OFlaherty V.C. | Page 8

taught me
that maybe she was right.
SIR PEARCE [grunts sulkily]!!
O'FLAHERTY [respectfully but doggedly]. And there's another thing
it's taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make bold to
tell it to you.
SIR PEARCE [still sulky]. I hope it's nothing you oughtn't to say to me,
O'Flaherty.
O'FLAHERTY. It's this, sir: that I'm able to sit here now and talk to
you without humbugging you; and that's what not one of your tenants
or your tenants' childer ever did to you before in all your long life. It's a
true respect I'm showing you at last, sir. Maybe you'd rather have me
humbug you and tell you lies as I used, just as the boys here, God help
them, would rather have me tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all
the world knows I never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But I
can't take advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be

wanting in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross.
SIR PEARCE [touched]. Not at all, O'Flaherty. Not at all.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure what's the Cross to me, barring the little pension
it carries? Do you think I don't know that there's hundreds of men as
brave as me that never had the luck to get anything for their bravery but
a curse from the sergeant, and the blame for the faults of them that
ought to have been their betters? I've learnt more than you'd think, sir;
for how would a gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant
conceited creature I was when I went from here into the wide world as
a soldier? What use is all the lying, and pretending, and humbugging,
and letting on, when the day comes to you that your comrade is killed
in the trench beside you, and you don't as much as look round at him
until you trip over his poor body, and then all you say is to ask why the
hell the stretcher-bearers don't take it out of the way. Why should I read
the papers to be humbugged and lied to by them that had the cunning to
stay at home and send me to fight for them? Don't talk to me or to any
soldier of the war being right. No war is right; and all the holy water
that Father Quinlan ever blessed couldn't make one right. There, sir!
Now you know what O'Flaherty V.C. thinks; and you're wiser so than
the others that only knows what he done.
SIR PEARCE [making the best of it, and turning goodhumoredly to
him again]. Well, what you did was brave and manly, anyhow.
O'FLAHERTY. God knows whether it was or not, better than you nor
me, General. I hope He won't be too hard on me for it, anyhow.
SIR PEARCE [sympathetically]. Oh yes: we all have to think seriously
sometimes, especially when we're a little run down. I'm afraid we've
been overworking you a bit over these recruiting meetings. However,
we can knock off for the rest of the day; and tomorrow's Sunday. I've
had about as much as I can stand myself. [He looks at his watch.] It's
teatime. I wonder what's keeping your mother.
O'FLAHERTY. It's nicely cocked up the old woman will be having tea
at the same table as you, sir, instead of in the kitchen. She'll be after
dressing in the heighth of grandeur; and stop she will at every house on
the way to show herself off and tell them where she's going, and fill the
whole parish with spite and envy. But sure, she shouldn't keep you
waiting, sir.
SIR PEARCE. Oh, that's all right: she must be indulged on an occasion

like this. I'm sorry my wife is in London: she'd have been glad to
welcome your mother.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure, I know she would, sir. She was always a kind
friend to the poor. Little her ladyship knew, God help her, the depth of
divilment that was in us: we were like a play to her. You see, sir, she
was English: that was how it was. We was to her what the Pathans and
Senegalese was to me when I first seen them: I couldn't think,
somehow, that they were liars, and thieves, and backbiters, and
drunkards, just like ourselves or any other Christians. Oh, her ladyship
never knew all that was going on behind her back: how would she?
When I was a weeshy child, she gave me the first penny I ever had in
my hand; and I wanted to pray for her conversion that night the same as
my mother made me pray for yours; and--
SIR PEARCE [scandalized]. Do you mean to say