Augusta Goold’s scheme for enrolling Irish volunteers to help the Boers was duly set forth in the next issue of the Croppy. It included two appeals—one for money and one for men. The details were worked out with the frank contempt for possibility which characterizes some of the famous suggestions of Dean Swift. She had the same faculty that he had for bringing absurdities within the range of the commonplace; but there was this difference between them—Miss Goold quite believed in her own plans, while the great Dean no doubt grinned over the proof-sheets of his ‘Modest Proposal.’

It happened, most unfortunately, that the appeal synchronized with another, also for funds, which was issued by Mr. O’Rourke, the leader of the Parliamentary party. Since the death of John O’Neill the purse of the party had been getting lean. The old tactics which used to draw plaudits and dollars from the United States, as well as a tribute from every parish in Ireland, had lately been unsuccessful. There were still violent scenes in the House of Commons, but they no longer produced anything except contemptuous smiles. Members of Parliament still succeeded occasionally in getting the Chief Secretary to imprison them, but the glory of martyrdom was harder to win than in the old days. Latterly things had come to such a pass that even the reduced stipends offered to the members fell into arrear. The attendance at Westminster dropped away. The Government could afford to smile at Mr. O’Rourke’s efforts to make himself disagreeable, and the Opposition were frankly contemptuous of a people who could not profit them by more than a dozen votes in a critical division. It became impossible to wring even a modest Land Bill from the Prime Minister, and Mr. Chesney, now much at ease in the Secretary’s office in the Castle, scarcely felt it necessary to be civil to deputations which wanted railways. It was clear that something must be done, or Mr. O’Rourke’s business would disappear. He decided to appeal for funds orbi et urbi. The world—in this case North America—was to be visited, exhorted, and, it was hoped, taxed by some of his most eloquent lieutenants. Even Canada, with its leaven of Orangemen, was to be honoured with the speeches of an orator of second-rate powers. The city—Dublin, of course—was the chosen scene of the leader’s personal exertions. Since his revolt against John O’Neill, O’Rourke had been a little shy of Dublin audiences, but the pressing nature of the present crisis almost forced him to pay his court to the capital. He found some comfort in the recollection that during the five years that had elapsed since O’Neill’s death he had missed no public opportunity of shedding tears beside his tomb. He remembered, too, that he had put his name down for a large subscription towards the erection of a statue to the dead leader, a work of art which the existing generation seemed unlikely to have the pleasure of seeing.

Thus it happened that on the very day of the publication of Miss Goold’s scheme Mr. O’Rourke announced his intention of addressing an appeal for funds to a public meeting in the Rotunda. Miss Goold was disconcerted and irritated. She was well aware that Mr. O’Rourke’s appeal would give the respectable Nationalists an excellent excuse for ignoring hers, and unfortunately the respectable people are just the ones who have most money. She was confident that she could rely on the extreme section of the Nationalists, and on that element in the city population which loves and makes a row, but she could not count on the moneyed classes. They were, so far as their words went, very enthusiastic for the Boer cause; but when it came to writing cheques, it was likely that the counter-attractions of the Parliamentary fund would prove too strong.

Since it seemed that Mr. O’Rourke would certainly spoil her collection, the obvious thing to do was to try to spoil his. If he afforded people an excuse for not paying the travelling expenses of her volunteers to Lorenzo Marques, she would, if possible, suggest a way of escape from paying for his men’s journeys to London. After all, no one really wanted to subscribe to either fund, and it might be supposed that the public would very gladly keep their purses shut altogether.

For an Irishman it is quite possible to be genuinely enthusiastic and at the same time able to see the humorous side of his own enthusiasm. This is a reason why an Irishman is never a bore unless, to gain his private ends, he wants to be. Even an Irish advocate of total abstinence, or an Irish antivaccinationist, if such a thing exists, is not a bore, because he will always trot out his conscientious objections with a half-humorous, half-deprecating smile. This same capacity for avoiding the slavery of serious fanaticism enables an Irishman to cease quite joyfully from the pursuit of his own particular fad in order to corner an obnoxious opponent. Thus Augusta Goold and her friends were genuinely desirous of striking a blow at England, and really believed that their volunteers might do it; but this did not prevent them from finding infinite relish in the prospect of watching Mr. O’Rourke squirming on the horns of a dilemma. They took counsel together, and the result of their deliberations was peculiar. They proposed to invite Mr. O’Rourke to join his appeal to theirs, to pool the money which came in, and to divide it evenly between the volunteers and the members of Parliament. It was Tim Halloran who hit upon the brilliant idea. Augusta Goold chuckled over it as she grasped its consequences. Mr. O’Rourke, Tim argued, would be unwilling to accept the proposal because he wanted all the money he could get, more than was at all likely to be collected. He would be equally unwilling to reject it, because he could then be represented as indifferent to the heroic struggle of the Boers. In the existing state of Irish and American opinion a suspicion of such indifference would be quite sufficient to wreck his chances of getting any money at all.

