I
It was one of those enticing days at the beginning of May when white
clouds are drawn about the earth like curtains. The lake lay like a
mirror that somebody had breathed upon, the brown islands showing
through the mist faintly, with gray shadows falling into the water,
blurred at the edges. The ducks were talking in the reeds, the reeds
themselves were talking, and the water lapping softly about the smooth
limestone shingle. But there was an impulse in the gentle day, and,
turning from the sandy spit, Father Oliver walked to and fro along the
disused cart-track about the edge of the wood, asking himself if he were
going home, knowing very well that he could not bring himself to
interview his parishioners that morning.
On a sudden resolve to escape from anyone that might be seeking him, he
went into the wood and lay down on the warm grass, and admired the
thickly-tasselled branches of the tall larches swinging above him. At a
little distance among the juniper-bushes, between the lake and the wood,
a bird uttered a cry like two stones clinked sharply together, and
getting up he followed the bird, trying to catch sight of it, but always
failing to do so; it seemed to range in a circle about certain trees,
and he hadn't gone very far when he heard it behind him. A stonechat he
was sure it must be, and he wandered on till he came to a great silver
fir, and thought that he spied a pigeon's nest among the multitudinous
branches. The nest, if it were one, was about sixty feet from the
ground, perhaps more than that; and, remembering that the great fir had
grown out of a single seed, it seemed to him not at all wonderful that
people had once worshipped trees, so mysterious is their life, so remote
from ours. And he stood a long time looking up, hardly able to resist
the temptation to climb the tree--not to rob the nest like a boy, but to
admire the two gray eggs which he would find lying on some bare twigs.
At the edge of the wood there were some chestnuts and sycamores. He
noticed that the large-patterned leaf of the sycamores, hanging out from
a longer stem, was darker than the chestnut leaf. There were some elms
close by, and their half-opened leaves, dainty and frail, reminded him
of clouds of butterflies. He could think of nothing else. White,
cotton-like clouds unfolded above the blossoming trees; patches of blue
appeared and disappeared; and he wandered on again, beguiled this time
by many errant scents and wilful little breezes.
Very soon he came upon some fields, and as he walked through the ferns
the young rabbits ran from under his feet, and he thought of the
delicious meals that the fox would snap up. He had to pick his way, for
thorn-bushes and hazels were springing up everywhere. Derrinrush, the
great headland stretching nearly a mile into the lake, said to be one of
the original forests, was extending inland. He remembered it as a deep,
religious wood, with its own particular smell of reeds and rushes. It
went further back than the island castles, further back than the Druids;
and was among Father Oliver's earliest recollections. Himself and his
brother James used to go there when they were boys to cut hazel stems,
to make fishing-rods; and one had only to turn over the dead leaves to
discover the chips scattered circlewise in the open spaces where the
coopers sat in the days gone by making hoops for barrels. But iron hoops
were now used instead of hazel, and the coopers worked there no more. In
the old days he and his brother James used to follow the wood-ranger,
asking him questions about the wild creatures of the wood--badgers,
marten cats, and otters. And one day they took home a nest of young
hawks. He did not neglect to feed them, but they had eaten each other,
nevertheless. He forgot what became of the last one.
A thick yellow smell hung on the still air. 'A fox,' he said, and he
trailed the animal through the hazel-bushes till he came to a rough
shore, covered with juniper-bushes and tussocked grass, the extreme
point of the headland, whence he could see the mountains--the pale
southern mountains mingling with the white sky, and the western
mountains, much nearer, showing in bold relief. The beautiful motion and
variety of the hills delighted him, and there was as much various colour
as there were many dips and curves, for the hills were not far enough
away to dwindle to one blue tint; they were blue, but the pink heather
showed through the blue, and the clouds continued to fold and unfold, so
that neither the colour nor the lines were ever the same. The retreating
and advancing of the great masses and the delicate illumination of the
crests could be watched without weariness. It was like listening to
music. Slieve Cairn showing straight as a bull's back against the white
sky, a cloud filling the gap between Slieve Cairn and Slieve Louan, a
quaint little hill like a hunchback going down a road. Slieve Louan was
followed by a great boulder-like hill turned sideways, the top indented
like a crater, and the priest likened the long, low profile of the next
hill to a reptile raising itself on its forepaws.
