Hyacinth

CHAPTER XX

On Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons Canon Beecher enjoyed the privilege of a fire in his study. He was supposed to be engaged at these seasons in the preparation of his sermons, a serious and exacting work which demanded solitude and profound quiet. In earlier years he really had prepared his sermons painfully, but long practice brings to the preacher a certain fatal facility. Old ideas are not improved by being clothed in new phrases, and of new ideas—a new idea will occasionally obtrude itself even on the Christian preacher—the Canon was exceedingly mistrustful. The study was an unexciting and comparatively comfortable room. The firelight on winter afternoons played pleasantly on the dim gold backs of the works of St. Augustine, a fine folio edition bequeathed to Mrs. Beecher by a scholarly uncle, which reposed undisturbed along a lower shelf. Adventurous rays occasionally explored a faded print of the Good Shepherd which hung above the books, and gleamed upon the handle of the safe where the parish registers and church plate were stored. The quiet and the process of digesting his mid-day dinner frequently tempted the Canon to indulge in a series of pleasant naps on Sunday afternoons.

When Hyacinth tapped at the study door and entered, the room was almost dark, and the sermon preparation, if proceeding at all, can have got no further than the preliminary concatenation of ideas. The Canon, however, was aggressively, perhaps suspiciously, wide awake.

‘Who is that?’ he asked. ‘Oh, Conneally, it is you. I am very glad to see you. Curiously enough, I thought of going down to call on you this afternoon. I wanted to have a talk with you. I dare say you have come up to consult me.’

Hyacinth was astonished. How could anyone have guessed what he came about? Had Marion told her father already?

‘It is a sad business,’ the Canon went on—’ very distressing and perplexing indeed. But so far as you personally are concerned, Conneally, I cannot regard it as an unmixed misfortune. You were meant for something better, if I may say so, than selling blankets. Now, I have a plan for your future, which I talked over last week with an old friend of yours. Now that something has been settled about the Quinns, we must all give our minds to your affairs.’

Then Hyacinth understood that Canon Beecher expected to be consulted about his future plans, and even had some scheme of his own in mind.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I shall be very glad of your help and advice, although I think I have decided about what I am going to do. It was not on that subject I came to speak to you to-day, but on another, more important, I think, for you and for me and for Marion.’

‘For Marion?’

‘I ought to tell you at once that I love your daughter Marion, and I am sure that she loves me. I want to marry her.’

‘My dear boy! I had not the slightest idea of this. It is one of the most extraordinary things—or perhaps extraordinary is not exactly the proper word—one of the most surprising things I——’

The Canon stopped abruptly and sat stroking his chin with his forefinger in the effort to adjust his mind to the new situation presented to it. It was characteristic of the man that the thought of Hyacinth’s poverty was not the first which presented itself. Indeed, Canon Beecher was one of those unreasonable Christians who are actually convinced of the truth of certain paradoxical sayings in the Gospel about wealth and poverty. He believed that there were things of more importance in life than the possession of money. Fortunately, such Christians are rare, for their absurd creed forms a standing menace to the existence of Church and sect alike. Fortunately also, ecclesiastical authorities have sufficient wisdom to keep these eccentrics in the background, confining them as far as possible to remote and obscure places. If ever a few of them escape into the open and find means of expressing themselves, the whole machinery of modern religion will become dislocated, and the Church will very likely relapse into the barbarity of the Apostolic age.

‘I believe, Conneally,’ said the Canon at last, ‘that you are a good man. I do not merely mean that you are moral and upright, but that you sincerely desire to follow in the footsteps of the Master.’

He looked as if he wanted some kind of answer, at least a confirmation of his belief. Fresh from his interview with Marion, and having the Canon’s eyes upon him, it did not seem impossible to Hyacinth to answer yes. Even the thought of the work he was to engage in with Miss Goold and Patrick O’Dwyer seemed to offer no ground for hesitation. Was he not enlisting with them to take part in the great battle? He had never ceased to believe his father’s words: ‘And the battlefield is Ireland—our dear Ireland which we love!’ He felt for the moment that he was altogether prepared to make the confession of faith the Canon required.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am on His side.’

‘And you love Marion? Are you quite sure of that? Are you certain that this is not a passing fancy?’

This time Hyacinth had no doubt whatever about his answer.

‘I am as certain of my love as I am of anything in the world.’

‘I am glad. I am very glad that this has happened—for your sake, because I have always liked you; also for Marion’s sake. I shall see you happy because you love one another, and because you both love the Lord. I ask no more than those two things. But I must go and tell my wife at once. She will be glad, too.’

He rose and went to the door. With his hand stretched out to open it he stopped, struck by a sudden thought.

‘By the way, I ought to ask you—if you mean to be married—have you any—I mean it is necessary—I hope you won’t think I am laying undue stress upon such matters, but I really—I mean we really ought to consider what you are to live upon.’

It was the prospect of imparting the news to his wife which forced this speech from him. Mrs. Beecher was, indeed, the least worldly of women. Did she not marry the Canon, then a mere curate, on the slenderest income, and bear him successively five babies in defiance of common prudence? But it had fallen to her lot to order the affairs of the household, and she had learnt that the people who give you bread and beef demand, after an interval, more or less money in exchange. It was likely that, after her first rapture had subsided, she would make some inquiry about Hyacinth’s income and prospects. The Canon felt he ought to be prepared.

