CHAPTER VII
The December afternoon was growing dark when the weary car-horse surmounted the last hill on the road from Clifden and broke into a shambling trot down the long straight stretch into Carrowkeel. Soon, as the distance dwindled, the lights which twinkled here and there in the village became distinguishable. This—Hyacinth recognised it—was the great hanging lamp in the window of Rafferty’s shop. That, a softer glow, came from the forge of Killeen, the smith. That, and that, fainter and more uncertain lights, were from fires seen through the open upper section of cottage doors. He could almost tell whose the cabins were where they shone. The scene inside rose to the imagination. A man with ragged clothes and a half-empty pipe is squeezed into the stone nook beside the blazing turf. The kettle, hanging from its hook, swings steaming beside him. The woman of the house, barefooted, sluttish, in torn crimson petticoat and gray bodice pinned across her breast, moves the red cinders from the lid of the pot-oven and peers at the browning cake within. Babies toddle or crawl over the greasy floor. The car rattled into the village street. Men whom he knew stopped it to speak to him. Children playing the last of their games in the fading light paused to stare at him. Father Moran, returning to his presbytery, waved his hand and shouted a greeting. He passed the last house of the village, and could see the fishing-boats, dim and naked-looking, riding at their anchors in the bay. Out beyond them, grim and terrible in the twilight, lay the hulk where the ice for fish-packing was stored. The thick stump of her one remaining mast made a blacker bar against the black sky. The pier was deserted, but he could see the bulky stacks of fish-boxes piled on it, and hear the water lapping against it. Along its utmost edge lay a belt of gray white, where the waves broke as they surged round it. He passed the pier, and there lay before him the long hill that led home. The church and the ruined school stood out clearly on the skyline. Below them, less clearly seen, was the rectory, and Hyacinth noted that the lamp in the kitchen was lit. Then the door was opened, and he saw, plain against the light, a man’s figure, his father’s. No doubt the old man was watching and listening. Perhaps the sound of the wheels reached him through the evening air, for in a few minutes he came out and walked down the drive. Hyacinth saw him fumble with the fastening of the rickety gate, and at last open it slowly and with difficulty. The car reached a gap in the loose stone wall, a familiar gap, for across it lay a short cut up a steeper part of the hill, which the road went round. Hyacinth jumped down and ran up the path. In another minute the greeting of father and son was accomplished, and the two were walking hand-in-hand towards the house. Hyacinth noticed that his father trembled, and that his feet stumbled uncertainly among the loose stones and stiff weeds.
When they entered the lighted room he saw that his father seemed older—many years older—than when he had said good-bye to him two months before. His skin was very transparent, his lips were tremulous, his eyes, after the first long look at his son, shifted feebly to the fire, the table, and the floor.
‘My dear son,’ he said, ‘I thank God that I have got you safe home again. Indeed, it is good to see you again, Hyacinth, for it has been very lonely while you were away. I have not been able to do very much lately or to go out to the seashore, as I used to. Perhaps it is only that I have not cared to. But I have tried hard to get everything ready for your coming.’
He looked round the room with evident pride as he spoke. Hyacinth followed his gaze, and it was with a sense of deep shame that he found himself noticing the squalor of his home. The table was stained, and the books which littered half of it were thick with dust and grease-spotted. The earthen floor was damp and pitted here and there, so that the chairs stood perilously among its inequalities. The fine white powder of turf ashes lay thick upon the dresser. The whitewash above the fireplace was blackened by the track of the smoke that had blown out of the chimney and climbed up to the still blacker rafters of the roof. Hyacinth remembered how he, and not his father, had been accustomed to clean the room and wash the cups and plates. He wondered how such matters had been managed in his absence, and a great sense of compassion filled his eyes with tears as he thought of the painful struggle which the details of life must have brought upon his father. He noted the evident preparations for his coming. There were two eggs lying in a saucer ready to be boiled, a fresh loaf—and this was not the day they got their bread—and a small tin of cocoa beside his cup. The hearth was piled with glowing turf, and the iron tripod with a saucepan on it stood surrounded with red coals. Some sense of what Hyacinth was feeling passed into his father’s mind.
‘Isn’t it all right, my son? I tried to make it very nice for you. I wanted to get Maggie Cassidy up from the village for the day, but her baby had the chin-cough, and she couldn’t come.’
He took Hyacinth’s hand and held it while he spoke.
‘Perhaps it looks poor to you,’ he went on, ‘after your college rooms and the houses your friends live in; but it’s your own home, son, isn’t it?’
Hyacinth made a gulp at the emotion which had brought him near to tears.
‘It’s splendid, father—simply splendid. And now I’m going to boil those two eggs and make the cocoa, and we’ll have a feast. Hallo! you’ve got some jam—jam and butter and eggs, and this is the month of December, when there’s hardly a hen laying or a cow milking in the whole parish!’
He held up the jam-pot as he spoke. It was wrapped in dingy red paper, and had a mouldy damp stain on one side. Hyacinth recognised the mark, and remembered that he had seen the identical pot on the upper shelf of Rafferty’s shop for years. Its label bore an inscription only vaguely prophetic of the contents—‘Irish Household Jam.’
‘That’s right, father, you are supporting home manufacture. I declare I wouldn’t have tasted it if it had come from England. You see, I’m a greater patriot than ever.’
Old Mr. Conneally smiled in a feeble, wavering way. He seemed scarcely to understand what was being said to him, but he found a quiet pleasure in the sound of his son’s voice. He settled himself in a chair by the fireside and watched contentedly while Hyacinth put the eggs into the saucepan, hung the kettle on its hook, and cut slices of bread. Then the meal was eaten, Hyacinth after his long drive finding a relish even in the household jam. He plied his father with questions, and heard what the old man knew of the gossip of the village—how Thady Durkan had broken his arm, and talked of giving up the fishing; how the police from Letter-frack had found, or said they found, a whisky-still behind the old castle; how a Gaelic League organizer had come round persuading the people to sing and dance at the Galway Féis.
