Hyacinth. George A. Birmingham
looked on them as anything but strangers to her family. They have been to her stray robber wasps, to be driven from the hive; while to the others they have seemed cygnets among her duckling brood. It is very wonderful that the University alone has been able to resist the glamour of Ireland’s past, and has failed to admire the persistency of her nationality. There has surely been enough in every century that has passed since the college was founded to win it over from alien thought and the ideals of the foreigner.
All this Hyacinth came to feel afterwards, and learnt in bitterness of spirit to be angry at the University’s isolation from Irish life. At first quite other thoughts crowded upon his mind. He felt a rebellion against his father’s estimate of what he was to learn. It seemed to him that he had come into vital touch with the greatest life of all. He was to join the ranks of those who besieged the ears of God for knowledge, and left behind them to successors yet unborn great traditions of the enigmas they had guessed. In entering upon the study of theology he seemed to become a soldier in the sacred band, the élite of the army which won and guarded truth. Already he was convinced that there could be no greater science than the Divine one, no more inspiring moment in life than this one when he took his first step towards the knowledge of God.
He crossed the quadrangle with his mind full of such thoughts, and joined a group of students round the door of one of the examination-halls. It did not shock his sense of fitness that some of his fellow-students in the great science wore shabby clothes, or that others scorned the use of a razor. Bred as he had been at home, he felt no incongruity between dirty collars and the study of divinity. It was not until he caught scraps of conversation that he experienced an awakening from his dream. One eager group surrounded a foreseeing youth who had written the dates of the first four General Councils of the Church upon his shirt-cuff.
‘Read them out, like a good man,’ said one.
‘Hold on a minute,’ said another, ‘till I see if I have got them right. I ground them up specially this morning. Nicæa, 318—no, hang it! that’s the number of Bishops who were present; 325 was the date, wasn’t it?’
‘What was the row about at Chalcedon?’ asked a tall, pale youth. ‘Didn’t some monk or other go for Cyril of Alexandria?’
‘You’ll be stuck anyhow, Tommy,’ said a neat, dapper little man with a very ragged gown.
Hyacinth slipped past the group, and approached two better dressed students who stood apart from the others.
‘Is this,’ he asked, ‘where the entrance examination to the divinity school is to be held?’
For answer he received a curt ‘Yes’ and a stare. Apparently his suit of brown Connemara homespun did not commend him to these aristocrats. They turned their backs on him, and resumed their conversation.
‘She was walking up and down the pier listening to the band with two of the rankest outsiders you ever set eyes on—medicals out of Paddy Dunn’s. Of course I could do nothing else but break it off.’
‘Oh, you were engaged to her, then? I didn’t know.’
‘Well, I was and I wasn’t. Anyhow, I thought it better to have a clear understanding. She came up to me outside the door of Patrick’s on Sunday afternoon just as if nothing had happened. “Hullo, Bob,” says she; “I haven’t seen you for ages.” “My name,” said I, “is Mr. Banks”—just like that, as cool as you please. I could see she felt it. “I’ve called you Bob,” says she, very red in the face, “and you’ve called me Maimie ever since we went to Sunday-school together, and I’m not going to begin calling you Mr. Banks now, my boy-o! so don’t you think it!” ’
It was a relief to Hyacinth when he was tapped on the arm by a boy with a very pimply face, who thrust a paper into his hand, and distracted his attention from the final discomfiture of Maimie, which Mr. Banks was recounting in a clear, high-pitched voice, as if he wished everyone in the neighbourhood to hear it.
‘I hope you’ll come,’ said the boy.
‘Where?’
‘It’s all in the paper. The students’ prayer-meeting, held every Wednesday morning at nine o’clock sharp. Special meeting to-morrow.’
Hyacinth was bewildered. There was something quite unfamiliar in this prompt and business-like advertisement of prayer. The student with the papers began to be doubtful of him.
‘You’re not High Church, are you?’ he asked. ‘We’re not. We don’t have printed offices, with verses and responds, and that sort of thing. We have extempore prayer by members of the union.’
‘No; I’m not High Church,’ said Hyacinth—‘at least, I think not. I don’t really know much about these things. I’ll be very glad to go to your meeting.’
‘That’s right,’ said the other. ‘All are welcome. There will be special prayer to-morrow for the success of the British arms. I suppose you heard that old Kruger has sent an ultimatum. There will be war at once.’
There was a sudden movement among the students; gowns were pulled straight and caps adjusted.
‘Here he comes,’ said someone.
Dr. Henry, the divinity professor, crossed the square rapidly. He was a middle-aged man, stout, almost ponderous, in figure; but he held himself rigidly upright, and walked fast across the square. The extreme neatness of his clothes contrasted with the prevailing shabbiness of the students and the assistant lecturers who followed him. Yet he did not seem to be a man who gave to externals more than their due share of consideration. His broad forehead gave promise of great intellectual power, a promise half belied by the narrow gray eyes beneath it. These were eyes which might see keenly, and would certainly see things just as they are, though they were not likely to catch any glimpse of that greater world where objects cannot be focussed sharply. Yet in them, an odd contradiction, there lurked a possibility of humorous twinkling. The man was capable perhaps of the broad tolerance of the great humorist, certainly of very acute perception of life’s minor incongruities. His thin lips were habitually pressed together, giving a suggestion of strength to the set of his mouth. A man with such a mouth can think and act, but not feel either passionately or enduringly. He will direct men because he knows his own mind, but is not likely to sway them because he will always be master of himself, and will not become enslaved to any great enthusiasm. The students trooped into the hall, and the examination began. The assistant lecturers helped in the work. Each student was called up in turn, asked a few questions, and given a portion of the Greek Testament to translate. For the most part their capacities were known beforehand. There were some who had won honours in their University course before entering the divinity school. For them the examiners were all smiles, and the business of the day was understood to be perfunctory. Others were recognised as mere pass men, whom it was necessary to spur to some exertion. A few, like Hyacinth, were unknown. These were the poorer students who had not been able to afford to reside at the University sooner than was absolutely necessary. Their knowledge, generally scanty, was received by the examiners with undisguised contempt. It fell to Hyacinth’s lot to present himself to Dr. Henry. He did so tremulously.
The professor inquired his name, and looked him over coldly.
‘Read for me,’ he said, handing him a Greek Testament. The passage marked was St. Paul’s great description of charity. It was very familiar to Hyacinth, and he read it with a serious feeling for the words. Dr. Henry, who at first had occupied himself with some figures on a sheet of paper, looked up and listened attentively.
‘Where were you at school,’ he asked. ‘Who taught you Greek?’
‘My father taught me, sir.’
‘Ah! You have got a very peculiar pronunciation, and you’ve made an extraordinary number of mistakes in accentuation and quantity, but you’ve read as if St. Paul meant something. Now translate.’
‘You have given me,’ he said, when Hyacinth had finished, ‘the Authorized Version word for word. Can you do no better than that?’
‘I