‘Well, don’t be delaying too long. And look you here’—his voice sank almost to a whisper—‘don’t be talking about what I’ve said to you. People are queer, and if Father Joyce down in Clifden came to hear that I was working for a Protestant he’d be sure to go talking to the Archbishop, and I’d never get to the end of the fuss that would be made.’
‘Indeed, it’s very good of you, especially considering who I am—I mean, my father being a convert, and——’
‘Say no more,’ said the priest—‘say no more. Your father was a good man, Catholic or Protestant. I’m not one of these bitter kind of priests, Mr. Conneally. I can be a good Catholic without hating my neighbours. I don’t hold with all this bullyragging in newspapers about “sourfaces” and “saved.” Maybe that’s the reason that I’m stuck down here at the other end of nowhere all my life, and never got promotion or praise. But what do I care as long as they let me alone to do my work for the people? I’m not afraid to say it to you, Mr. Conneally, for you won’t want to get me into trouble, but it’s my belief that there’s many of our priests would rather have grand churches than contented people. They’re fonder of Rome than they are of Ireland.’
‘Really, Father Moran,’ said Hyacinth, smiling, ‘if you go on like this, I shall expect to hear of your turning Protestant.’
‘God forbid, Mr. Conneally! I wish you well. I wish you to be here among us, and to be prosperous; but the dearest wish of my heart for you is that I might see you back in the Catholic Church, believing the creed of your forefathers.’
The priest’s suggestion attracted Hyacinth a great deal more than Dr. Henry’s. He liked the sea and the fishing, and he loved the simple people among whom he had been brought up. His experiences in Dublin had not encouraged him to be ambitious. Life in the great world—it was thus that he thought of the bickerings of the Dublin Nationalists and the schoolboy enthusiasms of college students—was not a very simple thing. There was a complexity and a confusion in affairs which made it difficult to hold to any cause devotedly. It seemed to him, looking back, that Miss Goold’s ideals—and she had ideals, as he knew—were somehow vulgarized in their contact with the actual. He had seen something of the joy she found in her conflict with O’Rourke, and it did not seem to him to be pure or ennobling. At one time he was on the verge of deciding to do what the priest wished. Walking day by day along the shore or through the fields, he came to think that life might very well be spent without ambitious or extended hopes in quiet toil and unexciting pleasures. What held him back was the recollection, which never ceased to haunt him, of his father’s prophecy. The thought of the great fight, declared to be imminent, stirred in him an emotion so strong that the peace and monotony he half desired became impossible. He never made it clear to himself that he either believed or disbelieved the prediction. He certainly did not expect to see an actual gathering of armed men, or that Ireland was to be the scene of a battle like those in South Africa. But there was in him a conviction that Ireland was awakening out of a long sleep, was stretching her limbs in preparation for activity. He felt the quiver of a national strenuousness which was already shaking loose the knots of the old binding-ropes of prejudice and cowardice. It seemed to him that bone was coming to dry bone, and that sooner or later—very soon, it was likely—one would breathe on these, and they would live. That contest should come out of such a renaissance was inevitable. But what contest? Against whom was the new Ireland to fight, and who was truly on her side? Here was the puzzle, insoluble but insistent. It would not let him rest, recurring to his mind with each fresh recollection of his father’s prophecy.
It was while he was wearying himself with this perplexity that he got a letter from Augusta Goold. It was characteristic of her that she had written no word of sympathy when she heard of his father’s death, and now, when a letter did come, it contained no allusion to Hyacinth’s affairs. She told him with evident delight that she had enlisted no less than ten recruits for the Boer army. She had collected sufficient money to equip them and pay their travelling expenses. It was arranged that they were to proceed to Paris, and there join a body of volunteers organized by a French officer, a certain Pierre de Villeneuve, about whom Miss Goold was enthusiastic. She was in communication with an Irishman who seemed likely to be a suitable captain for her little band, and she wanted Hyacinth back in Dublin to help her.
‘You know,’ she wrote, ‘the people I have round me here. Poor old Grealy is quite impracticable, though he means well. He talks about nothing but the Fianna and Finn McCool, and can’t see that my fellows must have riding lessons, and must be got somehow to understand the mechanism of a rifle. Tim Halloran has been in a sulk ever since I told him what I thought of his conduct at the Rotunda. He never comes near me, and Mary O’Dwyer told me the other day that he called my volunteers a “pack of blackguards.” I dare say it’s perfectly true, but they’re a finer kind of blackguard than the sodden loafers the English recruit for their miserable army.’
She went on to describe the series of Boer victories which had come one after another just at Christmas-time. She was confident that the cause of freedom and nationality would ultimately triumph, and she foresaw the intervention of some Continental Power. A great blow would be struck at the already tottering British Empire, and then—the freedom of Ireland.
Hyacinth felt strangely excited as he read her news. The letter seemed the first clear note of the trumpet summoning him to his father’s Armageddon. Politics and squabbling at home might be inglorious and degrading, but the actual war which was being waged in South Africa, the struggle of a people for existence and liberty, could be nothing but noble. He saw quite clearly what his own next step was to be, and there was no temptation to hesitate about it. He would place his money at Miss Goold’s disposal, and go himself with her ten volunteers to join the brigade of the heroic de Villeneuve.