Next morning the Dublin daily papers laid themselves out to make the
most of the sensational fight at the Rotunda. Even the habitually
cautious _Irish Times_ felt that the occasion justified the expression
of an opinion, and that there would be no serious risk of alienating the
sympathies of subscribers and advertisers by condemning the bloodshed.
It published an exceedingly dignified and stodgy leading article,
drawing the largest and finest words from the dictionary, and weaving
them with extraordinary art into sentences which would have been
creditable to anyone bent upon imitating the style of Dr. Samuel
Johnson. The British Empire and the whole of civilized Europe were
called upon to witness the unspeakably deplorable consequences which
invariably followed the habitual neglect of the cultivation of the
elementary decencies of public life. The paper disclaimed any sympathy
with either of the belligerent parties, and pointed out with sorrowful
solemnity that if the principles sedulously inculcated upon its readers
in its own columns were persistently flouted and contemned by those who
claimed the position of national representatives, little else except a
repetition at frequent intervals of the painful and humiliating
scenes of the night before could possibly be anticipated by reasonable
observers of the general trend of democratic institutions. The _Daily
Express_ openly exulted over the rioters. Its leading article--the
staff may have danced in a ring round the office table while composing
it--declared that now at length the Irish had proved to the world
that they were all, without a solitary exception, irredeemably
vicious corner-boys. Miss Augusta Goold was warmly praised for having
demonstrated once for all that ‘patriotism’ ought to be written ‘Pat
riotism.’ Deep regret was expressed that those who attended the meeting
had not been armed with revolvers instead of stones, and that the
platform had not been defended with Maxim guns instead of comparatively
innocuous wooden chairs. Had modern weapons of precision been used the
_Daily Express_ would have been able to congratulate mankind on getting
rid of quite a considerable number of Irishmen.
The _Freeman’s Journal_ and the _Daily Independent_ were awkwardly
situated. Their sympathies were entirely with Mr. O’Rourke, and
they were exceedingly angry with Miss Goold for interfering with the
collection of funds for the Parliamentary party. At the same time,
they felt a difficulty in denouncing her, not for want of suitable
language--the Irish Nationalist press has a superb command of words
which a self-respecting dictionary would hesitate to recognise--but
because they felt that push of the horns of the dilemma on which
O’Rourke had been impaled, and they were obliged to sand their
denunciations between layers of stoutest pro-Boer sentiment.
All four papers contained reports of the proceedings which were
practically identical up to a certain point. It was about the
commencement of the actual bloodshed that they differed. The _Irish
Times_ reporter believed that Mr. Shea had begun the fray by striking
Augusta Goold behind the ear with his clenched fist. The _Daily Express_
man claimed to have overheard Mr. O’Rourke urging his friends to brain
a member of the audience with a chair. The _Freeman’s Journal_ held that
Augusta Goold’s supporters had come into the hall supplied with huge
stones, which, at a given signal, they had flung at the inoffensive
members of Parliament who occupied the platform, adding, as a
corroborative detail, that the lady who accompanied Augusta Goold
had twice kicked the prostrate Mr. Shea in the stomach. The _Daily
Independent_ advanced the ingenious theory that the contest had been
precipitated by a malevolent student of Trinity College, who had flung
an apple of discord--on this occasion a jagged paving-stone of unusual
size--into the midst of a group of ladies and gentlemen who were
peacefully discussing a slight difference of opinion among themselves.
Beyond this point none of the papers gave any account of the
proceedings, all four reporters having recognised that, not being
retained as war correspondents, they were not called upon to risk their
lives on the battlefield. The accounts all closed with the information
that the wounded had been carried to Jervis Street Hospital, and were
under treatment suitable to their injuries. Hyacinth had suffered a
slight concussion of the brain and a flesh wound. Other sufferers were
in the same ward, Mr. Shea himself occupying a bed, so that Hyacinth had
the satisfaction of seeing him stretched out, a melancholy figure,
with a bandage concealing most of his red hair. After the surgeon
had finished his rounds for the morning a police official visited the
sufferers, and made a careful note of their names and addresses. He
inquired in a perfunctory manner whether any of them wished to swear an
information. No one, except Mr. Shea, was sufficiently satisfied with
his own share of the meeting to wish for more fame than was unavoidable.
As no further use was ever made of Mr. Shea’s narrative, it may be
presumed that the authorities regarded it as wanting in accuracy.
