When Hyacinth got back to Dublin about the middle of February, the streets were gay with amateur warriors. The fever for volunteering, which laid hold on the middle classes after the series of regrettable incidents of the winter, raged violently among the Irish Loyalists. Nowhere were the recruiting officers more fervently besieged than in Dublin. Youthful squireens who boasted of being admirable snipe shots, and possessed a knowledge of all that pertained to horses, struggled with prim youths out of banks for the privilege of serving as troopers. The sons of plump graziers in the West made up parties with footmen out of their landlords' mansions, and arrived in Dublin hopeful of enlistment. Light-hearted undergraduates of Trinity, drapers' assistants of dubious character, and the crowd of nondescripts whose time is spent in preparing for examinations which they fail to pass, leaped at the opportunity of winning glory and perhaps wealth in South Africa. Those who were fortunate enough to be selected were sent to the Curragh to be broken in to their new profession. They were clothed, to their own intense delight, in that peculiar shade of yellow which is supposed to be a help to the soldier in his efforts not to be shot. Their legs were screwed into putties and breeches incredibly tight round the knees, which expanded rapidly higher up, and hung round their hips in voluminous folds. Their jackets were covered with a multiplicity of quaint little pockets, sewed on in unexpected places, and each provided with a flap which buttoned over it. The name of the artist who designed this costume has perished, nor does there remain any written record of the use which these tightly-secured pocket-covers were supposed to serve. Augusta Goold suggested that perhaps they were meant to prevent the troopers' money from falling out in the event of any commanding officer ordering his men to receive the enemy standing on their heads.' In the light of the intelligence displayed by the English Generals up to the present,' she said, 'the War Office is quite right to be prepared for such a thing happening.'
It seemed possible to procure almost any amount of leave from the Curragh, and the yeomen delighted to spend it in promenading the fashionable streets of the metropolis. The tea-shops reaped a rich harvest from the regal way in which they treated their female relatives and friends. Indeed, their presence must have seriously disorganized the occupations by which young women earn their living. It was difficult to imagine that the sick in the hospitals could have been properly looked after, or the letters of solicitors typewritten, so great was the number of damsels who attached themselves to these attractive heroes. The philosophic observer found another curious subject for speculation in the fact that this parade of military splendour took place in a city whose population sympathized intensely with the Boer cause, and was accustomed to receive the news of a British defeat with delight. The Dublin artisan viewed the yeomen much as the French in Paris must have looked upon the allied troops who entered their city after Waterloo. The very name by which they were called had an anti-national sound, and suggested the performance of other amateur horse-soldiers in Wexford a century earlier.
The little band whose writings filled the pages of the Croppy were more than anyone else enraged at the flaunting of Imperialism in their streets. They had rejoiced quite openly after Christmas, and called attention every week in prose and poetry to the moribund condition of the British Empire, even boasting as if they themselves had borne a part in its humiliation. They were still in a position to assert that the Boers were victorious, and that the volunteers were likely to do no more than exhaust the prison accommodation at Pretoria. They could and did compose biting jests, but their very bitterness witnessed to a deep disappointment. It was not possible to deny that the despised English garrison in Ireland was displaying a wholly unlooked-for spirit. No one could have expected that West Britons and 'Seonini' would have wanted to fight. Very likely, when the time came, they would run away; but in the meanwhile here they were, swaggering through the streets of Dublin, outward and visible signs of a force in the country hostile to the hopes of the Croppy, a force that some day Republican Ireland would have to reckon with.
Augusta Goold herself was more tolerant and more philosophic than her friends. She looked at the yeomen with a certain admiration. Their exuberant youthfulness, their strutting, and their obvious belief in themselves, made a strong appeal to her imagination.
