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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RKELEY, CALIFORNI 
 
THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
DONATED 
 
 KATHERJNE TINGLEY 
 
 The Plough and the Cross 
 
 A Story of New Ireland 
 
 by 
 
 William Patrick O Ryan 
 
 The Aryan Theosophical Press 
 
 Point Loma, California 
 
 1910 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY KATHERINE TINGLEY 
 
 THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS 
 Point Loma, California 
 
DONATED BY 
 KATHER1NE TINQL5Y 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IT is at once a pleasure and a privilege to aid in making 
 this beautiful and stirring tale, which appeared in The 
 Irish Nation recently, more widely known. 
 
 A story of real life in Ireland in the deepest sense, 
 as well as in the usual one it elucidates certain heart- 
 problems in social and religious life with a candor, charm, 
 and fearlessness, and with so tender a restraint and sym 
 pathy, that it can hardly fail to be regarded as a wholly 
 unique contribution to modern thought. 
 
 More than one actual initiation into the real meaning 
 and purpose of human life is subtly and exquisitely de 
 picted here the outcome of those stern yet joyful ex 
 periences which must come sooner or later to all true 
 hearts that toil nobly and unselfishly for the uplift of 
 social and national life. 
 
 NK TINGI^Y 
 
 312703 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE: 
 THE EDITOR OF " FAINNE AN LAE " ESCAPES TO 
 
 ENCHANTMENT 1 
 
 A THEOSOPHICAL STORMY PETREL 11 
 
 THE GREAT NOVELIST SAYS GOOD-BYE 16 
 
 THE WISTFUL PAGAN AND THE HELL OF SUCCESS 25 
 
 THE NEW ADAM OUTSIDE MAYNOOTH 36 
 
 ELSIE O KENNEDY AND THE CLOUD-SWEEPER ... 46 
 
 AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMANENTIST 58 
 
 ARTHUR O MARA IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 69 
 
 AN T-ATHAIR MAIRTIN, THE MAYNOOTH CRISIS, 
 
 AND MAEVE IN A NEW LIGHT 76 
 
 LORD STRATHBARRA OFFENDS AND is FORGIVEN . . 91 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF A FAIRY SKY-LARK 97 
 
 PARIS OR THE HEBRIDES ? 108 
 
 THE " VITA NOVA " IN THE BOYNE VALLEY 116 
 
 THE PRIESTS STOCKBROKER WITH THE SOCIAL 
 
 CONSCIENCE 134 
 
 FERGUS O HAGAN is INTRODUCED TO HIMSELF ... 143 
 
 THE HOUR OF THE WHITE FROCK % . . 151 
 
 A COUNCIL AT CLUAINLUMNEY 161 
 
 THE LEAGUE OF PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS 180 
 
THE: PROMISE OF ELSIE; 188 
 
 MR. MILLIGAN S CROWNING SCHEME 198 
 
 THE Two STANDARDS 204 
 
 MAEVE AND ELSIE COMPARE NOTES 218 
 
 LOVE S CAPTURED HAT 23 1 
 
 MAEVE S QUEST, ELSIE S APOLOGIA AND 
 
 INDICTMENT 239 
 
 ELSIE AND A SENSATION 248 
 
 " O THE TEARS AND THE GREAT INANITIES OF 
 
 THINGS!" 257 
 
 DESERTERS FROM EDEN 264 
 
 TENANTS-AT-WILL IN THE WORLD 274 
 
 BOLTS FROM THE BLUE 285 
 
 FERGUS O HAGAN MAKES UP His MIND 295 
 
 THE BISHOP OF DUN NA RIOGH 300 
 
 MR. MORTIMER AND THE PIT MAYNOOTH AT 
 
 THE CROSS-ROADS 313 
 
 A FLANK MOVEMENT 328 
 
 TRANSITION AND TRIAL 334 
 
 DIVINE SOULS IN THE SLUMS 347 
 
 A CRISIS OF HEART AND MAEVE S DEDUCTION . . 361 
 
 THE SLUMS, THE FAIRIES, AND THE MOONLIT 
 
 SANDS BY THE SEA 367 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE; BOYNE AT NAVAN FRONTISPIECE 
 
 KIUJNEY HII.IV 37 
 
 BAIU,E NA BOINNE 96 
 
 WHERE THE POOR LIVE 117 
 
 THE BOYNE VAI^EY 189 
 
 TARA 238 
 
 How THE POOR LIVE 256 
 
 NEAR CivUAiNivUMNEY 284 
 
 GOING TO MARKET 301 
 
 AT ATHLUMNEY 346 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EDITOR otf FAINNE AN LAE ESCAPES TO 
 ENCHANTMENT 
 
 HE noisy crowds within or without 
 the public-houses in the Dublin slum- 
 streets took no notice of the fiddler 
 who came after nightfall and played 
 his country tunes, merry, plaintive, 
 and tender, as the spirit moved him. 
 At last, when he was tired of tramp 
 ing and playing, he walked away 
 slowly in the direction of the quays. 
 When he met ragged children who 
 begged, and women with babies in 
 their arms who also begged, he wearily and silently 
 handed them pennies none of which were the proceeds 
 of his fiddling, but simply loose coin of his own. He 
 raised his hat as he came to a large and stately church, 
 now dark and silent. Then he paused for a few moments 
 beside the railings and looked back in the direction of the 
 noisy, flaring public-houses and the sordid streets, shook 
 his head gloomily, and passed on. 
 
 A walk of a quarter of an hour brought him to a narrow 
 business street that had no sign or stir of life in the night. 
 
2 . THIS PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 He took out a key, opened a door, which contained a 
 panel bearing in Irish characters the name Fainnc an Lac 
 ("The Dawn of the Day") a romantic name for a 
 newspaper, but then it was the chief organ of a new move 
 ment. He passed upstairs, and opened a door on which 
 was painted, in Irish characters also, Seonira an Hagar- 
 thora (the Editor s Room). He lit the gas, put away the 
 old riddle, also the old coat and hat he had been wearing, 
 substituting for the former the habitual daily one which 
 hung on the rack behind the desk. In this he locked away 
 the false beard, of which he now divested himself. Fergus 
 O Hagan looked very unlike a street musician when he 
 had done so. He was tall and athletic, but curiously 
 boyish-looking and rosy-cheeked for one who was well 
 advanced in the thirties. He had blue eyes, wondering 
 and questioning, and a little uncanny when they suddenly 
 lit up, as they had a habit of doing. His garb had traces 
 of an American style, though with a certain daintiness, 
 almost fastidiousness. His hair was distinctive, inasmuch 
 as it seemed to stand on end gracefully. The salient im 
 pression he conveyed was one of alertness and good hu 
 mor with life. He did not look like an editor or a fiddler 
 in slum-land neither of whose roles is at all conducive 
 to good humor or to sunniness of spirit. 
 
 He remembered that the hour of the night post was 
 past ; he took a small key from the desk, went to the front, 
 and opened the letter-box. He came back with a bundle of 
 newspapers and envelopes of various sizes. He sorted the 
 letters slowly, in some cases with a trace of weariness ; he 
 appeared to realize from the superscriptions the measure 
 of interest, or the lack thereof, in the communications 
 
AN ESCAPE TO ENCHANTMENT 3 
 
 underneath. The one he opened at last, with a certain 
 enkindling of the eyes, was a bulky missive, whose en 
 velope bore the Maynooth postmark. He found a private 
 letter and a review, or rather causcrie, dealing with a new 
 book by a distinguished Jesuit. He had read the book 
 himself, and it had astonished and somewhat disturbed 
 him at first; for able, reverent and philosophical as it 
 was, its conclusions were not those of Catholicism as he 
 had so far understood it; but as it proceeded there was 
 no denying its appeal to the heart and the spiritual sense. 
 He was struck by the deep and almost gladsome measure 
 of sympathy with which the Maynooth professor reviewed 
 it, though expressing a sort of qualified dissent from its 
 more daring conclusions. The accompanying letter was 
 enlightening. The writer said that he was disposed to go 
 farther in appreciation and agreement, though not quite 
 so far as some of his friends in the college, but he thought 
 the time was not ripe for absolute definiteness. The great 
 modern task of freeing Catholicism in Ireland from form 
 alism and literalism, on the one hand, and of patronage 
 or forgetfulness of the poor rather than love of them, on 
 the other, and making it a profoundly moving and enlight 
 ening spiritual and social force again, demanded the most 
 subtle delicacy as well as courage. Bold were the courses 
 sometimes suggested and urged in his quarter of May 
 nooth, but the bishops could meet them at present with a 
 deadly counter-stroke. As things stood their lordships 
 were uneasy, if not alarmed. It was better to sow ideas, 
 and the spirit would prevail. 
 
 The letter branched away into personal matters, treat 
 ing of some points which Fergus had discussed with the 
 
4 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 professor on the last occasion of their meeting at 
 Maynooth itself during the production of an Irish play. 
 Crushed towards the close of the crowded sheet was a 
 piece of information that made him start : " It has been 
 decided that poor Arthur O Mara has no voco/ He 
 has got cats at last. His first offense was saying that 
 St. Patrick was never in Rome, and that anyone who 
 knew Church history understood that it did not matter. 
 His second was the declaration that the most brilliant 
 thing ever done by the Irish priests was the invention 
 of the legend that they had been always on the side of 
 the people. And the third was the reading of The 
 Descent of Man! There is great indignation over his 
 fate, but it would be dangerous tactics to make a stand 
 on what would be made out to be a matter of college 
 discipline. The Maynooth Movement, which will give 
 new life to Ireland of all creeds must be based on a 
 grand, unmistakably spiritual issue. Meanwhile continue 
 on your own splendid and tactful track; as enthusiastic 
 as you can be on the language movement and everything 
 national, sympathetic but guarded in your treatment of 
 the Liberal Catholic movement interpreting the thing 
 but not using the term too insistently. Our grandfathers 
 dreaded ghosts ; we of this generation dread names." 
 
 The news about Arthur O Mara was grave. Fergus 
 was puzzled at first over the strange term " cats," but 
 remembered that it was a free-and-easy designation 
 amongst Maynooth students for three severe reprimands, 
 the third entailing dismissal from the college. Arthur 
 was a friend of his own, a young man of ability and high, 
 if not well-ordered, enthusiasm, but somewhat unreserved 
 
AN ESCAPE; TO ENCHANTM&N? 5 
 
 in the expression of his native frankness and ardor, in 
 which he used to say he had the high example of the 
 Hehrew prophets. To what on earth would he return 
 now? 
 
 Fergus closed the office, walked to O Connell Bridge, 
 and went on the top of a Dalkey tram. From Merrion 
 onward there were alluring glimpses of the Bay in. the 
 clear summer night, hut for the most part he communed 
 with himself and seemed ill at ease. . . . 
 
 The little Irish-speaking cailin aim sire* from Aran, 
 who brought him supper, told him that the bean og a 
 tighc (his sister, who kept house for him) had retired to 
 rest. There were occasions, thrice a year or so, when 
 Miss Maeve O Hagan retired before 2 a. m., and he was 
 glad this was one of them. He would be bound to tell 
 her the news about Arthur O Mara, and he was not in 
 the mood for disputation to-night. For disputation there 
 would surely be. She would condemn Arthur with all 
 the intensity of St. Catherine of Siena at her intensest. 
 Miss Maeve was beautiful, brilliant, exceedingly kind- 
 hearted, but sensitive and inclined to be tempestuous over 
 spiritual and ecclesiastical matters. She criticised eccle 
 siastics at least the younger ones and their regula 
 tions herself, but she denied the privilege to all others. 
 Fergus retired with a relieved feeling to the study so 
 called mainly because it was the one room in the house in 
 which he was allowed to smoke. . . . 
 
 Long after midnight he was seated, pen in hand, at his 
 quaint little table, but the pen moved slowly over the 
 pages. Yet the vivid and lively young lady to whom he 
 
 * Domestic helper or servant. 
 
6 THE; PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 wrote, though as far away as Paris, was wont to awaken 
 airy moods and inspire much light-hearted correspond 
 ence on his part. Elsie O Kennedy inspired light-hearted- 
 ness in most human beings within her sphere of influence, 
 but to her cousin Fergus, who had been a somewhat irre 
 sponsible guardian of her childhood, she was a curious 
 combination of elf and confidant all the more easy to 
 confide in as, despite her buoyant humanity, she seemed 
 to belong half to fairyland. 
 
 "After a struggle with distracting (and some gloomy) 
 imps and spirits, I have escaped from prison," he wrote. 
 " I have got back to enchantment. An hour or two ago, 
 when I returned from town and office and slumming, 
 I was in an evil temper with myself and destiny. It 
 seemed hard to see clearly or to make anything noble out 
 of life. You see our imaginations are made for eternity 
 and the infinite, our bodies for this bonded trial-ground 
 in time and place, and there must be clash and confusion 
 at times. It is now past midnight, and from my silent 
 study I am pleased to report to you that the universe is 
 enkindled again. I would like above all things a chat 
 with your airy and enchanting self. But you are in Paris, 
 and I am bounded by that slum of wonderland called 
 Dublin Paris grown old and ugly, as she was called 
 by one of those candid Frenchmen you dislike. 
 
 44 Failing the chat with you, I want an enchanted island 
 far out tb sea. There, undisturbed and undistracted, I 
 could review and explore myself, and prepare for the 
 drama which I feel to be moving towards its crisis in 
 Ireland. I feel that I have changed momentously of late, 
 that I am not at all the same person who worked for some 
 
AN ESCAPE TO ENCHANTMENT 7 
 
 years in New York, for a few years in London, and for 
 a year in Paris. The stress of the three civilizations 
 American, British, and French should have made me 
 insensitive to surprises, but my short new spell in my 
 apparently simpler native land is shaking me up, in your 
 own racy phrase, quite dramatically. I seem to come 
 nearer, far nearer, to realities intellectual and racial, 
 as in the Gaelic League; sordid, as in the slums (which 
 have a morbid fascination for me) ; and of the soil and 
 Nature, as when I help in our Garden City scheme by 
 the Boyne. And here in New Ireland, in the slums, 
 and in the Boyne Valley are three widely different 
 worlds that know each other not. I am drawn to all, 
 and do not quite belong to any ; for my natural business 
 is to weave dreams into songs in the day of a placid, 
 reverent and human civilization. I am an artist (I think) 
 who has been guilty of the grave indiscretion of journal 
 ism. Perhaps you may think from the spirit of Fainne 
 an Lac, of which organ of a movement I have by so 
 curious a chain of circumstances become editor, that 
 Ireland is steadily becoming placid, reverent and human. 
 I try to keep the best side foremost, but my fear is ever 
 growing that revolution and strife are before us. The 
 Maynooth Movement the crusade which the bolder 
 professors are entertaining is certain for one thing, 
 unless subtly advanced, to lead to profound agitatioii i.nci 
 unrest in a country like ours where folklore senti 
 mentality have usurped for generations the pla* u. phil 
 osophy. And how will medieval bishops meet the modern 
 mind, confronting them unexpectedly in a land all whose 
 questionings they have quieted so far with a little innocent 
 
8 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 flattery and a courtly wave of the hand, or with occasional 
 blow and dramatic anathema ? And how will they the 
 great, disguised pillars of the British edifice in Ireland, 
 meet a young generation of priests and laymen who are 
 determined to be logically and unbendingly national ? 
 Today, unknown to the audience/ we are in the throes 
 of the first act of the drama, and the end not even 
 the chief actors know. 
 
 " You ask me for more light on Dublin and on Ire 
 land ? Which of them ? There are dozens. In the slums, 
 and in other places and ways, I see a hundred things and 
 traits which show how far man has fallen, not only from 
 Eden and his highest nature, but from practical Christi 
 anity, into savagery and spiritual and social inertia and 
 chaos. It oppresses me and makes me angry, but anger 
 is very degrading and wasteful to the soul. On the other 
 hand, the part of our mainly Pagan (in the bad sense) 
 and imitative city in which I mostly move, has much that 
 is fascinating to show for itself. It is a small part, but 
 its passion to be Irish and human gives it largeness and 
 originality. An ignored and forgotten civilization seems 
 in process of rebirth, and if some of the manifestations 
 are extravagant, more are certainly beautiful. As to 
 Ireland generally, it suggests a poet-prophet s mind in the 
 body of a sluggard that often gets drunk and violent. 
 There are young men and women those in whom the 
 dormant spirit of the old civilization has revived who 
 enlarge one s faith in humanity. Others seem the mater 
 ialized and comatose remnant of a once intellectual and 
 earnest race. The pioneers of Gaeldom and the prophets 
 of the Maynooth Movement have their work before them. 
 
AN KSCAPE TO ENCHANTMENT 9 
 
 They need the fervor of Isaiah, the simplicity of Patrick, 
 and the endurance of Sisyphus. 
 
 "All this may mystify you and seem a contradiction 
 to the spirit of enthusiasm and advance that you find 
 expressed in the pages of Fainne an Lae. Yet both 
 phases are sincere and real. With all your own enchant 
 ing mind-play, into what somber solemnity of spirit you 
 can shrink and sink occasionally ! I wonder if skylarks 
 are ever gloomily pessimistic before the dawn?" 
 
 When Fergus had written thus far he laid down his 
 pen and read over the pages. They did not please him, 
 though the convictions were sincere enough. It struck 
 him that he must be getting painfully serious, to write 
 in such a strain and style to Elsie, who treated his graver 
 moods with the sprightliest playfulness. He pictured the 
 elfin gaiety of her face, the delicate raillery of her com 
 ment as she read his epistle, and he felt a little dubious 
 and disconcerted and even absurd to himself. But he 
 knew the golden store of sympathy and understanding 
 that her Gaelic-Gallic piquancy could not hide, and the 
 disconcerted mood passed. Still he felt it would never 
 do to continue in that strain to Elsie. 
 
 When he resumed his letter it was in Irish. He had to 
 write simply, for Elsie, who wrote French and English 
 so briskly, was not yet adept in the home language ; but 
 he found very quickly that he could not keep to vexatious 
 problems of Dublin and " lonesome latter years " at all. 
 He found spirit and fancy flying to sunny fields and morn 
 ing lands, biding now amongst homely interests of the 
 days in the South ere either emigrated, anon skipping to 
 fairyland and the Golden Age. When he read over those 
 
io THE; PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 easily and gaily written pages at the close, it was with a 
 sense of surprise and wonder and the feeling of a certain 
 renewal of youth. He felt instinctively that they would 
 appeal to the heart and mind of Elsie; already their 
 spirits seemed to have been brought nearer in a clear, 
 new world. He began to wonder if there was something 
 deeper in the Irish language mission than he or anyone 
 else had yet realized ; also if some theories of his 
 friends about making the Gaelic more modern and up- 
 to-date were all that they seemed. Somehow, when the 
 mind and pen turned to Irish, modernity and vexation 
 had a way of evaporating; it almost looked as if the Gael 
 had no modern times and no Middle Age ; it was always 
 the morning or the evening of life the childhood of the 
 world, or its Golden Age. 
 
 He arose, sealed the letter, and walked up and down 
 the study for a long time. When he sat down again he 
 took up a primitive-looking briar pipe and began to 
 smoke. It struck him suddenly as absurd and incongru 
 ous that things so material and plain as a pipe and tobacco 
 should have become so necessary to the intellectual com 
 fort of a being with the pretensions of man. So much 
 from the standpoint of pure reason. It was certain, 
 however, that they added a fine flavor to the magic of 
 the mood into which he had drifted. It was splendid 
 anti-climax, an ironically fascinating culmination of the 
 wonder-sense, this having to peer into a pipe-bowl for 
 part of the explanation of the august enigma, Man! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A THEOSOPHICAL STORMY 
 
 ISS Maeve O Hagan looked beauti 
 ful but frosty at breakfast. Her 
 sweet severity was ominous. Fer 
 gus, when he caught the cold gleam 
 under her pince-nez, thought it 
 was well to defer all reference to 
 Arthur O Mara and Maynooth. 
 He had a weakness for putting off 
 disagreeable matters, and shrank 
 from discords. He felt sure that 
 Maeve s coldness had some con 
 cern with ecclesiastical affairs, curates most likely ; hardly 
 anything else put her out of temper. She did not get on 
 very well at times with the younger clergy ; in fact, few 
 men under the rank of Canon or Monsignor came up to 
 her ideal of dignity. 
 
 When, after a long silence which might be felt, she 
 looked at Fergus like an accusing spirit and said with 
 icy severity : " Some of the young men coming out of 
 Maynooth will be the ruin of the Church," he knew that 
 she had been hurt in her most tender spot. He waited 
 patiently for details. 
 
12 THE) PLOUGH AND THK CROSS 
 
 " I met young Father last evening. He was as 
 
 irresponsible as ever. He had the cheek to say that the 
 Church is leaving all fine art and poetry to the Pagans. 
 He was cynical about the publications of the Irish Catholic 
 Truth Society, and said the clergy should speak out about 
 the cult of St. Anthony. The Sisters at - he called 
 hen-brained females ! " 
 
 " He did not mean it," said Fergus soothingly. " We 
 Irish are so reverent that we can toy with the language 
 of seeming irreverence without being misunderstood. 
 The Pope himself is pictured racily in some of our folk 
 lore. Besides, in regard to brains which are not every 
 thing you have come to expect too much. Nature in 
 the matter of brains could not afford to dower all women, 
 and a good many men, as liberally as she has dowered 
 yourself and Cousin Elsie to whom, by the way, I 
 have written a long letter." 
 
 Maeve was by no means mollified. 
 
 " The pedestal on which you set that girl is preposter 
 ous," she said. " She was a delightful child, but she is 
 becoming spoiled. Paris is making her absurdly flippant. 
 In her last letter she wrote like a young curate on a 
 holiday." 
 
 It was plain that the clouds in Miss Maeve s mental 
 sky were blacker than usual. In all such moods she was 
 particularly severe with those she loved most the con 
 trast to her usual charm was piquant but the discovery 
 of flippancy in Elsie O Kennedy was " beyond the be- 
 yonds." Fergus tried to talk about the weather and 
 household affairs. 
 
 It was hard to turn city-ward when he went outside. 
 
A THEOSOPHICAI, STORMY PETREL 13 
 
 The morning was enchanting. Over the Bay and the hills 
 he felt a sense of something indefinably alluring as if the 
 world were re-created and young, or Nature on the tremu 
 lous verge of unfolding the magic of age-held secrets. 
 He felt a call to the hills and the sea, hard for the spirit 
 to resist. There lay dreams and divinity. He looked 
 longingly as he went office-ward, to those soft-tinted, 
 appealing hills of Dublin and Wicklow, and thought what 
 a day of potential beauty and reverie they held. In the 
 old folk-stories one stepped casually out of the most 
 ordinary day, off the commonest pathway, into woods of 
 wizardry, places of spells, the grim tasks and tragic 
 triumphs of giant-land. Just by turning to the hills this 
 radiant morning of the twentieth century he also could 
 enter a wonderland, and one more akin than these to his 
 own nature. Why men with souls condemned themselves 
 to the wasting, unproductive slavery of offices, every hour 
 marking a deterioration of heart and spirit, till exhaus 
 tion, impotence, and degrading pessimism were their lot 
 by nightfall what tragedian of the ages had conceived 
 or unfolded such a tragedy as this ? . . . 
 
 When the stress and detail of his day were done he was 
 tired indeed, and far from the delicate, divine kingdom 
 that called from the mountains in the morning. But the 
 day had not been as other days. 
 
 It was curious that it should have brought him letters 
 from two remarkable women friends, of strangely differ 
 ent characters and temperaments, and located at the 
 moment in different continents. He was charmed to hear 
 from one ; interested at first, but quickly embarrassed 
 and disturbed to hear from the other. In a message brief 
 
14 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 and blithe, Elsie O Kennedy unfolded the tidings that she 
 hoped to spend a holiday in Dublin ere the summer ended. 
 She was delightfully and characteristically vague as to 
 details, but the news was magical. 
 
 Miss Alice Lefanu wrote from California, in a strain 
 intense and earnest like her character. She reminded 
 Fergus of their friendship of some ten years before, in 
 New York, when she was passing through a deep mental 
 and religious crisis. She had found solace and the key 
 to all that baffled her, in Theosophy, and had spent a 
 number of the years since then at the great home and 
 center of the order at Point Loma, where such inspiring 
 and many-sided work was done. She had often wondered, 
 she said, how and where he fared, and had longed to meet 
 him again, for she felt from the first that their spirits 
 were akin ; but the world seemed to have swallowed him. 
 A note in their magazine on his paper and his work had 
 at last afforded her the long-coveted tidings, at a time 
 significantly enough, when she was preparing to go to 
 Ireland on a visit that would probably be prolonged. She 
 had long felt, she confided, incidentally, that Ireland 
 would prove peculiarly receptive of the truths of the 
 Ancient Wisdom, if only these truths were sympathetic 
 ally and fairly presented to her. Ireland seemed to be 
 dying of formalism and pessimism without a vision the 
 people perish, and it would be glorious to renew the 
 vision. Ireland was paralysed by the fear of Hell-fire 
 it had made her own childhood a horror which the 
 materialized folk-lore proclivities of the people had in 
 tensified for their imaginations until they were terrorized. 
 Her first work in Dublin, which she hoped to reach not 
 
A THEOSOPHICAI, STORMY PETREL 15 
 
 very much later than her letter, would be largely con 
 cerned with this literally and figuratively infernal theme. 
 She counted on his aid with confidence. 
 
 Miss Lefanu he knew to be a striking and strong mind 
 ed woman, mentally fearless if not reckless. He also 
 admitted her personal attraction, and did not like it. He 
 had formed the conviction that in the case of reformers 
 and idealists the eternal feminine is best at a distance. 
 He made an exception in the case of Elsie; she was 
 sisterly, enchanting, and seemed to have come out of 
 fairyland. Miss Lefanu had overmuch modern unrest 
 and intellectuality superimposed on, or shot through, her 
 primitive passion Fergus of course recalled her as he 
 had known her in the earlier decade though her char 
 acter had gracious human traits. 
 
 But her mission to Ireland ! The summer would surely 
 see drama. How Maeve would receive the ambassadress, 
 and what his Maynooth friends would think of her 
 reviewing these things he went home in a brown study. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GREAT NOVELIST SAYS GOOD-BYE 
 
 : ERGUS O HAGAN sent the last pages of 
 Fainne an Lae to press in the radiant 
 summer morning, and cursed, in a mild 
 way, the fates that preside over news 
 papers, official and unofficial. He had put 
 his heart into the work more than ever, 
 and leaders, causeries, and even notes, as 
 he wrote them seemed vital and true. He had 
 expressed his own heart and mind as profoundly 
 as he could. Then, as he read the proofs on the 
 evening before going to press, the reaction came. 
 All seemed too intimate, too personal, too sheer a revela 
 tion of the inmost soul to the indifferent multitude. The 
 feeling was torturing. He would like to recall everything, 
 and write lightly, impersonally, superficially, but it was 
 too late; the confidences must go forth. After he had 
 gone home, tired and depressed, another reaction came. 
 He spent a couple of hours amongst his books. He read 
 some of the letters of Goethe and Schiller, then one of 
 Pater s Appreciations, a little play of Maeterlinck s, and 
 lastly the first two cantos of Dante s Paradiso. Then 
 the feeling came that the work which he had thought 
 
THE: GREAT NOVELIST SAYS GOOD-BYE 17 
 
 good was only scrappy and cheap. No one could put 
 thought and art into a weekly newspaper; the burden of 
 years of it could only be artistic futility; the mind made 
 pieces of, day in day out, for ephemeral enthusiasms and 
 transient ends; no spiritual flowering, no artistic mo 
 mentum, no golden harvest of thought well-sown and 
 tended and ingathered. The artist within him rebelled 
 and was utterly ashamed and weary of the propagand 
 ist. Now he waited for the printed paper as a criminal 
 might await the sure and imminent discovery of his 
 crime. 
 
 He heard hammering and shouting from the rear of 
 the building downstairs, which showed that the exciting 
 process of " making ready " for the printing had begun. 
 He wondered what new internal ill would be suddenly 
 revealed in the antiquated contrivance which those who 
 were hopeful about the concern called a printing-machine, 
 but which the foreman printer referred to familiarly as 
 
 " the d old crock." Fergus had already handed the 
 
 said foreman certain causeries and sketches in Irish and 
 English to give out to his men for the setting of the fol 
 lowing week s paper. Such was the usual order so soon 
 as a week s issue was " through," to get the compositors 
 at work for the next. Otherwise an edition would never 
 be ready in time. The ideals of the paper were the most 
 advanced in Ireland, but the plant and the printers were 
 primitive. The foreman, looking down the case-room in 
 anxious and gloomy moments, used to say : " This is a 
 convalescent home, not a printing establishment." The 
 men never resented such expressions. Poor souls, so old 
 and tired, so tamed and disillusioned were they, that they 
 
l8 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 would scarcely resent even blows. Verily the contrast 
 between the ideals and the appliances of Fainne an Lae 
 was exceeding great. 
 
 However, Fergus could not help for the present the 
 apostolic poverty of the establishment, and anyhow he 
 thought it would be no bad thing to show Ireland what 
 could be done with the most unpromising materials. 
 Ireland, he sometimes thought, had grown over-genteel; 
 she sat down and groaned at the prospect of mean tasks 
 as if she felt that her real destiny was to do things in 
 the grand manner. All the same, for his own part, after 
 all his moods and dreams and the questions he had asked 
 of his soul and destiny, it seemed vain and humiliating 
 to go through life as a mere editor. It was a mixture 
 of false pretenses and bathos. There was something 
 intellectually barren and artistically nondescript about 
 an editor. A beggar-man or a ballad-singer presented a 
 more distinctive front to the world. 
 
 He grew weary of being weary and out of tune with 
 life on so lovely a morning. His thoughts turned to his 
 little farm in the Boyne Valley. He had eagerly inter 
 ested himself in the problem of bringing the people back 
 to the land, and of humanizing and exalting life thereon, 
 and as part of a wide and picturesque scheme had become 
 responsible for a charming little holding in the valley 
 that was sacred of old to the gods of Gaeldom. He con 
 cluded that he would go down by the afternoon train. 
 The spell of the soil and the glorious scenery, and the 
 friends who labored there, would recall the spirit to 
 itself. 
 
 A knock at the door interrupted his reverie. In re- 
 
GRF y AT NOVELIST SAYS GOOD-BYE IQ 
 
 sponse to his cheery "Tar isteach!"* there entered no 
 less a personage than Mr. Geoffrey Mortimer, the famous 
 novelist who had mildly shocked the two continents in 
 which he was read more or less, and who had greatly 
 shocked his own green isle where he was not read at all. 
 He would explain the puzzle himself by the statement that 
 Ireland imported distrust as raw material, and manufac 
 tured it into passionate prejudice ; it was the conspicuous 
 exception to her general industrial policy. 
 
 The distinguished visitor wore his habitual look of 
 ennui and solemnity tempered by resignation, as if the 
 small sins of Dublin bored him, while at the same time 
 he understood that it was beyond her power and courage 
 to sin boldly. 
 
 " Surely, my dear fellow," said Geoffrey in the lugu 
 brious tone but with the quick energetic air that were 
 habitual with him on such occasions, " surely you see 
 now that this sort of thing is not worth while. You don t 
 seriously mean to say that you re going to drag out the 
 summer in Dublin. Nobody lives here except those who 
 are compelled to do so." 
 
 " I often go down to see my little farm in Meath," said 
 Fergus. " In point of fact I had decided to go down 
 there this afternoon. I am tired, and want the inspira 
 tion of the land." 
 
 Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I can understand a man having one fad in order to 
 kill time in this hopeless land," he said ; " and a weekly 
 paper that concerns itself with literature and thought in 
 so unliterary and so thoughtless a place as Dublin is an 
 
 * Come in ! 
 
2O TH PLOUGH AND THEi CROSS 
 
 exacting fad. To add the burden of a farm, in a land 
 where nobody tills or consumes home produce, is more 
 than a fad, it is insanity. You are wasting your life by 
 taking Ireland seriously.* The country is dying before 
 your eyes through its innate and unalterable pessimism. 
 The most that a literary man can do with it is to treat 
 it as a sort of ironic recreation ground." 
 
 " But even you cut yourself away from Britain with 
 many solemn rites and interviews a couple of years ago, 
 and returned with eclat to help Ireland to save her soul." 
 
 " My dear fellow," exclaimed Geoffrey, " didn t you 
 see through that? I wanted a new sensation, and it was 
 easier to get to Dublin than to Mecca or Lhasa." 
 
 " Oh, now you are joking," said Fergus. " I met you 
 in London some time before the historic farewell, and 
 you were pathetically full of Ireland. You were a bad 
 landlord who had found grace, a worldling in whom the 
 primitive Celt had revived like a conscience, an Anglicized 
 Parisian who had stepped on a fairy patch steeped in 
 druid dew, and many other things. You shuddered when 
 people spoke of the decadent passions you once inter 
 preted; you crooned Connacht love-songs till you melted 
 to tears." 
 
 " Art, not Nature/ declared Geoffrey. " I was deeply 
 interested in Ireland for a month or more ; but an Ireland 
 of my own artistic consciousness. Ireland for the time 
 being was the Novel on, or to which, I was engaged, and 
 I treated her like a fiancee. If I advertised the little love 
 affair, and was interviewed about it, why, what harm was 
 done ? Incidentally it advertised the real Ireland with 
 which no sane man or artist could fall in love so even 
 
THE) GREAT NOVELIST SAYS GOOD-BYE 21 
 
 the real Ireland gained something. Now the flame is 
 spent, and I am leaving the Isle of Weariness." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed Fergus. " Leaving Ireland when 
 a new life is stirring in her veins, and she wants all her 
 thinkers and workers " 
 
 " Do you seriously expect me to turn intellectual mono 
 gamist in luscious and critical middle age?" asked Geof 
 frey. " I have loved and lived with Ireland for a much 
 longer season than wisdom dictated, and the alliance is 
 a strain on me. I must seek a new flame or I perish. 
 It is the price of intellectual virility." 
 
 " Can it be ? Can it be ? " asked Fergus. " Must the 
 Parisian plough stop suddenly in the first furrow of the 
 Untilled Field of Banba " 
 
 " Pooh ! Pooh ! " said Geoffrey. " Why, your impos 
 sible Gaelic League turned green over my scheme to bring 
 a galvanic battery to bear on your comatose language by 
 translating Zola into it. When I tried, to give Carton a 
 few easy lessons in the ways of woman, he said I spoiled 
 his play and his moral reputation, and he had to go and 
 endow a church choir in consequence. Impossible parish, 
 Ireland." 
 
 " And when is the tearful leave-taking to be ? " asked 
 Fergus. " Your parting epigrams, I suppose, are all 
 ready." 
 
 " There are to be no tears," replied Geoffrey. " I and 
 Ireland recognize that we part for each other s good. 
 She clearly sees that she has not passion enough to hold an 
 artist, and an alliance in such circumstances would be dull 
 and immoral. I leave on the North Wall boat at two." 
 
 " That seems a commonplace exit," said Fergus. " To 
 
22 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 leave in the early morning by the mail-boat from Dun- 
 loaghaire nick-named Kingstown would seem more 
 worthy of an artist. There is a radiant view of the reced 
 ing hills from the deck." 
 
 " It would have meant early rising," said Geoffrey, 
 " and besides I don t want to see Ireland s beauty at the 
 parting time. I want to see her ugliness and futility in 
 order to harden my heart and confirm my resolution. 
 And the crude confounded ugliness of the North Wall 
 is just the thing to do that." 
 
 " Yet to me," said Fergus, " the North Wall has a 
 tender and homely beauty. Like certain forms of Dutch 
 art it " Geoffrey threw out his hands. 
 
 " Don t," he cried in an imploring tone, " don t speak 
 about art to me until we meet some day in some place 
 far away from Ireland. Then I ll be in the mood to 
 listen. Talking of art in Dublin is as vain as talking of 
 spring water in Purgatory. But I want, before I go, to 
 speak to you seriously about your future." 
 
 " I m afraid that from your point of view mine is a 
 hopeless case," said Fergus with a smile. 
 
 " Never, so long as you have the price of a ticket to 
 Paris or London, or any other place where ideas are 
 either prized or despised. You can preserve your intel 
 lectual self in such a place, and you can live. Whether 
 the people appreciate or dislike ideas does not matter in 
 the long run to the artist they ll give him a hearing 
 for love s sake or hate s sake. In a place like Ireland, 
 where ideas are simply not understood, and where the 
 clergy won t allow them to be understood, you can do 
 nothing, except stagnate or take to drink." 
 
THE GREAT NOVELIST SAYS GOOD-BYE 23 
 
 " You walk in darkness," said Fergus, " or rather you 
 follow shadows back to London, and you leave a world 
 of human drama and endless enchantment here within 
 the four seas of Eire. I have my own dark moments, 
 but I know the enchantment is here withal." 
 
 " Enough," said Geoffrey dolefully. " A young man 
 who talks that way has got the new Irish fever badly. 
 It must be left to work itself out. It will take about a 
 year to do that. He will live partly on air and see visions 
 for the twelve months. If he does not proclaim the visions 
 abroad, and if he does not try to do anything particular 
 there will be no dangerous consequences. He will just 
 wake up in due course, and see Ireland as she really is 
 a certain number of silly sheepfolds attached to a certain 
 number of priests houses. If he does anything particular 
 he will be excommunicated by the priests and butted by 
 the sheep. This will probably be your own fate." 
 
 " It is a mistake to start work in Ireland with theories 
 about the clergy, or any other class," Fergus said. " It 
 deprives life at the start of human interest and surprise. 
 You can t fit women, or even novelists,, into a theory. 
 Why then the clergy ? " 
 
 " I 11 leave the shock of discovery to yourself," an 
 swered Geoffrey. " We ll see what your wild hope in 
 Maynooth will come to. You are really rather a curious 
 case, and I d almost like to stay and study your fortune, 
 or rather misfortune. But I must get away to some place 
 where ideas are either blessed or cursed. The intellect 
 ual inanition and vacuity of Dublin are unbearable. Tis 
 cruel to leave you at your age in this intellectual No 
 Man s Land, but some day soon I 11 be welcoming you 
 
24 TIIK PLOUGH AND THtf CROSS 
 
 back to civilization. Goodbye " he looked at his watch 
 "I may be obliged to walk to the boat. I m not sure 
 that a Dublin jarvey could drive there in the time." 
 
 Geoffrey shook Fergus s hand sadly. " It s like leaving 
 you in a condemned cell/ he said, as he turned towards 
 the door. 
 
 " Can t I really prevail on you to stay? " asked Fergus 
 smilingly. " There are plenty of sensations in Ireland. 
 The Oireachtas * will be delightful. And Miss Lefanti 
 will soon be here on her theosophical mission. Couldn t 
 you help her in her anti-Hell-Fire campaign ? Mortimer 
 versus Hell might prove as historic as Athanasius 
 contra inundum! 
 
 " The Oireachtas ! Ugh ! I saw it last year. It would 
 have been delightful if I were blind. Then I d have rev 
 eled in the music and the accents, and I would not have 
 seen what I saw. Why, not one of the fiddlers or pipers 
 in the competitions had pared his finger nails ! How can 
 you expect one to tolerate art in people with black, un 
 couth finger-nails? I had nightmares for a week after 
 wards, and in the mornings I was too nervous to shave 
 myself ; my hand trembled so much that I was afraid of 
 cutting my throat. Oh, yes, Miss Lefanu ! Pious and 
 charming revolutionary! You ll doubtless get very in 
 terested. But you ll have to marry the lady. They re 
 very particular in Dublin: alliances must be duly noted 
 in the parish books. And then a newspaper, a farm, 
 and a madwoman on your hands. Poor devil! Well, 
 time s up. I must walk to the North Wall." 
 
 * The annual literary and musical festival of the Gaelic League. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE WlSTtfUIv PAGAN AND THE HEU, OF SUCCESS 
 
 Geoffrey Mortimer had depart 
 ed for the North Wall, en route 
 for London, Fergus O Hagan did 
 what was probably never done be 
 fore in any other editorial cell. He 
 took down his fiddle and began to 
 play what he remembered of the 
 quaint, airy and tender country 
 tunes beloved in his youth in the 
 South. 
 
 Latterly the fiddle and the old melodies seemed to have 
 become not simply a diversion, but a necessity in life. 
 The reasons were various. One was that the kindly 
 folk-music lightened his recurring depression and ban 
 ished unanswered questioning. Others were abstruse 
 and complicated, but clear enough to his own mind. In 
 Ireland or at any rate the Ireland that specially inter 
 ested him young men were passing through far more 
 significant phases than most observers realized ; which 
 was no wonder, as the phases were mental and spiritual. 
 It was a time of unrest, and questioning, and the dawn of 
 new vision. 
 
26 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 All this affected Fergus variously. In a day when 
 young men faced all sorts of problems and issues, Fainne 
 an Lac, from its position, was necessarily made the 
 medium of critiques and confidences from all quarters. 
 " Innocent young men, who imagine they can think in 
 Ireland, are collecting the materials out of which the bish 
 ops will make an interesting bonfire, having first knocked 
 the collectors on the head," said Geoffrey Mortimer 
 sardonically. Whatever ecclesiastics may have thought, 
 Fergus himself was in one respect perturbed. The 
 thought was good, and in the Irish articles especially it 
 had a fascinating freshness ; but he feared that his friends 
 were in danger of becoming positively problem-vexed 
 and losing the flavor of humanity. His contributors 
 were in turn politicians, social scientists, theologians, 
 industrial revivalists, socialists, and other things ; but in 
 their energy and ardor they were in danger of missing 
 the magic of Life. They seemed to be drifting away 
 from the soil and the hearth, from the glamor of the 
 wild earth, and the soul of existence ; from the spirit 
 he called Ireland. His great trouble in this transition 
 time was to preserve in the paper and in himself 
 a sense of country life and character, a breath from the 
 old civilization amidst which his childhood had been 
 spent. With the theorists on the one hand, and the 
 fearsome slums of Dublin on the other, it was difficult. 
 But the fiddle and the folk-music forever brought back 
 the old firesides and the old savor of life to him for 
 a spell. 
 
 He had explained this philosophy to Geoffrey Mortimer. 
 The distinguished novelist made ironic sport of it. " Ye 
 
THE; WISTFUL PAGAN AND SUCCESS 2/ 
 
 are all the same," he said. " The keen edge of thought 
 is too much for the soft, silken Irish temperament. The 
 bishops say, The Lord between us and all manifestations 
 of the Evil One ! and prepare a pastoral against the subtle 
 foe. The editor of Fainne an Lae is Irish, so he cries 
 Diet idir sinn agus an t-olc! and takes fearful refuge 
 in his fiddle. Nothing so naive has happened since the 
 delightful medieval days when they used to ring church 
 bells on the coming of storms in order to clear the air, 
 as they thought, of thunder." 
 
 Now, as Fergus played the old country tunes, the 
 winter firesides of childhood and boyhood rose again and 
 glowed and laughed for him. A sense of exquisite peace 
 and of the unsounded sweetness of life stole over him. 
 Those melodies to him were the most authentic and soul 
 ful survival from the old civilization, full of the deep 
 heart and the exquisite yearnings of the race. It would 
 be glorious, he thought, to give up the whole burning 
 battle of moods and words and problems land schemes, 
 newspapers, slum-lands, and all and wander for years 
 as a fiddler among the villages and nooks of the Gaed- 
 healtacht, beyond the Shannon and the Galtees. The 
 winters would be mellow with cheer and the summers 
 bright with magic. One would see visions below the stars, 
 and thrill with inspiration at sunrise. One would listen 
 to wonder-worlds of folk-lore and haunting songs, and 
 haply hear in felicitous moments the fairy-music from the 
 raths. One would know, day in day out, the more touch 
 ing magic of the croidhe na fcilc* of the unspoiled people. 
 As the years deepened one might create a few songs from 
 
 * Literally, "Heart of Hospitality." 
 
2 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 the heart, and a few tunes as wondrous as those melodies 
 of old: and what sweeter outcome of a life could there 
 be, what more loving legacy to the hearts and spirits of 
 the generations? . . . 
 
 A boy knocked loudly at the door, and conveyed the 
 surprising news that Mr. Terence O Connellan would like 
 to see him. The name of the eminent editor brought him 
 down to the material world. . . . 
 
 Fergus was astonished at the fact of Terence s presence 
 in Dublin, for that noted man, though he wrote with 
 solemn pathos of his native land for British matrons and 
 maids, and waxed wistfully eloquent on its claims before 
 British political audiences, loved it best at a distance. 
 He metaphorically kissed hands to Eire from his mansion 
 or his luxurious editorial rooms in London, and then 
 turned to descant in sobbing prose on the pathos of 
 destiny he was an expert on the gloomy side of destiny 
 as revealed in the lives and loves of the neurotic 
 heroines of modern fiction, or the courtlier scandals that 
 hung round the queens or other consorts of the royal 
 rakes of history. To other journalists or reviewers, 
 scandals were simply scandals; he prided himself on 
 retrospectively raising their tone, and revealing their sad, 
 if soiled, humanity. 
 
 As Terence was " shown " upstairs many pictures came 
 before the mind of Fergus pictures of days when he 
 worked in Fleet Street under Terence, and when Terence 
 was still regarded by the outside world as a great journal 
 istic leader of democracy. He smiled a little sadly over 
 the dreams and the disillusions of those days, but it 
 was the dreams that predominated. 
 
THE) WISTFUL, PAGAN AND SUCCESS 29 
 
 It was with some difficulty that Terence entered the 
 narrow door of the editorial room. He was more portly 
 and material-looking than ever, but the old melancholy 
 on his massive features, and in his keen yet tired eyes, 
 had gravely deepened. If physiognomy were any criterion 
 his features told of great, satisfied appetites, and of 
 dissatisfaction and despair that succeeded repletion. It 
 was a picture to make the beholder grave. 
 
 Terence held out his hand; his face lightened with 
 a sort of wintry gleam, and he spoke with tired cheerful 
 ness. When, at Fergus s cheery request, he sat down on 
 the second small chair that the " sanctum " contained 
 there seemed to be no room for anything else in the 
 apartment. 
 
 " Your office boy told me at first," he said, " that you 
 were playing the fiddle and must not be disturbed. I m 
 glad to see that the atmosphere of this deludherin little 
 island " Terence s accent came on one with a sense of 
 shock, it seemed so unspoiled in a spoiled nature " is 
 favorable to the elfin harmony of your character. When 
 you were on my staff in London you fiddle-played, if I 
 may so speak, with a pen, and you caused my British 
 friends some sore bewilderment. I suppose, you lucky 
 young man, you are happy at last ? " 
 
 " To tell the plain truth," said Fergus, " I am no more 
 happy than I was in London. There seems always some 
 wonderful want in life. Once in a while, as when I write 
 a poem, or plough in the Boyne Valley, or play an old 
 folk-tune on the fiddle, something glorious seems to well 
 up in life or in myself, but the irony is that even in those 
 golden moments the want whatever it is seems more 
 
3O THE; PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 golden still. If I only knew what I really want the pro 
 blem would at least be simplified ; but I don t." 
 
 " A-a-a-ah ! " said Terence, in what seemed a weird 
 sepulchral groan ; " you have come into the toils of the 
 irony of ironies. The modern Devil is the fact that we 
 don t know what we want, and no philosophy can tell us. 
 In my young and starving days in London, when I stood 
 cold and hungry outside a certain shop in the Strand, I 
 thought the supreme want of life was a frizzling and 
 hissing sausage. The day came when I could buy up all 
 the sausages of London, and then I loathed sausages, and 
 writhed in the hell of indigestion; I groaned for other 
 things, and they came my way, and then I suffered the 
 pangs of moral and intellectual indigestion. What a cruel 
 hell is the success of life ! " 
 
 " Well, I m glad to see," said Fergus, " that you have 
 made a bold dash out of hell at last. I assume you have 
 renounced London for ever, and have returned to work 
 to the end in your native land. One by one the Gaels 
 seem to be coming back, whatever Geoffrey Mortimer may 
 say. Will you let Fainne an Lae have the honor of 
 making the first announcement of the ending of your 
 exile? Shall I stop the machine, and run in a double- 
 leaded Stop Press note ? " 
 
 "Easy, now," said Terence, in a tone of resigned 
 melancholy. " At my time of life men don t willingly 
 change their prisons. And from London to Ireland is sim 
 ply a change of prisons. Of the prisoners the Londoners 
 are the more natural and frankly Pagan of the two ; the 
 Irish the more foolish and cowardly. In London we are 
 allowed to complain as much as we please useless as it 
 
THE: WISTFUL, PAGAN AND SUCCESS 3! 
 
 is of the hardships of our prison. We call that free 
 dom of thought. In Ireland you dare not doubt or 
 speculate, or call life a prison at all. You must look on 
 it as a sure prelude to eternal bliss. That is called piety, 
 resignation to the Will of Providence, and devotion to the 
 bishops and clergy the most revered and reverend 
 warders of your prison-house. We are all bondsmen, with 
 marks of the beast,, and the sport of ironic fate or chance. 
 The Londoner knows it, and tries to make the best of 
 this poor, ironic prison of a world. The Irishman is 
 drugged and dragooned into a condition of ignorance and 
 confusion, sometimes half-blissful, and does nothing par 
 ticular at any rate until he gets away from his own 
 bogs and mists ; and then he becomes English or Ameri 
 can." 
 
 ^ And what are you doing to keep him at home, and to 
 keep him Irish ? " asked Fergus. " You are a leading 
 member of a party whose whole trend is to keep the Irish 
 political, social, economic and intellectual center of grav 
 ity in London, instead of in Ireland, where obviously it 
 ought to be." 
 
 " Oh, don t give me a New Ireland lecture," said 
 Terence despondently. " What does it matter where 
 Ireland s center of gravity is, or England s, or France s, 
 or any other nation s? All talk about nationality is dry 
 and vain and barren. What essential difference is there 
 between an Irishman and an American, or an Englishman, 
 or a Frenchman? Racial pride is only another illusion 
 the ironic fates have given poor distracted man to worry 
 his brain about. The common denominator of man is the 
 passion for the eternal feminine. Everything else is inci- 
 
32 THE: PLOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 dental. That reminds me that there is nothing about the 
 sexes in your paper; and so, though it is said to be 
 brilliant, it is infernally wearisome to me. Surely, as an 
 experienced journalist, you must know that it is not 
 thought or intellect that dominates the world, but love 
 and passion." 
 
 " It is not so in Young Ireland, anyhow," said Fergus 
 with a smile. " Our young men, to be sure, are human 
 and chivalrous and reverent towards woman-kind; but 
 the great desire of their hearts in these days is to prepare 
 the way for a human and self-reliant and creative nation. 
 Woman is to them the comrade-thinker and the comrade- 
 builder, not a toy or a slave, or even a golden creature 
 of romance. We decline to see her as light-headed 
 novelists see her " 
 
 " Then your damned Young Ireland is dehumanized, 
 and is deceiving itself/ said Terence, with a touch of 
 passion in his hoarse, sepulchral voice. " No wonder this 
 infernal Irish-Ireland Party, or whatever ye call it, is so 
 remote from the realities of life. It is led and directed 
 by sexless people, while we, the Parliamentarians that ye 
 want to supersede, are full of the world, the flesh, and 
 the Devil, and so understand life and men. If ye were 
 human ye might have to be reckoned with, but as it is 
 ye 11 achieve no more in Ireland than a National Council 
 composed of all the will-o -the-wisps and Jack-o -the- 
 lanterns in the country." 
 
 Fergus laughed. 
 
 " I m afraid/ he said, " that you have been spoiled by 
 the reading and reviewing of all the sex-novels of the 
 last two decades. You have come to forget true woman- 
 
THD WISTFUL PAGAN AND SUCCESS 33 
 
 hood in your profession of specialist in neurotic lunacy. 
 Thank goodness there s a great deal of the Eden sense 
 still left in Ireland, and I trust in every other land under 
 the sun." 
 
 " Eden ! " groaned Terence. " Why, the meaning of 
 the Eden story is that Adam and Eve gave way to passion, 
 and the habit remained with the race. I see you are as 
 hopeless as ever. I often wondered in your London years 
 why, with all your talent, we could not bring you down to 
 realities, and make you human and ambitious ; you were 
 always flying off towards the moon and stars which are 
 hopelessly uninteresting to humanity, whatever inscrut 
 able purpose they serve. There is not the saving, hard 
 ening leaven of vice in your character, and so you 11 
 come to nothing, at any rate in drugged and sheepish 
 Ireland. Still, if you d come back to London we might 
 spoil and so save you. You are young yet, and so there 
 is time to corrupt you." 
 
 " Tis something," replied Fergus, " to know that one 
 of the most famous of journalists has not entirely given 
 me up. But at the moment I am more interested in 
 Ireland than in myself, and I d rather listen to you on 
 the solution of the national problem." 
 
 " It s absolutely insoluble," declared Terence, "so long 
 as the clergy are so powerful, and the people so docile 
 and dehumanized. The wine of life has been kept from 
 the people so long that they don t appear to want to taste 
 it now. They are sexless, austere, benumbed, unvirile, 
 and the clergy can do anything they like with them. If 
 the men could recover the passions and dreams of men 
 and the women the desires and dreams of women, they 
 
34 TH PivOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 would live their lives to the full, without fear of damna 
 tion after death, and the clergy would soon have to 
 abandon their unnatural and inhuman dictatorship. What 
 is the good of trying to solve a mere political problem 
 I say this plainly to leaders of the Party in private; 
 but the Party is not serious when the real trouble is 
 the shirking of life? Irish misgovernment, indeed! It 
 would have been swept away long ago if there were not 
 below and beyond it all the appalling curse and blight of 
 Irish dehumanization and moral cowardice." 
 
 " You are certainly obsessed in regard to sex questions ; 
 but there may be a sort of truth in what you say. I 11 
 think it over." 
 
 " Don t," groaned Terence. " Don t waste your brain 
 over the inhuman muddle. Already you look care-worn. 
 Don t make the dangerous and costly mistake of putting 
 your real self into your work. Cultivate a special person 
 ality for journalistic and public use. Look at me can 
 I not point with just pride to my public personality as a 
 triumph of art and an inspiration to humanity? I tell 
 my friend Tree that he has never achieved such an 
 impersonation on his stage. In religion and in education, 
 behold what I am in the world s eyes a great Catholic 
 champion, a tower of strength against the secularization 
 of the schools/ a defender of the Church, praised by 
 your own bishops ; while you, with all your simple 
 Christianity, are probably a source of uneasiness to them." 
 
 " I d rather play the fiddle for a living than let my own 
 personality play a part," declared Fergus. 
 
 " You can be neither heroic nor successful in this 
 pitiful island/ said Terence. " Even to seriously help 
 
THE) WISTFUL PAGAN AND SUCCESS 35 
 
 Ireland you must work from a distance; from the days 
 of the old story-tellers, Ireland has always appreciated 
 things and heroes at a distance. No other land in the 
 world is such a worshiper of distance. Come back to 
 London on my staff at that distance Ireland will ap 
 preciate you and I 11 increase your old salary by one- 
 half." 
 
 " That would be three times as much as I can ever 
 expect in Ireland/ said Fergus, with a smile. " But to 
 take more money than one wants, or deserves, is immoral. 
 The true payment is joy in work, and help afforded to 
 others. And then Ireland wants me, or rather I want 
 Ireland. I 11 stay." 
 
 Terence rose slowly. 
 
 " Think it over," he said. " I 11 give you some time to 
 do so ; I 11 be back in Dublin later on. I m going down 
 to that desolate town of the West where I was born. 
 I m going home to bury my mother." 
 
 He spoke the last words in a low and plaintive tone, 
 and his eyes were tearful as he shook Fergus s hand. 
 Fergus was so struck by the change and the picture that 
 he could only murmur his sympathy. The shadow deep 
 ened on Terence s face, and he went out without speak 
 ing again. 
 
 " No man is so hardened as he thinks," said Fergus to 
 himself, when Terence had gone down. " Nature knows 
 when and where to find us all out." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NEW ADAM OUTSIDE MAYNOOTH 
 
 HILE Fergus listened in his office 
 to the philosophy of Terence 
 O Connellan, Miss Maeve 
 O Hagan was engaged in the little 
 summer-house in the garden at 
 Dalkey. She had a view from 
 where she sat of Killiney Hill and 
 the Bay, and she took passing no 
 tice of them occasionally. She 
 appreciated natural beauty, but 
 did not allow it to engross her 
 
 attention ; her attitude to seascape and mountain was one 
 of friendly recognition rather than enthusiasm ; the Alps 
 or the Himalayas would not nonplus or carry her away. 
 Slim and petite as she was, she would give the idea of 
 being somehow above them. She worked at crochet with 
 a reverent solemnity, bending over from time to time 
 to grasp the burden of a passage of the Bossuet (I/Ex 
 position de la doctrine catholique), which lay open on the 
 little table before her. One of her projects was to trans 
 late what she specially favored of Bossuet, Fenelon, and 
 Lacordaire into Irish. The translation proceeded at the 
 
THE NEW ADAM OUTSIDE MAYNOOTH 39 
 
 rate of some three pages a year. Very intimate friends 
 presumed occasionally, but in a hesitating way, to com 
 ment the most daring did not jest on her dilatoriness. 
 Her reply was caustic, or gracious, or lightsome, accord 
 ing to her mood ; but she always conveyed the sense that 
 the project was a thing of profound moment in her life, 
 and that she would lose her bearings in the universe with 
 out it. The perfected achievement might be far off, but 
 she moved towards it by stages whose very slowness and 
 deliberation bespoke its dignity and its nobility. For one 
 whose mind was so alert, and whose tongue was so keen, 
 there was infinite repose about her personality. There 
 was a flavor of epic in her procrastination. It seemed the 
 brooding and the spiritual reserve of a great spirit far 
 above the impetuosity and the urgent futilities of imper 
 fect humanity. 
 
 She took off her glasses and laid them tenderly on the 
 Bossuet. With the glasses, for all her grace and come 
 liness, she looked a little severe, though the severity was 
 tempered by piquancy ; she seemed one who looked quite 
 through the deeds of men. Without the glasses her eyes 
 looked very deep, soft, and singularly roguish. Fergus 
 used to say that this, not the Bossuet, was her unique 
 translation. 
 
 She heard steps on the path to the summer-house, 
 and she put on her glasses again with a haste which was 
 still graceful. At the sight of the dark, handsome young 
 man who paused and smiled at the entrance, her face 
 grew chill, and a cold gleam came into her eyes. Arthur 
 O Mara, however, only smiled more brightly, and held 
 out his hand. She did not take it, and he patted her on 
 
4o THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 the head gently. She arose and faced him freezingly. 
 He quietly sat down in front of her. 
 
 " I suppose you think very dreadful things about me," 
 he said. " I might agree with you, if the day were wild 
 and stormy. The night before I left Maynooth there was 
 a storm, and some awful accusing spirits rose within me. 
 I wonder were they the traces of bygone selves I have 
 been haunted lately by the reincarnation theory. But 
 today, in the glorious sunlight I feel a joyous Pagan 
 I suppose you d call it ? " 
 
 " No," snapped Maeve very coldly and grimly. "A 
 Pagan cannot help being what he is. He is outside the 
 fold, and grace has not been given him. He does not sin 
 against the light." 
 
 " What a fiery little preacher we are becoming ! I 
 have often wondered what would the story of Christianity 
 have been if women were allowed to embark on theo 
 logical careers " 
 
 They would easily do better than some young pretend 
 ers amongst " 
 
 " Ah ! Now you are spoiling an interesting general 
 issue by a crudely personal distraction. And you are 
 getting somewhat heated. Is it all worthy of this exquisite 
 hour of existence? You ought to be .a sea worshiper 
 and a mountain votary here. I thought as I came in 
 that I d ask you to come with me to the top of Killiney 
 Hill. Or we might go down into the Vale of Shanga- 
 nagh." 
 
 "I m glad you ve not asked me," said Maeve coldly. 
 
 " I suppose it is all as familiar to you as your garden," 
 said Arthur simply. " But you cannot understand the 
 
TH NKW ADAM OUTSIDE MAYNOOTH 4! 
 
 freshness of its fascination for me. I spent all yester 
 day on the mountains. I went into the loneliest places 
 and let myself roll down the slopes in the sunlight in the 
 abandon of sheer ecstasy." 
 
 " I thought you would have gone home," said Maeve, 
 less coldly than before, surprised and impressed by the 
 glow which came in his face. 
 
 " I could not go back to the old folk and the neighbors. 
 I know their ideas about anybody who leaves Maynooth. 
 They would not understand all that has been burning and 
 singing within me I don t half understand it myself. 
 And there would be religious discussions I mean dis 
 cussions about religion and these are inexpressibly dis 
 tasteful to me. Besides coming out free and unshackled, 
 into the fresh, unknown world with what I am to do 
 with life a vast uncertainty, was a shock half-joyful, 
 half-stunning. I felt instinctively that in the lovely 
 loneliness of the hills I could unravel things. I wanted 
 birds, and trees, and green slopes. All the afternoon 
 I felt almost delirious with happiness. I want to go again 
 today, but if you come I 11 promise to be calmer." 
 
 " Don t strain your good nature too much," Maeve 
 answered with mock gravity. 
 
 She was puzzled, and in spite of herself interested. 
 She had thought a good deal about Arthur O Mara in 
 the last few days, and he was contradicting all her con 
 clusions as to what he ought to be. She had pictured 
 something tragic and penitential, a being with a cloud 
 on his brow, who was conscious of a flaming sword 
 behind him, and knew there was a troubled fate before 
 him; for banishment from Maynooth was a modern 
 
42 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 banishment from Eden. He ought to talk of fate and 
 the Church and theology with the distracted air of a 
 Hamlet. Dwelling on the songs of birds and rolling 
 down hill-slopes in the sunlight was riotously unconven 
 tional behavior on the part of the new Adam. 
 
 " I d like to have the grand poise of your philosophy 
 of life," said Arthur, looking at her a little wistfully. 
 "At least, in my present mood I would. You are a medi 
 eval survival. In the Middle Ages people were contented 
 with the same set of ideas for hundreds of years though, 
 of course, there was a great deal of speculation in places. 
 To me the awesomely impressive thing about Dante and 
 Thomas Aquinas is the epic cast-ironism, so to say, of 
 their minds, the unbroken, unclouded, undoubting serious 
 ness with which they wrought and wrought on their 
 monumental works. I am Darwin when I read Darwin, 
 Spinoza when I read Spinoza, Loisy when I read Loisy, 
 somebody else when I listen to the birds, and another 
 individuality when at night I survey the stars. I begin 
 poems that I cannot finish, and plan adventures that I 
 cannot begin, the zest being gone. If one could be stereo 
 typed, as Maynooth with its mighty system wants one 
 tobe- 
 
 " You must not be disrespectful to Maynooth," said 
 Maeve severely. 
 
 " I have no desire to be so. I have a certain affection 
 for it, and I think with respectful awe of its tremendous 
 scheme of milling and molding, in which all types are 
 fashioned into the one type, all minds regulated as one 
 mind, cast j ironed as the mind of the Middle Ages. Year 
 
THE NEW ADAM OUTSIDE MAYNOOTH 43 
 
 by year Maynooth calls in her conscripts, and trains them 
 up to her Grand Army standard, and when they are 
 trained she sends them forth to post and outpost to hold 
 and regulate the body and soul of an untrained and sub 
 missive nation. And the marvel is how her Grand Army 
 believes that it can do the work of Heaven and England 
 at the same time." 
 
 Maeve s eyes gleamed coldly, and her lips tightened. 
 She could not speak for indignation for a few moments. 
 
 " That is cheap and impious rhetoric," she said when 
 she found voice. " Maynooth has a long and priceless 
 tradition of truth, and a glorious measure of grace. You 
 all, when you begin to go the wrong way, leave the mighty 
 and mystic element of grace out of your calculations. 
 Maynooth is something immeasurably greater than all 
 the individualities that apparently compose Maynooth. 
 Maynooth cannot linger to humor the whims and idio 
 syncrasies of overgrown boys, or be guided by their im 
 mature notions of ecclesiastical and national policy." 
 
 "A boy s vision, if the boy is natural and sincere, 
 may also be a part of God s vision," said Arthur humbly. 
 " Where would Christianity, or any religion, be today 
 if boys had not seen and followed visions? I think the 
 visions of the poor herd, Patrick, have counted for some 
 thing in Ireland s spiritual evolution " 
 
 " Don t use that tawdry word evolution. It s part 
 of the stock-in-trade of every charlatan nowadays," said 
 Maeve. " One would think it explained all mystery and 
 abolished all wonder." 
 