No blame, however, ought to be attached to the author for any petty
deviation from the truth of which he may have been guilty. No man’s mind
is perfectly clear on the morning after he has been struck on the head
with a stone, and perhaps afterwards kicked twice in the stomach by a
lady journalist. Besides, all members of Parliament are, in virtue of
their office, ‘honourable gentlemen.’
An excited and sympathetic nurse provided Hyacinth with copies of the
four morning papers, which he read with interest and a good deal of
amusement. Only the account in the _Daily Independent_ caused him any
uneasiness. No doubt, as he fully recognised, the suggestion about
the Trinity student was nothing but a wild guess on the part of the
reporter. It was highly unlikely that anyone would seriously consider a
theory so intrinsically improbable. Still, if the faintest suspicion of
the part he had played reached the ears of the college authorities, he
felt that his career as a divinity student was likely to be an extremely
brief one. His chief fear was that a prolonged absence from college
would give rise to inquiry, and that his bandages would excite suspicion
when he reappeared. Fortunately, the house surgeon decided that he was
sufficiently recovered to be allowed to leave the hospital early in the
afternoon. The boot which had put an end to his share in the riot had
raised its bruise under his hair, so he was able to remove the bandages
from his head as soon as he got into the street. There still remained a
long strip of plaster meant to keep a dressing of iodoform in its place
over the cut on his cheek which Mr. Shea’s chair-leg had inflicted.
This he could not get off, and thinking it wiser to make his entry into
college after nightfall, he sought a refuge in Mary O’Dwyer’s rooms.
He found the poetess laid on a sofa and clad in a blue dressing-gown.
She stretched a hand of welcome to Hyacinth, and then, before he had
time to take it, began to laugh immoderately. The laughing fit ended in
sobs, and then tears flowed from her eyes, which she mopped convulsively
with an already damp pocket-handkerchief. Before she had recovered
sufficient self-possession to speak, she signed to Hyacinth to fetch a
bottle of smelling-salts from the chimney-piece. He hastened to obey,
and found himself kneeling beside the sofa, holding the bottle to her
nose. After a while she recovered sufficiently to tell him that she had
not slept at all during the night, and felt extremely unwell and quite
unstrung in consequence. Another fit of immoderate and tearful laughter
followed, and Hyacinth, embarrassed and alarmed, fetched a tumbler of
soda-water from the syphon on the sideboard. The lady refused to
swallow any, and, just as he had made up his mind to risk an external
application, recovered again. During the lucid interval which followed
she informed him that his own conduct had been superb and heroic. What
seemed to be an effort to celebrate his achievements in extemporary
verse brought on another fit. Hyacinth determined to risk an appearance
in the college square in broad daylight rather than continue his
ministrations. While he was searching for his hat Miss O’Dwyer became
suddenly quite calm, and began to explain to him how immensely the cause
of Ireland’s independence had benefited by the demonstration in the
Rotunda. Hyacinth listened anxiously, waiting for the next explosion,
and experienced very great relief when the door opened and Augusta Goold
walked in.
Unlike Mary O’Dwyer, she was entirely mistress of herself. Her cheeks
were not a shade paler than usual, nor her hand at all less cool and
firm. She stretched herself, after her usual fashion, in the largest
available chair and lit a cigarette.
‘You look excited, my dear Mary,’ she said--‘a little overexcited,
perhaps. Have you had tea? No? Perhaps you will be so kind as to ring
the bell, Mr. Conneally.’
Mary O’Dwyer repeated the information she had given Hyacinth about her
sleepless night, and complimented Augusta Goold on her nerve.
‘As for poor little me,’ she went on, ‘I’m like a--like a--you remember
the kind of thing, don’t you?--like a--I’m not sure if I know the name
of the thing myself.’
She relapsed into a weak giggle, and Hyacinth stooped for the bottle of
smelling-salts, which had rolled under the sofa. Augusta Goold was much
less sympathetic. She fixed her with a strong stare of amazement and
disgust. Apparently this treatment was the right one, for the giggling
stopped almost immediately.
‘I see you have got some sticking-plaster on your face, Mr. Conneally,’
she said, when Mary O’Dwyer had quieted down.
‘Yes,’ said Hyacinth, ‘and a good-sized bump behind my ear.’
‘I suppose this business will be very awkward for you in college. Will
they turn you out?’
‘I’m sure they will if they find out that I threw that stone at Shea.’
‘You made a very good shot,’ said Augusta, smiling at the recollection.
‘But how on earth did you come to have a stone that size in the hall
with you?’
