Hyacinth Part 4

'Why did she do it?' he asked. 'What sort of a girl was she? Do you mind telling me?'

'Not in the least,' said Maguire. 'Only I'm not sure that I know. Three years ago--that is, when I left home--she was the last sort of girl you could imagine going into a convent. She was pretty, fond of nice clothes and admiration, as keen as every girl ought to be on a dance. I never supposed she had a thought of religion in her head--I mean, beyond the usual confessions and attendances at Ma.s.s.'

'I suppose,' said Hyacinth, 'your people wanted it.'

'I don't think so,' said Maguire. 'Perhaps my mother did. I don't know.'

'You see, Conneally,' said Tim Halloran, 'it is a sort of hall-mark of respectability among people like Maguire's to have a girl in a good convent. A little lower down in the social scale, in the cla.s.s I come from, the boys are made priests. A doctor is a more expensive article to manufacture, so Maguire's father selected that line of life for him. Not that they could have made a priest of you, Maguire, in any case. You'd have disgraced Maynooth, as I did.'

'I don't understand,' said Hyacinth. 'I thought a vocation for the life was necessary.'

'Oh, so it is,' said Tim Halloran, 'but, you see, there's the period of the novitiate. Given a girl at an impressionable age, the proper convent atmosphere, and a prize of six hundred pounds for the Order, and it will go hard with the Reverend Mother if she can't work the girl up to a vocation. It takes a man a lifetime to make six hundred pounds in a country shop, but there's many a one who does it by hard work and self-denial; then down come the nuns and sweep it away, and it's wasted. It ought to be invested in a local factory or in waterworks, or gas-works, or fifty other things that would benefit the town it's made in. It ought to be fructifying and bearing interest; instead of which off it goes to Munich for stained gla.s.s, or to Italy for a marble altar.

Is it any wonder Ireland is crying out with poverty?'

'Yes,' said Maguire, 'and that's not the worst of it. I'd be content to let them take the d.a.m.ned money and deck their churches with it, but the girls--there are hundreds of them caught every year for nuns, and swept out of life. It isn't the Irish convents alone that get them. American nuns come over and Australian nuns, and they go round and round the country picking up girls here and there, and carry them off. There, I don't want to talk too much about it. The money is nothing, but the girls and boys----'

'It seems strange to me,' said Hyacinth, 'that when you think that way you should go on belonging to your Church.'

'Desert the Church!' said Maguire. 'We'll never do that. How could we live without religion? And what other religion is there? I grant you that your priests wouldn't rob us, but--but think of the cold of it.

You can't realize it, Conneally, but think what it would mean to a Catholic--a religion without saints, without absolution, without sacrifice. Besides, what we complain of is not Catholicism. It's a parasitic growth destroying the true faith, defiling the Church.'

'Yes,' said Tim Halloran, 'and even from my point of view how should we be the better of a change? Your Church is ruled by old women who think the name of Englishman the most glorious in the world. You preach loyalty, and I believe you pray for the Queen in your services. A nice fool I would feel praying that the Queen should have victory over her enemies.'

For a long time afterwards this conversation dwelt in Hyacinth's mind.

Tim Halloran he knew to be practically a freethinker, but Maguire regularly heard Ma.s.s on Sundays, and often went to confession. It was a puzzle how he could do so, feeling as he did about the religious Orders.

So insistent did the problem become to his mind that he found himself continually leading the conversation round to it from one side or another. Mary O'Dwyer told him that she also had a sister in a nunnery.

'She teaches girls to make lace, and wonderful work they do. She is perfectly happy. I think her face is the sweetest and most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There is not a line on it of care or of fretfulness. It seems to me as if her whole life might be described as a quiet smile. I always feel better by the mere recollection of her face for a long time after I have visited her. Oh, I know it wouldn't do for me. I couldn't stand it for a week. I should go mad with the quiet restraint of it all. But my sister is happy. I can't forget that. I suppose she has a vocation.'

'Vocation,' said Hyacinth thoughtfully. 'Yes, I can understand how that would make all the difference. But how many of them have the vocation?'

'Don't you think vocation might be learnt? I mean mightn't one grow into it, if one wished to very much, and if the life was constantly before one's eyes, beautiful and calm?'

