Going to Maynooth: Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, The Works of William Carleton, Volume ThreeCarleton, William
General
Going to Maynooth: Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, The Works of William Carleton, Volume Three
Carleton, William
Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
On the day before his departure the friends and relations of the family
assembled to hold their farewell meeting. The same spirit which marked
all their rustic symposia presided in this; if we except a feeling of
sorrow natural to his family on being separated from one they loved so
affectionately. Denis, who was never deficient in warmth of feeling,
could not be insensible to the love and pride with which his family had
always looked upon him. Ambition, as he approached it, lost much of
its fictitious glitter. A sense of sorrow, if not of remorse, for the
fastidious and overbearing spirit he had manifested to them, pressed
upon his heart. Pride, in fact, was expelled; nature resumed her empire
over him; he looked upon the last two months of his life as a man would
be apt to do who had been all that time under the dominion of a feverish
dream. We do not say, however, that either ambition or superstition was
thoroughly expelled from his mind; for it is hard at all times to root
them out of the system of man: but they ceased to govern him altogether.
A passion, too, as obstinate as either of them, was determined to
dispute their power. The domestic affections softened his heart; but
love, which ambition left for dead, was only stunned; it rose again, and
finding a favorable position, set its seal to his feelings.
Denis himself, some days before that appointed for his departure, became
perfectly conscious that his affections were strongly fixed upon Susan
Connor. The nature of their last interview filled him with shame; nay,
more, it inspired him with pity for the fair, artless girl whom he
had so unfeelingly insulted. The manner in which he had won her young
affections; the many tender interviews that had passed between them; the
sacred promises of unchangeable love they had made to each other: all
crowded to his imagination with a power which reduced his spiritual
ambition and ecclesiastical pride, at least to the possession only of a
divided empire. He had, therefore, with his book in his hand as
usual, taken many solitary walks for the preceding few days, with the
expectation of meeting Susan. He heard that for the last month or six
weeks she had looked ill, been in low spirits, and lost her health. The
cause of this change, though a secret to the world, was known to him. He
knew, indeed, that an interview between them was indispensable; but had
it not been so, we question whether he would have been able to leave
home without seeing her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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