Pray for the Wanderer Part II

Matt Costello has had some success with his plays in London and the US. He feels he needs a break from London because he has been involved for some time with a married English actress who does not want to get a divorce. He is very fond of his brother, Will who has a farm near Mellick, and his wife Una is a very sweet good natured woman. He finds it hard to be apart from his mistress but it seems as if their affair is doomed. However he does not like the new Ireland that has come along since the separation from England. As a writer, he finds the censorship and narrowness of mind very depressing. He feels that it destroys art, and that apart from literature, Ireland has no great art unlike other Catholic countries. He supported the fight for Irish independence but is dismayed by what he sees the country has become. (Its believed that this novel was written to hit back at Irish censorship as it came soon after Mary Lavelle, Kate's "Spanish" novel was banned in Ireland. Largely because of its having a lesbian character and the heroine engaging in an adulterous relationship). Una's sister Nell is a supporter of De Valera and a devout Catholic, and although she is attractive and intelligent, he finds himself at odds with her... Una had hoped that he and Nell might get along as Nell is a teacher and well read, but they dont. Nell lives with her aunt who is also a devout and narrow minded Catholic, and her cousin Tom lives with them. He is more open minded and Matt learns that years ago, Tom and Nell were engaged. As cousins they had to get a dispensation from Rome to marry, but in that time, Nell found out that Tom had had an affair with a shop girl, who had his child. He has supported the child and remained in touch with the girl, and she later married a man of her own class, but Nell becomes positively hysterical that Tom was thinking of marrying HER when he had seduced a young woman and made her pregnant.