The Untilled Field | Page 9

George Moore
can see you know something about this.
You suspect someone."
"No, I suspect no one. It is very strange."
"You were going to tell me something when you came in. You said you
could not sit to me again. Why is that?"
"Because they have found out everything at home, that I sat for you, for
the Virgin."
"But they don't know that--"
"Yes, they do. They know everything. Father McCabe came in last
night, just after we had closed the shop. It was I who let him in, and
mother was sorry. She knew he had come to ask father for a
subscription to his church. But I had said that father and mother were at
home, and when I brought him upstairs and we got into the light, he
stood looking at me. He had not seen me for some years, and I thought
at first it was because he saw me grown up. He sat down, and began to
talk to father and mother about his church, and the altars he had ordered
for it, and the statues, and then he said that you were doing a statue for
him, and mother said that she knew you very well, and that you
sometimes came to spend an evening with us, and that I sat to you. It
was then that I saw him give a start. Unfortunately, I was sitting under

a lamp reading a book, and the light was full upon my face, and he had
a good view of it. I could see that he recognised me at once. You must
have shown him the statue. It was yesterday you changed the head."
"You had not gone an hour when he called, and I had not covered up
the group. Now I am beginning to see light. He came here anxious to
discuss every sort of thing with me, the Irish Romanesque, the Celtic
renaissance, stained glass, the possibility of rebuilding another
Cormac's Chapel. He sat warming his shins before the stove, and I
thought he would have gone on for ever arguing about the possibility of
returning to origins of art. I had to stop him, he was wasting all my day,
and I brought over that table to show him my design for the altar. He
said it was not large enough, and he took hours to explain how much
room the priest would require for his book and his chalice. I thought I
should never have got rid of him. He wanted to know about the statue
of the Virgin, and he was not satisfied when I told him it was not
finished. He prowled about the studio, looking into everything. I had
sent him a sketch for the Virgin and Child, and he recognised the pose
as the same, and he began to argue. I told him that sculptors always
used models, and that even a draped figure had to be done from the
nude first, and that the drapery went on afterwards. It was foolish to tell
him these things, but one is tempted to tread on their ignorance, their
bigotry; all they say and do is based on hatred of life. Iconoclast and
peasant! He sent some religion- besotted slave to break my statue."
"I don't think Father McCabe would have done that; he has got me into
a great deal of trouble, but you are wronging him. He would not get a
ruffian to break into your studio."
Rodney and Lucy stood looking at each other, and she had spoken with
such conviction that he felt she might be right.
"But who else could do it except the priest? No one had any interest in
having it done except the priest. He as much as told me that he would
never get any pleasure from the statue now that he knew it had been
done from a naked woman. He went away thinking it out. Ireland is
emptying before them. By God, it must have been he. Now it all comes
back to me. He has as much as said that something of the temptation of

the naked woman would transpire through the draperies. He said that.
He said that it would be a very awful thing if the temptations of the
flesh were to transpire through the draperies of the Virgin. From the
beginning they have looked upon women as unclean things. They have
hated woman. Woman have to cover up their heads before they go into
the churches. Everything is impure in their eyes, in their impure eyes,
whereas I saw nothing in you but loveliness. He was shocked by those
round tapering legs; and would have liked to curse them; and the dainty
design of the hips, the beautiful little hips, and the breasts curved like
shells,
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