He felt even more like a schoolteacher who has lost all rapport with his pupils. He felt that he was probably making things worse.
‘Is that what you came here to say?’ Mick was almost on his feet. ‘Hand ourselves over to the authorities, as you call them? We’d rather die.’
‘I don’t think you do want that really,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald affably. ‘You’re young, for heaven’s sake. You’ve got your whole life in front of you. Think of all the wine and women and song waiting for you in the years ahead. Give yourselves a chance, lads.’
‘The wine and the women and the song may appeal to people like you from the Big Houses,’ said Seamus. ‘We have a higher cause, the rights of the Irish people to their freedom, the rights of the Irish people to own the land of Ireland, the rights of the Irish people to govern themselves in their own way.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Johnny, ‘but you won’t be able to advance that cause very much if you’re in a wooden box. By the time you become a hero and a martyr in Ireland you don’t know about it, it’s too late, you’ve gone to join your ancestors in the cemetery up on the hill.’
‘What about the two of you?’ said Seamus. ‘Intelligent men, well educated, plenty of talent. And you’re Irish. Why do you run around doing the bidding of those people in the Big Houses? Why are you trying to support the crumbling Protestant Ascendancy? For I tell you, I am certain that I will see it disappear in my lifetime. The struggle may be long, it may be bloody, or the whole pack of them may fall in like a pack of cards, but their day is passing. I’m sure of it. Why support all that if you’re Irish? Wolfe Tone rose above his Protestant heritage to advance the cause of liberty in Ireland. Charles Stewart Parnell was a bloody Protestant landlord in County Wicklow, for Christ’s sake, and he nearly brought us Home Rule. Why can’t you join the right side?’
‘Perhaps we’re too old,’ said Powerscourt, nodding at Johnny by his side on the sofa, ‘and perhaps you’re too young. I was brought up into one world, it may be passing now, I grant you, but it was the world my parents lived in. It was the only one I knew. You are growing up in a different world. Each fresh generation embraces a cause, certain with all the certainty of the young that their mission is just and all earlier missions misguided and wrong. As they grow older, that generation is surprised in its turn by the fact that their children espouse different causes, take up another mission. Their creed, their beliefs that they held so strongly in their youth are now ancient history. They’ve been washed away, like sandcastles on a beach. So it goes on, down the generations, like the rising and the setting of the sun or the passing of the seasons. I don’t apologize for my beliefs. I don’t condemn you for yours. All I would remind you is that you’re going to be better placed to advance them if you’re alive rather than if you’re dead.’
Powerscourt suddenly realized that he had another problem. Pride, the pride of the young, the pride that would not let them lose face. He remembered himself as a young man, willing to argue on long after he had lost because he did not want to back down. He suspected it would be almost impossible for Seamus to agree to his requests. He would only show himself to be a leader without courage, a general who surrendered without a fight. He tried to find a way to ease his path but he couldn’t do it. There were no inducements he could think of offering.
He tried all the same. ‘Perhaps you’d like to take a break from our conversation and confer with your colleagues elsewhere in the house? Give yourselves a bit of time to think? As long as you go on holding those two women, I think your position is very difficult. If you start a fight here and they are injured or killed you’re in a desperate state, Seamus, you really are.’
It was Mick who replied. ‘Weasel words!’ he cried. ‘Time to think? You people have had centuries to think and you haven’t come up with anything better for Ireland than croquet on the lawn and hunting six days a week in the winter. You’re a bloody disgrace, the pair of you!’
Seamus was boxed in. He could not, Powerscourt knew, give way now in face of the defiance of his friend. Powerscourt felt sick inside.
‘I have made my mind up,’ said Seamus finally with an air of slight reluctance as if he might have behaved differently on his own. ‘Thank you for coming. Your offer is rejected. One of my men will escort you to the front door. The truce will end half an hour from now.’
This is not the best of times, Powerscourt said to himself, it is the worst of times. It is not the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness. Suddenly he remembered reading Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities at the age of fourteen, lying on the grass in the summer at Powerscourt House, oblivious to the noises of his sisters, and weeping uncontrollably at the end.
‘Perhaps I could make another proposal,’ he said firmly.
‘And what is that?’ replied Seamus.
‘Take no bloody notice,’ cried Mick, ‘it’ll just be another piece of Protestant trickery!’
‘My proposal, quite simply, is this. You let the two ladies go. They must have suffered enough by now. Johnny and I replace them as your hostages. You lose nothing. You still hold a couple of hostages of some value to the authorities here and in England.’
‘Just let me make sure I understand you, Lord Powerscourt, I find it hard to comprehend. We let the women go. You volunteer to replace them. Is that right?’
‘It is.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Seamus. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Powerscourt.
‘This time I do need to talk to the others,’ said Seamus, ‘I think I may have to put it to the vote. Wait here. Don’t try anything stupid.’
So, Powerscourt said to himself, their fate was to be decided by half a dozen twenty-year-olds, their heads probably filled with the nationalist rhetoric of the Christian Brothers and the wild songs of rebel Ireland. He took comfort in one thought. He did not think that these young men would have felt happy holding female hostages. They might have rejected orthodox religion or they might have not, but the Marian cult was probably stronger in Ireland than in any other country in Europe. They had been looking at statues of the Virgin Mary by the roadside, paintings of her on the walls of convent and schoolroom, huge representations with halo and sanctity on the altars of their churches, further icons no doubt displayed in their own homes since before they could walk. She was everywhere. Reverence for her was instilled into every generation. The young men would probably be relieved to be rid of the two women. Then he realized to his horror what else the Marian cult meant. Seamus and Mick would have fewer scruples killing men. Especially Protestant men.
Johnny strolled over to the window and stared out at the lake. Powerscourt took a close interest in a stuffed badger standing to attention in another glass case. They did not speak. Suddenly Powerscourt remembered the system of hand signals they had learnt in India, a private language without words. With their backs to the door so they could not be observed, they ran through a bewildering variety of gestures involving hands and feet, fingers in a variety of combinations, slight movements of the feet. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. Their revision class was complete. Johnny tried to work out how many of the Major’s troopers he could see, hiding in the woods. Powerscourt wondered if indeed it was a far far better thing they were doing now than they had ever done, if it might be a far far better rest they were going to than they had ever known. Half an hour had gone now. Powerscourt found himself wondering how the Major would behave if their offer were accepted. He hoped he would be calm in making his plans and ruthless in carrying them out. Forty minutes. Powerscourt found himself thinking of Lady Lucy in her wide-brimmed hat out on Killary Harbour so very very long ago now. He wondered what she was doing. The door opened to reveal Seamus and the redhead who had opened the door.