The Red Hand of Ulster Part 1

CHAPTER I

IT was in 1908 that Joseph Peterson Conroy burst upon London in the full magnificence of his astounding wealth. English society was, and had been for many years, accustomed to the irruption of millionaires, American or South African. Our aristocracy has learnt to pay these potentates the respect which is their due. Well-born men and women trot along Park Lane in obedience to the hooting calls of motor horns. No one considers himself degraded by grovelling before a plutocrat.

It has been for some time difficult to startle London by a display of mere wealth. Men respect more than ever fortunes which are reckoned in millions, though they have become too common to amaze. But Joseph Peterson Conroy, when he came, excited a great deal of interest. In the first place his income was enormous, larger, it was said, than the income of any other living man. In the next place he spent it very splendidly. There were no entertainments given in London during the years 1909, 1910, and 1911, equal in extravagance to those which Conroy gave. He outdid the “freak dinners” of New York. He invented freak dinners of his own. His horses—animals which he bought at enormous prices—won the great races. His yachts flew the white ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron. His gifts to fashionable charities were princely. English society fell at his feet and worshipped him. The most exclusive clubs were honoured by his desire of membership. Women whose fathers and husbands bore famous names were proud to boast of his friendship.

It cannot be said that Conroy abused either his position or his opportunities. He had won his great wealth honestly—that is to say without robbing any one except other robbers, and only robbing them in ways permitted by American law. He used what he had won honourably enough. He neither bought the favours of the women who thronged his entertainments; nor degraded, more than was necessary, the men who sought benefits from him. For a time, for nearly four years, he thoroughly enjoyed himself, exulting with boyish delight in his own splendour. Then he began to get restless. The things he did, the people he knew, ceased to interest him. It was early in 1911 that the crisis came; and before the season of that year was over Conroy had disappeared from London. His name still appeared occasionally in the columns which the newspapers devote to fashionable intelligence. But the house in Park Lane—the scene of many magnificent entertainments—was sold. The dinner parties, balls and card parties ceased; and Conroy entered upon what must have been the most exciting period of his life.

Bob Power—no one ever called him Robert—belonged to an old and respected Irish family, being a younger son of General Power of Kilfenora. He was educated at Harrow and afterwards at Trinity College. He was called to the Irish bar and might have achieved in time the comfortable mediocrity of a County Court judgeship if he had not become Conroy’s private secretary. The post was secured for him by an uncle who had known Conroy in New York in the days before he became a millionaire, while it was still possible for an ordinary man to do him a favour. Bob accepted the post because everybody said he would be a fool to refuse it. He did not much like writing letters. The making out of schemes for the arrangements of Conroy’s guests at the more formal dinner parties worried him. The general supervision of the upper servants was no delight to him. But he did all these things fairly well, and his unfailing good spirits carried him safely through periods of very tiresome duty. He became, in spite of the twenty-five years’ difference of age between him and his patron, the intimate friend of Joseph Peterson Conroy.

It was to Bob that Conroy confided the fact that he was tired of the life of a leader of English society. The two men were sitting together in the smoking room at one o’clock in the morning after one of Conroy’s most magnificent entertainments.

“I’m damned well sick of all this,” said Conroy suddenly.

“So am I,” said Bob.

Bob Power was a man of adventurous disposition. He had a reputation in Connacht as a singularly bold rider to hounds. The story of his singlehanded cruise round Ireland in a ten tonner will be told among yachtsmen until his son does something more extravagantly idiotic. The London season always bored him. The atmosphere of Conroy’s house in Park Lane stifled him.

“Is there any one thing left in this rotten old world,” said Conroy, “that’s worth doing?”

In Bob’s opinion there were several things very well worth doing. He suggested one of them at once.

“Let’s get out the Finola,” he said, “and go for a cruise. We’ve never done the South Sea Islands.”

The Finola was the largest of Conroy’s yachts, a handsome vessel of something over a thousand tons.

“Cruising in the Finola,” said Conroy, “is no earthly good to me. What I want is something that will put me into a nervous sweat, the same as I was when I was up against Ikenstein and the railway bosses. My nerves were like damned fiddle strings for a fortnight when I didn’t know whether I was going to come out a pauper or the owner of the biggest pile mortal man ever handled.”

Bob knew nothing of Ikenstein or the methods by which the pile had been wrested from him and his companions, but he did know the sensations which Conroy described. He, himself, arrived at them by hanging on to a sea anchor in a gale of wind off the Galway coast, or pushing a vicious horse at a nasty jump. Nervous sweat, stretched nerves and complete uncertainty about the immediate future afford the same delight however you get at them. He sympathized with Conroy.

“You might fit out a ship or two and try exploring round the South Pole,” Bob said. “They’ve got the thing itself of course, but there must be lots of places still undiscovered in the neighbourhood. I should think that hummocking along over the ice floes in a dog sledge must be pretty thrilling.”

Conroy sighed.

“I’m too fat,” he said, “and I’m too darned soft. The kind of life I’ve led for the last four years isn’t good training for camping out on icebergs and feeding on whale’s blubber.”

Bob smiled. Conroy was a very fat man. A camping party on an iceberg would be likely to end in some whale eating his blubber.

“I didn’t mean you to go yourself,” said Bob.

“Oh! I see. I’m to fit out the expedition and you are to go in command. I don’t quite see where the fun would come in for me. It wouldn’t excite me any to hear of your shooting Esquimaux and penguins. I shouldn’t care enough whether you lived or were froze to get any excitement out of a show of that kind.”

“We’d call it ‘The Joseph P. Conroy Expedition,’” said Bob; “and the newspapers—”

“Thanks. But I’m pretty well fed up with newspaper tosh. The press has boosted me ever since I landed in this country, and I’d just as soon they stopped now as started fresh.”

Bob relinquished the idea of a Polar expedition with a sigh.

It was Conroy himself who made the next suggestion.

“If politics weren’t such a rotten game—”

Bob did not feel attracted to political life; but he was loyal to his patron.

“Clithering,” he said, “was talking to me to-night. You know the man I mean, Sir Samuel Clithering. He’s not in the Cabinet, but he’s what I’d call a pretty intimate hanger on; does odd jobs for the Prime Minister. He said the interest of political life was absorbing.”

“I shouldn’t care for it,” said Conroy. “After all, what would it be worth to me? There’s nothing for me to gain, and I don’t see how I could lose anything. It would be like playing bridge for counters. They might make me a lord, of course. A title is about the only thing I haven’t got, but then I don’t want it.”

“I quite agree with you,” said Bob. “I merely mentioned politics because Clithering said—”

“Besides,” said Conroy, “it wouldn’t be my politics. England isn’t my country.”

“It would be rather exciting,” said Bob, “to run a revolution somewhere. There are lots of small states, in the Balkans, you know, which could be turned inside out and upside down by a man with the amount of money you have.”

“There’s something in that notion,” said Conroy. “Get a map, will you?”

Bob Power did not want to go wandering round the house at half-past one o’clock in the morning looking for a map of the Balkan States. It seemed to him that the idea—the financing of a revolution was of course a joke—might be worked out with reference to some country nearer at hand, the geographical conditions of which would be sufficiently well known without the aid of a map.

“Why not try Ireland?” he said.

Then a very curious thing happened. Conroy’s appearance, not merely his expression but his actual features seemed to change. Instead of the shrewd face of a successful American financier Bob Power saw the face of an Irish peasant. He was perfectly familiar with the type. It was one which he had known all his life. He knew it at its best, expressive of lofty idealisms and fantastic dreams of things beyond this world’s experience. He knew it at its worst too, when narrow cunning and unquenchable bitterness transform it. The change passed over Conroy’s face and then quickly passed away again.

“By God!” said Conroy, “it’s a great notion. To buck against the British Lion!”

Bob remembered the things which he had heard and half heeded about Conroy’s ancestry. In 1850 another Conroy, a broken peasant, the victim of evil fate and gross injustice, had left Ireland in an emigrant ship with a ragged wife and four half starved children clinging to him, with an unquenchable hatred of England in his heart. The hate, it appeared, had lived on in his son, had broken out again in a grandson, dominating the cynical cosmopolitanism of the financial magnate. Bob was vaguely uneasy. He did not like the expression he had seen on Conroy’s face. He did not like the tone in which he spoke. But it was obviously absurd to suppose that any one could take seriously the idea of financing an Irish revolution.

Then Conroy began to talk about Ireland. He knew, it appeared, a great deal about the history of the country up to a certain point. He had a traditional knowledge of the horrors of the famine period. He was intimately acquainted with the details of the Fenian movement. Either he or his father had been a member of the Clan na Gael. He understood the Parnell struggle for Home Rule. But with the fall of Parnell his knowledge stopped abruptly. Of all that happened after that he knew nothing. He supposed that the later Irish leaders had inherited the traditions of Mitchel, O’Leary, Davitt and the others. Bob laughed at him.

“If you’re thinking of buying guns for the Nationalists,” he said, “you may save your money. They wouldn’t use them if they had arsenals full. They’re quite the most loyal men there are nowadays. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve got most of what they want and Clithering told me the Home Rule Bill was going to knit their hearts to the Empire. Awful rot, of course, but his very words.”

“What do you mean?” said Conroy.

Bob laughed again. He had all the contempt common in his class for those of his fellow-countrymen who professed to be Nationalists. But he had rather more intelligence than most Irish gentlemen. He quite realized the absurdity of supposing that the Irish Parliamentary party consisted of men who had in them the makings of rebels.

“Read their speeches,” he said. “Since this talk of Home Rule began they’ve been cracking up the glories of the British Empire like—like the Primrose League.”

“To-morrow morning,” said Conroy, “you’ll fetch me along all the books and pamphlets you can lay hands on dealing with the present state of the Irish question.”

“I want a small cart,” said Bob.

“Get a four-horse waggon, if you like,” said Conroy.

 

CHAPTER II

FOR nearly a week Conroy remained shut up in his study. Bob was kept busy. He spent a good deal of time in writing plausible explanations of Conroy’s failure to keep his social engagements. He ransacked the shelves of booksellers for works dealing with contemporary Irish politics. He harried the managers of press-cutting companies for newspaper reports of speeches on Home Rule. These were things for which there was little or no demand, and the press-cutting people resented being asked for them. He even interviewed political leaders. These gentlemen received him coldly at first, suspecting from his appearance that he wanted to get a chance of earning £400 a year as a member of Parliament, and hoped to persuade them to find him a constituency. When they discovered that he was the private secretary of a famous millionaire their manner changed and they explained the policies of their various parties in such ways as seemed likely to draw large cheques from Conroy.

Bob reported what they said, summarized the letters of the disappointed hostesses, and piled Conroy’s table with books, pamphlets, and newspaper cuttings. The whole business bored and worried him. The idea that Conroy actually contemplated organizing a rebellion in Ireland never crossed his mind. He hoped that the political enthusiasm of his patron would die away as quickly as it had sprung up. It was therefore a surprise to him when, after a few weeks’ hard reading, Conroy announced his decision.

“I’m going into this business,” he said.

“Politics?” said Bob.

“Politics be damned! What I’m out for is a revolution.”

“You can’t do it,” said Bob. “I told you at the start that those fellows won’t fight. They haven’t it in them to stand up and be shot at.”

“I’m thinking of the other fellows,” said Conroy.

“What other fellows?” he asked.

“Belfast,” said Conroy.

Bob whistled.

“But,” he said, “but—but—” The extraordinary nature of the idea made him stammer. “But they are Loyalists.”

“As I figure it out,” said Conroy, “they mean to rebel. That’s what they say, anyhow, and I believe they mean it. I don’t care a cent whether they call themselves Loyalists or not. It’s up to them to twist the British Lion’s tail, and I’m with them.”

“Do you think they really mean it?” said Bob.

“Do you?”

“Well,” said Bob, after a slight hesitation, “I do. You see I happen to know one of them pretty well.”

Bob showed political discernment. It was the fashion in England and throughout three-quarters of Ireland to laugh at Belfast. Nobody believed that a community of merchants, manufacturers and artisans actually meant to take up arms, shoot off guns and hack at the bodies of their fellow-men with swords and spears. This thing, at the beginning of the twentieth century, seemed incredible. To politicians it was simply unthinkable. For politics are a game played in strict accordance with a set of rules. For several centuries nobody in these islands had broken the rules. It had come to be regarded as impossible that any one could break them. No one expects his opponent at the bridge table to draw a knife from his pocket and run amuck when the cards go against him. Nobody expected that the north of Ireland Protestants would actually fight. To threaten fighting is, of course, well within the rules of the game, a piece of bluff which any one is entitled to try if he thinks he will gain anything by it. Half the politicians in both countries, and half the inhabitants of England, were laughing at the Belfast bluff. The rest of the politicians and the other half of the inhabitants of England were pretending to believe what Belfast said so as to give an air of more terrific verisimilitude to the bluff. Conroy, guided by the instinct for the true meaning of things which had led him to great wealth, believed that the talk was more than bluff. Bob Power, relying on what he knew of the character of one man, came to the same conclusion.

“Who is the man you know?” said Conroy. “Not Babberly, is it?”

“Oh Lord! no,” said Bob. “Babberly is—well, Babberly talks a lot.”

“That’s so,” said Conroy. “But if it isn’t Babberly, who is it?”

“McNeice,” said Bob, “Gideon McNeice.”

“H’m. He’s something in some university, isn’t he?”

Conroy spoke contemptuously. He had a low opinion of the men who win honours in universities. They seemed to him to be unpractical creatures. He had, indeed, himself founded a university before he left America and handsomely endowed several professorial chairs. But he did so in the spirit which led Dean Swift to found a lunatic asylum. He wanted to provide a kind of hospital for a class of men who ought, for the sake of society, to be secluded, lest their theories should come inconveniently athwart the plans of those who are engaged in the real business of life.

“McNeice,” said Bob, “is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He was my tutor.”

Then he told Conroy the story of Gideon McNeice’s life as far as he knew it at that time. It was a remarkable story, but not yet, as it became afterwards, strikingly singular.

Gideon was the son of Ebenezer McNeice, a riveter in one of the great shipbuilding yards in Belfast. This Ebenezer was an Orangeman and, on the 12th of July, was accustomed to march long distances over dusty roads beating a big drum with untiring vigour. His Protestantism was a religion of the most definite kind. He rarely went to church, but he hated Popery with a profound earnestness. Gideon was taught, as soon as he could speak, to say, “No Pope, no Priest, no Surrender, Hurrah!” That was the first stage in his education. The second was taken at a National school where he learned the multiplication table and the decimal system with unusual ease. The master of a second-rate intermediate school heard of the boy’s ability. Being anxious to earn the fees which a generous government gives to the masters of clever boys, this man offered to continue Gideon’s education without asking payment from Ebenezer. The speculation turned out well. Gideon did more than was expected of him. He won all the exhibitions, medals and prizes possible under the Irish Intermediate system. At last he won a mathematical sizarship in Trinity College.

Belfast—perhaps because of the religious atmosphere of the city, perhaps because of the interest taken by its inhabitants in money-making—has not given to the world many eminent poets, philosophers or scholars. Nor, curiously enough, has it ever produced an eminent theologian, or even a heretic of any reputation. But it has given birth to several mathematicians of quite respectable standing. Gideon McNeice was one of them. After the sizarship he won a scholarship, and then, at an unusually early age, a fellowship. It is generally believed that the examination for fellowship in Trinity College in Dublin is so severe that no one who is successful in it is ever good for anything afterwards. Having once passed that examination men are said to settle down into a condition of exhausted mediocrity. Gideon McNeice proved to be an exception to the rule. Having won his fellowship and thereby demonstrated to the world that he knew all that there is to know about the science of mathematics, he at once turned to theology. Theology, since he lived in Ireland, led him straight to politics. He became one of the fighting men of the Irish Unionist party. He also, chiefly because of his very bad manners, became very unpopular among the fellows and professors of the College.

It must not be supposed that he had the smallest sympathy with the unfortunate Irish aristocracy, who, having like the Bourbons failed either to learn or to forget, still repeat the watch-words of long-past centuries and are greatly surprised that no one can be found to listen to them. Gideon McNeice’s Unionism was of a much more vigorous and militant kind. He respected England and had no objection to singing “God save the King” very much out of tune, so long as England and her King were obviously and blatantly on the side of Protestantism. He was quite prepared to substitute some other form of government for our present Imperial system if either the King, his representative the Lord Lieutenant, or the Parliament of Westminster, showed the smallest inclination to consider the feelings of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

It was thus that Bob Power, who was by no means a fool, described McNeice’s character. Conroy was interested.

“I should like,” he said, “to see that man and talk to him. Suppose you go over to Dublin to-morrow and bring him here.”

“You won’t like him,” said Bob. “He’s—well, domineering is the only word I can think of.”

“For that matter,” said Conroy, “I am domineering too.”

This was true. Conroy had good manners, unusually good manners for a millionaire, but underneath the manners lay a determination to get his own way in small matters as well as great. Bob, who knew both men, expected that they would become deadly enemies in the course of twenty-four hours. He was mistaken. To say that they became friends would be misleading. They probably disliked each other. But they certainly became allies, planned together and worked together the amazing scheme which ended in the last—we are justified in assuming that it really was the last—rebellion of Irishmen against the power of England.

Conroy supplied the money and a great deal of the brains which went to the carrying through of the plan. He had, as a financier with world-wide interests, a knowledge of European markets and manufactures which was very useful if not absolutely necessary. He had, as his inspiration, an extraordinarily vivid hatred of England. This was partly an inheritance from his Irish ancestors, men who had been bullied for centuries and laid the blame of their sufferings on England. Partly it was the result of the contempt he learned to feel for Englishmen while he held his leading position in London society. With McNeice’s violent Protestantism he never can have had the smallest sympathy. His ancestors were probably, almost certainly, Roman Catholics. If he professed any form of Christianity it must have been that of some sect unrepresented in England. No one ever heard of his attaching himself, even temporarily, to either church or chapel. McNeice also supplied brains and enthusiasm. His intelligence was narrower than Conroy’s, but more intensely concentrated. He knew the men with whom he intended to deal. By birth and early education he belonged to that north Irish democracy which is probably less imaginative and less reasonable but more virile than any other in the world. He believed, as his fathers had believed before him and his relations believed along with him, that the Belfast man has a natural right to govern the world, and only refrains from doing so because he has more important matters to attend to. He believed, and could give excellent reasons in support of his belief, that the other inhabitants of Ireland were meant by providence to be Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the people of Antrim and Down. He had quite as great a contempt for the Unionist landlords, who occasionally spoke beside him on political platforms, as he had for the Nationalist tenants who were wrestling their estates from them.

