The Red Hand of Ulster Part 7

"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 n.o.body 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 cla.s.s. 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 a.s.sured me that he was not. I might even have thought, taking at their face value certain resolutions pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 Sat.u.r.days to the instruction of young men in cricket and football. His Sunday afternoons he gives to an immense Bible-cla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sing. 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: