Miss Goold lived that part of her life which was not spent at political meetings or in the office of the Croppy in a villa at Killiney. A house agent would have described it as a most desirable residence, standing in its own grounds, overlooking the sea. Its windows opened upon one of the best of the many beautiful views of Dublin Bay. Its half-acre of pleasure ground—attended to by a jobbing gardener once a week—was trim and flowery. Its brown gate shone with frequently renewed paint, and the drive up to the door was neatly raked. Inside Miss Goold’s wants were ministered to by an eminently respectable man-servant, his wife who cooked, and a maid. The married couple were fixtures, and had been with Miss Goold since she started housekeeping. The maids varied. They never quarrelled with their mistress, but they found it impossible to live with their fellow-servants. Mr. and Mrs. Ginty were North of Ireland Protestants of the severest type. Ginty himself was a strong Orangeman, and his wife professed and enforced a strict code of morals. It did not in the least vex Miss Goold to know that her servants’ quarters were decorated with portraits of the reigning family in gilt frames, or that King William III. pranced on a white charger above the kitchen range. Nor had she any objection to her butler invoking a nightly malediction on the Pope over his tumbler of whisky-and-water. Unfortunately, her maids—the first three were Roman Catholics—found that their religious convictions were outraged, and left, after stormy scenes. The red-haired Protestant from the North who followed them was indifferent to the eternal destiny of Leo XIII., but declined to be dictated to by Mrs. Ginty about the conduct of her love affairs. Miss Goold, to whom the quarrel was referred, pleaded the damsel’s cause, and suggested privately that not even a policeman—she had a low opinion of the force—could be swept away from the path of respectability by a passion for so ugly a girl. Mrs. Ginty pointed out in reply that red hair and freckles were no safeguard when a flirtation is carried on after dark. There seemed no answer to this, and the maid returned indignantly to Ballymena. She was succeeded by an anaemic and wholly incompetent niece of Mrs. Ginty’s, who lived in such terror of her aunt that peace settled upon the household. Miss Goold suspected that this girl did little or no work—was, in fact, wholly unfit for her position; but so long as she herself was made comfortable, it did not seem to matter who tidied away her clothes or dusted her bedroom.
Miss Goold, in fact, had so far mastered the philosophy of life as to understand that the only real use of money is to purchase comfort and freedom from minor worries. She had deliberately cut herself adrift from the social set to which she belonged by birth and education, and so had little temptation to spend her substance either in giving parties or enjoying them. The ladies who flutter round the Lord Lieutenant’s hospitable court would as soon have thought of calling on a music-hall danseuse as on Miss Goold. Their husbands, brothers, and sons took liberties with her reputation in the smoking-rooms of the Kildare Street Club, and professed to be in possession of private information about her life which placed her outside the charity of even their tolerant morality. The little circle of revolutionary politicians who gathered round the Croppy were not the sort of people who gave dinner-parties; and there is, in spite of the Gospel precept, a certain awkwardness nowadays in continually asking people to dinner who cannot afford a retributive invitation. Occasionally, however, Miss Goold did entertain a few of her friends, and it was generally admitted among them that she not only provided food and drink of great excellence, but arranged the appointments of her feasts luxuriously.
On the very day after his interview with Tim Halloran Hyacinth received an invitation to dinner at the Killiney villa. Captain Quinn, the note informed him, had arrived in Dublin, and was anxious to make the acquaintance of his future comrade-in-arms. It seemed to Hyacinth, thinking over the story of Doherty, unlikely that the whole corps would be asked to meet their Captain round a dinner-table, but he hoped that some of them would be there. Their presence would reconcile him to the awkwardness of not possessing a dress-suit. Grealy, who had occasionally dined at the villa, warned him that a white shirt-front and black trousers would certainly be expected of him, and Hyacinth made an unsuccessful effort to hire garments for the night which would fit him. In the end, since it seemed absurd to purchase even a second-hand suit for a single evening, he brushed his Sunday clothes and bought a pair of patent-leather shoes.
