‘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