Of course, the obvious way of making such a proposal would have been by letter to Mr. O’Rourke. Afterwards the correspondence—he must make a reply of some sort—could be sent to the press, and sufficient publicity would be given to the matter. This was what Tim Halloran wanted to do, but such a course did not commend itself to Augusta Goold. It lacked dramatic possibilities, and there was always the chance that the leading papers might refuse to take any notice of the matter, or relegate the letters to a back page and small print. Besides, a mere newspaper controversy would not make a strong appeal to the section of the Dublin populace on whose support she chiefly relied. A much more attractive plan suggested itself. Augusta Goold, with a few friends to act as aides-de-camp, would present herself to Mr. O’Rourke at his Rotunda meeting, and put the proposal to him then and there in the presence of the audience.

In the meantime the few days before the meeting were occupied in scattering suggestive seed over the hoardings and blank walls of the city. One morning people were startled by the sight of an immense placard which asked in violent red letters, ‘What is Ireland going to do?’ Public opinion was divided about the ultimate purpose of the poster. The majority expected the announcement of a new play or novel; a few held that a pill or a cocoa would be recommended. Next morning the question became more explicit, and the hypothesis of the play and the pill were excluded. ‘What,’ the new poster ran, ‘is Ireland going to do for the Boers?’ The public were not intensely anxious to find an answer to the conundrum thrust thus forcibly on their attention, but they became curious to know who the advertisers were who hungered for the information. Men blessed by Providence with sagacious-looking faces made the most of their opportunity, and informed their friends that the thing was a new dodge of O’Rourke’s to get money. Their reputation suffered when the next placard appeared. The advertisers had apparently changed their minds, for what they now wanted to know was, ‘What are the Irish M.P.‘s going to do for the Boers?’ Clearly Mr. O’Rourke could have nothing to gain by insisting on an answer to such a question. The public were puzzled but pleased. The bill-stickers of the city foresaw the possibility of realizing a competence, for the next morning the satisfied inquirers published the result of their investigations. ‘The Em Pees ‘(it was thus that they now referred to the honourable members of Parliament) ‘are supporting the infamies of England.’ It was at this point that the eye of a Castle official was caught by one of the placards as he made his way to the Kildare Street Club for luncheon. He discussed the matter with a colleague, and it occurred to them that since they were paid for governing Ireland, they ought to give the public some value for their money, and seize the opportunity of doing something. They sent a series of telegrams to Mr. Chesney’s London house, which were forwarded by his private secretary to the Riviera. The replies which followed kept the Castle officials in a state of pleasurable excitement until quite late in the evening. At about eight o’clock large numbers of Metropolitan police sallied out of their barracks and tore down the last batch of placards. Next morning fresh ones were posted up, each of which bore the single word, ‘Why?’ The bill-stickers were highly pleased, and many of them were arrested for drunkenness. Mr. O’Rourke was much less pleased, for he began to guess what the answer was likely to be, and how it would affect his chances of securing a satisfactory collection. The officials were perplexed. They suspected the ‘Why?’ of containing within its three letters some hideous sedition, but it was not possible to deal vigorously with what might, after all, be only the cunning novelty of some advertising manufacturer. More telegrams harried Mr. Chesney, but before any definite course of action had been decided on the morning of the Rotunda meeting arrived, and with it an answer to the multifarious ‘Whys’: Because O’Rourke wants all the money to spend in the London restaurants.’ There was a great deal of laughter, and many people, quite uninterested in politics, determined to go to the meeting in hopes of more amusement.

