The Untilled Field Part 13

And she ran away shrinking like a dog, and the priest walked up and down the unfinished church. "She tries my temper more than anyone I ever met," he said to himself. At that moment he heard some loose boards clanking, and thinking it was the old woman coming back he looked round, his eyes flaming. But the intruder was a short and square-set man, of the type that one sees in Germany, and he introduced himself as an agent of a firm of stained gla.s.s manufacturers. He told Father Maguire they had heard in Germany of the beautiful church he was building. "I met an old woman on the road, and she told me that I would find you in the church considering the best place for the window she was going to put up. She looks very poor."

"She's not as poor as she looks; she's been saving money all her life for this window. Her window is her one idea, and, like people of one idea, she's apt to become a little tiresome."

"I don't quite understand."

He began telling the story, and seeing that the German was interested in the old woman he began to acquire an interest in her himself, an unpremeditated interest; he had not suspected that Biddy was so interesting. The German said she reminded him of the quaint sculpture of Nuremburg, and her character reminded him of one of the German saints, and talking of Biddy and medievalism and Gothic art and stained gla.s.s the priest and the agent for the manufacture of stained gla.s.s in Munich walked up and down the unfinished church until the return of the plasterer reminded the priest of his embarra.s.sments, and he took the German into his confidence.

"These embarra.s.sments always occur," said the agent, "but there is no such thing as an unfinished church in Ireland; if you were to let her put up the window subscriptions would pour in."

"How's that?"

"A paragraph in the newspaper describing the window, the gift of a local saint. I think you told me her name was M'Hale, and that she lives in the village."

"Yes, you pa.s.s her house on the way to the station."

The German took his leave abruptly, and when he was half-way down the hill he asked some children to direct him.

"Is it Biddy M'Hale, that has all the hins, and is going to put up a window in the church, that you're wanting?"

The German said that that was the woman he wanted, and the eldest child said:--

"You will see her feeding her chickens, and you must call to her over the hedge."

And he did as he was bidden.

"Madam ... the priest has sent me to show you some designs for a stained gla.s.s window."

No one had ever addressed Biddy as Madam before. She hastened to let him into the house, and wiped the table clean so that he could spread the designs upon it. The first designs he showed here were the four Evangelists, but he would like a woman's present to her church to be in a somewhat lighter style, and he showed her a picture of St. Cecilia that fascinated her for a time; and then he suggested that a group of figures would look handsomer than a single figure. But she could not put aside the idea of the window that had grown up in her mind, and after some attempts to persuade her to accept a design they had in stock he had to give way and listen.

At the top of the picture, where the window narrowed to a point, Our Lord sat dressed in white on a throne, placing a golden crown on the head of the Virgin kneeling before him. About him were the women who had loved him, and the old woman said she was sorry she was not a nun, and hoped that Christ would not think less of her. As far as mortal sin was concerned she could say she had never committed one. At the bottom of the window there were suffering souls. The cauldrons that Biddy wished to see them in, the agent said, would be difficult to introduce--the suffering of the souls could be artistically indicated by flames.

"I shall have great joy," she said, "seeing the blessed women standing about our Divine Lord, singing hymns in His praise, and the sight of sinners broiling will make me be sorrowful."

She insisted on telling the German of the different churches she had visited, and the windows she had seen, and she did not notice that he was turning over his designs and referring to his note book while she was talking. Suddenly he said:--

"Excuse me, but I think we have got the greater part of the window you wish for in stock, and the rest can be easily made up. Now the only question that remains is the question of the colours you care about."

"I have always thought there's no colour like blue. I'd like the Virgin to wear a blue cloak."

She did not know why she had chosen that colour, but the agent told her that she was quite right; blue signified chast.i.ty; and when the German had gone she sat thinking of the Virgin and her cloak. The Minorcas, and Buff Orpingtons, and Plymouth Rocks came through the door cackling, and while feeding them she sat, her eyes fixed on the beautiful evening sky, wondering if the blue in the picture would be as pale, or if it would be a deeper blue.

