Hyacinth

CHAPTER XVII

It was during the second year of Hyacinth’s residence in Ballymoy that the station-master at Clogher died. The poor man caught a cold one February night while waiting for a train which had broken down three miles outside his station. From the cold came first pneumonia, and then the end. Now, far to the east of Clogher, on a different branch of the railway-line, is a town with which the people of Mayo have no connection whatever. In it is a very flourishing Masonic lodge. Almost every male Protestant in the town and the neighbourhood belongs to it, and the Rector of the parish is its chaplain. Among its members at that time was an intelligent young man who occupied the position of goods clerk on the railway. The Masonic brethren, as in duty bound, used their influence to secure his promotion, and brought considerable pressure to bear on the directors of the company to have him made station-master at Clogher.

It is said with some appearance of truth that no appointment in Ireland is ever made on account of the fitness of the candidate for the post to be filled. Whether the Lord Lieutenant has to nominate a Local Government Board Inspector, or an Urban Council has to select a street scavenger, the principle acted on is the same. No investigation is made about the ability or character of a candidate. Questions may be asked about his political opinions, his religious creed, and sometimes about the social position of his wife, but no one cares in the least about his ability. The matter really turns upon the amount of influence which he can bring to bear. So it happened that John Crawford, Freemason and Protestant, was appointed station-master at Clogher. Of course, nobody really cared who got the post except a few seniors of John Crawford’s, who wanted it for themselves. Probably even they would have stopped grumbling after a month or two if it had not happened that a leading weekly newspaper, then at the height of its popularity and influence, was just inaugurating a crusade against Protestants and Freemasons. The case of John Crawford became the subject of a series of bitter and vehement articles. It was pointed out that although Roman Catholics were beyond all question more intelligent, better educated, and more upright than Protestants, they were condemned by the intolerance of highly-paid officials to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water. It was shown by figures which admitted of no controversy that Irish railways, banks, and trading companies were, without exception, on the verge of bankruptcy, entirely owing to the apathy of shareholders who allowed their interests to be sacrificed to the bigotry of directors. It was urged that a public meeting should be held at Clogher to protest against the new appointment.

The meeting was convened, and Father Fahey consented to occupy the chair. He was supported by a dispensary doctor, anxious to propitiate the Board of Guardians with a view to obtaining a summer holiday; a leading publican, who had a son at Maynooth; a grazier, who dreaded the possible partition of his ranch by the Congested Districts Board; and Mr. O’Reilly, who saw a hope of drawing custom from the counter of his rival draper, the Scotchman.

Father Fahey opened the proceedings with a speech. He assured his audience that he was not actuated by any spirit of religious bigotry or intolerance. He wished well to his Protestant fellow-countrymen, and hoped that in the bright future which lay before Ireland men of all creeds would be united in working for the common good of their country. These sentiments were not received with vociferous applause. The audience was perfectly well aware that something much more to the point was coming, and reserved their cheers. Father Fahey did not disappoint them. He proceeded to show that the appointment of the new station-master was a deliberate insult to the faith of the inhabitants of Clogher.

‘Are we,’ he asked, ‘to submit tamely to having the worst evils of the old ascendancy revived in our midst?’

He was followed by the dispensary doctor, who also began by declaring his freedom from bigotry. He confused the issue slightly by complaining that the new station-master was entirely ignorant of the Irish language. It was perfectly well known that in private life the doctor was in the habit of expressing the greatest contempt for the Gaelic League, and that he could not, if his life depended on it, have translated even Mr. O’Reilly’s advertisements; but his speech was greeted with tumultuous cheers. He proceeded to harrow the feelings of his audience by describing what he had heard at the railway-station one evening while waiting for the train. As he paced the platform his attention was attracted by the sound of a piano in the station-master’s house. He listened, and, to his amazement and disgust, heard the tune of a popular song, ‘a song’—he brought down his fist on the table as he uttered the awful indictment—‘imported from England.’

‘I ask,’ he went on—‘I ask our venerated and beloved parish priest; I ask you, fathers of innocent families; I ask every right-thinking patriot in this room, are our ears to be insulted, our morals corrupted, our intellects depraved, by sounds like these?’

He closed his speech by proposing a resolution requiring the railway company to withdraw the obnoxious official from their midst.

The oratory of the grazier, who seconded the resolution, was not inferior. It filled his heart with a sense of shame, so he said, to think of his cattle, poor, innocent beasts of the field, being handled by a Protestant. They had been bred, these bullocks of his, by Catholics, fed by Catholics, were owned by a Catholic, bought with Catholic money at the fairs, and yet they were told that in all Ireland no Catholic could be discovered fit to put them into a train.

