Hitherto his thoughts of his future condition had been bound up with consideration of his mother, but now there had come this realization of his father. It was not without its sadness to think that his father had been a stranger to him always and that he should now behold him stumbling down to old age amid the degradation of Garradrimna. He felt curiously desirous of doing something for him. But the heavy constraint between them still existed as always. He was unequal to the task of plucking up courage to speak to him. This evening, too, as he tried, after his accustomed fashion, in a vacant moment to catch a glimpse of his own future, he acutely felt the impossibility of seeing himself as a monument of pride.... Always there would arise before his mind a broken column in the middle of the valley.
And he was lonely. He had not seen Ulick Shannon or Rebecca since he had begun to cycle daily to Ballinamult. Often, in some of the vacant stretches of thought which came to him as he hurried along, he pictured the two of them meeting during some of those long, sweet evenings and being kind to one another. Despite sudden flashes of a different regard that would come sweeping his thoughts of all kinds, he loved these two and was glad that they were fond of one another. It now seemed surprising that he had ever thought so deeply of Rebecca Kerr, and wished to meet her upon the road and look longingly into her eyes. All this while going on to be a priest seemed far from him now that he had begun to be influenced by Father Considine.
He had to pass the house of Sergeant McGoldrick by the way he was going, and it seemed an action altogether outside him that he had gone into an adjacent field and gazed for quite a long time up at her window.... He was all confusion when he noticed the child of the McGoldricks observing him.... He drifted away, his cheeks hot and a little sense of shame dimming his eyes.... He took to the road again and at once saw Ulick Shannon coming towards him. The old, insinuating smile which had so often been used upon his weak points, was spread over the face of his friend.
"And at last you have succeeded in coming to see her thus far?"
The words seemed to fall out of Ulick's oblique smile.
"She?" he said in surprise.
"Oh, I thought it was that you had intentions of becoming my rival!"
John laughed now, for this was the old Ulick come back again. He went on laughing as if at a good joke, and the two students went together down the road.
"Don't let me delay you!" John said abruptly.
"Oh, you're not preventing me in any way at all."