 " For myself I am only just in the beginning of won- 
 
44 TH PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 der," said Arthur, an eager light in his eyes. " I almost 
 cried for wonder on the sunny hillsides yesterday. What 
 ever the meaning of life may be and I ve now no 
 theory at all it was ecstasy among the grasses, and the 
 breezes, and the sunshine, and the birds. I felt the joy 
 of having an open mind a child of Nature with no 
 label, or a sailor in a splendid, uncharted sea. The rest 
 of you feel you are booked and bound for the ports of 
 Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. I just revel in the seascape, 
 and sing in my little barque." 
 
 To come down to the language of plain and simple 
 people, what do you propose to do with yourself? You 
 have made some plans for the future, I assume ? " 
 
 " None," said Arthur promptly ; "except that I Ve 
 thought of camping out for a couple of weeks on Howth. 
 In the sunny and the lonely places I feel serene enough. 
 In towns and crowds I feel broken and terrorized. I 
 don t want to think of the future ; plans as you call 
 them are a horror to me." 
 
 " But you can t waste your life," said Maeve with 
 severe firmness. " You have duties to your own soul, 
 your own people, your own country " 
 
 "At present," said Arthur sadly, " I recognize no such 
 duties. My people, almost from my cradle, marked me 
 out for the priesthood, as an honor and dignity for the 
 family. That project has failed, and I ve hurt their 
 pride, and won t face them. My country I don t under 
 stand, my soul still less. It is sometimes as lightsome and 
 irresponsible as the birds ; in clouded days and stormy 
 nights it is dungeon-dark and woful. Did you ever study 
 
NW ADAM OUTSIDE MAYNOOTH 45 
 
 a Greek tragedy, did you ever read of those weird sisters, 
 the Erinnyes? If you did you 11 understand my feelings 
 and my torments. You look to endless bliss beyond the 
 grave, and some look to repeated returns to earth and 
 repeated life-experiments in new bodies. I d like the 
 dreaded awe and the scarcely less dreaded bliss of being 
 to end once for all. Nature s unaccountable experiments 
 with my poor, unfortunate personality terrorize me." 
 
 He sat down at Maeve s feet with the look of a fright 
 ened child. She feared for a moment that sudden illness 
 had seized him. He laughed rather wistfully, and then 
 leaned his head on her knees, humming as he did so a 
 lugubrious old melody. 
 
 For one so dignified as Maeve it was an undignified 
 position. For a few moments she came as near to being 
 nonplussed as it was possible for her to be. But she 
 did not stir or speak. She felt instinctively that there 
 had been more storm in Arthur O Mara s soul than any 
 thing he had uttered had described, and she felt that the 
 treatment of such a soul in these days of crisis might 
 be a matter of eternal significance. She hoped he would 
 not look up suddenly, for her eyes were misty, and the 
 display of emotion was against her principles. 
 
 Arthur O Mara did not look up; he dropped softly 
 to sleep. And then Maeve O Hagan realized what 
 had not struck her before that the ecstasy of rolling 
 down hill-slopes in the sunlight had its pathetic side. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 O KENNEDY AND THE) CLOUD- 
 
 .ERGUS O HAGAN said to himself, after 
 the departure of Terence O Connellan, 
 that he had certainly been getting the bene 
 fit of a great deal of philosophy about 
 Ireland lately. He was nearly tired of 
 philosophy about Ireland, and wanted to 
 see Irish life a-bloom instead. But Life 
 was just the thing from which the majority of 
 his countrymen seemed to shrink. Dublin and 
 other centers he visited did not seem to consist 
 of Individuals in an ordered and acting organ 
 ism, so much as a series of floating Frames of Mind, 
 mostly pessimistic and .quite unrelated to each other. For 
 restless and unfruitful frames of mind, for embodied 
 doubts, fears, and prejudices masquerading as men and 
 women, it was a wonderful and an eerie land. One might 
 be pardoned for entertaining the assumption that the 
 Creator had excluded Eire from the august Design which 
 obtained through the rest of the universe. He had not 
 realized the want in other years. The Ireland of his youth 
 had been a natural and consistent place, one essentially 
 human. With the exception of the more thoughtful minds 
 
47 
 
 in the Gaelic League the Ireland of the new day seemed 
 to have lost its human bearings somehow. It had no 
 relation to its own historic past, and no definite goal. 
 Much of it seemed to consist of fretful spirits on the brink 
 of disembodiment; consequently they could not think 
 of settling down seriously to the business of existence. 
 
 Terence O Connellan seemed to typify that uninformed 
 and disillusioned Ireland, grown materialized and suffer 
 ing from indigestion. He was self -questioning Racial 
 Deterioration striving to acclimatize itself in another civil 
 ization, and periodically playing to the " gallery." He 
 was quite different from Geoffrey Mortimer, ironist and 
 artist. If " Irish Ireland " could afford to buy him, it 
 might exhibit him as a Horrible Example. 
 
 Fergus took down the old riddle again. What Terence 
 had said about passions and dreams and desires turned 
 his thoughts to the love-melodies he knew. He realized 
 as he played how much the older Gael could teach Terence 
 about love and passion, and what a deal of it he would 
 not relish. This music, his priceless gift to the genera 
 tions, had a rapture and ruth, an impassioned tenderness, 
 a thrill of tears that seemed to swoon away and die in 
 dream, to rise again in ecstasy as if the bard and lover 
 had slipped awhile the bonds of time and clay. What had 
 come over the Gael that he was no longer inspired to 
 express his soul s affection in such exquisite trills and 
 cadences ? Were there no great loves in these " lonesome, 
 latter years "; or did the lovers " die with all the music 
 in them ? " Or did the inspiring heroines, the wonder- 
 women, appear no more? Ah, well it were hard to 
 picture Deirdre or Emer in latter-day Dublin. 
 
48 THE) PLOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 The door was suddenly opened, and a ringing, girlish 
 laugh chimed with the music. 
 
 " So this is the way the editors of the New Age spend 
 their mornings ! Or do you turn out the paper by music? 
 is it a case of faire d une pierre deux coups? " 
 
 The music had stopped with a crash. Fergus could 
 not speak for a few moments for pure astonishment. 
 He had not thought that Elsie O Kennedy was nearer than 
 Paris. 
 
 That extremely lively and engaging young lady might 
 be the Spirit of Laughter. She did what few men or 
 women can do she laughed beautifully and musically. 
 Her mind and her lithe body, her lips, teeth, eyes, fore 
 head, even the saucy tresses balanced above her brows, 
 seemed to join in the laughter, which had a singular, an 
 indiscribable, serenity, a rare mixture of fun and sweet 
 ness. It was a fascinating facial concert, and the culmin 
 ation of its fascination was the sense and impression that 
 it was all inspired not so much by anything in the outer 
 world as by some spirit at the back of her mind, and higher 
 even than her own personality, a spirit that could take 
 an infinately zestful but infinitely kindly view of human 
 oddity; there was a sense of the eternal in it. Fergus, 
 nonplussed for a moment, felt, as he had often felt in other 
 years of their piquant companionship, that there was 
 something honored and exalting in being the incident 
 al occasion or starting-point of such a dainty revel of 
 laughter. 
 
 The laughter ceased very slowly, leaving indeed in her 
 face what he felt might be described as laughter s grace 
 ful twilight, which had the suggestion, too, that it might 
 
49 
 
 start glowing again at any moment on the slightest provo 
 cation. In this delicate and trembling poise between 
 laughter and seriousness, Elsie s beauty was more palpa 
 ble; but her eyes and the lines of her face revealed un 
 expectedly an intensity of sympathy and affection, with 
 curious suggestions of sadness. The fact that in air and 
 guise she was girlish, and in years only in the first stage 
 of womanhood, gave an odd and touching interest to this 
 spiritual and mental maturity. Keen, thoughtful, beau 
 tiful eyes, and an intellectual forehead added to the 
 piquancy she presented that of womanliness in a child- 
 sylph s figure and form. 
 
 " I was thinking of Deirdre and you came ! " said 
 Fergus, as he gave her a welcoming kiss their relation 
 ship and engaging intercourse permitted the privilege, 
 though for the first time in his experience the kiss was 
 attended with a slight sense of embarrassment on his part, 
 which seemed to add to the pleasure of the act. He 
 thought the next moment that the inner realms of being 
 had grown wondrously sunny and subtle, set somehow to 
 music. 
 
 "A friend or conventional person would have an 
 nounced the good tidings, given notice of the date of your 
 arrival, if only by a day or two," he protested. " Your 
 last letter said sometime in the summer. Summer in 
 Ireland does not mean a particular day, but a whole 
 season. Samhradh was indeed the term which you used 
 quite correct Irish but that has the same signi 
 ficance." 
 
 Face, eyes, forehead and tresses laughed in concert 
 again. 
 
5O THE PlyOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " You answered that the day I d come would be the 
 beginning of Summer, and surely an editor of the New 
 Morning knows at least when summer begins. Besides, 
 I sent a telepathic message." 
 
 " Unfortunately, even in Ireland, the science of tele 
 pathy is only in its infancy " 
 
 " Like the wisdom and piety of certain self-elected 
 leaders of a much-led people. Well, with characteristic 
 impetuosity I seized the skirts of happy chance. Madam 
 Madcap, in a glorious mood of rashness, decided suddenly 
 that she needed the tonic of an American trip, and also 
 that Uncle Sam has something to learn in the way of 
 kindness to domestic animals. So her faithful secretary 
 is free for a spell, and naturally turned to her native 
 land." 
 
 The lady referred to rather lightly as " Madame Mad 
 cap " was really a very wealthy and important person, 
 with a profound sense of her own sanity as against that 
 of her contemporaries. She believed that a deeper sense 
 of domesticity, and especially a fonder enthusiasm for 
 animals, would hasten the evolution of the race and 
 accelerate the fruition of Nature s purpose by tens of 
 thousands of years. The curious but artistic little maga 
 zines she issued, like La Vie Domestique, Les Animaux 
 U tiles, and (in the English-speaking world) Home Pets, 
 Puss in Candle-light, etc., were in their way unique. Elsie 
 had been for some time her secretary, and in Elsie s 
 devotion to her mistress s mission that mistress had a 
 lively faith. . . . 
 
 Often, in after days, Fergus O Hagan re-pictured that 
 morning scene, though he found it no easy matter to re- 
 
call the apparently erratic and lightsome conversation. 
 He knew at once that a presence delightfully sprightly 
 and joyous had suddenly glided into life. 
 
 In the glow of question and answer, of comment and 
 blithe retort, he wondered why it was that he felt so 
 much gladder than on the hundreds of occasions in other 
 years when he had chatted with Elsie just as gaily. True, 
 the sprightly child, whom in their years in the South he 
 had treated so airily, taken keen delight in ruffling her 
 sensibilities for the pleasure of hearing her caustic retorts 
 a daintiness and tartness of style about her most 
 pungent shafts had developed rare beauty as well as 
 piquant grace. But these were not things of today or 
 yesterday, though they had never struck him so decisively 
 before. Perhaps the old music of the Gael had tuned his 
 spirit up to a keener sensitiveness and receptivity to 
 charm ; Nature may make an old fiddle go farther than 
 we wot of. 
 
 " You have not yet answered my question, Fergus 
 O Hagan," said Elsie, as she seated herself in the editorial 
 chair which he had vacated ; " do you turn out your 
 strenuous and impossible paper to music? Is this the 
 secret of your dazzling dreams and schemes? Often, as I 
 read your flights, I picture you as a Cloud-Sweeper. 
 You want not merely to reform Ireland and make her 
 glow, but to sweep her clouds and keep her skies perfect." 
 
 " I know a much more dainty and artistic Cloud- 
 Sweeper," he said airily, " a singular blend of child and 
 girl and woman, who, with airy grace, winsome sympathy, 
 intellectual keenness and piquancy of imagination and 
 temper, clears all the clouds from the mental and spiritual 
 
52 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 atmosphere : which is something a long way more complex 
 than the physical one." 
 
 Elsie s face resumed its quizzical air, and the concert 
 showed signs of restarting. 
 
 " Do the editors of the New Ireland, which is the old, 
 really talk that way in their off-duty moments? Be it 
 known to you that my fragile constitution cannot stand 
 it. Madam Madcap on domestic pets is bad enough, 
 and I ve also been reading French travellers on the 
 Gaelic revival. Remember always that I Ve come on what 
 I mean to be a mad and merry holiday. Primitive aban 
 don has resumed its sway in me. I feel a perfect primeval 
 savage. Beware, O Man of the Golden Mists! Come 
 down to the earth, O Cloud-Sweeper ! " 
 
 He took her round the building, which was earthly 
 enough in all conscience. He knew that, child of the 
 fields and the glens as she was, it was difficult for her to 
 keep still in an office. He explained machinery and 
 answered questions about home life and national affairs, 
 and replied to lively sallies as well as one could do when 
 all had to be done at the same time. The workers in the 
 case-room and the machine-room were not dangerously 
 sensitive to feminine verve and beauty, but they seemed 
 to feel a new presence in the air. 
 
 " It strikes me, Fergus O Hagan," said Elsie, when they 
 had returned to the office, " that your home life these 
 times must be rather spasmodic as well as nomadic. 
 You would not come up to Madame Madcap s ideal at 
 all, and with all her Church concerns I wonder how 
 Maeve stands it ? " 
 
 " I really don t know," he declared lightly, " how far 
 
KivSiK O KENNE}DY 53 
 
 and how subtly my home life extends. Apart from the 
 Boyne Valley magic, I have the witchery of the Dublin 
 Mountains and Killiney Hill and the Bay. Also I ve a 
 lovely assortment of enchanted islands round the coast. 
 I feel I d like to take you to one or other of them today. 
 You d go charmingly with an enchanted island." 
 
 In point of fact what they decided to do, when he had 
 told her of his own earlier intention, was to go down by 
 the early afternoon train to the Boyne Valley, see the 
 wonders of the Meath experiment, and return by the last 
 train in the evening. Maeve would then be probably at 
 home after the Church and missionary concerns which 
 usually filled her afternoons. Elsie was charmed with 
 the idea; being a gladsome child of the country, the 
 prospect of the Boyne Valley gave wings to her imagin 
 ation. She thought, however, that possibly Maeve might 
 be displeased if they went to the Boyne Valley without 
 first seeing herself. Elsie knew she was hypersensitive 
 on some points. 
 
 " She s not at home for a certainty/ said Fergus, "and 
 she s too busy with Church concerns in the afternoon to 
 think of us ; her mind would not take in non-eccle 
 siastical concerns like ourselves at the same time. Besides 
 she s sharp till some time after her last daily encounter 
 with a curate. It s best to take her in the twilight. 
 Charming as she is, she is growing testy on Church 
 matters, and lectures me severely for allowing advanced 
 Maynooth men any show in the paper. If you have liberal 
 Catholic tendencies, as I gather from your letters, be 
 exceedingly careful, and never say Loisy for the world. 
 I d rather be put on the Index than under the cold 
 
54 TH # PivOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 gleam of her eye when she fancies she has detected 
 1 golden heresy in a written or spoken word. It really 
 drives me to the Boyne Valley more often than I quite 
 want to go." 
 
 " I can t understand all this fine fury about the land and 
 country work/ Elsie said. "At first I thought it was a 
 passing phase, like Ruskin s road-making, or a luke-warm 
 indiscretion like Maeve s gardening. But it seems to be 
 growing a sort of religion with you. Is it a new and 
 subtle form of earth-worship?" 
 
 " It is new in the sense in which everything good in 
 the Ireland of today is new a return to the old and 
 human. I sometimes wish that we could sack and burn 
 Dublin. With the epic blaze and homelessness our com 
 mon humanity and sociability would be shaken up into 
 life again. Then we d all set to work on an equality, and 
 establish a new city on co-operative and human lines, 
 and looking back on the bad old days come gradually to 
 imagine the slums and the selfishness were nightmares." 
 
 " But you can t dig gracefully, or hold a plough proper 
 ly when you used to try years ago, the plough always 
 went too far into the ground, and someone had to haul 
 it up for you. Is that farm purely imaginary, and are 
 you taking me down, sir, to the Boyne Valley under false 
 pretenses ? " 
 
 " I overlook the legend about my early efforts as a 
 toiler. The farm is a substantial reality, but small 
 just a few acres, but there s a quaint old house with which 
 you 11 positively fall in love. A morning s or an after 
 noon s labor on the land is a joy. Of course, I haven t 
 time for a great deal of the work I told you in an 
 
O KENNEDY 55 
 
 early letter that I d brought Sean O Carroll and his wife 
 from home to look after place and house, and Sean 
 is quite in love with his duties. Kevin and Art (his 
 brothers) have small farms and homes hard by; in fact, 
 there s a little home colony there already." 
 
 Elsie thought that transplanting Munster folk in 
 Meath was a somewhat doubtful experiment. 
 
 " It depends on the folk," said Fergus. " It s some 
 thing to get ready-made associations and pleasant human 
 ity in a fresh situation. Still more pioneers are coming, 
 to break up the adjoining grass lands, and try life happily 
 on the basis of humanity and co-operation. When Mr. 
 Milligan, in his old age, got his great idea of starting 
 pleasant factories amidst the fields and breaking up the 
 grass ranches, he was faced by the fact that most of 
 Meath was a lonely desert, and that most of the poor folk 
 left had absolutely lost all interest in the soil and in 
 Nature. So bold measures had to be taken." 
 
 Elsie s laughter rang musically. 
 
 "And the boldest," she said, " was to lean for support 
 on one who plays the fiddle during office hours, and whose 
 letters are partly poetry and partly prose fancies." 
 
 " Yes, when I write to the fair and frivolous-minded," 
 he answered. " Mr. Milligan is something of a poet him 
 self, though his stanzas are gardens, and he liked my 
 imaginative touches as much as what I said about seeds. 
 He even appreciated the cloud-sweeping, though we 
 differed a little at first on the subject of crows. I said 
 that crows give a place an air at once homely and im 
 memorial ; he said the crow is a bit of an artist, but a 
 large deal of a thief. We still quarrel humorously about 
 
56 THIS PLOUGH AND THL) CROSS 
 
 crows. Anyhow, we became great friends through the 
 things I wrote on the rural problem, and how to break 
 the spell of the Great Blight, and I easily found him 
 tenants, becoming one in a way myself. The paper cham 
 pions the land as well as the language movement, and he 
 supplies the funds with a kindly hand." 
 
 " Not too kindly/ said Elsie, laughing again. " You 
 have the humblest-looking establishment in that part of 
 the uncivilized world which publishes newspapers. Your 
 compositors tell me, does Mr. Milligan look upon them 
 in the same light as crows ? " 
 
 " There is a golden idea underlying our humility," 
 Fergus answered. " Mr. Milligan does not see the good 
 of expensive machinery at first. He says we had better 
 proceed from modest things to great, growing gradually 
 with the land zest and the language movement. Better 
 a crazy printing machine, and a new cottage industry, 
 than a modern machine and less money left for the 
 industry and the land schemes. Indeed, he doesn t like 
 type-setting machines at all, because they mean throwing 
 comps on the world. And the comps will be paid ever 
 so much better when they come to develop an artistic en 
 thusiasm for their work he has been studying William 
 Morris and the Kelmscott Press. You may come to see 
 our comps set type to Irish music, and study Greek 
 philosophy and Irish poetry at the close of the dinner- 
 hour." 
 
 " I ve been reading a good deal about Irish industries 
 lately," said Elsie ; " but I did not think that the dream- 
 industry and the manufacture of golden halos had made 
 such enlivening progress." 
 
C O KENNEDY 57 
 
 " The Boyne Valley dream is the brightest of all," said 
 Fergus. " We have just made the beginning, and hope 
 to show what human and beautiful creations hand and 
 mind combined can compass in the gracious country. We 
 are hoping in due course to see sundry kinds of crafts 
 men attracted to live in the Boyne Valley, where they 
 could work so much better than in the city. Mentally 
 benumbed and plodding Dublin may wake up one day to 
 find a new social magic a few leagues beyond its sordid 
 slums - " 
 
 "And crows wearing golden feathers, and listening 
 entranced to the music of the fiddle." 
 
 " You try very piquantly to disguise your social en 
 thusiasm/ he said. " You will be a Cloud-Sweeper yet 
 yourself." 
 
 It was time to think of lunch, and they descended. 
 He arranged for the despatch of luggage, and sent a 
 note to Maeve. As they fared into the sunny street the 
 cares and problems of life seemed to have melted away. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMAN^NTIST 
 
 ERGUS O HAGAN," said Elsie, when 
 they had come out upon the quays, and 
 turned in the direction of O Connell 
 Bridge, " I don t wonder at your idea 
 of the prime necessity of sacking and 
 burning Dublin. Tis worse than Paris 
 grown old and ugly, for even in old 
 age and ugliness Paris would still have a 
 certain distinction and esprit. Between the 
 hills and the bay Dublin seems a shabby anti 
 climax." 
 
 " It is lovely in the mornings," he said. " No poet or 
 artist could do justice to the alluring and mysterious love 
 liness of Dublin in the earliness of a sunny morning; 
 for it is then not merely a question of light and color, 
 but of a spirit in the air, in quite a mystic and indefinable 
 sense it brings you a new suggestion, I might say a 
 revelation, of the mystery and wonder of so-called 
 matter. In a sense it is more suggestive than starlight 
 the deep human thrill is grander. But in the sober 
 day Dublin seems to exist chiefly for the humiliation of 
 Irish idealists of all kinds." 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMAN^NTIST 59 
 
 Certainly, taking the most charitable and picturesque 
 view possible, the houses on the quays had a mean or 
 an antiquated appearance. The streets and lanes that 
 branched off the main course were dingy and squalid. 
 The people at every stage had a listless, inert, unkempt 
 air; the children were bedraggled, neglected, and bois 
 terous. Here, plainly, was not a place where men thought 
 or wrought to any brave purpose ; here there was not the 
 least suggestion of any consciousness of divinity in life. 
 Folk just haggled and lounged and gossiped, and went to 
 sleep. Yet the lovely day and sky seemed a divine incite 
 ment to men to adventure nobly. 
 
 A man in striking and picturesque costume hailed 
 Fergus from the other side of the street he and Elsie 
 were now walking by the river wall. He had fine 
 features, clear, kindly eyes, and an expression of curious 
 ly mingled eagerness and peace. He hastened over, and 
 Fergus introduced his friend Lord Strathbarra to Elsie. 
 In the introduction and the complimentary Irish phrases 
 that followed he gave Lord Strathbarra to understand 
 that Elsie was a very special and original friend indeed. 
 He, did so in order that his lordship might open his mind 
 freely. When he opened his mind he was intensely inter 
 esting. A meeting with him, even a chance meeting, was 
 an event, and Fergus wanted to know what unconven 
 tional project he had last arrived at. 
 
 Lord Strathbarra was in a hurry. So far as the 
 physical plane was concerned he was nearly always in a 
 hurry, for from his isle in the Hebridean seas he made 
 many and strange tours to Ireland, Brittany, Paris, Spain, 
 Florence, Rome, and elsewhere. Intellectually and spirit- 
 
60 TH PLOUGH AND THK CROSS 
 
 tially he was always at ease, for his mental life was passed 
 either with the early Fathers, or in a far-off Millennium 
 of Church and State, where a liberal-minded Papacy, a 
 happy world of expert lay theologians, and a cultured 
 clergy made life serene, and respected the light which 
 enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. As 
 he tested contemporary ecclesiastics and laics by the stand 
 ards of the Fathers, on the one hand, and this distant 
 Golden Age on the other, his criticism, though expressed 
 with beatific serenity, was apt to sound severe. He was 
 an Irish language enthusiast, as well as a Scottish Gaelic 
 one, and already had visions of a national liturgy. He 
 came of the Irish aristocracy, but his home and most of 
 his property were Scottish, and he had bold schemes for 
 colonizing certain of his Hebridean moors and hills with 
 Gaels of both nations. Even those who distrusted or 
 dreaded his religious theories admitted that he and his 
 isle made a picturesque appeal to the imagination. 
 
 " I was coming to see you," he said to Fergus. " You 
 are making a serious mistake both as individual and as 
 editor. You are diffusing your energies and trying to 
 see and treat of too much of Irish life. Most of it does 
 not matter at all at least for the present. Before we 
 can tackle any of these social and literary questions with 
 effect we must first settle the crucial question of Ireland s 
 relation to Rome whether she is to be a Daughter of 
 the Church, respected and honored as a daughter in the 
 family, or whether she is to be a servant of the Papacy 
 to be the real Prisoner of the Vatican. That I fear, sums 
 up her present position." 
 
 " I d be perfectly content," said Fergus, with a smile, 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMAN^NTIST 6 1 
 
 " if I could help to get Ireland to try simple Christianity. 
 That, I tell our Maynooth friends, is the real problem, 
 when they go into the mazes of Church history and 
 ecclesiastical jurisprudence." 
 
 " Simple Christianity ! " exclaimed Lord Strathbarra. 
 " Why, that is what we are all trying to keep to, and 
 the ecclesiastical authorities will not let us. They have 
 gradually driven us laymen from all part in Church 
 affairs, and if we try to assert our point of view through 
 the State they make war upon the State, as in France. 
 I hear that the alarm and confusion at Rome are great 
 it was all beginning when I was there last year the 
 panic of the older and conservative ecclesiastics before 
 the march of modern ideas, which are really the old 
 ideas, is grievous, and there is the gravest danger that 
 they may put the Church herself in a hopelessly false 
 position. In effect their tendency is to make their own 
 fears and prejudices infallible, and to over-ride the great 
 body of tradition and precedent that has been the safe 
 guard of the faithful for ages." 
 
 " In that case," said Fergus, " it is they who are the 
 real Modernists, to use a term that is becoming familiar." 
 
 " Precisely," said Lord Strathbarra ; " I said some 
 thing to the same effect to Loisy when I was last in Paris. 
 A White Terrpr is coming in the Church, and the rights 
 of the individual Catholic s conscience, Newman and 
 others notwithstanding, will presently no longer be safe, 
 while an intellectual spirit and a tendency to appeal to 
 Church history on the part of laymen, or educated, think 
 ing priests, will be regarded as a deadly offense. Ireland 
 will have to make up her mind definitely as to her 
 
62 THE; PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 position Daughter of the Church or Prisoner of the 
 Vatican." 
 
 Elsie laughed, and the musical revel of her laughter 
 at first startled and then attracted Lord Strathbarra. 
 
 " Excuse my laughing," she said. " I did not think 
 the story was that way still. Isn t it really time to dis 
 sociate the Church and melodrama? Is there really need 
 for any more raging battles to prove what is perfect 
 Christianity? Would it not be better for the combatants 
 to retire to different hills and deserts and think it out, 
 then come back and practise it? Contemplation is surely 
 a surer way than blows." 
 
 Lord Strathbarra smiled in grateful and admiring 
 surprise. 
 
 " That is nobly true," he declared. " But it might be 
 anathema to the conservative and militant theologians. 
 Theirs to lay down the law, ours not to reason why. In 
 modern times the contemplative and the searching mind 
 is suspect." 
 
 " Your irony is excusable," said Fergus. " It touches 
 a sad and puzzling fact in certain ecclesiastical circles. 
 I am hoping that they are not representative." 
 
 " I m afraid that they prevail in Ireland," said Lord 
 Strathbarra ; " but my new island scheme may set them 
 thinking." 
 
 Fergus was on the point of asking what the new scheme 
 might be, but Elsie spoke first. 
 
 " Excuse me," she said, wearing an expression in which 
 gravity and gaiety were delightfully mixed, " perhaps I 
 am simple and uninformed in regard to these great issues, 
 but I really cannot understand why the contemplative and 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMAN^NTIST 63 
 
 the searching mind should be looked upon with disfavor 
 by ecclesiastical authorities." 
 
 " It might break out against formalism and ecclesi 
 astical jurisprudence," answered Lord Strathbarra, " and 
 you see " 
 
 " Yet yet ," said Elsie, whose face was serious, 
 though her eyes were quizzical, " did not revelation and 
 true Christian living precede the theological system, to 
 say nothing of ecclesiastical jurisprudence? Are not 
 revelation, spiritual experience, and Christian living the 
 really important considerations still? Is not the spiritual 
 life something immeasurably more important than ecclesi 
 astical jurisprudence?" 
 
 Lord Strathbarra looked more pleased and more grate 
 ful than before. 
 
 " You express it daringly and splendidly," he said. 
 " But to talk of the spiritual life and inner inspiration, 
 and their right and guidance, as against outer ecclesi 
 astical legislation, might be dangerous heresy these times. 
 It reminds me of the saying of one of the advanced 
 ecclesiastics at Rome that every man s soul is infallible." 
 
 "And the business of the Pope, according to Newman, 
 is to help the spiritual life of the individual Catholic," 
 said Fergus. 
 
 " I dare say I reason out things in a primitive way," 
 said Elsie, smiling as before. " But this is how it strikes 
 me. Would not what a gardener does for a rose be of 
 no avail if a Power infinitely greater than the gardener 
 had not implanted within itself the capacity to rose-grow, 
 if I may put it that way? The gardener can only tend 
 the rose, and does not give it what is all-important and 
 
64 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 essential in it. So surely, with the ecclesiastic and the 
 soul, and its own spiritual experience. He should not 
 try to dictate to it or thwart it ; he should only help it, 
 and wonder reverently over it." 
 
 Lord Strathbarra smiled admiringly. 
 
 " You are so wise and direct/ he said, " that I am 
 sorry I am pressed for time today. I would like to wait 
 and find out what you think of the scholastic philosophy. 
 I hope I shall see you in my island home in the Hebrides, 
 when we have got the new work under way." 
 
 Fergus expressed a lively curiosity as to the new work. 
 
 " I have not decided on all the details yet," Lord Strath 
 barra replied, " otherwise I d have written to you about 
 it. I must discuss them very carefully with my liberal 
 Catholic friends in Maynooth, Rome, and Paris. It s a 
 happy development of my original colonization scheme." 
 
 " I know that you want to gather to Strathbarra vigor 
 ous and strong-minded Gaels of both nations, who are in 
 the process of revolt against modern civilization/ " said 
 Fergus. 
 
 " I hope now to do even better," said Lord Strathbarra. 
 " The signs are that war will be declared on those inde 
 pendent-minded Catholics, whether priests or laymen, who 
 stand for the old Catholicism and the revelation of their 
 own spiritual lives, and the real Communion of Saints 
 of all times and lands, against the growing claims and 
 assumptions of Rome and ultramontanism. Individually, 
 perhaps, they could be crushed or caused to lose heart. 
 Brought after they have been denounced or suspended 
 to beautiful and remote Strathbarra, in the Celtic Sea, 
 theirs would be a new and congenial life. They would 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMANENTlST 65 
 
 hearten and fire one another and in divers ways could 
 plan bold enterprises for thought and truth in the soul- 
 struggle of the Catholic world against formalism and 
 ultramontanism and ecclesiastical aggression. We could 
 have a liberal Catholic college, printing press, and other 
 great needs in the island. Our clerics and laics could 
 learn the printing, book-binding, and other trades, and 
 keep themselves in form and spirit by incidental work on 
 the land. Everyone knows that the early missionaries and 
 religious pioneers did manual work as well as intellectual 
 and spiritual work." 
 
 11 You certainly strike the imagination, as you always 
 do," said Fergus. " I know that you are practically a 
 king in your island, and also that you are rich enough 
 to make big experiments " 
 
 " This experiment will make history in the Church," 
 declared Lord Strathbarra with enthusiasm. 
 
 " Rome, however, will have something to say to you " 
 
 "If the Vatican becomes unreasonable," said Lord 
 Strathbarra calmly, " we can enter into communion with 
 the Greek Church. She will gladly allow us our Gaelic 
 liturgy amongst other things." 
 
 "Are women, even reverent ones, to be allowed to tread 
 your unique island ? " asked Elsie gaily. 
 
 Lord Strathbarra, who was a handsome and dignified 
 man, still young, smiled and bowed gracefully. 
 
 " I d be charmed to have you as a permanent resident," 
 he said. " Your liberality and vividness of mind on theo 
 logical issues are simply wonderful for a young lady." 
 
 Fergus began to be conscious of a mysterious shadow 
 on the pleasure of the meeting with Lord Strathbarra. 
 
66 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 The latter again remembered that he was in a hurry. 
 He did not think, however, of hurrying away at once. 
 He spoke of Maynooth and Rome, of lectures he had to 
 give, advanced ecclesiastics he had to meet, and of the 
 signs of new life he observed in Ireland. Were they all, 
 he wondered, the first flush of the dawn of a renaissance? 
 It was grand to picture Ireland, after long ordeals and 
 long stagnation, waking up within the guardian sea and 
 achieving great things for intellectual and spiritual free 
 dom. But he was not sure of her initiative and staying 
 .power, and returned fondly to the example which his 
 Hebridean isle, and its gallant gathered Gaels in the new 
 day, would set her. Even the boldest modern spirits of 
 Rome and Paris would be proud of it. He left them in 
 the peaceful early afternoon light with the suggestion 
 that Europe was on the brink of intellectual and spiritual 
 revolution, and that Ireland could not, if she would, 
 escape. 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, how grim and grave you look," 
 said Elsie blithely, as they proceeded on their way to 
 O Connell Street. " I suppose you are shocked at my 
 rose and my gardener, and my boldness generally. You 
 are a man, and therefore conservative-minded." 
 
 "As a matter of fact," he replied, " I was struck by 
 your point and directness, though you are not the first 
 to press the rose and the gardener into service. I was 
 thinking, as I have been thinking lately, how wonderfully 
 your mind is growing you are a girl no longer and I 
 have the feeling that it has no business to grow without 
 my leave and supervision as of old. Tis uncomfortable 
 to find you developing an individuality, however charm- 
 
AN ARISTOCRATIC IMMANKNTIST 67 
 
 ing, of which I have not the daily superintending, as I 
 used to have when you were a blithe and caustic child." 
 
 " The conceit of some self-appointed leaders of the 
 people is Olympian," she answered laughing, " but I 
 doubt that such a thought would bring a shade to your 
 brow." 
 
 " Well, I was thinking of the future, too," he said. 
 " I often have what appear to be premonitions of it. Our 
 spiritual selves, though much bound up with bodies, and 
 consequently chained to the present, do not belong to it 
 alone ; I see no reason why they, eternal in essence as 
 they are, cannot occasionally realize in some measure 
 what is coming in time and space long before it arrives. 
 When Lord Strathbarra was speaking I seemed to see 
 dimly into the future, and it was not all pleasant." 
 
 Elsie s airiness softened, she grew playfully serious 
 and curious; but without seeming to do so he changed 
 the subject. 
 
 " Questions like this of Immanence," he said, " on 
 which Lord Strathbarra is so keen, are at once mighty 
 and terrible. Sometimes the thought of it all sweeps 
 through me like an inspiration; sometimes it leaves me 
 very lonely and distressed, and almost afraid. My faith 
 and philosophy of the universe were very simple. Now 
 they are growing complex. I cannot help the change, 
 but I do not like the transition. The change is as when 
 I left home, with all its simple affection, for the first 
 time; how hard it was to reconcile myself to the wide 
 world, and how unfriendly and unseizable it seemed at- 
 first ! So now, as I come to read new and wider meanings 
 into the old symbols, and the drama of the universe so 
 
68 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 vastly widens, the intellect doubtless gains, but the heart 
 feels lonely. And it seems sometimes a sort of treason 
 not to be able to read the old, simple, literal meanings in 
 the old lore." 
 
 " Poor boy ! " said Elsie, with a mixture of gaiety and 
 gentleness ; " can t you remember that God is good, and 
 that honest thinking and right living are the point, not 
 conceptions and interpretations of the universe? Weren t 
 Plato, Dante, and so on, quite incorrect in a number of 
 their data? Surely a leader of the people does not need 
 to be told such things." 
 
 He laughed. Looking at Elsie anyway it seemed ab 
 surd to trouble about the universe. He felt it must have 
 a fascinating explanation. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 ARTHUR O MARA IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 HEN Arthur O Mara roused him 
 self, and found that he had fallen 
 asleep at Maeve s feet, he blushed 
 and laughed and rose hastily. 
 Maeve had not yet made up her 
 mind as to how she ought to feel 
 in regard to the situation or the 
 young man, but she thought that 
 a cold questioning gaze would be 
 the best temporary expedient. 
 
 " I had a very extraordinary 
 said Arthur, " I thought that you and I were in 
 You were very fascinating, and we 
 kissed each other most of the time. It seemed more 
 natural than talking. Life appeared divinely intelligible, 
 good, and beautiful ; or rather there was no question of 
 good or evil, it was all beauty. Then a Maynooth pro 
 fessor appeared on the scene, and gave a terrible lecture 
 on the beastliness and corruption of woman. Then we 
 both felt ashamed of ourselves. We stood apart in 
 wretchedness and dismay; everything grew ugly, and 
 
 dream, 
 
 the Garden of Eden. 
 
7 THE PLOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 Eden was no more. Do you really think, Maeve, that 
 you are a beastly and corrupt young person ? " 
 
 He asked the question with such a comic air of 
 puzzled gravity that she laughed outright. 
 
 " But you know that many of the Fathers and the 
 modern theologians declare your beastliness and sinful- 
 ness to be unbounded. Of course they don t point the 
 ringer of scorn at you individually, but when they say 
 Woman they mean You, and such as you, not an abstrac 
 tion. Nobody can pretend that there s so much vicious- 
 ness in an abstraction. Isn t it grotesque and inhuman? 
 You know, Maeve, that you re quite beautiful and saintly, 
 if a little severe in the temper at times." 
 
 " Don t you think it would be better taste to leave 
 personalities out of the question ? " she asked, with a firm 
 attempt at a frown. 
 
 " But in such a matter we are simply driven to person 
 alities. What do we know of Woman apart from women ? 
 Our preachers declare her to be corrupt and beastly, and 
 a snare of Satan. We come to her and find her delight 
 fully human, and with a great deal more of the divine 
 than the preachers who condemn her in a cloud of words. 
 What are we to say? It seems to me that the Church 
 freed and raised woman to her rightful place, but that 
 Churchmen laboriously expend their energy in condemn 
 ing her to a much lower status than that from which the 
 Church originally raised her." 
 
 " You, too, have fallen into the dangerous habit of 
 separating the Church and the Churchmen," said Maeve 
 severely. 
 
ARTHUR O MARA IN EDN 71 
 
 " No theologian will quarrel with that much anyway. 
 Your friend Bossuet will enlighten you on the point. 
 You know what he taught about the limitation of the 
 Papal authority. But to return to woman. I wonder 
 that Irish chivalry has not withstood the Churchmen in 
 her regard before this. But really I sometimes wonder if 
 there s any Irish chivalry at all. Most Irishmen are 
 ashamed or afraid to fall in love our ideas of woman 
 would be regarded with contempt by our Pagan fore 
 fathers the Fianna, for example." 
 
 " And are you quite sure that the Fianna ever existed 
 at all ? " asked Maeve. 
 
 " So far as my point is concerned it is immaterial 
 whether they existed or not. If they were invented, the 
 spirit of chivalry towards woman must have existed in 
 the^minds of those who invented them. Their marriages 
 at the best had the right spirit, though they lacked the 
 symbols the ring, the gold and silver, and so on. In 
 Ireland nowadays we often lack the spirit women are 
 bargained for like cattle." 
 
 "You forget," said Maeve hotly, "that the Church 
 raises marriage to the dignity of a sacrament." 
 
 " The Church herself," said Arthur, " is always wise 
 and right. But do you mean to say that all Irish mar 
 riages, and the Irish attitude to woman, come up to the 
 Church s ideal, and follow the Church s spirit? The 
 Church says that the essence of the Sacrament is in the 
 vow of each to each their mental and spiritual attitude. 
 The Church presupposes love and chivalry. Where are 
 these in the hundreds of cases where the wife has scarcely 
 seen her husband before the marriage, and where she has 
 
72 THE: PiyOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 been taken as part of a bargain in which cattle and bank 
 notes count for more than herself ? " 
 
 " I m not defending the custom," said Maeve with 
 a smile. " Don t think that / will be discussed as an 
 incidental item amongst cows and banknotes " 
 
 " I d be awfully disgusted to think that you would," 
 said Arthur emphatically, "in fact I wouldn t stand it." 
 
 " I wasn t aware that you were an interested party," 
 said Maeve drily. 
 
 " Well, of course, I wasn t heretofore. Twouldn t 
 have been right to think of you in that way. But I 
 believe you were at the back of my mind when I heard 
 the birds and rolled down the slopes in the sunshine 
 yesterday. You were part of the ecstasy; there was 
 something of your voice in the bird-notes. To be sure 
 I didn t admit it to myself. But that dream of the 
 Garden of Eden has made things wonderfully vivid to 
 me. I d give worlds to bring back the feeling, and to 
 have you looking as you looked when you kissed me. 
 You can t possibly realize how divine you were." 
 
 " No, indeed," said Maeve with a dry smile ; " you see 
 I haven t been dreaming in the Garden of Eden. But 
 I am immensely tickled by your naivete." 
 
 " It wasn t a dream in the ordinary sense," declared 
 Arthur. " There was a wonderful intensity of spiritual 
 realization about it. Haven t you often felt on awaking 
 in the morning an extraordinary sense, for one brief 
 moment, that the whole mystery and wonder of things 
 were revealed? Just for a flash the whole soul seems 
 to take a peep at the infinite before being pressed into 
 the bodily harness and slavery of time and place again. 
 
ARTHUR O MARA IN EDEN 73 
 
 Tis exquisite, but tis too brief to leave more than a 
 tantalizing sense of the infinite, barely but irrevocably 
 missed. My Eden dream brought the same rapture, but 
 the memory is more definite. So you mustn t be surprised 
 if I look upon you with new eyes." 
 
 " You are wonderfully boyish/ said Maeve with a 
 judicial air. 
 
 "And surely the original Adam must have been exceed 
 ingly boyish, and the original Eve delightfully girlish. 
 Every boy in love is again in the Garden of Eden, I 
 suppose. And I m sure there must be some way of 
 checkmating what we call the serpent. Do you know that 
 the story of the Garden of Eden is my favorite one I 
 tantalized my brain over the symbolism at Maynooth, 
 and got pulled up for my curiosity. I must think it all 
 out when I m camping at Howth, or, I should say, Ben 
 Eadar. I wonder if you d come and see me some after 
 noon. It would be grand to take you round the cliffs. 
 You see " he pointed in its direction " it s only just 
 yonder." 
 
 " I could scarcely swim across the Bay, even in my 
 summer clothes," said Maeve. "And don t you think, 
 Mr. Modern Adam, that it is scarcely Eve s place to hunt 
 you up." 
 
 " Oh, I didn t suggest swimming/ he said, with a 
 laugh. " I knew twould mean a tram drive ; and I d 
 gladly come for you." 
 
 " The calm, cool way you talk of idling your time at 
 Howth is astonishing," said Maeve, trying to be quite 
 severe again. " The Fianna did a good deal of idling and 
 
74 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 hunting there, we are told ; but they and theirs are gone, 
 and you belong to the twentieth century." 
 
 " I m not sure that I do/ said Arthur. " I m not at 
 all clear as to what the twentieth century happens to be. 
 They didn t let us know much about it at Maynooth two 
 planets might crash together in the heavens and we d only 
 hear about it in vacation time. And you re wrong in 
 supposing that I m cool and calm. You can t imagine the 
 moods and storms that come to me at times. But you have 
 an indescribable effect upon me. I 11 always come to you 
 for poise and guidance." 
 
 " It will be like this : Now I feel light-headed, so I 11 
 go and pay my respects to the Dalkey millstone. Tis 
 well to serve some really definite purpose in life." 
 
 Maeve spoke the language of sarcasm with a slow 
 sweetness. 
 
 At this stage the little Irish-speaking cailin aimsire 
 appeared at the door of the summer-house and an 
 nounced that Father Martin Murray had called expect 
 ing to see Fergus, having missed him at his office. He 
 would be charmed to see Maeve herself. 
 
 Maeve opened her eyes widely and said " Oh ! " with 
 great and interested expression. She was surprised to 
 learn that Father Murray was in Dublin. She thought a 
 moment, made a plunge for her Bossuet, and said she 
 would be in the house directly. Arthur said that he would 
 slip out and run up Killiney Hill ; he could not converse 
 at his ease with clerics just yet. 
 
 u You need not be doubtful about meeting Father Mur 
 ray," said Maeve with a kindly positiveness. " He s a 
 great man in the Gaelic League, and a great man in every 
 
ARTHUR O MARA IN DN 75 
 
 way, though people generally don t realize his greatness, 
 as yet in Ireland. And he s gentleness and sympathy 
 personified." 
 
 Arthur, however, declared that he was only in the mood 
 for birds and waves and hills and Maeve herself. But 
 he would return to tea if she promised to try to look as 
 she did in his dream. 
 
 As Maeve O Hagan sailed gracefully across the garden, 
 with her Bossuet beneath her arm, she wore a rapt and 
 sphinx-like expression, of the kind which Fergus some 
 times said would hypnotize gooseberries. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 AN T-ATHAIR MAIRTIN, THE) MAYNOOTH CRISIS, AND 
 IN A 
 
 IATHER MARTIN MURRAY was not a 
 
 Canon or a Monsignor, but he held a high 
 and shining place in Maeve s esteem. He 
 had been an intimate friend of herself and 
 Fergus in their London period, and for 
 both of them he typified the finest spirit of 
 the Church, mingled with a gracious and 
 lofty humanity. He had held a high position, 
 though still, comparatively speaking, a young 
 man, in an English Catholic College, but had 
 left it because its anti-Irish prejudice had jarred 
 equally upon his patriotic and his Christian spirit. At this 
 later stage he was stationed in a lowly place in the West 
 minster diocese; but with his own character and his 
 attainments in music, in Catholic philosophy, and in liberal 
 culture, his position could never be lowly to those who 
 knew and understood. Most men, even interesting nav, 
 more, inspiring men, are unequal, intermittent, in their 
 appeal ; there are times when the light fails, when the fire 
 burneth not, and seemeth quenched. An t-Athair Mairtin, 
 like a classic or a noble landscape, never lacked force and 
 
THE) MAYNOOTH CRISIS 77 
 
 freshness and glow, for his inner life was simple and 
 great, always spent in the company of immortal things. 
 
 Maeve, when she pleased, could be a very gracious and 
 charming hostess ; giving with the mere making and serv 
 ing of tea the sense of a sylph performing in a Greek play 
 of a beautiful and idyllic, yet enlivening nature. She was 
 at her best today. As she moved through the room, and 
 in and out, she kept up an animated conversation with 
 Father Martin; and his eager musical voice, as he ques 
 tioned and replied, sounded, especially at a little distance, 
 as if he were reading some fine passage from Ruskin. 
 His grave, kindly eyes shone; his thoughtful oval face 
 was alternately wistful and beaming; and his quick, 
 merry, yet curiously uncanny-sounding laugh was an 
 arresting distraction at intervals. 
 
 " My dear Miss O Hagan," he was saying, as she filled 
 him a third cup of tea, " you entirely under-rate your own 
 influence in life. It is often said, and sometimes by 
 friends of our own, that the priests are far too powerful 
 in a worldly way, and that they derive a great deal of 
 their power from an unnatural ascendancy over the minds 
 of the women-folk. I wonder if anyone has thought about 
 the other side of the story how much the priests, and 
 incidentally the Church, owe to women bright, faithful, 
 humanizing women like yourself. Ye perennially freshen 
 our humanity and sweeten our Christianity itself." 
 
 " You ought not to let us know it in that candid way," 
 said Maeve, laughing. " It might spoil us. Still it is good 
 to hear it. It shows us ourselves in a new light. Only 
 this very day I was reminded of very extreme things that 
 the Fathers have said about us." 
 
78 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 " Don t worry over that ; there are several ways of 
 explaining it. But on the point of what we latter-day 
 clerics, worried by many formulae and worldly things 
 that have crept into the Church, owe to women who are 
 at once Christian and human I could talk to you for 
 an hour. After the extraordinary mazes and the strange 
 subtleties of ecclesiastical diplomacy; after jealousies, 
 poor human foibles, intrigues; after sternness and short 
 sightedness and golden opportunities missed by our superi 
 ors, we find your fresh sweet faith, your primitive Chris 
 tian spirit, and your unobtrusive charity, a joy and a 
 revelation." 
 
 Maeve was a little surprised to hear a priest speak thus 
 of high dignitaries in the Church, and she hinted as much 
 diplomatically. 
 
 " Oh my dear Miss O Hagan," he said earnestly, " you 
 must not suppose that the Catholic Church is a despotism, 
 and that you dare not speak out if you suffer at the hands 
 of its dignitaries and its ministers. Why, you might 
 quarrel with every bishop and priest in Ireland and yet 
 remain a loyal member of the Church. Be sure, of 
 course, that your quarrel is just, before you do so, and 
 then have no fear " 
 
 " I have not the least intention of so big a quarrel as 
 that," said Maeve smiling ; " even my little brushes with 
 curates rather distress me in the long run." 
 
 Father Martin laughed. Maeve s occasional severity 
 with younger members of the clergy was well known to 
 him. 
 
 " My thought of what we owe to our gentle-souled 
 
MAYNOOTH CRISIS 79 
 
 and humanizing Catholic women has been wonderfully 
 borne in upon me since I crossed your threshold," he said 
 feelingly. " I came here today in great distress of soul. 
 Indeed, my mission to Ireland,, personal and not personal, 
 has many distressing accompaniments ; and too many 
 things in the country distress me intensely. Yet your 
 homely, human kindliness has taken for the present a 
 great deal of the cloud away." 
 
 Maeve s eyes moistened. The pathos of Father Mar 
 tin s position, with his great gifts and noble ideals, in a 
 narrow sphere and an alien and unsympathetic environ 
 ment, had been the theme of many a chat between herself 
 and Fergus. 
 
 " I won t speak of my personal longings now," said 
 Father Martin, " though often when I think of what I 
 want to do, and what with God s help I might do, in 
 my native land, tears start in my eyes for the delay and 
 comparative failure of my days. However, there is hope 
 that better times are at hand ; I expect good news shortly. 
 But that is a simple matter compared with the ecclesiasti 
 cal and national questions on which I have felt it my duty 
 to come over, though they are so delicate and ominous 
 that the value of my humble help is doubtful. Tell me," 
 he instinctively lowered his voice, though there was no 
 possibility of anyone but themselves hearing a syllable of 
 what he said " has Fergus hinted anything to you of 
 the efforts to get the Gaelic League condemned at Rome, 
 or to have the clergy ordered to withdraw from it, and of 
 the gathering crisis at Maynooth ? " 
 
 Maeve was so astonished that she started. 
 
8o THE: pivOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " We don t talk much about Maynooth lately/ she said 
 after a pause. " We differ too much about it, as I fear 
 we are coming to differ over other things, so we tacitly 
 avoid it except in a general way. I believe that there are 
 wild spirits in Maynooth; that Gaelic League ideas, and 
 what are coming to be called Sinn Fein ideas, have intoxi 
 cated them, and that they get too much of a show in the 
 paper. It is widely understood that certain of the articles 
 are by Maynooth men ; so they will have a serious effect 
 upon the people. It is also known that the Maynooth 
 authorities have issued an order that nobody in the college 
 is to write for the paper, and that the order has been dis- 
 l regarded. Isn t it terrible to think of clergymen them 
 selves disobeying and weakening ecclesiastical authority ? " 
 " Where the ecclesiastical authority is just and legiti 
 mate, yes. But ecclesiastical authority has been sadly 
 overstrained in Ireland, especially in matters pertaining 
 to the British connexion. The bishops and Rome hold 
 Ireland for England. Don t protest. The Church, as the 
 guardian, teacher, and disseminator of Christ s Gospel, 
 is one thing, about which there is no question amongst 
 any of us, though we may have our own opinions 
 as I certainly have about the quality and character of 
 the teaching in Ireland. But the Church in modern times 
 has a subtle and complicated diplomatic side and machin 
 ery, as it has to enter into relations and negotiations, 
 direct and indirect, with powers and governments round 
 the world. That diplomatic side of the Church is very 
 human and fallible. Ireland, if she understood it, would 
 have grave reason to complain of it, for it is in no sense 
 fair to Ireland. To conciliate a great world-power like 
 
MAYNOOTH CRISIS 8l 
 
 England it will sacrifice our faithful little Ireland at any 
 time." 
 
 " What a shame ! " said Maeve hotly. Then she blushed 
 and laughed. Father Martin himself smiled at her sudden 
 lapse from ultramontanism. 
 
 " It is, however, partly Ireland s fault," continued 
 Father Martin. " She is unrepresented, or feebly, im 
 perfectly, wrongly represented at Rome. It is time that 
 we should change this stupid order of things, and take 
 steps to have our national case represented fairly and ably 
 at the Vatican. With the true facts before it, even 
 Vatican politicians who are not the Catholic Church, 
 remember cannot sacrifice our historic Catholic nation 
 to please a Protestant Empire." 
 
 " Diplomacy is a remote and subtle thing," said Maeve 
 smilingly, " and takes some thinking over. But the Gaelic 
 League is a bright and immediate home fact. The idea 
 of condemning it seems a monstrous one." 
 
 11 It is offensive to certain English politicians, as they 
 know the national strength and sanity it will lead to. To 
 none is it more offensive and disagreeable than to certain 
 powerful English Catholics,, lay and clerical. Your own 
 bishops are coming to dread it because it is sowing and 
 spreading thought and bringing Catholics and Protestants 
 into harmony for national ends. At present the wires are 
 being sedulously pulled, and some in high places are con 
 fident that the condemnation will come. Happily, how 
 ever, the question is very complicated, and the fear is 
 arising in certain quarters that the condemnation might 
 have very dangerous consequences but not for the 
 Gaelic League." 
 
82 TH PLOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 " I m afraid/ said Maeve sadly, " that a condemnation 
 from Rome, or the withdrawal of the clergy from it, 
 would simply annihilate it in the country places." 
 
 " On the other hand," said Father Martin, " some of 
 us are very clear as to our duty in case the condemnation 
 comes. Whatever be the consequences we shall point out 
 clearly to the people that this condemnation is a political 
 move, and in no sense the voice of the Catholic Church. 
 Respectfully, but with absolute firmness, we shall repudi 
 ate and resist it. I am to meet several of the priests who 
 have been prominent in the movement, and I trust I shall 
 find them equally clear as to their duty." 
 
 " But how will the bishops stand ? " asked Maeve. 
 " They have at least in a mild way expressed their ap 
 proval of the League " 
 
 " Some of them-, at all events," answered Father Martin, 
 " though they have not thrown themselves into the move 
 ment in the way they would have done were they far- 
 seeing and national. All the same a condemnation of the 
 League would be to some extent a condemnation of them 
 selves. What they fear most, however, is the danger of 
 direct resistance, lay and clerical. It would all give what 
 you call the wild spirits of Maynooth a tremendous 
 chance, and there s no knowing where it would end. My 
 own opinion is that the bishops will not risk it. They 11 
 probably think it best to press Rome to withhold its 
 condemnation, and leave them to deal with the Maynooth 
 crisis themselves." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Maeve. " Is there a Maynooth crisis apart 
 from the question of the condemnation of the Gaelic 
 League by Rome ? " 
 
THE) MAYNOOTH CRISIS 83 
 
 " The bishops are sure there is, at all events. It all 
 depends upon developments, and how they are dealt with. 
 Some of the trouble means simply that an honest national 
 spirit, which we should all be proud and glad of, is 
 animating certain young men and professors. More of 
 it is owing to the expression of the growing idea that the 
 Church in Ireland is not doing its duty to the nation, and 
 treats genuinely enlightened modern ideas as heresy. 
 Then the bishops are uneasy over the spreading of what 
 is called liberal Catholicism in Maynooth as if real 
 Catholicism were not always liberal. What really disturbs 
 .them is the apparently growing sympathy, in a certain 
 quarter of the college, with Immanentism, which, by the 
 way, one of Fergus s contributors explained very lucidly 
 and attractively in Irish." 
 
 " I did not like it at all," declared Maeve. " Its logical 
 outcome would be to reduce all authority and all tradition 
 to a shadow." 
 
 " It might be maintained that it has been always in the 
 Church," replied Father Murray. " It is rather the wild 
 deductions from it that are unphilosophic and dangerous. 
 But very much simpler things and simpler thought are in 
 a sense rather dangerous in Ireland today, just as a little 
 good wine is dangerous to a starved man. The people 
 generally are left very ignorant, and quite unacquainted 
 with the philosophic basis of Catholicism. I am appalled 
 at the way the Church in Ireland is leaving them, and at 
 the tepid, timid, unintellectual life she is satisfied with 
 herself. I do not wonder at the uprising in young May 
 nooth, though I am pained and distressed at the thought 
 of the possible consequences of haste and rashness. I 
 
84 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 hope my humble influence with the leaders may prove to 
 be of some avail. On the other hand, if the bishops, as 
 is threatened, try suppressions or expulsions, no man can 
 tell the end." 
 
 " Fergus must have known of all this," said Maeve 
 dejectedly, " and yet he has not thought me worthy of 
 the least little confidence in the matter. Of course I ve 
 been a bit stern and critical about the paper, and all that, 
 but he might have taken my sympathy for granted." 
 
 Father Martin smiled, but a little sadly. 
 
 " You have a golden heart and character, Miss 
 O Hagan," he said, " but are you sure that you are always, 
 sufficiently open-minded and open-hearted yourself? Like 
 many who live much in the inner world the confidence of 
 Fergus is not easily obtained, but where really attracted 
 and appreciated it is intimate and unrestrained. The sym 
 pathy of a mind like yours would be infinitely precious to 
 one like him ; but beware of half and critically-measured 
 sympathy. Fergus will need all he can get in the days 
 that are before us. If our friends in Maynooth are at 
 tacked we may be sure that he and his work are not going 
 to escape. Our bishops, alas, have yet to learn the real 
 wants of today, and the real friends of the Church and 
 Ireland." 
 
 Maeve was grave and silent for a while. When she 
 spoke again there was a curious hesitancy about her 
 words, as if she were speaking half against her will. - 
 
 "All this talk about the clash of ideas in Church and 
 nation is very painful to me," she said. " It seems to me 
 like violence in a sacred place. I want to be far away 
 from it all. I don t quite know yet where I really want 
 
THIS MAYNOOTH CRISIS 85 
 
 to be, but it is somewhere very different from the Ireland 
 I see and know. I can t explain myself to Fergus, nor 
 indeed even to myself, for of late I seem often to be 
 carried altogether out of myself. I pass into a world, or 
 rather a state, that is utterly unlike my ordinary, actual 
 one. I am not speaking of anything that could at all be 
 described as mere imagination. The vividness and defin- 
 iteness put that explanation out of the question." 
 
 " It is a poor and preposterous philosophy that attempts 
 to dogmatize on the limits of the experience of a soul, and 
 say it is this and that and no more," said Father Murray 
 eagerly and kindly. " The comparatively little use that 
 whole multitudes of men and women make of their souls 
 in the human interlude is a most astounding and awesome 
 thought to me at times. But, I would like to ask, is what 
 you tell me a new experience in your life? " 
 
 " No," said Maeve. " It began some years ago in times 
 of physical pain. After my recovery for a year or two, 
 it was intermittent. Then for a time it seemed to have 
 departed; I was altogether what I may call my normal 
 self. Since our return to Ireland, and especially since 
 days of crisis seemed imminent, it has come anew and in 
 a more wonderful way. Often it is an almost unbearable 
 ecstasy ; a few times when alone, and at prayer, I have 
 fainted quite away. I am supposed to be a somewhat 
 critical and positive person in daily life, and I have been 
 severe with myself over all all I hardly know how to 
 speak of it, vividly and wonderfully though I realize it; 
 and I have asked myself who am I that I should come into 
 intimate relation with things behind the veil of sense. I 
 cannot answer; I can only relate. The visions and the 
 
86 THK PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 messages continue. I am almost afraid to tell you more, 
 for fear you would think that it is all a matter of dis 
 ordered imagination or awful presumption. I can say, 
 however, that there is a solemn task, an ordeal it may be, 
 before me, and I believe in Ireland. What it is I 
 know not yet." 
 
 Father Murray, in the gentle and gracious way that 
 made him beloved by those with whom he was entirely 
 confidential, asked a number of questions with serene 
 sympathy and delicacy. Maeve had long since known how 
 far from normal and trodden fields his mental life was 
 passed, but she never realized till now the essentially 
 mystical side of his character as well as his knowledge. 
 At one stage he told her with a grace and glow of his own, 
 of things recorded in the annals of Raimondo of Capua, 
 the friend and confessor of St. Catherine of Siena. They 
 came home to her with enkindling interest and surprise, 
 for some of her own experiences in her hours of ecstasy 
 recalled early visions of " The Mantellata," whose won 
 drous inner life, in her tragic Southern Tuscany of the far 
 fourteenth century, was being retold with such sympathy 
 of spirit and music of voice above the blue of the Dublin 
 Bay of the twentieth. " But," thought Maeve, " she was 
 chosen for sublime work in a terrible time, and who am I, 
 and what is there before me ? " 
 
 But long before the rare exchange of confidence was 
 ended, and Father Murray was obliged to leave, there 
 was sunshine in Maeve s mind. 
 
 When left alone, she sat for some time by the open 
 window, looking down towards the Bay which she did 
 not see. Now that Father Martin was gone the news 
 
THIS MAYNOOTH CRISIS 87 
 
 he had brought bore upon her with poignant force. If 
 only she and Fergus could see eye to eye on most things 
 the path of life would be easier, but Ireland with her 
 tormenting problems was breaking their intellectual and 
 spiritual kinship, and, unkindest irony of all, advanced 
 Maynooth, she felt, was largely responsible. Even yet 
 he would talk to her, with profound sympathy and under 
 standing, on her favorite women-saints. She remembered 
 how only that very morning he told her before leaving 
 that she would find on his study table an arresting little 
 book by a religious scientist, containing incidentally a 
 glowing appreciation of St. Teresa and her mysticism. 
 He had brought it home to translate into Irish in quiet 
 hours certain pages which would give the readers of 
 Fainne an Lae a new sense of wonder, and show them that 
 magic and reverence accompanied the . true scientific 
 spirit, whatever might be said of half-science " when 
 half-gods go the gods arrive." 
 
 Maeve sought the little book and read the transcen 
 dental view of St. Teresa with delight and astonishment. 
 Then she turned to pages that were marked for transla 
 tion- and comment, and perused them with bewilderment, 
 fascination, and questioning. 
 
 " The ether of science, on whose re-discovery she is 
 now pluming herself, is, perhaps, only akin to that vital 
 primordial force or vehicle of force undifferentiated 
 cosmic matter, which in its evolution gives birth to the 
 radio-active spark of life and which never will be re 
 discovered until she changes her present methods. For 
 this force or matter is of the Substance and Essence of 
 the Divine Metaphysical Sun, of which our visible sun 
 
88 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 is but the symbol. This all-powerful, universal, tremend 
 ous force, or origin of force and matter both, is the Life 
 Principle of sun and star and planet, of man and beast 
 yea, of all creation. It fills interstellar space; the 
 stone, the flower, man, are alike saturated and permeated 
 by it. It lurks in the dust in the street, for no atom of 
 matter in the whole wide creation is devoid of life, of 
 spiritual entity. It is the energy, the power which creeps 
 out in, and shapes the fronds of, the humblest moss 
 gleaming on the damp walls of some mountain cavern. 
 It builds up every life-cell. It is the invisible and potent 
 architect, which gives it those unparalleled shapes of 
 geometrical perfection and loveliness, revealed to us by 
 the microscope. . . . 
 
 " It was in one form of this force, this Universal Sol 
 vent, as Paracelsus calls it, which pervades and saturates 
 everything the Astral Light this Book, as she calls 
 it that Sta. Teresa read Divine Truths, and was enabled 
 at times to soar above Humanity, to dive deep into the 
 past and the future, and to become practically omnipotent 
 and omniscient. It was this same Book, the leaves of 
 which lie always open, which revealed the most intimate 
 secrets of Nature to those High Priests and philosophers 
 of antiquity who, attaining to a lofty state of spiritualiza- 
 tion, were able to read therein that knowledge which 
 eludes and baffles the modern scientist. In the astral light 
 is registered every scene, every word, every deed that has 
 ever existed, been said, done or thought in this vast uni 
 verse. . . . 
 
 " For the Wisdom philosophers maintained, and main 
 tain, that it is possible to communicate with the World 
 
THE MAYNOOTH CRISIS 89 
 
 Soul the Archeus by a faculty which, in the earliest 
 ages of the race, was more developed than it is now 
 and which, although for the most part dormant or latent 
 is still the inalienable possession of the human mind. 
 