‘Of course, I have lost my position with Mr. Quinn. You know that. But I have an offer of work which I hope will lead on to something better, and will enable me in a short time to earn enough money to marry on. You know—or perhaps you don’t, for I am afraid I never told you‘—he remembered that he had carefully concealed his connection with the Croppy from his friends at Ballymoy, and paused—‘I have done some little writing. Oh, nothing very much—not a book, or anything like that, only a few articles for the press. Well, a friend of mine has got me the offer of a post in connection with a weekly paper. It is not a very great thing in itself just now, but it may improve, and there is always the prospect of picking up other work of the same kind.’

The Canon, who had never seen even an abstract of one of his own sermons in print, had a proper reverence for the men who guide the world’s thought through the press.

‘That is very good, Conneally—very satisfactory indeed. I always knew you had brains. But why did you never tell me what you were doing? I should have been deeply interested in anything you wrote.’

Hyacinth’s conscience smote him.

‘The truth is, that I was sure you wouldn’t approve of the paper I wrote for. It is the Croppy, the organ of the extreme left wing of the Nationalist party. It is Miss Goold—Augusta Goold—who now offers me work on that paper. She says—— But you had better read what she says for yourself. Then you will know the worst of it.’

He took the letter from his pocket. The Canon lit a candle and read it through slowly and attentively. When he had finished he laid it upon the table and sat down. Hyacinth waited in extreme anxiety for what was to come.

‘I do not like the cause you mean to work for or the people you call your friends. I would rather see my daughter’s husband doing almost anything else in the world. I would be happier if you proposed to break stones upon the roadside. You know what my political opinions are. I regard the Croppy as a disloyal and seditious paper, bent upon fostering a dangerous spirit.’

Hyacinth listened patiently. He had steeled himself against the hearing of some such words, and was determined not to be moved to argument or self-defence except as a last resort.

‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you will at least give me credit for honestly acting in accordance with my convictions.’

‘I am sure—quite sure—that you are honest, and believe that your cause is the right one. I recognise, too, though this is a very difficult thing to do, that you have every right to form and hold your own political opinions. It seems to me that they are very wrong and very mischievous, but it is quite possible that I am mistaken and prejudiced. In any case, I am not called upon to refuse you my affection or to separate you from my daughter because we differ about politics.’

Hyacinth breathed a great sigh of relief. He looked at the Canon in wonder and admiration. It had been beyond hope that a man grown gray in a narrow faith, a faith in which for centuries religion and politics had been inextricably blended, could have risen in one clear flight above the mire of prejudice. It seemed, even after he had spoken, impossible that in Ireland, where political opponents believe each other to be thieves and murderers, there could be found even one man, and he from the least emancipated class of all, who could understand and practise tolerance.

‘I say,’ went on the Canon, speaking very slowly, and with evident difficulty, ‘that I have no right to put you away from me because of your political opinions. But there is something here ‘—he touched Miss Goold’s letter—’ from which I must by all means try to save you. Will you let me speak to you, not as Marion’s father, not even as your friend, but as Christ’s ambassador set here to watch for your soul? But I need not excuse myself for what I am about to say. You will at least listen to me patiently.’

He took up Miss Goold’s letter and searched through it for a short time; then he read aloud:

‘“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? For it is this hatred which must animate our work. I said I thought you did.” Now consider what those words mean. You are to dedicate your powers, the talents God has given you, to preaching a gospel of hate. This is not a question of politics. I am ready to believe that in the contest of which our unhappy country is the battle-ground a man may be either on your side or mine, and yet be a follower of Christ. It is impossible to think that anyone can deliberately, with his eyes open, accept hatred for the inspiration of his life and still be true to Him.’

Hyacinth was greatly moved by the solemnity with which the Canon spoke. There was that in him which witnessed to the truth of what he heard. Yet he refused to be convinced. When he spoke it was clear that he was not addressing his companion, for his eyes were fixed upon the picture of the Good Shepherd, faintly illuminated by the candle light. He desired to order his own thought on the dilemma, to justify, if he could, his own position to himself. ‘It is true that the Gospel of Christ is a Gospel of love. Yet there are circumstances in which it is wrong to follow it. Is it possible to rouse our people out of their sordid apathy, to save Ireland for a place among the nations, except by preaching a mighty indignation against the tyranny which has crushed us to the dust?’

He felt that Canon Beecher’s eyes never left him for a moment while he spoke. He looked up, and saw in them an intense pleading. There stole over him a desire to yield, to submit himself to this appealing tenderness. He defended himself desperately against his weakness.

‘I am not choosing the pleasanter way. It would be easier for me to give up the fight for Ireland, to desert the beaten side, to forget the lost cause.’ He turned to Canon Beecher, speaking almost fiercely: ‘Do you think it is a small thing for me to surrender your friendship, and perhaps—perhaps to lose Marion? Is there not some of the nobility of sacrifice in refusing to listen to you?’

‘I cannot argue with you. No doubt you are cleverer than I am. But I know this—God is love, and only he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.’

