“I can’t find the letter high or low,” said Doyle.
“Maybe now,” said Father McCormack, “it’s not in your pocket at all.”
“It should be,” said Doyle, “for it was there I put it after showing it to the doctor here yesterday.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Dr. O’Grady, “you can tell us what he said in your own words.”
“What I told my nephew,” said Doyle, “when I was writing to him, was that the committee was a bit pressed in the matter of time, owing to next Thursday week being the only day that it was convenient for the Lord-Lieutenant to attend for the opening of the statue. Well, gentlemen, by the height of good luck it just happens that my nephew has a statue on hand which he thinks would do us.”
“He has what?” said the Major.
“A statue that has been left on his hands,” said Doyle. “The way of it was this. It was ordered by the relatives of a deceased gentleman, and it was to have been put up in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.”
“That shows,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that it’s a first rate statue. They wouldn’t let you put up anything second rate in a cathedral like that.”
“It must be a good one, surely,” said Father McCormack.
“But when the relatives of the deceased party went into his affairs,” said Doyle, “they found he hadn’t died near as well off as they thought he was going to; so they told my nephew that they wouldn’t take the statue and couldn’t pay for it. It was pretty near finished at the time, and what my nephew says is that he could make sure of having it ready for us by the end of this week at the latest.”
“Look here, O’Grady,” said the Major, “I’m as fond of a joke as any man; but I must draw the line somewhere. I’m hanged if I’ll be mixed up in any way with a second-hand statue.”
“It’s not second-hand,” said Dr. O’Grady, “it’s perfectly new. At this moment it isn’t even finished; I wouldn’t ask this committee to buy anything second hand. But you can surely see, Major—you do see, for you raised the point yourself, that with the very short time at our disposal we must, if we are to have a statue at all, get one that’s more or less ready made.”
“But—Good Heavens! O’Grady,” said the Major. “How can you possibly put up a statue of somebody else and call it General John Regan? It won’t be the least like him. How can you—the thing’s too absurd even for you. Who was this man that the statue was made for?”
“Who was he, Doyle?” said Dr. O’Grady. “It doesn’t really matter to us who he was; but you may as well tell the Major so as to satisfy him.”
“I disremember his name,” said Doyle, “and I can’t lay my hand on the letter; but he was a Deputy-Lieutenant of whatever county he belonged to.”
“There you are now, Major,” said Dr. O’Grady. “A Deputy-Lieutenant! Nothing could be more respectable than that. You’re only a J.P. yourself, and I don’t believe you’ll ever be anything more. You can’t afford to turn up your nose at a Deputy-Lieutenant. We shan’t be doing any injury to the General’s reputation by allowing him to be represented by a man of high position, most likely of good family, who was at all events supposed to be well off before he died.”
“I wasn’t thinking of the General’s reputation,” said the Major. “I don’t care a hang——”
“I don’t see that we are bound to consider the feelings of the Deputy-Lieutenant,” said Dr. O’Grady. “After all, if a man deliberately leads his relatives to suppose that he is rich enough to afford a statue in a cathedral and then turns out to be too poor to pay for it, he doesn’t deserve much consideration.”
“I wouldn’t cross the road,” said Doyle, “to do a good turn to a man that let my nephew in the way that fellow did. For let me tell you, gentlemen, that statue would have been a serious loss to him if——”
“I’m not thinking of him or Doyle’s nephew either,” said the Major. “I don’t know who that Deputy-Lieutenant was, and I don’t care if his statue was stuck up in every market town in Ireland.”
“If you’re not thinking of the General,” said the doctor, “and if you’re not thinking of the Deputy-Lieutenant, what on earth are you grumbling about?”
“I’m grumbling, as you call it,” said the Major, “about the utterly intolerable absurdity of the whole thing. Can’t you see it? You can of course, but you won’t. Look here, Father McCormack, you’re a man of some sense and decency of feeling. Can we possibly ask the Lord-Lieutenant to come here and unveil a statue of General John Regan—whoever he was—when all we’ve got is a statue of some other man? Quite possibly the Lord-Lieutenant may have known that Deputy-Lieutenant personally, and if he recognises the statue where shall we be?”
“There’s something in what the Major says,” said Father McCormack. “I’ll not deny there’s something in what he says.”
“There isn’t,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Excuse my contradicting you flatly, Father McCormack, but there really isn’t. We all know Doyle, and we respect him; but I put it to you now, Father McCormack, I put it to any member of the committee: Is Doyle likely to have a nephew who’d be able to make a statue that anybody would recognise?”
“There’s something in that,” said Father McCormack. “I’m not well up in statues, but I’ve seen a few in my time, and all I can say is that unless Doyle’s nephew is a great deal better at the job than most of the fellows that makes them, nobody would know, unless they were told, who their statue’s meant to be like.”
