General John Regan Part 34

"Look here, O'Grady," said the Major, "I'm as fond of a joke as any man; but I must draw the line somewhere. I'm hanged if I'll be mixed up in any way with a second-hand statue."

"It's not second-hand," said Dr. O'Grady, "it's perfectly new. At this moment it isn't even finished; I wouldn't ask this committee to buy anything second hand. But you can surely see, Major?you do see, for you raised the point yourself, that with the very short time at our disposal we must, if we are to have a statue at all, get one that's more or less ready made."

"But?Good Heavens! O'Grady," said the Major. "How can you possibly put up a statue of somebody else and call it General John Regan? It won't be the least like him. How can you?the thing's too absurd even for you. Who was this man that the statue was made for?"

"Who was he, Doyle?" said Dr. O'Grady. "It doesn't really matter to us who he was; but you may as well tell the Major so as to satisfy him."

"I disremember his name," said Doyle, "and I can't lay my hand on the letter; but he was a Deputy-Lieutenant of whatever county he belonged to."

"There you are now, Major," said Dr. O'Grady. "A Deputy-Lieutenant!

Nothing could be more respectable than that. You're only a J.P.

yourself, and I don't believe you'll ever be anything more. You can't afford to turn up your nose at a Deputy-Lieutenant. We shan't be doing any injury to the General's reputation by allowing him to be represented by a man of high position, most likely of good family, who was at all events supposed to be well off before he died."

"I wasn't thinking of the General's reputation," said the Major. "I don't care a hang??"

"I don't see that we are bound to consider the feelings of the Deputy-Lieutenant," said Dr. O'Grady. "After all, if a man deliberately leads his relatives to suppose that he is rich enough to afford a statue in a cathedral and then turns out to be too poor to pay for it, he doesn't deserve much consideration."

"I wouldn't cross the road," said Doyle, "to do a good turn to a man that let my nephew in the way that fellow did. For let me tell you, gentlemen, that statue would have been a serious loss to him if??"

"I'm not thinking of him or Doyle's nephew either," said the Major.

"I don't know who that Deputy-Lieutenant was, and I don't care if his statue was stuck up in every market town in Ireland."

"If you're not thinking of the General," said the doctor, "and if you're not thinking of the Deputy-Lieutenant, what on earth are you grumbling about?"

"I'm grumbling, as you call it," said the Major, "about the utterly intolerable absurdity of the whole thing. Can't you see it? You can of course, but you won't. Look here, Father McCormack, you're a man of some sense and decency of feeling. Can we possibly ask the Lord-Lieutenant to come here and unveil a statue of General John Regan?whoever he was?when all we've got is a statue of some other man? Quite possibly the Lord-Lieutenant may have known that Deputy-Lieutenant personally, and if he recognises the statue where shall we be?"

"There's something in what the Major says," said Father McCormack. "I'll not deny there's something in what he says."

"There isn't," said Dr. O'Grady. "Excuse my contradicting you flatly, Father McCormack, but there really isn't. We all know Doyle, and we respect him; but I put it to you now, Father McCormack, I put it to any member of the committee: Is Doyle likely to have a nephew who'd be able to make a statue that anybody would recognise?"

"There's something in that," said Father McCormack. "I'm not well up in statues, but I've seen a few in my time, and all I can say is that unless Doyle's nephew is a great deal better at the job than most of the fellows that makes them, n.o.body would know, unless they were told, who their statue's meant to be like."

"My nephew's a good sculptor," said Doyle. "If he wasn't I wouldn't have brought his name forward to-day; but what the doctor says is true enough. I've seen heads he's done, for mural tablets and the like, and so far as anybody recognising them for portraits of the deceased goes, you might have changed the tablets and, barring the inscriptions, n.o.body would have known to the differ. Not but what they were well done, every one of them."

"There now, Major," said Dr. O'Grady. "That pretty well disposes of your last objection."

