Canon Beecher took no notice of Hyacinth’s last speech. He had returned
with amazing swiftness and ease from the region of high emotion to the
commonplace. Excursions to the shining peaks of mystical experience are
for most men so rare that the glory leaves them with dazzled eyes, and
they walk stumblingly for a while along the dull roads of the world.
But Canon Beecher, in the course of his pleading with Hyacinth, had been
only in places very well known to him. The presence chamber of the King
was to him also the room of a familiar friend. It was no breathless
descent from the green hill of the cross to the thoroughfare of common
life.
‘Now, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘we really must go and talk to my wife and
Marion. Besides, I must tell you the plan I have made for you--the plan
I was just going to speak about when you put it out of my head with the
news of your love-making.’
For Hyacinth a great effort was necessary before he could get back to
his normal state. His hands were trembling violently. His forehead and
hair were damp with sweat. His whole body was intensely cold. His mind
was confused, and he listened to what was said to him with only the
vaguest apprehension of its meaning. The Canon laid a firm hand upon
his arm, and led him away from the study. In the passage he stopped, and
asked Hyacinth to go back and blow out the candle which still burned on
the study table.
‘And just put some turf on the fire,’ he added; ‘I don’t want it to go
out.’
The pause enabled Hyacinth to regain his self-command, and the
performance of the perfectly ordinary acts required of him helped to
bring him back again to common life.
When they entered the drawing-room it was evident that Mrs. Beecher had
already heard the news, and was, in fact, discussing the matter eagerly
with Marion. She sprang up, and hastened across the room to meet them.
‘I am so glad,’ she said--‘so delighted! I am sure you and Marion will
be happy together.’
She took Hyacinth’s hands in hers, and held them while she spoke, then
drew nearer to him and looked up in his face expectantly. A fearful
suspicion seized him that on an occasion of the kind she might consider
it right to kiss him. It was with the greatest difficulty that he
suppressed a wholly unreasonable impulse to laugh aloud. Apparently the
need of such affectionate stimulant was strong in Mrs. Beecher. When
Hyacinth hung back, she left him for her husband, put her arms round his
neck, and kissed him heartily on both cheeks.
‘Isn’t it fortunate,’ she said, ‘that you saw Dr. Henry last week while
you were in Dublin? You little thought how important that talk with him
was going to turn out--I mean, of course, important for us. It always
was important for Mr.--I mean for Hyacinth.’
The Canon seemed a little embarrassed. He cleared his throat somewhat
unnecessarily, and then said:
‘I haven’t mentioned that matter yet.’
‘Not mentioned Dr. Henry’s offer! Then, what have you been talking about
all this time?’
It did not seem necessary to tell Mrs. Beecher all that had been said,
or to repeat the scene in the study for her benefit. The Canon cleared
his throat again.
‘I was in Dublin last week attending a meeting of the Scriptural Schools
Society, and I met Dr. Henry. We were talking about the Quinns. I told
you that Mr. Quinn is to be the new secretary of the society, didn’t I?
Dr. Henry knows Mr. Quinn slightly, and was greatly interested in him.
Your name naturally was mentioned. Dr. Henry seems to have taken a
warm interest in you when you were in college, and to have a very high
opinion of your abilities. He did not know what had become of you, and
was very pleased to hear that you were a friend of ours.’
Hyacinth knew at once what was coming--knew what Canon Beecher’s plan
for his future was, and why he was pleased with it; understood how Mrs.
Beecher came to describe this conversation with Dr. Henry as fortunate.
He waited for the rest of the recital, vaguely surprised at his own want
of feeling.
‘I told him,’ the Canon went on, eying Hyacinth doubtfully, ‘that you
had lost your employment here. I hope you don’t object to my
having mentioned that. I am sure you wouldn’t if you had heard how
sympathetically he spoke of you. He assured me that he was most anxious
to help you in any way in his power. He just asked one question about
you.’ Hyacinth started. Where had he heard those identical words before?
Oh yes, they were in Miss Goold’s letter. Patrick O’Dwyer also had just
asked one question about him. He smiled faintly as the Canon went on:
‘“Is he fit, spiritually fit, to be ordained? For it is the desire to
serve God which must animate our work.” I said I thought you were. I
told him how you sang in our choir here, and how fond you seemed of our
quiet life, and what a good fellow you are. You see, I did not know then
that I was praising the man who is to be my son-in-law. He asked me to
remind you of a promise he had once made, and to say that he was ready
to fufil it. I understood him to mean that he would recommend you to any
Bishop you like for ordination.’
Hyacinth remained silent. He felt that in surrendering his work for the
_Croppy_ he surrendered also his right to make any choice. He was ready
to be shepherded into any position, like a sheep into a pen. And he
had no particular wish to resist. He saw a simple satisfaction in Mrs.
Beecher’s face and a beautiful joy in Marion’s eyes. It was impossible
for him to disappoint them. He smiled a response to Mrs. Beecher’s
kindly triumph.
‘Isn’t that splendid! Now you and Marion will be able to be married
quite soon, and I do dislike long engagements. Of course, you will be
very poor at first, but no poorer than we were. And Marion is not afraid
of being poor--are you, dear?’