“My nephew’s a good sculptor,” said Doyle. “If he wasn’t I wouldn’t have brought his name forward to-day; but what the doctor says is true enough. I’ve seen heads he’s done, for mural tablets and the like, and so far as anybody recognising them for portraits of the deceased goes, you might have changed the tablets and, barring the inscriptions, nobody would have known to the differ. Not but what they were well done, every one of them.”
“There now, Major,” said Dr. O’Grady. “That pretty well disposes of your last objection.”
“That’s only a side issue,” said the Major, speaking with a calm which was evidently forced. “My point is that we can’t, in ordinary decency, put up a statue of one man to represent another.”
“I don’t know that I altogether agree with the Major there,” said Father McCormack, “but there’s something in what he says.”
“I can’t see that there’s anything,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Deputy-Lieutenants have uniforms, haven’t they? So have Generals. Nobody can possibly know what the uniform of a Bolivian General was fifty or a hundred years ago. All we could do, even if we were having the statue entirely made to order, would be to guess at the uniform. It’s just as likely to be that of a modern Deputy-Lieutenant as anything else.”
“That’s true of course,” said Father McCormack.
“Anyway,” said Doyle, “if we’re to have a statue at all it’ll have to be this one. There’s no other for us to get, so what’s the use of talking?”
The Major shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“There’s evidently no use my talking,” he said.
“Is it your wish then, gentlemen,” said Father McCormack, “that the offer of Mr. Aloysius Doyle to supply a statue of General John Regan be accepted by the committee?”
“It is,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“Subject to the price being satisfactory,” said Gallagher. “We haven’t heard the price yet.”
“I have the letter about the price which my nephew sent me,” said Doyle, “and I think you’ll all agree with me that he’s giving it cheap.”
“He ought to,” said Gallagher, “considering that if he doesn’t sell it to us it’s not likely he’ll sell it at all.”
“The demand for second-hand statues must be small,” said the Major.
“What he says is,” said Doyle, “that considering he’s dealing with a member of his own family he’ll let the statue go at no more than the price of the raw material, not making any charge for the work he’s putting into it. I don’t know that we can expect more than that from him.”
“You cannot, of course,” said Father McCormack.
“Let’s hear the figure,” said Gallagher.
“I should say,” said the Major, “that £10 would be a liberal offer on our part.”
“Shut up, Major,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What do you know about the price of statues? You wouldn’t get a plaster cast of a pet dog for £10.”
Doyle smiled amiably.
“There’s not a man in Ballymoy,” he said, “fonder of a joke than the Major.”
“Let’s hear the figure,” said Gallagher.
“What he says,” said Doyle, “is £81.”
Major Kent whistled.
“But I wouldn’t wonder,” said Doyle, “but you could get him to knock 10s. off that and say £80 10s.”
Dr. O’Grady pulled a sheet of paper towards him and began to write rapidly.
“Statue £80 10s.,” he said. “Carriage, say £1 10s. The railway companies are robbers. Expenses of erection, say £2. You’ll let us have any mortar and cement that are needed for nothing, Doyle; so we’ll only have to pay for labour. I’ll superintend the erection without charging a fee. Illuminated Address, £4. Bouquet £1 is. That’s a good deal to give for a bouquet, but I don’t think we’ll get a decent one for less. Dresses, etc., for Mary Ellen—the green stockings will have to be ordered specially, and so will come to a little money. And we may have to get that grey tweed dress which Mrs. Ford wants, just to prevent her kicking up a row. Two dresses, stockings, etc., for Mary Ellen, say £4. That will include shoes with buckles. She’ll have to wear an Irish brooch of some sort, but we’ll probably be able to borrow that. Lunch for the Vice Regal party on the day of the unveiling—there’ll be at least four of them, say five in case of accidents. That will allow for two aides de camp and a private secretary. They can’t want more. The five of us and Mr. Billing, who said he’d be back for the ceremony. That makes eleven. I suppose you could do us really well, Doyle, at 7s. 6d. a head, including drinks, and there’ll have to be three or four bottles of champagne on the sideboard, just for the look of the thing. We may not have to open more than one. Eleven times 7s. 6d. makes £4 2s. 6d. What do you mean to charge us for the printing of the posters, Gallagher?”
“I’ll say £3,” said Gallagher, “to include posters and advertisements in the paper. I’ll be losing money on it.”
“You’ll not be losing much,” said Dr. O’Grady, “but we’ll say £3. That will make—let me see——”
He added up his column of figures and then checked the result by adding them downwards.
“That comes to £100 3s. 6d.,” he said, “and we’ve not put down anything for postage. You’ll have to get your nephew to knock another 10s. off the price of the statue. After all, when he said £81, he must have been prepared to take £80, and he’ll have to cut the inscription for us without extra charge.”