After supper Hyacinth nerved himself to tell the story of his term in college, and his determination to leave the divinity school. More than once he made an effort to begin, but the old man, who brightened a little during their meal, relapsed again into dreaminess, and did not seem to be listening to him. They pulled their chairs near to the fire, and Mr. Conneally sat holding his son’s hand fast. Sometimes he stroked or patted it gently, but otherwise he seemed scarcely to recognise that he was not alone. His eyes were fixed on the fire, but they stared strangely, as if they saw something afar off, something not in the room at all. There was no response in them when Hyacinth spoke, and no intelligence. From time to time his lips moved slightly as if they were forming words, but he said nothing. After awhile Hyacinth gave up the attempt to tell his story, and sat silent for so long that in the end he was startled when his father spoke.
‘Hyacinth, my son, I have somewhat to say unto you.’ Before Hyacinth could reply to him he continued: ‘And the young man answered and said unto him, “Say on.” And the old man lifted up his voice and said unto his son, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”’
He spoke as if he were reading out of a book some narrative from the Bible. Hyacinth realized suddenly that the communication which was to be made to him had been rehearsed by his father alone, again and again, that statement, question and reply, would follow each other in due sequence from the same lips. He felt that his father was still rehearsing, and had forgotten the real presence of his son. He grasped the hand that held him and shook it, saying sharply:
‘Father, father, I am here. Don’t you know me?’
‘Yes, yes, my son. Surely I know you. There is something I want to tell you. I have wanted to tell it to you for many days. I am glad that you are here now to listen to it.’
He paused, and Hyacinth feared that he would relapse again into dreamy insensibility; but he did not.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I should like to pray before I speak to you.’
He knelt down as Hyacinth had seen him kneel a thousand times before, facing the eastward-looking window, now a black, uncurtained square in the whitewashed wall. What he said was almost unintelligible. There was no petition nor even any sequence of ideas which could be traced. He poured forth a series of ejaculations expressive of intense and rapturous delight, very strange to listen to in such a place and from an old man’s lips. Then the language he spoke changed from English into Gaelic, and there came a kind of hymn of adoration. His sentences followed each other in metrical balance like the Latin of the old liturgies, and suited themselves naturally to a subdued melody, half chant, half cry, like the mourning of the keeners round a grave. At last, rising from his knees, he spoke, and his voice became wholly unemotional, devoid of fervour or excitement. He told his story as a man might relate some quite commonplace incident of daily life.
‘One evening I was sitting here by the fire, just as I always sit. I remember that the lamp was not lit, and that the fire was low, so that there was not much light in the room. It came into my mind that it was just out of such gloom that the Lord called “Samuel, Samuel,” and I wished that I was like Samuel, so innocent that I could hear the voice of the Lord. I do not remember what I thought of after that. Perhaps for a time I did not think at all. Then I felt that there were arms about my neck; but not like your arms, Hyacinth, when you were a child and clung to me. These were arms which held me lovingly, strongly, protectingly, like—do you remember, Hyacinth?—“His right hand is under my head; His left hand doth embrace me.” I sat quite still, and did not move or speak or even breathe, lest He should go away from me. Then, after a long time—I knew afterwards that the time was long, though then it seemed only a minute for the joy that I had in it—He told me—I do not mean that I heard a voice or any words; I did not hear, I felt Him tell me—the things that are to be. The last great fight, the Armageddon, draweth very near. All that is good is on one side in the fight, and the Captain over all. What is bad is on the other side—all kinds of tyranny and greed and lust. I did not hear these words, but I felt the things, only without any fear, for round me were the everlasting arms. And the battlefield is Ireland, our dear Ireland which we love. All these centuries since the great saints died He has kept Ireland to be His battlefield. I understood then how our people have been saved from riches and from power and from the opportunities of lust, that our soil out of all the world might be fit for the feet of the great Captain, for the marching of His horsemen and His chariots. Not even when I knew all this did I desire to share in the conflict. I am old and feeble, but that is not the reason why there was no desire on me, for strength is in His power to give to whom He wills. I did not desire it, because I was quite happy, being safe with Him.’
For a long time after he ceased speaking there was silence, for Hyacinth had no comment to offer. At last the old man spoke again.
‘That is all. I have no other word of revelation. But I have wondered since how men are to be disentangled from their parties and their churches and their nations, and gathered simply into good and bad. Will all men who are good just know the Captain when they see Him and range themselves with Him? But why should we think about such things as these? Doubtless He can order them. But you, Hyacinth—will you be sure to know the good side from the bad, the Captain from the enemy?’
For a long time after he had gone to bed Hyacinth lay awake haunted by his father’s prophecy of an Armageddon. There was that in his nature which responded eagerly to such a call to battle. In the presence of enthusiasm like his father’s or like Augusta Goold’s, Hyacinth caught fire. His mind flamed with the idea of an Independent Ireland resplendent with her ancient glories. He embraced no less eagerly the thought of his father’s battle and his own part in it. Groping for points of contact between the two enthusiasms, he caught at the conception of the Roman Church as the Antichrist and her power in Ireland as the point round which the fight must rage. Then with a sudden flash he saw, not Rome, but the British Empire, as the embodiment of the power of darkness. He had learned to think of it as a force, greedy, materialistic, tyrannous, grossly hypocritical. What more was required to satisfy the conception of evil that he sought for? He remembered all that he had ever heard from Augusta Goold and her friends about the shameless trickery of English statesmen, about the insatiable greed of the merchants, about the degraded sensuality of the workers. He recalled the blatant boastfulness with which English demagogues claimed to be the sole possessors of enlightened consciences, and the tales of native races exploited, gin-poisoned, and annihilated by pioneers of civilization advancing with Bibles in their hands.
