Humours of Irish Life Part 37

"Certainly not," said Meldon; "you are missing the whole point. I was afraid you would when you prevented me from explaining the theory of truth to you. I never justify lies under any circ.u.mstances whatever. The thing I'm trying to help you grasp is this: A statement isn't a lie if it proves itself in actual practice to be useful--it's true. There, now, you've let that second cigar go out. You'd better light that one again.

I hate to see a man wasting cigar after cigar, especially when they're good ones."

Mr. Willoughby fumbled with the matches and made more than one attempt to relight the cigar.

"The reason," Meldon went on, "why I think you're almost certain to be a pragmatist is that you're a politician. You're constantly having to make speeches, of course; and in every speech you must, more or less, say something about Ireland. When you are Chief Secretary the other fellow, the man in opposition who wants to be Chief Secretary but isn't, gets up and says you are telling a pack of lies. That's not the way he expresses himself, but it's exactly what he means. When his turn comes round to be Chief Secretary, and you are in opposition, you very naturally say that he's telling lies. Now, that's a very crude way of talking. You are, both of you, as patriotic and loyal men, doing your best to say what is really useful. If the things you say turn out in the end to be useful, why, then, if you happen to be a pragmatist, they aren't lies."

Mr. Willoughby stuck doggedly to his point. Just so his countrymen, though beaten by all the rules of war, have from time to time clung to positions which they ought to have evacuated.

"A lie," he said, "is a lie. I don't see that you've made your case at all."

"I know I haven't, but that's because you insist on stopping me. If you'll allow me to go back to the man who went round the tree with the monkey on it----"

"Don't do that, I can't bear it."

"Very well. I won't. I suppose we may consider the matter closed now, and go on to talk of something else."

"No. It's not closed," said Mr. Willoughby, with a fine show of spirited indignation. "I still want to know why you told Mr. Higginbotham that I sent Major Kent to make a geological survey of this island. It's all very well to talk as you've been doing, but a man is bound to tell the truth and not to deceive innocent people."

"Look here, Mr. Willoughby," said Meldon, "I've sat and listened to you calling me a liar half-a-dozen times, and I havn't turned a hair. I'm not a man with remarkable self-control, and I appreciate your point of view. You are irritated because you think you are not being treated with proper respect. You a.s.sert what you are pleased to call your dignity, by trying to prove that I am a liar. I've stood it from you so far, but I'm not bound to stand it any longer, and I won't. It doesn't suit you one bit to take up that high and mighty moral tone, and I may tell you it doesn't impress me. I'm not the British Public, and that bluff honesty pose isn't one I admire. All these plat.i.tudes about lies being lies simply run off my skin. I know that your own game of politics couldn't be played for a single hour without what you choose to describe as deceiving innocent people. Mind you, I'm not blaming you in the least. I quite give in that you can't always be blabbing out the exact literal truth about everything. Things couldn't go on if you did. All I say is, that, being in the line of life you are, you ought not to set yourself up as a model of every kind of integrity and come out here to an island, which, so far as I know, n.o.body ever invited you to visit, and talk ideal morality to me in the way you've been doing. Hullo! here's Higginbotham back again. I wonder if he has brought Thomas O'Flaherty Pat with him. You'll be interested in seeing that old man, even if you can't speak to him."

Higginbotham started as he entered the hut. He did not expect to find Meldon there. He was surprised to see Mr. Willoughby crumpled up, crushed, cowed in the depths of the hammock-chair, while Meldon, cheerful and triumphant, sat on the edge of the table swinging his legs and smoking a cigar.

"You'd better get that oil stove of yours lit, Higginbotham," said Meldon. "The Chief Secretary is dying for a cup of tea. You'd like some tea, wouldn't you, Mr Willoughby?"

"I would. I feel as if I wanted some tea. You won't say that I'm posing for the British Public if I drink tea, will you?"

It was Meldon who lit the stove, and busied himself with the cups and saucers. Higginbotham was too much astonished to a.s.sist.

"There's no water in your kettle," said Meldon. "I'd better run across to the well and get some. Or I'll go to Michael Pat's mother and get some hot. That will save time. When I'm there I'll collar a loaf of soda-bread and some b.u.t.ter if I can. I happen to know that she has some fresh b.u.t.ter because I helped her to make it."

Mr. Willoughby rallied a little when the door closed behind Meldon.

"Your friend," he said to Higginbotham, "seems to me to be a most remarkable man."

"He is. In college we always believed that if only he'd give his mind to it and taken some interest in his work, he could have done anything."

"I haven't the slightest doubt of it. He has given me a talking to this afternoon such as I haven't had since I left school--not since I left the nursery. Did you ever read a book on pragmatism?"

"No."

"You don't happen to know the name of the best book on the subject?"

"No, but I'm sure that Meldon--"

"Don't," said Mr. Willoughby. "I'd rather not start him on the subject again. Have you any cigars? I want one badly. I got no good of the two I half smoked while he was here."

"I'm afraid not. But your own cigar-case has one in it. It's on the table."

