The Red Hand of Ulster Part 1

The Red Hand of Ulster.

by George A. Birmingham.

PREFATORY NOTE

In a book of this kind some of the characters are necessarily placed in the positions occupied by living men; but no character is in any way copied from life, and no character must be taken as representing any real person. Nor must the opinions of Lord Kilmore of Errigal, the imaginary narrator of the tale, be regarded as those of the Author.

G. A. B.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

BY

LORD KILMORE OF ERRIGAL

The events recorded in this chapter and the next did not fall under my own observation. I derived my knowledge of them from various sources, chiefly from conversations with Bob Power, who had, as will appear, first-hand knowledge. In the third chapter I begin my own personal narrative of the events which led up to the final struggle of Ulster against Home Rule and of the struggle itself. Accidents of one kind or another, the accidents of the situation of Kilmore Castle, the accident of Bob Power's connection with my daughter Marion, the accidents of my social position and personal tastes, have placed me in a position to give a very full account of what actually happened. The first two chapters of this book will therefore be written in the impersonal manner of the ordinary history; I myself occupying the position of unseen spectator. The rest of the book is largely founded upon the diary which I actually kept.

THE RED HAND OF ULSTER

CHAPTER I

It was in 1908 that Joseph Peterson Conroy burst upon London in the full magnificence of his astounding wealth. English society was, and had been for many years, accustomed to the irruption of millionaires, American or South African. Our aristocracy has learnt to pay these potentates the respect which is their due. Well-born men and women trot along Park Lane in obedience to the hooting calls of motor horns.

No one considers himself degraded by grovelling before a plutocrat.

It has been for some time difficult to startle London by a display of mere wealth. Men respect more than ever fortunes which are reckoned in millions, though they have become too common to amaze. But Joseph Peterson Conroy, when he came, excited a great deal of interest. In the first place his income was enormous, larger, it was said, than the income of any other living man. In the next place he spent it very splendidly. There were no entertainments given in London during the years 1909, 1910, and 1911, equal in extravagance to those which Conroy gave. He outdid the "freak dinners" of New York. He invented freak dinners of his own. His horses--animals which he bought at enormous prices--won the great races. His yachts flew the white ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron. His gifts to fas.h.i.+onable charities were princely. English society fell at his feet and wors.h.i.+pped him.

The most exclusive clubs were honoured by his desire of members.h.i.+p.

Women whose fathers and husbands bore famous names were proud to boast of his friends.h.i.+p.

It cannot be said that Conroy abused either his position or his opportunities. He had won his great wealth honestly--that is to say without robbing any one except other robbers, and only robbing them in ways permitted by American law. He used what he had won honourably enough. He neither bought the favours of the women who thronged his entertainments; nor degraded, more than was necessary, the men who sought benefits from him. For a time, for nearly four years, he thoroughly enjoyed himself, exulting with boyish delight in his own splendour. Then he began to get restless. The things he did, the people he knew, ceased to interest him. It was early in 1911 that the crisis came; and before the season of that year was over Conroy had disappeared from London. His name still appeared occasionally in the columns which the newspapers devote to fas.h.i.+onable intelligence.

But the house in Park Lane--the scene of many magnificent entertainments--was sold. The dinner parties, b.a.l.l.s and card parties ceased; and Conroy entered upon what must have been the most exciting period of his life.

Bob Power--no one ever called him Robert--belonged to an old and respected Irish family, being a younger son of General Power of Kilfenora. He was educated at Harrow and afterwards at Trinity College. He was called to the Irish bar and might have achieved in time the comfortable mediocrity of a County Court judges.h.i.+p if he had not become Conroy's private secretary. The post was secured for him by an uncle who had known Conroy in New York in the days before he became a millionaire, while it was still possible for an ordinary man to do him a favour. Bob accepted the post because everybody said he would be a fool to refuse it. He did not much like writing letters. The making out of schemes for the arrangements of Conroy's guests at the more formal dinner parties worried him. The general supervision of the upper servants was no delight to him. But he did all these things fairly well, and his unfailing good spirits carried him safely through periods of very tiresome duty. He became, in spite of the twenty-five years' difference of age between him and his patron, the intimate friend of Joseph Peterson Conroy.