Neither the resolution itself nor the heart-rending appeal of the grazier produced the slightest effect on the railway company. John Crawford continued to sell tickets, even to Father Fahey himself, and appeared entirely unconcerned by the fuss.

About a fortnight after the meeting Hyacinth spent a night in Clogher. Mr. Holywell, the cigarette man, happened to be in the hotel, and, as usual, got through a good deal of desultory conversation while he drank his whisky-and-water. Quite unexpectedly, and apropos of nothing that had been said, he plumped out the question:

‘What religion are you, Conneally?’

The inquiry was such an unusual one, and came so strangely from Mr. Holywell, who had always seemed a Gallio in matters spiritual, that Hyacinth hesitated.

‘I’m a Baptist myself,’ he went on, apparently with a view to palliating his inquisitiveness by a show of candour. ‘I find it a very convenient sort of religion in Connaught. There isn’t a single place of worship belonging to my denomination in the whole province, so I’m always able to get my Sundays to myself. I don’t want to convert you to anything or to argue with you, but I have a fancy that you are a Church of Ireland Protestant.’

Hyacinth admitted the correctness of the guess, and wondered what was coming next.

‘Ever spend a Sunday here?’

‘Never,’ said Hyacinth; ‘I always get back home for the end of the week if I can.’

‘Ah! Well, do you know, if I were you, I should spend next Sunday here, and go to Mass.’

‘I shall not do anything of the sort.’

‘Well, it’s your own affair, of course; only I just think I should do it if I were you. Good-night.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Hyacinth. ‘I want to know what you mean.’

Mr. Holywell sat down again heavily.

‘Been round your customers here lately?’

‘No. I only arrived this evening, and have done nothing yet. I mean to go round them to-morrow.’

‘You may just as well go home by the early train for all the good you’ll do.’

Hyacinth restrained himself with an effort. He reflected that he was more likely to get at the meaning of these mysterious warnings if he refrained from direct questioning. After a minute of two of silence Mr. Hollywell went on:

‘They had a meeting here a little while ago about the appointment of a Protestant station-master. They didn’t take much by it so far as the railway company is concerned, but I happen to know that word has gone round that every shopkeeper in the town is to order his goods as far as possible from Catholics. Now, everybody knows your boss is a Protestant, but the people are a little uncertain about you. They’ve never seen you at Mass, which is suspicious, but, on the other hand, the way you gas on about Irish manufactures makes them think you can’t be a Protestant. The proper thing for you to do is to lie low till you’ve put in an appearance at Mass, and then go round and try for orders.’

‘That’s the kind of thing,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that I couldn’t do if I had no religion at all; but it happens that I have convictions of a sort, and I don’t mean to go against them.’

‘Oh, well, as I said before, it’s your own affair; only better Protestants than you have done as much. Why, I do it myself constantly, and everyone knows that a Baptist is the strongest kind of Protestant there is.’

This reasoning, curiously enough, proved unconvincing.

‘I can’t believe,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that a religious boycott of the kind is possible. People won’t be such fools as to act clean against their own interests. Considering that nine-tenths of the drapery goods in the country come from England and are sold by Protestant travellers, I don’t see how the shopkeepers could act as you say.’

‘Oh, of course they won’t act against their own interests. I’ve never come across a religion yet that made men do that. They won’t attempt to boycott the English firms, because, as you say, they couldn’t; but they can boycott you. Everything your boss makes is turned out just as well and just as cheap, or cheaper, by the nuns at Robeen. Perhaps you didn’t know that these holy ladies have hired a traveller. Well, they have, and he’s a middling smart man, too—quite smart enough to play the trumps that are put into his hand; and he’s got a fine flush of them now. What with the way that wretched rag of a paper, which started all the fuss, goes on rampaging, and the amount of feeling that’s got up over the station-master, the peaceablest people in the place would be afraid to deal with a Protestant at the present moment. The Robeen man has the game in his own hands, and I’m bound to say he’d be a fool if he didn’t play it for all it’s worth. I’d do it myself if I was in his shoes.’

Hyacinth discovered next day that Mr. Holywell had summed up the situation very accurately. No point-blank questions were asked about his religion, but he could by no means persuade his customers to give him even a small order. Every shop-window was filled with goods placarded ostentatiously as ‘made in Robeen.’ Every counter had tweeds, blankets, and flannels from the same factory. No one was in the least uncivil to him, and no one assigned any plausible reason for refusing to deal with him. He was simply bowed out as quickly as possible from every shop he entered.

He returned home disgusted and irritated, and told his tale to his employer. Mr. Quinn recognised the danger that threatened him. For the first time, he admitted that his business was being seriously injured by the competition of Robeen. He took Hyacinth into his confidence more fully than he had ever done before, and explained what seemed to be a hopeful plan.

