Part 6 (2/2)
”Her idea,” said Lord Moyne, ”is--”
Just then our Dean came into the room. His presence emphasised the highly political nature of the party. Unless she had asked Crossan, Lady Moyne could not have got hold of any one of more influence with our north of Ireland Protestant democracy. The Dean cannot possibly be accustomed to the kind of semi-regal state which is kept up at Castle Affey. I should be surprised to hear that he habitually dresses for dinner. It was only natural, therefore, that he should be a little overawed by the immensity of the rooms and the number of footmen who lurk about the halls and pa.s.sages. When he began explaining to me the extreme iniquity of the recent Vatican legislation about mixed marriages, he spoke in a quite low voice. As a rule this subject moves the Dean to stridency; but the heavy magnificence of Castle Affey crushed him into a kind of whisper. This encouraged me. If the Dean had been in his usual condition of vigour, I should not have ventured to do anything except agree with him heartily. Feeling that I might never catch him in a subdued mood again, I seized a chance of expressing my own views on the mixed marriage question. It seems to me that the whole difficulty about the validity of these unions might be got over by importing a few priests of the Greek Church into Ireland. The Vatican, I believe, recognizes that these Orientals really are priests. The Protestants could not reasonably object to their ministrations since they refuse to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Pope. A mixed marriage performed by one of them would, therefore, be valid in the opinion of the ecclesiastical advisers of, let us say, the bridegroom. It would be quite un.o.bjectionable to those responsible for the soul of the bride. I put my plan as persuasively as I could; but the Dean did not seem to see any merit in it. Indeed I have never met any one who did. That is the great drawback to trying to help the Irish nation out of its difficulties. No one will ever agree to a reasonable compromise.
I took Lady Moyne in to dinner and enjoyed myself very much. She was--as indeed she always is--beautifully dressed. Although she talked a good deal to Babberly who sat on the other side of her, she left me with the impression that I was the person who really interested her, and that she only turned occasionally to her other neighbour from a sense of duty. Babberly talked about Unionist clubs and the vigorous way in which the members of them were doing dumb bell exercises, so as to be in thoroughly good training when the Home Rule Bill became law.
The subject evidently interested him very much. He has a long white beard of the kind described as patriarchal. When he reaches exciting pa.s.sages in his public speeches, and even when he is saying something emphatic in private life, his beard wags up and down. On this occasion it rose and fell like a foamy wave. That was what convinced me that he was really interested in the activity of the Unionist clubs. Lady Moyne smiled at him in her bewilderingly bewitching way, and then turned round and smiled at me.
”But,” I said, ”do you actually mean to go out and do battle?”
”It won't be necessary,” said Babberly. ”Once the English people understand that we mean to die rather than see our lives and liberties--”
”Nowadays,” said Lady Moyne, ”when the industrial proletariate is breaking free from all control, it is a splendid thing for us to have a cause in which we take the lead, which will bind our working cla.s.ses to us, and make them loyal to those who are after all their best friends and their natural leaders.”
I quite saw Lady Moyne's point. Crossan would not be at all likely to follow her or regard her as his best friend in ordinary matters. He might even resent her interference with his affairs. But on the subject of Home Rule Crossan would certainly follow any one who took his side of the great controversy. If Lady Moyne wore an orange sash over her pretty dresses Crossan would cheer her. While Home Rule remained a real danger he would refrain from asking why Lord Moyne should spend as much on a bottle of champagne for dinner, as would feed the children of a labourer for a week. It did not surprise me to find that Lady Moyne was clever enough to understand Crossan. I wanted to know whether Babberly understood.
”But,” I said to him, ”suppose that the men you are enrolling take what you say seriously--”
”I a.s.sure you, Lord Kilmore,” said Babberly, ”we are quite serious.”
I could hear Malcolmson at the other end of the table explaining to Moyne a scheme for establis.h.i.+ng a number of artillery forts on the side of the Cave Hill above Belfast Lough. His idea apparently, was to sink any British wars.h.i.+p which was ill-advised enough to anchor there with a view to imposing Home Rule on us. Malcolmson, at all events, was quite serious.
