4
It is hardly to be imagined that I carried a light heart to Ireland. And the state of the country at this time was not of a kind to cure any private depression. In 1916 I entered Dublin as an academic nationalist, who had voted year after year with the staunch, self-effacing Redmondites; I left as a perfervid Sinn Feiner, when the men who had played with me as boys five-and-twenty years before were shot off their crazy barricades or done to death by a mockery of legal forms. Then for the first time, face to face with a people cheated of its promised independence, I too said that no trust was to be reposed in English honour and no sane leadership expected from men who believed in English pledges. Through weary years we liberals had fought constitutionally for our Home Rule Bill; it was inscribed on the Statute Book in spite of intrigues and intimidation; but treason triumphed over constitutionalism on the day when Germany made war in the belief that an Irish guerilla would keep Great Britain from taking part.
Melancholy memories and uneasy forebodings were my companions on the familiar road to Holyhead. I was dining with my uncle Bertrand on the night when the Home Rule Act was suspended; he at least had protested and perhaps he was a little self-righteous, but in 1916 I was to remember his grim prediction that from the breach of that undertaking, which every party in parliament helped to repudiate, would follow inevitably the discredit of the simpleton nationalists and the rise of Sinn Fein. The rebellion, which he foretold so accurately, was succeeded by a repression, which he and every one else knew would continue until the next rebellion. Sinn Fein, in these first months of the armistice, was penetrating the country peacefully; but even John Carstairs, who usually advocated the use of machine-guns and aeroplanes against political opponents, recognized that there would be war if the present army of occupation interfered. As yet there were only sporadic outrages on both sides, followed by reprisals, followed by counter-reprisals. As always happens, the non-combatants, squeezed by both sides, suffered most.
On this score, when at last I reached Lake House, I had no personal complaint to make. My agent told me that certain Sinn Feiners had been billeted on me and certain stores of food commandeered; my gun-room had been emptied; but both my cars, after a short period of detention, were returned with a permit from republican headquarters. This, I believe, made them liable to seizure by the forces of the crown; but my agent warned me that any license which recognized the authority of Dublin Castle would cause the cars to be taken and not restored. And nothing in Kerry tempted the Castle to send its emissaries so far into hostile territory. If I abstained from provocative acts or speeches, I should be left in peace.
“They like you,” my agent was good enough to tell me; “and it’s what they’re all saying, that you should be living here.”
“Are the tenants paying me any rent?,” I asked.
“They are.”
I drifted away by myself to see how well the house would suit Barbara. The lake was like a sheet of glass, in a frame of dense green wood, hanging from the gardens by the red ribands of the fuchsia hedges. Here and there I saw thin spirals of smoke: it was turf smoke, though I could not smell it. From Castlemaine, in the west, the air blew soft and salt from the Atlantic. I cursed the malevolence of man that disturbed such peace and desecrated such beauty. I cursed, too, the fate that had sent me to an English school, because there was none good enough in Ireland, so robbing me of one home without giving me another.
“I’m a married man,” I told my agent, “since last I was here. I don’t care to bring my wife over till things are more settled.”
That, he assured me regretfully, was what every one said; but I should be comfortable enough if I did not make trouble. He was himself an avowed republican, not from any hostility to the king, whom he admired, nor from devotion to the forms and spirit of republicanism: he wanted peace; and, whether Sinn Fein would achieve it or not, no other party had succeeded. Sinn Fein was feared, if not respected; and the English only remembered Ireland when they were frightened. If Redmond and his lot had put the fear of God into the English one half as well as the others, they would be lords and ministers and the rest now, like Mr. Law and the man who prosecuted Roger Casement. My agent disapproved of Sir Edward Carson’s politics but admired him as the Irishman who had put more fear of God into the English than any one since Parnell.
The one sentimental relaxation that this hard-headed, soft-spoken man allowed himself was that Parnell was still alive and would come back to lead Ireland.
“If I could find a purchaser . . .” I began.
“An Englishman? The house would be burnt over your honour’s head if the whisper of it ran round!”
“Then,” I said, “I may as well be getting back to London.”
My agent protested with touching fervour, but I was uneasy at being separated from Barbara. Two days after I landed at Kingston, she telegraphed: “Missing you dreadfully hope you arrived safely and are coming back immediately all my love bless you”; and, if her language seemed still a trifle neurotic, she had almost recovered her tranquillity by the time she wrote to describe the Whitsuntide party at Croxton Hall. The week-end had been uneventful; and, though Eric Lane was in the house, I could not read any embarrassment between the lines that described their meeting. The nervous excitability, however, of which I had seen too much evidence in London, betrayed itself once in a comment on a rumour: “You remember the Miss Maitland you met with the O’Ranes? She’s here. A pretty little thing! Obviously in love with Eric. I’d give anything to see him happily married, but I hope he’s not serious about this child. She’s too hopelessly young, she’d send him mad in a week. It’ll be too tragic if he lets another woman make a mess of his life.” The next day Barbara telegraphed again, telling me once more how much I was being missed and offering to join me at Lake House.
I returned to London as soon as I had finished my business and was met at Euston by a shivering form in a scarlet tea-gown and an ermine cloak.
“You crazy child, you’ll give yourself pneumonia!,” I cried as I hurried her into the car through a double line of smiling porters.
“That’s a pretty way to greet me when I’ve stayed up all night for you!,” Barbara laughed. “I am glad to see you again, George, though that wasn’t why I came to meet you. It’s your little friend Ivy Maitland: she’s gone down suddenly with appendicitis.”
“Well, I’m very sorry, of course . . .” I began.
“Yes, dear, but we must do something about it. You know she was acting as Eric’s secretary while his own girl had a holiday? Yes! And this child has collapsed in his flat. Dr. Gaisford’s attending her; and he says she’s not to be moved on any consideration whatsoever. When I heard about it last night, I felt we must offer Eric a couple of rooms till she can return home. Things being as they are, though . . .” Barbara faltered and turned away. “It’s all such a muddle that I thought I couldn’t ask him without your permission.”
From her consulting me, I surmised that she doubted the wisdom of her impulse. From my knowledge of Eric, I imagined he would sleep on the Embankment before he accepted a bed from us. If Barbara wished to make a sign of friendship, however, I would not check her.
“You don’t need my permission,” I said. “If you think it will do any good for us to invite him . . .”