‘I may tell you, Conneally, that I have very little capital to fall back upon in my business. Years ago when things were better than they are now, I had a few thousands put by, but most of it went on buying my brother Albert’s share of the mill. Lately I have not been able to save, and at the present moment I can lay hands on very little money. Still, I have something, and what I mean to do is this: I shall give up all idea of making a profit for the present. I shall even sell my goods at a slight loss, and try to beat the nunnery out of the market. I think this religious animosity will weaken after a while, and if we offer the cheapest goods we must in the end get back our customers.’

Hyacinth was not so sanguine.

‘You forget,’ he said, ‘that these people have Government money at their backs, and are likely to get more of it. If you sell at a loss they will do so, too, and ask for a new grant from the Congested Districts Board to make good their deficiency.’

Mr. Quinn sighed.

‘That is quite possible,’ he said. ‘But what can I do? I must make a fight for my business.’

Hyacinth hesitated.

‘Perhaps I have no right to make the suggestion, but it seems to me that you are bound to be beaten. Would it not be better to give in at once? Don’t risk the money you have safe. Keep it, and try to sell the mill and the business.’

‘I shall hold on,’ said Mr. Quinn.

‘Ought you not to think of your wife? Remember what it will mean to her if you are beaten in the end, when your savings are gone and your business unsaleable.’

For a moment there were signs of wavering in Mr. Quinn’s face. The fingers of his hands twisted in and out of each other, and a pitiable look of great distress came into his eyes. Then he unclasped his hands and placed them flat on the table before him.

‘I shall hold on,’ he said. ‘I shall not close my mill while I have a shilling left to pay my workers with.’

‘Well,’ said Hyacinth, ‘it is for you to decide. At least, you can count on my doing my best, my very best.’

CHAPTER XVIII

Mr. Quinn carried on his struggle for nearly a year, although from the very first he might have recognised its hopelessness. Time after time Hyacinth made his tour, and visited the shopkeepers who had once been his customers. Occasionally he succeeded in obtaining orders, and a faint gleam of hope encouraged him, but he had no steady success. Mr. Quinn’s original estimate of the situation was so far justified that after a while the religious animosity died out. Shopkeepers even explained apologetically that they gave their orders to the Robeen convent for purely commercial reasons.

‘Their goods are cheaper than yours, and that’s the truth, Mr. Conneally.’

Hyacinth recognised that Mr. Quinn was being beaten at his own game. He had attempted to drive the nuns out of the market by underselling them, and now it appeared that they, too, were prepared to face a loss. It was obvious that their losses must be great, much greater than Mr. Quinn’s. Rumours were rife of large loans raised by the Mother Superior, of mortgages on the factory buildings and the machinery. These stories brought very little consolation, for, as Hyacinth knew, Mr. Quinn was very nearly at the end of his resources. He refused to borrow.

‘When I am forced to close up,’ he said, ‘I shall do so with a clear balance-sheet. I have no wish for bankruptcy.’

‘I should like,’ said Hyacinth vindictively, ‘to see the Reverend Mother reduced to paying a shilling in the pound.’

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr. Quinn, ‘you won’t see that. The convent is a branch of an immense organization. No doubt, if it comes to a pinch, funds will be forthcoming.’

‘Yes, and they won’t draw on their own purse till they have got all they can out of the Congested Districts Board. I have no doubt they are counting on another four thousand pounds to start them clear when they have beaten you.’

One day, quite accidentally, Hyacinth came by a piece of information about the working of the Robeen factory which startled him. He was travelling home by rail. It happened to be Friday, and, as usual in the early summer, the train was crowded with emigrants on their way to Queenstown. The familiar melancholy crowd waited on every platform. Old women weeping openly and men with faces ridiculously screwed and puckered in the effort to restrain the rising tears clung to their sons and daughters. Pitiful little boxes and carpet bags were piled on the platform. Friends clung to hands outstretched through the carriage-windows while the train moved slowly out. Then came the long mournful wail from those left behind, and the last wavings of farewell. At the Robeen station the crowd was no less than elsewhere. The carriages set apart for the emigrants were full, and at the last minute two girls were hustled into the compartment where Hyacinth sat. A woman, their mother, mumbled and slobbered over their hands. An old man, too old to be their father, shouted broken benedictions to them. Two young men—lovers, perhaps, or brothers—stood red-eyed, desolate and helpless, without speaking. After the train had started Hyacinth looked at the girls. One of them, a pretty creature of perhaps eighteen years old, wept quietly in the corner of the carriage. Beside her lay her carpet bag and a brown shawl. On her lap was an orange, and she held a crumpled paper bag of biscuits in her hand. There was nothing unusual about her. She was just one instance of heartbreak, the heart-break of a whole nation which loves home as no other people have ever loved it, and yet are doomed, as it seems inevitably, to leave it. She was just one more waif thrown into the whirlpool of the great world to toil and struggle, succeed barrenly or pitifully fail; but through it all, through even the possible loss of faith and ultimate degradation, fated to cling to a love for the gray desolate fatherland. The other girl was different. Hyacinth looked at her with intense interest. She was the older of the two, and not so pretty as her sister. Her face was thin and pale, and a broad scar under one ear showed where a surgeon’s knife had cut. She sat with her hands folded on her lap, gazing dry-eyed out of the window beside her. There was no sign of sorrow on her face, nothing but a kind of sulky defiance.