‘But I do love: I love Ireland.’

‘Ah yes; but He says, “Love your enemies.”’

‘Then,’ said Hyacinth, ‘I will not have Him for my God.’

Hardly had he spoken than he started and grew suddenly cold. It was no doubt some trick of memory, but he believed that he heard very faintly from far off a remembered voice:

‘Will you be sure to know the good side from the bad, the Captain from the enemy.’

They were the last words his father had said to him. They had passed unregarded when they were spoken, but lingered unthought of in some recess of his memory. Now they came on him full of meaning, insistent for an answer.

‘You have chosen,’ said the Canon.

He had chosen. Could he be sure that he had chosen right, that he knew the good side from the bad?

‘You have chosen, and I have no more to say. Only, before it becomes impossible for you and me to kneel together, I ask you to let me pray with you once more. You can do this because you still believe He hears us, although you have decided to walk no more with Him.’

They knelt together, and Hyacinth, numbly indifferent, felt his hand grasped and held.

‘O Christ,’ said Canon Beecher, ‘this child of Thine has chosen to live by hatred rather than by love. Do Thou therefore remove love from him, lest it prove a hindrance to him on the way on which he goes. Let the memory of the cross be blotted out from his mind, so that he may do successfully that which he desires.’

Hyacinth wrenched his hand free from the grasp which held it, and flung himself forward across the table at which they knelt. Except for his sobs and his choking efforts to subdue them, there was silence in the room. Canon Beecher rose from his knees and stood watching him, his lips moving with unspoken supplication. At last Hyacinth also rose and stood, calm suddenly.

‘You have conquered me,’ he said.

‘My son, my son, this is joy indeed! All along I knew He could not fail you. But I have not conquered you. The Lord Jesus has saved you.’

‘I do not know,’ said Hyacinth slowly, ‘whether I have been saved or lost. I am not sure even now that I know the good side from the bad. But I do know that I cannot live without the hope of being loved by Him. Whether it is the better part to which I resign myself I cannot tell. No doubt He knows. As for me, if I have been forced to make a great betrayal, if I am to live hereafter very basely—and I think I am—at least I have not cut myself off from the opportunity of loving Him.’

CHAPTER XXI

Canon Beecher took no notice of Hyacinth’s last speech. He had returned with amazing swiftness and ease from the region of high emotion to the commonplace. Excursions to the shining peaks of mystical experience are for most men so rare that the glory leaves them with dazzled eyes, and they walk stumblingly for a while along the dull roads of the world. But Canon Beecher, in the course of his pleading with Hyacinth, had been only in places very well known to him. The presence chamber of the King was to him also the room of a familiar friend. It was no breathless descent from the green hill of the cross to the thoroughfare of common life.

‘Now, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘we really must go and talk to my wife and Marion. Besides, I must tell you the plan I have made for you—the plan I was just going to speak about when you put it out of my head with the news of your love-making.’

For Hyacinth a great effort was necessary before he could get back to his normal state. His hands were trembling violently. His forehead and hair were damp with sweat. His whole body was intensely cold. His mind was confused, and he listened to what was said to him with only the vaguest apprehension of its meaning. The Canon laid a firm hand upon his arm, and led him away from the study. In the passage he stopped, and asked Hyacinth to go back and blow out the candle which still burned on the study table.

‘And just put some turf on the fire,’ he added; ‘I don’t want it to go out.’

The pause enabled Hyacinth to regain his self-command, and the performance of the perfectly ordinary acts required of him helped to bring him back again to common life.

When they entered the drawing-room it was evident that Mrs. Beecher had already heard the news, and was, in fact, discussing the matter eagerly with Marion. She sprang up, and hastened across the room to meet them.

‘I am so glad,’ she said—‘so delighted! I am sure you and Marion will be happy together.’

She took Hyacinth’s hands in hers, and held them while she spoke, then drew nearer to him and looked up in his face expectantly. A fearful suspicion seized him that on an occasion of the kind she might consider it right to kiss him. It was with the greatest difficulty that he suppressed a wholly unreasonable impulse to laugh aloud. Apparently the need of such affectionate stimulant was strong in Mrs. Beecher. When Hyacinth hung back, she left him for her husband, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him heartily on both cheeks.

‘Isn’t it fortunate,’ she said, ‘that you saw Dr. Henry last week while you were in Dublin? You little thought how important that talk with him was going to turn out—I mean, of course, important for us. It always was important for Mr.—I mean for Hyacinth.’

The Canon seemed a little embarrassed. He cleared his throat somewhat unnecessarily, and then said:

‘I haven’t mentioned that matter yet.’

‘Not mentioned Dr. Henry’s offer! Then, what have you been talking about all this time?’

It did not seem necessary to tell Mrs. Beecher all that had been said, or to repeat the scene in the study for her benefit. The Canon cleared his throat again.

‘I was in Dublin last week attending a meeting of the Scriptural Schools Society, and I met Dr. Henry. We were talking about the Quinns. I told you that Mr. Quinn is to be the new secretary of the society, didn’t I? Dr. Henry knows Mr. Quinn slightly, and was greatly interested in him. Your name naturally was mentioned. Dr. Henry seems to have taken a warm interest in you when you were in college, and to have a very high opinion of your abilities. He did not know what had become of you, and was very pleased to hear that you were a friend of ours.’