Bob Power went to Dublin, and with great difficulty persuaded McNeice to pay Conroy a visit in London. For a fortnight the two men remained together, discussing, planning, devising. Others, among them James Crossan, manager of the Kilmore Co-operative Stores, and Grand Master of the Orangemen of the county, were summoned to the conference.

Then the first steps were taken. McNeice went back to Ireland and began, with the aid of James Crossan, his work of organization. Conroy sold his house in London, realized by degrees a considerable part of his large fortune, placed sums of money to his credit in French and German banks and gave over the command of his yacht, the Finola, to Bob Power. From this time on Conroy disappeared from London society. Stories were told in clubs and drawing-rooms about the sayings and doings of “His Royal Magnificence J. P. C.,” but these gradually grew stale and no fresh ones were forthcoming. The newspapers still printed from time to time paragraphs which had plainly been sent to them by Conroy himself, but no one at the time took very much interest in them.

“Mr. J. P. Conroy”—so people read—“has gone for a cruise in Mediterranean waters in his steam yacht, the Finola.” It did not seem to matter whether he had or not. “Among his guests are—” Then would follow a list of names; but always those of people more eminent than fashionable. The Prime Minister went for a short cruise with him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer went twice. Several admirals, a judge or two, and three or four well-known generals were on board at different times. Once he had two bishops, an Anglican who was known as a profound theologian, and a Roman Catholic prelate from the west of Ireland. The names of women rarely appeared on the list, but the Countess of Moyne was advertised as having accepted Conroy’s hospitality twice. She was well placed among the notable men. She was a young woman of singular beauty and great personal charm. She might have been if she had chosen a leader of the society which lives to amuse itself. Her husband’s great wealth and high social position would have secured her any place in that world which she chose to take. Being a woman of brains as well as beauty she chose to work instead of play, and had become a force, real though not formally recognized, in political life.

It is a curious instance of the careful way in which Conroy worked out the details of his plans, that he should have used the Finola in this way. The cruises which he took with his eminent guests were always well advertised and always short. But the Finola was kept continually in commission. Her voyages when there were no great people on board were longer, were never advertised, and were much more exciting. But no one suspected, or could have suspected, that a millionaire’s yacht, and it the temporary home of the leading members of the governing classes, could have been engaged in a secret trade, highly dangerous to the peace and security of the nation. It is difficult even now to imagine that after landing the Prime Minister and couple of bishops at Cowes the yacht should have started off to keep a midnight appointment with a disreputable tramp steamer in an unfrequented part of the North Sea; that Bob Power, after making himself agreeable for a fortnight to Lady Moyne, should have sweated like a stevedore at the difficult job of transhipping a cargo in mid-ocean.

CHAPTER III

INOW reach the time when I myself came for the first time in touch with Conroy’s plans and had my first meeting with Gideon McNeice.

I am an insignificant Irish peer, far from wealthy, with a taste for literature, and, I think, a moderate amount of benevolent feeling towards those of my fellow-men who do not annoy me in any way. I sold the estate, which had long before ceased to be in any real sense my property, immediately after the passing of the Land Act of 1903. I have lived since then chiefly in Kilmore Castle, a delightfully situated residence built by my grandfather, which suits me very well indeed. I have occupied my time for years back in gathering materials for a history of all the Irish rebellions there have ever been. My daughter Marion used to help me in this work, by filing and classifying the various slips of paper on which I made notes. Now that she has got married and cannot help me any more I have given up the idea of finishing my great work. I am satisfying my evil itch for writing by setting down an account of the short struggle between north-eastern Ulster and the rest of the British Empire.

The 5th of June was the day on which I first met Bob Power, first came into contact with McNeice, and first set eyes on the notorious Finola. It was the day fixed by my nephew Godfrey D’Aubigny for the first, for that year, of the series of garden-parties which I give annually. I detest these festivities, and I have every reason to believe that they must be quite as objectionable to my guests as they are to me. It is Godfrey who insists on their being held. He holds that I am bound to do some entertaining in order to keep up my position in the county. I am not in the least interested in my position in the county; but Godfrey is, and, of course, the matter is of some importance to him. He is heir to my title. I used to think and he used to think that he would ultimately enjoy my income too, securing it by marrying my daughter Marion. I am glad to say he has not succeeded in doing this. Marion has married a much better man.

I was sitting in my study after breakfast, fiddling with my papers, but unable to settle down to work. The prospect of the party in the afternoon depressed and irritated me. Godfrey entered the room suddenly through the window. The fact that he is my heir does not seem to me to entitle him to come upon me like a thief in the night. He ought to go to the door of the house, ring the bell, and ask if I am willing to see him.

“Good morning, Excellency,” he said, “glorious day, isn’t it?”

Godfrey always addressed me as “Excellency.” I cannot imagine why he does so. I have never been and never hope to be a Lord Lieutenant or a Colonial Governor. The title is not one which belongs to the office of a deputy lieutenant of a county, the only post of honour which I hold.

“I expect we’ll have a pretty good crowd this afternoon,” he said. “Lady Moyne is motoring over. But that’s not what I came to say to you. The fact is that something rather important has just happened.”

“The people in the gate lodge have burst the new boiler I put in for them, I suppose?” This is the kind of thing Godfrey considers important.

“Not that I know of,” he said; “but I’ll go down and inquire if you think—”

“I don’t think anything about the matter,” I said. “If it isn’t that, what is it that you’ve come to tell me?”

“A big steam yacht has just anchored in the bay,” he said, “the Finola. She belongs to Conroy, the millionaire.”

Godfrey is intensely interested in millionaires. He always hopes that he may be able in some way to secure for himself some of their superfluous cash.

“I think,” he said, “you ought to go down and leave a card on him. It would only be civil.”

“Very well,” I said, “you can go and leave my card, if you like.”

This was evidently what Godfrey expected me to say. He seemed grateful.

“Very well, Excellency, I’ll go at once. I’ll invite him and his party to your menagerie this afternoon. I dare say it will amuse them to see the natives.”

Godfrey always calls my parties menageries, and my guests natives. Lady Moyne and her husband, who sometimes comes with her, are not counted as natives. Nor am I. Nor is Marion. Nor is Godfrey himself. This illustrates the working of Godfrey’s mind. As a matter of fact the Moynes and my own family are about the only people of social importance in the locality who ought to be called natives. My other guests are all strangers, officials of one kind or another, stipendiary magistrates, police officers, bank managers, doctors, clergymen and others whom an unkind fate has temporarily stranded in our neighbourhood; who all look forward to an escape from their exile and a period of leisure retirement in the suburbs of Dublin.

Godfrey left me, and I went on fidgetting with my papers until luncheon-time.

Marion and I were just finishing luncheon when Godfrey came in again.

“Well,” I said, “have you captured your millionaire?”

“He wasn’t on board,” said Godfrey. “There were two men there, Power, who’s Conroy’s secretary, and a horrid bounder called McNeice. They were drinking bottled stout in the cabin with Crossan.”

“Under those circumstances,” I said, “you did not, I suppose, leave my cards.”

Godfrey has a standing feud with Crossan, who is not a gentleman and does not pretend to be. Godfrey, judged by any rational standard, is even less of a gentleman; but as the future Lord Kilmore he belongs to the ranks of an aristocracy and therefore has a contempt for Crossan. The two come into very frequent contact and quite as frequent conflict. Crossan manages the co-operative store which I started, and Godfrey regards him as one of my servants. Crossan, who has a fine instinct for business, also manages the commercial side of our local mackerel fishing. Godfrey thinks he would manage this better than Crossan does. Their latest feud was concerned with the service of carts which take the fish from our little harbour to the nearest railway station. Crossan is politically a strong Protestant and an Orangeman of high attainment. Godfrey has no particular religion, and in politics belongs to that old-fashioned school of Conservatives who think that the lower orders ought to be respectful to their betters. Crossan having been taught the Church Catechism in his youth, admits this respect as theoretical duty; but gets out of performing it in practice by denying that Godfrey, or for the matter of that any one else, is his better. Godfrey’s constant complaints about Crossan are the thorns which remind me that I must not regard my lot in life as altogether pleasant. I felt justified in assuming that Godfrey had not left my cards on men who degraded themselves so far as to drink bottled stout in company with Crossan.

I was wrong. Godfrey did leave my cards. I can only suppose that his respect for the private secretary of a millionaire was stronger than his dislike of Crossan. He had even, it appeared, invited both Power and McNeice to view my “menagerie.” For this he felt it necessary to offer some excuse.

“He is one of the Powers of Kilfenora,” he said, “so I thought it would be no harm. By the way, Marion, what are you going to wear? I should say that your blue crêpe de chine—”

Godfrey is something of an expert in the matter of woman’s clothes. Marion, I know, frequently consults him and values his opinion highly. Unfortunately the subject bores me. I cut him short with a remark which was intended for a snub.

“I hope you have a new suit yourself, Godfrey. The occasion is an important one. If both Lady Moyne and Conroy’s private secretary are to be here, you ought to look your best.”

But it is almost impossible to snub Godfrey. He answered me with a cheerful friendliness which showed that he appreciated my interest in his appearance.

“I have a new grey suit,” he said. “It arrived this morning, and it’s a capital fit. That’s the advantage of employing really good tailors. You can absolutely trust Nicholson and Blackett.”

I have often wondered whether Nicholson and Blackett could absolutely trust Godfrey. I have several times paid his debts, and I do not intend to do so any more. If they were debts of an intelligible kind I should not mind paying them occasionally. But Godfrey has no ostensible vices. I have never heard of his doing anything wild or disreputable. He does not gamble or borrow money in order to give jewels to pretty actresses. He owes bills to shop-keepers for ties and trousers. His next remark showed me that Nicholson and Blackett were becoming uneasy.

“By the way, Excellency,” he said, “I’d be glad if you’d be civil to the Pringles this afternoon. Get her tea or something.”

Mr. Pringle is the manager of the branch of the bank in which Godfrey keeps his account. I imagine that he and his wife owe their invitations to my garden parties to the fact that Godfrey’s account is always overdrawn. This demand that I should be especially civil to the Pringles suggested to me that Godfrey contemplated sending a cheque to Nicholson and Blackett. I have no particular objection to being civil to the Pringles. I have to be civil to some one. I readily promised to get both tea and an ice for Mrs. Pringle; hoping that Godfrey would go away. He did not. He began talking again about Marion’s blue dress. It was with the greatest difficulty that I got him out of the house half an hour later by saying that if he did not go home at once he would not have time to dress himself with the care which the new grey suit deserved.

It annoys me very much to think Godfrey is heir to my title. It used to annoy me still more to think that Marion meant to marry him. She assures me now that she never intended to; but she used to take an interest in his talk about clothes and he certainly intended to marry her.

CHAPTER IV

THERE are some churches in which it is considered desirable to keep the sexes apart. The men are placed on one side of the central aisle, the women on the other. At my garden-parties this separation takes place naturally without the intervention of any authority. The men gather in a group under a certain chestnut-tree and talk to each other gloomily in low tones. The women—there are always more women than men—seat themselves in three distinct rows round the sides of the tennis-court. The short row across the top of the tennis-court is reserved by an unwritten, but apparently very strict law for the ladies of the highest social position. The Dean’s wife, for instance, sits in that row. The seats at the other end of the court are occupied by people like the Pringles, those who are just eligible for invitations to my parties, but have, so to speak, no social position to spare. They always remind me of St. Paul’s “righteous” who “scarcely are saved.” The long side of the tennis-court opposite the chestnut-tree, which forms a kind of male seraglio, is given over to those of middling station, ladies who are, perhaps, in a position to shake hands with Lady Moyne, and who do not, perhaps, call on Mrs. Pringle.

To this strictly observed etiquette there are two exceptions. My nephew Godfrey does not stand under the chestnut-tree, but keeps close to the side of Lady Moyne. The other men make it quite clear that they do not want him. No man whom I have ever met can tolerate Godfrey’s company. He follows Lady Moyne about because he believes her to be a lady of political influence, and he hopes she will get him a well-paid post under the government. He is one exception. The other is Lady Moyne herself. She declines to sit in a row. She walks about, sometimes walks away from the rest of the party.

My daughter Marion’s duty on these occasions is to drag young men from the shelter of the chestnut-tree and make them play tennis with young women called from one or other of the rows in which their mothers have planted them. Marion finds this a difficult duty, requiring her utmost tact. My own duty, which I fulfil in the most conscientious manner, is to make as many complete journeys round the tennis-court as possible, saying something to every lady in all three rows, and giving a kind of general address of a friendly and encouraging kind to the men under the chestnut-tree.

On this particular afternoon two unusual incidents broke the monotony of my party. Lady Moyne refused to be satisfied with the company of Godfrey. She sat down beside the Dean’s wife and made herself extremely agreeable for nearly ten minutes. Then she crossed the corner of the tennis-court, seriously interfering with the game in progress, and “cut out” the Dean from the middle of the group of men under the chestnut-tree. “Cut out” is strictly the right phrase to use. It is applied or used to be applied to the operation of capturing and carrying off ships at anchor under the protecting guns of friendly forts. It requires great dash and gallantry to “cut out” a ship. The whole audience gaped in astonishment at Lady Moyne’s daring when she captured the Dean. She walked off with him, when she got him, to the shrubbery at the far end of the lawn. They were a singularly ill-assorted pair. Lady Moyne is invariably exquisite, a small woman with dainty ways and great vivacity. The Dean is an ecclesiastic as different as possible from the suave dignitaries who lead lives of scholarly leisure in cathedral closes. We picture the ideal dean, a slender man, slightly stooped, thin-lipped, with a suggestion of mild asceticism in his face. He steps slowly through the long window of his study. He paces the closely shaven lawn. The crows caw reverently in lofty trees. He holds a calf-bound volume of Plato in his hand. From time to time he glances from the cramped Greek text to the noble, weatherworn towers of his cathedral. His life is delicately scented with a fine mixture of classical culture and Tallis’ ferial responses. Our Dean—he is also rector of our parish—is a man of a wholly different kind. He is, for one thing, wholly unconnected with any cathedral and has probably never paced a lawn beneath the shadow of historic towers in all his life. This kind of detached, independent dean is not found, I believe, anywhere except in Ireland. He is tall, cadaverous, rugged, and he can open his eyes so wide that the whites of them show all round the irises. Besides being a dean and the rector of our parish, he is honorary Grand Chaplain to the Black Preceptory of the Orange Order. Crossan, a stern judge of ecclesiastics, has the highest opinion of him. It was surmised by a lady in the second row to whom I happened to be talking at the time, that Lady Moyne wanted to consult with him about the best way of defeating the Home Rule Bill. Lady Moyne is, of course, a strong Unionist.

The second unusual incident of the afternoon followed the arrival of Bob Power. He came late, and Godfrey, driven from the side of Lady Moyne, fastened on to him at once. Bob shook him off and joined Marion. Marion, who had her duties to do and could not allow Bob to take possession of her, introduced him to a humble maiden who sat with her mother in the third row. Bob, it appears, selected the damsel himself after looking all round the tennis-court. To the great scandal of every one present he led her away from the tennis-court, and found his way to the garden. There—I judged by the condition of her gloves when they returned—they picked strawberries. I have every reason to believe that Miss Pringle—the girl was the daughter of Godfrey’s banker—enjoyed this garden-party as she had never enjoyed one before. She was actually laughing, and was looking very pretty when Bob brought her back to the refreshment tent for tea.

I felt so pleased with Bob for his audacity that I asked him to dine with us. He refused, saying that he would be busy on the yacht, but he promised to call on us next morning.

The garden-party wore itself to an end as even the dreariest festivities always do. Marion and I dined together in a condition of irritable exhaustion. After dinner we played Patience for an hour in the library. Then Marion took a novel, and I settled down to read The Times. The night was very close and we sat with both windows wide open.

The Times had articles and letters on two subjects, the Home Rule Bill, which was a menace to the Empire and a danger to Irish Loyalists; and the German Navy, which was also a menace to the Empire and a danger to every one in the United Kingdom whether loyal or not. After reading the leading articles I passed on to the letters addressed to the editor. These are always, in my opinion, the most interesting part of any newspaper. The editor and leader writers are no doubt abler men than most of their correspondents; but then they write because they must, and they write in a hurry. The correspondents on the other hand write because they have something in them—something foolish as a rule, but none the less interesting—which is struggling for expression in print. They also—being for the most part retired military officers—have abundant leisure and are able to take days, perhaps weeks, in the preparation of their compositions.

In that particular number of The Times, two retired colonels had written letters. One of them was disquieted by the growth of the German Navy. He was uninteresting. The other—a Colonel Malcolmson, whom I meet occasionally at my club—had delivered himself of a plan of campaign, an actual fighting programme, which he recommended to the Ulstermen, supposing that they meant to declare war against any one who wanted them to govern themselves. This letter interested me very much. Malcolmson offered his lawn as a parade and drill ground for volunteers. He also said that he thoroughly understood modern guns, and was prepared to take command of any artillery which Ulster might happen to possess. I lay back in my chair and tried to form a mental picture of Malcolmson, who is stout and has a bristly white moustache, aiming an immense cannon at an income tax collector. The vision was a pleasant one to linger over, and I added to the scene before my mind the figure of an athletic policeman threatening to smash Malcolmson’s cannon with a baton. The Nationalist leaders then appeared in the background waving Union Jack flags, and urging the policeman to fresh exertions in the cause of law and order. I even seemed to hear them denouncing Malcolmson as one of those who march through rapine and bloodshed to the dismemberment of an Empire.

