“Anyhow it wasn’t that which brought me to Belfast. The fact is, Excellency, I couldn’t very well stay at home. You remember,”—here his voice sunk to a whisper—“what I told you about the Pringles.”
“Your bank account?”
“No. Not that. The girl, I mean. Tottie Pringle.”
“Oh yes, I remember.”
“Well, old Pringle began to get offensive. He seemed to think that I ought to—you know.”
“Marry her? I expect you ought.”
“Excellency?” said Godfrey in genuine horror and amazement.
“By the way,” said Bland, “I forgot to mention that I promised the court martial to get your nephew out of Belfast before to-morrow morning. I hope you don’t mind. They wouldn’t let him go on any other condition.”
“Quite right,” I said. “Godfrey shall start to-night.”
“I don’t see why I should,” said Godfrey. “I don’t think it’s at all nice of you, Excellency, to—”
“And while we’re at it,” I said, “we may as well ship off Clithering. Godfrey let me introduce you to—”
I looked round and discovered that Clithering was not in the room.
“I hope to goodness,” I said, “that he’s not gone out to get himself hanged. He rather wanted to a few minutes ago.”
“It’s all right,” said Bland. “I saw him going upstairs. I expect he’s looking for his clothes.”
“Godfrey,” I said. “I’m going to offer you a great chance. Sir Samuel Clithering is in every way a very big man. In the first place he’s very rich. In the next place he’s on intimate terms with the Prime Minister. In fact he’s been sending him telegrams every hour or so for the last two days. You go upstairs and help him to find his clothes. Then take him over to London. The Fleetwood steamer is still running. If you can get him out of Belfast and lay him down safe and sound on his own doorstep the Government will be so grateful that they’ll very likely make you a stipendiary magistrate.”
“But supposing he doesn’t want to go?”
“You’ll have to make him,” I said.
“How?” said Godfrey. “How can I?”
“Don’t be a fool, Godfrey,” I said. “Nag at him. You’ve got more than two hours before you, and nagging is a thing you’re really good at.”
Bland took Godfrey by the arm and led him up to Clithering’s bedroom. He locked them in together, and did not open the door again until half an hour before the steamer started. Then he took up Clithering’s clothes to him. Godfrey had evidently spent the time as I advised. Clithering deserved it, of course; but he certainly looked as if he had been through a bad time when Bland let him out.
There was a meeting of the Ulster Defence Committee at seven o’clock. It was summoned, so the noticewhich I received informed me, in order to make arrangements for preserving the peace of the town. This, I thought, was very proper work for the committee. The Cabinet was probably making other arrangements with the same object. Between them the committee and the Government had destroyed what little peace Belfast ever had. The least they could do was to restore it.
Moyne took the chair as usual. He opened our proceedings by saying firmly and decisively, that he intended to surrender himself at once to the authorities.
“We’re the only authorities there are at present,” said McNeice, “so if you want to surrender—”
“We must resolve ourselves into a Provisional Government,” said the Dean, who always likes to do things constitutionally.
“The police,” said Moyne feebly.
“There aren’t any,” said McNeice.
“Wiped out,” said Malcolmson.
“The General in command of the troops—” said Moyne.
“The troops are shut up in their barracks,” said McNeice.
“Licked,” said Malcolmson.
“Say,” said Conroy, “are you dead sure you whipped them?”
“They bolted,” said Malcolmson.
“I don’t reckon to be a military expert,” said Conroy, “but it kind of occurs to me that those troops weren’t doing all they knew. I don’t say but you’re quite right to boost your men all you can; but we’ll make a big mistake if we start figuring on having defeated the British army.”
“I happen to know,” I said, “that Mr. Conroy is quite right. Clithering—”
“That spaniel!” said McNeice.
“He told me,” I said, “that the troops had orders to fire over our men’s heads. The idea, I think, was not so much to injure as to overawe us.”
“It was a damned foolish idea,” said McNeice sulkily.
“You cannot,” said the Dean, “overawe the men of Ulster.”