“He might,” said Doyle, “if we approached him on the subject.”
“He’ll have to,” said Dr. O’Grady, “for £100 is all we’ve got, and we can’t run into debt.”
“He did say,” said Doyle, “that 3d. a letter was the regular charge for cutting inscriptions.”
“We’ll make it short,” said Dr. O’Grady. “We won’t stick him for more than about 10s. over the inscription. After all long inscriptions are vulgar. I propose that Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher, as the only representative of the press among us, be commissioned to write the inscription.”
“We couldn’t have a better man,” said Father McCormack.
“I’ll not do it,” said Gallagher. He had a solid reason for refusing the honour offered to him. The writer of an inscription at the base of a statue is almost bound to make some statement about the person whom the statue represents.
“You will now, Thady,” said Doyle, “and you’ll do it well.”
“I will not,” said Gallagher. “Let the doctor do it himself.”
“There’s no man in Connacht better fit to draw up an inscription of the kind,” said Father McCormack, “than Mr. Gallagher.”
Thady Gallagher was susceptible to flattery. He would have liked very well to draw up an inscription for the statue, modelling it on the resolutions which he was accustomed to propose at political meetings in favour of’ Home Rule. But he was faced with what seemed to him an insuperable difficulty. He did not know who General John Regan was.
“Let the doctor do it,” he said reluctantly.
“Whoever does it,” said Doyle, “it’ll have to be done at once. My nephew said that on account of the way we are pressed for time he’d be glad if the words of the inscription was wired to him to-day.”
“It would, maybe, be better,” said Father McCor-mack, “if you were to do it, doctor. We’ll all be sorry that the words don’t come from the accomplished pen of our respected fellow citizen, Mr. Gallagher——”
“I’ll not do it,” said Gallagher, “for I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“Write it out and have done with it, O’Grady,” said the Major. “What’s the good of keeping us sitting here all day?”
“Very well,” said Dr. O’Grady. “After all, it’s not much trouble. How would this do? ‘General John Regan—Patriot—Soldier—Statesman—Vivat Bolivia’.”
“We couldn’t do better,” said Father McCormack.
“What’s the meaning of the poetry at the end of it?” asked Gallagher.
“It’s not poetry,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and it doesn’t mean much. It’s the Latin for ‘Long live Bolivia.’”
Gallagher rose to his feet. He had been obliged to confess himself unable to write an inscription; but he was thoroughly well able to make a speech.
“Considering,” he said, “that the town of Ballymoy is in the Province of Connacht which is one of the provinces of Ireland, and considering the unswerving attachment through long centuries of alien oppression which the Irish people have shown to the cause of national independence, it’s my opinion that there should be something in the inscription, be the same more or less, about Home Rule. What I say, and what I’ve always said——”
“Very well,” said Dr. O’Grady, “I’ll put ‘Esto Perpetua,’ if you like. It’s the same number of letters, and it’s what Grattan said about the last Home Rule Parliament. That ought to satisfy you, and I’m sure the Major won’t mind.”
“I’m pretty well past minding anything now,” said the Major.
“There’s no example in history,” said Gallagher, “of determined devotion to a great cause equal to that of the Irish people who have been returning Members of Parliament pledged to the demand which has been made with unfaltering tongue on the floor of the House at Westminster——”
“Get a telegraph form, Doyle,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and copy out that inscription while Thady is finishing his speech.”
“There’s one other point that I’d like to mention,” said Doyle, “and it’s this——”
“Wait a minute, Thady,” said Dr. O’Grady. “We’ll just deal with this point of Doyle’s and then you’ll be able to go on without interruption. What is it, Doyle?”
“My nephew says,” said Doyle, “that he’d be glad of a cheque on account for the statue; he having been put to a good deal of out-of-pocket expense.”
“Very well,” said Dr. O’Grady, “send him £25. Now go on, Thady.”
“Is it me send him £25?” said Doyle doubtfully.
“Of course it’s you. You’re the treasurer.”
“But it’s you has Mr. Billing’s cheque,” said Doyle.
“I haven’t got Mr. Billing’s cheque,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“If you haven’t,” said Doyle, helplessly, “who has?”
“It’s my belief,” said Gallagher, in a tone of extreme satisfaction, “that there’s no cheque in it.”
“Do you mean to say, Doyle,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that you’ve been such a besotted idiot as to let that American escape out of this without paying over his subscription for the statue?”
“You’ll never seehimagain,” said Gallagher. “He’s not the first man that skipped the country after letting everybody in.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Father McCormack, “order, please, order.”
“We’ll have to drop the whole thing now,” said the Major, “and I must say I’m extremely glad.”
