General John Regan

A. Birmingham George

Description

James Owen Hannay was an Irish clergyman who wrote dozens of novels, stories and plays under the pen name "George A. Birmingham." General John Regan is a sharp satirical play about a charming huckster who spearheads a campaign to honor a purported local hero by erecting a statue in his honor in the small Irish village of his birth. The drama hit too close to home when it was first staged in Ireland -- locals rioted to protest the perceived slight against the Irish people.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776580330
• Langue: English

Extrait

GENERAL JOHN REGAN
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GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM
 
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General John Regan First published in 1913 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-033-0 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-034-7 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX
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TO CHARLES H. HAWTREY who has allowed me to offer this story to him in memory of times that were very pleasant to me. July 1913
Chapter I
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The Irish police barrack is invariably clean, occasionally picturesque,but it is never comfortable. The living-room, in which the men spendtheir spare time, is furnished with rigid simplicity. There is a table,sometimes two tables, but they have iron legs. There are benches tosit on, very narrow, and these also have iron legs. Iron is, of course,harder than wood. Men who are forced to look at it and rub their legsagainst it at meal times are likely to obtain a stern, martial spirit.Wood, even oak, might in the long run have an enervating effect on theirminds. The Government knows this, and if it were possible to have tablesand benches with iron tops as well as iron legs police barracks inIreland would be furnished with them. On the walls of the living-roomare stands for arms. Here are ranged the short carbines with which,in extreme emergencies, the police shoot at the other inhabitants ofIreland. The sight of these weapons serves to remind the men that theyform a military force.
Near the carbines hang a few pairs of handcuffs, unobtrusively, becauseno one wants to emphasize the fact that the police in Ireland have todeal with ordinary wrong doers as well as with turbulent mobs. Ornamentof every kind is rigorously excluded from these rooms. It is all verywell to aim at the development of the aesthetic faculty for children byputting pictures and scraggy geraniums in pots into schoolrooms. No onewants a policeman to be artistic. But the love of the beautiful breaksout occasionally, even in policemen who live in barracks. ConstableMoriarty, for instance, had a passion for music. He whistled betterthan any man in Ballymoy, and spent much of his leisure in working upthrilling variations of popular tunes.
Being confined by the call of duty to the living-room of the barrack inBallymoy for a whole morning, he had accomplished a series of runs andtrills through which the air of "The Minstrel Boy" seemed to strugglefor expression. His attention was fixed on this composition, and not atall on the newspaper which lay across his knees.
At twelve o'clock he rose from the bench on which he was sitting andallowed the newspaper to fall in a crumpled heap on the floor athis feet. He stretched himself and yawned. Then he glanced round thebarrack-room with an air of weariness. Sergeant Colgan, his tunicunbuttoned, his grey flannel shirt open at the neck, dozed uncomfortablyin a corner. Moriarty looked at him enviously. The sergeant was muchthe older man of the two, and was besides of portly figure. Sleep cameeasily to him under the most unpromising circumstances. Moriarty was notmore than twenty four years of age. He was mentally and physically anactive man. Before he went to work on "The Minstrel Boy" he had wooedsleep in vain. Even a three days' old copy of the Weekly Freeman hadbrought him no more than a series of stupefying yawns. If a man cannotgo to sleep over a back number of a weekly paper there is no use histrying to go to sleep at all. He may as well whistle tunes.
Moriarty left the living-room in which the sergeant slept and went outto the door of the barrack. He stared across the market square. The sunshone pitilessly. Except for a fat white dog, which lay asleep in thegutter opposite the shop of Kerrigan, the butcher, no living thingwas to be seen. Hot days are so rare in west of Ireland towns that thepeople succumb to them at once. Business, unless it happens to be marketday, absolutely ceases in a town like Ballymoy when the thermometerregisters anything over eighty degrees. Moriarty stretched himself againand yawned. He looked at the illustrated poster which hung on a boardbeside the barrack door. It proclaimed the attractiveness of service inthe British army. It moved him to no interest, because he had seen itevery day since he first came