‘You’ve listened to what I’ve told you, Father Moran, and you say that you understand what I feel, but I don’t think you really do, or else you wouldn’t fancy that I could be satisfied to stay here. What is it you ask of me? To spend my time fishing and talking Irish and dancing jigs. Ah! it’s well enough I’d like to do it. Don’t think that such a life wouldn’t be pleasant to me. It would be too pleasant. That’s what’s the matter with it. It’s a temptation, and not a duty, that you’re setting before me.’
‘Maybe it is now—maybe it is. And if it’s that way you think of it, you’re right enough to say no to me. But for all that I understand you well enough. Who’s this now coming up to the house to see me?’ He went over to the window and looked out. ‘Isn’t it a queer life a priest lives in a place like this, with never a minute of quiet peace from morning to night but somebody will be coming interrupting and destroying it? First it’s you, Hyacinth Conneally—not that I grudge the time to you when you’re going off so soon—and now it’s Michael Kavanagh. Indeed, he’s a decent man too, like yourself. Come in, Michael—come in. Don’t be standing there pulling at the old door-bell. You know as well as myself it’s broken these two years. It’s heartbroken the thing is ever since that congested engineer put up the electric bell for me, and little use that was, seeing that Biddy O’Halloran—that’s my housekeeper, Mr. Conneally; you remember her—poured a jug of hot water into its inside the way it wouldn’t annoy her with ringing so loud. And why the noise of it vexed her I couldn’t say, for she’s as deaf as a post every time I speak to her. Ah, you’re there, Michael, are you? Now, what do you want?’
A young farmer, black-haired, tall and straight, stood in the doorway with his hat in his hand. He had brought a paper for Father Moran’s signature. It related to a bull which the Congested Districts Board proposed to lend to the parish, and of which Kavanagh had been chosen to be custodian. A long conversation followed, conducted in Irish. The newly-erected habitation for the animal was discussed; then the best method of bringing him home from Clifden Station; then the kind of beast he was likely to turn out to be, and the suitability of particular breeds of cattle to the coarse, brine-soaked land of Carrowkeel. Kavanagh related a fearful tale of a lot of ‘foreign’ fowls which had been planted in the neighbourhood by the Board. They were particularly nice to look at, and settings of their eggs were eagerly booked long beforehand. Then one by one they sickened and died. Some people thought they died out of spite, being angered at the way they had been treated in the train. Kavanagh himself did not think so badly of them. He was of opinion that their spirits were desolated in them with the way the rain came through the roof of their house, and that their feet got sore with walking on the unaccustomed sea-sand. However their death was to be explained, he hoped that the bull would turn out to be hardier. Father Moran, on his part, hoped that the roof of the bull’s house would turn out to be sounder. In the end the paper was signed, and Kavanagh departed.
‘Now, there,’ said the priest, ‘is a fine young man. Only for him, I don’t know how I’d get on in the parish at all. He’s got a head on his shoulders, and a notion of improving himself and his neighbours, and it would do you good to see him dance a jig. But why need I tell you that when you’ve seen him yourself? He is to be the secretary of the Gaelic League when we get a branch of it started in Carrowkeel. And a good secretary he’ll make, for his heart will be in the work. I dare say, now, you’ve heard of the League when you were up in Dublin. Well, you’ll hear more of it. By the time you’re back here again—— Now, don’t be saying that you’ll not come back. I’ll give you a year to get sick of fighting for the Boers, and then there’ll be a hunger on you for the old place that will bring you back to it in spite of yourself.’
‘Good-bye, Father Moran. Whatever happens to me, I’ll not forget Carrowkeel nor you either. You’ve been good to me, and if I don’t take your advice and stay where I am, it’s not through want of gratitude.’
The priest wrung his hand.
‘You’ll come back. It may be after I’m dead and gone, but back you’ll come. Here or somewhere else in the old country you’ll spend your days working for Ireland, because you’ll have learnt that working is better than fighting.’
CHAPTER X
When Hyacinth got back to Dublin about the middle of February, the streets were gay with amateur warriors. The fever for volunteering, which laid hold on the middle classes after the series of regrettable incidents of the winter, raged violently among the Irish Loyalists. Nowhere were the recruiting officers more fervently besieged than in Dublin. Youthful squireens who boasted of being admirable snipe shots, and possessed a knowledge of all that pertained to horses, struggled with prim youths out of banks for the privilege of serving as troopers. The sons of plump graziers in the West made up parties with footmen out of their landlords’ mansions, and arrived in Dublin hopeful of enlistment. Light-hearted undergraduates of Trinity, drapers’ assistants of dubious character, and the crowd of nondescripts whose time is spent in preparing for examinations which they fail to pass, leaped at the opportunity of winning glory and perhaps wealth in South Africa. Those who were fortunate enough to be selected were sent to the Curragh to be broken in to their new profession. They were clothed, to their own intense delight, in that peculiar shade of yellow which is supposed to be a help to the soldier in his efforts not to be shot. Their legs were screwed into putties and breeches incredibly tight round the knees, which expanded rapidly higher up, and hung round their hips in voluminous folds. Their jackets were covered with a multiplicity of quaint little pockets, sewed on in unexpected places, and each provided with a flap which buttoned over it. The name of the artist who designed this costume has perished, nor does there remain any written record of the use which these tightly-secured pocket-covers were supposed to serve. Augusta Goold suggested that perhaps they were meant to prevent the troopers’ money from falling out in the event of any commanding officer ordering his men to receive the enemy standing on their heads. ‘In the light of the intelligence displayed by the English Generals up to the present,’ she said, ‘the War Office is quite right to be prepared for such a thing happening.’