Hyacinth Part 16

Hyacinth mentioned a sum which left a fair margin of profit for Mr.

Quinn. O'Reilly shook his head and laughed.

'Can't do it.'

Hyacinth reduced his price at once as far as possible.

'No use,' said Mr. O'Reilly.

Compared with the suave oratory to which he treated his customers, this extreme economy of words was striking.

'See here,' he said, producing a bundle of shawls from a shelf beside him. 'I get these for twenty-five s.h.i.+llings a dozen less from Thompson and Taylor of Manchester.'

Hyacinth looked at them curiously. Each bore a prominent label setting forth a name for the garment in large letters surrounded with wreaths of shamrocks. 'The Colleen Bawn,' he read, 'Erin's Own,' 'The Kathleen Mavourneen,' 'The Cruiskeen Lawn.' The appropriateness of this last t.i.tle was not obvious to the mere Irishman, but the colour of the garment was green, so perhaps there was a connection of thought in the maker's mind between that and 'Lawn.' 'Cruiskeen' he may have taken for the name of a place.

'Are these,' asked Hyacinth, 'what you advertise as Irish goods?'

Mr. O'Reilly cleared his throat twice before he replied.

'They are got up specially for the Irish market.' In the interests of his employer Hyacinth kept his temper, but the effort was a severe one.

'These,' he said, 'are half cotton. Mine are pure wool. They are really far better value even if they were double the price.'

Mr. O'Reilly shrugged his shoulders.

'I don't say they're not, but I should not sell one of yours for every dozen of the others.'

'Try,' said Hyacinth; 'give them a fair chance. Tell the people that they will last twice as long. Tell them that they are made in Ireland.'

'That would not be the slightest use. They would simply laugh in my face. My customers don't care a pin where the goods are made. I have never in my life been asked for Irish manufacture.'

'Then, why on earth do you stick up those advertis.e.m.e.nts?' said Hyacinth, pointing to the 'Feach Annseo' which appeared on a h.o.a.rding across the street.

Mr. O'Reilly was perfectly frank and unashamed.

'The other drapery house in the town is owned by a Scotchman, and of course it pays more or less to keep on saying that I am Irish. Besides, I mean to stand for the Urban Council in March, and those sort of ads.

are useful at an election, even if they are no good for business.'

'I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Hyacinth, s.h.i.+rking a discussion on the morality of advertising: 'I'll let you have a dozen shawls at cost price, and take back what you can't sell, if you give me your word to do your best for them.'

Similar discussions followed the display of serges and blankets. It appeared that nice-looking goods could be sent over from England at lower prices. It was vain for Hyacinth to press the fact that his things were better. Mr. O'Reilly admitted as much.

'But what am I to do? The people don't want what is good. They want a cheap article which looks well, and they don't care a pin whether the thing is made in England, Ireland, or America. Take my advice,' he added as Hyacinth left the shop: 'get your boss to do inferior lines--cheap, cheap and showy.'

So far Mr. Hollywell's opinions were entirely justified. The appeal of the patriotic press to the public and the shopkeepers on behalf of the industrial revival of Ireland had certainly not affected the town of Clogher. Hyacinth was bitterly disappointed; but hope, when it is born of enthusiasm, dies hard, and he was greatly interested in a speech which he read one day in the 'Mayo Telegraph'. It had been made at a meeting of the League by an Ardnaree shopkeeper called Dowling. A trade rival--the fact of the rivalry was not emphasized--had advertised in a Scotch paper for a milliner. Dowling was exceedingly indignant. He quoted emigration statistics showing the number of girls who left Mayo every year for the United States. He pointed out that all of them might be employed at home, as milliners or otherwise, if only the public would boycott shops which sold English goods or employed Scotch milliners.

He more than suspected that the obnoxious advertis.e.m.e.nt was part of an organized attempt to effect a new plantation of Connaught--'worse than Cromwell's was.' The fact that Connaught was the only part of Ireland which Cromwell did not propose to plant escaped the notice of both Mr. Dowling and his audience. The speech concluded with a pa.s.sionate peroration and a verse, no doubt declaimed soundingly, of 'The West's Awake.'

Hyacinth made an expedition to Ardnaree, and called hopefully on the orator. His reception was depressing in the extreme. The shop, which was large and imposing, was stocked with goods which were obviously English, and Mr. Dowling curtly refused even to look at the samples of Mr.

Quinn's manufactures. Hyacinth quoted his own speech to the man, and was amazed at the cynical indifference with which he ignored the dilemma.

'Business is one thing,' he said, 'and politics is something entirely different.'

Hyacinth lost his temper completely.