But with all his capacity for enthusiasm there was a strain of weakness in Hyacinth. More than once after the glories of an Independent Ireland had been preached to him he had found himself growing suddenly cold and dejected, smitten by an east wind of common-sense. At the time when he first recognised the loftiness of his father’s religion he had revolted against being called upon to adopt so fantastic a creed. So now, when his mind grew weary with the endeavour to set an Armageddon in array, he began to wish for a life of peaceful monotony, a place to be quiet in, where no high calls or imperious demands would come to threaten him. He ceased to toss to and fro, and gradually sank into a half-conscious sleep. It seemed to him at the time that he was still awake, held back from slumber by the great stillness of the country, that silence which disturbs ears long accustomed to the continuous roar of towns. Suddenly he started into perfect wakefulness, and felt that he was in possession of all his faculties. The room where he lay was quite dark, but he strained his eyes to see something in it. He listened intently, although no sound whatever met his ears. A great overmastering fear laid hold on him. He tried to reason with himself, insisting that there was nothing, and could be nothing, to be afraid of. Still the fear remained. His lips grew stiff and painfully hot, and when he tried to moisten them his tongue was dry and moved across them raspingly. He struggled with the terror that paralyzed him, and by a great effort raised his hand to his forehead. It was damp and cold, and the hair above it was damp. He had no way of knowing how much of the night had passed, or even how long he lay rigid, unable to breathe without a kind of pain; but suddenly as it had come the terror left him, left him without any effort on his part or any reason that he recognised. Then the window of his room shook, and he heard outside the low moan of the rising wind. Some heavy drops of rain struck audibly on the roof, and the first gust of the storm carried to his ears the sound of waves beating on the rocks. His senses strained no more. His eyes closed, and he sank quietly into a long dreamless sleep.
It was late when he woke, so late that the winter sky was fully lit. The wind, whose first gusts had lulled him to sleep, had risen to a gale, and the rain, mixed with salt spray, beat fiercely against his window and on the roof. He listened, expecting to hear his father moving in the room below, but within the house there was no sound. He rose, vaguely anxious, and without waiting to dress went into the kitchen. Everything lay untouched, just as he had left it the night before. The lamp and the remnants of the meal were on the table. The two chairs stood side by side before the hearth, where the fire which he had covered up smouldered feebly. He turned and went to his father’s room. He could not have explained how it was, but when he opened the door he was not surprised to see the old man lying quite still, dead, upon the bed. His face was turned upwards, and on it was that strange look of emotionless peace which rests very often on the faces of the dead. It seemed to Hyacinth quite natural that the soul as it departed into unknown beatitude should have printed this for the last expression on the earthly habitation which it left behind. He neither wondered nor, at first, sorrowed very much to see his father dead. His sight was undimmed and his hands steady when he closed the eyes and composed the limbs of the body on the bed. Afterwards it seemed strange to him that he should have dressed quietly, arranged the furniture in the kitchen, and blown the fire into a blaze before he went down into the village to tell his news and seek for help.
They buried Æneas Conneally beside his wife in the wind-swept churchyard. The fishermen carried his coffin into the church and out again to the grave. Father Moran himself stood by bareheaded while the clergyman from Clifden read the prayers and sprinkled the coffin-lid with the clay which symbolized the return of earth to earth and dust to dust. In the presence of death, and, with the recollection of the simple goodness of the man who was gone, priest and people alike forgot for an hour the endless strife between his creed and theirs.
CHAPTER VIII
In Connaught the upper middle classes, clergy, doctors, lawyers, police officers, bank officials, and so forth, are all strangers in the land. Each of them looks forward to a promotion which will enable him to move to some more congenial part of Ireland. A Dublin suburb is the ideal residence; failing that, the next best thing is a country town within easy reach of the metropolis. Most of them sooner or later achieve a promotion, but some of them are so unfortunate as to die in their exile. In either case their furniture and effects are auctioned. No one ever removes his goods from Connaught, because the cost of getting things to any other part of Ireland is exorbitant, and also because tables and chairs fetch very high prices at auctions. Thus it happens that a certain historic interest attaches to the furniture of most middle-class houses west of the Shannon. The dispensary doctor dines off a table which once graced the parlour of a parish priest. The inspector of police boasts of the price he paid for his easy-chair, recently upholstered, at the auction of a departing bank manager, the same mahogany frame having once supported the portly person of an old-time Protestant Archdeacon. It is to be supposed that the furniture originally imported—no one knows how—into Connaught must have been of superlative quality. Articles whose pedigree, so to speak, can be traced for nearly a hundred years are still in daily use, unimpaired by changes of scene and ownership.
An auction of any importance is a public holiday. Clergy, doctors, lawyers, and police officers gather to the scene, not unlike those beasts of prey of whom we read that they readily devour the remains of a fallen member of their own pack. The natives also collect together—publicans and shopkeepers in search of bargains in china, glass, and house-linen; farmers bent on purchasing such outdoor property as wheelbarrows, scythes, or harness.
