The Untilled Field | Page 4

CURSE VII. A PLAYHOUSE IN THE WASTE VIII. THE
WEDDING-GOWN IX. THE CLERK'S QUEST X. "ALMS-GIVING"
XI. SO ON HE FARES XII. THE WILD GOOSE XIII. THE WAY
BACK
CHAPTER I
IN THE CLAY

It was a beautiful summer morning, and Rodney was out of his bed at
six o'clock. He usually went for a walk before going to his studio, and
this morning his walk had been a very pleasant one, for yesterday's
work had gone well with him. But as he turned into the mews in which
his studio was situated he saw the woman whom he employed to light
his fire standing in the middle of the roadway. He had never seen her
standing in the middle of the roadway before and his doors wide open,
and he instantly divined a misfortune, and thought of the Virgin and

Child he had just finished. There was nothing else in his studio that he,
cared much about. A few busts, done long ago, and a few sketches; no
work of importance, nothing that he cared about or that could not be
replaced if it were broken.
He hastened his steps and he would have run if he had not been
ashamed to betray his fears to the char-woman.
"I'm afraid someone has been into the studio last night. The hasp was
off the door when I came this morning. Some of the things are broken."
Rodney heard no more. He stood on the threshold looking round the
wrecked studio. Three or four casts had been smashed, the floor was
covered with broken plaster, and the lay figure was overthrown,
Rodney saw none of these things, he only saw that his Virgin and Child
was not on the modelling stool, and not seeing it there, he hoped that
the group had been stolen, anything were better than that it should have
been destroyed. But this is what had happened: the group, now a mere
lump of clay, lay on the floor, and the modelling stand lay beside it.
"I cannot think," said the charwoman, "who has done this. It was a
wicked thing to do. Oh, sir, they have broken this beautiful statue that
you had in the Exhibition last year," and she picked up the broken
fragments of a sleeping girl.
"That doesn't matter," said Rodney. "My group is gone."
"But that, sir, was only in the clay. May I be helping you to pick it up,
sir? It is not broken altogether perhaps."
Rodney waved her aside. He was pale and he could not speak, and was
trembling. He had not the courage to untie the cloths, for he knew there
was nothing underneath but clay, and his manner was so strange that
the charwoman was frightened. He stood like one dazed by a dream. He
could not believe in reality, it was too mad, too discordant, too much
like a nightmare. He had only finished the group yesterday!
He still called it his Virgin and Child, but it had never been a Virgin

and Child in the sense suggested by the capital letters, for he had not
yet put on the drapery that would convert a naked girl and her baby into
the Virgin and Child. He had of course modelled his group in the nude
first, and Harding, who had been with him the night before last, had
liked it much better than anything he had done, Harding had said that
he must not cover it with draperies, that he must keep it for himself, a
naked girl playing with a baby, a piece of paganism. The girl's head
was not modelled when Harding had seen it. It was the conventional
Virgin's head, but Harding had said that he must send for his model and
put his model's head upon it. He had taken Harding's advice and had
sent for Lucy, and had put her pretty, quaint little head upon it. He had
done a portrait of Lucy. If this terrible accident had not happened last
night, the caster would have come to cast it to-morrow, and then,
following Harding's advice always, he would have taken a "squeeze,"
and when he got it back to the clay again he was going to put on a
conventional head, and add the conventional draperies, and make the
group into the conventional Virgin and Child, suitable to Father
McCabe's cathedral.
This was the last statue he would do in Ireland. He was leaving Ireland.
On this point his mind was made up, and the money he was going to
receive for this statue was the money that was going to take him away.
He had had enough of a country where there had never been any
sculpture or any painting, nor any architecture to signify. They were
talking about reviving