I was aroused from my agreeable reverie by Marion. She was standing at the window looking out across the bay on the far shore of which stands the little town of Kilmore, from which my ancestor, who was a Union peer, took his title.

“I wonder what they’re doing in the village to-night,” she said. “There are a lot of lights moving about in the harbour and on the quay.”

I shook myself free of the vision of Malcolmson’s artillery duel with the tax collector, and joined Marion at the window. A half moon lit the scene before me dimly, making patches of silver light here and there on the calm waters of the bay. The Finola, looking very large, lay at anchor, broadside on to us, opposite the pier. On her deck lights moved to and fro, yellow stars in the grey gloom. On the pier were more lights, lanterns evidently, some stationary, others flickering in rapid motion. The night was so still that I could hear distinctly the rattle of oars in rowlocks. Boats were plying between the Finola and the shore.

“Can they be landing anything from the yacht?” said Marion.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Yachts do not carry cargoes, and if they did they wouldn’t land them in the middle of the night.”

I looked at my watch. It was almost twelve o’clock. Then another noise was added to the rattling of oars. A cart, unmistakably a cart, lumbered across the stones at the end of the pier. After a while this cart emerged from the black shadows of the houses and we could see it toiling up the hill which leads out of the town. A very slight southerly breeze was setting across the bay from the town to us. We could hear the driver shouting encouragement to his horse as he breasted the hill. The cart was evidently heavily loaded.

“The boats haven’t been out,” said Marion. “There cannot have been a catch of mackerel.”

When there is a catch of mackerel the fish are packed in boxes on the pier, and carts, laden like the one we watched, climb the hill. There is a regularly organized service of those carts under the control of Crossan.

“It can’t be fish,” I said, “unless the Finola has been making a catch and has come in here to land them.”

Another cart bumped its way off the pier, and in a minute or two we saw it climbing the hill. Then the lights on the Finola’s deck went out one by one. The boats ceased plying between the yacht and the shore.

“I don’t see why they should land fish in the middle of the night,” said Marion.

The activity of the people on the pier increased. More lights appeared there and moved very rapidly to and fro.

“Unless they’re landing what they’re ashamed of,” said Marion, “I don’t see why they’re doing it at night.”

Mysteries always irritate me. I answered Marion impatiently.

“You can’t be so foolish as to suppose that Conroy is smuggling. It wouldn’t be any temptation to a millionaire to cheat the revenue out of the duty on a few pounds of tobacco.”

Several more carts followed each other in a slow procession up the hill. It seemed as if Crossan’s entire staff of men and horses was engaged in this midnight transport service.

“Mr. Conroy might not know anything about it,” said Marion. “It may be done—”

“I don’t suppose Bob Power—”

“There was another man on board,” said Marion, “and Godfrey seemed to think that he was—well, not a very nice kind of man.”

“The fact that Godfrey called him a cad,” I said, “rather goes to show that he is a man with a great deal of good in him. Besides, as it happens, I know all about him. His name is McNeice and he is a Fellow of Trinity College. It’s ridiculous to suppose that he’s landing a cargo of port wine for consumption in the common room. Fellows of College don’t do that kind of thing. Besides, he’s a good scholar. I had some correspondence with him when I was writing my article on St. Patrick’s birthplace. I mean to ask him to dinner to-morrow.”

That disposed of Marion and her smuggling theory. She gave me a dutiful kiss and went to bed.

I stood at the window and watched until the last cart had mounted the hill. The lights on the pier went out. A solitary boat rowed back to the Finola. The town and bay were still again.

I shut the window and went back to my chair. I had some thoughts of working up my vision of Malcolmson and his artillery into a short article of a light kind, slightly humorous, with a vein of satire running through it. I sometimes contribute articles of this kind, under a pseudonym, to a London evening paper. Unfortunately my mind refused to return to the subject. I was worried by the impossibility of finding any explanation of the curious proceedings of the Finola. The more I thought about the matter the less I was able to understand it. Marion’s smuggling hypothesis I dismissed as inherently absurd. It is true that the government has withdrawn most of the coastguards from our shores. We used to have twelve of them at Kilmore, and they were pleasant fellows, always ready to chat on topics of current interest with any passer-by. Now, having lingered on for some years with only two, we have none at all. But, as I understand, coastguards are not the real obstacle to smugglers and never were. The safety of the revenue depends upon the perfection of the organization of its inland officers which makes it impossible to dispose of whisky which cannot show a respectable past history.

I was driven back finally on my own theory—inherently very improbable—that the Finola had, in the course of her voyage, netted an immense catch of mackerel and had come into Kilmore harbour to get rid of them.

CHAPTER V

BOB POWER called on me next morning. Marion and I were busy at my history of Irish rebellions when Bob was shown into the library. The sun, I recollect, was shining so brightly outside that I had the blinds pulled down in order to soften the light. Bob’s entrance had much the same effect as pulling up the blinds again. He brought the sunshine with him, not in the trying form of heat and glare, but tempered with a sea breeze, and broken, so it seemed to me, into the sparkle of leaping waves. His work, the night before, whatever it was, had not affected his spirits.

As a rule I dislike being interrupted when I am engaged in my literary work. I always absolutely hate it when Godfrey is the interrupter. But I found myself quite pleased when Bob Power said that we ought not to sit indoors on so fine a day. Marion ran off to get her hat and joined us on the lawn. Bob Power led us straight to the garden, and when we got there, made for the strawberry bed. He owned to a pleasant recollection of the feast he had enjoyed the day before.

There is a good deal of the school-boy about Bob Power, and Marion is quite young enough to enjoy gorging herself with ripe strawberries. I, alas! am nearly sixty years of age. A very small number of strawberries satisfies me, and I find that stooping to gather them from beneath their nets tires me after a short time. Bob Power and Marion wandered far into the remoter parts of my strawberry bed. I stayed near the pathway. Their voices reached me and their laughter; but I could not hear what they were saying to each other. I felt suddenly lonely. They were getting on very well without me. I went on by myself and inspected my melon frames. I left them after a while and took a look at my poultry yard.

The rearing of poultry is one of the things which I do in order to benefit my country. Quite ordinary chickens satisfy my personal needs, and the egg of the modest barndoor fowl is all I ask at breakfast-time. But an energetic young lady in a short tweed skirt and thick brown boots explained to me two years ago that Ireland would be a much happier country if everybody in it kept fowls with long pedigrees. She must have been right about this, because the government paid her a small salary to go round the country saying it; and no government, not even ours, would pay people to say what is not true. Her plan for introducing the superior hens into the homes of the people was that I should undertake the care of such birds as she sent me, and give their eggs, under certain conditions, to any one who asked for them. This I agreed to do, and my new fowl yard, arranged exactly as the young lady in thick boots wished, is my latest effort in patriotism.

The hens which inhabited it were very fine-looking birds, and the cock who dominated them was a credit to any government. I watched them with real pleasure for some time. Then it occurred to me as curious that a government which recognized the value of good blood in birds, bulls, boars, horses, and even bees—if bees have blood—should be not only indifferent but actually hostile to our human aristocracy. For years past animals of pedigree have been almost forced upon Ireland. Men of pedigree have as far as possible been discouraged from remaining in this country. This idea struck me as very suitable for one of my light newspaper articles. I was unwilling to lose grip of it and allow it to fade away as Malcolmson and his cannons had faded the night before. I took a sheet of paper and a pencil from my pocket and sat down on a stone to make a rough draft of the article. Before I had written three sentences I heard Marion’s voice.

“Oh, there you are, father. We were looking for you everywhere. Mr. Power and I want you to come and play tennis with us.”

I rose and stuffed my paper into my pocket. I felt quite glad that they had found me, although I do not care for playing tennis, and, as a rule, enjoy writing articles.

“You will get on much better without me,” I said.

“Oh no,” said Marion; “Mr. Power is sure to beat me in a single; but I think I’d have a pretty good chance if you are on his side.”

I was to act as a handicap. My efforts to help Power were reckoned to be worth one, perhaps two strokes in every game for Marion. This was not complimentary to me; but I dare say my tennis deserves no more respectful treatment. I agreed to be a handicap, and I was a good one. Marion won the first set. I got exceedingly hot, but, up to the middle of the second set, I enjoyed myself. Then Godfrey appeared. He watched my efforts with an air of cold superiority and contemptuous surprise. My heart failed me and I was obliged to ask to be allowed to stop.

Bob Power invited us to lunch on the Finola. Marion accepted the invitation joyfully. Godfrey also accepted, although I do not think Power meant to ask him. But Godfrey is not the kind of man to miss the chance of getting into touch, however remotely, with any one as rich as Conroy. Power eyed him with an expression of frank dislike. Godfrey, it seemed to me, did not much like Power. He was probably annoyed at the way in which Power made himself agreeable to Marion. Godfrey regarded Marion as, in a sense, his property, although there was nothing in the way of an engagement between them.

McNeice, whom I had hoped to meet, was not on the yacht. The steward explained to us that he was spending the day with Crossan. I could see that the thought of any one spending the day with Crossan outraged Godfrey’s sense of decency. By way, I suppose, of annoying Power, he asked what had been happening on the Finola at twelve o’clock the night before.

“I was awakened up,” he said, “by the noise of carts going along the street and I looked out. I could see lights on the yacht and on the pier. What on earth were you doing at that time of night?”

“Coaling,” said Power, shortly.

It was plain to me that he disliked being asked questions. It must have been plain to Godfrey, too, for he immediately asked another.

“How did you get coal in a place like this?”

“Dear me,” said Marion, “how very unromantic! I thought you were smuggling!”

Godfrey’s face assumed an expression of quite unusual intelligence. He suspected Power of evil practices of some sort. Marion’s suggestion of smuggling delighted him.

“But where did you get the coal?” he persisted.

“My dear Godfrey,” I said, “for all you or I know there may be hundreds of tons of it piled up in the co-operative store. Crossan has a wonderful business instinct. He may have speculated on a visit from some large steamer and be making a large profit. I am the principal shareholder, and nothing pleases me better than to see the store succeeding.”

I knew, as a matter of fact, that Crossan had no coal. I also knew that the Finola was not coaling. The carts were loaded when they were going up the hill. They would have been empty if they had been going to get coal for the Finola. I made my remark in the hope of discouraging Godfrey from asking more questions.

“I wish you would smuggle something,” said Marion. “I should love to have some French lace laid at my door in a bale in the middle of the night.”

Marion reads novels, and the smugglers in these import French lace. In real life the only people who try to cheat the nation out of its duty on lace are tourist ladies, and they would not share their spoils with Marion.

“But why did you coal in the middle of the night?” said Godfrey.

One of Godfrey’s most striking characteristics is his persistent curiosity. There is hardly anything in the world which Godfrey will not find out if he is given time. A secret has the same attraction for him that cheese has for a mouse. Some day, I hope, he will find a trap baited with a seductive mystery.

“We always coal at night,” said Power.

“Of course,” said Marion, “the dirt shows so much less at night than it would in daylight.”

“But,” said Godfrey, “I don’t understand why you—”

I rose and said that we must go ashore. I invited Power to dinner, and urged him to bring McNeice with him if possible. I made it quite plain that I was not inviting Godfrey. Power accepted the invitation, and sent us off in a boat. I said good-bye firmly to Godfrey at the end of the pier. I was annoyed with him for cross-questioning our host at his own table. Marion and I walked home. Godfrey walked up the hill towards the co-operative store. I am sure he did not want to see Crossan. I cannot suppose that he would venture to catechise McNeice. I expect he meant to prowl round the premises in hopes of discovering casks of smuggled brandy or cases full of tobacco.

McNeice came to dinner, and I am bound to say that I found myself very nearly in agreement with Godfrey’s opinion of him. He was a singularly ill-mannered man. Power devoted himself to Marion, and I felt at once that their conversation was not of a kind that was likely to be interesting either to McNeice or me. They were talking about ski-ing and skating in Switzerland. McNeice made no effort to talk at all. He sucked his soup into his mouth with a loud hissing noise, and glared at me when I invited him to admire our scenery. His fish he ate more quietly, and I took the opportunity of reminding him of our correspondence about St. Patrick. The subject roused him.

“There are,” he said, “seventeen different theories about the place of that man’s birth.”

I knew nine myself, my own, of which I was a little proud, being the ninth. I did not expect McNeice to deliver a harangue on the whole seventeen, but that is what he did. Having bolted his fish, he began in a loud, harsh voice to pour contempt on all attempts at investigating the early history of our national saint. He delayed our progress through dinner a good deal, because he would neither refuse nor help himself to the entrée which my butler held at his elbow. It was not until he had finished with the whole seventeen theories about the saint that he turned his attention to dinner again. I ventured to suggest that he had not even mentioned my own theory.

“Oh,” he said, “you have a theory too, have you?”

My theory, at the time of its first appearance, occupied ten whole pages of the Nineteenth Century, and when republished, with notes, in pamphlet form, was reviewed by two German papers. I felt hurt by his ignorance of it, and reminded him again that we had corresponded about the subject while I was writing the article.

“If you’ve time to waste on that sort of thing,” he said, “why not devote it to living bishops instead of one who has been dead over a thousand years?”

The idea of investigating the origins of our existing bishops was new to me but not in the least attractive.

“Wouldn’t it be rather waste of labour,” I said, “to build up an hypothesis about the birthplace of a living bishop when—”

“It’s certainly waste of labour to build up an hypothesis about a dead one.”

“I meant to say,” I added, “that if one did want to know such a thing—”

“Nobody does,” said McNeice.

“It would,” I went on, “be much simpler to write and ask him.”

I gathered from the way in which he spoke that McNeice did not like bishops; but I was not prepared for the violence of the speech which he made to me after dinner. Marion and Power were at the piano, which stands in a far-off corner of my rather oversized drawing-room. McNeice settled himself in front of the fire, his long legs straddled far apart, the bow of his white tie twisted under his ear. He is a man of singularly ferocious appearance. He has very bushy eyebrows which meet across the bridge of his nose, shining green eyes, a large jaw heavily underhung, and bright red hair.

He addressed me for more than half an hour on the subject of bishops in general. I should be very sorry to write down the things he said. Some of them were quite untrue. Others were utterly unjust. It is quite wrong, for instance, to impute it as a crime to a whole class of men that their heads are bald. Nobody can help being bald if his hair will not grow any more than he can help being fat if his stomach will swell. Fatness was another of the accusations which McNeice hurled against the bishops. I suppose this violent hatred of an inoffensive class of men was partly the result of McNeice’s tremendous Protestantism. The poet Milton, I think, felt in the same way about the prelates of his day. Partly it may have been the expression of his naturally democratic temperament. Bishops like to be called “my lord” by servants and clergymen. McNeice, I imagine, has a quite evangelical dislike of such titles. I dare say that it was the fact of my being a lord which made him so rude to me.

On the afternoon of my garden-party I happened to be standing close beside Lady Moyne when she was saying good-bye to the Dean. Her final remark was addressed quite as much to him as to me.

“What we have got to do,” she said, “is to make use of this virile democracy of ours; to mould it into an instrument for the preservation of social order. The introduction of the Home Rule Bill gives us just about the chance we want.”

I found myself wondering, while the diatribe against the bishops was in full swing, whether Lady Moyne would succeed in moulding McNeice into a weapon for her hand. It seemed to me more probable at the moment that McNeice would in the end tumble her beautiful head from the block of a guillotine into the basket of sawdust which waited underneath.

Marion and Bob Power were singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas while McNeice preached to me. They at least were having an enjoyable evening. I dare say McNeice enjoyed himself too. If so, my dinner-party was not given in vain. One cannot reasonably expect more than three out of every four people to be happy at the same time. It was my misfortune that I happened to be the fourth.

CHAPTER VI

THE Finola steamed out of our bay next morning. Marion saw her go, and became quite lyrical at breakfast about the beauty of her “lines,” a word which, as applied to the appearance of a yacht, she can only have learned from Bob Power. I was not able to share her rapture because the Finola went out at 6 a. m., an hour at which I make it a settled rule to be in bed. Marion is generally in bed at 6 a. m. too. She made an exceptional effort that morning.

For a week I enjoyed almost unbroken peace, and accumulated quite a large sheaf of notes for my work on the Irish Rebellions. Even Godfrey refrained from worrying me. But such happiness was too good to last long. On Saturday morning three things happened, every one of them of a disturbing kind. I received a letter from Lady Moyne in which she invited me to spend three days during the following week at Castle Affey. Castle Affey is Lord Moyne’s chief Irish place. He has three others in various parts of the country and one in England. It is about ten miles from my home. Lady Moyne invited Marion too; but this was evidently an after thought, and she discounted the value of the invitation by saying that her party was to consist almost entirely of men and might be dull for Marion. I suspected politics at once, and advised Marion to refuse the invitation. I accepted it. Politics bore me a good deal; but it is interesting to watch politicians at their game. It is also pleasant, very pleasant, to be in the company of Lady Moyne. The prospect of the visit was as I have said disturbing. I prefer monotony. But if things must fall splashing into the pool of my life, I would as soon they took the form of visits to Castle Affey as any other.

The next thing which happened that morning was a deputation. It consisted of six out of the twenty carters whom Crossan has organized in the interests of our fishing industry. They made the modest request that I should drive my nephew Godfrey out of the neighbourhood. I felt the strongest possible sympathy with them. If I were a carter, a fisherman, a shopkeeper, or a farmer, and lived in Kilmore, I should certainly wish Godfrey to live somewhere else. I did not even question the members of the deputation about their special reasons for wanting to get rid of Godfrey. They told me in general terms that he was interfering in business which was “none of his.” I wanted no evidence in support of such a statement. Godfrey always interferes in everything. A very freckled young man who seemed to be junior member of the deputation, added that Godfrey “spied” upon them. Of course Godfrey spied on them. He spies on me.