When Hyacinth, to use the local expression, ‘called an auction’ shortly after his father’s death, he was favoured with quite the usual crowd of would-be buyers. Almost everyone with either money or credit within a radius of twenty miles came into Carrowkeel for the occasion. The presiding auctioneer had done his duty beforehand by advertising old Mr. Conneally’s mouldy furniture as ‘magnificently upholstered’ suites, and his battered editions of the classics as ‘a valuable library of handsomely bound books.’ It is not likely that anyone was really deceived by these announcements, or expected to find in the little rectory anything sumptuous or splendid. The people assembled mainly because they were exceedingly curious to see the inside of a house whose doors had never been open to them during the lifetime of the owner. It was always possible, besides, that though the ‘magnificently upholstered suites’existed only in the auctioneer’s imagination, treasures of silver spoons or candlesticks plated upon copper might be discovered among the effects of a man who lived as queer a life as Mr. Conneally. When men and women put themselves to a great deal of inconvenience to attend an auction, they do not like to return empty-handed. A day is more obviously wasted if one goes home with nothing to show than if one brings a table or a bedstead purchased at twice its proper value. Thus the bidding at Hyacinth’s auction was brisk, and the prices such as gave sincere satisfaction to the auctioneer. Everything was sold except ‘the valuable library.’ It was in vain that the auctioneer made personal appeals to Father Moran and the Rector of Clifden, as presumably the two most learned gentlemen present. Neither of them wanted the venerable classics. In fact, neither of them could have read a line of the crooked Greek type or construed a page of the Latin authors. Even the Irish books, in spite of the Gaelic revival, found no purchasers. When all was over, Hyacinth wheeled them away in barrowfuls, wondering greatly what he was to do with them.
Indeed, the disposal of his library was not the chief of his perplexities. He wondered also what he was to do with himself. When the auctioneer sent in his cheque, and the London Committee of the Mission had paid over certain arrears of salary, Hyacinth found himself the possessor of nearly two hundred pounds. It seemed to him quite a large fortune, amply sufficient to start life with, if only some suitable way of employing brains, energy, and money would suggest itself. In order to consider the important topic at his leisure, he hired the only lodging in Carrowkeel—the apartment (it was both bed and sitting room) over Mr. Rafferty’s public-house. The furniture had suffered during the tenancy of a series of Congested Districts Board officials. An engineer, who went to sleep in the evenings over the fire, had burnt a round hole in the hearthrug. An instructor in fish-curing, a hilarious young man, had cracked the mirror over the mantelpiece, and broken many ornaments, including the fellow of the large china dog which now mourned its mate on the sideboard. Other gentlemen had been responsible for dislocating the legs of two chairs and a disorganization of the handle, which made it impossible to shut the door from the inside. The chief glory of the apartment, however, still remained—a handsomely-framed document, signed by Earl Spencer, then Lord Lieutenant, ordering the arrest of the present Mr. Rafferty’s father as a person dangerous to the Commonwealth.
The first thing which brought Hyacinth’s meditations to a definite point was a letter he received from Dr. Henry.
‘I do not know,’ the professor wrote, ‘and of course I do not wish to inquire, how you are situated financially; but if, as I suppose is likely, you are obliged in the near future to earn your living, I may perhaps be of some help to you. You have taken your B.A. degree, and are so far qualified either to accept a post as a schoolmaster in an English preparatory school or to seek ordination from some Bishop. As you are probably aware, none of our Irish Bishops will accept a man who has not completed his divinity course. Several English Bishops, however, especially in the northern province, are willing to ordain men who have nothing more than a University degree, always supposing that they pass the required examination. I shall be quite willing to give you a letter of recommendation to one of these Bishops, and I have no doubt that a curacy could be found for you in one of the northern manufacturing towns, where you would have an ample sphere for useful work.’
The letter went on to urge the advisability of Hyacinth’s suppressing, disguising, or modifying his political opinions, which, stated nakedly, were likely to beget a certain prejudice in the well-balanced episcopal mind, and in any case would be quite out of place among the operatives of Yorkshire or Lancashire.
Hyacinth recognised and appreciated Dr. Henry’s kindness. He even tried to bring himself to consider the offer seriously and carefully, but it was no use. He could not conceive himself as likely to be either useful or happy amid the hustling commercialism of the Manchester streets or the staid proprieties of an Anglican vicarage.
After he had spent about a week in his new lodging, Father Moran called on him. The priest sat beside the fire for more than an hour chatting in a desultory manner. He drank tea and smoked, and it was not until he rose to go that the real object of his visit appeared.
‘I don’t know what you’re thinking of doing, Mr. Conneally, and maybe I’ve no right to ask.’
‘I wouldn’t have the least objection to telling you,’ said Hyacinth, ‘if I knew myself; but I haven’t my mind made up.’
The priest put down his hat again, and settled himself with his back to the fire and his hands in his pockets. Hyacinth sat down, and during the pause which followed contemplated the wonderful number and variety of the stains on the black waistcoat in front of him.
‘Then you’ve given up the idea of finishing your divinity course?’ said the priest. ‘I’m not blaming you in the least. There’s men that studying suits, and there’s men that it doesn’t. I never was much of a one for books myself.’
He sighed heavily, perhaps at the recollection of his own struggles with the mysteries of theology in his Maynooth student days. Then he walked over and closed the door, returned, drew a chair close to Hyacinth, and spoke in the tone of a man who imparts an important secret.
‘Did you hear that Thady Durkan’s giving up the fishing? Since he broke his arm he declares he’ll never step aboard the boat again. You know the St. Bridget. She’s not one of the biggest boats, but she’s a very lucky one. She made over five hundred pounds last year, besides the share the Board took. She was built at Baltimore, and the Board spent over two hundred pounds on her, nets and gear and all. There’s only one year more of instalments to pay off the price of her, and Thady has the rest of the men bought out. There’s nobody owns a stick or a net or a sail of her except himself, barring, of course, what’s due to the Board.’
Hyacinth was sufficiently acquainted with the system on which the Congested Districts Board provides the Connaught fishermen with boats and nets to understand Father Moran’s rather involved statement of Durkan’s financial position. He did not yet grasp why all this information should have been conveyed to him in such a solemn and mysterious tone.