She remembered suddenly that she used to wear a blue ribbon when she went blackberrying among the hills; she found it in an old box and tied it round her neck. The moment she put it on her memory was as if lighted up with the memories of the saints and the miracles they had performed, and she went to Father Maguire to tell him of the miracle.

That the agent should have in stock the very window she had imagined seemed a miracle, and she was encouraged to think some miraculous thing had happened when the priest asked her to tell him exactly what her window was like. She had often told him before but he had never listened to her. But now he recognised her window as an adaptation of Fra Angelico's picture, and he told her how the saint had wandered from monastery to monastery painting pictures on the walls. More he could not tell her, but he promised to procure a small biography of the saint. She received the book a few days after, and as she turned over the leaves she heard the children coming home from school, and she took the book out to them, for her sight was failing, and they read bits of it aloud, and she frightened them by dropping on her knees and crying out that G.o.d had been very good to her.

She wandered over the country visiting churches, returning to Kilmore suddenly. She was seen as usual at sunrise and at sunset feeding her poultry, and then she went away again, and the next time she was heard of was in a church near Dublin celebrated for its stained gla.s.s. A few days after Ned Kavanagh met her hurrying up the road from the station, and she told him she had just received a letter from the Munich agent saying he had forwarded her window. It was to arrive to-morrow.

It was expected some time about mid-day, but Biddy's patience was exhausted long before, and she walked a great part of the way to Dublin to meet the dray. She returned with it, walking with the draymen, but within three miles of Kilmore she was so tired that they had to put her on the top of the boxes, and a cheer went up from the villagers when she was lifted down. She called to the workmen to be careful in unpacking the gla.s.s; and when they were putting it up she went down on her knees and prayed that no accident might happen.

At sunset the church had to be closed, and it was with difficulty that she was persuaded to leave it. Next morning at sunrise she was knocking at the door of the woman who was charged with the cleaning of the church, asking for the key.

And from that day she was hardly ever out of the church; the charwoman began to complain that she could not get on with her work, and she was telling the priest that Biddy was always at her elbow, asking her to come to her window, saying she would show her things she had not seen before, when their conversation was interrupted by Biddy. She seemed a little astray, a little exalted, and Father Maguire watched her as she knelt with uplifted face, telling her beads. He noticed that her fingers very soon ceased to move; and that she held the same bead a long time between her fingers. Minutes pa.s.sed, but her lips did not move; her eyes were fixed on the panes and her look was so enraptured that he began to wonder if Paradise were being revealed to her.

And while the priest wondered, Biddy listened to music inconceivably tender. She had been awakened from her prayers by the sound of a harp string touched very gently; and the note had floated down like a flower, and all the vibrations were not dead when the same note floated down the aisles once more. Biddy listened, anxious to hear it a third time. Once more she heard it, and the third time she saw the saint's fingers moving over the strings; and she played a little tune of six notes. And it was at the end of the second playing of the tune that the priest touched Biddy on the shoulder. She looked up and it was a long while before she saw him, and she was greatly grieved that she had been awakened from her dream. She said it was a dream because her happiness had been so great; and she stood looking at the priest, fain, but unable, to tell how she had been borne beyond her usual life, that her whole being had answered to the music the saint played, and looking at him, she wondered what would have happened if he had not awakened her.

Next day was Sunday, and she was in the church at sunrise listening for the music. But she heard and saw nothing until the priest had reached the middle of the Ma.s.s. The acolyte had rung the bell to prepare the people for the Elevation, and it was then that she heard a faint low sound that the light wire emitted when the saint touched her harp, and she noticed that it was the same saint that had played yesterday, the tall saint with the long fair hair who stood apart from the others, looking more intently at Our Blessed Lord than the others. She touched her harp again and the note vibrated for a long while, and when the last vibrations died she touched the string again. The note was sweet and languid and intense, and it pierced to the very core of Biddy. The saint's hand pa.s.sed over the strings, producing faint exquisite sounds, so faint that Biddy felt no surprise they were not heard by anyone else; it was only by listening intently that she could hear them.