This is one of the Dean’s most cherished opinions. I have heard him express it a great many times. I do not know whether the Dean had actually been fighting during the afternoon. I am sure he wanted to; but he may have considered it his duty to do no more than look on. Our Dean is particularly strong on Old Testament history. I am sure he recollected that Moses sat on the top of an adjacent hill while Joshua was fighting the Amalekites.
“If you want to surrender yourself,” said Conroy to Moyne, “I reckon you’ll have the chance of handing yourself over to a British Admiral before long.”
“Have you any reason to suppose that the Fleet—?” said Moyne.
“We’re ready for them,” said Malcolmson. “If the Government thinks it can force Home Rule on Ulster with the guns of the Channel Fleet, it’s making a big mistake. It’ll find that out before long.”
“If you like, Lord Moyne,” said Conroy, “we’ll put you under arrest and then nobody will be able to hold you responsible afterwards for anything that happens. You’ll be quite safe.”
Whatever Moyne’s motives may have been in wishingto surrender himself, I am perfectly sure that a desire for his own safety was not one of them. I imagine that he hoped, in a confused and troubled way, to get himself somehow on the side of law and order again. Moyne was never meant to be a rebel.
Conroy’s words were insulting, intentionally so, I think. He wished to get rid of Moyne before the committee discussed the defence of Belfast against the Fleet. He may have wished to get rid of me too. He succeeded. Moyne is not nearly so thorough-going a patrician as his wife; but he has sufficient class pride to dislike being insulted by a millionaire. He got up and left the room. He looked so lonely in his dignified retirement that I felt I ought to give him such support as I could. I rose too, took his arm, and went out with him.
People who organize and carry through revolutions generally begin by cutting the telegraph wires, with a view to isolating the scene of action. I cannot help thinking that this is a mistake. We kept our telegraph offices open day and night, and I am strongly of opinion that we gained rather than lost by our departure from the established ritual of revolutions. The news which came to us from England was often encouraging, and generally of some value. Nor do I think that the Government gained any advantage over us by the messages which Clithering as their agent, or Bland and others in their capacity of public entertainers, sent from Belfast to London.
When Moyne and I got back to our hotel we found two long telegrams and one short one waiting for us. The first we opened was from Lady Moyne. She had, it appeared, spent a very strenuous day. She caught the Prime Minister at breakfast in his own house, and probably spoiled his appetite. She ran other members of the Cabinet to earth at various times during the day. One unfortunate man she found playing a mixed foursome on a suburban golf links. She impressed upon him, as she had upon all his colleagues the appalling wickedness of shooting the citizens of Belfast. Every one, it appeared, agreed with her on this point. The Government’s policy, so they told her and she told us, was to cow, not to kill, the misguided people who wererioting in Belfast. She besought Moyne to use all his influence to moderate the anti-Home Rule enthusiasm of Malcolmson and the Dean.
Moyne smiled in a sickly way when we came to this advice.
The other long telegram was from Babberly. I must say that Babberly at this crisis displayed immense energy and something like political genius. Having been all his life a strong Conservative, and a supporter of force as a remedy for every kind of social unpleasantness, he turned a most effective somersault and appealed suddenly to the anti-militarist feelings of the Labour Party. He succeeded—I cannot even imagine how—in organizing a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square to protest against the murder of the working-men of Belfast in the streets of their own city, by the hired mercenaries of the capitalist classes. The meeting was actually engaged in making its protest while Moyne and I were reading the telegrams. Babberly’s case was really extraordinarily strong. Soldiers were shooting off guns in Belfast, and the people they fired at—or as we knew, fired over—were working-men. There was occasion for a strong and eloquent appeal to the sentiment of the solidarity of labour. Babberly was just the man to make it with the utmost possible effectiveness. I pictured him perched on the head of one of the British lions which give its quite peculiar dignity to Trafalgar Square, beseeching a crowd of confused but very angry men not to allow the beast to open its mouth or show its teeth. I could easily imagine that the news of Babberly’s exertions, dribbling in during the day to the offices of harassed Ministers, might have reinforced with grave political considerationsthe hysterical humanitarian telegrams which Clithering was shooting off from the seat of war. A Tory Government might survive a little bloodshed. A Liberal Government convicted of having incited a soldier to shoot a working-man would be in a perilous position.
