I still stared through my glasses. I was struck by the unusual fact that only men were going into the church. Then, quite suddenly, I saw that every man was carrying a gun. I laid down my glasses and turned to Godfrey.
“I wish,” I said, “that you’d go down to the town—not to the church, mind, Godfrey, but into the town, and ask somebody—ask the police sergeant at the barrack what is going on in the church.”
Godfrey is always at his very best when he has to find out something. He would have made almost an ideal spy. If any one is ever wanted by the nation for the more disagreeable part of secret service work I can confidently recommend Godfrey.
Half an hour later he returned to me hot and breathless.
“The police sergeant told me, Excellency, that the Dean’s going to march all the Orangemen and a lot of other men along with them to Belfast for the Unionist demonstration. They are having service in the church first and they’ve all got rifles.”
I have all my life steadily objected to politics being mixed with religion. I hold most strongly that theChurch ought not to be dominated by politicians. The Church is degraded and religion is brought into contempt when they are used by party leaders. But—the bells had ceased ringing. The hymn was now, no doubt, being sung by the men within. It occurred to me suddenly that on this occasion it was not the politicians who were taking possession of religion, but religion which was asserting its right to dominate politics. This is plainly quite a different matter. I can even imagine that politics might be improved if religion asserted itself a little more frequently than it does. I still maintain that it is only right and fair to keep politics out of the Church. I am not at all sure that it is right to keep the Church out of politics.
“I told the sergeant,” said Godfrey, “that he had better go and stop them at once.”
“Oh, did you?” I said. “Do you know, Godfrey, that’s just the kind of suggestion I’d expect you to make under the circumstances.”
“Thanks awfully, Excellency,” said Godfrey. “I’m awfully glad you’re pleased.”
There are besides the sergeant three constables in our police barrack. They are armed as a rule with short round sticks. On very important occasions they carry an inferior kind of firearm called a carbine. There were, I guessed about three hundred men in the church, and they were armed with modern rifles. Godfrey’s faith in the inherent majesty of the law was extremely touching.
“Did he go?” I asked.
“I don’t think he intends to,” said Godfrey, “but he did not give me a decided answer.”
Our police sergeant is a man of sense.
“Did you say,” I asked, “that they’re going to march to Belfast?”
“That’s what the sergeant told me,” said Godfrey.
“Actually walk the whole way?”
Belfast is a good many miles away from us. It would, I suppose, take a quick walker the better part of two days to accomplish the journey.
“He said ‘march,’” said Godfrey. “I suppose he meant to walk.”
This is, as we are constantly reminded, the twentieth century. I should have supposed that any one who wanted to get from this place to Belfast would have gone in a train. Our nearest railway station is some way off, but one might walk to it in an hour and a half. Once there, the journey to Belfast can be accomplished in another two hours. It seems rather absurd to spend two days over it, but then the whole thing is rather absurd. The rifles are absurd. The gathering of three hundred men into a church to indulge in a kind of grace before meat as preparation for a speech from Babberly is rather absurd. To set a peal of bells playing—but I am not quite sure about the hymn tune. It did not sound to me absurd as it came across the bay. I am, I trust, a reasonable man, not peculiarly liable to be swept off my feet by waves of emotion; but there was something in the sound of that hymn tune which prevented me from counting it, along with our other performances, as an absurdity.
The Dean and his men did actually march to Belfast. I saw them there two days later. I also saw them start, ranged in very fair order with the Dean at their head. The most surprising thing about their march was that they had no band. There are at least two bands in the town. I subscribe to both of them regularly and have occasionally given a donation to a third which enjoys an intermittent existence, springing into sudden activity for a week or two and then disappearing for months. I asked the police sergeant, who is a South of Ireland man and very acute of mind, why none of the bands accompanied the army. The explanation he gave me was interesting and suggestive.
“There isn’t as much as a boy in the district,” he said, “who’d content himself with a drum when he might have the handling of a rifle.”
And yet an excessive fondness for drums has been reckoned—by English politicians—one of the failings of the Ulster man.
I went to Belfast next morning quite unexpectedly. No peal of bells heartened me for my start, partly because all the bell-ringers and nearly all the able-bodied members of the church in the parish had marched forth with the Dean. Partly also, I suppose, because I did not travel in a heroic way. I am much too old to undertake a two-days’ walking tour, so I went by train. Godfreysaw me off. I owed this attention, I am sure, to the fact that Marion was with me. She told Godfrey that she was going to marry Bob Power, but Godfrey did not on that account cease to regard her as his property. He had hopes, I fancy, that Bob Power would be killed in some fight with a Custom House officer. Marion, on the other hand, was vaguely afraid that either Bob or I would get injured while rioting in Belfast. That was her reason for going with me.
I went because I received on Friday evening a very urgent letter from Lady Moyne. She and Lord Moyne had just arrived in Belfast, and her letter was sent to me by a special messenger on a motor bicycle. She wished me to attend an extraordinary meeting of the “Ulster Defence Committee” which, in defiance of our strong sabbatarian feeling, was to be held on Sunday afternoon.
“We elected you a member of the committee at a meeting held yesterday in London,” she wrote, “so you have a perfect right to be present and to vote.”
That meeting must have been held after McNeice, Malcolmson and Cahoon returned to Ireland. They regard me as a Laodicean in the matter of Home Rule, and would never have consented to my sitting on a committee which controlled, or at all events was supposed to control, the actions of the Ulster leaders.
“It’s most important, dear Lord Kilmore,” the letter went on, “that you should be present on Sunday. Your well-known moderation will have a most steadying influence, and if it should come to a matter of voting, your vote may be absolutely necessary.”
After getting a letter of that kind I could not wellrefuse to go to Belfast. Even without the letter I should, I think, have gone. I was naturally anxious to see what was going to happen.
I spent my time in the train reading several different accounts of an important Nationalist meeting held the day before in a village in County Clare, the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten. Three of the chief Nationalist orators were there, men quite equal to Babberly in their mastery of the art of public speaking. I read all their speeches; but that was not really necessary. None of them said anything which the other two did not say, and none of them left out anything which the other two had said.
