A letter from Miss Goold overtook him the following Thursday in the hotel at Clogher.
‘I was delighted to hear from you again,’ she wrote. ‘I was afraid you had cut me altogether, gone over to the respectable people, and forgotten poor Ireland. Captain Quinn told me that you and he had quarrelled, and I gathered that you rather disapproved of him. Well, he was a bit of a blackguard; but, after all, one doesn’t expect a man who takes on a job of that kind to be anything else. I never thought it would suit you, and you will do me the justice of remembering that I never wanted you to volunteer. Now about your article. It was admirable. These “Cheap Patriots”’—it was thus the article was headed—‘are just the creatures we want to scarify. Dowling and his kind are the worst enemies Ireland has to-day. We’ll publish anything of that kind you send us, and remember we’re not the least afraid of anybody. It’s a grand thing for a paper to be as impecunious as the Croppy. No man but a fool would take a libel action against us with any hope of getting damages. A jury might value Dowling’s character at any fantastic sum they chose, but it would be a poor penny the Croppy would pay. Still, we’re not so hard up that we can’t give our contributors something, and next week you’ll get a small cheque from the office. I hope it may encourage you to send us more. Don’t be afraid to speak out. If anything peculiarly seditious occurs to you, write it in Irish. I know it’s all the same to you which language you write in. Do us half a column every fortnight or so on Western life and politics.’
Hyacinth was absurdly elated by Miss Goold’s praise. He made up his mind to contribute regularly to the Croppy, and had visions of a great future as a journalist, or perhaps a literary exponent of the ideas of Independent Ireland.
Meanwhile, he became very intimate both with the Quinns and with Canon Beecher’s family. Mrs. Quinn was an enthusiastic gardener, and early in the spring Hyacinth helped her with her flowerbeds. He learnt to plait the foliage of faded crocuses, and pin them tidily to the ground with little wooden forks. He gathered suitable earth for the boxes in which begonias made their earliest sproutings, and learned to know the daffodils and tulips by their names. Later on he helped Mr. Quinn to mow the grass and mix a potent weed-killer for the gravel walks. There came to be an understanding that, whenever he was not absent on a journey, he spent the latter part of the afternoon and the evening with the Quinns. As the days lengthened the family tea was pushed back to later and later hours to give more time out of doors.
There is something about the very occupation of gardening which is deadening to enthusiasm. Perhaps a man learns patience by familiarity with growing plants. Nature is never in a hurry in a garden, and there is no use in trying to hustle a flower, whereas a great impatience is the very life-spirit of enthusiastic patriotism. There has probably never been a revolutionary gardener, or even a strong Radical who worked with open-air flowers. Of course, in greenhouses things can be forced, and the spirit of the ardent reformer may find expression in the nurture of premature blooms. Perhaps also the constant stooping which gardening necessitates, especially in the early spring, when the weeds grow plentifully, tends to destroy the stiff mental independence which must be the attitude of the militant patriot. It is very difficult for a man who has stooped long enough to have conquered his early cramps and aches to face the problems of politics with uncompromising rigidity. Hyacinth recognised with a curious qualm of disgust that his thoughts turned less and less to Ireland’s wrongs and Ireland’s future as he learnt to care for the flowers and the grass.
No doubt, too, the atmosphere of the Quinns’ family life was not congenial to the spirit of the Irish politician. Mrs. Quinn was totally uninterested in politics, and except a prejudice in favour of what she called loyalty, had absolutely no views on any question which did not directly affect her home and her children. Mr. Quinn had a coldly-reasonable political and economic creed, which acted on the luxuriant fancies of Hyacinth’s enthusiasm as his weed-killer did on the tender green of the paths. He declined altogether to see any good in supporting Irish manufactures simply because they were Irish. The story of O’Reilly’s attitude towards his shawls moved him to no indignation.
‘I think he’s perfectly right,’ he said. ‘If a man can buy cheap shawls in England he would be a fool to pay more for Irish ones. Business can’t be run on those lines. I’m not an object of charity, and if I can’t meet fair competition I must go under, and it’s right that I should go under.’
Hyacinth had no answer to give. He shirked the point at issue, and attacked Mr. Quinn along another line in the hope of arousing his indignation.
‘But it is not fair competition that you are called upon to face. Do you call it fair competition when the Government subsidizes a woollen factory in a convent?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Quinn, ‘you are thinking of the four thousand pounds the Congested Districts Board gave to the convent at Bobeen. But it is hardly fair to hold the Government responsible for the way that body wastes eighty thousand pounds a year.’