Changing Winds

by St. John G. Ervine · English · Gutenberg #29902 · 986,039 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Changing Winds

Author: St. John G. Ervine

Release date: September 4, 2009 [eBook #29902]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29902

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CHANGING WINDS

* * * * *

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

_Novels._
MRS. MARTIN'S MAN.
ALICE AND A FAMILY.

_Short Stories._
EIGHT O'CLOCK AND OTHER STUDIES.

_Plays._
FOUR IRISH PLAYS
MIXED MARRIAGE.
THE MAGNANIMOUS LOVER.
THE CRITICS.
THE ORANGEMAN.
JANE CLEGG.
JOHN FERGUSON.

_Political Study._
SIR EDWARD CARSON AND THE ULSTER MOVEMENT.

* * * * *

CHANGING WINDS

A Novel

ST. JOHN G. ERVINE

New York
The Macmillan Company
1917

Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1917. Reprinted
March, twice, May, twice, July, August, September, November, 1917.

THE MEMORY OF RUPERT BROOKE

The translations from the Gaelic on pages 77 and 78 were made by the
late P. H. Pearse, who was executed in Dublin for his part in the Easter
Rebellion. The translations appeared in _New Ireland_, and I am indebted
to the Editor of that review for permission to reprint them here.

THE FIRST BOOK

CHANGING WINDS

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter, And lit by the
rich skies, all day. And after, Frost, with a gesture, stays the winds
that dance And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white, Unbroken glory,
a gathered radiance, A width, a shining peace, under the night.

RUPERT BROOKE.

CHANGING WINDS

THE FIRST CHAPTER

It would be absurd to say of Mr. Quinn that he was an ill-tempered man,
but it would also be absurd to say that he was of a mild disposition.
William Henry Matier, a talker by profession and a gardener in his
leisure moments, summarised Mr. Quinn's character thus: "He'd ate the
head off you, thon lad would, an' beg your pardon the minute after!"
That, on the whole, was a just and adequate description of Mr. Quinn,
and certainly no one had better qualifications for forming an estimate
of his employer's character than William Henry Matier; for he had spent
many years of his life in Mr. Quinn's service and had, on an average,
been discharged from it about ten times per annum.

Mr. Quinn, the younger son of a poor landowner in the north of Ireland,
had practised at the Bar without success. His failure to maintain
himself at the law was not due to ignorance of the statutes of the land
or to any inability on his part to distort their meaning: it was due
solely to the fact that he was a Unionist and a gentleman. His Unionism,
in a land where politics take the place of religion, prevented him from
receiving briefs from Nationalists, and his gentlemanliness made it
impossible for him to accept briefs from the Unionists; for if an Irish
lawyer be a Unionist, he must play the lickspittle and tomtoady to the
lords and ladies of the Ascendency and be ready at all times and on all
occasions to deride Ireland and befoul his countrymen in the presence of
the English people.

"I'd rather eat dirt," Mr. Quinn used to say, "than earn my livin' that
way!"

He contrived, however, to win prosperity by his marriage to Miss
Catherine Clotworthy, the only daughter of a Belfast mill-owner: a lady
of watery spirit who irked her husband terribly because she affected an
English manner and an English accent. He was very proud of his Irish
blood and he took great pride in using Ulster turns of speech. Mrs.
Quinn, whose education had been "finished" at Brighton, frequently urged
him to abandon his "broad" way of talking, but the principal effect she
had on him was to intensify the broadness of his accent.

"I do wish you wouldn't say _Aye_," she would plead, "when you mean
_Yes_!"

And then he would roar at her. "What! Bleat like a damned Englishman!
Where's your wit, woman?"

Soon after the birth of her son, she died, and her concern, therefore,
with this story is slight. It is sufficient to say of her that she
inherited a substantial fortune from her father and that she passed it
on, almost unimpaired, to her husband, thus enabling him to live in
comfortable disregard of the law as a means of livelihood. He had a
small estate in County Antrim, which included part of the village of
Ballymartin, and there he passed his days in agricultural pursuits.

Mr. Quinn, as has been stated, was a Unionist, and, in spite of his
Catholic name, a Protestant; but he had a poor opinion of his Unionist
neighbours who, so he said, were far more loyal to England than England
quite liked. He hated the English accent ... "finicky bleatin'," he
called it ... and declared, though he really knew better, that all
Englishmen spoke with a Cockney intonation. "A lot of h-droppers," he
called them, adding, "God gave them a decent language, but they haven't
the gumption to talk it!" The Oxford voice, in his opinion, was educated
Cockney, uglier, if possible, than the uneducated brand.

An Englishman, hearing Mr. Quinn talk in this fashion, might pardonably
have imagined that he was listening to a fanatical Nationalist, a
dynamiting Fenian, but if, being a Liberal, he had ventured to advocate
Home Rule for Ireland in Mr. Quinn's presence, he would speedily have
found that he was in error. "Damn the fear!" Mr. Quinn would say when
people charged him with being a Home Ruler. The motive of his Unionism,
however, was neither loyalty to England nor terror of Rome: it was
wholly and unashamedly a matter of commerce. "The English bled us for
centuries," he would say, "an' it's only fair we should bleed them.
We've got our teeth in their skins, an' they're shellin' out their money
gran'! That's what the Union's for--to make them keep on shellin' out
their money. An' instead of tellin' the people to bite deeper an' get
more money out of them, the fools o' Nationalists is tellin' them to
take their teeth out! Never," he would exclaim passionately, "never,
while there's a shillin' in an Englishman's pocket!"

Mr. Quinn, of course, treated every Englishman he met with courtesy, for
he was an Irish gentleman, and he had sometimes been heard to speak
affectionately of some person of English birth. The chief result of this
civility, conjoined with the ferocity of his political statements, was
that his English friends invariably spoke of him as "a typical
Irishman." They looked upon him as so much comic relief to the more
serious things of their own lives, and seemed constantly to expect him
to perform some amusing antic, some innately Celtic act of comic folly.
At such times, Mr. Quinn felt as if he could annihilate an Englishman.

"Ah, well," he would say, restraining himself, "we all know what the
English are like, God help them!"

It was because of his strong feeling for Ireland and Irish things that
he decided to have his son, Henry, educated in Ireland. "Anyway," he
said to the lad, "you'll have an Irish tongue, whatever else you have!"
He sent the boy to a school in the County Armagh and left him there
until he discovered that he was not being educated at all. He had
questioned Henry on the history and geography of Ireland one day, and
had found to his horror that while Henry could tell him exactly where
Popocatepetl was to be found, and knew that Mount Everest was 29,002
feet high, and could name the kings of England and the dates of their
accession as easily as he could recite the Lord's Prayer, he had no
knowledge of the whereabouts or character of Lurigedan, a hill in the
County Antrim, and could tell him nothing of the Red Earls and the
beautiful queens of Ireland. He knew something that was true, and much
that was not, of Queen Elizabeth and King Alfred, but nothing, true or
false, of Deirdre and Red Hugh O'Neill.

"What the hell's the good of knowin' about Popocatepetl," Mr. Quinn
shouted at him, "when you don't know the name of a hill on your own
doorstep!"

Lurigedan was hardly "on his own doorstep," and Mr. Quinn himself only
knew of it because he had once, very breathlessly, climbed to its
summit, but an Irish hill was of more consequence to him than the
highest mountain in the world; and so he descended upon the master of
the school, a dreepy individual with a tendency to lament the errors of
Rome, and damned him from tip to toe so effectually that the alarmed
pedagogue gladly consented to the immediate termination of Henry's
career at his establishment. Thereafter, Henry was educated in England,
for Mr. Quinn did not propose to sacrifice efficiency to patriotism.

"An' if you come back talkin' like a damned Cockney," he said to his son
as he bade good-bye to him, "I'll cut the legs off you!"

When Henry came home in the holidays, Mr. Quinn would spend hours in
testing his tongue.

"Sound your _r_s," he would say repeatedly, because he regarded one's
ability to say the letter _r_ as a test of a man's control of the
English language. "If you were to listen to an Englishman talkin' on the
telephone, you'd hear him yelpin' _'Ah yoh thah?'_ just like a big buck
nigger, 'til you'd be sick o' listenin' to him! Say, '_Are you there?_',
Henry son!"

And Henry would say _"Are you there_, father?" very gravely.

"That's right," the old man would exclaim, listening with delight to the
rolling _r_s. "Always sound your _r_s whatever you do. I'll not own you
if you come home sayin,'_Ah yoh thah?_' when you mean '_Are you there?_'
Do you mind me, now?"

"Yes, father."

"Well, be heedin' me, then! Now, how are you on the _h_s. Are you as
steady on them as you were when you were home before?"

Then Henry would protest. "But, father," he would say, "they don't all
drop their _h_s. It's only the common ones that drop them!...

"They're all common, Henry ... the whole lot, common as dirt!" Mr. Quinn
retorted once to that, and then began to tell his son how the English
people had lost the habits and instincts of gentlemen in the eighteenth
century ... "where Ireland still is, my son!" ... and had become
money-grubbers. "The English," he said, lying back in his chair and
delivering his sentences as if he were a monarch pronouncing decrees,
"ceased to be gentlemen on the day that Hargreaves invented the
spinnin'-jenny, and landlords gave way to mill-owners." He stopped for a
second or two and then continued as if an idea had only just come into
his head. "An' it was proper punishment for Hargreaves," he said, "that
the English let him die in the workhouse. Proper punishment. What the
hell did he want to invent the thing for?..."

