The Rebels of Ireland (120 page)

“I was wishing to purchase the land I rent from you.”

“To buy it?”

“The Act allows…”

She gave him a stony look.

“I know about the Act.”

It was a tribute to the effectiveness of Parnell in the London Parliament that not only the Liberals, but even the Tory party had now taken up the case of the Irish tenant. The government now wanted to encourage the tenant to buy his own land; and the latest legislation even offered a government loan to help him do so. If in his heart Fintan resented having to pay anything to recover land that, in his view, had been taken from him in the first place, he wouldn't deny that the terms offered were quite attractive. “Four percent over forty-nine years. Over time that will be less than the rent I'd be paying,” he had calculated. Nor could Mrs. Budge have been surprised that he made the request. All over Ireland, during recent years, land had been changing hands from Protestant landlord to Catholic tenant at a remarkable rate. More than twenty-five thousand tenants had already taken up the government loans.

“I suppose,” she continued quietly, “it's Home Rule you'll be wanting next.”

He was silent. He wouldn't deny it.

Willy looked at the strange lady in her turban, and tried to work out how it was that the open mountain acres he knew and loved so well could depend upon the will of this being from another world in her frightening, spice-laden cocoon. The colour of her eyes was blue. That much seemed familiar. Her hair, and her face itself, it seemed
to him, were drawn back and up into the tight recesses of that turban. Her features carried no expression that he could recognise.

“I will consider the matter, Fintan, and we shall speak in a few days,” she said finally.

Once outside, relieved to be in the fresh air, Willy turned to his father.

“Shall we own our land again?” he asked.

“Perhaps.” His father sighed. “But God knows what passes in that woman's mind.”

After they had gone, Rose Budge sat very still in her chair, thinking. She did not know why Fintan had brought the boy with him, to have the child standing there staring at her with eyes like saucers. Well, what of it? She must concentrate upon the matter in hand. She stared at the bright, intrusive slit of sunlight—the sunbeams, like so many thieves, softly stealing into the warm comfort of her home.

So it had come to this. She did not blame Fintan O'Byrne. It was not he, but the man whom, no doubt, he worshipped, that was the cause of all this. Damned Parnell.

Though they were neighbours and belonged to the same Protestant landowner class, the Budges had never cared for Parnell. “He has an American mother,” her father had always said. “That's probably what's the matter with him.” She herself had been abroad during his parliamentary career, but she had been kept well-informed.

And scandalised. How could it be that Parnell, a Protestant landowner like herself, should so entirely have assumed the mantle of Daniel O'Connell? For that was what Parnell had done when, a dozen years ago he had burst, like a meteor, over the parliamentary sky. True, he could not be the champion of the Catholic Church. But he was the champion of the Catholic tenant and he had a formidable organisation. Moreover, he had taken O'Connell's tactics to new heights, several times holding the balance of power in the
British House of Commons and ruthlessly compelling both parties to legislate for the good of Ireland.

And if Daniel O'Connell had hoped for the eventual Repeal of the Union with England, Parnell had been more blunt. He demanded Home Rule, loudly and firmly; he had even pushed Gladstone to introduce a Home Rule Bill into Parliament. Personally, she had thought the whole thing folly. Even if the Ascendancy families like her own could be cowed or cheated into submission, there were others in Ireland made of sterner stuff. If the London men supposed that the Presbyterians up in Ulster would stand to be ruled by Catholics, they'd have a rude awakening. Lord Randolph Churchill had been correct when he had warned them: “Ulster will fight. And Ulster will be right.” Thank God Gladstone's foolish measure had been smashed by conservative opposition. But that hadn't quietened Parnell. In no time he'd had the Tory government doing everything it could, short of granting independence, to keep the Irish contented. Including this wretched business now of giving Fintan O'Byrne money to buy her out.

“Traitor.” She said the word out loud to the listening room. A man who betrayed his class. Worse: because of him, the whole British Parliament was turning against their own kith and kin, the Irish Ascendancy. To pay the Catholics to buy us out of our homes, where we've been for centuries, and leave us to retire like servants pensioned off—to what? An apartment in Dublin or a suburban villa in England—we who were lords of the wide lands of Ireland? “Traitor.” She said it again, to the fire.

At least, people said, he was a parliamentary man. There were others in Ireland who'd use other means entirely, murder even, to reach their ends. But weren't some of those devils followers of Parnell, too? Some years ago, in Phoenix Park, the Chief Secretary, poor Lord Frederick Cavendish, had been murdered by extremists. At the time, she'd read that Parnell was behind it. Everybody nowadays told her no, it was all a forgery, he'd nothing to do with it. That might be the case. She couldn't say. But he was a villain even so.