Hyacinth told the story of the man who had been felled by the chair and
his murderous bequest.
‘That’s the proper spirit,’ said Augusta. ‘I admire that man, and he
couldn’t have passed his stone on to better hands than yours. Shea went
down as if he had been shot. I was afraid of my life he would clutch at
my skirts as he fell or squirm up against me after he was down. But he
lay quite still. By the way, Mary, I suppose your dress was ruined?’
Mary O’Dwyer was quite subdued.
‘It was torn,’ she said meekly enough.
‘Have you another one?’
‘Of course I have. I’ve three others, besides some old ones.’
‘Well, then, you’d better go and put on one of them. An old one will do.
It’s disgusting to see a woman slopping about in a dressing-gown at this
time of day. I’ll have tea ready when you come back.’
Miss O’Dwyer obeyed sulkily. She wished very much that Augusta Goold had
stopped at home. It would have been a great deal pleasanter to have gone
on practising hysterics with Hyacinth as a sympathetic spectator. When
the door was shut Augusta Goold turned to Hyacinth again.
‘That’s the worst of women’--apparently she did not consider herself as
one of the sex--‘they are all right at the time (nothing could have
been better than Mary’s behaviour at the meeting), but they collapse
afterwards in such idiotic ways. But I want to talk to you about
yourself. I owe you a good turn for what you did last night. Only for
you, I think Shea would have dared to touch me, and then very likely I
should have killed him, and there might have been trouble afterwards.’
She spoke quite calmly, but Hyacinth had very little doubt that she
meant exactly what she said. ‘Grealy of course, was useless. One might
have expected him to give utterance to an ancient tribal war-cry, but he
didn’t even do that. Tim Halloran got frightened when the row began. I
noticed him dodging about behind Mary and me, and I mean to let him know
what I think about him. It’s you I have to thank, and I won’t forget it.
If you get into trouble over this business in college, come to me, and
I will see you straight. In fact, if you like to give up the divinity
student business at once, I dare say I can put you in the way of earning
an honester livelihood.’
Hyacinth was gratified at the way Augusta Goold spoke to him. Since
the evening on which he had given his opinion about the morality of
desertion and murder he had been conscious of a coolness in her manner.
Now he had apparently reinstated himself in her good graces. Praise,
even for an act he was secretly ashamed of, and gratitude, though he
by no means recognised that he deserved it, were pleasant to him. He
promised to remember the offer of help, but declined for the present to
commit his future to the keeping of so bloodthirsty a patroness.
Curiously enough, Hyacinth’s reception in college was a great deal more
cordial after the Rotunda meeting than it had ever been before. For a
while the battle which had been fought at their doors superseded the
remoter South African warfare as a topic of conversation among the
students. Their sympathies were with Augusta Goold. Even members of the
divinity classes suffered themselves to be lured from their habitual
worship of respectability so far as to express admiration for the
dramatic picturesqueness of the part she played. It is true that the
lady herself was called by names universally resented by women, and that
the broadest slanders were circulated about her character. Still, a halo
of glory hung round her. It was felt that she had done a surprisingly
courageous thing when she faced Mr. O’Rourke on his own platform. Also,
she had behaved with a certain dignity, neither throwing chairs nor
stones at her opponents. Then, she was an undeniably beautiful woman,
a fact which made its inevitable appeal to the young men. The mere
expression of sympathy with this flamboyant and scandal-smeared heroine
brought with it a delightful flavour of gay and worldly vice. It was
pretty well known that Hyacinth was a friend of Miss Goold’s, and it
was rumoured that he had earned his piece of sticking-plaster in
her defence. No one knew exactly what he had done or how much he had
suffered, but a great many men were anxious to know. Very much to his
own surprise, he received a number of visitors in his rooms. Men who had
been the foremost of his tormentors came, ostensibly to inquire for his
health, in reality to glean details of the fight at the Rotunda. Certain
medical students of the kind which glory in any kind of row openly
congratulated him on his luck in being present on such an occasion. Men
who claimed to be fast, and tried to impress their acquaintances with
the belief that they indulged habitually in wild scenes of revelry,
courted Hyacinth, and boasted afterwards of their second-hand
acquaintance with Miss Goold. It became the fashion to be seen
arm-in-arm with him in the quadrangle, and to inquire from him in public
for ‘Finola.’