Strong as my sympathy was with the perfectly reasonable request of the deputation, I could not act as I was asked. Godfrey is, of course, in my employment. He collects the head rents still payable to me from some parts of the town which were not sold when I parted with the rest of my estate. For this I pay him £200 a year. I could, I suppose, dismiss him if I chose; but the plain fact is that if I dismissed Godfrey he would immediately starve or go to the workhouse. He is quite unfit to earn his living in any way. Once, after great exertions, I secured for him a kind of minor clerkship in a government office. His duties, so far as I was able to learn, were to put stamps on envelopes, and he was provided with a damp sponge to prevent any injury which might happen to his tongue through licking the stamps. At the end of a year he was dismissed as hopelessly incompetent. He came back to me, beautifully dressed, with a small despatch-box full of tradesmen’s bills, and a grievance against the government. It was plain to me after that experiment that Godfrey could never earn his own living. I did not see my way to let him drift into the workhouse. He is, little as I like him, the heir to my title, and, in mere decency, I could not allow the cost of his support to fall on the rates.

This is just one of the ways in which the democratic spirit of independence has affected us all without our knowing it. In the seventeenth century any member of the aristocracy who was afflicted with an heir like Godfrey had him shut up in the Bastille, or the Tower, by means of lettres de cachet or whatever corresponded to such instruments in England. There the objectionable young man ate bread and drank water at the expense of the public funds. Nobody seems to have suffered any discomfort at the thought that the cost of the support of his relative was falling either on the rates or the taxes. (I am not sure which it was but it must have been one or the other.) Nowadays we are horribly self-conscious in such matters. The debilitated labourer began it, objecting, absurdly, to being fed by other people in the workhouse. His spirit spread to the upper classes, and it is now impossible, morally, for me, a peer, to send my heir to the workhouse. Fortunately public opinion is swinging round again. The latest type of working-man has no objection to receiving an Old Age Pension, and likes to hear of his children being given free breakfasts at school. In time this new feeling will soak through to the class to which I belong. Then I shall be able, without a qualm, to send Godfrey to the workhouse. At present, I regret to say, I cannot.

I explained all this carefully to the deputation. It pained me to have to say no to their request, but I said it quite firmly. My decision, I think, was understood. My feelings I fear were not.

Very soon after the deputation left, Godfrey himself arrived. He wanted me to dismiss Crossan. I am not at all sure that I could dismiss Crossan even if I wanted to do so. He is the manager of our co-operative store, and although most of the money which went to the starting of that enterprise was mine there is a considerable number of small shareholders. Crossan also runs the fishing business and our saw mill. I capitalized both these industries, lending money to the men to buy nets and good boats, and buying the various saws which are necessary to the making of planks. This no doubt gives me some hold over Crossan, but not enough to enable me to dismiss him as I might a cook. Besides, I do not want to dismiss Crossan. He is managing these different enterprises in such a way that they earn fair interest on the capital I put into them.

“I’ve been looking into things a bit, Excellency,” said Godfrey.

I quite believed that. The deputation of carters said the same thing in other words.

“And you’ll find yourself in an awkward place one of these days if that fellow Crossan is allowed to go on as he’s going.”

“I hope you’re not going to drag up that dispute about the carters, Godfrey. I’m sick of it.”

The dispute about the carters is really an unpleasant business. As originally organized there were eight Protestant carters and four Roman Catholics. A year ago Crossan dismissed the four Roman Catholic carters, and one of the Protestants who was suspected of religious indifference. Their places were filled by five Orangemen of the most determined kind. Now the profits of this carting business are considerable. The five men who were dismissed appealed to Godfrey. Godfrey laid their case before me. I gathered that Godfrey had a high opinion of the outcasts who always spoke to him with the respect due to his position. He had a low opinion of the five interlopers who were men of rude speech and democratic independence of manner. I was foolish enough to speak to Crossan about the matter. He met me with a blunt assertion that it was impossible to trust what he called “Papishes.” There, as a lover of peace rather than justice, I wanted to let the matter rest; but Godfrey took up the subject again and again in the course of the following year. He persisted, not out of any love for justice though this once he was on the side of justice, but simply out of hatred of Crossan.

“It’s not only the dismissal of those carters,” said Godfrey. “There’s a great deal more behind that. There’s something going on which I don’t understand.”

“If you don’t understand it,” I said, “you can’t expect me to.”

“Look here, Excellency, you remember the time that yacht of Conroy’s, the Finola, was in here?”

“Of course I do. You went and left my cards on Bob Power.”

“I’m very sorry now that I did. There’s something fishy about that yacht. What was she doing on the night she was here?”

“Coaling,” I said; “I don’t see why I should dismiss Crossan because Conroy’s yacht came in here for coal.”

“She wasn’t coaling,” said Godfrey.

I knew that, of course; so I said nothing, but left Godfrey to develope his grievance whatever it was.

“Ever since that night,” said Godfrey, “there has been something or other going on in the yard behind the stores. Those carters are in it, whatever it is, and a lot more men, fishermen and young farmers. They’re up there every night.”

“Probably dancing,” I said.

“Much more likely to be drinking.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense, Godfrey. You know perfectly well that the store has not got a licence, and there’s no drink sold there. Besides Crossan is a fanatical teetotaller.”

“That wouldn’t stop him,” said Godfrey, “if he could sell the stuff cheap and make money on it; if”—here he sank his voice—“if it hadn’t paid duty.”

Now Crossan is one of those Christians who has added to the original Ten Commandments a Mohammedan prohibition of alcohol in any form. Godfrey, I have no doubt, would break any of the commandments which he recognized, if he saw his way to making a small profit on the sin. But I did not think that even a 25 per cent. dividend would tempt Crossan to disregard his self-imposed prohibition of alcohol.

“That’s all nonsense,” I said. “In the first place the Finola didn’t come in here to land a cargo of smuggled goods.”

“Then what did she come for?”

I did not know, so I ignored Godfrey’s question.

“And in the second place Crossan wouldn’t debauch the whole place by making the men drunk night after night on smuggled spirits. Why, only three weeks ago he spoke to me seriously about the glass of claret I drink at dinner. He did it quite respectfully and entirely for my good. I respected him for it.”

“He’s up to some mischief,” said Godfrey, sulkily, “and it won’t be too pleasant for you, Excellency, when the Inland Revenue people find out, and you are let in for a prosecution. I tell you that every night for the last week men have been going up to that store after dark, twenty or thirty of them, truculent, disrespectful blackguards out of the Orange Lodge. I’ve watched them.”

“Did you watch them coming out again?”

“I did, twice,” said Godfrey. “They didn’t go home till nearly one o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t stop up every night, so I only saw them twice.”

“Well,” I said, “were they drunk?”

“No,” said Godfrey, unwillingly, “they were not. They walked quite straight.”

“That explodes your theory then. If they had been drinking smuggled spirits for hours and hours, they would have been drunk.”

“They were at some mischief,” said Godfrey.

“They were probably getting up a concert,” I said.

“No, they weren’t, for—”

“Look here, Godfrey,” I said, “I’ve listened to you pretty patiently for a long time; but I really cannot spare you the whole morning. If you have anything to do I wish you’d go and do it. If you haven’t you’d better go to bed and sleep off your absurd suspicions.”

One has to speak very plainly to Godfrey. Hints are simply wasted on him. Even after my last remark he hesitated for a moment. Then he turned and went.

I felt in the mood to write a short story which I have had in my mind for some time. I very often write short stories; but have never yet got an editor who cares to print any of them. The one I had in my mind when Godfrey left me was, however, likely to be particularly good. It was to be the autobiography of a murderer; not an ordinary murderer who slays through desire of gain or in obedience to an inborn criminal instinct. My murderer was to be a highly respectable, God-fearing man, a useful citizen, a good father, a man of blameless life and almost blameless thoughts, generous, high-principled, beloved. He was to slay his victim with one of the fire-irons on his hearth. The murderous impulse was to take possession of him quite suddenly but with absolutely irresistible force. He was to kill a man who had been boring him for hours. My intention was to write the story in such a way as to win public sympathy for my murderer and to make every one feel that the dead man deserved his fate. I meant to model the dead man on my nephew Godfrey.

I still think that a very good short story might be written along those lines, but I doubt whether I shall ever write it. I wrote about two thousand words that morning before I was interrupted by the luncheon gong. I was unable to go on writing after luncheon because the conversation I had with Marion distracted my mind and turned my thoughts to another subject.

“Father,” she said, “do you think that Mr. Power could really have been smuggling things in that yacht?”

“No,” I said; “he couldn’t possibly.”

“It’s very queer,” said Marion.

“What’s queer?”

“Oh, nothing. Only this morning Rose had a new gold brooch, quite a handsome one.”

Rose is Marion’s maid, a pleasant and I believe efficient girl of agreeable appearance.

“Even if Mr. Power was smuggling,” I said, “it’s exceedingly unlikely that he’d bring in a cargo of gold brooches to give to the servants in the district.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Marion. “In fact Rose told me that her young man gave her the brooch. He’s a very nice, steady young fellow with a freckly face and he drives one of the carts for Crossan.”

He must, I suspect, be the same young man who accused Godfrey of being a spy. If so he is evidently a judge of character, and his selection of Rose as a sweet-heart is a high compliment to her.

“He promised her a gold bracelet next week,” said Marion, “and Rose is very mysterious about where he gets the money.”

“As long as he doesn’t steal it from me,” I said, “I don’t care where he gets it.”

“It’s very queer all the same. Rose says that a lot of the young men in the village have heaps of money lately, and I thought it might have something to do with smuggling.”

This is what distracted my mind from the story of the man who murdered Godfrey. I could not help wondering where Rose’s young man and the others got their money. They were, I assumed, the same young men who frequented the co-operation store during the midnight hours. It was, of course, possible that they might earn the money there by some form of honest labour. But I could not imagine that Crossan had started one of those ridiculous industries by means of which Government Boards and philanthropic ladies think they will add to the wealth of the Irish peasants. Besides, even if Crossan had suddenly developed symptoms of kindly idiocy, neither wood-carving or lace-making could possibly have made Rose’s freckly faced young man rich enough to buy a gold brooch. The thing puzzled me nearly as much as did the Finola’s midnight activity.

CHAPTER VII

ALL competent critics appear to agree that art ought to be kept entirely distinct from moral purposes. A picture meant to urge us on to virtue—and there are such pictures—is bad art. A play or a novel with a purpose stands condemned at once. The same canon of criticism must, I suppose, apply to parties of all kinds, dinner-parties, garden-parties, or house-parties. A good host or hostess ought, like the painter and the novelist, to aim at making her work beautiful in itself; and should not have behind the hospitality a cause of any kind, charitable or political.

I myself dissent, humbly, of course, from this view. Pictures like Time, Death and Judgment—I take it as an example of the kind of picture which is meant to make us good because I once saw it hung up in a church—appeal to me strongly. I do not like novels which aim at a reform of the marriage laws; but that is only because sex problems bore me horribly. I enjoy novels written with any other purpose. I hate parties, such as those which Godfrey instigates me to give, which have no object except that of merely being parties, the bare collection together of human beings in their best clothes. I was, therefore, greatly pleased when I discovered that my original guess was right and that Lady Moyne’s party was definitely political. I found this out when I arrived in the drawing-room before dinner. I was a little too early and there was no one in the room except Moyne. He shook hands with me apologetically and this gave me a clue to the nature of the entertainment before me. He dislikes politics greatly, and would be much happier than he is if he were allowed to hunt and fish instead of attending to such business as is carried on in the House of Lords. But a man cannot expect to get all he wants in life. Moyne has a particularly charming and clever wife who enjoys politics immensely. The price he pays for her is the loss of a certain amount of sport and the endurance of long periods of enforced legislative activity.

“I ought to have told you before you came,” he said, “that—well, you know that my lady is very strongly opposed to this Home Rule Bill.”

Moyne is fifteen years or so older than his wife. He shows his respect for her by the pretty old-fashioned way in which he always speaks of her as “my lady.”

“The fact is,” he went on, “that the people we have with us at present—”

“Babberly?” I asked.

Moyne nodded sorrowfully. Babberly is the most terrific of all Unionist orators. If his speeches were set to music, the orchestra would necessarily consist entirely of cornets, trumpets and drums. No one could express the spirit of Babberly’s oratory on stringed instruments. Flutes would be ridiculous.

“Of course,” said Moyne, still apologetically, “it really is rather a crisis you know.”

“It always is,” I said. “I’ve lived through seventy or eighty of them.”

“But this is much worse than most,” he said. “A man called Malcolmson arrived this afternoon, a colonel of some sort. Was in the artillery, I think.”

“You read his letter in The Times, I suppose?”

“Yes, I did. But I needn’t tell you, Kilmore, that that kind of thing is all talk. My wife—”

“I fancy Lady Moyne would look well as vivandière,” I said, “marching in front of an ambulance waggon with a red cross on it.”

Moyne looked pained. He is very fond of Lady Moyne and very proud of her. This is quite natural. I should be proud of her too if she were my wife.

“Her idea,” said Lord Moyne, “is—”

Just then our Dean came into the room. His presence emphasised the highly political nature of the party. Unless she had asked Crossan, Lady Moyne could not have got hold of any one of more influence with our north of Ireland Protestant democracy. The Dean cannot possibly be accustomed to the kind of semi-regal state which is kept up at Castle Affey. I should be surprised to hear that he habitually dresses for dinner. It was only natural, therefore, that he should be a little overawed by the immensity of the rooms and the number of footmen who lurk about the halls and passages. When he began explaining to me the extreme iniquity of the recent Vatican legislation about mixed marriages, he spoke in a quite low voice. As a rule this subject moves the Dean to stridency; but the heavy magnificence of Castle Affey crushed him into a kind of whisper. This encouraged me. If the Dean had been in his usual condition of vigour, I should not have ventured to do anything except agree with him heartily. Feeling that I might never catch him in a subdued mood again, I seized a chance of expressing my own views on the mixed marriage question. It seems to me that the whole difficulty about the validity of these unions might be got over by importing a few priests of the Greek Church into Ireland. The Vatican, I believe, recognizes that these Orientals really are priests. The Protestants could not reasonably object to their ministrations since they refuse to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Pope. A mixed marriage performed by one of them would, therefore, be valid in the opinion of the ecclesiastical advisers of, let us say, the bridegroom. It would be quite unobjectionable to those responsible for the soul of the bride. I put my plan as persuasively as I could; but the Dean did not seem to see any merit in it. Indeed I have never met any one who did. That is the great drawback to trying to help the Irish nation out of its difficulties. No one will ever agree to a reasonable compromise.

I took Lady Moyne in to dinner and enjoyed myself very much. She was—as indeed she always is—beautifully dressed. Although she talked a good deal to Babberly who sat on the other side of her, she left me with the impression that I was the person who really interested her, and that she only turned occasionally to her other neighbour from a sense of duty. Babberly talked about Unionist clubs and the vigorous way in which the members of them were doing dumb bell exercises, so as to be in thoroughly good training when the Home Rule Bill became law. The subject evidently interested him very much. He has a long white beard of the kind described as patriarchal. When he reaches exciting passages in his public speeches, and even when he is saying something emphatic in private life, his beard wags up and down. On this occasion it rose and fell like a foamy wave. That was what convinced me that he was really interested in the activity of the Unionist clubs. Lady Moyne smiled at him in her bewilderingly bewitching way, and then turned round and smiled at me.

“But,” I said, “do you actually mean to go out and do battle?”

“It won’t be necessary,” said Babberly. “Once the English people understand that we mean to die rather than see our lives and liberties—”

“Nowadays,” said Lady Moyne, “when the industrial proletariate is breaking free from all control, it is a splendid thing for us to have a cause in which we take the lead, which will bind our working classes to us, and make them loyal to those who are after all their best friends and their natural leaders.”

I quite saw Lady Moyne’s point. Crossan would not be at all likely to follow her or regard her as his best friend in ordinary matters. He might even resent her interference with his affairs. But on the subject of Home Rule Crossan would certainly follow any one who took his side of the great controversy. If Lady Moyne wore an orange sash over her pretty dresses Crossan would cheer her. While Home Rule remained a real danger he would refrain from asking why Lord Moyne should spend as much on a bottle of champagne for dinner, as would feed the children of a labourer for a week. It did not surprise me to find that Lady Moyne was clever enough to understand Crossan. I wanted to know whether Babberly understood.

“But,” I said to him, “suppose that the men you are enrolling take what you say seriously—”

“I assure you, Lord Kilmore,” said Babberly, “we are quite serious.”

I could hear Malcolmson at the other end of the table explaining to Moyne a scheme for establishing a number of artillery forts on the side of the Cave Hill above Belfast Lough. His idea apparently, was to sink any British warship which was ill-advised enough to anchor there with a view to imposing Home Rule on us. Malcolmson, at all events, was quite serious.

“It will never come to fighting,” said Babberly again. “After all, the great heart of the English people is sound. They will never consent to see their brethren and co-religionists handed over—”

Lady Moyne turned to me and smiled again. I am sixty years of age, but her smile gave me so much pleasure that I failed to hear the rest of what Babberly said.

When at the end of dinner Lady Moyne left us, we congregated round the other end of the table, and everybody talked loud; everybody, that is, except Moyne and me. Moyne looked to me very much as if he wanted to go to sleep. He blinked a good deal, and when he got his eyes open seemed to hold them in that state with considerable effort. I did not feel sleepy, and became more and more interested as the conversation round me grew more violent. Babberly talked about a campaign among the English constituencies. He had a curious and quite pathetic faith in the gullibility of the British working-man. Nobody listened much to Babberly. The Dean prosed on about the effects of the Ne Temere decree. We all said that we agreed with him, and then stopped listening. Malcolmson got on to field guns, and had an elaborate plan for training gunners without actual practice. Babberly did not like this talk about artillery. He kept on saying that we should never get as far as that. A Mr. Cahoon, who came from Belfast, and spoke with the same kind of accent as McNeice, prophesied doleful things about the paralyzing of business under a Home Rule Parliament. What interested me was, not the conversation which beat fiercely on my ears, but the personal question, Why had Lady Moyne invited me to this party?

