Hyacinth Part 19

Conneally.'

Hyacinth recognised that Mr. Quinn was being beaten at his own game. He had attempted to drive the nuns out of the market by underselling them, and now it appeared that they, too, were prepared to face a loss. It was obvious that their losses must be great, much greater than Mr. Quinn's.

Rumours were rife of large loans raised by the Mother Superior, of mortgages on the factory buildings and the machinery. These stories brought very little consolation, for, as Hyacinth knew, Mr. Quinn was very nearly at the end of his resources. He refused to borrow.

'When I am forced to close up,' he said, 'I shall do so with a clear balance-sheet. I have no wish for bankruptcy.'

'I should like,' said Hyacinth vindictively, 'to see the Reverend Mother reduced to paying a s.h.i.+lling in the pound.'

'I am afraid,' said Mr. Quinn, 'you won't see that. The convent is a branch of an immense organization. No doubt, if it comes to a pinch, funds will be forthcoming.'

'Yes, and they won't draw on their own purse till they have got all they can out of the Congested Districts Board. I have no doubt they are counting on another four thousand pounds to start them clear when they have beaten you.'

One day, quite accidentally, Hyacinth came by a piece of information about the working of the Robeen factory which startled him. He was travelling home by rail. It happened to be Friday, and, as usual in the early summer, the train was crowded with emigrants on their way to Queenstown. The familiar melancholy crowd waited on every platform.

Old women weeping openly and men with faces ridiculously screwed and puckered in the effort to restrain the rising tears clung to their sons and daughters. Pitiful little boxes and carpet bags were piled on the platform. Friends clung to hands outstretched through the carriage-windows while the train moved slowly out. Then came the long mournful wail from those left behind, and the last wavings of farewell.

At the Robeen station the crowd was no less than elsewhere. The carriages set apart for the emigrants were full, and at the last minute two girls were hustled into the compartment where Hyacinth sat. A woman, their mother, mumbled and s...o...b..red over their hands. An old man, too old to be their father, shouted broken benedictions to them. Two young men--lovers, perhaps, or brothers--stood red-eyed, desolate and helpless, without speaking. After the train had started Hyacinth looked at the girls. One of them, a pretty creature of perhaps eighteen years old, wept quietly in the corner of the carriage. Beside her lay her carpet bag and a brown shawl. On her lap was an orange, and she held a crumpled paper bag of biscuits in her hand. There was nothing unusual about her. She was just one instance of heartbreak, the heart-break of a whole nation which loves home as no other people have ever loved it, and yet are doomed, as it seems inevitably, to leave it. She was just one more waif thrown into the whirlpool of the great world to toil and struggle, succeed barrenly or pitifully fail; but through it all, through even the possible loss of faith and ultimate degradation, fated to cling to a love for the gray desolate fatherland. The other girl was different. Hyacinth looked at her with intense interest. She was the older of the two, and not so pretty as her sister. Her face was thin and pale, and a broad scar under one ear showed where a surgeon's knife had cut. She sat with her hands folded on her lap, gazing dry-eyed out of the window beside her. There was no sign of sorrow on her face, nothing but a kind of sulky defiance.

After a while she took the paper bag out of her sister's hand, opened it, and began to eat the gingerbread biscuits it contained. Hyacinth spoke to her, but she turned her head away, and would not answer him.

His voice seemed to rouse the younger sister, who stopped crying and looked at him curiously. He tried again, and this time he spoke in Irish.

At once the younger girl brightened and answered him. Apparently she had no fear that malice could lurk in the heart of a man who spoke her own language. In a few minutes she was chatting to him as if he were an old friend.

He learnt that the two girls were on their way to New York. They had a sister there who had sent them the price of their tickets. Yes, the sister was in a situation, was getting good wages, and had clothes 'as grand as a lady's.' She had sent home a photograph at Christmas-time, which their mother had shown all round the parish. These two were to get situations also as soon as they arrived. Oh yes, there was no doubt of it: Bridgy had promised. There were four of them left at home--three boys and a girl. No doubt in time they would all follow Bridgy to America--all but Seumas; he was to have the farm. No, the girls could not get married, because their father was too poor to give them fortunes. There was nothing for them but to go to America. But their mother had not wanted them to go. The clergy and the nuns were against the girls going. Indeed, they nearly had them persuaded to send Bridgy's money back.

