The Red Hand of Ulster/Chapter 14

OB POWER spent the afternoon with us. Strictly speaking, I ought to say he spent the afternoon with Marion. I only saw him at tea-time. He let me understand then that he would like to stay and dine with us. I felt that I ought to be vexed at the prospect of losing another quiet evening. Conroy had cost me two evenings. My visit to Castle Affey, my political March Past, and my expedition to Dublin had robbed me of nine others. I could ill afford to spare a twelfth to Bob Power. Yet I felt unreasonably pleased when he promised to dine with us. There is a certain flavour of the sea about Bob, a sense of boisterous good fellowship, a joyous irresponsibility, which would have been attractive to me at any time, and were singularly pleasant after my political experiences. I was not at all so well pleased when a note arrived from Godfrey in which he asked whether he too could dine with us.

He arrived long before dinner, before I had gone upstairs to dress, and explained himself.

“I heard,” he said, “that Power was up here, so I thought I’d better come too.”

“How lucky it is,” I said, “that Pringle didn’t invite you to-night.”

“I shouldn’t have gone if he had. I should have considered it my duty to come here. After all, Excellency, some one ought to look after Marion a bit.”

“For the matter of that,” I said, “some one ought to look after Tottie Pringle.”

“You never can tell,” said Godfrey, “what silly fancy a girl will take into her head, and that fellow Power is just the sort who might—”

Godfrey nodded sagaciously. It has always been understood that Godfrey is to marry Marion at some future time. I have always understood this and, on personal grounds, dislike it very much; though I do not deny that the arrangement is convenient. My title is not a very ancient or particularly honourable one, but I do not like to think of its being dragged in the gutter by a pauper. If Godfrey married Marion he would have the use of her income. Godfrey has certainly understood this plan for the future. He may treat himself occasionally to the kisses of Tottie Pringle, but he is not the man to allow kissing to interfere with his prospect of earning a competence. Whether Marion understood her fate or not, I do not know. She always endured Godfrey with patience. I suppose that this condition of affairs gave Godfrey a certain right to nod sagaciously when he spoke of looking after Marion. But I resented both his tone and the things he said. I left him and went up to dress.

Marion’s behaviour during the evening fully justified Godfrey’s fears, though I do not think that anything would have excused him for expressing them to me. She was amazingly cheerful during dinner, and in so good a temper, that she continued smiling at Godfrey even when he scowled at her. Bob Power was breezily agreeable, and I should have thoroughly enjoyed the stories he told us if I had not been conscious all the time that Godfrey was frowning at my right ear. He sat on that side of me and Bob Power on the other, so my ear was, most of the time, the nearest thing to my face that Godfrey could frown at.

After dinner Bob and Marion behaved really badly; not to Godfrey, but to me. No one could behave badly to Godfrey because he always deserves worse than the worst that is done to him. But I am not a very objectionable person, and I have during the last twenty-two years shown a good deal of kindness to Marion. I do not think that she and Bob ought to have slipped out of the drawing-room window after singing one short song, and left me to be worried by Godfrey for the whole evening. Only one way of escape presented itself to me. I pretended to go to sleep. That stopped Godfrey talking after a time; but not until I had found it necessary to snore. I heard every word he said up to that point. I woke up with a very good imitation of a start when Bob and Marion came in again. That happened at ten o’clock, and Bob immediately said good night. Under ordinary circumstances Godfrey stays on till nearly eleven; but that night he went away five minutes after Bob left.

Next morning there was trouble. It began with Marion’s behaviour at breakfast. As a rule she is a young woman of placid and equable temper, one who is likely in the future to have a soothing effect on her husband. That morning she was very nearly hysterical. When we went into my study after breakfast she was quite incapable of work, and could not lay her hands on any of the papers which I particularly wanted. I was irritated at the moment, but I recognized afterwards that she had some excuse, and in any case my morning’s work would have been interrupted.

