Waysiders Part 13

Ellen Miscal, who sat over the sheet of writing paper on the table, looked up quickly as he spoke the words. As she did so she was conscious of the new animation that vivified the idealistic face of Martin Cosgrave. But he did not give her time to question him.

"I have my own reasons for asking her to wait until the harvest," he said, with some irritation.

He stayed at the dresser until Ellen Miscal had written the letter. He carried it down to the village and posted it with his own hand, and he went and came as gravely as if he had been taking part in some solemn ritual.

II

That day the building was begun. Martin Cosgrave tackled the donkey and drew a few loads of limestone from the nearby quarry. Some of the neighbours who came his way found him a changed man, a silent man with his eager face set, a man in whose eyes a new light shone, a quiet man of the fields into whose mind a set purpose had come. He struggled up the road with his donkey-cart, his hand gripping the shaft to hasten the steps of the slow brute, his limbs bent to the hill, his head down at the work. By the end of the week a pile of grey-blue stones was heaped up on the crest of the hill. The walls of the fields had been broken down to make a carway. Late into the night when the donkey had been fed and tethered the neighbours would see Martin Cosgrave moving about the pile of grey-blue stones, sorting and picking, arranging in little groups to have ready to his hands. "A house he is going to put up on the hill," they would say, lost in wonder.

The spring came, and with it all the strenuous work on the land. But Martin Cosgrave went on with the building. The neighbours shook their heads at the sight of neglect that was gathering about his holding; they said it was flying in the face of Providence when Martin Cosgrave weaned all the lambs from the ewes one day, long before their time, and sold them at the fair to the first bidder that came his way. Martin Cosgrave did so because he wanted money and was in a hurry to get back to his building.

"What call has a man to be destroying himself like that?" the neighbours asked each other.

Martin Cosgrave knew what the neighbours were saying about him. But what did he care? What thought had any of them for the heart of a builder?

What did any of them know beyond putting a spade in the clay and waiting for the seasons to send up growing things from the seed they scattered by their hands? What did they know about the feel of the rough stone in the hand and the shaping of it to fit into the building, the building that day after day you saw rising up from the ground by the skill of your hand and the art of your mind? What could they in Kilbeg know of the ship that would plough the ocean in the harvest bearing Rose Dempsey home to him? For all their ploughing and their sowing, what sort of a place had any of them led a woman into? They might talk away. The joy of the builder was his. The beech trees that made music all day beside the building he was putting up to the sight of all the world had more understanding of him than all the people of the parish.

Martin Cosgrave had no help. He kept to his work from such an early hour in the morning until such a late hour of the night that the people marvelled at his endurance. But as the work went on the people would talk about Martin Cosgrave's building in the fields and tell strangers of it at the markets. They said that the like of it had never been seen in the countryside. It was to be "full of little turrets and the finest of fancy porches and a regular sight of bulging windows." One day that Martin Cosgrave heard a neighbour speaking about the "bulging windows"

he laughed a half-bitter, half-mocking laugh.

"Tell them," he said, "that they are cut-stone tracery windows to fit in with the carved doors." These cut-stone windows and carved doors cost Martin Cosgrave such a length of time that they provoked the patience of the people. Out of big slabs of stone he had worked them, and sometimes he would ask the neighbours to give him a hand in the shifting of these slabs. But he was quick to resent any interference. One day a stone-cutter from the quarry went up on the scaffold, and when Martin Cosgrave saw him he went white to the lips and cursed so bitterly that those standing about walked away.

When the sh.e.l.l of the building had been finished Martin Cosgrave hired a carpenter to do all the woodwork. The woodwork cost money. Martin Cosgrave did not hesitate. He sold some of his sheep, sold them hurriedly, and as all men who sell their sheep hurriedly, he sold them badly. When the carpentry had been finished, the roofing cost more money. One day the neighbours discovered that all the sheep had been sold. "He's beggared now," they said.

The farmer who turned the sod a few fields away laboured in the damp atmosphere of growing things, his mind filled with thoughts of bursting seeds and teeming barns. He shook his head at sight of Martin Cosgrave above on the hill bent all day over hard stones; whenever he looked up he only caught the glint of a trowel, or heard the harsh grind of a chisel. But Martin Cosgrave took no stock of the men reddening the soil beneath him. Whenever his eyes travelled down the hillside he only saw the flock of crows that hung over the head of the digger. The study of the veins of limestone that he turned in his hands, the slow moulding of the crude shapes to their place in the building, the rhythm and swing of the mallet in his arm, the zest with which he felt the impact of the chisel on the stone, the ring of forging steel, the consciousness of mastery over the work that lay to his hands--these were the things that seemed to him to give life a purpose and man a destiny. He would whistle a tune as he mixed the mortar with the broad shovel, for it gave him a feeling of the knitting of the building with the ages. He pitied the farmer who looked helplessly upon his corn as it was beaten to the ground by the first storm that blew from the sea; he was upon a work that would withstand the storms of centuries. The scent of lime and mortar greeted his nostrils. When he moved about the splinters crunched under his feet. Everything around him was hard and stubborn, but he was the master of it all. In his dreams in the night he would reach out his hands for the feel of the hard stone, a burning desire in his breast to put it into shape, to give it n.o.bility in the scheme of a building.