“I’m no more an idiot than you are yourself, doctor,” said Doyle, “and I won’t have language of the kind used to me. How was I to know he hadn’t given you the cheque?”
“You were the treasurer,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What on earth is a treasurer for if he doesn’t get in the subscriptions?”
“That nephew of yours will have his statue on his hands a bit longer,” said Gallagher.
He still spoke in a tone of satisfaction; but even as he contemplated the extreme disappointment of Doyle’s nephew it occurred to him that there might be a difficulty about paying his own bill for £3. The same thought struck Father McCormack.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “there’s been an unfortunate mistake, but it might be worse.”
“That American fellow has us robbed,” said Gallagher.
“We’ll prosecute him when we catch him,” said Doyle.
“It might be worse,” said Father McCormack. “We haven’t spent very much yet. The dresses for Mary Ellen can hardly have been put in hand yet, so we won’t have to pay for them.”
“There’s my bill,” said Gallagher.
“So there’s only Mr. Gallagher’s little account,” said Father McCormack.
“We’ll have a house-to-house collection,” said Doyle, “till we get the money raised.”
“Don’t be a blithering idiot, Doyle,” said Dr. O’Grady. “How can you go round and ask people to subscribe to——”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Father McCormack.
“We must fall back upon the subscription list that was published in theConnacht Eagle,” said the Major, “as well as I recollect we all promised——”
“Nobody promised anything,” said Doyle. “It was Dr. O’Grady that promised for us and before I pay a penny for a man that owes me more this minute than he can pay——”
“Oh, do shut up, Doyle,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What’s the good of raking up the past? What we’ve got to do now is to find a way out of the confounded hole we’ve been let into through your incompetence and carelessness.”
“I’m down for £5,” said the Major, “and I’ll consider that I’m very well out of this business if I have to pay no more. I’d rather give five pounds any day than stand by watching Mary Ellen and the Lord-Lieutenant making faces at a second-hand statue.”
“It’s a handsome offer, so it is,” said Father McCormack, “and the thanks of the meeting——”
“I’ll not pay a penny,” said Doyle, “and what’s more, if the doctor doesn’t pay me what he owes me I’ll put him into the County Court.”
“It’s you that’ll have to pay,” said Gallagher, “whether you like it or not.”
“I’m damned if I do,” said Doyle.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Father McCormack, “will you mind what you’re saying? That’s no language to be using, Mr. Doyle; and I don’t think the doctor has any right—not that I mind myself what you say for I’m not particular; but if it was to get out to the ears of the general public that this meeting had been conducting itself in ways that’s very far from being reputable——”
“There’s no general public here,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and that’s just as well.”
“What I’m trying to tell you,” said Father McCormack, “and what I would tell you if you’d listen to me, is that there’s somebody knocking at the door of the room we’re in and whoever it is must have heard every word that’s been said this last five minutes.”
Doyle and Gallagher stopped growling at each other when the priest spoke. Dr. O’Grady sat upright in his chair and bent his head towards the door. There was a moment’s silence in the room and a very faint, as it were an apologetic, knock was heard at the door.
“Come in,” said Dr. O’Grady.
Mary Ellen opened the door and looked in. She appeared to be rather frightened. If, as Father McCormack supposed she heard every word spoken during the previous five minutes, she had very good reason for feeling nervous. She had a still better reason a moment later when Doyle caught sight of her. Doyle had completely lost command of his temper.
“Get away out of that, Mary Ellen,” he said, “and if I catch sight of you here again before I call for you I’ll have the two ears cut off you and yourself sent home to your mother with them in a paper parcel in the well of the car.”
Curiously enough this appalling threat seemed to cheer Mary Ellen a little. She smiled.
“Mrs. Gregg says——” she said.
“If you’re not outside the door and it shut after you before I’ve done speaking I’ll do what I’ve said and worse on top of that,” said Doyle.
“I won’t have Mary Ellen bullied,” said Dr. O’Grady. “It’s all you’re fit for, Doyle, to frighten helpless little girls. If you’d talked that way to Billing when he was trying to run away without paying——”
“You’re a nice one to talk about paying,” said Doyle.
Dr. O’Grady left his seat and walked over lo the door.
“What is it now, Mary Ellen?” he said.
“Mrs. Gregg says,” she said, “will I be wearing a hat or will I not?”
“Go back to Mrs. Gregg,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and tell her that you will not wear a hat, but you’ll have your hair tied up with a green silk ribbon to match your stockings. Would you like that?”
“I’d as soon have a hat,” said Mary Ellen, “and Mr. Moriarty says———”
“Surely to goodness,” said Dr. O’Grady, “he hasn’t been helping to order your clothes!”
