touch of the hazel-leaves put my teeth on edge, and, remembering that AE would be away for hours, I walked across the field towards the cottage where we had left our bicycles.

  May I have a drink of water? I asked, looking over the half-door.

  Two women came out of the gloom, and, after talking between themselves, one of them asked wouldn’t I rather have a drop of milk? — a fine-looking girl with soft grey eyes and a friendly manner; the other was a rougher, an uglier sort.

  I drank from the bowl, and could have easily finished the milk, but lifting my eyes suddenly I caught sight of a flat-faced child with flaxen hair all in curl watching me, and it occurring to me at that moment that it might be his milk I was drinking, I put down the bowl and my hand went to my pocket.