'I shall write to the papers,' he said, Vand expose you. I shall have your speech reprinted, and along with it an account of the way you conduct your business.'

A mean, hard smile crossed Mr. Dowling's mouth before he answered:

'Perhaps you don't know that my wife is the Archbishop's niece?'

Hyacinth stared at him. For a minute or two he entirely failed to understand what Mrs. Dowling's relations.h.i.+p to a great ecclesiastic had to do with the question. At last a light broke on him.

'You mean that an editor wouldn't print my letter because he would be afraid of offending a Roman Catholic Archbishop?'

The expression 'Roman Catholic' caught Mr. Dowling's attention.

'Are you a Protestant?' he asked. 'You are--a dirty Protestant--and you dare to come here into my own house, and insult me and trample on my religious convictions. I'm a Catholic and a member of the League. What do you mean, you Souper, you Sour-face, by talking to me about Irish manufactures? Get out of this house, and go to the h.e.l.l that's waiting for you!'

As Hyacinth turned to go, there flashed across his mind the recollection of Miss Goold and her friends who wrote for the _Croppy_.

'There's one paper in Ireland, anyhow,' he said, 'which is not afraid of your wife nor your Archbishop. I'll write to the _Croppy_, and you'll see if they won't publish the facts.'

Mr. Dowling grinned.

'I don't care if they do,' he said. 'The priests are dead against the _Croppy_, and there's hardly a man in the town reads it. Go up there now to Hely's and try if you can buy a copy. I tell you it isn't on sale here at all, and whatever they publish will do me no harm.'

When Hyacinth returned to the hotel he found Mr. Holywell seated, with the inevitable whisky-and-water beside him, in the commercial-room.

'Well, Mr. Conneally,' he said, 'and how is patriotism paying you? Find people ready to buy what's Irish?'

Hyacinth, boiling over with indignation, related his experience with Mr.

Dowling.

'What did I tell you?' said Mr. Hollywell. 'But anyhow you're just as well out of a deal with that fellow. I wouldn't care to do business with him myself. I happen to know, and you may take my word for it '--his voice sunk to a confidential whisper--'that he's very deep in the books of two English firms, and that he daren't--simply daren't--place an order with anyone else. They'd have him in the Bankruptcy Court to-morrow if he did. I shouldn't feel easy with Mr. Dowling's cheque for an account until I saw how the clerk took it across the bank counter.

You mark my words, there'll be a fire in that establishment before the year's out.'

The prophecy was fulfilled, as Hyacinth learnt from the _Mayo Telegraphy_ and Mr. Dowling's whole stock of goods was consumed. There were rumours that a sceptical insurance company made difficulties about paying the compensation demanded; but the inhabitants of Ardnaree marked their confidence in the husband of an Archbishop's niece by presenting him with an address of sympathy and a purse containing ten sovereigns.

Most of Hyacinth's business was done with small shopkeepers in remote districts. The country-people who lived out of reach of such centres of fas.h.i.+on as Ardnaree and Clogher were sufficiently unsophisticated to prefer things which were really good. Hats and bonnets were not quite universal among the women in the mountain districts far back where they spoke Irish, and Mr. Quinn's head-kerchiefs were still in request. Even the younger women wanted garments which would keep them warm and dry, and Hyacinth often returned well satisfied from a tour of the country shops. Sometimes he doubted whether he ought to trust the people with more than a few pounds' worth of goods, but he gradually learnt that, unlike the patriotic Mr. Dowling, they were universally honest. He discovered, too, that these people, with their imperfect English and little knowledge of the world, were exceedingly shrewd. They had very little real confidence in oratorical politicians, and their interest in public affairs went no further than voting consistently for the man their priest recommended. But they quickly understood Hyacinth's arguments when he told them that the support of Irish manufactures would help to save their sons and daughters from the curse of emigration.

'Faith, sir,' said a shopkeeper who kept a few blankets and tweeds among his flour-sacks and porter-barrels, 'since you were talking to the boys last month, I couldn't induce one of them to take the foreign stuff if I was to offer him a s.h.i.+lling along with it.'

CHAPTER XVI

When he returned to Ballymoy after his interview with Mr. Dowling, Hyacinth set himself to fulfil his threat of writing to the _Croppy_.

He spent Sat.u.r.day afternoon and evening in his lodgings with the paper containing the blatant speech spread out before him. He blew his anger to a white heat by going over the evidence of the man's grotesque hypocrisy. He wrote and rewrote his article. It was his first attempt at expressing thought on paper since the days when he sought to satisfy examiners with disquisitions on Dryden's dramatic talent and other topics suited to the undergraduate mind. This was a different business.