Mr. Conroy arrived at luncheon-time, and Lady Moyne took him in hand
at once. I watched her talking to him during the meal and afterwards
when they walked together round the lawn. I came to the conclusion
that Lady Moyne would have no difficulty in obtaining any subscription
she wanted from the millionaire. They were, of course, intimate with
each other. Lady Moyne had been Conroy's guest in the days when his
London house was a centre of social life. She had sailed with him on
the _Finola_. But this was the first time she had him at Castle Affey;
and therefore the first time he had seen Lady Moyne in her character
as hostess. It is not to be wondered at that he yielded to her charm.
Like all women of real capacity Lady Moyne was at her best in her own
house.
But she was too clever a hostess to devote herself entirely to one
guest. She took Babberly for a drive later in the afternoon and I felt
that my time had come. I determined to be true to my trust and to make
myself agreeable to Conroy. Unfortunately he did not seem to want my
company. He went off for a long walk with Malcolmson. This surprised
me. I should have supposed beforehand that talk about artillery would
have bored Conroy; and Malcolmson, since this Home Rule struggle
began, has talked of nothing else.
I spent the afternoon with Mr. Cahoon, and we talked about Home Rule,
of course.
"What those fellows want," he said, "is to get their hands into our
pockets. But it won't do."
"Those fellows" were, plainly, the Nationalist leaders.
"Taxation?" I said.
"Belfast will be the milch cow of the Dublin Parliament," said Cahoon.
"Money will be wanted to feed paupers and pay priests in the south and
west. We're the only people who have any money."
I had never before come in contact with a man like Cahoon, and I was
very much interested in him. His contempt, not only for our
fellow-countrymen in Leinster, Munster and Connacht, but for all the
other inhabitants of the British Isles was absolute. He had a way of
pronouncing final judgment on all the problems of life which
fascinated me.
"That's all well enough in its way," he would say; "but it won't do in
Belfast. We're business men."
I think he said those words five times in the course of the afternoon,
and each time they filled me with fresh delight. If the man had been a
fool I should not have been interested in him. If he had been a simple
crude money maker, a Stock Exchange Imperialist, for instance, I
should have understood him and yawned. But he was not a fool. A man
cannot be a fool who manages successfully a large business, who keeps
in touch with the swift vicissitudes of modern international commerce,
who has organized into a condition of high efficiency an industrial
army of several thousand working-men and women. And Mr. Cahoon, in a
curious hard way, was touched with idealisms; I discovered,
accidentally, that he devotes his spare time on Saturdays to the
instruction of young men in cricket and football. His Sunday
afternoons he gives to an immense Bible-class for boys of fifteen or
sixteen. He has built and maintains, on the sole condition that he
does not actually lose money by it, a kind of model village in a
suburban district of Belfast. In order to look after this village
properly he gets up at five o'clock in the morning on three days in
the week. In winter, when his social work is in full swing, he spends
almost all his evenings at a large Working-Men's club. He spends his
summer holidays in the seaside camp of The Boys' Brigade. It would be
difficult to find a man who crams more work into what are supposed to
be his leisure hours. He has, of course, little time for reading and
he never travels. His devotion to good works leaves him no opportunity
for culture, and accounts for the fact that he believes the things
which Babberly says on platforms. He would, I did not actually try him
with the subject, but I have no doubt he would, have brushed the
philosophy of Emmanuel Kant into the world's waste-basket with his
unvarying formula: It wouldn't do in Belfast. They are business men
there.
We worried on about his fear of the over-taxation of Belfast and the
industrial North. I tried to get from him some definite account of the
exact taxes which he feared. I tried to get him to explain how he
proposed to fight, against whom he intended to fight, who might be
expected to fight on his side. I do not think he got angry with me for
my persistency, but his contempt for me steadily increased. I am not a
business man and so I could not possibly, so he hinted, understand how
they feel about the matter in Belfast.
"But do you think," I said, "that your workmen will go out and be shot
in order to save you from paying an extra penny in the pound income
tax? That's what it comes to, you know, and I don't see why they
should do it. They don't pay income tax, or for that matter death
duties."
Cahoon looked me full in the face for nearly half a minute without
replying. Then he took out his watch and looked at it. Then he took me
by the arm and led me towards the yard.
"Did you ever see the Green Loaney Scutching Mill?" he said.
I had never seen any scutching mill. I have only a vague idea of what
a scutching mill is.
"It'll not be more than twenty miles from this," said Cahoon. "And in
my car we'll do it and be back for dinner."
I did not particularly want to spend the rest of the afternoon rushing
about the country in Cahoon's motor car. I preferred to stay quietly
on the Castle Affey lawn and talk about Home Rule.
"But about the working-man," I said, "and the prospect of his
fighting--"
"You'll be better able to talk about that," said Cahoon, "when you've
seen the man I'm going to take you to. Seeing's believing."