“I must say,” I said, “that Babberly is infernally clever. I don’t quite know where he’ll find himself afterwards, but—”
“What does it matter about afterwards?” said Moyne, “if only we get out of the mess we’re in, nothing that happens afterwards need trouble us in the least.”
“If this meeting of his is really a success,” I said, “we may feel pretty confident that there’ll be no more shooting anyhow.”
The next telegram, the short one, rather dashed our hopes of immediate peace. It was from Lady Moyne.
“The Channel Fleet,” she said, “has been ordered to Belfast Lough. Expected to arrive to-morrow morning. Advise unconditional surrender.”
Moyne is very fond of his wife, and has a sincere admiration for her abilities; but on the receipt of this telegram he lost his temper.
“What on earth,” he said, “is the use of advising unconditional surrender when Conroy and Malcolmson are engaged at this moment in making plans for sinking the Fleet with rifles?”
“I quite agree with you,” I said. “There’s no kind of use our going to them again. But I don’t expect they’re relying entirely on rifles. Malcolmson always said he understood explosives. He may be laying submarine mines opposite Carrickfergus.”
Lady Moyne’s telegram was not the only warning we received of the approaching visit of the Channel Fleet. Our system of leaving the telegraph wires intact proved to be an excellent one. Everybody in Belfast learnt that the Fleet was coming. Everybody, so far as I could learn, received the news with joy. Bland was tremendously excited. He called on me next morning, and invited me to go with him to see the British Fleet in action. He had been up very early and found a place, so he said, from which we could have a capital view of the bombardment of the town.
“I’ve got two pairs of field-glasses,” he said, “Zeiss prism binoculars. We’ll see the whole show capitally.”
“Was there much other looting last night?” I asked.
“There was none,” said Bland. “I hired the glasses. I got them for five shillings. Cheap, I call it; but the optician who owned them seemed to think they’d be safer if I had them than they would be in his shop. More out of the way of shells, I expect.”
Moyne refused to come with us. He still cherished the hope of being able to surrender himself during the day to some one in recognizable authority. Bland and I set out together.
We hurried along High Street, past the Albert Memorial and crossed the bridge to the south side of the river. The streets were full of volunteers, marching about, all in the highest spirits. The prospect of being shelled by the Fleet did not frighten them in the least. Having, as they believed, defeated the Army the day before, it seemed quite a simple matter to deal with the battleships.
We made our way along the quays, passed through a shipbuilding yard, deserted by its workers, and cameto a long muddy embankment which stretched out on the south side of the channel leading into the harbour. On the end of this embankment was a small wooden lighthouse.
“That’s our spot,” said Bland. “I’ve got the key of the door.”
I will always say for Bland that he has the true instinct of a war correspondent. From the top of our tower we saw the Fleet far out in the offing. There were not nearly so many ships as I expected. I counted seven; disagreeable looking monsters with smoke pouring out of their funnels. They were too far off for us to see much of them even with the aid of our excellent glasses; but what I did see I did not like. Fighting against men requires courage, no doubt, especially when they have magazine rifles. But men are after all flesh and blood. Fighting against vast iron machines seems to me a much more terrifying thing. I wondered whether Malcolmson were also watching the ships and whether he were any more inclined than he had been the night before to unconditional surrender.
While I was gazing out to sea, Bland tapped me on the arm and drew my attention to the fact that a company of volunteers was marching out along our muddy causeway. They were Bob Power’s men and they came along whistling “The Protestant Boys,” a tune which makes an excellent quick-step march. They had spades with them as well as rifles, and they set to work at once to entrench themselves.
“They’re going to dispute a landing,” said Bland, “but I don’t see what use that is. The Fleet can shell the whole place into ruins in two hours without comingwithin range of their rifles—and—however we’ll see. The fellow who’s running this revolution—Conroy, isn’t it?—may have something up his sleeve.”