They all began by declaring that under Home Rule all Irishmen should receive equal consideration and be treated with equal respect. They all looked forward to the day when they would be walking about the premises at present occupied by the Bank of Ireland in Dublin with their arms round Babberly’s neck. The dearest wish of their hearts—so they all said, and the people of County Clare cheered heartily—was to unite with Lord Moyne, Babberly, Malcolmson and even the Dean in the work of regenerating holy Ireland. Any little differences of religious creed which might exist would be entirely forgotten as soon as the Home Rule Bill was safely passed. They then went on to say that the Belfast people, and the people of County Antrim and County Down generally, were enthusiastically in favour of Home Rule. The fact that they elected Unionist members of Parliament and held Unionist demonstrations was accounted for by the existence of a handful of rack-renting landlords, a few sweating capitalists and some clergymen whose churcheswere empty because the people were tired of hearing them curse the Pope.
Poor Moyne has sold every acre of his property and the Dean’s only difficulty with the majority of his large congregation is that he does not curse the Pope often enough to please them. Cahoon, I am told, only sweats in the old-fashioned intransitive sense of the word. He is frequently bathed in perspiration himself. I never heard of his insisting on his workmen getting any hotter than was natural and necessary. But these criticisms are beside the mark. No one supposes that a political orator means to tell the truth when he is making a speech. Politics could not be carried on if he did. What the public expects and generally insists on is that the inevitable lies should have their loins girt about with a specious appearance of truthfulness. Every speaker must offer distinct and convincing proofs that his statements are strictly accurate reflections of fact. The best and simplest way of doing this is by means of bold challenge. The speaker offers to deposit a large sum of money with the local mayor to be paid over to a deserving charity, if any opponent of the speaker can, to the satisfaction of twelve honourable men, generally named, disprove some quite irrelevant truism, or can prove to the satisfaction of the same twelve men the falsity of some universally accepted platitude. This method is very popular with orators, and invariably carries conviction to their audiences.
The Nationalist members in County Clare broke away into a variant of the familiar plan. They challenged the Government.
“Let the Government,” they said, all three of them, “proclaim the meeting to be held in Belfast on Mondaynext, and allow the public to watch with contempt the deflation of the wind-distended bladder of Ulster opposition to Home Rule. We venture to say that the little group of selfish wire-pullers at whose bidding the meeting has been summoned, will sneak away before the batons of half a dozen policemen, and their followers will be found to be non-existent.”
The Government, apparently, believed the Nationalist orators, or half believed them. Sir Samuel Clithering was sent over to Belfast, to report, confidentially, on the temper of the people. He must have sent off his despatch before the Dean’s army marched in, before any of the armies then converging on the city arrived, before the Belfast people had got out their rifles. The Government in the most solemn and impressive manner, proclaimed the meeting. That was the news with which we were greeted when our train drew up at the platform in Belfast.
The proclamation of meeting is one of the regular resources of governments when Irish affairs get into a particularly annoying tangle. There have been during my time hundreds of meetings proclaimed in different parts of the country. The Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary never get any thanks for their action. The people who want to hold the meeting always accuse the Government of violating the right of free speech and substituting a military tyranny for the Magna Charta. The other people who do not want the meeting to be held always say that the Government ought to have proclaimed it much sooner than it did, and ought to have imprisoned, perhaps beheaded, the men who intended to speak at the meeting.
Bob Power met us on the platform, which was horriblycrowded, and immediately conducted Marion to a motor car which he had in waiting outside the station. Then he came back to me and we went together in search of Marion’s luggage. It was while we were pushing our way through the crowd that he told me the great news. I said that the failure of the demonstration would be a disappointment to the Dean and his riflemen who would have to walk all the way home again without hearing Babberly’s speech.
“I’m not so sure about that,” said Bob. “We may have the meeting in spite of their teeth.”
“You can’t possibly,” I said, “hold a meeting when—dear me! Who are those?”
There was a crowd round the luggage van where we were trying to discover Marion’s trunk. An unmannerly porter shoved me back, and I bumped into a man who had something hard and knobby in his hand. I looked round. He was a soldier in the regular khaki uniform with a rifle in his hand. The bayonet was fixed. I felt deeply thankful that it was pointing upwards and not in a horizontal direction when the porter charged me. It might quite easily have gone through my back. This man appeared to be a kind of outpost sentry. Behind him, all similarly armed, were twenty or thirty more men drawn up with their backs to the wall of the station. A youth, who looked bored and disgusted, was in command of them and stood at the end of the line. His sword struck me as being far too big for him.
“Who on earth are those?” I said.
“Those,” said Bob, “are the troops who are overawing us. Some of them. There are lots more. You’ll see them at every street corner as we go along. Byjove! I believe that’s Nosey Henderson in command of this detachment. Excuse me one moment, Lord Kilmore. Henderson was with me at Harrow. I’ll just shake hands with him.”
He turned to the young officer as he spoke.
“Hullo Nosey,” he said, “I didn’t know you were in these parts.”
“Ordered up from the Curragh,” said Henderson. “Damned nuisance this sort of police duty. We oughtn’t to be asked to do it.”
“Your particular job,” said Bob, “is to overawe the railway porters, I suppose.”
“Been here since nine o’clock this morning,” said Henderson, “and haven’t had a blessed thing to eat except two water biscuits. What’s the row all about? That’s what I can’t make out.”
“Oh! It’s quite simple,” said Bob. “Our side wants to hold a meeting—”
“You are on a side then, are you?”
“Of course I am,” said Bob. “I’m in command of a company of volunteers. We don’t run to khaki uniforms and brass buttons, but we’ve got guns all right.”
“I say,” said Henderson, “tell me this now. Any chance of a scrap? Real fighting, you know? I’ve been asking all sorts of fellows, and nobody seems to be able to say for certain.”
“We shan’t begin it,” said Bob; “but, of course, if you get prodding at us with those spikes you have at the end of your guns—”
“There are a lot of fellows in this town that would be all the better of being prodded. Every porter that walks along the platform spits when he passes us in adamned offensive way. You would think they were looking for trouble.”
