Читать книгу Ireland in Travail онлайн

44 страница из 68

“Would you sooner deal with the women on the other side?” I asked.

“Oh no; oh, not at all. Oh, nothing like that about me. I know the other sort, too well I know them. You meet ’em at the top of the landing when you and your merry men dash into a house full of beans. Oh, I know the sort. They’d bite a man in the tonsils before he had his collar on in the morning.”

“D’you raid houses?”

“That’s me. That’s me in the cold dark night. That’s unfortunately me. I’m always getting myself into some trouble or other. As soon as I’ve done with one stunt I say, Never again. But I get rested; I get full of beans; I grow full of joy. On a fatal day, six months ago, I met a pal. ‘What are you doin’, old bean?’ he said. ‘Come to Ireland. Come and chase Shinners. Wonderful people, Shinners. All believe in the soap boycott. It’s money for nothing.’

“Money for nothing! I felt full of joy. And here I am up all night and all day, and feeling like death.”

“As bad as that?”

“Oh, terrible! Out every night, out all night long, hail and rain and frost. Rushing up stairs, expecting a bullet on every landing. Tearing into terrible slums where men and women and children all sleep in the same bed, and you come away with the itch, and where you have to crawl about with your hand to your nose looking for patriots. And they told me it was money for nothing. And then, in the small hours, you stagger back to bed and find an Irish patriot leaning against the door, and you dodge by with your gun under your coat pointing at him, and he swings about with his gun under his coat, and neither of you has the nerve to shoot the other. Oh, it’s money for nothing, and the life fills a man full of joy!” He beat his mouth with his handkerchief, and muttered, “My God, my God, my God!”