Hyacinth Part 20

'Never mind me,' said Hyacinth; 'I shall be all right. But I can't bear to think of you and Mrs. Quinn. Poverty like that in Dublin! Have you thought what it means? A shabby little house in a crowded street, off at the back of somewhere; dirt and stuffiness and vulgarity all around you.

She can't be expected to stand it--or you either.'

'My dear boy,' said Mr. Quinn, 'my wife and I have been trying all our lives to be Christians. Shall we receive good at the Lord's hand and not evil also? However it may be with me, I know that she will not fail in the trial.'

His face lit up as he spoke, and the smile on it was no longer forced, but clear and brave. Hyacinth knew that he was once again in the presence of that mysterious power which enables men and women to meet and conquer loss and pain, against which every kind of misfortune beats in vain. His eyes filled with tears as he took Mr. Quinn's hand and bade him good-night.

CHAPTER XIX

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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 secretarys.h.i.+p 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.h.i.+ning of love, which is stronger than all things and holds poverty and hards.h.i.+p 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.

CHAPTER XX