Down the garden John was reading Rebecca Kerr's letter first, for it was from her that the letter from "one of the chaps in the college" had come.
It told of how she was spending her holidays at a seaside village in Donegal. "It is even far quieter than Garradrimna and the valley. I go down to the sea in the mornings, but it is only to think and dream. The sea is just like one big lake, more lonely by far than the lake in the valley. This is surely the loneliest place you could imagine, but there is a certain sense of peace about it that is quite lovely. It is some distance from my home, and it is nice to be amongst people who have no immense concern for your eternal welfare. I like this, and so I have avoided making acquaintances here. But next week I am expecting a very dear friend to join me, and so, I dare say, my holidays will have a happy ending after all. I suppose you will have gone from the valley when I go back in October. And it will be the dreary place then...." She signed herself, "Yours very sincerely, Rebecca Kerr."
His eyes were dancing as he turned to read Ulick Shannon's letter.... In the opening passages it treated only in a conventional way of college affairs, but suddenly he was upon certain lines which to his mind seemed so blackly emphasized:
"Now I was just beginning to settle back into the routine of things when who should come along but Miss Kerr? She was looking fine. She stayed a few days here in Dublin, and I spent most of them with her. I gave her the time of her life, the poor little thing! Theaters every night, and all the rest of it. She was just lost for a bit of enjoyment. Grinding away, you know, in those cursed National Schools from year's end to year's end. Do you know what it is, John? I am getting fonder and fonder of that girl. She is the best little soul in all the world.
"She is spending her holidays up in some God-forsaken village in Donegal. Away from her people and by herself, you know. She has a girl friend going to see her next week. You will not be able to believe it probably—but I am the girl friend."
He read them and re-read them, these two letters which bore so intimately upon one another and which, through the coincidence of their arrival together, held convincing evidence of the dramatic moment that had arrived in the adventure of those two lives.
He became filled by an aching feeling that made him shiver and grow weak as if with some unknown expectation.... Yet why was he so disturbed in his mind as to this happening; what had he to do with it? He was one whose life must be directed away from such things. But the vision of Rebecca Kerr would be filling his eyes forever. And why had she written to him? Why had she so graphically pictured her condition of loneliness wherein he might enter and speak to her? His acquaintance with her was very slight, and yet he desired to know her beyond all the knowledge and beauty of the world.... And to think that it was Ulick Shannon who was now going where he longed to go.
A heavy constraint came between him and his mother during the remaining days. He spoke little and moved about in meditation like one fearful of things about to happen. But she fondly fancied as always that he was immersed in contemplation of the future she had planned for him. She never saw him setting forth into the autumn fields, a book in his hand, that she did not fancy the look of austere aloofness upon his face to be the expression of a priest reading his office. But thoughts of this kind were far from his mind in the fields or by the little wicket gate across which he often leaned, his eyes fixed upon the white, hard road which seemed to lead nowhere.
The day of his release at last came. Now that Ned was away from her, working in Ballinamult, she had managed to scrape together the price of another motor drive to Kilaconnaghan, but it was in the misfortune of things that Charlie Clarke's car should have been engaged for the very day of John's departure by the Houlihans of Clonabroney. It worried her greatly that she could not have this piece of grandeur upon this second occasion. Her intense devotion to religious literature had made her superstitious to a distressing degree. It appeared to her as an omen across the path of John and her own magnification. But John did not seem to mind.
It was notable that through his advance into contemplation he had triumphed over the power of the valley to a certain extent. So long as his mind had been altogether absorbed in thought of the priesthood he had moved about furtively, a fugitive, as it were, before the hateful looks of the people of the valley and the constant stare of the squinting windows. Now he had come into a little tranquillity and his heart was not without some happiness in the enjoyment of his larger vision.... And yet he was far from being completely at peace.