At half-past ten I got a note from Godfrey—written in pencil and almost illegible—in which he asked me to go down to see him at once. He said that he was in severe pain and for the time confined to bed.

“You’re sure,” he said, “to have heard a garbled account of what happened, before you get this letter. I want to tell you the facts before I take further action.”

The word “facts” was underlined shakily. I had, of course, heard no account of anything which had happened. I handed the letter to Marion.

“Do you know what this means?” I asked.

Marion read it.

“Rose told me this morning,” she said, “that there had been some kind of a row last night. She said Godfrey was killed.”

“That isn’t true at all events,” I said. “He’s still alive.”

“Of course I didn’t believe her,” said Marion.

“But I think you ought to have told me at breakfast,” I said. “I hate having these things sprung on me suddenly. At my time of life even good news ought to be broken to me gradually. Any sudden shock is bad for the heart.”

“I thought there might be no truth in the story at all,” said Marion, “and you know, father, that you don’t like being worried.”

I don’t. But I am worried a great deal.

“I suppose,” I said, “that I’d better go down and see him. He says he’s in great pain, so he’s not likely to be agreeable; but still I’d better go.”

“Do,” said Marion; “and, of course, if there’s anything I can do, anything I can send down to him—”

“I don’t expect he’s as bad as all that,” I said. “Men like Godfrey are never seriously hurt. But if he expresses a wish for chicken jelly I’ll let you know at once.”

I started at once. I met Bob Power just outside my own gate. He was evidently a little embarrassed, but he spoke to me with the greatest frankness.

“I’m extremely sorry, Lord Kilmore,” he said, “but I am afraid I hurt your nephew last night.”

“Badly?”

“Not very,” said Bob. “Collar bone and a couple of ribs. I saw the doctor this morning.”

“Broken?”

“Yes. It wasn’t altogether my fault. I mean to say—”

“I’m sure it was altogether Godfrey’s,” I said. “The thing which surprises me is that nobody ever did it before. Godfrey is nearly thirty, so for twenty years at least every man he has met must have been tempted to break his ribs. We must, in spite of what everybody says, be a Christian nation. If we were not—”

“He would keep following me about,” said Bob. “I told him several times to clear away and go home. But he wouldn’t.”

“He has a fixed idea that you’re engaged in smuggling.”

“Even if I was,” said Bob, “it would be no business of his.”

“That’s just why he mixes himself up in it. If it had been his business he wouldn’t have touched it. There’s nothing Godfrey hates more than doing anything he ought to do.”

“I’m awfully glad you take it that way,” said Bob. “I was afraid—”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “I’m delighted. But you haven’t told me yet exactly how it happened.”

“I was moving a packing-case,” said Bob, “a rather large one—”

He hesitated. I think he felt that the packing-case might require some explanation, especially as it was being moved at about eleven o’clock at night. I hastened to reassure him.

“Quite a proper thing for you to be doing,” I said, “and certainly no business of Godfrey’s. Every one has a perfect right to move packing-cases about from place to place.”

“He told me he was going for the police, so—”

“I don’t think you need have taken any notice of that threat. The police know Godfrey quite well. They hate being worried just as much as I do.”

“So I knocked him down.”

“You must have hit him in several places at once,” I said, “to have broken so many bones.”

“The fact is,” said Bob, “that he got up again.”

“That’s just the sort of thing he would do. Any man of ordinary good feeling would have known that when he was knocked down he was meant to stay down.”

“Then the two other men who were with me, young fellows out of the town, set on him.”

“Was one of them particularly freckly?” I asked.

“I didn’t notice. Why do you ask?”

“If he was it would account for my daughter’s maid getting hold of an inaccurate version of the story this morning. But it doesn’t matter. Go on with what you were saying.”

“There isn’t any more,” said Bob. “They hammered him, and then we carried him home. That’s all.”

“I am going down to see him now,” I said. “He’s thinking of taking further action.”

“Let him,” said Bob. “Is Miss D’Aubigny at home?”