Henry looked up, startled by the sudden anger that swept over his
father, replacing the oracular banter with which he had begun his
discourse on the decadence of manners in England.

"But, father," he said, "you aren't against machinery, are you?"

"Yes, I am," Mr. Quinn replied, banging the arm of his chair with his
fist. "I'd smash every machine in the world, if I were in authority."

"That's absurd, father. I mean, what would become of progress?"

Mr. Quinn leaped out of his chair and strode up and down the room.
"Progress! Progress!" he exclaimed. "D'ye think machines are progress?
D'ye think a factory is progress? Some of you young chaps think you're
makin' progress when you're only makin' changes. I tell you, Henry, the
only thing that is capable of progression is the human soul, and
machines can't develop _that_!" He came back to his seat as he said this
and sat down, but he did not lie back as he had done before. He sat
forward, gazing intently at his son, and spoke with a curious passion
such as Henry had never heard him use before. "Look here, Henry!" he
said, "there was a girl in the village once called Lizzie McCamley ... a
fine bit of a girl, too, big and strong, an' full of fun, an' she got
tired of the village. Her father was a labourer, an' all she could see
in front of her was the life of a labourer's wife. Well, it isn't much
of a life, that, an' Lizzie's mother had a poor life even for a
labourer's wife because McCamley boozed. I don't blame Lizzie for
wantin' somethin' better than that. I'd have despised her if she hadn't
wanted somethin' better. But what did she do? She had an uncle in
Belfast workin' in your grandfather's mill, an' she came to me an' she
asked me to use my influence with your grandfather to get her a job in
the mill. An' I did. An' by God, I'm sorry for it! I'll rue it 'til my
dyin' day, I can tell you!"

"But why, father!"

"Your grandfather gave her a job in the weavin' room of his mill. Do you
know what that's like, Henry?" Henry shook his head. He had never been
inside a linen-mill. "The linen has to be woven in a moist atmosphere,
or else it'd become brittle an' so it wouldn't be fine," Mr. Quinn went
on; "an' the atmosphere is kept moist by lettin' steam escape from pipes
into the room where the linen is bein' woven--a damp, muggy, steamy
atmosphere, Henry ... an' Lizzie McCamley left this village ... left
work in the fields there to go up to Belfast an' work in that for ten
shillin's a week! An' that's what people calls progress! I wish you
could see her now--half rotten with disease, her that was the healthiest
girl in the place before she went away. She's always sick, that girl,
an' she can't eat anythin' unless her appetite is stimulated with stuff
like pickles. She's anæmic an' debilitated, an' the last time I saw her,
she'd got English cholera.... She married a fellow that was as sick as
herself, an' she had a child that wasn't fit to be born ... it died,
thank God!... an' then she went back to her work an' became sicker. An'
she'll go on like that 'til she dies, a rotten, worn-out woman, the
mother of rotten children when she ought to have had fine healthy brats,
an' could have had them too, if it hadn't been for this damned progress
we're all makin'!"

Henry did not reply to his father. He did not know what to reply. His
mind was still in the pliable state, and he found that he was being
infected by his father's passion. But he had been taught at Rumpell's to
believe in Invention, in Progress by the Development of Machinery, and
so his mind reeled a little under this sudden onslaught on his beliefs.

"Well," said Mr. Quinn. "Is that your notion of progress, Henry! Makin'
fine linen out of healthy girls?"

"No, father, of course not. Only!..."

Mr. Quinn stood up, and caught hold of his son's shoulder. "Come over to
the window, Henry!" he said, and they walked across the room together.
"Look out there," he said, pointing towards the fields that stretched to
the foot of the hills. "That's fine, isn't it!" he exclaimed.

"It's very beautiful, father," Henry replied, looking across the fields
of corn and clover and the pastures where the silken-sided cattle
browsed and flocks of sheep cropped the short grass.

"It's _land_, Henry!" said Mr. Quinn, proudly. "You can do without
machines in the long run, but you can't do without _that_!"

"An' what do you think a mill-owner'd make of it, Henry!" Mr. Quinn said
as they stood there gazing on the richness of the earth. Near at hand,
they could hear the sound of a lawn-mower, leisurely worked by William
Henry Matier, and while they waited for him to come into view, a great
fat thrush flew down from a tree and seized a snail and beat it against
a stone until its shell was broken....

"I suppose he'd spoil it, father!" Henry answered.

"Spoil it!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed. "Damn it, Henry, he'd desecrate it!
He'd tear up my cornfields and meadows and put factories and mills in
their place! That's what he'd do!" He turned sideways and leant against
the lintel of the window so that he was looking at his son. "There was a
fellow came to see me once," he said, "from London. A speculatin' chap,
an' he wanted me to put capital into a scheme he had on. Do you know
what sort of a scheme it was, Henry?"

"No, father!"

"He wanted to develop the mineral resources of the County Wicklow, an'
he wanted me to lend him money to do it. He said that some Germans had
surveyed the whole district, an' there was an immense fortune just
waitin' to be torn out of the earth.... I could hardly keep my feet off
his backside! 'Do you want to turn Glendalough into a place like
Wigan?' I said to him. 'It's all in the interests of progress,' says
he.... No, I didn't give him any of my money. I was as civil to him as I
could be, an' he never knew how near he was to his death that day...."

Mr. Quinn's anger evaporated, and he began to laugh to himself as he
thought of the difficulty he had had in restraining his rage against the
speculator and how frightened that person would have been had he known
how angry he had made him.

"He was a little smooth chap," he said, "with smooth hair an' smooth
clothes and a smooth voice. You could hardly tell it was hair, it was
that smooth. You'd nearly think somebody had painted it on his skull. He
couldn't make me out when I said I'd rather starve than let a halfpenny
of my money be used to make a mess of Glendalough, an' he talked about
the necessity of havin' a broad outlook on the world. I suppose he went
away an' told everybody that I was a reactionary an' a bad landlord. Oh,
I can hear him spoutin' away about me ... he got into parliament soon
after that, an' used to denounce landlords an' blether away about
progress. An' I daresay everybody that listens to him thinks I'm a
stupid fellow, standin' in the way of everything. I'm a landlord, an'
so, of course, I'm obsolete and tyrannical an' thick-headed, an' all
that, but I wouldn't treat one of my labourers the way your grandfather
treated his for the wide world. Mind you, he was a religious man ... I
don't mean that he pretended to be religious ... he really was
religious, after a fashion ... wouldn't have missed goin' to church or
sayin' his prayers night _an'_ mornin' for a mint of money ... an' yet
there didn't seem to him to be anything wrong in lettin' men an' women
make money for him in that ... that disgustin' way. I can't understand
that. I'm damned if I can!"

Something stirred uneasily in Henry's mind. He became acutely conscious
of the principal source of his father's income, and he remembered
things that had been said to him by Gilbert Farlow at Rumpell's. Gilbert
Farlow was his chief friend at Rumpell's, the English school to which he
had been sent after his experience at Armagh, and Gilbert called himself
an hereditary socialist because his father had been a socialist before
him. ("He was one of the first members of the Fabian Society," Gilbert
used to say proudly.) Gilbert had strong, almost violent, views on
Personal Responsibility for General Wrongs. He always referred to rich
people as "oligarchs," or "the rotters who live on rent and interest"
and declared that it was impossible for them to escape from the
responsibility for the social chaos by asserting that they,
individually, had kind hearts and had never been known to underpay or
overwork any one. Remembering Gilbert's views, Henry could not help
thinking that it was all very well for his father to denounce the mill
in that fashion, but after all he was living on the money that was made
in it....

"But, father," he said, hesitatingly, "haven't we got grandfather's
money now ... and the mill!..."

"No, not the mill, Henry. Your grandfather turned that into a limited
company, an' your mother sold her shares in it. I told her to sell
them!"

Henry's conscience still pricked him. It seemed to him that selling the
shares was very like running away from the responsibility.

"But all the same," he said, "we've got money that was made out of the
mill by grandfather...."

"So we have, Henry," Mr. Quinn replied good-temperedly, "an' we're
makin' a better use of it than he did. Some one's got to use it, an' I'm
doin' the best I can with it. You've only got to look at my land to see
how well I've used the money. It's better land than it was when I got
it, isn't it?" Henry nodded his head. Even he knew that much. "I've
enriched it an' drained it an' improved it in ways that'll benefit them
that come after me ... not me, but you an' your children, Henry ... an'
that's a good use to make of it. I've planted trees that I'll never
reap a ha'penny from, an' I've spent money on experiments that did me no
good but helped to increase knowledge about land. Look at the labourers'
cottages I've built, an' the plots of land I've given them. Aren't they
good! Didn't I put up the best part of the money to build the new school
because the old one was lettin' in the wind an' rain?"

Henry's knowledge of sociology was not sufficient to enable him to cope
with these arguments ... there was no Gilbert Farlow at his elbow to
prompt him ... and so he collapsed.

