Hyacinth Part 9

Of course, it was before ever there was a word of my being a priest.

That came after. Thanks be to G.o.d 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 b.u.t.ter 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 G.o.d'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.

'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 coa.r.s.e, 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 grat.i.tude.'

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 cla.s.ses 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' a.s.sistants of dubious character, and the crowd of nondescripts whose time is spent in preparing for examinations which they fail to pa.s.s, 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 b.u.t.toned 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.'

It seemed possible to procure almost any amount of leave from the Curragh, and the yeomen delighted to spend it in promenading the fashionable streets of the metropolis. The tea-shops reaped a rich harvest from the regal way in which they treated their female relatives and friends. Indeed, their presence must have seriously disorganized the occupations by which young women earn their living. It was difficult to imagine that the sick in the hospitals could have been properly looked after, or the letters of solicitors typewritten, so great was the number of damsels who attached themselves to these attractive heroes. The philosophic observer found another curious subject for speculation in the fact that this parade of military splendour took place in a city whose population sympathized intensely with the Boer cause, and was accustomed to receive the news of a British defeat with delight. The Dublin artisan viewed the yeomen much as the French in Paris must have looked upon the allied troops who entered their city after Waterloo.

The very name by which they were called had an anti-national sound, and suggested the performance of other amateur horse-soldiers in Wexford a century earlier.

The little band whose writings filled the pages of the _Croppy_ were more than anyone else enraged at the flaunting of Imperialism in their streets. They had rejoiced quite openly after Christmas, and called attention every week in prose and poetry to the moribund condition of the British Empire, even boasting as if they themselves had borne a part in its humiliation. They were still in a position to a.s.sert that the Boers were victorious, and that the volunteers were likely to do no more than exhaust the prison accommodation at Pretoria. They could and did compose biting jests, but their very bitterness witnessed to a deep disappointment. It was not possible to deny that the despised English garrison in Ireland was displaying a wholly unlooked-for spirit. No one could have expected that West Britons and 'Seonini' would have wanted to fight. Very likely, when the time came, they would run away; but in the meanwhile here they were, swaggering through the streets of Dublin, outward and visible signs of a force in the country hostile to the hopes of the _Croppy_, a force that some day Republican Ireland would have to reckon with.

Augusta Goold herself was more tolerant and more philosophic than her friends. She looked at the yeomen with a certain admiration. Their exuberant youthfulness, their strutting, and their obvious belief in themselves, made a strong appeal to her imagination.

'Look at that young man,' she said to Hyacinth, pointing out a volunteer who pa.s.sed them in the street. 'I happen to know who he is. In fact, I knew his people very well indeed at one time, and spent a fortnight with them once when that young man was a toddler, and sometimes sat on my knee--at least, he may have sat on my knee. There were a good many children, and at this distance of time I can't be certain which of them it was that used to worry me most during the hour before dinner. The father is a landlord in the North, and comes of a fine old family. He's a strong Protestant, and English, of course, in all his sympathies.

Well, a hundred years or so ago that boy's great-grandfather was swaggering about these same streets in a uniform, just as his descendant is doing now. He helped to drag a cannon into the Phoenix Park one day with a large placard tied over its muzzle--"Our rights or----" Who do you think he was threatening? Just the same England that this boy is so keen to fight for to-day!'

'Ah,' said Hyacinth, 'you are thinking of the volunteer movement of 1780.'

'Afterwards,' she went on, 'he was one of the incorruptibles. You'll see his name on Jonah Barrington's red list. He stood out to the last against the Union, wouldn't be bribed, and fought two duels with Castlereagh's bravoes. The curious thing is that the present man is quite proud of that ancestor in a queer, inconsistent sort of way. Says the only mark of distinction his family can boast of is that they didn't get a Union peerage. Strange, isn't it?'

'It is strange,' said Hyacinth. 'The Irish gentry of 1782 were men to be proud of; yet look at their descendants to-day.'

'It is very sad. Do you know, I sometimes think that Ireland will never get her freedom till those men take it for her. Almost every struggle that Ireland ever made was captained by her aristocracy. Think of the Geraldines and the O'Neills. Think of Sarsfield and the Wild Geese.

Think of the men who wrenched a measure of independence from England in 1782. Think of Lord Edward and Smith O'Brien. No, we may talk and write and agitate, but we'll _do_ nothing till we get the old families with us.'

Hyacinth laughed. It seemed to him that Miss Goold was deliberately talking nonsense, rejoicing in a paradox.

'We are likely to wait, if we wait for them. Look at those.' He waved his hand towards a group of yeomen who were chatting at the street corner. 'They are going to stamp out a nation in South Africa. Is it likely that they will create one here?'