After a while she took the paper bag out of her sister’s hand, opened it, and began to eat the gingerbread biscuits it contained. Hyacinth spoke to her, but she turned her head away, and would not answer him. His voice seemed to rouse the younger sister, who stopped crying and looked at him curiously. He tried again, and this time he spoke in Irish.

At once the younger girl brightened and answered him. Apparently she had no fear that malice could lurk in the heart of a man who spoke her own language. In a few minutes she was chatting to him as if he were an old friend.

He learnt that the two girls were on their way to New York. They had a sister there who had sent them the price of their tickets. Yes, the sister was in a situation, was getting good wages, and had clothes ‘as grand as a lady’s.’ She had sent home a photograph at Christmas-time, which their mother had shown all round the parish. These two were to get situations also as soon as they arrived. Oh yes, there was no doubt of it: Bridgy had promised. There were four of them left at home—three boys and a girl. No doubt in time they would all follow Bridgy to America—all but Seumas; he was to have the farm. No, the girls could not get married, because their father was too poor to give them fortunes. There was nothing for them but to go to America. But their mother had not wanted them to go. The clergy and the nuns were against the girls going. Indeed, they nearly had them persuaded to send Bridgy’s money back.

‘But Onny was set on going.’

She glanced at her sister in the corner of the carriage. Hyacinth turned to her.

‘Why do you want to leave Ireland?’

But Onny remained silent, sulky, at it seemed. It was the younger girl who answered him.

‘They say it’s a fine life they have out there. There’s good money to be earned, and mightn’t we be coming home some day with a fortune?’

‘But aren’t you sorry to leave Ireland?’

Again he looked at the elder girl, and this time was rewarded with a flash of defiant bitterness from her eyes.

‘Sorry, is it? No, but I’m glad!’

‘Onny’s always saying that there was nothing to be earned in the factory. And she got more than the rest of us. Wasn’t she the first girl that Sister Mary Aloysius picked out of the school when the young lady from England came over to teach us? She was the best worker they had.’

‘It’s true what she says,’ said Onny. ‘I was the best worker they had. I worked for them for three years, and all I was getting at the end of it was six shillings a week. Why would I be working for that when I might be getting wages like Bridgy’s in America? What sense would there be in it?’

‘But why did you work for such wages?’

‘Well, now,’ said the younger girl, ‘how could we be refusing the Reverend Mother when she came round the town herself, and gave warning that we’d all be wanted?’

‘There’s few,’ continued Onny, without noticing her sister, ‘that earned as much as I did. Many a girl works there and has no more than one and ninepence to take home at the end of the week.’

Hyacinth began to understand how it was that Mr. Quinn was being hopelessly beaten. This was no struggle between two trade rivals, to be won by the side with the longer purse. Nor was it simply a fight between an independent manufacturer and a firm fed with Government bounties. Mr. Quinn’s rival could count on an unlimited supply of labour at starvation wages, while he had to hire men and women at the market value of their services. He had been sorry for the two girls when they got into the train. Now he felt almost glad that they were leaving Ireland. It appeared that they had certainly chosen the wiser part.

He arrived at home dejected, and sat down beside the fire in his room to give himself up to complete despair. He found no hope anywhere. Irish patriotism, so he saw it, was a matter of words and fine phrases. No one really believed in it or would venture anything for it. Politics was a game at which sharpers cheated each other and the people. The leaders were bold only in sordid personal quarrels. The mass of the people were utterly untouched by the idea of nationality, in earnest about nothing but huckstering and petty gains. Over all was the grip of a foreign bureaucracy and a selfish Church tightening slowly, squeezing out the nation’s life, grasping and holding fast its wealth. No man any longer made any demand except to be allowed to earn what would buy whisky enough to fuddle him into temporary forgetfulness of the present misery and the imminent tyranny.

The slatternly maid-servant who brought him his meals and made his bed tapped at the door.

‘Please, sir, Jimmy Loughlin’s after coming with a letter from Mr. Quinn, and he’s waiting to know if you’ll go.’