It was almost the same thought which Timothy Halloran had suggested.

Mary O'Dwyer spoke of growing into vocation, Tim of the working of it up. Was there any difference except a verbal one?

On another occasion he spoke to Dr. Henry about the position of the Church of Ireland in the country.

'We have proved,' said the professor, 'that the Roman claims have no support in Scripture, history, or reason. Our books remain unanswered, because they are unanswerable. We can do no more.'

'We might offer the Irish people a Church which they could join,' said Hyacinth.

'We do. We offer them the Church of St. Patrick, the ancient, historic Church of Ireland. We offer them the two Sacraments of the Gospel, administered by priests duly ordained at the hands of an Episcopate which goes back in an unbroken line to the Apostles. We present them the three great creeds for their a.s.sent. We use a liturgy that is at once ancient and pure. The Church of Ireland has all this, is beyond dispute a branch of the great Catholic Church of Christ.'

'It may be all you say,' said Hyacinth, 'but it is not national. In sentiment and sympathy it is English and not Irish.'

'I know what you mean,' said Dr. Henry. 'I think I understand how you feel, but I cannot consent to the conclusion you want to draw. There is no real meaning in the cry for nationality. It is a sentiment, a fashion, and will pa.s.s. Even if it were genuine and enduring, I hold it to be better for Ireland to be an integral part of a great Empire than a contemptible and helpless item among the nations of the world, a prey to the intrigues of ambitious foreign statesmen.'

Hyacinth sighed and turned to go, but Dr. Henry laid a hand upon his shoulder and detained him.

'Conneally,' he said kindly, 'let me give you a word of advice. Don't mix yourself up with your new friends too much. You will ruin your own prospects in life if you do. There is nothing more fatal to a man among the people with whom you and I are to live and work than the suspicion of being tainted with Nationalist ideas. You can't be both a rebel and a clergyman. You see,' he added with a smile, 'I take enough interest in you to know who your friends are, and what you are thinking about.'

CHAPTER V

Augusta Goold's scheme for enrolling Irish volunteers to help the Boers was duly set forth in the next issue of the _Croppy_. It included two appeals--one for money and one for men. The details were worked out with the frank contempt for possibility which characterizes some of the famous suggestions of Dean Swift. She had the same faculty that he had for bringing absurdities within the range of the commonplace; but there was this difference between them--Miss Goold quite believed in her own plans, while the great Dean no doubt grinned over the proof-sheets of his 'Modest Proposal.'

It happened, most unfortunately, that the appeal synchronized with another, also for funds, which was issued by Mr. O'Rourke, the leader of the Parliamentary party. Since the death of John O'Neill the purse of the party had been getting lean. The old tactics which used to draw plaudits and dollars from the United States, as well as a tribute from every parish in Ireland, had lately been unsuccessful. There were still violent scenes in the House of Commons, but they no longer produced anything except contemptuous smiles. Members of Parliament still succeeded occasionally in getting the Chief Secretary to imprison them, but the glory of martyrdom was harder to win than in the old days.

Latterly things had come to such a pa.s.s that even the reduced stipends offered to the members fell into arrear. The attendance at Westminster dropped away. The Government could afford to smile at Mr. O'Rourke's efforts to make himself disagreeable, and the Opposition were frankly contemptuous of a people who could not profit them by more than a dozen votes in a critical division. It became impossible to wring even a modest Land Bill from the Prime Minister, and Mr. Chesney, now much at ease in the Secretary's office in the Castle, scarcely felt it necessary to be civil to deputations which wanted railways. It was clear that something must be done, or Mr. O'Rourke's business would disappear.

He decided to appeal for funds _orbi et urbi_. The world--in this case North America--was to be visited, exhorted, and, it was hoped, taxed by some of his most eloquent lieutenants. Even Canada, with its leaven of Orangemen, was to be honoured with the speeches of an orator of second-rate powers. The city--Dublin, of course--was the chosen scene of the leader's personal exertions. Since his revolt against John O'Neill, O'Rourke had been a little shy of Dublin audiences, but the pressing nature of the present crisis almost forced him to pay his court to the capital. He found some comfort in the recollection that during the five years that had elapsed since O'Neill's death he had missed no public opportunity of shedding tears beside his tomb. He remembered, too, that he had put his name down for a large subscription towards the erection of a statue to the dead leader, a work of art which the existing generation seemed unlikely to have the pleasure of seeing.

Thus it happened that on the very day of the publication of Miss Goold's scheme Mr. O'Rourke announced his intention of addressing an appeal for funds to a public meeting in the Rotunda. Miss Goold was disconcerted and irritated. She was well aware that Mr. O'Rourke's appeal would give the respectable Nationalists an excellent excuse for ignoring hers, and unfortunately the respectable people are just the ones who have most money. She was confident that she could rely on the extreme section of the Nationalists, and on that element in the city population which loves and makes a row, but she could not count on the moneyed cla.s.ses. They were, so far as their words went, very enthusiastic for the Boer cause; but when it came to writing cheques, it was likely that the counter-attractions of the Parliamentary fund would prove too strong.

Since it seemed that Mr. O'Rourke would certainly spoil her collection, the obvious thing to do was to try to spoil his. If he afforded people an excuse for not paying the travelling expenses of her volunteers to Lorenzo Marques, she would, if possible, suggest a way of escape from paying for his men's journeys to London. After all, no one really wanted to subscribe to either fund, and it might be supposed that the public would very gladly keep their purses shut altogether.

For an Irishman it is quite possible to be genuinely enthusiastic and at the same time able to see the humorous side of his own enthusiasm. This is a reason why an Irishman is never a bore unless, to gain his private ends, he wants to be. Even an Irish advocate of total abstinence, or an Irish antivaccinationist, if such a thing exists, is not a bore, because he will always trot out his conscientious objections with a half-humorous, half-deprecating smile. This same capacity for avoiding the slavery of serious fanaticism enables an Irishman to cease quite joyfully from the pursuit of his own particular fad in order to corner an obnoxious opponent. Thus Augusta Goold and her friends were genuinely desirous of striking a blow at England, and really believed that their volunteers might do it; but this did not prevent them from finding infinite relish in the prospect of watching Mr. O'Rourke squirming on the horns of a dilemma. They took counsel together, and the result of their deliberations was peculiar. They proposed to invite Mr. O'Rourke to join his appeal to theirs, to pool the money which came in, and to divide it evenly between the volunteers and the members of Parliament.

It was Tim Halloran who hit upon the brilliant idea. Augusta Goold chuckled over it as she grasped its consequences. Mr. O'Rourke, Tim argued, would be unwilling to accept the proposal because he wanted all the money he could get, more than was at all likely to be collected.

He would be equally unwilling to reject it, because he could then be represented as indifferent to the heroic struggle of the Boers. In the existing state of Irish and American opinion a suspicion of such indifference would be quite sufficient to wreck his chances of getting any money at all.

Of course, the obvious way of making such a proposal would have been by letter to Mr. O'Rourke. Afterwards the correspondence--he must make a reply of some sort--could be sent to the press, and sufficient publicity would be given to the matter. This was what Tim Halloran wanted to do, but such a course did not commend itself to Augusta Goold. It lacked dramatic possibilities, and there was always the chance that the leading papers might refuse to take any notice of the matter, or relegate the letters to a back page and small print. Besides, a mere newspaper controversy would not make a strong appeal to the section of the Dublin populace on whose support she chiefly relied. A much more attractive plan suggested itself. Augusta Goold, with a few friends to act as aides-de-camp, would present herself to Mr. O'Rourke at his Rotunda meeting, and put the proposal to him then and there in the presence of the audience.

