The Red Hand of Ulster/Chapter 20

OYNE and I dined together in the hotel. We should have got a better dinner at the club, and I wanted to go there. But Moyne was afraid of the other men’s talk. It was likely that there would be some very eager talk at the club; and Moyne, whose name still figured on placards as chairman of next day’s meeting would have been a butt for every kind of anxious inquiry.

We did not altogether escape talk by staying in the hotel.

Just as we were sitting down to dinner I was told that Bob Power wished to see me. Moyne wanted me to send him away; but I could not well refuse an interview to the man who was to be my son-in-law. I gave that as my excuse to Moyne. In reality I was filled with curiosity, and wanted to hear what Bob would say to us. I told the waiter to show him in. He carried no visible weapon of any kind, but he was wearing a light blue scarf round his left arm. I suppose I stared at it.

“Our nearest approach to a uniform,” he said. “Something of the sort was necessary.”

“But why light blue?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a good colour, easily seen. The men are to wear orange, of course. I’m an officer.”

“Captain or Colonel or Knight at Arms?” I asked.

“We haven’t bothered about titles,” said Bob, who did not seem to recognize the question. “We haven’t had time to settle details of any sort. In fact I haven’t much time now. I just dropped in to tell you that you needn’t be nervous about to-night. We have our men well under control, and the police ought to be able to deal with the rabble. If they can’t—if there’s any sign of rioting—we step in and stop it at once.”

He pulled a revolver from his coat pocket as he spoke. It gave us the necessary information about the way in which rioting was to be stopped.

“I shall be on patrol all night,” he said. “My orders—”

“By the way,” I said, “excuse my asking a stupid sort of question. But who gives you your orders? Who is Commander-in-Chief?”

“Conroy, of course. Didn’t you know? He organized the whole thing. Wonderful head Conroy has. I don’t wonder he became a millionaire. He has his men under perfect control. They may not look starchy when you see them in the streets, but they’ll do what they’re told. I thought you and Lord Moyne would be glad to know, so I dropped in to tell you. I must be off now.”

He got as far as the door and then turned.

“Marion and Lady Moyne got away all right,” he said. “I saw them off.”

Then he left us.

“That’s good news as far as it goes,” I said.

“I’m not sure,” said Moyne. “I’m not at all sure. If there had been a riot to-night, the ordinary sort of riot—but I don’t know. It’s very hard to know what to hope for.”

If there had been an ordinary riot that night, and if it had been sternly and promptly suppressed, there would perhaps have been no battle next day. If, on the other hand, Conroy and Bob and the others could keep their men under control, if they could secure the peace of the city for the night, then the fighting next day was likely to be serious. As Moyne said, it was very hard to know what to hope for.

The waiter brought in our fish, and with it a message from Sir Samuel Clithering. He wanted to see Moyne. I had had enough of Clithering for one day, so I made no objection when Moyne flatly refused to see him.

I suppose a man cannot be a successful manufacturer of hosiery in the English midlands without possessing the quality of persistence. Clithering had it. He sent another message to say that his business was very important. Moyne said that he and his business might go to hell together. I hope the waiter translated this message into parliamentary language. Clithering is a Nonconformist, and therefore a man of tender conscience. I should not like him to be shocked.

The hotel cook was doing his best for us. He sent us up an entrée. With it came a note from Clithering.

“I’m sending a telegram to the Prime Minister describing the condition of affairs here. May I say that you have refused to preside at the meeting to-morrow?”

Moyne showed me the note. Then he scribbled an answer on the back of it.

“You may tell the Prime Minister that if a meeting is held I shall preside. The announcements made in the papers and posters stand good.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” I asked.

“I think it’s right,” said Moyne.

It is a great pity that right things very seldom are wise. I have hardly ever met anything which could possibly be called prudent which was not also either mean or actually wrong.

Our next interruption was due to a newspaper reporter. He represented several papers, among others one in New York. He had the names of all of them printed on his card, but they did not impress Moyne. Our waiter, who was beginning to swell with a sense of his own importance, drove off that newspaper reporter. Three others, all of them representing papers of high standing, sent in their cards in quick succession. Moyne laid a sovereign on the table and told the waiter that he could have it as a tip on condition that no one got into the room while we were at dinner.

The waiter got the sovereign in the end; but he did not deserve it. While we were drinking our coffee a young man overwhelmed our waiter and forced his way into the room. There were two doors in our room, which is one of what is called a suite. As the young man entered by one, Moyne, leaving his coffee and his sovereign behind him, left by the other. He shut it with a slam and locked it.

“Lord Moyne, I presume?” said the young man.

“Lord Moyne,” I said, “has just left.”

“May I ask,” he said, “if I have the honour of addressing Mr. McNeice?”

I explained that I was not McNeice. Then, in order to get him to go away, if possible, I added that I was not Malcolmson, or Cahoon, or Conroy, or the Dean.

“If you’ll pardon my curiosity,” he said, “I should like to ask—”

I saw that I should be obliged to tell him who I was in the end. I told him at once, adding that I was a person of no importance whatever, and that I had no views of any kind on what he would no doubt want to call “the situation.”