"I suppose you're right, father," he said.

"_Suppose_ I'm right," Mr. Quinn replied. "_Of course_ I'm right!"

"I know well," he continued after he had fumed for a few moments,
"there's people ... socialists an' radicals an' people like that ...
makes out that landlords are the curse of the world. They think we're
nothin' in comparison with mill-owners an' that sort, but I tell you,
Henry, whatever we are an' whatever we were, we're better than the
people that have taken our place. We didn't tear up the earth an' cover
it with slag-heaps or turn good rivers into stinkin' sewers. We didn't
pollute the rivers with filth an' poison the fish!" He turned suddenly
to Henry and said in a quieter tone, "You've never seen Wigan, have you,
Henry?"

"No, father."

"Well, you'd think by the look of it, it was made on the seventh day ...
when God rested. Landlords didn't do that, Henry, or anything as bad as
that. It was mill-owners that did it. Oh, I know well enough that
landlords were not all they ought to have been, but I'm certain of this,
that labourers on the land were healthier under landlords than they are
under mill-owners, and even if we weren't as good to the labourers as we
might have been, at least we had respect for God's world, an' I never
met a mill-owner yet that had respect for anything but a bankbook. I've
been in Lancashire an' I've listened to these mill-owners ... I've
listened to them talkin', an' I've listened to them eatin' an' drinkin'
... an' they talked 'brass' an' they thought 'brass,' an' I'm damned if
they didn't drink 'brass.' That's characteristic of them. They call
money 'brass.' Brass! Do you think they care for the fine look of things
or an old house or a picture or books or anything that's decent? No,
Henry ... all they care for is 'brass,' an' that's what's the matter
with the English ... they think too much about money ... easy money ...
an' they think so much about gettin' it that none of them have any time
to think of how they'll spend it when they do get it. An' they just fool
it away! Eat it away, drink it away! An' then they have to go to Buxton
an' Matlock an' Harrogate to sweat the muck out of their blood!"

Henry reminded his father of the bloods and bucks and macaronis of the
eighteenth century ... the last of the English gentlemen.

"After all, father, they weren't so very much better than the lot you're
denouncing!"

"Yes, they were. They had the tradition of gentlemen behind them. They
were drunkards and gamblers and women-hunters an' Lord knows what not,
but behind it all, Henry, they had the tradition of gentlemen, an' that
saved them from things that a mill-owner does as a matter of course. An'
anyway, their theory was right. They thought more of spendin' money than
of makin' it, an' that was right. It isn't makin' money that matters ...
any fool can do that ... it's spendin' money that matters. You're less
likely to make a mess of the world when you're spendin', than when
you're makin', money, an' the English'll find that out yet. God'll not
forget in a hurry the way they tore up their good land an' made dirty,
stinkin' towns out of it, an' by the Holy O, He'll make them suffer for
it. If I was an Englishman, I wouldn't want any one to see places like
Wigan an' the towns where they dig coal an' make pottery ... I'd ... I'd
be ashamed to look God in the face when I had mind of them...."

Late that night, long after Henry had gone to bed, Mr. Quinn came to his
room and wakened him.

"What is it, father!" Henry said, starting up in alarm.

"It's all right, son," Mr. Quinn replied. "I'm sorry I startled you.
I've been thinkin' over what I said to you this afternoon ... about
machinery. You're not to take me too seriously."

Henry, his eyes still full of sleep, blinked uncomprehendingly at his
father.

"I mean, son," Mr. Quinn went on, "that it'd be silly to break up every
machine in the world. Of course, it would! You must have thought I was
daft talkin' like that. What I mean is, I'd smash up all the machines
that make a mess of men an' women. That's all. I'm sorry I disturbed
you, Henry, but I couldn't bear to think of you lyin' here mebbe
thinkin' I was talkin' out of the back of my neck. I'm not very clever,
son ... I've a moidhered sort of a mind ... an' I say things sometimes
that aren't what I mean at all. You must be tired out, Henry. Good-night
to you!"

"Good-night, father!"

Mr. Quinn walked towards the door of the room, shading the light of the
candle from the draught, but before he had reached it, Henry called to
him.

"Father," he said.

"Yes, Henry," Mr. Quinn replied, turning to look at his son.

"You're a Socialist!"

"No, I'm not. I'm a Conservative," said Mr. Quinn, and then he went out
of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

Many things troubled Mr. Quinn, but the thing that troubled him most was
his son's nervousness. Henry, when he was a child, would cry with fright
during a thunderstorm, and he never in after life quite lost the sense
of apprehension when the clouds blackened. He loved horses, but he could
not sit on a horse's back without being haunted by the fear that the
animal would run away or that he would be thrown from his seat. He could
swim fairly well, but he was afraid to dive, and he never swam far out
of his depth without a sensation of alarm that he would not be able to
return in safety.

"Your mother was like that," Mr. Quinn said to him once. "She never was
in a theatre in her life, 'til I married her. Her father was too
religious to let her go to such a place, an' I had the great job to
persuade her to go with me. I took her to see Henry Irving in Belfast
once, an' all the time she kept whisperin' to me, 'Suppose I was to die
now, where'd I wake up?' That's a fact, Henry! Your mother was terribly
frightened of hell. An' even when she got over that, she was always
wonderin' if it was safe to go to a theatre. She'd imagine the place was
sure to go on fire, an' then she'd be burned alive or get crushed to
death or somethin' like that. I nearly felt scared myself, the way she
went on! I wish you weren't so nervous, Henry!"

They were at Cushendall when Mr. Quinn said this. They had ridden over
on bicycles intent on a day's picnic by the sea, and soon after they had
arrived, Mr. Quinn itched to be in the water. They had stripped on the
beach, and clambered over the rocks to a place where a deep, broad pool
was separated from the Irish Sea by a thick wedge of rock, covered by
long, yellow sea-weed. There was a swell on the sea, and so Mr. Quinn
decided to swim in the pool. "This is a good place for a dive," he said,
standing on the edge of the flat rock and looking down into the deep
pool, and then he put his hands above his head and, bending forward,
dived down into the water so finely that there was hardly any splash. He
came up, puffing and blowing, shaking the water from his eyes and hair,
and swam up and down the pool, now on his back, now on his side, and
then suddenly with a shout he would curl himself up and dive and swim
beneath the water, and again come up, red and shiny and puffing and
blowing and shouting, "Aw, that's grand! Aw, that's grand!" He could
stand on his hands in the water and turn somersaults and find pennies on
the sandy bottom. He loved all sport, but the sport that he loved best
was swimming. He liked to sit on a rock and let great waves come and hit
him hearty thumps in the back. He liked to bury his face in the water.
He liked the feel of the water on his body. He liked to stand up in the
sunshine and watch the drops of water glistening on his body. He liked
to lie on the sea-weed or the sand after his swim and let the sun dry
him. "It's great health, this!" he would say, kicking and splashing in
the sea.

"Come on," he shouted to Henry, after he had dived.

Henry was sitting on the sea-weed, with his arms clutched tightly round
his shins, shivering a little in the wind.

"You'll catch your death of cold if you sit there instead of jumpin'
in," his father called to him. "Dive, man! That's a grand place!"

Henry stood up ... and then turned away from the rock. He caught hold of
the sea-weed and slowly lowered himself into the water.

"That wasn't much of a dive," his father said, swimming up to him.

Henry did not answer. He swam across the pool and clambered out on the
other side and waited for his father, who followed after him.

"I wish you weren't so nervous," Mr. Quinn said a second time, as he sat
down on the sea-weed beside his son.

"So do I, father," Henry replied, "but I can't help it. I try to make
myself not feel afraid, but I just can't. If I could only not think
about it!..."

"Aye, that's it, Henry. You think too much. Do you mind that bit in
Shakespeare about people that think bein' dangerous. Begod, that's true!
Thin men think, that's what Shakespeare says, an' he's right, though
I've known fat men to think, too, but anyway thin men aren't near the
swimmers that fat men are. Well, I suppose it's no use complainin'. You
can't help thinkin' if you have that kind of a mind ... only I wish it
didn't make a coward of you!"

A twist of pain passed over the boy's face when his father said
"Coward," and instantly Mr. Quinn was sorry.

"I didn't mean that exactly," he said very quickly, putting out his hand
and touching Henry's bare back. "I didn't mean _coward_, Henry. I know
you're not that sort at all. It's just nervousness, that's what it is!"

He scrambled to his feet as he spoke, and stood for a moment or two,
slipping about on the wet sea-weed. He slapped his big, hairy chest with
his hands, and then he swung his arms over his head in order to send the
blood circulating more rapidly through his veins.

"I wish I were as big and strong as you are, father!" said Henry, gazing
at his father's muscular frame.

"You're a greedy young rascal," his father answered. "Sure, haven't you
more brains in your wee finger than I have in my whole body, an' what
more do you want! It would be a poor thing if your father hadn't got
something you haven't. Come on, now, an' I'll swim you a race to the end
of the pool an' back, an' then we must go home."

He plunged into the water and swam about, making a great noise and
splash, and deliberately looking away from his son. He was giving him an
opportunity to slip into the water without being seen to shrink from the
dive.