He stood at gaze, bewitched by the play of light and shadow among the
slopes; and when he turned towards the lake again, he was surprised to
see a yacht by Castle Island. A random breeze just sprung up had borne
her so far, and now she lay becalmed, carrying, without doubt, a
pleasure-party, inspired by some vague interest in ruins, and a very
real interest in lunch; or the yacht's destination might be Kilronan
Abbey, and the priest wondered if there were water enough in the strait
to let her through in this season of the year. The sails flapped in the
puffing breeze, and he began to calculate her tonnage, certain that if
he had such a boat he would not be sailing her on a lake, but on the
bright sea, out of sight of land, in the middle of a great circle of
water. As if stung by a sudden sense of the sea, of its perfume and its
freedom, he imagined the filling of the sails and the rattle of the
ropes, and how a fair wind would carry him as far as the cove of Cork
before morning. The run from Cork to Liverpool would be slower, but the
wind might veer a little, and in four-and-twenty hours the Welsh
mountains would begin to show above the horizon. But he would not land
anywhere on the Welsh coast. There was nothing to see in Wales but
castles, and he was weary of castles, and longed to see the cathedrals
of York and Salisbury; for he had often seen them in pictures, and had
more than once thought of a walking tour through England. Better still
if the yacht were to land him somewhere on the French coast. England
was, after all, only an island like Ireland--- a little larger, but
still an island--and he thought he would like a continent to roam in.
The French cathedrals were more beautiful than the English, and it would
be pleasant to wander in the French country in happy-go-lucky fashion,
resting when he was tired, walking when it pleased him, taking an
interest in whatever might strike his fancy.
It seemed to him that his desire was to be freed for a while from
everything he had ever seen, and from everything he had ever heard. He
merely wanted to wander, admiring everything there was to admire as he
went. He didn't want to learn anything, only to admire. He was weary of
argument, religious and political. It wasn't that he was indifferent to
his country's welfare, but every mind requires rest, and he wished
himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new
things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing
music, any music, French or German--any music but Irish music. He
sighed, and wondered why he sighed. Was it because he feared that if he
once went away he might never come back?
This lake was beautiful, but he was tired of its low gray shores; he was
tired of those mountains, melancholy as Irish melodies, and as
beautiful. He felt suddenly that he didn't want to see a lake or a
mountain for two months at least, and that his longing for a change was
legitimate and most natural. It pleased him to remember that everyone
likes to get out of his native country for a while, and he had only been
out of sight of this lake in the years he spent in Maynooth. On leaving
he had pleaded that he might be sent to live among the mountains by
Kilronan Abbey, at the north end of the lake, but when Father Conway
died he was moved round to the western shore; and every day since he
walked by the lake, for there was nowhere else to walk, unless up and
down the lawn under the sycamores, imitating Father Peter, whose wont it
was to walk there, reading his breviary, stopping from time to time to
speak to a parishioner in the road below; he too used to read his
breviary under the sycamores; but for one reason or another he walked
there no longer, and every afternoon now found him standing at the end
of this sandy spit, looking across the lake towards Tinnick, where he
was born, and where his sisters lived.
He couldn't see the walls of the convent to-day, there was too much mist
about; and he liked to see them; for whenever he saw them he began to
think of his sister Eliza, and he liked to think of her--she was his
favourite sister. They were nearly the same age, and had played
together; and his eyes dwelt in memory on the dark corner under the
stairs where they used to play. He could even see their toys through the
years, and the tall clock which used to tell them that it was time to
put them aside. Eliza was only eighteen months older than he; they were
the red-haired ones, and though they were as different in mind as it was
possible to be, he seemed nearer Eliza than anyone else. In what this
affinity consisted he couldn't say, but he had always felt himself of
the same flesh and blood. Neither his father nor mother had inspired
this sense of affinity; and his sister Mary and his brothers seemed to
him merely people whom he had known always--not more than that; whereas
Eliza was quite different, and perhaps it was this very mutuality, which
he could not define, that had decided their vocations.
