The prospect of joining Augusta Goold’s band of volunteers and going to South Africa to fight afforded Hyacinth great satisfaction. For two days he lived in an atmosphere of day-dreams and delightful anticipations. He had no knowledge whatever of the actual conditions of modern warfare. He understood vaguely that he would be called upon to endure great hardships. He liked to think of these, picturing himself bravely cheerful through long periods of hunger, heat, or cold. He had visions of night watches, of sudden alarms, of heart-stirring skirmishes, of scouting work, and stealthy approaches to the enemy’s lines. He thought out the details of critical interviews with commanding officers in which he with some chosen comrade volunteered for incredibly dangerous enterprises. He conceived of himself as wounded, though not fatally, and carried to the rear out of some bullet-swept firing-line. He was just twenty-three years of age. Adventure had its fascination, and the world was still a place full of splendid possibilities.
At the end of his two days of dreaming he returned, flushed with his great purposes, to the realities of life. He went to Father Moran to tell him that he would not buy Durkan’s boat. He laughed to himself at the thought of doing such a thing. Was he to spend his life fishing mackerel round the rocky islands of Connemara, when he might be fighting like one of the ancient heroes, giving his strength, perhaps his life, for a great cause? The priest met him at the presbytery door.
‘Come in, Mr. Conneally—come in and sit down. I was expecting you these two days. What were you doing at all, walking away there along the rocks by yourself? The people were beginning to say that you were getting to be like your poor father, and that nobody’d ever get any good out of you. But I knew you’d come back to me here. I hope now it’s to tell me that you’ll buy the boat you’ve come.’
They entered the house, and the priest opened the door of the little sitting-room. Hyacinth knew it well. There was the dark mahogany table with the marks burnt into it where hot dishes were set down, the shabby arm-chair, the worn cocoanut-matting on the floor, the dozen or so books in the hanging shelf, the tawdry sacred pictures round the wall. He had known it all, and it all seemed unchanged since he was a child.
‘Sit you down—sit you down,’ said the priest. ‘And now about the boat.’
‘I’m not going in for her,’ said Hyacinth. ‘I’m as thankful to you for suggesting it as if I did buy her. I hope you’ll understand that, but I’m not going to buy her.’
He found it difficult to speak of his new plan to Father Moran.
‘Do you tell me that, now? I’m sorry for it. And why wouldn’t you buy her? What’s there to hinder you?’
Hyacinth hesitated.
‘Well, now,’ said the priest, ‘I can guess. I thought the auction turned out well for you, but I never heard for certain, and maybe you haven’t got the money for the boat. Whisht now, my son, and let me speak. I’m thinking the thing might be managed.’
‘But, Father Moran———’
‘Ah now, will you be quiet when I bid you? I haven’t the money myself. Never a penny have I been able to save all my life, with the calls there are on me in a parish like this. Sure, you know yourself how it is. There’s one will have a cow that has died on him, and another will be wanting a lock of potatoes for seed in the springtime; and if it isn’t that, it’ll be something else. And who would the creatures go to in their trouble but the old priest that christened and married the most of them? But, indeed, thanks be to God, things is improving. The fishing brings in a lot of money to the men, and there’s a better breed of cattle in the country now, and the pigs fetch a good price since we had the railway to Clifden, and maybe the last few years I might have saved a little, but I didn’t. Indeed, I don’t know where it is the money goes at all, but someway it’s never at rest in my breeches pockets till it’s up and off somewhere. God forgive us! it’s more careful we ought to be.’
‘But, Father Moran, I don’t——’
‘Arrah then, will you cease your talking for one minute, and let me get a word in edgeways for your own good? What was I saying? Oh, I was just after telling you I hadn’t got the money to help you. But maybe I might manage to get it. The man in the bank in Clifden knows me. I borrowed a few pounds off him two years ago when the Cassidys’ house and three more beside it got blown away in the big wind. Father Joyce put his name on the back of the bill along with my own, and trouble enough I had to get him to do it, for he said I ought to put an appeal in the newspapers, and I’d get the money given to me. But I never was one to go begging round the country. I said I’d rather borrow the money and pay it back like a decent man. And so I did, every penny of it. And I think the bank will trust me now, with just your name and mine, more especially as it’s to buy a boat we want the money. What do you say to that, now?’ He looked at Hyacinth triumphantly.