When Mr. O’Rourke took the chair the hall was crowded to its utmost capacity. Under ordinary circumstances this would have augured well for the success of his appeal, for it showed that the public were at all events not apathetic. On this particular occasion, however, Mr. O’Rourke would have been better pleased with a smaller audience. The placards had shown him that something unpleasant was likely to occur, though they afforded no hint of the form which the unpleasantness would take. When he rose to his feet he was greeted with the usual volley of cheers, and although some rude remarks about the Boers were made in the corners of the hall, they did not amount to anything like an organized attempt at interruption. He began his speech cautiously, feeling the pulse of his audience, and plying them with the well-worn platitudes of the Nationalist platform. When these evoked the usual enthusiasm he waxed bolder, and shot out some almost original epigrams directed against the Government, working up to a really new gibe about officials who sat like spiders spinning murderous webs in Dublin Castle. The audience were delighted with this, but their joy reached its height when someone shouted: ‘You might speak better of the men who tore down the placard on Wednesday.’ Mr. O’Rourke ignored the suggestion, and passed on to sharpen his wit upon the landlords. He described them as ‘ill-omened tax-gatherers who suck the life-blood of the country, and refuse to disgorge a penny of it for any useful purpose.’ Mr. O’Rourke was not a man who shrank from a mixed metaphor, or paused to consider such trifles as the unpleasantness which would ensue if anyone who had been sucking blood were to repent and disgorge it. ‘Where,’ he went on to ask, ‘do they spend their immense revenues? Is it in Ireland?’ Here he made one of those dramatic pauses for which his oratory was famous. The audience waited breathlessly for the denunciation which was to follow. They were treated, unexpectedly, to a well-conceived anticlimax. A voice spoke softly, but quite clearly, from the back of the hall:

‘Bedad, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was in the London restaurants.’

A roar of laughter followed. The orator might no doubt have made an effective reply, but every time he opened his mouth minor wits, rending like wolves the carcase of the original joke, yelled ‘turtle-soup’ at him, or ‘champagne and oysters.’ He got angry, and consequently flurried. He tried to quell the tumult by thundering out the denunciation which he had prepared. But the delight which the audience took in shrieking the items of their imaginary bill of fare was too much for him. He forgot what he had meant to say, floundered, attempted to pull himself together, and brought out the stale jest about providing each landlord with a single ticket to Holyhead.

‘And that same,’ said his original tormentor, ‘would be cheaper than giving you a return ticket to London.’

The audience was immensely tickled. So far the entertainment, if not precisely novel, was better than anything they had hoped for, and everyone had an agreeable conviction that there was still something in the way of a sensation in store. Perhaps it was eagerness for the expected climax which induced them to keep tolerably quiet during the remainder of Mr. O’Rourke’s speech. He set forth at some length the glorious achievements of his party in the past, and explained the opportunities of future usefulness which lay to be grasped if only the necessary funds were provided. He sat down to make way, as he assured the audience, for certain tried and trusty soldiers of the cause who were waiting to propose important resolutions. So far as these warriors were concerned, he might as well have remained standing. Their resolutions are to this day unproposed and uncommended—a secret joy, no doubt, to those who framed them, but not endorsed by any popular approval.

Hyacinth Conneally was not admitted to the secret councils of Augusta Goold and her friends. He knew no more than the general public what kind of a coup was meditated, but he gathered from Miss O’Dwyer’s nervous excitement and Tim Halloran’s air of immense and mysterious importance that something quite out of the common was likely to occur. By arriving an hour and a half before the opening of the meeting he secured a seat near the platform. He enjoyed the discomfiture of O’Rourke, whom he had learnt from the pages of the Croppy to despise as a mere windbag, and to hate as the betrayer of O’Neill. A sudden thrill of excitement went through him when O’Rourke sat down. The whole audience turned their faces from the platform towards the door at the far end of the hall, and Hyacinth, without knowing exactly what he expected, turned too. There was a swaying visible among the crowd near the door, and almost immediately it became clear that someone was trying to force a way through the densely-packed people. Curses were to be heard, and even cries from those who were being trodden on. At last a way was made. Augusta Goold, followed by Grealy, Halloran, and Mary O’Dwyer, came slowly up the hall towards the platform. Those of the audience whose limbs had not been crushed or their feet mangled in preparation for her progress cheered her wildly. Indeed, she made a regal appeal to them. Even amidst a crowd of men her height made her conspicuous, and she had arrayed herself for the occasion in a magnificent violet robe. It flowed from her shoulders in spacious folds, and swept behind her, splendidly contemptuous of the part it played as scavenger amid the accumulated filth of the floor. Her bare arms shone out of the wide sleeves which hung around them. Her neck rose strong and stately over the silver clasp of a cloak which she had thrown back from her shoulders. She wore a hat which seemed to hold her hair captive from falling loose around her. One great tress alone escaped from it, and by some cunning manipulation was made to stand straight out, as if blown by the wind from its fastenings. In comparison her suite looked commonplace and mean. Poor Miss O’Dwyer was arrayed—‘gowned,’ she would have said herself in reporting the scene—in vesture not wanting in splendour, but which beside Miss Goold’s could not catch the eye. Thomas Grealy, awkward and stooped, peered through his glasses at the crowd. Tim Halloran walked jauntily, but his eyes glanced nervously from side to side. He was certainly ill at ease, possibly frightened, at the position in which he found himself.

