“I’m glad you didn’t make your bow without letting us know,” I said.
“How many more years are you staying?” he asked.
“It’s going to be fixed up,” he answered. “Temporarily, at any rate.”
He nodded, gloomily, I thought. “You’ll find it fixed up at any price. But the Government won’t have to pay a very big price. The extreme people won’t want to take this; but the nation as a whole want it, and they’ll help to see it through.”
“Some time ago, one night it was,” I said, “I met an old man waving about on two sticks and baying at the stars. He asked me if I’d like to know how the Irish question would be settled. I said certainly. He stopped waving on his two sticks, stopped baying at the stars, and cried out, ‘The extremists will meet the extreme extremists in the Rotunda at Rutland Square, and there will be a final battle to the death. If nobody is left, then it will be settled.’”
“But,” put in 47’s wife, thankfully, “we shall not be there.”
“We’re jolly glad we came over,” I said. “We’ve got some first-hand tips for running a revolution, and if the same sort of thing starts in another country one will know how much of the papers to believe. I hope things are going to hurry up and finish now, for we’re off, too, before long. I wish Ireland every good luck and a speedy growth to greatness, but I’m ready to transfer my attentions elsewhere.”
We had cut ourselves off from the others and were side by side. “You’ve no departing pangs?” I asked.
47 shrugged his shoulders. “Not really. One feels the usual regret at leaving places associated with pretty tumultuous hours in one’s life.” He turned and said with feeling, “I have only to stop at any street corner and those dark Christmas days come back. By gad, they wore one out while they lasted; but everything is over in the end. I’m glad to be off, though one makes acquaintances, friends even, that a fellow is sorry to lose, even on a job of this sort.”
“You can do your job and make friends?” I asked.
“Why not?” A moment after he said, “You get used to keeping your work entirely apart, a sort of falcon sitting on your wrist. You make friends like anybody else; but this hooded bird is waiting ready for the game when you start it. Or there’s some presence behind your chair, like the slave at a Roman general’s triumph, telling you you are a servant, and greater than you is the Empire you serve.”