It was while Martin Cosgrave walked through the building that Ellen Miscal came to him with the second letter from America. The carpenter was hammering at something below. The letter said that Rose Dempsey and her sister, Sheela, would be home in the late harvest. "With all I saw since I left Kilbeg," Rose Dempsey wrote, "I never saw one that I thought as much of as Martin Cosgrave."

When Ellen Miscal left him, Martin Cosgrave stood very quietly looking through the cut-stone tracery window. The beech trees were swaying slowly outside. Their music was in his ears.

Then he remembered that he was standing in the room where he would take Rose Dempsey in his arms. It was here he would tell her of all the bitter things he had locked up in his heart when she had gone away from him. It was here he would tell her of the day of resurrection, when all the bitter thoughts had burst into flower at the few words that told of her return. It was that day of great tumult within him that thought of the building had come into his mind.

When Martin Cosgrave walked out of the room the carpenter and a neighbour boy were arguing about something at the foot of the stairs.

"It's too steep, I'm telling you," the boy was saying.

"What do you know about it?"

"I know this much about it, that if a little child came running down that stairs he'd be apt to fall and break his neck."

Then the two men went out, still arguing.

Martin Cosgrave sat down on one of the steps of the stairs. A child running down the steps! His child! A child bearing his name! He would be prattling about the building. He would run across that landing, swaying and tottering. His little voice would fill the building. Arms would be reaching out to him. They would be the soft white arms of Rose Dempsey, or maybe, they would be the arms that raised up the building--his own strong arms. Or it might be that he would be carrying down the child and handing him over the rails there into the outspread arms of Rose Dempsey. She would be reaching out for the child with the newly-kindled light of motherhood in her eyes, the pa.s.sion of a young mother in her welcoming voice. A child with his very name--a child that would grow up to be a man and hand down the name to another, and so on during the generations. And with the name would go down the building, the building that would endure, that would live, that was immortal. Did it all come to him as a sudden revelation, springing from the idle talk of a neighbour boy brought up to work from one season to another? Or was it the same thing that was behind the forces that had fired him while he had worked at the building? Had it not all come into his life the evening he stood among his fields with his eyes on the crest of the hill?

Ah, there had been a great building surely, a building standing up on the hill, a great, a splendid building raised up to the sight of all the world, and with it a greater building, a building raised up from the sight of all men, the building of a name, the moulding of hearts that would beat while Time was, a building of immortal souls, a building into which G.o.d would breathe His breath, a building which would be heard of in Heaven, among the angels, through all the eternities, a building living on when all the light was gone out of the sun, when oceans were as if they had never been, a name, a building, living when the story of all the worlds and all the generations would be held written upon a scroll in the lap of G.o.d.... The face of the dreamer as he abandoned himself to his thoughts was pallid with a half-fanatical emotion.

The neighbours were more awed than shocked at the change they saw increasing in Martin Cosgrave. He had grown paler and thinner, but his eyes were more tense, had in them, some of the neighbours said, the colour of the limestone. He was more and more removed from the old life.

He walked his fields without seeing the things that made up the old companionship. His whole att.i.tude was one of detachment from everything that did not savour of the crunch of stone, the ring of steel on the walls of a building. He only talked rationally when the neighbours spoke to him of the building. They had heard that he had gone to the money-lender, and mortgaged every perch of his land. "It was easy to know how work of the like would end," they said.

One day a stranger was driving by on his car, and when he saw the building he got down, walked up the hill, and made a long study of it.

On his way down he met Martin Cosgrave.

"Who built the house on the hill?" he asked.

"A simple man in the neighbourhood," Martin Cosgrave made answer, after a little pause.

"A simple man!" the stranger exclaimed, looking at Martin Cosgrave with some disapproval. "Well, he has attempted something anyway. He may not have, succeeded, but the artist is in him somewhere. He has created a sort of--well, lyric--in stone on that hill. Extraordinary!"