I was, of course, quite willing to go with Cahoon if he would really
show me a citizen soldier in a scutching mill. We got out the motor
car and started.
"He's a man by the name of McConkey," said Cahoon.
"A good name," I said. "One expects something from a McConkey."
Cahoon did not say anything for about ten minutes. Then he went on--
"McConkey is foreman in the mill."
"The scutching mill?" I asked.
It was, of course, the scutching mill. I only asked the question in
order to keep up the conversation. The long silences were
embarrassing. Cahoon did not answer me. At the end of another quarter
of an hour of furious driving he gave me a little further information
about McConkey.
"He neither drinks nor smokes."
This led me to think that he might be some relation to my friend
Crossan, possibly a cousin.
"I happen to know," said Cahoon a little later, "that he has upwards
of L500 saved."
Undoubtedly McConkey and Crossan are close relations, brothers-in-law
perhaps.
We reached the Green Loaney Scutching Mill at about half-past five
o'clock. Cahoon, who seemed to know all about the establishment, led
me through some very dusty purlieus. McConkey, when we came upon him,
did not seem particularly pleased to see Cahoon. He looked at me with
suspicious malignity.
"There's a gentleman here," said Cahoon, "who wants to know whether
you mean to fight rather than submit to Home Rule."
"Aye," said McConkey, "I do."
Then he looked me square in the face without winking. Cahoon did the
same thing exactly. Neither of them spoke. It was clearly my turn to
say something; but with four hard grey eyes piercing my skin I found
it difficult to think of a remark. In the end I said:
"Really?"
They both continued to stare at me. Then McConkey broke the silence
again.
"You'll no be a Papist?" he said.
"Certainly not," I replied. "In fact I am a church-warden."
McConkey thrust his hand deep into a hip pocket in the back of his
trousers and drew out a somewhat soiled packet of yellow tracing
paper.
"Look at thon," he said.
I unfolded the tracing paper and found on it drawings of a machine
gun. Cahoon peered over my shoulder.
"She's a bonny wee thing," said McConkey.
She looked to me large and murderous. Cahoon expressed his admiration
for her, so I said nothing.
"I'll no be that badly off for something to fight with," said
McConkey, "when the time comes."
"Do you mean to say," I said, "that you've bought that weapon?"
"I haven't her bought yet," said McConkey; "but I have the money by
me."
"And you actually mean--" I said.
"Ay. I do."
I looked at Cahoon. He was still studying the drawings of the gun.
"It'll be queer," said McConkey, slowly, "if she doesna' land a few of
them in hell before they have me catched."
I turned to Cahoon again.
"Do you really think," I said, "that he--?"
"We're business men," said Cahoon, "and we don't throw away our
money."
"But," I said, "who are you going to shoot at? It would be silly to
attack a tax collector with a gun like that. I don't see who--"
"Oh," said Cahoon, "don't fret about that. We'll find somebody to
shoot at."
"There'll be plenty," said McConkey, "when the time comes."
"The real difficulty," said Cahoon, "is that--"
"They'll no be wanting to stand up till us," said McConkey.
The relations of Capital with Labour are, I understand, strained in
other parts of the United Kingdom. Here, with Home Rule on the
horizon, they seem to be actually cordial. There is certainly a good
deal to be said for Lady Moyne's policy. So long as Cahoon and
McConkey have a common taste for making domestic pets of machine guns
they are not likely to fall out over such minor matters as wages and
hours of work.
I had a good deal to think of as Cahoon drove me back to Castle Affey.
My main feeling was one of great personal thankfulness. I shall never,
I hope, take part in a battle. If I do I hope I shall be found
fighting against some properly organized army, the men and officers of
which have taken up the business of killing in a lofty professional
spirit. I cannot imagine anything more likely to shatter my nerve than
to be pitted against men like McConkey, who neither drink nor smoke,
but save and spend their savings on machine guns. The regular soldier
has his guns bought for him with other people's money. He does not
mind much if no gory dividend is earned. McConkey, on the other hand,
spends his own money, and being a business man, will hate to see it
wasted. He would not be satisfied, I imagine, with less than fifty
corpses per cent. as a return on his expenditure.
At dinner that evening Conroy made a suggestion for our evening's
entertainment.
"Lady Moyne," he said, "ought to read us the speech which she is to
make next week to the Unionist women."
I had never heard of the Unionist women before, and knew nothing of
their wish to be spoken to. The Dean assured me that they were
numerous and quite as enthusiastic as their husbands and brothers.
Cahoon said that he was giving his mill hands a half holiday in order
that the girls might go to listen to Lady Moyne. Babberly struck in
with a characteristic speech.
"The influence of women," he said, "can hardly be over-estimated. We
must never forget that the most impressionable years of a man's life
are those during which he is learning to say his prayers beside his
mother's knee."