‘You might have the St. Bridget,’ said the priest, ‘for one hundred and fifty pounds down.’
He paused to let the full glory of the situation lay hold upon Hyacinth. Perhaps he expected an outburst of delight and surprise, but none came.
‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘there’s others looking for her. The men that worked with Thady are thinking of making him an offer, and I dare say the Board would be glad enough to have the boat owned among them; but I can put in a word myself both with Thady and the inspector. Faith, the times is changed since I was a young man. I can remember when a priest was no more thought of than a barefooted gossure out of a bog, and now there isn’t a spalpeen of a Government inspector but lifts his hat to me in the street. Oh, a note from me will go a good way with the Board, and you’ll not miss the chance for want of my good word—I promise you that.’
‘Thank you,’ said Hyacinth.
‘Mind you, there’s a good thing to be made out of her. But sure you know that as well as I do myself, and maybe better. What do you say now?’
‘I’ll think it over,’ said Hyacinth, ‘and whatever comes of it I’ll be greatly obliged to you.’
‘Well, don’t be delaying too long. And look you here’—his voice sank almost to a whisper—‘don’t be talking about what I’ve said to you. People are queer, and if Father Joyce down in Clifden came to hear that I was working for a Protestant he’d be sure to go talking to the Archbishop, and I’d never get to the end of the fuss that would be made.’
‘Indeed, it’s very good of you, especially considering who I am—I mean, my father being a convert, and——’
‘Say no more,’ said the priest—‘say no more. Your father was a good man, Catholic or Protestant. I’m not one of these bitter kind of priests, Mr. Conneally. I can be a good Catholic without hating my neighbours. I don’t hold with all this bullyragging in newspapers about “sourfaces” and “saved.” Maybe that’s the reason that I’m stuck down here at the other end of nowhere all my life, and never got promotion or praise. But what do I care as long as they let me alone to do my work for the people? I’m not afraid to say it to you, Mr. Conneally, for you won’t want to get me into trouble, but it’s my belief that there’s many of our priests would rather have grand churches than contented people. They’re fonder of Rome than they are of Ireland.’
‘Really, Father Moran,’ said Hyacinth, smiling, ‘if you go on like this, I shall expect to hear of your turning Protestant.’
‘God forbid, Mr. Conneally! I wish you well. I wish you to be here among us, and to be prosperous; but the dearest wish of my heart for you is that I might see you back in the Catholic Church, believing the creed of your forefathers.’
The priest’s suggestion attracted Hyacinth a great deal more than Dr. Henry’s. He liked the sea and the fishing, and he loved the simple people among whom he had been brought up. His experiences in Dublin had not encouraged him to be ambitious. Life in the great world—it was thus that he thought of the bickerings of the Dublin Nationalists and the schoolboy enthusiasms of college students—was not a very simple thing. There was a complexity and a confusion in affairs which made it difficult to hold to any cause devotedly. It seemed to him, looking back, that Miss Goold’s ideals—and she had ideals, as he knew—were somehow vulgarized in their contact with the actual. He had seen something of the joy she found in her conflict with O’Rourke, and it did not seem to him to be pure or ennobling. At one time he was on the verge of deciding to do what the priest wished. Walking day by day along the shore or through the fields, he came to think that life might very well be spent without ambitious or extended hopes in quiet toil and unexciting pleasures. What held him back was the recollection, which never ceased to haunt him, of his father’s prophecy. The thought of the great fight, declared to be imminent, stirred in him an emotion so strong that the peace and monotony he half desired became impossible. He never made it clear to himself that he either believed or disbelieved the prediction. He certainly did not expect to see an actual gathering of armed men, or that Ireland was to be the scene of a battle like those in South Africa. But there was in him a conviction that Ireland was awakening out of a long sleep, was stretching her limbs in preparation for activity. He felt the quiver of a national strenuousness which was already shaking loose the knots of the old binding-ropes of prejudice and cowardice. It seemed to him that bone was coming to dry bone, and that sooner or later—very soon, it was likely—one would breathe on these, and they would live. That contest should come out of such a renaissance was inevitable. But what contest? Against whom was the new Ireland to fight, and who was truly on her side? Here was the puzzle, insoluble but insistent. It would not let him rest, recurring to his mind with each fresh recollection of his father’s prophecy.
It was while he was wearying himself with this perplexity that he got a letter from Augusta Goold. It was characteristic of her that she had written no word of sympathy when she heard of his father’s death, and now, when a letter did come, it contained no allusion to Hyacinth’s affairs. She told him with evident delight that she had enlisted no less than ten recruits for the Boer army. She had collected sufficient money to equip them and pay their travelling expenses. It was arranged that they were to proceed to Paris, and there join a body of volunteers organized by a French officer, a certain Pierre de Villeneuve, about whom Miss Goold was enthusiastic. She was in communication with an Irishman who seemed likely to be a suitable captain for her little band, and she wanted Hyacinth back in Dublin to help her.
‘You know,’ she wrote, ‘the people I have round me here. Poor old Grealy is quite impracticable, though he means well. He talks about nothing but the Fianna and Finn McCool, and can’t see that my fellows must have riding lessons, and must be got somehow to understand the mechanism of a rifle. Tim Halloran has been in a sulk ever since I told him what I thought of his conduct at the Rotunda. He never comes near me, and Mary O’Dwyer told me the other day that he called my volunteers a “pack of blackguards.” I dare say it’s perfectly true, but they’re a finer kind of blackguard than the sodden loafers the English recruit for their miserable army.’