"I can't smoke that one. To put it plainly, I daren't. Your friend Meldon said he might want it. I'd be afraid to face him if it was gone."

"But it's your own cigar! Why should Meldon----"

"It's not my cigar. Nothing in the world is mine any more, not even my mind, or my morality, or my self-respect is my own. Mr. Meldon has taken them from me, and torn them in pieces before my eyes. He has left me a nervous wreck of a man I once was. Did you say he was a parson?"

"Yes. He's curate of Ballymoy."

"Thank G.o.d, I don't live in that paris.h.!.+ I should be hypnotised into going to church every time he preached, and then----. Hus.h.!.+ Can he be coming back already? I believe he is. No other man would whistle as loud as that. If he begins to illtreat me again, Mr Higginbotham, I hope you'll try and drag him off. I can't stand much more."

Old Tummus and the Battle of Scarva.

_From "Lady Anne's Walk."_

BY ELEANOR ALEXANDER.

I found old Tummus scuffling Lady Anne's walk; that is to say, he was busy looking pensively at the weeds as he leaned on his hoe. He never suddenly pretends to be at work when he is not at work, but always retains the same calm dignity of carriage. He too frankly despises his employers to admit that either his occasional lapses into action, or his more frequent att.i.tude of storing his reserve force are any concern of theirs.

Gathering that he was graciously inclined for conversation by a not unfriendly glance which he cast in my direction after he had spat on the ground, I settled myself to listen.

"Do ye know what I'm goin' te tell ye?"

With this he generally prefaces his remarks. It is, however, merely rhetorical. He does not expect an answer; unless one were at least a minor prophet it would be impossible to give one, except in the negative. "Do ye know what I'm goin' te tell ye?" he repeated, gently, raising a weed with his hoe into what looked like a sitting position, where he held it as if he were supporting it in bed to receive its last communion. "There's not a hair's differ betwixt onny two weemen." I was speechless, and he continued: "There is thon boy o' mine, and though I say it that shouldn't, he's a fine boy, so he is, and no ways blate, and as brave a boy as you'd wish for te see. From the time he was six year old he was that old-fas.h.i.+oned he wouldn't go to church without his boots was right jergers (creakers) that ye'd hear all over the church when he c.u.m in a wee bit late: and he cud say off all the responses as bowld as bra.s.s. Did I no' learn him his releegion mesel, and bid him foller after him that has gone before?"

A solemn pause seemed only appropriate here, though I had my doubts.

"But whiles he tuk te colloque-in' with the wee fellers round the corner there in Irish street. That's so. But I soon quet him o' that. Says I te him: 'Do ye know what I'm goin' te tell ye? Me heart's broke with ye, so it is. I'll have no colloque-in' from onny boy o' mine, so I won't.

Ye'll have no traffickin', no, nor pa.s.sin' o' the time o' day with them that's not yer own sort, and that differs from the Reverend Crampsey; him and me and Johnston of Ballykilbeg, and the Great Example. What's that ye say? Who is the Great Example? Now! Now! Who wud it be, but him on the white horse?'"

This is not, as might be supposed, from the vision of the Apocalypse, but is easily recognised by those who are in the know, as an allusion to William of Orange, of "Glorious, pious, and immortal memory," who is always represented on a white horse.

"But," I argued, "he did traffic with those who disagreed with him; it is even said, you know, that when he came to England he subsidised the Pope."

Tummus appeared not to have heard this remark.

"As I was sayin', thon boy o' mine, he has a mind to get hisself marriet. So says I te him, 'There's not a hair's differ between onny two o' them.' Ye see, it's this way. He has the two o' them courted down to the askin', and he's afeard that if he asks the wan he'll think long for the other, or maybe he'll think he'd sooner have had the other."

"He is not behaving well. He can't, of course, marry them both, and yet he has raised hopes which _must_ in one case be disappointed; he might break the poor girl's heart."

"Break her heart! Hoot. Blethers. Heart is it?"

"But," I interjected again, merely, of course, to make conversation, for I have many times and oft heard his opinion on the subject, and it is not favourable, "Don't you believe in love?"

Tummus had been twice married. His first wife was called Peggy-Anne, and only lived a year after her marriage. I try to persuade myself and him that this was the romance of his life, but it is up-hill work. The present Mrs. Thomas, who has been his wife for five-and-twenty-years, he always speaks of as "Thon widdy wumman." She was the relict of one John M'Adam, whose simple annal in this world seems to be, that he was the first husband of Tummus's second wife; for the other world, his successor considers that, owing to his theological views, he is certainly--well--not in heaven.

"Do I no believe in love? Why, wumman, dear, have I no seen it mesel?

Sure, and I had an uncle o' me own, me own mother's brother, that was tuk that way, and what did he do? but went and got the whole o' Paul's wickedest Epistle off, so he did, and offered for te tell it till her, all at the wan sitting. Boys, oh! but he was the quare poet! And she got marriet on a boy out o' Ballinahone on him, and do ye know what I'm goin' te tell ye? he tuk to the hills and never did a hand's turn after."