One of the battleships detached herself from her fellows and steamed rapidly into the Lough. Opposite Carrickfergus her engines were stopped, and she turned slowly in a half circle till she lay broadside on to us. I could see her distinctly, and I confess that the look of her terrified me.
“Cleared for action,” said Bland.
A boat was lowered, a steam launch. In a minute or two she was speeding towards us, her white ensign trailing astern. Bob Power stood up outside his entrenchment and peered at her. As she drew closer we could see behind the shelter hood, the young officer who steered her. As she swerved this way and that, following the windings of the channel, we caught glimpses of a senior officer, seated in the stern sheets. Pushing through the calm water at high speed she threw up great waves from her bows. Her stern seemed curiously deep in the water. When she was almost abreast of our lighthouse Bob hailed her. Her engines were stopped at once. A sailor with a boathook in his hand sprang into her bow and stood there motionless while the boat glided on. I could see the young officer who steered gazing curiously at Bob’s entrenchments. Then the senior officer stood up.
“An Admiral,” said Bland.
He hailed Bob.
“Are you in command here?” he said.
As he spoke the launch stopped abreast of the entrenchments and lay motionless in the water.
“I am in command of this detachment,” said Bob.
“Then,” said the Admiral, “you are to lay down your arms at once.”
“You’d better come ashore,” said Bob, “and see our commanding officer if you want to make terms with us.”
The Admiral flushed. He was quite close to us and we could see his face distinctly. He looked as if he wanted to say something explosive. The idea of being invited to make terms with rebels was evidently very objectionable to him. I suppose he must have had strict and binding orders from somebody. He did not say any of the things he wanted to. The launch’s propeller gave a few turns in the water. Then the boat slipped up to the shore. The sailor with the boathook held her fast while the Admiral stepped out of her. Bob received him most courteously. The Admiral glared at Bob. The riflemen, crouched behind their mud bank, scowled at the Admiral. The young officer in the launch gave an order and his boat was pushed off from the shore. Bob and the Admiral walked off together towards the town.
For an hour and a half the launch lay opposite us in the middle of the channel. Occasionally, as the ebbing tide carried her down, she steamed a little and regained her position opposite the entrenchments. Bob’s men, realizing that there would be no shooting till the Admiral returned, rose from their trench. They strolled about the embankment, chatted, smoked, stared at the launch, stared at the battleship from which she came, and peered at the more distant fleet which lay hull down far out towards the entrance of the lough.
“Unless Mr. Conroy has some game on that we know nothing about,” said Bland, “he’d better climb down and make the best terms he can.”
I think that Bland was nervous. He made that remark or others like it several times while we were waiting for the Admiral’s return. I candidly confess that I was more than nervous. I was desperately frightened. I am not, I hope, a coward. I believe that I was not afraid of being killed, but I could not take my eyes off the great iron ship which lay motionless, without a sign of life about her, a black, menacing monster on the calm water of the lough. I was seized, obsessed, with a sense of her immense power. She would destroy and slay with a horrible, unemotional, scientific deliberation.
“Conroy had better surrender,” said Bland. “He can’t expect—”
“He won’t surrender,” I said; “and if he wanted to, the men would not let him.”
“Damn it,” said Bland. “He must. I’ve seen war, and I tell you he must.”
At last the Admiral returned. Bob was with him, and was evidently trying to make himself agreeable. He was chatting. Occasionally he laughed. The Admiral was entirely unresponsive. When he got close enough for us to see his face I saw that he looked perplexed and miserable. I was miserable and frightened, but the Admiral looked worse.
Behind them there was an immense crowd of people; men, armed and unarmed, women, even children. It was a mere mob. There was no sign of discipline among them. Some young girls, mill-workers with shawls over their heads, pressed close on the Admiral’sheels. Bob gave an order to his men, and they drew up across the end of our embankment. Bob and the Admiral passed through the line. The crowd stopped.
The launch drew to shore again. The Admiral stepped on board her, and she steamed away.
