Part 19 (2/2)

”I had a long letter from Babberly this morning,” said Moyne. ”He had an interview with the Prime Minister yesterday. It appears that the Government has some information.”

”Why doesn't the Government act upon it then?”

”They are acting. They want me and Babberly to come out and denounce this kind of thing, to discountenance definitely--”

”That's all well enough,” I said, ”but I don't see why you and Babberly should be expected to get the Government out of a hole. In fact it's your business to keep them in any holes they fall into.”

”Under ordinary circ.u.mstances,” said Moyne, ”we shouldn't, of course, stir hand or foot. We'd let them stew in their own juice. And I may tell you that's the line Babberly thinks we ought to take. But I don't know. If there's any truth in these rumours, and there may be, you know, it seems to me that we are face to face with a very serious business. Party politics are all right, of course; and I'm just as keen as any man to turn out this wretched Government. They've done mischief enough, but--well, if there's any truth in what they say, it isn't exactly a question of ordinary politics, and I think that every loyal man ought to stand by--”

”If there's any truth in the rumours--” I said.

”The country's in a queer state,” said Moyne. ”I don't understand what's going on.”

”If the people have got rifles,” I said, ”they're not likely to give them up because you and Babberly tell them to.”

”Babberly says there's nothing in it,” said Moyne, doubtfully, ”and her ladys.h.i.+p agrees with him. She thinks it's simply a dodge of the Government to spike our guns.”

It is curious that Moyne cannot help talking about guns, even when he's afraid that somebody or other may really have one. He might, under the circ.u.mstances, have been expected to use some other metaphor. ”Cook our goose,” for instance, would have expressed his meaning quite well, and there would have been no suggestion of gunpowder about the words.

”I don't see,” I said, ”how you can very well do anything when both Lady Moyne and Babberly are against you.”

”I can't--I can't, of course. And yet, don't you know, Kilmore, I don't know--”

I quite appreciated Moyne's condition of mind. I myself did not know.

I felt nearly certain that Bob Power had been importing arms in the _Finola_. I suspected that Crossan and others had been distributing them. And yet it seemed impossible to suppose that ordinary people, the men I lunched with in the club, like Malcolmson, the men who touched their hats to me on the road, like Rose's freckly-faced lover, the quiet-looking people whom I saw at railway stations, that those people actually meant to shoot off bullets out of guns with the intention of killing other people. Of course, long ago, this sort of killing was done, but then, long ago, men believed things which we do not believe now. Perhaps I ought to say which I do not believe now.

Malcolmson may still believe in what he calls ”civil and religious liberty.” Crossan certainly applies his favourite epithet to the ”Papishes.” He may conceivably think that they would put him on a rack if they got the chance. If he believed that he might fight. And yet the absurdity of the thing prevents serious consideration.

The fact is that our minds are so thoroughly attuned to the commonplace that we have lost the faculty of imaginative vision of unusual things. Commonplace men--I, for instance, or Babberly--can imagine a defeat of the Liberal Government or a Unionist victory at the General Election, because Liberal Governments have been defeated and Unionist victories have been won within our own memories. We cannot imagine that Malcolmson and Crossan and our large Dean would march out and kill people, because we have never known any one who did such things. Men with prophetic minds can contemplate such possibilities, because they have the power of launching themselves into the unseen. We cannot. This is the reason why cataclysms, things like the Flood recorded in the Book of Genesis, and the French Revolution, always come upon societies unprepared for them. The prophets foretell them, but the common man has not the amount of imagination which would make it possible for him to believe the prophets. ”They eat and drink, marry, and are given in marriage,”

until the day when the thing happens.

Looking back now and considering, in the light of what actually happened, my own frame of mind while I was talking to Moyne, I can only suppose that it was my lack of imagination which prevented my realizing the meaning of what was going on around me.

The next event which I find it necessary to chronicle is Conroy's visit to Germany. I heard about it from Marion. She got a letter almost every day from Bob Power, and it was understood that he was to pay us a short visit at the end of that week. He explained, much to Marion's disappointment and mine, that this visit must be postponed.

”The chief,” it was thus he wrote of Conroy, ”has gone over to Germany. He's always going over to Germany. I fancy he must have property there. But it doesn't generally matter to me whether he goes or not. This time--worse luck--he has taken it into his head to have the yacht to meet him at Kiel. I have to go at once.”

At the moment I attached no importance whatever to Conroy's visit to Germany. Now I have come to think that he went there on a very serious business indeed. His immense financial interests not only kept him in touch with all the money markets of the world. They also gave him a knowledge of what was being done everywhere by the great manufacturers and the inventors. Moreover Conroy's immense wealth, when he chose to use it, enabled him to get things done for him very quietly. He could secure the delivery of goods which he ordered in unconventional ways, in unusual places. He could, for instance, by means of lavish expenditure and personal interviews, arrange to have guns put un.o.btrusively into innocent looking tramp steamers and trans.h.i.+pped from them in lonely places to the hold of the _Finola_. Whether the German Government had any idea of what was going on I do not know.

Foreign governments are supposed to be well supplied with information about the manufacture and destination of munitions of war. The English Government, I am sure, had not up to the last moment any definite information. Its suspicions were of the very vaguest kind before the Chancellor of the Exchequer received G.o.dfrey's letter.

The Belfast demonstration--Babberly's defiance of the Government's warning--was fixed for the first Monday in September. On the 24th of August, ten days before the demonstration, _The Loyalist_ became a daily instead of a weekly paper. Its circulation increased immediately. It was on sale everywhere in the north of Ireland, and it was delivered with striking regularity in out of the way places in which it was almost impossible to get any other daily paper. It continued to press upon its readers the necessity of attending Babberly's demonstration in Belfast. It said, several times over, that the demonstration was to be one of armed men. Parliament was sitting late, debating wearily the amendments proposed by Unionists to the Home Rule Bill. A Nationalist member arrived at Westminster one day with a copy of _The Loyalist_ in his pocket. He called the attention of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the language used in one of the leading articles, and asked what steps were being taken to prevent a breach of the peace in Belfast on the first Monday in September.

Before the Chief Secretary could answer Babberly burst in with another question.

”Is it not a fact,” he asked, ”that the paper in question is edited by a notorious Nationalist, a physical force man, a declared rebel, one of the chosen a.s.sociates of the honourable gentleman opposite?”

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