Thus it happened that on the very day of the publication of Miss Goold’s scheme Mr. O’Rourke announced his intention of addressing an appeal for funds to a public meeting in the Rotunda. Miss Goold was disconcerted and irritated. She was well aware that Mr. O’Rourke’s appeal would give the respectable Nationalists an excellent excuse for ignoring hers, and unfortunately the respectable people are just the ones who have most money. She was confident that she could rely on the extreme section of the Nationalists, and on that element in the city population which loves and makes a row, but she could not count on the moneyed classes. They were, so far as their words went, very enthusiastic for the Boer cause; but when it came to writing cheques, it was likely that the counter-attractions of the Parliamentary fund would prove too strong.
Since it seemed that Mr. O’Rourke would certainly spoil her collection, the obvious thing to do was to try to spoil his. If he afforded people an excuse for not paying the travelling expenses of her volunteers to Lorenzo Marques, she would, if possible, suggest a way of escape from paying for his men’s journeys to London. After all, no one really wanted to subscribe to either fund, and it might be supposed that the public would very gladly keep their purses shut altogether.
For an Irishman it is quite possible to be genuinely enthusiastic and at the same time able to see the humorous side of his own enthusiasm. This is a reason why an Irishman is never a bore unless, to gain his private ends, he wants to be. Even an Irish advocate of total abstinence, or an Irish antivaccinationist, if such a thing exists, is not a bore, because he will always trot out his conscientious objections with a half-humorous, half-deprecating smile. This same capacity for avoiding the slavery of serious fanaticism enables an Irishman to cease quite joyfully from the pursuit of his own particular fad in order to corner an obnoxious opponent. Thus Augusta Goold and her friends were genuinely desirous of striking a blow at England, and really believed that their volunteers might do it; but this did not prevent them from finding infinite relish in the prospect of watching Mr. O’Rourke squirming on the horns of a dilemma. They took counsel together, and the result of their deliberations was peculiar. They proposed to invite Mr. O’Rourke to join his appeal to theirs, to pool the money which came in, and to divide it evenly between the volunteers and the members of Parliament. It was Tim Halloran who hit upon the brilliant idea. Augusta Goold chuckled over it as she grasped its consequences. Mr. O’Rourke, Tim argued, would be unwilling to accept the proposal because he wanted all the money he could get, more than was at all likely to be collected. He would be equally unwilling to reject it, because he could then be represented as indifferent to the heroic struggle of the Boers. In the existing state of Irish and American opinion a suspicion of such indifference would be quite sufficient to wreck his chances of getting any money at all.