Part 14 (2/2)

Thady Gallagher had not yet been paid for printing the green posters.

But he had every hope he would be when Mr. Billing handed over his subscription to the statue fund. He felt, it right to do all in his power to encourage Mr. Billing. Doyle, on the other hand, was becoming despondent. He did not like to see money which ought to be his frittered away on posters and the other necessary expenses of a public meeting. He was much less inclined to admire, the doctor's enterprise.

”I guess,” said Mr. Billing, ”that these Congressmen will draw some.”

”If you mean the Members of Parliament,” said Doyle, ”the doctor told me this morning that they said they'd more to do than to be attending his meetings.”

”It could be,” said Gallagher hopefully, ”that one of them might.”

”They will not,” said Doyle.

”We'll do without them,” said Mr. Billing.

”That's what the doctor said to me,” said Gallagher. ”'We'll do without them, Thady,' said he, 'so long as we have Mr. Billing and Father McCormack and yourself,' meaning me, 'we'll have a good meeting if there never was a Member of Parliament near it.' And that's true too.”

”If the doctor,” said Doyle, ”would pay what he owes instead of wasting his time over public meetings and statues and the like it would be better. Not that I'd say a word against the statue, or, for the matter of that, against the doctor, who's well liked in the town by all cla.s.ses.”

The Tuesday fixed for the meeting was a well chosen day. It was the occasion of one of the largest fairs held in Ballymoy during the year.

The country people, small farmers and their wives, flock into the town whenever there is a fair. The streets are thronged with cattle lowing miserably. ”Buyers,” men whose business it is to carry the half-fed Connacht beasts to the fattening pastures of Meath and Kildare, a.s.semble in large numbers and haggle over prices from early dawn till noon.

No better occasion for the exploitation of a cause could possibly be chosen. And three o'clock was a very good hour. By that time the business of the fair is well over. The buying and selling is finished.

But no one has gone home, and no one is more than partially drunk. It is safe to expect that everybody will welcome the entertainment that a meeting affords during the dull time which must intervene between the finis.h.i.+ng of the day's business and the weary journey home.

The green posters were distributed far and wide. They adorned every gatepost and every wall sufficiently smooth to hold them within a circle of three miles radius around the town. There was some talk beforehand about the meeting. But on the whole the people displayed very little curiosity about General John Regan. It was taken for granted that he had been in some way a.s.sociated with the cause of Irish Nationality, and one or two people professed to recollect that he had fought on the side of the Boers during the South African War. Whoever he was, the people were inclined to support the movement for erecting a statue to him by cheering anything which Thady Gallagher said. But they did not intend to support it in any other way. The Connacht farmer is like the rest of the human race in his dislike of being asked to subscribe to anything. He is superior to most other men in his capacity for resisting the pressure of the subscription list.

On the Sat.u.r.day before the meeting Gallagher published a long article on the subject of the General in the Connacht Eagle. It was read, as all Gallagher's articles were, with respectful attention. Everybody expected to find out by reading it who the General was. Everyone felt, as he read it, or listened to it read aloud, that he was learning all he wanted to know, and did not discover until he came to talk the matter over afterwards with his friends that he knew no more when he had read the article than he did before.

It was not Thady Gallagher but Dr. O'Grady who wrote the article.

Thady made several attempts and then gave up the matter in despair.

Dr. O'Grady, though he was extremely busy at the time, had to do the writing. It was very well done, and calculated to heat to the boiling point the enthusiasm of all patriotic people. He began by praising Thomas Emmet. He pa.s.sed from him to Daniel O'Connell. He recommended everyone to read John Mitch.e.l.l's ”Jail Journal.” He described the great work done for Ireland by Charles Stewart Parnell. Then he said that General John Regan was, in his own way, at least the equal, possibly the superior, of any of the patriots he had named. He wound up the composition with the statement that it was unnecessary to recapitulate the great deeds of the General, because every Irishman worthy of the name knew all about them already.

No one read the article with more eagerness and expectation than Gallagher himself. As the day of the meeting drew nearer he was becoming more and more uncomfortable about his speech. He had not been able to find out either from Doyle or from Father McCormack anything whatever about the General. He did not want much. He was a practised orator and could make a very small amount of information go a long way in a speech, but he did want something, if it was only a date to which he might attach the General's birth or death. Doyle and the priest steadily referred him to Dr. O'Grady. From Sergeant Colgan he got nothing except a guess that the General might have been one of the Fenians. Dr.

O'Grady, before the appearance of the article, promised that it would contain all that anyone needed to know. After the article was published Gallagher was ashamed to ask for further information, because he did not want to confess himself an Irishman unworthy of the name.

Doyle also was dissatisfied and became actually restive after the appearance of Sat.u.r.day's Connacht Eagle. He was not in the least troubled by the vagueness of the leading article. He was not one of the speakers at the meeting, and it did not matter to him whether he knew anything about General John Regan or not. What annoyed him was the publication, in the advertis.e.m.e.nt columns of the paper, of a preliminary list of subscribers. In the first place such an advertis.e.m.e.nt cost money and could only be paid for out of Mr. Billing's subscription, thus further diminis.h.i.+ng the small balance on which he was calculating as some compensation for the irrecoverable debt owed to him by Dr. O'Grady.

In the second place his name appeared on the list as a donor, not of 5, but of 10. He knew perfectly well that he would not be expected to pay any subscription, but he was vaguely annoyed at the threat of such a liability.

On Sunday afternoon he called on Dr. O'Grady.

”Wasn't it agreed,” he said, ”that I was to be the treasurer of the fund for putting up the statue?”

”It was,” said Dr. O'Grady, ”and you are the treasurer. Didn't you see your name printed in the Connacht Eagle, 'Secretary, Dr. Lucius O'Grady.

Treasurer, J. Doyle'?”

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