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By Root 1127 0

’s nothing I can say to console him, I realize that. All the same I must speak to him. He must be told that Edward acted only for himself. What he did was inhuman and intolerable...I tried to get him to leave with the twins but he refused, yet perhaps I didn’t try hard enough to persuade him. I should have realized what he was up to, but I never thought...For the past few weeks he has been full of hatred and despair. I tried to get him to leave...He’s a little mad, I’m sure. Why should I be responsible for everything he does? The man is no concern of mine. This morning he accused me of being disloyal! It’s intolerable...and yet what can I do? People must be told that Edward is no longer able to control himself. I’ll see that he goes away, of course, whether he wants to or not. Clearly he can’t stay here. The boy’s father mustn’t be allowed to think of his son as a martyr of the British, that would be unjust. What hope is there for Ireland if people are allowed to behave in this way? That poor boy was the victim of a private hatred and despair...I’m sure you understand me, Doctor. If you don’t understand me, nobody will!”

The old man sighed and shook his head, raising a feeble hand to pat the Major’s arm. But he had nothing to say.

Later, while waiting for the doctor, the Major stood beside the shattered statue of Queen Victoria and talked with the D.I., whose name was Murdoch, a curiously dry, pedantic man with a crooked smile which lit up one side of his face in wrinkles, leaving the other perfectly smooth. He had reacted to the death of the Sinn Feiner with equanimity, if not indifference. At most he had betrayed a mild, as it were, official satisfaction that a criminal had received punishment. The Major conceived a dislike for him and turned his attention to the statue.

It had been damaged but not completely destroyed. Although a gaping hole had appeared in the horse’s flanks, the august cavalier had managed to remain in the saddle, leaning acutely sideways in the manner of a bareback rider in a circus ring. The blast had immodestly lifted her steel skirts a few inches, he noticed.

“Gelignite and a coffee tin,” explained Murdoch at his elbow. “A temperamental explosive which kills the Shinners and British with perfect impartiality. In Irish they call the stuff ‘Bas gan Sagart’—‘Death without the priest.’” And while one half of Murdoch’s face remained smooth and solemn, the other half lit up with wrinkled glee.

Later again the Major sat for a long time in the room of the priest, Father O’Byrne, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence. The room was very small, dark and cluttered with books. The Major was abominably tired. He frequently looked at his watch, but the hours of the morning refused to pass.

“Edward Spencer is a coward and a murderer, Major... You’re a poor sort of man that you’d take it on yourself to make excuses for him.”

The Major was abominably tired. Yet he was fascinated by the priest’s threadbare cassock and by the hatred in his eyes. At length he lifted his eyes from the Major’s face to the crucifix on the wall. To the Major the steadiness of this gaze on the crucifix seemed blind, inhuman, fanatical. The yellowish naked body, the straining ribs, the rolling eyes and parted lips, the languorously draped arms and long trailing fingers, the feet crossed to economize on nails, the cherry splash of blood from the side...

“That boy got what he deserved,” he said harshly. “I only hope it may serve as an example to some of the other young cut-throats who are laying Ireland to waste!”

And with that he turned and strode out of the house, slamming the door with a crash.

In the weeks which had elapsed since the night of the ball the health of Mr Norton had declined steadily. It was hard to say whether this was because the poor man had over-exerted himself on the dance-floor or whether it was merely a natural and inevitable decline of the faculties. In any event, he was now confined to bed, his mind wandering indiscriminately between mathematics and the boudoir, sometimes chuckling to himself, sometimes