Captain Quinn made himself very agreeable to Mary O’Dwyer during the short journey back to Dublin. At Westland Row he saw her into a cab, which he paid for. His last words were a reminder that he would expect to have her war-song, music and all, sent after him to Paris. Then he turned to Hyacinth.
‘That’s all right. We’ve done with her. It was better to pay the cab for her, else she might have scrupled about taking one, and we should have been obliged to go home with her in a beastly tram. Come along. I’m staying at the Gresham. It’s always as well to go to a decent place if you have any money. You come with me, and we’ll have a drink and a talk.’
There were two priests and a Bishop in earnest conference round the fire in the hall of the hotel when they entered. When he discovered that their talk was of the iniquities of the National Board of Education, and therefore likely to last beyond midnight, Captain Quinn led the way into the smoking-room, which was unoccupied. A sufficient supply of whisky and a syphon of soda-water were set before them. The Captain stretched himself in a comfortable chair, and lit his pipe.
‘A fine woman, Miss Goold,’ he said meditatively. Hyacinth murmured an assent.
‘A very fine woman, and apparently pretty comfortably off. I wonder why on earth she does it.’
He looked at Hyacinth as if he expected some sort of explanation to be forthcoming.
‘Does what?’ asked Hyacinth at length.
‘Oh, all this revolutionary business: the Croppy, seditious speeches, and now this rot about helping the Boers. What does she stand to gain by it? I don’t suppose there’s any money in the business, and a woman like that might get all the notoriety she wants in her own proper set, without stumping the country and talking rot.’
This way of looking at Augusta Goold’s patriotism was new to Hyacinth, and he resented it.
‘I suppose she believes in the principles she professes,’ he said.
The Captain looked at him curiously, and then took a drink of his whisky-and-soda.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s suppose she does. After all, her motives are nothing to us, and she’s a damned fine woman, whatever she does it for.’
He drank again.
‘It would have been very pleasant, now, if she would have spent the next few weeks with me in Paris. You won’t mind my saying that I’d rather have had her than you, Conneally, as a companion in a little burst. However, I saw at once that it wouldn’t do. Anyone with an eye in his head could tell at a glance that she wasn’t that sort.’
He sighed. Hyacinth was not quite sure that he understood. The suggestion was so calmly made and reasoned on that it seemed impossible that it could be as iniquitous as it appeared.
‘There’s no one such an utter fool about women,’ went on the Captain, ‘as your respectable married man, who never does anything wrong himself. I’d heard of Miss Goold, as everybody has, and listened to discussions about her character. You know just as well as I do the sort of things they say about her.’
Hyacinth did know very well, and flared up in defence of his patroness.
‘They are vile lies.’
‘That’s just what I’m saying. Those respectable people who tell the lies are such fools. They think that every woman who doesn’t mew about at afternoon parties must be a bad one. Now, anyone with a little experience would know at once that Miss Goold—what’s this the other one called her? Oh yes, Finola—that Finola may be a fool, but she’s not that.’
He pulled himself together as he spoke. Evidently he plumed himself, on his experience and the faculty for judging it had brought him.
‘Now, I’d just as soon have asked my sister-in-law to come to Paris with me for a fortnight as Finola. You don’t know Mrs. James Quinn, I think. That’s a pity. She’s the most domesticated and virtuous haus-frau in the world.’
He paused, and then asked Hyacinth, ‘Why are you doing it?’
Again Hyacinth was reduced by sheer surprise to a futility.
‘Doing what?’
‘Oh, going out to fight for the Boers. Now, don’t, like a good fellow, say you’re acting on principle. It’s all well enough to give Finola credit for that kind of thing. She is, as we agreed, a splendid woman. But you mustn’t ask me to believe in the whole corps in the same way.’