Hyacinth read the note, which asked him to call on his employer that afternoon.

‘Tell him I’ll be there.’

‘Will you have your dinner before you go? The chops is in the pan below. Or will I keep them till you come back?’

‘Oh, I’ve time enough. Bring them as soon as they’re cooked, and for goodness’ sake see that the potatoes are properly boiled.’

He took up a great English weekly paper, with copies of which Canon Beecher supplied him at irregular intervals, and propped it against the dish-cover while he ate. The article which caught his attention was headed ‘Angels in Connaught.’ It contained an idealized account of the work of the Robeen nuns, from whose shoulders it seemed to the writer likely that wings would soon sprout. There was a description of the once miserable cabins now transformed into homesteads so comfortable that English labourers would not disdain them. The people shared in the elevation of their surroundings. Men and women, lately half-naked savages, starved and ignorant, had risen in the scale of civilization and intelligence to a level which almost equalled that of a Hampshire villager. The double stream of emigration to the United States and migration to the English harvest-fields was stopped. An earthly paradise had been created in a howling wilderness by the self-denying labours of the holy ladies, aided by the statesmanlike liberality of the Congested Districts Board. There was another page of the article, but Hyacinth could stand no more.

He stood up and glanced at his watch. It was already nearly five o’clock. He pushed his way down the street, where the country-people, having completed their week’s marketing, were loading donkeys on the footpath or carts pushed backwards against the kerbstone. Women dragged their heavily-intoxicated husbands from the public-houses, and girls, damp and bedraggled, stood in groups waiting for their parents. He turned into the gloomy archway of the mill, unlocked the iron gate, and crossed the yard into the Quinns’ garden. The lamp burned brightly in the dining-room, and he could see Mrs Quinn in her chair by the fireside sewing. Her children sat on the rug at her feet. He saw their faces turned up to hers, gravely intent. No doubt she was telling them some story. He stood for a minute and watched them, while the peaceful joy of the scene entered into his heart. This, no doubt, a home full of such love and peace, was the best thing life had got to give. It was God’s most precious benediction. ‘Lo, thus shall a man be blessed who feareth the Lord.’ He turned and passed on to the door. The servant showed him in, not, as he expected, to the sitting-room he had just gazed at, but to Mr. Quinn’s study.

It was a desolate chamber. A plain wooden desk like a schoolmaster’s stood in one corner, and upon it a feeble lamp. A bookcase surmounted a row of cupboards along one wall. Its contents—Hyacinth had often looked over them—were a many-volumed encyclopaedia, Macaulay’s ‘History of England,’ Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’ a series entitled ‘Heroes of the Reformation,’ and some bound volumes of a trade journal. Above the chimneypiece hung two trout-rods, a landing-net, and an old gun. The grate was fireless. It was a room obviously not loved by its owner. Neither pleasure nor comfort was looked for in it. It was simply a place of escape from the attractions of quiet ease when business overflowed the proper office hours. Mr. Quinn rose from his desk when Hyacinth entered.

‘I am very glad to see you,’ he said; ‘I want to have a talk with you.’

Hyacinth waited while he arranged and rearranged some papers on the desk in front of him. Mr. Quinn, although he had specially sent for Hyacinth, seemed in no hurry to get to the subject of the interview. When he did speak, it was evident from his tone that the important topic was still postponed.

‘How did you get on this week?’

Hyacinth had nothing good to report. He took from his pocket the note-book in which he entered his orders, and went over it. It contained an attenuated list. Moreover, the harvest had been bad, and old debts very difficult to collect. Mr. Quinn listened, apparently not very attentively, and when the reading was over said:

‘What you report this week is simply a repetition of the story of the last six months. I did not expect it to be different. It makes the decision I have to make a little more inevitable, that is all. Mr. Conneally, we have been very good friends, and since you have been in my employment I have been satisfied with you in every way. Now I am unable to employ you any longer. I am giving up my business.’

Hyacinth made an effort to speak, but Mr. Quinn held up his hand and silenced him.

‘This week,’ he continued, ‘I received news which settled the matter for me. Jameson and Thorpe, the big drapers in Dublin, were my best customers for certain goods. Last Monday they wrote that they had an offer of blankets at a figure a long way below mine. I didn’t believe that articles equal in quality to mine could be produced at the price, and wrote a hint to that effect. I received—nothing could have been more courteous—a sample of the blankets offered. Well, I admit that it was at least equal to what I could supply in every way. I wrote again asking as a favour to be supplied with the name of the competing firm. I got the answer to-day. Mr. Thorpe wrote himself. The Robeen convent has undersold me.’

Hyacinth made another attempt to speak.