‘Father Moran, you’re too good to me—you’re too good altogether. What did ever I do to deserve such kindness from you? But you’re all wrong. I’ve got plenty of money.’
‘And why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t you tell me so at once, and not keep me standing here twisting my brains into hard knots with thinking out ways of getting what you don’t want? If you’ve got the money you’ll buy the boat. What better could you do with it?’
‘But I don’t want to buy the boat. I don’t want to live here always. I’m going away out into the world. I want to see things and do things.’
‘Out into the world! Will you listen to the boy? Is it America you’re thinking of? Ah, now, there’s enough gone out and left us lonely here. Isn’t the best of all the boys and girls going to work for the strangers in the strange land? and why would you be going after them?’
‘I’m not going to America. I’m going to South Africa. I’m going to join some young Irishmen to fight for the Boers and for freedom.’
‘You’re going out to fight—to fight for the Boers! What is it that’s in your head at all, Hyacinth Conneally? Tell me now.’
Again Hyacinth hesitated. Was it possible to give utterance to the thoughts and hopes which filled his mind? Could he tell anyone about the furious fancies of the last few days, or of that weird vision of his father’s which lay at the back of what he felt and dreamed? Could he even speak of the enthusiasm which moved him to devote himself to the cause of freedom and a threatened nationality? In the presence of a man of the world the very effort to express himself would have acted as some corrosive acid, and stained with patches of absurdity the whole fabric of his dreams. He looked at Father Moran, and saw the priest’s eyes lit with sympathy. He knew that he had a listener who would not scoff, who might, perhaps, even understand. He began to speak, slowly and haltingly at first, then more rapidly. At last he poured out with breathless, incoherent speed the strange story of the Armageddon vision, the hopes that were in him, the fierce enthusiasm, the passionate love for Ireland which burnt in his soul. He was not conscious of the gaping inconsequences of his train of emotion. He did not recognise how ridiculous it was to connect the Boer War with the Apocalyptic battle of the saints, or the utter impossibility of getting either one or the other into any sort of relation with the existing condition of Ireland.
A casual observer might have supposed that Hyacinth had made a mistake in telling his story to Father Moran. A smile, threatening actual laughter, hovered visibly round the priest’s mouth. His eyes had a shrewd, searching expression, difficult to interpret. Still, he listened to the rhapsody without interrupting it, till Hyacinth stopped abruptly, smitten with sudden self-consciousness, terrified of imminent ridicule. Nor were the priest’s first words reassuring.
‘I wouldn’t say now, Hyacinth Conneally, but there might be the makings of a fine man in you yet.’
‘I might have known,’ said Hyacinth angrily, ‘that you’d laugh at me. I was a fool to tell you at all. But I’m in earnest about what I’m going to do. Whatever you may think about the rest, there’s no laughing at that.’
‘Well, you’re just wrong then, for I wasn’t laughing nor meaning to laugh at all. God forbid that I should laugh at you, and I meant it when I said that there was the makings of a fine man in you. Laugh at you! It’s little you know me. Listen now, till I tell you something; but don’t you be repeating it. This must be between you and me, and go no further. I was very much of your way of thinking myself once.’
Hyacinth gazed at him in astonishment. The thought of Father Moran, elderly, rotund, kindly; of Father Moran with sugar-stick in his pocket for the school-children and a quaint jest on his lips for their mothers; of Father Moran in his ruffled silk hat and shabby black coat and baggy trousers—of this Father Moran mounted and armed, facing the British infantry in South Africa, was wholly grotesque. He laughed aloud.
‘It’s yourself that has the bad manners to be laughing now,’ said the priest. ‘But small blame to you if it was out to the Boers I was thinking of going. The gray goose out there on the road might laugh—and she’s the solemnest mortal I know—at the notion of me charging along with maybe a pike in my hand, and the few gray hairs that’s left on the sides of my head blowing about in the breeze I’d make as I went prancing to and fro. But that’s not what I meant when I said th............