In the meantime the few days before the meeting were occupied in scattering suggestive seed over the h.o.a.rdings and blank walls of the city. One morning people were startled by the sight of an immense placard which asked in violent red letters, 'What is Ireland going to do?' Public opinion was divided about the ultimate purpose of the poster. The majority expected the announcement of a new play or novel; a few held that a pill or a cocoa would be recommended. Next morning the question became more explicit, and the hypothesis of the play and the pill were excluded. 'What,' the new poster ran, 'is Ireland going to do for the Boers?' The public were not intensely anxious to find an answer to the conundrum thrust thus forcibly on their attention, but they became curious to know who the advertisers were who hungered for the information. Men blessed by Providence with sagacious-looking faces made the most of their opportunity, and informed their friends that the thing was a new dodge of O'Rourke's to get money. Their reputation suffered when the next placard appeared. The advertisers had apparently changed their minds, for what they now wanted to know was, 'What are the Irish M.P.'s going to do for the Boers?' Clearly Mr. O'Rourke could have nothing to gain by insisting on an answer to such a question. The public were puzzled but pleased. The bill-stickers of the city foresaw the possibility of realizing a competence, for the next morning the satisfied inquirers published the result of their investigations. 'The Em Pees '(it was thus that they now referred to the honourable members of Parliament) 'are supporting the infamies of England.' It was at this point that the eye of a Castle official was caught by one of the placards as he made his way to the Kildare Street Club for luncheon.

He discussed the matter with a colleague, and it occurred to them that since they were paid for governing Ireland, they ought to give the public some value for their money, and seize the opportunity of doing something. They sent a series of telegrams to Mr. Chesney's London house, which were forwarded by his private secretary to the Riviera.

The replies which followed kept the Castle officials in a state of pleasurable excitement until quite late in the evening. At about eight o'clock large numbers of Metropolitan police sallied out of their barracks and tore down the last batch of placards. Next morning fresh ones were posted up, each of which bore the single word, 'Why?' The bill-stickers were highly pleased, and many of them were arrested for drunkenness. Mr. O'Rourke was much less pleased, for he began to guess what the answer was likely to be, and how it would affect his chances of securing a satisfactory collection. The officials were perplexed. They suspected the 'Why?' of containing within its three letters some hideous sedition, but it was not possible to deal vigorously with what might, after all, be only the cunning novelty of some advertising manufacturer.

More telegrams harried Mr. Chesney, but before any definite course of action had been decided on the morning of the Rotunda meeting arrived, and with it an answer to the multifarious 'Whys': Because O'Rourke wants all the money to spend in the London restaurants.' There was a great deal of laughter, and many people, quite uninterested in politics, determined to go to the meeting in hopes of more amus.e.m.e.nt.

When Mr. O'Rourke took the chair the hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances this would have augured well for the success of his appeal, for it showed that the public were at all events not apathetic. On this particular occasion, however, Mr. O'Rourke would have been better pleased with a smaller audience. The placards had shown him that something unpleasant was likely to occur, though they afforded no hint of the form which the unpleasantness would take. When he rose to his feet he was greeted with the usual volley of cheers, and although some rude remarks about the Boers were made in the corners of the hall, they did not amount to anything like an organized attempt at interruption. He began his speech cautiously, feeling the pulse of his audience, and plying them with the well-worn plat.i.tudes of the Nationalist platform. When these evoked the usual enthusiasm he waxed bolder, and shot out some almost original epigrams directed against the Government, working up to a really new gibe about officials who sat like spiders spinning murderous webs in Dublin Castle. The audience were delighted with this, but their joy reached its height when someone shouted: 'You might speak better of the men who tore down the placard on Wednesday.' Mr. O'Rourke ignored the suggestion, and pa.s.sed on to sharpen his wit upon the landlords. He described them as 'ill-omened tax-gatherers who suck the life-blood of the country, and refuse to disgorge a penny of it for any useful purpose.' Mr. O'Rourke was not a man who shrank from a mixed metaphor, or paused to consider such trifles as the unpleasantness which would ensue if anyone who had been sucking blood were to repent and disgorge it. 'Where,' he went on to ask, 'do they spend their immense revenues? Is it in Ireland?' Here he made one of those dramatic pauses for which his oratory was famous. The audience waited breathlessly for the denunciation which was to follow. They were treated, unexpectedly, to a well-conceived anticlimax. A voice spoke softly, but quite clearly, from the back of the hall:

'Bedad, and I shouldn't wonder if it was in the London restaurants.'

A roar of laughter followed. The orator might no doubt have made an effective reply, but every time he opened his mouth minor wits, rending like wolves the carcase of the original joke, yelled 'turtle-soup'

at him, or 'champagne and oysters.' He got angry, and consequently flurried. He tried to quell the tumult by thundering out the denunciation which he had prepared. But the delight which the audience took in shrieking the items of their imaginary bill of fare was too much for him. He forgot what he had meant to say, floundered, attempted to pull himself together, and brought out the stale jest about providing each landlord with a single ticket to Holyhead.

