General John Regan Part 44

"It can't possibly be the Lord-Lieutenant," said Dr. O'Grady. "He'd never change his mind twice in the same morning."

A tall man, very well dressed in a long frock-coat and a s.h.i.+ny silk hat, stood up in the motor. The crowd cheered again with tumultuous enthusiasm.

"It must be the Lord-Lieutenant," said Mrs. Gregg ecstatically. "Oh, will someone please hook up my blouse?"

"There's n.o.body else it could be," said Doyle. "Come on now, till we go to meet him. Come on, Father. Come you, Major. Doctor, will you go first? It's you knows the proper way to speak to the likes of him."

But Father McCormack had a strong sense of his own dignity, and was convinced that the Church had a right to precedence on all ceremonial occasions. He walked, hat in hand, towards the stranger in the motorcar.

The people divided to let him pa.s.s. Major Kent and Doyle followed him.

Dr. O'Grady stood still. Mrs. Gregg ran over to Mary Ellen and begged her to hook up the back of the degage blouse. Young Kerrigan mustered the town band. The members had strayed a little through the crowd, but at the summons of their leader they gathered in a circle. Kerrigan looked eagerly at Dr. O'Grady awaiting the signal to strike up "Rule Britannia." Dr. O'Grady, unable to make himself heard through the cheering of the people, signalled a frantic negative. The stranger stepped out of his motor-car. Father McCormack, bowing low, advanced to meet him.

"It is my proud and pleasant duty," he said, "to welcome your Excellency to Ballymoy, and to a.s.sure you??"

"I want to see a gentleman called O'Grady," said the stranger, "a Dr.

O'Grady."

"He's here, your Excellency," said Father McCormack, "and there isn't a man in Ballymoy who'll be more pleased to see your Excellency than he will."

"I'm not His Excellency. My name is Blakeney, Lord Alfred Blakeney. I'm aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant, and I particularly want to see Dr.

O'Grady."

CHAPTER XIX

Lord Alfred Blakeney walked up the street and crossed the square with great dignity. He made no acknowledgment whatever of the cheers with which the people greeted him. They still thought that he was the Lord-Lieutenant, and, expectant of benefits of some sort, they shouted their best. He glanced at the veiled statue, but turned his eyes away from it immediately, as if it were something obscene or otherwise disgusting. He took no notice of Mary Ellen, though she smiled at him.

Father McCormack and Doyle followed him, crestfallen. Major Kent, who seemed greatly pleased, also followed him. Half way across the square Lord Alfred Blakeney turned round and asked which was Dr. O'Grady.

Father McCormack pointed him out with deprecating eagerness, much as a schoolboy with inferior sense of honour when himself in danger of punishment, points out to the master the real culprit. Lord Alfred Blakeney's forehead wrinkled in a frown. His lips closed firmly. His whole face wore an expression of dignified severity, very terrible to contemplate. Dr. O'Grady seemed entirely unmoved.

"I'm delighted to see you," he said, "though we expected the Lord-Lieutenant. By the way, you're not the Lord-Lieutenant, are you, by any chance?"

"My name is Blakeney, Lord Alfred Blakeney."

"I was afraid you weren't," said Dr. O'Grady. "Father McCormack and Doyle insisted that you were. But I knew that His Excellency must be a much older man. They couldn't very well make anybody of your age Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, though I daresay you'd do very well, and deserve the honour quite as much as lots of people that get it."

Lord Alfred Blakeney had been at Eton as a boy and at Christchurch, Oxford, afterwards as a young man. He was a Captain in the Genadier Guards, and he was aide-de-camp to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. It seemed quite impossible that an Irish dispensary doctor could be trying to poke fun at him. He supposed that Dr. O'Grady was lamentably ignorant.

"I am here," he said, "at His Excellency's express command??"

"Quite so," said Dr. O'Grady. "We understand. You're his representative.

