Hyacinth sighed and turned to go, but Dr. Henry laid a hand upon his shoulder and detained him.
‘Conneally,’ he said kindly, ‘let me give you a word of advice. Don’t mix yourself up with your new friends too much. You will ruin your own prospects in life if you do. There is nothing more fatal to a man among the people with whom you and I are to live and work than the suspicion of being tainted with Nationalist ideas. You can’t be both a rebel and a clergyman. You see,’ he added with a smile, ‘I take enough interest in you to know who your friends are, and what you are thinking about.’
CHAPTER V
Augusta Goold’s scheme for enrolling Irish volunteers to help the Boers was duly set forth in the next issue of the Croppy. It included two appeals—one for money and one for men. The details were worked out with the frank contempt for possibility which characterizes some of the famous suggestions of Dean Swift. She had the same faculty that he had for bringing absurdities within the range of the commonplace; but there was this difference between them—Miss Goold quite believed in her own plans, while the great Dean no doubt grinned over the proof-sheets of his ‘Modest Proposal.’
It happened, most unfortunately, that the appeal synchronized with another, also for funds, which was issued by Mr. O’Rourke, the leader of the Parliamentary party. Since the death of John O’Neill the purse of the party had been getting lean. The old tactics which used to draw plaudits and dollars from the United States, as well as a tribute from every parish in Ireland, had lately been unsuccessful. There were still violent scenes in the House of Commons, but they no longer produced anything except contemptuous smiles. Members of Parliament still succeeded occasionally in getting the Chief Secretary to imprison them, but the glory of martyrdom was harder to win than in the old days. Latterly things had come to such a pass that even the reduced stipends offered to the members fell into arrear. The attendance at Westminster dropped away. The Government could afford to smile at Mr. O’Rourke’s efforts to make himself disagreeable, and the Opposition were frankly contemptuous of a people who could not profit them by more than a dozen votes in a critical division. It became impossible to wring even a modest Land Bill from the Prime Minister, and Mr. Chesney, now much at ease in the Secretary’s office in the Castle, scarcely felt it necessary to be civil to deputations which wanted railways. It was clear that something must be done, or Mr. O’Rourke’s business would disappear. He decided to appeal for funds orbi et urbi. The world—in this case North America—was to be visited, exhorted, and, it was hoped, taxed by some of his most eloquent lieutenants. Even Canada, with its leaven of Orangemen, was to be honoured with the speeches of an orator of second-rate powers. The city—Dublin, of course—was the chosen scene of the leader’s personal exertions. Since his revolt against John O’Neill, O’Rourke had been a little shy of Dublin audiences, but the pressing nature of the present crisis almost forced him to pay his court to the capital. He found some comfort in the recollection that during the five years that had elapsed since O’Neill’s death he had missed no public opportunity of shedding tears beside his tomb. He remembered, too, that he had put his name down for a large subscription towards the erection of a statue to the dead leader, a work of art which the existing generation seemed unlikely to have the pleasure of seeing.
Thus it happened that on the very day of the publication of Miss Goold’s scheme Mr. O’Rourke announced his intention of addressing an appeal for funds to a public meeting in the Rotunda. Miss Goold was disconcerted and irritated. She was well aware that Mr. O’Rourke’s appeal would give the respectable Nationalists an excellent excuse for ignoring hers, and unfortunately the respectable people are just the ones who have most money. She was confident that she could rely on the extreme section of the Nationalists, and on that element in the city population which loves and makes a row, but she could not count on the moneyed classes. They were, so far as their words went, very enthusiastic for the Boer cause; but when it came to writing cheques, it was likely that the counter-attractions of the Parliamentary fund would prove too strong.
Since it seemed that Mr. O’Rourke would certainly spoil her collection, the obvious thing to do was to try to spoil his. If he afforded people an excuse for not paying the travelling expenses of her volunteers to Lorenzo Marques, she would, if possible, suggest a way of escape from paying for his men’s journeys to London. After all, no one really wanted to subscribe to either fund, and it might be supposed that the public would very gladly keep their purses shut altogether.
For an Irishman it is quite possible to be genuinely enthusiastic and at the same time able to see the humorous side of his own enthusiasm. This is a reason why an Irishman is never a bore unless, to gain his private ends, he wants to be. Even an Irish advocate of total abstinence, or an Irish antivaccinationist, if such a thing exists, is not a bore, because he will always trot out his conscientious objections with a half-humorous, half-deprecating smile. This same capacity for avoiding the slavery of serious fanaticism enables an Irishman to cease quite joyfully from the pursuit of his own particular fad in order to corner an obnoxious opponent. Thus Augusta Goold and her friends were genuinely desirous of striking a blow at England, and really believed that their volunteers might do it; but this did not prevent them from finding infinite relish in the prospect of watching Mr. O’Rourke squirming on the horns of a dilemma. They took counsel together, and the result of their deliberations was peculiar. They proposed to invite Mr. O’Rourke to join his appeal to theirs, to pool the money which came in, and to divide it evenly between the volunteers and the members of Parliament. It was Tim Halloran who hit upon the brilliant idea. Augusta Goold chuckled over it as she grasped its consequences. Mr. O’Rourke, Tim argued, would be unwilling to accept the proposal because he wanted all the money he could get, more than was at all likely to be collected. He would be equally unwilling to reject it, because he could then be represented as indifferent to the heroic struggle of the Boers. In the existing state of Irish and American opinion a suspicion of such indifference would be quite sufficient to wreck his chances of getting any money at all.
Of course, the obvious way of making such a proposal would have been by letter to Mr. O’Rourke. Afterwards the correspondence—he must make a reply of some sort—could be sent to the press, and sufficient publicity would be given to the matter. This was what Tim Halloran wanted to do, but such a course did not commend itself to Augusta Goold. It lacked dramatic possibilities, and there was always the chance that the leading papers might refuse to take any notice of the matter, or relegate the letters to a back page and small print. Besides, a mere newspaper controversy would not make a strong appeal to the section of the Dublin populace on whose support she chiefly relied. A much more attractive plan suggested itself. Augusta Goold, with a few friends to act as aides-de-camp, would present herself to Mr. O’Rourke at his Rotunda meeting, and put the proposal to him then and there in the presence of the audience.