Maeve dragged a chair from the house down to the middle of the lawn. Her black hair that had in it a hint of blue sheen fell in a tangled wave about her shoulders. Her skin was white almost as alabaster. Never was there colour to the child: she was all black and white, save that her eyes were as blue as they were black and her lips were as red as coral. In her cheeks and brow there was no colour. I watched from my window her wild, undisciplined grace: the slender loveliness of her legs, the flowing gestures of her arms, ending in her shapely though dirty hands.
She sat in the chair, made a grab at chubby little Eileen and pushed her behind the chair. “Take up your shield,” she commanded; and Eileen obediently took up a large saucepan-lid and held it self-consciously. Maeve sprang from the chair and looked at her younger sister. “For the love of Mike!” she cried. “You look like a black pudding. Give me the shield.” Eileen meekly surrendered the saucepan-lid, and in Maeve’s hand it became at once a shield. “See! Like that!” said Maeve. “Remember you’re shield-bearer to the loveliest woman in Ireland.”
She sat again, smoothed out her dress, threw back her head, and looked regal. “Captain of the guards,” she cried. “My bronze-bladed spear!”
Rory leapt forward, and with a deep obeisance presented a long reed, which, for some reason of her own, Nellie kept standing, one of a bunch, in a porcelain jar in the hall. Maeve took the reed and held it as a queen might, with luck, hold a sceptre, “Stand on my left, Fergus MacRoy,” she commanded Rory; and to Oliver she said with a curve of her long white hand: “Husband, stand on my right.”
When Maeve sat, Eileen and Rory seemed of her own height. Oliver, standing on Maeve’s right, out-topped them all. The summer afternoon’s sun shone on the little group: on the red dress of queenly Maeve, who knew from childhood, what her colours were; on the crumpled green of dumpy and earnest Eileen; on Rory, standing straight and stocky on Maeve’s left, his honest eyes looking forward with great earnestness from beneath his tangled mat of hair and his broad low brow; on Oliver, slightly scornful of the game, slightly condescending, his shapely curly head on its slender neck bowed a little towards Queen Maeve.
“Now, this is what it’s all about,” Maeve chanted, “and if you want to read it for yourself you can do so in Standish O’Grady.”
“I know it all,” Rory interrupted. “I’ve read every word Standish O’Grady has written.”
“So you would,” said Maeve, “with father pushing him down your throat at all hours of the day and night. But that’s no reason, Fergus MacRoy, captain of the guards, for interrupting your queen. Listen, all of you, to this: ‘Queen Maeve summoned to her to Rath-Cruhane all her captains and counsellors and tributary kings. They came at once according as they had been commanded by the word of her mouth. When they were assembled, Maeve, from her high throne canopied with shining bronze, addressed them.’”
Oliver gave a supercilious glance at the empty air above Maeve’s head. Unheeding the implication, while Rory gazed stonily ahead, Maeve went on in her rich and ringing voice that I could have listened to all day: “‘She was a woman of great stature, beautiful and of a pure complexion, her eyes large and full and blue-grey in colour, her hair dense and long and of a lustrous yellow.’”
She flashed a scornful look at Oliver, as though daring him to comment upon that. Oliver returned the look with a smile which she refused to accept. “‘Of a lustrous yellow,’” she repeated. “‘A tiara of solid gold encircled her head, and a torque of gold her white neck.’”
“What’s a torque?” Eileen demanded.
“For the love of God,” said Maeve passionately, “what should a torque be, by the very sense of the words I’m speaking, but a thing to go round the neck?”
Eileen drooped her head in contrition. Rory turned and gave her his rare crooked smile; but added: “If we don’t understand it, let’s shut up. The thing is to feel it.”
“‘Her mantle of scarlet silk, very fine,’” Maeve proceeded, looking down with satisfaction at her red dress, “‘was gathered over her ample bosom in the ard-regal brooch of the high sovereignty of Connaught. In her right hand,”’—shaking the reed—“‘she bore a long spear with a broad blade of shining bronze. Her shield-bearer stood behind the throne. On her right hand stood her husband; on her left Fergus MacRoy, captain of her guards. Her voice, as she spoke, was full, clear and musical, and rang through the vast hall...’”
“Saying,” cried Rory in sudden excitement, “‘It is known to you all that there is not in Banba, nor yet in the whole world, so far report speaks truly, a woman more excellent than myself.’”