"Are you comin', Henry!" he asked, without looking back.

"Yes, father," the boy replied, standing up and looking fearfully into
the water. He lifted his hands above his head and drew in his breath. He
moved forward, half shutting his eyes, and poised himself on the edge of
the rock, ready for the plunge. Then he put his hands down again and
lowering himself on to the sea-weed, slipped slowly into the water and
struck out. "I'm coming, father!" he said.

"That's right, my son, that's right!" Mr. Quinn replied, looking round.

He did not speak of Henry's nervousness again, but it troubled him none
the less. He himself was so fearless, so careless of danger, so eager
for adventure that he could not understand his son's shrinking from
peril.

"I used to think," he said to himself one day, "that boys took their
physique from their mothers an' their brains from their fathers, but it
doesn't seem to have worked out like that with Henry. He doesn't seem to
have got anything from me.... It's a rum business, whatever way you look
at it."

THE SECOND CHAPTER

Mr. Quinn's horror of the English people was neither consistent nor
rigid. When the Armagh schoolmaster was found wanting, Mr. Quinn
instantly decided to send Henry to Rumpell's, a famous English school,
and here Henry soon made friends of Ninian Graham and Roger Carey and
Gilbert Farlow. Gilbert Farlow was the friend for whom he cared most,
but his affection for Ninian Graham and Roger Carey was very strong.
Henry's soft nature was naturally affectionate, but there had been
little opportunity in his life for a display of affection. His mother
was not even a memory to him, for she had died while he was still a
baby. Old Cassie Arnott had nursed him, but Cassie, at an age when it
seemed impossible for her to feel any emotion for men, had suddenly
married and had gone off to Belfast. His memory of her speedily faded.
Cassie was succeeded by Matilda Turnbull, who drank, and was dismissed
by Mr. Quinn at the end of a fortnight; and then came Bridget Fallon....
Bridget had the longest hold on his memory, but she, too, disappeared
and was seen no more; for Mr. Quinn came on her suddenly one day and
found her teaching "Master Henry" to say prayers to the Virgin Mary! She
had put a scapular about his neck and had taught him to make the sign of
the cross....

"Take that damned rag off my child's neck," Mr. Quinn had roared at her,
"an' take yourself off as soon as you can pack your box!"

And Bridget, poor, kindly, devout, gentle Bridget, was sent weeping
away.

Long afterwards, Henry had talked to his father about Bridget, and Mr.
Quinn had expressed regret for what he had said about the scapular. "I
had no call to say it was a damned rag," he said, "though that's all it
was. It meant a lot to her, of course, an' I suppose she was right to
try an' make a Catholic of you. But I'd hate to have a son of mine a
Catholic, Henry. It's an unmanly religion, only fit for women an' ...
an' actors! It's not religion at all ... it's funk, Henry, that's what
it is! I read 'The Garden of the Soul' one time, an' I'd be ashamed to
pray the way that book goes on, with their 'Jesus, Mercy!' 'Mother of
God, pity me!' 'Holy Saints, intercede for me!' Catholics don't pray,
Henry; they whine; and I've no use for whinin'. If I can't go to heaven
like a man, I'll go to hell like one. Anyway, if I commit a sin, I'll
not whine about it, an' if God says to me on the last day, 'Did you
commit this sin or that sin?' I'll answer Him to His face an' say, 'Yes,
God, I did, an' if You'd been a man, You'd have done the same
Yourself!'"

So it was that, in his childhood, no woman made a lasting impression on
Henry's affectionate nature. No one, indeed, filled his affections
except his father. Henry's love for his father was unfathomable. Their
natures were so dissimilar that they never clashed. There were things
about Henry, his nervousness, his sudden accessions of fright, which
puzzled Mr. Quinn, and might, had he been a smaller man than he was,
have made him angry with the boy, contemptuous of him; but when Mr.
Quinn came across some part of Henry's nature which was incomprehensible
to him, he tried first, to understand and then, failing that, to be
tolerant. "We all have our natures," he used to say to himself, "an'
it's no use complainin' because people are different. Sure, that's what
makes them interestin' anyway!"

But Henry's affection for Gilbert Farlow and Ninian Graham and Roger
Carey was a new affection, a thing that came spontaneously to him. There
were other boys at Rumpell's whom he liked and others for whom he felt
neither like nor dislike, but just the ordinary tolerance of temporary
encounters and passing life; and there were a few for whom he felt a
hatred so venomous that it sometimes frightened him. There was Cobain, a
brutal, thick-jawed fellow who thumped small boys whenever they came
near him, and there was Mullally!... He could not describe his feeling
for Mullally! It was so strong that he could not sit still in the same
room with him, could not speak civilly to him. And yet Mullally was
civil enough to him, was anxious even to be friendly with him. There was
something of a flabby sort in Mullally's nature that made Henry
instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering
eyes, peering from behind large glasses, his tow-coloured hair that
seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped
on one jerky note....

It was Gilbert Farlow who gave Mullally his nick-name. (It was the time
of the Boer War, and the nick-name came easily enough.) "He isn't a
man," said Gilbert; "he's a regrettable incident!"

Gilbert Farlow, though he was the youngest and the slightest of the four
boys, was the leader of them. He had the gift of vivid language. He
could cut a man with a name as sharply as if it were a knife. He
invented new oaths for the delight of Ninian Graham, who had a taste for
strong language but no genius in developing it. It was he who appointed
Roger to the office of Purse-Bearer because Roger was careful. It was he
who decided that their pocket-money, with small exceptions, should be
spent conjointly, and that no money should be spent unless three out
of four consented to the expenditure. ("Damn it, is it my money or is it
not?" said Ninian when the rule was proposed, and "Fined sixpence for
cheek!" Gilbert replied, ordering Roger to collect the sixpence which
was then divided between the three who had not murmured.) It was he who
declared that "Henry" was too long and "Quinn," too short (though Roger
said the words were exactly the same length) and insisted on calling
Henry "Quinny" (which Roger said was actually longer than either of the
displaced words. "Well, it sounds shorter," said Gilbert decisively).

Gilbert planned their lives for them. "We'll all go to Cambridge," he
said, "and then we'll become Great!"

"Righto!" said Ninian.

"If any of our people propose to send us to Oxford, there's to be a row!
Sloppy asses go to Oxford ... fellows like Mullally!" Henry made a
terrible grimace at the mention of Mullally's name and Gilbert, swift to
notice the grimace, pointed the moral, "Well, Quinny, if your guv'nor
tries to send you to Oxford, don't let him. Remember Mullally, the ...
the boiled worm!" he continued, "an' say you won't go!"

"But my father was at Oxford," said Roger quietly.

"Your father was a parson and didn't know any better," Gilbert replied.
"And that reminds me, if one of us becomes a parson, the rest of us give
him the chuck. Is that agreed?"

Ninian held up both his hands. "Carried unanimous!" he said.

"I don't know!" Henry objected. "I used to think it'd be rather nice to
be a parson ... standing in the pulpit in a surplice and talking like
that to people!"

Gilbert got up from the grass where they were sitting. "He'll have to be
scragged," he said.

"Righto!" said Ninian, and the three of them seized Henry and flung him
to the ground and sat on him until he swore by the blood of his
forefathers that he would never, never consent to be a clergyman. "Or
give pi-jaws of any sort!" said Gilbert.

"Lemme go!" Henry squeaked, struggling to throw them off his back.

"When you've promised!..."

"Oh, all right, then!"

They released him and he stood up and straightened his clothes and
searched his mind for something of a devastating character to say.
"Funny ass!" he said at last, and then they scragged him again for being
cheeky.

But he would have submitted to any amount of scragging from them because
they were his friends and because he loved Gilbert and because they,
too, in their turn submitted to being scragged.

When Henry had been at Rumpell's for a year, Ninian Graham asked him to
spend the Easter holidays at his home in Devonshire. "I'll get my mater
to write and ask you," he said. Henry hesitated. He had never spent a
holiday away from home, and he knew that his father liked him to return
to Ireland whenever he had the chance to do so. He himself enjoyed going
home, but suddenly, when Henry had finished speaking, he felt a strong
desire to accept this invitation. "I'll have to ask my father," he
replied, and added, "I'd like to, Ninian. Thanks awf'lly!"

He had heard his father speak so contemptuously of English people that
he was almost afraid to ask him for permission to accept Ninian's
invitation. He wondered how he would explain his father's refusal to
Ninian who was so kind.... But his fears were not warranted, for Mr.
Quinn replied to his letter, urging him to accept the invitation.

"_Enjoy yourself_," he wrote. "_The English are very hospitable when
you get to know them, and the only way you can get to know them is to go
and live in their homes! But I'll expect you to come here in the summer.
You can bring your friends with you, the whole lot. William Henry says
there'll be a grand lot of strawberries and goosegogs this year and you
can all make yourselves as sick as you like on them._" He signed
himself, "_Your affectionate Father, Henry Quinn._"

And so Henry had gone that Easter to Boveyhayne, where Mrs. Graham and
her daughter Mary lived. Ninian and he had travelled by train to
Whitcombe where they were met by old Widger and driven over hilly
country to Boveyhayne. There was a long climb out of Whitcombe and then
a long descent into Boveyhayne, after which the road ran on the level to
the end of Hayne lane which led to the Manor. Before they reached the
end of the lane, Old Widger turned to them and, pointing with his whip
in front of him, said, laughingly, "Here be Miss Mary waitin' for 'ee,
Mas'er Ninyan!"

