Chapter Eight

ADAM LOOKS BACKWARDS

ADAM wondered why Father Ignatius so suddenly departed or would have wondered had he allowed himself to doubt that saintly man's word. He felt the priest was shocked: but he did not appear to be shocked by him; for Adam, opening the door for him, was patted affectionately on the head and in the gentlest tone admonished to keep on being a good boy. Seemingly the Church did not hold the sitting of a young male in a married woman's lap to be a mortal sin. Perhaps Father Ignatius blamed the Marchesa. That, Adam felt, was not altogether fair : he had wished the Marchesa to take notice of and even, perhaps, to caress him, although he had not been prepared for the form which her endearments had taken. Still, he was quite sure that her caresses were as parental as that of any other elderly person: they had in them nothing reminiscent of Caroline Brady or even Josephine O'Meagher. The lightest touch of Barbara's finger-tip burnt hotter than the Marchesa's kiss.

'I frightened your holy man away,' the Marchesa was saying as Adam re-entered the room.

'Are you proud of that?' Mr Macarthy asked drily. She shot a tempestuous glance at him, 'Do you think I ought to be ashamed?'

'I think you ought to be ashamed of being silly,' Mr Macarthy answered, and silenced her retort with a wave of his hand: 'We are discussing something more important than even our own love affairs.'

'I am not sure,' Dr Hillingdon-Ryde argued, 'that there is anything more important than love.'

The Marchesa turned to him gratefully, 'How perfectly ripping of you to say that!'

The minister bowed deferentially, but Mr Macarthy insisted, despite a Hear, Hear! from Mr Behre, echoed by Mr O'Meagher, 'At the present moment we are discussing a Strike which involves our daily bread. I am more interested in my own daily bread than in other persons' daily heart-burns.'

'I protest,' said Dr Hillingdon-Ryde, 'I protest.' But the Marchesa, more sensibly, replied, albeit with a pout, 'You never understood me in the least. But, anyhow, go on with your beastly old Strike.'

'It is not my strike,' Mr Macarthy replied. "If I had my way there would be no strike. But, since there is one, I'm prepared to stake my all on seeing, firstly, that the men are not beaten, and, secondly, that they are not encouraged to take such risks lightly again.'

'I am entirely with you,' said Dr Ryde. 'I think you are, it may be, right,' declared Herr Behre. But Mr O'Meagher shook his head: 'The Castle is behind all this trouble. It's a trick to get the Irish proletariat into the grip of the English Labour party: so that they'll put their bellies-I beg your pardon, Marchesa-their stomachs . . .'

'Say bellies, and don't be an idiot,' the Marchesa broke in.

Their... their whatever you may call 'ems before their country,' Mr O'Meagher eloquently perorated.

'What is the use of your country if it won't support you?' Mr Macarthy inquired.

'That's a question for a Macarthy to ask an O'Meagher!' protested the Laisridere.

'I should not ask it if it were not,' Mr Macarthy declared.

'Would you blame Sweet Granuaile . . .' Mr O'Meagher commenced, but Mr Macarthy cut him. short, 'I'd blame the canting jackass who invented her. I've no more patience with silly patriots than I have with silly lovers.'

'Are you sure you were never a silly lover yourself?' the Marchesa blurted indignantly.

"To be sure I was,' Mr Macarthy gently replied, 'And a silly patriot too. And a silly everything under the sun. And have a vast and inexhaustible fund of silliness in me still. . . But at least I do aim at the mark of common sense, and do not consider it a meritorious deed to appear a bigger fool than I am.'

...

Mr O'Meagher thundered with a triumphant laugh: 'I'd rather look a bigger fool than I am than be a bigger fool than I look'; but on Mr Macarthy replying that they need not discuss impossibilities, he fell abruptly silent.

