XXXI
A thunderbolt struck the house in Sloane Street at half past eight one morning. It came, as other bolts had fallen upon men’s and women’s hearts during the time of the Great War, in a little pink envelope. This one was addressed to Bertram Pollard, and it came from Dublin.
Dennis condemned to death execution Wednesday. Implore father’s influence. Susan.
Bertram was sitting at breakfast opposite her father, who was reading The Morning Post as usual at this meal. His mother was pouring out coffee, and was aware instantly of his sudden indrawing of breath.
“Oh, Bertram!” she said, in a low voice. “Is it bad news?”
She slopped some coffee from the pot over the edge of a cup.
He was tempted to lie to her and say “Nothing much! A business matter,” but before the words left his lips he knew that honesty was best. She had seen his look of dismay, if he prevaricated, she would guess that the news was worse than this, though this was bad.
“It’s not good,” he said. “It’s about Susan’s husband.”
“That young scoundrel!” said his father, glancing over the top of his paper; “what infamy is he mixed up in now?”
Bertram read out the telegram, and saw his mother’s face change to a new tone of pallor, and the look of anguish in her eyes for Susan.
“ ‘Implore father’s influence.’ ” These words caused his father to drop The Morning Post in which he was reading a terrific indictment of Sinn Fein with a sense of fierce enjoyment.
“I wouldn’t use a hairsbreadth of influence to save my own son from the hangman’s rope, if he were a Sinn Fein murderer.”
“He’s your own daughter’s husband,” said Bertram. “The relationship is fairly close.”
“Too close,” said Michael Pollard. “Susan dishonoured her name by that secret and shameful marriage. I’ll never forgive her. I’ve already given orders that her name will not be mentioned in my presence.”
He picked up the paper again, and pretended to read, very calmly. But his hands trembled, so that the paper rustled.
“My dear!” said Mrs. Pollard; “for our dear Susan’s sake, I implore you, as she implores you. I’ve been a faithful wife to you. I beg you now to use any power you have in a plea of mercy for that misguided boy.”
She had risen from her chair, and Bertram saw that she was more excited than he had ever seen her. She had a tragic look, and age had crept into her face suddenly, so that she seemed an old, old lady, very frail and broken.
His father lowered his paper again, and he too was startled, it seemed to Bertram, by his wife’s look and speech.
“My darling,” he said, “trouble falls heavily upon your poor soul, because of our children’s folly. But I can do nothing in this matter, even if I would. If the fellow has been condemned by court-martial, it’s clear that he’s guilty of murder. He must suffer the punishment of murderers. No power of mine can save him.”
“You can have an enquiry made. At least postpone this dreadful sentence! Michael, if you have any love for me, in my old age, and my weakness—”
She faltered forward to him, and would have fallen if Bertram had not sprung towards her and held her close.
“Mother! Courage!”
“My poor Susan!” she cried. “My dear little daughter!”
Mr. Pollard rose, pale now, like his wife, visibly distressed.
“I’ll see if there’s anything to be done,” he said. “I’ll make enquiry. Hush, Mother! Hush, now!”
She put her hand on his shoulder and wept miserably, and said, “For God’s sake, dear. I can’t bear it! This is the worst that’s happened yet.”
Bertram took her to the sitting-room, and left her there later, when she seemed more composed, though still trembling. He went to his father’s study, and entered without knocking, and saw his father standing with his hands behind his back, staring at the floor with a heavy frown.
“Father,” he said, “something’s got to be done about this. You must get to work quickly. It’s not long till Wednesday.”
Michael Pollard stared at his son with anger and suspicion.
“How much do you know about this?” he asked. “Did Susan tell you how many murders her precious husband has committed? How many of your fellow officers he has shot in cold blood?”
“I know nothing,” said Bertram. “Don’t talk to me, father, as if I were an accomplice of Dennis O’Brien.”
“You’re sympathetic with Sinn Fein,” said his father. “You sheltered this very man in your own house, I’m told.”
Bertram wondered how he knew as much as that, but didn’t ask.
“He was with me an hour or two. Susan brought him. But that’s nothing to the point. For mother’s sake you must do what’s possible, and quickly, sir!”
“There’s nothing possible,” said Mr. Pollard. “I know all about the case already. This man O’Brien has been found guilty of leading an ambush against British officers, two of whom were killed. He was captured on the spot, a week ago, tried yesterday, and condemned. I have the full report.”
So he knew before the telegram came! He had not thought it worth while to tell Bertram before or to guard his wife against the shock of the news.
