Hyacinth

CHAPTER XXIII

The Reverend Mother bowed out the last of her guests, and retired to her own room well satisfied. She was assured of further support from the Congested Districts Board, and certain debts which had grown uncomfortably during her struggle with Mr. Quinn need trouble her no longer. Her goods would be extensively advertised next morning in the daily press. Her house would obtain a celebrity likely to attract the most eligible novices—those, that is to say, who would bring the largest sums of money as their dowries. There arose before her mind a vision of almost unbounded wealth and all that might be done with it. What statues of saints might not Italy supply! French painters and German organ-builders would compete for the privilege of furnishing the chapel of her house. Already she foresaw pavements of gorgeous mosaic, windows radiant with Munich glass, and store of vestments to make her sacristy famous. Grandiose plans suggested themselves of founding daughter houses in Melbourne, in Auckland, in Capetown, in Natal. All things were possible to a well-filled purse. She saw how her Order might open schools in English towns, where girls could be taught French, Italian, Latin, music, all the accomplishments dear to middle-class parents, at ridiculously low fees, or without fees at all. She stirred involuntarily at the splendour of her visions. The day’s weariness dropped off from her. She rose from her chair and went into the chapel. She prostrated herself before the altar, and lay passive in a glow of warm emotion. For God, for the Mother of God, for the Catholic Church, she had laboured and suffered and dared. Now she was well within sight of the end, the golden reward, the fulfilment of hopes that had never been altogether selfish.

Her thoughts, sanctified now by the Presence on the altar, drifted out again on to the shining sea of the future. What she, a humble nun, had done others would do. A countless army of missionary men and women marching from the Irish shore would conquer the world’s conquerors, regain for the Church the Anglo-Saxon race. Once in the far past Irish men and women had Christianized Europe, and Ireland had won her glorious title, ‘Island of Saints.’ Now the great day was to dawn again, the great race to be reborn. For this end had Ireland been kept faithful and pure for centuries, just that she might be at last the witness to the spiritual in a materialized world. For this end had the Church in Ireland gone through the storm of persecution, suffered the blight of the world’s contempt, that she might emerge in the end entirely fitted for the bloodless warfare.

‘And I am one of the race, a daughter of Ireland. And I am a worker—nay, one who has accomplished something—in the vineyard of the Church. Ah, God!’

She was swept forward on a wave of emotion. Thought ceased, expiring in the ecstasy of a communion which transcended thought. Then suddenly, sharp as an unexpected pain, an accusation shot across her soul, shattering the coloured glory of the trance in an instant.

‘Who am I that I should boast?’

The long years of introspection, the discipline of hundreds of heart-searching confessions, the hardly-learned lesson of self-distrust, made it possible for her to recognise the vain-glory even with the halo of devotion shining round it. She abased herself in penitence.

‘Give me the work, my Lord; give others the glory and the fruit of it. Let me toil, but withhold the reward from me. May my eyes not see it, lest I be lifted up! Nay, give me not even work to do, lest I should be praised or learn to praise myself. “Nunc dimittis servam tuam, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace.”’

There stole over her a sense of peace—numb, silent peace—wholly unlike the satisfaction which had flooded her in her own room or during the earlier ecstasy before the altar. She raised her eyes slowly till they rested on the shrine where the body of the sacrifice reposed.

‘Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.’

At last she rose. The lines of care and age gathered again upon her face. Her eyes gleamed with keen intelligence. She braced herself with the thought of all that might still lie before her. The advice of Iago, strangely sanctified, clamoured in her heart—‘Put money in thy purse.’