She went on to describe the series of Boer victories which had come one after another just at Christmas-time. She was confident that the cause of freedom and nationality would ultimately triumph, and she foresaw the intervention of some Continental Power. A great blow would be struck at the already tottering British Empire, and then—the freedom of Ireland.
Hyacinth felt strangely excited as he read her news. The letter seemed the first clear note of the trumpet summoning him to his father’s Armageddon. Politics and squabbling at home might be inglorious and degrading, but the actual war which was being waged in South Africa, the struggle of a people for existence and liberty, could be nothing but noble. He saw quite clearly what his own next step was to be, and there was no temptation to hesitate about it. He would place his money at Miss Goold’s disposal, and go himself with her ten volunteers to join the brigade of the heroic de Villeneuve.
CHAPTER IX
The prospect of joining Augusta Goold’s band of volunteers and going to South Africa to fight afforded Hyacinth great satisfaction. For two days he lived in an atmosphere of day-dreams and delightful anticipations. He had no knowledge whatever of the actual conditions of modern warfare. He understood vaguely that he would be called upon to endure great hardships. He liked to think of these, picturing himself bravely cheerful through long periods of hunger, heat, or cold. He had visions of night watches, of sudden alarms, of heart-stirring skirmishes, of scouting work, and stealthy approaches to the enemy’s lines. He thought out the details of critical interviews with commanding officers in which he with some chosen comrade volunteered for incredibly dangerous enterprises. He conceived of himself as wounded, though not fatally, and carried to the rear out of some bullet-swept firing-line. He was just twenty-three years of age. Adventure had its fascination, and the world was still a place full of splendid possibilities.
At the end of his two days of dreaming he returned, flushed with his great purposes, to the realities of life. He went to Father Moran to tell him that he would not buy Durkan’s boat. He laughed to himself at the thought of doing such a thing. Was he to spend his life fishing mackerel round the rocky islands of Connemara, when he might be fighting like one of the ancient heroes, giving his strength, perhaps his life, for a great cause? The priest met him at the presbytery door.
‘Come in, Mr. Conneally—come in and sit down. I was expecting you these two days. What were you doing at all, walking away there along the rocks by yourself? The people were beginning to say that you were getting to be like your poor father, and that nobody’d ever get any good out of you. But I knew you’d come back to me here. I hope now it’s to tell me that you’ll buy the boat you’ve come.’
They entered the house, and the priest opened the door of the little sitting-room. Hyacinth knew it well. There was the dark mahogany table with the marks burnt into it where hot dishes were set down, the shabby arm-chair, the worn cocoanut-matting on the floor, the dozen or so books in the hanging shelf, the tawdry sacred pictures round the wall. He had known it all, and it all seemed unchanged since he was a child.
‘Sit you down—sit you down,’ said the priest. ‘And now about the boat.’
‘I’m not going in for her,’ said Hyacinth. ‘I’m as thankful to you for suggesting it as if I did buy her. I hope you’ll understand that, but I’m not going to buy her.’
He found it difficult to speak of his new plan to Father Moran.
‘Do you tell me that, now? I’m sorry for it. And why wouldn’t you buy her? What’s there to hinder you?’
Hyacinth hesitated.
‘Well, now,’ said the priest, ‘I can guess. I thought the auction turned out well for you, but I never heard for certain, and maybe you haven’t got the money for the boat. Whisht now, my son, and let me speak. I’m thinking the thing might be managed.’
‘But, Father Moran———’
‘Ah now, will you be quiet when I bid you? I haven’t the money myself. Never a penny have I been able to save all my life, with the calls there are on me in a parish like this. Sure, you know yourself how it is. There’s one will have a cow that has died on him, and another will be wanting a lock of potatoes for seed in the springtime; and if it isn’t that, it’ll be something else. And who would the creatures go to in their trouble but the old priest that christened and married the most of them? But, indeed, thanks be to God, things is improving. The fishing brings in a lot of money to the men, and there’s a better breed of cattle in the country now, and the pigs fetch a good price since we had the railway to Clifden, and maybe the last few years I might have saved a little, but I didn’t. Indeed, I don’t know where it is the money goes at all, but someway it’s never at rest in my breeches pockets till it’s up and off somewhere. God forgive us! it’s more careful we ought to be.’
‘But, Father Moran, I don’t——’
‘Arrah then, will you cease your talking for one minute, and let me get a word in edgeways for your own good? What was I saying? Oh, I was just after telling you I hadn’t got the money to help you. But maybe I might manage to get it. The man in the bank in Clifden knows me. I borrowed a few pounds off him two years ago when the Cassidys’ house and three more beside it got blown away in the big wind. Father Joyce put his name on the back of the bill along with my own, and trouble enough I had to get him to do it, for he said I ought to put an appeal in the newspapers, and I’d get the money given to me. But I never was one to go begging round the country. I said I’d rather borrow the money and pay it back like a decent man. And so I did, every penny of it. And I think the bank will trust me now, with just your name and mine, more especially as it’s to buy a boat we want the money. What do you say to that, now?’ He looked at Hyacinth triumphantly.
‘Father Moran, you’re too good to me—you’re too good altogether. What did ever I do to deserve such kindness from you? But you’re all wrong. I’ve got plenty of money.’
‘And why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t you tell me so at once, and not keep me standing here twisting my brains into hard knots with thinking out ways of getting what you don’t want? If you’ve got the money you’ll buy the boat. What better could you do with it?’
‘But I don’t want to buy the boat. I don’t want to live here always. I’m going away out into the world. I want to see things and do things.’
‘Out into the world! Will you listen to the boy? Is it America you’re thinking of? Ah, now, there’s enough gone out and left us lonely here. Isn’t the best of all the boys and girls going to work for the strangers in the strange land? and why would you be going after them?’