'Look at that young man,' she said to Hyacinth, pointing out a volunteer who passed them in the street. 'I happen to know who he is. In fact, I knew his people very well indeed at one time, and spent a fortnight with them once when that young man was a toddler, and sometimes sat on my knee—at least, he may have sat on my knee. There were a good many children, and at this distance of time I can't be certain which of them it was that used to worry me most during the hour before dinner. The father is a landlord in the North, and comes of a fine old family. He's a strong Protestant, and English, of course, in all his sympathies. Well, a hundred years or so ago that boy's great-grandfather was swaggering about these same streets in a uniform, just as his descendant is doing now. He helped to drag a cannon into the Phoenix Park one day with a large placard tied over its muzzle—"Our rights or—" Who do you think he was threatening? Just the same England that this boy is so keen to fight for to-day!'
'Ah,' said Hyacinth, 'you are thinking of the volunteer movement of 1780.'
'Afterwards,' she went on, 'he was one of the incorruptibles. You'll see his name on Jonah Barrington's red list. He stood out to the last against the Union, wouldn't be bribed, and fought two duels with Castlereagh's bravoes. The curious thing is that the present man is quite proud of that ancestor in a queer, inconsistent sort of way. Says the only mark of distinction his family can boast of is that they didn't get a Union peerage. Strange, isn't it?'
'It is strange,' said Hyacinth. 'The Irish gentry of 1782 were men to be proud of; yet look at their descendants to-day.'
'It is very sad. Do you know, I sometimes think that Ireland will never get her freedom till those men take it for her. Almost every struggle that Ireland ever made was captained by her aristocracy. Think of the Geraldines and the O'Neills. Think of Sarsfield and the Wild Geese. Think of the men who wrenched a measure of independence from England in 1782. Think of Lord Edward and Smith O'Brien. No, we may talk and write and agitate, but we'll do nothing till we get the old families with us.'
Hyacinth laughed. It seemed to him that Miss Goold was deliberately talking nonsense, rejoicing in a paradox.
'We are likely to wait, if we wait for them. Look at those.' He waved his hand towards a group of yeomen who were chatting at the street corner. 'They are going to stamp out a nation in South Africa. Is it likely that they will create one here?'
'It is not likely'—she sighed as she spoke—'yet stranger things than that have happened. Have you ever considered what the present English policy in Ireland really is? Do you understand that they are trying to keep us quiet by bribing the priests? They think that the Protestants are powerless, or that they will be loyal no matter what happens. But think: These Protestants have been accustomed for generations to regard themselves as a superior race. They conceive themselves to have a natural right to govern. Now they are being snubbed and insulted. There isn't an English official from their Lord Lieutenant down but thinks he is quite safe in ignoring the Protestants, and is only anxious to make himself agreeable to the priests. That's the beginning. Very soon they'll be bullied as well as snubbed. They will stand a good deal of it, because, like most strong people, they are very stupid and slow at understanding; but do you suppose they will always stand it?'
'They're English, and not Irish,' said Hyacinth. 'I suppose they like what their own people do.'
'It's a lie. They are not English, though they say it themselves. In the end they will find out that they are Irish. Some day a last insult, a particularly barefaced robbery, or an intolerable oppression, will awake them. Then they'll turn on the people that betrayed them. They will discover that Ireland—their Ireland—isn't meant to be a cabbage-garden for Manchester, nor yet a crêche for sucking priests. Ah! it will be good to be alive when they find themselves. We shall be within reach of the freedom of Ireland then.'
Hyacinth was amazed at her vehement admiration for the class she was accustomed to anathematize. He turned her words over and over in his mind. They recalled, as so many different things seemed to do, his father's vision of an Armageddon. Amid the confusion of Irish politics this thought of a Protestant and aristocratic revolt was strangely attractive; only it seemed to be wholly impossible. He bewildered himself in the effort to arrange the pieces of the game into some reasonable order. What was to be thought of a priesthood who, contrary to all the traditions of their Church, had nursed a revolution against the rights of property? or of a people, amazingly quick of apprehension, idealistic of temperament, who time after time submitted themselves blindfold to the tyranny of a single leader, worshipped a man, and asked no questions about his policy? How was he to place an aristocracy who refused to lead, and persisted in whining about their wrongs to the inattentive shopkeepers of English towns, gentlemen not wanting in honour and spirit courting a contemptuous bourgeoisie with ridiculous flatteries? In what reasonable scheme of things was it possible to place Protestants, blatant in their boasts about liberty, who hugged subjection to a power which deliberately fostered the growth of an ecclesiastical tyranny? Where amid this crazy dance of self-contradictory fanatics and fools was a sane man to find a place on which to stand? How, above all, was Ireland, a nation, to evolve itself?