“He has not,” said Mary Ellen, “but he was outside the barrack and me coming along the street——”
“He always is,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“And he said to me that it wouldn’t do for me to be dressed up any way foolish like.”
“Let Constable Moriarty mind his own business,” said Dr. O’Grady. “You go back and tell Mrs. Gregg what I say.”
The other members of the committee sat listening with amazed interest to all Dr. O’Grady said to Mary Ellen. Even Doyle was too much astonished to attempt an interruption. He said nothing till the doctor, having dismissed Mary Ellen, returned to the table. Then he spoke.
“And who’s going to pay for the green ribbon which is to go along with the stockings? Who’s going to pay for it? That’s what I’m asking you. You needn’t be thinking that I will.”
“Gentlemen,” said Dr. O’Grady, “I owe you all an apology. I’m afraid I lost my temper for a minute or two. Father McCormack, I beg your pardon, and if I said—as I fear I did say—anything disrespectful to you as chairman——”
“Don’t speak another word, Doctor,” said Father McCormack, “you’ve said enough. Sure anyone might have been betrayed into a strong expression when he was provoked. Not that you said a word to me that you’ve any reason to be sorry for.”
“Major Kent,” said Dr. O’Grady, “if I’ve in any way insulted you——”
“Not worse than usual,” said Major Kent. “I’m quite accustomed to it.”
“Mr. Doyle,” said the doctor, “I’m afraid that in the heat of the moment I may have—but I can do no more than ask your pardon———”
“I don’t care a thraneen,” said Doyle, “what you called me, and I’ll give you leave to call me that and more every day of the week if you see your way to get the £100 out of the American gentleman.”
“I can’t do that,” said Dr. O’Grady, “but I have a proposal to lay before the meeting which I think will get us out of our difficulty.”
“Let you speak out,” said Doyle, “and if so be that you’re not asking us to pay up——”
“I think we may take it for granted, gentlemen,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that if we produce a creditable statue for the Lord-Lieutenant to unveil and give him a really gratifying illuminated address——”
“The statue and the illuminated address would be all right,” said Doyle, “if there was any way of paying for them.”
“And a bouquet,” said Dr. O’Grady; “and a good luncheon. If we do all that and make ourselves generally agreeable by means of Mary Ellen and in other ways the Lord-Lieutenant couldn’t very well refuse to give us a grant of Government money to build a pier.”
“It’s likely he’d give it,” said Father McCormack, “it’s likely enough that he’d give it—if we——”
“He couldn’t well not,” said Doyle, “after us giving him a lunch and all.”
“If so be,” said Gallagher, “that he was to refuse at the latter end we’d have questions asked about him in Parliament; and believe you me that’s what he wouldn’t like. Them fellows is terrible afraid of the Irish Members. And they’ve a good right to be, for devil the finer set of men you’d see anywhere than what they are. There isn’t a thing goes wrong in the country but they’re ready to torment the life out of whoever might be responsible for the man that did it.”
“Very well,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Now do we want a pier?”
“We want the money,” said Doyle.
“I don’t know,” said Father McCormack, “could we get the money without we’d build a pier when we’d got it.”
“My point is,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that the pier itself, the actual stone structure sticking out into the sea, being no particular use to any one once it’s built——”
“It’d be a public nuisance,” said the Major.
“We can do very well with an inferior kind of pier,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What I mean to say is we might spend a little less than we’re actually given.”
“What about the inspector they’d send down?” said Doyle.
“Them inspectors,” said Gallagher, “is as thick about the country as fleas on a dog. Hardly ever a man would turn round without he’d have one of them asking him what he was doing it for.”
For once Gallagher had spoken in a way that was acceptable to the other members of the committee. There was a general murmur of assent. Everyone present was more or less conscious of the enormous numbers of inspectors in Ireland. Even Major Kent, who had been in a bad temper all along, brightened up a little.
“I was reading a paper the other day,” he said, “that 80 per cent, of the adult population of Leinster, Munster and Connacht, were paid by the Government to teach the other people how to get their livings, and to see that they did what they were told. That included schoolmasters.”
“I shouldn’t wonder now,” said Father McCormack, “that those figures would be about right.”
“It was only the week before last,” said Doyle, “that there was a man stopping in my hotel, a man that looked as if he was earning a comfortable salary, and he——”
Doyle spoke in the tone of a man who is going to tell a long and leisurely story. Dr. O’Grady, who had heard the story before, interrupted him.
“Of course we’d have to talk to the inspector when he comes,” he said.
“You’d do that, O’Grady,” said the Major. “You’d talk to a bench of bishops.”
“I’m not sure,” said Father McCormack, “that I quite see what the doctor’s getting at.”