Hyacinth knew at once what was coming—knew what Canon Beecher’s plan for his future was, and why he was pleased with it; understood how Mrs. Beecher came to describe this conversation with Dr. Henry as fortunate. He waited for the rest of the recital, vaguely surprised at his own want of feeling.

‘I told him,’ the Canon went on, eying Hyacinth doubtfully, ‘that you had lost your employment here. I hope you don’t object to my having mentioned that. I am sure you wouldn’t if you had heard how sympathetically he spoke of you. He assured me that he was most anxious to help you in any way in his power. He just asked one question about you.’ Hyacinth started. Where had he heard those identical words before? Oh yes, they were in Miss Goold’s letter. Patrick O’Dwyer also had just asked one question about him. He smiled faintly as the Canon went on: ‘“Is he fit, spiritually fit, to be ordained? For it is the desire to serve God which must animate our work.” I said I thought you were. I told him how you sang in our choir here, and how fond you seemed of our quiet life, and what a good fellow you are. You see, I did not know then that I was praising the man who is to be my son-in-law. He asked me to remind you of a promise he had once made, and to say that he was ready to fufil it. I understood him to mean that he would recommend you to any Bishop you like for ordination.’

Hyacinth remained silent. He felt that in surrendering his work for the Croppy he surrendered also his right to make any choice. He was ready to be shepherded into any position, like a sheep into a pen. And he had no particular wish to resist. He saw a simple satisfaction in Mrs. Beecher’s face and a beautiful joy in Marion’s eyes. It was impossible for him to disappoint them. He smiled a response to Mrs. Beecher’s kindly triumph.

‘Isn’t that splendid! Now you and Marion will be able to be married quite soon, and I do dislike long engagements. Of course, you will be very poor at first, but no poorer than we were. And Marion is not afraid of being poor—are you, dear?’

‘That is just what I have been saying to him,’ said Marion; ‘isn’t it, Hyacinth? Of course I am not afraid. I have always said that if I ever married I should like to marry a clergyman, and if one does that one is sure to be poor.’

Evidently there was no doubt in either of their minds that Hyacinth would accept Dr. Henry’s offer. Nor had he any doubt himself. The thing seemed too inevitable to be anything but right. Only on Canon Beecher’s face there lingered a shadow of uncertainty. Hyacinth saw it, and relieved his mind at once.

‘I shall write to Dr. Henry to-night and thank him. I shall ask him to try and get me a curacy as soon as possible.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Canon.

‘I think,’ added Hyacinth, ‘that I should prefer getting work in England.’

‘Oh, why,’ said Mrs. Beecher. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to stay in Ireland! and then we might have Marion somewhere within reach.’

‘My dear,’ said the Canon, ‘we must let Hyacinth decide for himself. I am sure he knows what is wisest for him to do.’

Hyacinth was not at all sure that he knew what was wisest, and he was quite certain that he had not decided for himself in any matter of the slightest importance. He had suggested an English curacy in the vague hope that it might be easier there to forget his hopes and dreams for Ireland. It seemed to him, too, that a voluntary exile, of which he could not think without pain, might be a kind of atonement for the betrayal of his old enthusiasm.

The Canon followed him to the door when he left.

‘My dear boy’—there was a break in his voice as he spoke—’ my dear boy, you have made me very happy. I am sure that you will not enter upon the work of the ministry from any unworthy motive. The call will become clearer to you by degrees. I mean the inward call. The outward call, the leading of circumstance, has already made abundantly plain the way you ought to walk in. The other will come—the voice which brings assurance and peace when it speaks.’

Hyacinth looked at him wistfully. There seemed very little possibility of anything like assurance for him, and only such peace as might be gained by smothering the cries with which his heart assailed him. The Canon held his hand and wrung it.

‘I can understand why you want to go to England. Your political opinions will interfere very little with your work there. Here, of course, it would be different. Yes, your choice is certainly wise, for nothing must be allowed to hinder your work. “Laying aside every weight,” you remember, “let us run the race.” Yes, I understand.’

It was perfectly clear to Hyacinth that the Canon did not understand in the least. It was not likely that anyone ever would understand.

Gradually his despondency gave way before the crowding in of thoughts of satisfaction. He was to have Marion, to live with her, to love her, and be loved by her as long as they both lived. He saw life stretching out before him, a sunlit, pleasant journey in Marion’s company. It did not seem to him that any trouble could be really bad, any disappointment intolerable, any toil oppressive with her love for an atmosphere round him. He believed, too, that the work he was undertaking was a good work, perhaps the highest and noblest kind of work there is to be done in the world. From this conviction also came a glow of happiness. Yet there kept recurring chill shudderings of self-reproach. Something within him kept whispering that he had bartered his soul for happiness.

‘I have chosen the easier and therefore the baser way,’ he said. ‘I have shrunk from toil and pain. I have refused to make the sacrifice demanded of me.’

