Part 11 (2/2)

Conroy--you know Conroy, don't you?”

”Oh,” I said, ”then Lady Moyne got a subscription out of him after all. I knew she intended to.”

”Lady Moyne isn't in this at all,” said McNeice. ”We're out for business with _The Loyalist_. Lady Moyne's--well, I don't quite see Lady Moyne running _The Loyalist_.”

”She's a tremendously keen Unionist,” I said. ”She gave an address to the working-women of Belfast the week before last, one of the most moving--”

”All frills,” said McNeice, ”silk frills. Your friend Crossan is acting as one of our agents, distributing the paper for us. That'll give you an idea of the lines we're going on.”

Crossan, I admit, is the last man I should suspect of being interested in frills. The mention of his name gave me an idea.

”Was it copies of _The Loyalist_,” I asked, ”which were in the packing-cases which you and Power landed that night from the _Finola_?”

McNeice laughed.

”Come along round with me,” he said, ”and see the editor. He'll interest you. He's a first-rate journalist, used to edit a rebel paper and advocate the use of physical force for throwing off the English rule. But he's changed his tune now. Just wait for me one moment while I get together an article which I promised to bring him. It's all scattered about the floor of the next room in loose sheets.”

I read _The Loyalist_ while I waited. The editor was unquestionably a first-rate journalist. His English was of a naked, muscular kind, which reminded me of Swift and occasionally of John Mitchel. But I could not agree with McNeice that he had changed his tune. He still seemed to be editing a rebel paper and still advocated the use of physical force for resisting the will of the King, Lords and Commons of our const.i.tution. It is the merest commonplace to say that Ireland is a country of unblus.h.i.+ng self-contradictions; but I do not think that the truth of this ever came home to me quite so forcibly as when I read _The Loyalist_ that it would be better, if necessary, to imitate the Boers and shoot down regiments of British soldiers than to be false to the Empire of which ”it is our proudest boast that we are citizens.” The editor--such was the conclusion I arrived at--must be a humorist of a high order.

His name was Diarmid O'Donovan and he always wrote it in Irish characters, which used to puzzle me at first when I got into correspondence with him. We found him in a small room at the top of a house in a side street of a singularly depressing kind.

McNeice explained to me that _The Loyalist_ did not court notoriety, and preferred to have an office which was, as far as possible, out of sight. He said that O'Donovan was particularly anxious to be un.o.btrusive. He had, before he became connected with _The Loyalist_, been editor of two papers which had been suppressed by the Government for advocating what the Litany calls ”sedition and privy conspiracy.”

He held, very naturally, that a paper would get on better in the world if it had no office at all. If that was impossible, the office should be an attic in an inaccessible slum.

O'Donovan, when we entered, was seated at a table writing vigorously.

I do not know how he managed to write at all. His table was covered with stacks of newspapers, very dusty. He had cleared a small, a very small s.p.a.ce in the middle of them, and his ink-bottle occupied a kind of cave hollowed out at the base of one of the stacks. It must have been extremely difficult to put a pen into it. The chairs--there were only two of them besides the editorial stool--were also covered with papers. But even if they had been free I should not have cared to sit down on them. They were exceedingly dirty and did not look safe.

McNeice introduced me and then produced his own article. O'Donovan, very politely, offered me his stool.

”McNeice tells me,” he said, ”that you are writing a history of Irish Rebellions. I suppose you have said that Nationalism ceased to exist about the year 1900?”

”I hadn't thought of saying that,” I said. ”In fact--in view of the Home Rule Bill, you know--I should have said that Irish Nationalism was just beginning to come to its own.”

O'Donovan snorted.

”There's no such thing as Irish Nationalism left,” he said. ”The country is hypnotized. We've accepted a Bill which deprives us of the most elementary rights of freemen. We've licked the boots of English Liberals. We've said 'thank you' for any gnawed bones they like to fling to us. We've--”

It struck me that O'Donovan was becoming rhetorical. I interrupted him.

”Idealism in politics,” I said, ”is one of the most futile things there is. What the Nationalist Party--”

”Don't call them that,” said O'Donovan. ”I tell you they're not Nationalists.”

”I'll call them anything you like,” I said, ”but until you invent some other name for them I can't well talk about them without calling them Nationalists.”

”They--” said O'Donovan.

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