Maeve rose from the chair and threw down her reed. “Just because you know it by heart,” she cried, “is that any reason for shouting and spoiling everything? You’re just reciting it. I want to act it. Don’t you know that it’s silly tosh till it’s acted? I was going to give you all parts.”
Rory’s face blanched and his fists clenched. “What d’you mean tosh?” he demanded, advancing his round little head as near as he could to Maeve’s face. “It’s poetry. You ask father. It belongs to the time when Ireland was the land of saints and scholars. Don’t you call it tosh.”
“You spoiled the acting,” Maeve charged him.
“What if I did? You’re always acting.”
“So I am, then, and so I’ll always be.”
They glared into one another’s faces, Rory with his fists clenched at his sides, Maeve tall, white and scornful. Eileen stood by perplexed, clumsily holding the saucepan-lid. Oliver, practically, recovered the fallen reed.
Slowly a smile spread over Maeve’s face, and Rory’s hands at that sight uncurled. “Of course I’m always acting,” said Maeve, “and who wouldn’t want to act lovely poetry like that?” She skipped merrily under the beech trees.
“It is poetry. Isn’t it?” Rory demanded.
“Of course it’s poetry, you ugly little patriot,” said Maeve. “How couldn’t it be when it’s about a lovely woman called Maeve?”
*
I wasn’t seeing so much of the children now because they were all by this time at Miss Bussell’s. But that was a Saturday afternoon, and on most Saturday afternoons they were at The Beeches, because the garden there was better for playing in than Dermot’s. Maeve at that time was always trying to get them to act: she was mad about acting. You would see her strike poses when she was all alone; but usually the game broke down on some silly quibble like the one that afternoon.
Dermot’s children stayed to tea, and then Rory and Eileen set off for home. “Take care of Ugly and mind how you cross the roads,” said Maeve to Eileen in a superior grown-up fashion. She was trying hard to be self-controlled, but I could see that she was jumping with excitement inside, for I was taking her that night to the Theatre Royal.
“I’ll take care of Ugly,” Oliver suddenly announced. “Let me go with him.”
“And who’ll take care of you on the way home?” Nellie demanded, appearing out of the house. “I think I’d better walk with you; then you and I can come back together.”
Oliver’s colour deepened. “I am big enough to look after my friends,” he said.
“But Rory’s as old as you are,” Nellie argued obtusely; and I could almost see the answer forming in Oliver’s mouth before he spoke it. “But don’t you understand! I’m only pretending to take care of Rory, because I want to be with Rory.”
He stood and glared at the uncomprehending adults to whom all his thoughts had to be explained.
“Very well,” said Nellie. “But don’t go farther than the Priory. And mind the crossings on the way back.”
“Oh, as if I wouldn’t,” said Oliver; and he seized Rory’s arm and hurried him away, leaving Eileen to toil after.
As soon as they were gone, Maeve clutched my hand and squeezed it frantically, all grown-up pretence vanished. “Oh, Uncle Bill! Won’t it be lovely! Lovely! The first time I’ve ever been to a theatre!”
I patted her slender hand. “And lovely for me, too,” I said. “This will be the first time I’ve ever taken a lady to the theatre. D’you know that?”
“No!”
“Yes! It’s going to be a grand night for us both. But I wish it was the depth of winter.”
“Why do you wish that?”
“Because that’s the time for going to the theatre, and because we’re going to have dinner first in a restaurant, and the winter’s the best time for doing that, too. You go in out of the cold draughty streets and get a lovely slap in the face from the smell of soup and fish and meat and pastry and gaslight. Oh, yes. That’s much nicer in the winter.”
“We’re not going to a restaurant!”
“Oh, yes, we are.”
She was so excited that she didn’t answer. She merely looked down appraisingly at her red dress. “That’ll do,” I said with a smile. “That’ll do fine. I’ll be proud to be with you. Now if we were in London I’d put on a lovely white shirt; but I needn’t do that in Manchester, not even for the stalls, where I’ve got seats. Not even for Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.”
We had gone into the house and were climbing the stairs to my study, Maeve still hanging on my arm. “Oh, tell me about them,” she said with a squeeze.
“Now what’s the good of telling you when you’re going to see them with your own eyes inside a few hours?”
“Well, tell me about the play,” she insisted as we went into the study.
“Here’s somebody who can tell you about that better than I can,” I said, pulling Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare out of the book-case. “But I expect you’ve read this already.”