"That's only a side issue," said the Major, speaking with a calm which was evidently forced. "My point is that we can't, in ordinary decency, put up a statue of one man to represent another."

"I don't know that I altogether agree with the Major there," said Father McCormack, "but there's something in what he says."

"I can't see that there's anything," said Dr. O'Grady.

"Deputy-Lieutenants have uniforms, haven't they? So have Generals.

n.o.body can possibly know what the uniform of a Bolivian General was fifty or a hundred years ago. All we could do, even if we were having the statue entirely made to order, would be to guess at the uniform.

It's just as likely to be that of a modern Deputy-Lieutenant as anything else."

"That's true of course," said Father McCormack.

"Anyway," said Doyle, "if we're to have a statue at all it'll have to be this one. There's no other for us to get, so what's the use of talking?"

The Major shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"There's evidently no use my talking," he said.

"Is it your wish then, gentlemen," said Father McCormack, "that the offer of Mr. Aloysius Doyle to supply a statue of General John Regan be accepted by the committee?"

"It is," said Dr. O'Grady.

"Subject to the price being satisfactory," said Gallagher. "We haven't heard the price yet."

"I have the letter about the price which my nephew sent me," said Doyle, "and I think you'll all agree with me that he's giving it cheap."

"He ought to," said Gallagher, "considering that if he doesn't sell it to us it's not likely he'll sell it at all."

"The demand for second-hand statues must be small," said the Major.

"What he says is," said Doyle, "that considering he's dealing with a member of his own family he'll let the statue go at no more than the price of the raw material, not making any charge for the work he's putting into it. I don't know that we can expect more than that from him."

"You cannot, of course," said Father McCormack.

"Let's hear the figure," said Gallagher.

"I should say," said the Major, "that 10 would be a liberal offer on our part."

"Shut up, Major," said Dr. O'Grady. "What do you know about the price of statues? You wouldn't get a plaster cast of a pet dog for 10."

Doyle smiled amiably.

"There's not a man in Ballymoy," he said, "fonder of a joke than the Major."

"Let's hear the figure," said Gallagher.

"What he says," said Doyle, "is 81."

Major Kent whistled.

"But I wouldn't wonder," said Doyle, "but you could get him to knock 10s. off that and say 80 10s."

Dr. O'Grady pulled a sheet of paper towards him and began to write rapidly.

"Statue 80 10s.," he said. "Carriage, say 1 10s. The railway companies are robbers. Expenses of erection, say 2. You'll let us have any mortar and cement that are needed for nothing, Doyle; so we'll only have to pay for labour. I'll superintend the erection without charging a fee.

Illuminated Address, 4. Bouquet 1 is. That's a good deal to give for a bouquet, but I don't think we'll get a decent one for less. Dresses, etc., for Mary Ellen?the green stockings will have to be ordered specially, and so will come to a little money. And we may have to get that grey tweed dress which Mrs. Ford wants, just to prevent her kicking up a row. Two dresses, stockings, etc., for Mary Ellen, say 4. That will include shoes with buckles. She'll have to wear an Irish brooch of some sort, but we'll probably be able to borrow that. Lunch for the Vice Regal party on the day of the unveiling?there'll be at least four of them, say five in case of accidents. That will allow for two aides de camp and a private secretary. They can't want more. The five of us and Mr. Billing, who said he'd be back for the ceremony. That makes eleven.

I suppose you could do us really well, Doyle, at 7s. 6d. a head, including drinks, and there'll have to be three or four bottles of champagne on the sideboard, just for the look of the thing. We may not have to open more than one. Eleven times 7s. 6d. makes 4 2s. 6d. What do you mean to charge us for the printing of the posters, Gallagher?"

"I'll say 3," said Gallagher, "to include posters and advertis.e.m.e.nts in the paper. I'll be losing money on it."

"You'll not be losing much," said Dr. O'Grady, "but we'll say 3. That will make?let me see??"

He added up his column of figures and then checked the result by adding them downwards.