Ninian stood up in the carriage and looked ahead. "Hilloa, Mary!" he
shouted, waving his hand, and then, before Old Widger had time to pull
up, he jumped into the road and ran on ahead. "Come on, Quinny!" he
shouted, and Henry, suddenly shy, got out of the carriage and followed
after him.

"You needn't wait for us, Widger!" Ninian shouted again. "We'll walk
home!"

And Widger, smiling largely, drove on.

Mary Graham was younger than Ninian, nearly two years younger, and very
different from him. He was big in body and bone, and fair and very
hearty in his manner. When Ninian approved of you he did not pat your
back: he punched it so that your bones rattled and your flesh tingled.
All his movements were large, splashy, as Gilbert said, and, his voice
was incapable of whispers. But Mary was slight and small and dark and
her laugh was like the sound of a little silver bell. She was standing
on an earth mound at the entrance to the lane when Henry came up to
Ninian and her, and he wondered to himself how her small, shapely head
could bear the weight of the long dark hair which fell about her
shoulders in a thick, flowing pile. Ninian was chattering to her so
loudly and so rapidly that Henry could hardly hear her replies....

"Oh, this is Quinny!" Ninian said, jerking his thumb in Henry's
direction. "His real name is Quinn, Henry Quinn, but we call him
'Quinny.' At least, Gilbert does, so, of course we do too. And he's
Irish, but he isn't a Catholic, and he says Irish people don't keep pigs
in their houses, and they eat other things besides potatoes and ... come
on, Quinny, buck up and be civil!"

Mary stepped down from the mound, and held out her hand to Henry. "How
do you do!" she said, smiling at him, and he took her hand and said he
was very well and asked her how she did, and she said she was very well,
and then she smiled again, and so Henry smiled too.

Ninian had moved on up the lane. "Buck up, you two!" he said. "I'm
hungry!" He started to run, thinking of tea, and then he suddenly
checked himself and came back. "I say, Mary," he said, "Quinny's
fearfully gone on wildflowers and birds and ... and Nature ... and that
sort of stuff. Show him the primroses and things, will you? I've got an
awful hunger and I want to see the mater. Oh, Quinny, these are
primroses, these yellow things, and Mary'll show you anything else you
want to see. There's a jolly lot of honeysuckle and hazelnuts in these
hedges later on. So long!" He went off again, running in a heavy,
lumbering fashion because of the ascent and the broken, stony ground.

Henry stood still, waiting for Mary to make a decision. He could not
think of anything to say and so he just smiled. He began to feel hot and
uncomfortable, and it seemed to him suddenly that Mary must think he
was a frightful fool, maundering about primroses and wild violets and
bluebells, and yet not able to say a word for himself in her presence
... standing there, grinning like ... like anything, and ... and not
saying a word.

She was standing sideways, with her head turned to look at her brother,
now disappearing round a bend in the lane, and Henry was able to observe
her more closely. He saw that she was wearing a short frock, reaching to
her knees, and he plucked up heart. "She's only a kid," he said to
himself, and then said aloud to her, "It's awf'lly nice here!"

She turned towards him as he spoke and he saw that her face was still
smiling. "Yes, isn't it?" she answered. "Shall we go on now, or would
you like to gather some primroses. There are lots in this lane, or if
you like to walk up to the copse, there are more there, and we can mix
them with bluebells. I think primroses and bluebells are lovely
together, don't you?"

He thought it would be nicer to go to the copse, and so they moved on up
the lane.

"I like these high hedges," he said. "We don't have high hedges in
Ireland. In lots of places we don't have hedges at all--only stone
walls!"

Mary made a grimace. "I shouldn't like that," she exclaimed. "I love
hedges ... best in the spring because then they're new. There's always
something living in them. I never go by the hedges without hearing
something moving inside ... birds and mice and things. Of course, it's
very stuffy in the lanes in summer because the hedges are so high and
the leaves are so thick and the air can't get through!... Look! Look!"
She climbed on to the bars of a gate, and pointed, and he climbed on to
the bars beside her, and saw the English Channel, shining like a sheet
of silver in the setting sun.

"Can you see the trawlers coming home?" she said. "Out there! Do you
see? Those are our boats ... the Boveyhayne boats. That one with the
brown sails is Tom Yeo's boat. He's awf'lly nice and his wife's going to
have a baby. He told me so, and they hope it'll be a boy because Jim
Rattenbury--that's Tom Yeo's mate in the boat ... his wife had a
daughter last month, and they all think it would be awf'lly nice if
Tom's son were to grow up and marry Jim's daughter, and I think it
would, and of course it would, wouldn't it?"

"Would it?" said Henry.

"Of course it would. It would be so nice for everybody, and then the
boat could be left to Tom's son and it would belong to Jim's daughter,
too. I think that would be _very_ nice! I do hope they've caught a lot
of fish!" She jumped down from the gate and clapped her hands together.
"I know," she said. "We won't pluck primroses now. We'll go home and
simply swallow our tea like lightning, and then we'll tear down to the
beach and see them landing the fish. Come on, let's run!" She started
off and then suddenly checked herself and said, "Oh, I think I'd better
call you 'Quinny,' like Ninian. It'll save a lot of trouble, won't it?
Mother won't call you that. She'll probably call you 'Henry' or 'Harry.'
If we hurry up, we'll be just in time to see the boats beached!"

She ran off, laughing pleasantly, and he followed after her.

"That's the copse," she shouted, pointing to the trees on her left.
"We'll soon be there!"

They reached the top of the lane and crossed a narrow public road, and
then were in a broad avenue, almost arched by trees, at the end of which
was the Manor. It was a squarely-built sixteenth century house, made of
stone, taken from the Roman quarry a mile or two away on the road to
Franscombe. The first Graham to own it received it and the lands
adjacent to it from Henry the Second, and ever since that time a Graham
had been lord of the manor of Boveyhayne. Ninian was the last of his
line. If he were to die, there would be no more Grahams at Boveyhayne.
That was the fear that haunted Mrs. Graham....

Mary ran swiftly across the grass in the centre of the avenue and pushed
open the gate that led through a fine stone arch. She held the gate open
for Henry, and then they both passed up the flagged path into the house.

"Mother, mother!" Mary shouted, quickly entering the drawing-room,
"here's Quinny, and please can we have tea at once because the trawlers
are just coming home and we want to see them being beached and ... oh, I
say, my hands are messy, aren't they. Still, it doesn't matter! I can
wash them afterwards."

"My dear!" said Mrs. Graham reproachfully, and then she turned to greet
Henry who had become awkward again. "How do you do, Mr. Quinn," she
said, holding her hand out to him.

Henry flushed deeply. It was the first time any one had ever called him
Mister, and he was very glad that Ninian was not present to hear. He was
quite well, he said. No, he was not a bit tired. Yes, he would rather
like to go to his room.... A maid had followed him into the room, and
Mrs. Graham asked her to show Mr. Quinn to his room, and, flushing
deeper still, he turned to go with her. As he left the room, he heard
Mary saying to Mrs. Graham, "Oh, mother, you mustn't call him _Mr._
Quinn. He blushed frightfully when you said that. His name is 'Quinny,'
or you can call him 'Henry' if you like!"

"I think I'll call him 'Henry,' my dear!" said Mrs. Graham.

It seemed to Henry that Mrs. Graham was the most beautiful woman in the
world, and he had a great longing that she would draw him to her, as she
drew Ninian, and put her arms about him and kiss him. Sometimes he had
faint memories of the way in which poor Bridget Fallon had hugged him,
and how she had cried over him once when she told him that his soul
would be damned forever because he was a "black Protestant." ... He
remembered that episode more vividly than any other because he had
howled with fear when she narrated the pains and torments of hell to
him. There had been a Mission at the chapel the previous week, and a
preaching friar had frightened the wits out of her with his description
of "the bad place." He had told the congregation of scared servants and
frightened labourers that they would be laid on red-hot bars in hell and
that the devil would send demons to nip their flesh with burning
pincers.... Henry could not be comforted until she had promised to
rescue him from the Evil One, and when she bade him wear the scapular,
he hurriedly hung it round his neck as if he were afraid that before he
could get it on, the Devil would have him.... Well, Bridget had loved
him very tenderly, and of all the women he had ever known, she seemed to
him to be the most beautiful. But Mrs. Graham was more beautiful than
Bridget, more beautiful than Bridget could ever be. There was something
so exquisite in her movements, her smile (Mary had her smile) and her
soft sweet voice with its slight Devonshire burr, that Henry felt he
wished to sit beside her and walk with her and always be by her. His
sudden, growing love for her made him feel bold, and he lost the shy,
nervous sensation he had had when he first came into her presence and
heard her call him "Mr. Quinn," and so, when Ninian and Mary talked
about the trawlers, he turned to Mrs. Graham quite naturally, and said,
"Won't you come to the beach, too, Mrs. Graham?" Instantly Ninian and
Mary were clamorous that she should go with them, and so she
consented....

"We'll have to hurry," said Mary, "because the boats come in awf'lly
quick."

"My dear, I can't run," Mrs. Graham said.

It was Ninian who suggested that Widger should harness the pony and that
they should drive down to the beach in the buggy....

"Yes, yes," said Mary.

And Ninian went off to tell Widger to hurry harder than he had ever
hurried before in his life.

"I'll do that for 'ee, Mas'er Ninyan, sure 'nough!" said Widger.

But Ninian and Mary were too impatient to wait for the buggy, and so
they set off together, leaving Henry to follow with Mrs. Graham.

"Quinny'll drive you down, mater," Ninian said.

Mrs. Graham turned to Henry. "You won't let Peggy run away with me, will
you?" she said, pretending to be alarmed, and Mary and Ninian burst into
laughter at the thought of Peggy ... which was short for Pegasus ...
running away with any one.

"He's fat and lazy," said Ninian.

"He goes to sleep in the shafts," Mary added, running out of the
drawing-room on Ninian's heels.

Boveyhayne Bay is a little bay within the very large bay that is guarded
at one end by Portland Bill and at the other end by Start Point. It lies
in the shelter of two white cliffs which keep its water quiet even when
the sea outside is rough, and so it is a fine home for fishermen though
there is no harbour and the trawlers have to be hauled up the shingly
beach every night. Nowhere else on that coast are chalk cliffs to be
found, and the sudden whiteness of Boveyhayne Head and the White Cliff
shining out of the red clay of the adjoining cliffs is a sign to
sailors, passing down the Channel on their homeward beat, that they are
off the coast of Devonshire. Mrs. Graham talked to Henry about the
fishermen as they drove down Bovey Lane towards the village.

"I love Boveyhayne," she said, "because the people are so fine. They
rely on themselves far more than any other people I know. That's because
they're fishermen, I suppose, and have no employers. They work for
themselves ... and it's frightfully hard work too. People come to
Boveyhayne in the summer, but they can't spoil it because the villagers
don't depend on visitors for a living: they depend on themselves ... and
the sea. There isn't a man in Boveyhayne who is pretending to be a
fisherman and is really a cadger on summer visitors. Some of them won't
be bothered to take people out in rowing-boats--they feel that that is
work for the old. I used to wonder," she went on, "why it was that I
didn't really like the villagers in other places, but I never found out
why until I came to Boveyhayne, and it was simply because I felt
instinctively that they were spongers ... those other people ... that
they hadn't any real work to do, and that they were living on us like
... like ticks on a sheep. The Boveyhayne men are splendid men. It
wouldn't make any difference ... much difference, anyhow ... to them if
another visitor never came to the place. And that is how it ought to be
in every village in England!"

Henry was not quite certain that he understood all that she was saying,
but he liked to listen to her, and so he did not interrupt her, except
to say "Yes" and "I suppose so" when it seemed that she was waiting for
him to say something.

"Do you like being in England?" she asked him suddenly.

"Oh, yes," he answered.

"Would you rather be in England than in Ireland?"

He did not know. He liked being at home with his father, but he also
liked being at Rumpell's with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian, and now he
felt that he would like to be at Boveyhayne with Mrs. Graham and Mary.

"Perhaps you like people better than you like places," Mrs. Graham said.

"I don't know," he replied. "I hadn't thought about that."

"You must come again to Boveyhayne. Perhaps, in the summer, Gilbert and
Roger will come, too!"

Henry thought that that would be awf'lly jolly....

They turned down the village street and left Peggy at the foot of it
while they went down the slope leading on to the beach where the
trawlers were now being hauled up by the aid of hand winches. Henry
could see Mary and Ninian in the group of fishermen who were working the
nearest winch. They had hold of one of the wooden bars and were helping
to push it round.

"We'll go down to the boats," said Mrs. Graham, "and see the fish!"

She put her hand on his shoulder, and he helped to steady her as they
walked across the shingle to where the boats were slowly climbing out of
the sea over wooden runners on to the high stones.

One of the boats had already been hauled up, and the fishermen, having
thrown out their gear, were now getting ready to sell their fish. They
threw out a heap of skate and dun-cows,[1] and auctioned them to the
dealers standing by.

"They're still alive," Henry whispered to Mrs. Graham as he watched the
dun-cows curling their bodies and the skate gasping in the air. He
looked over the side of the trawler and saw baskets of dabs and plaice
and some soles and turbot and a couple of crabs. A plaice flapped
helplessly and fell off the heap in the basket on to the bottom of the
boat, and one of the fishermen trod on it.... "They're _all_ alive,"
Henry said, turning again to Mrs. Graham.

"Yes," she answered.

"But ... isn't it cruel? Oughtn't they to kill them?"

"It would take a long time to kill all those fish," she said. "Most of
them are dead already, and the others will be dead soon...."

But he could not rid himself of the feeling that the fish were suffering
agonies, and he began to feel sick with pity.

"I think I'll go and see Mary and Ninian," he said to Mrs. Graham,
edging away from the boat.

"All right," she replied.

But Ninian and Mary were on their way down to the boats, and so he did
not get far.

"Come and see them cutting up the skate and dun-cows!" said Ninian,
catching hold of Henry's arm and pulling him back.

"Yes, let's," Mary added.

The sick feeling was growing stronger in Henry. He hated the sight of
blood. Once he had been ill in the street because William Henry Matier
had shown a dead rabbit to him, the blood dribbling from its mouth ...
and the sight of a butcher's shop always filled him with nausea. He did
not wish to see the skate cut up, but he felt that Mary would despise
him if he did not go with Ninian and her, so he followed after them.

The fishermen were sharpening their knives on the stones when they came
up to them, and then one of them seized a dun-cow and struck its head on
the shingle and cut it open, while another fisherman inserted his knife
into the quivering body of a skate and cut out the entrails and the head
in circular pieces.

"But they're alive," said Henry.

"Of course, they're alive," said Ninian, seizing a dun-cow and smacking
its head against the beach. "Here you are, Jim," he added, passing the
dun-cow to a fisherman. "Here's another one!"

Henry could not stay any longer. He turned away quickly and almost ran
up the beach. "Hilloa," Ninian shouted after him, "where are you going?"

He stopped for a moment and looked back, wondering what excuse he should
make for his running away. "I ... I'm just going to see if ... if
Peggy's all right!"

_"She's_ all right," Ninian replied.

"I think I'll just go all the same," said Henry.

"But you'll miss it all," Mary called to him.

"I'll ... I'll come back presently," he answered.

He had finished a game of cards with Mary and then Mary had gone off to
bed. She had kissed her mother and Ninian, and then she held out her
hand to him and said "Good-night, Quinny!" and he said "Good-night,
Mary!" and held the door open for her so that she might pass out.

"Let's go out in a boat to-morrow," she said. "We'll go to the
Smugglers' Cave...."

"Yes, let's," he answered.

When she had gone, Mrs. Graham called him to her. "Come and sit here,"
she said, pointing to a footstool at her feet. Ninian was trying to
solve a chess problem and was deaf to the whole world....

"I suppose you didn't like to see the fish being gutted, Henry?" Mrs.
Graham said.

He glanced up at her quickly. He had not spoken of his feeling to any of
them because he was ashamed of it. "It's namby-pamby of me," he had said
to himself. He flushed as he looked up, fearing that she must despise
him for his weakness, and he almost denied that he had had any feeling
at all about it; but he did not deny it. "I couldn't bear it, Mrs.
Graham," he said quickly in a low voice. "I felt I should be ill if I
stayed there any longer!"

"I used to feel like that," she said, patting his shoulder, "but you
soon get used to it. The fishermen aren't really cruel. They are the
kindest men I know!"

Ninian, having failed to solve his chess problem, got up from the table
and stretched himself and yawned.

"I'm going to bed, Quinny," he said. "Are you coming?"

Henry rose and shook hands with Mrs. Graham. "Good-night," he said.

"Good-night, Henry!" she replied. "I hope you'll sleep well." And then
she turned to kiss Ninian, who pushed a sleepy face against hers.

In the morning, there were fried plaice for breakfast, and Henry ate two
of them.

"These are some of the fish you saw on the beach last night," said Mrs.
Graham.

"Oh, yes," said Henry, reaching for the toast, and swallowing a mouthful
of the fish. "And jolly nice, too!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Dog-fish.]

THE THIRD CHAPTER

He stayed at Boveyhayne until the time came to return to Rumpell's, and
the holiday passed so quickly that he could not believe that it was
really over. They had picnicked in the Smugglers' Cave and on Boveyhayne
Common where the gorse was in bloom, and Henry had plucked whinblossoms
to dye Easter eggs when he found that the Grahams did not know that
whinblossoms could be used in this way. "You boil the blossoms and the
eggs together, and the eggs come out a lovely browny-yellow colour. We
always dye our eggs like that in the north of Ireland!" And on the day
they picnicked on Boveyhayne Common, Mrs. Graham took them down the side
of the hill to the big farm at Franscombe and treated them to a
Devonshire tea: bread and butter and raspberry jam and cream, cream
piled thick on the jam, and cake. (But they ate so much of the bread and
butter and jam and cream that they could not eat the cake.) And they
swam every day.... Mary was like a sea-bird: she seemed to swim on the
crest of every wave as lightly as a feather, and was only submerged when
she chose to thrust her head into the body of some wave swelling higher
and higher until its curled top could stay no longer and it pitched
forward and fell in a white, spumy pile on the shore. She would climb
over the stern of a rowing-boat and then plunge from it into the sea
again, and come up laughing with the water streaming from her face and
hair, or dive beneath Ninian and pull his feet until he kicked out....

And then the last evening of his visit came. The vicar of Boveyhayne and
his wife were to dine at the Manor that night, and so they were bidden
to put on their company manners and their evening clothes. Ninian
grumbled lustily when he heard the news, for he had made arrangements
with a fisherman to "clean" a skate that evening when the trawlers came
home. "I bet him thruppence I could do it as good as he could, and now
I'll have to pay up. Beastly swizz, that's what it is!" he said to Henry
in the stable where he was busy rubbing down Peggy, although Peggy did
not need or wish to be rubbed down. "I think Mother ought to give me the
thruppence anyhow!..."

After dinner, Ninian and Henry and Mary had contrived to miss the
drawing-room, whither Mrs. Graham led the Vicar and his wife, and they
went to the room which had been the nursery and was now a work-room, and
lit the fire and sat round it, talking and telling tales and reading
until the time came for Mary to go to bed.

"We're going soon, too!" said Ninian. "We've got to get up jolly early
to-morrow, blow it! I hate getting up early!"

Henry yawned and stretched out his hands to the fire. "I wish I weren't
going to-morrow," he said, half reflectively.

"So do I," Mary exclaimed.

She was sitting on the floor beside him and he turned to look at her, a
little startled by the suddenness of her speech.

"I wish you weren't going," she said, sitting up and leaning against him
as she was accustomed to lean against Ninian. "It's been great fun this
Easter!"

Ninian caught hold of her hair and pulled it. "He isn't a bad chap, old
Quinny," he said. "Soft-hearted, a bit!"

"Shut up, Ninian!" Henry shouted, punching him in the ribs.

But Ninian would not shut up. "Blubs like anything if you kill a rabbit
or anything. He eats them all the same!"

Mary put her hands over Ninian's mouth. "Leave Quinny alone, Ninian,"
she said. "He's much nicer than you, and I do think it's horrid of you
to go gutting fish just for fun. The fishermen have to do it, else we
wouldn't get any breakfast, and of course plaice are very nice for
breakfast...."

"Yahhh!" yelled Ninian.

"Well, anyhow," she continued, "Quinny's much nicer than you are. Aren't
you, Quinny?"

"No, he isn't," Ninian asserted stoutly. "I'm ten times nicer than he
is!"

"No, you're not...."

Henry, embarrassed at first by Mary's admiration, plucked up his spirits
and joined in.

"Of course, I'm nicer than you are, Ninian," he said. "Anybody could see
that with half an eye in his head!"

"All right, then, I'll fight you for it," Ninian replied, squaring up at
him in mock rage.

"I'll box your ears for you, Ninian Graham!" said Mary, "and I won't let
Quinny fight you, and Quinny, if you dare to fight him, I shan't like
you any more...."

"Then I won't fight him, Mary. She's saved your life, Ninian," he said,
turning to his friend.

"Yahhh!" Ninian shouted.

"I'll get up very early to-morrow morning," said Mary, as she prepared
to leave them, "and perhaps mother'll let me drive to Whitcombe with you
to see you off!"

"No," Ninian objected, "we don't want you blubbing all over the
platform!..."

"I shan't blub, Ninian. I never blub!..."

"Yes, you do. You always blub. You blubbed the last time and made me
feel an awful ass!" he persisted.

"Well, I shan't blub this time, or if I do, it won't be about you....
Anyhow, I shall get up early and see Quinny off. I _like_ Quinny!..."

Ninian pointed at Henry, and burst out laughing. "Oh! Oh, he's blushing!
Look at him! Oh! Oh!!"

"Shut up, Ninian, you ass!" said Henry, turning away.

Mary went over to him and took hold of his arm. "Never mind, Quinny,"
she said, "I _do_ like you. Good-night!"

Then she went out and left him alone with Ninian.

"I suppose," said Ninian when she had gone, "we ought to go down and say
something to the Vicar!"

That night, Henry went to bed in the knowledge that he loved Mary
Graham. "I'll marry her," he said, as he stripped his clothes off.
"That's what I'll do. I'll jolly well marry her!"

In the excitement of his love, he forgot to wash his hands and face and
clean his teeth, and he climbed into bed and lay there thinking about
Mary. "I suppose," he said, "I ought to tell her about it. That ass,
Ninian'll be sure to laugh if I tell him!" He sat up suddenly in bed.
"Lord," he exclaimed, "I forgot to wash!" He got out of bed and washed
himself. "Beastly fag, cleaning your teeth," he murmured, and then went
back to bed.

"I know," he said, as he blew out the candle and hauled the clothes well
about his neck. "I'll make Ninian look after the luggage and stuff, and
then I'll tell her. On the platform! I hope she won't be cross about
it!" And then he fell asleep.

In the morning, they went off, Mary with them, and they stood up in the
carriage and waved their hands to Mrs. Graham until the dip in the road
hid her from their view. Ninian, who had been so disdainful of
"blubbers" the night before, sat down in a corner of the carriage and
looked miserable, but neither Mary nor Henry said anything to him. They
drove slowly down the Lane because it was difficult to do otherwise,
but when they had come into the road that leads to Franscombe, Widger
whipped up the horse, and the carriage moved quickly through the
village, past the schools, until they came to the long hill out of the
village ... and there Jim Rattenbury was waiting for them.

"I brought 'ee a li'l bit o' fish, Mas'er Ninyan," he said, putting a
basket into the carriage.

"I say, Jim!" Ninian exclaimed, forgetting his misery for a while. They
thanked him for the gift and enquired about the baby Rattenbury and
wished him good-luck in the mackerel fishing, and were about to go on
when Ninian recollected his failure to keep his appointment with Tom Yeo
on the previous evening. "Oh, Jim," he said, "I bet Tom Yeo thruppence
I'd 'clean' a skate as good as he can, but I couldn't come ... so here's
the thruppence. You might give it to Tom for me, will you!"

Jim Rattenbury waved the money away. "Ah, that be all right, Mas'er
Ninyan," he exclaimed. "You can try your 'and at it nex' time you comes
'ome. I'll tell Tom. 'Er'll be glad to 'ave longer to get ready for it,
'er will!" He laughed at his own joke, and they laughed, too. "Good luck
to 'ee, Mas'er Ninyan," Jim went on, "an' to 'ee too, sir!" he added,
turning to Henry.

"And me, Jim, _and_ me!" Mary said impetuously.

"Why, of course, Miss Mary, an' to 'ee, too!"

They drove on up the hill, from which they could look down on the
village, tucked snugly in the hollow of the rising lands, and along the
top of the ridge, gaining glimpses of the blue Channel, dotted far out
with the sails of trawlers, and down the hair-pin road where the pine
trees stand like black sentinels, through Whitcombe to the station....

"I wish we weren't going!..." one or other of them said as they drove
on.

"I'd love to have another swim," said Ninian.

"Or go out in a boat," said Henry.

The carriage entered the station-yard and they got out and walked
towards the platform. There were very few people travelling by that
early train, and Henry was glad because, if he could dispose of Ninian
for a few moments, he thought he could settle his affairs with Mary.

"Ninian," he said, trying to speak very casually, "you and Widger can
look after the luggage and tickets, can't you!"

Ninian, who had already induced one of the porters to describe a
thrilling fox-hunt in which the fox took to the river and was killed,
after a hard struggle, in the water, nodded his head and said "Righto!"

"Let's walk up and down," Henry said to Mary, and they walked towards
the end of the platform. "It's been awf'lly nice here!" he added.

"Yes, hasn't it?" she replied. "You'll come again, won't you?"

_"Ra_-ther!" he exclaimed.

"How long will it be before you can come again?"

"I don't know. You see, my father'll expect me to go home in the
summer...."

"Oh!"

"But I might come for part of the hols. I'd like to!"

"Yes," she said, sliding one of her feet in front of her and regarding
the tip of her shoe intently.

They did not speak for a few moments until he remembered that time was
fleeting. "It's an awf'lly nice day," he said, and licked his lips.

"Yes, isn't it?..."

"Awf'lly nice," he continued and broke off lamely.

They could see the train coming into Coly station, and a sense of
despair seized Henry when he thought that it would soon come into
Whitcombe station and then go back again to the junction, carrying
Ninian and him with it. He could feel his nervousness mounting up his
legs until it began to gallop through his body.... He felt frightfully
dry, and when he tried to speak, he could not do anything but cough.
The train had started now from Coly station. He could see the white
smoke rising from the engine's funnel almost in a straight line, so
little wind was there in the valley.... "Oh, Lord!" he said to
himself....

"What age are you?" he suddenly demanded of her.

"Fourteen," she replied.

"I'm sixteen ... nearly!" he continued.