 " This faculty enables him who has received the key 
 to retrace, as it were, in a mirror, the creative processes 
 of the Cosmos. It is maintained that the monad linked 
 with, and reflecting the parent monad, preserves intact 
 the photographs of these creative, still operative, pro 
 cesses, and under certain physiological conditions can be 
 made to yield them up. Man being thus placed in touch 
 with immediate, absolute and concrete knowledge, the 
 reign of error and hypothesis is at an end, and he be 
 comes, what he was meant to be, the Dominator and Ruler 
 of Nature s most occult and hidden forces. It was this 
 science, this knowledge of many of the properties and 
 powers of Akasa, i.e., ether (for who of finite intellect 
 can say all ? ) which enabled the sages of antiquity to 
 allay storms, produce thunder and lightning, arrest rain, 
 and all the other marvels ascribed to them. Do not mis 
 apprehend me. It is no blind force I speak of, but an all- 
 powerful and tremendous force, directed by Will and 
 Intelligence, an objective emanation of Divinity a 
 medium whereby the Divine Thought is transmitted to 
 and suffuses matter a medium which is the repository 
 of the spiritual images of all human thoughts and forms. 
 
 " The properties in as far as known to scientists, of the 
 etheric medium, the cathode, Roentgen, Becquerel, and 
 N rays, the radio-active spark, are all significant signs 
 that science must either abandon her old position in re 
 gard to forces outside the physical plane perfectly nat- 
 
 
9O THIS PLOUGH AND THJ$ CROSS 
 
 ural forces by the way or hover, baffled and impotent, 
 on the confines of the Visible and the Invisible. She has 
 come to a point when she must ally herself boldly with 
 Transcendental Metaphysics or fail ; when she must 
 humbly, and with bowed head, confess that her feeble 
 crawlings are girt in on every side by vast spiritual realms 
 of abysmal immensity, when she must either turn the 
 lock with that same key which opened the portal of the 
 universal secret to the sages, saints and alchemists of the 
 past, or give up the attempt for ever. 
 
 " It shows us that there is no conflict between matter 
 and spirit that they cannot be divorced. Both are alike 
 Divine. The Divine compenetrating matter matter corn- 
 penetrating the Divine. It establishes the solidarity of 
 Spirit. It proves beyond all possible disproof that we are 
 all Members of a Human and a Divine Brotherhood, 
 and woe be to him who fails to realize the transcendent 
 relationship in this, his ephemeral and temporary life." 
 
 Maeve sighed. All this might be true or untrue, 
 science or a dream; but it said nothing of the voice or 
 authority of the Church. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 LORD STRATHBARRA OFFENDS AND IS FORGIVEN 
 
 gN point of actuality the Boyne Valley is 
 not far from Dublin ; practically it is as 
 distant as the Middle Ages. To the Dub- 
 liner it is a mere name, conveying a vague 
 sense of beauty and remoteness. Few men 
 in all Ireland have thought in modern times 
 of exploring it. Cattle-dealers and com 
 mercial travelers fare sometimes to the 
 towns and villages in its vicinity, but the 
 Valley itself remains as much apart from 
 their lives and destiny as fairyland. Even 
 to those towns and villages in its vicinity the trains from 
 Dublin are few, and they look like contrivances that the 
 railway companies do not very well know what to do with. 
 They are sent forth in the morning and evening, never 
 in the full light of day; with just one exception, and this 
 is not a direct or Midland conveyance, but first goes north 
 by the sea as far as Drogheda, and then turns and makes 
 the best of the devious and lonely way to Oldcastle (there 
 is a corresponding one from Meath at noon). This was 
 the train which Fergus and Elsie arranged to catch after 
 
92 THIS PLOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 lunch. So shortly before three o clock they found them 
 selves at Amiens Street. 
 
 They were surprised to find Lord Strathbarra at the 
 station. He explained that he was on his way to Kells, 
 as, amongst other things, one of his schemes was a 
 special study of Saint Columcille particularly his vis 
 ionary and mystical appeal for a Continental liberal 
 Catholic magazine ; and he found that a first-hand in 
 vestigation of the saints homes and haunts helped his 
 work appreciably. There was a great deal in the Genius 
 Loci. He was delighted to find that he would have the 
 company of Elsie and Fergus as far as Baile na Boinne, 
 on the verge of the Boyne Valley. 
 
 At heart Fergus was not quite so pleased, though he 
 was keenly interested in Lord Strathbarra. He did not 
 at first admit to himself that he was not pleased, still 
 less would he admit that his undefined displeasure had 
 anything to do with Lord Strathbarra s very obvious in 
 terest in Elsie. As the train ambled along by the sunlit 
 Fingal sea, and Lord Strathbarra, seated by Elsie s side, 
 grew more and more animated and interested, he cherished 
 a feeling more pronounced, though he asked and answered 
 questions with apparent ease and lightness of heart. When 
 the train turned at Drogheda into a lonely and cloistral 
 land he lapsed into a pensive listlessness, though his im 
 agination was vividly if poignantly at work. Lord Strath 
 barra now monopolized the talk, and his eager tones, 
 a-blent with the rumbling of the train in the silent land, 
 brought a strange mental lull. Fergus caught as in a dream 
 words and phrases like " Eusebius," " Tertullian," " Sy 
 noptic," " Fourth Gospel," " Pauline," "Athanasius," 
 
LORD STRATHBARRA 93 
 
 " Forged Decretals," " v See of Constantinople," " Deposit 
 of the Faith," " Development of Doctrine," " Council of 
 Constance," " Lammenais," " Lacordaire," " L Avenir," 
 " Vaticanism," and anon " second sight," " lona," " The 
 Light that enlighteneth every man," " The Immanentist 
 position." Elsie s eyes sparkled curiously, Lord Strath- 
 barra s glowed. 
 
 Fergus was conscious that a deep though unphilo- 
 sophic objection to Immanentism was arising in his mind. 
 The Immanentism of Lord Strathbarra in his lonely 
 Hebridean isle, where he planned a mighty stand against 
 Rome, was bold and picturesque; the Immanentism of 
 Elsie, such as it was, made her more interesting and 
 piquant, but an Immanentism which brought the hearts 
 of the laird and the lady into romantic accord and tune 
 deserved to be cursed with bell, book and candle. Fergus 
 admitted that his reasoning was ridiculous, but these did 
 not serve to bring him into better humor with himself. 
 Why, after all, should not Lord Strathbarra sail down 
 from his wild Hebridean shore and capture Elsie if he 
 could? So asked some ironic imp in Fergus s ear, and 
 though he was much offended he was not ready with an 
 answer. He had come to assume that Elsie s destiny was 
 a matter on which he alone had any right even to express 
 an opinion. His attitude to her, so far as it could be 
 denned at all, was compact of brotherliness, playfulness 
 and idealism. That peer or peasant should presume to 
 interfere with the subtle and delicate harmony of their 
 relations was as great a piece of presumption as that either 
 should dictate his leading articles or take out and pass 
 remarks on his private correspondence. 
 
94 TH E PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 However, he forgave Lord Strathbarra as a good man 
 who had unwittingly made a very foolish mistake and 
 he said, Slan leaf go n-eirghidh an bothar leat at Baile 
 na Boinne station in quite a forgiving spirit. He felt 
 hurt all the same. When, as they passed to the station 
 door Elsie put her hand gently on his shoulder, looked up 
 laughingly into his eyes, and said with the airiest com 
 passion, " Poor old thing ! Is it so very, very tired of the 
 Immanentist position philosophically and historically con 
 sidered ? " he felt that all which had happened from 
 Amiens Street down had been gently blown from the 
 Book of Life by an angel s breath, and he wished Lord 
 Strathbara quite a flood of light and lore on the soul 
 and sixth sense of Columcille when he got to the piece 
 of desolation called Kells. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE; PHILOSOPHY OF A FAIRY SKY-LARK 
 
 ERGUS had told Elsie that Baile na Boinne 
 was a series of sleepy and straggling slums 
 on the borders of wonderland. It was con 
 soling to her spirit to be assured of the 
 proximity of wonderland, for though it 
 was not absolutely all slums, Baile na 
 Boinne itself was depressing, even on a 
 glorious early summer afternoon. It looked a 
 place that had ceased to grow or work or think 
 or trouble about anything, even washing. It 
 conveyed the sense of being the sort of town that 
 a progresssive people would clear away as rubbish, to 
 build a new one on the site, the old one being really 
 incapable, by any sort of mending, of meeting modern 
 human requirements. Being Wednesday the town suf 
 fered a market, or rather a sort of fair, and this served 
 to intensify the sense of wreck and decay. The marketers 
 had the air of being too listless to go home over the 
 lonely roads amid the grasslands. There were several of 
 them sjill in all the straggling streets, mainly in half- 
 petrified groups outside the shabby-looking shops devoted 
 to groceries and drink. They seemed plodders with no 
 
98 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 curiosities and no interests. The soil and Nature meant 
 nothing to them. They were nearly all non-producers; 
 concerned mostly with cattle, which they did not fatten, 
 leaving that more profitable business to the English and 
 Scotch, who bought the unfinished beasts. Where Baile 
 na Boinne did not suggest inertia it suggested meanness 
 or sordidness. 
 
 "O Man of the Golden Mists," said Elsie, as they 
 turned down the road that led from the town over the 
 Boyne, " do you really expect to build a nation out of 
 such stuff as Baile na Boinne is made of? It sets one 
 thinking of a human scrap-heap." 
 
 " Paris has given you picturesque .notions," he said. 
 "After all, God is good, and we ve only seen the outside 
 of Baile na Boinne s people anyway. Under their clumsy 
 garb, and inert, shrivelled faces, there is the eternal ro 
 mance and mystery of individuality. Where there is 
 human personality there is possible magic, possible 
 miracle." 
 
 " Baile na Boinne looks to me the Great Blight in the 
 form of a town," she said. 
 
 "At the worst/ he replied, " It is good to be a while in 
 Baile na Boinne. It leaves one under no illusions as to 
 the mighty labor to be effected before Ireland is in the 
 way to breathe and grow. But by way of compensation 
 I 11 take you into fairyland in a few minutes." 
 
 They stopped for a little while on the Boyne Bridge. 
 The river at this stage, before sweeping round into the 
 Valley, expanded like a lake below them. In the midst 
 of it was a tiny islet in which tall trees rose. It was a 
 
A FAIRY SKY-LARK S PHILOSOPHY 99 
 
 lovely little picture the expanse of water and the greenery 
 made ; Elsie thought that somehow she had been suddenly 
 transported into a world a thousand miles from the mean 
 market town they had just left. 
 
 " This spot is always a little paradise to the imagina 
 tion," said Fergus. " You know that all this is really 
 storied ground. Hereabouts were favorite haunts of the 
 old gods of the Gael, whom your friend D Arbois de 
 Jubainville re-discovered for Europe a few years ago. 
 Angus Og, the god of love, had one of his wonder-palaces 
 not far from where we now stand. His magical birds 
 used to sing above lovers. 
 
 Beautiful is the beginning of love 
 A youth and a maid, and the birds 
 Of Angus above them, 
 
 as the old bard sang. What a grand incentive and beauti 
 ful accompaniment to life had those ancestors of ours, 
 to whom such ideas were realities." 
 
 " You would have done record things in the golden halo 
 industry if you had lived in their day," said Elsie. " Per 
 haps you did. There may be something in reincarnation. 
 You may even be Angus Og without knowing it, and 
 your affection for Meath may have a deeper explanation 
 than you think. And the crows why, they may be your 
 old-time birds of love in disguise." 
 
 "If you mean that I am as like Angus as the crows of 
 Meath are like his birds, I thank you sincerely for the 
 graceful compliment," said Fergus. " There are occa 
 sions, however, on which I would not change places even 
 with Angus Og." 
 
IOO THE PLOUGH AND THE} CROSS 
 
 "If you happen to be Angus in a new form your 
 behavior on the train journey was not up to your old 
 heroic standard," said Elsie slyly. 
 
 " Nobody dared in the old days to come and try to 
 delude the innocent and trusting mind of a beautiful 
 ward of Angus by relating nineteen hundred years 
 history of the Light that enlighteneth every man/ " 
 retorted Fergus, with a laugh. 
 
 "A ward/ indeed, Fergus O Hagan ! Neither Angus 
 nor any other god in Gaeldom had the infinite pretension 
 of some modern self-elected leaders of the people," said 
 Elsie, with her delicate revel of laughter. 
 
 They passed on, and a few moments walk brought 
 them to the bridge over the canal. Under the bridge, 
 and beside the canal, a narrow pathway gave entrance to 
 the Valley. " You can now bid farewell to the ordinary 
 world change here for fairyland! " said Fergus. 
 
 Once in the Valley everything savored of seclusion and 
 beauty. Nature was cloistral and reverential as well as 
 lovely. For a stage tall trees filled almost all the space 
 between the river on one side and the canal on the other. 
 They could see lonely fields ranging away from the 
 further side of the river, when they came out through the 
 trees to its brink, while when they veered round to the 
 canal side there was nothing visible beyond but high 
 ground and lonely greenery. Thus they seemed to be 
 cut away from the world and humanity, save at two 
 picturesque early stages, where an old mill and another 
 building had been turned by Mr. Milligan to new fac 
 tories ; and even here the signs of work and life rather 
 intensified the general loneliness. After these was still- 
 
A FAIRY SKY-LARK s PHILOSOPHY 101 
 
 ness. At almost every turn the river and the riverside 
 scenery revealed new shades of loveliness. They spoke 
 little; the heart and mind seemed to demand no expres 
 sion here the quiet ecstasy was all-sufficing. After a 
 time there were no trees for a spell, the Valley narrowing 
 to a green strip between the natural and the artificial 
 river, the scenery on either side still beautiful and de 
 serted. Here they found voice and chatted a little, Fergus 
 explaining for one thing the puzzle of the silent canal. 
 It had been made in the days of the independent Irish 
 Parliament, but for a generation it had been silent and 
 neglected. Lately, however, Mr. Milligan s scheme for 
 its freeing and utilizing had been concluded, and it was 
 to play a liberal part in the new projects that would bring 
 industrial and human momentum into the beautiful Boyne 
 Valley desert. 
 
 Tis hard to picture human activity invading this 
 solitude," said Elsie. " There is something sacred about 
 it sacred and a little awesome." 
 
 After a while they were under trees again, and the 
 Valley seemed to grow more cloistral and more romantic. 
 There were surprises of shading and of river magic at 
 every stage. The scene might be a fairyland into which, 
 by some amazing and benign fortune, they had strayed. 
 At last they came to a lovely piece of open sward, where 
 the river widened into a shining lake-like expanse, an old 
 ruined castle rising on the lonely height- beyond the 
 further bank. Many had been their wonder-glimpses 
 since they entered the Valley, but there was a mysterious 
 sense of surprise and revelation in this. Elsie s eyes 
 shone as if she had suddenly seen a faery vision. She 
 
102 TH PLOUGH AND TUtf CROSS 
 
 sat down on the bank above the gleaming expanse of 
 water. " Enchantment ! " was all she said. 
 
 Fergus sat down also. After a few moments she 
 turned to him with softly shining eyes. 
 
 " Do you know," she said, " there are times when 
 talking seems a poor, primitive contrivance that tries 
 hopelessly to express the inexpressible. That s how I 
 feel at this moment. What I d say if I had the winged 
 words I want is that I don t seem ever to have been 
 alive till now, and I am just thinking what a really en 
 chanting thing life is." 
 
 " Well, you Ve only to look into yourself to see how 
 beautiful life is," said Fergus. " There s only a slight, 
 all but spiritualized bodily vesture, like gauze, between 
 your spirit and the infinite. So you are your own fairy 
 land. Your mind can always revel and see wonder. 
 I have to brush away tons of cloud, and scare off crowds 
 of dragons and tigers, before I can come to anything 
 interesting and soulful in my personality." 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, there s no use in pretending that 
 I Ve been escorted into the Boyne Valley by a menagerie." 
 
 " It was an exercise in symbolic comparison. I was 
 trying to contrast our two natures and experiences. 
 While you are easily and naturally ethereal, I have to 
 get out of dungeons and fight dragons before I can 
 think of looking upward,, much less enjoying any spiritual 
 soaring." 
 
 " Well, I may be ethereal as you call it, but it is the 
 etherealism of a sky-lark that is tied most of the time 
 in a wintry bog. Remember, O Man of the Golden 
 
A P AIRY SKY-IvARK S PHILOSOPHY IO3 
 
 Mists, that life is not all a summer afternoon in the Boyne 
 Valley." 
 
 " We all," he said, " get into an absurd habit of treating 
 a personality as something definite and constant. I am 
 twenty things myself, and fifteen of them are unknown 
 to my personal acquaintances, and seventeen of them 
 have never been expressed in the paper. As for you, I 
 know your shaded moods, yet you are beautifully light 
 some and elfin in my imagination " 
 
 " Young man, I am beginning to find it exceedingly 
 difficult to live up to your lively fancy. About twenty 
 times in the last couple of years I had made up my mind 
 to settle down as a rational and fairly level-headed crea 
 ture one who would try to take sober and sensible 
 views of life. Just as I was putting the finishing touches 
 each time to my decision, and was admiring it in my 
 mental looking-glass, your inevitable ten-paged letter 
 came and set my fancy romping again, playing its star 
 part of fairy-child-skylark. I answered in kind, and the 
 effect on your work has been bad. I can always trace 
 it easily. After receiving a letter of mine there s a crazy 
 sense of irresponsibility in your articles. In Irish es 
 pecially you throw decorum to the winds." 
 
 " Gaiety of manner and gravity of matter you mean," 
 replied Fergus. " It s the mark of great art. There 
 have been grave and learned dissertations as to the secret 
 of the style of Fainne an Lac, but nobody has guessed 
 the truth, and thought of giving honor where honor is 
 due to her whom Maeve in facetious moments refers 
 to as Our Paris Correspondent. " 
 
IO4 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " Don t you think it would be a great gain if I ceased 
 writing, and so famous an organ of a movement got a 
 chance of possessing more sobriety and dignity?" 
 
 " Polite names for dulness. Your letters kindle spirit 
 ual fire, though the expression of it for the benefit of a 
 nation is sometimes disguised in playful forms. It is 
 rapture of the soul all the same. On a few occasions 
 when you were slow about writing, my soul seemed to 
 have gone out in the cold. I was forlorn and evil- 
 mooded, and grew very nearly as dull as the daily papers. 
 They are horrible times to look back to." 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, I don t believe you mean half 
 what you say, or that you care a pin about anybody," 
 said Elsie. " Your imagination simply wants something 
 to play with, and it has kept to me just because we used 
 to be so much together. I used to say terribly saucy 
 things in my natural girlish days, and you got a literary 
 interest in them and me. My tongue appealed to your 
 sense of style. I object to be considered in a cold, 
 scientific way as a subject. : 
 
 "If you were not quite so absolutely charming," he 
 said, " I d have had to bring you home and marry you 
 a good while ago. Somewhat less charming than you are, 
 I d want you near me always in order to preserve the 
 delightful sense you impart. But you are so unique in 
 your glow and sweetness that just to know you are in 
 it is a feast to mind and spirit. And so I ve been able 
 to reconcile myself to the thought of deferring the happy 
 time till the world went well. Sometimes in truth a 
 half-fear used to come over me that you were too delicate 
 and ethereal for ordinary human relations at all; that 
 
A FAIRY SKY-LARK S PHILOSOPHY 105 
 
 it would be cruel to bring you down to earth. I now 
 believe that you 11 be perfectly serene there." 
 
 She looked into his face and laughed musically. 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan," she said, " I am sometimes in 
 doubt whether you are intensely warm-hearted, or the 
 most cold-hearted person in the world. And when you 
 talk I am not always certain that you are not playing 
 with words and unconsciously weaving leading articles. 
 Don t practise on me, please, in this lovely hour of life 
 and on my first visit to the Boyne Valley. Your prose 
 fancy about marriage is characteristically cheeky. You 
 never spoke this way before." 
 
 " Words are crude where sympathy, feeling, and under 
 standing are so fine. Besides, you know my inner and 
 outer life has not been in an exactly placid and settled 
 state hitherto. Indeed, I cannot call it so even now; 
 but it is promising, and anyway we cannot play with 
 destiny indefinitely." 
 
 " You think you have nothing to do now that the 
 Boyne Valley, and perhaps the Birds of Angus/ have 
 affected your imagination but to make up your mind, 
 and reach out your hand for your fairy skylark. But 
 up in the blue she s taken notes of the wayward artistic 
 hearts down below, and she knows that Boyne Valley 
 summer moods are one thing, and Boyne Valley (and 
 Dublin) autumn and winter moods quite another thing. 
 The little bird is glic, as we say in Irish, and she knows 
 that when the mood changed she would be a fairy sky 
 lark no longer. She might be regarded well, as crows 
 are regarded by some people." 
 
 " The sweet little thing might at least be just," he 
 
IO6 TIIU PLOUGH AND Tlltf CROSS 
 
 declared. " She forgets that I said that I quite liked 
 crows. But she must have a positively fantastic imagina 
 tion if she can see herself ever pictured as a crow." 
 
 " The fairy sky-lark is also exceedingly proud. The 
 thought of being a burden on a toiling fellow-creature 
 is painful to her. While she can work out her destiny 
 in her own impetuous way she is comparatively happy. 
 Fainne an Lae has said more than once that the social 
 order must be re-organized, and woman made economic 
 ally independent, and then she can marry with a lighter 
 heart. I think the best way " she smiled mischievously 
 " to bring about that re-organization of the social 
 order is for women to refuse to marry until it is done. 
 I 11 take your strenuous, Golden- Age paper at its word, 
 Fergus O Hagan. I simply won t entertain the idea of 
 marriage till your humanizing, artistic, socialist regime 
 is established." 
 
 As she spoke, she laid her hand gently on his shoulder, 
 and looked up into his eyes quizzically. 
 
 "A mere debating point is unworthy of your subtle 
 genius. The emancipation of the average woman was 
 mentioned as an incidental gain and glory of the new 
 order. The emancipation exists already where the man 
 and woman are high-minded, and appreciate the human 
 and spiritual individuality of each other such men and 
 women are really socialists, forerunners of the new order. 
 You will have absolutely all the freedom you desire " 
 
 " Young man you must not try to make me foolish. 
 Of course, to me you are one apart, and life would seem 
 unnatural if you were not fond of me, and I of you in 
 a reasonable way, of course " she laid a delightful 
 
A FAIRY SKY-IvARK S PHILOSOPHY IO? 
 
 emphasis on the " reasonable " " but you can t manu 
 facture a golden halo for me, especially when we get back 
 from this enchanted valley to the workaday world." 
 
 " There is to be no workaday world any more," he 
 replied. " I shan t let you return to Paris. So work 
 will be henceforth a thing of inspiration and joy, as life 
 will have found its inspiring and explaining beauty." 
 
 " How very like a socialist leading article ! " she re 
 sponded teasingly. " I wonder if I were unkind enough 
 to take you at your word, would you try all your leaders 
 on the shoulders I mean the wings of your poor 
 fairy sky-lark?" 
 
 The conversation became a little too romantically friv 
 olous for serious history. 
 
 " I have a vague memory," said Elsie at last, " that 
 part of today s program was a visit to a farm or some 
 thing of that kind. You haven t said anything about it, 
 or of the. ordinary concerns of life for some hours. 
 Won t it take some time to see everything before catching 
 the last train for Dublin ? " 
 
 He looked at his watch with a little start. It was 
 over a full hour later than he thought,, and the last train 
 for Dublin had gone from Baile na Boinne ! 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 PARTS OR THE HEBRIDES? 
 
 HE loss of the last train, and the 
 comparative lateness of the hour, 
 did not worry Fergus greatly. After 
 a few moments thought he appeared 
 to be rather pleased and relieved. 
 There was plenty of accommodation, 
 he said, in the quaint old house on 
 the little farm. Sean O Carroll and 
 his wife, his own brothers and their 
 wives, and the new colonists gener 
 ally, would be delighted to have them 
 for the evening. They were all choice spirits and very 
 racy of the soil. It would be a night of their childhood 
 in the South restored. Maeve would understand he 
 had missed the last train before. She would be blithely 
 sarcastic indeed when they returned ; but there was an 
 intellectual savor in her sarcasm which raised it to the 
 dignity of literature. Anyhow, with Elsie to the fore, 
 Fergus said, he could bear anything. She seemed, as 
 it were, his finer self, spiritualized and airy, and set 
 gracefully beside him, instead of being a component part 
 
PARIS OR THE: HEBRIDES? 109 
 
 of him. Now he had new light on the great Eden story 
 of Man s ideal mate being formed from within himself. 
 
 " How foolish you 11 think all these passing enthusi 
 asms when you come to sober middle age ! " said Elsie, 
 laughing. " I know you better than you know yourself. 
 Neither you nor Maeve could ever be really in love, for 
 you have not sufficient passion. In either case what you 
 would regard as love would be just a phase of intellectual 
 enthusiasm. If under the spell of the enthusiasm you 
 happened to get married you would be mightily dis 
 gusted with yourself for the rest of your life. Anyway, 
 you have deeper work to do than idealizing an individual, 
 though that temporary process may be a necessary part 
 of your mental education, and may make you a little 
 more human." 
 
 Fergus laughed. 
 
 "Are you, too, amongst the philosophers? They are 
 astonishingly plentiful in New Ireland. I fear we have 
 too much philosophy, and that we live in the air rather 
 than in the nation. Your present piece of philosophy 
 would be dangerous if it were serious. The real, subtle, 
 and lasting love is precisely that which is suffused with 
 intellectual enthusiasm." 
 
 " Like all true teachers," Elsie declared gaily, " I must 
 wait patiently for justification. In serious middle age, 
 when the golden mists and irresponsible moods are gone, 
 you will wonder at my insight. Come away now, like 
 a good boy, and get on with the work of life." 
 
 " I m afraid that it will be terribly difficult to get on 
 with what you call the work of life. In great moods of 
 religious exaltation mystics gave up the world, became 
 
no THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 hermits, and led lives of ecstatic contemplation. I under 
 stand the attitude and the spirit now. My affection is 
 mysticism a divine spell and dream in which I want 
 to revel, far from the breath of the rough world." 
 
 " Don t you think, Fergus O Hagan, that you are 
 dropping into careless and conventional ways when you 
 allow yourself to speak of such things as the rough 
 world ? Don t you see the magnificent stage you have ? 
 Look over at that wonderful setting sun, which has made 
 these glorious hours possible for us. By-and-bye there 
 will be a revel of stars that ought to entrance you. Why, 
 kings, or even gods, could not be better served. Yet 
 Fergus O Hagan, you have the coolness to talk of the 
 rough world/ Even I, light-minded creature that I am, 
 don t feel that way when I m away at the office of 
 La vie domestique, writing about sleek cats and silly 
 pug dogs." 
 
 "And, shades of Angus ! " he said, " what cruelty and 
 waste of beautiful life is such an existence for you ! How 
 on earth is it that I did not see the weary tragedy of it 
 before ? I cannot let you back again " 
 
 A smile, half-sad, half-amused, played upon her lips. 
 
 " You are getting more delightfully and wildly im 
 practicable every moment," was what she said. Then, 
 after a pause : " Don t fear for me. I have my own 
 kingdom, which I regulate and rule rather tyrannically 
 except on holiday spells. I am not sure, though, that 
 I shall return to Paris. If you were not in such a grave 
 mood in the latter part of the train journey you d have 
 heard Lord Strathbarra say that he d like me to become 
 his private secretary. In his mixture of Renaissance and 
 
PARIS OR THE HEBRIDES? Ill 
 
 Reformation in the Hebrides he expects his correspond 
 ence to be immense." 
 
 A shade passed over Fergus s face. He looked keenly 
 at Elsie before he spoke. 
 
 " The presumption of Lord Strathbarra is beyond 
 description/ he declared. " I hope he 11 come into clash 
 with the bishops straight away, or with Rome itself. 
 Then he 11 have quite enough to think about. His deep 
 design " 
 
 Elsie placed her fingers on his lips. 
 
 " I have not said yet that I was going, Fergus O Hagan. 
 I was just trying you, and your nature is more impetuous 
 and jealous than I thought. Let us get away to that 
 farm-house of yours if it really exists." 
 
 "Alas ! " he said, as he rose, " it is really getting late, 
 and I suppose we must go. But I shrink from all other 
 human society now in the presence of others you won t 
 seem to belong wholly to me " 
 
 "And, conceited man, who told you that I belong 
 wholly to you ? " she asked, with vehemence through 
 which laughter broke. 
 
 " It has often puzzled me," he said, ignoring her ques 
 tion, " that Naisi, on his flight with Deirdre to Scotland, 
 should have been glad of the company of his brothers 
 and others, though, of course, there were reasons for 
 their flight, too. Even one s brothers must be a little 
 out of place on a honeymoon. By the way, what a 
 lovely heroine is Deirdre the most winning, tender, 
 devoted, and romantic woman even in our hero-sagas. 
 She must have been like you in the days when she was 
 
H2 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 wooed and won, though I do not think that she had 
 your charming piquancy and playfulness." 
 
 Elsie took hold of his arm. 
 
 " Come away, maker of golden halos," she said. " If 
 you love me " she laughed musically " bring me to 
 this alleged homestead of yours. I heard you croon a 
 verse in the office today. One line I remember : 
 
 He follows after shadows, the King of Ireland s son. 
 I begin to fear that you are the king s son." 
 
 " Then you d be the princess, and in due course the 
 queen. Wouldn t you like it ? " 
 
 " What ! in a land of shadows ! There would be no 
 other woman before whom I could show off my crown ; 
 and so according to men s theory of women there 
 would be no pleasure in life." 
 
 "And do you imagine that I d try to fit you into a 
 mere theory of women ? You are you, outside and 
 above all theory, unique." 
 
 "Fergus O Hagan, a week s ploughing on a real 
 farm would do you. good, and bring you down to the 
 realities of life." 
 
 Some minutes later they crossed a bridge, and a brisk 
 walk over a lonely road, and then along a lonelier lane, 
 brought them to the quaint old house in Cluainlumney. 
 Down the fields they could see the new cottages of his 
 brothers and the other pioneers of tillage in that lovely, 
 long-deserted place. . . . 
 
 Already, comparatively brief though the time and the 
 journey were, Fergus O Hagan had begun to experience 
 
PARIS OR THE; HEBRIDES? 113 
 
 one of those tormenting and inexplicable changes of 
 mood which sometimes set his inner life awry. Or, 
 rather, he seemed to consist of two selves, one of which 
 sat in pitiless judgment on the other. Sometimes when 
 he felt keenly he wrote intensely and without any reserve, 
 and, as we have seen earlier, by the time the proof or the 
 printed words arrived there came also the distressing 
 sense that the revelation was too personal and intimate 
 that it was, as it were, like tearing out a piece of one s 
 soul and flinging it from the house-tops into the market 
 place. However, with confidences in a mere newspaper 
 one had the satisfaction of knowing that they were in 
 the first place anonymous, and in the second short-lived. 
 One brief, kindly week consigned them, par grande vitcsse, 
 to oblivion, and the Ego would go back to its mellow 
 and sacred solitude. The talk with Elsie was very differ 
 ent. To be sure, all those river-side references to affec 
 tion and the future had been in playful wise, and his and 
 Elsie s relation and harmony of association had been such 
 that it all seemed like talking to one s self. Yet somehow 
 he had now the disturbing feeling that it was crude, and 
 that it had broken a delicate and delightful spell. It had 
 brushed away the subtle poetry, and brought something 
 common if not vulgar into his relation to Elsie. For 
 an idealist, he had some peculiar feelings, or rather 
 qualms, about marriage, partly because he had known 
 among his friends in more lands than one rather distress 
 ing failures, for no obvious reason, in that trying and 
 sensitive state ; the best of men seemed to fail hope 
 lessly at times in the reverential attitude due to the 
 women they really prized when all was said; and the 
 
114 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 best of the women seemed to be fated on occasions to stir 
 up not the higher but the lower natures of their husbands. 
 With the most Christian and chivalrous spirit in both 
 there seemed often a spiritual deterioriation, which 
 showed what a severe task even Christianity had with 
 the wayward children of Adam. And again, with the 
 uncertainty and cruelty of present social conditions he 
 often felt especially in the slums of Dublin that 
 the man who adventured on marriage was either an im 
 pulsive idiot, or a sublime if somewhat thoughtless hero. 
 
 But apart from general notions and qualms, some of 
 which he had shrunk from analysing, Elsie was a problem 
 all to herself, quite different he was sure from woman 
 kind in general. He had a poetical, delicately undefined 
 feeling that it would be well and delightful if he and 
 she could remain young indefinitely; always kindred in 
 spirit and eagerly interested in life, which would thus be 
 a sort of congenial un-idling Eden. He would be quite 
 contented thus to go on, thus to work and dream, and 
 wait the still fuller communion of soul in another life 
 and star. The trouble would be if someone else of a 
 more matter-of-fact and unidealistic turn of mind came 
 along and wanted to marry Elsie on earth. That would 
 be intolerable and bitter, but in our imperfect planet such 
 disagreeable things happened. 
 
 Was not Lord Strathbarra, impressed if not positively 
 devoted, already on the scene, shadowing the landscape 
 within the very heart of Eden? Lord Strathbarra of all 
 men, who with his vivid knowledge of the early Fathers 
 and his epic dreams of a transcendental Church and State, 
 ought to have no place whatever in his philosophy for 
 
PARIS OR THE) HDBRIDBS? 115 
 
 feminism, in the abstract or the concrete ! Fergus blamed 
 Lord Strathbarra severely for his own distracting depart 
 ure from idealism by the riverside, and for the compli 
 cations which he felt and feared would ensue. 
 
 The fact remained that the Birds of Angus had been 
 
 tempted back to the Boyne Valley, and . Even an 
 
 editor who gets into a politely autocratic way of doing 
 things, and develops absurdly false notions of his power 
 and influence could not crowd them out, even for a 
 week, on the plea of want of space. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 VITA NOVA " IN TH BOYNE) 
 
 jERGUS being a frequent and sometimes 
 an unexpected visitor at Cluainlumney, 
 Sean O Carroll and Maire, his wife, were 
 never unprepared for him. But they 
 were delighted and excited by the coming 
 of Elsie, whom they had last seen in the 
 South some years before. They, like all 
 who had seen her, had lively memories of her. 
 She had been a special favorite of Maire s 
 and had written many a letter for her to her 
 daughters in America. " God bless you, a char a 
 mo chroidhe" Maire used to say, " but you do it betther 
 than me own heart could do it, full an tendher as it is 
 this blessed day." " But wait/ Sean would say, " till 
 she 11 be writin her own love-letthers. There s some boy 
 takin the world aisy today, little knowin the joy an 
 glory that s in store for him." " Let him take it aisy," 
 Maire would retort, " an let him keep on takin it aisy 
 till his hearse overtakes him. Elsie is too good for any 
 man that ever stood in two shoes, an tisn t throublin 
 her head about their silly notions she 11 be." 
 
 Meeting Sean and Maire quite at home in the quaint 
 
"VITA NOVA" IN THE: BOYNE VAI^KY 119 
 
 old house was to Elsie like a grand heartsome whiff of 
 the life of other days in the South. Sean s long, thin 
 face was somehow a study in drollery, even when in 
 repose, comicality almost always peering out from the 
 corners of his eyes ; being with difficulty restrained even 
 at church and during thunderstorms. Maire was serious 
 and plaintive in air and outlook, but she had a heart of 
 gold, and was unbounded in her affection. In a kitchen 
 there was at once something motherly and queenly about 
 her ; there was a flavor of heroic times and hospitalities 
 in the way she set a table and a meal and tried to warm 
 the heart of the visitor towards the fare and the par 
 taking thereof. Her present kitchen was a spacious 
 one, and she took a noble pride in it, giving it a delightful 
 sense of homeliness and comfort, so that to Elsie, as to 
 Fergus always, it brought a sense of the homeliness and 
 cheer of the early home life, long a tender memory. 
 
 Sean went out and brought over Kevin and Art and 
 their wives, and when the merry greetings were over it 
 was a joyous home circle that sat round the table, while 
 Sean from the chimney corner he had a weakness for 
 chimney corners even in summer interjected his droll 
 remarks on almost every subject that cropped up. When 
 he had no remark to make he crooned in his quaint and 
 curious way a snatch from one of his rare stock of old 
 country ditties. Then he joined in the chat again, and 
 suddenly, with the oddest effect, cast his eye humorously 
 up the chimney and crooned a snatch of a wholly differ 
 ent sone. The airs were racy of the soil, the words for 
 the most part a mixture of raciness and craziness. Now 
 it was : 
 
I2O THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 The Divil came to me one day at the plough, 
 " Oro, Patterson ! Poor Dick Patterson ! " 
 
 Anon it was : 
 
 A tidy woman ! A tidy woman ! 
 
 A tidy woman was Mdirin! 
 She milked the cow in the tail of her gown, 
 
 And carried it home in her prdiscin! 
 
 And so on through quite a singular series. He made 
 impromptu rhymes occasionally by way of reply to 
 remarks of his young neighbors, Art and Kevin. Both 
 of the latter were different in temperament from Fergus, 
 except in their love of country things and interests and 
 their taste for music. Their literary preferences were 
 romantic tales and ghost lore. They were intensely inter 
 ested in the land and its powers they had been testing 
 some of Kropotkin s theories with zeal and profit since 
 Fergus had sent them Fields, Factories, and Workshops 
 they loved and understood Nature and her magic much 
 more than they consciously realized ; they were so strong 
 and interested that labor was a joy to them, and they 
 delighted in music and country sports and pastimes when 
 it was over. Their wives were fresh and bonny girls 
 from their own neighborhood. The patent content and 
 happiness of all four set Elsie wondering a little wistfully. 
 Why did it seem a distant dream something almost of 
 another realm than this to think that she and Fergus 
 could ever attain so radiantly content and undisturbed a 
 state ? 
 
 There were a hundred things to talk over, but the 
 seanchus turned ever and anon from the new days in 
 Meath to other days and neighbors in the kindly South. 
 
" VITA NOVA " IN Til 15 13OYN VALI^Y 121 
 
 Every heart was warmed though tears trickled down 
 Maire s cheeks at the name and thought of the loved ones 
 over-sea. Fergus said that these, too/ should return; 
 there was room, and more than room, nigh the long 
 lonely Boyne for all. At this Maire wept unrestrained, 
 and all other eyes softened and glistened. 
 
 At length, leaving Maire to her household duties, the 
 
 others went out, strolled round the pleasant garden and 
 
 orchard at the back of the house and then passed to 
 
 the sanded space and large stretch of sward in front. In 
 
 the center of the sward was a great drooping-ash with 
 
 seats underneath, forming what Fergus called a romantic 
 
 bower and truly it now looked romantic in the soft 
 
 early moonlight. Kevin and Art had brought their fiddles, 
 
 and presently, seated underneath the drooping-ash, they 
 
 thrilled the loneliness with melody. Elsie had just re 
 
 marked what a pity it was that there was not a merry 
 
 muster for a dance on the sward, when boys and girls 
 
 from the cottages hurried in. They were followed at a 
 
 brief interval by men and women. Soon came boys 
 
 and girls from the few houses somewhat farther afield. 
 
 Dancing parties were formed on the green as readily and 
 
 gaily as if all this were the recognized and inevitable 
 
 business of life in evenings and nights after toil. The 
 
 scene rang with melody and gaiety. Fergus explained 
 
 to Elsie, who was his partner in the dance, that it was 
 
 always thus on such occasions. The sound of the fiddle 
 
 on the sward or elsewhere brought the young neighbors. 
 
 and indeed the old, forthwith ; and dance and sons: and 
 
 scanchus succeeded. There was absolutely nothing 1 that 
 
 could be called formal about Cluainlumnev, but it had 
 
122 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 come to be particularly understood that the sound of music 
 was a special sign and token that home and heart were 
 open, and that all who willed were thereby cordially 
 invited to the fun and frolic. 
 
 After an hour of the dancing Elsie stood, excited and 
 eager, inside of the front room window in view of the 
 merry parties that still kept up the sport. Fergus said 
 that he would introduce her to a few young men who 
 would show her the stuff of which the new " colonists " 
 were made, and he went out for the said young men who, 
 he saw, had now ceased dancing. Two were assistant 
 teachers in the forlorn-looking school at Baile na Boinne 
 keen, alert, and genial young men they were, and 
 excellent Irish speakers. The third was a poet and a 
 traveling teacher under the Gaelic League. All three had 
 taken cottages and plots at Cluainlumney, to which they 
 devoted their evenings. They had recently married, and 
 had that look of serene content which Elsie had noted 
 on the faces of Fergus s brothers. Just as Fergus went 
 out they were joined by two young priests, both seminary 
 professors, who had strolled down from Baile na Boinne, 
 and an animated seanchus ensued. The priests, who had 
 not been long out of Maynooth, were curiously different 
 types. One, Father Wilson, looked almost boyish ; he 
 had a handsome, affectionate, wistful face that bespoke 
 the dreamer and the artist. The other, Father Kenealy, 
 was also very young, but he was tall and of fine bearing 
 and presence ; his calm, intellectual face had an expres 
 sion of courage, candor, and manliness. One he looked 
 who was destined to be a teacher and leader of his genera 
 tion, but one who would be the frank and helpful comrade 
 
"VITA NOVA" IN THE BOYNE VAU.EY 123 
 
 even as he led. As he made no secret of his conviction 
 that the British Government had not the slightest moral 
 sanction in Ireland, and that bishops who said otherwise 
 were politicians whose conversion should be earnestly 
 prayed for, he was idolized by young Nationalists; and 
 as his religious preaching and teaching was at once human, 
 virile, and broad-minded, with a gracious flavor of thought 
 and culture, he was much discussed by the older priests 
 and a fearful joy to the younger, his friend Father Wilson 
 most of all. 
 
 As the two young priests and the three teachers came 
 in with Fergus, Elsie noticed with a certain wonder the 
 easy, cordial, intimate terms on which they associated; 
 in other years she had never noted such a spirit of cama 
 raderie between cleric and laic. They came in chatting 
 gaily in Irish, and the merry muster seemed to have given 
 a new spirit to all except Father Wilson, on whose 
 boyish face there was a shade. Father Kenealy rallied 
 him thereon when the introductions to Elsie were over. 
 
 " We have been talking of clerical dictation," he 
 explained to Elsie, " and Father Wilson expects the sky 
 to fall straight down on Cluainlumney." 
 
 " They don t want any independence or character in 
 the laity," said Seamus, one of the assistant teachers, 
 continuing the discussion. " We in the schools, who are 
 in the grip of the clerical managers, can hardly call our 
 souls our own, or if we try to do so it is with the prospect 
 of dismissal before us. And then look at the efforts the 
 clergy all round are making to prevent the establishment 
 of a public library in Baile na Boinne. They Ve been to 
 all the councillors, and when the question comes up next 
 
124 -THE PLOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 week all except one or two will be afraid to go against 
 the wishes of the priests. So the people must remain 
 without books. All the clergy the young Irish Ireland 
 priests, of course, excepted are against knowledge for 
 the people. And Fainne an Lae, with all its grand ideals 
 of a progressive clergy, is appealing to them in vain. 
 The Boyne is as much open to ideas." 
 
 Father Wilson looked pained. 
 
 " Seamus ! Seamus ! " he said wistfully. " You are 
 getting more and more extreme. The older priests 
 doubtless do not understand the new time, and they have 
 their faults, but they mean well. They stand for interests 
 compared with which even knowledge and nation are 
 nothing. And the obedience of the people shows the 
 instinct of humanity for a theocracy, the natural gov 
 ernment for all the world. I m I m I m getting 
 afraid of the Gaelic League and the new ideas. They 
 seemed grand in Maynooth, but they may lead to some 
 calamity something that would injure the prestige of 
 the Church." 
 
 Father Wilson had been a zealous member of the Co- 
 lumban League in Maynooth, and had come out into the 
 world full of enthusiasm for Irish ideas, and full of the 
 faith that the priests of the new day could be strenuous 
 Irishmen. He found that the priests as a rule, in the 
 diocese of Meath, were not of his way of thinking. 
 They disliked ideas, including Irish ideas. His spirit was 
 troubled in consequence, his young life made chill and 
 lonely, intensely so till the coming of Father Kenealy. 
 He was too gentle and sensitive to do battle for his ideas : 
 and, indeed, the little world in which he habitually moved 
 
IN THE: BOYNE vAi^EiY 125 
 
 would chill the enthusiasm of far stronger souls. When 
 he found himself amongst congenial spirits his nature 
 rose and expanded again, and he was happy till some 
 one happened to question some phase of clerical policy 
 in Ireland. Then, as on the present occasion, he trembled 
 for the prestige of the Church. 
 
 " But surely/ said Fergus in reply to his plaint, " the 
 Church is a spiritual force, and her mission is a spiritual 
 one. She was never promised secular dominance, and 
 unhappy efforts to secure it led to blood and havoc and 
 moral disaster in Europe. And in any case the clergy 
 are not the Church." 
 
 Father Wilson liked Fergus as the latter was one of 
 the very few with whom he could discuss literature, 
 politics, and life; and he found a fearful joy in Fainne 
 an Lae. He could not discover anything wrong in its 
 columns himself, but he heard conservative clerics say 
 that it stood for subtle and dangerous doctrines of na 
 tionality and independence. He feared the coming of 
 anathema and strife, and his gentle spirit was more 
 clouded than ever. 
 
 " Oh, my dear Fergus," he said, " these are risky things 
 to teach our people, whose faith has been so simple and 
 unquestioning. I earnestly wish that Fainne an Lae 
 would go slowly and cautiously. Sudden light is unbear 
 able by eyes long accustomed to dimness." 
 
 The poet, who had been gazing delightedly from the 
 window towards the dancers, now chimed in : 
 
 " Fainne an Lae is a grand paper," he said, " and we 
 all owe it a debt we can never repay. But I wish it would 
 keep altogether to the things that interest the mind of the 
 
126 THE PIvOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 Gael. It goes out into strange foreign ground sometimes. 
 Sure, only last week it had something in Irish about 
 Darwin and Evolution, and what Gael ever troubled 
 about things like these ? They d simply spoil our beauti 
 ful and reverent language." 
 
 Fergus laughed a kindly laugh. So did Father Wilson. 
 They knew the poet s outlook and inlook well. He was 
 a delightful, simple-hearted soul, and spoke for a com 
 fortable little host of his young contemporaries, who 
 only knew " the Gael " through their own hearts and 
 flowery fancies and a little folk-lore. To them " the 
 Gael " was of piety, simplicity, and reverence all compact, 
 and, unlike the rest of the children of men, was superior 
 in all ages to all the questionings and temptations of 
 human nature. 
 
 Father Wilson grew grave again. " I m afraid," he 
 said wistfully, " that Fainne an Lac is too happy a dawn 
 for our long-benighted land. The clouds are gathering. 
 There are ominous rumors in the Seminary. There s 
 a fatal feeling amongst the older priests all round that 
 the paper is telling the people too much." 
 
 Father Kenealy, who had been chatting with Elsie, 
 turned round suddenly. " That s an extraordinary theo 
 ry for priests to entertain," he said with a smile. " Telling 
 the people too much! The objection seems to argue a 
 strange want of faith on the part of those priests." 
 
 Father Wilson shrugged his shoulders and looked more 
 wistful than ever. " You know what is said in the Sem 
 inary," he answered in a cheerless way. " To be sure 
 they seldom read the paper themselves, but they feel that 
 it is injuring the prestige of the Church." 
 
127 
 
 " Fainne an Lae is the best friend the clergy have had 
 for a long time/ said Father Kenealy. " It shows them 
 the trend of mind in Ireland. If they are as they ought 
 to be they should rejoice to witness so much mind apply 
 ing itself to the problems of the nation and life. If they 
 are not rejoicing, but alarmed or distrustful, well it shows 
 they re in a bad way., and that they Ve got to bestir 
 themselves and put their house in order. Thank goodness 
 Irish mind is not going to suppress itself or go to sleep 
 because some timid parish priests or bishops are needlessly 
 distressed about it." 
 
 A pained expression came into Father Wilson s eyes. 
 He looked up pathetically to Father Kenealy. 
 
 "Ah," he said plaintively, " we must take things tenderly 
 in Ireland where the faith is a simple and sensitive plant. 
 Irish Catholicism unfortunately perhaps is essentially 
 emotional, not intellectual. We must beware of the shock 
 of intellectuality. The Christian at the best of times has 
 to make sacrifices. His is mostly a cold and joyless pil 
 grimage. The Pagans have practically all the poetry, the 
 beautiful art, and the joy of life." 
 
 " So you accept," said Fergus, " that sweeping picture 
 of the poet: 
 
 Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, 
 
 The world has grown gray with Thy breath. 
 
 I cannot accept it. I see nothing anti-Christian in beauty 
 and the joy of life; and despite the astonishing timidity 
 of the parish priests of Meath, I believe that Catholicism 
 has an intellectual basis, and that an attempt to enslave 
 or suppress mind is anti-Christian as well as futile." 
 
128 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 " The long and short of it," said Father Kenealy, " is 
 that the Church in Ireland must take a broad, healthy, 
 and liberal view of the problems of the nation and the 
 individual mind and soul. She must be something noble 
 and enlightening, worthy of her past and the great minds 
 that molded it, worthy of her mission and the divine 
 spirit of her Founder. She is a divine institution, and 
 she must be true to her divinity. In Ireland she has no 
 business to be a garrison of England or obscurantism, 
 or to grow worldly and lose the old impassioned interest 
 in the problems of the poor. So much for the Church. 
 As Fergus says, the priests and bishops are not the 
 Church. The laity are part of the Church, too, and it 
 does the heart good to find that they are not going to 
 forget it, and that they are becoming quite clear, also, 
 about their sacred duties to their nation." 
 
 The eyes of the young teachers and the poet brightened 
 when Father Kenealy began. They glowed as he finished. 
 Father Wilson was acutely distressed. 
 
 " Ireland is primitive and peculiar," he said, " and 
 the older priests and bishops will cling to the old ways. 
 They cannot abide or understand the new. So a terrible 
 tumult is inevitable. Ah me ! new ideas are very appeal 
 ing to young hearts and minds, but tis better to suppress 
 ourselves and the new ideas than to quarrel with bishops." 
 
 At this stage the dancers felt that they had their fill of 
 the joy of life in the moonlight, and the muster began to 
 break up. The teachers and the poet departed with them, 
 and Elsie went to the kitchen to aid Maire in the prepara 
 tions for supper, which were made to the accompaniment 
 of Sean s droll snatches of song, now livelier than ever, 
 
" VITA NOVA IN TH BOYNE) VAU<EY I2Q 
 
 as the gaiety of the night had tuned up his spirit. Father 
 Wilson remembered that he had still some of his Office 
 to say, and midnight was approaching, so he retired to an 
 inner apartment. Fergus and Father Kenealy were left 
 together in the front room. 
 
 It was Father Kenealy who now became grave. 
 
 " The news about Maynooth is bad," he said, in a low 
 voice, as he turned to Fergus. 
 
 " I think you are mistaken/ said the latter cheerfully. 
 " My last letter from An t-Athair O Muinneog was quite 
 buoyant and confident. Of course twas some few days 
 ago, but the difficulty cannot have deepened." 
 
 " Our friends in Maynooth do not know their danger," 
 replied Father Kenealy. " Inside the college they are as 
 innocent and simple-hearted as they are high-minded. 
 The bishops know a great deal more than they think, and 
 have laid their plans as only the bishops can. They have 
 decided on strong action I fear it will be much too 
 strong for our friends. They will have to submit and 
 lie low, or face a religious crisis for which neither they 
 nor the times are really ripe. Did you hear that Father 
 Martin Murray has come over ? " 
 
 " No," said Fergus in great surprise. " He was uneasy 
 when he wrote a few days ago, but he had no immediate 
 intention of leaving London." 
 
 " Then he changed his mind suddenly. He is now in 
 Dublin. I had a note from him on the last post tonight 
 just before I came out. He mentioned that he missed 
 you in your office, and was about to go out to Dalkey. 
 Here is his note. He was too hurried to give many 
 details and, anyhow, he is very cautious in his letters 
 
I3O THE PlyOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 though he always writes or wires in Latin when there s 
 trouble but the message shows acute distress of mind." 
 
 A good deal of Fergus s Latin Church Latin apart 
 had become dim and uncertain. And Father Martin s 
 handwriting was perplexing at the best. But Father 
 Kenealy solved the difficulties. 
 
 " I must go up to Dublin in the morning," said Fergus, 
 when the purport of the letter had become clear. " The 
 crisis may be upon us at any moment. The days of brave 
 work and high ideal were too good to last." 
 
 " I think it would have been better had our Maynooth 
 friends left Immanence alone for the present," said Father 
 Kenealy. " Had they preached nationality to their hearts 
 content the bishops would have been slower to interfere 
 with them. Had they taken your own advice, and declared 
 for a persistent and unflinching application of practical 
 Christianity to every phase and problem of Irish life, 
 they would have been revolutionary indeed, but impreg 
 nable and invincible. And a body of educated priests, 
 standing fearlessly and passionately for the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and backed up by devoted laymen, would have 
 made a tremendous sensation." 
 
 " Please God, it is not too late yet/ said Fergus. 
 
 Supper was now ready in Maire s kindly kitchen. The 
 talk was turned from Maynooth and the expected crisis 
 to the more general problems of Church and nation. The 
 glow and optimism of Father Kenealy became intensified ; 
 the wistfulness of Father Wilson deepened at first, for 
 it was hard to shake off the gloomy foreboding that strife 
 and clangor were at hand. But Fergus and Father Ken 
 ealy rallied him, and the piquant banter of Elsie touched 
 
" VITA NOVA" IN THE BOYNE VAU,Y 13! 
 
 the boyish gaiety and humanity that still nestled in his 
 nature. He took heart at length, and decided that maybe, 
 after all, the joy of life was not wholly Pagan he re 
 called in a dim way that a brave, broad-minded early 
 Pope had revoked the edict against the reading of the 
 " Pagan authors/ and that Patrick himself had had the 
 insight to see the gleam of divinity and beauty in the lore 
 of the Celtic gods who had uplifted the souls of men in 
 the natural ages before him. At last he allowed himself 
 to glow in a naive and diffident way. He felt ere supper 
 was over that though thinkers thought and nation-builders 
 built, the prestige of the Church might not really suffer, 
 whatever his everyday conservative clerical associates 
 might prophesy to the contrary. His brow grew clearer, 
 his eyes brightened, and he felt as happy as in the artless, 
 eager days when he discoursed on art and wrote poetry 
 for the Columban League, within the soul-sheltering walls 
 of Maynooth. He was really an artist at heart, a Greek 
 nature in a gentle Irish frame, wrapt in clerical costume. 
 His tragedy was one of daily environment. Among eager, 
 congenial, and intellectual minds, as now, he breathed 
 natural air and really lived. 
 
 Fergus and Elsie went with the two sagairt for a part 
 of the way along the lonely high road to Baile na Boinne. 
 Below them the Boyne Valley was as still and solemn as 
 in the primeval moonlight ere yet a Celtic colonist, or 
 other human pioneer, had set a foot in the rich, lone 
 region that environed Tara. Father Kenealy paused on 
 a height of the road, laid his hand on Father Wilson s 
 shoulder, and then pointed to the starry heaven. 
 
 " There ! " he said. " It shows no sign of falling, 
 
132 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 despite the revolutionary sentiments you have heard to 
 night. When you look at its order and its mystic glory, 
 don t you think that the spectacle of your timid P. P. s 
 and conservative bishops, agitated over a little thought, 
 is ironical and preposterous ? " 
 
 Here the friends parted. 
 
 " Oh, to think of it ! " said Elsie, when she and Fergus 
 had turned back. " It s not yet twenty-four hours since 
 I walked into that office of yours. It s more like twenty- 
 four years in the way of sensations and experiences." 
 
 He put his arm within hers. 
 
 " I ve been heart-hungry for several hours," he said. 
 " In all the talk and glow I just wanted you to myself. 
 Some grand ideals were expressed, but all the time I was 
 thinking how humble they were compared with the witch 
 ery and divinity of affection. I also thought what a 
 mystery affection is. It is a wondrous, ideal, unworldly 
 feeling; with something sacred, something starry about 
 it, yet what exquisite heart-hunger all the time ! I never 
 felt till tonight the full force and insight of the poet s 
 wonderful lines: 
 
 O lyric love, half angel and half bird. 
 And all a wonder and a wild desire. 
 
 " Isn t it a far cry from your Boyne Valley friends, the 
 Birds of Angus, to Browning?" said Elsie. 
 
 " The divine flame is eternal, and the words of symbol 
 ists and poets just express in divers ways, from age to 
 age, the human sense of worship and rapture before the 
 shrine ; yet nobody sounds its mystery and sanctity. But 
 I know them when I kiss you.". , 
 
" VITA NOVA IN THE: BOYNE vAij,EY 133 
 
 " I wonder if the duration of kisses is an index of 
 enthusiasm for knowledge/ said Elsie, a playful gleam 
 shining mischievously through her eyes. 
 
 " What a wickedly airy sprite you are ! " he said ; "even 
 things so hallowed as kisses you cannot take seriously." 
 
 " If both of us got too serious," she replied, " we d 
 never be able to get away from the banks of the bewitch 
 ing Boyne." 
 
 " That prospect has no terrors for me," said Fergus, 
 who had apparently overcome the questioning mood of 
 the early evening. 
 
 They went slowly back to the old house. 
 
 When Elsie went to her room Fergus thought that 
 he would write for an hour or two. " Copy " would be 
 needed for Fainne an Lae on the morrow, and after such 
 a day there was a revel of thought and feeling that de 
 manded expression. But it was simply impossible to 
 complete anything. Radiant vistas of thought and fancy 
 opened, tides of delicate feeling flowed and flashed, but 
 they eluded the artistic imprisonment of sentences in an 
 airy and bewildering way that in the end brought a sense 
 of exhaustion and pain. It were as easy to impress star 
 light into a fountain pen. Then the news from Maynooth 
 swept like a chill wind into his idyll-lands of reverie. 
 He dozed off to sleep in the end, and had a tantalizing 
 vision of bishops in a half-ploughed field, and Elsie play 
 fully scattering the Birds of Angus amongst them, while 
 a crowd of Maynooth men with spades and fiddles tried 
 vainly to leap over from the other side of the Boyne. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 THE: PRIESTS STOCKBROKER WITH THE SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 
 
 HE workers at Cluainlumney were ear 
 ly risers. When Fergus awoke next 
 morning songs from the gardens 
 reached his ears. There was a deli 
 cate sense of freshness in the air, 
 and the singing seemed the expres 
 sion of human joy thereat. The sun 
 was not yet high, and there was a 
 subtle feeling of softness and charm 
 and mystery in the morning s radi 
 ance. He dressed quickly; he knew 
 by this time that to miss the first magic of morning in 
 the Boyne Valley or Dublin was to lose an experience 
 for which no sensation or happening of the after day 
 could make amends. To walk below by the flowing river 
 under the greenery, with the hundred melodies of the 
 birds an exquisite accompaniment, was to realize an 
 Earthly Paradise in open actuality as well as in the heart. 
 But there was to be no joyous walk by the river this 
 morning. He learned from Maire that breakfast was 
 nearly ready, that Elsie would be down in a few minutes, 
 and that a messenger had just come over with a note from 
 
THE: PRIESTS STOCKBROKER 135 
 
 Mr. Milligan, one of whose country houses was not far 
 away. He found that the note was brief and written in 
 a somewhat shaky hand. Mr. Milligan said he heard the 
 previous night that Fergus was in Cluainlumney, and he 
 would greatly like to see him before he returned to Dub 
 lin. He was not very well otherwise he would walk over. 
 
 Fergus now saw that he would be unable to start for 
 Dublin by the early train; he must wait till noon. He 
 would telegraph to Maeve to meet him at Amiens Street, 
 or in the office. She would know the whereabouts of 
 Father Murray. Possibly both the latter and herself 
 could return with him to the Boyne Valley on the even 
 ing train. It would be better than Dublin for all con 
 cerned, and Father Kenealy would be at hand to discuss 
 the crisis. For the present Maeve and Elsie would find 
 the Boyne Valley more enjoyable than the capital. When 
 Elsie appeared, t and he told her of the plans, she con 
 sidered that possibly they were the best in the circum 
 stances, though she was eager to see Maeve without delay. 
 
 " Mr. Milligan is just the man we want to be hale and 
 well for the next twenty years, if it s God s will/ said 
 Fergus as they sat down to breakfast. " He s one of the 
 very few men in Ireland who understand the rural prob 
 lem. He s the only one, apparently, who, understanding 
 it, is able and willing to bring ideas and money to the 
 solution of it. He grasped it and tackled it rather late 
 in life it s a puzzle to me why it did not come home to 
 him earlier but he s done great things since he started. 
 If Heaven spares him and us, you 11 see wonders yet in 
 the Boyne Valley and above it. A busy and picturesque 
 town of the new order will be visible from your boudoir 
 
136 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 window for, of course, you must have a boudoir, or, 
 to give it the old Irish name, a grianan before you are 
 many years here." 
 
 " Be serious, Fergus O Hagan, and tell me more about 
 this magician of yours. Since I Ve seen your enchanted 
 valley I am twice as interested as I was before." 
 
 " He s no magician, for he works with perfectly natur 
 al materials, along perfectly natural lines. But he s a 
 phenomenon, being a rich Irishman who takes his own 
 country seriously, and spends his surplus wealth on 
 schemes that will enable its peasantry to uplift them 
 selves." 
 
 " Where did he get the wealth to start with ? " 
 
 " Through stockbroking. The clergy, by the way, are 
 noted patrons of his firm." 
 
 " The clergy seem to crop up everywhere in this 
 puzzling island," she said. " But in connexion with 
 stockbroking they seem incongruous. By the way, was 
 not usury, or the taking of interest, forbidden by Ecu 
 menical Councils? I must ask Lord Strathbarra," she 
 added slyly. 
 
 Fergus went to see Mr. Milligan. He found him on 
 a couch in a luxurious morning-room of his picturesque 
 Meath home. He had others this particular one had 
 been built a generation before for a British statesman. 
 The simple and courtly old man looked out pensively on 
 a great stretch of sunlit grass-land. As a picture it was 
 beautiful in the morning light; but in these days grass 
 to old Mr. Milligan spelt waste and loss and loneliness 
 and vanished people. He could have wept over the tracts 
 where the tiller and the toiler were not. 
 
THE: PRIESTS STOCKBROKER 137 
 
 He greeted Fergus cordially, but sadly. 
 
 " I have been greatly shaken for the past day or two," 
 he said. " And illness now worries me intensely : not 
 for itself, but because it interrupts the work I so dearly 
 want to do. Ah! Mr. O Hagan, the puzzle of life is a 
 baffling and a solemn one. It was not till I was an old 
 man that I came to see clearly the tragic conditions and 
 burdens of the Irish peasantry, and to understand how 
 the rural problem is to be tackled. And just as I have 
 seriously tackled it, the fear comes upon me that I may 
 be called away." 
 
 Fergus expressed the cheery hope and belief that Mr. 
 Milligan had many hearty years of life before him yet. 
 
 " God grant it. If I am given strength and life, all that 
 is mine to give and do will be at the service of the people. 
 And if we can till successfully down here, and solve 
 transit and market problems, and establish healthy fac 
 tories in pleasant places, and bring social and intellectual 
 interests into the lives of the rural workers why, it will 
 all be a grand thing in itself, and it will be a shining 
 example to others near and far, who have the money and 
 the opportunities but who somehow have never thought 
 of having faith in Ireland." 
 
 " It will be glorious," said Fergus. " We had a de 
 lightful muster last night at Cluainlumney, and I thought 
 of it as a glad little foretaste of the social and intellectual 
 life of the workers in the Boyne Valley in the pleasant 
 days to be." 
 
 " How happy I d be if I thought I d live to see it, or 
 even to see the good work well in train. But I am ill, 
 Mr. O Hagan, and there are many thoughts that trouble 
 
138 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 me. Have I any right to the wealth I possess? Am I 
 expending more than a fraction of it properly? Can I be 
 said to have done my duty with the starting of a few 
 factories,, the re-opening of a long-neglected canal, and 
 the breaking up of a grass ranch at Cluainlumney ? It 
 seems much to some; it is coming to seem little to me. 
 First of all, about my wealth. I started with little or no 
 thing; I am a self-made man. I began as a stockbroker s 
 clerk; I went higher and higher and eventually I was 
 possessed of a big business and a fortune. Though I 
 had been industrious, and I suppose skilful in my busi 
 ness, it gradually dawned upon me in my old age that 
 the fortune I had made was grossly, wildly beyond my 
 deserts and merits. Again, the clergy were very steady 
 clients of mine, in their private capacities, as well as in 
 their capacities as trustees. Now it was clear to me that 
 the property in which they thus dealt had come originally 
 from the people, sometimes the very poor people. So 
 through the clergy ostensibly, but in reality through the 
 people, I was enabled to make a large fortune as a stock 
 broker. It was borne in upon me that in one form or 
 another I was bound to make restitution to the people. 
 That is why I came to start the factories and begin the 
 breaking up of the grass lands." 
 