‘I’m not going to America. I’m going to South Africa. I’m going to join some young Irishmen to fight for the Boers and for freedom.’
‘You’re going out to fight—to fight for the Boers! What is it that’s in your head at all, Hyacinth Conneally? Tell me now.’
Again Hyacinth hesitated. Was it possible to give utterance to the thoughts and hopes which filled his mind? Could he tell anyone about the furious fancies of the last few days, or of that weird vision of his father’s which lay at the back of what he felt and dreamed? Could he even speak of the enthusiasm which moved him to devote himself to the cause of freedom and a threatened nationality? In the presence of a man of the world the very effort to express himself would have acted as some corrosive acid, and stained with patches of absurdity the whole fabric of his dreams. He looked at Father Moran, and saw the priest’s eyes lit with sympathy. He knew that he had a listener who would not scoff, who might, perhaps, even understand. He began to speak, slowly and haltingly at first, then more rapidly. At last he poured out with breathless, incoherent speed the strange story of the Armageddon vision, the hopes that were in him, the fierce enthusiasm, the passionate love for Ireland which burnt in his soul. He was not conscious of the gaping inconsequences of his train of emotion. He did not recognise how ridiculous it was to connect the Boer War with the Apocalyptic battle of the saints, or the utter impossibility of getting either one or the other into any sort of relation with the existing condition of Ireland.
A casual observer might have supposed that Hyacinth had made a mistake in telling his story to Father Moran. A smile, threatening actual laughter, hovered visibly round the priest’s mouth. His eyes had a shrewd, searching expression, difficult to interpret. Still, he listened to the rhapsody without interrupting it, till Hyacinth stopped abruptly, smitten with sudden self-consciousness, terrified of imminent ridicule. Nor were the priest’s first words reassuring.
‘I wouldn’t say now, Hyacinth Conneally, but there might be the makings of a fine man in you yet.’
‘I might have known,’ said Hyacinth angrily, ‘that you’d laugh at me. I was a fool to tell you at all. But I’m in earnest about what I’m going to do. Whatever you may think about the rest, there’s no laughing at that.’
‘Well, you’re just wrong then, for I wasn’t laughing nor meaning to laugh at all. God forbid that I should laugh at you, and I meant it when I said that there was the makings of a fine man in you. Laugh at you! It’s little you know me. Listen now, till I tell you something; but don’t you be repeating it. This must be between you and me, and go no further. I was very much of your way of thinking myself once.’
Hyacinth gazed at him in astonishment. The thought of Father Moran, elderly, rotund, kindly; of Father Moran with sugar-stick in his pocket for the school-children and a quaint jest on his lips for their mothers; of Father Moran in his ruffled silk hat and shabby black coat and baggy trousers—of this Father Moran mounted and armed, facing the British infantry in South Africa, was wholly grotesque. He laughed aloud.
‘It’s yourself that has the bad manners to be laughing now,’ said the priest. ‘But small blame to you if it was out to the Boers I was thinking of going. The gray goose out there on the road might laugh—and she’s the solemnest mortal I know—at the notion of me charging along with maybe a pike in my hand, and the few gray hairs that’s left on the sides of my head blowing about in the breeze I’d make as I went prancing to and fro. But that’s not what I meant when I said that once upon a time I was something of your way of thinking. And sure enough I was, but it’s a long time ago now.’
He sighed, and for a minute or two he said no more. Hyacinth began to wonder what he meant, and whether the promised confidence would be forthcoming at all. Then the priest went on:
‘When I was a young man—and it’s hard for you to think it, but I was a fine young man; never a better lad at the hurling than I was, me that’s a doddering old soggarth now—when I was a boy, as I’m telling you, there was a deal of going to and fro in the country and meetings at night, and drillings too, and plenty of talk of a rising—no less. Little good came of it that ever I saw, but I’m not blaming the men that was in it. They were good men, Hyacinth Conneally—men that would have given the souls out of their bodies for the sake of Ireland. They would, sure, for they loved Ireland well. But I had my own share in the doings. Of course, it was before ever there was a word of my being a priest. That came after. Thanks be to God for His mercies’—the old man crossed himself reverently—‘He kept me from harm and the sin that might have been laid on me. But in those days there were great thoughts in me, just as there are in you to-day. Faith! I’m of opinion that my thoughts were greater than yours, for I was all for fighting here in Ireland, for the Poor Old Woman herself, and it’s out to some foreign war you’d be going to fight for people that’s not friends of yours by so much as one heart’s drop. Still, the feeling in you is the same as the feeling that was in me, not a doubt of it. But, indeed, so far as I’m concerned, it’s over and gone. I haven’t spoken to a mortal soul about such things these thirty years, and I wouldn’t be doing it now only just to show you that I’m the last man in Ireland that would laugh at you for what you’ve told me.’
‘I’m glad I told you what’s in my heart,’ said Hyacinth; ‘I’d like to think I had your blessing with me when I go.’
‘Well, you won’t get it,’ said Father Moran, ‘so I tell you straight. I’ll give you no blessing when you’re going away out of the country, just when there’s need of every man in it. I tell you this—and you’ll remember that I know what I’m talking about—it’s not men that ‘ll fight who will help Ireland to-day, but men that will work.’
‘Work!’ said Hyacinth—‘work! What work is there for a man like me to do in Ireland?’
‘Don’t I offer you the chance of buying Thady Durkan’s boat? Isn’t there work enough for any man in her?’
‘But that’s not the sort of work I ought to be doing. What good would it be to anyone but myself? What good would it be to Ireland if I caught boatloads of mackerel?’