‘Let me finish,’ said Mr. Quinn. ‘I had foreseen, of course, that this was coming. I have no more capital to fall back upon. I do not mean to run into debt. There is nothing for me but to dismiss my employées and shut up.’

‘Yes,’ said Hyacinth. ‘And then——’

He knew he had no right to ask a question about the future, but the thought of Mrs. Quinn and her children as he had seen them in the dining-room almost forced him to inquire what was to happen to them. A spasm of extreme pain crossed Mr. Quinn’s face.

‘You are thinking of my wife. It will be hard—yes, very hard. She loved this place, her friends here, her garden, and all the quiet, peaceful life we have lived. Well, there is to be an end of it. But don’t look so desperate.’ He forced himself to smile as he spoke. ‘We shall not starve or go to the workhouse. I have a knowledge of woollen goods if I have nothing else, and I dare say I can get an appointment as foreman or traveller for some big drapery house. But I may not be reduced to that. There is a secretary wanted just now in the office of one of the Dublin charitable societies. I mean to apply for the post. Canon Beecher and our Bishop are both members of the committee, and I am sure will do their best for me. The salary is not princely—a hundred and twenty pounds a year, I think. But there, I ought not to be talking all this time about myself. I must try and do something for you.’

‘Never mind me,’ said Hyacinth; ‘I shall be all right. But I can’t bear to think of you and Mrs. Quinn. Poverty like that in Dublin! Have you thought what it means? A shabby little house in a crowded street, off at the back of somewhere; dirt and stuffiness and vulgarity all around you. She can’t be expected to stand it—or you either.’

‘My dear boy,’ said Mr. Quinn, ‘my wife and I have been trying all our lives to be Christians. Shall we receive good at the Lord’s hand and not evil also? However it may be with me, I know that she will not fail in the trial.’

His face lit up as he spoke, and the smile on it was no longer forced, but clear and brave. Hyacinth knew that he was once again in the presence of that mysterious power which enables men and women to meet and conquer loss and pain, against which every kind of misfortune beats in vain. His eyes filled with tears as he took Mr. Quinn’s hand and bade him good-night.

CHAPTER XIX

Hyacinth had three months’ work to do before he actually left Mr. Quinn’s employment. He knew that at the end of that time he would be left absolutely without income, and that it was necessary for him to look out for some other situation. He reckoned up the remains of his original capital, and found himself with little more than a hundred pounds to fall back upon. Yet he did nothing. From time to time he bestirred himself, pondered the newspaper advertisements of vacant situations, and mentally resolved to commence his search at once. Always some excuse offered itself to justify putting the unpleasant business off, and he allowed himself to slip back into the quiet routine of life as if no catastrophe threatened him. He was, indeed, far more troubled about the Quinns’ future than his own, and when, at the end of April, Canon Beecher returned from Dublin with the news that he had secured the secretaryship of the Church of Ireland Scriptural Schools Society for Mr. Quinn, Hyacinth felt that his mind was relieved of a great anxiety. That no such post had been discovered for him did not cost him a thought. In spite of his spasmodic efforts to goad himself into a condition of reasonable anxiety for his future, there remained half consciously present in his mind a conviction that somehow a way of getting sufficient food and clothes would offer itself in due time.

The conviction was justified by the event. It was on Saturday evening that the Canon returned with his good news, and on Sunday morning Hyacinth received a letter from Miss Goold.