 " That is an exceedingly interesting and expressive 
 statement," said Fergus. " I had no idea of the facts 
 before." 
 
 " But I have only made a mere beginning. Even the 
 beginning is unsatisfactory. The tillers at Cluainlumney 
 are only tenants; I must arrange that they get a deeper 
 and securer interest in the holdings, a point which did 
 
THE PRIESTS STOCKBROKER 139 
 
 not occur to me at first. The workers in the factory are 
 only workers, though decently treated and paid ; I must 
 arrange that the concerns are placed upon a co-operative 
 basis. But when I have these matters settled I shall still 
 be but at the beginning. What about the rest of what I 
 call my property, landed and otherwise? How shall I 
 arrange and leave it that I may be sure it will be turned 
 to the best service of the nation when I am gone? I 
 cannot leave the matter to chance or to my own family s 
 decision and preferences. My sons are well-meaning and 
 loyal, but they have been used to luxury and privilege. 
 They had not to fight the battle of life as I had, they do 
 not know the people, and social injustice and the circum 
 stances of the peasantry do not come home to them as 
 they do to me, mean no more to them than the weather 
 does. If I give them enough to start them fairly in life, 
 and devote all the rest to some profitable and productive 
 national purpose it will certainly be for the best. I d like 
 you to help me with suggestions towards the scheme that 
 would be most instructive and attractive as an example 
 to others, and likely in itself to benefit the greatest num 
 ber of poor men s children in the present circumstances 
 of Ireland. I ve been brooding over a scheme, but tis 
 very big, and the details are not clear yet." 
 
 He made a broad sketch of the landed and other 
 property available, and gave general details likely to be 
 serviceable or suggestive to Fergus. 
 
 " There is one thing more .1 want to tell you," Mr. 
 Milligan continued. " It will explain some of my anxiety 
 about the future. My clerical friends at any rate the 
 older ones are prophesying all sorts of woe and disaster 
 
140 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 if we continue our present course, and more especially 
 if Fainne an Lae continues its independent and thought- 
 spreading mission. They imagine they can worry me out 
 of my purposes our clergy as a rule are exceedingly 
 persistent and subtle in their policy. The bishop himself 
 has called upon me to discuss it all, but he has been gentle, 
 though showing alarm and pain." 
 
 " It is most extraordinary," declared Fergus. " Surely 
 they should all see how much the Church stands to gain 
 by your projects, for the end of these is a progressive and 
 happy people on the land a blessed contrast to the 
 present order: an untrained and miserable people, many 
 of them emigrating to America or Britain, to be lost 
 eventually in hundreds of cases to Church as well as 
 Ireland. Truly the clergy ought to bless you personally, 
 and pray fervently that your example may be widely 
 followed." 
 
 "Ah, but the older clergy, and some of the young, are 
 alarmed at the prospect of a strong-minded laity. I am 
 drawn reluctantly to the conclusion that they dislike all 
 character of which they themselves have not had the 
 molding. They have had the virtual ruling of rural Ire 
 land so long, except, of course, in the North-east, that 
 they almost believe, if they do not entirely believe, that 
 the continuance of the rule is essential to Christian 
 stability and salvation. They come to me with strange 
 stories. They are afraid that our new workers in the 
 Boyne Valley will not be sufficiently submissive in social 
 as well as spiritual matters, and they have a nervous 
 dread about our paper." 
 
 " But do they come down to facts ? " Fergus asked. 
 
THE: PRIESTS STOCKBROKER I4 1 
 
 " Do they point to any definite crime or misdemeanor? " 
 "Ah, Mr. O Hagan, they are never so direct and 
 reasonable as that. They try to impress you with a vague, 
 dread sense that everything is wrong, everything in the 
 independent man s schemes and efforts, and that it is 
 impossible to put things right save by trusting implicitly 
 in themselves. Hints, indeed, have been thrown out that 
 stronger measures than mere remonstrances will be taken 
 against us, so I thought I would warn you that troubled 
 times may be at hand. As to my tillage and factory 
 schemes I am anxious to put them on such a basis that 
 the workers will be safe against clerical interference. 
 That is what I really fear in the future. I have been a 
 good friend to the Church, and I have a son a Jesuit and 
 a daughter a nun,, so I can speak frankly without being 
 misunderstood." 
 
 " It is pitiful," said Fergus, " that you should be wor 
 ried in this way in the midst of your work, when in 
 reality you ought to be most heartily encouraged and 
 seconded, especially by the spiritual leaders and guides 
 of the people." 
 
 " I am an old man now, Mr. O Hagan, and it does not 
 surprise me in the least. It certainly shall not daunt me. 
 My great anxiety is that I may not live to complete the 
 work I began too late. But I was afraid that possibly 
 you might be disturbed and depressed by irrational oppo 
 sition to your good work. You must be ready for all 
 that in Ireland, or you can do nothing. Your reward 
 must be in the work and in yourself, and in your hopes 
 for the future. That is the most helpful advice which 
 an old man who has seen much of Irish life can give you." 
 
142 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 They chatted for some time on points and phases of 
 the Boyne Valley work and its development, Fergus 
 noting with anxiety that Mr. Milligan seemed weak and 
 worn, though he spoke with keener hope and energy 
 than ever. 
 
 " I remember when Meath was busy and populous," 
 he said toward the close. " Tis terrible to think of the 
 waste of the clearances and the emigration the loss in 
 men, in energy, in happiness, and in ideas. But if we 
 could re-people all the rich wastes, I am afraid that with 
 out the co-operative idea in action we could never get 
 men under modern conditions and in modern circum 
 stances, to exert themselves, and put forth their best. 
 And we must not have workers who are afraid of the 
 clergy, otherwise there will be no fair harvest of ideas 
 and character. And without these a people perish." 
 
 " There are several kinds of art-workers and artisans 
 who might be induced to come from Dublin to live in the 
 Boyne Valley," said Fergus. " They could work more 
 naturally and interestedly there, and incidentally they d 
 sow the ideas. I Ve broached the project before. It is 
 only one there are many others." 
 
 "Ah, if I were twenty years younger, or if I could 
 count on even five years more of tolerable health ! " said 
 Mr. Milligan feelingly. 
 
 " His insight is as keen as his heart is simple. Heaven 
 send him many years of life and strength. He is indis 
 pensable to Ireland," said Fergus to himself as he re 
 turned to Cluainlumney. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 O HAGAN is INTRODUCED TO 
 
 HEN Fergus left Elsie at Cluain- 
 lumney, after the visit to Mr. 
 Milligan, and went to catch the 
 mid-day train at Baile na Boinne 
 for Dublin, his first feeling was 
 one of loneliness, and then he had 
 an unaccountable sensation of be 
 ing alone with a new individuality. 
 It was an agreeable and yet a 
 bewildering sensation. It seemed 
 a rank absurdity to assume that 
 
 he had never known himself before, and the idea of a 
 man being introduced to himself for the first time, and 
 when the mid-thirties of his life had passed, was exquis 
 itely fantastic. Yet that was how he felt, as nearly as 
 he could express or realize it. Had he been slumbering 
 all those years, and now in some unfathomable way had 
 he suddenly awakened? That solution would not meet 
 the case at all; his life had been an active and strenu 
 ous one. 
 
 Nor could he explain the puzzle by saying that his 
 life had been active and resonant outwardly, and that now 
 
144 TH E PivOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 the intellectual part of him had come to assert itself. 
 The contrary was the case. All his active life had been 
 concerned with matters more or less intellectual; and 
 when he was not engaged upon his literary duties he 
 had been studying great movements, great causes, great 
 enthusiasms manifested in history; and always in his 
 vision he identified himself with, was part of, was lost in, 
 an Ireland of a coming day that would arise and think 
 and create and mark a momentous tide in the sea of 
 human evolution. Now all these great movements and 
 their stories had rolled away like clouds, leaving him 
 alone with himself, as much alone and as solitary as if 
 he were the last man in the universe, left to unravel the 
 riddle of fate without help from one of humankind. 
 Even Ireland had become as a dream, as a fading memory 
 of a tale that was long since told. 
 
 As he left the Boyne Valley and entered Baile na 
 Boinne, he thought that perhaps in the Louvre, the Brit 
 ish Museum, and elsewhere, and in his private studies, 
 he had dwelt too much upon, had been drawn too much 
 to, the ideals, the art, the philosophy of other times and 
 men, and that now in some mysterious way Nature had 
 thrust him back on the realm of his own mind, and made 
 him seriously see for the first time that that was as mystic 
 and insoluble and as essentially interesting an entity as 
 anything he had been studying on the great scale all the 
 years. 
 
 But no; that solution would not do either. He 
 had been always individualistic enough, at least he had 
 thought so. He ought to have known his own mental 
 life by this time; but this new and extraordinary mix- 
 
FERGUS O HAGAN AND HIMSEI/F 145 
 
 ture of awe and ecstasy was a discovery for which no 
 previous experiences had prepared him. As the train 
 bore him past lonely fields of Meath he recalled conver 
 sations with Miss Alice Lefanu in other years on the 
 subject of personality and its multiplex character in every 
 human being, though the multiplexity was never realized 
 by the many. She had become fascinated by the subject, 
 on which she had gathered a singular stock of lore. She 
 had brooded on famous cases in which four or more 
 personalities had manifested themselves, or had been 
 unearthed, in the same individual. But she carefully 
 insisted on a fact which was novel and surprising to him 
 at that stage, running counter as it did to the average 
 psychologist s theory. This was that personality was to 
 a great extent fleeting or illusive, and really concerned 
 the lower forces of the human character, beyond which, 
 however, the average human being at this stage of the 
 race s history, never rose. It was very different from 
 Individuality, in the true sense, to which only the few as 
 yet attained, or tried to attain. The true Self, the Master 
 ruling our life, was ordinarily little known to the normal 
 consciousness, and was on a plane far above our custom 
 ary desires and passions. The supreme exaltations of 
 the great characters in human story meant that the lower 
 nature had been shed or crucified, mere personality or 
 personalities transcended, and the true Self, the Master 
 unknown to normal consciousness, the inner Christos, 
 more or less asserted and revealed. All vivid enthusiasms 
 and inspirations, all subordination of the habitual human 
 entity to a noble cause, to disinterested service of human 
 ity, was really a step upward to that grander Self in 
 
146 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 each, that inner Christos. He had been wondering of 
 late if this was somehow another way of expressing that 
 Immanence of which Lord Strathbarra and certain of his 
 Maynooth friends, like An t-Athair O Muinneog, were so 
 full. Did it not express their idea of Revelation? 
 which to them was not statement, but spiritual experience : 
 " the Divine which is immanent in man s spirit," reveal 
 ing to him a vita nova, adjusting itself to realities beyond 
 the course of time and space, giving him though still in 
 the flesh an august and momentous sense of the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Be that as it may, Fergus saw himself and existence 
 in a new light today. A Self of which he had been but 
 dimly conscious before dominated his being, and sent 
 strange light flashing and delicate music playing in long 
 obscure avenues of consciousness. A great deal of his 
 previous life seemed now to be mere obscure groping; 
 but though he felt it to have been wasted and ineffective, 
 there was none of that accusing regret for it with which 
 he had been tormented of late months. The newly- 
 asserted Self seemed to know that the end of man is joy, 
 and that when the great resurrection and assertion of the 
 individuality, the inner Christos, comes, there is no pain 
 for the past; the futilities and the mistakes are as 
 clouds that have been, and now in the clear sky are 
 not. It also seemed to realize that suffering is not an 
 ultimate reality, but something incidental to the transition 
 to the divine, yet to be prized in the transition as a glori 
 ous privilege. 
 
 He had a curious feeling of anxiety, to hurry back and 
 speak in a new spirit to Elsie. His light and airy attitude 
 
O HAGAN AND HIMSELF 147 
 
 and discourses were poor tribute, he now understood, to 
 her delicate and exquisite nature. Looking back on the 
 banter and play of years, it all seemed a trifling and un 
 gracious irreverence. He was sure that in reality it had 
 never been such; he was certain at heart that it was not 
 so, but a merely fantastic, merry-minded way in which 
 kinship of spirit and boundless appreciation and sympathy 
 spoke. But the fact remained he felt it now with the 
 vividness of soul-fact that Elsie was such a character 
 as comes but once in an aeon to earth, and the privilege 
 of such a nature s winsome confidence and affectionate 
 trust should give to life not airiness but a serene and 
 reverential joy. Now, as the train sped on its easy course 
 by the lovely Fingal sea, the sense of the sweetness and 
 charm which she wrought in his world came upon him 
 like a dream that twas wondrous to find true. 
 
 Never had he felt so exquisite a sense of liberty as 
 today. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, after many 
 questionings, searching studies, and grievous unrest, he 
 saw the simple, electrifying truth that the inevitable way 
 to the Truth was not by laborious gropings through the 
 libraries and the sciences, but just by sacrificing all the 
 minor desires and the lower nature, and steadily compel 
 ling what commonly passed for self to give way more and 
 more to the Master Self, the Christos, the child of the 
 Divine in each. 
 
 That was the sure way to the heart of romance, the 
 source of revelation, the Kingdom of Heaven. Every 
 sedulously cultivated higher nature cultivated by pain, 
 by thought, by disinterested human service, and all else 
 that elevated and enkindled the inner vision was a 
 
148 THE PLOUGH AND TH^ CROSS 
 
 star in communion with the Source of all Light, an 
 instrument responsive to the harmony which the Lord of 
 the Music of Life breathed through all the spheres. Now 
 he realized the full significance of Newman s saying that 
 the purpose of the Pope, the mission of the Church, was 
 to help the light which enlighteneth every man. 
 
 Was it a coincidence, or more, that the coming of 
 Elsie O Kennedy synchronized with this clear high tide 
 of inner feeling and vision? The clearer and higher it 
 became the sweeter and the more subtle was the appeal 
 which Elsie made to his imagination. He knew that cer 
 tain of the Fathers would prove that this was simply a 
 deadly snare of Satan, and that even a more human and 
 far-seeing guide like Lacordaire would suggest to him to 
 beware. He felt, however, that the Fathers were one 
 sided in their view of woman. He also thought that the 
 woman-saints of the Church and life were on the 
 whole the more divine. When all was said, anyhow, he 
 would not admit that Elsie, or Maeve, or any of the few 
 women he understood and reverenced, would fit into any 
 " Theory of Woman " whatsoever. 
 
 When he reached Dublin the city gave him an impres 
 sion of strangeness and newness, yet a certain remoteness. 
 There was a telegram from Maeve at the office saying 
 that she had urgent duties at home, and without, to attend 
 to, and could not possibly start for the Boyne Valley for 
 another day or two, though she would make a supreme 
 effort on the following day. She thought Father Murray 
 was there, or on his way there, or possibly in that per 
 plexing and disturbing place, Maynooth. 
 
 " I might have known," said Fergus to himself. 
 
O HAGAN AND IHMSEXI? 149 
 
 " Hurry is the Eighth Deadly Sin in Maeve s theology. 
 When somebody asks her hand in marriage she will say 
 very nicely, casually, and deliberately, Oh, is that what 
 you called about? Please give me a little while to think 
 before I reply ten years or so. J: 
 
 He was astonished that there was no message from 
 his Maynooth friends. What did the sudden silence 
 mean? 
 
 He prepared " copy " for the printers till the foreman 
 in his shirt-sleeves came in with the cheerily exaggerated 
 news that they had " tons " of it, and that he might 
 make his mind easy. Then he found that he had time 
 to take a cup of tea before catching the last train to Baile 
 na Boinne a Midland train from the Broadstone, which 
 towards the close of the journey would allow him a sight 
 of Tara. 
 
 He was disappointed that Elsie did not meet him at 
 Baile na Boinne station, as he expected. He had pic 
 tured a quiet, delightful walk through the Valley to 
 Cluainlumney, in the course of which he would talk as 
 he had never talked before, and she would wonder at 
 his new philosophy. For this had been a day of revela 
 tion. But Elsie appeared not, and he must take the Valley 
 alone. 
 
 When he approached Cluainlumney he saw Elsie at 
 last. She was strolling leisurely across the fields from 
 the new cottages, accompanied by no less a personage 
 than Lord Strathbarra. His lordship was apparently 
 talking with great animation. 
 
 When the first dash of mingled feelings was over, 
 Fergus O Hagan, as he walked slowly along the avenue 
 
15 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 to the old house, unseen by the others as yet, tried to 
 face the crucial question: how his growing philosophy 
 of pain and renunciations as aids to the discovery and 
 enthronement of the diviner Self would stand him in 
 stead, or acquit itself, in regard to Elsie. When they met 
 near the house, Lord Strathbarra beamed, but Elsie s 
 demeanor was astonishingly unenkindled and grave. 
 Fergus felt a leaden feeling at his heart. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 THE HOUR OF THE: WHITE FROCK 
 
 BOUT the time that Fergus read 
 Maeve s telegram, that busy young 
 lady had managed to take a few 
 minutes rest from her labors. She 
 sat at the little table in the summer- 
 house in the garden at Dalkey, and 
 with her elbows on the table and her 
 hands against her cheeks she looked 
 beyond her manuscript-book and her 
 open Bossuet into the unknown. 
 Today she had translated six whole sentences, but she 
 had felt a certain severity in Bossuet and wondered if a 
 little Lacordaire would not be more in harmony with 
 scene and spirit. Then she reproved herself for the 
 feeling associating a great Churchman with severity 
 was, if not a spiritual lapse, a dangerous leaning to tempt 
 ation. She asked herself a little sternly if it were possible 
 that in some insidious way she was becoming infected by 
 the spirit of the world. She was not sure if she had done 
 right in donning the picturesque white frock which she 
 wore. She had felt in doing so that it was a genial recog 
 nition of Nature s afternoon charm, and incidentally it 
 suited herself beautifully; but there was, after all, a 
 
152 THE PLOUGH AND Tlllv CROSS 
 
 Pagan flavor about both these reasons. They were not 
 convincing to a clear, calm soul that wanted to keep to 
 the narrow way. 
 
 She had expected that Arthur O Mara would have 
 come in the forenoon, and was disappointed that he had 
 not done so, as she wanted to tell him in a quiet way a 
 number of things that would do him good. That young 
 man gave her considerable concern, though she was not 
 quite sure whether sternness or gentle firmness would be 
 the more effective with him in his present irresponsible 
 and unconventional state of mind. She was much afraid 
 that there was a strain of genius in his nature, and it was 
 exceedingly difficult to compel genius into a becoming 
 respect for the great virtues of obedience and humility. 
 Had he gone forward in Maynooth it would have been 
 different, for although it sometimes proved troublesome 
 the Church was nearly always able to regulate and control 
 genius. 
 
 Arthur O Mara appeared before Maeve had decided 
 in her own mind whether the white frock after all was 
 appropriate and wise. She was inclined, however, to a 
 tolerant view of it, but the unmistakable look of surprise 
 and pleasure with which Arthur regarded it convinced 
 her that it was a tactical mistake; it would reduce the 
 effect of her spiritual counsel appreciably. 
 
 " Why, Maeve," said Arthur, " you are looking be 
 witching. You can t play the proud Puritan today." 
 
 " I am not accustomed to playing parts," said Maeve 
 in her severest manner. 
 
 " Not consciously, of course. ; but you do not always 
 
THE HOUR 01? THE WHITE FROCK 153 
 
 give the grace and sweetness of your nature play, and 
 that comes to the same thing. You look yourself today. 
 You wore a white frock, by the way, in the Garden of 
 Eden." 
 
 Arthur himself was more dainty and less conventional 
 in his get-up than she had seen him yet. His straw hat 
 was romantic, he wore a large blue tie, and his waistcoat, 
 though certainly not new, suggested that it had been 
 made by an artist for an artist. 
 
 " I had a glorious sleep at Howth last night," he said. 
 "And the sight when I woke at sunrise outshone any 
 thing I Ve ever read of in poetry. I understood what 
 Fergus meant when he said some time ago that our re 
 formers ought to live by Dublin Bay if they can, and in 
 any case be earlier risers than skylarks. I said good-bye 
 irrevocably to a conventional life. I felt so rapturous 
 that had you been anywhere within a mile of me I d have 
 run over and positively kissed you. As it was I wrote 
 a long piece of poetry." 
 
 "Your second thoughts appear to be occasionally an 
 improvement on your first," said Maeve frostily. 
 
 " I had great news when I went to the G. P. O.," 
 continued Arthur. " Father sent a long letter and some 
 dusty banknotes. He thought I had been badly treated 
 at Maynooth, and he is wroth with the clergy all round ; 
 so he is on my side. As luck would have it, he has had 
 a stiff quarrel with Father Brady, the new P. P. Father 
 Brady not only drove some of his cattle on to father s 
 lands without asking his permission, but he insisted on 
 driving more of them on to a piece of land that father 
 had sub-let to a struggling neighbor. Father says he s 
 
154 -THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 coming round to the idea of Fainne an Lae about tillage, 
 and as for his feelings about priests as graziers " 
 
 " Good gracious ! " exclaimed Maeve, with cold passion ; 
 " where is this bitter criticism of the priests going to 
 stop? Is any sense of loyalty to the Church of our 
 fathers to be left in the land? Isn t it an old custom 
 in parts of the country to let the priests have grass for 
 their cattle free and welcome? Isn t it another form 
 of dues? Why, then, attack the priests for being 
 graziers ? " 
 
 " My dear little white-frocked firebrand," said Arthur, 
 " I have as a matter of fact attacked nobody at all. The 
 good priest s cows are welcome to their fill so far as 
 I am concerned. I was simply telling you of father s 
 feelings " 
 
 " There was a sneer in your reference to priests as 
 graziers which a good Catholic would be ashamed of," 
 declared Maeve. 
 
 " You are more sensitive than the Church herself," 
 said Arthur. " I don t think that she has any particular 
 liking for grass lands, whether they are held by laic or 
 cleric. And I honestly think that the clerical grazier is 
 out of date now. I certainly agree with father that his 
 reverence ought to have asked permission, and that he 
 should have left the sub-let land alone." 
 
 " The parish priest knows better than your father, and 
 even if a P. P. appears to exceed his rights no Catholic 
 ought to mind, and certainly he should never complain 
 about it to other people. If priests overstep the mark 
 they will see it soon or late themselves, and will put things 
 to rights. The good taste and religious feeling of their 
 
THE HOUR OF THK WHITE FROCK 155 
 
 parishioners should keep them from complaint, which is 
 as unseemly as noise in church." 
 
 " Fancy a girl who reads Bossuet talking in that strain ! 
 Maeve, you are charmingly absurd." 
 
 " I don t approve of the freedom which Bossuet allows 
 himself on occasions," replied Maeve. " I am sure he 
 would be different had he lived and written after the 
 Vatican Council. Anyhow, France is not Ireland. Ire 
 land has a unique tradition of obedience to the lightest 
 whisper of the Church. She has given up the world 
 for the sake of her own soul " 
 
 " My dear Maeve, your Church history has been in 
 spired by the Man in the Moon, and it is not worth the 
 moonbeams it has been transmitted on. Women like 
 you are doing immense harm. Ye are an obstinate, 
 unteachable barrier in the way of reform in the Irish 
 Church today " 
 
 " Reform in the Irish Church ! " cried Maeve, with 
 icy indignation. " O, please go away. Go away at once ! 
 If you don t we are going to have a violent quarrel." 
 
 Arthur sat down on her little table, but she managed 
 before he did so to snatch away the Bossuet and the 
 manuscript-book, pressing them against her breast as she 
 moved her chair back a little. 
 
 " My dear Maeve," said Arthur, " it was entirely un 
 fair to put on a nice white frock in honor of my coming" 
 her eyes answered freezingly "if your heart and 
 temper are going to be so black as this. If you 11 just be 
 as sweet as it is natural for you to be, I 11 write home to 
 my father telling him that every field he has ought to 
 be open to a cow belonging to the good P. P. I 11 ask 
 
156 TllU PLOUGH AND Till-: CROSS 
 
 him to put up a notice in each in Irish and English: 
 A bho an tsagairt, ta faille a s fie he romhat annso ! " * 
 
 " Though you left Maynooth early you brought out 
 one unpleasant and regrettable characteristic of certain 
 finished young Maynooth men flippancy. It all speaks 
 very badly for the future. It s very painful to think 
 that some of the curates of today will be the P. P. s 
 of tomorrow." 
 
 " The flippancy of some young Maynooth men," 
 Arthur replied, with a touch of passion, " has a very sad 
 explanation. It is an attempt to laugh away the unnat- 
 uralness in their hearts their death-in-life. They dis 
 cover when it is too late that they are barred out of Eden. 
 The joy of loving and marrying is denied them." 
 
 Maeve flushed and rose regally from her chair. 
 
 "I I didn t think you would become blasphem 
 ous and indecent," she said. 
 
 " Sit down child," said Arthur. " You don t know 
 what you are talking about. I do; and so do some of 
 the curates. You forget, like a great many Irish people, 
 that clerical celibacy, when all is said, is just a regulation, 
 not an article of faith. It may be a glorious thing for 
 some, emphatically it is not so for others." 
 
 " I did not know," snapped Maeve, " that the vicious 
 theories of Geoffrey Mortimer had effected an entrance 
 into Maynooth." 
 
 " There you are again ! " exclaimed Arthur. " Partly 
 through Maynooth, and the ideas it has spread, the Irish 
 popular mind has become poisoned and ashamed on the 
 
 * Lit. : " O priest s cow there are one-and-twenty welcomes 
 before you here ! " 
 
THE; HOUR OF THE: WHITE: FROCK 157 
 
 subject of love and marriage. You call it vicious! And 
 yet you and others talk of getting back to the Gael! 
 You will find, if you do not wilfully close your mind to 
 facts, that the old Gael entertained no such sickly and 
 dehumanizing theories. He understood the naturalness 
 and the sanctity of love mind you, I don t say passion." 
 
 " Do you mean, then," asked Maeve, trying hard to 
 put the question with a cold calmness, " that the priests 
 should marry? " 
 
 " Many of them might not desire to do so. Those 
 who wish to do so should be permitted to marry. Or 
 there could be an Order of married priests, through which 
 the Church would stand to gain immensely, for she 
 would secure a band of consecrated workers, of high 
 ideals and broad sympathies, who are now scared away 
 by celibacy. In the Greek Catholic Church, which is 
 older than our own, the priests can marry once. In our 
 Church the enforcement of clerical celibacy was very 
 gradual, and was strongly opposed for centuries." 
 
 " I don t want to hear anything about Church history," 
 said Maeve icily ; " it is only appealed to by people who 
 want to show us that the Church has made what they 
 consider mistakes." 
 
 " Churchmen, not the Church. But we won t discuss 
 theology any longer. It gives you a fiery and furious 
 temper astonishing to anyone who knows your natural 
 sweetness " Maeve bowed with facetious solemnity. 
 
 "Anyhow I m out of Maynooth," continued Arthur, 
 " though I hope to do missionary work all the same." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Maeve, ironically. " Considering the 
 
158 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 sentiments you entertain your missionary work should 
 be rather original." 
 
 " We want a lay apostolate," said Arthur ; " not one 
 overbound by rules and likely to grow formalized and 
 sapless, but one inspired by a common spirit, while leaving 
 the individual free and joyous. We want young men 
 who will preach and illustrate the joy of life, and who 
 will contemn convention, caste and formalism; young 
 men who will forswear luxuries and cramping houses 
 and money-grabbing businesses; who will give them 
 selves to the wild and delicate joys of camping out, and 
 manly sport and courtship, and poetry, and art, and daring 
 thought ; who will do just enough work of some natural 
 kind, whether book-binding or stage-playing amongst the 
 people, or fiddling or novel-writing, to keep body and 
 soul together, and give all the rest of their time and en 
 ergy to romance and joy. In short, we want a new order 
 of intellectual and romantic outlaws who will scorn the 
 lying and huckstering thing that is nicknamed civiliza 
 tion, and who will touch and stir what is still unspoiled 
 in the heart and imagination of our race." 
 
 " It sounds very dashing and romantic," said Maeve 
 smiling, " but you spoke of courtship, and I imagine 
 that the life you picture would prove rather trying on 
 your women-folk." 
 
 " We d only woo and marry brave, gladsome, golden- 
 hearted girls who d love the wild and the starlight and 
 the wind on the heath like ourselves. There must be 
 many girls with such hearts still amongst the Gael. 
 The blood of Emer and Deirdre cannot be spent yet, 
 only a little chilled. Why, you are really most romantic 
 
THE: HOUR OF THE: WHITE: FROCK 159 
 
 yourself, and would respond delightfully to a lover s 
 tenderness. Only you would size and test him very se 
 verely for a long time, and only melt when you were 
 sure he was the lover who would love for ever. Then 
 you would be divine. Well, some day you will be with 
 me in a heath-floored home on Howth." 
 
 He quietly bent forward, put his right arm round 
 Maeve s neck and kissed her softly on the lips. 
 
 Crude displays of feeling were repugnant to Maeve. 
 The art of being angry with dignity may have been 
 given to her by Nature, but she certainly cultivated it 
 sedulously till at the dawn of womanhood her displeasure 
 was like a cold but deadly flame. She had tried it with 
 crushing effect upon the hapless young curates in whom 
 she detected an unbecoming frivolity. But a young man 
 who presumed to kiss her raised a new problem, some 
 thing far more subtle than the harmless mental play of a 
 curate. She swiftly tried to concentrate her wits on 
 some scathing way of meeting the new situation without 
 giving vent to the crude indignation of mere impulsive 
 people. In this she lost but a small fraction of time 
 large enough, however, to allow Arthur to follow up the 
 first adventure by a kiss still more eager and by a third 
 of insinuating delicacy. The problem for Maeve was 
 by this time, short as it was, complicated ; for something 
 in her severely controlled nature rebelled, and putting 
 aside conviction, acknowledged in kisses a certain interest 
 as studies. Then to the bewilderment and amazement 
 of reason she was conscious of a wave of emotion in 
 which kisses seemed a joyous rite and love a mysterious 
 exaltation of the whole being. It lasted only a few 
 
160 THE: PLOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 moments, but it seemed undated ages; nay, it outsoared 
 time. Then in a vivid flash came the memory and sig 
 nificance of the ecstasies and visions of many days and 
 nights, the momentous and incommunicable moods of the 
 soul, the realization of forces and presences behind the 
 veil of sense. She shivered, and her eyes suffused with 
 tears. Whereat Arthur drew back shocked at his boldness. 
 
 He caught her hand in a timid, nervous way. 
 
 " Don t be angry, Maeve," he pleaded, " or I 11 run 
 away and leap into the sea. Sometimes my brain feels 
 like bursting and scattering on all sides in a hundred 
 fiery tangents. But when I think of you so beautiful and 
 sweet I grow quite collected and uplifted, and could sing 
 like a skylark. I want you to be a shrine, not an accusing 
 spirit." 
 
 Maeve stood up. He had a confused idea that thun 
 derbolts were about to be hurled at him. 
 
 " You give me an ominous idea of my responsibility," 
 she said. " I think you had better come in, and I 11 give 
 you some tea. You are getting feverish, and tea on a 
 hot day has a curiously cooling effect." 
 
 She led the way in her calm and daintily regal style to 
 the house, Arthur feeling partly like a sheep he thought 
 and partly like a being who has had a sudden vision 
 of wonderland. 
 
 At the same time beneath her mask of serenity Maeve s 
 mind realized unflinchingly that when left alone the 
 severe court of her inner nature would have acute ques 
 tions to review and settle. Apart from this she was 
 tantalized by the mundane query : " Was it the white 
 frock that did it?" 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A COUNCIL, AT CLUAINLUMNEY 
 
 HILE Fergus O Hagan was trying 
 to solve the puzzle of Elsie s 
 astonishingly chilled and grave 
 demeanor, Sean O Carroll came 
 out from the house. He told 
 Fergus in Irish that a letter and 
 a telegram had come for him 
 during his absence. The style in 
 which he sounded a guttural and 
 the slender vowels delighted Lord 
 Strathbarra, who declared that he 
 
 had heard nothing like it in Donegal or the West. He 
 was an enthusiast for subtle points of phonetics. He 
 engaged Sean in an animated conversation, looking as 
 charmed as if Sean were the authentic, traditional Gael, 
 on whose quest he had left the Hebrides time and again, 
 and whom he discovered in Royal Meath at last. He sat 
 down with Sean under the drooping-ash and proceeded 
 with his questions and comparisons as eagerly as if 
 fuaimeanna had some subtle relation to the soul-struggle 
 of the age. When Fergus urged him to come in and 
 take some tea he postponed the pleasure, declaring in 
 
1 62 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 his musical Gaelic that even now he was in the act of 
 partaking of a feast that did his heart good. 
 
 Fergus found that the telegram was from Father 
 Murray. He, with his friend, Mr. Carton, was on a 
 visit at the country house of Mr. Wightman, then coming 
 into prominence as a Catholic and National leader 
 though his leading, the irreverent said, was invariably 
 backwards to the Middle Ages. Mr. Wightman s 
 country home was in the Kells district, comparatively 
 close at hand. Father Murray s message was to the 
 effect that he and Mr. Carton would drive over that 
 evening to Cluainlumney, also that the news from " the 
 seat of trouble " was confusing. Here was promise, 
 truly, of a vivid night if only Elsie were herself ! 
 
 The letter was a hurried one from his chief friend in 
 Maynooth. He thought it best, he said, in these deli 
 cate and anxious days not to send it to the office. It 
 would be well for the present to be specially careful 
 about the references to Maynooth in Fainne an Lae. 
 It might even be well to suggest editorially that it was 
 anything but abreast of advanced Catholic thought 
 which was perfectly true, speaking generally that in 
 fact it was reactionary compared with Continental cen 
 ters. The blessed word " obscurantist," which never 
 hurt anybody, and had a soothing and comforting ring 
 in the ears of bishops, might be hurled at it again and 
 again. One of his friends had written a severe article 
 on these lines, which he enclosed. It said that while 
 Immanence, etc., promised to bring new life and vigor 
 into the Catholic world, and had already proved an ex- 
 
A COUNCIIv AT CUJAINUJMNEY 163 
 
 alting and reconciling influence in great centers of 
 Europe, Maynooth sent Ireland no message in regard to 
 it ; in fact, Maynooth was asleep so far as it was 
 concerned and in its waking hours was content with 
 the old ways which again was true, speaking generally. 
 This would tend to throw their lordships off the track, 
 and it might be followed up by other and stronger 
 articles. They wanted to avert an immediate crisis. 
 If a crisis was forced, one outcome, it was feared, 
 
 would be the suppression of . They had been 
 
 greatly impressed by Father Murray s philosophic coun 
 cil and caution. Anyhow, they were not ready for an 
 open struggle, and some could not make up their minds 
 as to where Immanentism would lead them. Sufficient 
 for the day was the grand new spiritual consciousness 
 that had been stirred, the spacious new vista which had 
 been opened. Soon or late it would affect the whole Irish 
 Church. The bishops though alarmed were apparently 
 desirous not to force trouble into the open; they, too, 
 wisely realized so far as one could presume to say 
 what was really in their lordships minds that any 
 public clash on these issues, never openly broached so 
 far in Ireland, would be dangerous, whoever triumphed. 
 Even in the investigations so far they allowed it to be 
 understood that they were mainly concerned with a pro 
 nounced and restless spirit of nationality. They were 
 none too anxious to admit too openly the idea of a 
 religious crisis in the background. But there was no 
 knowing how and where their lordships would strike if 
 the issue became serious. There were various dangers. 
 
164 THIS PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 Lord Strathbarra with his logical and candid intellect- 
 ualism might move too fast and bring terrible com 
 plications. Their latest news was to the effect that he 
 was in most militant mood. If only he could be 
 temporarily distracted by some new interest, say a Gaelic 
 League internal trouble or an affair of the heart (Fergus 
 smiled a little grimly) ! Even their apostolic-minded 
 friend, Father Murray, with his liberal philosophy, his 
 deep idealism, and his brave and simple Christian spirit, 
 was so far in advance of Irish thought and circumstances 
 that he also but in perfect innocence of heart, and 
 not realizing the primitive and suspicious order that 
 still obtained in Ireland, of which he took the language 
 movement as typical might easily be too advanced 
 and outspoken for his day. Pioneers in Ireland were 
 apt to trust too much to great thoughts and too little 
 to spade-work. 
 
 Meanwhile, the professor said, he had made consider 
 able progress with a pamphlet, to be published quickly, 
 entitled " Has Hell-fire Served Its Purpose ? and What 
 Has the Church in Reality to Say to It?" The idea 
 had been long in his mind, and Fergus s reference to the 
 project -of his friend Miss Lefanu had set him working 
 again. The pamphlet would probably occasion a sen 
 sation in certain quarters. The introduction was ready. 
 Would it be well to try it in Fainne an Lae as an experi 
 ment, a test of the time-spirit? 
 
 Fergus had only just finished the reading of the letter 
 when Father Kenealy and Father Wilson arrived from 
 the Seminary. Lord Strathbarra s enthusiasm for phon- 
 
A COUNCIL AT CLUAINLUMNEY 165 
 
 etics was suddenly satisfied, or rather it gave way to the 
 more compelling desire to resume the discussion of 
 philosophy and nationality with the former, whom he 
 had already met several times at feiseanna of the Gaelic 
 League, and whom, he said, he had marked out for a 
 special place in the Hebridean colony, the Church 
 authorities in Ireland being sure to suppress a man of 
 his high talents and courage soon or late. Father Wilson 
 sustained a shock at once unpleasant and pleasant 
 unpleasant at encountering for the first time one whose 
 fearful fame had long since penetrated to the Seminary; 
 pleasant on discovering that this formidable foe of ultra- 
 montanism, the temporal power, and other things making 
 for the prestige of the Church, seemed so refined and 
 gentle. On reflection he saw that the refinement and 
 gentleness were a grievous misfortune. They would 
 surely delude innocent souls into a respect for their 
 possessor s un-Papal and anti-theocratic opinions ! 
 
 After the introduction it was his fate to be left to chat 
 with Lord Strathbarra beside the drooping-ash, as it 
 chanced that Fergus and Father Kenealy became en 
 gaged in conversation a few yards away. Father Wilson 
 felt sorely embarrassed. To what theme would he turn 
 the conversation so that he might not hear things which 
 would be piis auribus offensive,, if not positively her 
 etical ? 
 
 In his perplexity he looked skyward and caught the 
 modest twinkle of an early star. His heart rose. The 
 sky was surely a safe subject. The sky was beyond 
 human controversy. 
 
1 66 THE PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 He gently drew Lord Strathbarra s attention to the 
 star. 
 
 " I find few things so fascinating as the watching of 
 the stars and planets/ he said. " But I don t know 
 Mars from Orion. I ve always thought the human nick 
 naming of the heavenly bodies a petty and pretentious 
 absurdity. I love to take the celestial picture in all its 
 unlabelled glory and mystery." 
 
 " Man has played poor pranks with the firmament," 
 declared Lord Strathbarra promptly. " The worst of 
 fenders, I am sorry to say, were those theologians who 
 stepped out of their proper sphere and tried to make 
 the world believe that the heavenly bodies moved round 
 this humble earth of ours in meek and respectful at 
 tendance upon it." 
 
 Father Wilson s heart failed. He had thought him 
 self safe with the solemn sky, and lo! this gentle and 
 terrible personage had pressed the whole firmament into 
 his dangerous service at once. 
 
 Happily Father Murray and Mr. Carton arrived at 
 this stage from Kells, and events and minds took a new 
 turn straight away. 
 
 The newcomers and the others had scarcely entered 
 the house when the strains of lively music rose from the 
 direction of the new cottages. 
 
 That music, like everything those new homes re 
 present, does the heart good," said Father Murray, his 
 kindly face beaming. " So long as the people love good 
 music, simple or complex, their social and intellectual, as 
 well as their spiritual, salvation is possible. One of the 
 
A COUNCIIy AT CUJAINIvUMNKY 167 
 
 happiest features of the new Ireland is the musical sense 
 that is stirring along with the language revival ; one of 
 the saddest features of the old Ireland, so conservative 
 and short-sighted, is the neglect by responsible ecclesias 
 tics of the great musical traditions of the Church." 
 
 Fergus had been wondering how soon a Church ques 
 tion would be introduced, and whether Father Murray or 
 Lord Strathbarra old personal friends, whose debates 
 on philosophical and historical issues were beyond count 
 would be the first to introduce it. 
 
 Father Wilson thought he saw a happy opportunity. 
 
 " The Church in Ireland is too poor to be artistic on the 
 grand scale," he said. " She has not the generous patrons 
 of the Middle Ages. But our friend Mr. Carton, by his 
 munificent ideas of choir endowment has made history. 
 He has turned the imagination of gentle and simple, laic 
 and cleric, to the spacious importance of Church music. 
 His thought is golden in more ways than one." 
 
 Mr. Carton s plump, shaded, good-natured face was 
 already bent over the table in profound reverie. He 
 started, shook his shoulders, and looked at the company 
 in a sad way. One thought of the Dormouse in Alice in 
 Wonderland. 
 
 " Palestrina choirs, indeed ! " he said with a deep groan. 
 " I begin to think that singing at the plough might do 
 them a lot more good." 
 
 "What! On Sundays! Oh, Mr. Carton, Mr. Car 
 ton ! " cried Father Wilson ; but Mr. Carton had already 
 returned to his reverie. 
 
 " It has been irreverently suggested," Lord Strathbarra 
 said, " that our friend Carton s endowment of Church 
 
168 THE PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 choirs is to soothe the minds of the congregations so that 
 they may be able to endure the sort of sermons they 
 habitually get; that, in fact, it is an expensive, Swift- 
 esque form of anti-clericalism." 
 
 Mr. Carton started from his reverie, as everybody, 
 except Father Wilson, laughed. His eyes twinkled dimly 
 through his glasses, though his features as a whole re 
 mained gloomy. 
 
 " Everything in Ireland is topsy-turvy and queer," he 
 said, " and the sermons are the queerest and topsy-turviest 
 of all." 
 
 And then with his hands on his ears he went back to 
 his reverie. 
 
 " Our friend Mr. Carton is nearly right," said Father 
 Murray. " Irish sermons are the queerest things in Ire 
 land, with one exception the clerical pronunciation of 
 Latin. Its fame has gone over Europe, and there are 
 said to be moments when the thought of it lightens the 
 mighty burden of Rome itself." 
 
 Father Wilson would have enjoyed this sally had no 
 laymen been present. As things stood he thought it best 
 to get back to music again. He said it was significant 
 how every evening after toil the Cluainlumney workers 
 seemed to turn instinctively to music, while during their 
 work they sang. Was there some subtle connexion be 
 tween life on the land and harmony? 
 
 " I think it means that life on the land is natural, and 
 that once you give the people sweet and healthy lives and 
 fair play, they will find their own joys and express their 
 sense of life and enjoyment in their own way," Father 
 Murray said. " If you made and regulated their joys 
 
A COUNCIL AT CIvUAINLUMN^Y 169 
 
 and amusements for them they would find even joy 
 dictated joy an irksome tyranny. That is the weak 
 point of Socialism. It proposes to do too much for hu 
 manity. And the Church, which could really do much 
 more, in a deeper way, is proposing or promising little 
 or nothing in Ireland." 
 
 " I think," said Fergus, " that Socialism simply pro 
 poses to take the fetters off the worker s feet, the load 
 off his back, give him the means of subsistence and the 
 opportunity of development, and let him develop and 
 flourish to his heart s content and his soul s. It really 
 only proposes to clear the ground for the nobler forms 
 of individualism, which by their very nobility would be 
 co-operative." 
 
 " We must not judge Socialism," Father Kenealy said, 
 " by some early and crude pronouncements of individual 
 Socialists in places half-dehumanized by competitive and 
 unsparing industrialism. Our own religion is Socialistic ; 
 our Church system is largely ecclesiastical Socialism. 
 When we say the Lord s Prayer we pray collectively and 
 socialistically : Give us this day our daily bread, and 
 so on. Nobody says, Give me my daily bread and 
 let others starve. Our Lord s parables of the Kingdom 
 are in essence Socialism. So are other things which we 
 are told the common people heard gladly." 
 
 " I am not a Socialist in the ordinarily accepted sense," 
 said Lord Strathbarra, " but I have a rooted objection to 
 Rome, or any body of ecclesiastics, laying it down that 
 I must not be a Socialist. It is no part of their mission 
 to control or interfere with my ideas on economics. Their 
 Master taught no economics. Their mission is to hold 
 
170 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 fast to His spirit in the world,, to administer the sacra 
 ments to help the individual conscience, to aid the individ 
 ual soul to uplift itself, and in the social order to intensify 
 the sense of brotherhood. They have nothing to do with 
 the State as such. If the people think it well to national 
 ize the land, and the means of production and distribution, 
 it is preposterous to suggest that the Church has any 
 mandate to say them nay. These things are temporal 
 and temporary; another age may discover something 
 much better than nationalization or co-operative industry. 
 The business of Church and Churchmen is not with the 
 temporary, but with that part of the eternal which we 
 call the soul." 
 
 Mr. Carton, who had been silent as the tomb, took his 
 hands off his ears, looked up suddenly, and said : 
 
 " Churchmen declare they have a mandate to interfere 
 with you in everything, and if you don t believe them 
 you know where you go " 
 
 Mr. Carton put all the sense of terror he could into the 
 last clause, and hurriedly returned to his reverie, as if 
 to escape from the thought. 
 
 " Churchmen in Ireland undoubtedly claim too much," 
 said Father Kenealy ; " they claim much that is both 
 unreasonable and impracticable. In education they simply 
 do not know where to stop. A Seminary professor myself, 
 I can say without the suspicion of envy or prejudice 
 that they have far too much of Irish secondary teaching 
 in their hands, and that their grip of the lay teacher in the 
 primary system is not alone tyrannical, but disastrous to 
 character and the cause of true education." 
 
 " One of your western bishops admitted to friends in 
 
A COUNCIL AT CLUAINUJMNKY 171 
 
 his pre-episcopal Maynooth days," said Lord Strathbarra, 
 " that there was a great deal of truth in Frank Hugh s 
 book, The Ruin of Education in Ireland. What a pity 
 he does not speak out from his more exalted station now. 
 The book is no less true because the good Doctor has 
 been made a bishop." 
 
 Mr. Carton again looked up suddenly. 
 
 " No one in this country/ he said, " speaks out the full 
 truth that is in him. He fears it might hurt somebody, 
 or maybe catch cold if it were let out." 
 
 Whereat Mr. Carton buried his face in his hands. 
 
 " I m thinking of suggesting in Painne an Lae that we 
 have a Candor Week once a year," said Fergus, " a week 
 in which it would be recognized that nobody would suffer 
 for plain speaking. The first such Candor Week we 
 could devote to education questions." 
 
 " Nothing ye can say about Churchmen and the control 
 and character of education in Ireland will be too strong 
 for me," declared Father Murray. " It annoys and dis 
 tresses me as much as the weak, sentimental sermons that 
 ignore the whole philosophic basis of Catholicism, the 
 childish, quasi-pietistic pages that do duty amongst us 
 here for Catholic literature/ and the manufacture and 
 melodrama that pass with so many of our priests for 
 art. To Fergus and Mr. Carton I Ve admitted all these 
 things a hundred times. Most of the Irish priests are 
 living on the past, and are afraid both of the present 
 and the future. But dwelling on their deficiences is un 
 pleasant, and is poor consolation. We must try to bring 
 them to a sense of the glorious mission and possibilities 
 of the Church, till her philosophy, her spirit, her ceremo- 
 
172 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 nies, her ritual, will be a living inspiration to her children 
 again, and a source of gracious interest and example to 
 those who are not her children." 
 
 " I am afraid/ said Lord Strathbarra, " that the ideal 
 is impossible. The Church organization in Ireland would 
 quarrel on some pretext with the nation if it found the 
 nation growing too strong, and it would have Rome and 
 England to help it. The tradition of the Roman Catholic 
 Church for ages has been against nationalities, and a 
 change of policy is now, humanly speaking, impossible. 
 The Greek Catholic Church which many of our people 
 do not know is really a Catholic Church has, on the 
 other hand, been always friendly to nationality. The 
 educated Irish Catholics who are loyal to nationality as 
 well as to Christian principles may ultimately nay, must 
 ultimately be driven to find a solution of their diffi 
 culties by entering into communion with the Greek 
 Church. You could not imagine the Greek Church inter 
 fering with the Gaelic League. Our relations with Rome 
 are entirely unsatisfactory. Ireland is not treated as a 
 Daughter of the Church, but as a Drudge downstairs." 
 
 " While, of course, I disagree altogether with your 
 Greek Church scheme," said Father Murray, " I admit 
 frankly that our position in regard to Rome is sadly 
 unsatisfactory. English influence is strong at the Vatican, 
 and though the Maynooth oath of loyalty is abolished, 
 the spirit and the tradition remain, and no Irish bishop is 
 appointed unless he is a supporter of the British regime 
 in Ireland. In other words, Irish episcopal appointments 
 are also political appointments: But if the Irish priests 
 made a stand, and held out, Rome would not and could 
 
A COUNCIL AT CUJAINUJMNSY 173 
 
 not compel them in any diocese to accept an anti-national 
 or an tin-national bishop. Again, Ireland is not treated 
 as a Catholic country, but as a heathen land. She is not 
 directly under the Pope, but under the Propaganda " 
 
 " None of our concerns are dealt with by the Pope ; 
 all of them by Boards of Clerks open to political influ 
 ences," 9 interrupted Lord Strathbarra. 
 
 " The clerks, however, are ecclesiastics," replied Father 
 Murray. " But our position is unsatisfactory all the 
 same, and, for a historic Catholic nation, rather humiliat 
 ing. I readily grant you that Ireland ought to be restored 
 to her old and honored position." 
 
 " It would make little difference, such is the modern 
 temper of Rome, and with the Jesuits, those historic 
 enemies of all national spirit, so influential at the Vati 
 can," declared Lord Strathbarra. " In any case liberty 
 of thought is becoming impossible, and for another thing 
 the Church government has become over-organized, and 
 many ecclesiastics think far more of the power and the 
 machinery of government than of the original and saving 
 Christian ethics." 
 
 Mr. Carton looked up again. 
 
 " Ecclesiastics are also interested directly or indirectly 
 in the machinery of the Stock Exchange and in the drink 
 traffic," he said, and relapsed into contemplation, while 
 the pained look deepened on Father Wilson s boyish and 
 wistful face. 
 
 " The trouble goes far deeper than Lord Strathbarra 
 imagines," said Father Kenealy, " though he is right 
 in the contention that over-organization, the hypnotism 
 by machinery, the dead-weight of formalism, and the love 
 
174 TH E PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 of power are crying evils. The great want, as Fainne an 
 Lae has said again and again, is applied Christianity. 
 The majority of our people are still far from the stage 
 at which Modernism could interest them it would only 
 confuse or unsettle them now and they are quite 
 unconcerned about matters of Church history and organ 
 ization. But applied Christianity would move them pro 
 foundly, would give the Church an august new meaning, 
 and would revolutionize Irish life. It is the business of 
 the bishops and of us the priests to begin it. Let us give 
 up our palaces and fine parochial houses, our grazing 
 system, wherever it exists, our sporting, our dealings with 
 stockbrokers, our expensive horses., and so on; and let 
 us live simply. Let us withdraw all the wealth we have 
 from the banks and elsewhere and devote it to co-operative 
 industries. Let us cease all charges in connexion with 
 Masses, Marriages, and everything sacramental and 
 sacred. Let us cease from expensive church building 
 till all our flocks have decent homes, and till libraries and 
 halls for the people are universal. Let us give up for 
 ever our dining with the genteel, our snobbish social hob 
 nobbing with the well-to-do. Let our leisure hours be 
 spent with the workers, walking with the ploughman, 
 chatting at the forge, in the shoemaker s shop, with the 
 tailor, and the carpenter, and the rest. Let us no longer 
 be a caste apart. But this is not half our duty. Let us 
 insist from ajtar and in confessional and everywhere that 
 the man who neglects to cultivate his land properly, the 
 man who underpays his workers, the seller who adulter 
 ates food, the man who takes rent for slums, the man 
 who in any shape or form brings trouble to his fellow 
 
A COUNCIL, AT CI;UAINI<UMNEY 175 
 
 beings for the sake of profits are all grievous sinners. 
 Let us hold up in all their heinousness to the people the 
 whole catalog of anti-social crimes. In short, in God s 
 name, let us return to the spirit of the early Church. 
 Let us bring back Christ to the everyday life of Ire 
 land." 
 
 Mr. Carton looked up with a start. 
 
 "If only you were a bishop!" he said, looking with 
 poignant eyes at Father Kenealy. " By the staff of St. 
 Patrick I d spend my last penny to endow a choir in 
 every church in your diocese." 
 
 Then Mr. Carton closed his eyes again. 
 
 "I entirely agree with everything Father Kenealy has 
 said," declared Father Murray. " You all know that 
 my present business in Ireland is partly in connexion 
 with a position that will enable me to do the work that 
 is near my heart, here in our own land. My old friend, 
 
 the aged Bishop of , has all but come round to my 
 
 views, though as the post I want is something of a new 
 departure at least it is thought so in these conservative 
 days in the Irish Church the task of convincing him 
 has been difficult. If I obtain the position, as it is now 
 virtually certain I shall, my position in the great diocese 
 will be one of enormous responsibility, and glorious 
 opportunity, and the dream of my life will be in a fair 
 way towards fulfilment." 
 
 " It will be the beginning of a new chapter in the 
 relation of the Irish Church to national and intellectual 
 life it is almost too good to be true," said Fergus, to 
 whom Father Murray, in his London years, had so often 
 opened his heart. 
 
176 THE: PLOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 Father Murray shook his head in modest deprecation 
 of his friend s enthusiasm, but he smiled gratefully. 
 
 " I shall show the people/ he said, " that between the 
 Church as such the Church, not mistaken Churchmen 
 and Irish nationality there can never be any clash 
 whatever. And I hope, with God s help, to preach and to 
 put into practice all those ideas that Father Kenealy has 
 expressed. But there are other great issues confronting 
 us. The world has changed, though the Irish priests as a 
 rule do not want to admit that it has. Great advances on 
 material lines, luminous scientific discoveries, the diffusion 
 of culture and half-culture, and several other things, have 
 appeared to put man in a new relation to the universe. 
 I am afraid that Churchmen generally have met the new 
 situation in an impossible spirit, and in Ireland in a 
 reactionary or ignorant spirit. They have stood for 
 old formulae and mediums of expression that were tem 
 porary and incidental, they have stood for tales rather 
 than the truth embodied in the tales; they have fought, 
 especially in Ireland, for a worldly dominance that is no 
 part of their divine and spiritual mission. They have 
 done much to suggest, what is essentially untrue, that the 
 Catholic Church is a despotism. They should have fallen 
 back upon the great central store of the Church s philo 
 sophy, with its profound moral and intellectual wealth and 
 inspiration, and enriched and encouraged the changing 
 world with its changeless truth and abiding appeal. But 
 the master minds of the Church are a sealed book, 
 especially in Ireland, and many a man who wants to be 
 loyal to the Church of his fathers, if he can be so without 
 intellectual insincerity, has been allowed to go on in the 
 
A COUNCIL AT ClyUAINIyUMNEY 177 
 
 feeling that these master minds are primitive and out- 
 of-date. A man with a fair intellect must really turn 
 away in despair or weariness from the majority of Irish 
 sermons and the generality of the stuff that is called 
 Catholic literature. It is all a terrible and tragic 
 blunder." 
 
 " But don t you think," asked Father Wilson pathetic 
 ally, " that Irish faith is firm, and Irish Catholic instinct 
 sound, and that the dangers rife in Europe remain remote 
 from us ? " 
 
 " God help you ! with your untrained people on the 
 one hand, and the printing presses of Britain on the 
 other," said Father Murray. " You don t .realize what is 
 happening. It is that a large proportion of the more or 
 less educated mind of the country is drifting away from 
 you. It does not revolt; it simply does not care. It 
 does not yield intellectual allegiance to Catholicism. Its 
 attitude in the main is not the result of searching and 
 conviction, but simply of ignorance. The master-minds 
 and the great philosophy of the Church would win it 
 back, arrest those on the way, and inspire many more. 
 But the great teachers and teaching are ignored in Ireland. 
 Instead of these you give the Eden story literally, you 
 preach a material hell, you repeat the legends of St. 
 Patrick, while in the country places you do nothing to 
 dissipate the fantastic idea that the priests can work 
 miracles every time they are so minded. If people accept 
 things like these as Catholic truth, and give up the 
 Church when they outgrow them, assuming that none of 
 her teaching has any better basis, it is your own fault. 
 The leaders of the Church in Ireland must put folk-lore 
 
1^8 THE PLOUGH AND THE} CROSS 
 
 aside and stand for the golden heart and philosophy of 
 Christianity." 
 
 Mr. Carton looked up, and glanced solemnly and sadly 
 round the company. 
 
 " It s all in vain," he said. " Matters in the Church 
 must, humanly speaking, go from bad to worse. The 
 strong and brilliant men will be kept out of the high 
 positions. The safely-weak, the timid, and the conserv 
 ative will be appointed to the exalted places. The next 
 generation and the next will see timidity more timid, and 
 conservatism more conservative, in the high places. Only 
 an institution divine in origin could survive through it all." 
 
 This was the, longest speech of Mr. Carton s life. The 
 gloomy philosophy it expressed was the theme of dis 
 cussion till Maire and Elsie brought in supper. Lord 
 Strathbarra at once became eagerly interested, and grace 
 fully managed in due course to make place for Elsie 
 beside himself. During supper he talked with mingled 
 glow and blitheness, seasoning his talk with pointed anec 
 dotes from the great capitals of Europe, and displaying 
 what to a few of the company was a new and richly en 
 tertaining side of his character. The whole conversation 
 was animated, but leaping in a somewhat erratic, lightly 
 irresponsible way from subject to subject as far apart 
 as Maynooth and Rome. A melodious, thoughtful sen 
 tence from Father Murray gave it poise and dignity from 
 time to time. Mr. Carton said short and solemn things 
 on art and philosophy in the manner of a man giving 
 directions to favorite dogs or horses. Fergus felt himself 
 wishing for his riddle and a quiet corner in a lonely old 
 house beyond a wild waste. Elsie answered remarks of 
 
A COUNCIL, AT CIAJAINIvUMNEY 179 
 
 Lord Strathbarra in a curiously and delicately caustic 
 way. When passing down to help Maire at the close she 
 leaned over Fergus s shoulder to take something from the 
 table, resting one arm on his neck for a few moments 
 and then, as she slowly drew back, touching his cheek 
 with her hand in a patting, delicate way, and pulling his 
 ear finally, unnoted by anybody else, a general dash to 
 disputation having been caused by a particular militant 
 remark, made in his splendidly serene way, by Lord 
 Strathbarra. Fergus had no idea what the remark was 
 about ; the touch of Elsie s hand on his cheek had carried 
 his imagination with great suddenness from old houses 
 and lonely wastes to one of his enchanted islands, and the 
 pulling of his ear sent him ten thousand leagues or so 
 nearer to Tir na nOg* 
 
 * Land of the Young, or Country of Perpetual Youth. A 
 wonderland in the western sea of which there are many tales 
 and glimpses in earlier Irish literature. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE: LEAGUE OF PROGRESSIVE; PRIESTS 
 
 iFTER supper Lord Strathbarra de 
 clared that they had had a pleasant 
 and stimulating evening, but when 
 all was said they had decided upon 
 no bold and helpful measures. With 
 all the wants of the new day, and the 
 imminent condemnation of the Gaelic 
 League by Rome, it was time, he said 
 in his genially challenging way, for 
 the clerics who believed in Ireland to 
 exert themselves. 
 
 " I grow more and more confident," said Father Mur 
 ray, " that Rome will be induced to hold its hand. The 
 dangers that such high-handed action would produce 
 are too serious. Besides, I know from very high au 
 thority that in progressive minds at Rome there is great 
 anxiety and dissatisfaction over ecclesiastical concerns 
 in Ireland, and these men feel they may not be the 
 majority, but they count that an organization like the 
 Gaelic League, which spreads culture and self-respect, 
 must react on Church affairs in the long run. Rome 
 has been perturbed and offended over sundry Irish mat- 
 
IvKAGUlC OF PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS l8l 
 
 ters of late years, the Armagh celebrations amongst 
 them. I well remember the Sunday; I was on a visit 
 to the West of Ireland at the time. For financial reasons, 
 and reasons of health, it was my lot to remain alone all 
 day while the whole Irish race seemed gathered at 
 Armagh. I was able, however, to drive over to Kilmac- 
 cluagh and sit in the silent choir, and in the rich sun 
 light, think of the Eire that once was, and that was so 
 much more real, and so much more beautiful, than the 
 Eire that was on view at Armagh that day. I found 
 afterwards that at Armagh there was certainly much 
 make-believe. It might to some seem a trifling technical 
 matter, but thoughtful ecclesiastics considered it charac 
 teristic of one side of Ireland, that the actual consecration 
 of the cathedral, which alone could justify the formality 
 of the Sunday s proceedings, was gone through privately 
 on the Wednesday previous, leaving nothing for the 
 Sunday but the solemn Mass, which in a normal cathedral 
 would be sung every day. I trusted at the time that the 
 foreign prelates did not go home with their tongues in 
 their cheeks. Again, the drinking on the occasion of the 
 social festivities was painful to many. Things like these 
 tell heavily at Rome, and will make them very chary 
 about interfering with that rare thing, an Irish movement 
 making for intellectual sanity and a bright social spirit." 
 
 Mr. Carton was deeply impressed by the point about 
 Armagh, and dwelt upon it as a momentous illustration 
 of the truth of his down-grade philosophy. 
 
 When all was said, Lord Strathbarra declared, we 
 could count upon no help, but might reckon on much 
 positive hindrance from Rome. He gave a rapid and 
 
182 THE: PivOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 lucid review of the historical side of liberal Catholicism, 
 and the Immanentist movement,, showing, that the end 
 was always either submission to ultramontanism, or a- 
 vowed departure from the Church, or unexpressed dissent 
 and silent rebellion. The first two were unhappy, the 
 last was unworthy. He did not believe that in the new 
 crisis more than two or three men in Maynooth, if even 
 so many, would stand firm. And in the untrained, con 
 fused, dragooned and folk-lore-loving Ireland outside 
 Maynooth there were very few men with minds of their 
 own and minds of the depth and cast that counted. So 
 where on Irish soil was the hope? The more he re 
 viewed the position the more convinced he was that the 
 issue and the hope would turn surely and inevitably to 
 his Hebridean shore and scheme. His island would send 
 a message and set an example to the new age even as 
 lona sent light to the old. Ireland would gradually learn 
 and take heart from Strathbarra, and eventually she might 
 have sufficient courage to insist on a natural understand 
 ing with Rome, and to put herself right with her own 
 soul. 
 
 " I am deeply distressed/ said Father Murray, " over 
 Lord Strathbarra s criticism of Rome and over Mr. 
 Carton s profound pessimism. Yet there is some basis 
 for each, and criticism may imply an underlying love of 
 perfection. Lord Strathbarra would love Rome if she 
 were perfect. But with all her political and diplomatic 
 mistakes we should not be unfilially severe. We should 
 remember the mighty spiritual mission and the august 
 traditions of Rome, and we should not hastily lose hope 
 that even her worldly and human faults are beyond cur- 
 
THE) LEAGUE OF PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS 183 
 
 ing. Anyhow, to the truly instructed Catholic they do 
 not count, or at least they need not worry him. He owes 
 no obedience to political orders from the Vatican the 
 Catholic Church as such has nothing to say to or against 
 nationality and in matters of conscience the Pope him 
 self has no power over any Catholic. If it were conceiv 
 able that the Pope would say one thing and conscience 
 another, we would be bound to follow conscience. Our 
 Irish relation to Rome should be. inspired by reverence 
 for its spiritual side as the guardian of our supreme 
 body of moral truth and the helper of our spiritual lives. 
 We may be as critical as we like of its diplomatic and 
 intellectual side. Of its personalities in any age, and 
 their theories on science, politics, and a hundred other 
 worldly interests and issues, we need take no concern. 
 An Ireland loyal to real Catholicity, but independent and 
 critical towards Vaticanism, would be a healthy fact, 
 and a beneficial factor in the world. But while we are 
 demanding perfection in Rome on her worldly "as well as 
 on her spiritual side, we are apt to forget the duty of 
 beginning at home,, with our individual selves and our 
 nation. Each and all of us have as serious and as solemn 
 a concern with the finer spirit and the fuller practice of 
 Christianity as has Rome." 
 