No doubt there is a moment in every man's life when something happens to
turn him into the road which he is destined to follow; for all that it
would be superficial to think that the fate of one's life is dependent
upon accident. The accident that turns one into the road is only the
means which Providence takes to procure the working out of certain ends.
Accidents are many: life is as full of accidents as a fire is full of
sparks, and any spark is enough to set fire to the train. The train
escapes a thousand, but at last a spark lights it, and this spark always
seems to us the only one that could have done it. We cannot imagine how
the same result could have been obtained otherwise. But other ways would
have been found; for Nature is full of resource, and if Eliza had not
been by to fire the idea hidden in him, something else would. She was
the means, but only the means, for no man escapes his vocation, and the
priesthood was his. A vocation always finds a way out. But was he sure
if it hadn't been for Eliza that he wouldn't have married Annie McGrath?
He didn't think he would have married Annie, but he might have married
another. All the same, Annie was a good, comfortable girl, a girl that
everybody was sure would make a good wife for any man, and at that time
many people were thinking that he should marry Annie. On looking back he
couldn't honestly say that a stray thought of Annie hadn't found its way
into his mind; but not into his heart--there is a difference.
At that time he was what is known as a growing lad; he was seventeen.
His father was then dead two years, and his mother looked to him, he
being the eldest, to take charge of the shop, for at that time it was
almost settled that James was to go to America. They had two or three
nice grass farms just beyond the town: Patsy was going to have them; and
his sisters' fortunes were in the bank, and very good fortunes they
were. They had a hundred pounds apiece and should have married well.
Eliza could have married whomever she pleased. Mary could have married,
too, and to this day he couldn't tell why she hadn't married.
The chances his sister Mary had missed rose up in his mind--why, he did
not know; and a little bored by these memories, he suddenly became
absorbed in the little bleat of a blackcap perched on a bush, the only
one amid a bed of flags and rushes; 'an alder-bush,' he said. 'His mate
is sitting on her eggs, and there are some wood-gatherers about; that's
what's worrying the little fellow.' The bird continued to utter its
troubled bleat, and the priest walked on, thinking how different was its
evensong. He meditated an excursion to hear it, and then, without his
being aware of any transition, his thoughts returned to his sister Mary,
and to the time when he had once indulged in hopes that the mills along
the river-side might be rebuilt and Tinnick restored to its former
commercial prosperity. He was not certain if he had ever really believed
that he might set these mills going, or if he had, he encouraged an
illusion, knowing it to be one. He was only certain of this, that when
he was a boy and saw no life ahead of him except that of a Tinnick
shopman, he used to feel that if he remained at home he must have the
excitement of adventure. The beautiful river, with its lime-trees,
appealed to his imagination; the rebuilding of the mills and the
reorganization of trade, if he succeeded in reorganizing trade, would
mean spending his mornings on the wharves by the river-side, and in
those days his one desire was to escape from the shop. He looked upon
the shop as a prison. In those days he liked dreaming, and it was
pleasant to dream of giving back to Tinnick its trade of former days;
but when his mother asked him what steps he intended to take to get the
necessary capital, he lost his temper with her. He must have known that
he could never make enough money in the shop to set the mills working!
He must have known that he would never take his father's place at the
desk by the dusty window! But if he shrank from an avowal it was because
he had no other proposal to make. His mother understood him, though the
others didn't, and seeing his inability to say what kind of work he
would put his hand to, she had spoken of Annie McGrath. She didn't say
he should marry Annie--she was a clever woman in her way--she merely
said that Annie's relations in America could afford to supply sufficient
capital to start one of the mills. But he never wanted to marry Annie,
and couldn't do else but snap when the subject was mentioned, and many's
the time he told his mother that if the mills were to pay it would be
necessary to start business on a large scale. He was an impracticable
lad and even now he couldn't help smiling when he thought of the
abruptness with which he would go down to the river-side to seek a new
argument wherewith to confute his mother, to return happy when he had
found one, and sit watching for an opportunity to raise the question
again.