”It will never come to fighting,” said Babberly again. ”After all, the great heart of the English people is sound. They will never consent to see their brethren and co-religionists handed over--”
Lady Moyne turned to me and smiled again. I am sixty years of age, but her smile gave me so much pleasure that I failed to hear the rest of what Babberly said.
When at the end of dinner Lady Moyne left us, we congregated round the other end of the table, and everybody talked loud; everybody, that is, except Moyne and me. Moyne looked to me very much as if he wanted to go to sleep. He blinked a good deal, and when he got his eyes open seemed to hold them in that state with considerable effort. I did not feel sleepy, and became more and more interested as the conversation round me grew more violent. Babberly talked about a campaign among the English const.i.tuencies. He had a curious and quite pathetic faith in the gullibility of the British working-man. n.o.body listened much to Babberly. The Dean prosed on about the effects of the _Ne Temere_ decree. We all said that we agreed with him, and then stopped listening. Malcolmson got on to field guns, and had an elaborate plan for training gunners without actual practice. Babberly did not like this talk about artillery. He kept on saying that we should never get as far as that. A Mr. Cahoon, who came from Belfast, and spoke with the same kind of accent as McNeice, prophesied doleful things about the paralyzing of business under a Home Rule Parliament. What interested me was, not the conversation which beat fiercely on my ears, but the personal question, Why had Lady Moyne invited me to this party?
I am const.i.tutionally incapable of becoming excited about politics, and have therefore the reputation, quite undeserved, of being that singular creature, a Liberal peer. Why, being the kind of Gallio I am, I should have been, like a second Daniel, thrown among these lions, I could not understand. They were not the least likely to convert me to their own desperate intensity of feeling. If Lady Moyne wanted to convert me a far better plan would have been to invite me to her house after the politicians had gone away. Circe, I imagine, did not attract new lovers by parading those whom she had already turned into swine.
Nor could I suppose that I had been brought to Castle Affey in order to convert people like Malcolmson to pacific ways of thought. In the first place, Lady Moyne did not want him converted. He and his like were a valuable a.s.set to the Conservative party. And even if she had wanted them converted I was not the man to do it. I am mildly reasonable in my outlook upon life. To reason with Malcolmson is much the same as if a man, meaning well, were to offer a Seidlitz powder to an enraged hippopotamus.
It was not until next day that I found a solution of my problem. Moyne b.u.t.tonholed me after breakfast, and invited me, rather wistfully I thought, to go round the stables with him. He wanted my opinion of a new filly. I went, pursued by the sound of the Dean's voice.
He was telling the story of a famous case of wife desertion brought about by the _Ne Temere_ decree. He was telling it to Cahoon, the Belfast manufacturer, who must, I am sure, have heard it several times before.
I used, long ago, to be a good judge of horses. I still retained my eye for a neat filly. Moyne's latest acquisition was more than neat. I stroked her neck, and patted her flanks with genuine appreciation.
Moyne looked quite cheerful and babbled pleasantly about hunting. Then Lady Moyne came through the door of the stable. I was very glad to see her. Her dress, a simple brown tweed, suited her admirably, and her smile, less radiant, perhaps, than it was the night before when set off by her diamonds, was most attractive. Moyne, too, though I knew that he did not want to talk politics, was glad to see her. She came into the horse-box, and fondled the filly. Then she sighed.
”What a lot we have to go through for a good cause!” she said. ”Those terrible men!”
”Heavy going,” said Moyne, ”that kind of thing at breakfast. Let's take out the new car, and go for a spin.”
”I should love to,” she said, ”but I must not. I only ran out to speak to you for a minute, Lord Kilmore.”
Her eyes led me to believe at dinner the night before that I was the one man among her guests that she really wanted to talk to. Now her lips said the same thing plainly. I did not believe it, of course; but I felt quite as much gratified as if it had been true.
”Mr. Conroy comes this afternoon,” she said.
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