 Lord Strathbarra admitted that all this was excellent 
 in theory but impossible in practice. Rome would insist 
 on being taken as a whole, and would brook no distinction 
 between her spiritual and her political sides. She had 
 Ireland in thrall, body and soul, and would insist on 
 keeping her so, as long as she ruled in the land. 
 
 Father Kenealy declared that the time for a new de- 
 
184 THIS PLOUGH AND Till } CROSS 
 
 parture had come, but it must not be either on the lines 
 of the Maynooth movement or the Strathbarra revolt. 
 He had brooded long on the social, national and religious 
 situation, and he felt that the fit beginning was at once 
 simple and daring. There ought to be a League of Priests 
 progressive, national-minded and apostolic-spirited 
 priests, mostly young who would carry out unflinch 
 ingly in their several spheres the practical Christianity he 
 had expounded earlier in the night. He went over the 
 broad details and suggestions again, speaking with great 
 earnestness and intensity. After hearing Father Murray 
 he was ready to agree that the priests in question should 
 also expound the philosophy of Catholicity to the best 
 of their opportunity and ability, but the supreme matter 
 was the logical and inspiring application of Christianity 
 in every phase and circumstance of their daily lives. 
 There should be no formal rules or organization; the 
 League of Priests should rather be a union in spirit and 
 understanding; it would be heartening to each to know 
 that the others were at work in different parts of the 
 vineyard. There could be foregathering from time to 
 time; but formalism should be strictly and ardently 
 avoided. Fainne an Lae could publish, in Irish pref 
 erably, what they thought would be encouraging and 
 expressive in regard to the work, without hinting, how 
 ever, that there was a definite League in being. Gradually 
 the spirit would permeate all the young priests coming 
 out of Maynooth, and the unspoiled amongst the laity 
 would take fire from the outset. 
 
 " Splendid ! " cried Lord Strathbarra, his face beaming. 
 " Ye do not know the tremendous adventure on which 
 
THE I.EAGUE 01* PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS 185 
 
 ye are embarking, nor the vested interests and prejudices 
 against which your applied Christianity will crash. But 
 go ahead ! Ye have the right spirit, and ye will be most 
 certainly training and preparing recruits and workers for 
 my own island scheme. As soon as a member of the 
 League of Priests comes to grief let him set forth with 
 out delay for Strathbarra; there will be a welcome and 
 a home for him." 
 
 Father Kenealy, however, was too young and couragous 
 to be easily daunted. It was agreed to submit the idea 
 forthwith to all friends amongst the progressive minded 
 clergy within and without Maynooth, and to broach it 
 in a general way in the Irish columns of Fainne an Lae. 
 Father Wilson grew more wistful; Mr. Carton went 
 deeper in the depths of reverie. 
 
 " It is a noble prospect," said Lord Strathbarra, " but 
 too interesting for further discussion at this late hour. 
 We shall have plenty of opportunities to review it in all 
 its bearings when we are all together in the Hebrides. 
 Fergus, you may as well look ahead a little, and give 
 Strathbarra in the Hebrides as the permanent address of 
 the League of Priests who are going to stand for practical 
 Christianity in Ireland." 
 
 Lord Strathbarra rose. The others also prepared for 
 departure. Fergus accompanied his friends to the end 
 of the lane, walking by Father Murray s side and listen 
 ing eagerly to the plans for his settlement in Ireland, 
 which he reviewed with so much hope and enthusiasm. 
 
 " When I am coadjutor-bishop," said Father Murray 
 gaily, " I shall often take a text or an illustration from 
 Fainne an Lae. I often try to picture the sort of a paper 
 
i86 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 you would produce every week if Ireland were a place 
 where things happened and gave you the fit interests to 
 describe and interpret if she were a full-living, creative 
 land, with artistic and intellectual momentum, and the 
 Church a great, culture-giving force, with an influence 
 on all the national life. At present that glorious Ireland 
 exists only in our hearts, but please God it will be an 
 actuality ere we go." 
 
 He spoke with keen distress of the Maynooth trouble. 
 
 " With the present episcopal order and mood, and the 
 ignorant condition of the popular mind, they ought to 
 walk more warily," he said. " The manifest duty is to 
 teach, soothe and uplift the nation s mind, and not to be 
 heated or critical. Let them emphasize the real beauty and 
 philosophy of the Church, which is much more advanced 
 than the majority of people think, and the formalized 
 folk-lore and the excrescences will gradually fall away. 
 Starting straight off to attack the folk-lore will give the 
 poor people the idea that the inner truth itself is being 
 attacked, and the powers that be will take advantage of 
 the ignorance and confusion to crush the pioneers if they 
 can." 
 
 Fergus mentioned the professor s project of the pam 
 phlet on Hell-fire. 
 
 " The wrong way to go to work and the wrong time," 
 said Father Murray emphatically. " Reveal the love of 
 God, the wonder of life, the beauty of holiness, the 
 grandeur of Christianity, applied practically and unflinch 
 ingly to everyday affairs, and you will gradually take 
 the mind of the people, so to say, out of Hell. Hell as 
 commonly understood is a popular not a Church concep- 
 
THE) LEAGUED OF PROGRESSIVE PRIESTS l8? 
 
 tion at all. What the Church really teaches about Hell 
 is no easy matter to explain, and her reticence has given 
 the popular imagination its opportunity. The very study 
 of eschatology is a sort of hell in itself. Egyptian, He 
 brew, Greek, Patristic, and medieval ideas and notions 
 are mixed up, and many moderns turn away from it all 
 in mingled horror, weariness and incredulity. No serious 
 theologian now gives a thought to a hell of material fire, 
 and it is a holy and wholesome thought to tell the people 
 as much. But the abiding question of retribution is 
 excessively complicated and difficult. It might be better 
 for our friends to attend more to the development of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven in the individual and the nation." 
 The high road was now reached, and the parting of 
 the ways had come. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THI> TROMISU 
 
 S Fergus approached the house, after 
 the parting with his friends, he saw 
 that Elsie was standing at the open 
 door. He had been looking from the 
 splendid solemnity of the stars to the 
 cloistral solemnity of Meath, pond 
 ering over the mystery of so much 
 silent matter above and below, and 
 wondering if it all held myriad mani 
 festations of existence of which the 
 senses gave no idea. The picture which Elsie presented 
 gave his thoughts a new turn. She stepped forward, 
 lifted her hands and shook his shoulders, while her eyes 
 clouded and her lips pouted in a curiously childish way. 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan," she said, "what. time is the first up- 
 train in the morning from Baile na Boinne ? " 
 
 He replied promptly that slow as Meath trains were 
 it would creep along an hour or two before she rose. 
 For it would be late when she went to bed he had so 
 many things to say to her after the events of the last 
 twelve hours. And she had better come in, for she might 
 catch cold even on a summer night. True the prospect 
 
THE: PROMISE; otf EXSIE; I9 1 
 
 from the open door was beautiful, but she would bring 
 in the starlight with her, so he could not complain. 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan," she said, as they went in, " I am 
 catching that morning train, and I am going away from 
 the Boyne Valley for ever. I 11 have time to see Maeve in 
 Dublin before I leave Ireland." 
 
 " Maeve may possibly be down on the first train to 
 Baile na Boinne," he said smiling. " Your trains would 
 meet a good way beyond Tara. Even from passing 
 Meath trains you would not have time enough for all 
 ye would want to say to each other. You count too 
 much on the accommodating spirit of Meath trains. I 
 assure you that passengers even fair lady passengers 
 are not so much as allowed to get out and exchange 
 compliments, while all passengers are forbidden under a 
 penalty to pluck flowers while the trains are in motion." 
 
 " You are getting into a perfectly disagreeable temper, 
 Fergus O Hagan. It s on a par with your treatment of 
 me all the evening and all day. That is why I am leaving 
 your moonstruck valley and your impossible country." 
 
 "As a greater than any of us said : I am not conscious 
 to myself of anything, yet I am not thereby justified." 
 
 " Not conscious to yourself of anything, indeed ! Your 
 letters were most appetizing and charming to the spirit, 
 especially the last eight pages or so in each. They gave 
 me to understand that I d be treated like a fairy princess 
 in Eirinn. But most of the time you leave me, and go 
 planning hare-brained projects with all sorts of mad 
 people. Last night, as my mind was excited, the thing 
 had some sort of attraction; but I shook myself into 
 sanity when you deserted me for Dublin this afternoon. 
 
192 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 And, lo ! tonight my second in your eerie valley you 
 fill the house with twice as many mad people, and barely 
 recognize my existence." 
 
 " Elsie O Kennedy, I know that even you must have 
 a slight touch of vanity somewhere, and I am sure that, 
 you are secretly delighted at the unwonted attraction 
 you have been to so many leaders of the people." 
 
 " Leaders of the people! Madame Madcap is perfectly 
 sane and natural in comparison. I never heard such in 
 human conversation as during the last couple of days. 
 Can ye really keep it up all the year round? Do ye 
 never descend from such mountain-high topics as Genesis, 
 General Councils, and the manners and customs of 
 bishops ? " They were standing by the mantel-piece in 
 the large front room, where the night s discussion had 
 taken place. He laid his hand gaily on her shoulder. 
 
 " I hope you 11 keep up this charming affectation of dis 
 pleasure," he said, " until I get the picture well imprinted 
 in my mind. It becomes you beautifully, and I want to 
 add it to the lovely stock of phases of you that enrich 
 my imagination. But, by the way, I ve a little account 
 to settle with you. Why did you look so grave when I 
 met you this evening on coming down from Dublin, and 
 when I could not very well kiss you back to good humor ? 
 Lord Strathbarra was present, you know, and I didn t 
 want to make him envious." 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, I m not going to tell you why I 
 looked grave and unhappy, because it might make you 
 too conceited. You are bad enough already, just because 
 people say nice things about your soulful and impossible 
 paper." 
 
THE PROMISE OF EXSIE 193 
 
 " It is well to know how it strikes a fair contemporary. 
 I assure myself that the chief thing I have been learning 
 in Ireland is profound humility." 
 
 " Well, don t look sad over it/ said Elsie, " or I might 
 be tempted to relent towards you, and tis troublesome to 
 have a fight with temptation. For I m not going to 
 relent, so long as you treat me so barbarously in this 
 outlandish valley of yours." 
 
 " I d have kissed you before this/ he said, suiting 
 the action to the word, " only I was afraid it would break 
 this novel and delightful mood of yours; and I wanted 
 to study and enjoy it." 
 
 " More cold-blooded study of me, as if I were some 
 strange subject ! I won t stand it, Fergus O Hagan. 
 And you need not think that kisses will improve your 
 position. Even as to kisses why, you were afraid to 
 kiss me today when you were leaving for Dublin, just 
 because Maire was present." 
 
 " What a stupid and unaccountable piece of forgetful- 
 ness ! " he said. " But I was excited and concerned after 
 the visit to Mr. Milligan. And I was in a hurry to catch 
 the train." 
 
 " Quite like you, Fergus O Hagan. Thinking ever so 
 much more about schemes and men and trains than about 
 me, though you pretend all sorts of poetical things on 
 paper, when I m as far away as Paris. You must find it 
 very convenient to have me so far off. At that distance 
 you can invest me with a sort of enchantment you are 
 an excellent hand at the manufacture of golden halos - 
 and there s no danger of my disturbing your solemn 
 affairs, your plots and plans with moonstruck people 
 
194 THE PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 against other moonstruck people. Lord Strathbarra 
 would be a great deal more considerate." 
 
 "You would find him very trying as a lover, be-, 
 cause you would have to keep yourself astonishingly well 
 posted in ancient and modern theology. The strain 
 would be too much for you. Now, I am a great deal 
 more reasonable I talk a fair share of light and airy 
 nonsense." 
 
 " Thank you very much, Fergus O Hagan. It is 
 exceedingly kind of you to accommodate yourself to the 
 wee and babyish intelligence. But you need not think 
 that Lord Strathbarra is interested only in my theology. 
 However, I won t tell you any more, for I m getting quite 
 frightened about that wanton, wicked, and jealous nature 
 of yours." 
 
 " I m charmed," he said, as he laid his hands on her 
 shoulders gently, " to find that you have so much of the 
 child-spirit left. I have been afraid that you were grow 
 ing too wise and womanish." 
 
 Her expression changed with surprising suddenness, 
 her face becoming clouded and pathetic, and her eyes 
 filling with tears. 
 
 " No ; I m growing absurd and unhappy," she said. 
 " I was thinking about you all the afternoon, and I was 
 cross with myself and you, and then cross for being cross. 
 Somehow everything seems to have been changing ever 
 since we left Amiens Street yesterday. It began to come 
 over me when I looked at you as Lord Strathbarra was 
 talking in the train, and then when we had that talk by 
 the river, and again when we were coming back last 
 night. This taking one another seriously is destroying 
 
THE: PROMISE OF ELSIE 195 
 
 the old charm, and making us conventional people, which 
 is against our natures." 
 
 : This is profound and eloquent," said Fergus, gently 
 brushing her tears away. " But like many other pro 
 found things, it is just a little obscure." 
 
 " Because you do not quite want to see my meaning," 
 she said, a bright roguish gleam stealing up into her eyes. 
 " I want to be as interested in you as ever,, and you as 
 interested in me, but dismal seriousness would be provok 
 ing. And look here, Fergus O Hagan, you have splendid 
 work to do, and must not go wasting your time and mind 
 in idealizing me or anybody else. I d rather that you 
 would idealize me than anybody else ; indeed, I d get 
 exceedingly cross-tempered if you idealized somebody 
 else or several somebody elses ; but I want you to be just 
 rational as you were before; to go on with the work of 
 your moonshiny paper, and your cloud-sweeping, and to 
 let your imagination play with me by way of recreation 
 only." 
 
 "And if this momentous treaty is ratified, what is the 
 position of Lord Strathbarra ? " asked Fergus. "Is he 
 to be unpledged, and free to raid my fairy territory? " 
 
 " You are childish, Fergus O Hagan. I 11 mix up 
 Eusebius and Lammenais, or do something equally ab 
 surd one of these days, and then Lord Strathbarra s 
 interest will die a sudden death. He made me feel 
 gloomy, too, this afternoon. He was talking a lot about 
 second-sight and other weird things, and he hinted that 
 there were ordeals before you; and I was as angry as 
 anything. He really knows no more than I do about 
 the future. He hinted that I could have his island " 
 
196 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " Ha ! " said Fergus, " this is becoming dramatic and 
 interesting." 
 
 " Well, I dealt in hints also/ said Elsie, " and made 
 light of islands girt by the wild sea. I declared that my 
 passion for freedom is unbounded " 
 
 "And I suppose he felt sorry that he hadn t a con 
 tinent to offer you," said Fergus. 
 
 " Jealous again, Fergus O Hagan. I believe that even 
 you do not realize my love of freedom and independence. 
 I m an indescribably tameless person, and anyone who 
 thinks I can be easily lured into marriage is leaving my 
 wild free spirit out of the reckoning. But as for you 
 I want you to remain devoted to me in a reasonable 
 way and not to be the least bit jealous, when any of 
 your unconventional friends think they detect in me a 
 budding theologian." 
 
 "And in return for my agreement to those modest 
 demands " 
 
 " Why, I 11 be exceedingly devoted to you in a 
 common-sense way and I 11 faithfully promise never 
 to marry anybody without your permission." 
 
 " You are the most original sprite on this side of 
 fairyland," said Fergus, with a laugh. " Such an arrange 
 ment may sound gracious and charming, but it might 
 place me in a tragic difficulty. Suppose you grew very 
 fond of somebody else, on marriage with whom your 
 happiness would depend. I, to whom your happiness 
 means so much more than I can possibly describe, would 
 logically be bound to agree. But at what a sheer personal 
 sacrifice ! It would be an awful dilemma." 
 
 " I thought you d be quite charmed with my promise, 
 
THE PROMISE of ELSIE 197 
 
 ungrateful man/ said Elsie. " I d make it to no one else 
 in the world, and you wilfully close your eyes to the 
 kindly and trustful side of it." 
 
 "But don t you see the cruel dilemma?" 
 
 " No," said Elsie ; " I refuse to look at it. I am in 
 earnest about the promise, and you ought to feel com 
 plimented. I have to take some drastic step to cure you 
 of your gloomy and impossible moods, and your erratic 
 treatment of me, and this is the best I can think of. To 
 be quite serious, we are going to prove to our satisfaction 
 that a beautiful and affectionate friendship though 
 friendship seems too cold a word can exist between 
 man and woman, without leading to misunderstandings 
 and complications. Mind and spirit must regulate our 
 attitude throughout." 
 
 " It is wonderful to think," he said, " how much of 
 my own half-formed thought and underlying feeling you 
 can clearly and pointedly express on occasions. But in 
 this instance I foresee difficulties." 
 
 " Don t meet them half-way. And now you can kiss 
 me good-night, or rather good-morning. The hours that 
 we keep in your wonderful valley are worse than 
 Maeve s." 
 
 As she tripped lightly away she laughed in the musical, 
 full-hearted, fascinating way that made Fergus think of 
 her as the Spirit of Laughter. . . . 
 
 He felt as he sat alone, and thought over the puzzle 
 of things, that it would be pleasant to marry Elsie; 
 he also felt that it would be pleasant not to marry Elsie, 
 but just to let the present subtle and tantalizing harmony 
 continue. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 MR. MULLIGAN S CROWNING SCHEME 
 
 ;HE singing of the birds and the songs 
 of workers in the gardens woke 
 Fergus early next morning. Sean 
 O Carroll trolled a racy Southern 
 ditty in the kitchen garden below his 
 window. When he dressed and went 
 downstairs, he heard the voices of 
 Elsie and Maire in the front. The 
 old woman was briskly sweeping the 
 sanded space before the door, though 
 it really needed no sweeping what 
 ever. She gave Fergus and Elsie an early cup of tea 
 under the drooping-ash, and in buoyant humor with 
 themselves and the world they went for a river-side walk 
 before breakfast. 
 
 Soon after breakfast, as they discussed plans, Mr. 
 Milligan drove over. Fergus was startled at the idea of 
 his coming out, he looked so weak and ill. Mr. Milligan 
 protested that he felt better, but could not rest till he had 
 got his new plans ahead and in order. He was greatly 
 attracted by Elsie, and asked much about her, as soon 
 as he and Fergus were alone together. 
 
 " You must be wonderfully devoted to ideas, Mr. 
 
MR. MIUJGAN S CROWNING SCHEME 199 
 
 O Hagan/ he said, " if you can cheerfully work on in 
 Ireland and let that charming young lady stay in Paris. 
 It is magnificent, but somehow it seems to me to be also 
 a little inhuman. I would not be equal to the sacrifice 
 myself. I d get married, always assuming, of course, 
 that the young lady were willing. And curiously enough 
 I Ve been thinking that we ought to make matters easier 
 for you. You have too much to do for the paper. We 
 could easily get a sub-editor to relieve you of a lot of 
 detail, and then your writing could be done more easily 
 and peacefully down here in the Boyne Valley. I thought 
 of the paper at first as something modest and subsidiary, 
 but the character of the writing, and the alarm of my 
 timid and complaining clerical friends are coming to 
 show me it s special and striking importance. Also, I can 
 give you more land if you desire it. I Ve sometimes 
 feared that you might become daunted by our difficulties, 
 or that the taste for travel might re-assert itself in you. 
 That young lady would fix you very happily to our valley. 
 Why didn t you tell me about her before ? " 
 
 " We are great friends," said Fergus, " but I m afraid 
 that she does not regard me with entire seriousness." 
 
 A smile played over Mr. Milligan s pale face. 
 
 " That," he said, " would be an additional attraction 
 in a charming and true-hearted helpmate. The women 
 who take men with entire seriousness, are never their 
 best helpers. When you are as old as I am, Mr. O Hagan, 
 you will realize the value and virtue of a sense of humor 
 in a wife. Plainly you do not know as much about 
 womankind yet as you do about the rural problem and 
 the philosophy of the Irish language movement." 
 
2OO THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 He found it difficult to turn away from the thought of 
 Elsie and a possible life in the Boyne Valley. He had 
 pleasant new schemes in view was not there some 
 artistic and delicate work which she could superintend 
 or direct? And then there was the biggest scheme of 
 all, on which he had been brooding of late, and the 
 details of which were now clearer. 
 
 It was certainly a spacious scheme. He would make 
 over a great tract of his adjacent grass land to be the 
 basis of it. He would devote some thousands of pounds 
 towards the initial tasks and the working of it. He would 
 ask the bishop and others to come in and appeal with 
 him in Meath for the further funds that might be needed ; 
 in any case it would be necessary to postpone for the 
 present the building of new churches, the erection of 
 costly altars and organs, etc., which would be a tax on 
 the popular resources ; the people would thus be free to 
 support the new project; and to this end the bishop s 
 agreement and patronage were essential. The initial idea 
 was to establish prizes and scholarships in connexion with 
 the schools in the diocese, and to give those who won 
 them an agricultural training, or a training in some 
 industry allied to agriculture, and to entitle them further 
 more, on very modest terms, to a certain number of acres 
 of the allotted land, or to positions, as the case might be, 
 in the industrial departments to be started in connexion 
 with the Garden City, as he might call it. He said much 
 about procedure, possible help, developments, educational 
 and artistic ideas, transits, markets, and more. The point 
 was that he was prepared to make a definite offer on a 
 large scale, and whether others followed or not, there 
 
MR. MIUvlGAN S CROWNING SCHEME 2OI 
 
 was a good deal to go upon. It was plain that such a 
 scheme would come home with direct and kindling interest 
 to the people generally, for it meant education for their 
 children, and then a start in life, nay a settlement on the 
 land, or in industries related to the land. If the bishop 
 and others were willing to stand for the scheme whole 
 heartedly the funds might be forthcoming to secure ad 
 joining land, and to start there in the Tara country a 
 spacious Garden City and a world of industry that would 
 strike the people s imagination, stir their energies, and 
 make history or conduce to a happiness much more 
 important than history. He had been thinking a good 
 deal of late of the wonderful work at Mount Melleray 
 to which Ireland apparently gave surprisingly little 
 thought or attention and he saw no reason why in 
 their own way and on their own lines in Meath they could 
 not achieve results as creditable as those of the monks. 
 There were no class distinctions at Mount Melleray 
 the abbot was as humble and as zealous as the rest 
 and all recognized the duty of work and pursued an ideal 
 in year-long silence. Meath s Garden City would not 
 try poor humanity so much, and would give it earthly and 
 human joys. It might be a merry and beautiful Melleray, 
 or haply a pleasant Tara of the twentieth century and 
 after. 
 
 A land scheme stirred the imagination of Fergus like 
 poetry and romance ; and here was something of a feast. 
 He raised points that gave Mr. Milligan an opportunity 
 of showing his genius for practical detail, and he heart 
 ened his courageous and courtly old friend by the story 
 of what the young priests dreamed, and their projected 
 
2O2 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 league for the everyday application of Christianity to 
 Irish life and circumstances. 
 
 " But alas, Mr. O Hagan," said the old man, " such 
 priests are few as yet, especially in rich and melancholy 
 Meath. Father Murray and,, I believe, Father Kenealy, 
 are not Meathmen. And a great deal depends on the 
 bishops. I wonder why so many of their lordships remain 
 unconcerned and socially asleep while Ireland perishes. 
 It saddens the heart." 
 
 Apparently the talk about his scheme did Mr. Milligaru 
 good. He was brighter at the close than when he came, 
 and spoke hopefully of his coming interview with the 
 bishop, who had more social insight than the majority 
 of his brethren displayed. 
 
 " Do you know, Mr. O Hagan," he said, as he prepared 
 to drive away, " I am always glad when the night comes 
 down on Meath? In the daytime its rich desert wastes 
 are intensely depressing to me, and apart from Cluain- 
 lumney, I seem a man alone. At night I can picture the 
 grass ranches studded with homes, and alive with people ; 
 I can imagine I hear the ploughmen s songs, and see the 
 lights of a happy workers town on Tara. God send that 
 the men of tomorrow may see it all without dreaming. 
 At all events I 11 do my part before I go. The broad 
 acres are ready for the people. God bless the Garden 
 City that is to be." 
 
 The post brought a letter from Maeve. She hoped to 
 be down on the afternoon train. The Boyne Valley, she 
 caustically remarked, had evidently developed new and 
 special attractions, which she might be permitted to wit- 
 
MR. MULLIGAN S CROWNING SCHEME; 203 
 
 ness. She also wanted to translate a page of Bossuet 
 in peace and quietness. 
 
 " She will probably translate three complete sentences 
 and then feel intolerably good, and lecture us all on our 
 sluggish spirit," said Fergus. " We 11 be obliged to be 
 circumspect now, and if pioneers and advanced theolo 
 gians come along there will be a decided rise in the 
 temperature." 
 
 Fergus decided to go up again to Dublin on the noon 
 train. He had work to clear up for the week-end. Elsie 
 could meet Maeve at the station, and he added slyly 
 if Lord Strathbarra were about better hide him in a. cave, 
 or other secure place. 
 
 " No," said Elsie ; " I 11 inveigle them into a discussion 
 on the Hebridean stand against Rome, and then climb 
 the nearest tree, where I can watch and listen with pleas 
 ure and safety. You can rescue me when you come back 
 in the evening." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE TWO STANDARDS 
 
 HEN Fergus reached his office he 
 found amongst his correspondence 
 a long letter from Miss Alice 
 Lefanu. She was still at Point 
 Loma; various matters had de 
 layed her departure for Europe, 
 and her Irish holiday, but she 
 hoped the way would be shortly 
 clear. He must understand, she 
 said, that her visit was private, 
 what he perhaps would call un 
 official; at any rate their teacher at Point Loma would 
 never think of sending a disciple recklessly on a distant 
 missionary enterprise. In the great peace and the con 
 stant inspiration of the work in California she herself 
 felt grave at times over the idea of turning to the 
 intellectul stagnation and mental confusion that so much 
 obtained in Ireland to which she looked, however, with 
 infinite compassion but there were personal and family 
 reasons for the visit to her native land ; and incidentally 
 she hoped to sow ideas that would bear fruit in Eirinn, 
 but the method of the sowing would no doubt surprise 
 
THE; TWO STANDARDS 205 
 
 him. He would not find her the impetuous and wilful 
 and spiritually undecided individual of other days. She 
 had found the pathway to that realm where the gods 
 abide. She had learned from her leader that "If the 
 world is ever to become a better place women must begin 
 to think and act as Divine Souls." She had also realized 
 that the selfish devotee lives to no purpose ; and that one 
 must step out of sunlight into shade to make more room 
 for others. 
 
 The numbers of Fainne an Lae which she had now 
 studied gave her pleasure and hope. Much that he 
 apparently had discovered very slowly and painfully for 
 himself, as well as much in his applied Christianity, had 
 really been part of the philosophy of life untold ages 
 ago; to East and West it was part of an ancient tale. 
 The ignorant modern idea, now passing away, that hu 
 manity and civilization were only a few thousand years 
 old was ludicrous; every advance in archaeology, in real 
 scientific discovery, showed that it and the notion that 
 man had evolved from animal and savage ancestry was 
 preposterous. The deeper we dug the more positive 
 and striking were the relics and the proofs of the buried 
 civilizations; while from other sources the true student 
 knew that there had been great Teachers and Sages 
 who had drunk from the same stream of Divine Wisdom 
 aeons before the appearance of the present world-race. 
 
 While she valued and understood the human sympathy 
 and spirit which he brought to bear on the ordeals in the 
 Dublin slums, and on other sores and cancers in Irish 
 life, and appreciated all the efforts to remove them, she 
 was sure he did not see the problem whole, nor the great 
 
206 THE PLOUGH AND T.HE CROSS 
 
 truth which set it all in a new light ; he had forgotten, or 
 did not believe, or did not consciously realize the mighty 
 fact of reincarnation, which was part of the philosophy 
 and faith of their Gaelic ancestors. -The victims of the 
 circumstances he deplored, and his contemporaries gen 
 erally, were at different stages of the life-scale and at 
 different points of evolution. They had many other and 
 varying lives to lead in the noisy tuition-place we call the 
 world. This gave a new and momentous significance to 
 the drama. She quoted one of her own teachers : "When 
 your modern philosophers will have succeeded in showing 
 to us a good reason why so many apparently innocent 
 and good men are born only to suffer during a whole 
 life-time; why so many are born poor unto starvation 
 in the slums of great cities, abandoned by fate and men ; 
 why, while these are born in the gutter, others open their 
 eyes to light in palaces ; while a noble birth and fortune 
 seem often given to the worst of men and only rarely 
 to the worthy ; while there are beggars whose inner selves 
 are peers to the highest and noblest of men ; when this and 
 much more is satisfactorily explained by either your philo 
 sophers or theologians, then only, but not till then, you 
 will have the right to reject the theory of reincarnation." 
 He ought to find work in the Boyne Valley fascinating, 
 she said. Its sacred traditions and associations, the gods 
 the old Gaels felt and knew by its waters and beneath 
 its greenery were no dreams. Here came in the question 
 of a subtle brotherhood, which most of the moderns had 
 lost, though it was clearly realized by the ancients, the 
 Gaels included. Brotherhood at basis was something 
 human, but we have inter-relationships apart from those 
 
THE) TWO STANDARDS 2OJ 
 
 which are comprised within humanity. We enter into 
 these relationships, which are elementally divine and 
 universal, when we escape out of our narrow and selfish 
 personalism. With the ancients some of these were 
 spoken of as the gods, and ancient religion and science 
 were woven into sundry festivals and ceremonies through 
 which it was believed the life of the gods might be reached 
 and in a sense assimilated. Nowadays in most cases our 
 exclusive selfhood, our narrowing education, dull us to 
 the sense of the greater Identity that encompassed our 
 own. Thus the beauty and vastness of the sea had no 
 direct place and meaning in our schemes and philoso 
 phies. We never realized that there was anything in it 
 to which we were actually akin. It remained external, a 
 " feature " of Nature. So with the .mountains we 
 felt no kinship with them. The old generous, ennobling 
 relations and powers, as of Poseidon and the Mountain 
 Gods, and Angus Og of the plains of Meath, had faded 
 out of human minds in the cramping ages, and our 
 humanity in consequence was crippled and incomplete. 
 In the olden ages it was different, and as one of her 
 friends had said only the other day, " they understood 
 how in glorifying the gods, they were really drawing near 
 to their own deeper greatness. * The corn, the vine, and 
 the young flowers Demeter, lacchos, and Persephone 
 they were in me and I was in them. In approaching 
 them I was dissolving the gall of selfhood ; I was un 
 tying the strained tangles and knots of my personality, 
 or, as you may say, making myself as large as all Greece, 
 as all the realms where those three Bright Ones reigned. 
 Religion in those times must have meant such thoughts 
 
2O8 THE PIvOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 as that, and the big altruistic life that would flow from 
 them." 
 
 The same friend had impressed upon them and it 
 was easy to imagine how the labor of agriculture 
 in those ancient days would not have tended ever to 
 level man with the oxen that drew his plough, but 
 would have constantly clothed him with divinity. " Who 
 knows what may have come to the ploughman as he 
 turned at the end of his row? He was walking with 
 Juno, with Athena; he may have heard some message 
 from Demeter through the life-thrilled, broken clods 
 beneath his feet, or Apollo may have leaned down from 
 his chariot and whispered some secret in his ear which 
 suddenly revealed to him ah ! what ? a sense of his 
 own divinity." 
 
 Through Angus Og and his kin the old Gael, like the 
 Greek and others, had a sense of these divine and universal 
 relationships, and of the divinity in himself. Such phil 
 osophy was familiar to her in their great home and haunt 
 of thought and labor in the Far West. It must color his 
 Boyne Valley work and hopes, or the work would not be 
 deep and lasting. Mere tilling for tilling s sake was a 
 slight beginning. He must help the tillers to open their 
 eyes and hearts, to feel their kinship with all Nature, 
 to realize at the spade and plough their own divinity, and 
 the divine end to which they moved. 
 
 Miss Lefanu told a good deal about the work, the 
 schools, the theaters, the music, and above all the Raja 
 Yoga Academy, at Point Loma. Raja Yoga, she ex 
 plained, meant " Kingly Union " the perfect balance 
 of all the faculties, physical, mental, moral and spiritual. 
 
TWO STANDARDS 2OO, 
 
 The school, though American in center, was international 
 in character. Through it and its branches the children 
 of the race would be taught the laws of physical life, 
 and the laws of physical, moral and mental health and 
 spiritual unfoldment, so that they would learn to live 
 in harmony with Nature. The teachers and the workers 
 postulated throughout the perfectibility of the Race, 
 and they began in a scientific and beautiful way with 
 the child-character. She urged that he would try to 
 induce Ireland to follow suit. A similar haunt of labor 
 and education under the shadow of Tara was one of the 
 ideals she hoped to live to realize. It would be a hu 
 manized Mount Melleray, and more with women and 
 children and joyful work, and beautiful art, and the 
 culture of the ages as well as Irish culture. 
 
 Fergus thought it curious that two such divergent 
 individualities as Mr. Milligan and Miss Lefanu should 
 have thought of a " Mount Melleray " and much more 
 in the Tara country. Charmed as he was with the 
 graphic and detailed description of the work and the 
 education in the far Californian " Homestead," of which 
 so few in Ireland knew anything it had come as a 
 revelation to himself not long since the letter brought 
 him a certain troubled feeling. True it dwelt on the 
 divinity and the divine end of life; but, alas, to reach 
 and realize the divinity, whether in one life or in hun 
 dreds if one accepted the age-old doctrine of rein 
 carnation there seemed a terrible deal of baseness and 
 futility to be shed. Sometimes, all a-sudden and for no 
 obvious reason, the sense of life s meaning and drift came 
 upon and through him like a wave of ecstasy ; sometimes 
 
2IO THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 it seemed a weird, inscrutable, and overwhelmingly stun 
 ning matter : so mysterious and awesome that it was 
 simply wonderful how one had heart for the lightsome 
 transient, and ultimately trivial things that filled up the 
 ordinary day ; they seemed as the lighting of pipes on 
 a mountain while lightnings blazed and the heights shook 
 in the thunder " like a whole sea overhead." 
 
 At this stage Mr. Terence O Connellan, who had re 
 turned to Dublin from the West, was " shown " upstairs. 
 That eminent editor and disillusioned man walked in 
 and sat down with apparent weariness and difficulty. 
 Trouble sat heavy upon him, as if, like Oisin after the 
 return from Tir na nOg, the touch of his feet on the clay 
 of his native land pressed the burden of mortality ever 
 and ever in more awful wise upon him. 
 
 " Ha ! " he said, with a groan that seemed to come 
 from a deep cavern, " you are looking twenty years older 
 than when I saw you the other morning. Tis extra 
 ordinary how quickly people grow old in this Land Where 
 Nothing Happens, or at least where the silence of de 
 cay and doom is only broken by an episcopal pronounce 
 ment against something that would like to be up and 
 doing which is illogical and impossible in Ireland. 
 I suppose their lordships have given you notice of their 
 coming with bell, book and candle. Take it calmly. You 
 will find a mail boat or an express boat to the other side 
 every evening. And the English tyrant will treat you a 
 lot better than the Irish one for telling him the truth 
 if you are so eccentric as to persevere in that absurd 
 habit." 
 
 " If I look care-worn or troubled I really cannot blame 
 
THE TWO STANDARDS 211 
 
 their lordships/ said Fergus. " I ve heard nothing from 
 them, though I understand that they are somewhat con 
 cerned over certain friends of mine in Maynooth." 
 
 " They re not at all concerned," Terence declared 
 gloomily. " Nothing gives your bishops concern except 
 an occasionally obdurate British Ministry. They can 
 easily get their way with men and things in this intel 
 lectually lamb-like land. They 11 sweep off your friends 
 and yourself as simply as a gardener gets clear of so 
 many autumn leaves. I almost expected to find you all 
 in the dust-bin by this time you know a friend of 
 bishops like me hears things that are not for ordinary 
 ears." 
 
 " The wizard West set you dreaming. There s really 
 a deep strain of poetry in your character, and you d have 
 reached the home of the Muses long ago only that neu 
 rotic heroines and the suffering spouses of historic: royal 
 sinners encountered you on the way, touched your sus 
 ceptible heart, and prevailed on you to write their apo 
 logias for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and 
 posterity. No Knight of the Middle Ages ever champ 
 ioned half so many ladies in distress. And you made 
 their morals and characters as good as new a crowning 
 triumph of the creative faculty." 
 
 " I warned you in London against the frivolity called 
 humor," said Terence gloomily. " Hardly anybody in 
 England or Ireland understands it. Much of my own 
 literary success is due to the utter absence of deliberate 
 humor from my writings. I can t understand how your 
 mind can be so cool and callous as to play in this melan 
 choly island. Humor in Ireland is as incongruous as 
 
212 THE PLOUGH AND THE} CROSS 
 
 jocose epitaphs on tombstones. You used to read a good 
 deal of poetry. You know William Watson s line, 
 
 I too have been through wintry terrors. 
 
 Well, so have I, in the last few days. I saw no summer 
 but a horrible winter of life and frozen fate." 
 
 " I m afraid," said Fergus, " that you have not been 
 looking at Ireland at all, but at a depressed and tortured 
 Self. I ve been studying Ireland since from the golden 
 heart of the Boyne Valley, and I ve found her joyful 
 with life and hope." 
 
 " You know something about botany and something 
 about evolution," said Terence, still more gloomily. 
 " You know of those once high families of plants that 
 have missed their way or have deteriorated, and now 
 shake and sigh in the form of forlorn reeds and rushes 
 by stagnant pools or lonely and melancholy rivers. Ire 
 land is "like these : only worse, for she carries a blighted 
 humanity, the world s most awful example of arrested 
 development and inertia. She can never ascend in the 
 scale." 
 
 " I am now certain that you did not see Ireland at all," 
 said Fergus cheerily. " With all her deterioration and 
 drawbacks, the most remarkable thing in her position 
 today is her new vitality. The men and the enthusiasm 
 she has inspired are refreshing. Yet, after all, is it so 
 very remarkable? If we find so much wonder and beau 
 ty in apparently inanimate matter, so much exhaustless 
 energy in a little radium, for instance, is it strange that 
 we should witness marvels in the mind of a people?" 
 
 " Oh, I met a dreaming madman or two," said Terence, 
 
THE TWO STANDARDS 213 
 
 with the air of a man who felt that he had left no 
 factor out of count. " Like all madmen they are making 
 themselves heard. It reminds me of shipwrecked men 
 on a raft in the ocean at the stage when insanity has 
 just set in. They see visions the sea that will soon 
 devour them seems an earthly paradise, there is a fair 
 and noble humanity about them, the world is filled with 
 music. So with your friends and yourself. Poor 
 devils! you call your own illusions New Ireland. It is 
 the saddest and eeriest thing in Europe." 
 
 " Yet I see that one of your weekly papers T. T. T. 
 whose full name the irreverent say is Terence s Terse 
 Tattle announces an article from your pen on The 
 Glamor of Dublin. " 
 
 " Well, what of that ? " asked Terence moodily. 
 " Doesn t my friend Tree play Falstaff as easily as he 
 plays Hamlet? A successful journalist is simply an 
 actor who strayed into journalism. Haven t you yet 
 got out of the curious habit of pinning a man down to 
 everything he says and writes? Talking of the stage, 
 I never realized till I found myself this time in the bogs 
 and blighted villages of the West what sheltering temples 
 of solace to sad humanity are the London theaters. 
 You drive from the grinding Purgatory of Fleet Street 
 through the Hell of the Strand, and the moment you 
 reach the vestibule you feel a soothing lull, a luxurious 
 warmth, a passionate Pagan thrill. By the time you 
 have got to your box you have left all the cruelty and 
 sordidness of life behind you, and for five whole acts, 
 whatever the sensations that are stirred in you, you 
 escape the futility and inconsequence of the actual human 
 
214 THE PlyOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 story. There may be a lovely lady beside you shedding the 
 ineffable charm of femininity through your atmosphere 
 and your being, or you may know that later on a beauti 
 ful actress will hang round your neck and kiss you 
 rapturously. But femininity, or no femininity, the Lon 
 don theater is a perennial appeal to the delectable Pagan 
 that the preachers have tried to suppress in man. My 
 reviews and monologs would soon lose their sap and 
 lusciousness if I had to live beyond the sound of Bow 
 Bells or outside the four-mile circle. In cheerless, all 
 but theaterless Ireland I d feel like Ovid in the exiled 
 wastes of Scythia." 
 
 " I d ask you down to the Boyne Valley for the week 
 end," said Fergus, " only that it s too simple for one who 
 is so far gone and has worked so much against Nature 
 as you. But I d heartily recommend you to try a month 
 at Mount Melleray. They Ve cured and humanized even 
 worse cases. You d write a wonderful book afterwards 
 on the recovery of your soul in the process. You would 
 make a bigger sensation in intellectual Europe than 
 Huysman himself." 
 
 " I spent twenty years trying to escape from my soul," 
 said Terence with a groan. " It was a terrible and most 
 unreasonable companion. But you need not think that 
 I m callous even yet. The horror of life comes over 
 me still, like a drove of devils in the darkness, and I d 
 welcome utter annihilation to escape it. You young folk 
 with airy-fairy temperaments are for ever misunder 
 standing me. You have neither my terrors nor my 
 temptations " 
 
 " I believe that Mount Melleray would bring you balm 
 
TWO STANDARDS 215 
 
 and calm/ said Fergus, " and I know you d be welcome. 
 "Tisn t often they have so famous a visitor at the guest 
 house, though fame counts for nothing with the good 
 monks. I wish you would go down and make the 
 retreat/ I m greatly interested in the curative side of 
 Mount Melleray, from all I hear, and I d be keenly 
 interested to see how it would work out in your complex 
 case." 
 
 " I have far more momentous work in Dublin, and it 
 will keep me a few days more from my beloved theaters, 
 and delay my release from the devils that haunt me when 
 I get out into lonely and melancholy places/ Terence 
 answered sadly. " I have to wait on and gather the will 
 and take the commands of a very distinguished ecclesias 
 tic. He will communicate the desires of his brethren in 
 the Hierarchy to me, and I am to place them in detail 
 before the Party leaders, and act upon them in connexion 
 with the Irish political organization which I boss in Great 
 Britain. The situation is what you would call delicate." 
 
 " This is interesting," said Fergus, " and the idea of 
 the bishops placing so much trust in you is an exquisite 
 irony/ 
 
 " I have not said that they trust me, or the Party 
 either," responded Terence frankly. " But they use 
 us, and politically we have to trot to the crack of the 
 episcopal whip. Their lordships want the Party to make 
 a special burst for some time to come on English educa 
 tion questions, and your daily papers will almost burst 
 themselves with praise of our tactics and our eloquence 
 and our glorious work for the children of the poor 
 Irish Catholic exile who d get far better terms from 
 
2i6 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 the British if we didn t interfere and deny the Briton 
 Home Rule in his own educational affairs. All this will 
 turn the eyes of your innocent countrymen on Great 
 Britain, and during this happy state of things your 
 bishops will take a quiet opportunity of knocking some 
 people on the head in Ireland. That I gather is the 
 general scheme, but I must carefully take instructions 
 as to the campaign." 
 
 " I don t think the bishops entirely realize the New 
 Ireland they have to deal with," said Fergus. 
 
 " I think they re going to too much trouble," respond 
 ed Terence. "If they let it alone this poor crazy New 
 Ireland would soon discover it was only dreaming and 
 would become part of the general bleakness and melan 
 choly. But their lordships got frightened over some bold, 
 bad ideas of independence and self-reliance developed 
 in Gaelic League branches, and now some of you are 
 talking about your right to have a look-in regarding the 
 management of the schools you support, and bold, bad 
 Maynooth men are asking questions about the nature 
 of inspiration and the flames of Hell. In fact, some of 
 you are coming to take the idea of freedom seriously, 
 and have got to be put in your proper places. You 11 
 probably be an early victim yourself, but that will rather 
 please me, for then you 11 be driven to leave Ireland 
 I regard you as lost in this land of death-in-life. Tis a 
 nuisance, however, that ye are the means of delaying 
 me here. Famous defender of the faith and enemy 
 of the secularization of the schools though I am, I do 
 not feel in my element in an audience with a distinguished 
 ecclesiastic, even though I know he has a decided journal- 
 
THIS TWO STANDARDS 217 
 
 istic bent, and practically directs the policy of one of 
 your daily papers." 
 
 " Taking all you say as literally correct, is not your 
 position rather sorry and undignified?" Fergus asked. 
 " On your own showing you adopt a course you do not 
 believe in just because you are pressed by bishops ; and 
 at the same time you realize that your action may help 
 indirectly to stifle thought and mar brave effort in your 
 native land." 
 
 Terence groaned and rose. 
 
 " I can warn you but I can t give you sense," he said 
 fretfully. " You apparently are under the impression 
 that high politics can be conducted in a straightforward 
 way! And you imagine that episcopal policy, parlia 
 mentary policy, and imperial policy must take count of 
 the fact that a few young priests and a few young 
 laymen have decided to do a little thinking in Dublin, 
 the Boyne Valley, the Bog of Allen, and other remote 
 places. I wonder if history has any parallel to the 
 dreamers of little Ireland?" 
 
 " I think the dreamers of little Judea went farther," 
 said Fergus with a smile, as he shook hands with 
 Terence. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 MAEVE AND ELSIE COMPARE NOTES 
 
 T was Saturday afternoon after all when 
 Maeve reached the Boyne Valley. Fergus 
 professed to feel alarmed at her haste, 
 declaring that her intellectual balance must 
 have been broken in some rude way; for 
 to be only twenty-four hours late was 
 an ominous new departure on her part, 
 betraying an unguided and reckless spirit. 
 Jesting apart, she seemed somewhat excit 
 ed, but she answered with a caustic calm. 
 At the approach of sunset she was seated 
 with Elsie at a bedroom window that commanded a broad 
 view of garden and greenery. They had retired there for 
 a little chat, of the intimate, meandering kind that they 
 loved. They had now spent two hours thereat, and felt 
 that they had made a good beginning. Maeve had laid 
 her glasses aside, and her eyes looked soft, alluringly 
 confiding, and delicately roguish. Elsie rounded off most 
 sentences with rippling laughter. Sometimes it reached 
 Fergus away at the end of his garden. He was in his 
 shirt-sleeves, spade in hand, reducing to artistic propor 
 tions a piece of an old ditch that offended the aesthetic 
 
MAEVE AND ELSIE) COMPARE NOTES 
 
 eye, to say nothing of the up-to-date agricultural sense. 
 He felt humiliated in a mild way at the thought of the 
 clumsy ditches and other haphazard and primitive things 
 that satisfied the modern farmer and modern man gener 
 ally. It was a poor tribute to evolution ages after the 
 Gael s great handiwork and Plato s impassioned contem 
 plation of the beautiful. 
 
 " Elsie! " cried Maeve suddenly, in a tone of reproof, 
 designed to do duty for both their consciences, " I m 
 afraid that we have been back-biting! Isn t it awful? 
 And we supposed to be so intellectual, and such severe 
 moralists ! I, at any rate. In Paris, by .all accounts, 
 you are not supposed to be so particular." 
 
 " We 11 call it artistic dissection of character," said 
 Elsie. " It s supposed to betoken perspicacity and clarity, 
 and to be a modern intellectual development. The French 
 and Irish excel in it the French in causeries, the Irish 
 in fireside and boudoir conversations." 
 
 " It s pleasant to open the heart to an understanding 
 soul now and then, a soul that will see the comedy in 
 what crude people would consider impish or even mali 
 cious," declared Maeve. " Most of the time one only 
 gets the opportunity to open the temper. One has to be 
 severe with the contemporary world, lay and clerical. If 
 the lot of them saw the hidden oasis of good-nature in 
 our desert of reserve and severity they would presume 
 too much. I m afraid," she added, with a far-away 
 .look in her eyes, "that I must have been off my guard 
 lately." 
 
 Elsie s eyes sparkled mischievously. 
 
 " That means a romance I know by your eyes," she 
 
22O THE) PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 said insinuatingly. " Own up, Maeve ! Who is the soul- 
 smitten intrepid young man ? I know he must be young ; 
 your eyes couldn t shine that way for anyone much above 
 twenty thirty at the very outside." 
 
 " If they shine they are playing me false," said Maeve, 
 with a smile. " But I won t deprive you of the interest 
 ing secret. Of course you remember that young rascal, 
 Arthur O Mara?" 
 
 " I should think so," answered Elsie. " Why he was in 
 love with me in my school days. You need not be jealous, 
 however or, at least, not of me alone. There were 
 about six other girls in a few years. You lived much 
 in the moon then, Maeve, and didn t notice mundane and 
 parochial affairs." 
 
 " The young scamp ! " said Maeve. " Had I known all 
 that I d have boxed his ears. I thought twas love s 
 young dream, and all that sort of thing. He has plagued 
 me for the last few days, and this very morning he 
 declared that if I didn t marry him his dead body would 
 be found on the waters off Howth, where he s camping 
 out and writing poetry since he left Maynooth. He vowed 
 that he d hurl himself off the cliffs in the moonlight. 
 I ve been really agitated over his condition, and thought 
 it cold and selfish to come away to the peace of the Boyne 
 Valley." 
 
 Elsie s laughter must have gone in rippling music as 
 far as Fergus. He looked up from his digging. 
 
 " You ve shattered an illusion of mine," she said. " I . 
 never thought your heart was so responsive and sensitive. 
 Why you are as human as the rest of us." 
 
 " Don t be a goose, Elsie/ said Maeve, in sedate re- 
 
AND KiySiE COMPARE: NOTES 221 
 
 proof. " Of course these young men are a nuisance, and 
 the bedraggled thing they call love is unseemly; but 
 somehow it is not easy to repress a curious interest in a 
 person who is ready to die for you." 
 
 "And takes a whole lifetime getting ready! Beats 
 utterly a woman getting ready to go to a ball " 
 
 " Cynic ! " said Maeve, laughing. " Well, Arthur 
 O Mara is a strange case anyway. He utters the most 
 impassioned, and poetical,, and erratic sentiments, and 
 has some new hare-brained scheme every time I see him. 
 His soul is in an awful way, and if his sentiments were 
 known he d be simply excommunicated. I hope he won t 
 start putting them into poetry." 
 
 " Oh, I thought he was going to die," said Elsie archly. 
 " Turning to poetry the sort of poetry that young men 
 write when they are in love is sheer anticlimax." 
 
 " Tis no laughing matter, Elsie," said Maeve judicious 
 ly. " Very self-centered as we are in ways we have 
 moral duties towards all our neighbors " 
 
 " Curates, particularly," Elsie suggested. 
 
 " You are getting into one of your impish moods. Yes ; 
 we have duties. And though we may not be able to 
 respond to the extravagances of the young men who 
 believe they love us and though we may have to be 
 very severe with them when the fever gets the better of 
 them, yet we are bound to find subtle, unobtrusive but 
 decisive ways of helping them. I lecture Arthur severely 
 but I want very much to smooth his path all the same. 
 I fear it will be an erratic and troubled path." 
 
 " Why, Maeve, this most considerate and original philo 
 sophy is quite a new revelation of your character. I can t 
 
222 THE PIvOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 tell you how impressive and chastening it is to me. But 
 have you considered where it will lead you ? into love 
 and^ marriage, almost for a certainty." 
 
 Maeve smiled and then shook her head with a certain 
 sadness. 
 
 " I have a terrible insight into myself," she said. " I 11 
 certainly never marry. The ordeal before me is vastly 
 different. I could tell you what would astonish you. 
 I won t though not yet, at all events. But what about 
 yourself? I d like to cross-examine you in a friendly 
 way." 
 
 " On the whole, when I have the heart and courage to 
 look down into the cavern of what I call my character, I 
 don t know what to think of myself/ said Elsie, assuming 
 a solemn expression which gave her face a piquancy that 
 would be the charm and despair of an artist ; " I feel a 
 mixture of owl and skylark. The skylark so far has got 
 the bigger show. I sometimes wish I could suppress the 
 owl," she added ruefully, " though I am not without a 
 certain affection for that gloomy bird that darker part 
 of the tangled entity." 
 
 Maeve nodded in an expressive way in the direction 
 of Fergus. 
 
 " He does not know anything about the owl/ said Elsie 
 promptly. " He would laugh at the idea that I am any 
 thing but a fairy skylark. He has too much imagination 
 and not enough heart. If he could turn some of the 
 intensity of his mind into his heart he would be " 
 
 " Oh, I think you re judging rashly," interposed 
 Maeve. " He has plenty of heart, though it s not usually 
 on view, so to say. If he hadn t he would not worry so 
 
AND EI,SIE COMPARE NOTES 223 
 
 much about social rights and wrongs. I ve known him 
 to get quite afflicted in soul over the sight of the children 
 in the Dublin streets, and anybody who is touched by the 
 wrongs and the neglect of little children cannot be said 
 to be without heart." 
 
 " Fergus has heart go leor in a general way," said 
 Elsie. " You didn t let me finish. When I spoke about 
 intensity of heart, I meant for me. Of course, I tell him 
 not to be foolish, and that the best ideal is affectionate 
 friendship, and all that, and I mean it, at least up to a 
 point ; but it s a little disappointing to be taken readily 
 at my word." 
 
 " I m not at all sure that he takes you at your word 
 in that matter," said Maeve, " though I m not going to 
 try to analyse the sort of feeling you have for each other. 
 The effort would simply make my brain dizzy. I don t 
 believe that you know what the feeling is yourselves. I 
 might put it this way. You re both ultra-idealistic, and 
 by instinct and reasoning you both rebel against the 
 concentrated selfishness of love, and the material realiza 
 tion of it. But Nature, which has larger ideals and ends 
 though Nature might be more dignified in some respects 
 complicates the matter for each of you by the personal 
 attraction of the other. It s an interesting situation, quite 
 outside average experience but in such a case Nature 
 is almost certain to win." 
 
 " Would you mind writing that down for me, Maeve ? " 
 said Elsie quizzically. " Such subtle philosophy should 
 not be lost, and anyhow it demands thinking over. The 
 situation, as you call it, is much more easily explained. 
 Fergus and I are affectionate in our feelings towards 
 
224 TH PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 each other. But I have a wild spirit of freedom, and he 
 is devoted to a cause. So, affectionate as we are, we are 
 as the poles apart in one sense. I own that at times my 
 heart yearns for a little more human warmth in Fergus, 
 directed to and concentrated on my lone little self. Then 
 I am what I suppose you would call human and womanly. 
 But in due course the owl in me asserts its wicked, 
 solitary self, and I shrink from humanity. Later on I am 
 all skylark, rejoicing in the bonny blue and freedom, 
 and all my heart a song. Now, what do you think ? " 
 
 " That both yourself and the person who feels affec 
 tionately towards you are at once to be envied and pitied," 
 Maeve declared. " But Fergus is quite as peculiar as 
 you, and you 11 come to terms somehow. I wish ye 
 would do so quickly, for particular reasons of my own. 
 But what of poor me ? I m a housekeeper with a mystical 
 temperament and a critical temper. So I m out of my 
 element, and out of tune with myself. Love means 
 nothing to me, and yet here s a foolish young man de 
 claring that he 11 drown himself for my sake. I shudder 
 when I think of the waves of Howth." 
 
 Elsie s laughter rang musically. 
 
 " Yes ; he 11 throw himself into the waves of Howth," 
 she said, " but they 11 be heather waves, and the rolling 
 will at least be healthy exercise, and must do him good." 
 
 " Wonderfully affectionate as you are you take a cruel 
 and cynical view of human nature sometimes," said Maeve 
 complainingly. 
 
 " It s that villainous owl," said Elsie laughing. " It 
 must get a chance even in the Boyne Valley. The skylark 
 has been dominant for quite a long spell. But you 11 find 
 
AND ELSIE COMPARE NOTES 225 
 
 that the owl is entirely correct about Arthur O Mara. A 
 change of the moon is due tomorrow or after, and he 11 
 be found writing poetry to another girl." 
 
 " Oh, Paris, Paris ! " said Maeve protestingly. 
 
 " Paris has nothing to do with it," replied Elsie, bend 
 ing over and laying her hand gaily on Maeve s shoulder, 
 "it s only insight and a little ^ patient study of human 
 nature." 
 
 " Let us come back to yourself and Fergus," said 
 Maeve. " This intellectual comedy between you is doubt 
 less very attractive, but I wish ye d take a fit of serious 
 ness and get married. It would give both of you the 
 settled strain that is needed to complete your characters. 
 I don t want to see your lives spoiled, and there are some 
 things pointing that way at present which make me 
 uneasy. What was said about Lord Strathbarra at 
 tea-time may be mere romance, though you certainly 
 blushed " 
 
 " With pride, perhaps, at the prospect of the title," 
 suggested Elsie. 
 
 " Be serious, Elsie ! Even the bare mention of you in 
 connexion with that insidious mischief-maker in the 
 Church distresses me. But I am far more troubled about 
 Fergus. He is on a very dangeroi^ road at present, and 
 I m afraid every day that I 11 hear of some painful clash 
 between himself and those mad friends of his and the 
 Church authorities. He positively expects bishops to 
 give reasons for their opinions and actions ! As a wife 
 you could lead him away delightfully from this unreason 
 and turmoil " 
 
 " Or I might accentuate the trouble," said Elsie. 
 
226 THE) PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " You re too sweet and affectionate for that, Elsie. 
 Then there s that revolutionary American woman who s 
 coming over. I wish she wasn t " Maeve shook her 
 shoulders, and spoke with a touch of vehemence " her 
 former influence on Fergus was altogether disturbing and 
 unnatural." 
 
 " The mystery deepens," said Elsie. " Who is this 
 formidable American person anyway?" 
 
 " Miss Lefanu, of course. Fergus, I believe, has never 
 been the same since he first knew her. Attractive and 
 clever as s4ie is, she has been probably his worst enemy. 
 She turned his thoughts to all sorts of outlandish ideas, 
 Oriental and otherwise, and stirred things in his mind 
 that have never been stilled since. Her visit to Ireland at 
 such a disturbing time is a terrible misfortune, and you 
 can see my anxiety at the idea of Fergus being thrown 
 again under her influence." 
 
 " Well, not too clearly," said Elsie ; " your sense of 
 disaster seems to be a great deal more acute than mine." 
 
 Elsie was wondering why she had never been told 
 anything about Miss Lefanu. She did not care to admit 
 so much to Maeve directly, and she was anxious to gain 
 information in a quiet way. 
 
 Miss Lefanu was a theme on which Maeve could 
 discourse at great length with caustic eloquence. She 
 now summed up that lady s beliefs and ideas and designs 
 in a fashion that would certainly have surprised herself, 
 and depicted her influence on Fergus in colors that might 
 have surprised her still more. 
 
 Why had Fergus never told her of Miss Lefanu ? Why 
 had he kept silent about her coming visit? What was 
 
MAEVE AND ELSIE) COMPARE NOTES 227 
 
 the real secret of her influence? Elsie O Kennedy asked 
 herself these questions again and again, as she listened 
 in the twilight. She could not answer them, but she was 
 conscious of something new and oppressive in life. . . . 
 
 After supper Maeve and Elsie seated themselves at a 
 small table and busied themselves with mysterious work 
 which Fergus was genially informed was none of his 
 business. He was told that during its performance he 
 could sit in the rocking-chair and go to sleep after his 
 exacting labor on the land. He gathered, however, that 
 the work had something to do with the light and airy 
 appurtenances of feminine Sunday garb, and on these 
 things Maeve and Elsie always worked like conscious and 
 reverential artists. He took the rocking-chair, and ar 
 ranged it so that from his pleasant position he could 
 watch their artistry and their expression. He did not 
 want to go to sleep; he wanted to let his imagination 
 drift into all sorts of lotus-lands in a zig-zag, unhurrying, 
 irresponsible way. It was his week-end form of recrea 
 tion. 
 
 He was able in such times to detach his mind from all 
 the books he had read, and all the theories of life and 
 things he had ever known to be advocated, and from all 
 the circumstances of daily work and all the problems 
 before him, and to let his imagination go fresh and sport 
 ive through the universe. It might be the imagination of 
 the primeval man, bursting wonderingly into the surprises 
 of the untilled, untraveled planet and all the radiance of 
 the world s morning, unburdened and unbroken by all 
 the lore and losses and doubts and searchings of the 
 aeons. It knew no empires, no philosophies, no civiliza- 
 
228 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 tions, they were yet unborn and undreamed of. Stars 
 to it were the same as flowers, apple-blossoms the same 
 as gold-mines, bees the same as the fairies that shook the 
 glistening grasses, the butter-cup the same as the sun 
 all parts of the universal wonder that he did not in the 
 least desire to explain. He had the planet and the accom 
 panying firmament to himself ; the morning twilight of 
 time had not begun, and tradition had not started on its 
 course. Created beauty had just burst into being at the 
 Creator s thought and wondered at herself. 
 
 Tonight, indeed, he found it agreeably difficult at first 
 to give the slip to time and tide and get back over the 
 thousand aeons to the dews and morning breezes of the 
 prime. The week s men and concerns coaxed him insinu 
 atingly to discuss themselves as he tried to steal on tip-toe, 
 as it were, out of urgent actuality. Mr. Milligan, with 
 beaming eye and courtly gesture, drew his attention to 
 the path of golden ploughshares in the Boyne Valley and 
 the new-age argosies that came up the canal, now wide as 
 an inland sea, and then urged him to come in his diamond 
 motor-car to the opening of the twentieth-century Feis on 
 exultant Tara. When he had passed from these, Lord 
 Strathbarra stood in his path with a gloriously illuminated 
 volume, the first edition, straight from the Hebridean 
 Press, of Eusebius in modern Irish. However, he divert 
 ed the proud author s attention to a heliograph message 
 announcing the shelling of his Hebridean isle by the 
 Papal navy, and immediately escaped. But he next en 
 countered Father Martin Murray in archiepiscopal guise 
 proceeding on his first visitation to the newly-constituted 
 arch-diocese of Tara. With these and other fantastic 
 
AND I&SIE COMPARlv NOTES 22Q 
 
 imaginings and pictures it was a long time before his 
 fancy got free, and was able to revel in the primeval light 
 and loneliness before the ordeal of humanity began. . . . 
 
 Fergus O Hagan wondered at the extraordinary sense 
 of ecstasy that possessed him for a moment, which had 
 the suggestion of being an age. Then a peal of musical 
 laughter rang in his ears. He saw that Elsie was kneeling 
 beside the rocking-chair, a curiously soft yet quizzical 
 look in her eyes. He knew now that he had dozed off to 
 sleep after the pranks and play of fancy, but he marveled 
 that the awaking sense was so exquisite. The whole soul 
 for the moment seemed to have asserted itself in a spirit 
 ualized body, and to have looked through the universe of 
 mind and matter with understanding eyes. 
 
 " I had to laugh at you for going to sleep a conse 
 quence, I suppose, of your sunset spell with the spade," 
 said Elsie, " and then I felt ashamed of myself, for you 
 really looked quite human and affectionate in slumber. 
 Maeve has gone upstairs with tired, accusing eyes, after 
 blaming me for keeping her gossiping an hour after her 
 natural time. She told me to shake you up, and that 
 you d be mightily cross." 
 
 She was puzzled and surprised by the strange, far-off, 
 spell-struck look in his eyes as he sat up and his hands 
 played with her hands. 
 
 " I Ve often had moments," he said, " when time, 
 trials, and death seemed to matter nothing, but I never 
 had such a sheer amazing sense of joy as now at waking 
 up, and you in a curious way seemed to be in and through 
 it like fragrance in flowers. What was the hidden mean 
 ing of your coming to Ireland? Outside ourselves or 
 
230 THE PiyOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 above the normal selves we know, some mysterious and 
 magical forces are at work to ends we cannot under 
 stand." 
 
 " I 11 become quite awed if you say any more in this 
 strain," said Elsie, smiling softly. " I Ve heard wonder 
 ful things of the Boyne Valley in the days of Angus Og, 
 or as you would say in the days when folk had vision 
 enough to see him ; but the Boyne Valley of today seems 
 more haunted than ever." 
 
 " The people we meet in O Connell Street, and the 
 people who come in electric cars from Dalkey might smile 
 if I told them in the sober day of things I feel and know," 
 said Fergus. " But down here on the great, lone land 
 the real Self gets a chance to open the gates of Wonder 
 and to feel the drama that is coming. There will be 
 momentous things in Ireland if not in the light, at any 
 rate in the souls of many men and women." 
 