to Ballymoy. The gaudy uniforms depictedon it excited no envy in his mind. His own uniform was of sobercolouring, but it taught him all he wanted to know about the discomfortof such clothes in hot weather. His eyes wandered from the poster andremained fixed for some time on the front of the office of the ConnachtAdvocate. The door was shut and the window blind was pulled down. Animaginative man might have pictured Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher, theeditor, penning ferocious attacks upon landlords at his desk inside,or demonstrating, in spite of the high temperature, the desperatewickedness of all critics of the Irish Party. But Moriarty was bytemperament a realist. He suspected that Thaddeus Gallagher, divested ofhis coat and waistcoat, was asleep, with his feet on the office table.Next to the newspaper office was the Imperial Hotel, owned and managedby Mr. Doyle. Its door was open, so that any one with sufficient energyfor such activity might go in and get a drink at the bar. Moriarty gazedat the front of the hotel for a long time, so long that the glare oflight reflected from its whitewashed walls brought water to his eyes.Then he turned and looked into the barrack again. Beside him, justoutside the door of the living-room, hung a small framed notice, whichstated that Constable Moriarty was on guard. He looked at it. Then hepeeped into the living-room and satisfied himself that the sergeantwas still sound asleep. It was exceedingly unlikely that Mr. Gregg, theDistrict Inspector of the Police, would visit the barrack on such a veryhot day. Moriarty buttoned his tunic, put his forage cap on his head,and stepped out of the barrack.
He crossed the square towards Doyle's Hotel. A hostile critic ofthe Royal Irish Constabulary—and there are such critics even of thisexcellent body of men—might have suspected Moriarty of adventuring insearch of a drink. The great heat of the day and the extreme dulnessof keeping guard over a barrack which no one ever attacks might haveexcused a longing for bottled porter. It would have been unfair to blameMoriarty if he had entered the bar of the hotel and wakened Mr. Doyle.But he did no more than glance through the open door. He satisfiedhimself that Mr. Doyle, like the sergeant and Mr. Thaddeus Gallagher,was sound asleep. Then he passed on and turned down a narrow laneway atthe side of the hotel.
This led him into the yard at the back of the hotel. A man of delicatesensibilities would have shrunk from entering Mr. Doyle's yard on ahot day. It was exceedingly dirty, and there were a great many decayingthings all over it, besides a manure heap in one corner and a pig-styein another. But Constable Moriarty had no objection to bad smells.He sat down on the low wall of the pig-stye and whistled "KathleenMavourneen." He worked through the tune twice creditably, but withoutattempting variations. He was just beginning it a third time when a doorat the back of the hotel opened and a girl came out. Moriarty stoppedwhistling and grinned at her amiably. She was a very pretty girl, butshe was nearly as dirty as the yard. Her short skirt was spotted andstained from waist-band to the ragged fringe where there had once beena hem. Her boots were caked with dry mud. They were several sizes toolarge for her and seemed likely to fall off when she lifted her feetfrom the ground. A pink cotton blouse was untidily fastened at her neckwith a brass safety pin. Her hair hung in a thick pig-tail down herback. In the higher ranks of society in Connacht, as elsewhere, girlsare generally anxious to pose as young women at the earliest possiblemoment. They roll up their hair and fasten it with hairpins as soon astheir mothers allow them. But girls of the peasant class in the west ofIreland put off the advance of womanhood as long as they can. Wiserthan their more fashionable sisters, they dread the cares andresponsibilities of adult life. Up to the age of twenty, twenty-one,or twenty-two, they still wear their hair in pig-tails and keep theirskirts above their ankles.
"Is that you, Mary Ellen?" said Constable Moriarty.
The girl stood still. She was carrying a bucket full of a thick yellowliquid in her right hand. She allowed it to rest against her leg. Asmall portion of its contents slopped over and still further stained herskirt. She looked at Constable Moriarty out of the corners of her eyesfor a moment. Then she went on again towards the pig-stye. She had largebrown eyes with thick lashes. Her hair was still in a pig-tail, andher skirt was far from covering the tops of her boots; but she hada precocious understanding of the art of looking at a man out of thecorners of her eyes. Moriarty was agreeably thrilled by her glance.
"Is it the pig you're going to feed?" he asked.
"It is," said Mary Ellen.
A very chivalrous man, or one trained in the conventions of what iscalled polite society, might have left his seat on the wall and helpedthe girl to carry the bucket across the yard. Moriarty did neither theone nor the other. Mary Ellen did not expect that he