CHAPTER XXIV

The Reverend Mother was not the only person well satisfied with the day. The Right Hon. T. J. Chesney leant back in his saloon-carriage, and puffed contentedly at his cigar. It might be his part occasionally—indeed, frequently—to talk like a fool, but the man was shrewd enough. It really seemed that he had hit on the true method of governing Ireland. Nationalist members of Parliament could be muzzled, not by the foolish old methods of coercion, but by winning the goodwill of the Bishops. No Irish member dared open his mouth when a priest bid him keep it shut, or give a vote contrary to the wishes of the hierarchy. And the Bishops were reasonable men. They looked at things from a point of view intelligible to Englishmen. There was no ridiculous sentimentality about their demands. For so much money they would silence the clamour of the Parliamentary party; for so much more they would preach a modified loyalty, would assert before the world that the Irish people were faithful servants of the Sovereign; for a good lump sum down they would undertake to play ‘God Save the King’ or ‘Rule, Britannia’ on the organ at Maynooth. Of course, the money must be paid: Mr. Chesney was beginning to understand that, and felt the drawback. It would have been much pleasanter and simpler if the Bishops would have been content with promises. There was a certain difficulty in obtaining the necessary funds without announcing precisely what they were for. But, after all, a man cannot be called a great statesman without doing something to deserve the title, and British statesmanship is the art of hoodwinking the taxpayer. That is all—not too difficult a task for a clever man. Mr. Chesney reckoned on no power in Ireland likely to be seriously troublesome. The upper classes were either helpless and sulking, or helpless and smiling artificially. They might grumble in private or try to make themselves popular by joining the chorus of the Church’s flatterers. Either way their influence was inconsiderable. Was there anyone else worth considering? The Orangemen were still a noisy faction, but their organization appeared to be breaking up. They were more bent on devouring their own leaders than interfering with him. There were a number of people anxious to revive the Irish language, who at one time had caused him some little uneasiness. He had found it quite impossible to understand the Gaelic League, and, being an Englishman, arrived gradually at the comfortable conclusion that what he could not understand must be foolish. Now, he had great hopes that the Bishops might capture the movement.

If once it was safely under the patronage of the Church, he had nothing more to fear from it. No doubt, resolutions would be passed, but resolutions——— Mr. Chesney smiled. There were, of course, the impossible people connected with the Croppy. Mr. Chesney did not like them, and in the bottom of his heart was a little nervous about them. They seemed to be very little afraid of the authority of the Church, and he doubted if the authority of the state would frighten them at all. Still, there were very few of them, and their abominable spirit of independence was spreading slowly, if at all.

‘They won’t,’ he said to himself, ‘be of any importance for some years to come, at all events, and five years hence——’

In five years Mr. Chesney hoped to be Prime Minister, or perhaps to have migrated to the House of Lords, At least, he expected to be out of Ireland, Meanwhile, he lighted a fresh cigar. The condition of the country was extremely satisfactory, and his policy was working out better than he had hoped.

The other travellers by the special train were equally well pleased, Ireland, so they understood Mr. Chesney, was to be made happy and contented, peaceful and prosperous. It followed that there must be Boards under the control of Dublin Castle—more and more Boards, an endless procession of them. There is no way devised by the wit of man for securing prosperity and contentment except the creation of Boards. If Boards, then necessarily officials—officials with salaries and travelling allowances. Nice gentlemanly men, with villas at Dalkey and Killiney, would perform duties not too arduous in connection with the Boards, and carry out the benevolent policy of the Government. There was not a man in the train, except the newspaper reporters, who did not believe in the regeneration of Ireland by Boards, and everyone hoped to take a share in the good work, with the prospect of a retiring pension afterwards.

The local magnates—with the exception of Sir Gerald Geoghegan, whose temper had been bad from the first—also went home content. The minds of great ladies work somewhat confusedly, for Providence, no doubt wisely, has denied to most of them the faculty of reason. It was enough for them to feel that the nuns were ‘sweet women,’ and that in some way not very clear Mr. Chesney was getting the better of ‘those wretched agitators.’

Only one of all whom the special train had brought down failed to return in it. Mary O’Dwyer slipped out of the convent before the speeches began, and wandered away towards the desolate stony hill where the stream which turns the factory mill took its rise. It grieved her to miss the cup of tea which a friendly nun had led her to expect; but even tea might be too dearly purchased, and Miss O’Dwyer had a strong dislike to listening to what Augusta Goold described as the ‘sugared hypocrisies of professional liars.’ Besides, she had her cigarette-case in her pocket, and a smoke, unattainable for her in the convent or the train, was much to be desired. She left the road at the foot of the hill, and picked her way along the rough bohireen which led upwards along the course of the stream. After awhile even this track disappeared. The stream tumbled noisily over rocks and stones, the bog-stained water glowing auburn-coloured in the sunlight. The ling and heather were springy under her feet, and the air was sweet with the scent of the bog-myrtle. She spied round her for a rock which cast a shade upon the kind of heathery bed she had set her heart to find. Her eyes lit upon a little party—a young man and two girls—encamped with a kettle, a spirit-stove, and a store of bread-and-butter. Her renunciation of the convent tea had not been made without a pang. She looked longingly at the steam which already spouted from the kettle. The young man said a few words to the girls, then stood up, raised his hat to her, and beckoned. She approached him, wondering.

