No one read the article with more eagerness and expectation than Gallagher himself. As the day of the meeting drew nearer he was becoming more and more uncomfortable about his speech. He had not been able to find out either from Doyle or from Father McCormack anything whatever about the General. He did not want much. He was a practised orator and could make a very small amount of information go a long way in a speech, but he did want something, if it was only a date to which he might attach the General’s birth or death. Doyle and the priest steadily referred him to Dr. O’Grady. From Sergeant Colgan he got nothing except a guess that the General might have been one of the Fenians. Dr. O’Grady, before the appearance of the article, promised that it would contain all that anyone needed to know. After the article was published Gallagher was ashamed to ask for further information, because he did not want to confess himself an Irishman unworthy of the name.
Doyle also was dissatisfied and became actually restive after the appearance of Saturday’s Connacht Eagle. He was not in the least troubled by the vagueness of the leading article. He was not one of the speakers at the meeting, and it did not matter to him whether he knew anything about General John Regan or not. What annoyed him was the publication, in the advertisement columns of the paper, of a preliminary list of subscribers. In the first place such an advertisement cost money and could only be paid for out of Mr. Billing’s subscription, thus further diminishing the small balance on which he was calculating as some compensation for the irrecoverable debt owed to him by Dr. O’Grady. In the second place his name appeared on the list as a donor, not of £5, but of £10. He knew perfectly well that he would not be expected to pay any subscription, but he was vaguely annoyed at the threat of such a liability.
On Sunday afternoon he called on Dr. O’Grady.
“Wasn’t it agreed,” he said, “that I was to be the treasurer of the fund for putting up the statue?”
“It was,” said Dr. O’Grady, “and you are the treasurer. Didn’t you see your name printed in the Connacht Eagle, ‘Secretary, Dr. Lucius O’Grady. Treasurer, J. Doyle’?”
“If I’m the treasurer it’s no more than right that I should have some say in the way the money’s being spent, for let me tell you, doctor—and I may as well speak plain when I’m at it—I’m not satisfied. I’ve had some correspondence with a nephew of mine who’s in that line of business himself up in Dublin, and he tells me that £100 is little enough for a statue of any size. Now I’m not saying that I want to close the account with a balance in hand——”