Hyacinth had three months’ work to do before he actually left Mr.
Quinn’s employment. He knew that at the end of that time he would be
left absolutely without income, and that it was necessary for him to
look out for some other situation. He reckoned up the remains of his
original capital, and found himself with little more than a hundred
pounds to fall back upon. Yet he did nothing. From time to time he
bestirred himself, pondered the newspaper advertisements of vacant
situations, and mentally resolved to commence his search at once. Always
some excuse offered itself to justify putting the unpleasant business
off, and he allowed himself to slip back into the quiet routine of life
as if no catastrophe threatened him. He was, indeed, far more troubled
about the Quinns’ future than his own, and when, at the end of April,
Canon Beecher returned from Dublin with the news that he had secured the
secretaryship of the Church of Ireland Scriptural Schools Society for
Mr. Quinn, Hyacinth felt that his mind was relieved of a great anxiety.
That no such post had been discovered for him did not cost him a
thought. In spite of his spasmodic efforts to goad himself into a
condition of reasonable anxiety for his future, there remained half
consciously present in his mind a conviction that somehow a way of
getting sufficient food and clothes would offer itself in due time.
The conviction was justified by the event. It was on Saturday evening
that the Canon returned with his good news, and on Sunday morning
Hyacinth received a letter from Miss Goold.
‘You have no doubt heard,’ she wrote, ‘that we have got a new editor
for the Croppy--Patrick O’Dwyer, Mary’s brother. Of course, you remember
Mary and her unpoetical hysterics the morning after the Rotunda meeting.
The new editor is a splendid man. He has been on the staff of a New
York paper for the last five years, and thoroughly understands the whole
business. But that’s not the best of him. He hates England worse than
I do. I’m only a child beside him, bursting out into fits of temper
now and then, and cooling off again. He hates steadily, quietly, and
intensely. But even that is not all that is to be said. He has got
brains--brains enough, my dear Hyacinth, to make fools of you and me
every day and all day long. He has devised a new policy for Ireland. The
plan is simplicity itself, like all really great plans, and it _must_
succeed. I won’t go into it now, because I want you to come up to Dublin
and see O’Dwyer. He tells me that he needs somebody else besides himself
on the staff of the _Croppy_, which, by the way, is to be enlarged and
improved. He wants a man who can write a column a week in Irish, as well
as an article now and then in good strong plain English. I suggested
your name to him, and showed him some of the articles you had written.
He was greatly pleased with the one about O’Dowd’s cheap patriotism, and
liked one or two of the others. He just asked one question about you:
“Does Mr. Conneally hate England and the Empire, and everything English,
from the Parliament to the police barrack? It is this hatred which must
animate the work.” I said I thought you did. I told him how you had
volunteered to fight for the Boers, and about the day you nearly killed
that blackguard Shea. He seemed to think that was good enough, and asked
me to write to you on the subject. We can’t offer you a big salary. The
editor himself is only to get a hundred pounds a year for the present,
and I am guaranteeing another hundred for you. I am confident that I
shan’t have to pay it for more than six months. The paper is sure to go
as it never went before, and in a few years we shall be able to treble
O’Dwyer’s salary and double yours. Nothing like such a chance has ever
offered itself in Irish history before. Everything goes to show that
this is our opportunity. England is weaker than she has been for
centuries, is clinging desperately to the last tatters of her old
prestige. She hasn’t a single statesman capable of thinking or acting
vigorously. Her Parliament is the laughingstock of Europe. Her Irish
policy may be summed up in four words--intrigue with the Vatican. In
Ireland the power of the faithful garrison is gone. The Protestants in
the North are sick of being fooled by one English party after another.
The landlords, or what’s left of them, are beginning to discover that
they have been bought and sold. The Bishops, England’s last line of
defence, are overreaching themselves, and we are within measurable
distance of the day when the Church will be put into her proper place.
There is not so much as a shoneen publican in a country town left who
believes in the ranting of O’Rourke and his litter of blind whelps.
