The Red Hand of Ulster Part 8

"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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.sured 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 plat.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sed 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 quant.i.ty 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 cla.s.s.

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 inst.i.tutions by which Turks, and Orientals generally, a.s.sert and maintain the rights of property with regard to the other s.e.x. "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 b.u.t.tons 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 n.o.ble womanhood and the sanct.i.ty 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 p.r.o.noun bracketed McConkey with Lord Moyne. McConkey's wife, a.s.suming 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 p.r.o.noun, 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 sanct.i.ty of the marriage tie, a matter of particular importance to women and likely to be seriously affected by the pa.s.sing 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 ill.u.s.trated and was meant to ill.u.s.trate 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed golden grain for nutriment from the hand of a G.o.ddess. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 h.o.a.rds 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 G.o.ddess 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 t.i.tle 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.