“Yes, she is. If you’re going up to see her—”

“I would,” said Bob, “if I thought she wouldn’t be angry with me.”

“She’s nervous,” I said, “and excited; but she didn’t seem angry.”

Just outside the town I met Crossan and, very much to my surprise, McNeice walking with him. Crossan handed me a letter. I put it into my pocket and greeted McNeice.

“I did not know you were here,” I said. “When did you come?”

“Last night,” said McNeice. “Crossan brought me on his motor.”

“Were you in time for the scrimmage?”

“You’d maybe better read the letter I’ve given you, my lord,” said Crossan.

“If I’d been there,” said McNeice, “your nephew would probably be dead now. In my opinion he ought to be.”

“The letter I’ve just given your lordship,” said Crossan, “is an important one.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said. “But I haven’t time to read it now.”

“What’s in it, my lord, is this. I’m resigning the management of your business here, and the sooner you’re suited with a new man the better.”

“If my nephew Godfrey has been worrying you, Crossan,” I said, “I’ll take steps—”

“It’s not that, my lord. For all the harm his talk ever did me I’d stay on. But—”

He looked at McNeice as if asking permission to say more.

“Political business,” said McNeice.

“Of course,” I said, “if it’s a matter of politics, everything must give way to politics. But I’m very sorry to lose you, Crossan. My business affairs—”

“You’ll have no business affairs left, my lord, if the Home Rule Bill passes.”

“But you’re going to stop it,” I said.

“We are,” said Crossan.

He certainly believed that he was. At the present moment he believes that he did stop it.

I found Godfrey propped up in bed. His face had a curiously unbalanced appearance owing to the way in which one side of his jaw was swollen. Bob Power’s original blow must have been a hard one. I noticed when he spoke that one of his eye teeth was broken off short. He began to pour out his complaint the moment I entered the room.

“A murderous assault was made on me last night,” he said. “After I left your house I walked down—”

“Don’t talk if it hurts you, Godfrey,” I said.

He was speaking in a muffled way which led me to think that the inside of his mouth must be nearly as much swollen as the outside.

“That fellow Power had a band of ruffians with him. If he had fought fair I shouldn’t have minded, but—”

“What were you doing,” I said, “to make him attack you? He must have had some reason.”

“I wasn’t doing anything. I was simply looking on.”

“That may have been the most objectionable thing possible,” I said. “I don’t say that his violence was justified; but it may have been quite excusable if you insisted on looking on at something which he didn’t want you to see.”

Godfrey actually tried to smile. He could not do so, of course, on account of the condition of his mouth, but I judged by the expression of his eyes that he was trying to. Godfrey’s smiles are always either malicious or idiotic. This one, if it had come off, would have been malicious.

“I saw all I wanted to,” he said, “before they attacked me. In fact, I was just going for the police—”

“I suppose you sent for the police this morning?” I said.

“No, I didn’t. I don’t trust the police. I wouldn’t trust the magistrates here, except you, of course, Excellency. What I’m going to do is write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“Good gracious, Godfrey! Why the Chancellor of the Exchequer? What interest can you expect him to take in your fights? If you are going to make a political matter of it at all, you’d far better try the Secretary of State for War. It’s much more in his line.”

“But the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the man who’s responsible for the revenue, isn’t he?”

“You can’t expect him to give you a pension simply because Power knocked out your teeth.”

“He’ll stop Power smuggling,” said Godfrey.

“I suppose,” I said, “that it’s no use my telling you that he was not smuggling?”

“I saw him at it,” said Godfrey, “and I’m going to write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“What on earth do you expect to gain by that?” I asked.

“He ought to be grateful to me for putting him on the track of the smuggling,” said Godfrey. “I should think he’d want to do something for me afterwards. He might—”

“Give you a job,” I said.

“Yes,” said Godfrey. “I always heard that fellows in the Treasury got good salaries.”