Ireland is simply crying out for light and leading, and the _Croppy_
is going to give both. You always wanted to serve Ireland. Now I am
offering you the chance. I don’t say you ought to thank me, though you
will thank me to the day of your death. I don’t say that you have an
opportunity of becoming a great man. I know you, and I know a better way
of making sure of you than that. I say to you, Hyacinth Conneally, that
we want you--just _you_ and nobody else. Ireland wants you.’
The letter, especially the last part of it, was sufficiently ridiculous
to have moved Hyacinth to a smile. But it did no such thing. On the
contrary, its rhetoric excited and touched him. The flattery of the
final sentences elated him. The absurdity of the idea that Ireland
needed him, a fifth-rate office clerk, an out-of-work commercial
traveller who had failed to sell blankets and flannels, did not strike
him at all. The figure of Augusta Goold rose to his mind. She flashed
before him, an Apocalyptic angel, splended and terrible, trumpet-calling
him to the last great fight. He forgot in an instant the Quinns and
their trouble. The years of quietness in Ballymoy, the daily intercourse
with gentle people, the atmosphere of the religion in which he had
lived, fell away from him suddenly.
He sat absorbed in an ecstasy of joyful excitement until the jangling of
Canon Beecher’s church bell recalled him to common life again. It speaks
for the strength of the habits he had formed in Ballymoy that he rose
without hesitation and went to take his part in the morning service.
He sat down as usual beside Marion Beecher and her harmonium. He
listened to her playing until her father entered. He found himself
gazing at her when she stood up for the opening words of the service.
He felt himself strangely affected by the gentleness of her face and the
slender beauty of her form. When she knelt down he could not take
his eyes off her. There came over him an inexplicable softening, a
relaxation of the tense excitement of the morning. He thought of her
kneeling there in the faded shabby church Sunday after Sunday for years
and years, when he was working at hot pressure far away. He knew just
how her eyes would look calmly, trustfully up to the God she spoke
to; how her soul would grow in gentleness; how love would be the very
atmosphere around her. And all the while he would struggle and fight,
with no inspiration except a bitter hate. Suddenly there came on him a
feeling that he could not leave her. The very thought of separation
was a fierce pain. A desire of her seized on him like uncontrollable
physical hunger. Wherever he might be, whatever life might have in store
for him, he knew that his heart would go back to her restlessly, and
remain unsatisfied without her. He understood that he loved her. Canon
Beecher’s voice came to him as if from an immense distance:
‘O God, make speed to save us.’
Then he heard very clearly Marion’s sweet voice replying:
‘O Lord, make haste to help us.’
There was a faint shuffling, and the congregation rose to their feet.
His eyes were still on Marion, and now his whole body quivered with the
force of his newly-found love. She half turned and looked at him. For
one instant their eyes met, and he saw in hers a flash of recognition,
then a strange look of fear, and she turned away from him, flushed and
trembling. He saw that she had read his heart and knew his love.
‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,’ read
the Canon heavily.
Hyacinth’s heart swelled in him. His whole being seemed to throb with
exultation, and he responded in a voice he could not recognise for his.
‘As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without
end. Amen.’
Marion stood silent. Her head was bowed down, and her hands clasped
tight together.
Of the remainder of the morning’s service Hyacinth could never
afterwards remember anything. No doubt Canon Beecher read the Psalms and
lessons and prayers; no doubt he preached. Probably, also, hymns were
sung, and Marion played them, but he could not imagine how. It seemed
quite impossible that she could have touched the keys with her fingers,
or that she could have uttered any sound; yet no one had remarked the
absence of hymns or even noticed any peculiarity in their performance.
Not till after the service was over did he regain full consciousness
of himself and his surroundings; then he became exceedingly alert. He
watched the Canon disappear into the vestry, heard the congregation
trample down the aisle, listened to Marion playing a final voluntary.
It seemed to him as he sat there waiting for her to stop that she played
much longer than usual. He could hear Mrs. Beecher and Mr. Quinn talking
in the porch, and every moment he expected the Canon to appear. At last
the music ceased, and the lid of the harmonium was closed and locked. He
stepped forward and took Marion’s hands in his.
‘Marion,’ he said, ‘I love you. It was only this morning that I found
it out, but I know--oh, I know--that I love you far, far more than I can
tell you.’
The hand which lay in his grew cold, and the girl’s head was bowed so
that he could not see her face. He felt her tremble.