“It’s simple enough,” said Dr. O’Grady, “Suppose he offers us £500 for a pier—he can’t well make it less——”
“It’ll be more,” said Doyle optimistically. “It’ll be nearer a thousand pounds.”
“Say £500,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What I propose is that we spend £400 on a pier and use the other hundred to pay for the statue and the rest of the things we have to get.”
“Bedamn,” said Doyle, “but that’s great. That’s the best ever I heard.”
Major Kent rose to his feet. He was very red in the face, and there was a look of rigid determination in his eyes.
“I may as well tell you at once,” he said, “that I’ll have nothing to do with any such plan.”
“Why not?” said Dr. O’Grady.
“Because I’m an honest man. I raised no particular objection when you merely proposed to make a fool of me and everybody else concerned——”
“You’ve done very little else except raise objections,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“—But when it comes to a deliberate act of dishonesty———”
“That’s a hard word, so it is,” said Doyle.
“It’s not a bit too hard,” said the Major, “and I say it again. Dishonesty. I won’t have anything to do——”
“The Major’s right,” said Father McCormack, “there’s no denying it, the Major’s right.”
“He would be right,” said Dr. O’Grady, “he’d be perfectly right if there were any dishonesty about the matter. I hope it isn’t necessary for me to say that if I thought the plan a dishonest one I’d be the last man in Ireland to propose it.”
“Of course, of course,” said Father McCormack.
“The doctor wouldn’t do the like,” said Doyle.
“Sure we all know that,” said Father McCormack, “but the objection that the Major has raised——”
“It’s all very well talking,” said the Major. “But talking won’t alter facts. It is dishonest to get a grant of money for one purpose and use it for something totally different.”
“I’m not quite sure,” said Dr. O’Grady, “whether you quite understand the philosophy of modern charity, Major.”
“I understand the ten commandments,” said the Major, “and that’s enough for me.”
“Nobody’s saying a word against the ten commandments,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“You’re going to do something against one of them,” said the Major, “and that’s worse. If you merely said things against them I shouldn’t mind. We all know that you’d say anything.”
“You’re begging the question, Major, you really are. Now listen to me. What’s the ordinary recognised way of raising large sums of money for charitable objects? Some kind of bazaar, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Father McCormack. “There’s hardly ever a winter but there’s one or two of them up in Dublin for hospitals or the like.”
“Very well,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What happens when a bazaar is held?”
“It doesn’t matter to us what happens,” said the Major. “We’re not holding one.”
“Let the doctor speak,” said Doyle.
“What happens is this,” said Dr. O’Grady. “A large sum of money, very often an enormous sum, is spent on getting up switch-back railways, and Alpine panoramas, and underground rivers, and old English villages. Those things are absolutely necessary to the success of the show. They cost thousands of pounds sometimes. Now, who pays for them? The charity pays, and is jolly glad to. The price of them is deducted from the gross receipts and the balance is handed over to the hospital. Is there anything dishonest about that?”
“There is not, of course,” said Father McCormack. “It’s always done.”
“Wouldn’t a bishop do it? A bishop of any church?”
“Lots of them do,” said Father McCormack.
“Well, if a bishop would do it, it can’t be dishonest,” said Dr. O’Grady. “You’ll agree to that, I suppose, Major? You won’t want to accuse the hierarchy of Ireland, Protestant and Roman Catholics, of flying in the face of the ten commandments.”
The Major had sat down again. While Dr. O’Grady was speaking he turned his chair half round and stared out of the window. He wished to convey the impression that he was not listening to a word that was said. When Dr. O’Grady appealed to him directly he turned round again and answered:
“It’s dishonest to take money given for one purpose and use it for another,” he said.
“I’m with you there, Major,” said Father McCormack. “I’m with you there.”
“Are you prepared,” said Dr. O’Grady, “to go back on the whole theory of necessary expenses? Would you refuse to allow the unfortunate secretary of a charitable society to refund himself for the postage stamps he uses in sending out his appeals?”
“Secretaries have nothing to do with us,” said the Major. “This is a simple question of right and wrong.”
“You haven’t quite caught my point yet,” said Dr. O’Grady patiently. “What I’m trying to explain to you is this: we’re in exactly the same position as the charity that’s getting up a bazaar. In order to make the money we want for the good of the town—the good of the town, mind you, Major—that’s a worthy object.”
“A pier wouldn’t be any good if you had it,” said the Major.
“A lot of money would be spent building it,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and that would do us all good. But in order to get a pier we must incur some expense. We shan’t get the pier unless we succeed in enticing a Lord-Lieutenant down here.”
“You will not,” said Doyle. “It’s waste of time writing letters to those fellows, for they don’t read them.”
“And we can’t get the Lord-Lieutenant down unless we have a statue for him to unveil,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“He wouldn’t come without he had something of the sort,” said Father McCormack. “That’s sure.”