I am constitutionally incapable of becoming excited about politics, and have therefore the reputation, quite undeserved, of being that singular creature, a Liberal peer. Why, being the kind of Gallio I am, I should have been, like a second Daniel, thrown among these lions, I could not understand. They were not the least likely to convert me to their own desperate intensity of feeling. If Lady Moyne wanted to convert me a far better plan would have been to invite me to her house after the politicians had gone away. Circe, I imagine, did not attract new lovers by parading those whom she had already turned into swine. Nor could I suppose that I had been brought to Castle Affey in order to convert people like Malcolmson to pacific ways of thought. In the first place, Lady Moyne did not want him converted. He and his like were a valuable asset to the Conservative party. And even if she had wanted them converted I was not the man to do it. I am mildly reasonable in my outlook upon life. To reason with Malcolmson is much the same as if a man, meaning well, were to offer a Seidlitz powder to an enraged hippopotamus.

It was not until next day that I found a solution of my problem. Moyne buttonholed me after breakfast, and invited me, rather wistfully I thought, to go round the stables with him. He wanted my opinion of a new filly. I went, pursued by the sound of the Dean’s voice.

He was telling the story of a famous case of wife desertion brought about by the Ne Temere decree. He was telling it to Cahoon, the Belfast manufacturer, who must, I am sure, have heard it several times before.

I used, long ago, to be a good judge of horses. I still retained my eye for a neat filly. Moyne’s latest acquisition was more than neat. I stroked her neck, and patted her flanks with genuine appreciation. Moyne looked quite cheerful and babbled pleasantly about hunting. Then Lady Moyne came through the door of the stable. I was very glad to see her. Her dress, a simple brown tweed, suited her admirably, and her smile, less radiant, perhaps, than it was the night before when set off by her diamonds, was most attractive. Moyne, too, though I knew that he did not want to talk politics, was glad to see her. She came into the horse-box, and fondled the filly. Then she sighed.

“What a lot we have to go through for a good cause!” she said. “Those terrible men!”

“Heavy going,” said Moyne, “that kind of thing at breakfast. Let’s take out the new car, and go for a spin.”

“I should love to,” she said, “but I must not. I only ran out to speak to you for a minute, Lord Kilmore.”

Her eyes led me to believe at dinner the night before that I was the one man among her guests that she really wanted to talk to. Now her lips said the same thing plainly. I did not believe it, of course; but I felt quite as much gratified as if it had been true.

“Mr. Conroy comes this afternoon,” she said.

“That millionaire fellow?” said Moyne, who was evidently not well up in the list of his visitors.

“And I want you to take him in hand,” said Lady Moyne to me—not to her husband. “He’s very clever, and it’s most important to get him interested in our movement.”

“You’d much better take him in hand yourself,” I said. “If any one could interest him—”

“I shall, of course; but I can’t always be with him. I’m dreadfully afraid that if Mr. Babberly talks to him—but you know what Mr. Babberly is. He’s splendid in Parliament and on a platform; perfectly splendid. We’ve nobody like him. But he might not quite suit Mr. Conroy. Then poor dear Colonel Malcolmson does talk such nonsense. Of course it’s very good in its way, and I do hope the Liberals will lay to heart what he says about fighting before it’s too late—”

“Mr. Conroy is a business man,” I said, “and has a reputation for shrewdness.”

“That’s just it,” said Lady Moyne, “and the others—the Dean and that curious Mr. Cahoon. They’re dears, perfect dears in the way they stand up for the Union and the Empire, but—” She shrugged her shoulders, and smiled.

“I quite understand,” I said; “but, after all, I’m rather an old bore, too.”

“You!” said Lady Moyne. “You’re a literary man, and that’s so rare, you know, in our class. And, besides, you’re a Liberal. I don’t mean in any offensive sense of the word; only just that you’re not a party man. I must run away now; but you will do your best with Mr. Conroy, won’t you? We want a big subscription from him.”

The Dean caught me a little later in the morning, and, though I told him I had letters to write, he insisted on explaining to me that, as a clergyman, he considered it wrong to take any active part in politics.

“The Church,” he said, “cannot allow herself to become attached to any party. She must stand above and beyond party, a witness to divine and eternal righteousness in public affairs.”

I am, on the whole, glad that I heard the Dean say this. I should certainly have believed he was taking a side in politics, if he had not solemnly assured me that he was not. I might even have thought, taking at their face value certain resolutions passed by its General Synod, that the Church was, more or less, on the side of the Unionists, if the Dean had not explained to me that she only appeared to be on their side because they happened to be always in the right, but that she would be quite as much on the side of the Liberals if they would only drop their present programme which happened in every respect to be morally wrong. This cleared my mind for me, and I felt quite ready to face Conroy at luncheon, and dispel any difficulties he might feel about the Church and politics.

CHAPTER VIII

MR. CONROY arrived at luncheon-time, and Lady Moyne took him in hand at once. I watched her talking to him during the meal and afterwards when they walked together round the lawn. I came to the conclusion that Lady Moyne would have no difficulty in obtaining any subscription she wanted from the millionaire. They were, of course, intimate with each other. Lady Moyne had been Conroy’s guest in the days when his London house was a centre of social life. She had sailed with him on the Finola. But this was the first time she had him at Castle Affey; and therefore the first time he had seen Lady Moyne in her character as hostess. It is not to be wondered at that he yielded to her charm. Like all women of real capacity Lady Moyne was at her best in her own house.

But she was too clever a hostess to devote herself entirely to one guest. She took Babberly for a drive later in the afternoon and I felt that my time had come. I determined to be true to my trust and to make myself agreeable to Conroy. Unfortunately he did not seem to want my company. He went off for a long walk with Malcolmson. This surprised me. I should have supposed beforehand that talk about artillery would have bored Conroy; and Malcolmson, since this Home Rule struggle began, has talked of nothing else.

I spent the afternoon with Mr. Cahoon, and we talked about Home Rule, of course.

“What those fellows want,” he said, “is to get their hands into our pockets. But it won’t do.”

“Those fellows” were, plainly, the Nationalist leaders.

“Taxation?” I said.

“Belfast will be the milch cow of the Dublin Parliament,” said Cahoon. “Money will be wanted to feed paupers and pay priests in the south and west. We’re the only people who have any money.”

I had never before come in contact with a man like Cahoon, and I was very much interested in him. His contempt, not only for our fellow-countrymen in Leinster, Munster and Connacht, but for all the other inhabitants of the British Isles was absolute. He had a way of pronouncing final judgment on all the problems of life which fascinated me.

“That’s all well enough in its way,” he would say; “but it won’t do in Belfast. We’re business men.”

I think he said those words five times in the course of the afternoon, and each time they filled me with fresh delight. If the man had been a fool I should not have been interested in him. If he had been a simple crude money maker, a Stock Exchange Imperialist, for instance, I should have understood him and yawned. But he was not a fool. A man cannot be a fool who manages successfully a large business, who keeps in touch with the swift vicissitudes of modern international commerce, who has organized into a condition of high efficiency an industrial army of several thousand working-men and women. And Mr. Cahoon, in a curious hard way, was touched with idealisms; I discovered, accidentally, that he devotes his spare time on Saturdays to the instruction of young men in cricket and football. His Sunday afternoons he gives to an immense Bible-class for boys of fifteen or sixteen. He has built and maintains, on the sole condition that he does not actually lose money by it, a kind of model village in a suburban district of Belfast. In order to look after this village properly he gets up at five o’clock in the morning on three days in the week. In winter, when his social work is in full swing, he spends almost all his evenings at a large Working-Men’s club. He spends his summer holidays in the seaside camp of The Boys’ Brigade. It would be difficult to find a man who crams more work into what are supposed to be his leisure hours. He has, of course, little time for reading and he never travels. His devotion to good works leaves him no opportunity for culture, and accounts for the fact that he believes the things which Babberly says on platforms. He would, I did not actually try him with the subject, but I have no doubt he would, have brushed the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant into the world’s waste-basket with his unvarying formula: It wouldn’t do in Belfast. They are business men there.

We worried on about his fear of the over-taxation of Belfast and the industrial North. I tried to get from him some definite account of the exact taxes which he feared. I tried to get him to explain how he proposed to fight, against whom he intended to fight, who might be expected to fight on his side. I do not think he got angry with me for my persistency, but his contempt for me steadily increased. I am not a business man and so I could not possibly, so he hinted, understand how they feel about the matter in Belfast.

“But do you think,” I said, “that your workmen will go out and be shot in order to save you from paying an extra penny in the pound income tax? That’s what it comes to, you know, and I don’t see why they should do it. They don’t pay income tax, or for that matter death duties.”

Cahoon looked me full in the face for nearly half a minute without replying. Then he took out his watch and looked at it. Then he took me by the arm and led me towards the yard.

“Did you ever see the Green Loaney Scutching Mill?” he said.

I had never seen any scutching mill. I have only a vague idea of what a scutching mill is.

“It’ll not be more than twenty miles from this,” said Cahoon. “And in my car we’ll do it and be back for dinner.”

I did not particularly want to spend the rest of the afternoon rushing about the country in Cahoon’s motor car. I preferred to stay quietly on the Castle Affey lawn and talk about Home Rule.

“But about the working-man,” I said, “and the prospect of his fighting—”

“You’ll be better able to talk about that,” said Cahoon, “when you’ve seen the man I’m going to take you to. Seeing’s believing.”

I was, of course, quite willing to go with Cahoon if he would really show me a citizen soldier in a scutching mill. We got out the motor car and started.

“He’s a man by the name of McConkey,” said Cahoon.

“A good name,” I said. “One expects something from a McConkey.”

Cahoon did not say anything for about ten minutes. Then he went on—

“McConkey is foreman in the mill.”

“The scutching mill?” I asked.

It was, of course, the scutching mill. I only asked the question in order to keep up the conversation. The long silences were embarrassing. Cahoon did not answer me. At the end of another quarter of an hour of furious driving he gave me a little further information about McConkey.

“He neither drinks nor smokes.”

This led me to think that he might be some relation to my friend Crossan, possibly a cousin.

“I happen to know,” said Cahoon a little later, “that he has upwards of £500 saved.”

Undoubtedly McConkey and Crossan are close relations, brothers-in-law perhaps.

We reached the Green Loaney Scutching Mill at about half-past five o’clock. Cahoon, who seemed to know all about the establishment, led me through some very dusty purlieus. McConkey, when we came upon him, did not seem particularly pleased to see Cahoon. He looked at me with suspicious malignity.

“There’s a gentleman here,” said Cahoon, “who wants to know whether you mean to fight rather than submit to Home Rule.”

“Aye,” said McConkey, “I do.”

Then he looked me square in the face without winking. Cahoon did the same thing exactly. Neither of them spoke. It was clearly my turn to say something; but with four hard grey eyes piercing my skin I found it difficult to think of a remark. In the end I said:

“Really?”

They both continued to stare at me. Then McConkey broke the silence again.

“You’ll no be a Papist?” he said.

“Certainly not,” I replied. “In fact I am a church-warden.”

McConkey thrust his hand deep into a hip pocket in the back of his trousers and drew out a somewhat soiled packet of yellow tracing paper.

“Look at thon,” he said.

I unfolded the tracing paper and found on it drawings of a machine gun. Cahoon peered over my shoulder.

“She’s a bonny wee thing,” said McConkey.

She looked to me large and murderous. Cahoon expressed his admiration for her, so I said nothing.

“I’ll no be that badly off for something to fight with,” said McConkey, “when the time comes.”

“Do you mean to say,” I said, “that you’ve bought that weapon?”

“I haven’t her bought yet,” said McConkey; “but I have the money by me.”

“And you actually mean—” I said.

“Ay. I do.”

I looked at Cahoon. He was still studying the drawings of the gun.

“It’ll be queer,” said McConkey, slowly, “if she doesna’ land a few of them in hell before they have me catched.”

I turned to Cahoon again.

“Do you really think,” I said, “that he—?”

“We’re business men,” said Cahoon, “and we don’t throw away our money.”

“But,” I said, “who are you going to shoot at? It would be silly to attack a tax collector with a gun like that. I don’t see who—”

“Oh,” said Cahoon, “don’t fret about that. We’ll find somebody to shoot at.”

“There’ll be plenty,” said McConkey, “when the time comes.”

“The real difficulty,” said Cahoon, “is that—”

“They’ll no be wanting to stand up till us,” said McConkey.

The relations of Capital with Labour are, I understand, strained in other parts of the United Kingdom. Here, with Home Rule on the horizon, they seem to be actually cordial. There is certainly a good deal to be said for Lady Moyne’s policy. So long as Cahoon and McConkey have a common taste for making domestic pets of machine guns they are not likely to fall out over such minor matters as wages and hours of work.

I had a good deal to think of as Cahoon drove me back to Castle Affey. My main feeling was one of great personal thankfulness. I shall never, I hope, take part in a battle. If I do I hope I shall be found fighting against some properly organized army, the men and officers of which have taken up the business of killing in a lofty professional spirit. I cannot imagine anything more likely to shatter my nerve than to be pitted against men like McConkey, who neither drink nor smoke, but save and spend their savings on machine guns. The regular soldier has his guns bought for him with other people’s money. He does not mind much if no gory dividend is earned. McConkey, on the other hand, spends his own money, and being a business man, will hate to see it wasted. He would not be satisfied, I imagine, with less than fifty corpses per cent. as a return on his expenditure.

At dinner that evening Conroy made a suggestion for our evening’s entertainment.

“Lady Moyne,” he said, “ought to read us the speech which she is to make next week to the Unionist women.”

I had never heard of the Unionist women before, and knew nothing of their wish to be spoken to. The Dean assured me that they were numerous and quite as enthusiastic as their husbands and brothers. Cahoon said that he was giving his mill hands a half holiday in order that the girls might go to listen to Lady Moyne. Babberly struck in with a characteristic speech.

“The influence of women,” he said, “can hardly be over-estimated. We must never forget that the most impressionable years of a man’s life are those during which he is learning to say his prayers beside his mother’s knee.”

This, as I recognized was a mere paraphrase of the proverb which states that the hand which rocks the cradle rules the world. The secret of Babberly’s great success as an orator is that he has a striking power of putting platitudes into new words.

I ventured to suggest that, so far as the present political situation was concerned it was hardly worth while trying to get at the children who were learning to say their prayers. The Home Rule Bill would be either rejected or passed long before any of that generation had votes. Lady Moyne was good enough to smile at me; but Babberly felled me at once.

“The women whom we expect to influence,” he said, “have fathers, brothers and husbands as well as young children.”

After dinner we had the speech. A secretary, who had once been Lady Moyne’s governess and still wore pince-nez, brought a quantity of type-written matter into the drawing-room. Moyne wanted me to slip away with him to the billiard room; but I refused to do so. I wanted to watch Lady Moyne making her speech. I am glad that I resisted his appeal. Lady Moyne not only read us the speech. She delivered it to us, treated us, indeed, to a rehearsal, I might even call it a dress rehearsal, for she described at some length the clothes she intended to wear. They must have been the most sumptuous in her wardrobe.

“The poor dears,” she said, “want something to brighten their lives. Besides, they’ll take it as a compliment to them if I’m like Solomon in all his glory.”

I gathered from this remark that the audience was to consist mainly of the wives and sisters of McConkey and other men of the same class. Cahoon’s wife, if he had one, would not require a display of Lady Moyne’s best clothes to seal her attachment to the Union.

The speech was an uncommonly good one. A phrase in it frequently repeated, appealed to me very strongly. Lady Moyne spoke about “our men.” I do not know why it is, but the phrase “our women” as used for instance by military officers who have been to India, always strikes me as singularly offensive. It suggests seraglios, purdahs and other institutions by which Turks, and Orientals generally, assert and maintain the rights of property with regard to the other sex. “Our men,” on the other hand, is redolent of sentimental domesticity. I never hear it without thinking of women who are mothers and makers of men; who sew on trouser buttons and cook savoury messes for those who are fighting the battle of life for them in a rough world, sustained by an abiding vision of noble womanhood and the sanctity of home. It is an extraordinarily appealing phrase and Lady Moyne used it for all it was worth. As addressed by her to wives and sisters of the Belfast working-men, it had a further value. The plural possessive pronoun bracketed McConkey with Lord Moyne. McConkey’s wife, assuming for the moment that he had not abstained from matrimony as he had from tobacco, shared his joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears, heartened him for his daily toil, would join no doubt in polishing the muzzle of the machine gun. So Lady Moyne in her gorgeous raiment, sustained Lord Moyne, her man. That was the suggestion of the possessive pronoun, and the audience was not allowed to miss it. Poor Moyne did miss it, for he was nearly asleep in a chair. But McConkey’s wife would not. Her heart would glow with a sense that she and Lady Moyne were sisters in their anxious care for the men entrusted to them.

That single phrase made such a violent emotional appeal to me that I missed all the rest of the speech. Each time I began to recover a little from hearing it and was prepared to give my attention to something else, Lady Moyne used to repeat it, and then I was hypnotized again. I have no doubt, however, that the speech was a powerful appeal for the maintenance of the Union. Conroy said so afterwards and Babberly entirely agreed with him. The Dean suggested that something might be put in about the sanctity of the marriage tie, a matter of particular importance to women and likely to be seriously affected by the passing of a Home Rule Bill. Lady Moyne thanked him for calling her attention to the omission. The secretary, who had once been a governess, adjusted her pince-nez and took a note.