‘Surely it can’t be—I really believe it is——’

‘Yes, Miss O’Dwyer, it really is myself, Hyacinth Conneally.’

‘My dear boy, you are the last person I expected to meet, though of course I knew you were somewhere down in these parts.’

‘Come and have some tea,’ said Hyacinth. ‘And let me introduce you to Miss Beecher and Miss Elsie Beecher.’

Miss O’Dwyer took stock of the two girls. ‘They make their own clothes,’ she thought, ‘and apparently only see last year’s fashion-plates. The eldest isn’t bad-looking. How is it all West of Ireland girls have such glorious complexions? Her figure wouldn’t be bad if her mother bought her a decent pair of stays. I wonder who they are, and what they are doing here with Hyacinth. They can’t be his sisters.’

While they drank their tea certain glances and smiles gave her an inkling of the truth. ‘I suppose Hyacinth is engaged to the elder one,’ she concluded. ‘That kind of girl wouldn’t dare to make eyes at a man unless she had some kind of right to him.’

After tea she produced her cigarette-case.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said to Marion. ‘I know it’s very shocking, but I’ve had a tiring day and an excellent tea, and oh, this heather is delicious to lie on!’ She stretched herself at full length as she spoke. ‘I really must smoke, just to arrive at perfect felicity for once in my life. How happy you people ought to be who always have in a place like this!’

‘Oh,’ said Marion, ‘it sometimes rains, you know.’

‘Ah! and then these sweet spots get boggy, I suppose, and you have to wear thick, clumping boots.’

Her own were very neat and small, and she knew that they must obtrude themselves on the eye while she lay prone. Elsie, whose shoes were patched as well as thick-soled, made an ineffectual attempt to cover them with her skirt.

‘Now,’ said Hyacinth, ‘tell us what you are doing down here. They haven’t made you an inspectress of boarded-out workhouse children, have they? or sent you down to improve the breed of hens?’

‘No,’ said Miss O’Dwyer; ‘I have spent the afternoon helping to govern Ireland.’

Marion and Elsie gazed at her in wonder. A lady who smoked cigarettes and bore the cares of State upon her shoulders was a novelty to them.

‘I have sat in the seats of the mighty,’ she said; ‘I have breathed the same air as Mr. Chesney and two members of the C.D.B. Think of that! Moreover, I might, if I liked, have drunk tea with a Duchess.’

‘Oh,’ said Hyacinth, ‘you were at the convent function, I suppose. I wonder I didn’t see you.’

‘What on earth were you doing there? I thought you hated the nuns and all their ways.’

‘Go on about yourself,’ said Hyacinth. ‘You are not employed by the Government to inspect infant industries, are you?’

‘Oh no; I was one of the representatives of the press. I have notes here of all the beautiful clothes worn by the wives and daughters of the West British aristocracy. Listen to this: “Lady Geoghegan was gowned in an important creation of saffron tweed, the product of the convent looms. We are much mistaken if this fabric in just this shade is not destined to play a part in robing the élégantes who will shed a lustre on our house-parties during the autumn.” And this—you must just listen to this.’

‘I won’t,’ said Hyacinth; ‘you can if you like, Marion. I’ll shut my ears.’

‘Very well,’ said Miss O’Dwyer; ‘I’ll talk seriously. When are you coming up to Dublin? You know my brother has taken over the editorship of the Croppy. We are going to make it a great power in the country. We are coming out with a policy which will sweep the old set of political talkers out of existence, and clear the country of Mr. Chesney and the likes of him.’ She waved her hand towards the convent. ‘Oh, it is going to be great. It is great already. Why don’t you come and help us?’

Hyacinth looked at her. She had half risen and leaned upon her elbow. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparkled. There was no doubt about the genuineness of her enthusiasm. The words of her poem, long since, he supposed, blotted from his memory, suddenly returned to him:

Had it come at last, this revival of the nation’s vitality? Had it come just too late for him to share it?

‘I shall not help you,’ he said sadly; ‘I do not suppose that I ever could have helped you much, but now I shall not even try.’

She looked at him quickly with a startled expression in her eyes. Then she turned to Marion.

‘Are you preventing him?’ she said.

‘No,’ said Hyacinth; ‘it is not Marion. But I am going away—going to England. I am going to be ordained, to become an English curate. Do you understand? I came here to-day to see the man who is to be my Rector, and to make final arrangements with him.’

