5
And, as we spoke, the last chapter was opening. Though neither of us had paid much attention to the report that certain political prisoners were being removed to England, we awoke next day to find that public interest had been deflected to another part of the battle. As a football match is suddenly suspended at sound of the referee’s whistle and the players stand apart to watch one of their number who has been injured, so the armies in Ireland, the factions in England, the spectators all over the world now stood apart to watch one man slowly dying. The lord mayor of Cork, arrested and imprisoned, refused to take food. For a week or two, while life still ticked loudly, we debated over our dinners whether he had been rightly condemned, whether the government would let him die of starvation, whether he and his cause would not be made ridiculous if he were fed forcibly. Then the contest became more determined: the government would not yield to a hunger-strike; and Terence McSwiney, with life ticking now less clearly, would not yield to the government. It was a question of endurance.
“Do come here next week-end if you can possibly manage it,” wrote Barbara. “This business about the lord mayor must be decided one way or the other by then.” . . .
I could give no promise. The papers were at this time recording the days of the fast and hunting for stories of men who had lived for three, four, five weeks without food. The ticking became feebler; and, one press-night, when I sat shuffling an obituary, an appeal and a face-saving leader on McSwiney’s surrender, we heard that the strike was over. The report was contradicted before I reached the composing-room. A week later, as the unwound spring stopped, jerked and stopped again, we were told that the lord mayor was dead. He was still alive next day, next week. Sympathy flowed and ebbed. The government was entreated to spare a game fighter; the public grew angrily unhappy at being made an accomplice in this slow torture. Then a gust of impatience blew against such crazy stubbornness; there followed a flash of illumination, and Dainton, who would have shot McSwiney out of hand two months before, asked dubiously whether an Ireland of McSwineys would be easy to “reconquer”.
At length the dying prisoner became an institution. His name was tucked into inconspicuous corners of the daily papers. There were other claims on the public attention. At last he died; and we realized that, as the injured player no longer obstructed the field, the match must go on.
On the day of the funeral procession I received an unexpected call from O’Rane, white-faced and enigmatic. In all the years I had known him I doubt if we had talked of Ireland a dozen times; but this day stirred passions older than any he could remember, and I felt that the taut, bare-headed figure who gripped my arm was saluting McSwiney’s coffin in the name of his father, “O’Rane the liberator”. The Irish of London were present in thousands; but the English watched or followed in tens of thousands. Some, I well believe, came to salve a restless conscience; some in homage to a brave man; most to gratify an idle curiosity. The republican colours fluttered unfamiliarly in English faces; the way was lined with English police.
“In any other country there would have been a riot,” murmured O’Rane, when I described the scene.
“There will be all the riots you can use when this is over. . . . You’ve been lying very low the last few months, Raney.”
“I’ve been thinking. All Lancing’s money . . .”
“And ‘the good of humanity’?”
“Yes. I believe . . . I’ve decided . . . to save humanity . . . from ever touching it,” he answered slowly.
At the time he would say no more; and we spent the afternoon strolling along one embankment and back by the other. In the course of our walk, we had a good view of St. Thomas’ Hospital, if he wished to heal the sick, and of the Tate Gallery, if he cared to foster the fine arts; south of the river we walked through streets that were more sordidly grimed with poverty than any I wish to see again. There were, I pointed out, inequalities of wealth for a millionaire to adjust.
“But is all this for the good of humanity?,” O’Rane asked, breaking silence for the first time as we pressed into his house. The side-door of The Sanctuary was like the out-patients’ entrance to a hospital; his writing-table was submerged in appeals to his charity. “You can begin by adjusting the difference between yourself and those people outside.”
There was a sneer in his tone that roused my natural perversity. I distributed a handful of small change and returned to find him smiling.
“What did you give them?,” he asked.
“About a sovereign. Whether they’re deserving cases . . .”
“They’re more deserving than you, George. And, if I’d given Lancing money, I should have been handing you a sovereign. That’s my difficulty. Every time I give to a hospital or a gallery, I’m relieving prosperous people like you of your responsibilities. If the material good is outweighed by the spiritual harm . . .” He broke off to stalk up and down the darkening library with shoulders hunched and head thrust forward. “There’s still plenty of wealth in the world. Places like the Turf and Stage stink of it. And, if people want things badly enough, they’ll pay for them. If London had a smallpox epidemic, we should press money on our neighbours to get them vaccinated.”
“But, while you’re saving humanity from itself,” I pointed out, “the money’s increasing automatically.”
“I can find outlets farther afield. You wouldn’t let those people starve under your eyes; but you’ll let people starve to their hearts’ content if you can’t see ’em.”
“With a million or two of unemployed here,” I began, “you won’t be popular.”
“If I could afford to consider my popularity!,” he broke out with a joyless laugh.
As Sonia was in the country, I brought him to dine with me in Seymour Street. We gossiped until nearly midnight; and, when I had sent him home, I settled to my daily duty of opening Barbara’s letters for her. She had been right, three months before, in calling her correspondence uninteresting; and, until this night, I had not been troubled with any doubts which letters to send on and which to destroy.
Now I encountered a problem for which I was unprepared. The first letter referred to an occasion eighteen months before, when my wife—according to the writer—had invited him to run away with her.