“May I ask you one question?” he said. “Is Lord Moyne going to take the chair to-morrow?”

“Yes,” I said, “he is. But if you’re going to print what I say in any paper I won’t speak another word.”

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “the wires are blocked. There’s a man in the post office writing as hard as he can and handing one sheet after another across the counter as quick as he can write them. Nobody else can send anything.”

“Clithering, I expect.”

“Very likely. Seems to fancy himself a bit, whoever he is. Nobody else can get a message through.”

He seemed an agreeable young man. Moyne had probably gone to bed and I did not want to spend a lonely evening.

“Have a glass of claret,” I said.

He sat down and poured himself off half a tumbler-full. Then it struck him that he owed me some return for my hospitality.

“My name,” he said, “is Bland. I was with Roberts’ column in the Orange Free State.”

“Ah!” I said. “A war correspondent.”

“I did the Greek War, too,” he said. “A poor affair, very. Looks to me as if you were going to do better here. But it’s a curious situation.”

“Very,” I said, “and most unpleasant.”

“From my point of view,” said Bland, “it’s most interesting. The usual thing is for one army to clear out of a town before the other comes in or else to surrender after a regular siege. But here—”

“I’m afraid,” I said, “that our proceedings are frightfully irregular.”

“None the worse for that,” said Bland kindly. “But they are a bit peculiar. I’ve read up quite a lot of military history and I don’t recollect a single case in which two hostile armies patrolled the streets of the same city without firing a shot at one another. By the way, have you been out?”

“Not since this afternoon,” I said.

“It would be quite worth your while to take a stroll round,” said Bland. “There’s not the slightest risk and you may never have a chance of seeing anything like it again.”

I quite agreed with Bland. The odds are, I suppose, thousands to one against my ever again seeing two hostile armies walking up and down opposite sides of the street. I got my hat and we went out together.

We were almost immediately stopped by a body of lancers. Their leader asked us who we were and where we were going.

“Press correspondents,” said Bland, “on our way to the telegraph office.”

This impressed the officer. He allowed us to go on without ordering his men to impale us. I was glad of this. I am not particularly afraid of being killed, but I would rather meet my end by a sword cut or a bullet than by a lance. I should feel like a wild pig if a lancer speared me. No one could die with dignity and self-respect if he felt like a wild pig while he was passing away.

“In ordinary wars,” said Bland, “the best thing to say is that you are a doctor attached to the Ambulance Corps. But that’s no use here. These fellows don’t want doctors!”

Then we met a party of volunteers. They stopped us too, and challenged us very sternly. Bland gave his answer. This time it did not prove wholly satisfactory.

“Protestant or Papist?” said the officer in command.

“Neither,” said Bland, “I’m a high caste Brahmin.”

Fortunately I recognized the officer’s voice. It was Crossan who commanded this particular regiment. It never was safe, even in the quietest times, to be flippant with Crossan. On a night like that and under the existing circumstances, Bland might very well have been knocked on the head for his joke if I had not come to his rescue.

“Crossan,” I said, “don’t make a fuss. Mr. Bland and I are simply taking a walk round the streets.”

“If he’s a Papist,” said Crossan, “he’ll have to go home to his bed. Them’s my orders. We don’t want rioting in the streets to-night.”

I turned to Bland.

“What is your religion?” I asked.

“Haven’t any,” he said. “I haven’t believed any doctrine taught by any Church since I was six years old. Will that satisfy you?”

“I was afeard,” said Crossan, “that you might be a Papist. You can go on.”

This shows, I think, that the charges of bigotry and intolerance brought against our Northern Protestants are quite unfounded. Crossan had no wish to persecute even a professed atheist.

We did not go very far though we were out for nearly two hours. The streets were filled with armed men and everybody we met challenged us. The police were the hardest to get rid of. They were no doubt soured by the treatment they received in Belfast. Accustomed to be regarded with awe by rural malefactors and denounced in flaming periods, of a kind highly gratifying to their self-importance, by political leaders, they could not understand a people who did not mention them in speeches but threatened their lives with paving stones. This had been their previous experience of Belfast and they were naturally suspicious of any stray wayfarers whom they met. They were not impressed when Bland said he was a newspaper reporter. They did not seem to care whether he believed or disbelieved the Apostles’ Creed. One party of them actually arrested us and only a ready lie of Bland’s saved us from spending an uncomfortable night. He said, to my absolute amazement, that we were officials of an exalted kind, sent down by the Local Government Board to hold a sworn inquiry into the condition of Belfast. This struck me at the time as an outrageously silly story, but it was really a rather good one to tell. The Irish police are accustomed to sworn inquiries as one of the last resorts of harassed Governments. It seemed to the sergeant quite natural that somebody should be in Belfast to hold one.

We came across McConkey with his machine gun at a street corner. He had got a new crew to pull it along. I suppose the first men were utterly exhausted. But McConkey himself was quite fresh. Enthusiasm for the weapon on which he had spent the savings of a lifetime kept him from fatigue.

