Among these cleverer boys was one ?neas Conneally, who was something more than clever. He was also religious in an intense and enthusiastic manner, which puzzled his teachers while it pleased them. His ancestors had lived for generations on a seaboard farm, watered by salt rain, swept by misty8 storms. The famine and the fever that followed it left him fatherless and brotherless. The emigration schemes robbed him and his mother of their surviving relations. The mission school and the missionary’s charity effected the half conversion9 of the mother and a whole-hearted acceptance of the new faith on the part of ?neas. Unlike most of his fellows in the college classrooms, he refused to regard an English curacy as the goal of his ambition. It seemed to him that his conversion ought not to end in his parading the streets of Liverpool in a black coat and a white tie. He wanted to return to his people and tell them in their own tongue the Gospel which he had found so beautiful.
The London committee meditated10 on his request, and before they arrived at a conclusion his mother died, having at the last moment made a tardy11 submission12 to the Church she had denied. Her apostasy—so the missionaries called it—confirmed the resolution of her son, and the committee at length agreed to allow him to return to his native village as the first Rector of the newly-created parish of Carrowkeel. He was provided with all that seemed necessary to insure the success of his work. They built him a gray house, low and strong, for it had to withstand the gales13 which swept in from the Atlantic. They bought him a field where a cow could graze, and an acre of bog14 to cut turf from. A church was built for him, gray and strong, like his house. It was fitted with comfortable pews, a pulpit, a reading-desk, and a movable table of wood decently covered with a crimson15 cloth. Beyond the church stood the school he had attended as a boy, whitewashed16 without and draped inside with maps and illuminated17 texts. A salary, not princely but sufficient, was voted to Mr. Conneally, and he was given authority over a Scripture-reader and a schoolmaster. The whole group of mission buildings—the rectory, the church, and the school—stood, like types of the uncompromising spirit of Protestantism, upon the bare hillside, swept by every storm, battered18 by the Atlantic spray. Below them Carrowkeel, the village, cowered19 in such shelter as the sandhills afforded. Eastward20 lonely cottages, faintly smoking dots in the landscape, straggled away to the rugged21 bases of the mountains. The Rev22. ?neas Conneally entered upon his mission enthusiastically, and the London committee awaited results. There were scarcely any results, certainly none that could be considered satisfactory. The day for making conversions23 was past, and the tide had set decisively against the new reformation. A national school, started by a clearsighted priest, in spite of his Archbishop, left the mission school almost without pupils. The Scripture-reader lost heart, and took to seeking encouragement in the public-house. He found it, and once when exalted—he said, spiritually—paraded the streets cursing the Virgin24 Mary. Worse followed, and the committee in London dismissed the man. A diminishing income forced on them the necessity of economy, and no successor was appointed. For a few years Mr. Conneally laboured on. Then a sharp-eyed inspector25 from London discovered that the schoolmaster took very little trouble about teaching, but displayed great talent in prompting his children at examinations. He, too, was dismissed, and the committee, still bent26 on economy, appointed a mistress in his place. She was a pretty girl, and after she had shivered through the stormy nights of two winters in the lonely school-house, Mr. Conneally married her. Afterwards the office of school-teacher was also left vacant. The whitewashed school fell gradually into decay, and the committee effected a further saving.
After his marriage Mr. Conneally’s missionary enthusiasm began to flag. His contact with womanhood humanized him. The sternness of the reformer died in him, and his neighbours, who never could comprehend his religion, came to understand the man. They learned to look upon him as a friend, to seek his sympathy and help. In time they learnt to love him.