The crowd round the luggage van cleared away a little and we found Marion’s trunk. Bob handed it over to a porter and we joined Marion in the motor car.
The scene outside the station was striking. A considerable body of dragoons, some mounted, some on foot beside their horses, were grouped together near the great gate which led into the railway company’s yard. Their accoutrements and the bridles of their horses jangled at every movement in a way very suggestive of military ardour. The trappings of horse soldiers are evidently made as noisy as possible. Perhaps with the idea of keeping up the spirits of the men. Some Highlanders, complete in their kilts, stood opposite the dragoons at the other end of the yard. A sergeant was shouting explosive monosyllables at them in order to make them turn to the left or to the right as he thought desirable. Behind them were some other soldiers, Englishmen I presume, who wore ordinary trousers. They were sitting on a flight of stone steps eating chunks of dry bread. Their rifles were neatly stacked behind them. Round the motor car were about thirty men whom I hesitate to call civilians, because they had rifles in their hands; but who were certainly not real soldiers, for they had no uniforms. They looked to me like young farmers.
“My fellows,” said Bob, pointing to these men. “Pretty tidy looking lot, aren’t they? I brought them along as a sort of guard of honour for Marion. They’re not really the least necessary; but I thought you and she might be pleased to see them.”
Here and there, scattered among the military and Bob’s irregular troops, were black uniformed policemen, rosy-faced young men, fresh from a healthy life among the cattle ranches of Roscommon, drafted to their own immense bewilderment into this strange city of Belfast, where no one regarded them with any reverence, or treated them with the smallest respect. The motor car started, creeping at a walking pace through the mingled crowd of armed men who thronged the entrance to the station. Our guard of honour, some of them smoking, some stopping for a moment to exchange greetings with acquaintance, kept up with us pretty well. Then, as we got clear of the station and went faster, we left our guard behind. One man indeed, with a singular devotion to duty, poked his rifle into the car and then ran alongside of us with his hand on the mudguard. He carried Marion’s trunk into the hotel when we got there.
Our drive was an exciting one. At every street corner there were parties of soldiers. Along every street stalwart policemen strolled in pairs. There were certainly hundreds of armed irregulars. For the most part these men seemed to be under no control; but occasionally we met a party marching in something like military formation, led by an officer, grave with responsibility. One company, I remember, got in our way and for a long time could not get out of it. Their officer had been drilling them carefully and they were all most anxious to obey his orders. The difficulty was that he could not recollect at the moment what orders he ought to give to get them out of our way. He halted them to begin with. Then in firm tones, he commanded a half-right turn and a quick march. We hadto back our car to avoid collision with the middle part of the column. Their officer halted them again. We offered to go back and take another route to our hotel; but the officer would not hear of this. He told his men to stand at ease while he consulted a handbook on military evolutions. In the end he gave the problem up.
“Get out of the way, will you,” he said, “and form up again when the car is past.”
This was unconventional, but quite effective. The men—and it is to their credit that not one of them smiled—broke their formation, scattered to right and left and reformed after we had passed. This took place in a narrow side street in which there was very little traffic. I recognized the wisdom of the officer in choosing such a place for his manœuvres.
In the main streets the business of the town seemed to be going on very much as usual. It was Saturday afternoon. Shops and offices were closing. Young men and girls passed out of them and thronged the trams which were leaving the centre of the city. They took very little notice of the soldiers or the police. In the poorer streets women with baskets on their arms were doing their weekly shopping at the stalls of small butchers and greengrocers. Groups of factory girls marched along with linked arms, enjoying their outing, unaffected apparently by the unusual condition of their streets. The newspaper boys did a roaring trade, shrieking promises of sensational news to be found in the pages of theTelegraphandEcho.
Marion became intensely excited.
“Doesn’t it look just as if the town had been captured by an enemy,” she said, “after a long siege?”
“It hasn’t been captured yet,” said Bob.
I have often tried to understand how it was that Bob Power came to take the active part he did in the fighting which followed, and how he came to be in command of a body of volunteers. He had not, so far as I know, any actual hatred of the idea of Home Rule. He was too light-hearted to be in full sympathy with fanatical Puritans like Crossan and McNeice. He certainly had no hatred of the British Empire or the English army. He was, up to the last moment, on friendly terms with those of the army officers whom he happened to know. He chatted with them and with detached inspectors of police in the same friendly way as he did with Henderson at the railway station.
I can only suppose that he regarded the whole business—to begin with at all events—as a large adventure of a novel and delightful kind. He went into it very much as many volunteers went into the Boer War, without any very strong convictions about the righteousness of the cause in which he fought, certainly without any realization of the horror of actual bloodshed.
There are men of this temperament, fortunately a good many of them. If they did not exist in large numbers the world’s fighting would be very badly done. The mere mercenary—uninspired by the passion for adventure—will at the best do as little fighting as possible, and do it with the smallest amount of ardour. Fanatics cannot be had to order. Some kind of idea—in most cases a religious idea—is necessary to turn the ordinary church-going business man or farmer into an efficient fighting unit. The kind of patriotism which is prepared to make sacrifices, to endure bodily painand risk death, is very rare. It is on the men who enjoy risk, who love struggle, who face death with a laugh, the men of Bob Power’s reckless temperament, that the world must rely when it wants fighting done. Hitherto men of this kind have been plentiful. Whether our advancing civilization is going to destroy the breed is a question which, I am pleased to say, need not be answered by my generation. There are enough Bob Powers alive to last my time.
Ifully intended to go to church on Sunday morning. I was, in fact, waiting for Marion at the door of the hotel, when Sir Samuel Clithering came to see me.
“I shall be so much obliged,” he said, “if you will spare me a few minutes.”