The experience was immensely interesting; but I began to get tired after a time. The necessity for explaining what we were—or rather what we were not—at the end of every fifty yards, began to make me nervous. Bland’s spirits kept up, but Bland is a war correspondent and accustomed to being harried by military authorities. I am not. It was a comfort to me when we ran into Bob Power’s regiment outside the Ulster Hall.

“Bob,” I said, “I want to get back to my hotel. I wish you’d see me safe, chaperone me, convoy me, or whatever you call the thing I want you to do.”

Bland tugged at my sleeve.

“Get him to take me to the post-office,” he said. “I’ll have another go at getting a telegram through.”

“Bob,” I said, “this is my friend Mr. Bland. He’s a war correspondent and he wants to get to the post-office.”

My return to the hotel was simple enough. The police kept out of the way of Bob’s men. The other soldiers let him and his regiment pass without challenge. Bland, faithful to his professional duties, poured out questions as we went along.

“How’s it managed?” he said. “Why aren’t you at each other’s throats?”

“So far as we’re concerned,” said Bob, “there’s nothing to fight about. We don’t object to the soldiers or the police. We’re loyal men.”

“Oh, are you?” said Bland.

“Quite.”

“Unless our meeting’s interrupted to-morrow,” I said.

“Of course,” said Bob.

“That explains your position all right,” said Bland. “But I don’t quite understand the others. I should have thought—”

“The soldiers,” said Bob, “have strict orders not to provoke a conflict. I met Henderson just now and he told me so. You remember Henderson, Lord Kilmore? The man I was talking to at the railway station. He’d only had two water biscuits to eat all day yesterday. When I met him just now he told me he’d had nothing since breakfast to-day but one bit of butterscotch. He said he wished we’d fight at once if we were going to fight and get it over.”

“But the police—” said Bland, still trying to get information. “I should have thought the police—”

“They tried to arrest us,” I said. “In fact they did arrest us but they let us go again.”

“I dare say they’d like to arrest us,” said Bob, “but you see we’ve all got guns.”

“Ah,” said Bland, “and the ordinary inhabitants of the city—?”

“They’re in bed,” said Bob, “and we’ve all agreed that they’d better stay there. Nobody wants a riot.”

“Thanks,” said Bland. “If I can get my wire through I’ll let the world know the exact position of affairs.”

“If you are wiring,” said Bob, “you might like to mention that there was jolly nearly being a fight at the gasworks. The military people got it into their heads that we intended to turn off the gas and plunge the town into darkness so as to be able to murder people without being caught. They took possession of the works and put a party of Royal Engineers in charge. Fairly silly idea! But some fool on our side—a fellow who’s been dragging a quick-firing gun about the streets all day—”

“McConkey,” I said. “I know him.”

“I didn’t hear his name,” said Bob, “but he got it into his head that the Royal Engineers were going to turn off the gas so that the soldiers could make short work of us. He wanted to wipe out those engineers with his gun. I don’t suppose he’d have hit them, but he’d certainly have tried if some one hadn’t run and fetched Conroy. He settled the matter at once.”

“How?” said Bland. “This story will be a scoop for me. I don’t expect any one else knows it.”

“He handed the gasworks over to the police,” said Bob.

“But did that satisfy any one?” I asked. “I should have thought that both the original parties would have fallen upon the police.”

“Not at all,” said Bob. “The police are so much the weakest party in the town that it’s plainly to their interest to keep the gas burning. Even the man with the machine gun saw that.”

I found Moyne waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. He was very depressed and took no more than a mere sip of the whisky and soda which I ordered for him. I made an effort to cheer him a little before I went to bed.

“I don’t think,” I said, “that there’ll be a battle to-morrow.”

“I am sure there will. What’s to stop it?”

“The fact is,” I said, “that everybody will be too exhausted to fight. McConkey, for instance, is still hauling that field gun of his about the streets. He simply won’t have strength enough left to-morrow to shoot it off. All the soldiers and all the volunteers are marching up and down. They mean to keep it up all night. I should say that you and I and three or four other sensible people who have gone to bed will have the town entirely to ourselves to-morrow.”

Moyne smiled feebly.

“I wish it was all well over,” he said. “I hope the Prime Minister won’t be disagreeable to—. It would have been better, much better, if she’d gone to Castle Affey.”

“You needn’t be a bit afraid of that,” I said.

This time I spoke with real assurance. No man living could be disagreeable to Lady Moyne, if she smiled at him. When she left Belfast she was so much in earnest and so anxious, that she would certainly smile her very best at the Prime Minister.

“I don’t know,” said Moyne. “He may hold her responsible to some extent. And she is, you know. That’s the worst of it, she is. We all are.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Oh, but we are,” said Moyne. “I feel that. I wish to goodness we’d never—”

“What I mean is that the Prime Minister won’t hold her responsible. After all, Moyne, he’s a politician himself. He’ll understand.”

“But we said—we kept on saying—Babberly and all of us—”

Moyne was becoming morbid.

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “Of course we said things. Everybody does. But we never intended to do them. Any one accustomed to politics will understand that. I expect the Prime Minister will be particularly civil to Lady Moyne. He’ll see the hole she’s in.”