 Maeve returned downstairs with words of judicial 
 reproof for people who persisted in keeping such uncanny 
 and impossible hours. Having delivered her little lecture 
 she sat down in her restful way, and for another hour 
 with the familiar blending of gravity and gaiety, they 
 discussed the things of their inner and outer spheres, 
 and felt so alert and interested at the close that it seemed 
 a pity to retire. In days when drama of which they 
 little dreamed had come, they often recalled that kindly, 
 heart-opening seanchus between night and dawn. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 S CAPTURED HAT 
 
 N Sunday night at an early stage 
 Maeve lapsed into that aloof and 
 thoughtful mood which was the call 
 to her to translate a little Bossuet. 
 Fergus wanted to see Father Kenealy 
 specially, and suggested to Elsie the 
 charm of a walk to Baile na Boinne. 
 She affected to be duly impressed, 
 and they went forth. 
 
 She wanted an opportunity of ask 
 ing him about Miss Alice Lefanu. She had decided that 
 she would begin, and continue, and end, her remarks in 
 a frivolous and chaffing spirit. His secrecy had been 
 unwonted and unkind and unaccountable, but she would 
 treat it all as sheer comedy. That would serve him right, 
 and anything else, she felt, would be preposterous and 
 undignified. 
 
 But somehow she found it impossible to begin. The 
 saucy query, the facetious suggestion, would not come 
 naturally. And she shrank from the direct and serious 
 line. She felt perplexed and uncomfortable,, and a little 
 indignant. 
 
232 THE PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 As they walked slowly in the moonlight along the 
 lonely road towards the town, they were suddenly startled 
 by a cry. Looking forward in the direction from which 
 it proceeded they saw three figures. In a few moments, 
 one of the figures that of a young man jumped over 
 the hedge and was lost to sight. A second figure rushed 
 towards them. It was that of a young girl. She was 
 hatless, unnerved, excited. Sobbing, she swept past them. 
 The third figure hurried in her wake. Fergus presently 
 recognized it as that of Father Finnegan, the chief pastor 
 of Baile na Boinne. Father Finnegan, who held a girl s 
 hat in his grip, was also apparently a little excited too. 
 
 He stopped suddenly when he got to Fergus and Elsie, 
 and as he tried to take hold of the latter s hat exclaimed : 
 
 "A nice sort of girl, indeed ! Out on the roads at night ! 
 Who " 
 
 Elsie drew back indignantly, and Fergus caught hold 
 of Father Finnegan s extended hand. 
 
 " You ve made a mistake this time, Father Finnegan," 
 he said. " You are not now dealing with any of the 
 slaves of Baile na Boinne, but with people who know their 
 place and yours. You will begin with an apology." 
 
 Father Finnegan started and looked distressed. 
 
 "I I I beg pardon;" he said. " I am exceedingly 
 sorry for my mistake. I thought ye were two of my 
 parishioners " 
 
 " Two of your poorer parishioners your reverence 
 means/ said Fergus. " It is generally understood that 
 you do not interfere with the evening rambles of the 
 richer folk." 
 
 Father Finnegan flushed, but did not answer. He 
 
LOVE S CAPTURED HAT 233 
 
 disliked argument at any time he was accustomed to 
 obedience and he did not care for controversy with 
 anyone connected with that dangerous and perniciously 
 independent organ, Fainne an Lae. 
 
 " And by what right do you interfere with anybody, 
 parishioner or visitor ? " Elsie demanded. " Do you set 
 yourself up to decide who are to take walks, and who are 
 not? Is this sort of autocracy really tolerated in Irish 
 parishes? Are the people such slaves as to endure it?" 
 
 " I have expressed my regret for my mistake," said 
 Father Finnegan, " but I cannot enter into an argument. 
 The duties of priests in their own parishes, and the rights 
 of the Church are " 
 
 " And can you inform us," asked Fergus, " when and 
 where the Church decided that priests can go out into 
 the highways, stop the walks of friends, acquaintances, 
 or even lovers, and confiscate the hats of the young 
 ladies?" 
 
 The trio were so pre-occupied that they had not noticed 
 the approach of two figures from Baile na Boinne. These 
 now came up. They were Father Kenealy and Father 
 Wilson. On hearing their voices, Father Finnegan looked 
 troubled. He seemed to feel that his position was not 
 dignified. 
 
 " I have just put a question to Father Finnegan," 
 Fergus explained. " His reverence has been out on one 
 of his famous tours of inspection. He has seized one 
 young lady s hat already." 
 
 Father Finnegan looked awkwardly at the offending 
 article, and moved as if to go. Elsie caught hold of the 
 hat. The good sagart looked nonplussed and undecided. 
 
234 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 He did not care to do anything so undignified as to try 
 to pull it from her hold ; neither did he desire to leave 
 her entire possession of it; so he simply stood still, 
 leaving her one side of the confiscated hat, he holding the 
 other, while Fergus continued : 
 
 " I have asked Father Finnegan when and where the 
 Church decided that priests can stop the walks of young 
 men and women friends or lovers and confiscate the 
 young ladies hats. Father Finnegan is popularly believed 
 to have a whole roomful of such spoils." 
 
 Father Wilson looked grievously pained, as he always 
 did when any question affecting the province of the clergy 
 was raised by a layman. 
 
 Father Kenealy laughed. 
 
 " Things are done in the Church s name in Ireland that 
 well might startle the Church," he declared. " We ought 
 not to blame the Church, but rather the moral cowardice 
 of the people." 
 
 Father Finnegan flushed again, and drew away abrupt 
 ly, leaving the vanished girl s hat in Elsie s hand. 
 
 " Good-night ! " he said hastily, and turning, bent his 
 steps towards Baile na Boinne. The friends went leisure 
 ly to Cluainlumney, discussing from various standpoints 
 the drama of the parted sweethearts and the cailin s cap 
 tured hat. 
 
 "And the fool of a young man jumped over the ditch 
 and ran away ! " said Elsie indignantly. " That s modern 
 Irish chivalry and bravery ! And some people imagine 
 you can build a nation on such craven material. O ye 
 worshipers of the impossible ! O, ye Men of the Golden 
 Mists ! " 
 
CAPTURED HAT 235 
 
 "But what will you do with the hat?" asked Father 
 Kenealy gaily. 
 
 " Suppose we tell the story," said Fergus, " in next 
 week s Painne an Lae, and say the young lady can have 
 the hat on application. Meanwhile we could exhibit it 
 in the office window. It would be an expressive attrac 
 tion for Dublin." 
 
 " Twas an absurd episode," said Father Wilson dole 
 fully, " but it will lead to fearful trouble. Clash with 
 a priest of the old order means clash with a whole organ 
 ization, and a very formidable one." 
 
 " But naturally the salient question is : Who is right 
 and who is wrong?" Fergus insisted. 
 
 " That, I fear, is not really asked in Ireland," said 
 Father Wilson, despondently. " It is known that the 
 ecclesiastical power is strong, and it is assumed that it 
 must be right. In the present case Father Finnegan and 
 his friends will not forget that he, and through him, the 
 ministry, have been shown in an undignified light, that 
 the authority he has exercised for years, and through him 
 ecclesiastical authority generally, have been questioned. 
 The bishop will hear of it in the morning; and all the 
 bishops are exceptionally sensitive just now. The May- 
 nooth trouble, which is proving more critical than they 
 thought, and in which their victory is likely to be but 
 nominal and temporary, has grievously disturbed them, 
 and lay independence will be sternly repressed." 
 
 " Oh, come now," urged Father Kenealy, " don t des 
 pair. The bishops don t hold Ireland in the hollow of 
 their hands." 
 
 " They believe they do," replied Father Wilson, " and 
 
236 THK PLOUGH AND THIS CROSS 
 
 that is the trouble. They are not expected to reason, 
 
 or explain, or prove things. They believe, they speak 
 
 and opposition withers like autumn leaves. As with the 
 forces of Nature, which in many ways they resemble, 
 the question of right or wrong does not come in at all. 
 In the country places it is much the same with the priests. 
 
 They are feared and to a great extent reverenced 
 
 as the old gods were. The Gael has forgotten the Dagh- 
 da, Angus Og, and their kin; but he has enthroned the 
 bishops and the priests in their stead. It is a case of 
 the gods survive with God above them. " 
 
 " But the old Gods did not suppress love. Autres 
 temps, autres mccurs!" said Elsie. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 QUE)ST, ELSIE S APOLOGIA AND INDICTMENT 
 
 |ERGUS, Elsie and Maeve caught the first 
 train from Baile na Boinne for Dublin on 
 Monday morning. It was a " Midland " 
 train this time, and the first part of the 
 journey was through storied ground. 
 They passed within sight of historic Tara, 
 lonely above the grass lands. Everything 
 in Meath that speaks of the civilization of the 
 past is lonely, or grassy, or unregarded. But 
 it was a regal moment for Elsie. It brought her 
 first glimpse, with bodily eyes, of Teamhair na 
 Riogh, Tara of the Kings, the golden realm that meant 
 more in her imagination than Imperial Rome and Troy 
 combined. 
 
 At one of the stations Maeve bought a morning paper 
 and scanned all its pages searchingly, but read nothing. 
 Fergus was somewhat surprised, for she regarded the 
 daily press as a rule with disdain. When they reached 
 Dublin she mentioned in mysterious wise that she had 
 some very urgent and special business to do, and that she 
 would come to the office in about an hour for Elsie. 
 Fergus assumed that the business was a round of visits 
 
240 THIv PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 to churches, though he wondered why she did not take 
 Elsie with her straight away. However, as the arrange 
 ment meant that Elsie would accompany him to the office 
 meanwhile, he felt he had goo d reason for not complain 
 ing. 
 
 Maeve s mission, however, had nothing to do with 
 churches. Her reason ridiculed it, and called it childish 
 and absurd, but she was impelled to it all the same. 
 She was haunted by the vision of the drowned body of 
 Arthur O Mara, dead for love s sake and her s. She 
 had bought the morning paper with the trembling half- 
 fear of finding the dread discovery off Howth described 
 in crude, sensational sentences in some column or corner. 
 There was nothing of the kind, but the deed, and the 
 discovery might not have been till the morning, long 
 after the paper had gone to press. And now she felt 
 that she positively must go, on the first available tram, 
 and take stock of the scene, and peep at those waves 
 that had so tragic a suggestiveness for her imagination. 
 The probable futility of the journey was no argument 
 against making it. Her critical spirit mocked the notion, 
 and made light of the brooding and gloom of her tem 
 perament. But she must go. 
 
 At the office, as was usual on Monday mornings, a 
 great pile of letters awaited Fergus. There was a certain 
 romance about the post on the mornings of Monday and 
 Tuesday. Not only did special contributors send their 
 critical or joyous thoughts, but there were surprises and 
 plenty of stimulation amongst the correspondence and the 
 news notes from so many quarters of Gaeldom. As he 
 opened letter after letter he seemed to come into electric 
 
APOLOGIA 241 
 
 contact with a new phase of awakened mind, and the effect 
 altogether was exalting. He felt in glad communion 
 with a world of which there was little sign or token 
 abroad in the streets and squares of Dublin. The feeling 
 came that Ireland was not only mentally alive, but in 
 exhaustibly interesting, magnificently spacious. 
 
 He passed a couple of special contributions for the 
 printers, and told the foreman that the only remaining 
 article in Irish would be one by himself in a chat with 
 Father Kenealy the previous evening the nature of the 
 hints and preliminary points about the League of Pro 
 gressive Priests had been decided on, and these he meant 
 to unfold in Irish when he had exhausted the interest 
 of the correspondence. A soft light like a flush of 
 spring in a wintry morning stole over the foreman s face 
 and dispelled its careworn gravity when he heard that 
 Fergus was to write the remaining Irish for that week s 
 issue. To foremen and compositors Fergus was easily 
 the most favored and favorite of the modern writers 
 of Irish. In fact, he had no serious rivals. He stood 
 alone on a proud peak far above all his contemporaries. 
 His eminence, however, had nothing to cfo with idiom, 
 or style, or imagination, or thought, or any of the usual 
 essentials of literature. It arose simply from the fact 
 that the writing was conscientiously, purposely, scien 
 tifically legible. His printers were far too old and tired 
 to study Irish, beyond, in a hazy way, the alphabet, and 
 so their Gaelic work had often a fearsome originality. 
 The receipt of proofs made the foreman temporarily 
 an enemy of his kind, and the old " comps " correction 
 of their own work was attended save when Fergus 
 
242 TH PLOUGH AND THS CROSS 
 
 and one or two others were the writers with a mel 
 ancholy amount of blasphemy and some regrettable in 
 temperance. 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan," said Elsie when the foreman had 
 gone out of the editorial room, " would you trust me to 
 write an article for your soulful and impossible paper? " 
 
 " I wish to goodness you would/ he said. " I often 
 wonder why you, with your original and beautiful mind, 
 shrink so much from literary expression, while so many 
 vain and foolish people rush into print continually 
 in the daily papers, I mean." 
 
 " I thought you left flattering fancy in the Boyne 
 Valley, and brought a sober spirit into your office. But 
 you wouldn t print the article if I wrote it. It would be 
 too strong for you. I burn with indignation every time 
 I think of Father Finnegan and that incident last night 
 and all it typifies. Such clergymen seem to think that 
 young men and women have no hearts, or rather that the 
 finest feelings of their hearts spell sin and corruption. 
 I m tempted to write on article on The Clergy Against 
 Nature. " 
 
 " That is fairly pointed and decisive to begin with. 
 You have undoubtedy a spacious subject but also a grim 
 and terrible one. It brings us to one of the greatest 
 root-wrongs and ironies of Irish country life. We cannot 
 tell what blighted existence and tragedy it causes. It 
 crushes romance and tenderness, or gives young people 
 a false and poisonous notion of them. You are in the 
 mood to deal fitly with it now that your own heart 
 is so tender." 
 
 " Be serious, Fergus O Hagan. I, too, can take what 
 
APOLOGIA 243 
 
 some people call broad, impersonal views of situations." 
 She had seated herself at the little table in a corner of 
 the room. She took up a pen and some sheets of thin 
 copy-paper, and began to write. Fergus, from the stress 
 of his own work, glanced interestedly across at her from 
 time to time. Her face was set and her eyes had an 
 enkindled gleam. Now and then she made solemn pauses, 
 rested her forehead in her hands, then started and bent 
 eagerly to her task again. She seemed concentrated in 
 tensity in a slim and piquant setting. 
 
 Fergus proceeded with the study of the correspondence. 
 There was a letter not for publication from Geoffrey 
 Mortimer. He wrote from the neighborhood of Victoria 
 Station, London, S. W., and was near enough to Brixton 
 and far enough from Ireland to feel in a half-forgiving 
 mood towards the latter, he said. He was on his way 
 to Paris for a spell. From Ireland, supinely indifferent 
 to art, to London, so crudely and vulgarly hostile to 
 art, was too abrupt a transition for artistic equilibrium. 
 He must have a purple bath of Paris, where art was 
 alternately played with and practised. 
 
 " London is realizing more and more its destiny as 
 the universal suburb," he said. " The eternal lean man 
 with glasses on his nose and black bag in his hand is 
 eternally running after his odious bus. The Devil dis 
 tributes himself in many motor-cars. The architecture 
 seems uglier than ever ; the very policemen seem tempted 
 to arrest the buildings as public nuisances. Are not 
 the ways of what you call Nature curious? At first 
 sight there is no sense in her production of an artist 
 like myself in this advanced stage of British decomposi- 
 
244 TH E PLOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 tion and Irish futility, when men no longer can build 
 beautifully, write beautifully, or live beautifully; and 
 when women cannot even dress beautifully. Nature, it 
 would seem, should have brought me forth hundreds of 
 years ago, made me a contemporary of Michael Angelo, 
 not a successor of Pater and a contemporary of Kipling 
 and the Freeman s Journal. Posterity, however, may 
 see that I was as timely in my appearance and my artis 
 tic adolescence as Horace or Juvenal. In unborn genera 
 tions I may stand forth as the literary undertaker of 
 the British Empire. Its decline and fall may still interest 
 humanity through a few of my epigrams. 
 
 " There was a rumor here last evening that the Gaelic 
 League, as well as your Tadmor-in-the-Wilderness paper, 
 had been suppressed. I did not believe it, and it does 
 not seem to be true. The powers that really rule Ireland 
 do not act precipitately, nor put marked folk and forces 
 out of pain quickly. The course of the doom is as 
 deliberate as it is inevitable. Your fair American am 
 bassadress will doubtless be in time to share yours. 
 
 " I may have to look in on your island for a few days 
 after my recuperation in Paris. Don t imagine that the 
 little of the soul of Cuchulainn which is in most of 
 your racial remnant has revived in me. I go for family 
 and property reasons, and simply in my personal capacity. 
 My artistic individuality is divorced from Ireland abso 
 lutely, and no more shall the world associate it with 
 Dublin. Geoffrey Mortimer, the middle-age gentleman 
 and citizen can call on Ireland, but the Geoffrey Mortimer 
 of art and the imagination tries never again to compress 
 his cosmic significance into the limits of your island. 
 
APOLOGIA 245 
 
 Ibsen forgave Norway and terminated his German exile, 
 but this was going back to a land of men and women and 
 mountains and tall pines. The land where the incident 
 of my birth took place offers in the main but sheep and 
 mists." 
 
 Fergus completed his Irish article, wrote some notes, 
 and answered a few letters. As for Elsie it was early 
 afternoon when she blotted her last sheet. 
 
 " I m afraid it s a wild and whirling affair," she said. 
 " But I wrote as I felt. How shall I sign it? " 
 
 " I said the other day in the Boyne Valley," he an 
 swered, " that Deirdre winning, tender and romantic 
 as she was must have been like you in her girlhood, 
 though she was scarely so piquant and playful. Sign 
 it Deirdre. " 
 
 " You may not be so extravagantly flattering when 
 you Ve read it. But I can t sign it with so romantic a 
 pen-name in cold blood if it is cold at the moment. 
 But take it, and sign it in any wild way you please if 
 you dare to print it." 
 
 He took the article, signed it " Deidre," and then read 
 it slowly from beginning to end. 
 
 " Elsie O Kennedy," he said, " no sensible person 
 speaks positively as to what will or will not excite Ireland 
 in the domain of thoughts and ideas. Yet I think I 
 may safely prophesy that The Clergy Against Nature 
 will make history." 
 
 "Golden Mists again!" said Elsie. "I merely de 
 scribed the scene outside Baile na Boinne, made some 
 general reflections, and drew a few broad conclu 
 sions." 
 
.246 THE; PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " Quite true, so far as it goes. A sonneteer might 
 say he had simply written poems of fourteen lines. The 
 point is the nature of the lines. So with your reflections 
 and conclusions. You made and drew them with insight 
 and boldness, but with singular delicacy, though at times 
 when you grew ironic you were mordantly severe. You 
 wrote from the heart as well as the head, and your article 
 is at once a charming apologia for- love and tenderness 
 and heart-magic and a broad indictment of the older 
 clergy for their suppression of the joy of life. Your pic 
 ture of the sheer rural Blight, the forlorn land where 
 love must needs be still-born, is extraordinarily grim and 
 striking. At the same time you express a very noble 
 ideal of broad-minded and living-hearted priests, recog 
 nizing the modern world and the essence of humanity. 
 You have revealed yourself at last. Even I did not 
 know you till today." 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, you may be more or less competent 
 to turn out an impossible, golden-age paper, but you have 
 a great deal to learn about woman s nature yet." 
 
 " I wonder on what divine adventure has Maeve be 
 taken herself," he asked when he had passed out the 
 article. " The hour is rather long, even for one of 
 Maeve s hours. Ah ! here s something that will in 
 terest you a letter from the one and only Geoffrey 
 Mortimer. It isn t private, and he likes his ironic wisdom 
 to get the widest possible circulation." 
 
 He wondered why, when she had read the letter, she 
 passed it back listlessly, and said a little wearily : " I 
 think I 11 go out in search of Maeve." He had forgotten 
 the phrase about the " fair American ambassadress," 
 
APOLOGIA 247 
 
 which happened to be the one that possessed for Elsie 
 a special and peculiar significance. 
 
 " I suppose," she thought to herself, " I m a fool to 
 give the thing half a thought. His real interest is in 
 ideas. Everything else is mental play. His heart if 
 he really has a heart at all would never bleed for 
 anybody. He 11 never die of la grande passion." 
 
 The arrival of Maeve diverted her thoughts. That 
 apparently reposeful young lady made light of their 
 gentle raillery about her dilatoriness. 
 
 " N importe," she said. " When a woman is late you 
 may be sure in nine cases out of ten that the explanation 
 is something frivolous or foolish." 
 
 They did not think so, but inwardly she resolutely 
 applied the description to herself. She had found in 
 Howth no tragic significance whatever. Everything was 
 placid, almost commonplace indeed to her anxious mind 
 and expectant eyes. When she came down from the bold 
 cliffs and looked at the easy-going villagers and thought 
 of the character of her quest so far as it was a quest 
 she laughed at herself. If Elsie and Fergus only 
 knew ! Then she consoled herself with the reflection that 
 the wisest of men and women have a streak of glorious 
 folly in their natures. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 AND A SENSATION 
 
 M in a mighty hurry," said Terence 
 O Connellan, when he called next day to 
 see Fergus. "I ve got the bishops in 
 structions as to the part which my Irish 
 political organization in Britain is to take 
 in the coming campaign, and I ve got 
 
 special hints for the Party " 
 
 The age of the wonder-workers is not 
 past," said Fergus ironically. 
 
 " We re to give the Nonconformists, 
 English and Welsh, a hot time of it," 
 continued Terence. " We are to help to turn the imagin 
 ation of the Irish race at home and abroad to the British 
 schools question. While we are smiting the Noncom- 
 formists to the wonder and delight of the innocent and 
 artless Irish people, your bishops will deal a few quiet 
 back-handers in Maynooth and elsewhere, and your wild 
 experiment of thinking for yourselves in Ireland will 
 trouble episcopal sensibilities no more. Don t worry, how 
 ever. When the blow comes just gather yourself together, 
 and go straight to the North Wall. That pleasant position 
 on my staff will be waiting for you in London." 
 
 " I m going to fight the good fight in Ireland to the 
 last," said Fergus. 
 
AND A SENSATION 249 
 
 " No, you re not," said Terence. " You re not so moon 
 struck as all that. You don t seriously imagine that the 
 bishops who lead the fieriest political party of modern 
 times like sheep are going to tolerate your little adven 
 tures. Neither they nor Rome can allow you to spread 
 ideas that might in any way endanger the British con 
 nexion. Rome cannot afford to displease the British 
 Empire, and so Rome, acting directly or through the 
 bishops, must simply smash you all, the moment your 
 wild project of making Ireland a thinking or an inde 
 pendent entity looks in any way serious. You d better 
 be packing up and thinking of your ticket to Euston. 
 The confidences of the great are, of course, private, but 
 I can tell you that the bishops have not the least idea 
 of standing any nonsense either in Maynooth or Dublin." 
 
 " Bishops are neither infallible nor all-powerful," said 
 Fergus. 
 
 " For all practical purposes they are both, in Ireland," 
 retorted Terence. " In my capacity as Irish political 
 leader I have to do their bidding meekly, though in my 
 role as English Radical and journalist I am outside their 
 jurisdiction, and take no count of them. That is where 
 I have the pull of Redmond and the rest of them. Which 
 reminds me that I Ve decided to start another great 
 Radical evening paper in London. Twas hard to get the 
 money till now. You know that my friends lost heavily 
 in South African stock transactions at the beginning of 
 that infernal Boer War. We counted on a British picnic 
 to Pretoria/ as all the finanical experts did, and we paid 
 dearly for our confidence. We have now recouped our 
 selves in other directions." 
 
250 THE PivOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 " Then you ought to come along ancl establish new 
 industries in your native land," said Fergus. 
 
 " I ve made ten thousand speeches for the benefit of 
 my native land," replied Terence. " Isn t that worth a 
 hundred of your provincial and plodding industries? I Ve 
 made Irish wrongs respectable in the drawing-rooms of 
 Mayfair, and I ve turned my Ego inside out in evening 
 and weekly papers for a quarter of a century till knowing 
 that Ego the British Empire knows the whole race of 
 which it is the microcosm. My heart was bleeding into 
 copy for Ireland when you were in your cradle. Young 
 Ireland sneers at that, and thinks it cheap and easy to 
 weep in print. Young Ireland has a primitive and impos 
 sible idea of heroism and patriotism. I m too old and 
 pampered a bird to be caught with the chaff of the 
 simple life. Of life in any sense worth living Young 
 Ireland is cravenly afraid, and if you want to realize 
 yourself the sooner you come back to London from this 
 sapless, shivering, hole-and-corner country the better." 
 
 " You think Young Ireland is afraid of life, do you? " 
 asked Fergus. " Here is something that may cause you 
 to see how far behind the times you are." 
 
 He produced a proof of Elsie s article. Terence looked 
 at it listlessly, but the heading attracted his attention and 
 stirred his interest. He did a little " lightning reading," 
 and then his editorial spirit was aroused. 
 
 " This smacks at once of Paris and Norway, and is 
 an amazing production for sheepish Ireland," he said 
 after a few minutes. " I can t wait to read it all now. 
 I 11 take it with me, and if it pans out as it promises 
 I 11 devote a signed special article to it in the next issue 
 
AND A SENSATION 25! 
 
 of Terence s Own Trumpet. You re printing it this 
 week? Very well. My rhapsody will be out almost as 
 soon as itself.- You may possibly come to something as 
 a journalist after all even in Ireland. If you really 
 get in this way the eternal feminine and the natural 
 passion of humanity to rise up against Ban and Blight 
 in Ireland you may have to be reckoned with. But 
 such human and natural procedure is terribly unlike 
 you. You ve probably just blundered into printing this 
 amazingly good thing tis doubtless only a felicitous 
 accident, and tomorrow and the day after you will very 
 likely lapse back into the vain and wasteful task of 
 attempting to awaken mind in Ireland, where it can 
 always and easily be suppressed. However, when the 
 crash comes you know where to find me in London." . . . 
 On the appearance of the next number of Fainne an 
 Lae there was consternation amongst the older official 
 heads of the Gaelic League. Mr. Wightman read with 
 some difficulty the guarded Irish notes about the Pro 
 gressive Priests as he walked amongst his sheep on the 
 plains of Meath, and he wrote post-haste to declare that 
 insistence on the spirit of the early Church was a subtle 
 attack on property and the grazing system, and the ap 
 plication of practical Christianity meant an insidious 
 move towards a schism in the Church in Ireland, as well 
 as towards the levelling down and the robbery of the men 
 with a stake on the country. The Devil would denounce 
 dividends for his purpose. The executive of the Gaelic 
 League would have to repudiate all such poisonous her 
 esies, threatening society and property as they did, and 
 tending to make the rich look askance on the language 
 
252 TH PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 movement. As to " Deirdre s " article, " The Clergy 
 Against Nature," Mr. Wightman could not find words 
 sufficiently strong for the condemnation it deserved. It 
 was impudent and irreligious to contend that the clergy 
 were not empowered and entitled to superintend or veto 
 the love affairs of their flocks. On the whole they had 
 used their power justly and discreetly. Practically they 
 never interfered with the walks and ways of rich and 
 educated lovers ; but it was obviously incumbent on them 
 to keep an eye on those of members of the inferior and 
 uneducated classes. Even in these cases it would be 
 easy for respectable sweethearts to obtain permits from 
 their P. P. that would enable them to take walks at a 
 reasonable time, say up to an hour after sunset. 
 
 There was a great deal of talk about both matters, 
 but there was no public comment at first. The worthies 
 of the daily press as usual had their eyes on England 
 and the ends of the earth and an Irish Sappho, Pindar, 
 Heine, or Burns might sing, or an Irish Dante begin a 
 new Divina Commedia in a thoughtful home organ, 
 without notice on their part. Indeed, the daily press 
 conductors appeared to consider it infra dig. to notice 
 anything intellectual that had a native origin, at any rate 
 until it had first secured attention in England or France ; 
 then their London or Paris correspondents were attracted 
 and the work obtained a transient, second-hand recog 
 nition in the country of its origin. 
 
 With little delay, however, Elsie s article was destined 
 to secure as much attention as a cause cclebre. Terence 
 O Connellan s weekly whirl of egoism came out. It con 
 tained a mighty pronouncement on " The Clergy Against 
 
AND A SENSATION 253 
 
 Nature " (with copious quotations) by the great man 
 himself. His adjectives, whirling fast on one another 
 cried like winds and waters in tempestuous nights. This 
 womanly indictment, he said, was a portent, a herald of 
 revolt, the most startling and suggestive note that had 
 been sounded in Ireland within the memory of man. 
 For good or ill, or a mixture of good and ill, the dom 
 inance of the priest in three-fourths of rural Ireland had 
 been all but universal and unquestioned. How far men 
 or women might think was for him to decide ; whether 
 boys and girls might dance at the crossroads or even in 
 their own or neighbor s homes depended on his will and 
 pleasure; but woe to the young man and maid that 
 dared to saunter on the highways or the byways in the 
 evenings, dreaming love s young dream, when he was 
 abroad. To him romance was sin and the heart of 
 manhood and maidenhood corruption. He knew better 
 than Nature, and he suppressed her. 
 
 Of course, continued Terence, there must have been 
 youths and maids, and men and women, who in their 
 heart of hearts resented all this, who felt instinctively 
 or dumbly that it was all wrong. But none of them had 
 hitherto indicted the system ; none had been bold enough 
 to expose and express its unnaturalness and its cruelty. 
 But at last there had arisen one who spoke for the sup 
 pressed and the marred lives, and boldly and eloquently 
 arraigned the system root and branch. In " Deirdre " 
 not an individual, but Womanhood itself, seemed to speak, 
 and speak in this instance with a Norwegian grimness 
 and a Gaelic grace. He quoted sundry passages by way 
 of illustration, and declared that whoever " Deirdre " was, 
 
254 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 she surely had before her a great future as a writer, 
 and a teacher and leader of woman. She had sounded a 
 trumpet-note of resurgence and revolution in Ireland. 
 But he went on, in his characteristic way, to deduce 
 from the article a plea for passion and revolt entirely 
 and utterly foreign to Elsie s thought and nature. And 
 in this others followed his lead. 
 
 The Dublin papers, that had not troubled about the 
 article itself, could not ignore or resist a pronouncement 
 from London and Terence O Connellan, and they gave 
 it in liberal measure. The organs under clerical control 
 or influence took care to point out editorially that the 
 philosophy of " Deirdre " was unsound and un-Irish, 
 and that all the writers of Europe could not break the 
 mystic bond between priests and people nor mar their 
 historic union in the cause of Faith and Fatherland. 
 The priests knew better than the people themselves what 
 was good for the people. These articles were so strained 
 and platitudinous that it is charitable to assume they 
 carried .little conviction to anybody. The provincial 
 papers quoted largely from Terence, as did the avowedly 
 religious weeklies, which then adventured upon long 
 discussions that touched the real point occasionally. 
 Lord Strathbarra, the day he read the article, translated 
 it into French for a Paris daily paper, and afterwards 
 wrote two studies of it, one in French and the other in 
 Italian, for favorite organs of liberal Catholicism. Its 
 public career was long. Its private effect was, however, 
 more momentous. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 O THE TKARS AND TH GRAT INANITIES OF THINGS ! " 
 
 |ERGUS S world went strangely awry in 
 the days succeeding the publication of 
 Elsie s article. Some of the trouble was 
 obvious, and some mysterious. The for 
 mer concerned the office, where men and 
 machinery were overtried; the latter the 
 home at Dalkey, where spirit and atmos 
 phere had become unaccountably out of time 
 and disappointing. As there was no apparent 
 reason for this, no patent cause for any want of 
 harmony with life on the part of Maeve and 
 Elsie, he began to think after a few days that his ima 
 gination was at fault. But the feeling that there was 
 trouble in the background could not be wholly put away. 
 When he asked questions he was answered either caustic 
 ally or evasively. 
 
 He was obliged to be absent all day, and often till 
 late into the night. One of the grim periodical office 
 crises was in being. It happened that there was a great 
 deal of special printing to be done much of it in Irish, 
 particularly the programs of coming Feiseanna of the 
 Gaelic League, and these he had to watch carefully him- 
 
258 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 self at all times. The expected happened. The anti 
 quated printing-machine proved uncertain and erratic 
 at the most critical stages, and now and then refused to 
 work altogether. Hence delay, demoralization of the 
 antique compositors nerves, unearthly hours, and a gen 
 eral feeling of the imminence of chaos. 
 
 Fergus had also a good deal of exacting correspond 
 ence to attend to, and he found it an ordeal. Original 
 work was satisfying and never tiring, but correspondence 
 meant making pieces of the mind to no particular purpose. 
 He made exceptions, of course: in the case of his May- 
 nooth friends especially. An interesting discussion with 
 these forward spirits was in progress when Elsie s article 
 saw the light. The mood of certain pioneers in the 
 College was bold, especially when the possible interfer 
 ence of the Roman authorities with the Gaelic League was 
 broached, but the spirit of wariness was growing, and 
 there was a feeling that the fears of the bishops had 
 been allayed for the time. Fergus had steadily coun 
 selled caution and prudence, not alone because he hated 
 the idea of clash and strife in the name of religion, but 
 because he felt that the duty of the day was to awaken 
 spirit and mind in Ireland to be as soothing, inspiring, 
 and constructive as one and all could be; and for this 
 slow and delicate work the utmost possible calm, both in 
 mood and in environment, was necessary. But a startling 
 change in the temper of the Maynooth correspondence 
 came about unexpectedly. 
 
 Elsie, of all people in the world, was the cause. For 
 some days, with the stress and strain of late hours, he 
 saw comparatively little of herself and Maeve. He 
 
THE: TEARS AND INANITIES OF THINGS 259 
 
 gathered that rambles and excursions were the order of 
 the day, but somehow they did not appear to conduce 
 to harmony or glow of soul. When he returned late 
 they were tired or out of tune, and when he saw them 
 in the mornings they were not much more serene. The 
 least reference to Elsie s article irritated Maeve, and to 
 Elsie herself the subject was apparently distasteful. 
 This puzzled Fergus not a little, but light came one morn 
 ing when he made a reference to the shrill pronouncement 
 of Terence O Connellan, which had reached Ireland 
 the day before. He had just finished breakfast, and 
 was in a hurry, for office concerns were particularly 
 complicated and critical. Elsie came down, looking tired 
 and perturbed. Affecting the usual gaiety he lightly 
 referred to her growing fame as a leader of modern 
 womankind. 
 
 He was taken aback by her answer : 
 
 " It is all preposterous, and I feel absurd and angry. 
 I wish I could get the whole miserable business out of 
 my mind." 
 
 And before Fergus could interject a protest she ran 
 on: 
 
 " Terence O Connellan has a gross mind and writes 
 clotted nonsense. From all he says about sex and 
 rebellious womanhood one would think I am a revolted 
 daughter or a new woman. He can t distinguish be 
 tween romance and disease. He has read things into 
 what I wrote that make me feel almost ashamed of being 
 alive." 
 
 " That s his way," said Fergus. " If he reviewed 
 the Song of Solomon we know the terrible thing he d 
 
260 THE; PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 make of it. Everybody understands all about his morbid 
 imagination and makes liberal allowances. As to what 
 you wrote every natural-minded reader will be struck 
 from first to last by its tenderness and delicacy." 
 
 " Moonshine, Fergus O Hagan ! The sting of the 
 wretched business is that I know Terence O Connellan s 
 deductions to be true. I don t know why I wrote the 
 miserable stuff. I suppose I was carried out of myself, 
 or down into some nasty, wilful dungeon of myself. 
 I hate it all now ; but there it stands in black and white 
 against me, and I can t forgive you for being so stupid 
 and short-sighted as to print it. It will do endless harm ; 
 the hubbub about it is simply indecent." 
 
 " Elsie O Kennedy, you are talking nonsense at once 
 pathetic and delightful. Of course, I know how extra 
 ordinarily sensitive and delicate-minded you are, and how 
 Terence s crude inferences must jar upon you. But love 
 and the heart are great, eternal realities part of the 
 wonder of life, the Design of Providence and it was 
 for these you pleaded. If Terence O Connellan and other 
 spoiled and worldly people choose to look to the seamy 
 side and draw deductions about passion and license, 
 that is another story, and you should treat it with airy 
 contempt." 
 
 " It will make your work and the paper and yourself 
 unpopular. It will spoil everything. I don t know what 
 madness took possession of me 
 
 " What is wrong with us that if we write from the 
 heart we are distressed when we see the confidences 
 in print?" he asked, half to himself. "I ve had the 
 feeling dozens of times." 
 
THIS TEARS AND INANITIES OF THINGS 2.6l 
 
 Maeve came down at this stage and the discussion 
 was abruptly closed. Fergus went away with uneasy 
 feelings. When Elsie descended from her wonted light 
 some heights her gloom for the nonce was apt to be 
 abysmal. 
 
 To his surprise and indignation his friends in Maynooth, 
 An t-Athair O Muinneog excepted, drew from " The 
 Clergy Against Nature " the same deductions as Terence 
 O Connellan, the blase editor himself. 
 
 "You had Maynooth with you," wrote one, "and at 
 a stroke you have lost it, and we are horribly compro 
 mised. To say we are wounded and amazed is to give an 
 imperfect idea of our feelings. The paper is plainly 
 entering on a vicious course and campaign, throwing 
 decency and virtue to the winds. The hostile and the 
 wobbly have now a case against us. We now know 
 what your Gaelic League means/ they say ; it is throwing 
 off the mask at last. That Fainne an Lae should lend 
 itself to an apologia for Paganism is deplorable and dis 
 graceful." There was much more in the same key. 
 
 In a time of less strain, and had anyone but Elsie been 
 concerned, Fergus would probably have replied to the 
 Maynooth objectors with more mellowness of style and 
 temper; but at the best of times he was apt to grow 
 impatient with stupidity, and positively wrathful over 
 injustice, though after the expression of the wrath a 
 sheer and chastening reaction was sure to set in. 
 
 " I expected more perception and discretion," he 
 wrote, " from presumably educated men. Theologians 
 who affect to be advanced ought to have long since given 
 up reading disease and viciousness into the expression of 
 
262 TH PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 pure and tender feelings of the heart. Tis really time 
 for ecclesiastics to make up their minds to understand 
 human nature. The Church has suffered enough in the 
 past from the unreason and the morbid imaginings of 
 particular Churchmen who had sterilized their own hearts 
 and who seemed to think that the hearts of all men and 
 women ought to be sterilized too." 
 
 The controversy grew sharp and almost embittered, 
 though An t-Athair O Muinneog tried to pour oil on the 
 troubled waters. Some of the Maynooth pioneers de 
 clared that they were risking everything by their attitude 
 and ideas, and now laymen like Fergus wanted to lead 
 them and dictate to them instead of trusting to their 
 calmer guidance. Fergus replied that apparently it was 
 hard for even advanced ecclesiastics to surrender the idea 
 that Churchmen must be dominant in all spheres, and he 
 advised them to think more of the common cause than of 
 their individual susceptibilities. Eventually they declared 
 in effect that they would have to reconsider their whole 
 position. Fergus suggested that they were running away 
 from their recent bold ideas on an unreal side-issue. 
 After this there were strained relations, though the ex 
 change of ideas between An t-Athair O Muinneog and 
 Fergus grew, if anything, more kindly and confidential 
 than before. The former admitted, however, a growing 
 sense of doubt that Maynooth was quite the place to 
 mold intellectual heroes and martyrs. 
 
 In the little intervals that Fergus could spend at home 
 as time went on Maeve and Elsie were not particularly 
 gracious to each other, but they seemed to join for some 
 unaccountable reason in a sort of graceful caustic hostil- 
 
THE: TKARS AND INANITIES OF THINGS 263 
 
 ity to himself. After his battling with the Maynooth men 
 on Elsie s behalf this was anything but cheering, and he 
 thought Elsie s attitude, or her perseverance therein, an 
 amazing outcome and expression of ruffled sensibility. 
 In his brief appearances by the domestic hearth and board 
 he gave way to a certain habit of irony, treating the gleam 
 of the interesting rapier-tempers and the darker mind- 
 bursts of Maeve and Elsie thunder in a clear and sunny 
 atmosphere with even a touch of levity. It was not 
 the philosophic way, and he soon regretted it. But 
 unreasonable young ladies, an antique and obdurate print 
 ing machine, and offended clerical correspondents are ex 
 ceedingly trying even to philosophers, save those who 
 are well-nigh inhuman and sternly on their guard. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 FROM EDEN 
 
 HE trouble began in the Dalkey 
 household the day that Maeve read 
 Elsie s article. She obtained a fan 
 tastic and facetious account of it 
 from Fergus beforehand, and the 
 gleam behind her glasses was cold 
 and questioning when she heard of 
 " The Clergy " and at once frozen 
 and affrighted when she heard of 
 " Nature." There was much in Na 
 ture s procedure of which Maeve by 
 no means approved. She felt that Nature was in many 
 ways in subtle antagonism to the Church ; indeed in her 
 imagination Nature was for ever on the point of being 
 placed on an infinite Index. All the good and gracious 
 things attributed to Nature could not disguise her peren 
 nial " Paganism." The fact that Elsie had stood up for 
 Nature was a lamentable proof of the deteriorating effect 
 of Paris on a gentle Irish character. She awaited the 
 printed article with concern and trepidation. When at 
 last she read it she retired to her own room and was not 
 seen until the next morning. Elsie mentioned it at break- 
 
DESERTERS FROM EDEN 265 
 
 fast, but Maeve put up her hands and said pleadingly: 
 " Don t, Elsie ! We must not. quarrel during your holi 
 days." 
 
 It was just at this stage that Arthur O Mara reappeared 
 at Dalkey. He had apparently quite got over his tragic 
 determination to drown himself for Maeve and unrequited 
 love. Illogically enough that serene and austere young 
 lady was grievously disappointed at the quickness with 
 which he had overcome his fever and mocked herself in 
 her heart over her painful pilgrimage to the cliffs of" 
 Howth. She was glad that he did not want any longer 
 to die for her and was relieved at the obvious cooling of 
 his love ; he was full of a new poem in which he had tried 
 to set a portion of Spinoza s philosophy in solution and 
 this was palpably unlike a distracted lover. But she 
 thought that for the sake of romance and dignity his 
 stricken heart s convalescence ought to extend over at 
 least a fortnight. Recovery in a few days was indecently 
 hasty. 
 
 To crown the comedy his immediate and open prefer 
 ence for Elsie was betrayed with the naivete and ingenu 
 ousness of a child for a toy. This appealed engagingly 
 to Elsie s sense of the ironical and the ridiculous, and 
 partly for the fun of the thing and partly by way of 
 revenge for Maeve s cloudy-and-lightning solemnity over 
 the article, even though already it distressed herself, she 
 played with the young man s feelings pleasantly. After 
 half an hour of it Maeve took up her Bossuet coldly. 
 
 " Really, Maeve/ said Arthur,, " you overdo Bossuet 
 altogether. He is making you old before your time. You 
 know he rather ignores the region of the heart." 
 
266 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 " So does every deep and learned mind," said Maeve, 
 looking up from the page with an expression that suggest 
 ed the Arctic wastes ; " the heart of man is something 
 inexpressibly feathery and foolish." 
 
 " Theologians must recognize the charm and the angelic 
 nature of woman and the beauty of life," said Arthur. 
 " That is perhaps the chief problem before Churchmen in 
 the future. What they Ve called Woman so far is a 
 mixture of diseased melodrama and nightmare." 
 
 "And you have found her an idyll yearning for the stars 
 when she is not at prayer," suggested Elsie sweetly. 
 
 " You doubtless speak from a profound and varied 
 experience of the sex," interjected Maeve ironically. 
 
 " I speak from instinct," replied Arthur, " but I hope 
 to speak from a large and liberal experience later on." 
 
 " You have progressed in a wonderfully short time 
 from Adam to Bluebeard. You 11 outdistance the rest 
 of the race so much that you 11 be solitary and very 
 lonely," said Maeve. 
 
 " Why do you persist in being so stiff-necked and 
 conventional ? " asked Arthur. " It is not worthy of your 
 keen and alert mind. Bluebeard is melodrama in the 
 sphere of imagination just as Brigham Young is melo 
 drama in the region of actuality. While I hope for a 
 large and liberal experience of womankind our relations 
 are to be unflinchingly and beautifully moral. If it is an 
 education for a young man to associate much with other 
 young men, as in a university, how much more of an 
 education is it for him to associate much with young 
 women, with all their finer nature and charm " 
 
DESERTERS FROM EDEN 267 
 
 " I ve heard a great deal about the Irish University 
 question," said Elsie, " but this is the most attractive and 
 original contribution yet. I doubt however that it would 
 satisfy the bishops." 
 
 " I only propose to satisfy myself," said Arthur. " It 
 was told in Maynooth that I had too much of the artistic 
 temperament, and I believe the subtle glamor of femin 
 inity is essential to the life of the artistic temperament. 
 Anyhow, I feel that way. I want woman comrades that 
 I can cherish and worship. But I detest what you call 
 entangling alliances and all that sort of thing." 
 
 " You will please understand," said Maeve coldly, " that 
 we do not discuss or think of such things." 
 
 " But your mind jumps to them when the association 
 or comradeship of unmarried young men and women is 
 mentioned," retorted Arthur. " What I mean is intellec 
 tual and really romantic association, but on a strictly 
 moral basis." 
 
 " I ve heard of that sort of thing being tried, but with 
 doubtful success from the moral point of view," said 
 Maeve severely. 
 
 " I don t care what has been tried," said Arthur. " I 
 know my own mind and feelings, and I mean to follow 
 them. I m sure that refining and joyous association, 
 without either immorality or melodrama, is possible be 
 tween men and women. Man hasn t been allowed a fair 
 chance of understanding and appreciating woman s mind 
 as yet. There has been a chasm between them, and in 
 Ireland it is only bridged by the risky and often premature 
 experiment of marriage. If a man marries the wrong 
 woman he can t fairly appreciate her mind or cultivate 
 
268 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 his own. It may be necessary to love a hundred women 
 before discovering the right one." 
 
 " What a woefully battered heart you d have to offer 
 the favored one at last ! " said Elsie. 
 
 " Not if every test took less than a week," said Maeve 
 meaningly. " We take love nowadays on a sort of quick- 
 lunch system." . . . 
 
 In the ensuing days, while Fergus strove steadily to 
 bring office affairs back to order, and waged correspon 
 dence with his offended friends in Maynooth, Arthur 
 went down into Wicklow or over the Dublin hills on 
 excursions and rambles with Maeve and Elsie. He talked 
 with fantastic irresponsibility, and behaved generally like 
 a child of Nature with no care, or sense of time and tide, 
 or touch of convention. Maeve, who had the art of being 
 absent-minded with dignity, did not always listen, and 
 sometimes when she did she was annoyed or distressed. 
 Elsie, who had made up her mind that Arthur s career 
 would end in talk, but who felt that entertaining talk 
 which relieves the mystery and strain of existence had 
 its use and purpose, was sympathetic and agreeable. On 
 hill and in dell and heather Maeve was often struck with 
 a spell of thought and brooding; she grew uncommuni- 
 cable and self-centered, and silently drifted apart. Some 
 times she seated herself on a ledge of rock or under a 
 tree in the sunlight and lost herself in some favorite little 
 volume like The Dream of Gerontius or The Little 
 Floivers of St. Francis, and let the twentieth century 
 and its interests slip away. At other times she took out 
 her manuscript-book and her Bossuet, and in the all- 
 golden afternoon slowly translated a passage with a calm 
 
FROM EDEN 269 
 
 and poise unknown even in the studious hours in the 
 little summer-house in the garden at Dalkey. A snatch 
 of a song of Arthur s or a burst of Elsie s laughter, from 
 dingle or dale below, would bring her back with a certain 
 sadness and gravity to the immediate world. 
 
 Arthur s spirit of worship towards Elsie grew obvious 
 enough. Maeve took it as the days went with indignant 
 seriousness ; Elsie regarded it at the outset with laughing 
 lightsomeness, for she had taken the measure of Master 
 Arthur s heart. Unhappily Maeve felt it her duty to 
 lecture Elsie with a trying iteration on the error of her 
 ways, and to season her discourses with commentaries on 
 what she considered the reckless and " revolted " points 
 in the now famous article. These, and what she deemed 
 the encouragement of so light-headed and irresponsible 
 a young man as Arthur were proofs to her mind that 
 Elsie had reached a dangerous stage, and that her spirit 
 ual condition needed measures far from gentle. The 
 natural result was that she and Elsie had several quarrels 
 a day, that the charm of each was considerably ruffled, 
 and that Elsie grew rebellious, almost wishing she 
 could take Arthur with entire seriousness. Maeve at 
 length, when she saw Fergus in the nights after toil and 
 strain, gave him, with the best intentions, sundry hints 
 of the kind that are more harmful and suggestive than 
 facts. She wanted him to bestir himself, and the effect 
 of her friendly counsel was to engender a series of vexing 
 moods and set his overtaxed imagination on weary and 
 lonely wing. 
 
 He felt that there was a change in Elsie to begin. In 
 sooth there was, but it was not of the nature he fancied 
 
270 THE; PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 the daily tragi-comedy, the little ruffling battles between 
 herself and Maeve, were unknown to him. The office 
 strain and demoralization, the anger of the Maynooth men, 
 more serious news of Mr. Milligan s illness, the disturb 
 ing silence of Father Murray, his own enforced absence 
 from the Boyne Valley and the land, and the home irrita 
 tion, all kept his mind in those days out of the eager and 
 constructive sphere in which it could be happy. And 
 when his mind was unenkindled life pressed heavily, 
 weirdly, awesomely an ordeal and a mystery for no 
 clear and definite goal. He felt in such hours that the 
 only certain thing about it was its grimness as a tuition- 
 place, its ever-demanded sacrifice and disappointment for 
 the sake of some far-off end, some long-to"-be- sought per 
 fection, whose enjoyment could never be here below, but 
 in another stage and star. 
 
 In this shadowed spirit he reached home one night 
 at a late hour. Maeve and Elsie had had another clash 
 of mood and temper. It was more severe than usual to 
 begin, and unhappily the minds of both had a habit of 
 growing more alert and valiant as night deepened and 
 morning approached. The spirit of contention was strong 
 upon them when he entered. 
 
 He wearily asked the meaning of the trouble. 
 
 " It means several things," said Maeve, " and one of 
 them is that you, at all events, are living in a fool s 
 paradise." 
 
 Whereupon she retired in her regal way. 
 
 " I m sorry for all this, Elsie," said Fergus gloomily, 
 as he sank into an armchair. " It s a painful waste of 
 energy. Maeve is giving herself an unnecessary deal of 
 
DESERTERS PROM EDEN 271 
 
 trouble. There is no need to think of me at all. My 
 course is marked out for me, and need irritate nobody 
 in Ireland." 
 
 The thought of Alice Lefanu shot through Elsie s 
 mind. Of the mood in which Fergus happened to be 
 she had no idea whatever. 
 
 " You surely don t mean to suggest that you be 
 lieve " She was on the point of making mention 
 
 of the comedy with Arthur O Mara, but hesitated. It 
 was too absurd, too unreal. 
 
 " What I really believe," he said, " is that life if it s 
 to be anything in particular must be one of renunciation 
 and sacrifice. What I hoped and planned about you, 
 Elsie, was too good to be true in this world, but I m not 
 afraid of renunciation." 
 
 " Then you re worse than Maeve, and you believe 
 oh, Fergus ! Fergus ! " she said ; and opening the door 
 and closing it hastily was out of sight before he could 
 speak. 
 
 Fergus started to his feet as he heard her steps on the 
 stairs. He had not reckoned on this abrupt departure. 
 He called after her, but no answer came, and he heard 
 the door of her room close in a few minutes. 
 
 It struck him that he had made a bad blunder, and 
 that Elsie had quite misunderstood his frame of mind, 
 and the shspdowed sphere into which he had let his ima 
 gination run. He had been impelled to say something 
 darksome and tragical, to play gloomily with the idea 
 of renunciation, and then, having teased his own imagin 
 ation and hers, he knew he would drift naturally into 
 
272 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 sunniness of mind and temper, and the usual harmony 
 would come. But Elsie s tense and serious mood had 
 played havoc with that little drama. He felt indignant 
 with himself, and wondered if anybody else on the shores 
 of Dublin Bay had so erratic a temperament as he. He 
 hoped not, most devoutly. 
 
 He had sometimes, in far brighter hours, allowed his 
 imagination the darksome luxury of picturing Elsie in 
 unfriendly, unresponsive, hostile guise, and he himself 
 quite forlorn and uncared for and battling wearily with 
 the chilled world. But to put the mood into words before 
 Elsie herself was utter fatuity. 
 
 Late as it was, and full of stress and strain though 
 the day had been he could not think of retiring to rest. 
 He had the hope for a long time that Elsie might think 
 better of it and come downstairs again. At long last 
 he gave up the hope. He went out, and up a lonely 
 hill road to where, under the silent glory of the stars, 
 he had a view of the Bay with the dimness of the inland 
 hills and Binn Eadar of the Fianna, beyond the waters. 
 He wondered if the Fianna, those mighty and joyous hun 
 ters and warriors of the brave days of old, had their own 
 tormenting moods and questionings, or were they ever 
 as elemental as the story-tellers suggested, asking ques 
 tions only of men and not of the gods ? Then he thought 
 of many friends in far lands, from under northern pines 
 to the Southern Cross, who would give much ah, how 
 much ! to be able to gaze on that storied and alluringly 
 beautiful scene before and around him old comrades 
 who must often feel like a bright, broken friend of his 
 London years: 
 
DESERTERS FROM EDEN 273 
 
 In hunger of the heart I loathe 
 
 These happy fields; I turn with tears 
 
 Of love and longing far away 
 To where the heathered Hill of Howth 
 Stands guardian, with the Golden Spears, 
 Above the blue of Dublin Bay. 
 
 And what a wonderful panorama it was to be sure! 
 looking from the firmament to it there was no sense 
 of anti-climax, only kinship. In the silent, revealing 
 night the soul was conscious of a kindred spirit in the 
 star-watched waters and a kindred identity in the mys 
 terious hills, a sense of the illimitable divinity permeating 
 all the spheres and glowing into points of eternal light 
 in the higher consciousness of man. . . . 
 
 Fergus O Hagan hardly knew whether to smile or 
 sigh at the memory of his own ineptitude in letting 
 trivialities like a crazy printing-machine, compositors 
 racked nerves, and little personal ebullitions of temper 
 come between him and the Kingdom of Heaven. In 
 the end he felt mightily ashamed of himself. On the 
 silent height, looking over from Ath Cliath to where the 
 waters grew dim, he felt that man was a stupendous 
 fool : the tragedy was not altogether that in an undated 
 age in the long ago he was false to the light that would 
 have kept him in Eden, but that he wilfully and blindly 
 persisted in deserting and shutting himself out of Eden 
 every day of all the years of time. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 TKNANTS-AT-WII.lv IN THE} WORLD 
 
 >EXT day was Saturday and Fergus 
 was much concerned about office 
 affairs, and anxious to be in town 
 early. He was more concerned, how 
 ever about Elsie, and the explanation 
 of the mood of the previous night. 
 He had many poetical and delectable 
 things in his mind to say, for the 
 hour on the hill above the sea had 
 uplifted his spirit, and morning near 
 ly always brought a sense of mental 
 rejuvenation. He resolved that he would be tenderly 
 careful henceforward of Elsie s sensibilities; nobody had 
 reason to know better than he the delicacy and sensitive 
 ness of her character, for all its laughing, lightsome play. 
 She had a child s nature though a woman s mind. He 
 waited a considerable time after breakfast, but neither 
 she nor Maeve appeared. At last disappointed and heavy- 
 hearted he had to fare forth. 
 
 He found office matters calmer, the machine running 
 serenely, and the foreman so far on the road to optimism 
 as to admit that though the case-room had much in 
 
 3 
 
TENANTS-AT-WILIv IN THE WORLD 2/5 
 
 common with a convalescent home it was not absolutely 
 impossible to convert it into a printing establishment. 
 His tired-minded comps were not dead anyway, and 
 while there was life there was hope. 
 
 The cheer of these comforting tidings were soon, how 
 ever, dissipated. Fergus had an alarming message about 
 Mr. Milligan s illness,, and a telegram came from Father 
 Kenealy declaring that he wanted to see him especially, 
 that afternoon or evening if at all possible ; there had 
 been an astonishing development. 
 
 Fergus saw that he must go down to the Boyne 
 Valley, and he thought that to spend the week-end there 
 would be the happiest course for Maeve and Elsie. So 
 he sent an express letter to Maeve, telling her how matters 
 stood, and asking herself and Elsie to come down by 
 the last train ; he would go in the afternoon himself. 
 He wrote in cheery strain, and pictured the balms and 
 joys of the Valley for sensitive and spirited imagin 
 ations. . . . 
 
 Father Kenealy met him at Baile na Boinne station, 
 and said he would walk with him along the Valley to 
 Cluainlumney. 
 
 " It will be our last ramble together and our last chat 
 for a long time," he said quietly. " I am leaving Ireland 
 almost at once." 
 
 Fergus was amazed and could scarcely credit or grasp 
 the fact at once. In his imagination Father Kenealy 
 was as much an integral part of the new Ireland in 
 which he worked, and for which his hopes were so high, 
 as the Boyne Valley was of Meath. The idea of his 
 removal was for the nonce unthinkable. 
 
276 TH PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " I was rather astonished myself at first," said Father 
 Kenealy. " In truth it staggered me. But after all a 
 priest must be prepared for, or at least must get used to, 
 surprises. He must not set his heart too much on 
 anything temporal. My going is at the bishop s command, 
 politely expressed as at once a desire and a compliment. 
 Where? Well, it seems somewhat romantic on the face 
 of it. I am to be away for possibly three years, collecting 
 funds, at first amongst the Irish of Scotland and England, 
 and then amongst the Irish of Australia and New Zealand, 
 for the erection of a great church, to be dedicated to St. 
 Patrick, on the Hill of Tara." 
 
 " Good gracious ! " exclaimed Fergus. " What is the 
 purpose of such a church on Tara? Tara in the grassy 
 wilderness. Has his lordship become a dreamer of 
 dreams? " 
 
 " Well, you see/ replied Father Kenealy, " they are 
 planning a church on Cruach Phadraig in the West, since 
 the annual pilgrimages have re-started. The bishop thinks 
 that Tara might become a haunt of pilgrimages too, 
 and he is anxious to have the church " 
 
 " Yet I find that he could not see his way to fall in 
 with Mr. Milligan s great scheme, which would give a 
 new life to Meath. Mr. Milligan has been intensely 
 grieved " 
 
 " Ah, that was a social scheme at basis," replied Father 
 Kenealy, " and you cannot fire the minds of our bishops 
 over social schemes. Maybe tis just as well. The people 
 will see, soon or late, that socially they must depend on 
 themselves. It will bring out their latent power and 
 develop their hidden character." 
 
TENANTS-AT-WIU, IN THE WORLD 2/7 
 
 " I must say that the Tara fund scheme is entirely 
 unconvincing to me/ declared Fergus ; " or at any rate 
 there s something more in the wind. The bishop must 
 have heard of your advanced ideas, and is anxious to 
 have you out of the way. There has been as much 
 talk over the practical Christianity as if we had urged 
 a revolution. Your removal is the beginning of the 
 battle." 
 
 " They think similarly in the Seminary/ Father Ken- 
 ealy admitted. " But of course, it is simply a theory. 
 We do not know one way or the other. I admit that it is 
 a blow to me, but in the circumstances what can I do but 
 bow and bear it? A few priests can make no serious 
 stand till the great spirit has had time to work. Doubtless 
 the time is not ripe for such work as I contemplated, 
 though I hoped to help to ripen it. And in one sense 
 three years are not much a fragment in a life. With 
 God s help I shall return with new and greater energy. 
 We shall all be disappointed if we expect immediate 
 miracles. Endure, endure " 
 
 " A great deal may happen in three years," said Fergus 
 ruefully. " Things are coming to a critical stage and 
 your loss will be grievous. I cannot tell you how pain 
 fully it affects me, and in the days to come I 11 realize it 
 a great deal more keenly. Tis the first bad blow against 
 Young Ireland, and there is no use in minimizing it." 
 
 " That is not quite the right way to look at things. 
 One of our weaknesses in Ireland is trusting too much 
 to particular personalities and leaders. Tis dangerous 
 and tis unwise. Depending too much on the leaders, we 
 neglect our own development and power, and we and the 
 
278 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 nation remain so much the poorer in consequence. Each 
 must work as if everything depended upon himself." 
 
 " We certainly have a weakness for being led," said 
 Fergus ; " but when men are looking to and following 
 high-minded leaders, they may be unconsciously uplifting 
 and developing themselves. They rise with the leaders, 
 and their mental life is far greater than if the leaders 
 were not. A real leader, like a great figure in hero-story 
 or literature, is a world in himself, and has a creative 
 effect on the racial mind. We have all grown with Fionn 
 and Cuchulainn since our youth, and we are growing to 
 day with men like An Craoibhin." 
 
 "That is true," said Father Kenealy; "but for my 
 part I want to get down more and more amongst the 
 so-called common people. I want to get at their real 
 minds, in their working hours and in their hours of 
 recreation. I don t mean and they know I don t mean 
 as a priest who wants to moralize or lecture them, but 
 just as a fellow man who is interested in all they feel 
 and dream, in everything from their rhymes and riddles 
 to their ghosts. Our friends in the Cluainlumney cot 
 tages have been a god-send to me. In the last couple 
 of weeks when you were so engrossed in Dublin, I spent 
 evening after evening with them, and I have a fresher 
 and simpler heart to bear my new burden in consequence. 
 I wish to the Lord that we had in Maynooth and the 
 diocesan colleges staffs of deep-hearted professors of 
 Irish rural human nature." 
 
 " I know the feeling well," said Fergus. " I have not 
 to educate myself into it, for I grew up amongst the 
 real people. My only fear is that I might possibly educate 
 
TENANTS-AT-WIU, IN THE WORLD 279 
 
 myself out of it, or that our problems and ideals might 
 carry me too far away from it. Latterly I ve had spells 
 when I apparently lost or forgot it Dubliners are di 
 vorced from the land and largely spoiled and the fact 
 has disturbed me. Yet I think it has been there all the 
 same." 
 
 Father Kenealy walked on in silence for a while. 
 
 " What troubles me most about my going," he said 
 after the silent spell, " is that I shall be away for the 
 most part from the people where I want to see them, and 
 in the way I want to see and meet them. I love our Irish 
 people least in crowds. I 11 come back, please God, to 
 Irish country life with the heart of a boy for his holidays." 
 
 When they reached Cluainlumney they first walked 
 round by the cottages and the gardens, Father Kenealy 
 chatting with everybody with peculiar warmth and hearti 
 ness. 
 
 " They did not know I was really saying good-bye 
 in my own way," he said to Fergus, as they came away. 
 His quiet tone gave no hint of the emotion he felt, but 
 Fergus understood. 
 
 " Many a night I 11 dream of it," continued Father 
 Kenealy to himself ; " many a night in English mining 
 towns and by Australian seas." And then he added, 
 turning to Fergus : " Remember, if rural Ireland dies, 
 the root dies. But, please God, tis fated not to die." 
 
 As they approached the old house Sean O Carroll came 
 up the avenue. His face was heavy with an unwonted 
 gravity. Even his eyes were cold. 
 
 " Ye didn t hear the black news ? " he asked, and their 
 eyes answered his question. " Poor Mr. Milligan is dead, 
 
28<D THK PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 and the people are heart-broken. Beannacht dilis De 
 leri an am!" * 
 
 Fergus was so staggered that for a minute or two he 
 could not utter a word. Father Kenealy remained silent 
 also for a spell, while his lips moved as if in prayer. 
 Sean O Carroll, his head bent, walked slowly over towards 
 the cottages. 
 
 " The man that Meath, if not Ireland, wants most, is 
 taken from us/ said Fergus at last. " God rest him and 
 help us. Such things make the mystery and purpose of 
 life seem dark." 
 
 " We were talking of rural Ireland and one of its 
 saviors is gone to God. Do you think that Mr. Milligan s 
 death will make any serious difference with the land 
 schemes and Fainne an Laef " asked Father Kenealy. 
 
 " It is not easy to say yet," replied Fergus slowly. 
 " Mr. Milligan s people have not his feeling or his char 
 acter, but they have been very loyal to him, and I think 
 will be loyal to his ideas for his sake. But the loss of his 
 grand individuality, his insight, and his courage, is a 
 grievous blow. He gave Meath a new meaning for 
 Ireland, and I can t believe yet that we 11 see him in the 
 fields no more." 
 
 " It has happened again and again in Ireland s story," 
 Father Kenealy said, " that the man who seemed to be 
 needed most of all who was leading, teaching, directing 
 was stricken down, and then confusion or stagnation 
 came. We have had a disastrous habit of over-idealizing 
 leaders, and despairing or quarreling when they have been 
 
 * God s blessing with his soul ! a familiar Irish prayer for 
 the departed. 
 
