The Red Hand of Ulster Part 11

"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 G.o.dfrey.

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

"Do not be a d.a.m.ned fool."

"Well," I said, "that's sound advice even if it's not very politely expressed."

"Conroy's in it too," said G.o.dfrey, vindictively, "and I'll make them all sorry for themselves before I've done with them."

CHAPTER X

I find 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 n.o.bler 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 const.i.tution. 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 un.o.btrusive. 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 s.p.a.ce 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.