‘Oh, Hyacinth!’

For some minutes she said no more. He saw in her face a wondering sorrow, a pathetic submissiveness to an unexpected disappointment, like the look in the face of a dog struck suddenly by the hand of a friend. He felt that he could have borne her anger better. No doubt if he had made his confession to Augusta Goold he would have been overwhelmed with passionate wrath or withered by a superb contemptuous stare. Then he could have worked himself to anger in return. But this!

‘You will never speak to any of us again,’ she went on. You will be ashamed even to read the Croppy. You will wear a long black coat and gray gloves. You will learn to talk about the “Irish Problem” and the inestimable advantages of belonging to a world-wide Empire, and about the great heart of the English people. I see it all—all that will happen to you. Your hair will get quite smooth and sleek. Then you will become a Vicar of a parish. You will live in a beautiful house, with Virginia creeper growing over it and plum-trees in the garden. You will have a nice clean village for a parish, with old women who drop curtsies to you, and men—such men! stupid as bullocks! I know it all. And you will be ashamed to call yourself an Irishman. Oh, Hyacinth!’

Miss O’Dwyer’s catalogue of catastrophes was curiously mixed. Perhaps the comedy in it tended to obscure the utter degradation of the ruin she described. But the freakish incongruity of the speech did not strike Hyacinth. He found in it only two notes—pity that such a fate awaited him, and contempt for the man who submitted to it.

‘I cannot help myself. Will you not make an effort to understand? I am trying to do what is right.’

She shook her head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I know it is no use. You could not understand even if I told you all I felt.’

Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. He heard her sob. Then she turned without a word and left them. He stood watching her till she reached the road and started on her walk to the railway-station. Then he took Marion’s two hands in his, and held them fast.

‘Will you understand?’ he asked her.

She looked up at him. Her face was all tenderness. Love shone on him—trusting, unquestioning, adoring love, love that would be loyal to the uttermost; but her eyes were full of a dumb wonder.

CHAPTER XXV

One morning near the end of September the Irish Times published a list of Irish graduates ordained in England on the previous Sunday. Among other names appeared:

‘Hyacinth Conneally, B.A., T.C.D., deacon, by the Bishop of Ripon, for the curacy of Kirby-Stowell.’

Shortly afterwards the Croppy printed the following verses, signed ‘M.O’D.‘:

Hyacinth read the verses, cut them out of the Croppy, and locked them in the box in which he stored the few papers of interest he possessed. The sorrowful judgment pronounced on his conduct affected him, but only in a dull way, like an additional blow upon a limb already bruised to numbness. He accepted his new duties and performed them without any feeling of enthusiasm, and after a little while without any definite hope of doing any good. He got no further in understanding the people he had to deal with, and he was aware that even those of them who came most frequently into contact with him regarded him as a stranger. A young doctor whose wife took a fancy to Marion tried to make friends with him. The result was unsatisfactory, owing to Hyacinth’s irresponsiveness. He could not, without yawning piteously, spend an evening discussing the performances of the local cricket club; nor did his conduct improve when the two ladies suspended their talk and sacrificed an hour to playing four-handed halma with their husbands. An unmarried solicitor, attracted by Marion’s beauty and friendliness, adopted the habit of calling at Hyacinth’s little house about nine or ten o’clock in the evening. He was a man full of anecdote and simple mirth, and he often stayed, quite happily, till midnight. Every week he brought an illustrated paper as an offering to Marion, and recommended the short stories in it to her notice. He often asked Hyacinth’s advice and help in solving the conundrums set by the prize editor. He took a mild interest in politics, and retailed gossip picked up at the Conservative Club. After a while he gave up coming to the house. Hyacinth blamed himself for being cold and unfriendly to the man.

Mr. Austin treated Hyacinth with kindness and some consideration, much as a wise master treats an upper servant. He was anxious that his curate should perform many and complicated ceremonies in church, was seriously intent on the wearing of correctly-coloured stoles, and ‘ran,’ as he expressed it himself, a very large number of different organizations, of each of which the objective appeared to be a tea-party in the parochial hall. Hyacinth accepted his tuition, bowed low at the times when Mr. Austin liked to bow, watched for the seasons when stoles bloomed white and gold, changed to green, or faded down to violet. He tried to make himself agreeable to the ‘united mothers’ and the rest when they assembled for tea-drinking. Mr. Austin asserted that these were the methods by which the English people were being taught the Catholic faith. Hyacinth did not doubt it, nor did he permit himself to wonder whether it was worth while teaching them.

