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Novels and Novelists

‘A Poser’

‘A Poser’

The Land They Loved — By G. D. Cummins

A woman is standing on the deck of an Atlantic liner, straining to catch the first glimpse of the Irish coast. She is ‘nearly five foot eight in height, with handsome features and a stately carriage … with this straightness of carriage there was a looseness of limb, a certain deft grace in all her movements, that made her a remarkable figure….’ We are told that she has come home because of a craving in her blood for the fields and wide spaces, because she was conscious that any life away from Ireland could never satisfy her profoundly. Whence exactly came these strange urgings of the spirit she did not know, but they were strong enough to drive her back to her brother's farm…. ‘The memory of old forgotten times came drifting back to her from the outlying spaces of her mind as she watched and waited now.’ Thinking of the joy of working in the field again, of the warm welcome awaiting her from her brother Denis and Aunt Maggie, Kate Carmody wept tears of joy.

And all happened just as she had expected—if anything, better than she had expected. For the war had page 56 brought prosperity to Droumavalla; the seven fat 7ears seemed to be there. On the evening of her return, Kate went for a walk alone, and overcome she ‘knelt down and took up a little of the earth, cradling it for a moment in the palms of her hands and then letting it slip slowly through her fingers. Ah! how she loved the land….’

There is one difference. Many of the boys are gone to fight; her two boon companions, Steve and Michael Turpin, both are dead—one in France, one, a Sinn Feiner, killed in the Dublin rebellion. Only one brother, Eugene, is left, and he is lamed from a hurley match. This is a terrible shock to Kate. Dimly she had always thought that one day she would marry Steve or Michael; it is more terrible still for her to find that Eugene is a weak creature, father-ridden, obedient as a dog to his bullying old father for fear that the old man will leave the farm away from him. For, like Kate, Eugene has one passion. It is for the land. Nevertheless, he has the courage to ask Kate to marry him; but although she is tempted to, because of the part of him that is like his darling brothers, his cowardice and weakness shame her. She'll never marry any but ‘a whole man.’

So far, Mr. Cummins succeeds in conveying, with astonishing ease and freshness, the charm of that country. As we read we seem to wade into its flowering beauty and warmth until we are lost like children wading in a ripe meadow. Sharply he pulls us up. No, Kate won't have Eugene; she won't stay in Droumavalla Off she goes to Dublin, and after a series of gloomy vicissitudes, she takes a position as cook at a salary of eighteen pounds a year, becomes very proud of having a fat policeman in her kitchen, devours servants' novelettes, and on her marketing jaunts is thrilled to the marrow by salmon-pink dinner-blouses in a dingy draper's. Good-bye to the land. Here is the area gate—the butcher's boy and the baker's boy. Here's for high tragedy the fact she can't get all the sugar she wants for her tea.

There is a last act when, finding she does not really love page 57 the policeman, she hands him over to the housemaid, and returns to the farm to find Eugene's old father dead, and Eugene a changed man—a whole man, the biggest man in the district, and still wishful to marry her.

Kate found it difficult to realize she had got back to the old life, and that her future would be lived with the man who walked beside her, this man who was so beautiful, so gentle, and yet so strong.

We find it incredibly difficult to understand why Mr. Cummins ruined so promising a book by ever taking her away from it.

(August 1, 1919.)