Two years passed, and a son was born. The village people crowded upon him with congratulations, and mothers of wide experience praised the boy till Mrs. Conneally’s heart swelled27 in her with pride. He was christened Hyacinth, after a great pioneer and leader of the mission work. The naming was Mr. Conneally’s act of contrition28 for the forsaking29 of his enthusiasm, his recognition of the value of a zeal30 which had not flagged. Failing the attainment31 of greatness, the next best thing is to dedicate a new life to a patron saint who has won the reward of those who endure to the end. For two years more life in the glebe house was rapturously happy. Such bliss32 has in it, no doubt, an element of sin, and it is not good that it should endure. This was to be seen afterwards in calmer times, though hardly at the moment when the break came. There was a hope of a second child, a delightful33 time of expectation; then an accident, the blighting34 of the hope, and in a few days the death of Mrs. Conneally. Her husband buried her, digging the first grave in the rocky ground that lay around the little church.
For a time Mr. Conneally was stunned35 by his sorrow. He stopped working altogether, ceased to think, even to feel. Men avoided him with instinctive36 reverence37 at first, and afterwards with fear, as he wandered, muttering to himself, among the sandhills and along the beach. After a while the power of thought and a sense of the outward things of life returned to him. He found that an aged38 crone from the village had established herself in his house, and was caring for Hyacinth. He let her stay, and according to her abilities she cooked and washed for him and the boy, neither asking wages nor taking orders from him, until she died.
Hyacinth grew and throve amazingly. From morning till evening he was in the village, among the boats beside the little pier39, or in the fields, when the men worked there. Everyone petted and loved him, from Father Moran, the priest who had started the national school, down to old Shamus, the crippled singer of interminable Irish songs and teller40 of heroic legends of the past. It was when he heard the boy repeat a story of Finn MacCool to the old crone in the kitchen that Mr. Conneally awoke to the idea that he must educate his son. He began, naturally enough, with Irish, for it was Irish, and not English, that Hyacinth spoke41 fluently.
Afterwards the English alphabet followed, though not for the sake of reading books, for except the Bible and the Prayer-Book Hyacinth was taught to read no English books. He learned Latin after a fashion, not with nice attention to complexities42 of syntax, but as a language meant to be used, read, and even spoken now and then to Father Moran.
Meanwhile the passage of the years brought changes to Carrowkeel. The Admiralty established a coastguard station near the village, and arranged, for the greater security of the Empire, that men in blue-serge clothes should take it in turns to look at the Atlantic through a telescope. Then the unquiet spirit of the Congested Districts Board possessed43 the place for a while. A young engineer designed a new pier to shelter fishing-boats. He galvanized the people into unwonted activity, and, though sceptical of good results, they earned a weekly wage by building it. Boats came, great able boats, which fought the Atlantic, and the old curraghs were left to blister44 in the sun far up on the beach. Instructors45 from the Isle46 of Man taught new ways of catching47 mackerel. Green patches between the cottages and the sea, once the playground of pigs and children, or the marine48 parade of solemn lines of geese, were spread with brown nets. On May mornings, if the take was good, long lines of carts rattled49 down the road carrying the fish to the railway at Clifden, and the place bore for a while the appearance of vitality50. A vagrant51 Englishman discovered that lobsters52 could be had almost for the asking in Carrowkeel. The commercial instincts of his race were aroused in him.
He established a trade between the villagers and the fishmongers of Manchester. The price of lobsters rose to the unprecedented53 figure of four shillings a dozen, and it was supposed that even so the promoter of the scheme secured a profit.
To ?neas Conneally, growing quietly old, the changes meant very little. The coastguards, being bound by one of the articles of the British Constitution, came to church on Sunday mornings with exemplary regularity54, and each man at fixed55 intervals56 brought a baby to be christened and a woman to be churched. Otherwise they hardly affected57 Mr. Conneally’s life. The great officials who visited Carrowkeel to survey the benignant activities of the Congested Districts Board were men whose magnificent intellectual powers raised them above any recognised form of Christianity. Neither Father Moran’s ministrations nor Mr. Conneally’s appealed to them.
The London committee of the mission to Roman Catholics made no inquiry58 about what was going on at Carrowkeel. They asked for no statistics, expected no results, but signed quarterly cheques for Mr. Conneally, presuming, one may suppose, that if he had ceased to exist they would somehow have heard of it.
