The Untilled Field Part 24

"Father Meehan," said his Grace, "is a great friend of yours. Yet nothing he could say could shake your resolution to write to Rome?"

"Nothing," said Father MacTurnan. "The call I received was too distinct and too clear for me to hesitate."

"Tell me about this call."

Father MacTurnan told the Bishop that the poor man had come out of the work-house because he wanted to be married, and that Mike Mulhare would not give him his daughter until he had earned the price of a pig. "And as I was talking to him I heard my conscience say, 'No man can afford to marry in Ireland but the clergy.' We all live better than our parishioners."

And then, forgetting the Bishop, and talking as if he were alone with his G.o.d, he described how the conviction had taken possession of him--that Ireland would become a Protestant country if the Catholic emigration did not cease. And he told how this conviction had left him little peace until he had written his letter.

The priest talked on until he was interrupted by Father Moran.

"I have some business to transact with Father Moran now," the Bishop said, "but you must stay to dinner. You have walked a long way, and you are tired and hungry."

"But, your Grace, if I don't start now, I shall not get home until nightfall."

"A car will take you back, Father MacTurnan. I will see to that. I must have some exact information about your poor people. We must do something for them."

Father MacTurnan and the Bishop were talking together when the car came to take Father MacTurnan home, and the Bishop said:--

"Father MacTurnan, you have borne the loneliness of your parish a long while."

"Loneliness is only a matter of habit. I think, your Grace, I'm better suited to the place than I am for any other. I don't wish any change, if your Grace is satisfied with me."

"No one will look after the poor people better than yourself, Father MacTurnan. But," he said, "it seems to me there is one thing we have forgotten. You haven't told me if you succeeded in getting the money to buy the pig."

Father MacTurnan grew very red.... "I had forgotten it. The relief works--"

"It's not too late. Here's five pounds, and this will buy him a pig."

"It will indeed," said the priest, "it will buy him two!"

He had left the Palace without having asked the Bishop how his letter had been received at Rome, and he stopped the car, and was about to tell the driver to go back. But no matter, he would hear about his letter some other time. He was bringing happiness to two poor people, and he could not persuade himself to delay their happiness by one minute. He was not bringing one pig, but two pigs, and now Mike Mulhare would have to give him Norah and a calf; and the priest remembered that James Murdoch had said, "What a fine house this will be to rear them in." There were many who thought that human beings and animals should not live together; but after all, what did it matter if they were happy? And the priest forgot his letter to Rome in the thought of the happiness he was bringing to two poor people. He could not see Norah Mulhare that night; but he drove down to the famine road, and he and the driver called till they awoke James Murdoch. The poor man came stumbling across the bog, and the priest told him the news.

CHAPTER VI

JULIA CAHILL'S CURSE

In '95 I was agent of the Irish Industrial Society, and I spent three days with Father O'Hara making arrangements for the establishment of looms, for the weaving of homespuns and for acquiring plots of ground whereon to build schools where the village girls could practice lace-making.

The priest was one of the chief supporters of our movement. He was a wise and tactful man, who succeeded not only in living on terms of friendship with one of the worst landlords in Ireland, but in obtaining many concessions from him. When he came to live in Culloch the landlord had said to him that what he would like to do would be to run the ploughshare through the town, and to turn "Culloch" into Bullock. But before many years had pa.s.sed Father O'Hara had persuaded this man to use his influence to get a sufficient capital to start a bacon factory.

And the town of Culloch possessed no other advantages except an energetic and foreseeing parish priest. It was not a railway terminus, nor was it a seaport.

But, perhaps because of his many admirable qualities, Father O'Hara is not the subject of this story. We find stories in the lives of the weak and the foolish, and the improvident, and his name occurs here because he is typical of not a few priests I have met in Ireland.

I left him early one Sunday morning, and he saying that twenty odd miles lay before me, and my first stopping place would be Ballygliesane. I could hear Ma.s.s there at Father Madden's chapel, and after Ma.s.s I could call upon him, and that when I had explained the objects of our Society I could drive to Rathowen, where there was a great gathering of the clergy. All the priests within ten miles round would be there for the consecration of the new church.

On an outside car one divides one's time in moralising on the state of the country or in chatting with the driver, and as the driver seemed somewhat taciturn I examined the fields as we pa.s.sed them. They were scanty fields, drifting from thin gra.s.s into bog, and from bog into thin gra.s.s again, and in the distance there was a rim of melancholy mountains, and the peasants I saw along the road seemed a counterpart of the landscape. "The land has made them," I said, "according to its own image and likeness," and I tried to find words to define the yearning that I read in their eyes as we drove past. But I could find no words that satisfied me.

"Only music can express their yearning, and they have written it themselves in their folk tunes."

My driver's eyes were the eyes that one meets everywhere in Ireland, pale, wandering eyes that the land seems to create, and I wondered if his character corresponded to his eyes; and with a view to finding if it did I asked him some questions about Father Madden. He seemed unwilling to talk, but I soon began to see that his silence was the result of shyness rather than dislike of conversation. He was a gentle, shy lad, and I told him that Father O'Hara had said I would see the loneliest parish in Ireland.

"It's true for him," he answered, and again there was silence. At the end of a mile I asked him if the land in Father Madden's parish was poor, and he said no, it was the best land in the country, and then I was certain that there was some mystery attached to Father Madden.

"The road over there is the mearing."

And soon after pa.s.sing this road I noticed that although the land was certainly better than the land about Culloch, there seemed to be very few people on it; and what was more significant than the untilled fields were the ruins, for they were not the cold ruins of twenty, or thirty, or forty years ago when the people were evicted and their tillage turned into pasture, but the ruins of cabins that had been lately abandoned. Some of the roof trees were still unbroken, and I said that the inhabitants must have left voluntarily.

"Sure they did. Arn't we all going to America."

"Then it was not the landlord?"

"Ah, it's the landlord who'd have them back if he could."

"And the priest? How does he get his dues?"

"Those on the other side are always sending their money to their friends and they pay the priest. Sure why should we be staying? Isn't the most of us over there already. It's more like going home than leaving home."

I told him we hoped to establish new looms in the country, and that Father O'Hara had promised to help us.

"Father O'Hara is a great man," he said.

"Well, don't you think that with the revival of industries the people might be induced to stay at home?"

"Sorra stay," said he.

I could see that he was not so convinced about the depopulation of Father O'Hara's parish as he was about Father Madden's, and I tried to induce him to speak his mind.

"Well, your honour, there's many that think there's a curse on the parish."

"A curse! And who put the curse on the parish?"

"Isn't that the bell ringing for Ma.s.s, your honour?"

And listening I could head a doleful pealing in the grey sky.

"Does Father Madden know of this curse?"

"Indeed he does; none better."

"And does he believe in it?"

"There's many who will tell you that he has been saying Ma.s.ses for the last ten years, that the curse may be taken off the parish."