'But Onny was set on going.'

She glanced at her sister in the corner of the carriage. Hyacinth turned to her.

'Why do you want to leave Ireland?'

But Onny remained silent, sulky, at it seemed. It was the younger girl who answered him.

'They say it's a fine life they have out there. There's good money to be earned, and mightn't we be coming home some day with a fortune?'

'But aren't you sorry to leave Ireland?'

Again he looked at the elder girl, and this time was rewarded with a flash of defiant bitterness from her eyes.

'Sorry, is it? No, but I'm glad!'

'Onny's always saying that there was nothing to be earned in the factory. And she got more than the rest of us. Wasn't she the first girl that Sister Mary Aloysius picked out of the school when the young lady from England came over to teach us? She was the best worker they had.'

'It's true what she says,' said Onny. 'I was the best worker they had. I worked for them for three years, and all I was getting at the end of it was six s.h.i.+llings a week. Why would I be working for that when I might be getting wages like Bridgy's in America? What sense would there be in it?'

'But why did you work for such wages?'

'Well, now,' said the younger girl, 'how could we be refusing the Reverend Mother when she came round the town herself, and gave warning that we'd all be wanted?'

'There's few,' continued Onny, without noticing her sister, 'that earned as much as I did. Many a girl works there and has no more than one and ninepence to take home at the end of the week.'

Hyacinth began to understand how it was that Mr. Quinn was being hopelessly beaten. This was no struggle between two trade rivals, to be won by the side with the longer purse. Nor was it simply a fight between an independent manufacturer and a firm fed with Government bounties. Mr.

Quinn's rival could count on an unlimited supply of labour at starvation wages, while he had to hire men and women at the market value of their services. He had been sorry for the two girls when they got into the train. Now he felt almost glad that they were leaving Ireland. It appeared that they had certainly chosen the wiser part.

He arrived at home dejected, and sat down beside the fire in his room to give himself up to complete despair. He found no hope anywhere. Irish patriotism, so he saw it, was a matter of words and fine phrases. No one really believed in it or would venture anything for it. Politics was a game at which sharpers cheated each other and the people. The leaders were bold only in sordid personal quarrels. The ma.s.s of the people were utterly untouched by the idea of nationality, in earnest about nothing but huckstering and petty gains. Over all was the grip of a foreign bureaucracy and a selfish Church tightening slowly, squeezing out the nation's life, grasping and holding fast its wealth. No man any longer made any demand except to be allowed to earn what would buy whisky enough to fuddle him into temporary forgetfulness of the present misery and the imminent tyranny.

The slatternly maid-servant who brought him his meals and made his bed tapped at the door.

'Please, sir, Jimmy Loughlin's after coming with a letter from Mr.

Quinn, and he's waiting to know if you'll go.'

Hyacinth read the note, which asked him to call on his employer that afternoon.

'Tell him I'll be there.'

'Will you have your dinner before you go? The chops is in the pan below.

Or will I keep them till you come back?'

'Oh, I've time enough. Bring them as soon as they're cooked, and for goodness' sake see that the potatoes are properly boiled.'

He took up a great English weekly paper, with copies of which Canon Beecher supplied him at irregular intervals, and propped it against the dish-cover while he ate. The article which caught his attention was headed 'Angels in Connaught.' It contained an idealized account of the work of the Robeen nuns, from whose shoulders it seemed to the writer likely that wings would soon sprout. There was a description of the once miserable cabins now transformed into homesteads so comfortable that English labourers would not disdain them. The people shared in the elevation of their surroundings. Men and women, lately half-naked savages, starved and ignorant, had risen in the scale of civilization and intelligence to a level which almost equalled that of a Hamps.h.i.+re villager. The double stream of emigration to the United States and migration to the English harvest-fields was stopped. An earthly paradise had been created in a howling wilderness by the self-denying labours of the holy ladies, aided by the statesmanlike liberality of the Congested Districts Board. There was another page of the article, but Hyacinth could stand no more.