This, as I recognized was a mere paraphrase of the proverb which
states that the hand which rocks the cradle rules the world. The
secret of Babberly's great success as an orator is that he has a
striking power of putting platitudes into new words.
I ventured to suggest that, so far as the present political situation
was concerned it was hardly worth while trying to get at the children
who were learning to say their prayers. The Home Rule Bill would be
either rejected or passed long before any of that generation had
votes. Lady Moyne was good enough to smile at me; but Babberly felled
me at once.
"The women whom we expect to influence," he said, "have fathers,
brothers and husbands as well as young children."
After dinner we had the speech. A secretary, who had once been Lady
Moyne's governess and still wore pince-nez, brought a quantity of
type-written matter into the drawing-room. Moyne wanted me to slip
away with him to the billiard room; but I refused to do so. I wanted
to watch Lady Moyne making her speech. I am glad that I resisted his
appeal. Lady Moyne not only read us the speech. She delivered it to
us, treated us, indeed, to a rehearsal, I might even call it a dress
rehearsal, for she described at some length the clothes she intended
to wear. They must have been the most sumptuous in her wardrobe.
"The poor dears," she said, "want something to brighten their lives.
Besides, they'll take it as a compliment to them if I'm like Solomon
in all his glory."
I gathered from this remark that the audience was to consist mainly of
the wives and sisters of McConkey and other men of the same class.
Cahoon's wife, if he had one, would not require a display of Lady
Moyne's best clothes to seal her attachment to the Union.
The speech was an uncommonly good one. A phrase in it frequently
repeated, appealed to me very strongly. Lady Moyne spoke about "our
men." I do not know why it is, but the phrase "our women" as used for
instance by military officers who have been to India, always strikes
me as singularly offensive. It suggests seraglios, purdahs and other
institutions by which Turks, and Orientals generally, assert and
maintain the rights of property with regard to the other sex. "Our
men," on the other hand, is redolent of sentimental domesticity. I
never hear it without thinking of women who are mothers and makers of
men; who sew on trouser buttons and cook savoury messes for those who
are fighting the battle of life for them in a rough world, sustained
by an abiding vision of noble womanhood and the sanctity of home. It
is an extraordinarily appealing phrase and Lady Moyne used it for all
it was worth. As addressed by her to wives and sisters of the Belfast
working-men, it had a further value. The plural possessive pronoun
bracketed McConkey with Lord Moyne. McConkey's wife, assuming for the
moment that he had not abstained from matrimony as he had from
tobacco, shared his joys and sorrows, his hopes and fears, heartened
him for his daily toil, would join no doubt in polishing the muzzle of
the machine gun. So Lady Moyne in her gorgeous raiment, sustained Lord
Moyne, her man. That was the suggestion of the possessive pronoun, and
the audience was not allowed to miss it. Poor Moyne did miss it, for
he was nearly asleep in a chair. But McConkey's wife would not. Her
heart would glow with a sense that she and Lady Moyne were sisters in
their anxious care for the men entrusted to them.
That single phrase made such a violent emotional appeal to me that I
missed all the rest of the speech. Each time I began to recover a
little from hearing it and was prepared to give my attention to
something else, Lady Moyne used to repeat it, and then I was
hypnotized again. I have no doubt, however, that the speech was a
powerful appeal for the maintenance of the Union. Conroy said so
afterwards and Babberly entirely agreed with him. The Dean suggested
that something might be put in about the sanctity of the marriage
tie, a matter of particular importance to women and likely to be
seriously affected by the passing of a Home Rule Bill. Lady Moyne
thanked him for calling her attention to the omission. The secretary,
who had once been a governess, adjusted her pince-nez and took a note.
In the smoking-room that evening Conroy took command of the
conversation, and for the first time since I arrived at Castle Affey
we got off politics. He told us a good deal about how he made his
fortune. Most men who have made fortunes enjoy talking about how they
made them. But their stories are nearly always most uninteresting. My
impression is that they do not themselves understand how they came to
be rich. But Conroy understood, or at all events thought he
understood, his own success. He believed that he was rich because he
had, more than other men, a love of the excitement which comes with
risk. He had the spirit of the true adventurer, the man who pursues
novelty and danger for their own sakes. Every story he told us
illustrated and was meant to illustrate this side of his character. He
despised the rest of us, especially me perhaps. We, Cahoon, the Dean,
even Malcolmson, though he was a bristly fighting man, certainly Moyne
who had gone quietly to bed--we were tame barndoor fowls, eating the
sordid messes spread for us by that old henwife, civilized society.
Conroy was a free bird of the wild. He snatched golden grain for
nutriment from the hand of a goddess. These were not his words or his
metaphors, but they represented the impression which his talk and his
stories left on my mind.