Hyacinth meditated a reply. It was clearly impossible to assert that he wanted to fight for liberty, to give his life to the cause of an oppressed nationality. It would be utterly absurd to tell the story of his father’s vision, and say that he looked on the South African War as a skirmish preliminary to the Armageddon. Sitting opposite to this cynical man of the world and listening to his talk, Hyacinth came himself to disbelieve in principle. He felt that there must be some baser motive at the bottom of his desire to fight, only, for the life of him, he could not remember what it was. He could not even imagine a good reason—good in the estimation of his companion—why anyone should do so foolish a thing as go out to the Transvaal. The Captain was not at all impatient. He sat smoking quietly, until there seemed no prospect of Hyacinth answering; then he said:
‘Well, if you don’t want to tell me, I don’t mind. Only I think you’re foolish. You see, little accidents happen in these affairs. There are such things as bullets, and one of them might hit you somewhere that would matter. Then it would be my duty to send home your last words to your sorrowing relatives, and it would be easier to do that if I knew exactly what you had done. The death-bed repentance of the prodigal is always most consoling to the elder brother—much more consoling, in fact, than the prodigal’s return. Now, how the deuce am I to make up a plausible repentance for you, if I don’t know what you’ve done?’
‘But I’ve not done anything,’ said Hyacinth ineffectively.
The Captain ignored him.
‘Come, now, it can’t be anything very bad at your age. Have you got into a mess with a girl? Or’—he brightened up at the guess—‘are you hopelessly enamoured of the beautiful Finola? That would be most suitable. The bold, bad woman sends the minstrel boy to his death, with his wild harp slung behind him. I could draw tears from the stoniest-hearted elder brother over that.’
If he could have thought of a crime at the moment, Hyacinth would probably have confessed it; but he was bewildered, and could hit on nothing better than:
‘I have no elder brother—in fact, no relation of any sort.’
‘Lucky man! Now, I have a perfect specimen of a brother—James Quinn, Esquire, of Ballymoy. He’s a churchwarden. Think of that! If it should be your melancholy duty to send the message home to him—in case that bullet hits me, I mean—tell him——— Oh, there’s no false pride about me. Fill your glass again. I don’t in the least mind your knowing that I wouldn’t go a step to fight for Boer or Briton either if it wasn’t for a little affair connected with some horses and a cheque. You see, the War Office people sent down a perfect idiot to buy remounts for the cavalry in Galway and Mayo. He was the sort of idiot that would tempt an Archbishop to swindle him. I rather overdid it, I’m afraid, and now the matter is likely to come out.’
For all his boasted powers of observation, Captain Quinn failed to notice the disgust and alarm on Hyacinth’s face.
‘I stuck the fool,’ he went on, ‘with every old screw in the country. I got broken-winded mares from the ploughs. I collected a regular hospital of spavined, knock-kneed beasts, and he took them from me without a word at thirty pounds apiece. It would have been all right if I had gone no further. But, hang it all! I got to the end of my tether. I declare to you I don’t believe there was another screw left in the whole county of Mayo, and unless I took to selling him the asses I couldn’t go on. Then I heard of this plan of your friend Finola’s, and I determined to make a little coup and clear. I altered a cheque. The idiot was on his way to an out-of-the-way corner of Connemara looking for mounted infantry cobs. I knew he wouldn’t see his bank-book for at least a week, so I chanced it. That’s the reason why I am so uncommonly anxious to get clear at once. If I once get off, it will be next door to impossible to get me back again. General Joubert will hardly give me up. I’m not the least afraid of those ridiculous policemen who walk about after Finola. But I am very much afraid of being tapped on the shoulder for reasons quite non-political. I can tell you I’ve been on the jump ever since yesterday, when I cashed the cheque, and I shan’t feel easy till I’ve left France behind me. I fancy I’m safe for the present. The idiot is sure to try fifty ways of getting his accounts straight before he lights on my little cheque; and when he does, I’ve covered my tracks pretty well. My dear brother hasn’t the slightest notion what’s become of me. I dare say he’ll stop making inquiries as soon as the police begin. Poor old chap! He’ll feel it about the family name, and so on.’
He smiled at his own ref............