He went back again to the story of his father’s vision. For a moment it seemed quite clear that he had deliberately refused the call to the great fight, that he had judged himself unworthy, being cowardly and selfish in his heart. Then he remembered that the Captain of whom his father had told him was no one else but Christ, the same Christ of whom Canon Beecher spoke, the Good Shepherd whose love he had discovered to be the greatest need of all.

‘I must have Him,’ he said—‘I must have Him—and Marion.’

Again with the renewed decision came a glow of happiness and a sense of rest, until there rose, as if to smite him, the thought of Ireland—of Ireland, poor, derided of strangers, deserted by her sons, roped in as a prize-ring where selfish men struggle ignobly for sordid gains. The children of the land fled from it sick with despair. Its deserted houses were full of all doleful things. Cormorants and the daughters of the owl lodged in the lintels of them.

Sullen desolation was on the threshold, while satyrs cried to their fellows across tracts of brown rush-grown land. Aliens came to hiss and passed by wagging their hands. Over all was the monotony of the gray sky, descending and still descending with clouds that came upon the land, mistily folding it in close embraces of death. Voices sounded far off and unreal through the gloom. The final convulsive struggles of the nation’s life grew feebler and fewer. Of all causes Ireland’s seemed the most hopelessly lost. Was he, too, going to forsake her? He felt that in spite of all the good promised him there would always hang over his life a gloom that even Marion’s love would not disperse, the heavy shadow of Ireland’s Calvary. For Marion there would be no such darkness, nor would Marion understand it. But surely Christ understood. Words of His crowded to the memory. ‘When He beheld the city He wept over it, saying, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem!’ Most certainly He understood this, as He understood all human emotion. He, too, had yearned over a nation’s fall, had felt the heartbreak of the patriot.

‘I have chosen Him,’ he said at last. ‘Once having caught a glimpse of Him, I could not do without Him. He understands it all, and He has given me Marion.’

CHAPTER XXII

It was a brilliant July day, and the convent at Robeen was decked for a festival. The occasion was a very great one. Cloth of gold hung in the chapel, the entrance-hall was splendid with flowers, and the whole white front of the buildings had put on signs of holiday. Indeed, this festival was unique, the very greatest day in the history of the sisterhood. Easter, Christmas, and the saints’ days recurred annually in their proper order, and the emotions they brought with them were no doubt familiar to holy ladies whose business it was to live in close touch with the other world. But on this day the great of the earth, beings much more unapproachable, as a rule, than the saints, were to visit the convent. Honour was to be paid to ladies whose magnificence was guaranteed by worldly titles; to the Proconsuls of the far-off Imperial power, holders of the purse-strings of the richest nation upon earth; to Judges accustomed to sit in splendid robes and awful head-dresses, pronouncing the doom of malefactors; to a member of the Cabinet, a very mighty man, though untitled; and quite possibly—a glittering hope—to the Lord Lieutenant himself.

It was therefore no wonder that the nuns had decked their convent with all possible splendour. On each side of the iron gateway was a flag-post. From the top of one fluttered the green banner of Ireland, with its gold harp and a great crown over it. From the other hung the Union Jack, emblem of that marriage of nationalities for whose consummation eight centuries have not sufficed. It was hoisted upside down—not with intentional disrespect, but because Sister Gertrude, who superintended this part of the decorations, had long ago renounced the world, and did not remember that the tangled crosses had a top or a bottom to them. Between the posts hung a festoon of signalling flags, long pointed strips of bunting with red balls or blue on them. The central streamer just tipped as it fluttered the top of the iron cross which marked the religious nature of the gateway. The straight gravel walk inside was covered with red baize, and on each side of it were planted tapering poles, round which crimson and white muslin circled in alternate stripes, giving them the appearance of huge old-fashioned sugar-sticks. These added to the gaiety of the scene, though it cannot be supposed that they were of any actual use. The most bewildered visitor was hardly likely to stray off the red baize or miss his way to the door in front of him. Within the great entrance-hall were palms and flowering shrubs in pots or tubs. The mosaic flooring, imported from Italy, and a source of pride to all the Sisters, shone with much washing and polishing. The Madonna with the blue eyes and the golden crown, before which even Bishops crossed themselves, was less in evidence than usual, for the expected guests were mostly heretics. She stood retired behind the flower-pots, and veiled her benignity with the leaves of palms.

Right and left of the hall stretched corridors, whose shining parquet invited the curious to explore the working-rooms and eating-rooms which lay beyond. The door of the chapel stood open, and offered a vision of simpering angels crowding the canvas of the altar-piece, a justly-admired specimen of German religious art. Before it, dimly seen, two nuns knelt, types of conventual piety, absorbed in spiritual contemplation amid the tumult of the world’s invasion of their sanctuary. Another door led to the garden. Here a fountain played into a great stone basin, and neat gravel walks intersected each other at sharp angles among flower-beds. The grass which lay around the maze of paths was sacred as a rule, even from the list slippers of the nuns, but to-day booths stood on it like stalls at a charity bazaar, hung with tweeds, blankets, and stockings. A tall Calvary lowered incongruously over one. An inferior Madonna, deposed from her old station in the entrance-hall, presided in a weather-beaten blue robe over another.