'And that same,' said his original tormentor, 'would be cheaper than giving you a return ticket to London.'

The audience was immensely tickled. So far the entertainment, if not precisely novel, was better than anything they had hoped for, and everyone had an agreeable conviction that there was still something in the way of a sensation in store. Perhaps it was eagerness for the expected climax which induced them to keep tolerably quiet during the remainder of Mr. O'Rourke's speech. He set forth at some length the glorious achievements of his party in the past, and explained the opportunities of future usefulness which lay to be grasped if only the necessary funds were provided. He sat down to make way, as he a.s.sured the audience, for certain tried and trusty soldiers of the cause who were waiting to propose important resolutions. So far as these warriors were concerned, he might as well have remained standing. Their resolutions are to this day unproposed and uncommended--a secret joy, no doubt, to those who framed them, but not endorsed by any popular approval.

Hyacinth Conneally was not admitted to the secret councils of Augusta Goold and her friends. He knew no more than the general public what kind of a coup was meditated, but he gathered from Miss O'Dwyer's nervous excitement and Tim Halloran's air of immense and mysterious importance that something quite out of the common was likely to occur. By arriving an hour and a half before the opening of the meeting he secured a seat near the platform. He enjoyed the discomfiture of O'Rourke, whom he had learnt from the pages of the _Croppy_ to despise as a mere windbag, and to hate as the betrayer of O'Neill. A sudden thrill of excitement went through him when O'Rourke sat down. The whole audience turned their faces from the platform towards the door at the far end of the hall, and Hyacinth, without knowing exactly what he expected, turned too.

There was a swaying visible among the crowd near the door, and almost immediately it became clear that someone was trying to force a way through the densely-packed people. Curses were to be heard, and even cries from those who were being trodden on. At last a way was made.

Augusta Goold, followed by Grealy, Halloran, and Mary O'Dwyer, came slowly up the hall towards the platform. Those of the audience whose limbs had not been crushed or their feet mangled in preparation for her progress cheered her wildly. Indeed, she made a regal appeal to them.

Even amidst a crowd of men her height made her conspicuous, and she had arrayed herself for the occasion in a magnificent violet robe. It flowed from her shoulders in s.p.a.cious folds, and swept behind her, splendidly contemptuous of the part it played as scavenger amid the acc.u.mulated filth of the floor. Her bare arms shone out of the wide sleeves which hung around them. Her neck rose strong and stately over the silver clasp of a cloak which she had thrown back from her shoulders. She wore a hat which seemed to hold her hair captive from falling loose around her. One great tress alone escaped from it, and by some cunning manipulation was made to stand straight out, as if blown by the wind from its fastenings.

In comparison her suite looked commonplace and mean. Poor Miss O'Dwyer was arrayed--'gowned,' she would have said herself in reporting the scene--in vesture not wanting in splendour, but which beside Miss Goold's could not catch the eye. Thomas Grealy, awkward and stooped, peered through his gla.s.ses at the crowd. Tim Halloran walked jauntily, but his eyes glanced nervously from side to side. He was certainly ill at ease, possibly frightened, at the position in which he found himself.

A hurried consultation took place among the gentlemen on the platform, which ended in Mr. O'Rourke stepping forward with a smile and an outstretched hand to welcome Augusta Goold as she ascended the steps.

The expression of his face belied the smile which he had impressed upon his lips. His eyes had the same look of furtive malice as a dog's which wants to bite but fears the stick. Augusta Goold waved aside the proffered hand, and stepped unaided on to the platform. Mr. O'Rourke placed a chair for her, but she ignored it and stood, with her followers behind her, facing the audience. O'Rourke and two of his tried and trusty members of Parliament approached her. They stood between her and the audience, and talked to her for some time, apparently very earnestly. Augusta Goold looked past them, over them, sometimes it seemed through them, while they spoke, but made them no answer whatever.

At last Mr. O'Rourke shrugged his shoulders, and withdrew to his chair with a sulky scowl.