In the smoking-room that evening Conroy took command of the conversation, and for the first time since I arrived at Castle Affey we got off politics. He told us a good deal about how he made his fortune. Most men who have made fortunes enjoy talking about how they made them. But their stories are nearly always most uninteresting. My impression is that they do not themselves understand how they came to be rich. But Conroy understood, or at all events thought he understood, his own success. He believed that he was rich because he had, more than other men, a love of the excitement which comes with risk. He had the spirit of the true adventurer, the man who pursues novelty and danger for their own sakes. Every story he told us illustrated and was meant to illustrate this side of his character. He despised the rest of us, especially me perhaps. We, Cahoon, the Dean, even Malcolmson, though he was a bristly fighting man, certainly Moyne who had gone quietly to bed—we were tame barndoor fowls, eating the sordid messes spread for us by that old henwife, civilized society. Conroy was a free bird of the wild. He snatched golden grain for nutriment from the hand of a goddess. These were not his words or his metaphors, but they represented the impression which his talk and his stories left on my mind.

At twelve o’clock I rose to say good night. As I did so a servant entered the room and told Conroy that his motor was ready for him at the door. Conroy left the room at once, and left the house a few minutes later.

I suppose we ought, all of us, to have been surprised. Motor drives in the middle of the night are an unusual form of amusement, and it was impossible to suppose that Conroy could have any business requiring immediate personal attention in the neighbourhood of Castle Affey. But his talk during the evening had left its impression on other minds as well as mine. We bid each other good night without expressing any astonishment at Conroy’s conduct. Cahoon refrained from saying that inexplicable midnight expeditions were not the kind of things they cared for in Belfast. Even he recognized that a man who had accumulated as large a fortune as Conroy’s must not be judged by ordinary standards.

I, unfortunately, failed to go to sleep. I tried to read the works of Alexander Pope, of which I found a well-bound copy in my bedroom. But my mind only became more active. I got up at last and covered six sheets of the Castle Affey note paper with a character sketch of Conroy. I maintained that he was wrong in supposing that a capacity for daring is the secret of becoming rich. Bob Power, for instance, is as daring as any man living and certainly loves risk for its own sake, but Bob will not die a rich man. Nor will Conroy. Wealth falls into the hands of such men occasionally, as vast hoards of gold did one hundred and fifty years ago into the holds of pirate ships. But no one ever heard of a buccaneer who died with a large fortune safely invested. Before Conroy dies his fortune will have taken to itself wings and fled back to that goddess of his who gave it. This was the substance of my article. Marion typed it out for me when I went home, but neither of the editors who usually print my articles would have it. I suppose that they did not know Conroy personally. If they had known him they would have appreciated my character sketch. I called it, I remember, “Our Contemporary Pirates,” a title which ought to have been attractive.

At three o’clock, just as I was finishing my article, I heard Conroy’s motor on the gravel outside my window.

He appeared at breakfast looking fresh and cheerful. None of us asked him where he had been the night before, and he did not offer us any information.

After breakfast he asked me to go for a walk with him. Lady Moyne, who heard the invitation given, looked pleased, and I recollected at once that I had promised to interest Conroy in the Unionist cause and lead him on to the point of giving a large subscription to our funds.

These party funds have always been rather a puzzle to me. I have never understood why it should be necessary for rich Liberals, rich Conservatives and American Irishmen to spend enormous sums of money in persuading people to vote. The theory of democratic government is, I suppose, that the citizen expresses his opinion freely in a polling booth. If he has not got an opinion it would surely be better to leave him alone. If he has an opinion and attaches any importance to it he will go to the polling booth without being dragged there by a kind of special constable hired for the purpose. If the money of the party funds were given to the voters in the form of bribes, the expenditure would be intelligible. It might even be justified; since an occasional tip would be most welcome to nearly every elector. But to spend tens of thousands of pounds on what is called organization seems very foolish. However I am not a practical politician, and my immediate object was not to explain the theory of political finance to Conroy, but to work him up into the frame of mind in which he would sign cheques.

I cannot flatter myself that I did this or even helped to do it. Conroy did not give me a chance. He began to talk about the Irish land question, a thing in which I no longer take any but an academic interest. He asked me if I still owned a small estate in Co. Galway which had belonged to my father. I told him that I had long ago sold it and was uncommonly glad to do so.

“Not a paying proposition?” said Conroy.

“Oh,” I said, “it paid very well; but the fact is, what with the agitation about grazing lands, and the trouble about people in congested districts—”

“I reckon,” said Conroy, “that your ancestors mismanaged the property some.”

I expect they did. But I did not expect to have their misdeeds brought home to me in a vigorous personal way.

“Your father,” said Conroy, “or your grandfather, turned my grandfather off a patch of land down there in 1850.”

My grandfather had, I have heard, a theory that small holdings of land were uneconomic. He evicted his tenants and made large grass farms. Nowadays we hold the opposite opinion. We are evicting large tenants and establishing small holdings. Our grandsons, I dare say, will go back again to the large farms. I explained to Conroy that he ought not to blame my grandfather who was acting in accordance with the most advanced scientific theories of his time.

Conroy was very nice about the matter. He said he had no grudge against either me or my grandfather. He had, however, so he told me frankly, a prejudice against everything English; an inherited prejudice, and not quite so irrational as it looked. It was after all the English who invented the economic theories on which my grandfather acted. He talked so much about his dislike of England and everything English that I did not like to introduce the subject of the subscription to Lady Moyne’s political fund. He did, in the end, subscribe largely. When I heard about his £1000 cheque I supposed that he must have counted the Union with us a misfortune for England and so wished to perpetuate it. Either that was his motive, so I thought, or else Lady Moyne had captivated him as she always captivates me.

CHAPTER IX

IHAD no sooner settled down quietly at home and got to work again on my history than I was assailed by Godfrey. I wish very much that he was Conroy’s nephew and not mine. Conroy goes driving in a motor in the middle of the night, so he must like disturbances. I hate them.

“I’m sorry, Excellency, but I am afraid I shall have to interrupt you.”

Godfrey, besides being objectionable in other ways, is a liar. He is not sorry, he is very glad, when he gets the chance of interrupting me. I should resent the disturbance less if he acknowledged frankly that he enjoyed annoying me.

“It can’t be time,” I said, “for another garden-party yet; but, if it is, I’d rather you made out the invitation list yourself. I’m busy. Besides making out lists is one of the things you’re good at. I should be sure to leave out somebody.”

“I don’t want to talk about garden-parties,” said Godfrey. “This is something much more serious.”

“There’s no use coming to me about it,” I said. “I told you last time that your tailor could bring you into the County Court if he liked. I shan’t pay him again.”

The inference was a natural one. Godfrey had said that he wanted to talk about something more important than a garden-party. But the inference was wrong. Godfrey looked offended.

“I sent Nicholson and Blackett a cheque last week,” he said.

I waited patiently. If Godfrey’s business had nothing to do with garden-parties or tailors’ bills, I could only suppose that he meant to make some fresh complaint about Crossan.

“Pringle cashed it all right,” said Godfrey, after a short pause. “I went in there the day after your party and played tennis with his daughter. They were awfully pleased.”

I dare say they were. People attach a surprising amount of importance to Godfrey’s social patronage. I myself should be more inclined to cash his cheques for him if he stayed away from my house. But I did not want to argue with Godfrey about Pringle’s taste in guests.

“What’s Crossan been doing to you?” I asked at last.

“He hasn’t been doing anything to me.”

“Then for goodness’ sake, Godfrey, let the man alone.”

“I don’t like the way he’s going on.”

“You never did. There’s nothing fresh about that. You’ve complained about him regularly every week for five years.”

This was an exaggeration. I am sometimes away from home for more than a week at a time and Godfrey does not always complain about Crossan in his letters.

“Look here, Excellency,” said Godfrey, “it’s far better for you to know what Crossan’s doing. He’s going about all over the country day after day. He’s got a motor car.”

I can quite understand that Crossan’s owning a motor car must have a very irritating effect on Godfrey. I cannot afford to keep one. That any one else in the district over which I ought, according to Godfrey’s theory, to be a kind of king, should assume a grandeur impossible for me is simply an aggravated kind of insolence. No wonder that Godfrey, with the honour of the family at heart, resented Crossan’s motor car. I tried to soothe him.

“It’s probably quite an inferior machine,” I said. “It will break down soon.”

“It’s not only that,” said Godfrey, “though I think Crossan ought to stay at home and mind his business. He must be neglecting things. But—I wish you’d walk up to the store with me, Excellency. Crossan’s away.”

“I’d much rather go when Crossan’s at home,” I said; “but, of course, if you won’t leave me in peace until I do, I may as well go at once.”

I got my hat and walking stick. On the way up to the store Godfrey preserved an air of mysterious importance. I had no objection whatever to his doing this; because he could not talk and look mysterious at the same time, and I particularly dislike being talked to by Godfrey. I expect he tried to be dignified with a view to impressing me, but just before we reached the store he broke down and babbled fatuously.

“Marion told me yesterday,” he said, “that she’d had a letter from that fellow Power.”

“She told me that too,” I said.

“Well, I think you ought to put a stop to it. It’s not right.”

“My dear Godfrey,” I said, “you appear to forget that he’s one of the Powers of Kilfenora and private secretary to a millionaire.”

This twofold appeal to the highest and strongest feelings which Godfrey possesses ought to have silenced him. He did, I think, feel the force of what I said. But he was not satisfied.

“If you knew all that was going on,” he said, “you wouldn’t like it.”

We reached the store. The young woman who controls the sale of miscellaneous goods was alert and smiling behind her counter. Whatever Crossan might be doing she at all events was attending to her business. Godfrey took no notice of her. He led me through the shop to the yard behind it. He pushed open the door of one of the outhouses.

“That door ought to be locked,” he said.

This was true. I was somewhat surprised to find it open.

“I forced the lock this morning,” said Godfrey, “with a screw driver.”

“In that case,” I said, “you can hardly blame Crossan for its being open. Why did you do it?”

“I wanted to see what he had inside,” said Godfrey, “and I wanted you to see.”

There was a good deal inside. In fact the outhouse, a large building, was filled from floor to ceiling with packing-cases, some of them very large indeed. Godfrey pointed to a small one near the door.

“Just lift that up, will you, Excellency?” said Godfrey.

“No, I won’t. Why should I? I’m not a railway porter, and it looks heavy.”

“It is heavy. Just watch me for a moment if you don’t want to lift it yourself.”

Godfrey with evident difficulty lifted the packing-case, staggered a few steps with it and then set it down. The packing-case may have been heavy but it was quite small. It seemed to me that Godfrey was making a rather pitiful exhibition of his physical feebleness.

“You ought to do things with dumb bells,” I said. “The muscles of your arms are evidently quite soft.”

Godfrey took no notice of the taunt. He was in a state of tremendous moral earnestness.

“I want your permission to open these cases,” he said.

“I won’t give you any such permission,” I said. “How can I? They’re not my packing-cases.”

Godfrey argued with me for quite a long time, but I remained firm. For some reason which I could not understand, Godfrey was unwilling to open the packing-cases without permission from somebody. I should have supposed that having already forced a door he would not have boggled at the lid of a packing-case; but he did. He evidently had some vague idea that the law takes a more serious view of smashing packing-cases than it does of housebreaking. He may have been right. But my record so far was clear. I had not forced the lock of the door.

“What do you suppose is in those cases?” said Godfrey.

“Artificial manure,” I said.

Our store does a large business in artificial manure. It generally comes to us in sacks, but there is no reason why it should not come in packing-cases. It is tremendously heavy stuff.

“Those cases were landed from the Finola,” said Godfrey. “She wouldn’t come here with a cargo of artificial manure.”

“If you’ve brought me all the way up here to accuse Conroy of smuggling,” I said, “you’ve wasted your own time and mine.”

“I don’t accuse Conroy of smuggling,” said Godfrey. “In fact, I’m going to write to him to-night to tell him what’s going on.”

“Very well,” I said. “You can if you like, but don’t mix my name up with it.”

We walked back together as far as the village. Godfrey was silent again. I could see that he still had something on his mind, probably something which he wanted me to do. He kept on clearing his throat and pulling himself together as if he were going to say something of importance. I was uncomfortable, for I felt sure that he intended to attack me again about Marion’s correspondence with Bob Power. I have never, since she was quite a little girl, interfered with Marion’s freedom of action. I had not the smallest intention of making myself ridiculous by claiming any kind of authority over her, especially in a matter so purely personal as the young man she chose to favour. Besides, I like Bob Power. At worst there was nothing against him except his smuggling, and smuggling is much less objectionable than the things that Godfrey does. I should rather, if it came to that, have a son-in-law who went to prison occasionally for importing spirits without consulting the government than one who perpetually nagged at me and worried me. But I did not want to provoke further arguments by explaining my feelings to Godfrey. I was therefore rather relieved when he finally succeeded in blurting out what was in his mind.

“I hope, Excellency,” he said, “that you will take the first chance you get of speaking to Crossan.”

In sudden gratitude for escaping a wrangle about Marion and Bob Power I promised hurriedly that I would speak to Crossan. I was sorry afterwards that I did promise. Still, I very much wished to know what was in the packing-cases. I did not really believe it was artificial manure. I did not believe either that it was smuggled brandy.

My chance came two days later. I met Crossan in the street. He was standing beside his motor car, a handsome-looking vehicle. He evidently intended to go for a drive. I felt at once that I could not ask him a direct question about the packing-cases. I determined to get at them obliquely if I could. I began by admiring the motor.

“She’s good enough, my lord,” said Crossan.

He is a man of few words, and is sparing of his praise. “Good enough” is, from Crossan, quite an enthusiastic compliment.

“If your lordship would care about a drive any day,” he said, “it’ll be a pleasure to me.”

Crossan always interjects “my lord” and “your lordship” into the middle of the remarks he makes to me; but he says the words in a very peculiar tone. It always seems to me that he wishes to emphasize the difference in our social station because he feels that the advantage is all on his side. “The rank,” so his tone suggests, “is but the guinea stamp. The man”—that is in this case Crossan himself—“is the gowd for a’ that.”

“You can get about the country pretty quickly in that car,” I said.

Crossan looked at me with a perfectly expressionless face for some time. Then he said said—

“If you think, my lord, that I’m neglecting my work, you’ve only to say so and I’ll go.”

I hastened to assure him that I had no intention of finding fault with him in any way. My apology was as ample as possible. After another minute spent in silent meditation Crossan expressed himself satisfied.

“It suits me as little to be running round the country,” he said, “as it would suit your lordship.”

“I quite understand that,” I said. “But then I don’t do it. You do.”

“It has to be,” said Crossan.

I did not quite see why it had to be; but Crossan spoke with such conviction that I dared not contradict him and did not even like to question him. Fortunately he explained himself.

“I’m the Grand Master, as your lordship is aware,” he said.

“Worshipful” is the title of courtesy applied to Grand Masters, and I’m sure no one ever deserved it better than Crossan.

“If we’re not ready for them, my lord, they’ll have our throats cut in our beds as soon as ever they get Home Rule.”

“They,” of course were the “Papishes,” Crossan’s arch enemies.

I wanted very much to hear more of his activities among the Orangemen. I wanted to know what steps he, as Grand Master, was taking to prevent cut-throats creeping in on us while we slept. I thought I might encourage him by telling him something he would be pleased to hear.

“McConkey,” I said, “who is foreman in the Green Loaney Scutching Mill, is buying a splendid quick-firing gun.”

The remark did not have the effect I hoped for. It had an exactly opposite effect. Crossan shut up like a sea anemone suddenly touched.

“Your lordship’s affairs won’t be neglected,” he said stiffly. “You may count on that.”

I felt that I could. I have the utmost confidence in Crossan’s integrity. If a body of “Papishes” of the bloodiest kind were to come upon Crossan and capture him; if they were to condemn him to death and, being God-fearing men, were to allow him half an hour in which to make his soul; he would spend the time, not in saying his prayers, not even in cursing the Pope, but in balancing the accounts of the co-operative store, so that any auditor who took over the books afterwards might find everything in order.

“If you really feel it to be your duty,” I said, “to go round the district working up—”

“You’ll have heard of the Home Rule Bill, maybe,” said Crossan.

I had heard of it, several times. After my visit to Castle Affey I even understood it, though it was certainly a measure of great complexity. I think I appreciated the orthodox Protestant view of it since the day I talked to McConkey. I wanted Crossan to realize how fully I entered into his feelings, so I quoted a phrase from one of Babberly’s speeches.

“In this supreme crisis of our country’s destiny,” I said, “it is the duty of every man to do his uttermost to avert the threatened ruin of our common Protestantism.”

That ought to have pacified Crossan even if it did not rouse him to enthusiasm. Huge crowds have cheered Babberly for saying these moving words. But Crossan received them from me in sullen silence.

“It would be well,” he said at last, “if your lordship and others like you were more in earnest.”

Crossan is not by any means a fool. I have occasionally been tempted to think he is, especially when he talks about having his throat cut at night; but he has always shown me in the end that he has in him a vein of strong common sense. He recognized that I was talking bombast when I spoke about the supreme crisis; but, curiously enough, he is quite convinced of Babberly’s sincerity when he says things of that sort.

It was nearly an hour after Crossan left me when I recollected that I had not found out anything about the packing-cases. The subject somehow had not come up between us, though I fully intended that it should. Our talk about Home Rule gave me no clue to what was in the cases. I could scarcely suppose that they were full of gorgets for distribution among Orangemen, defensive armour proof against the particular kind of stabs which Crossan anticipated.

Godfrey called on me the next morning in a white heat of righteous indignation. He had received an answer to the letter which he wrote to Conroy. Before showing it to me he insisted on my reading what he called his statement of the case. It occupied four sheets of quarto paper, closely type-written. It accused Bob Power and McNeice of using the Finola for smuggling without the owner’s knowledge. It made out, I am bound to say, quite a good case. He had collected every possible scrap of evidence, down to Rose’s new brooch. I suppose Marion told him about that. He said at the end of the letter that he had no motive in writing it except a sincere wish for Conroy’s welfare. This was quite untrue. He had several other motives. His love of meddling was one. Hatred of Crossan was another. Jealousy of Bob Power was a third.