Bertram begged him to put in a plea for mercy. It wouldn’t be ignored, because of his name and service to the Government. It might save O’Brien’s life, at least, and Susan’s life-long misery.
Michael Pollard’s face hardened.
“I speak to you more frankly, Bertram, than to your poor mother. For her sake I’ve already done as much as I can in honour. I’ve enquired into the proofs of guilt, into the Court Martial procedure. There’s no doubt of guilt, no flaw in the conduct of the trial. The Chief Secretary has favoured me with a private consultation. I told him, as I tell you, that I wish for no mercy on behalf of an Irish rebel who has fired on forces of the Crown, and killed men in British uniform.”
Bertram groaned, and quoted, not lightly, but in anguish, the old Shakespearean line,
“The quality of mercy is not strained.”
“Sinn Fein has no mercy,” said his father. “It’s ruthless and bloody and cruel.”
“Need we meet cruelty by cruelty?” asked Bertram. “Wouldn’t chivalry gain more for us?”
“Never!” answered his father harshly. “The Irish Catholics don’t understand the meaning of chivalry. These Sinn Feiners would stab a man in the back who held out his hand in friendship and forgiveness.”
“You’re Irish of the Irish!” said Bertram. “Your Irish blood is in my veins. We of all people should understand the passion of our race for liberty, their remembrance of old crimes against their faith and land, their frightful heritage of memory. I loathe this guerrilla warfare, but I understand its motives and impulses. In their spirit it’s as much a fight for liberty as that of any people who strive to free themselves from a foreign yoke. O’Brien’s deed was not real murder, at least in his soul and conscience, because it was an act of war—armed men against armed men, and ours with no right in Ireland, except that of ancient conquest. Surely there’s a difference. Surely as an Irishman, you see there’s no moral baseness in what O’Brien did? Except the madness of argument by blood and force for an ideal of liberty which might be gained by other means.”
“Every word you say convinces me that you’re on the side of the rebels,” said Michael Pollard. “You’re a traitor in my own household. I’ll be glad when you leave my house before I have to turn you out.”
It was the second time that Bertram had been called traitor. Once it was his wife who called him that. Now it was his father. He went white to the lips at the sound of it, and that last sentence of his father’s put passion into his brain.
“Did God make you without humanity?” he asked. “Is it for nothing that you’ve lost the love of all your children and now risk the love of the woman who bore them, and is stricken by your harshness in her old age?”
Michael Pollard’s face became ashen in colour at these words from his son. He took a step forward, and then raised his hand sharply.
“Silence, sir! I have one son who is a comfort to me, and to his mother. Digby does his duty and is loyal. I find no loyalty in you. I don’t wish to hear more of your rebellious insolence.”
“Then you refuse to raise a little finger to help Susan in her grief, or mother in her agony?” asked Bertram.
His father turned from him.
“Leave my room!”
Bertram left the room, and that night crossed over to Ireland from Holyhead. In his mind was the thought of three other people stricken by this tragedy—those three sisters of Dennis O’Brien, who would be weeping for him now, and praying still to God, who didn’t answer their prayers. The youngest of them—Jane—had said, “What’ll I do if Dennis is taken from us?” She’d had a foreboding of his fate, perhaps a knowledge of his guilt.
Guilt it was. Bertram sickened at the thought of that guerrilla warfare which he had tried to defend to his father, but couldn’t defend in his heart because of loyalty to England and hatred of cruelty. It was all madness and murder, though with some spiritual value behind it, and not ignoble passion. Those young men, mostly boys, who fought for Irish liberty, were willing to die for Ireland, went to their death on the scaffold like martyrs. Yet they adopted methods of war which were Red Indian in their savagery. On the other side, the British Government had abandoned all sanity, all statesmanship, all decency. By a series of stupidities, falsities, betrayal of pledges, they had maddened Irish manhood into this state of rebellion—at least had reopened old wounds, and revived old passions. Now they could find no other policy than that of coercion, meeting Terror by Counter-Terror, trying to break the spirit of the Irish people by raids, searches, shootings, burnings. God! What a horror, after the Great War! And what a mental agony for a man like himself, hating the methods of both sides, seeing the point of view from both sides, divided in sympathy, trying to keep to the middle of the road, between the two extremes. Once again he was called traitor, and felt the word like a wound in his heart. Traitor, though he was loyal to the truth as far as he could see it. Traitor, though he had pledged his soul to loyalty!