The Untilled Field | Page 5

the Gothic, but Rodney did not believe in their
resurrections or in their renaissance or in their anything. "The Gael has
had his day. The Gael is passing." Only the night before he and
Harding had had a long talk about the Gael, and he had told Harding
that he had given up the School of Art, that he was leaving Ireland, and
Harding had thought that this was an extreme step, but Rodney had said
that he did not want to die, that no one wanted to die less than he did,
but he thought he would sooner die than go on teaching. He had made
some reputation and had orders that would carry him on for some years,
and he was going where he could execute them, to where there were
models, to where there was art, to where there was the joy of life, out of
a damp religious atmosphere in which nothing flourished but the
religious vocation.

"Good Heavens! How happy I was yesterday, full of hope and
happiness, my statue finished, and I had arranged to meet Harding in
Rome. The blow had fallen in the night. Who had done this? Who had
destroyed it?"
He fell into a chair, and sat helpless like his own lay figure. He sat there
like one on whom some stupor had fallen, and he was as white as one
of the casts; the charwoman had never seen anyone give way like that
before, and she withdrew very quietly.
In a little while he got up and mechanically kicked the broken pieces of
plaster aside. The charwoman was right, they had broken his sleeping
girl: that did not matter much, but the beautiful slenderness, the grace
he had caught from Lucy's figure--those slendernesses, those flowing
rhythms, all these were gone; the lovely knees were ugly clay. Yes,
there was the ruin, the ignoble ruin, and he could not believe in it; he
still hoped he would wake and find he had been dreaming, so difficult
is it to believe that the living have turned to clay.
In front of him there was the cheval glass, and overcome though he was
by misfortune he noticed that he was a small, pale, wiry, and very dark
little man, with a large bony forehead. He had seen, strangely enough,
such a bumpy forehead, and such narrow eyes in a Florentine bust, and
it was some satisfaction to him to see that he was the typical Italian.
"If I had lived three hundred years ago," he said, "I should have been
one of Cellini's apprentices."
And yet he was the son of a Dublin builder! His father had never
himself thought to draw, but he had always taken an interest in
sculpture and painting, and he had said before Rodney was born that he
would like to have a son a sculptor. And he waited for the little boy to
show some signs of artistic aptitude. He pondered every scribble the
boy made, and scribbles that any child at the same age could have done
filled him with admiration. But when Rodney was fourteen he
remodelled some leaves that had failed to please an important customer;
and his father was overcome with joy, and felt that his hopes were
about to be realised. For the customer, who professed a certain artistic

knowledge, praised the leaves that Rodney had designed, and soon after
Rodney gave a still further proof of his desire for art by telling his
mother he did not care to go to Mass, that Mass depressed him and
made him feel unhappy, and he had begged to be allowed to stay at
home and do some modelling. His father excused his son's want of
religious feeling on the ground that no one can think of two things at
once, and John was now bent on doing sculpture. He had converted a
little loft into a studio, and was at work there from dusk to dusk, and
his father used to steal up the ladder from time to time to watch his
son's progress. He used to say there was no doubt that he had been
forewarned, and his wife had to admit that it did seem as if he had had
some pre-vision of his son's genius: how else explain the fact that he
had said he would like to have a son a sculptor three months before the
child was born?
Rodney said he would like to go to the School of Art, and his father
kept him there for two years, though he sorely wanted him to help in
the business. There was no sacrifice that the elder Rodney would not
have made for his son. But Rodney knew that he could not always
count upon his father's help, and one