'It is not likely'--she sighed as she spoke--'yet stranger things than that have happened. Have you ever considered what the present English policy in Ireland really is? Do you understand that they are trying to keep us quiet by bribing the priests? They think that the Protestants are powerless, or that they will be loyal no matter what happens. But think: These Protestants have been accustomed for generations to regard themselves as a superior race. They conceive themselves to have a natural right to govern. Now they are being snubbed and insulted. There isn't an English official from their Lord Lieutenant down but thinks he is quite safe in ignoring the Protestants, and is only anxious to make himself agreeable to the priests. That's the beginning. Very soon they'll be bullied as well as snubbed. They will stand a good deal of it, because, like most strong people, they are very stupid and slow at understanding; but do you suppose they will always stand it?'

'They're English, and not Irish,' said Hyacinth. 'I suppose they like what their own people do.'

'It's a lie. They are not English, though they say it themselves. In the end they will find out that they are Irish. Some day a last insult, a particularly barefaced robbery, or an intolerable oppression, will awake them. Then they'll turn on the people that betrayed them. They will discover that Ireland--their Ireland--isn't meant to be a cabbage-garden for Manchester, nor yet a _creche_ for sucking priests. Ah! it will be good to be alive when they find themselves. We shall be within reach of the freedom of Ireland then.'

Hyacinth was amazed at her vehement admiration for the cla.s.s she was accustomed to anathematize. He turned her words over and over in his mind. They recalled, as so many different things seemed to do, his father's vision of an Armageddon. Amid the confusion of Irish politics this thought of a Protestant and aristocratic revolt was strangely attractive; only it seemed to be wholly impossible. He bewildered himself in the effort to arrange the pieces of the game into some reasonable order. What was to be thought of a priesthood who, contrary to all the traditions of their Church, had nursed a revolution against the rights of property? or of a people, amazingly quick of apprehension, idealistic of temperament, who time after time submitted themselves blindfold to the tyranny of a single leader, worshipped a man, and asked no questions about his policy? How was he to place an aristocracy who refused to lead, and persisted in whining about their wrongs to the inattentive shopkeepers of English towns, gentlemen not wanting in honour and spirit courting a contemptuous bourgeoisie with ridiculous flatteries? In what reasonable scheme of things was it possible to place Protestants, blatant in their boasts about liberty, who hugged subjection to a power which deliberately fostered the growth of an ecclesiastical tyranny? Where amid this crazy dance of self-contradictory fanatics and fools was a sane man to find a place on which to stand? How, above all, was Ireland, a nation, to evolve itself?

He turned with relief from these perplexities to the work that lay before him. However a man might worry and befog himself over the confused issues of politics, it was at all events a straightforward and simple matter to fight, and Hyacinth was going to the front as the eleventh Irish volunteer.

To do Miss Goold justice, she had been extremely unwilling to enrol him, and had refused to take a penny of his money. Her conscience, such as it was after years of patriotic endeavour, rebelled against committing a young man whom she really liked to the companionship of the men she had enlisted and the care of their commander, Captain Albert Quinn.

This gentleman, whom she daily expected in Dublin, belonged to County Mayo. He represented himself as a member of an ancient but impoverished family, boasted of his military experience, and professed to be profoundly skilled in all matters relating to horses. Miss Goold's inquiries elicited the fact that he held an undefined position under his brother, a respectable manufacturer of woollen goods. His military experience had been gathered during the few months he held a commission in the militia battalion of the Connaught Rangers, an honourable position which he had resigned because his brother officers persistently misunderstood his methods of winning money at cards. No one, however, was found to deny that he really did possess a wonderful knowledge of horses. The worst that Miss Goold's correspondents could suggest with regard to this third qualification was that he knew too much. None of these drawbacks to the Captain--he had a.s.sumed the t.i.tle when he accepted the command of the volunteers--weighed with Miss Goold. Indeed, she admitted to Mary O'Dwyer, in a moment of frankness, that if her men weren't more or less blackguards she couldn't expect them to go out to South Africa. She did not speak equally plainly to Hyacinth. She recollected that he had displayed a very inconvenient kind of morality when she first knew him, and she believed him quite capable of breaking away from her influence altogether if he discovered the kind of men she was willing to work with.

She did her best to persuade him to give up the idea of joining the force, by pointing out to him that he was quite unfitted for the work that would have to be done.

'You know nothing about horses,' she said. 'I don't suppose you've ever been on the back of one.'

Hyacinth admitted that this was true. The inhabitants of Carrowkeel rarely ride their s.h.a.ggy ponies, and when they do it is sitting sideways just above the creatures' tails, with two creels for turf or seaweed in the place where the saddle ought to be.

'And I don't suppose you know much about shooting?'

Hyacinth was depressed, for he had never pulled a trigger in his life.

In the West of Ireland a man is not allowed to possess a gun unless a resident magistrate will certify to his loyalty and harmless-ness.

Therefore, the inhabitants of villages like Carrowkeel are debarred from shooting either snipe or seals, and the British Empire stands secure.