[He pulls up his chair and settles himself comfortably to lecture Doyle].Now,Larry,I've listened carefully to all you've said about Ireland;and I can see nothing whatever to prevent your coming with me.What does it all come to?Simply that you were only a young fellow when you were in Ireland.You'll find all that chaffing and drinking and not knowing what to be at in Peckham just the same as in Donnybrook.You looked at Ireland with a boy's eyes and saw only boyish things.Come back with me and look at it with a man's,and get a better opinion of your country.
DOYLE.I daresay you're partly right in that:at all events Iknow very well that if I had been the son of a laborer instead of the son of a country landagent,I should have struck more grit than I did.Unfortunately I'm not going back to visit the Irish nation,but to visit my father and Aunt Judy and Nora Reilly and Father Dempsey and the rest of them.
BROADBENT.Well,why not?They'll be delighted to see you,now that England has made a man of you.
DOYLE [struck by this].Ah!you hit the mark there,Tom,with true British inspiration.
BROADBENT.Common sense,you mean.
DOYLE [quickly].No I don't:you've no more common sense than a gander.No Englishman has any common sense,or ever had,or ever will have.You're going on a sentimental expedition for perfectly ridiculous reasons,with your head full of political nonsense that would not take in any ordinarily intelligent donkey;but you can hit me in the eye with the simple truth about myself and my father.
BROADBENT [amazed].I never mentioned your father.
DOYLE [not heeding the interruption].There he is in Rosscullen,a landagent who's always been in a small way because he's a Catholic,and the landlords are mostly Protestants.What with land courts reducing rents and Land Acts turning big estates into little holdings,he'd be a beggar this day if he hadn't bought his own little farm under the Land Purchase Act.I doubt if he's been further from home than Athenmullet for the last twenty years.And here am I,made a man of,as you say,by England.
BROADBENT [apologetically].I assure you I never meant--DOYLE.Oh,don't apologize:it's quite true.I daresay I've learnt something in America and a few other remote and inferior spots;but in the main it is by living with you and working in double harness with you that I have learnt to live in a real world and not in an imaginary one.I owe more to you than to any Irishman.
BROADBENT [shaking his head with a twinkle in his eye].Very friendly of you,Larry,old man,but all blarney.I like blarney;but it's rot,all the same.
DOYLE.No it's not.I should never have done anything without you;although I never stop wondering at that blessed old head of yours with all its ideas in watertight compartments,and all the compartments warranted impervious to anything that it doesn't suit you to understand.
BROADBENT [invincible].Unmitigated rot,Larry,I assure you.
DOYLE.Well,at any rate you will admit that all my friends are either Englishmen or men of the big world that belongs to the big Powers.All the serious part of my life has been lived in that atmosphere:all the serious part of my work has been done with men of that sort.Just think of me as I am now going back to Rosscullen!to that hell of littleness and monotony!How am I to get on with a little country landagent that ekes out his 5per cent with a little farming and a scrap of house property in the nearest country town?What am I to say to him?What is he to say to me?
BROADBFNT [scandalized].But you're father and son,man!
DOYLE.What difference does that make?What would you say if Iproposed a visit to YOUR father?
BROADBENT [with filial rectitude].I always made a point of going to see my father regularly until his mind gave way.
DOYLE [concerned].Has he gone mad?You never told me.
BROADBENT.He has joined the Tariff Reform League.He would never have done that if his mind had not been weakened.[Beginning to declaim]He has fallen a victim to the arts of a political charlatan who--DOYLE [interrupting him].You mean that you keep clear of your father because he differs from you about Free Trade,and you don't want to quarrel with him.Well,think of me and my father!
He's a Nationalist and a Separatist.I'm a metallurgical chemist turned civil engineer.Now whatever else metallurgical chemistry may be,it's not national.It's international.And my business and yours as civil engineers is to join countries,not to separate them.The one real political conviction that our business has rubbed into us is that frontiers are hindrances and flags confounded nuisances.
BROADBENT [still smarting under Mr Chamberlain's economic heresy].Only when there is a protective tariff--DOYLE [firmly]Now look here,Tom:you want to get in a speech on Free Trade;and you're not going to do it:I won't stand it.My father wants to make St George's Channel a frontier and hoist a green flag on College Green;and I want to bring Galway within 3hours of Colchester and 24of New York.I want Ireland to be the brains and imagination of a big Commonwealth,not a Robinson Crusoe island.Then there's the religious difficulty.My Catholicism is the Catholicism of Charlemagne or Dante,qualified by a great deal of modern science and folklore which Father Dempsey would call the ravings of an Atheist.Well,my father's Catholicism is the Catholicism of Father Dempsey.
BROADBENT [shrewdly].I don't want to interrupt you,Larry;but you know this is all gammon.These differences exist in all families;but the members rub on together all right.[Suddenly relapsing into portentousness]Of course there are some questions which touch the very foundations of morals;and on these I grant you even the closest relationships cannot excuse any compromise or laxity.For instance--DOYLE [impatiently springing up and walking about].For instance,Home Rule,South Africa,Free Trade,and the Education Rate.