“Now is there anything objectionable in that letter? Anything that one gentleman would not write to another?”

I admitted that on the whole it was a civil letter.

“Now look at his answer,” said Godfrey.

Conroy’s answer was on a post-card. It consisted of six words only.

“Do not be a damned fool.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s sound advice even if it’s not very politely expressed.”

“Conroy’s in it too,” said Godfrey, vindictively, “and I’ll make them all sorry for themselves before I’ve done with them.”

CHAPTER X

IFIND by consulting my diary that it was on the 30th of June that I went to Dublin. I am not often in Dublin, though I do not share the contempt for that city which is felt by most Ulstermen. Cahoon, for instance, will not recognize it as the capital of the country in which he lives, and always speaks of Dublin people as impractical, given over to barren political discussion and utterly unable to make useful things such as ships and linen. He also says that Dublin is dirty, that the rates are exorbitantly high, and that the houses have not got bath-rooms in them. I put it to him that there are two first-rate libraries in Dublin.

“If I want a book,” he said, “I buy it. We pay for what we use in Belfast. We are business men.”

“But,” I explained, “there are some books, old ones, which you cannot buy. You can only consult them in libraries.”

“Why don’t you go to London, then?” said Cahoon.

The conversation took place in the club. I lunched there on my way through Belfast, going on to Dublin by an afternoon train. I was, in fact, going to Dublin to consult some books in the College Library. Marion and I had been brought up short in our labours on my history for want of some quotations from the diary of a seventeenth-century divine, and even if I had been willing to buy the book I should have had to wait months while a second-hand bookseller advertised for it.

Trinity College, when I entered the quadrangle next day, seemed singularly deserted. The long vacation had begun a week before. Fellows, professors and students had fled from the scene of their labours. Halfway across the square, however, I met McNeice. He seemed quite glad to see me and invited me to luncheon in his rooms. I accepted the invitation and was fed on cold ham, stale bread and bottled stout.

Thackeray once hinted that fellows of Trinity College gave their guests beer to drink. Many hard words have been said of him ever since by members of Dublin University. I have no wish to have hard things said about me; so I explain myself carefully. McNeice’s luncheon was an eccentricity. It is not on cold ham solely, it is not on stale bread ever, that guests in the Common Room are fed. If, like Prince Hal, they remember amid their feasting “that good creature, small beer,” they do not drink it without being offered nobler beverages. When the University, in recognition of my labours on the Life of St. Patrick, made me a doctor of both kinds of law, I fared sumptuously in the dining hall and afterwards sipped port rich with the glory of suns which shone many many years ago on the banks of the upper Douro.

After luncheon, while I was still heavy with the spume of the stout, McNeice asked me if I had seen the new paper which was being published to express, I imagine also to exacerbate, the opinions of the Ulster Unionists. He produced a copy as he spoke. It was called The Loyalist.

“We wanted something with a bite in it,” he said. “We’re dead sick of the pap the daily papers give us in their leading articles.”

Pap is, I think, a soft innocuous food, slightly sugary in flavour, suitable for infants. I should never have dreamed of describing the articles in The Belfast Newsletter as pap. An infant nourished on them would either suffer badly from the form of indigestion called flatulence or would grow up to be an exceedingly ferocious man. I felt, however, that if McNeice had anything to do with the editing of The Loyalist its articles would be of such a kind that those of the Newsletter would seem, by comparison, papescent.

“We’re running it as a weekly,” said McNeice, “and what we want is to get it into the home of every Protestant farmer, and every working-man in Belfast. We are circulating the first six numbers free. After that we shall charge a penny.”

I looked at The Loyalist. It was very well printed, on good paper. It looked something like The Spectator, but had none of the pleasant advertisements of schools and books, and much fewer pages of correspondence than the English weekly has.

“Surely,” I said, “you can’t expect it to pay at that price.”

“We don’t,” said McNeice. “We’ve plenty of money behind us. Conroy—you know Conroy, don’t you?”

“Oh,” I said, “then Lady Moyne got a subscription out of him after all. I knew she intended to.”

“Lady Moyne isn’t in this at all,” said McNeice. “We’re out for business with The Loyalist. Lady Moyne’s—well, I don’t quite see Lady Moyne running The Loyalist.”

“She’s a tremendously keen Unionist,” I said. “She gave an address to the working-women of Belfast the week before last, one of the most moving—”

“All frills,” said McNeice, “silk frills. Your friend Crossan is acting as one of our agents, distributing the paper for us. That’ll give you an idea of the lines we’re going on.”

Crossan, I admit, is the last man I should suspect of being interested in frills. The mention of his name gave me an idea.

“Was it copies of The Loyalist,” I asked, “which were in the packing-cases which you and Power landed that night from the Finola?”

McNeice laughed.

“Come along round with me,” he said, “and see the editor. He’ll interest you. He’s a first-rate journalist, used to edit a rebel paper and advocate the use of physical force for throwing off the English rule. But he’s changed his tune now. Just wait for me one moment while I get together an article which I promised to bring him. It’s all scattered about the floor of the next room in loose sheets.”

I read The Loyalist while I waited. The editor was unquestionably a first-rate journalist. His English was of a naked, muscular kind, which reminded me of Swift and occasionally of John Mitchel. But I could not agree with McNeice that he had changed his tune. He still seemed to be editing a rebel paper and still advocated the use of physical force for resisting the will of the King, Lords and Commons of our constitution. It is the merest commonplace to say that Ireland is a country of unblushing self-contradictions; but I do not think that the truth of this ever came home to me quite so forcibly as when I read The Loyalist that it would be better, if necessary, to imitate the Boers and shoot down regiments of British soldiers than to be false to the Empire of which “it is our proudest boast that we are citizens.” The editor—such was the conclusion I arrived at—must be a humorist of a high order.

His name was Diarmid O’Donovan and he always wrote it in Irish characters, which used to puzzle me at first when I got into correspondence with him. We found him in a small room at the top of a house in a side street of a singularly depressing kind.

McNeice explained to me that The Loyalist did not court notoriety, and preferred to have an office which was, as far as possible, out of sight. He said that O’Donovan was particularly anxious to be unobtrusive. He had, before he became connected with The Loyalist, been editor of two papers which had been suppressed by the Government for advocating what the Litany calls “sedition and privy conspiracy.” He held, very naturally, that a paper would get on better in the world if it had no office at all. If that was impossible, the office should be an attic in an inaccessible slum.

O’Donovan, when we entered, was seated at a table writing vigorously. I do not know how he managed to write at all. His table was covered with stacks of newspapers, very dusty. He had cleared a small, a very small space in the middle of them, and his ink-bottle occupied a kind of cave hollowed out at the base of one of the stacks. It must have been extremely difficult to put a pen into it. The chairs—there were only two of them besides the editorial stool—were also covered with papers. But even if they had been free I should not have cared to sit down on them. They were exceedingly dirty and did not look safe.

McNeice introduced me and then produced his own article. O’Donovan, very politely, offered me his stool.

“McNeice tells me,” he said, “that you are writing a history of Irish Rebellions. I suppose you have said that Nationalism ceased to exist about the year 1900?”

“I hadn’t thought of saying that,” I said. “In fact—in view of the Home Rule Bill, you know—I should have said that Irish Nationalism was just beginning to come to its own.”

O’Donovan snorted.

“There’s no such thing as Irish Nationalism left,” he said. “The country is hypnotized. We’ve accepted a Bill which deprives us of the most elementary rights of freemen. We’ve licked the boots of English Liberals. We’ve said ‘thank you’ for any gnawed bones they like to fling to us. We’ve—”

It struck me that O’Donovan was becoming rhetorical. I interrupted him.

“Idealism in politics,” I said, “is one of the most futile things there is. What the Nationalist Party—”

“Don’t call them that,” said O’Donovan. “I tell you they’re not Nationalists.”

“I’ll call them anything you like,” I said, “but until you invent some other name for them I can’t well talk about them without calling them Nationalists.”

“They—” said O’Donovan.

“Very well,” I said. “They. So long as you know who I mean, the pronoun will satisfy me. They had to consider not what men like you wanted, but what the Liberal Party could be induced to give. I don’t say they made the best bargain possible, but—”

“Anyhow,” said McNeice, “we’re not going to be governed by those fellows. That’s the essential point.”

I think it is. The Unionist is not really passionately attached to the Union. He has no insuperable antipathy to Home Rule. Indeed, I think most Unionists would welcome any change in our existing system of government if it were not that they have the most profound and deeply rooted objection to the men whom McNeice describes as “those fellows,” and O’Donovan indicates briefly as “they.”

“And so,” I said, turning to O’Donovan, “in mere despair of nationality you have gone over to the side of the Unionists.”

“I’ve gone over,” said O’Donovan, “to the side of the only people in Ireland who mean to fight.”

Supposing that Ulster really did mean to fight O’Donovan’s position was quite reasonable. But Babberly says it will never come to fighting. He is quite confident of his ability to bluff the conscientious Liberal into dropping the Home Rule Bill for fear of civil war. O’Donovan, and possibly McNeice, will be left out in the cold if Babberly is right. The matter is rather a tangled one. With Babberly is Lady Moyne, working at her ingenious policy of dragging a red herring across the path along which democracy goes towards socialism. On the other hand there is McNeice with fiery intelligence, and O’Donovan, a coldly consistent rebel against English rule in any shape and form. They have their little paper with money enough behind it, with people like Crossan circulating it for them. It is quite possible that they may count for something. Then there is Malcolmson, a man of almost incredible stupidity, but with a knowledge, hammered into him no doubt with extra difficulty, of how to handle guns.

O’Donovan and McNeice were bending over some proof sheets and talking in low whispers; there was a knock at the office door, and a moment later Malcolmson entered. He looked bristlier than ever, and was plainly in a state of joyous excitement. He held a copy of the first number of The Loyalist in his hand. He caught sight of me at once.

“I’m damned,” he said, “if I expected to see you here, Kilmore. You’re the last man in Ireland—”

“I’m only here by accident,” I said, “and I’m going away almost at once. Let me introduce you to Mr. McNeice and Mr. O’Donovan.”

Malcolmson shook hands with the two men vigorously. I never shake hands with Malcolmson if I can possibly help it, because he always hurts me. I expect he hurt both McNeice and O’Donovan. They did not cry out, but they looked a good deal surprised.

“I happened to be in Dublin,” said Malcolmson, “and I called round here to congratulate the editor of this paper. I only came across it the day before yesterday, and—”

“You couldn’t have come across it any sooner,” I said, “for it’s only just published.”

“And to put down my name as a subscriber for twenty copies. If you want money—”

“They don’t,” I said, “Conroy is financing them.”

“Conroy has some sound ideas,” said Malcolmson.

“You approve of the paper, then?” said McNeice.

“I like straight talk,” said Malcolmson.

“We aim at that,” said O’Donovan.

“I’m dead sick of politics and speech making,” said Malcolmson. “What I want is to have a slap at the damned rebels.”

“Mr. O’Donovan’s point of view,” I said, “is almost the same as yours. What he wants—”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Malcolmson, “and I need only say that when the time comes, gentlemen, and it won’t be long now if things go on as they are going—you’ll find me ready. What Ireland wants—”

Malcolmson paused. I waited expectantly. It is always interesting to hear what Ireland wants. Many people have theories on the subject, and hardly any one agrees with any one else.

“What Ireland wants,” said Malcolmson dramatically, “is another Oliver Cromwell.”

He drew himself up and puffed out his chest as he spoke. He must, I think, have rather fancied himself in the part of a twentieth century Puritan horse soldier. I looked round at O’Donovan to see how he was taking the suggestion. Oliver Cromwell I supposed, could not possibly be one of his favourite heroes. But I had misjudged O’Donovan. His sympathy with rebels of all nations was evidently stronger than his dislike of the typical Englishman. After all, Cromwell, however objectionable his religious views may have been, did kill a king. O’Donovan smiled quite pleasantly at Malcolmson. I dare say that even the idea of a new massacre of Drogheda was agreeable enough to him, provided the inhabitants of the town were the people to whom he denied the title of Nationalists and Malcolmson wanted to have a slap at because they were rebels.

Then McNeice got us all back to practical business in a way that would have delighted Cahoon. McNeice, though he does live in Dublin, has good Belfast blood in his veins. He likes his heroics to be put on a business basis. The immediate and most pressing problem, he reminded us, was to secure as large a circulation as possible for The Loyalist.

“You get the paper into the people’s hands,” he said to Malcolmson, “and we’ll get the ideas into their heads.”

Malcolmson, who is certainly prepared to make sacrifices in a good cause, offered to hire a man with a motorcycle to distribute the paper from house to house over a wide district.

“I know the exact man we want,” he said. “He knows every house in County Antrim, and the people like him. He’s been distributing Bibles and selling illuminated texts among the farmers and labourers for years. He’s what’s called a colporteur. That,” he turned to O’Donovan with his explanation, “is a kind of Scripture reader, you know.”

If any one in the world except Malcolmson had suggested the employment of a Scripture reader for the distribution of The Loyalist, I should have applauded a remarkable piece of cynicism. But Malcolmson was in simple earnest.

“Will you be able to get him?” I said. “The society which employs him may perhaps—”

“Oh, that will be all right,” said Malcolmson. “There can’t be any objection. But if there is—I happen to be a member of the committee of the society. I’m one”—he sunk his voice modestly—“of the largest subscribers.”

I am inclined to forget sometimes that Malcolmson takes a leading part in Church affairs. At the last meeting of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland he said that the distribution of the Bible among the people of Ireland was the surest means of quenching the desire for Home Rule. Free copies of The Loyalist for the people who already have Bibles and a force of artillery are, so to speak, his reserves.

CHAPTER XI

THE 12th of July, was, of course, indicated by nature itself as a day in every way suitable for a great Unionist demonstration. Babberly and Lady Moyne were not the people to neglect an opportunity. They organized a demonstration. Then somebody—I think it must have been McNeice in the pages of The Loyalist—suggested that the thing should be called a review and not a demonstration. Malcolmson took the idea up warmly and forced Babberly’s hand. English journalists of the Conservative kind—journalists of every kind swarmed over Belfast for a week beforehand—were delighted and trumpetted the thing as a review. Liberal journalists lost their tempers—the clever ones losing theirs most hopelessly—and abused the Orangemen in finely pointed paradoxical epigrams, which I dare say excited the admiration of sentimental Nationalists in Chelsea, but had not the smallest effect of any kind on the people of Belfast. They, just then, had no leisure time to spend in reading epigrams, and never at any time appreciated paradox. An English statesman of great ability announced to the world at large that a demonstration was one thing, and a review was quite a different thing. He went no further than to point out the fact that there was a distinction between the two things; but everybody understood that a demonstration was, in his opinion, quite harmless, whereas a review might end in getting somebody into trouble.

The Nationalist leaders—“those fellows” as McNeice called them—issued a kind of manifesto. It was a document which breathed the spirit of moderate constitutionalism, and spoke the words of grave, serious patriotism. It made a strong appeal to the people of Belfast not to injure the cause of liberty, law and order by rash and ill-considered action. It said that no Nationalist wanted to see Babberly and Lord Moyne put into prison; but that most Nationalists had been made to sleep on plank beds for utterances much less seditious than this advertisement of a review. O’Donovan and McNeice tore this manifesto to pieces with jubilant scorn in the next number of The Loyalist.

A Roman Catholic bishop issued a kind of pastoral to his flock urging them to remain at home on the 12th of July, and above all things not to attempt a counter demonstration in Belfast. It was a nice pastoral, very Christian in tone, but quite unnecessary. No sane Roman Catholic, unless he wanted a martyr’s crown, would have dreamed of demonstrating anywhere north of the Boyne on that particular day.

The newspapers were very interesting at this time, and I took in so many of them that I had not time to do anything except read them. I had not even time to read them all, but Marion used to go through the ones I could not read. With a view to writing an essay—to be published in calmer times—on “Different Points of View” we cut out and pasted into a book some of the finer phrases. We put them in parallel columns. “Truculent corner boys,” for instance, faced “Grim, silent warriors.” “Men in whom the spirit of the martial psalms still survives,” stood over against “Ruffians whose sole idea of religion is to curse the Pope.” “Sons of unconquerable colonists, men of our own race and blood,” was balanced by “hooligans with a taste for rioting so long as rioting can be indulged in with no danger to their own skins.” We were interrupted in this pleasant work by the arrival of a letter from Lady Moyne. She summoned me—invited would be quite the wrong word—to Castle Affey. I went, of course.

Babberly was there. He and Lady Moyne were shut up in the library along with Lady Moyne’s exhausted secretary. They were writing letters which she typed. I saw Moyne himself before I saw them.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “I’m very much afraid that some of our people are inclined to go too far. Malcolmson, for instance. I can’t understand Malcolmson. After all the man’s a gentleman.”

“But,” I said, “Malcolmson wants to fight. He always said so.”

“Quite so, quite so. We all said so. I’ve said so myself; but it was always on the distinct understanding——”

“That it would never come to that. I’ve heard Babberly say so.”

“But—damn it all, Kilmore!—it doesn’t do to push things to these extremes. The whole business has been mismanaged. The people have got out of hand; and there’s Malcolmson, a man who’s dined at my table a score of times, actually egging them on. Now, what do you think we ought to do?”

“The Government is threatening you, I suppose?”

“It’s growling,” said Moyne. “Not that I care what the Government does to me. It can’t do much. But I do not want her ladyship mixed up in anything unpleasant. It won’t do, you know. People don’t like it. I don’t mind for myself, of course. But still it’s very unpleasant. Men I know keep writing to me. You know the sort of thing I mean.”

I did. The members of the English aristocracy still preserve a curious sentiment which they call “loyalty.” It is quite a different thing from the “loyalty” of Crossan, for instance, or McNeice. I fully understood that there were men in clubs in London who would look coldly at poor Moyne (men of such importance that their wives’ treatment of Lady Moyne would matter even to her) if he were discovered to be heading an actual rising of Ulster Protestants. I promised to do what I could to get Moyne out of his difficulty.