The stranger hesitated before he hit on the word lyric. He got up on his car and drove away muttering something under his breath.

Martin Cosgrave could have run up the hill and shouted. He could have called all the neighbours together and told them of the strange man who had praised the building.

But he did none of these things. He had work waiting to his hand. A hunger was upon him to feel his pulse beating to the throb of steel on stone. From the road he made a sweep of a drive up to the building. The neighbours looked open-mouthed at the work for the days it went on.

"Well, that finishes Martin Cosgrave anyway," they said.

Martin Cosgrave rushed the making of the drive; he took all the help he could get. The boys would come up after their day's work and give him a hand. While they worked he was busy with his chisel upon the boulders of limestone which he had set up on either side of the entrance gate. Once more he felt the glamour of life--the impact of forging steel on stone was thrilling through his arms, the stone was being moulded to the direction of his exulting mind.

When he had finished with the boulders at the entrance gate the people marvelled. The gate had a glory of its own, and yet it was connected with the scheme of the building on the hill palpably enough for even their minds to grasp it. When the people looked upon it they forgot to make complaint of the good land that was given to ruin. One of them had expressed the general vague sentiment when he said, "Well, the kite has got its tail."

In the late harvest Martin Cosgrave carried up all the little sticks of furniture from his cabin and put it in the building. Then he sent for Ellen Miscal. When the woman came she looked about the place in amazement.

"Well, of all the sights in the world!" she exclaimed.

Martin Cosgrave was irritated at the woman's att.i.tude.

"We'll have to make the best of it," he said, looking at the furniture.

"I will be marrying Rose Dempsey in the town some days after she lands."

"Rose would never like the suddenness of that," her aunt protested. "She can be staying with me and marrying from my house.

"I saw the priest about it," Martin Cosgrave said impatiently. "I will have my way, Ellen Miscal. Rose Dempsey will come up to Kilbeg my wife.

We will come in the gate together, we will walk in to the building together. I will have my way."

Martin Cosgrave spoke of having his way in the impa.s.sioned voice of the fanatic, of his home-coming with his bride in the half-dreamy voice of the visionary.

"Have your way, Martin, have your way," the woman said. "And," she added, rising, "I will be bringing up a few things to put into your house."

III

Martin Cosgrave spent three days in the town waiting the arrival of Rose Dempsey. The boat was late. He haunted the railway station, with hungry eyes scanned the pa.s.sengers as each train steamed in. His blood was on fire in his veins for those three days. What peace could a man have who was waiting to get back to his building and to have Rose Dempsey going back with him, his wife?

Sometimes he would sit down on the railway bench on the platform, staring down at the ground, smiling to himself. What a surprise he had in store for Rose! What would he say to her first? Would he say anything of the building? No, he would say nothing at all of the building until they drove across the bridge and right up to the gate! "Rose," he would then say, "do you remember the hill--the place under the beech trees?"

She was sure to remember that place. It was there they had spent so much time, there he had first found her lips, there they had quarrelled! And Rose would look up to that old place and see the building! What would she think? Would she feel about it as he felt himself? She would, she would! What sort of look would come into her face? And what would he be able to tell her about it at all?... He would say nothing at all about it; that would be the best way! They would say nothing to each other, but walk in the gate and up the drive across the hill, the hill they often ran across in the old days! They would be quite silent, and walk into the house silently. The building, too, would be silent, and he would take her from one room to another in silence, and when she had seen everything he would look into her eyes and say, "Well?" It would be all so like a wonderful story, a day of magic!... Martin Cosgrave sprang from the bench and went to the edge of the platform, staring down the long level road, with its two rails tapering almost together in the distance. Not a sign of a train. Would it never come in? Had anything happened the boat? He walked up and down with energy, holding the lapel of his coat, saying to himself, "I must not be thinking of things like this. It is foolishness. Whatever is to happen will happen, and that's all about it. I am quite at ease, quite cool!"

At last it came, steaming and blowing. Windows were lowered, carriage doors flew open, people ran up and down. Martin Cosgrave stood a little away, tense, drawn, his eyes sweeping down the people. Suddenly something shot through him; an old sensation, an old thrill, made his whole being tingle, his mind exult, and then there was the most exquisite relaxation. How long it was since he felt like this before!

His eyes were burning upon a familiar figure that had come from a carriage, the figure of a girl in a navy blue coat and skirt, her back turned, struggling with parcels, helped by the hands of invisible people from within the carriage. Martin Cosgrave strode down the platform, eagerness, joy, sense of proprietorship, already in his stride.

"Rose!" he exclaimed while the girl's back was still turned to him.