No, it wasn't because Annie's relations weren't rich enough that he
hadn't wanted to marry her. And to account for his prejudice against
marriage, he must suppose that some notion of the priesthood was
stirring in him at the time, for one day, as he sat looking at Annie
across the tea-table, he couldn't help thinking that it would be hard to
live alongside of her year in and year out. Although a good and a
pleasant girl, Annie was a bit tiresome to listen to, and she wasn't one
of those who improve with age. As he sat looking at her, he seemed to
understand, as he had never understood before, that if he married her
all that had happened in the years back would happen again--more
children scrambling about the counter, with a shopman (himself) by the
dusty window putting his pen behind his ear, just as his father did when
he came forward to serve some country woman with half a pound of tea or
a hank of onions.
And as these thoughts were passing through his mind, he remembered
hearing his mother say that Annie's sister was thinking of starting
dressmaking in the High Street. 'It would be nice if Eliza were to join
her,' his mother added casually. Eliza laid aside the skirt she was
turning, raised her eyes and stared at mother, as if she were surprised
mother could say anything so stupid. 'I'm going to be a nun,' she said,
and, just as if she didn't wish to answer any questions, went on sewing.
Well might they be surprised, for not one of them suspected Eliza of
religious inclinations. She wasn't more pious than another, and when
they asked her if she were joking, she looked at them as if she thought
the question very stupid, and they didn't ask her any more.
She wasn't more than fifteen at the time, yet she spoke out of her own
mind. At the time they thought she had been thinking on the
matter--considering her future. A child of fifteen doesn't consider, but
a child of fifteen may _know_, and after he had seen the look which
greeted his mother's remarks, and heard Eliza's simple answer, 'I've
decided to be a nun,' he never doubted that what she said was true. From
that day she became for him a different being; and when she told him,
feeling, perhaps, that he sympathized with her more than the others did,
that one day she would be Reverend Mother of the Tinnick Convent, he
felt convinced that she knew what she was saying--how she knew he could
not say.
His childhood had been a slumber, with occasional awakenings or half
awakenings, and Eliza's announcement that she intended to enter the
religious life was the first real awakening; and this awakening first
took the form of an acute interest in Eliza's character, and, persuaded
that she or her prototype had already existed, he searched the lives of
the saints for an account of her, finding many partial portraits of her;
certain typical traits in the lives of three or four saints reminded him
of Eliza, but there was no complete portrait. The strangest part of the
business was that he traced his vocation to his search for Eliza in the
lives of the saints. Everything that happened afterwards was the
emotional sequence of taking down the books from the shelf. He didn't
exaggerate; it was possible his life might have taken a different turn,
for up to that time he had only read books of adventure--stories about
robbers and pirates. As if by magic, his interest in such stories passed
clean out of his mind, or was exchanged for an extraordinary enthusiasm
for saints, who by renouncement of animal life had contrived to steal up
to the last bounds, whence they could see into the eternal life that
lies beyond the grave. Once this power was admitted, what interest could
we find in the feeble ambitions of temporal life, whose scope is limited
to three score and ten years? And who could doubt that saints attained
the eternal life, which is God, while still living in the temporal
flesh? For did not the miracles of the saints prove that they were no
longer subject to natural laws? Ancient Ireland, perhaps, more than any
other country, understood the supremacy of spirit over matter, and
strove to escape through mortifications from the prison of the flesh.
Without doubt great numbers in Ireland had fled from the torment of
actual life into the wilderness. If the shore and the islands on this
lake were dotted with fortress castles, it was the Welsh and the Normans
who built them, and the priest remembered how his mind took fire when he
first heard of the hermit who lived in Church Island, and how
disappointed he was when he heard that Church Island was ten miles away,
at the other end of the lake.