I did not want to spare any minutes to Sir Samuel Clithering. In the first place I had promised to take Marion to the cathedral. “A Parade Service”—I quote the official title of the function—was to be held for the benefit of the volunteers and Marion naturally wanted to see Bob Power at the head of his men. I wanted to hear the men singing that hymn again, and I wanted to hear what sort of sermon the Dean—our Dean, not the Dean of the cathedral—would preach on such an occasion. He was advertised to preach, as “Chaplain General of the Loyalists.” These were three good reasons for not giving Sir Samuel Clithering the few minutes he demanded. I had, also, a fourth. I had held, as I have related, previous communications with Clithering. I suspected him of having more peerages in his pocket for distribution, and I did not want to undertake any further negotiations like that with Conroy. He might even—and I particularly disliked the idea—be empowered to offer our Dean an English bishopric.
I kept this last reason to myself, but I stated the other three fully to Sir Samuel. He seemed dissatisfied.
“Everybody’s going to church,” he complained. “I can’t get Lord Moyne. I can’t get Babberly. I can’t get Malcolmson, and it’s really most important that I should see some one. Going to church is all very well—”
“As a leading Nonconformist,” I said.
“Free Churchman,” said Sir Samuel.
“I beg your pardon, Free Churchman. You ought not to object to people going to church. I’ve always understood that the Free Churchmen are honourably distinguished from other Christians by their respect for the practice of Sunday worship.”
“Of course, I don’t object to people going to church. I should be there myself if it were not that—”
He hesitated. I thought he might be searching for an appropriate text of Scripture so I helped him.
“Your ass,” I said, “has fallen into a pit, and you want—”
This was evidently not exactly the text he wanted. He seemed astonished when I quoted it.
“Ass!” he said. “What ass?”
“The Government,” I said. “It is in rather a hole, isn’t it?”
“Capital,” said Clithering, laughing without the smallest appearance of mirth, “capital! I didn’t catch the point for a moment, but I do now. My ass has fallen into a pit. You put the matter in a nutshell, Lord Kilmore. I don’t mind confessing that a pit of rather an inconvenient size does lie in front of us. I feel sure that you, as a humane man, won’t refuseyour help in the charitable work of helping to get us out.”
Marion came downstairs in her best hat. It was not for nothing that Bob Power and I and the running volunteer had struggled with her trunk. Her frock, also, was charming.
“Your daughter,” said Clithering. “Now my dear young lady, you must spare your father to me for an hour. Affairs of state. Affairs of state. But you’ll allow me to send you to church in my car. My private secretary is in it, and I shall tell him to see you safely to church, to secure a seat for you—”
“The Dean has reserved seats for us,” I said.
“Capital, capital. We can regard that as settled then. My private secretary—an excellent young fellow whom I picked up at Toynbee Hall—a student of our social problems—a man whom I’m sure you’ll like.”
He conducted Marion to the door and handed her over to the private secretary from Toynbee Hall. I resigned myself and led Clithering to a deserted smoking-room.
“I never saw so much church-going anywhere,” he said. “It’s most remarkable. I don’t think the Government quite appreciates—”
As a matter of fact the percentage of church-going men on that particular Sunday was considerably over the average. On the other hand there were much fewer women than usual. Every church of every Protestant denomination was holding a “Parade Service” for volunteers, and most of the women who tried to get in had to be turned away from the doors. I thought it well to rub the facts in a little.
“Rack-renting landlords,” I said. “Sweating capitalists, and clergymen whose churches are empty because their congregations are tired of hearing them curse the Pope!”
“Eh?” said Clithering, “what’s that? what’s that?”
“Only a quotation,” I said. “I forget if it was a Cabinet Minister—”
“Not at all,” said Clithering. “I recollect the words now. It was one of the Irish Members. No Cabinet Minister would dream of saying such things. We have a high sense of the importance of the Ulster problem. Nothing, I assure you, is further from our minds than the desire to minimize or treat with undue flippancy the conscientious objections, even the somewhat unreasonable fears of men whom we recognize as—”
Clithering paused. I had not anything particular to say, so I waited for him to begin again.
“I understand,” he said, “that a meeting of the Unionist Defence Committee is to be held this afternoon.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to it. I’m not really a member of the committee, at least I wasn’t until yesterday; but—”
“I quite understand, quite understand. In fact—speaking now in the strictest confidence—I may say that the suggestion to add your name to the committee was made—well it was made to Lady Moyne by a very important person. It was generally recognized that a man of your well-known moderation—”
I was beginning to dislike being called a man of moderation nearly as much as I disliked being called a Liberal.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“The situation—the very difficult and distressing situation is this,” said Clithering, “stated roughly it is this. The Government has proclaimed to-morrow’s meeting.”
“That,” I said, “is the pit into which—I don’t want to be offensive—I’ll say, your ox has fallen.”
“And the town is full of troops and police. Any attempt to hold the meeting can only result in bloodshed, deplorable bloodshed, the lives of men and women, innocent women sacrificed.”
“The strength of Babberly’s position,” I said, “is that he doesn’t think bloodshed deplorable.”
“But he does. He told me so in London. He repeated the same thing this morning.”
“I don’t mean Babberly personally,” I said, “I mean his party; Malcolmson, you know, and our Dean. If you’d only gone to hear the Dean preach this morning you’d know what he thinks about blood. I’ve often heard him say that the last drop of it—mind that now, Sir Samuel—the last drop ought to be shed. That’s going as far as any one very well could, isn’t it?”
“But he must,” said Clithering, “he must think bloodshed deplorable.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “You mustn’t think everybody is like your Government. It’s humanitarian. We’re not. We’re business men.”
Clithering caught at the last phrase. It appealed to him. He did not know the meaning attached to it by Cahoon.
“That’s just it,” he said. “We want to appeal to you as business men. We want to suggest a reasonable compromise.”
“I’m afraid,” I said, “that you’ve come to the wrongplace. I’m not the least averse to compromises myself, in fact I love them. But the Belfast business man—You don’t quite understand him, I’m afraid, Sir Samuel. Have you heard him singing his hymn?”
“No. What hymn? But leaving the question of hymns aside for the moment—”
“You can’t do that,” I said, “the hymn is the central fact in the situation.”