Beyond the garden, blocked off from it by a white wall, lay the factory itself, the magnet which was drawing the great of the earth to the nunnery. Here were the workers, all of them bright young women, smiling pleasantly and well washed for the occasion. They were dressed in neat violet petticoats and white blouses, with shawls thrown back from their heads, a glorified presentment of the Mayo woman’s working dress. Here and there, a touch of realism creditable to the Reverend Mother’s talent for stage management, one sat in bare feet—not, of course, dust or mud stained, as bare feet are apt to be in Connaught, but clean. The careful observer of detail might have been led to suppose that the Sisters improved upon the practice of the Holy Father himself, and daily washed the feet of the poor.

Everywhere fresh-complexioned, gentle-faced nuns flitted silently about. The brass crosses pendent over their breasts relieved with a single glitter the sombre folds of their robes. Snowy coifs, which had cost the industrial schoolgirls of a sister house hours of labour and many tears, shone, glazed and unwrinkled, round their heads. Even the youngest of them had acquired the difficult art of walking gracefully with her hands folded in front of her.

At about two o’clock the visitors began to arrive, although the train from Dublin which was to bring the very elect was not due for another half-hour. Lady Geoghegan, grown pleasantly stout and cheerfully benignant, came by a local train, and rejoiced the eyes of beholders with a dress made of one of the convent tweeds. Sir Gerald followed her, awkward and unwilling. He had been dragged with difficulty from his books and the society of his children, and was doubtful whether a cigar in a nunnery garden might not be counted sacrilege. With them was a wonderful person—an English priest: it was thus he described himself—whom Lady Geoghegan had met in Yorkshire. His charming manners and good Church principles had won her favour and earned him the holiday he was enjoying at Clogher House. He was arrayed in a pair of gray trousers, a white shirt, and a blazer with the arms of Brazenose College embroidered on the pocket, his sacerdotal character being marked only by his collar. He leaped gaily from the car which brought them from the station, and, as he assisted his hostess to alight, amazed the little crowd around the gate by chaffing the driver in an entirely unknown tongue. The good man had an ear for music, and plumed himself on his ability to pick up any dialect he heard—Scotch, Yorkshire, or Irish brogue. The driver was bewildered, but smiled pleasantly. He realized that the gentleman was a foreigner, and since the meaning of his speech was not clear, it was quite likely that he might be hazy about the value of money and the rates of car hire.

The Duchess of Drummin came in her landau. Like Lady Geoghegan, she marked the national and industrial nature of the occasion in her attire. At much personal inconvenience, for the day was warm, she wore a long cloak of rich brown tweed, adorned with rows of large leather-covered buttons. Lady Josephine Maguire fluttered after her. She had bidden her maid disguise a dress, neither Irish nor homespun, with as much Carrickmacross lace as could be attached to it. Lord Eustace, who represented his father, appeared in all the glory of a silk hat and a frock-coat. He eyed Sir Gerald’s baggy trousers and shabby wideawake with contempt, and turned away his eyes from beholding the vanity of obviously bad form when he came face to face with the English priest in his blazer.

A smiling nun took charge of each party as it arrived. Lady Geoghegan plied hers with questions, and received a series of quite uninforming answers. Her husband followed her, bent principally upon escaping from the precincts if he could. Already he was bored, and he knew that speeches from great men were in store for him if he were forced to linger. The Duchess of Drummin eyed each object presented to her notice gravely through long-handled glasses, but gave her attendant nun very little conversational help. Lady Josephine made every effort to be intelligent, and inquired in a dormitory where the looking-glasses were. She was amazed to hear that the nuns did, or failed to do, their hair—the head-dresses concealed the result of their efforts—without mirrors. Lord Eustace was preoccupied. Amid his unaccustomed surroundings he walked uncertain whether to keep his hat on his head or hold it in his hands. The English priest, whose name was Austin, got detached from Lady Geoghegan, and picked up a stray nun for himself. She took him, by his own request, straight to the chapel. He crossed himself with elaborate care on entering, and knelt for a moment before the altar. The nun was delighted.

‘So you, too, are a Catholic?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied briskly—‘an English Catholic.’

‘Ah! many of our priests go to England. Perhaps you have met Father O’Connell. He is on a London mission.’

‘No,’ said Mr. Austin, ‘I do not happen to have met him. My church is in Yorkshire.’

The nun gazed at him in amazement.

‘Your church! Then you are——

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am a priest.’

Her eyes slowly travelled over him. They began at the gray trousers, passed to the blazer, resting a moment on the college arms, which certainly suggested the ecclesiastical, and remained fixed on his collar. After all, why should she, a humble nun, doubt his word when he said he was a priest? Perhaps he might belong to some order of which she had never heard. Eccentricities of costume might be forced on the English clergy by Protestant intolerance. She smothered her uncertainty, and took him at his word. They went together into the garden. Mr. Austin took off his hat before the tarnished Madonna, and crossed himself again. The nun’s doubts vanished.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘that I should like to buy some of this tweed. Is it for sale?’

‘Oh, certainly. Sister Aloysia will sell it to you. We are so glad, so very glad, when anyone will buy what our poor workers make. It is all a help to the good cause.’

‘Now this,’ said Mr. Austin, fingering a bright-green cloth, ‘would make a nice lady’s dress. Don’t you think so?’