The crowd hung around the end of our embankment. Some children began chasing each other in and out among the men and women. A few girls went down to the water’s edge and threw in stones, laughing at the splashes they made. Then a young man found an empty bottle and flung it far out into the channel. Fifty or sixty men and women threw stones at it, laughing when shots went wide, cheering when some well-aimed stone set the bottle rocking. Further back from the water’s edge young men and girls were romping with each other, the girls crying shrilly and laughing boisterously, the men catching them round their waists or by their arms. It might have been a crowd out for enjoyment of a Bank Holiday.
The launch reached the battleship, was hoisted and stowed on board. Almost immediately a long line of signal flags fluttered from the squat mast. Smoke began to pour from the funnels. The flags were hauled down and another festoon of them was hoisted in their place. I could see an answering stream of flags fluttering from one of the ships further out.
Then, very slowly, the great steamer began to move. She went at a snail’s pace, as it seemed to me, across the lough to the County Down coast. Very slowly she swept round in a wide circle and steamed back again northward. There was something terrifying in the stately deliberation with which she moved. It was as if some great beast of prey paced as a sentinel in frontof his victim, so conscious of his power to seize and kill that he could afford to wait before he sprang.
The crowd behind us was silent now. The laughter and the play had ceased. Children were crowding round the women seeking for hands to hold. Some of the women, vaguely terror-stricken, looked into the faces of the men. Others had drawn a little apart from the rest of the crowd and stood in a group by themselves, staring out at the battleship. There were middle-aged women and quite young women in this group. I raised my field-glasses and scanned their faces. There was one expression on them, and only one—not fear, but hatred. Women fight sometimes in citizen armies when such things have been called into existence. But it is not their fighting power which makes them important. That is, probably, always quite inconsiderable. What makes them a force to be reckoned with in war is their faculty for hating. They hate with more concentration and intensity than men do. These women were mindful, perhaps, of the girl with the baby whom Clithering had seen shot. They realized, perhaps, the menace for husbands, lovers, and sons which lay in the guns of the black ironclad parading sluggishly before their eyes. Remembering and anticipating death, they hated the source of it with uncompromising bitterness. The men in the crowd seemed crushed into silence by mere wonder and expectation of some unknown thing. They were not, so far as I could judge, afraid. They were not excited. They simply waited to see what was to happen to them and their town.
Once more a string of flags fluttered from the ship’s mast. Once more the answer came from her consorts.Then for the third time she swept round. We saw her foreshortened; then end on; then foreshortened again as her other side swung into view. At that moment—just before the whole length of her lay flat before our eyes she fired. At first I scarcely realized that she had fired. There was a small cloud of white smoke hanging over her near the bow. That was all for the moment. Then came the horrible sound of the great projectile racing through the air. Then it was past.
Some women in the crowd, a few, shrieked aloud. Some girls ran wildly towards the town, driven, I suppose, to seek shelter of some kind. Most of the crowd stood silent. Then from some young men who stood together there came a kind of moaning sound. It gathered volume. It, as it were, took shape. Voice after voice took it up. The whole crowd—many hundreds of men and women—sang together the hymn they had all been singing for months past, “O God, our help in ages past.” I do not know how far back towards the town the singing spread, but it would not surprise me to hear that ten thousand voices joined in it.
Bland had his glasses raised. He was still gazing at the battleship.
“A strange answer,” I said, “to make to the first shell of a bombardment.”
“Yes,” said Bland. “It reminds me of a profane rhyme which I used to hear:
“‘There was a young lady of ZionWho sang Sunday-school songs to a lion.’
“‘There was a young lady of ZionWho sang Sunday-school songs to a lion.’
“‘There was a young lady of ZionWho sang Sunday-school songs to a lion.’
“But hers, I should say, was the more sensible proceeding of the two.”
I was not sure. It is just conceivable—it seemedto me at that moment even likely—that a hymn, sung as that one was, may be the most effective answer to a big gun. There are only certain things which guns can do. When they have destroyed life and ruined buildings their power is spent. But the singing of hymns may, and sometimes does, render men for a time at least, indifferent to the loss of their lives and the ruin of their houses. Against men in the frame of mind which hymn-singing induces the biggest guns are powerless. The original singers fall, perhaps, but the spirit of their singing survives. For each voice silenced by the bursting shells ten voices take up the song.