To Marion the new life was full of many delights. The surpliced choir-boys gratified her aesthetic sense, and she entered herself as one of a band of volunteers who scrubbed the chancel tiles and polished a brass cross. She smiled, kissed, and petted Hyacinth out of the fits of depression which came on him, managed his small income with wonderful skill, and wrote immensely long letters home to Ballymoy.

CHAPTER XXVI

It is very hard for a poor man to travel from one side of England to the other side of Ireland, because railway companies, even when, to allure the public, they advertise extraordinary excursions, charge a great deal for their tickets. The journey becomes still more difficult of accomplishment when the poor man is married. Then there are two tickets to be bought, and very likely most of the money which might have bought them has been spent securing the safe arrival of a baby—a third person who in due time will also require a railway-ticket. This was Hyacinth’s case. For two summers he had no holiday at all, and it was only by the most fortunate of chances that he found himself during the third summer in a position to go to Ballymoy. He sublet his house to a freshly-arrived supervisor of Inland Revenue, who wanted six weeks to look about for a suitable residence. With the nine pounds paid in advance by this gentleman, Hyacinth and Marion, having with them their baby, a perambulator, and much other luggage, set off for Ballymoy.

The journey is not a very pleasant one, because it is made over the lines of three English railway companies, whose trains refuse to connect with each other at junctions, and because St. George’s Channel is generally rough. The discomfort of third-class carriages is more acutely felt when the Irish shore is reached, but the misery of having to feed and tend a year-old child lasts the whole journey through. Therefore, Marion arrived in Dublin dishevelled, weary, and, for all her natural placidness, inclined to be cross. The steamer came to port at an hour which left them just the faint hope of catching the earliest train to Ballymoy. Disappointment followed the nervous strain of a rush across Dublin. Two long hours intervened before the next train started, and the people who keep the refreshment-room in Broadstone Station are not early risers. Marion, without tea or courage, settled herself and the baby in the draughty waiting-room.

Hyacinth was also dishevelled, dirty, and tired, having borne his full share of strife with the child’s worst moods. But the sight of Ireland from the steamer’s deck filled him with a strange sense of exultation. He wished to shout with gladness when the gray dome of the Custom House rose to view, immense above the low blanket of mist. Even the incredibly hideous iron grating of the railway viaduct set his pulse beating joyfully. He drew deep breaths, inhaling various abominable smells delightedly. The voices of the sleepy porters on the quay roused in him a craving for the gentle slovenliness of Irish speech. He fussed and hustled Marion beyond the limits of her endurance, pretending eagerness to catch the early train, caring in reality not at all whether any train were caught or missed, filled only with a kind of frenzy to keep moving somehow further into Ireland. In the cab he gave utterance to ridiculous pleasantries. He seized the child from Marion, and held him, wailing piteously, half out of the window, that his eyes might rest on the great gilt characters which adorn the offices of the Gaelic League. It was with rapture that he read Irish names, written and spelt in Irish, above the shops, and saw a banner proclaiming the annual festival of Irish Ireland hanging over the door of the Rotunda. The city had grown more Irish since he left it. There was no possibility now, even in the early morning, with few people but scavengers and milkmen in the streets, of mistaking for an English town.

While Marion sat torpid in the waiting-room, he paced the platform eagerly from end to end. He saw the train pushed slowly into position beside the platform, watched porters sweep the accumulated débris of yesterday’s traffic from the floors of the carriages, and rub with filthy rags the brass doorhandles. Little groups of passengers began to arrive—first a company of cattle-jobbers, four of them, red-faced men with keen, crafty eyes, bound for some Western fair; then a laughing party of tourists, women in short skirts and exaggeratedly protective veils, men with fierce tweed knickerbockers dragging stuffed hold-alls and yellow bags. These were evidently English. Their clear high-pitched voices proclaimed contempt for their surroundings, and left no doubt of their nationality. One of them addressed a bewildered porter in cheerful song:

He felt, and his companions sympathized, that he was entering into the spirit of Irish life. Then, heralded by an obsequious guard, came a great man, proconsular in mien and gait. Bags and rugs were wheeled beside him. In his hand was a despatch-box bearing the tremendous initials of the Local Government Board. He took complete possession of a first-class smoking carriage, scribbled a telegram, perhaps of international importance, handed it to the guard for instant despatch, and lit a finely-odorous cigar. Hyacinth, humbled by the mere view of this incarnation of the Imperial spirit, went meekly to the waiting-room to fetch Marion and his child. He led them across the now crowded platform towards a third-class carriage.