A hurried consultation took place among the gentlemen on the platform, which ended in Mr. O’Rourke stepping forward with a smile and an outstretched hand to welcome Augusta Goold as she ascended the steps. The expression of his face belied the smile which he had impressed upon his lips. His eyes had the same look of furtive malice as a dog’s which wants to bite but fears the stick. Augusta Goold waved aside the proffered hand, and stepped unaided on to the platform. Mr. O’Rourke placed a chair for her, but she ignored it and stood, with her followers behind her, facing the audience. O’Rourke and two of his tried and trusty members of Parliament approached her. They stood between her and the audience, and talked to her for some time, apparently very earnestly. Augusta Goold looked past them, over them, sometimes it seemed through them, while they spoke, but made them no answer whatever. At last Mr. O’Rourke shrugged his shoulders, and withdrew to his chair with a sulky scowl.

‘I wish,’ said Augusta Goold, ‘to ask a simple question of your chairman.’

Mr. O’Rourke rose.

‘This meeting,’ he said, ‘is convened for the purpose of raising funds for the carrying on of the national business in the House of Commons. If Miss Goold’s question relates to the business in hand, I shall be most happy to answer it. If not, I am afraid I cannot allow it to be asked here. At another time and in another place I shall be prepared to listen to what Miss Goold has to say, and in the meantime if she will take her seat on the platform she will be heartily welcome.’

‘My question,’ said Augusta Goold, ‘is intimately connected with the business of the meeting. It is simply this: Are you, Mr. O’Rourke, prepared to give any portion of the money entrusted to you by the Irish people to assist the Boers in their struggle for freedom?’

It was manifestly absurd to ask such a question at all. Mr. O’Rourke had no intention of collecting money for the Boers, who seemed to have plenty of their own, and he could not without breach of trust have applied funds subscribed to feed and clothe members of Parliament to arming volunteers. Nevertheless, it was an awkward question to answer in the presence of an audience excited by Augusta Goold’s beauty and splendid audacity. A really strong man, like, for instance, O’Rourke’s predecessor, John O’Neill, might have faced the situation, and won, if not the immediate cheers, at least the respect of the Irish people. But Mr. O’Rourke was not a strong man, and besides he was out of temper and had lost his nerve. He took perhaps the worst course open to him: he made a speech. He appealed to his past record as a Nationalist, and to his publicly reiterated expressions of sympathy with the Boer cause. He asked the audience to trust him to do what was right, but he neither said Yes nor No to the question he was asked.

Augusta Goold stood calm and impassive while he spoke. A sneer gathered on her lips and indrawn nostrils as he made his appeal for the people’s confidence. When he had finished she said, very slowly, and with that extreme distinctness of articulation which women speakers seem to learn so much more easily than men:

‘Are you prepared to give any portion of the money entrusted to you by the Irish people to assist the Boers in their struggle for freedom?’

Mr. O’Rourke was goaded into attempting another speech, but the audience was in no mood to listen to him. He was interrupted again and again with shouts of ‘Yes or no!’ ‘Answer the question!’ The bantering tone with which they had plied him earlier in the evening with suggestions for a menu had changed now into angry insistence. He passed his hand over his forehead with a gesture of despair, and sat down. At once the tumult ceased, and the people waited breathless for Augusta Goold to speak again.

‘Are you prepared’—she seemed to have learnt her question off by heart—‘to give any portion of the money entrusted to you by the Irish people to assist the Boers in their struggle for freedom?’

Mr. Shea, a red-headed member of Parliament from Co. Limerick, being himself one of those most deeply interested in the contents of the party’s purse, sprang to his feet. It was clear that he was in a condition of almost dangerous excitement, for he stammered, as he shouted to the chairman:

‘Sir, is this—this—this woman to be allowed to interrupt the meeting? I demand her immediate removal.’