Clithering thought this over and evidently failed to understand it.
“What I am empowered to suggest,” he said, “is a compromise so very favourable to the Ulster claims that I can hardly imagine your rejecting it. The Government will allow the meeting to be held this day week if your committee will agree to the postponement.”
“If,” I said, “you will also withdraw your Home Rule Bill—”
“But we can’t,” said Clithering. “We can’t do that. We’ll insert any reasonable safeguards. We’ll concede anything that Ulster likes to ask, but we’re pledged, absolutely pledged, to the Bill.”
“Well,” I said, “as far as pledges are concerned, we’re pledged against it.”
“What we deprecate,” said Sir Samuel, “is violence of any kind. Constitutional agitation, even if carried on with great bitterness is one thing. Violence—but I’m sure, Lord Kilmore, that we can rely on you to use your influence at the meeting this afternoon to secure the acceptance of the terms we offer. I’m sure we can count on you. You can’twantbloodshed.”
I did not want bloodshed, of course. I do not suppose that anybody did. What Clithering could not understandwas that some people—without wanting bloodshed—might prefer it to Home Rule. He left me, still I fancy relying on my well-known moderation. No man ever relied on a more utterly useless crutch. Moderation has never been of the slightest use anywhere in Ireland and was certainly a vain thing in Belfast that day.
I walked round to the club and found nobody in it except Conroy. He alone, among the leading supporters of the Loyalist movement, had failed to go to church. I thought I might try how he would regard the policy of moderation.
“I suppose,” I said, “that you’ll have to give up this meeting to-morrow.”
“I don’t think so,” said Conroy.
“I’ve just been talking to Sir Samuel Clithering,” I said, “and he thinks there’ll be bloodshed if you don’t.”
“I reckon he’s right there. We’re kind of out for that, aren’t we?”
“It won’t be so pleasant,” I said, “when it’s your blood that’s shed. I don’t mean yours personally, I mean your friends.”
“The other side will do some of the bleeding,” said Conroy.
“Still,” I said, “in the end they’ll win.”
“I wouldn’t bet too heavy on that,” said Conroy.
“You don’t mean to say that you think that a handful of north of Ireland farmers and mechanics can stand up against the British Empire?”
“It’s fixed in my mind,” said Conroy, “that the British lion will get his tail twisted a bit before he’s through with this business. I don’t say that he won’t make good in the end. Nobody but God Almighty cantell this minute whether he will or not; but he’ll be considerable less frisky when he’s finished than he is to-day.”
“But,” I said, “even supposing you clear the streets of the soldiers and police to-morrow—I do not see how you can; but if you do the Government will simply anchor a battleship off Carrickfergus and shell the whole town into a heap of ruins.”
“I’m calculating on their trying that,” said Conroy.
That was all I could get out of Conroy. I left him, feeling uneasily that his vote would certainly go against Clithering’s compromise. His confidence in the fighting powers of the raw men whom Bob and others had taken to church with them struck me as absurd. His cool assumption of power to deal with the British fleet was arrogance run mad.
On my way back to my hotel I ran into a congregation which had just got out of some church or other. In the first rank—they were marching in very fair order—was Crossan. He saluted me and stopped.
“I’m thinking,” he said, “that you won’t have seen them.”
He pointed to a small group of men who were bringing up the rear of the congregation’s march. They were dragging a heavy object along with two large ropes. I recognized the leader of them at once. He was Cahoon’s foreman friend, McConkey. I was pleased to find that he recognized me.
“I have her safe,” he said. “Would you like to take a look at her?”
I did. She was a machine gun of a kind quite unknown to me; but her appearance was very murderous.McConkey led me up to her. He stroked her black side lovingly and patted her in various places.
“I was trying her yesterday,” he said, “down on the slob land under the Shore Road. Man o’ man, but she shoots bonny!”
I had no doubt of it. She was likely to be accountable for a good deal of bloodshed if there was any street fighting next day. The record of her bag would, I should think, haunt Sir Samuel Clithering for the rest of his life.
“I’ve a matter of five thousand cartridges,” said McConkey in a hoarse whisper, “and there’s another five thousand ordered.”
The committee met at three o’clock in the afternoon. Sir Samuel Clithering was not, of course, a member of it; but he lurked about outside and waylaid us as we went in. He was in a condition of pitiful bewilderment. Alice whose adventures in Wonderland have been very dear to me since I first read them aloud to Marion, was once placed in a difficult and awkward position by the kings, queens and knaves of the pack of cards with which she was playing coming to life. This was sufficiently embarrassing. But Clithering was much worse off than Alice. In her story all the cards came to life, and though the unexpectedness of their behaviour made things difficult for her there was a certain consistency about the whole business. A card player might in time adjust himself to a game played with cards which possessed wills of their own. But poor Clithering had to play with a pack in which one suit only, and it not even the trump suit, suddenly insisted that the game was a reality. The other three suits, the Liberals, the Conservatives, and the Irish Nationalists still behaved in the normal way, falling pleasantly on top of each other, and winning or losing tricks as the rules of the game demanded. The Ulster party alone—Clubs, we may call them—would not play fairly. They jumped out of the player’s hand and obstinately declared that the green clothwas a real battlefield. The higher court cards of the suit—Lady Moyne for instance, and Babberly—Clithering felt himself able to control. It was the knaves—I am sure he looked on McNeice as a knave—the tens, the sevens and the humble twos which behaved outrageously.
And Clithering was not the only player who was perplexed. I had been to luncheon with the Moynes. Babberly was there of course. So was Malcolmson. Clithering sat next but one to Lady Moyne. Malcolmson was between them. It was a curious alliance. The emissary of the Government, which had passed measures which all good aristocrats disliked intensely, joined hands for the moment with the lady whose skill as a political hostess had frequently been troublesome to Clithering’s friends. I do not suppose that such an alliance could possibly last long. Those whom misfortune, according to the old proverb, forces into bed together, always struggle out again at opposite sides when the clouds cease to be threatening. But while it lasted the alliance was firm enough. They were both bent on pressing the advantages of moderation on Malcolmson. They produced very little effect. Malcolmson is impervious to reason. He kept falling back, in replying to their arguments, on his original objection to Home Rule.