“Therefore,” said Dr. O’Grady, “the statue is a necessary part of our expenses in getting the pier. So is the illuminated address. So is the bouquet. And we’re just as well entitled to charge what they all cost us against the money we succeed in making, as the secretary of a charitable bazaar is to debit his gross earnings with the hire of the hall in which the show is held.”
“Now that you put it in that way,” said Father McCormack, “I can see well that there’s something in what you say.”
“Honesty and dishonesty are two different things,” said the Major.
“Don’t keep on making those bald and senseless assertions,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Even an income tax collector, and he’s the most sceptical kind of man there is with regard to assertions about money—but even he allows his victims to deduct the expenses necessarily incurred in making their incomes from the gross amount which they return to him. You can’t want to go behind the income tax authorities, Major.”
“It’s all very well arguing,” said the Major, “and I can’t answer you when you confuse things in the way you do. But I know perfectly well that it isn’t right——”
“Well do what the doctor says, anyway,” said Doyle. “Doesn’t the Government rob the whole of us every day more than ever we’ll be able to rob it?”
“There’s something in that, too,” said Father McCormack.
Curiously enough Doyle’s statement produced far more effect on Major Kent’s mind than the elaborate arguments of Dr. O’Grady. He was accustomed to gnash his teeth over the burden of taxation laid upon him. He had often, in private conversation, described governments, especially Liberal Governments, as bandits and thieves.
“We are robbed,” he said. “I admit that. What with the extra tax on unearned income and the insurance of servants against accidents, and this infernal new unemployment insurance, and the death duties, and——”
“There was a report of the Financial Relations Commission,” said Gallagher, “which presented a case on behalf of Ireland that showed——”
“Don’t drag in politics, Thady,” said Dr. O’Grady. “The Major admits that he’s robbed. That ought to be enough for you. Now, Major, if you were attacked by a highwayman——”
“I didn’t say the Government was a highwayman,” said the Major.
“You said it was a robber. Didn’t he, Father Mc-Cormack?”
“He said it had him robbed,” said Father McCormack, with the air of a man who is carefully making a fine distinction.
“That’s exactly the same thing. Now, Major, if a robber stole your money, wouldn’t you take the first chance you could of getting it back? You know you would. We all would. And would you call that dishonesty? You would not. Now we’re offering you the chance of getting something back, a mere trifle, but still something, out of a Government which, as you admit, has robbed you. Why on earth do you start making a fuss?”
“I can’t argue with you, O’Grady,” said the Major, “but you’re wrong.”
“What’s the good of talking?” said Doyle. “We’ll do what the doctor says.”
“Your nephew won’t be able to get that advance he asked for,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“Let him not,” said Doyle. “I don’t pity him. He’ll get his money in the end.”
“Gentlemen,” said Father McCormack, “is it your will that the plan now laid before the meeting by Dr. O’Grady, be adopted?”
“It is,” said Gallagher.
“What else is there for us to do?” said Doyle.
“You may take me as dissenting,” said the Major.
“I’ll make a note of that in the minutes,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and then your conscience will be perfectly clear, no matter what happens.”
“Well, gentlemen,” said Father McCormack, “I suppose that completes our arrangements for to-day. When shall we have our next meeting?” He rose to his feet as he spoke. Everyone else rose too. Major Kent put on his hat and walked towards the door. When he reached it he turned.
“I shan’t come to any more meetings,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s any necessity to hold another meeting,” said Dr. O’Grady, “until after the Lord-Lieutenant has left and the time comes for squaring up things. I shall be so busy between this and the day of his visit that I shan’t have time to attend meetings.”
“Very well,” said Father McCormack. “I shall be all the better pleased.”
He left the room and followed Major Kent down the stairs.
“Thady,” said Doyle, “do you go down to the bar, and I’ll be with you in a minute. I’ve a word to say to the doctor.”
“I could do with a sup of porter after all that talk,” said Gallagher, as he left the room.
“Doctor,” said Doyle, “if things turn out the way we hope——“.
“I suppose you’re knocking a commission out of that nephew of yours for selling his statue for him?”
“Twenty-five per pent, is the amount agreed on. It isn’t everyone I’d tell, but I’ve confidence in you, doctor.”
“And if we get £500 for the pier?”
“A middling good pier,” said Doyle, “as good a pier as anyone’d have a right to expect in a place like this, might be built for £300.”
“That’ll put £120 into your pocket, Doyle, not counting anything you may make on the luncheons!”
“What I was meaning to say, doctor, is, that it would be a satisfaction to me if there was something coming to yourself. You deserve it.”
“Thank you, Doyle; but I’m not in this business to make money.”
“It would be well,” said Doyle with a sigh, “if you’d make a little more now and again.”
