Hyacinth Part 11

'I'm afraid that's out of the question,' said Augusta Goold. 'M. de Villeneuve arranged to send me a wire when he was ready for our men, and I can't well send them sooner.'

'Ah,' said the Captain, 'but it seems to me the Frenchman is inclined to dawdle. Don't you think that if we went over it might hurry him up a bit?'

She agreed that this was possible, but represented the difficulty of keeping the men suitably employed in Paris for perhaps three weeks or a month.

'You see,' she said, 'they are all right here in Dublin, where I can keep an eye on them. Besides, they have all got some sort of employment here, and I don't have to pay them. I haven't got money enough to keep them in Paris, and they won't get anything from Dr. Leyds until you have them on board the steamer.'

Captain Quinn seemed satisfied, but later on in the evening he returned to the subject.

'I can't help feeling that it would be better for me, at all events, to go over to Paris at once. I shouldn't ask to draw any pay at present. I have enough by me to keep me going for a few weeks.'

'But what about the men? Will you come back for them?'

'No, I think that would be foolish and unnecessary. There is no use in attracting attention to our movements. We can't have a public send-off, with cheers and that sort of thing, in any case, or march through the streets like those ridiculous yeomen. Our fellows have got to slip away quietly in twos and threes. We can't tell whether we're not being watched this minute.'

There was a note of sincerity in the Captain's voice which convinced Hyacinth that he was genuinely frightened at the thought of having a policeman on his track. Miss Goold, too, looked appropriately solemn at the suggestion. As a matter of fact, the authorities in Dublin Castle did occasionally send a detective in plain clothes to walk after her.

It is not conceivable that they suspected her of wanting to blow up Nelson's pillar or a.s.sa.s.sinate a judge. Probably they merely wished to exercise the members of the force, and, in the absence of any actual crime in the country, felt that no harm could come to anyone through the 'shadowing' of Miss Goold. The plan, though the authorities probably did not consider this, had the incidental advantage of gratifying the lady herself. She was perfectly acquainted with most of the officers who were put on her track, and was always in good spirits when she recognised one of them waiting for her in Westland Row Station. Captain Quinn kept a watch on her face with his sharp s.h.i.+fting eyes while he spoke, and he was quick to realize that he had hit on a way of flattering her.

'You are a person, Miss Goold, of whose actions the Government is bound to take cognisance. I dare say they have their suspicions of me, and if you and I are seen together in Dublin during the next week or two there will certainly be inquiries; whereas, if I go over to Paris at once, there will be no reason to watch you or anybody else.'

Augusta Goold hesitated.

'What do you say, Mr. Conneally?' she asked.

Hyacinth was puzzled at this extreme eagerness to be off. A suspicion crossed his mind that the Captain meditated some kind of treachery. He made what appeared to him to be a brilliant suggestion.

'Let me go with Captain Quinn. I can start to-morrow if necessary. I should like to see something of Paris; and you know, Miss Goold, I've plenty of money.'

He thought it likely that the Captain would object to this plan. If he meditated any kind of crooked dealing when he got to Paris, though Hyacinth failed to see any motive for treachery, he would not want to be saddled with a companion. The answer he received surprised him.

'Delightful! I shall be glad to have a friend with me. In the intervals of military preparation we can have a gay time--not too gay, of course, Miss Goold. I shall keep Mr. Conneally out of serious mischief. When we have a little spare cash we may as well enjoy ourselves. We shan't want to carry money about with us in the Transvaal. We mean to live at the expense of the English out there.'

Augusta Goold smiled almost maternally at Hyacinth.

'My dear boy,' she said, 'what seems plenty of money to you won't go very far in Paris. What is it? Let me see, you said two hundred pounds, and you want to buy your outfit out of that. Keep a little by you in case of accident.'

'Well,' said the Captain, 'that's settled. And if we are really to start to-morrow, we ought to get home to-night. Mr. Conneally may be ready to start at a moment's notice, but he must at least pack up his tooth-brush. May we see you safe back to town, Miss O'Dwyer? Remember, we shall expect a valedictory ode in the next number of the _Croppy_.

Write us something that will go to a tune, something with a swing in it, and we'll sing it beside the camp fires on the veldt. Miss Goold'--he held out his hand as he spoke--'I'm a plain fellow'--he did not look in the least as if he thought so--'I've led too rough a life to be any good at making pretty speeches, but I'm glad I've seen you and talked to you.

If I'm knocked on the head out there I shall go under satisfied, for I've met a woman fit to be a queen--a woman who is a queen, the queen of the heart of Ireland.'

It is likely that Augusta Goold, though she was certainly not a fool, was a little excited by the homage, for she refused to say good-bye, declaring that she would see the boat off next morning. It was a promise which would cost her something to keep, for the mail steamer leaves at 8 a.m., and Miss Goold was a lady who appreciated the warmth of her bed in the mornings, especially during the early days of March, when the wind is likely to be in the east.

CHAPTER XII

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 a.s.sent.

'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 d.a.m.ned 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?'