‘What a beautiful picture,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘A serene and beguiling lie,’ Yearling answered. Father O’Connor looked surprised. Yearling, with unexpected gravity, said:
‘I sometimes despair of this city of ours.’
‘Its poverty?’
‘Its contradictions.’
‘I work in its back streets every day and when I lie down to sleep I am conscious of its squalor being on my doorstep. But I don’t despair.’
‘You have one eye fixed on heaven,’ Yearling said, ‘try looking at it with both eyes sometimes.’
‘I assure you I’ve looked at it closely.’ Father O’Connor spoke the truth. He did not despair. But there were days after days of depression, of feeling lost in a nightmare. The excuse of business or good manners brought him now and then to the Bradshaws. They were welcome retreats.
‘What do you think of Larkin’s sentence?’
A little confused at what appeared to be a sudden change of subject, Father O’Connor hesitated before asking: ‘Has he been sentenced?’
‘To twelve months with hard labour, it’s in today’s paper.’ Yearling held out the paper he had been reading over his whiskey.
Father O’Connor, remembering having bought a paper himself at some stage, searched vaguely and found it stuck in his pocket, unopened and, until now, completely forgotten.
‘I hadn’t seen it,’ he explained.
‘Savage,’ Yearling pronounced.
Father O’Connor spread out his hands.
‘If he was dishonest . . .’ he began.
‘He collected money from one city and gave it to the wretches who were on strike in another. The only case against him is that the money should have been sent on first to Liverpool. Where’s the dishonesty?’
‘It was irregular . . .’ Father O’Connor suggested.
‘If it was, who are collecting for his defence? The very people he’s accused of defrauding. One of them shook a box under my nose less than an hour ago.’
That was what Timothy Keever had told him. Fitzpatrick had been collecting for Larkin—he remembered now. ‘I haven’t followed the trial very closely.’ As he said so he remembered a detail which had shocked him early on. It was a newspaper interview in which Mr. Sexton, the general secretary who had come over from Liverpool to give evidence against Larkin, confessed that he had had to go through the streets armed with a revolver.
‘They’ve bungled,’ Mr. Yearling said, ‘and bungled badly. First they delay the trial for two years. Now they convict him on a technicality and give him twelve months’ hard. They’re determined to make a popular martyr of the most dangerous man of our time. They’ll have the dregs of the city flocking to him.’
‘They seem to be flocking to him already,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘That is no reason why the law should become his recruiting sergeant.’
‘Is that what you meant when you said you despair of the city?’
‘I despair of the law and the Government,’ Yearling confessed, ‘and of the men who are supposed to be my business colleagues. They’re fools—all of them.’
They had stopped at Booterstown. On their left the tide was advancing towards the wall, a thin edge of foam along its border. A light breeze found its way into the carriage. It tasted of salt. Looking across towards Howth Hill, Father O’Connor said: ‘Men bungle and make mistakes. But you must at least agree that the city is beautiful.’
‘It depends on where you live and how much you earn, doesn’t it?’
‘I think we are talking of different things.’
‘What is your answer to poverty?’ Yearling challenged. He was not yet prepared to leave the subject alone.
Father O’Connor sighed and after a moment of reflection said: ‘From those who have wealth, charity for the sake of God; from those who suffer poverty, resignation for His sake also.’
‘Marx has a different answer. He says the expropriators must be expropriated. That means me,’ Yearling pointed out.
‘We condemn socialism, of course.’
‘I have read your condemnations, Father. But for all their hat-raising to you, I am beginning to doubt that they will always listen to you. Does that sound offensive?’
‘Not at all. We’ve pointed out already that Larkin is a dangerous man; he’s a self-professed socialist. He doesn’t hesitate to criticise the priests, yet the people still help him and listen to him.’
‘And you will leave it like that?’
‘I am not the Hierarchy,’ Father O’Connor said, with a modest smile. ‘My duty is to be obedient.’
‘You broke Parnell,’ Yearling suggested.
‘I wonder did we?’ Father O’Connor said. ‘Do you not think it was his own party that broke him? After all, many of the people continued to follow him.’
‘You condemned him,’ Yearling insisted. ‘Yet, as you say, many of the people remained loyal to him. They didn’t listen to you—that’s my point.’
Did Yearling speak with sympathy of Parnell because he, like the fallen chief, was a Protestant. Why was he questioning about Larkin? Did he wish the Church to condemn openly and at once? Or was it possible that Larkin’s methods had his sympathy? Surely not. If the Church commanded absolute obedience Yearling would say the country was priest-ridden; if it did not he would taunt the Church for its failure. A note of sadness crept into Father O’Connor’s voice as he answered, generally:
‘There are other, more important matters in which they sometimes do not listen to us either. That is why we have to spend so much of our time hearing confessions.’
To his surprise Yearling began to laugh.
‘Have I said something amusing?’
‘You are like all the others of your cloth,’ Yearling explained. ‘I point out the very real threat of social revolution to you and you are only concerned about it because it may, perhaps, be a sin.’
‘Surely,’ Father O’Connor said earnestly, ‘that is the only thing which is worth being concerned about.’
At Kingstown Father O’Connor was persuaded to agree to drop in on Yearling when he had concluded his visit to the Bradshaws. They parted. Father O’Connor allowed himself the pleasure of a walk along the front. The elegance of the houses pleased him, the frequent carriages, the manifestations of polite living. It was a world in which he had once held an honoured place. He turned into the back streets, where the passage of a couple of years had left their less kindly traces. Mr. Bradshaw’s set of houses near the harbour, he discovered, were now in need of support and had great beams slanting against them to prop the front walls. But their poverty was not like that of the central city; their squalor kept itself to itself. The township remained elegant.
He refused Mrs. Bradshaw’s invitation to stay for dinner, and explained that he was already committed. As an alternative she was happy to have him accept tea and scones. She hoped he was contented still in his parish and wondered why he seemed to have abandoned the relief fund idea. She had thought it such an excellent one. Father O’Connor explained that it had not proved so straightforward a matter as, in his early enthusiasm, he had believed it to be. He would not vex her with details. She thought his uneasiness was a sign that their efforts had fallen short of his expectations. He assured her that that was not the case.
‘Our help was so small it wasn’t worth while,’ she suggested.
‘Everything is worth while,’ Father O’Connor insisted, ‘even the smallest thing we do.’
‘I’ve often thought of visiting myself,’ Mrs. Bradshaw confided, ‘but my husband is very much against it.’