‘Been round your customers here lately?’
‘No. I only arrived this evening, and have done nothing yet. I mean to go round them to-morrow.’
‘You may just as well go home by the early train for all the good you’ll do.’
Hyacinth restrained himself with an effort. He reflected that he was more likely to get at the meaning of these mysterious warnings if he refrained from direct questioning. After a minute of two of silence Mr. Hollywell went on:
‘They had a meeting here a little while ago about the appointment of a Protestant station-master. They didn’t take much by it so far as the railway company is concerned, but I happen to know that word has gone round that every shopkeeper in the town is to order his goods as far as possible from Catholics. Now, everybody knows your boss is a Protestant, but the people are a little uncertain about you. They’ve never seen you at Mass, which is suspicious, but, on the other hand, the way you gas on about Irish manufactures makes them think you can’t be a Protestant. The proper thing for you to do is to lie low till you’ve put in an appearance at Mass, and then go round and try for orders.’
‘That’s the kind of thing,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that I couldn’t do if I had no religion at all; but it happens that I have convictions of a sort, and I don’t mean to go against them.’
‘Oh, well, as I said before, it’s your own affair; only better Protestants than you have done as much. Why, I do it myself constantly, and everyone knows that a Baptist is the strongest kind of Protestant there is.’
This reasoning, curiously enough, proved unconvincing.
‘I can’t believe,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that a religious boycott of the kind is possible. People won’t be such fools as to act clean against their own interests. Considering that nine-tenths of the drapery goods in the country come from England and are sold by Protestant travellers, I don’t see how the shopkeepers could act as you say.’
‘Oh, of course they won’t act against their own interests. I’ve never come across a religion yet that made men do that. They won’t attempt to boycott the English firms, because, as you say, they couldn’t; but they can boycott you. Everything your boss makes is turned out just as well and just as cheap, or cheaper, by the nuns at Robeen. Perhaps you didn’t know that these holy ladies have hired a traveller. Well, they have, and he’s a middling smart man, too—quite smart enough to play the trumps that are put into his hand; and he’s got a fine flush of them now. What with the way that wretched rag of a paper, which started all the fuss, goes on rampaging, and the amount of feeling that’s got up over the station-master, the peaceablest people in the place would be afraid to deal with a Protestant at the present moment. The Robeen man has the game in his own hands, and I’m bound to say he’d be a fool if he didn’t play it for all it’s worth. I’d do it myself if I was in his shoes.’