“The whole of it?” said Waterhouse. “Good Lord!”
“You’d have spent it in the Strand Palace Hotel, I suppose, running in and out of music halls, but I prefer the simple joys of country life, though I couldn’t shoot or ride properly on account of my arm. Still I could watch the sunset and listen to the birds singing, which I like. Besides, I was absolutely stoney at the time, and couldn’t have stayed in London for a week. As it happened, it was a jolly good thing I was there. If I’d been in London I’d have missed that war. Perhaps I’d better begin by telling you the sort of place Ballymahon is.”
“You needn’t,” said Waterhouse. “I spent three months in camp in County Tipperary. I know those dirty little Irish towns. Twenty public-houses. Two churches, a workhouse and a police barrack.”
“In Ballymahon there is also a court house and our ancestral home. My old dad is the principal doctor in the neighbourhood. He lives on one side of the court house. The parish priest lives on the other. You must grasp these facts in order to understand the subsequent military operations. The only other thing you really must know is that Ballymahon lies in a hole with hills all round it, like the rim of a saucer. Well, on Monday afternoon, Easter Monday, the enemy, that is to say, the Sinn Feiners, marched in and took possession of the town. It was a most imposing sight, Waterhouse. There were at least eight hundred of them. Lots of them had uniforms. Most of them had flags. There were two bands and quite a lot of rifles. The cavalry——”
“You can’t expect me to believe in the cavalry,” said Waterhouse. ‘’But I say, supposing they really came, didn’t the loyal inhabitants put up any kind of resistance?”
“My old dad,” said Power, “was the only loyal inhabitant, except four policemen. You couldn’t expect four policemen to give battle to a whole army. They shut themselves up in their barrack and stayed there. My dad, being a doctor, was of course a non-combatant. I couldn’t do anything with my arm in a sling, so there was no fight at all.”
“I suppose the next thing they did was loot the public-houses,” said Waterhouse, “and get gloriously drunk?”
“Certainly not. I told you that our war was properly conducted. There was no looting in Ballymahon and I never saw a drunken man the whole time. If those Sinn Feiners had a fault it was over-respectability. I shouldn’t care to be in that army myself.”
“I believe that,” said Waterhouse. “It’s the first thing in this story that I really have believed.”
“They used to march about all day in the most orderly manner, and at night there were sentries at every street corner who challenged you in Irish. Not knowing the language, I thought it better to stay indoors. But my dad used to wander about. He’s a sporting old bird and likes to know what’s going on. Well, that state of things lasted three days and we all began to settle down comfortably for the summer. Except that there were no newspapers or letters there wasn’t much to complain about. In fact, you’d hardly have known there was a war on. It wasn’t the least like this beastly country where everyone destroys everything he sees, and wretched devils have to live in rabbit-holes. In Ballymahon we lived in houses with beds and chairs and looked after ourselves properly. Then one morning—it must have been Friday—news came in that a lot of soldiers were marching on the town. Some country girls saw them and came running in to tell us. I must say for the Sinn Fein commander that he kept his head. His name was O’Farrelly and he called himself a Colonel. He sent out scouts to see where the soldiers were and how many there were. Quite the proper thing to do. I didn’t hear exactly what the scouts reported; but that evening O’Farrelly came round to our house to talk things over with my dad.”