“I shall never consent,” he said, “to be governed by a pack of blackguards in Dublin.”
It was really a very good answer, for every time he made it he drove a wedge into the coalition against him. Lady Moyne was bound to admit that all Irishmen outside Ulster are blackguards, and that the atmosphere of Dublin is poisonous. Clithering, on theother hand, was officially committed to an unqualified admiration for everything south of the Boyne. I do not think that Malcolmson appreciated his dialectic advantage. His mind was running on big guns rather than arguments.
Lady Moyne squeezed my hand as we parted after luncheon, and I think I am not exaggerating in saying that there were tears in her eyes. She succeeded at all events in giving me the impression that her future happiness depended very largely on me. I determined, as I had determined several times before, to be true to the most charming lady of my acquaintance.
Moyne took the chair at our meeting. Next him sat Babberly. Cahoon, McNeice and Malcolmson sat together at the bottom of the table. I was given a chair on Moyne’s other side. Conroy would not sit at the table at all. He had two chairs in a corner of the room. He sat on one of them and put his legs on the other. He also smoked a cigar, which I think everybody regarded as bad form. But nobody liked to protest, because nobody, except me and McNeice, knew which side Conroy was going to take in the controversy before us. Babberly, I feel sure, would have objected to the cigar if he had thought that Conroy favoured extreme defiance of the Government. Malcolmson, like many military men, is a great stickler for etiquette. He would have snubbed the cigar if he thought Conroy was inclined to moderation. As things were, we all warmly invited Conroy to desert his private encampment and join us round the table.
“I guess I’m here as an onlooker,” said Conroy. “You gentlemen can settle things nicely without me, till it comes to writing cheques. Then I chip in.”
Moyne murmured a compliment about Conroy’s extreme generosity in the past, and Babberly said that further calls on our purses were, for the present, unnecessary. Then we all forgot about Conroy. The Dean sat half way down the table on my side. There was also present a Member of Parliament, a man who had sat by Babberly’s side in the House of Commons all through the dreary months of June, July and August, supporting consistently every move he made towards wrecking the Home Rule Bill. There ought to have been several others of the moderate party at the meeting. Their letters of apology were read to us. They all had urgent business either in England or Scotland, which prevented their being in Belfast. I do not think their absence made much difference in the result of our deliberations. We had got beyond the stage at which votes matter much.
Moyne was pitifully nervous. He stated our position very fairly. It was, he said, a hateful thing to have to give in to the Government. He did not like doing it. On the other hand he did not like to take the responsibility of urging the people of Belfast to commit a breach of the peace. Lives, he said, would certainly be lost if we attempted to hold our meeting in the face of the force of armed men which the Government had collected in our streets. He would feel himself guilty of something little short of murder if he did not advise the acceptance of the compromise offered by Clithering. It was, after all, a fair, more than a fair compromise. Nothing would be lost by postponing the meeting for a week.
It was rather a feeble speech. Nobody offered any interruption, but nobody expressed any approval ofwhat he said. When he sat down Babberly rose at once.
Now Babberly is no fool. He knows that florid orations are out of place at committee meetings. He did not treat us to any oratory. He gave us tersely and forcibly several excellent reasons for postponing our demonstration.
“The Government,” he said, “is weakening. Its offer of a compromise shows that it is beginning at last to feel the full force of the Ulster objection to Home Rule.”
Here McNeice interrupted him.
“If that’s so,” he said, “we must make our objection more unmistakably obvious than before.”
“Quite so,” said Babberly; “but how? Is it—”
“By fighting them,” said McNeice.
“If by fighting them,” said Babberly, “you mean asking the unarmed citizens of Belfast to stand up against rifles—”
“Unarmed?” The word came from Conroy in his corner. Every one was startled. We had not expected Conroy to take any part in the discussion.
“Undrilled, undisciplined,” said Babberly. “What can be the result of such a conflict as you suggest? Our people, the men who have trusted us, will be mowed down. We shall place ourselves hopelessly in the wrong. We shall alienate the sympathies of our friends in England.”
A large crowd had gathered in the street outside the windows of the room in which we were sitting. I suppose that the men found waiting a tiresome business. By way of passing the time they began to sing “O God, our help in ages past.”
“It is of the utmost importance to us,” said Babberly, “to retain the sympathies of the English constituencies. Any illegal violence on our part—”
“You should have thought of that before you told the English people that we meant to fight,” said McNeice.
“If you follow my advice to-day,” said Babberly, “there will be no necessity for fighting.”
The hymn outside gathered volume. It seemed to me that thousands of voices were joining in the singing of it. It became exceedingly difficult to hear what Babberly was saying. I leaned forward and caught his next few sentences.
“By keeping within the limits of constitutional action at this crisis we shall demonstrate that we are, what we have always boasted ourselves, the party of law and order. We shall win a bloodless victory. We shall convince the Government that we possess self-control as well as determination.”
Then the noise of the singing outside became so great that it was impossible to hear Babberly at all. McNeice tilted his chair back and began to hum the tune. Malcolmson beat time to the singing with his forefingers. Their action seemed to me to be intentionally insulting to Babberly. The crowd outside reached the end of a verse and there was a pause.
“Damn that hymn!” said Babberly.
This roused the Dean. It would have roused any dean with a particle of spirit in him. After all, a high ecclesiastic cannot sit still and listen to profane condemnation of one of the Psalms of David, even if it has undergone versification at the hands of Dr. Watts. The conduct of McNeice and Malcolmson wasoffensive and provocative. The noise made by the crowd was maddening. There is every excuse for Babberly’s sudden loss of temper. But the Dean’s anger was more than excusable. It was justified. He sprang to his feet, and I knew at once that he was very angry indeed. I could see a broad white rim all round the irises of his eyes, and a pulse in his temples was throbbing visibly. I recognized the symptoms. I had seen them once before at a vestry meeting when some ill-conditioned parishioner said that the Dean’s curate was converting to his own uses the profits of the parish magazine. The periodical, as appeared later on, was actually run at a loss, and the curate had been seven-and-ninepence out of pocket the previous year.