I found that Babberly and Lady Moyne had worked out a very feasible plan without any help from me.

“That fellow Malcolmson has rushed things,” said Babberly, “and there’s an abominable rag called The Loyalist—”

“By the way,” I said, “I hear that the Nationalists at their last meeting in Dublin joined in singing ‘God Save the King.’”

I wanted to hear what Babberly thought of this. I was disappointed. The fact did not seem to interest him.

“I don’t know who edits the thing,” he went on, still referring to The Loyalist.

“Conroy is behind it,” I said. “I happen to know that.”

“But surely,” said Lady Moyne, “Mr. Conroy cannot want to encourage violence. He has just as much to lose as any of us—more than most of us—by any kind of outbreak of the democracy.”

“Lady Moyne has suggested to Malcolmson,” said Babberly, “that he should agree to call this 12th of July business a March Past.”

“Is that any improvement on Review?” I asked.

“Of course,” said Lady Moyne, “the Government doesn’t want to be driven to take steps against us. There would be horrible rioting afterwards if they struck Moyne’s name off the Privy Council or did anything like that. It would be just as unpleasant for them as it would be for us, more so in fact.”

“Your idea,” I said, “is to give the Government a loophole of escape.”

“Malcolmson has agreed all right,” said Babberly, “and if only that wretched little paper—did you say Conroy was in it?”

“I’ll write to Mr. Conroy at once,” said Lady Moyne. “I’m sure his connection with a paper of that kind is simply a mistake.”

She turned to the table and began to write her letter. The secretary in a distant corner of the room was still typing out a long pronouncement which Babberly intended to forward to The Times. A minute or two later Lady Moyne turned to me with one of her brightest smiles.

“We want you to be with us on the 12th,” she said.

In England or Scotland a countess who gives an invitation for “the 12th” is understood to mean the 12th of August, and her guest must be ready to shoot grouse. In North-Eastern Ulster “the 12th” meant the 12th of July, and the party, in this case at all events, was likely to end in the shooting of policemen.

“At the Review?” I said, “I mean to say the March Past? But I never go to political meetings. I’m no good at all as a speaker.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter about your speaking. We should love to hear you, of course. But if you’d really rather not—!”

I think Lady Moyne was relieved when I assured her that I really would rather not.

“But you’ll be on the platform,” she said. “We want you very much indeed.”

“I don’t see,” I said, “that I’ll be the least use to you.”

“The point is,” said Babberly, “that you’re a Liberal.”

“Oh, you mustn’t say that,” said Lady Moyne. “That’s only foolish gossip. I’m perfectly certain that Lord Kilmore never was—”

“Never,” I said. “But then I never was a Conservative either.”

“That’s just it,” said Lady Moyne. “Don’t you see?”

“The point is,” said Babberly, “that if you are on the platform it will be quite clear—I mean to say as it’s generally understood that you’re inclined to Liberalism—”

I began to understand a little. Last time I was at Castle Affey Lady Moyne made a great point of my associating myself with her party in opposing Home Rule. The fact that I was a Liberal (though not in any offensive sense of the word) gave weight to the opposition; and I might help to make the other Liberals (who were Liberals in the most offensive possible sense) take the threats of Babberly seriously. This time I was to sit on the platform side by side with Malcolmson and Cahoon, because, being a Liberal, or rather suspected of being inclined to Liberalism, my presence might induce the other Liberals, who were Liberals indeed, not to take Babberly’s remarks at their face value. That is the drawback to the kind of detached position which I occupy. I am liable to be used for such various purposes that I get confused. However, I ought, no doubt, to be very thankful that I am useful in any way.

“If you think, my dear Lady Moyne,” I said, “that my presence at the March Past will be of the slightest service to you—”

“It will,” she said. “It will, indeed, of the very greatest service, and Moyne will be delighted.”

I was thinking of Moyne when I made the promise. I do not mean to say that I should have undertaken to perch myself like a fool on a wooden platform in the middle of a mob simply out of friendship for Moyne. I would not have done it unless Lady Moyne had looked at me with a particular expression in her eyes, unless I had hoped that she would give my hand a little squeeze of intimate friendship when I was bidding her good night. Still I did think of Moyne too, and was quite genuinely pleased that I was able to help him out of a difficult position.

I found him later on roaming about among the cucumber frames in a desolate corner of the garden. A man who was digging potatoes directed me to that curious retreat.

“It’s all right, Moyne,” I said. “We’ve got the whole thing settled most satisfactorily. You needn’t be afraid of any disagreeable public scandal.”

“Thank God!” said Moyne, fervently. “How did you manage it?”

“I can’t take any credit for the arrangement,” I said. “Lady Moyne and Babberly had it all cut and dried before they consulted me at all.”

“What are they going to do?”

“Well, in the first place they’ve got Malcolmson and the rest of that lot to stop calling the thing a Review. It’s to be officially known for the future as a March Past.”

“Who is to march past what?” said Moyne.

“I forgot to ask that,” I said, “but I rather fancy the audience is to march past you.”

“I don’t see,” said Moyne, “that there’s much difference between calling it a March Past and calling it a Review. They’re both military terms; and what I object to is being associated with—”

“Lady Moyne seemed to think,” I said, “that it made all the difference in the world; and that the Government would grasp at the olive branch.”

“I suppose it will be all right,” said Moyne doubtfully.

“The next part of the plan,” I said, “is that I am to be on the platform.”

“You’ll rather hate that, won’t you, Kilmore?”

“I shall detest it.”

“And I don’t see what good it will do.”

“Nor do I; but Lady Moyne and Babberly both say that as I’m a Liberal—”

“Surely to God you’re not that!” said Moyne.

“No, I’m not. But I’m suspected of being inclined that way. Therefore my being on the platform will prove to the world that you’re not nearly so much of a Unionist as you’ve been trying to make out.”

“But I am,” said Moyne.

“I know that, of course; but Lady Moyne wants to persuade people that you’re not, just for the present, till this fuss about the Review wears off.”

“I suppose it will be all right,” said Moyne, again.

It was all right. An announcement was made in all the leading papers that no one had ever intended to hold a Review on the 12th of July, but that the Unionist leaders had expressed their unalterable determination to have a March Past. The Liberal papers said that this abandonment of the principal item on their programme showed more distinctly than ever that the Ulster Unionists were merely swaggering cowards who retreated before the firm front showed by the Government in face of their arrogant claims. The Unionist papers said that Belfast by insisting on the essential thing while displaying a magnanimous disregard for the accidental nomenclature, had demonstrated once and for ever the impossibility of passing the Home Rule Bill.

A few days later my name appeared amongst those of other gentlemen who intended to take seats on the platform in Belfast. The Unionist papers welcomed the entry into public life of a peer of my well-known intellectual powers and widely recognized moderation. The Liberal papers said that the emptiness of Ulster’s opposition to Home Rule might be gauged by the fact that it had welcomed the support of a dilettante lordling.

CHAPTER XII

OUR meeting on the 12th of July was held in the Botanic Gardens, and nobody marched past anything. A platform, not unlike the Grand Stand at a country race meeting, was built on the top of a long slope of grass. At the bottom of the slope was a level space, devoted at ordinary times to tennis-courts. Beyond that the ground sloped up again. The botanists who owned the gardens must, I imagine, have regretted that our meeting was a splendid success. I did not see their grounds afterwards, but there cannot possibly have been much grass left. The poor tennis-players must have been cut off from their game for the rest of the summer. The space in front of the platform was packed with men, and the air was heavy with the peculiarly pungent smell of orange peel. I cannot imagine how any one in the crowd managed to peel an orange. The men seemed to be so tightly packed as to make the smallest movement impossible. Possibly the oranges were deliberately peeled beforehand by the organizers of the meeting with a view to creating the proper atmosphere for the meeting. There certainly is a connection between the smell of oranges and political enthusiasm. I felt a wave of strong feeling come over me the moment I climbed to my seat; and as no one had at that time made a speech, it can only have been the oranges which affected me. I wish some philosopher would work out a theory of oranges. The blossom of the tree is used at weddings as a symbol of enduring love, perhaps as an aid to affection. The mature fruit pervades political meetings, which are all called together with a view to promoting strife and general ill feeling. What would happen if any one came to a meeting crowned with the blossoms? What would become of a bride if she were decked with the fruit? Is there any connection whatever between the fruit and the lily? It is certainly associated with political action of the most violent kind.

Poor Moyne, who took the chair, wore one of the lilies, a very small one, in the lapel of his coat. Lady Moyne carried a large bouquet of them. Babberly wore one. So did Malcolmson. Our Dean would have worn one if he could; but it is impossible to fix a flower becomingly into the button-hole of a clerical coat. We began by singing a hymn. The Dean declaimed the first two lines of it, and then the bands took up the tune. Considering that there must have been at least forty bands present, all playing, I think we got through the hymn remarkably well. We certainly made an impressive amount of noise. I think it was Babberly who suggested the hymn. He had an idea that it would impress the English Nonconformists. I do not think it did; but, so far as our meeting was concerned, that did not matter. We were not singing it—any of us, except Babberly—with a view to impressing other people. We were singing with the feeling in our breasts, that we were actually marching to battle under the divine protection. The reporters of the Unionist papers made the most of the prevailing emotion. They sent off telegrams of the most flamboyant kind about our Puritan forefathers.

Poor Moyne, who is a deeply religious man, did not sing the hymn. He has a theory that hymns and politics ought not to be mixed. I heard him arguing the position afterwards with the Dean who maintained that the question of Home Rule was not a political one. Political questions are those, so he argued, with regard to which there is a possibility of difference of opinion among honest men. But all honest men are opposed to Home Rule, which is therefore not a political question.

My seat was in the very front of the platform, and when we had finished the hymn I noticed that the smell of perspiration was beginning to overpower the oranges. It is my misfortune to have an unusually acute sense of smell. No one afflicted with such an infirmity ought to take any part in the politics of a modern democratic state.

Moyne introduced Babberly to the audience, and everybody cheered, although no one heard a word he said. Moyne has not a good voice at any time, and his objection to the hymn had made him nervous.

Babberly was not nervous, and he has a very good voice. I imagine that at least half the audience heard what he said, and the other half knew he was saying the right things because the first half cheered him at frequent intervals.

He began, of course, by saying that our forefathers bled and died for the cause which we were determined to support. This, so far as my forefathers and Moyne’s are concerned, is horribly untrue. The ancestors of both of us commanded regiments of the volunteers who achieved the only Home Rule Parliament which ever sat in Ireland. My own great grandfather afterwards exchanged his right to legislate in Dublin for the peerage which I now enjoy. But Moyne and I were no doubt in a minority in that assembly. Babberly’s forefathers may possibly have bled and died for the Union; but I do not think he can be sure about this. His father lived in Leeds, and nobody, not even Babberly himself, knows anything about his grandfather.

When the audience had stopped cheering Babberly’s forefathers, he went on to tell us that Belfast had the largest shipbuilding yard, the largest tobacco factory, the largest linen mill, and the second largest School of Art Needlework in the United Kingdom. These facts were treated by everybody as convincing reasons for the rejection of the Home Rule Bill, and a man, who was squeezed very tight against the platform just below me, cursed the Pope several times with singular vindictiveness.

Babberly’s next statement was that he defied the present Government to drive us out of the British Empire, which we had taken a great deal of trouble in times past to build up. This was, of course, a perfectly safe defiance to utter; for no one that I ever heard of had proposed to drive Babberly, or me, or Moyne out of the Empire.

Then we got to the core of Babberly’s speech. Some fool, it appeared, wanted to impeach Babberly, and Babberly said that he wanted to be impeached. I am a little hazy about the exact consequences of a successful impeachment. There has not been one for a long time; but I have an idea that the victim of the process is called before the House of Lords and beheaded. How far recent legislation may have curtailed the powers of the House of Lords in the matter I do not know; but even under our new constitution impeachment must remain a very serious matter. It was, we all felt, most heroic of Babberly to face this kind of undefined doom in the way he did.

This was the last thing which Babberly said in his speech. He talked a great deal more, but he did not say anything else which it is possible to write down. I do not think I have ever heard any public speaker equal to Babberly in eloquence. He gave one incontestable proof of his power as an orator that day in Belfast. He must have spoken for very nearly an hour, and yet no one noticed that he was not saying anything for the greater part of the time. I did not notice it, and probably should never have found it out if I had not tried afterwards to write down what he said.

After Babberly came the Dean. I suffer a great deal from the Dean’s sermons on Sundays; but I thoroughly enjoyed his speech. He is not Babberly’s rival in eloquence; but he has a knack of saying the kind of things which people listen to. He began by telling us what he would do if he found himself in command of the forces of Ulster at the beginning of a great war. “Lord Moyne,” he said, “should organize my transport and commissariat.”

I cannot imagine any job at which Moyne would be more certain to fail totally. But the Dean justified himself.

“I have stopped in Lord Moyne’s house,” he said, “and I know how well he manages the food supply of a large establishment. My friend Mr. Babberly should draw up the plan of campaign. His cautious intellect should devise the schemes for circumventing the wiles and stratagems of the enemy. He should map out the ambuscades into which the opposing troops should fall. You have listened to Mr. Babberly to-day. You will agree with me about his fitness for the work to which I should put him.”

I had listened to Babberly and I did not agree with the Dean. But I formed one of a very small minority. Moyne began to look uneasy. It seemed to me that he did not much like this military metaphor of the Dean’s. I imagine that he would have been still more uncomfortable if he had been obliged to take an active part in a campaign planned by Babberly.

“For the command of a forlorn hope,” said the Dean, “for the leading of a desperate charge, for the midnight dash across the frontier—”

Some one in the audience suggested the Boyne as the boundary of the frontier.

“I should select Colonel Malcolmson.”

The audience highly approved of his choice. It seemed to me that the people did not quite grasp the fact that the Dean was speaking only metaphorically. Some thought of the same kind struck Moyne. He fidgetted uneasily, Babberly made an effort to stop the Dean, but that was impossible.

“For settling the terms of peace with the beaten enemy—”

“We’ll beat them,” said several people in the crowd.

“I should call upon my good friend Lord Kilmore.”

This gave me a severe shock. For a moment I thought of standing up and refusing to act as military ambassador of the Ulster army. Then I recollected that if Moyne managed the transport and Babberly planned the campaign it was exceedingly unlikely that there would be any beaten enemy. I kept my seat and watched Babberly whispering earnestly to Lady Moyne.

Malcolmson followed the Dean. Moyne leaned over to me and expressed a hope that Malcolmson was not going to commit us to anything outrageous. From the look of Malcolmson’s eye as he rose I judged that Moyne’s hope was a vain one.

“The Dean,” said Malcolmson, “has spoken to you about the campaign. I ask you, are you prepared to undertake one?”

“Good Heavens!” said Moyne.

Babberly squeezed his way past Lady Moyne.

“This won’t do,” he said to Moyne, “Malcolmson mustn’t go too far.”

“The Dean,” said Malcolmson, “has told us where to find our commanders. Looking round upon this vast assembly of determined men I can tell the Dean where to look for the rank and file of the army.”

“You’ll have to stop him,” said Babberly.

I dare say the thought of the impeachment which was hanging over his head made him nervous.

“I can’t,” said Lord Moyne.

“I ask those present here,” said Malcolmson, “who, when the supreme moment comes are prepared to step forward into the ranks, to hold up their hands and swear.”

Malcolmson did not make it quite clear what oaths we were to employ. But his audience appeared to understand him. Thousands of hands were held up and there was a kind of loud, fierce growl, which I took to be the swearing. Lord Moyne turned to me.

“What am I to do, Kilmore?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Malcolmson and the ten or twelve thousand men in front of him were still growling like a very angry thunderstorm at a distance. The thing was exceedingly impressive. Then some one started the hymn again. I never heard a hymn sung in such a way before. If the explosions of large guns could be tuned to the notes of an octave the effect of firing them off, fully loaded with cannon balls, would be very much the same. Malcolmson, beating time very slowly with his hand from the front of the platform, controlled this human artillery. Lady Moyne came to me and shouted in my ear. It was necessary to shout on account of the terrific noise made by Malcolmson’s hymn.

“As soon as he sits down you’ll have to get up and say something.”

“I can’t,” I yelled. “I’m no good at all as a public speaker.”

The beginning of Lady Moyne’s next shout I could not hear at all. Only the last words reached me.

“—on account of your being a Liberal, you know.”

For the first time since I have known her I refused to do what Lady Moyne asked me. Very likely I should have given in at last and made an indescribable fool of myself; but before she succeeded in persuading me, Malcolmson’s hymn stopped. Malcolmson himself, apparently satisfied with his performance, sat down.

“What on earth am I to do?” said Moyne.

“You can write to the papers, to-morrow,” I said.

“But now?” said Moyne, “now.”

“The only thing I can think of,” I said, “is to start them singing ‘God Save the King.’ That will commit them more or less—at least it may.”

Moyne rose to his feet and asked all the bands present to play “God Save the King.” Babberly backed him and the bands struck up.

Considering that the audience had just pledged themselves with inarticulate oaths and most terrifying psalmody to march in Malcolmson’s army, their enthusiasm for the King was striking. They sang the National Anthem quite as whole-heartedly as they had sung the hymn. They are a very curious people, these fellow-countrymen of mine.

Moyne cheered up a little when we got back to the club.

“That was a capital idea of yours, Kilmore,” he said. “I don’t see how they can very well accuse us of being rebels after the way we sang the National Anthem.”

“I wonder if they’ll impeach Babberly,” I said.

“Oh, that’s only a Labour Member,” said Moyne. “He doesn’t really mean it. Those fellows never do.”

“Do you think our people really meant it to-day?” I said.

“Meant what? God Save the King? Of course they did.”

“I was thinking of the hymn,” I said.

“I hope to God,” said Moyne, “they didn’t mean that.”

This is a curious view of hymn-singing for a religious man to take.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.