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It is also pleasant, very pleasant, to be in the company of Lady Moyne. The prospect of the visit was as I have said disturbing. I prefer monotony. But if things must fall splashing into the pool of my life, I would as soon they took the form of visits to Castle Affey as any other. The next thing which happened that morning was a deputation.
"If you really feel it to be your duty," I said, "to go round the district working up " "You'll have heard of the Home Rule Bill, maybe," said Crossan. I had heard of it, several times. After my visit to Castle Affey I even understood it, though it was certainly a measure of great complexity. I think I appreciated the orthodox Protestant view of it since the day I talked to McConkey.
But my mind only became more active. I got up at last and covered six sheets of the Castle Affey note paper with a character sketch of Conroy. I maintained that he was wrong in supposing that a capacity for daring is the secret of becoming rich. Bob Power, for instance, is as daring as any man living and certainly loves risk for its own sake, but Bob will not die a rich man. Nor will Conroy.
I received a letter from Lady Moyne in which she invited me to spend three days during the following week at Castle Affey. Castle Affey is Lord Moyne's chief Irish place. He has three others in various parts of the country and one in England. It is about ten miles from my home.
We'll get across to Stranraer this evening, and I'll have a special train and be in London to-morrow morning." "London!" said Moyne. "But why London? Surely Castle Affey " "I must see the Prime Minister early to-morrow. He must be persuaded he must be forced if necessary to telegraph orders to Belfast. Don't you realize?
"Her ladyship must be got away," he said. "And your daughter, Kilmore. She's here, isn't she? This town will be no place for women to-morrow. Luckily I have the car. You'll take them, won't you? Castle Affey will be the best place for the present." "What are you going to do yourself?" I asked. We passed through the door and down the flight of steps to the street.
She did not, of course, resign the position of Lady Corless. It is doubtful whether she could have got twenty-five shillings a week if she had. The Government does not seem to have contemplated the case of unemployed wives. What she did was to dismiss Bridie Malone, cook at Castle Affey before her marriage.
As a rule this subject moves the Dean to stridency; but the heavy magnificence of Castle Affey crushed him into a kind of whisper. This encouraged me. If the Dean had been in his usual condition of vigour, I should not have ventured to do anything except agree with him heartily.
"The point is," said Babberly, "that if you are on the platform it will be quite clear I mean to say as it's generally understood that you're inclined to Liberalism " I began to understand a little. Last time I was at Castle Affey Lady Moyne made a great point of my associating myself with her party in opposing Home Rule.
"Sons of unconquerable colonists, men of our own race and blood," was balanced by "hooligans with a taste for rioting so long as rioting can be indulged in with no danger to their own skins." We were interrupted in this pleasant work by the arrival of a letter from Lady Moyne. She summoned me invited would be quite the wrong word to Castle Affey. I went, of course. Babberly was there.
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