He turned with relief from these perplexities to the work that lay before him. However a man might worry and befog himself over the confused issues of politics, it was at all events a straightforward and simple matter to fight, and Hyacinth was going to the front as the eleventh Irish volunteer.
To do Miss Goold justice, she had been extremely unwilling to enrol him, and had refused to take a penny of his money. Her conscience, such as it was after years of patriotic endeavour, rebelled against committing a young man whom she really liked to the companionship of the men she had enlisted and the care of their commander, Captain Albert Quinn.
This gentleman, whom she daily expected in Dublin, belonged to County Mayo. He represented himself as a member of an ancient but impoverished family, boasted of his military experience, and professed to be profoundly skilled in all matters relating to horses. Miss Goold's inquiries elicited the fact that he held an undefined position under his brother, a respectable manufacturer of woollen goods. His military experience had been gathered during the few months he held a commission in the militia battalion of the Connaught Rangers, an honourable position which he had resigned because his brother officers persistently misunderstood his methods of winning money at cards. No one, however, was found to deny that he really did possess a wonderful knowledge of horses. The worst that Miss Goold's correspondents could suggest with regard to this third qualification was that he knew too much. None of these drawbacks to the Captain—he had assumed the title when he accepted the command of the volunteers—weighed with Miss Goold. Indeed, she admitted to Mary O'Dwyer, in a moment of frankness, that if her men weren't more or less blackguards she couldn't expect them to go out to South Africa. She did not speak equally plainly to Hyacinth. She recollected that he had displayed a very inconvenient kind of morality when she first knew him, and she believed him quite capable of breaking away from her influence altogether if he discovered the kind of men she was willing to work with.
She did her best to persuade him to give up the idea of joining the force, by pointing out to him that he was quite unfitted for the work that would have to be done.
'You know nothing about horses,' she said. 'I don't suppose you've ever been on the back of one.'
Hyacinth admitted that this was true. The inhabitants of Carrowkeel rarely ride their shaggy ponies, and when they do it is sitting sideways just above the creatures' tails, with two creels for turf or seaweed in the place where the saddle ought to be.
'And I don't suppose you know much about shooting?'
Hyacinth was depressed, for he had never pulled a trigger in his life. In the West of Ireland a man is not allowed to possess a gun unless a resident magistrate will certify to his loyalty and harmless-ness. Therefore, the inhabitants of villages like Carrowkeel are debarred from shooting either snipe or seals, and the British Empire stands secure.
The difficulty about his horsemanship Hyacinth endeavoured to get over. He arranged with a car-driver of his acquaintance to teach him to groom and harness his horses. The man possessed two quadrupeds, which he described as 'the yellow pony' and 'the little mare.' Hyacinth began with the yellow pony, the oldest and staidest of the two. The little mare, who had a temper of her own, gave him more trouble. She disliked his way of putting the crupper under her tail, and one day, to her owner's great delight, 'rose the divil on them' when her new groom got the shaft of the car stuck through her collar.
The want of experience in shooting was more difficult to get over. Grealy owned an antiquated army rifle, which he lent to Hyacinth. It was, of course, entirely different from the Mauser, and it was impossible to get an opportunity for firing it off. However, there was some comfort to be found in handling the thing, and taking long and careful aim at a distant church spire through a window.