Augusta Goold smiled at him. It was really a very gracious, almost a tender, smile. One might imagine the divine Theodora in her earlier days smiling with just such an expression on a plebeian lover whose passion she regarded as creditable to him but hopeless.

‘I assure you, Mr. Shea, that I shall not interrupt the business for more than a minute. Mr. O’Rourke has only got to say one word—either Yes or No. Are you prepared to give any portion of the funds entrusted to you by the Irish people to assist the Boers in their struggle for freedom?’

Mr. Shea was not at all mollified either by the smile or the politeness of her tone.

‘We shall not permit the meeting to be interrupted any more,’ he shouted. ‘Either you will withdraw at once, or we shall have you removed by force.’

She smiled at him again—a pitying smile, as if she regretted the petulance of his manner, and turned to the chairman.

‘Are you prepared to give——’

Then Mr. Shea’s feelings became too strong for his self-control. He sprang forward, apparently with the intention of laying violent hands upon Augusta Groold. Hyacinth Conneally started up to protect her, and the same impulse moved a large part of the audience. There was a rush for the platform, and a fierce, threatening yell. Mr. Shea hung back, frightened. Augusta Goold held up her hand, and immediately the rush stopped and the people were silent. She went on with her question, taking it up at the exact word which Mr. Shea had interrupted, in the same level and exquisitely irritating tone.

‘—Any of the money entrusted to you by the Irish people to assist the Boers in their struggle for freedom?’

Mr. O’Rourke had sat scowling silently since the failure of his last attempt to explain himself. This final disjointed repetition of the galling question roused him to the necessity of doing something. He was a pitiful sight as he rose and confronted Augusta Goold. There were blotches of purple red and spaces of pallor on his face; his hands twisted together; a sweat had broken out from his neck, and made his collar limp. His words were a stammering mixture of bluster and appeal.

‘You mustn’t—mustn’t—mustn’t interrupt the meeting,’ So far he tried to assert himself, then, with a glance at the contemptuous face of the woman before him, he relapsed into the tone of a schoolboy who begs off the last strokes of a caning. ‘Is this nice conduct? Is it ladylike to come here and attack us like this? Miss Goold, I’m ashamed of you.’

‘I am glad to hear,’ said Augusta Goold, departing for the first time from her question, ‘that there is anything left in the world that Mr. O’Rourke is ashamed of. I didn’t think there was.’

It was Mr. Shea and not his leader who resented this last insult. His lips drew apart, leaving his teeth bare in a ghastly grin. He clenched his fists, and stood for a moment trembling from head to foot. Then he leaped forward towards Augusta Goold. The man who stood next Hyacinth lurched suddenly forward, wrenched his right hand free of the crowd round him, and flung it back behind his head. Hyacinth saw that he held a large stone in it.

‘You are a cowardly blackguard, Shea,’ he yelled—‘a damned, cowardly blackguard! Would you strike a woman?’

Shea turned on the instant, saw the hand stretched back to fling the stone. He seized the chair behind him—the very chair which, while an appearance of politeness was still possible, Mr. O’Rourke had offered to Augusta Goold—and flung it with all his force at the man with the stone. One of the legs grazed Hyacinth’s cheek, scraping the skin off. The corner of the seat struck the man beside him full across the forehead just above his eyes. The blood poured out, blinding, and then, as he gasped, choking him. He reeled and huddled together helplessly. He could not fall, for the pressure of the crowd round him held him up. Hyacinth felt his hands groping wildly as if for support, and reached out his own to grasp him. But the man wanted no help for himself. As soon as he felt another hand touch his he pressed the stone into it.

‘I can’t see,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Take it, you, and kill him, kill him, kill him! smash his skull!’

Hyacinth took the stone. The feel of the man’s blood warm on it and the fierce yelling and stamping of the crowd filled him with a mad lust of hate against Shea, who stood as if suddenly paralyzed within a few feet of him. He wrenched his hand free, and with a mighty effort flung the stone. He saw it strike Shea fair on the forehead. In spite of the tumult around him, he fancied he heard the dull thud of its impact. He saw Shea fling up his hands and pitch forward. He saw Augusta Goold gather her skirts in her hand, and sweep them swiftly aside lest the man should fall on them. Then the crowd pressing towards the platform swept him off his feet, and he was tossed helplessly forward. A giddy sickness seized him. The pressure slackened for an instant, and he fell. Someone’s boot struck him on the head. He felt without any keen regret that he was likely to be trampled to death. Then he lost consciousness.