Adam looked pityingly at Josephine's father: his naturally bright and jolly face had taken on the gloom of one brooding o'er ancient wrong. At times he threw his host a glance almost of hate; and yet, Adam knew that few loved and admired Mr Macarthy more than did Mr O'Meagher. Adam thought it silly of Mr O'Meagher to behave like that: silly and babyish unworthy of Josephine's father: he was positively making faces at his host, you might almost say putting out his tongue. . . . Now was it to be understood why Mrs O'Meagher, despite her lesser intelligence, laid down the law at Capua Terrace!

. . And yet he, Adam himself, had been making faces at his guardian a little while ago, and only relinquished that occupation when disarmed by a smile. What was it gave this funny old fogey the double power to wound and salve with two successive flashes of his eye. The minister, rising to go, towered above him, massive, ponderously magnificent, a perfect figure of a healthy, amiable, Samson. A few feet

away was Herr Behre, as tall as Dr Ryde and as straight, but gaunt and haggard, colourless of skin and beard: an ancient Daniel. Both looked towards Mr Macarthy, Adam thought, as he had once seen a pair of Guinness's dray horses look at their driver: as it were affectionately curious of the use to which he would next put their great limbs.

It seemed to Adam, as he gazed at the trio, that he was fonder of Dr Ryde and Herr Behre than he was of Mr Macarthy: just as he was really fonder of the dray horses with their deferential eyes than of their master, who, though he might never whip them, yet had it always in his power to do so. Adam felt that Mr Macarthy, though the mildest spoken person he had ever met, would cut a man in two with a whip if his intellect prompted him to that solution of a problem he thought of matter. On the other hand,

he never teased you with a sight of the whip. Indeed, he spoke as though whips had no existence even in his thoughts. In that he differed even from Father Innocent, who palpably dreaded punishment, though more for the sake of others than for himself.

His mind went back to the first day he had sat in that same room with Herr Behre, Mr O'Meagher and their host . . . it was barely six months ago, and yet how completely his world had altered since then

the most vital moment of his life had been that when Mr Macarthy had brought him to the window to let the spring sun fall upon his face while he asked him whether he was willing to trust him, he remembered the very words as they looked in each other's eyes: 'Do you feel you could trust me as you trusted

Father Innocent?' and how he had recalled his ancient jealousy because he had first seen him in a photograph with Josephine sitting in his lap, and how Mr Macarthy went on because of his silence, 'I don't want you to trust me without question .. but so

far that I can trust you in turn . to do nothing ... behind my back,' and how he, Adam, at long length had answered firmly that he could trust him

that he was sure of that . . . yes, and he had been sure of it ever since.

It is possible that, as he walked back with Herr Behre that spring night six months ago from Mountjoy Square, Adam saw his future through too rosy spectacles. It is possible that he thought the new guardianship would weigh lightly on his shoulders, and that at thirteen he would be even freer than he was in the period between his father's death and the rule of Father Muldoon, S.J. It is possible that he fancied himself already a grown man then. If so, he was undeceived; for Mr Macarthy had placed him in leading-strings from which there had been no breaking away. Indeed, it was now, as he believed himself to be on the point of leaving childhood behind, he found himself for the first time consistently treated as a child. Not that Mr Macarthy was wanting in respect for him if hardly so flattering as Herr Behre and Mr O'Meagher, he was as punctilious and perhaps more urbane than either. But he had perfectly clear-cut ideas as to what Adam ought to do, and, in the absence of equally clear objections on Adam's part, he saw that it was done.

Adam's soul was still, in those early days of his guardianship, hot with indignation from the force of Miss Gannon's assault upon his person. He almost demanded that his guardian should allow him to seek another lodging; but Mr Macarthy merely laughed at the story of the battery, and came round to St George's Place to interview her... . . Adam was tempted to rebellion to see them part friends. "That will be all right,' Mr Macarthy said; 'Miss Gannon may have a dirty temper, but it's the cleanest house of its kind I've seen in Dublin; also, she's honest and, within her limitations, well-meaning.'

A.C.

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