‘I will not go with you in your first-class carriage, Father Lavelle; so that’s flat. Nor I won’t split the difference and go second either, if that’s what you’re going to propose to me. Is it spend what would keep the family of a poor man in bread and tea for a week, for the sake of easing my back with a cushion? Get away with you. The plain deal board’s good enough for me. And, moreover, I doubt very much if I’ve the money to do it, if I were ever so willing. I’m afraid to look into my purse to count the few coppers that’s left in it after paying that murdering bill in the hotel you took me to. Gresham, indeed! A place where they’re not ashamed to charge a poor old priest three and sixpence for his breakfast, and me not able to eat the half of what they put before me.’

Hyacinth turned quickly. Two priests stood together near the bookstall. The one, a young man, handsome and well-dressed, he did not know. The other he recognised at once. It seemed to be the same familiarly shabby black coat which he wore, the same many-stained waistcoat, the identical silk hat, ruffled and rain-spotted. The same pads of flesh hung flaccid from his jaws; the red, cracked knuckles of his hands, well remembered, were enormous still. Only the furrows on the face seemed to be ploughed deeper and wider, and a few more stiff hairs curled over the general bushiness of the grizzled eyebrows.

‘Father Moran!’ cried Hyacinth.

‘I am Father Moran. You’re right there. But who you are or how you come to know me is more than I can tell. But wait a minute. I’ve a sort of recollection of your voice. Will you speak to me again, and maybe I’ll be able to put a name on you.’

Hyacinth said a few words rapidly in Irish.

‘I have you now,’ said the priest. ‘You’re Hyacinth Conneally, the boy that went out to fight for the Boers. Father Lavelle, this is a friend of mine that I’ve known ever since he was born, and I haven’t laid eyes on him these six years or more. You’re going West, Mr. Conneally? But of course you are. Where else would you be going? We’ll travel together and talk. If it’s second-class you’re going, Father Lavelle will have to lend me the money to pay the extra on my ticket, so as I can go with you. Seemingly it’s a Protestant minister you’ve grown into. Well now, who’d have thought it? And you so set on fighting the battle of Armageddon and all. It’s a come-down for you, so it is. But never mind. You might have got yourself killed in it. There’s many a one killed or maimed for life in smaller fights than it. It’s better to be a minister any day than a corpse or a cripple. And as you are a minister, it’s likely to be third-class you’re travelling. Times are changed since I was young. It was the priests travelled third-class then, if they travelled at all, and the ministers were cocked up on the cushions, looking down on the likes of us out of the windows with the little red curtains half-drawn across them. Now it’ll be Father Lavelle there, with his grand new coat that he says is Irish manufacture—but I don’t believe him—who’ll be doing the gentleman. But come along, Mr. Conneally—come along, and tell me all the battles you fought and the Generals you made prisoners of, and how it was you took to preaching afterwards.’

Hyacinth, somewhat shyly, introduced the priest to Marion. Then a ticket-collector drove them into their carriage and locked the door.

Father Moran began to catechize Hyacinth before the train started, and drew from him, as they went westwards, the story of his disappointments, doubts, hopes, veerings, and final despair. Hyacinth spoke unwillingly at first, giving no more than necessary answers to the questions. Then, because he found that reticence called down on him fresh and more detailed inquiries, and also because the priest’s evident and sympathetic interest redeemed a prying curiosity from offensiveness, he told his tale more freely. Very soon there was no more need of questioning, and Father Moran’s share in the talk took the form of comments interrupting a narrative.

Of Captain Albert Quinn he said:

‘I’ve heard of him, and a nice kind of a boy he seems to have been. I suppose he fought when he got there. He’s just the sort that would be splendid at the fighting. Well, God is good, and I suppose it’s to do the fighting for the rest of us that He makes the likes of Captain Quinn. Did you hear that they wanted to make him a member of Parliament? Well, they did. Nothing less would please them. But what good would that be, when he couldn’t set foot in the country for fear of being arrested?’

Later on he was moved to laughter.