The battleship, after firing the gun, swung round and once more slowly steamed across the lough. I waited, tense with excitement, for her to turn again. At the next turn, I felt sure, another shell would come. I was wrong. She turned, more slowly than ever as it seemed. No white smoke issued from her. Again she steamed northwards. Again, opposite Carrickfergus, close to the northern shore, she turned. Right in front of her bows the water was suddenly broken. It was as if some one had dropped a huge stone close to her. The spray of the splash must have fallen on her fore deck.
“My God!” said Bland, “they’re firing at her. Look! From the hill above the town.”
I could not look. My eyes were on the ship as she slowly turned. Her side came gradually into view. Then, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, she staggered. I saw her list over heavily, right herself again, and steam on.
“Hit!” said Bland. “Hit! Hit!”
He danced beside me with excitement.
Two puffs of smoke hung over the ship’s decks, one forward, one aft, and blew clear again. But this time we heard no shrieking shells. She was firing, not at the town, but at the guns on the hill which threatened and wounded her. Then her signal flags ran up again. Before the answer came from the other ships the sea was broken twice close to her. I looked to see her stagger from another blow, heel over, perhaps sink. Her speed increased. In a minute she was rushing towards us, flinging white waves from her great bows. Then she swept round once more. Fire as well as smoke poured from her funnels. She steamed eastwards down the lough. We saw her join the other ships far out. She and they lay motionless together.
The crowd behind us began to sing their hymn again.
Bland and I left our lighthouse and went back towards the town. We passed Bob and his men in their trench but they scarcely noticed us. We pushed our way through the crowd. We passed the shipbuilding yard, now full of eager people, discussing the departure of the ship, canvassing the possibility of her coming back again.
“What guns have they on the Cave Hill?” said Bland.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I did not know that they had any guns.”
“I wonder where they got them,” said Bland. “I wonder who has command of them.”
I could answer, or thought I could answer, both questions. As we struggled through the crowds which thronged the quay I told Bland of the visits of theFinolato our bay and of the piles of huge packing-caseswhich Godfrey had shown me in the sheds behind the store.
“But who fired them?” said Bland. “Who have you got who understands them? Those were big guns.”
“Malcolmson,” I said, “always said he understood guns.”
“He does,” said Bland. “If he’d shot just the least shade better he’d have sunk that ship.”
On the bridge we met McConkey, sweating profusely, taking his favourite weapon along at a rapid trot. He stopped when he saw us and halted his breathless team.
“I have her working again,” he said, “and she’ll shoot the now.”
“You’re too late,” said Bland.
“Is she sunken?” said McConkey. “Man o’ man but I’m sorry for it. I wanted sore to have a shot at her.”
“She’s not sunk,” said Bland, “but she’s gone. Steamed clean out of range of your gun.”
“I’d have liked well to have got to her before she quit,” said McConkey. “Did you hear tell what she did with that shell she fired into the town?”
“No,” I said. “Did it kill many people?”
“Sorra the one,” said McConkey. “But I’ll tell you what it did do.” His voice sank to a hoarse but singularly impressive whisper. “It made flitters of the statue of the old Queen that was sitting fornint the City Hall. The like of thon is nice work for men that’s wearing the King’s uniform.”
Bland burst into a sudden fit of boisterous laughter.
“You may laugh if it pleases you,” said McConkey,“but I’m thinking it’s time for loyal men to be getting guns of their own when the Government is that thick with rebels and Papishes that they’d go shooting at the ould Queen who was always a decent woman, so she was, and too good for the like of them.”
McConkey’s story was perfectly true. The solitary shell which was fired into Belfast fell just outside the City Hall. It injured that building a good deal; and it entirely destroyed the statue of Queen Victoria. It is a curious evidence of the amazing loyalty of the people of Belfast that many of them were more angry at this insult to Majesty than they would have been if the shell had killed half a dozen volunteers. McConkey was not by any means the only man who saw in the accident evidence of an unholy alliance between the Liberal Government and the men whom Babberly was accustomed to describe as “Steeped to the lips in treason.”
