‘When I was a young man—and it’s hard for you to think it, but I was a fine young man; never a better lad at the hurling than I was, me that’s a doddering old soggarth now—when I was a boy, as I’m telling you, there was a deal of going to and fro in the country and meetings at night, and drillings too, and plenty of talk of a rising—no less. Little good came of it that ever I saw, but I’m not blaming the men that was in it. They were good men, Hyacinth Conneally—men that would have given the souls out of their bodies for the sake of Ireland. They would, sure, for they loved Ireland well. But I had my own share in the doings. Of course, it was before ever there was a word of my being a priest. That came after. Thanks be to God for His mercies’—the old man crossed himself reverently—‘He kept me from harm and the sin that might have been laid on me. But in those days there were great thoughts in me, just as there are in you to-day. Faith! I’m of opinion that my thoughts were greater than yours, for I was all for fighting here in Ireland, for the Poor Old Woman herself, and it’s out to some foreign war you’d be going to fight for people that’s not friends of yours by so much as one heart’s drop. Still, the feeling in you is the same as the feeling that was in me, not a doubt of it. But, indeed, so far as I’m concerned, it’s over and gone. I haven’t spoken to a mortal soul about such things these thirty years, and I wouldn’t be doing it now only just to show you that I’m the last man in Ireland that would laugh at you for what you’ve told me.’
‘I’m glad I told you what’s in my heart,’ said Hyacinth; ‘I’d like to think I had your blessing with me when I go.’
‘Well, you won’t get it,’ said Father Moran, ‘so I tell you straight. I’ll give you no blessing when you’re going away out of the country, just when there’s need of every man in it. I tell you this—and you’ll remember that I know what I’m talking about—it’s not men that ‘ll fight who will help Ireland to-day, but men that will work.’
‘Work!’ said Hyacinth—‘work! What work is there for a man like me to do in Ireland?’
‘Don’t I offer you the chance of buying Thady Durkan’s boat? Isn’t there work enough for any man in her?’
‘But that’s not the sort of work I ought to be doing. What good would it be to anyone but myself? What good would it be to Ireland if I caught boatloads of mackerel?’
‘Don’t be making light of the mackerel, now. He’s a good fish if you get him fresh, and split him down and fry him with a lump of butter in the pan. There’s worse fish than the mackerel, as you’ll discover if you go to South Africa, and find yourself living on a bit of some ancient tough beast of an ostrich, or whatever it may happen to be that they eat out there.’
In his exalted mood Hyacinth felt insulted at the praise of the mackerel and the laughter in the priest’s eyes when he suggested a dinner off ostrich. He held out his hand, and said good-bye.
‘Wait, now—wait,’ said the priest; ‘don’t be in such a tearing hurry. I’ll talk as serious as you like, and not hurt your feelings, if you’ll stay for a minute or two. Listen, now. Isn’t the language dying on the people’s lips? They’re talking the English, more and more of them every day; and don’t you know as well as I do that when they lose their Irish they’ll lose half the good that’s in them? What sort will the next generation of our people be, with their own language gone from them, and their Irish ways forgotten, and all the old tales and songs and tunes perished away like the froth of the waves that the storm blew up across the fields the night your father died? I’ll tell you what they’ll be—just sham Englishmen. And the Lord knows the real thing is not the best kind of man in the world, but the copy of an Englishman! sure, that’s the poorest creature to be found anywhere on the face of God’s good earth. And that’s what we’ll be, when the Irish is gone from us. Wouldn’t there be work enough for you to do, now, if you were to buy Thady Durkan’s boat, and stay here and help to keep the people to the old tongue and the old ways?’
Hyacinth shook his head. His mood was altogether too heroic to allow him to think highly of what the priest said to him. He loved the Irish language as his native speech—loved it, too, as a symbol, and something more, perhaps—as an expression of the nationality of Ireland. But it did not seem to him to be a very essential thing, and to spend his life talking it and persuading other people to talk it was an obscure kind of patriotism which made no strong appeal to him—which, indeed, could not stand compared to the glory of drawing the sword.