‘You have no doubt heard,’ she wrote, ‘that we have got a new editor for the Croppy—Patrick O’Dwyer, Mary’s brother. Of course, you remember Mary and her unpoetical hysterics the morning after the Rotunda meeting. The new editor is a splendid man. He has been on the staff of a New York paper for the last five years, and thoroughly understands the whole business. But that’s not the best of him. He hates England worse than I do. I’m only a child beside him, bursting out into fits of temper now and then, and cooling off again. He hates steadily, quietly, and intensely. But even that is not all that is to be said. He has got brains—brains enough, my dear Hyacinth, to make fools of you and me every day and all day long. He has devised a new policy for Ireland. The plan is simplicity itself, like all really great plans, and it must succeed. I won’t go into it now, because I want you to come up to Dublin and see O’Dwyer. He tells me that he needs somebody else besides himself on the staff of the Croppy, which, by the way, is to be enlarged and improved. He wants a man who can write a column a week in Irish, as well as an article now and then in good strong plain English. I suggested your name to him, and showed him some of the articles you had written. He was greatly pleased with the one about O’Dowd’s cheap patriotism, and liked one or two of the others. He just asked one question about you: “Does Mr. Conneally hate England and the Empire, and everything English, from the Parliament to the police barrack? It is this hatred which must animate the work.” I said I thought you did. I told him how you had volunteered to fight for the Boers, and about the day you nearly killed that blackguard Shea. He seemed to think that was good enough, and asked me to write to you on the subject. We can’t offer you a big salary. The editor himself is only to get a hundred pounds a year for the present, and I am guaranteeing another hundred for you. I am confident that I shan’t have to pay it for more than six months. The paper is sure to go as it never went before, and in a few years we shall be able to treble O’Dwyer’s salary and double yours. Nothing like such a chance has ever offered itself in Irish history before. Everything goes to show that this is our opportunity. England is weaker than she has been for centuries, is clinging desperately to the last tatters of her old prestige. She hasn’t a single statesman capable of thinking or acting vigorously. Her Parliament is the laughingstock of Europe. Her Irish policy may be summed up in four words—intrigue with the Vatican. In Ireland the power of the faithful garrison is gone. The Protestants in the North are sick of being fooled by one English party after another. The landlords, or what’s left of them, are beginning to discover that they have been bought and sold. The Bishops, England’s last line of defence, are overreaching themselves, and we are within measurable distance of the day when the Church will be put into her proper place. There is not so much as a shoneen publican in a country town left who believes in the ranting of O’Rourke and his litter of blind whelps. Ireland is simply crying out for light and leading, and the Croppy is going to give both. You always wanted to serve Ireland. Now I am offering you the chance. I don’t say you ought to thank me, though you will thank me to the day of your death. I don’t say that you have an opportunity of becoming a great man. I know you, and I know a better way of making sure of you than that. I say to you, Hyacinth Conneally, that we want you—just you and nobody else. Ireland wants you.’

The letter, especially the last part of it, was sufficiently ridiculous to have moved Hyacinth to a smile. But it did no such thing. On the contrary, its rhetoric excited and touched him. The flattery of the final sentences elated him. The absurdity of the idea that Ireland needed him, a fifth-rate office clerk, an out-of-work commercial traveller who had failed to sell blankets and flannels, did not strike him at all. The figure of Augusta Goold rose to his mind. She flashed before him, an Apocalyptic angel, splended and terrible, trumpet-calling him to the last great fight. He forgot in an instant the Quinns and their trouble. The years of quietness in Ballymoy, the daily intercourse with gentle people, the atmosphere of the religion in which he had lived, fell away from him suddenly.

He sat absorbed in an ecstasy of joyful excitement until the jangling of Canon Beecher’s church bell recalled him to common life again. It speaks for the strength of the habits he had formed in Ballymoy that he rose without hesitation and went to take his part in the morning service.

He sat down as usual beside Marion Beecher and her harmonium. He listened to her playing until her father entered. He found himself gazing at her when she stood up for the opening words of the service. He felt himself strangely affected by the gentleness of her face and the slender beauty of her form. When she knelt down he could not take his eyes off her. There came over him an inexplicable softening, a relaxation of the tense excitement of the morning. He thought of her kneeling there in the faded shabby church Sunday after Sunday for years and years, when he was working at hot pressure far away. He knew just how her eyes would look calmly, trustfully up to the God she spoke to; how her soul would grow in gentleness; how love would be the very atmosphere around her. And all the while he would struggle and fight, with no inspiration except a bitter hate. Suddenly there came on him a feeling that he could not leave her. The very thought of separation was a fierce pain. A desire of her seized on him like uncontrollable physical hunger. Wherever he might be, whatever life might have in store for him, he knew that his heart would go back to her restlessly, and remain unsatisfied without her. He understood that he loved her. Canon Beecher’s voice came to him as if from an immense distance:

‘O God, make speed to save us.’

Then he heard very clearly Marion’s sweet voice replying:

‘O Lord, make haste to help us.’

There was a faint shuffling, and the congregation rose to their feet. His eyes were still on Marion, and now his whole body quivered with the force of his newly-found love. She half turned and looked at him. For one instant their eyes met, and he saw in hers a flash of recognition, then a strange look of fear, and she turned away from him, flushed and trembling. He saw that she had read his heart and knew his love.

‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,’ read the Canon heavily.

Hyacinth’s heart swelled in him. His whole being seemed to throb with exultation, and he responded in a voice he could not recognise for his.

‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’

Marion stood silent. Her head was bowed down, and her hands clasped tight together.