I was greatly relieved when I left Godfrey. I expected that he would want to take some sort of legal proceedings against Bob Power which would have involved us all in a great deal of unpleasantness. I should not have been surprised if he had tried to blackmail Bob or Conroy, or both, and I should have disliked that very much. But his letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to be merely foolish. In the first place Bob Power was not smuggling. In the next place the Chancellor of the Exchequer would never see Godfrey’s letter. It would be opened, I supposed, by some kind of clerk or secretary. He would giggle over it and show it to a friend. He would also giggle. Then unless the spelling was unusually eccentric the letter would go into the waste-paper basket. Nothing whatever would happen.

I was, I own, entirely wrong. The Chancellor of the Exchequer did see the letter. I take that for granted, because the Prime Minister saw it, and I cannot see how it could have got to him except through the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The spelling may have been as bad as Godfrey’s spelling usually is, but the letter evidently gave a detailed account of what had happened, the kind of account which impresses people as being true. The letter was, in fact, the first direct evidence the Government got about what Conroy and McNeice and Bob were doing. I dare say there were suspicions abroad before. The offer of a peerage to Conroy showed that there was good reason to placate him. But it was Godfrey’s absurd letter which first suggested to the minds of the Cabinet that Conroy was using his yacht, the Finola, for importing arms into Ulster. Even then I do not think that anybody in authority suspected how thoroughly Conroy and Bob were doing the work. They may have thought of a cargo of rifles, and a few thousand cartridges. The existence of the Ulster artillery was a surprise to them at the very moment when the guns first opened fire.

So far from having no consequences at all, Godfrey’s ridiculous letter actually precipitated the conflict which took place. I do not think that it made any difference to the result of the fighting. That would have been the same whether the fighting came a little sooner or a little later. But the letter and the action of the Government which followed it certainly disorganized Conroy’s plans and hustled McNeice.

I found McNeice in my study when I got home. I told him, by way of a joke, about the letter which Godfrey intended to write. To my surprise he did not treat it as a joke. I suppose he realized at once what the consequences of such a letter might be.

“They ought to have put him past writing letters,” he growled, “when they had him.”

Then, without even saying good-bye to me, he got up and left the room. In less than an hour he and Crossan were rushing off somewhere in their motor car. They may have gone to hold a consultation with Conroy. He was in Belfast at the time.

I found Bob Power and Marion in the garden, but not, as I expected, eating gooseberries. They were sitting together on a seat opposite a small artificial pond in which I try to keep gold fish. When I came upon them they were sitting up straight, and both of them were gazing intently into the pond. This surprised me, because all the last consignment of gold fish had died, and there was nothing in the pond to look at.

I told Bob about Godfrey and the letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. His reception of the news was even more disappointing than McNeice’s was. He neither laughed, as I hoped, nor even scowled. In fact, if I had not spoken quite distinctly, I should have thought that he did not hear what I said.

“Lord Kilmore,” he said, “I think I ought to tell you at once—”

Then he stopped and looked at Marion. She became very red in the face.

“Father,” she said, “Bob and I—”

Then she stopped too. I waited for a long time. Neither of them did more than begin a sentence; but Bob took Marion’s hand and held it tight. I thought it better to try to help them out.

“I don’t know,” I said, “whether I’ve guessed rightly—”

“Of course you have, father,” said Marion.

“If not,” I said, “it’ll be very embarrassing for all of us when I tell you what my guess is.”

“Marion and I—” said Bob.

“Have spent the morning,” I said, “in finding out that you want to marry each other?”

“Of course we have,” said Marion.

“Of course,” said Bob.

The discovery that they both wanted the same thing made them ridiculously happy. Marion kissed me with effusive ardour, putting her left arm tight round my neck, but still holding on to Bob with her right hand. Bob, after our first raptures had subsided a little, insisted on going down to Godfrey’s lodgings, and apologizing for breaking his ribs. I told him that an apology delivered in that spirit would merely intensify Godfrey’s wish to write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But nothing I said moved Bob in the least. He was so happy that he wanted to abase himself before some one.