TENANTS-AT-WILJ, IN TH WORLD 28l 
 
 taken away. The greater art of learning the best from 
 them, and ourselves, and continuing their work has not 
 been ours as a rule. If we only could get the many to 
 think and build for themselves! Then there would be 
 continuity and national evolution." 
 
 " It was poor Mr. Milligan s aim to inspire the masses 
 with an ordered and holy passion for doing and minding 
 their own business/ said Fergus, as if to himself. . . . 
 
 Maeve and Elsie did not come on the last train. Fergus 
 went away wearily from the station, and found Baile na 
 Boinne intensely depressing and blank. At Cluainlumney 
 there was a telegram from Father Murray, saying that 
 he was again at Mr. Wightman s and would come over 
 next day. He added that his heart was low. Fergus 
 wondered if the news of Mr. Milligan s death had already 
 reached him. 
 
 For the first time in his experience Fergus had a 
 poignant evening in the Boyne Valley. He had a feeling 
 of sheer, strange loneliness, and when night came he 
 could almost imagine he felt the looming and gathering 
 of dim but vast and impalpable forces behind the veil of 
 sense. 
 
 After a long time he shook away the oppressive burden, 
 and mind and spirit seemed clarified and strengthened 
 after the ordeal. Death after all, was but an incident of 
 change, an essential turning in our time-and-space stage, 
 the end of a chapter and a starting point. Mr. Milligan 
 had finished his spell in the fields of Meath ; there were 
 farther and farther fields, millions of them maybe, to be 
 reached, stage by stage, in the eternal life-scale, the tilling 
 ever more subtle, the harvests ever more golden and 
 
282 THE: pivOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 more wondrous. Here in the fields of Meath and of 
 Eire they who remained had begun to till and think, and 
 had no more than dimly realized as yet the end of the 
 tilling and the thought. In a quiet, obscure way they 
 realized that both were joyful and good ; but they would 
 learn more and more as they wrought and thought. In 
 the stress and joyance of the tilling and the thinking they 
 would bring forth not only the deeper fruitfulness of 
 the earth, but the finer intelligence that was latent in 
 themselves; and thus they would co-operate in their 
 own way and land with the purposive activity of the 
 cosmos. Thus would hand and mind shape ever towards 
 the Christ-consciousness, " Ye are in Me, and I in you." 
 " I and the Father are one." Tilling and thought were 
 steps to Life. 
 
NEAR 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 BOI/TS FROM THE BLUE 
 
 ET us go down by the river-side," said Father 
 Martin Murray, when he came over on Sun 
 day, " a talk in the sunlight to the mag 
 nificent accompaniment of the Boyne 
 should do the heart good." 
 
 Fergus noted with concern that he 
 was pale and careworn. The visit to 
 the country had wrought him no good 
 physically. As they walked to the 
 waterside he spoke with great feeling 
 of the loss of Mr. Milligan: just when the harvest of 
 his ideas was so abundant, and when his exemplary 
 work bade fair to advance bravely to fruition. 
 
 " He is gone, but he has set the great headlines, 
 and may his memory become an inspiring and com 
 pelling tradition," he said. " Dead leaders have been 
 sometimes the greatest of leaders, fulfilling and direct 
 ing through the spirit what they could not compass in 
 their bodily days. The time of men s passing from our 
 earthly vision seems often premature and unfitting and 
 incomprehensible, but who knows the full story? We 
 are troubled and puzzled at the going and the passing, 
 but be sure it is well, and has its hidden justification. 
 
286 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 And enough remain to do the great deeds and to make 
 the land s life golden. Alas, after thousands of years 
 of civilization man has not really roused himself yet, 
 and made the world s inner and outer life the spacious 
 paradise it could be. We complain of grassy, unpro 
 ductive Meath, and the social waste it is ; but in the 
 world s intellectual and spiritual order there is many 
 and many a Meath. Hundreds are ready to rush away 
 and dig in Klondyke; few think of the gold-fields under 
 their feet and the obscured Edens in their minds and 
 souls. My dear boy, you must keep reminding Ireland 
 of intensive culture of her mind no less than of her 
 soil. We 11 never exhaust the interest and meaning 
 of that august saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is 
 within you. 
 
 " You are to labor in your own way on a grand home 
 mission," he continued, when they reached the river-side, 
 " perhaps you do not fully understand your felicity and 
 your opportunity. You see clouds on the horizon, you 
 see idlers on the ditches, you hear complainings where 
 there should be song and sympathy; it may be that 
 stones are thrown in your direction from time to time. 
 But remember how golden is the field itself, and how 
 many a young mind you can cheer and hearten and direct, 
 and how congenial and vigorous you can make your own 
 mental life racy as your country s earth, high as the 
 eternal stars." 
 
 " I often feel that fine spirit ; the sense and purpose 
 of life come upon me like a tide of joy, especially in 
 hours that are silent and aloof," said Fergus. " But 
 sometimes in the distracting days, when I am looking 
 
BOI/TS FROM THE: BLUE; 287 
 
 outside myself, I am tormented and depressed, and I 
 have to pull myself up sharply. The everyday world 
 often seems a trivial and vexing conspiracy to dull and 
 blind us to the sense of the greater Identity of which we, 
 or at least our spiritual selves, are part." 
 
 " True, true/ said Father Murray, and then he con 
 tinued in a lower tone : 
 
 " I feel your priceless privilege today, my last for a 
 long time on Irish earth and amidst the true Gaelic 
 freemasonry of kindness. Tomorrow I go back to exile. 
 I think of Dante s line : 
 
 Per me si va nella citta dolente. 
 
 The rest of the quotation would be too gloomy, and 
 happily inappropriate." Fergus stopped in amazement. 
 
 " Surely," he said, " we are going to have you at work 
 at home in Ireland " 
 
 " Alas, it is not to be. The bishop drew back in the 
 end. I cannot quite understand it all, but it is part of 
 my life s trial. It appears I am too advanced in my 
 ideas and too rosy in my hopes for the Church in Ireland. 
 I am described as an educated idealist who might want 
 reforms here and there, and courage, enthusiasm and 
 progress everywhere, and this it seems would be putting 
 new wine into old bottles, and the poor dear old Irish 
 bottles must not be tampered with." He spoke with 
 kindly irony, but Fergus was in grimmer mood. 
 
 " What is the secret of these amazing moves ? " he 
 asked. " Father Kenealy, the bravest and most Christ 
 ian-minded of the young home priests, is being banished, 
 and you, the most philosophic and far-seeing of those 
 abroad, are not to be allowed to come and work in 
 
288 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 Ireland. And the spirit of young Maynooth is being 
 watched and checked. What really is the matter with 
 our bishops?" 
 
 " We must follow the Gleam and the Cause, and 
 make light of all obstacles," said Father Murray quietly. 
 " We can expect nothing helpful from the bishops on 
 any question concerning Irish nationality. Nay, be for 
 ever on your guard when they speak on any issue be 
 tween Ireland and England. And don t look to them 
 for anything more than a circumspect and conservative 
 Christianity. The master-minds and the apostolic spirits 
 are with the past yet we can ever revive them in our 
 souls. But speak gently, charitably and feelingly of the 
 bishops always. Remember that they live in an age and 
 an environment two hundred years old, two hundred 
 years earlier than our own. When we speak of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven being realized in the Irish nation 
 they think we preach some strange new doctrine. Do 
 you know any of the bishops personally?" 
 
 " My old parish priest has been for some time the 
 Bishop of Dun na Riogh. I learned many liberal ideas 
 from him when I was growing up. He was rather a 
 man of the people, but he has been curiously quiet since 
 he became a bishop." 
 
 " The usual story," said Father Murray sadly. " Our 
 bishops appear to live in an atmosphere of peculiar timid 
 ity. None more than they could help to give Ireland 
 soul and stamina, and to make her Irish and what God 
 desires her to be, but they shrink from the effort, and 
 have no faith in an Irish nation doing its business and 
 saving its soul independently of England. The finest 
 
BOI/TS FROM THE: BLUE 289 
 
 philosophy of the Church may never apply nowadays to 
 life. They seem to go on the theory that because many 
 of the older generation have primitive ideas the great 
 ideas of all ages are dangerous for Ireland." 
 
 " Tis pitiful and perplexing," declared Fergus. "And 
 now the most helpful counsellors and comrades are not 
 to be in our midst. I had hoped great things from men 
 like Father Kenealy and yourself. How long, O Lord, 
 how long will timidity and unreason prevail ? " 
 
 " I 11 make no attempt to conceal my intense disap 
 pointment and depression over my failure to secure the 
 place and work on which my heart was set not for my 
 own sake, but in the cause of the Church and the nation," 
 said Father Murray. " The blow has left me downcast 
 and physically weak the reaction after my high hopes 
 unnerved me. I cannot away with the dread that dan 
 gerous and stormy days are before you in Ireland. The 
 racial mind and consciousness are returning, and there 
 is a stirring of new thought and energy. The people 
 who are recovering their minds and taking heart after 
 long ignorance and inertia will want their rights in the 
 social, educational and intellectual domain. Against all 
 this there is the timid and largely unsympathetic spirit 
 of the Church authorities, sensitive about power and 
 privilege, and distrustful of awakened mind. The danger 
 of clash and strife is great, and should they come no man 
 may tell the end. It is painful to think of being remote 
 and helpless when one s heart and one s highest work 
 are here here in our own dear land of great ideals 
 and great dangers. Alas, alas, alas ! " 
 
 " Please God, your disappointment is but temporary," 
 
2QO THE PIvOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 said Fergus. " Ireland wants you, and you want Ireland ; 
 and sooner than we think the opportunity and the sphere 
 may come." 
 
 " I have a curious feeling," said Father Murray slowly, 
 " that the tide is gone, and that my work lies afar, very, 
 very far. But my heart tells me that all will yet be well 
 with Ireland; that the deft hand, the genial heart, the 
 vivid mind, the sane and reverent soul will be hers again ; 
 that speaking her own speech, tilling her own fields, 
 utilizing all her talents, inspiring all her children with 
 the spirit of brotherhood and progress, she will be a 
 nation with a sense of the kingdom of Heaven." 
 
 They walked slowly up and down by the river-side 
 for a long time, the talk ranging over memories and hopes 
 and all their personal and national problems. When they 
 returned to the house Father Murray said feelingly that 
 though his time was past he was loath to go. Something 
 told him that this would be a parting for many many 
 days, and that they would be days to try all their souls. 
 
 For himself he wanted a strict rest, and when he had 
 righted a few matters in London, he would seek it. 
 Amongst the Gael was his heart s choice, and he wanted 
 to go to his native place, but first he must spend a few 
 days in that northern college where his teaching career 
 began, and where a few old friends had been calling him 
 for years ; but the call of the Gael had been deeper. 
 
 When he went away Fergus could not rest anywhere, 
 and he walked far away over the lonely roads amid the 
 grass lands. Few might realize that the failure of An 
 t-Athair Mairtin s hopes and mission in Ireland was a 
 matter beyond the ordinary, but Fergus had a sheer and 
 
BOLTS FROM THE: BLUE 291 
 
 poignant realization of what Young Ireland had lost. 
 
 After a restless night the morning brought a vague 
 uneasy sense of disorder and disaster. He was out early 
 and reached Baile na Boinne station nearly half an hour 
 before the first train came along in its leisurely way. 
 The outlook had greatly changed for him with the going 
 of Father Kenealy and Father Murray; he had counted 
 with glow and heartsomeness on their vivid work in 
 Ireland, and on their gallant and cheering spirit of com 
 radeship. He was coming to see that no comradeship is 
 certain, except the comradeship of the spirits we can 
 summon within; he had his first deep lesson in the 
 philosophy that true work must be done for its own sake, 
 and that we may end in marred lives and failure unless 
 we are prepared in the last resort to pursue life s work 
 not only for its own sake, but with no hope of its fruition 
 in our day; and finally that we must be ready full many 
 a day to follow the Gleam in desert loneliness of soul. 
 
 But Fergus had many friends yet, and away under 
 Killiney Hill Maeve and Elsie gleamed for his imagin 
 ation like people of romance. He expected as he worked 
 through the day that one or other, or both, of those fair 
 young ladies would ascend to his editorial cell. But 
 neither came, and he supposed that Bossuet and the Bay, 
 or it might be Wicklow, made a more particular appeal. 
 
 When he reached home in the evening Maeve sat 
 alone. She had neither Bossuet nor crochet before her, 
 and there was about her what he never noticed hitherto 
 an entirely inert and idle air. He wondered at her 
 coldness and gravity. She looked up with a Sphinx-like 
 but questioning expression. 
 
292 TH PIvOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 " Just myself, Maeve/ he said. " Nothing more in 
 human than the tired editor of Fainne an Lae. You 
 looked as if I were a ghost or an embodied heresy. 
 Where is the fair and facetious Elsie ? " 
 
 " I presume that she s in Paris/ repied Maeve, with 
 cold gravity. " At any rate she left for Paris on Satur 
 day." 
 
 "What!" exclaimed Fergus in amazement. "You 
 cannot be serious." 
 
 " I m sorry if my frivolous manner sets you astray/ 
 replied Maeve in measured tones. "Notwithstanding this, 
 you may take the fact as definite." 
 
 " But why should she run away ? " asked Fergus, 
 bewildered and troubled. " There was no need for her 
 to go. And without a word to me " 
 
 " Perhaps after your renunciatory mood of Friday 
 night " began Maeve frostily. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense," interrupted Fergus, " Elsie is wiser 
 than to take a fanciful mood, or a mere fantastic expres 
 sion so seriously as that." 
 
 " I leave it between you when it comes to a matter 
 of moods," said Maeve, with a resigned air. " It would 
 be folly on my part to interfere. I m only a normal 
 being." 
 
 " But could you not have reasoned with Elsie ? Could 
 you not have tried a little soothing, a little smoothing 
 over of things " 
 
 " Of course," said Maeve wearily, " if you want to 
 attack me you can. Go on, and say I caused all the 
 trouble. It s a man s way." 
 
 " Maeve, you are preposterous," said Fergus deject- 
 
BOLTS FROM TIIK BI.UK 293 
 
 edly. " You know what I mean. Elsie was wounded in 
 soul over things. I didn t understand it all till I thought 
 it over. You know how sensitive and highly-strung she 
 is, for all her playfulness. You could have reasoned with 
 her " 
 
 " There you are again ! " declared Maeve. " Saying 
 that I did nothing to induce her to stay. Your next 
 charge will be that I turned her out of the house." 
 
 " Maeve/ said Fergus helplessly, " I 11 say nothing 
 if you 11 just tell me the story in your own way. Please 
 begin at the beginning." 
 
 " The beginning was in Meath," replied Maeve. " The 
 beginning was the scene that led to Elsie s unfortunate 
 and amazing article. Once one member of the Church, 
 like Father Finnegan, is interfered with, there s no end 
 to the troublous consequences set in train. Dramatic 
 justice is worked out through the troubled minds of those 
 very people who interfere with the Church through its 
 ministers." 
 
 " You conveniently ignore the fact that Father Finnegan 
 was the originator of the whole trouble," retorted Fergus. 
 " And the other assumptions are grotesque. Elsie was 
 right in what she said from first to last, and she knows 
 it, and you know it, Maeve. If you go off on these foolish 
 and extravagant tracks I 11 get impatient." 
 
 " Don t, please," said Maeve. " Considering the state 
 of anger and impatience in which you have been since 
 you came in, I tremble to think what you VI be if you 
 grew what you call impatient. 
 
 Fergus thought he had high cause for anger, though 
 he had not been angry. 
 
294 T H PlyOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 The dialog went on in much the same style during 
 tea-time, and when it was over Fergus retired to his 
 study. Maeve crossed her hands at the back of her head 
 and mused in this wise : 
 
 " Twas beastly to seem so unsympathetic beastly, 
 and very hard to keep up. But it was the only way. 
 Twill be a sort of counter-irritant. If I told him simply 
 and straight of Elsie s gloom it would be much worse. 
 Happily, he won t take to drink his dissipation will be 
 voluminous correspondence to Paris. Poor Elsie ! What 
 a sensitive spirit she has ! Little Fergus dreams how 
 much I d give to have her back. And I m sure she s 
 so disgusted with herself by now for her hasty flight that 
 she s simply unapproachable. I won t write to her for 
 at least two months I don t want to receive a postcard 
 that would snap the nose off me. Oh dear, dear! the 
 tragi-comedy we create for our poor selves, as if the 
 world were not full of it. If / had so preposterous a 
 misadventure as to be in love with anybody, there would 
 be one relieving element in the strange affair I d be 
 rational about it and wouldn t assume for a moment that 
 twas something unique in the universe. I wonder has 
 Fergus started his Paris letter. Twill be a sort of 
 Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Perhaps, after all, I d better 
 write to Elsie a nice, cousinly, jocose letter. As I 
 write, the abandoned, heart-wounded hero in his lair 
 curses fate, scatters ink like April rain, and makes the 
 place filthy with tobacco smoke. She 11 be as cross as 
 two sticks, but twill break the strain. Too much tragedy 
 is tiresome almost worse than the flippancy of curates." 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 O HAGAN MAKES UP HIS MIND 
 
 ISS Maeve O Hagan for once had 
 misjudged the situation. When 
 Fergus went to his study he did 
 not sit down to write a letter to 
 Elsie in Paris. To be sure he 
 felt like doing so but there were 
 elements in the problem and in 
 himself that he wanted to think 
 through and over and under ; and 
 he did so to a fine accompaniment 
 of tobacco smoke Maeve was 
 
 right about the tobacco smoke. He had sustained a blow ; 
 but, unlike a petty annoyance, a good^ stinging blow 
 brought him to himself. 
 
 He started with the axiom that Elsie was right in 
 and to her own mind. Painful as her flight was to him 
 and on the face of it ill-judged and cruel, the justification 
 must have been vivid to her own mind, or she would not 
 have gone; and this being so, neither he nor anybody 
 else had the least right to upbraid her or even question 
 her decision. At the same time his heart questioned it, 
 
296 THE PIvOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 and the feeling of blankness and loneliness was intoler 
 able. 
 
 Elsie must have suffered intensely of late, must be 
 suffering intensely now. In the singular tangle of nerves 
 and circumstances she had been misunderstood and set 
 out of tune; being the most sensitive of them all she 
 had felt and endured the most. The question was : 
 How could the wrong and the irony best be righted ? 
 
 In the tense and concentrated condition of his mind 
 the fit solution did not demand much seeking. The 
 ancient, much-debated, but apparently rather popular 
 one of marriage suggested itself. The more he thought 
 over it in the new circumstances the more it appealed 
 to him, and raised his mind and spirits. Life with Elsie 
 in the Boyne Valley and elsewhere would be a unique 
 experience, and as for the work in Dublin 
 
 He paused. Was the work of a newspaper his fit 
 work at all, except by fits and starts? If it were all 
 writing it were good and congenial, but the original 
 writing was but a fraction of the labor, and the other 
 fractions had a harassing and dissipating effect upon 
 the mind. Taking the large view they really marred 
 and defeated his purpose in Ireland. They broke intel 
 lectual coherence and spoiled artistic expression. The 
 ideas he wanted to drive home could be expressed a 
 thousand times better in books, with immeasurably 
 more concentration and effect. One book written with 
 Elsie in the Boyne Valley, or some other haunt of labor 
 and peace, would be worth the newspaper work of a 
 life-time. 
 
 He looked through a couple of his own books of which 
 
O HACAN MAKES UP HIS MIND 297 
 
 he had kept copies. One was in Irish, and was a revel of 
 the imagination in fairy glens, in under-world magical 
 palaces, and among flowers and stars. The other was 
 a novel, published long since pseudonymously. It re 
 vealed his own early neighbors in toil and joy, in struggle 
 and hope, in suffering and faith; on their heather and 
 their hillsides, as near to the next world as to this. It 
 was the natal nook of many like Sean O Carroll and 
 Maire. Glancing over the pages, which he had not re 
 read for years, he came to phases and flashes of a racy, 
 delicate life for the Irish rural life of his youth had 
 singular and subtle delicacy, as well as wizardry which 
 phases and flashes he had all but forgotten, and he re 
 called Father Kenealy s caution in the Boyne Valley. 
 Then he sought and found a purely literary novel, pub 
 lished serially and also pseudonymously in his years 
 abroad. It brought back a flood of memories, but it 
 also showed him, like the others, that the newspaper 
 realm was, for him at any rate, an artistic mistake. 
 
 Had he not said all he wanted to say in Fainne an Laef 
 With the loss of Mr. Milligan, the exile of Father 
 Kenealy, the hope deferred of Father Murray, the chilli 
 ness of Maynooth, a change in the order had come, a 
 time to take one s bearings. There were friends not a 
 few who would be glad to have charge of Fainne an Lae, 
 and who would not mind, or would not feel, the inartistic 
 distractions. He himself could work in the literary 
 realm that was natural to him. He would start forth 
 with to make arrangements for the change. He hoped 
 the transition would be brief. 
 
 He wrote to Elsie in affectionate and buoyant style, 
 
2Q8 THE PLOUGH AND THE} CROSS 
 
 for the conclusion he had come to had relieved his heart 
 and mind. Of course she would return without delay; 
 there was no purpose now in remaining in Paris. " In 
 the joyous future," he said, "we shall doubtless laugh 
 often over your famous mid-holiday flight; but it was 
 a crushing sensation this evening." 
 
 " Do not think," he also said, " that I have changed 
 my views about our affectionate and unworldly relation 
 ship. It is ideal,, and fascinating, and suggestive of 
 fairyland. My one fear about marriage has always been 
 that it might possibly for human personalities are im 
 perfect do something to take even a little off the 
 delicate bloom and charm of our mental and spiritual 
 idyll; and that would be a disaster. But your drastic 
 step has brought poignant pangs, and I have to recognize, 
 and with terrible keenness, that our hearts and natures 
 belong to this world as well as to fairyland and immortal 
 spheres." 
 
 When he went down stairs Maeve and Arthur O Mara 
 were quietly playing chess. Maeve looked up with a 
 surprised expression which meant : " Really I thought 
 you would be shedding ink and tears for at least another 
 hour." She was still more astonished when she noticed 
 the glow in his eyes. 
 
 " Hello, -Fergus," said Arthur. " That was a rather 
 wild trick of Elsie O Kennedy s, was it not? Elsie is 
 a cat," he continued, as he made a move on the board. 
 " Plays very gaily, but has claws. We had a good deal 
 of fun in Wicklow, and it made Maeve rather jealous, 
 though she knows that I m twice as fond of her." 
 
O HAGAN MARKS UP HIS MIND 299 
 
 " Check ! " said Maeve, looking with cold glee at 
 Arthur s king. 
 
 " Confound that bishop of yours," cried Arthur. " I 
 quite overlooked him." 
 
 " Some people make a similar mistake in life, and the 
 consequences are more striking than in chess," said Maeve 
 drily. 
 
 " For my part I imagine that I m done with bishops," 
 said Fergus, as he moved away. " I 11 be back quickly 
 I m just going to post a letter." 
 
 " Of course you are," said Maeve sweetly. " But 
 don t be too sure about the bishops." 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE: BISHOP OF DUN NA RIOGH 
 
 | ILL you tell Mr. O Hagan that the 
 Bishop of Dun na Riogh would 
 like to see him? " 
 
 The alert young man in the 
 commercial office of Fainne an 
 Lac was considerably surprised. 
 Distinguished and interesting visit 
 ors there had been during the 
 year, but never till now a bishop. 
 "Oh, pray, don t be alarmed," 
 said his lordship, smiling, " I m 
 not a Castle bishop." 
 
 The young man recovered his composure and his 
 spirits, and made a movement to go upstairs. But he 
 suddenly thought it would not be proper to keep a bishop 
 waiting, so he said hurriedly: 
 
 "Will your lordship please come this way?" 
 His lordship did so, and immediately the young man 
 grew embarrassed again, for he knew that Fergus was 
 playing the fiddle, and wondered incidentally why he had 
 resumed that uneditorial habit. Fergus himself had 
 been wondering if it were possible to compose a Farewell 
 
I 
 
 B 
 
THE BISHOP OF DUN NA RIOGH 303 
 
 to Journalism. It was at least as tantalizing as a sweet 
 heart, but the prospect of separation did not seem to 
 conduce to either exhaltation or pathos, so the celebration 
 by melody seemed remote. He was now in the midst 
 of a favorite folk-tune, and what the young man felt 
 was that announcing a bishop to an editor engaged in play 
 ing the fiddle was an incongruous business, and might be 
 mutually embarrassing. 
 
 In point of fact there was no occasion for his fears. 
 Fergus looked a little surprised, but considerably pleased 
 when the bishop was announced, and his lordship looked 
 as if he thought that fiddle-playing was a natural part 
 of the day s work of editors. 
 
 " I feel every moment on the point of addressing your 
 lordship as Father, " said Fergus, when the bishop was 
 seated. " I have not had the good fortune to see you 
 since I first left home, and then " 
 
 " And then I was a humble, hard-working, somewhat 
 unconventional P. P. in your native parish," said his 
 lordship, " and had no idea that a bishopric was in store 
 for me. Neither had most other people. But there are 
 occasional surprises even in Church affairs. I d as lief 
 be the humble parish priest still. Several things about 
 the episcopacy are not ideal. But I must not say such 
 things to " his lordship s eyes twinkled " to a vigilant 
 enemy of the Church like you." 
 
 " I don t know if bishops read Irish papers," said 
 Fergus, " but assuming that your lordship reads Fainne 
 an Lae, did you ever see a line in it directed against the 
 Church as distinguished from individual Churchmen who 
 happen to obstruct or retard national development ? " 
 
304 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 " Of course I did not/ said the bishop, " and sorry 
 I d be if I did ; and much I d blame myself if I did, for 
 it would show that I, your old parish priest, had not done 
 my duty to you in your youth. I have seen the result of 
 my own old sermons in certain of your articles. All the 
 same you are on the wrong track in Ireland. You want, 
 for one thing, intellectuality in the Church, and you will 
 not get it. For hundreds of years our religion in Ireland 
 has been emotional, and in a measure sentimental. So it 
 will remain, as far as human eyes can see. Then, and 
 perhaps more serious still, you advocate a freedom for 
 the laity which the laity do not want, and the clergy do 
 not like. Is it worth your while to go against the tide? 
 Have you not enough to occupy your energy without 
 troubling about the relations of the priests and the people ? 
 What was good enough for the eighteenth century, and 
 the nineteenth, is sufficient for the twentieth. I hear at 
 all our diocesan conferences that everybody is satisfied 
 with the status quo." 
 
 " With the somewhat significant exceptions of the laity, 
 who are outside, and the young progressive priests who 
 recognize the new age," said Fergus. " No serious head 
 way is possible in Ireland until there is a clear under 
 standing about the relations, and the respective rights, of 
 Churchmen and laity. Our articles on these issues 
 by clerics as well as laics have been but a comparatively 
 small part of the work of the paper, but they have done 
 something to clear the air." 
 
 " That is just the difficulty," the bishop declared. 
 " Most of us do not want discussion ; we do not desire 
 the air to be cleared. We want the old, easy order to 
 
THE) BISHOP OF DUN NA RIOGH 305 
 
 continue we the bishops, with our clergy, ruling Ireland, 
 the people unquestioning and submissive at home, or emi 
 grating to spread the faith abroad. I can tell you that 
 the British Government wants the status quo too; and 
 the Vatican, which for the sake of the Church all round 
 the Empire desires to conciliate the British Government, 
 wants it also. If the bishops are unable to lead and 
 govern the people, the plans of both Government and 
 Vatican are upset." 
 
 " But need the bishops be so insistently on the side of 
 the British Government?" asked Fergus. " Of course 
 no actual or known opponent of the British connexion is 
 made a bishop by Rome, but even so, could not all think 
 for Ireland and help her forward in many ways? Your 
 lordship often said you were proud to be a man of the 
 people, so your view on this matter, which is coming to 
 agitate the mind of young Ireland very much, should be 
 particularly interesting." 
 
 " My friend, these big questions of policy are not so 
 easily settled as you think. One bishop and one editor 
 cannot settle them at all events. You put Ireland first, 
 and as for me I do not leave Ireland entirely out of sight; 
 but most of my brethren have no country. The Church 
 thinks for souls, not nationalities. The British Empire 
 is a much larger field of and for souls than Ireland, you 
 know." 
 
 "And the Roman Empire in the earthly days of the 
 Founder of Christianity was bigger than Palestine," said 
 Fergus, " yet our Lord kept to his own modest land, 
 preaching, it is generally believed, in a local dialect, and 
 never using the Imperial language." 
 
306 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 His lordship smiled. " Ah, but he ordained that His 
 disciples should go and teach all nations." 
 
 " True, your lordship, but He never said that any of 
 them should necessarily renounce their own nationality, 
 or interfere with the rights of States and peoples. Ren 
 der to Caesar the things that are Caesar s. My King 
 dom is not of this world. And is there any ordinance 
 to the effect that those who in modern times must neces 
 sarily stay to preach and teach at home should not be in 
 sympathy with the home nation? In other words, is 
 there any reason known to your lordship why the bishops 
 should not be Irish in feeling? And may I ask your 
 lordship a bigger question still ? Is there any reason why 
 we should not have broad-minded, democratic, and intel 
 lectual Churchmen in Ireland? men who would show 
 that the Church, so far from being afraid of science, 
 culture, democracy, and progress, appreciates them and 
 encourages them, and has a mission and a spirit im 
 measurably greater than them all? The anti-social and 
 unintellectual spirit of so many Churchmen in Ireland 
 often appears to me to argue a strange want of faith." 
 
 " Really," replied his lordship, " you are on a par with 
 certain parties in Maynooth. If the laity generally had 
 such definite and decided ideas as you have the lives of 
 bishops would be strenuous. I am not saying that under 
 other conditions it would not be better for Church and 
 State. But you and your friends are ahead of your time, 
 .and ye have the same weakness for ideas that some 
 of our poorer countrymen have for drink. My old friend 
 Aubrey de Vere used to say that poetry refuses to take 
 up more philosophy than it can hold in solution. Simi- 
 
THE BISHOP OF DUN NA RIOGH 307 
 
 larly with average men and average life. A few ideas 
 are all very well if held in solution in the mental and 
 social economy; but if we were all like you and the 
 Maynooth forwards Ireland would disappear in an 
 intellectual explosion. You don t know the country we 
 have to contend with, and I think I understand the 
 reason. You were brought up in a district that was close 
 to the Gael, and that still in your youth preserved a 
 life that had been the growth of ages. You left it while 
 still young, though it had grown into your heart and 
 being, and it has lived in and with you since, wherever 
 you went in the world, and you have brought it back in 
 your heart and memory to your new work and your new 
 day. But in the old place itself and it is typical of 
 hundreds it is dead and gone : dead as Knocknagow ; 
 and a dreary, decaying apology for life has largely taken 
 its place. Alas, the emigrant ships have left us, who 
 knew another order, very lonely in the South. The great 
 consolation is that our good people have gone to spread 
 the faith abroad." 
 
 " Your lordship amazes me," interjected Fergus. " You 
 know how simple and untrained our poor emigrants are 
 as a rule. You know, on the other hand, that the modern 
 world which counts is neither simple nor untrained. The 
 idea that our emigrants could affect its conception of life 
 is to me one of the wildest illusions in history. It seems 
 to me awful that our bishops and clergy should look 
 calmly on the breaking and scattering of the Irish nation 
 for the sake of an illusion." 
 
 " God must have willed that our nation should break 
 and scatter," said the bishop, " or it would not happen. 
 
308 TH PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 And God would not will such a national tragedy except 
 for a great purpose. Who are we that we should try to 
 interfere with the purpose ? " 
 
 " Surely it is good and even divine to use our brains," 
 replied Fergus. "And if, using our brains, we can see 
 that the main cause of the Irish exodus is economic, and 
 means the ultimate ruin of our historic nation, the passing 
 of a distinctive shrine and treasury of humanity, surely 
 then it is senseless to look calmly on the ruin and declare 
 it is fulfilling a divine purpose. But assuming for a 
 moment that the mission of Ireland is not to do her own 
 business truly and nobly, but to undertake the big and 
 boastful task of looking after the world s, why not edu 
 cate the people before they go? At present our people 
 are the worst educated in Europe, with the possible 
 exception of the Italians." 
 
 " There is education and education," replied his lord 
 ship. " If education were too Irish too many of the 
 people would stay at home, surrendering for a narrow 
 destiny the great missionary one before the race. And 
 overmuch culture would spoil the missionary spirit of 
 those going abroad it would destroy their passionate 
 and simple spiritual fervor on which we count so largely. 
 Besides, deep education for the masses in any land is 
 dangerous. As soon as you really educate the masses you 
 must begin to rearrange the social order. Educated 
 young men won t be satisfied with being farm drudges 
 or stone-breakers ; they will want as good and as honored 
 a place in the social economy as others. Education for 
 the masses in short means some form of socialism." 
 
 "And need we shrink from that?" asked Fergus. 
 
THE BISHOP 01? DUN NA RIOGrf 309 
 
 " Ethically, is not essential socialism akin to Christianity? 
 I think, however, that nationalization of certain indus 
 tries, municipalization of others, and co-operation every 
 where we can possibly apply it, would do to go on with, 
 more especially if we applied Christianity to everyday life. 
 Anyhow is it not our duty and interest to train, educate, 
 and exalt mind, assured that all will be well ? I have not 
 the least doubt that thinking and educated humanity will 
 be equal to its problems and its responsibilities." 
 
 "Alas, I am an old man, and the thought of these 
 revolutions appals me," said the bishop. "Anyway, 
 vain to interfere with fate and destiny, and Irish dt. 
 is to suffer in this world and spread the faith. The drean 
 ers of young Ireland, finding they cannot fight fate and 
 move mountains, will grow sensible like the rest of us. 
 You had better start slowing down yourself. You must 
 accept the status quo. You may discourse on tillage, the 
 revival of the kilt, co-operative creameries, simplified 
 spelling of the Irish language, and sundry such fruitful 
 and interesting themes. But you must not criticise any 
 phase or point of ecclesiastical policy in Ireland. You 
 must not recommend the study of the philosophic basis 
 of Catholicism, nor advocate the application of practical 
 Christianity in everyday Irish life : your own good and 
 wise bishops will see to these great things. You must 
 leave the political aspect of the Hierarchy alone. You 
 must rigidly avoid all suggestions tending towards popu 
 lar control of education, and where the clergy oppose the 
 establishment of free libraries for the people you must 
 assume that they have reasons entirely convincing to 
 themselves." 
 
3IO THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 " Your lordship is delightful," said Fergus. " You 
 bring, if I may say so, a very pleasant spirit of irony to 
 bear on the extreme clerical position." 
 
 " You foolish young man ! " said the bishop, " I am 
 quite serious. 
 
 " Does your lordship really mean that you desire 
 to prevent a national newspaper from commenting on 
 national questions ! " Fergus asked in surprise. 
 
 " Episcopal and clerical questions/ said his lordship. 
 
 " But episcopal and clerical questions that directly 
 affect the nation, and are not in the sphere of the 
 bishops and clergy as such." 
 
 "It is the tradition in Ireland," replied the bishop. 
 " There are national and social questions which the 
 bishops and clergy here have always decided, and we 
 cannot allow the laity to have any say in them now or 
 in future." 
 
 " I decline, with all due respect, to recognize any such 
 law, rule, or tradition," said Fergus. " I absolutely 
 refuse to bind myself, or suppress or withhold legitimate 
 criticism or comment on any public or national question 
 whatsoever." 
 
 " I admire your pluck," his lordship said, " but tis 
 absolutely quixotic. Yourself and your paper will inevit 
 ably be crushed. Do you know where you are and what 
 you are doing? Can you calmly contemplate the thought 
 of the utter ruin of your career in your native land? If 
 you resist the episcopal will you must take the conse 
 quences." 
 
 " Willingly," replied Fergus. 
 
 " Somehow, I had the fear that you would not listen to 
 
THE} BISHOP OF DUN NA RIOGH 311 
 
 reason, though as one who was to some extent responsible 
 for your spiritual upbringing I felt it my duty to try, and 
 I said I would do my best. My brethren generally want 
 to get these troubles settled as quietly as possible. I see 
 that in your case they must take their own measures." 
 
 " Then your lordship is not speaking for yourself 
 alone! Do I understand you to mean that the bishops 
 seriously take it upon themselves to decide the policy 
 of a national journal ? " 
 
 His lordship smiled blandly as he replied : 
 
 "Ah, my friend, you have been living a long time 
 in free countries and have forgotten some things about 
 Ireland. Of course we bishops decide the policy of 
 national journals. We can generally do it in a quiet way ; 
 it is seldom necessary to hit an editor very hard ; but 
 editors who print such bold and cruelly true articles as 
 The Clergy Against Nature require special handling. 
 I cannot say what will happen when I go back to the 
 meeting of the Standing Committee." 
 
 " Does the Standing Committee of the Bishops meet 
 today ? " asked Fergus. 
 
 " It has been sitting at University College for some 
 time. I had the consideration of your case postponed 
 pending the result of my talk with you. His Eminence 
 thought that one of his own famous missives would be 
 the best means of frightening you, and his Grace of the 
 West thought it infra dig. for a bishop to call on an edi 
 tor, but his Grace nearer home said his visits to the offices 
 of the daily papers invariably occasioned a pleasing mix 
 ture of politeness and awe, and he felt that a weekly 
 would be still more amenable to reason. Anyhow, I 
 
312 THJC PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 declared that I d please myself. We have had a pleasant 
 chat, but unfortunately I have failed in my main object. 
 Are you really determined to be crushed ? " 
 
 " No, your lordship," replied Fergus. " I am going 
 Ic congnamh DC* to show the bishops that the Irish 
 world has changed." 
 
 " They will be the last men in Ireland to be convinced 
 on that point," said his lordship, as he rose to go. " Well, 
 you have the spirit of the old place and the old times. 
 Tis almost a pity to crush you. But I fear it must be 
 done. You stand in the way of episcopal and British 
 and Vatican policy in Ireland. And you want thought 
 where your bishops, who are wiser than you, declare 
 there shall be no thought. And you ask questions upon 
 issues that these same good bishops declare have been 
 settled for all time." 
 
 When his lordship had gone Fergus reviewed sundry 
 facts of late days from a new standpoint. He saw how 
 real had been poor Mr. Milligan s fears, and that the 
 pressure on Maynooth, the banishment of Father Ken- 
 ealy, and the failure of Father Murray to obtain in 
 Ireland the post and the work after his own heart, were 
 outcomes of the same deliberate and determined episcopal 
 policy. 
 *With God s help. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 MR. MORT1MUR AND THE} PIT MAYNOOTH AT THE 
 CROSS-ROADS 
 
 FTER a few days, when he heard 
 nothing from the bishops, Fergus 
 began to wonder if serene counsels 
 had prevailed, or if the Bishop of 
 Dun na Riogh, who always had a 
 quiet sense of humor, had indulged 
 in genial exaggeration. If their 
 lordships had decided to leave well 
 enough alone, and made no move, he 
 could carry out his plan of retiring 
 from the paper to the purely literary fold. If they 
 threatened or condemned he would stay at his post and 
 see the issue out. For the moment the attitude of their 
 lordships gave him far less concern that did the attitude 
 of Elsie. She had not answered any of his letters or 
 recognized the fact of his existence in any way, and this 
 made a momentous difference in his life. Maeve herself 
 was cloudy and uncommunicative. 
 
 One evening at this perplexing and indecisive stage, 
 just as he left the office he encountered Mr. Geoffrey 
 Mortimer in the narrow street. Fergus was so deep in 
 
314 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 thought that although the great man s voice brought him 
 back to actuality he entirely missed the drift of his 
 carefully prepared opening epigram, on which others 
 depended, and the result was the partial disorganization 
 of the conversation for a couple of minutes. 
 
 " You are making a brave effort to brazen out the 
 theory that a thinking mind can thrive in Ireland," said 
 Geoffrey. " Your obstinacy is worthy of a better cause. 
 Excuse the trite remark that sort of thing slips on one 
 in Dublin, the capital of triteness. I know, when I reflect, 
 that no good or great cause is served by obstinacy. It is 
 the propagandists counterfeit for heroism ; if you allow 
 it to grow upon you it will be your undoing as an artist. 
 I suppose, however, that you have forgotten art by this 
 time. You look as if you had not an idea left." 
 
 " I happen to have a rather wild one at present," 
 replied Fergus. " It is to ask you to come home with 
 me to tea. Elementary you may say but wait. Our 
 Maynooth friend, Father O Muinneog, happens to be in 
 town today, and he will be there. My sister is probably 
 entertaining him by this time. Pitting you against a 
 Maynooth professor and a highly religious-minded young 
 lady rather appeals to me in my present mood. But you 
 would be out of your element, I suppose." 
 
 " My dear O Hagan," said Geoffrey, " you are becom 
 ing as thoughtless and intolerant as the majority of the 
 anglicized Dubliners themselves. In the first place you 
 forget what I told you in my letter that my hurried 
 visit is solely in my personal capacity. My artistic in 
 dividuality for ever remains out of Ireland. And you 
 ought to know that Geoffrey Mortimer, the middle-aged 
 
MR. MORTIMER AND THE PIT 31$ 
 
 gentleman and private citizen, is almost tedious in his 
 decorum and well-nigh intolerable in his virtue. I shall 
 be delighted to go." 
 
 The incredible record that she never dropped china had 
 been claimed for Maeve. She very nearly dropped a whole 
 trayful when Geoffrey Mortimer s name was mentioned 
 by Fergus, but she bowed with surprising calm, and her 
 smile was hospitality itself. The professor s expression 
 was inscrutable. 
 
 " You must be sorry, Father, to be away even for a day 
 from Maynooth," said Geoffrey, as they sat down to tea. 
 " Had I the priceless privilege of being a professor in 
 Maynooth, instead of as I am a poor worm creeping 
 after the inaccessible and the inexpressible in art I d 
 never have the courage to come out into the common, 
 sinful world. I d have the same horror of it that folk 
 in the Middle Ages had of mountains." 
 
 Maeve opened her eyes as wide as politeness would 
 allow. Father O Muinneog, who was always interested 
 in new ideas and fancies, or a fresh expression of old 
 ones, smiled encouragingly. 
 
 " Mind in Maynooth has its own burdens," said Fergus. 
 " There is an episcopal shadow on the landscape just 
 now." 
 
 " You must not talk that way, my dear O Hagan," said 
 Geoffrey deprecatingly. " It betrays an obsession by 
 externals, a mind vexed by incidentals. Mine is a mere 
 lay view, of course, but my great regret is that the bishops 
 do not loom more largely in our Irish affairs. It would 
 give dignity and momentum and eclat to our existence. 
 Their thunders would lead to agitation good for souls, 
 
THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 while the ensuing calm would be sweet with serenity and 
 relief, and men would be put in tune for great things. 
 Nature would be stagnant and plague-filled were there 
 no storms, and Irish life is becoming stagnant and drab 
 and monotonous since our bishops became sparing in the 
 use of the anathema. Mean moods are the order and 
 mean vices have sprung up. Their lordships are the only 
 epic institution left us, the only force that can save us 
 from parochialism. But they shrink into themselves, and 
 refuse to thunder. In fact, our bishops are developing a 
 reserve and modesty and plainness of pretension that sav 
 or uncomfortably of Protestantism. That is the very way 
 to encourage rationalism and incredulity. The priests, I 
 regret to see, are betraying a similar tendency to efface 
 themselves, or minimize their own importance. How 
 many of them will now admit that they can turn sinners 
 or unbelievers into goats or blocks of wood if they like? " 
 
 "None of them, I hope," replied the professor, with 
 a smile. " The superstition that priests can work miracles 
 at will cannot, of course, be in any way encouraged by 
 the priests themselves." 
 
 " Oh, my dear professor," said Geoffrey plaintively, 
 " don t try to shock me in that way. You make me feel 
 cold. You don t know the mystery and solemnity you 
 are trying to take out of life. Surely the power of the 
 priests is one of the great advantages we of the laity 
 have over our Protestant neighbors. You can t imagine 
 all it means to us. More than once in pettish moments of 
 my life I ve thought of turning Protestant. But then I 
 went to the parson and said, Parson, if I join your 
 Church and am going to the devil, how far must I go 
 
MR. MORTIMKR AND TH PIT 317 
 
 before you ll turn me into a goat? And he frankly 
 answered, I can t turn you into a goat, Mr. Mortimer. 
 You must go to the devil/ And naturally I replied, 
 Then, parson, you bring yourself down to the level of an 
 attorney or a chartered accountant, and in your fold I ve 
 no final protection against my wicked self. My dear 
 professor, you can t realize the restraining influence on a 
 sinner of the knowledge that at a certain stage he may be 
 turned into a goat or a piece of bog-wood. He s sure 
 to pull up soon or late. I implore you not to lightly try 
 to take away this shield and shelter of ours. The duty 
 of today is to emphasize and assert the power of the 
 priesthood more and more, and to carry it into spheres of 
 life where it was never asserted before. The Irish laity, 
 barring a few revolutionaries and faddists, will welcome 
 whole-heartedly a wide-spread extension of the clerical 
 control of life. A love of sacerdotal dominance is in 
 grained in the Irish heart and undying in the Irish im 
 agination." 
 
 Maeve looked keenly and wonderingly at Geoffrey. 
 Fergus and the professor laughed. Geoffrey seemed 
 pained and astonished at the laughter. 
 
 " Mr. Mortimer satirizes us very neatly," said the pro 
 fessor. " We have let the people grow up in a folk 
 lore conception of the priesthood, and now we point to 
 popular ignorance and imagination as proofs that it would 
 be dangerous to put the real truth plainly and simply." 
 
 " But surely you understand that the imagination of 
 the people is a sacred and fruitful thing, and that you 
 are bound not only to respect it, but to foster it," said 
 Geoffrey. "And you know that things may be true 
 
318 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 though not literally facts. Take our friend O Hagan 
 and the fairies. He wouldn t swear that little red-capped 
 men ride over the dells at night, or dance in the raths, 
 yet he knows the fairies are true, and he will tell you 
 that they are the popular embodiment and dramatization 
 of part of the wonder and the mysterious forces beyond 
 actuality. He would not think of destroying the popular 
 sense of that wonder and mystery just because the little 
 red caps and the diminutive men may not be strictly 
 correct details. It is the sense of wonder, not the details, 
 that matters. So with the priestly power. The sinners 
 turned into goats may be brilliant embellishments, but 
 you need not boggle at them if the great central -fact 
 awe and fear of the priesthood is preserved." 
 
 Maeve began to wonder if Mr. Geoffrey Mortimer were 
 a much misunderstood man. She had read none of his 
 novels herself, and now she asked her conscience if her 
 infinite prejudice against him was consistent with perfect 
 charity. She remembered with a certain humiliation that 
 she had first heard him denounced by curates. 
 
 The question of popular imagination and folk-lore led 
 naturally to the Irish rural conception of Hell, for which 
 the professor frankly confessed a sheer intellectual loath 
 ing. It was high time, he said, to put out of court the 
 Devil with hoof and horns, the material fire and brim 
 stone, and to preach a philosophic doctrine of retribution. 
 The horned Devil and material fire and brimstone were 
 not Church conceptions, and theologians ignored them, 
 yet preachers were allowed to preach them, especially at 
 missions, and the serious question arose : Why were 
 preachers allowed to frighten poor, simple congregations 
 
MR. MORTIMER AND THE PIT 319 
 
 with terrors unknown to revelation and theology? The 
 material Hell of which Ireland heard was a caricature of 
 Catholic teaching, and the courageous theologians who 
 would free the Irish mind from this coarse and crude 
 terror would be immeasurably greater friends of the 
 nation than the men who would give her political inde 
 pendence. Geoffrey s face assumed a more poignant ex 
 pression as the professor proceeded. 
 
 " And so you would not leave us Hell itself? " he cried 
 at last, " at least the time-honored Hell and the gridirons 
 whereon we ve seen our enemies roasting in fancy, and 
 the proud ones of this earth frizzling, while grinning 
 demons danced round in glee. Professor, I 11 protest to 
 the last against your astounding innovations. We, the 
 unreforming, loyal-hearted laity, stand for the old Pit. 
 Hands off our fire and brimstone ! You don t know what 
 you would take from us. To throw cold water on Hell- 
 fire after all those ages would simply stagger humanity. 
 The imagination of mankind would reel after the drastic 
 abolition, and would not know where it was. Your phil 
 osophical abstraction about retribution would be cold 
 comfort : no better than metaphysics to a poor man 
 robbed of his beer. None of us is afraid of a philoso 
 phical abstraction. But Hell keeps all but the worst 
 of us from descending to brutehood. The thought that 
 our enemies will frizzle in Hell makes life at least tolerable 
 the thought of a philosophical abstraction as their des 
 tiny would never prevent us from knifing them." 
 
 The professor found Mr. Mortimer exceedingly en 
 tertaining, and ironically congratulated him on his intel 
 lectual conclusions. 
 
320 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 " Intellectual men,, my dear professor, intellectual men 
 like yourself, have a special interest in the preservation 
 and encouragement of preachers who preach Hell-Fire," 
 responded Geoffrey. " The very fact that their theories 
 seem crude makes your own more delicate sentiments 
 shine out and impress by the force of contrast, as drama 
 scores and shines by contrast with melodrama, and art 
 and literature by contrast with pot-boilers/ Hell is 
 the greatest pot-boiler in the history of human art. It 
 is the frizzling foil to your transcendental philosophy. 
 Without this contrast you could make no impression. 
 Leave Hell-fire to the wild, melodrama-loving multitude, 
 and the very fact of that sinister popular background 
 will help you with the intellectual and the progressive. 
 But don t start your career as a reformer by stunning 
 the human race. If you stun it you can t teach it." 
 
 " Your irony is agreeable, Mr. Mortimer," said the 
 professor, " but you will find that ultimately we must 
 deal seriously with Hell-fire, which our Church does not 
 ask you to believe in she does, of course, in retribution 
 though theologians will call you temerarious and 
 other things if you don t. The Hell-fire pictures that are 
 drawn by certain preachers, without any authority but 
 folk-lore and fancy, are a grievous evil. This question 
 is far and away the most serious one before Ireland. 
 Ultimately the undue clerical dominance of which men 
 so justly complain depends dh the popular belief in 
 material Hell-fire. But for the dread of it, and the belief 
 that opposition to priests or bishops on anything will be 
 the means of sending them to it the people would stand 
 up for their just rights. But there is a far greater ques- 
 
MR. MORTIMER AND TH PIT 321 
 
 tion. As things stand the great force of priests you have 
 in Ireland need not bestir themselves intellectually or 
 socially. But if the belief in material Hell-Fire not 
 retribution, mind you were to pass away the whole 
 situation would be revolutionized, and the ultimate con 
 sequences for Church and people would be glorious. 
 Why? No longer able to appeal to the crude terror 
 of Hell-Fire the clergy would be obliged to exert them 
 selves, to preach the love of God and man, to appeal to 
 what is noble in the souls and hearts of their flocks, not 
 to what can be cowed and terrorized. And the people 
 appealed to solely on their good side would do more in 
 an age for the love of God and their fellow-men and the 
 Christ in themselves than they 11 do in all the aeons for 
 fear of any horned Devil and all manner of fire and 
 brimstone." 
 
 " Tis a grand ideal/ said Geoffrey, " but tis a vain 
 dream. Man is naturally a brute and a fool, and when 
 all is said you can only keep him in order through fear 
 of damnation." 
 
 " Man is nothing of the kind," replied An-t-Athair 
 O Muinneog, with a touch of passion, " and if you can 
 not believe in the perfectibility of the race you are damned 
 in this world to start with." 
 
 " You 11 find that the people will fight for Hell-Fire," 
 declared Geoffrey. 
 
 Geoffrey was generous with epigrams after tea. When 
 he left at length for the city he felt that he had been 
 correct and entertaining, and that whatever the world 
 might think of his artistic individuality his decorum as 
 middle-aged gentleman and private citizen was still be- 
 
322 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 yond cavil. Maeve s graciousness as he said good-bye 
 seemed to set the seal on his charter of respectability. 
 
 Fergus and the professor talked into the small hours 
 of the morning. The professor in quiet, confidential 
 moments had a fascinatingly frank and easy way of 
 expressing revolutionary sentiments,, or sentiments that 
 would have seemed so to the vast majority of his Irish 
 clerical contemporaries. In some ways his outlook and 
 inlook recalled those of Father Kenealy. 
 
 He regretted to say that their friends in Maynooth 
 were still sore in spirit over the memorable indictment, 
 " The Clergy Against Nature," and the resulting war 
 of letters with Fergus. 
 
 " They are mostly wrong/ he said, " but there is a 
 certain crude right on their side. The same may be 
 said of the priests who meet love with the rod and 
 denunciation. I suppose it is another phase of the general 
 order and policy of seeing the Irish people a primitive 
 and ignorant folk who are to be bullied and cowed, 
 instead of a sensitive and talented race not difficult to 
 hearten, uplift and inspire with a sense of the good and 
 beauty of life. Common sense alone should teach us 
 that so universal, essential, and world-driving a force as 
 love cannot be ignored or suppressed, and the true philo 
 sophy is to cultivate as clear and sane an understanding 
 of it as possible. Even so it is hard to guard against 
 all its dangers, but knowledge minimizes them, and the 
 trained, prepared youth has the likelihood of being able 
 to make it his beneficent servant when it comes, or to 
 leave it alone if he thinks his intellectual and spiritual 
 development will be freer and better without it. That 
 
MR. MORTIMER AND THE} PIT 323 
 
 it has led to monstrous evil, partly through ignorance and 
 want of trained and educated character, is all the more 
 reason for facing it and trying to be prepared for it. 
 Great, deep forces are to be studied sympathetically so 
 that they may be utilized, regulated or avoided. The 
 Maynooth and general clerical habit of treating love as a 
 disease or a scandal, and to be crushed or hidden out of 
 sight, is worse than foolish." 
 
 "And it all seems so very elementary a mistake that 
 it ought to have been discovered long ago," said Fergus. 
 " But really that is our great trouble in Ireland as yet. 
 All the things we are standing for, startling though they 
 are to some in high places and to many in low places, 
 appear painfully elementary. We don t seem to get 
 near the higher and deeper business of life at all. For 
 that reason I sometimes rebel against my work on the 
 paper. Explosive ideas ! revolution ! cry formalists, 
 middle-class capitalists, graziers, and other non-producers. 
 Only truisms! I say myself, and anything that was in 
 any way distinctive within me must be becoming atro 
 phied. I want to leave these truisms and look at the 
 deeper realities of life. " 
 
 " It is much the same way in the theological order," 
 the professor said. " Some of us who think we are 
 expressing truisms are looked upon askance as the preach 
 ers of revolution. We also rebel against the ordeal of 
 declaring truisms and want to let our deeper selves have 
 freedom; we yearn to spread the sweetness and light 
 of the finer philosophy of the Church; and we want to 
 let our people know all the good and gracious things 
 which the spirit of man has proved and achieved since 
 
324 THE) PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 the days of the scholastics. But formalism and folk-lore 
 though much folk-lore originally had probably a pro 
 found meaning and a certain shilling shocker theology, 
 unworthy of the great mind of the Church, obstruct the 
 view and make the atmosphere heavy around us." 
 
 " But everywhere in the Catholic world there is a new 
 stirring of soul, and what may be called a certain revolu 
 tion of explanation," interjected Fergus. 
 
 " Ireland, I am afraid, is far and away the most back 
 ward of all Catholic countries," replied his friend. 
 " There are Irish priests who would stand aghast at Dr. 
 Barry s theory of the nature of scriptural inspiration, 
 and you know he is not so advanced as certain Catholic 
 theologians of today. And it may take Maynooth as a 
 whole generation to come up with Dr. Barry, or at least 
 to admit it frankly and fully. And the Irish priests as 
 a whole will be startled and indignant over the theory of 
 Immanence for a long time to come." 
 
 " I can well believe that," said Fergus. " Considering 
 our materialism of explanation and symbol for hundreds 
 of years it necessarily seems revolutionary. The central 
 theory, or one of them, that revelation is experience not 
 statement, is unthinkable to anybody who has the later 
 folk-lore not the philosophical spirit. God is very near 
 and neighborly to the simple Irish country mind, not the 
 illimitable and inexpressible spiritual entity He is to 
 yourself and the Immanentists generally. From your 
 standpoint, it is easy and gladsome to grasp the fact that 
 the Divine Spirit, the Eternal Will, Who is the governing 
 and active center of the whole system of spirits and intel 
 ligences and wills, communicates with us through our 
 
MR. MORTIMER AND TH PIT 325 
 
 spiritual entities and in spiritual ways, and that revela 
 tion is perennial in every soul that is spiritually alive and 
 active. But the general Irish mind has got into the habit 
 of assuming that the Divine takes some material form 
 before we, though we have divine entities, can at all 
 realize or understand the message." 
 
 "Admitting all that, while it may account for the atti 
 tude of the masses, it does not explain the difficulty with 
 the clergy," the professor said. Fergus suggested that 
 most of humanity was in the same condition. 
 
 "And really," he said, " in these time-and-space degrees 
 and stages of ours the material presses so much that 
 unless man is on his guard it may hypnotize and over 
 whelm him, drive the spiritual part of him into the back 
 ground, so to say, or to sleep. We have not the vivid 
 sense that our ancestors had of the unity and ultimate 
 divinity of Life, and of the higher Identity with which 
 we are bound. Even Churches, which are essentially 
 custodians of moral lore, and the helpers of the spiritual 
 lives of their children, drift into materialism of expression 
 and symbolism, and into stereotyped and formal ways 
 which it takes something like a revolution to change. 
 Theologians hold, though it is very hard to understand, 
 that if Providence inspires your mind in a special way at 
 a given moment He does so by the exercise or infusion 
 of actual physical energy. Altogether, you cannot well 
 blame the generality of priests or people for any material 
 izing of purely spiritual ideas, entities and communica 
 tions." 
 
 " Whomever or whatever we may blame we are not 
 exactly bold or brilliant in Maynooth I mean the for- 
 
326 THE PLOUGH AND THE) CROSS 
 
 ward spirits. In fact we stand reflective at the cross 
 roads, doubtful of the road to take and of the pace at 
 which to take it. Immanence is a spacious and glorious 
 illustration of the Master s dictum, The Kingdom of 
 Heaven is within you. It shows that each individual if 
 he wills it may be, as it were, one of God s Churches. 
 But we in Maynooth who feel thus are before our time 
 and shrink from heroic courses. We are also afraid that 
 while justly insisting on the truth I have mentioned, and 
 rightly emphasizing the profound significance of individ 
 ual spiritual experience, certain leading Immanentists are 
 coming to minimize the august importance of the visible 
 Church that the people understand. There is a dangerous 
 tendency to glide from the extreme that the Church is 
 everything to the extreme that it is little or nothing. The 
 mistakes and pretensions of Churchmen have blinded even 
 leaders to that sense of the Communion of Saints, that 
 co-operation of spirit, that help towards the realization of 
 Divinity, for which the ideal Church stands. So we are 
 afraid of the future, and of clash and crisis that will 
 make the task of freeing the Church in Ireland from 
 formalism, and of turning the people from materialized 
 folk-lore to philosophic Christianity, appallingly difficult." 
 
 " Immanence is for the few as yet," said Fergus, 
 " though we find its appeal coming home in unexpected 
 places. I own I was considerably surprised when a May- 
 nooth professor first told me that it stirred him like a 
 trumpet-call. But for the people in general it is a ques 
 tion not of today but of tomorrow." 
 
 " Very likely," responded An t-Athair O Muinneog. 
 " It is being borne in upon me that the great initial work 
 
MR. MORTIMER AND THE PIT 327 
 
 is to face the material Hell-Fire terror. When the people 
 have left craven fear for something philosophic and uplift 
 ing, and the Christ-sense of human and divine brother 
 hood not as flabby sentiment but as a profound and 
 eternal fact many glorious things will be possible. I 11 
 give all my available time for the next year or two. I 
 thought a pamphlet would do, but it will grow to a book." 
 
 " The book will be a mighty shock," said Fergus. 
 
 " Let us trust it will be a salutary one," replied the 
 professor. " The pitiful fact may be that the people, as 
 the ironic Mortimer declares, will fight for Hell-Fire 
 at first." 
 
 The talk turned to the visit of the Bishop of Dun na 
 Riogh. 
 
 " We sometimes fear in Maynooth that the Standing 
 Committee, or the bishops as a whole, by some drastic 
 action may throw the Irish Church into confusion/ said 
 the professor, with a certain sadness. " Most of their 
 lordships are old, and painfully out of touch with the 
 people, and unfriendly to the spirit of democracy. But 
 to attack a national journal that has tried so hopefully 
 to awaken mind and to clear the air at the same time, is, 
 I trust, a blunder yet beyond them. Still it might possibly 
 be their lordships way of dealing a blow at advanced 
 Maynooth they shrink from hitting us directly, especially 
 as they Ve assured the Vatican that there s no Modernism 
 in Ireland, and political Rome holds its hand in regard to 
 the Gaelic League. Attack would be an irony now that 
 friends in Maynooth are not playing with you. Time 
 will tell if the bishops ignore the time-spirit or misunder 
 stand it." 
 
 Which it did. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 A %ANK MOVEMENT 
 
 FEW mornings later Fergus had a 
 visit from Mr. Jonathan Milligan, 
 son of his late friend. At the best 
 of times young Mr. Milligan seemed 
 graver than his years. Today he was 
 careworn and depressed. He at once 
 unbosomed himself on the subject of 
 trouble. 
 
 " Mr. O Hagan," he said sadly, " I 
 thought I could work for Ireland as 
 my father did. I have little of his knowledge of Ireland 
 and the peasantry, I was educated at Trinity College, 
 though a Catholic, and I. ve been devoted to travel and 
 sport till the last year or so. But I have earnestly 
 desired to carry on his good work. But good work is 
 hard at the best of times in Ireland. Things have been 
 so ordered that / now find it to be impossible." 
 
 " That is a startling statement, Mr. Milligan, for one 
 of your talent and opportunity. You have it in your 
 power, with God s help, to change the face of Meath, and 
 give a heartening example to Ireland." 
 
A FLANK MOVEMENT 329 
 
 Young Mr. Milligan shook his head grimly. He took 
 a letter from his pocket and handed it to Fergus. The 
 latter opened his eyes in wonder as he gathered its pur 
 port. 
 
 It was a short matter-of-fact note conveying the 
 decision of the Standing Committee of the Bishops. It 
 declared that Fainne an Lae was becoming a pernicious 
 enemy of the Church, that it would be denounced public 
 ly and its reading by the faithful forbidden. The matter 
 apparently was considered so serious that the exalted 
 dignitary who had presided at the meeting had himself 
 written. 
 
 " But that is illogical and tyrannical," said Fergus. 
 " Not a single proof or illustration is ventured upon. 
 We have been mainly concerned with social, literary and 
 national questions in Fainne an Lae, and clerical ques 
 tions have only been discussed in their social and national 
 bearings. Our friends in Maynooth " 
 
 " You need not go into these things at all, Mr. 
 O Hagan," said Mr. Milligan promptly. " We have all 
 been proud of the paper and delighted to show it to our 
 friends everywhere. Every new reader has been aston 
 ished at its broad and intellectual character. But you 
 don t know the priests except certain of the younger 
 ones who have no influence yet. The local clergy have 
 loaded us with reproaches over the Boyne Valley work, 
 and what they describe as the rise of the anti-clerical 
 colony at Cluainlumney. We ve reasoned with them, 
 but tis utterly useless. My mother s life of late has 
 been a torture through it all. My sister who is a nun has 
 been visited, and astounding stories told to her about the 
 
330 THE PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 paper and its alleged irreligion. And now this bolt 
 from the blue! Of course we cannot think of resisting 
 the bishops." 
 
 " You need not," said Fergus. " I and Painne an Lae 
 will do the resisting. Their lordships have put themselves 
 in the wrong. They cannot succeed with such high 
 handed action in the twentieth century." 
 
 " I am afraid they can," said young Mr. Milligan 
 despondently. " They can do anything they desire in 
 Ireland. I d like to hold out myself but life is before 
 me, and I m engaged to be marrie d, and one does not 
 court ruin in such circumstances. And resistance would 
 only mean ruin of our stock-broking business so largely 
 patronized by the clergy, to begin with. But whatever my 
 feelings and wishes may be I am simply helpless. The 
 property is my mother s, not mine, and she is distracted 
 at the very thought of ecclesiastical censure. Very near 
 and dear relations of ours are priests and nuns, and you 
 cannot imagine the pressure and the influences brought 
 to bear on them, and how they worry us. We are helpless 
 in a net, and there s only one way out. My father is 
 gone, and my mother must not be driven to the grave 
 through torture. She is intensely devotional, and very 
 simple in her faith, and cannot distinguish between reli 
 gion and ecclesiastical politics." 
 