‘Don’t be making light of the mackerel, now. He’s a good fish if you get him fresh, and split him down and fry him with a lump of butter in the pan. There’s worse fish than the mackerel, as you’ll discover if you go to South Africa, and find yourself living on a bit of some ancient tough beast of an ostrich, or whatever it may happen to be that they eat out there.’
In his exalted mood Hyacinth felt insulted at the praise of the mackerel and the laughter in the priest’s eyes when he suggested a dinner off ostrich. He held out his hand, and said good-bye.
‘Wait, now—wait,’ said the priest; ‘don’t be in such a tearing hurry. I’ll talk as serious as you like, and not hurt your feelings, if you’ll stay for a minute or two. Listen, now. Isn’t the language dying on the people’s lips? They’re talking the English, more and more of them every day; and don’t you know as well as I do that when they lose their Irish they’ll lose half the good that’s in them? What sort will the next generation of our people be, with their own language gone from them, and their Irish ways forgotten, and all the old tales and songs and tunes perished away like the froth of the waves that the storm blew up across the fields the night your father died? I’ll tell you what they’ll be—just sham Englishmen. And the Lord knows the real thing is not the best kind of man in the world, but the copy of an Englishman! sure, that’s the poorest creature to be found anywhere on the face of God’s good earth. And that’s what we’ll be, when the Irish is gone from us. Wouldn’t there be work enough for you to do, now, if you were to buy Thady Durkan’s boat, and stay here and help to keep the people to the old tongue and the old ways?’
Hyacinth shook his head. His mood was altogether too heroic to allow him to think highly of what the priest said to him. He loved the Irish language as his native speech—loved it, too, as a symbol, and something more, perhaps—as an expression of the nationality of Ireland. But it did not seem to him to be a very essential thing, and to spend his life talking it and persuading other people to talk it was an obscure kind of patriotism which made no strong appeal to him—which, indeed, could not stand compared to the glory of drawing the sword.
‘You’ve listened to what I’ve told you, Father Moran, and you say that you understand what I feel, but I don’t think you really do, or else you wouldn’t fancy that I could be satisfied to stay here. What is it you ask of me? To spend my time fishing and talking Irish and dancing jigs. Ah! it’s well enough I’d like to do it. Don’t think that such a life wouldn’t be pleasant to me. It would be too pleasant. That’s what’s the matter with it. It’s a temptation, and not a duty, that you’re setting before me.’
‘Maybe it is now—maybe it is. And if it’s that way you think of it, you’re right enough to say no to me. But for all that I understand you well enough. Who’s this now coming up to the house to see me?’ He went over to the window and looked out. ‘Isn’t it a queer life a priest lives in a place like this, with never a minute of quiet peace from morning to night but somebody will be coming interrupting and destroying it? First it’s you, Hyacinth Conneally—not that I grudge the time to you when you’re going off so soon—and now it’s Michael Kavanagh. Indeed, he’s a decent man too, like yourself. Come in, Michael—come in. Don’t be standing there pulling at the old door-bell. You know as well as myself it’s broken these two years. It’s heartbroken the thing is ever since that congested engineer put up the electric bell for me, and little use that was, seeing that Biddy O’Halloran—that’s my housekeeper, Mr. Conneally; you remember her—poured a jug of hot water into its inside the way it wouldn’t annoy her with ringing so loud. And why the noise of it vexed her I couldn’t say, for she’s as deaf as a post every time I speak to her. Ah, you’re there, Michael, are you? Now, what do you want?’
A young farmer, black-haired, tall and straight, stood in the doorway with his hat in his hand. He had brought a paper for Father Moran’s signature. It related to a bull which the Congested Districts Board proposed to lend to the parish, and of which Kavanagh had been chosen to be custodian. A long conversation followed, conducted in Irish. The newly-erected habitation for the animal was discussed; then the best method of bringing him home from Clifden Station; then the kind of beast he was likely to turn out to be, and the suitability of particular breeds of cattle to the coarse, brine-soaked land of Carrowkeel. Kavanagh related a fearful tale of a lot of ‘foreign’ fowls which had been planted in the neighbourhood by the Board. They were particularly nice to look at, and settings of their eggs were eagerly booked long beforehand. Then one by one they sickened and died. Some people thought they died out of spite, being angered at the way they had been treated in the train. Kavanagh himself did not think so badly of them. He was of opinion that their spirits were desolated in them with the way the rain came through the roof of their house, and that their feet got sore with walking on the unaccustomed sea-sand. However their death was to be explained, he hoped that the bull would turn out to be hardier. Father Moran, on his part, hoped that the roof of the bull’s house would turn out to be sounder. In the end the paper was signed, and Kavanagh departed.
‘Now, there,’ said the priest, ‘is a fine young man. Only for him, I don’t know how I’d get on in the parish at all. He’s got a head on his shoulders, and a notion of improving himself and his neighbours, and it would do you good to see him dance a jig. But why need I tell you that when you’ve seen him yourself? He is to be the secretary of the Gaelic League when we get a branch of it started in Carrowkeel. And a good secretary he’ll make, for his heart will be in the work. I dare say, now, you’ve heard of the League when you were up in Dublin. Well, you’ll hear more of it. By the time you’re back here again—— Now, don’t be saying that you’ll not come back. I’ll give you a year to get sick of fighting for the Boers, and then there’ll be a hunger on you for the old place that will bring you back to it in spite of yourself.’
‘Good-bye, Father Moran. Whatever happens to me, I’ll not forget Carrowkeel nor you either. You’ve been good to me, and if I don’t take your advice and stay where I am, it’s not through want of gratitude.’
The priest wrung his hand.
‘You’ll come back. It may be after I’m dead and gone, but back you’ll come. Here or somewhere else in the old country you’ll spend your days working for Ireland, because you’ll have learnt that working is better than fighting.’