He'd been punished, anyway. She wasn't sorry. She'd heard that he'd been living with a woman not his wife, but the estranged wife of another. Mrs. O'Shea, they said, was a nice woman, and her husband had no interest in her. And certainly, those being the circumstances and after all those years, for O'Shea to have divorced her and named Parnell was quite uncalled for. It wasn't what a gentleman would do at all. And it had destroyed the man. The English wouldn't stand for it. Nor would the Catholic Church in Ireland, which had never been so pleased at his being a Protestant in the first place. They'd driven him out of politics. He was destroyed.

It was a poor end, certainly. But she wasn't sorry.

The question now was, what to do with the mess Parnell had created on her own doorstep? What should she do about Fintan O'Byrne?

The next morning, she went down to Wicklow. For this expedition, she did not wear her turban, but a felt flower-pot hat. In Wicklow, she went straight to the offices of her solicitor, Mr. Quinlan Smith. After listening to her carefully, he nodded and asked her a single question.

“Do you want to sell this farm to Fintan O'Byrne?”

“Certainly not.”

“Might I ask why?”

“Because,” she answered truthfully, “it is mine and my family's, and I didn't come halfway round the world just to give it all away.”

“You feel you belong here.”

“Of course I belong here. Where else would I belong?”

“I understand.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Though you might be surprised at how many people, with families just as old, are selling up now.” He paused. “I need hardly tell you that there's no reason for you to sell if you do not wish to.”

“Good.”

The interview could have ended there, but she did not move. He gave her a moment or two, and then gently probed.

“You still feel concern, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“You are concerned that your refusal might cause bad feeling?”

“I'm not afraid of him, if that's what you mean.”

“The thought never occurred to me,” he answered gently.

“I haven't been there for so many years,” she said, a little sadly. “Half the people I used to know are dead. I'm living among strangers, in my own home. But I have to live with them, you see.”

“Indeed.”

“If my husband were here, it would be different. It's a funny feeling: I hardly know Fintan O'Byrne. I remember him as a boy, but I scarcely know what sort of man he is.”

“He has no bad reputation. If he did, I should certainly know.” He considered. “Things have changed in the years of your absence, of course. And I think they will change more. But I am quite sure that, within a little time, you will come to feel yourself as much at home with the people at Rathconan as ever you did before. They are still the same sort of people. Do you wish me to speak to O'Byrne?”

“I think I'd better do it myself.”

“I agree. I shall be in the vicinity of Rathconan, as it happens, next week. Perhaps I might call in at that time.”

She indicated with a nod that this would be gratefully received.

“I should recommend, if I may, that you might care to visit Wicklow from time to time, and Dublin also. There is always plenty to do, and it is an admirable way of keeping in touch with public opinion in these changing times.” He smiled. “Speaking of which, have you heard the latest news? I was just given word of it this morning?”

She shook her head.

“Parnell has died. He'd been sick for some time, as you may know. He died in England, in Brighton, down by the sea. I understand that his wife, that was Mrs. O'Shea, was at his side.” He sighed. “He was only forty-five, you know.”

It was still light when she got back to Rathconan. She sent for Fintan at once. He came, accompanied by the boy. She couldn't imagine why the child was there again.

“I'm sorry, Fintan,” she told him, “but I can't let you have that land. Not at present, anyway.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Budge.”

“Well, there it is.” She nodded, to indicate that she had nothing more to say. Then, as he turned to go, she thought of something. “By the way, I heard in Wicklow today: Parnell is dead.”

“Dead?” He winced as if he had been struck, then bowed his head and left, without any further word.

She watched him. She did not think to look at the boy.

Willy had watched everything carefully. He had seen his father denied his land. Also, it seemed to him, the casual way Mrs. Budge threw the death of Parnell in his face was a deliberate insult to hurt and humiliate him. On the way home, he realised that his father was so close to tears that he did not dare speak to him.

The next day, he heard his father say gloomily to his mother:

“We'll never get our land back until that woman's dead.”

Two weeks later, his father told him:

“You're to go down to your aunt's in Dublin, Willy. You're to go to school down there.”

“But I want to stay at home,” he cried.

“It's for the best. I want you to have an education, Willy. You'll do very well, I know. And you'll be up here all the holidays.”

He could not tell why, but he was sure that his father's interview with Mrs. Budge and his own exile from his home were in some way related.

 

1903