Bland and I stood together outside the City Hall and surveyed the shattered fragments of the statue. The shell must have exploded quite close to it, and I was immensely impressed at first with the terrific power of modern artillery. Then I began to think about the moral effects of the bombardment, and I saw my way to helping Bland in his profession. He had been very kind to me and very helpful. I wanted to do him a good turn if I could.
“This,” I said, “is a magnificent opportunity for you. You’ll be able to send off a telegram to your newspaper which will make your fortune as a correspondent.”
“I don’t see that,” said Bland. “If there’d been a little slaughter I might have made something out of it. But a statue! Hang it all! One statue is rather a poor bag for the British Fleet. The people are proud of their navy. They’ve spent a lot of money on it, and they won’t like being told that it has hit nothing but a statue, after a long morning’s shooting.”
Bland had not grasped my idea. For a moment I was inclined to keep it for my own use and work it up into an article when I got time. But Bland deserved something from me. I resisted the temptation and gave him the idea.
“I wish,” I said, “that I were a special correspondent. I’d—”
“Well,” said Bland. “What would you say?”
“I should take that New Zealander who stood on the broken arch of Westminster Bridge and—”
“Macaulay’s,” said Bland. “I don’t think that the public would stand him again. He’s played out.”
“Not in the way I mean to use him. I should, so to speak, spiritualize him, and—”
“Hold on a minute,” said Bland.
He got out a note-book and a pencil and prepared to write.
“Now,” he said, “go on.”
Bland’s expectant attitude, and the fact that he was evidently going to take down what I said in shorthand, embarrassed me. When I write essays I like to work deliberately and to correct carefully. I aim at a polished elegance of style. I do not care for the kind of offhand composition Bland asked for.
“‘Interview with a Revolutionary Peer,’” said Bland, “‘Lord Kilmore on the Ulster Situation.’ You were just going to say—”
“Oh, nothing much. Only that the feelings of that New Zealander—”
“Meditating on the ruins of a shattered civilization,” said Bland. “I can put in that part myself.”
“—Are nothing to yours—” I said.
“Yours,” said Bland.
“Well, mine, if this must be an interview; but I’d rather you had the whole credit.—Are nothing to mine when I survey the vacant pedestal of that statue. You catch the idea now?”
“No,” said Bland. “I don’t. Is there one?”
“Yes, there is. These unrecognizable fragments of stone, the once majestic statue, Ulster’s loyalty.”
“Good,” said Bland. “I have it now.” He beganto write rapidly. “‘To the thoughtful mind there was something infinitely tragic in the shattered statue of the great queen, symbol of the destruction of an ideal. England bought the friendship of Nationalist Ireland at a heavy price when the guns of her Fleet annihilated the loyalty of Ulster.’ That’s your idea.”
“You’ve got it exactly,” I said.
“I’ll send it off at once.”
“Yes. You’d better hurry. It’s almost certain to occur to Babberly, and the moment it does he’ll put it into a speech. If he does, the whole credit will go to him.”
This impressed Bland. He hurried away towards the post-office. I felt that I was not likely to get anything more out of the statue. I put a small bit of it in my pocket to keep as a souvenir, and then strolled along Donegal Place.
I met Crossan, who saluted me gravely.
“The provisional Government,” he said, “desires your lordship’s presence in the City Hall.”
“I’m glad there’s a provisional Government,” I said. “We want something of the sort. Do you happen to know if I’m a member of it?”
“I’ve been looking for you, my lord,” said Crossan, severely, “for over an hour, and there’s no time to waste.”
I hurried off. The Government, after driving off the British Fleet, was likely to be in a good temper, but I did not wish to keep it waiting for me too long.
When I entered the room I found Conroy, McNeice, Malcolmson, Cahoon and the Dean seated at the table. Moyne was not there.
“I congratulate you, gentlemen,” I said, “on the resultof the naval engagement. Malcolmson was perfectly magnificent. It was you, wasn’t it, who—?”
“I didn’t see anything magnificent about it,” said Malcolmson, sulkily.
“We’re damned well sick of being played with,” said McNeice.