It was to Bob that Conroy confided the fact that he was tired of the life of a leader of English society. The two men were sitting together in the smoking room at one o'clock in the morning after one of Conroy's most magnificent entertainments.

"I'm d.a.m.ned well sick of all this," said Conroy suddenly.

"So am I," said Bob.

Bob Power was a man of adventurous disposition. He had a reputation in Connacht as a singularly bold rider to hounds. The story of his singlehanded cruise round Ireland in a ten tonner will be told among yachtsmen until his son does something more extravagantly idiotic.

The London season always bored him. The atmosphere of Conroy's house in Park Lane stifled him.

"Is there any one thing left in this rotten old world," said Conroy, "that's worth doing?"

In Bob's opinion there were several things very well worth doing. He suggested one of them at once.

"Let's get out the _Finola_," he said, "and go for a cruise. We've never done the South Sea Islands."

The _Finola_ was the largest of Conroy's yachts, a handsome vessel of something over a thousand tons.

"Cruising in the _Finola_," said Conroy, "is no earthly good to me.

What I want is something that will put me into a nervous sweat, the same as I was when I was up against Ikenstein and the railway bosses.

My nerves were like d.a.m.ned fiddle strings for a fortnight when I didn't know whether I was going to come out a pauper or the owner of the biggest pile mortal man ever handled."

Bob knew nothing of Ikenstein or the methods by which the pile had been wrested from him and his companions, but he did know the sensations which Conroy described. He, himself, arrived at them by hanging on to a sea anchor in a gale of wind off the Galway coast, or pus.h.i.+ng a vicious horse at a nasty jump. Nervous sweat, stretched nerves and complete uncertainty about the immediate future afford the same delight however you get at them. He sympathized with Conroy.

"You might fit out a s.h.i.+p or two and try exploring round the South Pole," Bob said. "They've got the thing itself of course, but there must be lots of places still undiscovered in the neighbourhood. I should think that hummocking along over the ice floes in a dog sledge must be pretty thrilling."

Conroy sighed.

"I'm too fat," he said, "and I'm too darned soft. The kind of life I've led for the last four years isn't good training for camping out on icebergs and feeding on whale's blubber."

Bob smiled. Conroy was a very fat man. A camping party on an iceberg would be likely to end in some whale eating his blubber.

"I didn't mean you to go yourself," said Bob.

"Oh! I see. I'm to fit out the expedition and you are to go in command. I don't quite see where the fun would come in for me. It wouldn't excite me any to hear of your shooting Esquimaux and penguins. I shouldn't care enough whether you lived or were froze to get any excitement out of a show of that kind."

"We'd call it 'The Joseph P. Conroy Expedition,'" said Bob; "and the newspapers--"

"Thanks. But I'm pretty well fed up with newspaper tosh. The press has boosted me ever since I landed in this country, and I'd just as soon they stopped now as started fresh."

Bob relinquished the idea of a Polar expedition with a sigh.

It was Conroy himself who made the next suggestion.

"If politics weren't such a rotten game--"

Bob did not feel attracted to political life; but he was loyal to his patron.

"c.l.i.thering," he said, "was talking to me to-night. You know the man I mean, Sir Samuel c.l.i.thering. He's not in the Cabinet, but he's what I'd call a pretty intimate hanger on; does odd jobs for the Prime Minister. He said the interest of political life was absorbing."

"I shouldn't care for it," said Conroy. "After all, what would it be worth to me? There's nothing for me to gain, and I don't see how I could lose anything. It would be like playing bridge for counters.

They might make me a lord, of course. A t.i.tle is about the only thing I haven't got, but then I don't want it."

"I quite agree with you," said Bob. "I merely mentioned politics because c.l.i.thering said--"

"Besides," said Conroy, "it wouldn't be my politics. England isn't my country."