第35章 ACT IV(11)

LARRY.Mr Keegan:if you are going to be sentimental about Ireland,I shall bid you good evening.We have had enough of that,and more than enough of cleverly proving that everybody who is not an Irishman is an ass.It is neither good sense nor good manners.It will not stop the syndicate;and it will not interest young Ireland so much as my friend's gospel of efficiency.

BROADBENT.Ah,yes,yes:efficiency is the thing.I don't in the least mind your chaff,Mr Keegan;but Larry's right on the main point.The world belongs to the efficient.

KEEGAN [with polished irony].I stand rebuked,gentlemen.But believe me,I do every justice to the efficiency of you and your syndicate.You are both,I am told,thoroughly efficient civil engineers;and I have no doubt the golf links will be a triumph of your art.Mr Broadbent will get into parliament most efficiently,which is more than St Patrick could do if he were alive now.You may even build the hotel efficiently if you can find enough efficient masons,carpenters,and plumbers,which Irather doubt.[Dropping his irony,and beginning to fall into the attitude of the priest rebuking sin]When the hotel becomes insolvent [Broadbent takes his cigar out of his mouth,a little taken aback],your English business habits will secure the thorough efficiency of the liquidation.You will reorganize the scheme efficiently;you will liquidate its second bankruptcy efficiently [Broadbent and Larry look quickly at one another;for this,unless the priest is an old financial hand,must be inspiration];you will get rid of its original shareholders efficiently after efficiently ruining them;and you will finally profit very efficiently by getting that hotel for a few shillings in the pound.[More and more sternly]Besides those efficient operations,you will foreclose your mortgages most efficiently [his rebuking forefinger goes up in spite of himself];you will drive Haffigan to America very efficiently;you will find a use for Barney Doran's foul mouth and bullying temper by employing him to slave-drive your laborers very efficiently;and [low and bitter]when at last this poor desolate countryside becomes a busy mint in which we shall all slave to make money for you,with our Polytechnic to teach us how to do it efficiently,and our library to fuddle the few imaginations your distilleries will spare,and our repaired Round Tower with admission sixpence,and refreshments and penny-in-the-slot mutoscopes to make it interesting,then no doubt your English and American shareholders will spend all the money we make for them very efficiently in shooting and hunting,in operations for cancer and appendicitis,in gluttony and gambling;and you will devote what they save to fresh land development schemes.For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency;and the end is not yet.But the end will come.

BROADBENT [seriously].Too true,Mr Keegan,only too true.And most eloquently put.It reminds me of poor Ruskin--a great man,you know.I sympathize.Believe me,I'm on your side.Don't sneer,Larry:I used to read a lot of Shelley years ago.Let us be faithful to the dreams of our youth [he wafts a wreath of cigar smoke at large across the hill].

KEEGAN.Come,Mr Doyle!is this English sentiment so much more efficient than our Irish sentiment,after all?Mr Broadbent spends his life inefficiently admiring the thoughts of great men,and efficiently serving the cupidity of base money hunters.We spend our lives efficiently sneering at him and doing nothing.

Which of us has any right to reproach the other?

BROADBENT [coming down the hill again to Keegan's right hand].

But you know,something must be done.

KEEGAN.Yes:when we cease to do,we cease to live.Well,what shall we do?

BROADBENT.Why,what lies to our hand.

KEEGAN.Which is the making of golf links and hotels to bring idlers to a country which workers have left in millions because it is a hungry land,a naked land,an ignorant and oppressed land.

BROADBENT.But,hang it all,the idlers will bring money from England to Ireland!

KEEGAN.Just as our idlers have for so many generations taken money from Ireland to England.Has that saved England from poverty and degradation more horrible than we have ever dreamed of?When I went to England,sir,I hated England.Now I pity it.

[Broadbent can hardly conceive an Irishman pitying England;but as Larry intervenes angrily,he gives it up and takes to the bill and his cigar again]

LARRY.Much good your pity will do it!