“If you’re going to start about that wretched bill I owe you——”
“I am not then. Nor I won’t mention it to you until such time as you might be able to pay it. If so be that things turn out the way you say I shouldn’t care——”
“If you keep Gallagher waiting too long for his drink,” said Dr. O’Grady, “he’ll start breaking things. He must be uncommonly thirsty after all the speeches he made this afternoon.”
“That’s true,” said Doyle. “I’d maybe better go to him.”
Constable Moriarty stood just outside the door of the hotel. He saluted Major Kent as he passed. He touched his hat respectfully to Father McCormack. He saw Gallagher come downstairs and enter the bar. A few minutes later he saw Dr. O’Grady. All traces of his usual smile vanished from his face. He drew himself up stiffly, and his eyes expressed something more than official severity. When Dr. O’Grady passed through the door into the street, Moriarty confronted him.
“I’m glad to see,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that you’ve stopped grinning. It’s quite time you did.”
“It’s not grins I’m talking about now,” said Moriarty. “It’s Mary Ellen.”
“Nice little girl, isn’t she?”
“It’s a nice little girl you’ll make of her before you’ve done! What’s this I’m after hearing about the way you have in mind for dressing her up?”
“Do be reasonable, Moriarty! What’s the good of asking me what you’ve heard? I can’t possibly know, for I wasn’t there when you heard it.”
“You know well what I heard.”
“Look here, Moriarty,” said Dr. O’Grady. “If you think I’m going to stand here to be bullied by you in the public street you’re greatly mistaken. Why don’t you go and patrol somewhere?”
“I’ll not have Mary Ellen play-acting before the Lord-Lieutenant, so now you know, doctor.”
“There’s no play-acting to be done,” said Dr. O’Grady. “We haven’t even had time to get up a pageant. I wish we had. You’d look splendid as a Roman Emperor trampling on a conquered people. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t get you up as an Assyrian bull. The expression of your face is just right this minute.”
“Mary Ellen’s an orphan girl,” said Moriarty, “with no father to look after her, and what’s more I’m thinking of marrying her myself. So it’s as well for you to understand, doctor, that I’ll not have her character took from her. It’s not the first time you’ve tried that same, but it had better be the last.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Moriarty. There’s nobody injuring the girl’s character except, maybe, yourself. Doyle tells me you’re never out of the back-yard of the hotel.”
“You put it out that she was married to young Kerrigan.”
“That was Thady Gallagher,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and it didn’t do her a bit of harm. Nobody except Mr. Billing believed it.”
“I don’t mind that so much now,” said Moriarty, “though I don’t deny I was angry at the time, but what I won’t have is Mary Ellen dressed up to be an ancient Irish colleen. It’s not respectful to the girl.”
“You told me the other day that you want the Lord-Lieutenant to make you a sergeant. Did you mean that when you said it, or did you not?”
“It’s no way to make a sergeant of me to be dressing up Mary Ellen.”
“It’s far the best way. When the Lord-Lieutenant sees her and hears——”
“It’s not going to be done, anyway,” said Moriarty, “for I won’t have it.”
“Listen to me now,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and you may take it that this is my last word, for I haven’t time to waste talking to you. If I catch you interfering with Mary Ellen in any way or setting the girl’s mind up against the costume that Mrs. Gregg has designed for her, I’ll speak to Mr. Gregg, and have you transferred to some different county altogether, where you’ll never see Mary Ellen either in fancy dress or any other way. What’s more I’ll represent your conduct to the Lord-Lieutenant, so that you’ll never be made a sergeant as long as you live.”
These threats affected Moriarty. He had no doubt in his mind that Dr. O’Grady could and would carry out the first of them. About the second he was not quite so sure, but it remained a horrible possibility.
He saw that there was nothing to be done by opposing his will to a powerful combination of private influence and official power. Without speaking another word he turned and walked across the street to the barrack. But his anger had by no means died away. He found Sergeant Colgan asleep in the living-room. He woke him at once.
“I’ll be even with that doctor,” he said, “before I’ve done with him.”
“That’s threatening language,” said the sergeant, who was not pleased at being wakened, “and it’s actionable; so you’d better mind yourself, Moriarty. There’s many a better man than you has gone to jail for less than that. I knew a Member of Parliament one time that got three weeks for no more than saying that he’d like to see the people beating the life out of a land grabber. What has the doctor been doing to you?”
“It’s about Mary Ellen.”
“Get out,” said the sergeant, “you and your Mary Ellen! It’s too fond you are of running here and there after that same Mary Ellen.”
It was plain that no sympathy was to be expected from Sergeant Colgan. Moriarty sat down on a chair in the corner and meditated on plans of vengeance. The sergeant dropped off to sleep again.