For he could not row himself so far; distance and danger compelled him
to consider the islands facing Tinnick--two large islands covered with
brushwood, ugly brown patches--ugly as their names, Horse Island and Hog
Island, whereas Castle Island had always seemed to him a suitable island
for a hermitage, far more so than Castle Hag. Castle Hag was too small
and bleak to engage the attention of a sixth-century hermit. But there
were trees on Castle Island, and out of the ruins of the castle a
comfortable sheiling could be built, and the ground thus freed from the
ruins of the Welshman's castle might be cultivated. He remembered
commandeering the fisherman's boat, and rowing himself out, taking a
tape to measure, and how, after much application of the tape, he had
satisfied himself that there was enough arable land in the island for a
garden; he had walked down the island certain that a quarter of an acre
could grow enough vegetables to support a hermit, and that a goat would
be able to pick a living among the bushes and the tussocked grass: even
a hermit might have a goat, and he didn't think he could live without
milk. He must have been a long time measuring out his garden, for when
he returned to his boat the appearance of the lake frightened him; it
was full of blustering waves, and it wasn't likely he'd ever forget his
struggle to get the boat back to Tinnick. He left it where he had found
it, at the mouth of the river by the fisherman's hut, and returned home
thinking how he would have to import a little hay occasionally for the
goat. Nor would this be all; he would have to go on shore every Sunday
to hear Mass, unless he built a chapel. The hermit of Church Island had
an oratory in which he said Mass! But if he left his island every Sunday
his hermitage would be a mockery. For the moment he couldn't see how he
was to build a chapel--a sheiling, perhaps; a chapel was out of the
question, he feared.
He would have to have vestments and a chalice, and, immersed in the
difficulty of obtaining these, he walked home, taking the path along the
river from habit, not because he wished to consider afresh the problems
of the ruined mills. The dream of restoring Tinnick to its commerce of
former days was forgotten, and he walked on, thinking of his chalice,
until he heard somebody call him. It was Eliza, and as they leaned over
the parapet of the bridge, he could not keep himself from telling her
that he had rowed out to Castle Island, never thinking that she would
reprove him, and sternly, for taking the fisherman's boat without asking
leave. It was no use to argue with Eliza that the fisherman didn't want
his boat, the day being too rough for fishing. What did she know about
fishing? She had asked very sharply what brought him out to Castle
Island on such a day. There was no use saying he didn't know; he never
was able to keep a secret from Eliza, and feeling that he must confide
in somebody, he told her he was tired of living at home, and was
thinking of building a sheiling on the island.
Eliza didn't understand, and she understood still less when he spoke of
a beehive hut, such as the ancient hermits of Ireland lived in. She was
entirely without imagination; but what surprised him still more than her
lack of sympathy with his dream-project was her inability to understand
an idea so inherent in Christianity as the hermitage, for at that time
Eliza's mind was made up to enter the religious life. He waited a long
time for her answer, but the only answer she made was that in the early
centuries a man was either a bandit or a hermit. This wasn't true: life
was peaceful in Ireland in the sixth and seventh centuries; even if it
weren't, she ought to have understood that change of circumstance cannot
alter an idea so inherent in man as the hermitage, and when he asked her
if she intended to found a new Order, or to go out to Patagonia to teach
the Indians, she laughed, saying she was much more interested in a
laundry than in the Indians. Her plea that the Tinnick Convent was
always in straits for money did not appeal to him then any more than it
did to-day.
'The officers in Tinnick have to send their washing to Dublin. A fine
reason for entering a convent,' he answered.