‘To think of your going on the road with a bag full of blankets and shawls! I never heard of such a thing, and all the grand notions your head was full of! Why didn’t you come my way? I’d have made Rafferty give you an order. I’d have bought the makings of a frieze coat from you myself—I would, indeed.’

Afterwards he became grave again.

‘I won’t let you say the hard word about the nuns, Mr. Conneally. Don’t do it, now. There’s plenty of good convents up and down through the country—more than ever you’ll know of, being the black Protestant you are. And the ones that ruined your business—supposing they did ruin it, and I’ve only your word for that—what right have you to be blaming them? They were trying to turn an honest penny by an honest trade, and that’s just what you and your friend Mr. Quinn were doing yourselves.’

Hyacinth, conscious of a failure in good taste, shifted his ground, only to be interrupted again.

‘Oh, you may abuse the Congested Districts Board to your heart’s content. I never could see what the Government made all the Boards for unless it was to keep the people out of mischief. As long as there is a Board of any kind about the country every blackguard will be so busy throwing stones at it that he won’t have time nor inclination left to annoy decent people. And I’ll say this for the Congested Districts Board: they mean well. Indeed they do; not a doubt of it. There’s one good thing they did, anyway, if there isn’t another, and that’s when they came to Carrowkeel and bought the big Curragh Farm that never supported a Christian, but two herds and some bullocks ever since the famine clearances. They fetched the people down off the mountains and put them on it. Wasn’t that a good thing, now? Sure, all Government Boards do more wrong than right. It’s the nature of that sort of confederation. But it’s all the more thankful we ought to be when once in a while they do something useful.’

Hyacinth came to tell of the choice which Canon Beecher offered him, and dwelt with tragic emphasis on his own decision. The priest listened, a smile on his lips, a look of pity which belied the smile in his eyes.

‘So you thought Ireland would be lost altogether unless you wrote articles for Miss Goold in the Croppy? It’s no small opinion you have of yourself, Hyacinth Conneally. And you thought you’d save your soul by going to preach the Gospel to the English people? Was that it, now?’

‘It was not,’ said Hyacinth, ‘and you know it wasn’t.’

‘Of course it wasn’t. What was I thinking of to forget the young lady that was in it? A fine wife you’ve got, any way. God bless her, and make you a good husband to her! By the looks of her she’s better than you deserve. I suppose it was to get money you went to England, so as to buy her pretty dresses and a beautiful house to live in? Did you think you’d grow rich over there?’

‘Indeed I did not,’ said Hyacinth bitterly. ‘I knew we’d never be rich.’

‘Well, then, couldn’t you as well have been poor in Ireland? And better, for everybody’s poor here. But there, I know well enough it wasn’t money you were after. Don’t be getting angry with me, now. It wasn’t for the sake of saving your soul you went, nor to get your nice wife, though a man might go a long way for the likes of her. I don’t know why you went, and it’s my belief you don’t know yourself. But you made a mistake, whatever you did it for, going off on that English mission. Is it a mission you call it when you’re a Protestant? I don’t think it is, but it doesn’t matter. You made a mistake. Why don’t you come back again?’

‘God knows I would if I could. It’s hungry I am to get back—just sick with hunger and the great desire that is on me to be back again in Ireland.’

‘Well, what’s to hinder you? Let me tell you this: There’s been four men in your father’s place since he died. Never a one of the first three would stay. They tell me the pay’s small, and the place is desolate to them for the want of Protestants, there being none, you may say, but the coastguards. After the third of them left it was long enough before they got the fourth. I hear they went scouring and scraping round the four coasts of the country with a trawl-net trying to get a man. And now they’ve got him he’s all for going away. He says there’s no work to do, and no people to preach to. But you’d find work, if you were there. I’d find you work myself—work for the people you knew since you were born, that’s in the way at last of getting to be the men and women they were meant to be, and that wants all the help can be got for them. Why don’t you come back?’

‘Indeed, Father Moran, I would if I could.’ ‘If you could! What’s the use of talking? Isn’t your wife’s father a Canon? And wouldn’t that professor in the college that you used to tell me of do something for you? What’s the good of having fine friends like that if they won’t get you sent to a place like Carrowkeel, that never another minister but yourself would as much as eat his dinner in twice if he could help it?’

Hyacinth glanced doubtfully at Marion. The child lay quiet in her arms. She slept uncomfortably. It was clear that she had not cared to listen to the conversation of the two men.

THE END