By far the most important event for Hyacinth and his father was the death of their old housekeeper59. In the changed state of society in Carrowkeel it was found impossible to secure the services of another. Hyacinth, at this time about fifteen years old, took to the housework without feeling that he was doing anything strange or unmanly. He was familiar with the position of ‘bachelor boys’ who, having grown elderly under the care of a mother, preferred afterwards the toil60 of their own kitchens to the uncertain issue of marrying a girl to ‘do for them.’ Life under their altered circumstances was simplified. It seemed unnecessary to carry a meal from the room it was cooked in to another for the purpose of eating it, so the front rooms of the house, with their tattered61 furniture, were left to moulder62 quietly in the persistent63 damp. One door was felt to be sufficient for the ingress and egress64 of two people from a house. The kitchen door, being at the back of the house, was oftenest the sheltered one, so the front door was bolted, and the grass grew up to it. One by one, as Hyacinth’s education required, the Latin and Greek books were removed from the forsaken65 study, and took their places among the diminishing array of plates and cups on the kitchen dresser. The spreading and removal of a tablecloth66 for every meal came to be regarded as foolish toil. When room was required on the table for plates, the books and papers were swept on one side. A pile of potatoes, and the pan, with bacon or a fish perhaps still frizzling in it, was set in the place left vacant.
Morning and evening ?neas Conneally expected his son to join with him in prayer. The two knelt together on the earthen floor facing the window, while the old man meditated aloud on Divine things. There were breaks in his speech and long silences, so that sometimes it was hard to tell when his prayer had really ended. These devotions formed a part of his father’s life into which Hyacinth never really entered at all. He neither rebelled nor mocked. He simply remained outside. So when his father wandered off to solitary67 places on the seashore, and sat gazing into the sunset or a gathering68 storm, Hyacinth neither followed nor questioned him. Sometimes on winter nights when the wind howled more fiercely than usual round the house, the old man would close the book they read together, and repeat aloud long passages from the Apocalypse. His voice, weak and wavering at first, would gather strength as he proceeded, and the young man listened, stirred to vague emotion over the fall of Babylon the Great.
For the most part Hyacinth’s time was his own. Even the hours of study were uncertain. He read when he liked, and his father seemed content with long days of idleness followed by others of application. It was, indeed, only owing to his love of what he read that the boy learned at all. Often while he tramped from his home to the village at midday his heart was hot within him with some great thought which had sprung to him from a hastily construed69 chorus of Euripides. Sometimes he startled the fishermen when he went with them at night by chanting Homer’s rolling hexameters through the darkness while the boat lay waiting, borne gunwale down to the black water with the drag of the net that had been shot.
There was a tacit understanding that Hyacinth, like his father, was to take Holy Orders. He matriculated in Trinity College when he was eighteen, and, as is often done by poorer students, remained at home, merely passing the required examinations, until he took his degree, and the time came for his entering the divinity school. Then it became necessary for him to reside in Dublin, and the first great change in his life took place.
The night before he left home he and his father sat together in the kitchen after they had finished their evening meal. For a long time neither of them spoke. Hyacinth held a book in his hand, but scarcely attempted to read it. His thoughts wandered from hopeful expectation of what the future was to bring him and the new life was to mean, to vague regrets, weighted with misgivings70, which would take no certain shape. There crowded upon him recollections of busy autumn days when the grain harvest overtook the belated hay-making, and men toiled71 till late in the fields; of long nights in the springtime when he tugged72 at the fishing-nets, and felt the mackerel slipping and flapping past his feet in the darkness; of the longer winter nights when he joined the gatherings73 of the boys and girls to dance jigs74 and reels on the earthen floor of some kitchen. It seemed now that all this was past and over for him. Holiday time would bring him back to Carrowkeel, but would it be the same? Would he be the same?
He looked at his father, half hoping for sympathy; but the old man sat gazing—it seemed to Hyacinth stupidly—into the fire. He wondered if his father had forgotten that this was their last evening together. Then suddenly, without raising his eyes, the old man began to speak, and it appeared that he, too, was thinking of the change.