“I have not then,” she said, seizing the book and throwing her lithe young body into a chair. “It’s all Irish stuff we get at home. You’d never believe—it’s all wonderful or all woeful. Marvellous tales of Cuculain and the heroes, or miserable tales about patriots and potato famines. I’m getting sick of it, but Rory laps it up. And there’s such a lot in it about hating the English. I don’t hate you, Uncle Bill. Why should we hate the English?”
“I don’t see any sense in hating anybody,” I said, rather professorially.
“Well, then, I wish you’d ask father to give us a change.”
“Ah, that’s another matter. Get on with that while you have a chance.”
So Maeve drew her long legs up under her on the couch and settled down to The Merchant of Venice. I filled a pipe, pulled a chair to the open window, and sat looking down the long front garden towards the beech trees.
“This will be the first time I’ve ever taken a lady to the theatre.” Extraordinary! Before my marriage I had had little time for the theatre. I had gone occasionally with Dermot; less often with old O’Riorden; but they were not enthusiastic. The old man preferred to have his feet on the hob and Dickens on his lap, and Dermot wanted to spend all his time with planes and chisels and gouges. Soon after marriage there came the time when I worked harder than I had ever worked before, harder than I have ever worked since: building up the Easifix Company all day, working on my books at night.
Then suddenly came success with both my endeavours. Easifix took up little time. The mornings were all I needed to give to my writing. In the afternoons I walked. The nights were mine to do with as I pleased.
It was at this time that I tried consciously to draw Nellie nearer to the things that were of my heart’s desire. The very effort was evidence of breach. It must have been three years ago now—more than three years, for it was on a winter morning—that I said at breakfast: “There’s a grand play at the Prince’s Theatre this week, Nellie. What about going along there? We could have dinner somewhere first.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t like the theatre.”
“But you’ve never been. That is, so far as I know.”
“No. I’ve never been.”
“Then how do you know whether you like it or not?”
“Well, I don’t approve of it, then.”
She gave me the blank and dogged look with which I knew there was no arguing.
“Well, we could do something else. If we only had a bit of dinner in a restaurant. We might go on to a Hallé concert. You don’t object to music, do you?”
“I don’t see any sense in wasting money in restaurants,” she said. “The food’s nothing like so good as we get at home, and it costs about four times as much.”
“I don’t call it waste,” I defended myself. “You pay for more than the food—the change, the service—all that.”
“I hate eating in public, and I dislike waiters hovering about.”
I found it difficult to be patient; but I persisted. “Well, if there was a Hallé concert you thought you’d like, we could have an early dinner here and go straight there.”
She shook her head, got up, and began piling the breakfast things, a job she could never leave to the maid. “What would be the good?” she said. “I don’t understand music, and I should feel out of place. Besides, I don’t want to leave Oliver at night.”
I knew this was the last time I should ever try to walk in step with Nellie. I would see it through. I strode over to the fireplace and stood there filling my after-breakfast pipe. “Nellie,” I said, “just leave the things alone for a moment and listen to me.”
She ceased her clattering and sat down. “What’s wrong with leaving Oliver?” I asked. “We’re fairly rich people, and so far as I can see, we’re likely to get richer. If I wanted to do it, or if you wanted to do it, we could leave this house tomorrow and go into one twice as big, where there’d be room for a nursery-governess who’d have nothing to do but give all her time and thoughts to Oliver. Would you like that?”
She shook her head slowly.
“Why not? It would give you much more freedom.”
“I don’t want it!” she burst out. “I don’t want women looking after the child. Can’t you see that he’s got too much already? Don’t you know that you’re ruining him by pouring into his lap anything he thinks or dreams of? I’ll look after him myself. It won’t do him any harm to see there’s someone who’s not gallivanting about and having this and having that. And I don’t want a new house. I never wanted this house. I never wanted servants about me. I was happy where I was.”
“Servants?” I raised an eyebrow, thinking of our one small maid; but it was no use. Had I been squandering our last few sovereigns on uniformed flunkeys I clearly could not stand more deeply damned in Nellie’s eyes.
So I had never taken a lady to the theatre, which, I thought with a wry smile, sitting at the open window, was one of the pleasures of life that a civilised man should have pretty often. I had accepted the situation: that Nellie and I must rub along as best we could. After all, I had never pretended to love Nellie. I had nothing to blame her with. There was a lot with which I might blame myself. I had given her a great many things which, I saw with increasing clearness, she did not value in the least. She was stubborn, narrow, but, above all, she was honest and of integrity. She had a dislike and distrust of affluence which I now believe to have been grounded in reason. She didn’t like the smell of riches, and I myself have more and more come to think that riches have a bad smell.