He arrived at the platform of Westland Row Station in good time for the train he meant to catch. He was soon joined by Miss O’Dwyer, who appeared with her head and neck swathed in a fluffy shawl and the train of a silk skirt gathered in her hand. The view of several flounces of nebulous white petticoat confirmed Hyacinth in his conjecture that she was bound for Miss Goold’s party. No one who could be supposed to be a member of Captain Quinn’s corps appeared on the platform, and Hyacinth became painfully conscious of the shortcomings of his costume. He thought that even Miss O’Dwyer glanced at it with some contempt. He wished that, failing a dress-suit, he could have imitated the Imperial Yeomen who paraded the streets, and donned some kind of uniform. His discomfort reached a climax when Ginty received them at the door, passed Miss O’Dwyer on to the incompetent niece, and solemnly extracted the new shoes from their brown-paper parcel.
Miss Goold stood chatting to Captain Quinn when Hyacinth entered the drawing-room. She moved forward to meet him, radiant and splendid, he thought, beyond imagination. The rustle of her draperies, the faint scent that hung around her, and the glitter of the stones on her throat, bewildered him.
It was not till after he had been presented to his commander that he was able to take his eyes off her. Then, in spite of his embarrassment, he experienced surprise and disappointment. He had formed no clear idea of what he expected Captain Quinn to be like, but he had a vague mental picture of a furiously-moustachioed swashbuckler, a man of immense power and hirsute hands. Instead, there stood before him a slim, small man, clean shaved, with shiny black hair smoothly brushed. His clothes were so well cut and his linen so glossy that he seemed fittingly placed even beside the magnificent Finola. His hand, when Hyacinth shook it, seemed absurdly small, and his feet, in their neat pumps, were more like a woman’s than a man’s. Then, when he turned to resume his conversation with his hostess, Hyacinth was able to watch his face. He noticed the man’s eyes. They were small and quick, like a bird’s, and shifted rapidly, never resting long on any object. His mouth was seldom closed, and the lips, like the eyes, moved incessantly, though very slightly. There were strange lines about the cheeks and jaws, which somehow suggested that the man had seen a good deal of the evil of the world, and not altogether unwillingly. His voice was wonderfully soft and clear, and he spoke without a trace of any provincial accent.
During dinner Captain Quinn took the largest share in the conversation. It appeared that he was a man of considerable knowledge of the world. He had been a sailor in his time, and had made two voyages to Melbourne as apprentice in a large sailing-ship. His stories were interesting and humorously told; though they all dealt with experiences of his own, he never allowed himself to figure as anything of a hero. He recounted, for instance, how one night in Melbourne Docks he had run from a half-drunken Swede, armed with a knife, and had spent hours dodging round the deck of a ship and calling for help before he could get his assailant arrested. His career as an officer in the mercantile navy was cut short by a period of imprisonment in a small town in Madagascar. He did not specify his offence, but gave a vivid account of life in the gaol.
‘There were twenty of us altogether,’ he said—‘nineteen niggers and myself. There was no nonsense about discipline or work. We just sat about all day in an open courtyard, with nothing but a big iron gate between us and liberty. All the same, there was very little chance of escape. There were always four black soldiers on guard, truculent scoundrels with curly swords. A sort of missionary man got wind of my being there, and used to come and visit me. One day he gave me a tract called “Gideon.” I read the thing because I had absolutely nothing else to read. In the end it turned out an extremely useful tract, for it occurred to me that the old plan for defeating the Midianites might work with the four black soldiers. I organized the other prisoners, and divided them into three bands. We raked up a pretty fair substitute for pitchers and lamps. Then one night we played off the stratagem, and flurried the sentries to such an extent that I got clear away. I rather fancy one or two others got off, too, but I don’t know. I got into a rather disagreeable tramp steamer, and volunteered as stoker. It’s so difficult to get stokers in the tropics that the captain took his risks and kept me. I must ............