Of the remainder of the morning’s service Hyacinth could never afterwards remember anything. No doubt Canon Beecher read the Psalms and lessons and prayers; no doubt he preached. Probably, also, hymns were sung, and Marion played them, but he could not imagine how. It seemed quite impossible that she could have touched the keys with her fingers, or that she could have uttered any sound; yet no one had remarked the absence of hymns or even noticed any peculiarity in their performance. Not till after the service was over did he regain full consciousness of himself and his surroundings; then he became exceedingly alert. He watched the Canon disappear into the vestry, heard the congregation trample down the aisle, listened to Marion playing a final voluntary. It seemed to him as he sat there waiting for her to stop that she played much longer than usual. He could hear Mrs. Beecher and Mr. Quinn talking in the porch, and every moment he expected the Canon to appear. At last the music ceased, and the lid of the harmonium was closed and locked. He stepped forward and took Marion’s hands in his.

‘Marion,’ he said, ‘I love you. It was only this morning that I found it out, but I know—oh, I know—that I love you far, far more than I can tell you.’

The hand which lay in his grew cold, and the girl’s head was bowed so that he could not see her face. He felt her tremble.

‘Marion, Marion, I love you, love you, love you!’

Then very slowly she raised her head and looked at him. He stooped to kiss her lips, and felt her face flush and glow when he touched it. Then she drew her hands from his and fled down the church to her mother.

Hyacinth stood agape with wonder at the words which he had spoken. The knowledge of his love had come on him like a sudden gust, and he only half realized what he had done. He walked back to his lodgings, going over and over the amazing words, recalling with flushed astonishment the kiss. Then a chilling doubt beset him suddenly. Did Marion know how poor he was? Never in his life had the fear of poverty or the desire of gain determined Hyacinth’s plans. He knew very well that no such considerations would have in any way affected his conduct towards Marion. Once he realized that he loved her, the confession of his love was quite inevitable. Yet he felt vaguely that he might be judged blameworthy. He had read a few novels, and he knew that even the writers whose chief business it is to glorify the passion of love do not dare to represent it as independent of money. He knew, too, that many penniless heroes won admiration—he did not in the least understand why they should—by silently deserting affectionate women. He knew that kisses were immoral except for those who possessed a modest competence. These authorized ethics of marriage engagements were wholly incomprehensible to him, and it in no way disquieted his conscience that he had bound Marion to him with his kiss; yet he felt that she had a right to know what income he hoped to earn, and what kind of home he would have to offer her. A hundred pounds a year might be deemed insufficient, and he knew that, not being either a raven or a lily, he could not count on finding food and clothes ready when he wanted them.

The daughters of the Irish Church clergy, even of the dignitaries, are not brought up in luxury. Still, they are most of them accustomed to a daily supply of food—plain, perhaps, but sufficient—and will look for as much in the homes of their husbands. A girl like Marion Beecher does not expect to secure a position which will enable her to send her own clothes to a laundress or hire a cook who can make pastry; but it is not fair to ask her to wash the family’s blankets or to boil potatoes for a pig. Probably her friends would think her lucky in marrying a curate or a dispensary doctor with one hundred and fifty pounds a year, and the prospect of one-third as much again after a while. But Hyacinth remembered that he was poorer than any curate. He determined to put the matter plainly before Marion without delay.

The Rectory door was opened for him by Elsie Beecher, and, in spite of her wondering protests, Hyacinth walked into the dining-room and asked that Marion should be sent to him. The room was empty, as he expected. He stood and waited for her, deriving faint comfort and courage from the threadbare carpet, patched tablecloth, and poor crazy chairs. They were strange properties for a scene with possibilities of deep romance in it, but they made his confession of poverty easier.

Marion entered at last and stood beside him. He neither took her hand nor looked at her.

‘When I told you to-day that I loved you,’ he said, ‘I ought to have told you that I am very poor.’

‘I know it,’ she said.

‘But I am poorer even than you know. I am not in Mr. Quinn’s employment any more. I have no settled income, and only a prospect of earning a very small one.’ He paused. ‘I shall have to go away from Ballymoy. I must live in Dublin. I do not think it is fair to ask you to marry me. I shall have no more to live upon than——’

She moved a step nearer to him and laid her hand on his arm.

‘Look at me,’ she said.

He raised his eyes to her face, and saw again there, as he had seen in church, the wonderful shining of love, which is stronger than all things and holds poverty and hardship cheap.

‘Keep looking at me still,’ she said. ‘Now tell me: Do you really think it matters that you are poor? Do you think I care whether you have much or little? Tell me.’

He could not answer her, although he knew that there was only one answer to her question.

‘Do you think that I love money? Do you doubt that I love you?’

Her voice sunk almost to a whisper as she spoke, and her eyes fell from looking into his. Just as when he kissed her in the church, she flushed suddenly, but this time she did not try to escape from him. Instead she clung to his arm, and hid her face against his shoulder. He put his arms round her and held her close.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I was a fool to come here thinking that my being poor would matter. I might have known. Indeed, I think I did know even before I spoke to you.’

She had no answer except a long soft laugh, which was half smothered in his arms.