Our interview had ostensibly been for the purpose of discussing certain letters I had given into his care at a former interview, but, as he afterwards told me, he had asked those persons, who had, I thought, stared at me in the hotel, if they could identify me with someone who had been impersonating me with the hope of better entangling Parnell, and of preventing him from publicly protecting his honour for fear of dragging me into the case. The "gentlemen from Ireland" who had had so good a look at me were forced to admit that they had never seen me before in their lives.
Shortly before the case came on I asked Mr. Lewis if he would mind my going to see Mr. Soames (solicitor for the Times). He answered, "I do not see why you should not do so if you wish it," and to Parnell, who had just come in, "It will be quite safe for her to see Soames." "Yes, of course, she knows best," answered Parnell, and off I went, pursued by Mr. Lewis's "You must come straight back here, Mrs. O'Shea," as he put me into the waiting cab.
My waiting cab was always an acute irritation to Lewis. Alter his first greeting of me he invariably asked me if my cab was waiting. "Yes, of course, how else should get home?" "You are not going to drive home!" with horror. "No, but to the station." "Pay him off, my dear lady, and I'll send for another when I have given you some tea," encouragingly. "But I like this horse, he has such good legs." Then dear Mr. Lewis used to get intensely irritated, and send someone flying to pay my cab to go away at once. I never dared at this stage to tell him that I always made a compact with the cabman that "waiting did not count."
On my arrival at Mr. Soames's office he saw me at once without any pretence of being "too busy." In fact his office appeared almost deserted, and he welcomed me as his "cousin." He took some time in arranging the exact collateral degree of our relationship, but beyond this our interview behind his closely shut glass-panelled door led to nothing. I was desirous of finding out which way his suspicions tended—as obviously he did not really think that Parnell had written the letters; he, on his part, was trying to find out why I had come.
On the 1st of March, 1889, Pigott shot himself in Madrid. It was a painful affair, and Parnell was sorry for the poor creature.
When Parnell attended the House for the first time after the result of the Parnell Commission was made known, I was not well, and could not get to the Ladies' Gallery, as I had hoped to do, but long before he came I had had reports of the tremendous ovation he received; how every section of the House—Ministers, Opposition—all rose at his entry as one man, cheering themselves hoarse and shouting his name. I asked him afterwards if he had not felt very proud and happy then, but he only smiled, and answered, "They would all be at my throat in a week if they could!" I thought of that speech a little later on.
Soon after the death of Pigott Mr. Parnell met Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone at Mrs. Sydney Buxton's[[5]] "at home." Almost the only comment, when he got home was: "That's over; thank goodness!"
On May 28th, 1889, Sir Charles and Lady Russell gave a reception in honour of the hero of the fight. Parnell hated these affairs, but, as I pointed out to him, it would be very sad if all those people assembled to meet him and he was not there. The reception was a time of adulation for him from first to last, I afterwards heard, but when Parnell came home and told me all about it he remarked, "It was all very kind and just as troublesome as usual—or would have been had I not discovered a pretty little brown head with friendly eyes that looked as shy as I felt."
I answered, "Dear me, who was this charming lady? I should like to know!"
"That is just what she was, a charming little lady, an Irishwoman. You know, Queenie, you are the only Englishwoman I can bear! This was Katharine Tynan; you read some of her things to me," and he went on to speak of others at the reception, afterwards reverting to the pleasure he had felt in meeting Katharine Tynan, who he believed genuinely felt what all "those others" were saying.