This new popularity by no means pleased Hyacinth. He was not at all
proud of his share in the Rotunda meeting, and lived in daily dread of
being recognised as the assailant of Mr. Shea. He knew, too, that he was
making no way with the better class of students. The men whose faces
he liked were more than ever shy of making his acquaintance. The
sub-lecturers and minor professors in the divinity school were coldly
contemptuous in their manner, and it seemed to him that even Dr.
Henry was less friendly. He became desperately anxious to get out of a
position which he found more intolerable than the original isolation. He
applied himself with extreme diligence to his studies, even affecting
an interest, unnatural for the most pious, in the expositions given
by learned doctors of the Thirty-nine Articles. At lectures on Church
history he made notes about the vagaries of heretics so assiduously that
the professor began to hope that there existed one student at least
who took an interest in the Christological controversies of the sixth
century. He never ventured back again to the Wednesday prayer-meeting,
but he performed many attendances beyond the required minimum at the
college chapel. Morning after morning he dragged himself from his
bed and hurried across the dusky quadrangle to take his part in the
mutilated matins with which the college authorities see fit to usher
in the day. He even went to hear the sermons delivered on Friday
afternoons, homilies so painful that the preachers themselves recognise
an extraordinary merit in enduring them, and allow that submission of
the ears to one of them is to be reckoned as equal to two ordinary acts
of devotion.
It is to be hoped that Hyacinth derived some remote benefit from the
discipline to which he subjected himself, for the immediate results were
not satisfactory. He seemed no nearer winning the respect of the more
serious students, and Dr. Henry’s manner showed no signs of softening
into friendliness. His surfeit of theology bred in him a dislike of the
subject. The solemn platitudes which were posed as expositions of the
creeds affected his mind much as the expurgated life histories of maiden
aunts do the newly-emancipated school-girl. The relentless closing in of
argument upon a single previously settled doctrine woke in him a desire
to break through at some point and breathe again in the open. He
began to fear that he was becoming hopelessly irreligious. His morning
devotions in the foggy atmosphere of the chapel did not touch the
capacity for enthusiasm within him. The vague splendour of his father’s
meditations had left him outside, indeed, but sure that within there
lay a great reality. But now religion had come to seem an altogether
narrower thing, a fenced off, well-ordered garden in which useful
vegetables might be cultivated, but very little inspiring to the soul.
The unwelcome attention of the students whose friendship he did not
desire, and his increasing dislike for the work he was expected to do,
led him to spend more and more of his time with Augusta Goold and her
friends. He found in their society that note of enthusiasm which he
missed in the religion of the college. He responded warmly to their
passionate devotion to the dream of an independent Irish Republic. He
felt less conscious of his want of religion in their company. With the
exception of Augusta Goold herself, the members of the coterie were
professedly Roman Catholics; but this made little or no difference
in their intercourse with him. What he found in their ideals was a
substitute for religion, a space where his enthusiasm might extend
itself. He became, as he realized his own position clearly, very
doubtful whether he ought to continue his college course. It did not
seem likely that he would in the end be able to take Holy Orders, and
to remain in the divinity school without that intention was clearly
foolish. On the other hand, he shrank from inflicting what he knew would
be a painful disappointment on his father. It happened that before the
term ended his connection with the divinity school was cut in a way that
saved him from the responsibility of forming a decision.
He was a regular attendant at the lectures of Dr. Spenser, who had never
from the first disguised his dislike and contempt for Hyacinth. This
gentleman was one day explaining to his class the difference between
evidence which leads to a high degree of probability and a demonstration
which produces absolute certainty. The subject was a dry one, and quite
unsuited to Dr. Spenser, whose heart was set on maintaining a reputation
for caustic wit. He cast about for an illustration which would at once
make clear the distinction and enliven his lecture. His eye lit upon
Hyacinth, upon whose cheek there still burned a long red scar. Dr.
Spenser’s face brightened.
‘For instance, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘if I should reason from the fact
that our friend Mr. Conneally affects the society of certain charming
ladies of doubtful reputation, like Miss Goold, to the conclusion that
Mr. Conneally is himself a Nationalist, I should only have arrived at
a probable conclusion. The degree of probability might be very high;
still, I should have no right to regard my conclusion as absolutely
certain.’
The class tittered delightedly. Dr. Spenser proceeded without heeding a
deep flush on Hyacinth’s face, which might have warned a wiser man that
an explosion was coming.
‘If I should then proceed to reason thus: All Nationalists are rebels
and potential murderers--Mr. Conneally is a Nationalist; therefore Mr.