But quite unmoved by the sarcasm, she replied that a woman can do
nothing unless she be a member of a congregation. He shrank from Eliza's
mind as from the touch of something coarse, and his suggestion that the
object of the religious life is meditation did not embarrass her in the
very least, and he remembered well how she had said:
'Putting aside for the moment the important question whether there may
or may not be hermits in the twentieth century, tell me, Oliver, are you
thinking of marrying Annie McGrath? You know she has rich relations in
America, and you might get them to supply the capital to set the mills
going. The mills would be a great advantage. Annie has a good headpiece,
and would be able to take the shop off your hands, leaving you free to
look after the mills.'
'The mills, Eliza! there are other things in the world beside those
mills!'
'A hermitage on Castle Island?'
Eliza could be very impertinent when she liked. If she had no concern in
what was being said, she looked round, displaying an irritating
curiosity in every passer-by, and true to herself she had drawn his
attention to the ducks on the river while he was telling her of the
great change that had come over him. He had felt like boxing her ears.
But the moment he began to speak of taking Orders she forgot all about
the ducks; her eyes were fixed upon him, she listened to his every word,
and when he finished speaking, she reminded him there had always been a
priest in the family. All her wits were awake. He was the one of the
family who had shown most aptitude for learning, and their cousin the
Bishop would be able to help him. What she would like would be to see
him parish priest of Tinnick. The parish was one of the best in the
diocese. Not a doubt of it, she was thinking at that moment of the
advantage this arrangement would be to her when she was directing the
affairs of the convent.
If there was no other, there was at least one woman in Ireland who was
interested in things. He had never met anybody less interested in
opinions or in ideas than Eliza. They had walked home together in
silence, at all events not saying much, and that very evening she left
the room immediately after supper. And soon after they heard sounds of
trunks being dragged along the passage; furniture was being moved, and
when she came downstairs she just said she was going to sleep with Mary.
'Oliver is going to have my room. He must have a room to himself on
account of his studies.'
On that she gathered up her sewing, and left him to explain. He felt
that it was rather sly of her to go away like that, leaving all the
explanation to him. She wanted him to be a priest, and was full of
little tricks. There was no time for thinking it over. There was only
just time to prepare for the examination. He worked hard, for his work
interested him, especially the Latin language; but what interested him
far more than his aptitude for learning whatever he made up his mind to
learn was the discovery of a religious vocation in himself. Eliza feared
that his interest in hermits sprang from a boyish taste for adventure
rather than from religious feeling, but no sooner had he begun his
studies for the priesthood, than he found himself overtaken and
overpowered by an extraordinary religious fervour and by a desire for
prayer and discipline. Never had a boy left home more zealous, more
desirous to excel in piety and to strive for the honour and glory of the
Church.
An expression of anger, almost of hatred, passed over Father Oliver's
face, and he turned from the lake and walked a few yards rapidly, hoping
to escape from memories of his folly; for he had made a great fool of
himself, no doubt. But, after all, he preferred his enthusiasms, however
exaggerated they might seem to him now, to the commonplace--he could not
call it wisdom--of those whom he had taken into his confidence. It was
foolish of him, no doubt, to have told how he used to go out in a boat
and measure the ground about Castle Island, thinking to build himself a
beehive hut out of the ruins. He knew too little of the world at that
time; he had no idea how incapable the students were of understanding
anything outside the narrow interests of an ecclesiastical career.
Anyhow, he had had the satisfaction of having beaten them in all the
examinations; and if he had cared to go in for advancement, he could
have easily got ahead of them all, for he had better brains and better
interest than any of them. When he last saw that ignorant brute Peter
Fahy, Fahy asked him if he still put pebbles in his shoes. It was to
Fahy he had confided the cause of his lameness, and Fahy had told on
him; he was ridiculously innocent in those days, and he could still see
them gathered about him, pretending not to believe that he kept a
cat-o'-nine-tails in his room, and scourged himself at night. It was Tom
Bryan who said that he wouldn't mind betting a couple of shillings that
Gogarty's whip wouldn't draw a squeal from a pig on the roadside. The
answer to that was: 'A touch will make a pig squeal: you should have
said an ass!' But at the moment he couldn't think of an answer.