The nun cast down her eyes.

‘I do not know, Father, about dresses. Sister Aloysia, the Reverend Father wants to buy tweed to make a dress for ‘—she hesitated; perhaps it was his niece, but he looked young to have a full-grown niece—‘for his sister.’

Sister Aloysia looked round her, puzzled. She saw no Reverend Father.

‘This,’ said the other, ‘is Father—Father——’

‘Austin,’ he helped her out.

‘Father Austin,’ added the nun.

‘And you wish,’ said Sister Aloysia, ‘to buy a dress for your sister?’

‘Not for my sister,’ said Mr. Austin—‘for my wife.’

Both nuns started back as if he had tried to strike them.

‘Your wife! Your wife! Then you are a Protestant.’

‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘I detest all Protestants. I am a Catholic—an Anglo-Catholic.’

Neither of the nuns had ever heard of an Anglo-Catholic before. What manner of religion such people might profess was doubtful and unimportant. One thing was clear—this was not a priest in any sense of the word which they could recognise. They distrusted him, as a wolf, not certainly in the clothing, but using the language, of a sheep. The situation became embarrassing. Mr. Austin prepared to bow himself away.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘I shall ask Lady Geoghegan’—he rolled the title out emphatically; it formed a salve to his wounded dignity—‘I shall ask Lady Geoghegan to purchase the tweed for me. I must be on the look-out for a friend who promised to meet me here this afternoon—a young man whom I contemplate engaging as my curate. I am most particular in the choice of a curate, and should, of course, prefer a public school and ‘Varsity man. I need scarcely say that I refer only to Oxford and Cambridge as the Universities. As a rule, I do not care for Irishmen, but on the recommendation of my friend Dr. Henry, I am willing to consider this Mr. Conneally.’

It seemed to Mr. Austin that a preference for the English Universities, the friendship of a distinguished professor, a contempt for the mere Irishman, and a titled hostess ought to restore the respect he had forfeited by the mention of his wife. Curiously enough, and this shows the disadvantage of a monastic seclusion from the world, the nuns remained unimpressed. The conception of a married priest was too much for them. As he walked away Mr. Austin heard Sister Aloysia murmur:

‘How very indecent!’

Meanwhile, the train from Dublin had arrived, and Mr. Austin, when he returned after his interview with Hyacinth, found that even the two nuns he had victimized had forgotten him in the excitement of gazing at more important visitors. Mr. Justice Saunders, a tall, stout man with a florid face, made a tour of the factory under the charge of one of the senior Sisters. He took little notice of what he was shown, being mainly bent on explaining to his escort how he came to be known in legal circles as ‘Satan Saunders.’ Afterwards he added a tale of how he had once bluffed a crowd in an out-of-the-way country town into giving three cheers for the Queen.

‘You’re all loyal here,’ he said. ‘I saw the Union Jack flying over the gate as I came in.’

The nun smiled, a slow, enigmatic smile, and the Judge, watching her, was struck by her innocence and simplicity.

‘Surely,’ she said, ‘the Church must always be loyal.’

‘Well, I’m not so sure of that. I’ve met a few firebrands of priests in my time.’

‘Oh, those!’ she said with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘You must not think of them. It will always be easy to keep them in order when the time comes. They spring from the cabins. What can you expect of them? But the Church—— Can the Church fail of respect for the Sovereign?’

Mr. Clifford and Mr. Davis followed Judge Saunders. They were members of the Congested Districts Board, and it was clear from the manner of the nun who escorted them that they were guests of very considerable importance in her estimation. Mr. Clifford was an Englishman who had been imported to assist in governing Ireland because he was married to the sister of the Chief Secretary’s wife. He was otherwise qualified for the task by possessing a fair knowledge of the points of a horse. He believed that he knew Ireland and the Irish people thoroughly.

His colleague, Mr. Davis, was a man of quite a different stamp. The son of a Presbyterian farmer in County Tyrone, he had joined the Irish Parliamentary party, and made himself particularly objectionable in Westminster. He had devoted his talents to discovering and publishing the principles upon which appointments to lucrative posts are made by the officials in Dublin Castle. It was found convenient at last to provide him with a salary and a seat on the Congested Districts Board. Thus he found himself engaged in ameliorating the lot of the Connaught peasants. Mr. Clifford used to describe him as ‘a bit of a bounder—in fact, a complete outsider—but no fool.’ His estimate of Mr. Clifford was perhaps less complimentary.

‘Every business,’ he used to say, ‘must have at least one gentleman in it to do the entertaining and the dining out. We have Mr. Clifford. He’s a first-rate man at one of the Lord Lieutenant’s balls.’

A professor from Trinity College was one of the two guests conducted by the Reverend Mother herself. Nominally this learned gentleman existed for the purpose of impressing upon the world the beauties of Latin poetry, but he was best known to fame as an orator on the platforms of the Primrose League, and a writer of magazine articles on Irish questions. He was a man who owed his success in life largely to his faculty for always keeping beside the most important person present. The Lord Lieutenant, being slightly indisposed, had been unable to make an early start, so the most honourable stranger was Mr. Chesney, the Chief Secretary. To him Professor Cairns attached himself, and received a share of the Reverend Mother’s blandishments.

