The Untilled Field | Page 7

folding and unfolding over Italy. I am at home amid those Southern
people, and a splendid pagan life is always before one's eyes, ready to
one's hand. Beautiful girls and boys are always knocking at one's doors.
Beautiful nakedness abounds. Sculpture is native to the orange
zone--the embers of the renaissance smoulder under orange-trees."
He had never believed in any Celtic renaissance, and all the talk he had
heard about stained glass and the revivals did not deceive him. "Let the
Gael disappear," he said. "He is doing it very nicely. Do not interfere
with his instinct. His instinct is to disappear in America. Since
Cormac's Chapel he has built nothing but mud cabins. Since the Cross
of Cong he has imported Virgins from Germany. However, if they want
sculpture in this last hour I will do some for them."
And Rodney had designed several altars and had done some religious
sculpture, or, as he put it to himself, he had done some sculpture on
religious themes. There was no such thing as religious sculpture, and
could not be. The moment art, especially sculpture, passes out of the
domain of the folk tale it becomes pagan.
One of Rodney's principal patrons was a certain Father McCabe, who
had begun life by making an ancient abbey ridiculous by adding a
modern steeple. He had ruined two parishes by putting up churches so
large that his parishioners could not afford to keep them in repair. All
this was many years ago, and the current story was that a great deal of

difficulty had been experienced in settling Father McCabe's debts, and
that the Bishop had threatened to suspend him if he built any more.
However this may be, nothing was heard of Father McCabe for fifteen
years. He retired entirely into private life, but at his Bishop's death he
was heard of in the newspapers as the propounder of a scheme for the
revival of Irish Romanesque. He had been to America, and had
collected a large sum of money, and had got permission from his
Bishop to set an example of what Ireland could do "in the line" of
Cormac's Chapel.
Rodney had designed an altar for him, and he had also given Rodney a
commission for a statue of the Virgin. There were no models in Dublin.
There was no nakedness worth a sculptor's while. One of the two fat
unfortunate women that the artists of Dublin had been living upon for
the last seven years was in child, the other had gone to England, and the
memory of them filled Rodney with loathing and contempt and an
extraordinary eagerness for Italy. He had been on the point of telling
Father McCabe that he could not undertake to do the Virgin and Child
because there were no models. He had just stopped in time. He had
suddenly remembered that the priest did not know that sculptors use
models; that he did not know, at all events, that a nude model would be
required to model a Virgin from, and he had replied ambiguously,
making no promise to do this group before he left Ireland. "If I can get
a model here I will do it," he had said to himself. "If not, the
ecclesiastic will have to wait until I get to Italy."
Rodney no more believed in finding a good model in Dublin than he
believed in Christianity. But the unexpected had happened. He had
discovered in Dublin the most delicious model that had ever enchanted
a sculptor's eyes, and this extraordinary good fortune had happened in
the simplest way. He had gone to a solicitor's office to sign an
agreement for one of Father McCabe's altars, and as he came in he saw
a girl rise from her typewriting machine. There was a strange idle
rhythm in her walk as she crossed the office, and Rodney, as he stood
watching her, divined long tapering legs and a sinuous back. He did not
know what her face was like. Before she had time to turn round, Mr.
Lawrence had called him into his office, and he had been let out by a

private door. Rodney had been dreaming of a good model, of the true
proportions and delicate articulations that in Paris and Italy are
knocking at your door all day, and this was the very model he wanted
for his girl feeding chickens and for his Virgin, and he thought of
several other things he might do from her. But he might as well wish
for a star out of heaven, for if he were to ask that girl to sit to him she
would probably scream with horror; she would run to her confessor,
and the clergy would be up in arms. Rodney had put the girl out of