No doubt everyone looked on him as a ninny, and they persuaded him to
prove to them that his whip was a real whip by letting Tom Bryan do the
whipping for him. Tom Bryan was a rough fellow, who ought to have been
driving a plough; a ploughman's life was too peaceful an occupation for
him--a drover's life would have suited him best, prodding his cattle
along the road with a goad; it was said that was how he maintained his
authority in the parish. The remembrance of the day he bared his back to
that fellow was still a bitter one. With a gentle smile he had handed
the whip to Tom Bryan, the very smile which he imagined the hermits of
old time used to wear. The first blow had so stunned him that he
couldn't cry out, and this blow was followed by a second which sent the
blood flaming through his veins, and then by another which brought all
the blood into one point in his body. He seemed to lose consciousness of
everything but three inches of back. Nine blows he bore without wincing;
the tenth overcame his fortitude, and he had reeled away from Tom Bryan.
Tom had exchanged the whip he had given him for a great leather belt;
that was why he had been hurt so grievously--hurt till the pain seemed
to reach his very heart. Tom had belted him with all his strength; and
half a dozen of Tom's pals were waiting outside the door, and they came
into the room, their wide mouths agrin, asking him how he liked it. But
they were unready for the pain his face expressed, and in the midst of
his agony he noticed that already they foresaw consequences, and he
heard them reprove Tom Bryan, their intention being to dissociate
themselves from him. Cowards! cowards! cowards!
They tried to help him on with his shirt, but he had been too badly
beaten, and Tom Bryan came up in the evening to ask him not to tell on
him. He promised, and he wouldn't have told if he could have helped it.
But some explanation had to be forthcoming--he couldn't lie on his
back. The doctor was sent for....
And next day he was told the President wished to see him. The President
was Eliza over again; hermits and hermitages were all very well in the
early centuries, but religion had advanced, and nowadays a steadfast
piety was more suited to modern requirements than pebbles in the shoes.
If it had been possible to leave for America that day he thought he
would have gone. But he couldn't leave Maynooth because he had been fool
enough to bare his back to Tom Bryan. He couldn't return home to tell
such a story as that. All Tinnick would be laughing at him, and Eliza,
what would she think of him? He wasn't such a fool as the Maynooth
students thought him, and he realized at once that he must stay in
Maynooth and live down remembrance of his folly. So, as the saying goes,
he took the bit between his teeth.
The necessity of living down his first folly, of creating a new idea of
himself in the minds of the students, forced him to apply all his
intelligence to his studies, and he made extraordinary progress in the
first years. The recollection of the ease with which he outdistanced his
fellow-students was as pleasant as the breezes about the lake, and his
thoughts dwelt on the opinion which he knew was entertained, that for
many years no one at Maynooth had shown such aptitude for scholarship.
He only had to look at a book to know more about it than his
fellow-students would know if they were to spend days over it. He won
honours. He could have won greater honours, but his conscience reminded
him that the gifts he received from God were not bestowed upon him for
the mere purpose of humiliating his fellow-students. He often felt then
that if certain talents had been given to him, they were given to him to
use for the greater glory of God rather than for his own glorification;
and his feeling was that there was nothing more hateful in God's sight
than intellectual, unless perhaps spiritual, pride, and his object
during his last years at Maynooth was to exhibit himself to the least
advantage.
It is strange how an idea enters the soul and remakes it, and when he
left Maynooth he used his influence with his cousin, the Bishop, to get
himself appointed to the poorest parish in Connaught. Eliza had to
dissemble, but he knew that in her heart she was furious with him. We
are all extraordinarily different one from another, and if we seem most
different from those whom we are most like, it is because we know
nothing at all about strangers. He had gone to Kilronan in spite of
Eliza, in spite of everyone, their cousin the Bishop included. He had
been very happy in Bridget Clery's cottage, so happy that he didn't know
himself why he ever consented to leave Kilronan.
No, it was not because he was too happy there. He had to a certain
extent outgrown his very delicate conscience.