Well, there it was. We lived together; to the end we shared the same bed; we never quarrelled; and things might have been worse.
I looked across the room at Maeve’s dark hair which, like a black drooping wing, hid her face bent over the conflict of Shylock and Antonio. Just such black hair as that, just such a healthy pallid face, had been Daisy Morton’s. It was soon after that definitive talk with Nellie that I met Daisy. She would be in her middle twenties, I suppose, and she was beautiful and rich and had a quality of generosity that I have found in few women. I mean, her spirit came out to meet you, and you were aware of an absence of bodily prudery that was unusual and delightful. She was not the woman to expect marriage to follow a kiss. Not that I ever kissed her; but I knew in my heart that she was mine for the taking.
I never took Daisy to the theatre, but it was there I met her. I made the habit now of going every Saturday night, usually alone, sometimes with Dermot. It was Dermot who introduced me to Daisy Morton. She was an only child whose father, a cotton merchant, had died and left her all he had. Dermot had been out to Bowdon to overhaul the mansion in which old Sir Anthony Morton had been accumulating costly rubbish for half a century. Daisy gaily bade him sell, if he could get a cent for them, the lush Alma-Tademas and Marcus Stones that sprawled largely upon the walls, and to sweep away the combination of spidery knick-knackery and cumbrous pieces that made up the furniture.
She was interested when Dermot introduced us at the theatre. Novelists were not too common in Manchester then, though I believe they are now almost as numerous as knights, and my reputation had gone considerably beyond the boundaries of a local fame.
Daisy had read my books. She could talk intelligently about them. She criticised them with a good deal of common sense. She developed a habit of being wherever I was to be found. We had a few meals together at restaurants, and I discovered that I was dressing with unusual care.
She was so gay and happy, so full of good conversation, that I, who had known no woman well save Nellie and Sheila, was captivated by her company. It was so easy to envisage a life different from my present one—if Daisy were my wife.
For a couple of months I lunched with her one day a week—the day on which I went into Manchester to supervise the Easifix affairs. It was after lunch one day, when we were shaking hands outside a restaurant, that our hands didn’t part. We could feel the hot currents of awareness passing from one to the other of us, and looking into her face I saw for the first time colour burning in her pallid cheeks.
She said: “Mr. O’Riorden has finished now up at the house. You’ve never seen it. Do come. Do come—now.”
Her voice shook a little and I was never more certain of anything in my life than of the meaning of her words. I could go—and it would never be the same with me and Nellie again. I didn’t go. I owed Nellie that.
Well, there it was. That’s how things were with us.
Maeve threw down her book. “That’s a big sigh,” she said.
“Come along,” I said gaily. “The cab will be here in a moment, and I’m going to take a lovely lady to the theatre.”
*
Although both windows were down, the old four-wheeler smelt of mouldering leather. It was almost falling to pieces. It might have been the very cab from which, so many years ago, I had seen my brother’s face looking out as he followed my mother’s body to the grave. That was the night I had wandered into Moscrop’s: the night I had knocked out the bully who was terrorising Nellie. So much had begun from that night. I sniffed the cab’s odours with displeasure.
But to Maeve, lovely summer evening though it was, and all the circumstances hopelessly inappropriate to the theatre, the occasion was perfect. Hatless, she sat back in her red dress, her black hair falling about her shoulders, and watched the trees of the Fallowfield gardens wavering slowly past the windows. Her hands were in her lap, knotted, writhing with excitement. But her voice was unexcited when she spoke. “It’s strange, isn’t it, Uncle Bill, that I know how much I’m going to love the theatre tonight. I’ve never been, but I love the thought of it. I’ve been reading in Villette how Lucy Snowe went in Brussels to see Rachel act, and I’ve been reading everything else that I can find about actresses and plays.”
I patted her hand. “Good. If there’s anything you love very much, stick to it. Never let go till it’s given you all it’s got.”
“I shall,” she said gravely. “I want to be an actress. I must be an actress.”
“Very well,” I laughed. “One of these days I’ll write a play for you.”
She took me up seriously. “Will you? Really?”
I looked down at the blue-black eyes, earnest in the white oval of her face. I was surprised at their intensity. “Promise?” she demanded.
“Honest to goodness,” I said. “I’ll remember this promise.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re a good man, Uncle Bill. I wish Oliver was as good as you are.”
“But my child, my child,” I protested, “he’s got to be better than I am—much better.”
She shook her head slowly, doubtingly.
“Why don’t you like Oliver?” I challenged her suddenly. I had noticed her disapproval of him more than once.