The Dean said something to Babberly, but the crowd had begun the fourth verse of the hymn, and we could not hear what he said. I got up and shut both windows. The atmosphere of our committee-room was hot, and likely to become hotter; but it is better to do business in a Turkish bath than not to do it at all. There was plainly no use our talking to each other unless we were able to hear. My action gave Babberly time to regain his temper.
“I apologize,” he said. “I apologize to all of you, and especially to you, Mr. Dean, for an intemperate and uncalled-for exclamation.”
The Dean sat down. The pulse in his forehead was still throbbing, but the irises of his eyes ceased to look like bulls’ eyes in the middle of targets.
“I have been a consistent supporter of the Union,” said Babberly, “for twenty years. In season and out of season I have upheld the cause we have at heart on English platforms and in the House of Commons. Iknow better than you do, gentlemen, what the temper of the English people is. I know that we shall sacrifice their friendship and alienate their sympathy if we resort to the argument of lawlessness and violence.”
“It’s the only argument they ever listen to,” said McNeice. “Look at the Nationalists. What arguments did they use?”
“Gentlemen,” said Babberly, “are you going to ask Ulstermen to fire on the King’s troops?”
“I reckon,” said Conroy, “that we mean to use our guns now we’ve got them.”
Babberly made a curious gesture with his hands. He flung them out from him with the palms upwards and then sat down. McNeice rose next.
“For the last two years,” he said, “we’ve been boasting that we meant to resist Home Rule with force if necessary. That’s so, isn’t it?”
Malcolmson growled an assent.
“English politicians and Irish rebels said we were bluffing. Our own people—the men outside there in the street—thought we were in earnest. The English went on with their Bill. Our people drilled and got rifles. Which of the two was right about us? Were we bluffing or were we in earnest? We’ve got to answer that question to-morrow, and we’ll never get another chance. If we don’t fight now, we’ll never fight, for there won’t be a man left in Ulster that will believe in us again. I don’t know that there’s any more to be said. I propose that Lord Moyne puts the question to the meeting and takes a vote.”
Then Cahoon rose to his feet.
“Before you do that, my lord,” he said, “I’d like to say a word. I’m a business man. I’ve as much atstake as any one in this room. My fortune, gentlemen, is in bricks and mortar, in machinery and plant not ten miles from this city. I’ve thought this matter out, and I came to a conclusion years ago. Home Rule won’t do for Belfast, and Belfast isn’t going to have it. If I saw any way of stopping it but the one I’d take it. There are thousands, yes, gentlemen, thousands of men, women, and children depending on my business for their living. Home Rule means ruining it and starving them. I don’t like fighting, but, by God, I’ll fight before I submit to Home Rule.”
Lord Moyne looked slowly round the room. His face was quite pale. It seemed to me that his eyes had grown larger. They had a look of terror in them. His hands trembled among the papers in front of him. He saw at once what the result of a vote would be. He looked at me. I shook my head. It was quite plain that nothing I could say would influence the meeting in the least.
“Gentlemen,” said Moyne, “are we to attempt to hold our meeting to-morrow? Those who are in favour of doing so say ‘Aye.’”
Cahoon, McNeice, Malcolmson, the Dean and Conroy voted “aye.”
“The ‘ayes’ have it,” said Moyne.
“Before we part,” said Babberly, “I wish to say that I leave Belfast to-night—”
Malcolmson muttered something. Babberly held up his hand.
“No,” he said. “You are wrong. I’m not afraid. I’m not taking care of my own skin. But I have lived a loyal man and I mean to die a loyal man. I decline to take part in the rebellion.”
I have heard Babberly speak on various occasions and admired his eloquence. This time I recognized his sincerity. He was speaking the truth.
“I shall go back to England,” he said, “and, of this you may rest assured, that I shall do what can be done in Parliament and elsewhere to save you and the men whom I must call your victims from the consequences of to-day’s madness and to-morrow’s crime.”
He left the room. The five men who had voted “Aye” were gathered in a knot talking eagerly. I took Moyne’s arm and we went out together.
“Her ladyship must be got away,” he said. “And your daughter, Kilmore. She’s here, isn’t she? This town will be no place for women to-morrow. Luckily I have the car. You’ll take them, won’t you? Castle Affey will be the best place for the present.”
“What are you going to do yourself?” I asked.
We passed through the door and down the flight of steps to the street. The crowd outside caught sight of us at once. Some one shouted aloud.
“More traitors!”
The news of the result of the meeting and the part we took in it had somehow reached the people already. An angry roar went up from the crowd. Those who were nearest to us cursed us. A police-officer with eight men forced a way through the crowd. At a word from their officer the men drew their batons and stood in front of us.
“I think, my lord,” said the officer to Moyne, “that you’d better go back. We had the greatest difficulty in getting Mr. Babberly through, and the crowd is angrier now.”
“I’m going on,” said Moyne.
“I cannot be responsible,” said the officer. “I haven’t enough men to control this crowd. If you go on—”
Moyne pushed his way through the cordon of police. I followed him. At first the people drew back a little and let us pass into the middle of the crowd. Then one man after another began to hustle us. Moyne linked his arm in mine and helped me along. A man struck him in the face with the flat of his hand. It was a sharp slap rather than an actual blow. Moyne flushed deeply, but he neither spoke nor struck back. Then suddenly the people seemed to forget all about us. A wild cheer burst from them. Hats were flung into the air. Sticks were waved. Some one began firing shots from a revolver in rapid succession. It was a fusillade of joy, a kind of salute to McNeice who appeared at the window of the committee-room. Moyne and I pushed our way on. When we were clear of the crowd Moyne spoke to me again.
“You’d better take them at once,” he said. “It’s impossible to know what’ll happen here to-night.”
“But you?” I said.
“Oh, I shall stay.”