Conneally is a rebel and potential murderer--I should, assuming the
truth of my minor premise, have arrived at a certainty.’
The syllogism was greeted with loud applause. Hyacinth started to his
feet. For a time he could only gasp for breath to utter a reply, and
Dr. Spenser, secure in the conviction of his own intellectual and social
superiority to the son of a parson from Connemara, determined to pursue
his prey.
‘Does Mr. Conneally,’ he asked with a simper, ‘propose to impugn the
accuracy of my induction or the logic of my deduction?’
The simper and the number of beautiful long words which Dr. Spenser had
succeeded in collecting together into one sentence provoked a sustained
clapping of hands and stamping of feet from the class. Hyacinth rapidly
regained his self-possession, and was surprised at his own coolness when
he replied:
‘I should say, sir, that a man who makes an induction holding up a lady
to ridicule is probably a cad, and that the cad who makes a deduction
confusing patriotism with murder is certainly a fool.’
A report of Hyacinth’s speech was handed to Dr. Henry, with a
suggestion that expulsion from the divinity school was the only suitable
punishment. Hyacinth did not look forward with any pleasure to the
interview to which he was summoned. He was agreeably surprised when he
entered the professor’s room. Dr. Henry offered him a chair.
‘I hear,’ he said--his tone was severe, but a barely perceptible gleam
of humorous appreciation flashed across his eyes as he spoke--‘that you
have been exceedingly insolent to Dr. Spenser.’
‘I don’t know, sir, whether you heard the whole story, but if you did
you will surely recognise that Dr. Spenser was gratuitously insulting to
me.’
‘Quite so,’ said Dr. Henry. ‘I recognise that, but the question is, What
am I to do with you now? What would you do if you were in my place? I
should like to know your views of the best way out of the situation.’
Hyacinth was silent.
‘You see,’ Dr. Henry went on, ‘we can’t have our divinity lecturers
called fools and cads before their classes. I should be afraid myself
to deliver a lecture in your presence if I thought I was liable to that
kind of interruption.’
‘I think, sir,’ said Hyacinth, ‘that the best thing will be for me to
leave the divinity school.’
‘I think so, too. But leaving our divinity school need not mean that you
give up the idea of taking Holy Orders. I have a very high opinion of
your abilities, Conneally--so high that I should not like the Church to
lose your services. At the same time, you are not at present the kind
of man whom I could possibly recommend to any Irish Bishop. Your
Nationalist principles are an absolute bar to your working in the Church
of Ireland.’
‘I wonder, sir, how you can call our Church the Church of Ireland, and
in the same breath say that there is no room for a Nationalist in her.
Don’t the two things contradict each other.’
Dr. Henry’s eyes twinkled again. There spread over his mouth a smile of
tolerant amusement.
‘My dear boy, I’m not going to let you trap me into a discussion of that
question. Theoretically, I have no doubt you would make out an excellent
case. National Church, National spirit, National politics--Irish Church,
Irish nation, Irish ideas. They all go excellently together, don’t they?
And yet the facts are as I state them. A Nationalist clergyman in
the Church of Ireland would be just as impossible as an English
Nonconformist in the Court of Louis Quatorze. After all, in this life
one has got to steer one’s course among facts, and they’re sharp things
which knock holes in the man who disregards them. Now, what I propose
to you is this: Put off your ordination for three years or so. Take
up schoolmastaring. I will undertake to get you a post in an English
school. Your politics won’t matter over there, because no one will in
the least understand what you mean. Work hard, think hard, read hard.
Mix with the bigger world across the Channel. See England and realize
what England is and what her Empire means. Don’t be angry with me for
saying that, long before the three years are over, you’ll have come to
see that what you call patriotism is nothing else than parochialism of
a particularly narrow and uninstructed kind. Then come back here to me,
and I’ll arrange for your ordination. You’ll do the best of good work
when you’ve grown up a bit, and I’ll see you a Bishop before I die.’
‘I shall always be grateful to you,’ said Hyacinth. ‘I shall never
forget your kindness, and the way you’ve treated me; but I can’t do what
you ask.’
‘Oh, I’m not going to take no for an answer,’ said Dr. Henry. ‘Go home
to the West and think it over. Talk to your father about your future.
Write to me if you like about your plans, and remember my offer is open
six months or a year hence. You’ll be the same man then that you are
now--I mean, in character. I’m not afraid of your turning out badly. You
may think wrong-headedly, but I’m sure you’ll not act disgracefully.’