“I don’t know,” she said, laughing it off. “Perhaps he looks too good to be true.”
“Rory likes him.”
“Oh, Ugly-Mugly likes everyone. Every night now when he’s getting into bed he says: ‘God damn England—except Uncle Bill and Oliver and all my friends.’ And that means everybody.”
“But it’s a pity he says that at all.”
“Oh, man,” she said, relapsing into a touch of Irish that I loved to hear in her, “oh, man, it is that then. He gets it from father.”
“It’s a pity,” I repeated.
“It gives me the creeps to hear it,” she said. “’Twas but the other night I rushed downstairs and into father’s room when he was sitting smoking his pipe and reading. ‘Father,’ I shouted, ‘some day you’ll have something to answer for.’ He jumped up as if I had hit him, and stood in front of the fireplace with his teeth biting his pipe hard. He looked at me in a way he’s never looked at me before—very pale and cold, and believe me, Uncle Bill, his eyes had little green specks in them.”
I knew those little green specks. I said nothing.
“He said,” she went on, “‘If there’s any answering to be done, I’m ready to do it.’ So I just went out of the room.”
Well, we had a meal, and Maeve enjoyed it because she wasn’t used to dining out; but I didn’t enjoy it much because I was thinking of pug-faced little Rory so carefully excluding his friends from his damnations; and of Dermot with the green flecks still lighting up his pale eyes, which looked so much lighter now that he had that red pointed beard; and of Maeve, growing so beautiful and talented—hadn’t she told me that little story with real dramatic power?—and yet troubled so early by the madnesses of her elders. The Manchester Martyrs, and that brave fighting rat Flynn, and Dermot, and now Rory. A cold whiff of doom seemed to touch my spine. Why couldn’t old quarrels die? There seemed to be always someone blowing on the coals. Politics... politicians... I hated them then; and today I hate them more: foul old men of the sea, astride the shoulders of the nations.
We went across the road and saw the curtain swing up, saw Irving and Ellen Terry walk the boards in the grand old theatre where now you can see nothing but shadows mouthing the inanities of little minds. So we progress.
I shall always feel a grudge when I think of the Theatre Royal going over to the “pictures.” I have a personal sense that it should have remained true to the drama if only because there Maeve saw her first play, drew her first breath of the purpose of her life. But perhaps by now Maeve herself is forgotten: Maeve O’Riorden who flamed so splendidly and expired so soon. We do not long remember.
For myself, I have little remembrance of the play, but a most clear remembrance of a hot hand that hardly left mine all through the evening, of a small voice that whispered when I bent over her in the first interval “No, don’t talk,” and of a strange blow that suddenly hit my mind when I heard a voice speaking the words:
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But while this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
What memory did they stir? And my thoughts rushed back to the fantastic Flynn pausing on an Ancoats street corner at midnight and reciting those words to me and Nellie. He had added: “God bless you,” and then he disappeared.
So for the second time that night the thought of Flynn came back to me, and it was somehow with a foreboding heart that at last I found myself holding Maeve’s hand among the jostling crowd in the gaslight outside the theatre. I looked down at her small form, and she looked up at me with a face illumined by more than the gaslight. “I’m so happy,” she said, “so happy and so tired.”
I got her into a cab and sat her upon my knee, with her head upon my shoulder. Although it was a fine summer night there was a nip in the late air, so I opened my coat and pulled it round her. She was asleep long before the cab reached Dermot’s house.
*
Sheila came to the door and took Maeve from my arms. She looked rather strained and anxious, which was not usual with her. “Thank you, Bill. You’re a dear to have taken her,” she said. “Did she enjoy it?”
“It was the night of her life,” I boasted.
Sheila opened the door into the drawing-room and said: “Good-night, Dermot. I’m taking Maeve straight up. Good-night, Mr. Donnelly.”
A clear, pleasing voice from within the room said: “Good-night then, Mrs. O’Riorden, good-night.”
“Come on in here, Bill,” Dermot shouted, and I went into the drawing-room. Dermot and the man who was with him rose. “This is Kevin Donnelly, Bill. Mr. Donnelly, this is William Essex.”
Donnelly shook my hand. “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Essex,” he said in his pleasant silvery voice, “and, what’s more, I’ve read one of your books. Only one. I don’t get much time for fiction.”
He looked a typical artisan. He was short and thick-set, dressed in comfortable homely clothes. His hair was rather thin, his moustache full and inclined to be ragged, his face as homely as his coat.
