The matron was as pleased as if she were a friend of mine. I was too amazed to know what to think. I told the detective, however, that as I did not know this part of Dublin, I could not find my way back to the hospital without his company. Off we went again, and he paid my carfare, for which I thanked him.
In the sky overhead were aëroplanes that the British kept hovering over Dublin to impress the people.
"Are those the little things with which you fight the Zeppelins?" I asked my detective.
This remark hurt his feelings. He was not British, he informed me, but a good Redmondite. How embarrassed he was when I asked him if he liked arresting Irish who had shown their love of Ireland by being willing to die for her and, what sometimes seemed worse to me, going into an English prison for life. After that we did not talk any more until he said good-by to me at the hospital door.
The nurses were not as surprised to see me back as I had expected them to be. They had known I was returning, for it was the head doctor who had telephoned the authorities at Dublin Castle to tell them, with a good deal of heat, that I was in no condition to begin a prison sentence. That must have been what the "G-man" had whispered to the old official at Bridewell Prison.
XII
After two weeks more, I left the hospital and went to stay with a friend in Dublin. It seemed very strange to me not to be going back to Surrey House. How everything had changed! As soon as I was strong enough, I went around to see where the fighting had destroyed whole streets. Dublin was scarred and, it seemed to me, very sick. I recalled momentarily that a teacher of mine had once said the name Dublin meant "the Black Pool."
The building where I had first met Thomas McDonagh, the Volunteer headquarters, had a "to let" sign in its windows. Who would want to engage in business in a place where such high hopes had been blasted?