‘I’m not going to America. I’m going to South Africa. I’m going to join some young Irishmen to fight for the Boers and for freedom.’
‘You’re going out to fight—to fight for the Boers! What is it that’s in your head at all, Hyacinth Conneally? Tell me now.’
Again Hyacinth hesitated. Was it possible to give utterance to the thoughts and hopes which filled his mind? Could he tell anyone about the furious fancies of the last few days, or of that weird vision of his father’s which lay at the back of what he felt and dreamed? Could he even speak of the enthusiasm which moved him to devote himself to the cause of freedom and a threatened nationality? In the presence of a man of the world the very effort to express himself would have acted as some corrosive acid, and stained with patches of absurdity the whole fabric of his dreams. He looked at Father Moran, and saw the priest’s eyes lit with sympathy. He knew that he had a listener who would not scoff, who might, perhaps, even understand. He began to speak, slowly and haltingly at first, then more rapidly. At last he poured out with breathless, incoherent speed the strange story of the Armageddon vision, the hopes that were in him, the fierce enthusiasm, the passionate love for Ireland which burnt in his soul. He was not conscious of the gaping inconsequences of his train of emotion. He did not recognise how ridiculous it was to connect the Boer War with the Apocalyptic battle of the saints, or the utter impossibility of getting either one or the other into any sort of relation with the existing condition of Ireland.
A casual observer might have supposed that Hyacinth had made a mistake in telling his story to Father Moran. A smile, threatening actual laughter, hovered visibly round the priest’s mouth. His eyes had a shrewd, searching expression, difficult to interpret. Still, he listened to the rhapsody without interrupting it, till Hyacinth stopped abruptly, smitten with sudden self-consciousness, terrified of imminent ridicule. Nor were the priest’s first words reassuring.
‘I wouldn’t say now, Hyacinth Conneally, but there might be the makings of a fine man in you yet.’
‘I might have known,’ said Hyacinth angrily, ‘that you’d laugh at me. I was a fool to tell you at all. But I’m in earnest about what I’m going to do. Whatever you may think about the rest, there’s no laughing at that.’
‘Well, you’re just wrong then, for I wasn’t laughing nor meaning to laugh at all. God forbid that I should laugh at you, and I meant it when I said that there was the makings of a fine man in you. Laugh at you! It’s little you know me. Listen now, till I tell you something; but don’t you be repeating it. This must be between you and me, and go no further. I was very much of your way of thinking myself once.’
Hyacinth gazed at him in astonishment. The thought of Father Moran, elderly, rotund, kindly; of Father Moran with sugar-stick in his pocket for the school-children and a quaint jest on his lips for their mothers; of Father Moran in his ruffled silk hat and shabby black coat and baggy trousers—of this Father Moran mounted and armed, facing the British infantry in South Africa, was wholly grotesque. He laughed aloud.
‘It’s yourself that has the bad manners to be laughing now,’ said the priest. ‘But small blame to you if it was out to the Boers I was thinking of going. The gray goose out there on the road might laugh—and she’s the solemnest mortal I know—at the notion of me charging along with maybe a pike in my hand, and the few gray hairs that’s left on the sides of my head blowing about in the breeze I’d make as I went prancing to and fro. But that’s not what I meant when I said that once upon a time I was something of your way of thinking. And sure enough I was, but it’s a long time ago now.’
He sighed, and for a minute or two he said no more. Hyacinth began to wonder what he meant, and whether the promised confidence would be forthcoming at all. Then the priest went on: