They took a furnished flat in Buckingham Street, and lived there while Henry completed "Turbulence" and saw it through the press. Gilbert had finished another comedy soon after the production of "The Magic Casement," and Sir Geoffrey Mundane had asked for a first option on it. "The Magic Casement" was not a great popular success, but it "paid its way," as Sir Geoffrey said. It was performed for a hundred and twenty times in England, and for three weeks in America, where it failed lamentably. "I never did think much of a republic!" Gilbert said when he heard of the play's failure.
Roger and Rachel had settled in their house in Hampstead soon after Gilbert and Henry had taken the furnished flat, and after a while, some of the old routine of their lives, except that part of it represented by Ninian, went on as before. Most of Ninian's leave was spent in quelling his mother's alarms about his journey to South America. "It's a splendid chance for me, mother!" he insisted. "It's jolly decent of old Hare to give it to me!"
"But it's so far away, Ninian, dear, and if anything were to happen to you!..."
"Nothing'll happen to me, mother ... nothing serious anyhow. Heaps of chaps go off to places like that without turning a hair!"
"But I've only got you, Ninian!" Mrs. Graham objected.
"You've got Mary, too, and I shall come back to you!"
One evening, as they walked along the road that leads to Sidmouth, she put her arm in his, and drew him near to her.
"Ninian, dear," she said very softly and hesitatingly as if she were afraid to say all that was in her mind.
"Yes, mother!"
"Ninian, I sometimes wish ..."
Again she hesitated, and again he said, "Yes, mother?"
Her speech took another direction. "There have been Grahams at Boveyhayne for four hundred years, dear, and there's only you left now."
He looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Well, mother!..."
"My dear, we can't let it go away from us. It's us, and we're it, and if anything were to happen to you, and a stranger were to come here!"
"But, my dear mother," he interrupted, "nothing's going to happen to me, and no one's going to get Boveyhayne away from us. Why should any one?..."
She put her free hand on his sleeve. "When Roger married Rachel," she said, "I wished ... I wished that you were Roger, Ninian!"
"You want me to get married, mother?"
She did not answer, but her clasp on his arm tightened.
"A chap can't marry a girl just for the sake of getting married, mother!..."
"No, dear, I know, but ..."
"I've not seen a girl yet that I wanted particularly. You see, I've been awfully busy at my job!... I know how you feel, mother, about Boveyhayne, and I feel like that myself sometimes. I used to think it was rather rot all this talk about Family and keeping on and ... and that kind of thing, but I can't help feeling proud of ... of all those old chaps who went before me, and ... all that, and I'd hate to break the line ... only I can't just go up to a girl and ... and say, 'We want some ... some babies in our house!' ..."
"No, dear, you can't saythat, of course, but there are plenty of nice girls about, and if you would just ... just think of some of them, instead of always thinking of works and tunnels and things!... Of course, I know that tunnels are very interesting, Ninian, but ... but Boveyhayne!..."
She did not say any more. She stood by the gate of a field, looking over the valley of the Axe to the hilly countrythat separates Dorset from Devon, seeing nothing because her eyes were full of tears. He slipped his arm from hers and put it round her waist and drew her close to him. "All right, mother!" he said.
"My dear!" she said, reaching up and kissing him.
They dined together on Ninian's last night in England. Rachel, with fine understanding, insisted that they should dine alone, although they urged her to join them.
"I say, you chaps," Ninian said to them, "you might go and see my mater sometimes. She'd be awfully glad. Quinny, you haven't been to Boveyhayne for centuries. ... If you'd go, now and then, you'd cheer the mater up. She's awfully down in the mouth about me going!"
"Righto, Ninian!" said Gilbert.
"Mary was saying what a long time it was since you were there, Quinny," Ninian went on.
"Did she?" Henry answered.
"Yes. I hope you'll go down sometime."
"I will," he said.
Mrs. Graham invited Gilbert and Henry to spend Christmas at Boveyhayne, and they gladly accepted her invitation, but a week before they were due to go to Devonshire, Mr. Quinn fell ill, and Henry, alarmed by the reports which were sent to him by Hannah, wrote to Mrs. Graham to say that he must travel to Ireland at once. He hurried home to Ballymartin, and found that his father was more ill even than Hannah had hinted.
"I wouldn't have let her send for you, Henry!" he said, apologetically, "only I was afraid ... I mightn't see you again!"
He tried to cheer his father by protesting that in a little while he would be astride his horse again, directing the farm experiments as vigorously as ever, but Mr. Quinn shook his head. "I don't think so, Henry!" he said. "I'll not be fit for much anyway. You'll have to lend a hand with the estate, my son."
"I'll help all I can, father, but I'm not much of an agriculturist!..."
"Well, you can't be everything. That new book of yours ... the one you sent me the other day!..."
"'Turbulence,' father?"
"Aye. It's a gran' book, that. I'd like well to be able to write a book of that sort. I'm proud of you. Henry!"
Henry blushed and turned away shyly, for direct praise always embarrassed him, but he was very pleased with hisfather's praises which gave him greater pleasure than the praises of any one else, even Gilbert.
"You'll stay home a while, now you're here, Henry, son, won't you?"
"Yes, father, as long as you like!"
"That's right. You'll be able to work away here in peace and quietness. Nobody'll disturb you. I suppose you're started on another book?"
Henry told him of "The Wayward Man." ...
"That's a great title," he said. "You're a gran' one at gettin' good titles for your books, Henry. I was readin' a bit in the paper about you the other day, an' I near wrote to the man an' told him you were my son, I was that pleased. Ease this pillow under my head, will you? Thanks, boy!"
He took Henry's hand in his. "I'm right an' glad to have you home again," he said, smiling at him. "Right an' glad!"
The whole of "The Wayward Man" was completed before Mr. Quinn was well enough to move about easily. Henry spent the morning and part of the afternoon on his novel, giving the rest of the day to his father. Sometimes, in his walks, Henry met young farmers and labourers returning from the Orange Hall where they had been doing such drill as can be done indoors. On Saturday afternoons, they would set off to join other companies of the Ulster Volunteer Force in a route march. Jamesey McKeown had begun to learn wireless telegraphy and was already expert with flag-signals and the heliograph. Peter Logan, who had married Sheila Morgan, had been promoted to be a sergeant.... "I suppose Sheila's a nurse?" Henry said to him the first time he met him.
"She's nursin' a wean, Mr. Henry!" Logan replied,winking heavily. "We've a couple already, an' there'll be another afore long. She's as punctual as the clock, Sheila. She's a great woman for fine, healthy childher!"
"Well, that's what you want, isn't it?" Henry said.
"Aye, you're right, sir. You are, indeed. There's nothin' til beat a lot of young childher about the house. Will you come an' see the drill?..."
Henry went to see a display in a field just outside Ballymartin. The men marched and counter-marched, and charged and skirmished, and did physical drill until they were tired and sweating, while their women looked on in pride and pleasure. Sheila was there, too, and Henry went to her and sat beside her while the military manœuvres took place. She made no impression on him now ... he saw her simply as a countrywoman in the family way ... a little blowsy and dishevelled and red with exertion.
"For dear sake, Henry!" she said in greeting, holding out her hand to him.
"Well," he said, "when does the war begin?"
"Aw, now," she answered, "don't ask me! Sure, I'm never done coddin' Peter about it. But it's the grand health, Henry. You'd never believe the differs it's made to that wee lad, Gebbie, that serves in Dobbin's shop. I declare to my God, he had a back as roun' as a hoop 'til they started these Volunteers, but now he's like a ramrod. He's a marvel, that lad! Teeshie Halpin's taken a notion of him since he straightened up, an' as sure as you're living she'll have him the minute they can scrape a few ha'pence thegether to buy a wheen of furniture. Well, if the Volunteers never does no more nor that, they'll have done well, for dear knows, Andy Gebbie was an affront to the Almighty, an' him stoopin' that way!"
"But are they going to fight, Sheila?..."
"Ah, get away with you, man!" said Sheila. "What in the name of all that's good an' gracious, would they be fightin' for? Sure, they're lettin' on, to frighten the English out of their wits!" She changed the talk to more interesting discourse. "I've two childher now," she said.
"So Peter was telling me," he answered.
"A wee boy an' a wee girl. An' terrible wee tories they are, too! They're about somewhere with their aunt Kate. An' how an' all are you, Henry?"
"I'm very well, Sheila."
"You're lookin' gran'. I hear you write books, but I never read noan of them!"
"Would you like to read them?" he asked.
"I would, fine. Dear, oh, I often wonder how anybody can write books. I never was no hand at writin' anything, not even a letter. But I suppose there's a knack in it, an' once you learn it, you're all right!"
"Yes," he replied, "that's about it. I'll send my books to you. I'd have sent them before if I'd thought you'd care to read them!"
"You might 'a' knowed rightly, I'd be glad to have them...."
But Sheila's good-natured scorn for the Ulster Volunteer Force did not convince Henry. One could not look at these drilling men, and feel satisfied that they were pretending to be angry or that they did not mean what they said, when they declared that they would die in the last ditch rather than consent to be governed by Nationalists. Mr. Quinn spent much time in denouncing Sir Edward Carson and his friends, but he did not doubt for a moment that the followers would fight. He had very little faith in the sincerity of the politicians. "That fellow, F. E. Smith," he exclaimed wrathfully, "what in hell is he doin' over here, I'd like to know? I'd like to kick his backside for him, an' pack him back to wherever he come from!" And there was F. E. Robinson, too, bounding about Ulster like a well-polished young gentleman from the Gaiety chorus,and delivering historical orations that filled the crowd with amazement.
"He's the great cod, that lad!" Mr. Quinn said. "He's worse nor Smith. He come down here to Ballymartin, an' he made a speech all about King James's foreign policy, and mentioned a whole lot of people that the Or'ngemen never heard tell of. It would 'a' done well for a lecture at the Queen's College ... you should 'a' seen the men nudgin' one another, an' askin' who he was, an' what in the name of God he was talkin' about! 'Why doesn't he curse the Pope an' 'a' done wi' it!' one fellow said to another. 'That lad curse anybody!' says the other one. 'Sure, he'd near boak[3]himself if he done the like of that!' Aye, there's a lot of bletherin' about the Volunteers, but all the same I don't like the look o' things, an' if they're not careful there'll be bother. It'll take the men at the top all their time to hold the bottom ones down. It ought never to have been allowed to begin with. The minute they started their drillin' an' palaver, they ought to 'a' been stopped. Have you seen John Marsh lately, Henry?"
"I saw him when I was in Dublin a few months ago with Gilbert Farlow. He's drilling, too!..."
"It's fearful, that's what it is. Fightin' an' wranglin' like that! I wish I could get him up here a while. I'd talk to him, an' try an' put some sense into him. Do you think would he come if I was to ask him?"
"I daresay, father. Shall I write to him for you?"
"Aye, do, Henry. I like that fellow quaren well, an' I'd be sorry if any harm come to him. He's the sort gets into any bother that's about! Write to him now, will you, an' you'll catch the evenin' mail!"
Henry got writing materials and wrote the letter in his father's room. "Will that do?" he said, passing it to Mr. Quinn for inspection.
"That'll do fine," Mr. Quinn replied, when he had finished reading it. "Matier'll take it to the letterbox!"
"I don't know what the world's comin' to," he went on, a little fractiously. "There's a fellow wouldn't harm a fly, drillin' and gettin' ready to shoot people. An' Irish people, too! One lot of Irishmen wantin' to shoot another lot!... They're out of their minds, that's what's wrong wi' them. There's Matier ... you'd think at his age, he'd have more sense, but nothin'll do him but he must be off of an evenin' formin' fours. And what for? I'd like to know. I says to him, 'William Henry, who do you want to kill?' 'The Home Rulers an' the Papishes!' says he. 'Quit, man,' says I, 'an' talk sense.' 'I am talkin' sense,' says he. 'You're not,' I says to him. 'D'you mean to stan' there an' tell me you want to kill Hugh Kearney?' 'I do not indeed,' says he. 'What put that notion in your head?' 'Isn't he a Catholic an' a Home Ruler?' says I. I had him properly when I said that, for him an' Hugh Kearney is like brothers to one another. 'Would you kill him?' I says to Matier. 'No, sir, I wouldn't,' he answers me back. 'I'd shed me heart's blood for him!' And he would, too!... I've always been against Home Rule, Henry, an' you know well why, but I'm more against this sort of thing than I am against that, and anyway I'm not so sure it wouldn't be better in the long run. There's too much Socialism in England, an' we have to put up with the results of it because of the Union. The Socialists get this law an' that law passed, an' we have to suffer it in Ireland because we're tied up to England...."
John Marsh came to Ballymartin. Henry had sent a private note to him, urging him to accept his father's invitation. "He's very ill," he wrote, "and he would like to see you. I'm afraid he may not get better, although there's a chance...."
"There you are, John Marsh!" Mr. Quinn said to him, as he entered the bedroom. "An' what damned nonsense are you up to now, will you tell me?"
John smiled at him. "You're to get well at once," he answered. "We can't have you lying ill at a time like this!"
"An' aren't you an' the like of you enough to make any man ill? Come here to me, an' let me have a look at you. I can't see you rightly in that light.... You're lookin' pale on it, John. What ails you?"
"I'm tired, that's all. I shall be all right in the morning...."
"You're workin' yourself to death! That's what you're doin'. Sit down there by the side of the bed till I talk to you!"
John drew a chair up to the old man's bedside, and sat down on it as he had been bidden. Henry, anxious lest his father should overtax his strength, sat at the foot of the bed.
"An' what are you drillin' for?" Mr. Quinn demanded of John.
"We must defend ourselves, Mr. Quinn...."
"Defend me granny! An' who's goin' to harm you?" Henry made a motion as if he would quieten his father, but the old man shook him off. "Leave me alone, Henry," he said, "an' let me have my say!" He turned again to John Marsh. "Isn't there the English Army to defend you if anybody tries to injure you? What call have you to start another lot of damned volunteers to be makin' ill-feelin' in the country for?"
"We must be prepared to defend ourselves," John insisted. "We can't trust the English...."
And so they wrangled until Mr. Quinn, too tired to continue, sent Henry and Marsh from his room.
"Take him away an' talk to him, Henry!" he said. "He'll not be happy 'til he's in bother, that lad. Away on with you, John!..."
It was while John Marsh was at Ballymartin, that the mutiny at the Curragh Camp took place. The soldiers had been ordered to Ulster to maintain order ... and their officers had refused to go.
"I thought you said we could depend on the English Army," John exclaimed to Mr. Quinn in very excited tones. "This looks like it, doesn't it? If they'd been ordered to march onus, they'd have done it quick enough. That's why we're drilling, Mr. Quinn. We've got to defend ourselves. Supposing the Ulster Volunteers attack us!..."
"They won't," Mr. Quinn snapped at him.
"But supposing they do, are we to sit down and let them do it? I tell you we daren't trust to the English. They'll promise everything and give nothing. That's the nature of them. They're a treacherous race!..."
"I wish to my God you had some sense, John Marsh," said Mr. Quinn.
"Oh, I know you think I'm a madman, but you can't deny facts, and the facts are that the English have systematically betrayed the Irish throughout their history. If there's a war on, they go down on their hands and knees and ask us to win it for them ... they offer us the sun and the moon and the stars for our help ... but the minute they've got over their fright, they start plotting to get out of their promises. They've done it before and they'll do it again. I want our Volunteers to be more than a defensive organisation. I want them to be an offensive organisation. If we don't look out very sharply well find that the English have ruined Ireland again. They've started to do it openly now. You've heard, haven't you, about the Cunard Line and Queenstown?..." It appeared that the Cunard Line had abandoned Queenstown as a port of call for American liners.... That means absolute ruin for Queenstown!... Casement tried toget the Hamburg-Amerika line to send their boats instead, and they'd agreed to do so ... all the preparations were made to welcome the first of their boats ... and then the scheme was abandoned by the Germans. The English Foreign office got at them!... "Oh, of course, it's only Ireland, and Irish people and Irish interests can be neglected and ruined without a blush so long as the English interests are safe.... More and more I'm convinced that we've got to separate from them. They're a common-minded people. You know they are! They're hucksters ... they think in ... in ha'porths!..."
The attempt to bring John Marsh to reason was a failure, and he went back to Dublin more resolved to make the Volunteers an offensive body than he had been when he arrived. He had seen a review of the Ulster Volunteer Force in Belfast and the setness of the men impressed him. "They'll fight all right," he said. "I don't suppose their leaders have any stomach for fighting, but the men have plenty. By God, I wish they were on our side!"
"Well, why don't you try to get them on your side!" Henry demanded. "Your notion of conciliating them is to start getting ready to fight them!"
"We have tried to conciliate them," Marsh replied. "When Carson formed his Provisional Government, some of us asked him to extend it to the whole of Ireland. Do you think we wouldn't rather have Carson than Redmond? He's gotsomestuff in him anyhow, but Redmond!..."
He made a gesture of contempt. "I've no use," he said, "for a man who looks so like Napoleon without being Napoleon!"
"But Carson wouldn't," he went on. "It's all very well to say 'Conciliate Ulster!' but Ulster won't let us conciliate her. The Ulster people have nothing but contempt for us, and they ram Belfast down our throats until we'resick of it. And a lot of their prosperity is just good luck and ... and favour. They've been well looked after by the English, and they're near everything ... coalfields and Lancashire. Do you think if Galway was where Belfast is, it wouldn't be as prosperous? If they're so almighty clever as they say they are, why don't they come and lead us, instead of clinging on to England like a pampered kid?..."
Henry listened patiently to John. There must, he thought, be some powerful motive for so much passion. He had come to look upon nationality as a contemptible thing, a fretful preoccupation with little affairs, but when he faced the fury of John Marsh, he could not deny that this passion, whether it be little or big, will bring the world to broils until it be satisfied. He did not now feel that irritation which he had formerly felt when John derided the English or called them by opprobrious names. He could make allowances for the anger of the dispossessed. "That kind of talk," he thought, "kills itself. Marsh has only to let himself go along enough, and he'll let himself go altogether. He'll exhaust his abuse...."
He remembered that when Gilbert and he had arrived in Dublin after their flight from London, they had tried to discover just what Marsh and his friends meant to do with Ireland when they had gained control of the country ... but Marsh and his friends had no plans. They talked vaguely of the national spirit and of self-government, but they could not be induced to name a specific reform to which they would set their minds. Some one had given a copy of Dale's Report of Irish Elementary Education to Henry, and he had read it with something like horror. It seemed to him that here was the whole Irish problem, that when this was solved, everything was solved ... but when he spoke of it to Marsh and his friends he found that most of them had never heard of Dale's Report, were scarcely aware of the fact that there was an Irish education problem. "We'll deal with that after we've gotHome Rule," they would say, waving their hands in the airy fashion in which futile people always wave their hands. And so it was with everything else. They would deal with thatafterthey had got Home Rule. Gilbert and Henry had explored the Combe and the dreadful swamp of slums reaching up from Ringsend and spilling almost into the gardens of Merrion Square....
"But don't they know about this?" Gilbert asked in amazement. "I mean, haven't they any eyes ... or noses?"
"They'll deal with thatafterthey've got Home Rule," Henry answered miserably.
They had gone back to their lodgings in a state of deep depression. Wherever one went in Dublin, one was followed by little whining children, demanding alms in the cadging voice of the professional beggar, and many of them were hopelessly diseased....
"I thought the Irish were very religious and moral?" Gilbert said once, as they passed a group of sickly children sitting at the entrance to a court of Baggot Street.
"Why?" Henry replied.
"These kids are syphilitic," Gilbert answered. "The place is full of syphilis!"
"Dublin is a garrison town and a University town," said Henry, with a shrug of his shoulders. "There are eight barracks in Dublin ... it's the most be-barracked city in the Kingdom.... Oh, we're terribly moral, we Irish. As moral as ostriches. If you pick up a Dublin newspaper, it's a million to one you'll see a reference to 'the innate purity of the Irish women,' written probably by a boozy reporter. No, Gilbert, you're wrong about these kids. They're not syphilitic.... Good Lord, no! That's English misgovernment. Wait 'til they've got Home Rule ... and those kids won't be syphilitic any more!..."
They had met a man at Ernest Harper's who wore the kilt of the Gael, and had listened to him while he bleated about the beautiful purity of the Irish women. He wasa convert to Catholicism and Nationalism and anti-Englishism, and he had the appearance of a nicely-brought-up saint. "He looks as if he had just committed a miracle, and is afraid he may do it again!" Gilbert whispered to Henry. This man purred at them. "The priests have kept Ireland pure," he murmured. "Many harsh things have been said about them, but no one has ever denied that they have kept Ireland pure!"
"I do," said Henry, full of desire to shock the Celt.
"You do?..."
"Anybody can keep a man pure by putting him in prison. That's what the priests have done. They've put the Irish people in gaol!..."
The kilted Celt shrank away from him. He was sorry, but he could not possibly sit still and listen to such conversation. He hoped that he was as broad-minded as any one, but there were limits.... Very wisely, he thought, the Church!...
"Blast the Church!" said Henry, and the kilted Celt had gone shivering away from him.
"That kind of person makes me foam at the mouth," Henry muttered to Gilbert "The Irish people aren't any purer than any other race. It's all bunkum, this talk about their 'innate purity.' If you clap the population into gaol, you can keep them 'pure,' in act anyhow, and if the priests won't let the sexes mingle openly, they can get up a spurious purity just like that. If a girl gets into trouble in Ireland, she goes to the priest and confesses, and the priest takes jolly good care that the man marries her. That's why the rate of illegitimacy is so low. And anyhow, the bulk of the people are agricultural, and country people are more continent than any other people. It's the same in England, but the English don't go about bleating of their 'innate purity.' I tell you, Gilbert, the trouble with this country is self-consciousness...."
"Home Rule ought to cure that!" said Gilbert.
"That's why I'm a Home Ruler," Henry replied. "Ifyou chaff these people, they get angry and want to fight. If anybody were to get up in a public hall and say about the Irish one-quarter of the things that Bernard Shaw says in public about the English, the audience would flay him alive and wreck the building. They're too little to stand chaff easily. It takes a big people to bear criticism good-naturedly.... All the same, Gilbert, your damned countrymen are to blame for all this!"
"I know that," said Gilbert, "but your damned countrymen seem determined to remain like it!"
Mr. Quinn and Henry had talked of Ireland and of John Marsh, after John had returned to Dublin.
"Sometimes," said Mr. Quinn, "I think that the best thing for Ireland would be to let the two sides fight. That might bring them together. One damned good scrap ... and they might shake hands and become reconciled. There was as much antagonism and bitterness between the North and South in America as there is between the North and South in Ireland ... and on the whole, I think the Civil War did a lot of good!"
"It's a damned queer country, Henry!" he went on, lying down and drawing the bedclothes up about his neck. "Damned queer!"
"I suppose they all know what they're up to," he continued, looking intently at the ceiling. "But I don't!"
"Are you comfortable, father?" Henry asked, bending anxiously over Mr. Quinn who had a grey, tired look on his face.
"Yes, thank you, Henry, I'm ... I'm comfortable enough!" He turned his head slightly and gazed at Henry for a few moments without speaking. Then he smiled at him. "I tried hard to make an Irishman out of you, Henry," he said.
"I am an Irishman, father!"
"Aye, but averyIrishman. Many's a time I wonder what you are. What are you, Henry? You're not English an' you're not Irish. What are you?"
"I don't know, father. I'm very Irish when I'm in England, and I'm very English when I'm here!"
"That's no good, Henry. All you do is to make both sides angry. You should be something all the time!"
"I try to be fair," said Henry.
"That'll not lead you very far. Well, well, the world's the world, and there's an end of it!"
Sitting in the garden that evening, looking towards the hazy hills, Henry wondered, too, what he was. Indeed, he told himself, he loved Ireland, but then he loved England, also. Once, when he was in Trinity, he had trudged up into the mountains, and had sat on a stone and gazed down on the city and, beyond it, to the sea, and while he had sat there, a great love of his country had come into his heart, and he had found himself irrationally loving the earth about him, just because it was Irish earth. He had tried to check this love which was conquering him, and he had scraped up a handful of earth and rubbed his fingers in it. "Soil," he had murmured aloud. "Just soil ... like any other soil!" and then, suddenly, overpoweringly, irresistibly, something had quickened in him, and while he was murmuring that the earth he had scraped up was "just soil," he had raised it to his lips and had kissed it.... And as quickly as the impulse to kiss the earth came to him, came also revulsion. "That was a sloppy thing to do," he said to himself, and he flung the earth away from him.
He had stayed there until the evening, lulled by the warm wind that blew about the mountains, and soothed by the soft, kindly smell of burning turf. There was an odour of smouldering furze near by, and the air was full of pleasant sounds: the rattle of carts, the call of a man to a dog, the whinnying of horses and the deep lowing of cows. He turned on his side and looked seawards. The sun had set in a great field of golden cloud, throwing splashes of light down the sides of the mountains and turning little rain-pools into pools of fire; but now the dusk was settling down, and as Henry looked towards the sea, he saw lights shining out of the houses, making warm and comforting signals in the dark. Dublin lay curled about the Bay, covered by smoke that was pierced here and there by the chimney-stacks of factories. There, beneath him, were little rocking lights on the boats and ships that lay in Kingstown Harbour or drifted up and down the Irish Sea, and over there, across the Bay, the great high hump of Howth thrust itself upwards. A tired ship sailed slowly up to the city, trailing a long line of white foam behind her.... He stood up and looked about him; and again the love of Ireland came into his heart, and this time he did not try to check it. He yielded to it, giving himself up to it completely....
"You can't help it," he murmured to himself. "You simply can't help it!..."
But he loved England, too. There had been nights when he had loved London as a man might love his mother ... when the curve of the Thames, and the dark shine of its water against the arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the bulging dome of St. Paul's rising proudly out of the haze and smoke, and the view of the little humpy hills at Harrow that was seen from the Hampstead Heath ... when all these became like living things that loved him and were loved by him. Once, with Gilbert, he had wandered over Romney Marsh, from Hythe to Rye, and had felt that Kent and Sussex were as close to him as Antrim and Down. And Devonshire, from north and south, was friendly and native to him. He had tramped about Exmoor and had seen the red deer running swiftly from the hunt, and had climbed a bare scarp of Dartmoor, startling the wild ponies so thatthey ran off with their long tails flying in the air, scattering the flocks of sheep in their flight. The very names of the Devonshire rivers were like homely music to him, and he would say the names over to himself for the pleasure of their sound: Taw and Tamar and Torridge, the Teign and the Dart and the Exe, and the rivers about Boveyhayne, the Sid and the Otter, the Coly, the Axe and the Yarty....
"I'm not de-nationalised," he insisted. "I love Ireland and England. I'm part of them and they are part of me, and we shall never be separate...."
He had stayed at Ballymartin until he had completed "The Wayward Man." His father's health had varied greatly, but soon after the publication of the new novel, it mended and, although he did not recover his old strength and vigour, he was well enough to move about and superintend the work on his farm.
"You can go back to London now, Henry!" he said to his son one morning, after breakfast. "I know you're just itchin' to get back there, an' I'm sure I'm sick, sore an' tired of the sight of you. Away off with you, now!" And Henry, protesting that he did not wish to go, had gone to London. Gilbert's second comedy, "Sylvia," had been produced by Sir Geoffrey Mundane and, like "The Magic Casement," had achieved a fair amount of success. "But I haven't done anything big yet," Gilbert complained to Henry. "My aim's better than it was, but I'm still missing the point. Perhaps the next one will hit it...."
In London, Henry began "The Fennels," but after he had written a couple of chapters, he found himself unable to proceed with it.
"I must go back to Ireland," he said to Gilbert. "I want the feel of Ulster. I can't get it into this book unlessI'm there, somehow!" And so, sooner than he had anticipated, he returned to Ballymartin, where "The Fennels" was finished, and there he stayed until Gilbert wrote and asked him to join him at Tre'Arrdur Bay.
"You can't get much nearer to Ireland than that," he wrote: "You hop into the boat at Kingstown and hop out of it again at Holyhead and there you are!..."
"I shall be back again in a month, father!" he had said to Mr. Quinn, and then he had taken train to Belfast, where he was to change for Dublin and thence go to Wales.
In Belfast, there was great excitement because the Ulster Volunteers had successfully landed a cargo of guns that were purchased in Germany. The Volunteers had seized the coastguard stations at Larne and at Donaghadee and Bangor, overawing the police, and there had been much jocularity. It was all done in excellent taste. Had it not been for the death of a coastguard through heart failure, there would have been nothing to mar the jolly entertainment....
"I suppose John Marsh was sick about the gun-running in Ulster?" said Gilbert to Henry, as they approached the hotel at Tre'Arrdur Bay at which they were to stay.
"No, I don't think so. He seemed to think it was rather fine of the Ulstermen to do it. You see, it's put the Government in a hole, and that pleases him. He was very mysterious in his talk, and full of hints!..."
"Are they going to run guns, too?" Gilbert asked.
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Henry. "One of these days a gun'll go off, and then they'll stop playing the fool, I suppose!"
"Roger's getting all his facts in fine trim for the book on a National Army," Gilbert said after lunch. "The thing's been much bigger than any of us imagined, but Roger's a sticker, and he's got a lot done!"
"I'd nearly forgotten about that business," Henry replied.
"Roger hasn't forgotten. He's been spending a great deal of time in Bermondsey lately, and I shouldn't be surprised if the local Tories adopt him as their candidate at the next election. I don't suppose he'll get in. It'll be a pity if he doesn't. Rachel's making it easier for him. Roger says she's popular with the girls in the jam factories ... and of course that's very useful. You see, Rachel tells the girls to tell their mothers to tell their fathers to vote for Roger when the time comes, and the fathers'll have to do it or they'll get a hell of a time from their women. I can tell you, Quinny, Rachel knows what's what. She's going to ask some of the jam-girls out to tea and show them the baby!..."
"Good old British Slop, Gilbert! Do you remember how we swore that we would never have anything to do with Slop?..."
"We've had a lot to do with it. Roger was right. The Slop is there and you've got to make allowances for it, and after all, why shouldn't Rachel show her baby to the girls? Damn it all, a baby is a remarkable thing, when you come to think of it. All that wriggle and bubble and squeak and kick ... and Lord only knows what'll comeout of it! We ought to get married, Quinny, and father a few brats. My own notion is to get hold of a nice, large, healthy female of the working-class and set her up in a very ugly house in a very ugly suburb, near a municipal park, and give her three pounds a week for herself, and an allowance for every child she produces. I could have all the pride and pleasure of parenthood without the boredom and nuisance of being a husband, and the youngsters would probably be young giants. The girl wouldn't mind how many she had, and she'd feed 'em herself. There'd be no damned bottle and no damned limitation. And I'd put all the boys in the Navy, and I'd make cooks out of the girls ...cooks, Quinny, not food-murderers, and I'd call the first boy Michael John, and the second boy Patrick James and the third boy Peter William and the fourth boy Roger Henry Gilbert Ninian...."
"And what would you call the girls?"
"Wait a minute! I haven't done with the boys yet. And I'd call the fifth boy Matthew. I'd call the first girl Margaret, and the second girl Bridget, and the third girl Rachel, and the fourth girl Mary, and I'm damned if I know what I'd call the fifth girl, so I'd let her mother choose her name. And they'd all know how to swim, and manage a boat, and box, and whistle with two fingers in their mouths, and the girls' chief ambition would be to get married and have babies. They'd have a competition to see who could have the most. And their husbands would all be big, hearty men. Margaret would marry a blacksmith, and Bridget 'ud marry a fisherman, and Rachel 'ud marry a farmer, and Mary'd marry a soldier and the other one would marry a sailor. Mary's man 'ud be a sergeant-major, a fat sergeant-major, and the other one's 'ud be a boatswain or a chief gunner. I'd have so many grandchildren that I'd never be able to remember which were mine and which belonged to the man next door!..."
"You'd want a great deal of money for that lot, Gilbert!"
"I suppose I would. But I think that men of quality ought to have children by strong, healthy women of the working-class. I think there's a lot to be said for the right of the lord, don't you? It was good for the race ... kept up the quality of the breed! I shall have to think seriously about this...."
"You'd better look out for a farmer's daughter while you're here," Henry suggested.
"What! A Welshwoman! Good God, no!! My goodness, Quinny, you ought to bring that fellow, John Marsh, to Wales for a few months. That 'ud cure him of his Slop about nationality. I came to Wales, determined to like the Welsh, and I've failed. That's all. I've failed hopelessly. I told myself that it was absurd to believe that a whole nation could be as bad as English people say the Welsh are ... but it isn't absurd ... of the Welsh anyhow. They're all that everybody says they are, only about ten times worse. I've been all over this country one time and another, and they're simply ... mean. They're a dying race, thank heaven! They've kept themselves to themselves so much that their blood is like water, and so they're simply perishing. They wouldn't absorb or be absorbed ... and so they're just dying out. Your lot were wiser than the Welsh, Quinny!"
"The Irish?"
"Yes. They absorbed all the new blood they could get into their veins, and so, whoever else may perish, the Irish won't. This nationality business is all my eye, Quinny. You don't want one strain in a country. You want hundreds of strains. You want to mingle the bloods. ... I don't believe there's a pure-blooded Irishman in Ireland or out of it.... Oh, the Welsh! Oh, the awful Welsh! Inbreeding in a nation is the very devil ... and it makes 'em so damned uncivil. Oh, a shifty, whining race, the Welsh!..."
There are many bays on that coast, and in one of these, where they could easily get to deep water, they bathed every morning, drying themselves in the sun when they were tired of swimming. They would haul themselves out of the sea by clutching at the long tassels of sea-weed, and then lie down on the bare, warm rocks while the sun dried the salt into their skins. Once, while they were lying in this fashion, Gilbert turned to Henry and said, "Have you been to Boveyhayne at all since Ninian went away?"
"No," Henry answered. "I was to have gone with you that Christmas, but my father's illness prevented me, and I haven't been since."
"Why don't you go? They'd be glad to see you, and Ninian'd like it."
"I must go one of these days. How is Mrs. Graham? I suppose you've seen her lately?"
"She was all right when I saw her. Mary's rather nice!"
Henry did not say anything, and Gilbert, having waited for a while, went on.
"I always thought you and Mary...."
He broke off suddenly and sat up. "It's getting a bit chilly," he said. "I think I'll dress!"
"There's no hurry, Gilbert," Henry answered. "You didn't finish what you were saying."
"It's none of my business. I've no right to...."
"Oh, yes, you have, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, sitting up too. "Go on!"
"Well, I always thought that you and Mary were ... well, liked each other. That was why I was so puzzled when you got fond of Cecily. I felt certain that you'd marry Mary. Why don't you, Quinny? She's an awfully nice girl, and you and she are rather good pals, aren't you?"
"I don't know, Gilbert. I think I love Mary betterthan any one I've ever met, and yet I seem to lose touch with her very easily!"
"Oh, I shouldn't count Cecily. Cecily is anybody's sweetheart!..."
"But it wasn't only Cecily. There was a girl ... a farm-girl in Antrim. I never told you about her. Her name was Sheila Morgan ... she's married now ... and I went straight from Mary to her. Of course, I was a kid then, but still I'd told Mary I was fond of her, and we'd arranged to get married when we grew up ... and then I went home and made love to Sheila Morgan!"
"None of these women held you, Quinny!" said Gilbert.
"No, that's true, and Mary has, although I seldom see her. I thought that I could never love anybody as I loved Sheila Morgan ... until I met Cecily ... and then I thought I should never love any one as I loved her ... but somehow Cecily doesn't hold me now, and Mary does. I can't tell you when I ceased to love Cecily ... I don't really know that I have ceased to love her ... it just weakened, so gradually that I did not notice it weakening. All the same, if I were to see Cecily now, I should probably want her as badly as ever."
"You might, Quinny, but you wouldn't go on wanting her. You see, she wouldn't want you for very long, and my general opinion is that you can't keep on giving if you get nothing in return ... unless, of course, you're a one-eyed ass. A healthy, intelligent man, if he loves a woman who doesn't love him ... well he goes off and loves some one else ... and quite right, too. These devoted fellows who cherish their blighted affections forever ... damn it, they deserve it. They've got no imagination! I don't think Cecily'd hold you now, Quinny, not for very long anyhow. I wish you'd marry Mary. You quite obviously love her, and she quite obviously loves you.... Oh, Lordy God, I wish I could love somebody. I wish I were a young man in a novelette, with a nice, clear-cut face and crisp, curly hair and frightfully gentlemanly ways and no brainsso that I could get into the most idiotic messes.... Why aren't there any aphrodisiacs for men who cannot love any one in particular, Quinny! If you'd had the sense to have a sister, I should probably have married her. Roger's family runs to nothing but males, and Rachel can't honestly recommend any of her female relatives to me. If I thought Mary'd have me, I'd marry her, but I know she wouldn't. I used to think it was awful to want to believe in God and not be able to believe in Him, but it's a lot worse to want to love and not be able to love. I shall have to marry an actress. That's all!"
They dressed in the shelter of the rocks, and then went back to the hotel to lunch.
"I'd like to marry Mary!..." Henry began.
"Why don't you, then?" Gilbert interrupted.
"Because I feel that I must go to her absolutely undivided, Gilbert. Do you know what I mean? I want to be able to go to her, knowing that no other woman can sway me from her for a second. It would be horrible to be married to her and feel something lurking inside me, just waiting for a chance to spring out and ... and make love to some one else!"
"You've changed a lot, Quinny, since the days when you pleaded for infinite variety. You wanted a wife for every mood!..."
Henry laughed. "We did talk a lot of rot when we first went to London," he said, putting his arm in Gilbert's.
"It wasn't all rot. My contributions to the discussion were very sensible. I wonder what's the excitement up there! The papers are in!..."
There was a group of visitors sitting on the seats in front of the hotel and they were reading the newspapers which had just been sent out from Holyhead.
"Let's go and ask," Henry exclaimed, and they both went on more quickly.
"Any news?" Gilbert shouted as they mounted the steps leading from the carriage-way to the terrace.
"Yes. Bad news from Ireland," a visitor answered.
"From Ireland!" Henry said.
"Yes. The Nationalists landed some guns at Howth!..."
"Yes, yes!" Henry said excitedly.
"And there was a scrap between the people and soldiers!..."
"The soldiers!"
The visitor nodded his head. "Some damned ass," he said, "had ordered the soldiers out, and ... well, there was a row. The crowd stoned the soldiers ... and soldiers are human like anybody else ... they fired on the crowd!..."
"Fired on them!"
"Yes. Several people were killed. It's a bad business, a damned bad business!..."
There was an unreasonable fury in Henry's heart. "It's a clever joke when the Ulster people do it," he said, raging at Gilbert. "And everybody agrees to look the other way, but it's a crime when the Nationalists do it, and it can only be punished by ... by shooting. I suppose it's absolutely impossible for the English to get any understanding into their thick heads!..."
"Don't be an old ass, Henry. You're not going to improve a rotten bad business by hitting about indiscriminately. I daresay the people who were responsible for the thing were Irishmen. I've always noticed that when anything really dirty is done in Ireland, it's an Irishman who does it...."
"A rotten Unionist!..."
"Irish, all the same! The only thing that you Irishare united about is your habit of blaming the English for your own faults and misbehaviour. If I had the fellow who was responsible for this business I'd shoot him out of hand. I wouldn't think twice about it. If a man is such an ass as all that, he ought to be put out of the world quick. But then I'm English. The Irish'll make a case out of him. They'll orate over him, and they'll get frightfully cross for a fortnight, and then they'll do nothing. You know as well as I do, Quinny, that the English aren't unfriendly to the Irish, that they really are anxious to do the decent thing by Ireland. It isn't us: it's you. We're not against you ... you're against yourselves. There are about seventy-five different parties in Ireland, aren't there, and they all hate each other like poison?"
"I wonder if John Marsh was hurt!..."
"I don't suppose so. There'd have been some reference to him in the paper if he'd been hurt."
"This was what he was hinting at when I saw him in Dublin," Henry went on. "He talked about 'doubling it' and said that two could play at that game!"
He was calmer now, and able to talk about the Dublin shooting with some discrimination.
"I don't know why they want to 'run' guns at all," he said. "The tit-for-tat style of politics seems a fairly foolish one.... I think I shall go back to Ireland to-morrow, Gilbert. I feel as if I ought to be there. This business won't end where it is now. I know what John Marsh and Galway and Mineely are like. Whatever bitterness was in them before will be increased enormously by this. Mineely's an Ulsterman, and he'll make somebody pay for this. He doesn't say much ... he's like Connolly ... Connolly's the brains behind Larkin ... but he keeps things inside him, deep down, but safe, so that he can always get at them when he wants them!"
"What sort of man is he, Quinny?" Gilbert asked. "I didn't see him when we were in Dublin."
"He looks like a comfortable tradesman, and he's akindly sort of chap. You'd never dream that he was an agitator or that he'd want to lead a rebellion. I don't believe he likes that work, either. I think that inside him his chief desire is for a decent house with a garden, where he can grow sweet peas and cabbages and sit in the evening with his wife and children. He has more balanced knowledge than most of the people he works with. Marsh and Galway have had a better education than Mineely, but they haven't had his experience or his knowledge of men, and so they can't check their enthusiasm. He was in America for a long while, and he's lived in England, too. He wrote a quite good book on the Irish Labour Movement that would have been better if he'd made more allowance for the nature of the times. If the employers hadn't behaved so brutally over the strike, Mineely might have become the solvent of a lot of ill-will in Ireland; but they made a bitter man out of him then, and I suppose it's too late now. He'll go on, getting more and more bitter until.... Do you remember that story by H. G. Wells, Gilbert, called 'In the Days of the Comet'?"
"Is that the green vapour story?"
"Yes. Well, we want a green vapour very badly in Ireland, something to obliterate every memory and leave us all with fresh minds!"
"Miracle-mongering won't lead you very far, Quinny. It's no good howling for a vapour to heal you. You've just got to take your blooming memories and cure 'em yourselves, by the sweat of your brows! And, look here, Quinny, there doesn't seem any good reason why you should dash back to Ireland because of this business. I always think that the worst row in the world would never have come to anything if people hadn't done what you propose to do, rushed into it just because they thought they ought to be there. They congest things ... they use up the air and make the place feel stuffy ... and then they get cross, and somebody shoves somebody else, and before they know where they are, they're splitting eachother's skulls. If they'd only remained dispersed...."
"But I'd like to be there!..."
"I know you would. We'd all like to be there, so's we could say afterwards we'd seen the whole thing from beginning to end. That's just why we shouldn't be there. It isn't the principals in the row that make all the trouble, Quinny ... it's the blooming spectators!..."
He let himself be persuaded by Gilbert to stay in Wales, and they spent the next two or three days in tramping about the island of Anglesey. The days were bright and sunny, and the rich sparkle of the sea tempted them frequently to the water. There were many visitors at the hotel, some of whom were Irish people from Dublin, but mostly they came from Liverpool and Manchester; and with several of them, Gilbert and Henry became friendly. There was a schoolmaster who made a profession of mountain-climbing and a hobby of religion; and a doctor who told comic stories and talked with good temper about Home Rule, to which he was opposed; and a splendid old man, with his wife, who was interested in co-operation and was eager to limit armaments; and a wine merchant from Liverpool who had come to the conclusion that the world, on the whole, was quite a decent place to live in; and a dreadful little stockbroker who belonged to the Bloody school of politicians and talked about the Empire as if it were a music-hall; and an agent of some sort from Manchester who had reached that stage of prosperity at which he was beginning to wonder whether, after all, Nonconformity was not a grievous heresy and the Church of England a sure means of salvation. And there were others, vague people of the middle class, kindly and comfortable and inarticulate, with no particular opinions on anything except the desirability of four good meals every day and a month's holiday in the summer. There were daughters,too ... all sorts and conditions of daughters! Some that were hearty and athletic, living either in the sea or on the golf-links; and others that were full of their sex, unable to forget that men are men and women are women, and never the two shall come together but there shall be wooing and marrying.... There were a few who were eager to use their minds ... and they quoted their parents and the morning papers to Gilbert and Henry....
Surprisingly, their feeling about the Howth gun-raid became cool. In that exquisite sunlight, beneath the wide reach of blue sky, it was impossible to experience rancour or maintain anger. They swam and basked and swam again, and let their eyes look gladly on young shapely girls, running across the grassy tops of the piled rocks, and were sure that there could be nothing on earth more beautiful than the spectacle of pink arms gleaming through white muslin, unless it might be the full brown ears of wheat now bending in the ripening rays of sunshine.... And again, after dinner, they would sit in a high, grassy corner of the bay, listening to the lap of the sea beneath them, while the stars threw their faint reflections on the returning tide....
Exquisite peace and quiet, long days of rich pleasure and sweet nights of rest, kindliness and laughter and the friendly word of casual acquaintances ... and over all, the enduring beauty of this world.
Gilbert looked up from the paper as Henry came out of the hotel.
"I say, Quinny," he said, "I think there's going to be a war!"
"A what?" Henry exclaimed.
"A war!..."
"But where?"
Henry sat down on the long seat beside Gilbert, and looked over his shoulder at the paper.
"All over the place!" Gilbert answered. "The Austrians want to have a go at the Serbians, and the Russians mean to have one at the Austrians, and then the Germans will have to help the Austrians, and that'll bring the French in, and ... and then I suppose we shall shove in some where!"
Henry took the paper from Gilbert's hands. "But what have we got to do with it?" he said, hastily scanning the telegrams with which the news columns were filled.
"I dunno!..."
"It's ridiculous.... What's there to fight about? Damn it all, my novel's coming out in a month! What's it about?"
"You remember that Archduke chap who got blown up the other day?..."
"Yes, I remember!"
"Well, that's what it's about!"
"But, good God, man, they can't have a war about a thing like that...."
"It looks as if they thought they could. Anyhow, they're going to try!" said Gilbert.
"Just because an Archduke got killed? Damn it, Gilbert, that's what they're for!..."
There was a queer look of fright in the faces of the visitors to the hotel. The boy from Holyhead had been slow in coming with the papers, and the first news that came to them came from a man who had been into the town that morning.
"There's going to be a war," he had shouted to the group of people sitting on the terrace.
"Don't be an ass!" they had shouted back at him.
"Yes, there is. The whole blooming world'll be scrapping presently!" He spoke with the queer gaiety of a man who has abandoned all hope. "Just as I was getting on my feet, too!" he went on. He suddenly unburdened himself to a man who had only arrived at the hotel late on the previous evening ... they had never seen each other before ... but now they were revealing intimacies....
"Just getting on my feet," the man who had brought the news went on.
"It'll be very bad for business, I'm afraid!..."
"Bad. Goo' Lor', man, it's ruin ... absolute ruin! I'll be up the pole, that's where I'll be. And I was thinking of getting married, too. Just thinking of it, you know ... nothing settled or anything ... and now ... damn it, what they want to go and have a war for?Wedon't want one!"
Then the boy with the newspapers appeared, and they rushed at him and tore the papers from his bag....
"By Jove!" they said, "it's ... it's true!"
"I told you it was true. You wouldn't believe me when I told you. You know, it's a Bit Thick, that's what it is. I've been a Liberal all my life, same as my father ... and then this goes and happens! Whatisa chap to do?..."
He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, carrying an atlas.
"Where the 'ell is Serbia anyway?" he demanded. "I can't find the damn place on the map!"