“Don’t be a fool, Moyne,” I said. “You’re the one of all others who ought not to stay. Don’t you see that whatever way things go you’re in for it? The mob thinks you’re a traitor. I wouldn’t trust those fellows we’ve just left not to kill you. And when the soldiers have shot them down and the subsequent investigation begins, the Government is bound to fix on you as a ringleader. There’ll be panic to-morrow and savage vindictiveness the next day. McNeice and Malcolmson will frighten the Government and the Government willhave you hanged or beheaded afterwards for causing the trouble. The English people will clamour for a victim, and you’re exactly the sort of victim they’ll like. Your one chance is to get out of this. Go to Castle Affey to-night, and telegraph toThe Timesto-morrow to say that you dissociate yourself—”
Moyne stopped me.
“Look here, Kilmore,” he said. “I’ve heard all you have to say, and I agree with it, more or less. I don’t suppose I’ll be either murdered by the mob or shot by the military, but—”
“You will,” I said, “if you stay here.”
“Even if I am,” he said, “I’ll have to stay.”
“In the name of goodness, why?”
“You know the way we’ve been talking for the last two years—our side, I mean.”
I knew the way Babberly had been talking. I knew the way Lady Moyne had goaded him and others to talk, but poor Moyne hardly ever talked at all. All he ever wanted was to be left alone.
“Well, I can’t exactly go back on them now when they’re doing what we said they ought to do. I’ve got to see the thing through. After all it’s my fault that those poor fellows are in this horrible mess.”
He glanced back as he spoke. He was thinking of the angry crowd we had left behind us.
“So you’ll take care of the ladies,” he said. “Run them down to Castle Affey and make yourself as comfortable as you can. They won’t be expecting you, but they’ll manage some sort of dinner.”
“I’m not going,” I said. “I’m staying on in Belfast.”
“But why should you? You’ve no responsibility.You’ve never taken any part in our—It’s very good of you to think of staying. It really is. And I appreciate the spirit in which—But—”
“For goodness’ sake, Moyne,” I said, “don’t give me credit for any kind of heroism. Thatnoblesse obligeattitude of yours doesn’t suit me a bit. It isn’t in my line.”
“But hang it all, Kilmore, you can’t be staying here for the fun of it.”
“I’ve often told you,” I said, “that I’m writing a history of the Irish Rebellions. I naturally want to see one, and there isn’t likely to be another in my time. That’s my only reason for staying in Belfast.”
We found Lady Moyne waiting for us when we reached the hotel. She was wearing a long cloak, and had a motor-veil tied over her head. She was evidently prepared to start at once.
“I’ve ordered the car,” she said. “It ought to be round now. Marion’s coming with me, Lord Kilmore. I think she’d be better out of Belfast for the next few days.”
The news of the decision of our committee seemed to have spread with quite unexampled rapidity. We came straight from the meeting, and we found that Lady Moyne had already recognized the necessity for flight.
“I’m glad you’re going,” said Moyne, “and I’m glad you’re taking Marion with you. But how did you know? Who told you what—?”
“That young man who’s Mr. Conroy’s secretary,” said Lady Moyne. “I forget his name.”
“Bob Power,” I said.
“He came in to see Marion, and he told us.”
Bob must have known beforehand what the committee’sdecision was to be. I realized that Conroy must have had the whole plan cut and dried; that the meeting at which Moyne presided was simply a farce. However, there was nothing to be gained by discussing that.
“I think,” I said, “that Moyne ought to go with you. I don’t think Belfast is particularly safe for him just now; and—”
“Moyne must stay, of course,” said Lady Moyne.
“There’ll be trouble afterwards,” I said. “He ought not to be mixed up in it. If he clears out at once—”
Lady Moyne looked at me with an expression of wonder on her face. Her eyes opened very wide.
“Surely,” she said, “you don’t expect him to run away.”
“Of course not,” said Moyne; “of course not. And there’s really no risk. I’ll—”
“That’s not the kind of people we are,” said Lady Moyne.
“I’ll join you at Castle Affey in a couple of days,” said Moyne.
“Castle Affey,” said Lady Moyne. “I’m not going to Castle Affey. I’m going to London.”
“What for?” I said. “And how are you going to get there? There are no steamers on Sunday night.”
“I’m taking possession of Mr. Conroy’s yacht,” said Lady Moyne. “She’s lying off Bangor, and that young man, Mr. Power, said we could have her. We’ll get across to Stranraer this evening, and I’ll have a special train and be in London to-morrow morning.”
“London!” said Moyne. “But why London? Surely Castle Affey—”
“I must see the Prime Minister early to-morrow. He must be persuaded—he must be forced if necessary—to telegraph orders to Belfast. Don’t you realize? I don’t blame you, I don’t blame either of you for the failure of your meeting this afternoon. I’m sure you did your best. But—but what will happen here to-morrow? We can’t leave the people to be shot down like dogs. After all, they’reourpeople.”
“But what can you do?” said Moyne. “The Prime Minister won’t see you.”
“If necessary I shall force him,” said Lady Moyne. “He shall see me.”
Lady Moyne is, as I have always said, a remarkable woman. Many members of her sex have been trying for years to force their way into the presence of the Prime Minister. They have hitherto failed.
“I am afraid,” I said, “that Marion won’t be much use to you if you’re going to come into collision with the police in any way.”
Lady Moyne smiled.
“I hope I shan’t be reduced to those methods,” she said; “but if I am I shall leave Marion at home.”
I had not the slightest doubt that Lady Moyne would succeed in seeing the Prime Minister. He has probably sense enough to know that though he may resist other women successfully, he cannot possibly make head against her.
“If there is no rioting here to-night,” said Lady Moyne, “I shall be in time. That young man, Mr. Power, seemed to think that everything would be quiet until to-morrow. I hope he’s right.”
“He’s sure to be,” I said. “Conroy is running the revolution and settles exactly what is to happen.”
“He was very confident,” said Lady Moyne. “Ah! here’s Marion. Now we can start. Good-bye, Lord Kilmore. Do your best here. I’ll make the best arrangement I can with the Prime Minister.”