‘I do not know, my son, what they will teach you in their school of divinity. I have long ago forgotten all I learned there, and I have not missed the knowledge. It does not seem to me now that what they taught me has been of any help in getting to know Him.’
He paused for a long time. Hyacinth was familiar enough with his father’s ways of speech to know that the emphatic75 ‘Him’ meant the God whom he worshipped.
‘There is, I am sure, only one way in which we can become His friends. These are they which have come out of great tribulation76! You remember that, Hyacinth? That is the only way. You may be taught truths about Him, but they matter very little. You have already great thoughts, burning thoughts, but they will not of themselves bring you to Him. The other way is the only way. Shall I wish it for you, my son? Shall I give it to you for my blessing77? May great tribulation come upon you in your life! Great tribulation! See how weak my faith is even now at the very end. I cannot give you this blessing, although I know very well that it is the only way. I know this, because I have been along this way myself, and it has led me to Him.’
Again he paused. It did not seem to Hyacinth to be possible to say anything. He was not sure in his heart that the friendship of the Man of Sorrows was so well worth having that he would be content to pay for it by accepting such a benediction78 from his father.
‘I shall do this for you, Hyacinth: I shall pray that when the choice is given you, the great choice between what is easy and what is hard, the right decision may be made for you. I do not know in what form it will come. Perhaps it will be as it was with me. He made the choice for me, for indeed I could not have chosen for myself. He set my feet upon the narrow way, forced me along it for a while, and now at the end I see His face.’
Hyacinth had heard enough of the brief bliss of his father’s married life to understand. He caught for the first time a glimpse of the meaning of the solitary life, the long prayers, and the meditations79. He was profoundly moved, but it did not even then seem to him desirable to choose such a way, or to have such attainment thrust on him.
Next morning the autumn sunlight chased the recollection of his emotion from his mind. The fishermen stopped his car as he drove through the street to shake hands with him. Their wives shouted familiar blessings80 from the cabin doors. Father Moran came bare-headed to the gate of his presbytery garden and waved a farewell.
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1
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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scripture
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| n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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tardy
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| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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gales
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| 龙猫 | |
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bog
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| n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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conversions
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| 变换( conversion的名词复数 )； （宗教、信仰等）彻底改变； （尤指为居住而）改建的房屋； 橄榄球（触地得分后再把球射中球门的）附加得分 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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contrition
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| n.悔罪，痛悔 | |
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forsaking
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| 放弃( forsake的现在分词 )； 弃绝； 抛弃； 摒弃 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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attainment
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| n.达到，到达；［常pl.］成就，造诣 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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blighting
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| 使凋萎( blight的现在分词 )； 使颓丧； 损害； 妨害 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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pier
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| n.码头；桥墩，桥柱；[建]窗间壁，支柱 | |
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teller
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| n.银行出纳员；(选举)计票员 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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complexities
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| 复杂性(complexity的名词复数)； 复杂的事物 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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blister
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| n.水疱；(油漆等的)气泡；v.(使)起泡 | |
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instructors
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| 指导者，教师( instructor的名词复数 ) | |
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isle
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| n.小岛，岛 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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51
vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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52
lobsters
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| 龙虾( lobster的名词复数 )； 龙虾肉 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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55
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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56
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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62
moulder
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| v.腐朽，崩碎 | |
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63
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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64
egress
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| n.出去；出口 | |
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Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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tablecloth
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| n.桌布，台布 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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construed
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| v.解释（陈述、行为等）( construe的过去式和过去分词 )；翻译，作句法分析 | |
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70
misgivings
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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71
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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72
tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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74
jigs
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| n.快步舞（曲）极快地( jig的名词复数 )；夹具v.（使）上下急动( jig的第三人称单数 ) | |
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75
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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76
tribulation
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| n.苦难，灾难 | |
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77
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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78
benediction
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| n.祝福；恩赐 | |
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79
meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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80
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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