 " But surely," said Fergus, " the bishops are fair- 
 minded men, and understand that ye were not responsible 
 for the opinions of the paper. If anyone ought to be 
 censured it is myself. When the Bishop of Dun na Riogh 
 called to see me the other day he was my P. P. in early 
 days we had a long discussion about the paper and the 
 
A FI.ANK MOV^MlvNT 33 T 
 
 episcopal attitude to it, but he never suggested that ye 
 were to be troubled." 
 
 " The bishops," Mr. Milligan replied, " will always 
 work quietly if they can. They desire to get rid of the 
 paper as easily as possible, so they come down upon those 
 who finance it. And the local clergy assist in the cam 
 paign by attacking us over the colony at Cluainlumney, 
 and by hints of attacks on the other industries if we stand 
 firm. It is all grossly unjust, all bitter to bear, all char 
 acteristic of the ordeals that attend honest projects for 
 progress, through self-reliance, in Ireland. It seems a 
 poor and weak thing to do, but we must simply give up 
 those projects of father s. We must stop Fainne an Lae, 
 or finance it no more, and the developments at Cluain 
 lumney must cease." 
 
 He spoke the last sentence in an aggrieved and hesitat 
 ing tone, and then looked as one who had at last got rid 
 of an awkward and disagreeable duty. 
 
 Fergus saw the pity, humiliation and anti-climax of so 
 extreme a step, and vigorously said so. Mr. Jonathan 
 Milligan agreed. It was pitiful, humiliating and an anti 
 climax. It was a surrender of the trust bequeathed by 
 his father, and that surrender hurt him sore. But, he 
 gloomily declared, it was inevitable. The bishops and 
 clergy had spoken. That was the end. So far as they 
 were concerned Fainne an Lac must cease ; and in Cluain 
 lumney, though they would keep the few Meath settlers, 
 the other homes must be broken up. 
 
 Fergus urged that at least there should be a respite 
 that the decision should not take effect till he would have 
 time to make other arrangements for Fainne an Lae. 
 
332 TH PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 An effort must be made at all costs to save the situation. 
 The mission of the paper should be remembered ; it was 
 a national not a personal concern. And Cluainlumney 
 was a national example, too. 
 
 Even to this Mr. Milligan said the family could not 
 agree. Fainne an Lae, so far as they were responsible, 
 must end with the issue of that week. His mother was so 
 stunned by the threat of ecclesiastical denunciation that 
 her one thought was to be clear and free for ever of the 
 dangerous concern. She was as one bound to a solitary 
 tree in a thunderstorm. To escape from the tree was 
 the all-absorbing thought. . . . 
 
 Often during the day Fergus thought of his last chat 
 in Cluainlumney with old Mr. Milligan : of the old man s 
 sadness, his hopes, his determination, his dreams. Now 
 he was gone, and already in the Boyne Valley the edict 
 had gone forth that the scheme of his old age must be 
 marred, that his great work as a whole was not to live 
 and grow after him. And his family? Fergus made 
 liberal allowances. They were kindly and generous folk, 
 but had little of the intimate grip of Irish realities and 
 none of the sense of the tears of things possessed by the 
 late head of the household ; for they had had luxury and 
 an artistic environment from the start, and he in his 
 younger days had had to battle severely with circum 
 stance. For his labors and memory theirs was and ever 
 would be a touching affection, but they had not that love 
 of Ireland and humanity which comes, as his came, from 
 feeling and suffering with them. And when clerical and 
 episcopal pressure came ! well, with peace and ease and 
 riches, perhaps it was not easy in slumberous, unheroic 
 
A FLANK MOVEMENT 333 
 
 Meath to give a second thought to the alternative of 
 martyrdom. . . . 
 
 Fainne an Lae had thus been deprived at a stroke of 
 its financial stay and basis, a fact which would mean in 
 ordinary circumstances that its career was done. Fergus 
 was confronted with an irony against which he was often 
 to chafe in after days: the sordid necessity, under mod 
 ern conditions, of troubling about money before ideas and 
 ideals could be effectively enunciated, or indeed enunciated 
 at all through a newspaper. Finance had little or no 
 place in his philosophy ; he detested the brutal tyranny of 
 money : its position in the latter-day social economy was 
 enough to make one who believed in progress and brother 
 hood a thorough-going socialist. To withstand all the 
 powers that might wage war against the spirit of nation 
 ality and the new sense of freedom of thought gave him 
 comparatively little concern. Over the monetary irony 
 and impasse he was indignant and rebellious. One was 
 intellectual stress; the other was crude and lowering 
 materialism. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 TRANSITION AND TRIAL 
 
 JERGUS told the story of the episcopal 
 move against Fainne an Lae in the issue 
 the last of the old series that appeared 
 after the visit of young Mr. Milligan. The 
 sudden action, he shrank from saying 
 panic, of the proprietors or at least those 
 who had furnished the funds as distinct 
 from the ideas left no alternative from the 
 cessation of publication : for a spell. Fainne an 
 Lae would reappear after a brief interval, when 
 new lines were laid and new arrangements com 
 pleted. The spirit of Young Ireland was to be put to a 
 happy and it might be historic test. It could show that 
 no attack, however formidable, would make it run away 
 from its principles, or falter in the expression of its 
 awakened national spirit, its sense of a creative and co 
 operative national realm, its devotion to honest freedom 
 of thought, its zest for every discernible path towards 
 social and intellectual emancipation. It was one of life s 
 ironies that many species of garbage and grossness in 
 newspaper form could flood the land unchecked, or scarce- 
 
TRANSITION AND TRIAI, 335 
 
 ly checked, while a thoughtful organ that expressed not 
 only the mind of young lay Ireland but of advanced 
 Maynooth should be suppressed (if possible) ; a journal 
 noted, moreover, for the sense of reverence and , zest 
 which its writers evinced and manifested in spiritual 
 things; whose ideal of the nation was a great human 
 household, with a sense of the Kingdom of Heaven wjthin 
 it ; that ever wrought and thought for enlightenment and 
 progress, deeming stagnation and formalism to be foes 
 of the spirit everywhere. The struggle now forced upon 
 it avowedly in the name of religion, but in reality ecclesi 
 astical politics, was to be regarded as part of the Day s 
 Work. As Newman had said : " I did not regard it as 
 inopportune, for times and seasons are known to God 
 alone, and persecution may be as opportune, though not 
 so pleasant as peace." 
 
 The story created a sensation in Scotland, England, 
 France, Belgium, Italy, America, and other distant places. 
 Fergus in the next few weeks received a large number 
 of British, Continental and American papers from which 
 he learned that there was mighty stress of soul in Ireland, 
 and that the day of the inevitable modern struggle for 
 freedom of thought had dawned for even her. He was 
 overwhelmed with work, and was not able to go forth 
 and see the signs of the revolution for himself ; and it 
 was strange how very little the home Press was inclined 
 to tell him or anybody else about it. In fact the home 
 Press kept its gaze intently on foreign crimes and sensa 
 tions. To look to the ends of the earth was safe ; the 
 realm of ecclesiastical politics at home was dangerous 
 ground. 
 
336 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 But if the home Press had its eyes on the ends of the 
 earth, and was diplomatically blind to domestic drama, 
 Fergus was the recipient of reams of home correspond 
 ence and of many a missive from Irish folk abroad. Of 
 the home correspondents there were sundry varieties. 
 The majority of the Protestants on the south side of the 
 Boyne declared that it was a glorious thing to see Catholic 
 laymen resisting the intolerance of clerics of their own 
 creed, and insisting that all creeds were Irish ; but at the 
 same time, they said, it was a struggle within the Catholic 
 fold, and it would be bad taste on the part of Protestants 
 to intervene in any way. Sturdy northern Presbyterians 
 were interested but dubious; the idea of a Catholic of 
 the south daring to think his own thoughts, much less 
 express them, was a shock to all their theories. Of the 
 Catholics a host of professional business men averred 
 that their hearts were with Fergus and his friends in the 
 struggle, but that they dare not show it; it would mean 
 inevitable ruin, such was the power of the clergy in their 
 districts though the young generation was beginning to 
 ask questions. There were still some, even amongst 
 the avowedly educated, who suggested that it was un 
 lucky to differ from bishops or clergymen on any ques 
 tion in life. 
 
 Official Gaelic Leaguers said the paper was right, 
 but before its time, and they would read and revel in 
 the new Fainne an Lae, sub rosa, but to recognize or 
 support it publicly would set the clergy against the Irish 
 language movement, and that would mean the death 
 thereof in the still confused and cowering country. Some 
 of these bold leaders considered that Fainne an Lae 
 
TRANSITION AND TRIAL 337 
 
 should have bowed to the bishops, watered down its 
 policy, and bided its time for another ten years. There 
 would then be little slavery in the people, and the truth 
 could be told politely to the episcopacy. Everyone knew 
 that wonders would happen in " the next ten years " if 
 only folk were patient and did not tempt fate. In the 
 face of emigration, pessimism and many-sided decay- this 
 showed a rosy if unconvincing optimism. Messages from 
 young priests of progressive and liberal minds, and from 
 hundreds of the rising and eager-hearted laity through 
 the land, were the things that stood out most brightly in 
 those days from the background of confusion and moral 
 cowardice. 
 
 The spirit of a host of the country clergy changed in 
 a peculiar degree. Fainne an Lae might have been right 
 and helpful before, and the episcopal action mistaken, but 
 to contest that action, right or wrong, was, to their think 
 ing, unseemly disobedience, a flouting of the organization 
 of the Church, an assertion of self against sacred author 
 ity, a profane anti-clericalism. For itself, and to shield 
 a faithful people against evil example, and to guard 
 against the possibility of more pernicious revolt in the 
 future it must be steadily, silently, subtly stamped out! 
 Innately justifiable resistance to episcopal and clerical 
 wrong became pernicious and immoral through the fact 
 and act of resistance; laymen presuming to defend a 
 position against bishops and clergy implied a sense of 
 equality with them, a raising of themselves to the episco 
 pal or clerical plane an unthinkable assumption in Ire 
 land. When Fergus questioned this philosophy, and asked 
 for the authority on which it was based, he was informed 
 
338 THE: PLOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 that the strength of the bishops and clergy in Ireland was 
 that they never made the tactical mistake of defending any 
 pretension or giving any authority. They were the au 
 thority. That was the Alpha and Omega. There lay 
 their absolute might. 
 
 Then there was a great folk-lore-loving, uninstructed 
 mass of simple-minded people who learned more or less 
 vaguely that terrible men had arisen in Dublin, who, 
 prompted by the Devil, were " against the priests and 
 bishops," and the Church, and the unexampled piety of 
 the Irish race, and were to bring out a paper that would 
 be a scandal- to the blessed island from which St. Patrick 
 banished snakes and demons and Paganism. Whether 
 the ground would suddenly open and swallow those evil 
 men, or whether the bishops and priests would turn them 
 into goats, or whether they would suddenly be filled with 
 penitence for their sinful ways and be reconciled to the 
 Church, was as yet uncertain; but dramatic justice would 
 be done somehow. 
 
 There was another element whose reason rebelled 
 against episcopal and clerical dictation, but whose imagin 
 ation was still awed by it, and had a vague horror of the 
 idea of any clash with it. A further element thought it 
 better to endure incidental clerical aggression rather than 
 endanger by any protest the essential religious influence 
 of the priests. Yet other elements were sapped or atro 
 phied or ruined by greed, materialism, betting, drink, or 
 semi-starvation. Within the four seas of the island the 
 social and psychological conditions were various and 
 divided. Several ages met and many modes and nations 
 jostled one another unconsciously in Ireland. 
 
TRANSITION AND TRIAI, 339 
 
 Arrangements were at length completed, and on finan 
 cial resources that in other days would have shocked or 
 daunted Fergus the truest friends were poor, and rich 
 ones were afraid or selfish the new Fainne an Lae was 
 launched. But he and his friends were prepared for 
 stress and sacrifice, for toil and poverty, and the scheme 
 and spirit were co-operative. The foreman of the old 
 days came along smiling and announced in the case-room 
 with an emphasis only known to printers in tragic mo 
 ments that this at long last was a printing establishment, 
 and tired comps who wanted a convalescent home would 
 be thrown downstairs. Thus began a struggle unique in 
 Ireland. The older types of clerics had laid their plans 
 warily, and they worked subtly, especially in the country 
 places their task was harder in the cities. Their press 
 ure on advertisers and news-agents was speedily felt. It 
 was direct or roundabout according to subject and cir 
 cumstances ; they had exhaustive knowledge of character 
 to start with. They looked on the very posters of the 
 daring journal as challenging banners of the army of 
 revolt and evil, and acted accordingly. Fergus had 
 no illusions as to the nature of the battle that was to 
 be his. Argument or intellect would not be brought 
 to bear against him, but an organization that spread 
 fear and slept not. The hope was in the younger genera 
 tion, lay and clerical. Both sides felt that if so simple a 
 thing as the existence of one of the world s thousands of 
 journals was the nominal question, the issue was between 
 the might and dominance of ecclesiastical autocracy and 
 politics on the one hand, and freedom of thought and the 
 spirit on the other. It was a sign and portent of the 
 
340 THE; PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 gathering day when men would choose between the Un- 
 tilled Fields and the Tilled Tilled Fields where the 
 soils were subtle and deep. 
 
 Apart altogether from the great principle at issue Fer 
 gus was glad when matters were in train again. Exhaust 
 ing and detailed though the work of such an organ might 
 be, it had a certain unity and zest and even charm. The 
 weeks of toilsome correspondence and wearisome busi 
 ness arrangements had been a distracting ordeal, giving 
 little scope to the real self. He had begun to feel a 
 broken and incoherent personality intellectually ; one who 
 longed vainly and hopelessly for repose and dreams, the 
 magic of serene creative work in a restful intellectual 
 land ; and who might as well such were circumstances 
 and Ireland have called to one of the fairies to arise 
 and bring him " a sweet cup of dew . . . cold from the 
 moon." 
 
 A grievous blow was the news of the death of Father 
 Martin Murray. All Gaeldom that had known him was 
 shocked and grief-stricken; Fergus, who knew his heart 
 and ideals more than most men, felt for the time that the 
 ways of destiny were startling and elusive indeed. Father 
 Martin had passed away after a brief illness in the 
 northern English haunt where he had spent the best of 
 his teaching career, and where old friends called and 
 welcomed him. Fergus was sure that the failure of his 
 Irish hopes had had much to do with his early and la 
 mented death, far from Eire and " the true Gaelic free 
 masonry of kindness." Few, as the years passed and 
 dimmed his beautiful memory, might recall and realize 
 how great a spirit had been borne away, and what Young 
 
TRANSITION AND TRIAL 341 
 
 Ireland lost in the loss of his culture, his ideals, and his 
 rare personality. 
 
 Fergus could only console himself with the resolve 
 that at least they would be interpreted and reflected 
 in the new Fainne an Lae ; nobler ideals it could not 
 find to form. He made his resolve good, but often 
 in days of stress and crisis he longed for the old heart- 
 open counsel, the brave philosophy, and the magnet 
 ism of individuality that made counsel and philosophy 
 so human. The converse and seanchus of London days 
 and nights, when already they were spiritually at home 
 in New Ireland, would come back, and the face a-glow 
 and the musical voice of An t-Athair Mairtin his voice 
 had a strange, almost songful beauty when he was deeply 
 moved would arise in hallowed, romantic remem 
 brance. The eager talk, the melodious tones, and the 
 human pathos of the end set Fergus often thinking in 
 Dublin light and shade of the poignant little lyric that 
 enshrined an antique Hellenic friendship : 
 
 They told me, Heraclitus, they told me thoti wert dead, 
 They brought me bitter news to bear and bitter tears to shed. 
 I wept when I remembered how often you and I 
 Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky! 
 
 And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, 
 A handful of gray ashes, long, long ago at rest, 
 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake. 
 For Death, he taketh all away, but these he cannot take. 
 
 Fergus wondered much over the possible action of 
 Lord Strathbarra. This should be a time for bold moves, 
 something after his lordship s own heart. His lordship 
 
342 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 in the first stage of the trouble came promptly on the 
 scene and arranged for the transfer of Fergus s brothers 
 and their wives and other disturbed Cluainlumney 
 colonists to his isle in the Hebrides. Fergus shook his 
 head at first over the idea of the rude removal and the 
 far transplanting; but the younger colonists had bold 
 hearts and still bolder imaginations. Fergus was not 
 convinced, but he could do nothing definite or helpful 
 himself. Often in the ensuing days of tension and toil 
 he thought sadly of his transplanted kin between the far 
 island-heather and the waves. It was the strangest, wild 
 est exile he could recall. The Norwegians of the Middle 
 Ages who bore their substance and their song and their 
 sagas to Iceland had more to cheer them, for all Lord 
 Strathbarra s kindly heart and hope. He sighed when he 
 thought of the workers songs in the mornings and the 
 moonlight dances round the drooping-ash in the swift 
 brief time of the Promise of Meath. 
 
 But what of Lord jStrathbarra in relation to the great 
 stern struggle of which the new Painne an Lae was to be 
 the center? Would he come boldly into the arena? 
 It was surprising that he made no move and remained 
 aloof. It was strangely unlike him. 
 
 His lordship wrote at last. For some time, he said, 
 Fergus and Ireland would see him no more. To settle 
 the Cluainlumney colonists and set their hearts at home 
 in the Hebrides would demand thought and kindly zeal. 
 Again, and far more delicate still, he had to enter into 
 correspondence with the Patriarch of Constantinople over 
 sundry points in his Greek Church scheme, and one 
 
TRANSITION AND TRIAL, 343 
 
 would want all one s mind and balance for correspond 
 ence with a Patriarch. The occasion would demand 
 island-peace and remoteness. 
 
 But forthwith, and before facing this great task, his 
 lordship said, he had to pay a momentous visit to Paris. 
 To Fergus he need make no secret of the fact that he 
 had dreamed dreams in regard to a certain young lady, 
 and before any further facing of the great problems of 
 life he must put his dreams to the test. His heart and his 
 hopes were high. 
 
 Fergus had heard no word whatever from Elsie. Her 
 silence and the thought of Lord Strathbarra s high hopes 
 now set him into a brown or rather a gray study. 
 In his heart he was confident that his lordship would not 
 succeed, but erratically enough his already overtaxed 
 imagination let itself toy with the idea of his lordship s 
 success : with pictures of Elsie s transfer in state to the 
 Hebrides, and his own desolation. A light artistic gloom 
 at first, it became a torment in the end, almost worse 
 than reality. One who dwelt more with the actual world 
 would have done something decisive, or daring, or even 
 desperate. Fergus did nothing definite, beyond creating 
 in his mental life a subtle form of torture. 
 
 Many resorts to the fiddle and the beloved folk-music, 
 and an excursion into the old sagas of Gaeldom the 
 tales of the Fianna and the Red Branch brought him 
 back to himself. The richness of the antique character, 
 the daring deeds of those heroic times, the glow of the 
 soul of the past, reflected in those ever-fresh and spacious 
 tales, set him thinking on himself and on modern Ireland 
 
344 TH PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 generally in a chastened, salutary way. Ireland s worst 
 disaster was that her mind had shrunk, that as a whole 
 she had lost the heroic consciousness, that her inner life 
 had grown weedy, pessimistic and vexatious. And though 
 there was a bright recovery and re-discovery there was 
 a terrible danger that even those who desired to serve 
 her would unconsciously lapse in these days of so much 
 that was mean and selfish and querulous, into crude, 
 combative moods, into bitter barrenness of nature-. With 
 out a sense of the old heroic calm, the old deep joy in 
 Life and Nature,, we could never hope to till the Untilled 
 Fields. 
 
AT ATHMJMNEY 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 DIVINE SOULS IN THE: SLUMS 
 
 change of circumstances made it 
 necessary for Fergus OTIagan and 
 Maeve to give up the Dalkey home, 
 and betake themselves to modest 
 quarters in a city side-street not very 
 far from the office. The new haunt 
 was cramped and in itself uninviting, 
 but Maeve s taste made it agreeable 
 at the outset and soon gave it a hint 
 of charm. It was on the borders of 
 a deep slum area, and Maeve s spirit 
 was drawn to the problems and the souls of slum-land. 
 But before this happened Fergus made a discovery that 
 gave him food for wonder and many hours of reflection. 
 The clash and crisis weakened Maeve s health at first, 
 and Fergus was exceedingly uneasy about the removal 
 from the scene of sunniness and charm below Killiney 
 and above the Bay. But she insisted that scene and 
 environment had nothing to do with it, and he knew at any 
 rate that she had a brave spirit and a kingdom of thought 
 and solace within herself. She changed, or seemed to 
 
348 THE) PIvOUGH AND THK CROSS 
 
 change, in ways that surprised him. She kept her mind 
 to herself on Church matters beyond the, for her, far- 
 reaching admission after the trouble over Fainne an Lae : 
 " We are not bound to believe that Churchmen are in 
 variably wise " ; and again : " There are times in the 
 history of Church and State when a prime duty of the 
 faithful is to pray fervently for the ecclesiastical authori 
 ties." Her ill-health,, however, became ominous, and one 
 evening on returning from the office Fergus found to 
 his great alarm that she had fainted away. The return 
 to consciousness was slow, but when she had recovered 
 there was something in her mood and manner that aston 
 ished him. It was a mixture of serenity and ecstasy, so 
 far as he could describe it. It was then that she confided 
 to him, for the first time, her mysterious story of voices 
 and messages from beyond the veil, and of a sad but 
 noble labor that she knew was before her. Deep as was 
 the conviction of Fergus as to the illimitable forces 
 beyond the range of human senses, his feeling was that 
 communication and inspiration took place not in the 
 direct and more or less positive manner which Maeve 
 suggested, but in spiritual wise too subtle for material 
 description, though intensely realizable by the soul. But 
 he would not dogmatize even in his own mind on such 
 an issue, knowing that normal human experience is too 
 limited, too preoccupied with minor interests, too much 
 hypnotized by mundane bias and tradition for anything 
 but partial and unconvincing judgment on so vast a 
 question. Maeve s confidences interested and moved him 
 deeply, and brought the hint of a new wonder home to 
 him. 
 
DIVINE SOULS IN THE: SLUMS 349 
 
 After a short time she was much in the slum places, 
 and singularly enough, though often distressed or ap 
 palled, she seemed as one who had settled down to her 
 work in life serenely. It gave her a poise and joy at 
 once unexpected and touching. She made the discovery 
 early that slum-land was not all squalor and wretched 
 ness, but had elements of beautiful character and phases 
 of most tender life, and little oases of engaging charm 
 and taste,, though the picture in the main was awful. 
 
 Curiously, too, when Miss Alice Lefanu arrived in 
 Dublin it was to the slum-lands that her mind seemed 
 to turn most. What to Fergus was the unexpected, 
 happened at a very early stage she and Maeve appeared 
 to become kindred spirits. In Alice Lefanu there had 
 come a momentous change, and Fergus found it difficult 
 at first to reconcile the bygone picture and the new, 
 though the obvious difference was mainly in expression 
 and poise. She was tall, striking and well-developed 
 physically; very graceful in carriage, a sort of mean 
 between the sedate grace of Maeve and the nervous, 
 volatile grace of Elsie. Her features were of the cast 
 known popularly as Greek, though often met in Ireland. 
 In absolute repose they were features with a hint of 
 coldness, verging to troubled seriousness in times of 
 reverie; which did her nature an injustice. When she 
 listened (which was most of the time) or when she spoke 
 they were very ruthful and sympathetic. When her 
 voice expressed interest or sympathy there was a singular 
 softening of the eyes and a curious twitching of the face, 
 as if she were suffering from physical pain. Her personal 
 disposition seemed to be to speak very little as a rule; 
 
350 THE: PLOUGH AND THE; CROSS 
 
 she impressed one with her strong, positive Silence 
 Fergus could not express it more clearly and quiet 
 reserve power. She seemed at most times to radiate 
 joy and forgetfulness of self. Fergus felt that all her 
 latent goodness had been vitalized and made active at 
 Point Loma. He was to realize it more deeply in the 
 later day when her broader work had begun. 
 
 It was Miss Lefanu s intensity of sympathy that won 
 the heart of Maeve. When they had grown confidential 
 her new friend s ideas on life and destiny, especially the 
 philosophy of Reincarnation, gave her an eerie feeling 
 at first, a somewhat less eerie feeling afterwards. The 
 doctrine of the law of Karma, philosophically bound up 
 with it, she found somewhat more arresting; the idea 
 of unending adjustment of mind and character till the 
 divine was reached possessed a certain spaciousness and 
 momentous zeal. There was something very touching 
 and striking to her imagination in Miss Lefanu s further 
 philosophy of the vital fact of a Universal Brotherhood 
 of Humanity which all mankind must recognize before 
 effectual reforms can come ; something solemn in the idea 
 that we cannot do evil ourselves without making it harder 
 for all humanity to do right, nor strive towards perfection 
 without making the pathway a little clearer for all the 
 world. She had never before even considered the idea 
 of such mysterious inter-action and unity amongst all the 
 members of the human family, and the theory of the 
 power and action of mere thought was strangely new to 
 her. She was incredulous but interested. Miss Lefanu s 
 profound belief in the perfectibility of humanity, and 
 its ultimate recovery of its own divinity, was the one that 
 
DIVINE; SOULS IN THE: SLUMS 351 
 
 appealed to her most. It made her ponder anew on 
 Christ s teachings : " Be ye therefore perfect, even as 
 your Father in Heaven is perfect." " Ye are gods." 
 " The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." She some 
 times found herself wondering if the hitherto vague thing 
 called theosophy contained a great deal of ideal Christ 
 ianity. The theosophy she had heard in London lectures 
 had not. struck her in this way. The Point Loma theo 
 sophy, as she came to call it, though in reality its devotees 
 were world-wide, appealed to her for its wonderfully 
 high moral code and its prevailing spirit of practicality. 
 Its end was help and action. Miss Lefanu told her that 
 the international headquarters of the Universal Brother 
 hood and Theosophical Society (at Point Loma) had 
 several Irish workers. The organization represented no 
 particular creed ; it was entirely unsectarian, and included 
 professors of all faiths, only exacting from each member 
 that large toleration in the beliefs of others which he 
 desired them to exhibit towards his own. Fergus ex 
 pressed the hope that all the Irish workers at Point Loma 
 would come home. They would give serene and ennobling 
 counsel to creed-warring Ireland, in a day when the old 
 leaders tried to keep the nation a series of sectarian con 
 centration camps ; when there were country priests who 
 tried to keep Protestants outside the Gaelic League bran 
 ches; and bishops who decided that it was a sin on the 
 part of a Catholic to enter a Protestant church for any 
 purpose, even to act as best man at the wedding of a 
 Protestant friend ! Maeve was coldly indignant over 
 these strictures at first, but admitted little by little that 
 Ireland was not yet a pioneer of toleration. Anyhow 
 
352 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 with her deepening spirit of pity and helpfulness she was 
 coming to see in combativeness a pure waste of energy 
 as well as a loss of personal dignity. 
 
 Long afterwards in reviewing this toilsome and 
 troublous period Fergus was able to see a strange fact 
 in a clear light. Alice Lefanu the theosophist had un 
 consciously exercised a vitalizing and sweetening effect 
 upon his own Christianity. Whenever a conversation 
 turned on the tactics of clerics against Fainne an Lae, or 
 any other phase of ecclesiastical aggression, she inter 
 vened with a commentary on some specially beautiful 
 phase of Christ s own teaching, particularly where it bore 
 upon human perfectibility and divinity, the Kingdom of 
 Heaven within, and the chanty and helpfulness we owe 
 to all our brethren of the Race and the Universe. And 
 she wanted to give an everyday, practical application to 
 it all, as well as to all the humanly helpful philosophy of 
 the great Wisdom Teachers she had no enthusiasm for 
 unapplied theory. Fergus began to feel her resource 
 and activity of sympathy a silent reproach to himself 
 and his habit of speculation and lotus-land excursions 
 after toil. 
 
 He had already introduced to Maeve a fearful and 
 wonderful, but an intensely human and genial authority 
 on slum-land. Mr. Dan Deegan was a relieving officer 
 who knew the deeps and quaintness and follies and guile 
 and twisted human nature of the nether Dublin to a 
 degree that made other seekers knowledge thereof seem 
 but the A B C of the theme, but he remained joyous and 
 a philosopher. To anything in the nature of idealism in 
 regard to Dublin a talk with him was a terrible corrective ; 
 
DIVINE SOULS IN THE; SLUMS 353 
 
 yet even as he chastened he cheered, for apart from his 
 vigorous humanity he knew the roots and the remedies 
 as well as he knew his own home. Fergus thought of 
 him as the great, racy Slum Doctor, who was cheery- 
 hearted because he believed in the final cure. 
 
 Maeve and her new friend had many mysterious con 
 sultations, and made many excursions with the ever-alert 
 and resourceful Dan, and Fergus heard hints from time 
 to time from busy and brightening Maeve of novel slum 
 schemes in which children always figured; of Irish 
 classes, and musical evenings, and amusing plays, and 
 story-telling in houses or halls in courts and quarters 
 near and remote ; and anon of more practical and scien 
 tific projects of everyday bearing. Maeve got into the 
 habit of talking pointedly and sedately of Raja Yoga 
 methods and possibilities even in Dublin. Air. Dan 
 Deegan began to declare that the great blunder of the 
 Gaelic League, which against his earnest urging had 
 always ignored the hosts of slum-children, was in the 
 way of being more than repaired, and things he had never 
 dreamed of would come to pass besides. The daily Press 
 still looked to the ends of the earth. The Dublin that 
 genteel and general citizens saw was as unlovely and as 
 anti-social as ever. Preachers in sermons that had the fla 
 vor of the Middle Ages, spoke now and then in awe-struck 
 tones of mad modern unrest and of unnamed but poison 
 ous heresies and crimes that were rampant in the outer 
 world, but could never affect the faithful and innocent 
 Irish people. Thus the old order ran, while away in the 
 nether and noxious places women had indeed begun " to 
 think and act as Divine Souls." 
 
354 T H # PivOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 Miss Lefanu had come into considerable property in 
 Ireland which was partly the explanation of her visit 
 and now she had decided to devote it to educative, and 
 social purposes., as like those which had succeeded so 
 wonderfully at Point Lorna as it was possible to compass 
 in Irish conditions ; in regard to the children more par 
 ticularly. She had planned at the outset a lay sisterhood, 
 who would be teachers on novel lines and illustrative of 
 " Raja Yoga " methods generally. She readily agreed, 
 of course, with Fergus that great as the work in the 
 slums themselves might be it could only be preliminary 
 and preparatory ; it must lead in some way to the country 
 and the land. She had thought of art schools and art 
 industries, and greater projects, between the city and the 
 hills. Already a slum landlord and slum publican element 
 was alarmed and combative. It did not want betterment 
 or emancipation, for degradation meant greater "profits" ; 
 and pressure was being brought to bear upon the clergy 
 to move against Miss Lefanu on account of her theoso- 
 phy: which, of course, slum publicans had weighed and 
 found wanting ! It was to be found, however, that Alice 
 Lefanu was a character with no sense of fear; and 
 already the daring stand of Fainne an Lac had conduced 
 to a certain caution. 
 
 The office work of Fergus was more exacting and 
 strenuous than ever, for the struggle against grievous 
 odds had been fairly started. Through Maeve s new 
 friendships and mission, it came to pass for a period that 
 in the evenings and nights he was much alone. Unknown 
 to Maeve and most other people an aeon of life seemed 
 to be compressed for him into this aloof and isolated 
 
DIVINE SOULS IN THE) SLUMS 355 
 
 spell. It was solitariness that came to be filled with 
 meaning. He had come to the end of a definite stage, 
 and with the Boyne Valley break-up, the death of Father 
 Murray, the temporary intellectual retreat of Lord Strath- 
 barra in the Hebrides, the bolt from the bishops, the 
 brooding and hesitancy of the Maynooth men who would 
 like to be pioneers, and the alarmist campaign of the 
 older clerics far and near, against the new Fainnc an Lae, 
 his actual life seemed curiously different from what it 
 was in the early summer. And what the New Stage would 
 really mean for himself personally or Young Ireland no 
 man might venture to forecast. He had seen the ending 
 of a vivid act of life s drama, and the stress and real 
 developments of the next could only be awaited with 
 expectancy and philosophy and a due sense of the fact 
 that there were sure to be surprises. He had left Ireland 
 partly of necessity, partly because the spirit of his youth 
 was idealistic and venturesome ; he had no serious reason 
 to complain of fate or fortune over-sea ; but Ireland had 
 drawn him back as a shrine draws a devotee ; his spirit 
 had responded joyously to the new life there was. Since 
 the coming there had been a certain intensity of action, 
 much gallant zest, experiment, and exaltation of heart. 
 But the old order and the new had clashed, in the spirit 
 ual as well as the social realm. And now he was alone, 
 and his highest-hearted comrades were dead, or scattered, 
 or mute and dubious. Fortune, great and generous for 
 a spell, had grown suddenly strange and cold. 
 
 But the real and insistent problem that confronted and 
 perturbed him was that of Elsie. Why she remained 
 silent and uncommunicative since her flight, was the 
 
356 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 disturbing query of his inner life. The old affectionate, 
 airy, delightful correspondence had seemed as natural 
 and essential in life as air, sunshine and reverie. It was 
 of the spirit, and the spirit demanded it. The absence 
 of it now made days drag, and life seem lonely and 
 unfruitful, and the imagination inert, and the soul open 
 to doubts and fears that had never obtruded themselves 
 before. It seemed as if some subtle stay and harmony in 
 his character had gone, or the finer essence of himself 
 had become atrophied. He used to take pride in the fact 
 that his own and Elsie s idyll was a delightful proof of 
 a delicate, undefined affection which can make a Golden 
 Age in the everyday world, because it is essentially of 
 the mind, and has no touch of passion or melodrama. 
 But some crudity of self or circumstance had broken the 
 spell. 
 
 When he spoke to Maeve on the silence of Elsie she 
 was gracious, but unhelpful. Elsie s few and hurried 
 notes to herself threw little light on her mind and motives. 
 Fergus shrank from saying anything about Lord Strath- 
 barra s "momentous visit" to Paris, though it haunted his 
 mind. 
 
 " You know Fergus," said Maeve one evening, " that 
 you really know little about woman s nature. You are 
 too preoccupied with your own ideas, though you occa 
 sionally take passing notice of bishops and stars. You 
 ought to know me and Elsie very well, yet in some 
 respects we re too deep for you. You treated Elsie badly 
 at Dalkey, and she s so proud and sensitive worse 
 even than myself that you must expect elusiveness. 
 Personally I don t think that she 11 forgive you for a 
 
DIVINE SOULS IN THE SLUMS 357 
 
 couple of years, and even then she may be distant with 
 you. Or she may join a religious order, and not see 
 you at all. She always had a leaning that way, her 
 historic literary escapade notwithstanding. YQU don t 
 believe that? Alas, it shows anew that you are out 
 about her character." 
 
 " Oh, come now," Fergus said, " this pretense of 
 woman s incomprehensibility is feminine fiction. And 
 fiction can be overdone. Elsie is too sympathetic and 
 sweet-natured to want to play the enigma anyway. I 
 fear there s some terrible explanation of her silence and 
 apparent unkindness." 
 
 " Don t let your imagination brood on it," replied 
 Maeve, " Elsie is right to her own mind, anyhow, and 
 that should be enough for you. With your present for 
 tunes, or misfortunes, you can t marry anyway. You 
 are giving your imagination too much to Elsie, and your 
 mind too much to the paper. Why can t you become 
 interested in a practical way in our slum-work and teach 
 ing? That would be good for you and us. You used 
 to be slum-struck before Elsie came." 
 
 " I hope to be full of it all later on. But I must first 
 put the new Fainne an Lae on a firm basis. You know 
 the fearful opposition, and you know how timid even 
 some of our friends are, and how even the official Gaelic 
 League is afraid to be openly identified with it. But 
 my real worry is about Elsie. If she would open her 
 mind a of old, I d trouble very little about all the 
 reactionaries and formalists in Ireland." 
 
 In the end, after many days, Fergus O Hagan found 
 himself impelled more and more to the philosophy that 
 
358 THE PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 life s primal significance is that of a great tuition-place, 
 and that while the Gleam should be faithfully followed, 
 the end is afar, incalculably far, beyond the visible and 
 the aeons, and the stages are sacrificial and soul-solitary, 
 though the solitude is dimly broken by gleams and mur 
 murs of the Company to be. 
 
 He began to think of Elsie, the Boyne Valley work, and 
 friends like Mr. Milligan, Father Murray, and Father 
 Kenealy, as something flashed briefly into his life to show 
 him apart from what they meant in and to themselves 
 what bright and noble entities of divers degree are 
 possible in actuality, and then withdrawn to other spheres 
 remote from him, but testing in their going and their 
 loss his strength of heart and spirit. He felt that maybe 
 the test in the long run, whatever heart and soul felt now, 
 would serve some finer purpose than even the old precious 
 association. He unfolded in the new Fainne an Lae at 
 this stage his own " philosophy of a worker." Until the 
 worker had lost all things on which the heart was set, 
 and all the temporal solaces of the soul,, and yet could 
 feel that all was well with heart and soul and work, he 
 was not a proved Worker. Maeve declared that the 
 "philosophy" was colder than moonlight on an iceberg, 
 and that she was sure he did not really mean it for his 
 workaday world. 
 
 Nevertheless it began to possess for him a serene 
 appeal and satisfaction. One had to crucify the lower 
 nature continually. As one did so a Master Self, un 
 known to normal consciousness, and indifferent to self 
 hood in the ordinary sense, became dimly but ever more 
 and more realizable. The soul became more radiantly 
 
DIVINE SOULS IN THE SLUMS 359 
 
 alive and active, in more conscious relation with the 
 Divinity ruling the higher reaches of life; it felt itself 
 to be part of a grander Identity ; it breathed and realized 
 itself in an atmosphere impossible of access or conception 
 if the lower nature ruled, and one were hypnotized by 
 material or temporary things. It came towards its own, 
 and ever the human self felt a joy of surrender of the 
 things held in common esteem. To be sacrificial, lost in 
 the great human Cause, of which country and kin were 
 part, filled with the spirit of brotherhood and co-opera 
 tion, seemed natural ; and movement to a divine End in 
 evitable. Christ s appeal to divine fatherhood and human 
 brotherhood, His insistence on the divine in man himself, 
 had always seemed clear, beautiful and conclusive when 
 the mind really dwelt upon it. How anything could have 
 long obscured it seemed extraordinary. Now it came 
 home with a new appeal and meaning and was infinitely 
 satisfying and inspiring. 
 
 Fergus began to take the Day s Work philosophically, 
 and to treat the opposition to Fainne an Lae, and the toil 
 some labor for that light-bringing and lightning-conduct 
 ing journal both of which seemed momentous facts to his 
 friends as a matter of course. The trouble was that 
 after many hours work one grew physically exhausted, 
 but dawn and early sunlight brought magic once more. 
 
 At last Lord Strathbarra wrote again. His Paris visit 
 had been in vain, and not till now had he the heart to 
 mention it, though some explanation of his protracted 
 silence was due to Fergus. Perhaps Fergus could not 
 understand how much his dream of a certain young lady 
 had dominated him. But then her vividness and liberality 
 
360 THE) PIvOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 of mind on theological questions were unique in his 
 experience. To read the great theologians by her side 
 in the Hebrides, and discuss their heights and deeps, 
 would be a wonderful experience. Alas for human hopes ! 
 He would solace his mind and heart by re-reading the 
 full story and the letters of Athanasius. He had found it 
 the best available comfort in any crisis of life. It would 
 also hearten him for the great task and the strenuous 
 stand that would mark the not far future the day 
 when Ireland and Rome and Europe would look wonder- 
 ingly on the part in the soul-struggle of the age played 
 in far Strathbarra in the Celtic Sea. . . . 
 
 To Fergus Elsie s silence was now more bewildering 
 than ever. But in the tension and the toil of daily life 
 she, like the Boyne Valley days and friends, came gradu 
 ally to appear as a dream that was too delicate for " the 
 rough tuition-place called the world." It was only in the 
 twilight-times and reveries of the spirit that she and they 
 became real and radiant once again. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 A CRISIS OF HEART AND 
 
 S DEDUCTION 
 
 BEGIN to see," Fergus said to Maeve one 
 evening, " that the sudden flight of Elsie 
 and her extraordinary change of attitude 
 towards myself were all for the best." 
 
 A pathetic expression came into Maeve s 
 face. 
 
 " I ve been afraid of this for some little 
 time," she said. " I know what you mean. 
 I saw it would be just the irony of things 
 that you d go and fall in love with Alice. 
 If she listens to you as I fear she may 
 
 it will take her mind off our schemes and complicate 
 
 matters hopelessly." 
 
 "What put so astonishing an idea into your head?" 
 
 asked Fergus. " I have a deep admiration for Miss 
 
 Lefanu and her work, but I am as likely to fall in 
 
 love with the spirit of Antigone or Deirdre as with 
 
 her." 
 
 " Oh, you want to break it gently to me, do you ? " 
 
 said Maeve. " Mind you, I don t blame you altogether. 
 
 Alice is a beautiful character too good for you, of 
 
362 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 course and she has returned into your life at a dan 
 gerously psychological moment. You ve been badly 
 hurt over Elsie ; I 11 admit that you have been on the 
 whole badly treated though you began the bad treat 
 ment and that you ve suffered a great deal. So it s 
 your time of real peril. When a man of your tempera 
 ment, or indeed almost any man, is just coming through 
 an agony about one woman he s fairly in the mood to 
 give his wounded heart to another, especially if she s 
 attractive and sympathetic." 
 
 " Women are wonderfully fond of theorizing about 
 hearts - 
 
 "And are generally right. It s their metier," said 
 Maeve. " But in a case like this very little theory or 
 penetration is required the procedure has almost the 
 regularity of a law. Yet if only you could be firm and 
 endure your pain for some time longer you would recover 
 and be safe. It s at the crisis that the danger intervenes. 
 I fear, however, that with Alice on the scene continually, 
 and you unable to get away owing to the battle for 
 the paper, the story can end only in one way. Is 
 there any chance at all of your being able to take a 
 holiday?" 
 
 "Not the slightest," replied Fergus. "The situation 
 is such that I must toil continually for many a day to 
 come. But I assure you that your concern is very amus 
 ing to me in the circumstances. Your fear is " 
 
 "Are you sure that you are not deceiving me, or your 
 self, or both of us ? " asked Maeve critically. " I ve 
 noticed your attitude to Alice of late, and it has been 
 
A CRISIS OF HEART 363 
 
 suspiciously considerate and attentive for you are gen 
 erally both heedless and thoughtless in regard to your 
 women friends; you have none of the alert and kindly 
 little virtues that they like. That you are in any way 
 popular with them is a striking proof of their good 
 nature." 
 
 " Thank you very much," said Fergus ironically. " But 
 your wild little theory prevented me from saying what I 
 started to say about Elsie. I ve been slowly coming to 
 certain conclusions which I 11 tell you. But first of all 
 another matter, bearing in a way upon them. I had a 
 letter from Terence O Connellan today, and he wanted to 
 know why I ve been such a fool as not to have gone 
 over after the crisis. Now my old friend Stanley Curran 
 has left his staff positively driven out of London 
 through racked nerves and disgust over quarrels with his 
 wife and Terence asked me to take his place, a pleas 
 antly literary one. He mentioned Stanley s case and his 
 wife s as a terrible illustration of the peculiar matrimonial 
 tragedy over which he has so often wept in print con 
 stant clash and trouble, and life gone awry, through no 
 obvious fault in either party, and sterling affectionate 
 qualities in each " 
 
 " You want to lead me off the track," interrupted 
 Maeve. "All this is very remote from Elsie." 
 
 " Wait a moment/ he said. " It set me thinking of 
 the astonishing amount of married unhappiness amongst 
 the literary friends I ve had, though so far as I could 
 see they were honorable and affectionate men. Poor 
 Stanley Curran s case was the worst. He drifted into 
 marriage in a youthful, hopeful, idealistic way before he 
 
364 THE; PLOUGH AND THK CROSS 
 
 knew the real bent of his own mind, and though he got 
 a good wife who, however, did not understand him 
 though very positive herself that she did his career 
 was warped and spoiled. With a shy, dreamy, literary 
 temperament, though a keen mind, any roughness and 
 crudeness put him horribly out of tune, and his life after 
 marriage was mostly roughness. His mind got out of 
 the right atmosphere, and really never flourished." 
 
 " Bad enough," said Maeve, " but I d like to hear the 
 wife s story." 
 
 " I heard it several times from both him and her," 
 replied Fergus. " Her version varied. It was black, 
 very gray, light gray, and lily-white, according to her 
 moods. His was consistent. He said that a wife in his 
 experience was a dual personality. One was brave, affec 
 tionate, sacrificial, sunny-tempered, helpful ; the other 
 was nerve-vexed, combative, suspicious, vexatious in a 
 hundred small ways, and with a maddening capacity for 
 piling up purely imaginary grievances. One was a minis 
 tering spirit, the other had a fearful capacity for arousing 
 the worst in her husband and proclaiming with an almost 
 delirious joy that this worst was the whole character. 
 She was April, Saint and Scorpion. It is an amazing and, 
 on the whole, a strangely pathetic story. I have been 
 thinking of it all today, and of other stories not quite so 
 depressing, but depressing enough in all conscience. I 
 found myself wondering if it were really possible that 
 I and Elsie could ever have been thus, and it was an 
 awful thought. Now as things stand Elsie remains a 
 beautiful ideal. There s no danger of any such disaster 
 or deterioration." 
 
A CRISIS OF HEART 365 
 
 " You are talking extravagant nonsense, Fergus," said 
 Maeve. " No man was ever frightened from marriage 
 by the mistakes or sufferings of other men." 
 
 " Nor would I be, I dare say. But Elsie has put herself 
 as far from my life as fairyland, and I m simply pointing 
 to the possession of the ideal as a sad sort of satisfaction. 
 The other things I ve been thinking over are nearer to 
 life, at least some of them. To bring Elsie into the grim 
 and grinding circumstances into which we are thrown 
 would be, of course, unthinkable, and tis a strange coinci 
 dence that she renounced me just as the crash was coming. 
 Tis stranger still that I have not her sympathy or 
 encouragement in this trial-time above all times. It 
 almost seems as if it were designed that I should have 
 nothing sweet or tender even you are preoccupied 
 to draw me away even in thought from the struggle, that 
 I Ve simply to go on with it grimly and single-minded, 
 and so be in the mood to make the best of it. I may 
 come up with Elsie again in another star, where there 
 shall be no vexing and dividing problems." 
 
 " Somewhat remote comfort," said Maeve. 
 
 " It all depends on the point of view, on what one 
 actually believes," he answered. " The real attitude of 
 some avowedly religious-minded people to the question 
 of immortality is a puzzle to me. They do not act by any 
 means as if they were sure of it. I have no doubt about 
 it myself, but I believe that we may pass through myriad 
 further evolutions after the human change we call death. 
 Convinced on the subject of immortality it is illogical to 
 be impatient about gaining the ideal here. We can afford 
 to be calm." 
 
366 THi; PLOUGH AND THE} CROSS 
 
 Maeve shook her head slowly, in a dubious but not 
 unfriendly way. 
 
 " You used to be very full of fairyland," she said. 
 " Now you seem to wade through a place of perpetual 
 snow, with no comfort but starlight. That is to say, 
 except when Alice s theories appeal to your imagination. 
 Yet without human cheer and a touch of fairyland you 
 are likely to droop and perish. I wonder what Elsie 
 would think of it all." 
 
 " I have not the heart to try to find out," replied 
 Fergus. " I may know in the other star." 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 SLUMS, THE FAIRIES, AND THE MOONIJT SANDS 
 BY THE SEA 
 
 .ERGUS O HAGAN, having settled his phil 
 osophy of Work and Life, resolved that 
 there should be no more ploughing of 
 the desert-sands of speculation and idle 
 brooding. Then literary projects called 
 invitingly to his imagination, but these, 
 too, he put away as luxurious dreams. 
 He determined that he would give his evenings 
 unremittingly to helping in the great, quiet, 
 ordered work of Maeve and her friends. 
 
 Maeve had suddenly appeared to grow un- 
 wontedly joyous, and smiled sedately and then mused 
 for a little while when he told her of his determina 
 tion. She said there had been a rally of new helpers 
 of late, even certain ladies of the Gaelic League had 
 become mildly interested, and another very distinguished 
 and beautiful lady had decided to throw in her lot with 
 them permanently; Alice s genius and Calif ornian ex 
 perience gave promise of carrying the work to a stage 
 quite -undreamt of at the outset. There were mysterious 
 consultations between Maeve and Miss Lefanu, and 
 Fergus was asked if he would attend at a certain center 
 
368 THE PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 a couple of evenings later and tell fairy stories to a great 
 gathering of children. He eagerly agreed, for this was 
 one of the things he could do joyfully and without effort, 
 and he felt ashamed that he had not made a move before. 
 
 It was a lovely night of autumn, and as he went down 
 to the place of the gathering the light of the harvest 
 moon and the stars over the squalor of Dublin slum 
 streets set his imagination working, and the most enjoy 
 able of the stories was fantasy with a moral, moon and 
 stars and Dublin children and tenements being made 
 acquainted in a fashion that diverted and astonished the 
 young folk. Fergus became so interested himself that 
 his difficulty was to stop. 
 
 He had seen Maeve in the building at an early stage, 
 but as the merry gathering broke up there was no sign 
 of her anywhere. He paused in the street outside, and 
 then reflected that she had possibly gone elsewhere, as 
 there were generally several night musters these times. 
 
 A hand was laid on his shoulders and a laughing 
 voice said : 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, I see that your imagination is just 
 as reckless and fantastic as ever." 
 
 Fergus turned in sheer amazement. Elsie O Kennedy 
 stood before him face, eyes, brows, tresses and all, 
 seeming to laugh in concert as on the morning when she 
 suddenly appeared in the editorial room of Fainne an Lae, 
 and when he had pictured her as the Spirit of Laughter. 
 
 Fergus thought of so many things to say that he could 
 utter none of them for the moment though his face 
 looked several of them. 
 
 " You d better come along, Man of the Golden Mists 
 
THE; SUJMS AND THE FAIRIES 369 
 
 and the Gray/ said Elsie. " If the illustrious ro- 
 mancist who played with the stars tonight is seen stand 
 ing with that bewildered look before a mere girl, he 11 
 simply lose his reputation." 
 
 " I m not sure that I m not playing with the stars 
 still, or that the moon is not playing with me," said 
 Fergus, as they walked onward. " If you are real, how 
 on earth did you come here, where have you been, and 
 why have you taken no notice of my existence for the 
 past couple of centuries ? " 
 
 " No apparent notice, you mean, Fergus O Hagan. 
 It is not so easy to get rid of illusions. In point of fact, 
 you didn t deserve to have any notice taken of you, for 
 you never wrote to me when your moonshiny and friv 
 olous paper was come down upon by the bishops. I read 
 of it first in a Paris journal, and very cross I was that 
 I had not got first-hand information." 
 
 "Considering that I had already written about a 
 hundred letters which you had thrown, I suppose, in the 
 waste-paper basket of La Vie Domestique " 
 
 " I was communing with my soul," said Elsie, " and 
 a very shadowed and self-accusing soul it was. And the 
 idea of you being so disturbed because I did not write 
 by every post " 
 
 " By any post," corrected Fergus. 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan, you talk of kindred spirits, union 
 of souls, and all that. Fancy a spirit being upset by a 
 matter of a few hundred miles of space, or looking for 
 solace in a few sheets of hieroglyphics. Why, you were 
 a mere materialist." 
 
370 THE: PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 " Then I ve improved of late, for I gave up writing 
 or expecting letters." 
 
 " That is simply because you Ve grown cold-hearted 
 and do not believe in kindred spirits/ " retorted Elsie. 
 
 " Well, kind spirit," said Fergus, " I suppose you 
 just glided through the air tonight for a little change 
 from Paris. Please don t vanish till I have an oppor 
 tunity of asking you several questions." 
 
 " I ve been in Dublin all day," replied Elsie, " but 
 you were so engrossed in your impossible office, and by 
 all accounts so unapproachable, that I kept away. Besides, 
 Maeve and I thought that we d have a little surprise for 
 you, just to celebrate your effort to bring fairyland to 
 the slums." 
 
 " I noticed that Maeve was rather hilarious of late," 
 said Fergus. And now the mystery is solved. Ye 
 have been conspiring. But your coolness, Elsie O Ken- 
 nedy, in returning to Dublin and being here a day without 
 my knowledge is simply characteristic." 
 
 " I was afraid that I might interfere with your ima 
 gination if I showed myself before the story-telling. 
 You might have mixed up the sta r-dwellers and the 
 Dublin Corporation. Besides I was doubtful of the re 
 ception I d get if you had fair notice. You ve been 
 making some grim reflections on destiny and other 
 mysterious things in your cloud-sweeping paper of late. 
 The best way was to take you by surprise." 
 
 "As you have taken Dublin. But please do not let 
 your going be so dramatic as on the last occasion. We 
 could not bear two such shocks in a lifetime." 
 
 " I don t propose to go back at all. I want Ireland 
 
THE: sivUMS AND THE: FAIRIES 371 
 
 as well as other folk. Maeve s slum-ardor made me 
 ashamed and envious. And besides, incidentally, I want 
 to shake up some people Golden mists would appear 
 to be getting gray." 
 
 " There will be a change with Deirdre between 
 us and the slums and other outposts of the Dublin Devil." 
 
 " Fergus O Hagan," said Elsie, when they reached 
 O Connell Street, " I can t control my imagination after 
 those tantalizing stories of yours, and I simply can t 
 go under a roof just yet. And Maeve won t be home 
 till later. I m dying to see the Bay and Killiney and 
 the mountains by moonlight again. But I suppose Dalkey 
 is too far at this hour we d have to walk back. And 
 the old scene might be saddening after all; though not 
 nearly so much as a sight of poor old Cluainlumney 
 would be." . 
 
 " We d get a glorious picture from the strand at 
 Merrion or Sandymount," replied Fergus, " and either 
 is quickly reached. Binn Eadar, the heathered hill 
 of Howth across the water, Killiney Hill, and the Dublin 
 Mountains, look soft-toned and enchanting by moonlight. 
 Tis all simply a wonderland." . . . 
 
 The electric car seemed to speed with a music of 
 its own to the sea. At Sandymount strand where they 
 alighted it had reached enchantment. Elsie s airiness 
 suddenly changed to a gentle and delicate seriousness. 
 
 The tide was far out. They walked slowly over the 
 smooth, sandy expanse towards the waters. 
 
 " Perhaps tis as well," said Elsie, stopping and looking 
 south, towards Killiney Hill, " just as well that we did 
 not go straight to the old spot. At this distance it has 
 
372 TH PLOUGH AND TH CROSS 
 
 a wonderful shaded beauty, and, though really near, 
 a romantic remoteness. So tis just like the events 
 that past of ours itself." 
 
 " Tis curious to talk of it already as a past, " said 
 Fergus, " and yet truly it seems to be part of a Long 
 Ago." 
 
 Elsie looked back over the moonlit sands to the shore 
 and the lights and the shaded, lovely background of the 
 hills. 
 
 " How easily one escapes from Dublin to enchant 
 ment ! " she said, " but how far is poor old Dublin itself 
 from it ! " 
 
 " Dublin is just like mankind," replied Fergus. 
 " Mankind only believes in dreamy moments that the 
 Golden Age is possible, forgetting that it is in its own 
 heart and soul all the time, and it has only to do a 
 certain regulating of the outer things and details of the 
 world to give that Golden Age scope and play. God has 
 provided it with all the great essentials already." 
 
 " Here by the moonlit sea/ said Elsie, as they moved 
 nearer to the waters, " the Golden Age would really 
 seem to have come. There are no vexing problems at 
 all just pure beauty and ecstasy. Even you," she 
 added smiling, " do not feel like upbraiding destiny 
 or myself." 
 
 " Not in the least degree," he answered laughing. 
 " Not so very long ago, I could have made all sorts of 
 complaints in regard to you, and I could have asked a 
 hundred questions about things and thoughts and moods 
 since we were last together ; but I ve been subduing 
 personalism. And anyhow now that you are here the 
 
THE SLUMS AND THE FAIRIES 373 
 
 indictment and the questions are gone. There is some 
 thing so restful and satisfying in life that it almost seems 
 anti-climax to use the material organs of speech. All 
 the same it adds to the charm to hear you speaking, 
 just as the voice of the sea harmonizes with the moon- 
 light." 
 
 " Dreamer ! ." said Elsie laughing. " You might have 
 been living in the moon of late months, instead of an 
 agitated Ireland, and probably a still more agitated Ireland 
 before you." 
 
 "When you come to think of it," he replied, " the great 
 Ireland is in ourselves, and it is full of beauty, divine 
 activity and boundless hope. The outer Ireland, agitated 
 or stagnant, is something incidental to keep our souls in 
 training." 
 
 They walked slowly up and down over the moonlit 
 sands by the waters. 
 
 " You are very.philosophic," said Elsie. " You betray 
 no curiosity as to why I went away, why I remained so 
 stubbornly silent, and why I returned in this erratic 
 fashion." 
 
 " I would not think of associating yourself and ex 
 planations even in the sober daylight. Explanations are 
 for, and of, the ordinary. The subtle in Life and Woman 
 is to be accepted as we accept poetry." 
 
 " I 11 think over that answer tomorrow, and see if it 
 is complimentary to me personally. The Philosophy of 
 a Worker was not, though noble in principle. I took 
 it to myself, and very much to heart. I said Know Elsie 
 O Kennedy by these presents that Fergus O Hagan puts 
 
374 TH 3 PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 you outside the pale of his interests. Perhaps you 11 
 say that the philosophy was the expression of a mood, 
 not a conviction." 
 
 " Like your chariness in the way of letter-writing," 
 said Fergus. " It was a conviction, however ; but you 
 were wrong in supposing I meant to put you outside the 
 pale of my interests." 
 
 " Well, I 11 tell you all about myself," said Elsie in 
 serious wise. " I was infinitely disgusted with myself 
 for going away in that absurd fashion. Yet I felt also 
 that I had done right. Then the spell of what you call 
 New Ireland, though so many old traits burst out in it, 
 had deeply affected me. I knew that I wanted Ireland 
 with all my heart. But I was greatly agitated within 
 myself. Your mad people in the Boyne Valley and your 
 cloud-sweeping self bewildered me. I did not know where 
 we were in regard to each other. We might take our 
 selves too seriously, or we might not take each other 
 half seriously. I wondered how the* old golden mean 
 had existed so long. Now where exactly am I drifting? " 
 
 To fairyland," suggested Fergus. 
 
 " I wanted to work like other people in Ireland," con 
 tinued Elsie. " I also wanted to help you. But I felt 
 if I came back I might hinder you. We might be 
 come foolishly sentimental, and I knew it would not do 
 in our case, it would mean a lapse from the old charm, 
 a departure from the old fairyland. I was sure, though 
 I could not explain it, that there must be for us a more 
 delightful relation. Your Philosophy of a Worker 
 showed me exactly what I meant, though in one way I 
 could not follow it or agree with it. It seemed exclusive 
 
THE SLUMS AND THE FAIRIES 375 
 
 and cold, to bar out tenderness, and beautiful comrade 
 ship, such as ours has been." 
 
 " One cannot explain everything on paper," said 
 Fergus, " and there has always been such mental and 
 spiritual harmony between us that I think of our minds 
 as one." 
 
 " I don t think that you can explain, or that I can ex 
 plain, the situation at all," said Elsie. " I 11 give it up 
 and let time explain and test it. We can all work toge 
 ther anyway it does not seem that we can give much 
 thought to ourselves for many a day ; the struggle before 
 yourself is stupendous, and with Maeve and your won 
 derful Irish-American friend in the slums it can t be 
 roses, roses all the way with me either " 
 
 " You can t be serious about slum-work," he inter 
 rupted, " though you may do very graceful things for 
 other parts of the scheme the art-work center they 
 propose at Rathfarnham, for instance. Actual slum-work 
 would be too painful for you." 
 
 " More of your moonshiny view of the feminine char 
 acter," replied Elsie gaily. " We shall see. I have craved 
 some such labor for years. The thought of bringing the 
 children towards sweetness and light is glorious. But 
 Dublin s odious slum-lands and the lovely, empty, wasted 
 Boyne Valley separated by so short a space ! isn t it 
 an awful irony? " 
 
 " Ireland is slowly waking up, and brave, human deeds 
 will be done. She will come to think less of her great 
 ruins and more of her great riches." 
 
 " Our Irish-American friend, for all her reserve and 
 sympathy, has astonishing force of character," said Elsie 
 
376 TH PLOUGH AND THE: CROSS 
 
 after a pause. " I wonder she confines herself to nether 
 Dublin, as you call it." 
 
 " You will find her, I think, in the other slums in due 
 time the intellectual and spiritual ones of which Ireland 
 has, alas, so many." 
 
 " Have you set about manufacturing a golden halo for 
 her yet?" asked Elsie archly. 
 
 " No," he answered. " I cast away the apparatus and 
 materials for ever when I had given the final touches to 
 my chef d ceuvre in the Boyne Valley." 
 
 " I heard one evening from Maeve in the Boyne Valley 
 that our friend had daring and explosive theories, and 
 that one of her ideas was an anti-Hell-Fire campaign. 
 Maeve was solemn about her then." 
 
 " Like myself," explained Fergus, " when she returned 
 to our strange transition-Ireland she found realities and 
 portents that upset pre-conceived notions altogether. She 
 found one fearsome hell in Dublin, and she decided that 
 while An t-Athair O Muinneog, in the cloistral calm of 
 Maynooth, could philosophize on the other, she would try, 
 for a start, to give the children of the Dublin hell some 
 taste and sight of heaven. But tis work for apostles 
 or gods, not tender women, unless the like of Catherine 
 of Siena or Joan of Arc can be born again ; for the 
 degradation of Dublin is beyond all telling. It is an awful 
 satire on our fine theories about Irish goodness and spirit 
 uality I try to think it is not Ireland at all." 
 
 " Maeve s evolution was a revelation and a call to 
 me," continued Elsie, growing serious again. " So was 
 your Philosophy/ as I Ve told you. We can come to 
 nothing unless there is an ideal for which the personal 
 
THE SLUMS AND THK FAIRIES 377 
 
 % 
 self will be willingly sacrificed if need be. I felt at 
 
 last that we were all one in heart and aim." 
 
 " I knew that long ago/ said Fergus. 
 
 "But I may as well make a full confession your 
 Philosophy had so lonely a side that well, I felt 
 a little cheering up would do you no harm. When I 
 reflected I did not see why serene devoteclness to Ireland 
 should not begin with you." 
 
 "A sort of after-thought the inevitable postscript," 
 suggested Fergus, for whom life had become airy and 
 radiant. He thought it wonderful that just as he felt 
 he had suppressed his own heart, and had determined 
 to work wholly for Cause and Kin, Elsie had come back 
 rilled with the same ideal, but also in the mood to be, as 
 of old, a heart befriending spirit to himself. 
 
 " Of course you. jump to the conclusion that the post 
 script is the most important," responded Elsie in answer 
 to his last remark. 
 
 " It always is in a woman s case," he said, " and you 
 are delightfully womanly first, last and all the time." 
 
 You spoke a while ago of the outer Ireland as some 
 thing to keep our souls in training. Whatever the train 
 ing before us may be, an hour like this on the moonlit 
 sands gives us heart for ordeals and hope for miracles," 
 said Elsie softly. 
 
 " It makes us realize that even nether Dublin is small," 
 said Fergus. " It tells us that Ireland can be divinely 
 recreated if she has the will. And it fills us with the 
 feeling that affection and beauty are boundless." 
 
 They turned to walk slowly towards Merrion over 
 the moonlit sands by the sea. 
 
378 THE: PLOUGH AND THE CROSS 
 
 We have reached the end of a long stage. Perhaps 
 we lingered over-long, with the times of hope and idyll, 
 but the temptation was great. Had our task been one of 
 pure invention it would have been easy to make the course 
 more sensational and picturesque. But we were con 
 cerned with very real life its inner stress and its outer 
 movement. Another day, and in a further story, we hope 
 to follow the later fortunes of our friends in the deepening 
 social and spiritual drama of their new Ireland. 
 
 THE END 
 
There is no Religion Higher than Truth 
 
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