Hyacinth. George A. Birmingham
for the Boers. It is a shame to have to admit that the English garrison in Ireland can raise thousands of pounds for their war funds, and the Irish can’t be got to subscribe a few hundreds.’
‘The wealth of the country,’ said Grealy, ‘is in the hands of a minority—the so-called Loyalists.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Finola sharply. ‘If you ever gave a thought to anything more recent than the High-King’s Court at Tara you would know that the landlords are not the wealthy part of the community any longer. There’s many a provincial publican calling himself a Nationalist who could buy up the nearest landlord and every Protestant in the parish along with him. I’m a Protestant myself, born and bred among the class you speak of, and I know.’
‘You’re quite right, Miss Goold,’ said Tim. ‘The people could have given the money if they liked. I attribute the failure of the fund to the apathy or treachery of the priests, call it which you like. There isn’t a Protestant church in the country where the parsons don’t preach “Give give, give” to their people Sunday after Sunday. And what’s the result? Why, they have raised thousands of pounds.’
‘After the poem you published in last week’s Croppy,’ said Hyacinth to Mary O’Dwyer, ‘I made sure the subscriptions would have come in. Your appeal was one of the most beautiful things I ever read. It would have touched the heart of a stone.’
‘Poetry is all well enough,’ said Tim. ‘I admire your verses, Mary, as much as anyone, but we want a collection at every church door after Mass. That’s what we ought to have, but it’s exactly what we won’t get, because the priests are West Britons at heart. They would pray for the Queen and the army to-morrow, like Cardinal Vaughan, if they weren’t afraid.’
‘I believe,’ said Finola, ‘that we went the wrong way about the thing altogether. We asked for a hospital, and we appealed to the people’s pity for the wounded Boers. Nobody in Ireland cares a pin about the Boers. Why on earth should we? From all I can hear they are a narrow-minded, intolerant set of hypocrites. I’d just as soon read the stuff some fool of an English newspaper man wrote about “our brother the Boer” as listen to the maudlin sentiment our people talk. We don’t want to help the Boers. We want to hurt the English.’
‘And you think——’ said Grealy.
‘I think,’ went on Finola, ‘that we ought to have asked for volunteers to go out and fight, instead of nurses to cocker up the men who are fools enough to get themselves shot. We’d have got them.’
‘You would not,’ said Tim. ‘The clergy would have been dead against you. They would have nipped the whole project in the bud without so much as making a noise in doing it.’
‘That’s true,’ said Grealy. ‘Remember, Miss Goold, it was the priests who cursed Tara, and the monks who broke the power of the Irish Kings. I haven’t worked the thing out yet, but I mean to show——’
Finola interrupted the poor man ruthlessly:
‘Let’s try it, anyway. Let’s preach a crusade.’
‘Not the least bit of good,’ said Tim. ‘Every blackguard in the country is enlisted already in the Connaught Bangers or the Dublin Fusiliers, or some confounded Militia regiment. There’s nobody left but the nice, respectable, goody-goody boys who wouldn’t leave their mothers or miss going to confession if you went down on your knees to them.’
‘Well, then, the Irish troops ought to shoot their officers, and walk over to the Boer camp,’ said Finola savagely.
Hyacinth half smiled at what seemed to him a monstrous jest. Then, when he perceived that she was actually in earnest, the smile froze into a kind of grin. His hands trembled with the violence of his indignation.
‘It would be devilish treachery,’ he blurted out. ‘The name of Irishman will never be disgraced by such an act.’
Augusta Goold flung her cigarette into the grate, and rose from her chair. She stood over Hyacinth, her hands clenched and her bosom heaving rapidly. Her eyes blazed down into his until their scorn cowed him.
‘There is no treachery possible for an Irishman,’ she said, ‘except the one of fighting for England. Any deed against England—yes, any deed—is glorious, and not shameful.’
Hyacinth was utterly quelled. He ventured upon no reply. Indeed, not only did her violence render argument undesirable—and it seemed for the moment that he would find himself in actual grips with a furious Amazon—but her words carried with them a certain conviction. It actually seemed to him while she spoke as if a good defence might be made for Irish soldiers who murdered their officers and deserted to an enemy in the field. It was not until hours afterwards, when the vivid impression of Finola’s face had faded from his recollection, when he had begun to forget the flash of her eyes, the poise of her figure, and the glow of her draperies, that his moral sense was able to reassert itself. Then he knew that she had spoken wickedly. It might be right for an Irishman to fight against England when he could. It might be justifiable to seize the opportunity of England’s embarrassment to make a bid for freedom by striking a blow at the Empire. So far his conscience went willingly, but that treachery and murder could ever be anything but horrible he refused altogether to believe.
Another conversation in which he took part about this time helped Hyacinth still further to understand the position of his new friends. Tim Halloran and he were smoking and chatting together over the fire when Maguire joined them.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Halloran. ‘You look as if you’d been at your mother’s funeral.’
‘You’re not so far out in your guess,’ said Maguire grimly. ‘I spent the morning at my sister’s wedding. Would you like a bit of the cake?’ He produced from his pocket a paper containing crushed fragments of white sugar and a shapeless mass of citron and currants. ‘With the compliments of the Reverend Mother,’ he said. ‘Try a bit.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’ said Hyacinth.
‘Oh, I assure you the Sisters of Pity do these things in style,’ said Maguire. ‘It’s a pretty fancy, that of the wedding-cake, isn’t it? But you’re a Protestant, Conneally; you don’t understand this delicate playfulness. I was present to-day at the reception of my only sister into the Institute of the Catholic Sisters of Pity, founded by Honoria Kavanagh. I’ve lost Birdie Maguire, that’s all, the little girl that used to climb on to my knee and kiss me, and instead of her there’s a Sister Monica Mary, who will no doubt pray for my soul when she’s let.’
‘What was the figure in her case?’ asked Tim in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone.
‘Six hundred pounds,’ said Maguire. ‘It must have put the old man to the pin of his collar to pay it. The only time he ever talked to me about his affairs he told me he had got four hundred pounds put by for Birdie’s fortune, and that I was to have my medical course and whatever the old shop would fetch when he was gone. They must have put the screw on pretty tight to make him spring the extra two hundred. I dare say I shall suffer for it in the end. He must have borrowed the money.’
Hyacinth felt intensely curious about this young nun. Like most Protestants he had grown up to regard monasticism in all its forms as something remote, partly horrible, wholly unintelligible.
‘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 Mass.’
‘I suppose,’ said Hyacinth, ‘your people wanted it.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Maguire. ‘Perhaps my mother did.