The Red Hand of Ulster/Chapter 18

FULLY intended to go to church on Sunday morning. I was, in fact, waiting for Marion at the door of the hotel, when Sir Samuel Clithering came to see me.

“I shall be so much obliged,” he said, “if you will spare me a few minutes.”

I did not want to spare any minutes to Sir Samuel Clithering. In the first place I had promised to take Marion to the cathedral. “A Parade Service”—I quote the official title of the function—was to be held for the benefit of the volunteers and Marion naturally wanted to see Bob Power at the head of his men. I wanted to hear the men singing that hymn again, and I wanted to hear what sort of sermon the Dean—our Dean, not the Dean of the cathedral—would preach on such an occasion. He was advertised to preach, as “Chaplain General of the Loyalists.” These were three good reasons for not giving Sir Samuel Clithering the few minutes he demanded. I had, also, a fourth. I had held, as I have related, previous communications with Clithering. I suspected him of having more peerages in his pocket for distribution, and I did not want to undertake any further negotiations like that with Conroy. He might even—and I particularly disliked the idea—be empowered to offer our Dean an English bishopric.

I kept this last reason to myself, but I stated the other three fully to Sir Samuel. He seemed dissatisfied.

“Everybody’s going to church,” he complained. “I can’t get Lord Moyne. I can’t get Babberly. I can’t get Malcolmson, and it’s really most important that I should see some one. Going to church is all very well—”

“As a leading Nonconformist,” I said.

“Free Churchman,” said Sir Samuel.

“I beg your pardon, Free Churchman. You ought not to object to people going to church. I’ve always understood that the Free Churchmen are honourably distinguished from other Christians by their respect for the practice of Sunday worship.”

“Of course, I don’t object to people going to church. I should be there myself if it were not that—”

He hesitated. I thought he might be searching for an appropriate text of Scripture so I helped him.

“Your ass,” I said, “has fallen into a pit, and you want—”

This was evidently not exactly the text he wanted. He seemed astonished when I quoted it.

“Ass!” he said. “What ass?”

“The Government,” I said. “It is in rather a hole, isn’t it?”

“Capital,” said Clithering, laughing without the smallest appearance of mirth, “capital! I didn’t catch the point for a moment, but I do now. My ass has fallen into a pit. You put the matter in a nutshell, Lord Kilmore. I don’t mind confessing that a pit of rather an inconvenient size does lie in front of us. I feel sure that you, as a humane man, won’t refuse your help in the charitable work of helping to get us out.”

Marion came downstairs in her best hat. It was not for nothing that Bob Power and I and the running volunteer had struggled with her trunk. Her frock, also, was charming.

“Your daughter,” said Clithering. “Now my dear young lady, you must spare your father to me for an hour. Affairs of state. Affairs of state. But you’ll allow me to send you to church in my car. My private secretary is in it, and I shall tell him to see you safely to church, to secure a seat for you—”

“The Dean has reserved seats for us,” I said.

“Capital, capital. We can regard that as settled then. My private secretary—an excellent young fellow whom I picked up at Toynbee Hall—a student of our social problems—a man whom I’m sure you’ll like.”

He conducted Marion to the door and handed her over to the private secretary from Toynbee Hall. I resigned myself and led Clithering to a deserted smoking-room.

“I never saw so much church-going anywhere,” he said. “It’s most remarkable. I don’t think the Government quite appreciates—”

As a matter of fact the percentage of church-going men on that particular Sunday was considerably over the average. On the other hand there were much fewer women than usual. Every church of every Protestant denomination was holding a “Parade Service” for volunteers, and most of the women who tried to get in had to be turned away from the doors. I thought it well to rub the facts in a little.

“Rack-renting landlords,” I said. “Sweating capitalists, and clergymen whose churches are empty because their congregations are tired of hearing them curse the Pope!”

“Eh?” said Clithering, “what’s that? what’s that?”

“Only a quotation,” I said. “I forget if it was a Cabinet Minister—”

“Not at all,” said Clithering. “I recollect the words now. It was one of the Irish Members. No Cabinet Minister would dream of saying such things. We have a high sense of the importance of the Ulster problem. Nothing, I assure you, is further from our minds than the desire to minimize or treat with undue flippancy the conscientious objections, even the somewhat unreasonable fears of men whom we recognize as—”

Clithering paused. I had not anything particular to say, so I waited for him to begin again.

“I understand,” he said, “that a meeting of the Unionist Defence Committee is to be held this afternoon.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to it. I’m not really a member of the committee, at least I wasn’t until yesterday; but—”

“I quite understand, quite understand. In fact—speaking now in the strictest confidence—I may say that the suggestion to add your name to the committee was made—well it was made to Lady Moyne by a very important person. It was generally recognized that a man of your well-known moderation—”

I was beginning to dislike being called a man of moderation nearly as much as I disliked being called a Liberal.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“The situation—the very difficult and distressing situation is this,” said Clithering, “stated roughly it is this. The Government has proclaimed to-morrow’s meeting.”

“That,” I said, “is the pit into which—I don’t want to be offensive—I’ll say, your ox has fallen.”

“And the town is full of troops and police. Any attempt to hold the meeting can only result in bloodshed, deplorable bloodshed, the lives of men and women, innocent women sacrificed.”

