CHAPTER IX
The prospect of joining Augusta Goold’s band of volunteers and going to South Africa to fight afforded Hyacinth great satisfaction. For two days he lived in an atmosphere of day-dreams and delightful anticipations. He had no knowledge whatever of the actual conditions of modern warfare. He understood vaguely that he would be called upon to endure great hardships. He liked to think of these, picturing himself bravely cheerful through long periods of hunger, heat, or cold. He had visions of night watches, of sudden alarms, of heart-stirring skirmishes, of scouting work, and stealthy approaches to the enemy’s lines. He thought out the details of critical interviews with commanding officers in which he with some chosen comrade volunteered for incredibly dangerous enterprises. He conceived of himself as wounded, though not fatally, and carried to the rear out of some bullet-swept firing-line. He was just twenty-three years of age. Adventure had its fascination, and the world was still a place full of splendid possibilities.
At the end of his two days of dreaming he returned, flushed with his great purposes, to the realities of life. He went to Father Moran to tell him that he would not buy Durkan’s boat. He laughed to himself at the thought of doing such a thing. Was he to spend his life fishing mackerel round the rocky islands of Connemara, when he might be fighting like one of the ancient heroes, giving his strength, perhaps his life, for a great cause? The priest met him at the presbytery door.
‘Come in, Mr. Conneally—come in and sit down. I was expecting you these two days. What were you doing at all, walking away there along the rocks by yourself? The people were beginning to say that you were getting to be like your poor father, and that nobody’d ever get any good out of you. But I knew you’d come back to me here. I hope now it’s to tell me that you’ll buy the boat you’ve come.’
They entered the house, and the priest opened the door of the little sitting-room. Hyacinth knew it well. There was the dark mahogany table with the marks burnt into it where hot dishes were set down, the shabby arm-chair, the worn cocoanut-matting on the floor, the dozen or so books in the hanging shelf, the tawdry sacred pictures round the wall. He had known it all, and it all seemed unchanged since he was a child.
‘Sit you down—sit you down,’ said the priest. ‘And now about the boat.’
‘I’m not going in for her,’ said Hyacinth. ‘I’m as thankful to you for suggesting it as if I did buy her. I hope you’ll understand that, but I’m not going to buy her.’
He found it difficult to speak of his new plan to Father Moran.
‘Do you tell me that, now? I’m sorry for it. And why wouldn’t you buy her? What’s there to hinder you?’