He stood up and glanced at his watch. It was already nearly five o'clock. He pushed his way down the street, where the country-people, having completed their week's marketing, were loading donkeys on the footpath or carts pushed backwards against the kerbstone. Women dragged their heavily-intoxicated husbands from the public-houses, and girls, damp and bedraggled, stood in groups waiting for their parents. He turned into the gloomy archway of the mill, unlocked the iron gate, and crossed the yard into the Quinns' garden. The lamp burned brightly in the dining-room, and he could see Mrs Quinn in her chair by the fireside sewing. Her children sat on the rug at her feet. He saw their faces turned up to hers, gravely intent. No doubt she was telling them some story. He stood for a minute and watched them, while the peaceful joy of the scene entered into his heart. This, no doubt, a home full of such love and peace, was the best thing life had got to give. It was G.o.d's most precious benediction. 'Lo, thus shall a man be blessed who feareth the Lord.' He turned and pa.s.sed on to the door. The servant showed him in, not, as he expected, to the sitting-room he had just gazed at, but to Mr. Quinn's study.

It was a desolate chamber. A plain wooden desk like a schoolmaster's stood in one corner, and upon it a feeble lamp. A bookcase surmounted a row of cupboards along one wall. Its contents--Hyacinth had often looked over them--were a many-volumed encyclopaedia, Macaulay's 'History of England,' Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs,' a series ent.i.tled 'Heroes of the Reformation,' and some bound volumes of a trade journal. Above the chimneypiece hung two trout-rods, a landing-net, and an old gun. The grate was tireless. It was a room obviously not loved by its owner.

Neither pleasure nor comfort was looked for in it. It was simply a place of escape from the attractions of quiet ease when business overflowed the proper office hours. Mr. Quinn rose from his desk when Hyacinth entered.

'I am very glad to see you,' he said; 'I want to have a talk with you.'

Hyacinth waited while he arranged and rearranged some papers on the desk in front of him. Mr. Quinn, although he had specially sent for Hyacinth, seemed in no hurry to get to the subject of the interview. When he did speak, it was evident from his tone that the important topic was still postponed.

'How did you get on this week?'

Hyacinth had nothing good to report. He took from his pocket the note-book in which he entered his orders, and went over it. It contained an attenuated list. Moreover, the harvest had been bad, and old debts very difficult to collect. Mr. Quinn listened, apparently not very attentively, and when the reading was over said:

'What you report this week is simply a repet.i.tion of the story of the last six months. I did not expect it to be different. It makes the decision I have to make a little more inevitable, that is all. Mr. Conneally, we have been very good friends, and since you have been in my employment I have been satisfied with you in every way. Now I am unable to employ you any longer. I am giving up my business.'

Hyacinth made an effort to speak, but Mr. Quinn held up his hand and silenced him.

'This week,' he continued, 'I received news which settled the matter for me. Jameson and Thorpe, the big drapers in Dublin, were my best customers for certain goods. Last Monday they wrote that they had an offer of blankets at a figure a long way below mine. I didn't believe that articles equal in quality to mine could be produced at the price, and wrote a hint to that effect. I received--nothing could have been more courteous--a sample of the blankets offered. Well, I admit that it was at least equal to what I could supply in every way. I wrote again asking as a favour to be supplied with the name of the competing firm. I got the answer to-day. Mr. Thorpe wrote himself. The Robeen convent has undersold me.'

Hyacinth made another attempt to speak.

'Let me finish,' said Mr. Quinn. 'I had foreseen, of course, that this was coming. I have no more capital to fall back upon. I do not mean to run into debt. There is nothing for me but to dismiss my employees and shut up.'

'Yes,' said Hyacinth. 'And then----'

He knew he had no right to ask a question about the future, but the thought of Mrs. Quinn and her children as he had seen them in the dining-room almost forced him to inquire what was to happen to them. A spasm of extreme pain crossed Mr. Quinn's face.

'You are thinking of my wife. It will be hard--yes, very hard. She loved this place, her friends here, her garden, and all the quiet, peaceful life we have lived. Well, there is to be an end of it. But don't look so desperate.' He forced himself to smile as he spoke. 'We shall not starve or go to the workhouse. I have a knowledge of woollen goods if I have nothing else, and I dare say I can get an appointment as foreman or traveller for some big drapery house. But I may not be reduced to that.

There is a secretary wanted just now in the office of one of the Dublin charitable societies. I mean to apply for the post. Canon Beecher and our Bishop are both members of the committee, and I am sure will do their best for me. The salary is not princely--a hundred and twenty pounds a year, I think. But there, I ought not to be talking all this time about myself. I must try and do something for you.'