“If the English Government means to fight us—” said the Dean, speaking explosively.
“Do you mean to say,” I said, “that you think the Admiral was not in earnest in that bombardment?”
“No more than the soldiers were yesterday,” said McNeice. “They fired over our heads.”
“And we’re not going to stand any more fooling,” said Malcolmson.
“We’re business men,” said Cahoon, “and this sort of play-acting won’t do for Belfast.”
“Your boss politicians,” said Conroy, “have been flooding us out with telegrams.”
There was a large pile of telegrams in front of him and some forty or fifty loose sheets of flimsy yellow paper were scattered about the table.
“Their notion,” said Conroy, “is that we should send a man over to negotiate.”
“An ambassador,” I said, “Plenipotentiary?”
“Lord Moyne won’t go,” said the Dean.
“He’s the proper man,” I said. “Let’s try to persuade him.”
“He’s up at the barracks,” said McNeice. “He’s been there all morning trying to get the General to arrest him.”
“It would be far better,” I said, “if he went to London and handed himself over to the Prime Minister.”
“European convention,” said Conroy, “makes it necessary, so I am informed, that this particular kind of job should be done by a member of your aristocracy.”
I was, I think, with the exception of Moyne, the only member of the House of Lords in Belfast at the moment. The committee had evidently fixed on me as an ambassador.
“There is,” I said, “a tradition that the Diplomatic Service should be—but our circumstances are so very peculiar—I am not sure that we ought to feel bound—”
“Will you go?” said Conroy.
“Of course, I’ll go,” I said. “There’s nothing I should like better.”
“TheFinolais lying off Bangor,” said Conroy. “I’ll run you and Power down there in my motor. He’ll land you wherever you like.”
“Good,” I said. “I suppose I’ll go in my shirt with a rope round my neck, like the burghers of Calais.”
“If that’s the regular costume,” said Conroy.
He spoke so severely that I thought I had better drop the subject of clothes.
“Now, as to the terms which you are prepared to offer the Government,” I said.
“We will not have Home Rule,” said the Dean and Malcolmson together.
“Of course not,” I said. “That will be understood at once. Shall I demand Mr. Redmond’s head on a charger? I don’t suppose you want it, but it’s always well to ask for more than you mean to take. It gives the other side a chance of negotiating.”
“All we ask,” said McNeice, “is that the English clear out of this country, bag and baggage, soldiers,policemen, tax collectors, the whole infernal crew, and leave us free hand to clean up the mess they’ve been making for the last hundred years.”
“Either that,” said Malcolmson, “or fight us in earnest.”
“They’ll clear out, of course,” I said. “If it’s a choice between that and fighting. But what about governing the country afterwards?”
“We’ll do that,” said Conroy, “and if we can’t do it better than they did—”
“Oh, you will,” I said. “Anyhow, you can’t do it worse. But—there’s just one point more. What about the Lord Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know that he matters any,” said Conroy.
“He doesn’t,” I said, “not a bit. But he’s there at present, and some arrangement will have to be made about him.”
“If the Dublin people like airing their best clothes before an imitation king,” said Cahoon, “let them. It won’t matter to us.”
This showed me that Cahoon, at least, has a statesman’s mind. In unessential matters he is ready to yield to the sentiments of his inferiors.
“I understand then,” I said, “that the Lord Lieutenant with the purely ornamental part of the Viceregal staff is to be allowed to remain on the condition that he gives—shall we say eight balls and eight dinner-parties every year?—and that every other Englishman leaves the country at once. Those are your terms.”
“And no more talk about Home Rule,” said the Dean firmly.
“Very well,” I said, “I’ll start at once.”
Bob Power was waiting for me in Conroy’s motorwhen I had packed my bag. The streets were very crowded as we drove through them, and the people cheered us tremendously. It was the first time I had ever been cheered, and I found the sensation agreeable. Besides cheering, the crowd sang a great deal. Some one had composed a song especially for the occasion, which had caught the fancy of the Belfast people, and spread among them with wonderful rapidity. The tune, I am told, dates from the days of the eighteenth-century volunteer movement.