As he sat driving with his mother in the ass-trap to Kilaconnaghan, on his way back to the grand college in England, his doubts were assailing him although he was so quiet, to all seeming, sitting there. Those who passed them upon the road never guessed that this pale-faced young man in black was at war with his soul.... Few words passed between him and his mother, for the constraint of the past week had not yet been lifted. She was beginning to feel so lonely, and she was vexed with herself that the period of his stay in the valley had not been all she had dreamt of making it. It had been disappointing to a depressing extent, and now especially in its concluding stage. This sad excursion in the little ass-trap, without any of the pomp and circumstance which John so highly deserved, was a poor, mean ending.
He was running over in his mind the different causes which had given this vacation its unusual character. First there came remembrance of his journey down from Dublin with Mr. Myles Shannon, who had then suggested the friendship with his nephew Ulick. Springing out of this thought was a very vivid impression of Garradrimna, that ugly place which he had discovered in its true colors for the first time; its vile set of drunkards and the few secret lapses it had occasioned him. Then there was his father, that fallen and besotted man whom the valley had ruined past all hope. As a more intimate recollection his own doubts of the religious life by the lakeside arose clear before him. And the lake itself seemed very near, for it had been the silent witness of all his moods and conditions, the dead thing that had gathered to itself a full record of his sojourn in the valley. But, above all, there was Rebecca Kerr, whom he had contrived to meet so often as she went from school. It was she who now brought light to all the darkened places of his memory. Her letter to him the other day was the one real thing he had been given to take away from the valley. How he longed to read it again! But his mother's eyes were upon him.... At last he began to have a little thought of the part she had played.
Already they had reached the railway station of Kilaconnaghan. They went together through the little waiting-room, which held sad memories for Mrs. Brennan, and out upon the platform, where a couple of porters leaned against their barrows chewing tobacco. Two or three passengers were sitting around beside their luggage waiting to take the train for Dublin. A few bank clerks from the town were standing in a little group which possessed an imaginary distinction, laughing in a genteel way at a puerile joke from some of the London weekly journals. They were wearing sporting clothes and had fresh fags in their mouths. It was an essential portion of their occupation, this perpetual delight in watching the outgoing afternoon train.
"Aren't they the grand-looking young swells?" said Mrs. Brennan; "I suppose them have the great jobs now?"
"Great!" replied John, quite unconscious of what he said.
He spoke no other word till he took his place in the train. She kissed him through the open window and hung affectionately to his hand.... Then there fluttered in upon them the moment of parting.... Smiling wistfully and waving her hand, she watched the train until it had rounded a curve. She lingered for a moment by the advertisement for Jameson's Whiskey in the waiting-room to wipe her eyes. She began to remember how she had behaved here in this very place on the day of John's home-coming, and of how he had left her standing while he talked to Myles Shannon.... He seemed to have slipped away from her now, and her present thought made her feel that the shadow of the Shannon family, stretching far across her life, had attended his going as it had attended his coming.
She went out to the little waiting ass and, mounting into the trap, drove out of Kilaconnaghan into the dark forest of her fears.