‘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.