In the face of such enthusiasm, Miss Goold could not refuse her recruit. She talked to him freely about her plans, and was eloquent about the spirit and abilities of M. de Villeneuve, who was to take charge of her soldiers after they joined him in Paris. On the subject of Captain Quinn she was much more reticent, and she refused altogether to introduce Hyacinth to his ten fellow troopers.
'There's not the least necessity,' she said, 'for you to meet them until the time for starting comes. In fact, I may say it is safer for none of you to know each other.'
Hyacinth experienced a thrill of agreeable excitement. He felt that he was engaged in a real conspiracy.
'For fear of informers?' he asked.
'Yes. One never can be quite sure of anyone. Of course, they can every one of them give information against me. You can yourself, if you like. But no one can betray anyone else, and as long as the men are safe, it doesn't matter what happens to me.'
It was one of Miss Goold's weaknesses that she imagined herself to be an object of hatred and dread to the Government, and nothing irritated her more than a suspicion that she was not being taken seriously.
The first glimpse that Hyacinth got of the character of the men among whom he was to serve came to him through Tim Halloran. Tim was still sore from the scolding he had been given for his conduct at the Rotunda meeting, and missed no opportunity of scoffing—not, of course, publicly, but among his friends—at Miss Goold and her volunteers. Hyacinth avoided him as much as possible, but one evening he walked up against him on the narrow footway at the corner of George's Street. Halloran was delighted, and seized him by the arm.
'You're the very man I wanted to see,' he said. 'Have you heard about Doherty?'
Hyacinth knew no one called Doherty. He said so, and tried to escape, but Halloran held him fast.
'Not know Doherty! How's that? I thought you were in all dear Finola's secrets. Faith! I heard you were going out to fight for the Boers yourself. I didn't believe it, of course. You wouldn't be such a fool. But I thought you'd know that Doherty is one of the ten precious recruits, or, rather, was one of them.' He laughed loudly. 'He'll fight on the other side now, if he fights at all.'
'What do you mean?' asked Hyacinth uneasily.
He was not at all sure what view the authorities in Dublin Castle might take of recruiting for the Boer service, and Miss Goold's hints about informers recurred to his mind alarmingly. Perhaps this Doherty was an informer.
'Well,' said Halloran, 'I was in one of the police-courts this morning doing my work for the Evening Star. You know I report the police news for that rag, don't you? Well, I do. My column is called "The Doom of the Disorderly." Rather a good title that for a column of the kind! There didn't appear to be anything particular on, just a few ordinary drunks, until this fellow Doherty was brought in. I thought I recognised him, and when I heard his name I was certain of my man. He hadn't done anything very bad—assaulted a tram-conductor, or some such trifle—and would have got off with a fine. However, a military man turned up and claimed him as a deserter. His real name, it appears, is Johnston. He deserted six weeks ago from the Dublin Fusiliers.'
'How on earth did he impose on Miss Goold?' asked Hyacinth.
Halloran looked at him curiously.
'Oh, I shouldn't say he exactly imposed upon Finola. She's not precisely a fool, you know, and she has pretty accurate information about most of the people she deals with.'
'But surely——'
Halloran shrugged his shoulders.
'My dear fellow, I don't want to shatter your ideal, but the beautiful Finola wants to work a revolution, and you can't do that sort of thing without soiling your hands. However, whether he imposed on her or not, there's no doubt about it that he was a deserter. Why, it appeared that the fool was tattooed all over the arms and chest, and the military people had a list of the designs. They had a perfectly plain case, and, indeed, Doherty made no defence.'
'What will they do with him?' said Hyacinth, still uneasy about the possibility of Doherty's volunteering information.
'I don't know,' said Halloran. 'I should think the best punishment would be to send him out to Ladysmith. I dare say the Boers would pass him in if the circumstances were explained to them. By the way, it would be rather funny if he met the other nine out there on a kopje, wouldn't it? He might take them prisoners, or they might capture him. Either way the situation would have its comic possibilities.'