He was pretty well bound to send somebody considering the way he's treated us, telegraphing at the last moment. We're quite ready to make excuses for him, of course, if he's got a sudden attack of influenza or anything of that sort. At the same time he ought to have come unless he's very bad indeed. However, as you're here, we may as well be getting on with the business. Where's Doyle?"

Doyle was just behind him. He was, in fact, plucking at Dr. O'Grady's sleeve. He leaned forward and whispered:

"Speak a word to the gentleman about the pier. He's a high up gentleman surely, and if you speak to him he'll use his influence with the Lord-Lieutenant."

"Be quiet, Doyle," said Dr. O'Grady. "Go off and get the bouquet as quick as you can and give it to Mrs. Gregg."

Lord Alfred Blakeney, who had gasped with astonishment at the end of Dr.

O'Grady's last speech to him, recovered his dignity with an effort.

"You evidently don't understand that I have come here, at the Lord-Lieutenant's express command??"

"You said that before," said Dr. O'Grady.

"To ask for?in fact to demand an explanation of??"

"I should have thought that you'd have offered some sort of explanation to us. After all, we've been rather badly treated and??"

"An explanation," said Lord Alfred sternly, "if any explanation is possible, of the extraordinary hoax which you've seen fit to play on His Excellency."

A group of spectators formed a circle round Dr. O'Grady and Lord Alfred.

Father McCormack, puzzled and anxious, stood beside Mrs. Gregg. The Major was at a little distance from them. Mary Ellen stood almost alone beside the statue. The children of the town, attracted by some new excitement, had left her, and in spite of Sergeant Colgan, were pus.h.i.+ng their way towards Lord Alfred. Dr. O'Grady looked round him and frowned at the people.

Then he took Lord Alfred by the arm and led him away to a corner of the square near the police barrack where there were very few people.

"Now," he said, "we can talk in peace. It's impossible to discuss anything in the middle of a crowd. You seem to think that the Lord-Lieutenant has some sort of grievance against us. What is it?"

"You surely understand that," said Lord Alfred, "without my telling you.

You've attempted to play off an outrageous hoax on the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. At least that's my view of it."

"Quite a mistaken one!"

"The Lord-Lieutenant himself hopes that there may be some other explanation. That is why he sent me down here. He wants to give you the chance of clearing yourselves if you can. I may say frankly that if he'd asked my opinion I should??"

"You'd have put us in prison at once," said Dr. O'Grady, "and kept us there till we died. You'd have been perfectly right. We'd have deserved it richly if we really had??"

"Then you are prepared to offer an explanation?"

"I'll explain anything you like," said Dr. O'Grady, "if you'll only tell me what your difficulty is. Oh, hang it! Excuse me one moment. Here's that a.s.s Doyle coming at us again."

Doyle had brought the bouquet out of the hotel and given it to Mrs.

Gregg. He had warned Constable Moriarty not to allow the people to press against the statue. He was crossing the square in the direction of the police barrack when Dr. O'Grady saw him and went to meet him.

"Doctor," said Doyle, "will you keep in mind what I was saying to you this minute about the pier? Get a promise of it out of the gentleman."

"It's utterly impossible for me," said Dr. O'Grady, "to do anything if you keep interrupting me every minute. I'm in the middle of an extremely difficult negotiation, and unless I'm allowed a free hand there'll certainly be no pier."

"If there's no pier," said Doyle angrily, "it'll be the worse for you.

Don't you forget, doctor, that you owe me a matter of 60, and if I'm at the loss of more money over this statue??"

Constable Moriarty's voice rang out across the square. He was speaking in very strident tones.

"Will you stand back out of that?" he said. "What business have you there at all? Didn't I tell you a minute ago that you weren't to go near the statue?"

Dr. O'Grady and Doyle turned round to see what was happening. A man from the crowd, a well-dressed man, had slipped past Constable Moriarty and reached the statue. He had raised the bottom of the sheet which covered it and was peering at the inscription on the pedestal.