“The strength of Babberly’s position,” I said, “is that he doesn’t think bloodshed deplorable.”

“But he does. He told me so in London. He repeated the same thing this morning.”

“I don’t mean Babberly personally,” I said, “I mean his party; Malcolmson, you know, and our Dean. If you’d only gone to hear the Dean preach this morning you’d know what he thinks about blood. I’ve often heard him say that the last drop of it—mind that now, Sir Samuel—the last drop ought to be shed. That’s going as far as any one very well could, isn’t it?”

“But he must,” said Clithering, “he must think bloodshed deplorable.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “You mustn’t think everybody is like your Government. It’s humanitarian. We’re not. We’re business men.”

Clithering caught at the last phrase. It appealed to him. He did not know the meaning attached to it by Cahoon.

“That’s just it,” he said. “We want to appeal to you as business men. We want to suggest a reasonable compromise.”

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that you’ve come to the wrong place. I’m not the least averse to compromises myself, in fact I love them. But the Belfast business man—You don’t quite understand him, I’m afraid, Sir Samuel. Have you heard him singing his hymn?”

“No. What hymn? But leaving the question of hymns aside for the moment—”

“You can’t do that,” I said, “the hymn is the central fact in the situation.”

Clithering thought this over and evidently failed to understand it.

“What I am empowered to suggest,” he said, “is a compromise so very favourable to the Ulster claims that I can hardly imagine your rejecting it. The Government will allow the meeting to be held this day week if your committee will agree to the postponement.”

“If,” I said, “you will also withdraw your Home Rule Bill—”

“But we can’t,” said Clithering. “We can’t do that. We’ll insert any reasonable safeguards. We’ll concede anything that Ulster likes to ask, but we’re pledged, absolutely pledged, to the Bill.”

“Well,” I said, “as far as pledges are concerned, we’re pledged against it.”

“What we deprecate,” said Sir Samuel, “is violence of any kind. Constitutional agitation, even if carried on with great bitterness is one thing. Violence—but I’m sure, Lord Kilmore, that we can rely on you to use your influence at the meeting this afternoon to secure the acceptance of the terms we offer. I’m sure we can count on you. You can’t want bloodshed.”

I did not want bloodshed, of course. I do not suppose that anybody did. What Clithering could not understand was that some people—without wanting bloodshed—might prefer it to Home Rule. He left me, still I fancy relying on my well-known moderation. No man ever relied on a more utterly useless crutch. Moderation has never been of the slightest use anywhere in Ireland and was certainly a vain thing in Belfast that day.

I walked round to the club and found nobody in it except Conroy. He alone, among the leading supporters of the Loyalist movement, had failed to go to church. I thought I might try how he would regard the policy of moderation.

“I suppose,” I said, “that you’ll have to give up this meeting to-morrow.”

“I don’t think so,” said Conroy.

“I’ve just been talking to Sir Samuel Clithering,” I said, “and he thinks there’ll be bloodshed if you don’t.”

“I reckon he’s right there. We’re kind of out for that, aren’t we?”

“It won’t be so pleasant,” I said, “when it’s your blood that’s shed. I don’t mean yours personally, I mean your friends.”

“The other side will do some of the bleeding,” said Conroy.

“Still,” I said, “in the end they’ll win.”

“I wouldn’t bet too heavy on that,” said Conroy.

“You don’t mean to say that you think that a handful of north of Ireland farmers and mechanics can stand up against the British Empire?”

“It’s fixed in my mind,” said Conroy, “that the British lion will get his tail twisted a bit before he’s through with this business. I don’t say that he won’t make good in the end. Nobody but God Almighty can tell this minute whether he will or not; but he’ll be considerable less frisky when he’s finished than he is to-day.”

“But,” I said, “even supposing you clear the streets of the soldiers and police to-morrow—I do not see how you can; but if you do the Government will simply anchor a battleship off Carrickfergus and shell the whole town into a heap of ruins.”

“I’m calculating on their trying that,” said Conroy.

That was all I could get out of Conroy. I left him, feeling uneasily that his vote would certainly go against Clithering’s compromise. His confidence in the fighting powers of the raw men whom Bob and others had taken to church with them struck me as absurd. His cool assumption of power to deal with the British fleet was arrogance run mad.

On my way back to my hotel I ran into a congregation which had just got out of some church or other. In the first rank—they were marching in very fair order—was Crossan. He saluted me and stopped.

“I’m thinking,” he said, “that you won’t have seen them.”

He pointed to a small group of men who were bringing up the rear of the congregation’s march. They were dragging a heavy object along with two large ropes. I recognized the leader of them at once. He was Cahoon’s foreman friend, McConkey. I was pleased to find that he recognized me.

“I have her safe,” he said. “Would you like to take a look at her?”

I did. She was a machine gun of a kind quite unknown to me; but her appearance was very murderous. McConkey led me up to her. He stroked her black side lovingly and patted her in various places.

“I was trying her yesterday,” he said, “down on the slob land under the Shore Road. Man o’ man, but she shoots bonny!”

I had no doubt of it. She was likely to be accountable for a good deal of bloodshed if there was any street fighting next day. The record of her bag would, I should think, haunt Sir Samuel Clithering for the rest of his life.

“I’ve a matter of five thousand cartridges,” said McConkey in a hoarse whisper, “and there’s another five thousand ordered.”