At twelve o'clock I rose to say good night. As I did so a servant
entered the room and told Conroy that his motor was ready for him at
the door. Conroy left the room at once, and left the house a few
minutes later.
I suppose we ought, all of us, to have been surprised. Motor drives in
the middle of the night are an unusual form of amusement, and it was
impossible to suppose that Conroy could have any business requiring
immediate personal attention in the neighbourhood of Castle Affey. But
his talk during the evening had left its impression on other minds as
well as mine. We bid each other good night without expressing any
astonishment at Conroy's conduct. Cahoon refrained from saying that
inexplicable midnight expeditions were not the kind of things they
cared for in Belfast. Even he recognized that a man who had
accumulated as large a fortune as Conroy's must not be judged by
ordinary standards.
I, unfortunately, failed to go to sleep. I tried to read the works of
Alexander Pope, of which I found a well-bound copy in my bedroom. But
my mind only became more active. I got up at last and covered six
sheets of the Castle Affey note paper with a character sketch of
Conroy. I maintained that he was wrong in supposing that a capacity
for daring is the secret of becoming rich. Bob Power, for instance, is
as daring as any man living and certainly loves risk for its own sake,
but Bob will not die a rich man. Nor will Conroy. Wealth falls into
the hands of such men occasionally, as vast hoards of gold did one
hundred and fifty years ago into the holds of pirate ships. But no one
ever heard of a buccaneer who died with a large fortune safely
invested. Before Conroy dies his fortune will have taken to itself
wings and fled back to that goddess of his who gave it. This was the
substance of my article. Marion typed it out for me when I went home,
but neither of the editors who usually print my articles would have
it. I suppose that they did not know Conroy personally. If they had
known him they would have appreciated my character sketch. I called
it, I remember, "Our Contemporary Pirates," a title which ought to
have been attractive.
At three o'clock, just as I was finishing my article, I heard Conroy's
motor on the gravel outside my window.
He appeared at breakfast looking fresh and cheerful. None of us asked
him where he had been the night before, and he did not offer us any
information.
After breakfast he asked me to go for a walk with him. Lady Moyne, who
heard the invitation given, looked pleased, and I recollected at once
that I had promised to interest Conroy in the Unionist cause and lead
him on to the point of giving a large subscription to our funds.
These party funds have always been rather a puzzle to me. I have never
understood why it should be necessary for rich Liberals, rich
Conservatives and American Irishmen to spend enormous sums of money in
persuading people to vote. The theory of democratic government is, I
suppose, that the citizen expresses his opinion freely in a polling
booth. If he has not got an opinion it would surely be better to leave
him alone. If he has an opinion and attaches any importance to it he
will go to the polling booth without being dragged there by a kind of
special constable hired for the purpose. If the money of the party
funds were given to the voters in the form of bribes, the expenditure
would be intelligible. It might even be justified; since an occasional
tip would be most welcome to nearly every elector. But to spend tens
of thousands of pounds on what is called organization seems very
foolish. However I am not a practical politician, and my immediate
object was not to explain the theory of political finance to Conroy,
but to work him up into the frame of mind in which he would sign
cheques.
I cannot flatter myself that I did this or even helped to do it.
Conroy did not give me a chance. He began to talk about the Irish land
question, a thing in which I no longer take any but an academic
interest. He asked me if I still owned a small estate in Co. Galway
which had belonged to my father. I told him that I had long ago sold
it and was uncommonly glad to do so.
"Not a paying proposition?" said Conroy.
"Oh," I said, "it paid very well; but the fact is, what with the
agitation about grazing lands, and the trouble about people in
congested districts--"
"I reckon," said Conroy, "that your ancestors mismanaged the property
some."
I expect they did. But I did not expect to have their misdeeds brought
home to me in a vigorous personal way.
"Your father," said Conroy, "or your grandfather, turned my
grandfather off a patch of land down there in 1850."
My grandfather had, I have heard, a theory that small holdings of land
were uneconomic. He evicted his tenants and made large grass farms.
Nowadays we hold the opposite opinion. We are evicting large tenants
and establishing small holdings. Our grandsons, I dare say, will go
back again to the large farms. I explained to Conroy that he ought not
to blame my grandfather who was acting in accordance with the most
advanced scientific theories of his time.
Conroy was very nice about the matter. He said he had no grudge
against either me or my grandfather. He had, however, so he told me
frankly, a prejudice against everything English; an inherited
prejudice, and not quite so irrational as it looked. It was after all
the English who invented the economic theories on which my grandfather
acted. He talked so much about his dislike of England and everything
English that I did not like to introduce the subject of the
subscription to Lady Moyne's political fund. He did, in the end,
subscribe largely. When I heard about his L1000 cheque I supposed that
he must have counted the Union with us a misfortune for England and so
wished to perpetuate it. Either that was his motive, so I thought, or
else Lady Moyne had captivated him as she always captivates me.