‘That is just what I have been saying to him,’ said Marion; ‘isn’t it,
Hyacinth? Of course I am not afraid. I have always said that if I ever
married I should like to marry a clergyman, and if one does that one is
sure to be poor.’
Evidently there was no doubt in either of their minds that Hyacinth
would accept Dr. Henry’s offer. Nor had he any doubt himself. The thing
seemed too inevitable to be anything but right. Only on Canon Beecher’s
face there lingered a shadow of uncertainty. Hyacinth saw it, and
relieved his mind at once.
‘I shall write to Dr. Henry to-night and thank him. I shall ask him to
try and get me a curacy as soon as possible.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Canon.
‘I think,’ added Hyacinth, ‘that I should prefer getting work in
England.’
‘Oh, why,’ said Mrs. Beecher. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to stay in Ireland!
and then we might have Marion somewhere within reach.’
‘My dear,’ said the Canon, ‘we must let Hyacinth decide for himself. I
am sure he knows what is wisest for him to do.’
Hyacinth was not at all sure that he knew what was wisest, and he was
quite certain that he had not decided for himself in any matter of the
slightest importance. He had suggested an English curacy in the vague
hope that it might be easier there to forget his hopes and dreams for
Ireland. It seemed to him, too, that a voluntary exile, of which he
could not think without pain, might be a kind of atonement for the
betrayal of his old enthusiasm.
The Canon followed him to the door when he left.
‘My dear boy’--there was a break in his voice as he spoke--’ my dear
boy, you have made me very happy. I am sure that you will not enter upon
the work of the ministry from any unworthy motive. The call will become
clearer to you by degrees. I mean the inward call. The outward call, the
leading of circumstance, has already made abundantly plain the way you
ought to walk in. The other will come--the voice which brings assurance
and peace when it speaks.’
Hyacinth looked at him wistfully. There seemed very little possibility
of anything like assurance for him, and only such peace as might be
gained by smothering the cries with which his heart assailed him. The
Canon held his hand and wrung it.
‘I can understand why you want to go to England. Your political opinions
will interfere very little with your work there. Here, of course, it
would be different. Yes, your choice is certainly wise, for nothing
must be allowed to hinder your work. “Laying aside every weight,” you
remember, “let us run the race.” Yes, I understand.’
It was perfectly clear to Hyacinth that the Canon did not understand in
the least. It was not likely that anyone ever would understand.
Gradually his despondency gave way before the crowding in of thoughts of
satisfaction. He was to have Marion, to live with her, to love her, and
be loved by her as long as they both lived. He saw life stretching out
before him, a sunlit, pleasant journey in Marion’s company. It did not
seem to him that any trouble could be really bad, any disappointment
intolerable, any toil oppressive with her love for an atmosphere round
him. He believed, too, that the work he was undertaking was a good work,
perhaps the highest and noblest kind of work there is to be done in the
world. From this conviction also came a glow of happiness. Yet there
kept recurring chill shudderings of self-reproach. Something within him
kept whispering that he had bartered his soul for happiness.
‘I have chosen the easier and therefore the baser way,’ he said. ‘I have
shrunk from toil and pain. I have refused to make the sacrifice demanded
of me.’
He went back again to the story of his father’s vision. For a moment
it seemed quite clear that he had deliberately refused the call to the
great fight, that he had judged himself unworthy, being cowardly and
selfish in his heart. Then he remembered that the Captain of whom his
father had told him was no one else but Christ, the same Christ of whom
Canon Beecher spoke, the Good Shepherd whose love he had discovered to
be the greatest need of all.
‘I must have Him,’ he said--‘I must have Him--and Marion.’
Again with the renewed decision came a glow of happiness and a sense of
rest, until there rose, as if to smite him, the thought of Ireland--of
Ireland, poor, derided of strangers, deserted by her sons, roped in as
a prize-ring where selfish men struggle ignobly for sordid gains. The
children of the land fled from it sick with despair. Its deserted houses
were full of all doleful things. Cormorants and the daughters of the owl
lodged in the lintels of them.
Sullen desolation was on the threshold, while satyrs cried to their
fellows across tracts of brown rush-grown land. Aliens came to hiss and
passed by wagging their hands. Over all was the monotony of the gray
sky, descending and still descending with clouds that came upon the
land, mistily folding it in close embraces of death. Voices sounded far
off and unreal through the gloom. The final convulsive struggles of the
nation’s life grew feebler and fewer. Of all causes Ireland’s seemed the
most hopelessly lost. Was he, too, going to forsake her? He felt that in
spite of all the good promised him there would always hang over his life
a gloom that even Marion’s love would not disperse, the heavy shadow of
Ireland’s Calvary. For Marion there would be no such darkness, nor would
Marion understand it. But surely Christ understood. Words of His crowded
to the memory. ‘When He beheld the city He wept over it, saying,
Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem!’ Most certainly He understood this, as He
understood all human emotion. He, too, had yearned over a nation’s fall,
had felt the heartbreak of the patriot.
‘I have chosen Him,’ he said at last. ‘Once having caught a glimpse of
Him, I could not do without Him. He understands it all, and He has given
me Marion.’