Yesterday's little tune appeared again, a little tune of six notes, and it seemed to Biddy even more exquisite than it had seemed when she first heard it. The only difference between to-day and yesterday was, that to-day all the saints struck their harps, and after playing for some time the music grew white like snow and remote as star-fire, and yet Biddy heard it more clearly than she had heard anything before, and she saw Our Lord more clearly than she had ever seen anybody else. She saw Him look up when He had placed the crown on His Mother's head; she heard Him sing a few notes, and then the saints began to sing. The window filled up with song and colour, and all along the window there was a continual trans.m.u.tation of colour and song. The figures grew taller, and they breathed extraordinary life. It sang like a song within them, and it flowed about them and out of them in a sort of pearl-coloured mist. The vision clove the church along and across, and through it she could see the priest saying his Ma.s.s, and when he raised the Host above his head, Biddy saw Our Lord look at her, and His eyes brightened as if with love of her. He seemed to have forgotten the saints that sang His praises so beautifully, and when He bent towards her and she felt His presence about her, she cried out:--

"He is coming to take me in His arms!"

And it was then that Biddy fell out of her place and lay at length on the floor of the church, pale as a dead woman. The clerk went to her, but he could not carry her out; she lay rigid as one who had been dead a long while and she muttered, "He is coming to put the gold crown on my head." The clerk moved away, and she swooned again.

Her return to her ordinary perceptions was slow and painful. The people had left long ago, and she tottered out of the empty church and followed the road to her cabin without seeing it or the people whom she met on the road. At last a woman took her by the arm and led her into her cabin, and spoke to her. She could not answer at first, but she awoke gradually, and she began to remember that she had heard music in the window and that Our Lord had sung to her. The neighbour left her babbling. She began to feed her chickens, and was glad when she had fed them. She wanted to think of the great and wonderful sights she had seen. She could not particularise, preferring to remember her vision as a whole, unwilling to separate the music from the colour, or the colour and the music from the adoration of the saints.

As the days went by her life seemed to pa.s.s more and more out of the life of the ordinary day. She seemed to live, as it were, on the last verge of human life; the mortal and the immortal mingled; she felt she had been always conscious of the immortal, and that nothing had happened except the withdrawing of a veil. The memory of her vision was still intense in her, but she wished to renew it; and waited next Sunday breathless with antic.i.p.ation. The vision began at the same moment, the signal was the same as before; the note from the harp string floated down the aisles and when it had been repeated three times the saintly fingers moved over the strings, and she heard the beautiful little tune.

Every eye was upon her, and forgetful of the fact that the priest was celebrating Ma.s.s, they said, "Look, she hears the saints singing about her. She sees Christ coming." The priest heard Biddy cry out "Christ is coming," and she fell p.r.o.ne and none dared to raise her up, and she lay there till the Ma.s.s was finished. When the priest left the altar she was still lying at length, and the people were about her; and knowing how much she would feel the slightest reproof, he did not say a word that would throw doubt on her statement. He did not like to impugn a popular belief, but he felt obliged to exercise clerical control.

"Now, Biddy, I know you are a very pious woman, but I cannot allow you to interrupt the Ma.s.s."

"If the Lord comes to me am I not to receive Him, your reverence?"

"In the first place I object to your dress; you are not properly dressed."

She wore a bright blue cloak, she seemed to wear hardly anything else, and tresses of dirty hair hung over her shoulders.

"The Lord has not said anything to me about my dress, your reverence, and He put His gold crown on my head to-day."

"Biddy, is all this true?"

"As true as you're standing there."

"I am not asking you if your visions are true. I have my opinion about that. I am asking if they are true to you."

"True to me, your reverence? I don't rightly understand."

"I want to know if you think Our Lord put a gold crown on your head to-day."

"To be sure He did, your reverence."

"If He did, where is it?"

"Where is it, your reverence? It is with Him, to be sure. He wouldn't be leaving it on my head and me walking about the parish--that would not be reasonable at all, I am thinking. He doesn't want me to be robbed."

"There is no one in the parish who would rob you."

"Maybe some one would come out of another parish, if I was walking about with a gold crown on my head. And such a crown as He put upon it!--I am sorry you did not see it, but your reverence was saying the holy Ma.s.s at the time."

And she fell on her knees and clung to his ca.s.sock.