Part 8 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. LAWRENCE'S GATE, DROGHEDA]

”Very good, sir,” he said. ”I'm the lad can take ye. Do you and your lady get right up.”

”What is the fare?” I asked.

”One pound, sir.”

”The legal fare is just half that,” I pointed out.

”It may be,” he agreed pleasantly.

We left him negligently flicking his horse with his whip, and presently we met a policeman, and told him we wanted to drive out to Monasterboice, and while we didn't mind being robbed, we didn't care to be looted, and we asked his advice. He scratched his head dubiously.

”Ye see it is like this, sir,” he said; ”there is no one to enforce the regulations, so the jarvies just charge what they please. I'm free to admit they have no conscience. There is one, though, who is fairly honest,” and he directed us to his house. ”Tell him you come from me, and he'll treat you well.”

But that transaction was never closed. We found the house--grimy, dark, dirt-floored, trash-littered--with the man's wife and a.s.sorted children within; but the woman told us that ”himself” had driven out into the country and would not be back till evening. And just then it began to drizzle most dismally.

”This is no day for the trip, anyway,” I said. ”Suppose we wait till we get to Belfast, and run down from there.”

So it was agreed, and we made our way back to the station, through a sea of sticky mud, and presently took train again for Ireland's ancient capital.

We were ready to leave Dublin for a swing clear around the coast of Ireland, and late that afternoon, having sifted our luggage to the minimum and armed ourselves cap-a-pie against every vicissitude of weather, we bade our friends at the hotel good-bye (not forgetting the bell-boy), drove to the station, and got aboard a train, which presently rolled away southwards. It was very full--the third-cla.s.s crowded with soldiers in khaki bound for the camp on the Curragh of Kildare, and our own compartment jammed with a variety of people.

In one corner, a white-haired priest mumbled his breviary and watched the crowd with absent eyes, while across from him a loud-voiced woman, evidently, from her big hat and cheap finery, just home from America, was trying to overawe the friends who had gone to Dublin to meet her by an exhibition of sham gentility. In the seat with us was a plump and comfortable woman of middle age, with whom we soon got into talk about everything from children to Home Rule.

What she had to say about Home Rule was interesting. Her home was somewhere down in the Vale of Tipperary, and I judged from her appearance that she was the wife of a well-to-do farmer. She was most emphatically not a Nationalist.

”It isn't them who own land, or who are buyin' a little farm under the purchase act that want Home Rule,” she said. ”No, no; them ones would be glad to let well enough alone. 'Tis the labourers, the farm-hands, the ditch-diggers, and such-like people, who have nothin' to lose, that shout the loudest for it. They would like a bit of land themselves, and they fancy that under Home Rule they'll be gettin' it; but where is it to come from, I'd like to know, unless off of them that has it now; and who would be trustin' the likes of them to pay for it? Ah, 'tis foolish to think of! Besides, if everybody owned land, where would we be gettin'

labour to work it? No, no; 'tis time to stop, I say, and there be many who think like me.”

”What wages does a labourer make?” I asked.

”From ten to twelve s.h.i.+llin's a week.”

”All the year round?”

”There's no work in winter, so how can one be payin' wages then?”

”But how can they live on that?”

”They can't live on it,” she said fiercely; ”many of them ones couldn't live at all, if it wasn't for the money that's sent them from America.

But what can the farmers do? If they pay higher wages, they ruin themselves. Most of them have give up in disgust and turned their land into gra.s.s.”

”What do the labourers do then?” I asked.

”They move away some'rs else--to America if they can.”

”Perhaps Home Rule will make things better,” I suggested.