Mr. Chesney himself was dapper and smiling as usual. Even the early hour at which he had been obliged to leave home had neither ruffled his temper nor withered the flower in his buttonhole. He spent his money generously at the various stalls in the garden, addressed friendly remarks to the women in the factory, and asked the questions with which Mr. Davis had primed him in the train.

Quite a crowd of minor people followed the great statesman. There were barristers who hoped to become County Court Judges, and ladies who enjoyed a novel kind of occasion for displaying their clothes, hoping to see their names afterwards in the newspaper accounts of the proceedings. There were a few foremen from leading Dublin shops, who foresaw the possibility of a fashionable boom in Robeen tweeds and flannels. There were also reporters from the Dublin papers, and a representative—Miss O’Dwyer—of a syndicate which supplied ladies’ journals with accounts of the clothes worn at fashionable functions.

The supreme moment of the day arrived when the company assembled to listen to words of wisdom from the orators selected to address them. Seats had been provided by carting in forms from the neighbouring national schools. A handsomely-carved chair of ecclesiastical design awaited Mr. Chesney.

He opened his speech by assuring his audience that there was no occasion for him to address them at all, a truth which struck home to the heart of Sir Gerald, who was trying to arrange himself comfortably at a desk designed for a class of infants.

‘Facts,’ Mr. Chesney explained himself, ‘are more eloquent than words. You have seen what I could never have described to you—the contented workers in this factory and the artistic designs of the fabrics they weave. Many of you remember what Robeen was a few years ago—a howling wilderness. We are told on high authority that even the wilderness shall blossom as a rose.’

He bowed in the direction of the Reverend Mother, possibly with a feeling that it was suitable to acknowledge her presence when quoting Holy Writ, possibly with a vague idea that she might consider herself a spiritual descendant of the Prophet Isaiah. ‘You see it now a hive of happy industry.’

He observed with pleasure that the reporters were busy with their note-books, and he knew that these editors of public utterance might be relied on to unravel a tangled metaphor before publishing a speech. He went on light-heartedly, confident that in the next day’s papers his wilderness would blossom into something else, and that the hive, if it appeared at all, would be arrived at by some other process than blossoming. The habit of rolling out agreeable platitudes to audiences forced to listen is one which grows on public men as dram-drinking does on the common herd. Mr. Chesney was evidently enjoying himself, and there seemed no reason why he should ever stop. He could, and perhaps would, have gone on for hours but for the offensive way in which Judge Saunders snapped the case of his watch at the end of every period. There was really no hurry, for the special train which was to bring them back to Dublin would certainly wait until they were ready for it. Mr. Chesney felt aggrieved at the repeated interruption, and closed his speech without giving the audience the benefit of his peroration.

The Judge came next, and began with reminding his hearers that he was known as ‘Satan Saunders.’ An account of the origin of the name followed, and was enjoyed even by those who had listened to the Judge’s oratory before, and therefore knew the story. There was something piquant, almost risqué, in the constant repetition of a really wicked word like ‘Satan’ in the halls of a nunnery. The audience laughed reassuringly, and the Judge went on to supply fresh pabulum for mirth by suggesting that the Reverend Mother should clothe her nuns in their own tweeds. He was probably right in supposing that the new costumes would add a gaiety to the religious life. Other jests followed, and he sat down amid a flutter of applause after promising that when he next presided over the Winter Assizes in a draughty court-house he would send for a Robeen blanket and wrap his legs in it.

Mr. Clifford, who followed the Judge, began by wondering whether anyone present had ever been in Lancashire. After a pause, during which no one owned to having crossed the Channel, he said that Lancashire was the home of the modern factory. There every man and woman earned good wages, wore excellent clothes, and lived in a house fitted with hot and cold water taps and a gas-meter. It was his hope to see Mayo turned into another Lancashire. When ladies of undoubted commercial ability, like the Lady Abbess who presided over the Robeen convent—Lady Abbess sounded well, and Mr. Clifford was not strong on ecclesiastical titles—took the matter up, success was assured. All that was required for the development of the factory system in Mayo was capital, and that ‘we, the Congested Districts Board, are in a position to supply.’ With the help of some prompting from Mr. Davis, he proceeded to lay before the audience a few figures purporting to explain the Board’s expenditure.

Professor Cairns was evidently anxious to follow Mr. Clifford, if only in the humble capacity of the proposer of a vote of thanks. But his name was not on the programme, and Mr. Chesney was already engaged in a whispered conversation with the Reverend Mother. Ignoring the professor, almost rudely, he announced that the company in general was invited to tea in the dining-room.

The refreshments provided, if not substantial, were admirable in quality. There happened just then to be a young lady engaged, at the expense of the County Council, in teaching cookery in a neighbouring convent. She was sent over to Robeen for the occasion, and made a number of delightful cakes at extremely small expense. The workers in the factory had given the butter she required as a thank-offering, and the necessary eggs came from another convent where the nuns, with financial assistance from the Congested Districts Board, kept a poultry-farm. The Reverend Mother dispensed her hospitality with the same air of generosity with which Mr. Clifford had spoken of providing capital for the future ecclesiastical factories.