“Sit down, Bill,” said Dermot. He mixed me a whisky and soda. Donnelly, who had an empty glass alongside his chair, declined another. He remained standing. “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. O’Riorden,” he said, “I’ll be getting along. It’s well past eleven, and I’ve got to get back to town. There’s nothing more we can say tonight. But if you’re of the same mind when the time comes, you can rely on me.”
He shook hands, and Dermot saw him out.
“Well,” said Dermot, when he came back into the room. “I’m glad you had a chance to meet Kevin Donnelly. What do you think of him?”
“He looks like a walking illustration of the dignity of labour, as understood by Ruskin and Carlyle,” I laughed. “The very stuff of integrity. The firm, hard-working basis that makes it easy for parasites like you and me to keep on top.”
Dermot looked at me queerly. “You wouldn’t be on top for long if Donnelly had his way,” he said. “D’you mean to say you’ve never heard of him?”
“Never. He doesn’t look the sort of chap one hears of, does he?”
Dermot pulled at his pipe in silence for a while. “The conceit, complacency and ignorance of the English are beyond belief,” he said at last. “There goes a man who has been working tirelessly, day and night, for years, nibbling away at the very foundation you stand on in Ireland, and all you have to say is that he doesn’t look the sort of chap one hears of.” He tossed off the remains of his whisky. “Well, well. You’ll hear of him.”
“At least, I’m willing to learn,” I said. “Tell me about him.”
“Well, he is by trade a printer, living in Dublin. When he’s lucky, I suppose he earns about two pounds a week. He’s married and has a small daughter. His family life is of extraordinary purity and beauty, I know. I’ve lived in his house for a week, and I’ve talked with many of his friends. I wouldn’t entrust Rory to him without taking some personal care.”
“Rory? What’s all this?”
“I’m coming to it. I’ve lived with Kevin Donnelly and talked much with him. I’ve seen his library. Be flattered, Bill, that he’s read one of your books. It’s a compliment. He taught himself to read. Figure out what that means. And Bunyan and Cobbett are about the lowest point his reading touches. Figure that out, too.”
“Thank you. He’s read me.”
“All right. His writing has the same punch as Cobbett’s and that’s all the worse for you—that is, if you’re interested in keeping Ireland. Have you ever heard—no, I won’t ask you. You’ve never heard of Ireland Arise! It’s a little sheet that Donnelly writes and prints, and I myself don’t know where he prints it. Neither does Dublin Castle, but it would like to. Donnelly gets nothing out of it. The Party funds provided the press and provide the paper. Donnelly does the rest, and the sheet circulates by the thousand. That sheet is one of the things that will help to blow Dublin Castle half-way to Holyhead. Even your bayonets won’t stand against the logic of it much longer.”
He paused to put a match to his pipe. “Well,” he said, “that’s your walking illustration of the dignity of labour. You never said a truer word, Bill. Add to this that Donnelly’s an orator. Did you notice he had a beautiful voice?”
I nodded. “You’ve never heard him in full cry. The Party sent him to America a few years ago. One of his speeches charmed ten thousand dollars out of my Uncle Con’s pocket. Not a penny for Donnelly, mark you—all for the cause. I’ve heard him talking to the Dublin toughs on a barrel alongside the Liffey and to the Wicklow farmers, standing on a haycart outside the very door of the village police-station. And he’s irresistible every time.”
“It’s midnight, Dermot,” I said. “I must be going home. But tell me first—what’s all this got to do with Rory?”
“It’s got this to do with it: that Rory’s going to be brought up as an Irishman, as I told you long ago he would be. When the time comes, he is going to live with Donnelly in Dublin. I’ll board him there, and Donnelly’ll treat him as one of the family. He’ll go to school in Dublin, and when he’s old enough he’ll go to the University there. And not Trinity College, either. Rory’s going where he belongs, that’s all.”
“And when is this to come about?”
“I don’t quite know. A couple of years.”
“I’m sorry.”
I stood up to go, and Dermot faced me, pale and angry-looking. “And why should you be sorry?” he demanded. “What the hell—”
I placed a hand on his arm. “Dermot, this is something we’re not going to quarrel about. We’re not going to quarrel—you and I—about anything. But perhaps it’s just that I’ve got a general idea that the world’s salvation isn’t going to come so much from splitting up as from joining on. See? That’s all. Good-night now.”
He put out his hand impulsively. “Thank you, Bill,” he said. “We won’t quarrel—you and I—especially about this. But—just on general principles—God damn England.”