‘Marion, Marion, I love you, love you, love you!’
Then very slowly she raised her head and looked at him. He stooped to
kiss her lips, and felt her face flush and glow when he touched it. Then
she drew her hands from his and fled down the church to her mother.
Hyacinth stood agape with wonder at the words which he had spoken. The
knowledge of his love had come on him like a sudden gust, and he only
half realized what he had done. He walked back to his lodgings, going
over and over the amazing words, recalling with flushed astonishment the
kiss. Then a chilling doubt beset him suddenly. Did Marion know how poor
he was? Never in his life had the fear of poverty or the desire of
gain determined Hyacinth’s plans. He knew very well that no such
considerations would have in any way affected his conduct towards
Marion. Once he realized that he loved her, the confession of his
love was quite inevitable. Yet he felt vaguely that he might be judged
blameworthy. He had read a few novels, and he knew that even the writers
whose chief business it is to glorify the passion of love do not dare to
represent it as independent of money. He knew, too, that many penniless
heroes won admiration--he did not in the least understand why they
should--by silently deserting affectionate women. He knew that kisses
were immoral except for those who possessed a modest competence. These
authorized ethics of marriage engagements were wholly incomprehensible
to him, and it in no way disquieted his conscience that he had bound
Marion to him with his kiss; yet he felt that she had a right to know
what income he hoped to earn, and what kind of home he would have to
offer her. A hundred pounds a year might be deemed insufficient, and
he knew that, not being either a raven or a lily, he could not count on
finding food and clothes ready when he wanted them.
The daughters of the Irish Church clergy, even of the dignitaries, are
not brought up in luxury. Still, they are most of them accustomed to a
daily supply of food--plain, perhaps, but sufficient--and will look for
as much in the homes of their husbands. A girl like Marion Beecher does
not expect to secure a position which will enable her to send her own
clothes to a laundress or hire a cook who can make pastry; but it is not
fair to ask her to wash the family’s blankets or to boil potatoes for a
pig. Probably her friends would think her lucky in marrying a curate or
a dispensary doctor with one hundred and fifty pounds a year, and
the prospect of one-third as much again after a while. But Hyacinth
remembered that he was poorer than any curate. He determined to put the
matter plainly before Marion without delay.
The Rectory door was opened for him by Elsie Beecher, and, in spite of
her wondering protests, Hyacinth walked into the dining-room and asked
that Marion should be sent to him. The room was empty, as he expected.
He stood and waited for her, deriving faint comfort and courage from the
threadbare carpet, patched tablecloth, and poor crazy chairs. They were
strange properties for a scene with possibilities of deep romance in it,
but they made his confession of poverty easier.
Marion entered at last and stood beside him. He neither took her hand
nor looked at her.
‘When I told you to-day that I loved you,’ he said, ‘I ought to have
told you that I am very poor.’
‘I know it,’ she said.
‘But I am poorer even than you know. I am not in Mr. Quinn’s employment
any more. I have no settled income, and only a prospect of earning a
very small one.’ He paused. ‘I shall have to go away from Ballymoy. I
must live in Dublin. I do not think it is fair to ask you to marry me. I
shall have no more to live upon than----’
She moved a step nearer to him and laid her hand on his arm.
‘Look at me,’ she said.
He raised his eyes to her face, and saw again there, as he had seen in
church, the wonderful shining of love, which is stronger than all things
and holds poverty and hardship cheap.
‘Keep looking at me still,’ she said. ‘Now tell me: Do you really think
it matters that you are poor? Do you think I care whether you have much
or little? Tell me.’
He could not answer her, although he knew that there was only one answer
to her question.
‘Do you think that I love money? Do you doubt that I love you?’
Her voice sunk almost to a whisper as she spoke, and her eyes fell from
looking into his. Just as when he kissed her in the church, she flushed
suddenly, but this time she did not try to escape from him. Instead she
clung to his arm, and hid her face against his shoulder. He put his arms
round her and held her close.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I was a fool to come here thinking that my being
poor would matter. I might have known. Indeed, I think I did know even
before I spoke to you.’
She had no answer except a long soft laugh, which was half smothered in
his arms.