"Ninian's over sixteen," Mary said, and added, "I wish I were sixteen!"

"Why!"

"Oh, I don't know. I just wish I were. When I'm sixteen, you'll be
eighteen ... nearly!"

"So I shall. I say, Mary!..."

"Yes, Quinny?"

He could hear the rattle of the train on the railway lines, and, turning
towards the other end of the platform, he saw that Ninian, having
settled about the luggage and finished listening to the story of the fox
hunt, was approaching them. "Come on," he said, catching hold of Mary's
arm and drawing her to the other end of the platform.

"But that's the wrong end," she protested.

"I say, Mary!..."

"Yes, Quinny?"

"Oh, I say, Mary!..."

"Yes?..."

"I'd like to marry you awf'lly, if you don't mind!"

It was out ... oh, Lord, it was out!...

"Oh, I should love it, Quinny," said Mary, looking up at him and
smiling.

"Would you really!"

"Yes. Of course, I would. Let's tell Ninian and Widger!..."

Her suggestion alarmed him. Ninian would be sure to chaff him about
it.... "Oh, not yet!..." he began, but he was too late. Ninian had come
up to them, grumbling, "I thought you two'd started to leg it to
Rumpell's...."

Mary seized his arm and pressed it tightly. "Quinny and me are going to
get married," she said.

"Silly asses," said Ninian. "Come on, here's the train in!"

They climbed into their carriage a few seconds before the train steamed
out of the station again, and jammed themselves in the window to look
out. Ninian was full of instructions to Widger about his terrier and his
ferrets and a blind mouse that was supposed to recognise him with
miraculous ease. There was also some point about the fox-hunt which
required explanation....

"Good-bye, Mary!" Henry said, taking hold of her hand and pressing it.
"I suppose," he whispered, "I ought to give you a ring or something.
Chaps always do that!..."

Mary shook her head. "I don't think mother would like that," she
replied.

"Well, anyhow, we're engaged, aren't we?"

"Oh, of course, Quinny!"

"It's most awf'lly nice of you to have me, Mary!"

"But I like you!"

"Do you really?"

The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag and the train began to
move out of the station. He stood at the window looking back at Mary
standing on the platform, waving her hands to him, until he could see
her no longer.

"What are you looking at?" Ninian asked, taking down the basket of fish
which Jim Rattenbury had given him and preparing to open it.

"I'm looking at Mary," he answered.

"Sloppy ass!" said Ninian, and then he added excitedly, "Oh, I say,
plaice and dabs and a lobster ... a whopping big lobster! It's berried,
too!" He pointed to the red seeds in the lobster's body. "My Heavenly
Father, Quinny!" he exclaimed, "what a tuck-in we'll have to-night!"

"Eh?" Henry replied vaguely.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER

Gilbert summoned Roger and Henry and Ninian to a solemn council. "Look
here," he said, "I've made up my mind about myself!"

"Oh!" they exclaimed.

"Yes. I'm going to be a dramatist and write plays!"

"Why?" Ninian asked.

"I dunno! I went to see a play in the hols, and I thought I'd like to
write one, too. It seems easy enough. You just make up a lot of talk,
and then you get some actors to say it...."

"I see," said Ninian.

"And when I was a kid," Gilbert continued, "I used to make up plays for
parties. Jolly good, they were ... at least I thought so!"

Gilbert, having settled what his own career was to be, was eager that
his friends should settle what their careers were to be. "Roger, of
course," he said, "has made up his mind to be a barrister, so that's
him, but what about you, Ninian, and what about Quinny?"

Ninian said that he did not know what he should do. Mrs. Graham was
anxious that he should become a member of parliament and lead the life
of a country gentleman who takes an intelligent interest in his estate
and his country. His Uncle George, the Dean of Exebury, oscillated
between two opinions: one that Ninian should become a parson....

Gilbert suddenly proposed a resolution, sternly forbidding their young
friend, Ninian Graham, to become a parson on any conditions whatever.
The resolution was seconded by Henry Quinn, and passed unanimously.

... and the other that he should enter the Diplomatic Service. The Dean
had talked largely to Ninian on the subject of his career. On the whole
he had inclined towards the Diplomatic Service. He had stood in front of
the fire, his hands thrust through the belt of his apron and talked
magnificently of the glories of diplomacy. "How splendid it would be,
Ninian," he said in that rich, flowing voice which caused ladies to
admire his sermons so much, "if you were to become an ambassador!"
Ninian, feeling that he ought to say something, had murmured that he
supposed it would be rather jolly. "An ambassador!" the Dean continued.
"His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the Imperial Court of ... of
Vienna!" He liked the sound of the title so much that he repeated it:
"His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador!..."

But Ninian had interrupted him. "I don't think I'd like that job very
much, Uncle George!" he said. "You're supposed to have an awful lot of
tact if you're an ambassador, and I'm rather an ass at tact!"

"Well, then, the Church!" the Dean suggested. "After all, the Church is
still the profession of a gentleman!..."

But Ninian had as little desire to be a priest as he had to be an
ambassador. He wished to be an engineer!

"A what?" the Dean had exclaimed in horror.

"An engineer, uncle!"

The Dean could not rid himself of the notion that Ninian was a small
boy, and so he imagined that when Ninian said an "engineer" he meant a
man who drives a railway engine.... The Dean was not insensible to the
value of engineers to the community ... in fact, whenever he travelled
by train, he invariably handed any newspapers he might have with him to
the engine-driver at the end of the journey, "because," he said, "I wish
to show my appreciation of the fact that without his care and skill I
might--er--have been--well involved in a collision or something of the
sort!" But, while the occupation of an engine-driver was a very
admirable one ... very admirable one, indeed ... for a member of the
working-class, it could hardly be described as a suitable occupation for
a gentleman. "I think," he said, "that engine-drivers get thirty-eight
shillings per week, or some such amount!" He adjusted his glasses and
beamed pleasantly at Ninian. "My dear boy," he said, "thirty-eight
shillings per week is hardly ... hardly an adequate income for a
Graham!"

Ninian did not like to ask his uncle George to "chuck it," nor did he
care to tell him that he was making a frightful ass of himself, and so
he did not answer, and the beaming old gentleman felt that he had
impressed the lad.... It was Mrs. Graham who reminded him of the larger
functions of an engineer.

"I think," she said, "that Ninian wishes to build bridges and railways
and ... and things like that!"

"Oh!" said the Dean, and his countenance altered swiftly. "Oh, yes, yes,
yes! I was forgetting about bridges. Dear me, yes! I remember meeting
Sir John Aird once. Remarkable man! Very remarkable man! He built the
Assouan Dam, of course. Well, that would be a very nice occupation,
Ninian. Rather different, of course, from the Diplomatic Service ... or
the Church ... but still, very nice, _very_ nice! And profitable, I'm
told!..."

"Anyhow," said Ninian, when he had related the story of his uncle's
views, "I'm going to be an engineer, no matter what Uncle George says,
and I'm not going to be a parson and I'm not going to be a blooming
ambassador, and I'm not going into parliament to make an ass of
myself!..."

Ninian's chief horror was of "making an ass" of himself. It seemed that
there was less likelihood of him doing this at engineering than at
anything else.

"And a very good engineer you'll be," Gilbert said encouragingly.
"You're always messing about with the insides of things, and I can't see
what good that habit would be to an ambassador, or a parson, and anyhow
you can't speak French for toffee, and that's the principal thing an
ambassador has to do! Well, Quinny," he continued, turning to Henry,
"what about you?"

"I used to think I'd like to be a clergyman," Henry answered.

"Oh, did you?..."

"And then," he went on rapidly, "I thought I'd like to be an actor!..."

They rose at him simultaneously. "A what?" they shouted.

"An actor," he repeated.

They gaped at him for a few moments without speaking. Then Ninian
expressed their views. "You're balmy!" he said.

"Clean off your chump!" Gilbert added.

"It seems an odd choice," Roger said, quietly.

Henry blushed. "Of course," he hurried to say, "I've given up the idea.
It was just a notion that came into my head!"

He went on to say that as Gilbert had resolved to be a writer, he did
not see any reason why he should not become one too. "I've read an awful
lot of books," he said, "so I daresay I could write one. I used to write
things when I was a youngster, just like you, Gilbert!"

They gazed dubiously at Henry. A fellow who could make such choices of
profession ... a parson or an actor ... was a rum bird, in their
opinion, and they told him so. Gilbert said that the conjunction of
_actor_ with _parson_ showed that all Henry cared about was the chance
to show off. "All you want is to get yourself up," he said. "If you were
a parson, you could get yourself up in a surplice!..."

"He'd turn High Churchman," Roger interrupted, "and trot about in
chasubles and copes!..."

"And if he were an actor, he could get himself up in terrific style!..."
Gilbert continued.

Henry got up and walked away from them. "It isn't fair," he said, as he
went, "to chip me like that. I'm not going to be a parson and I'm not
going to be an actor!..."

Gilbert followed him and brought him back to the council.

"All right, Quinny," he said, "we won't chip you any more. Only, don't
talk like a soppy ass again, will you? Sit down and listen to me!..."

He forced Henry to sit beside him and then he proceeded to plan their
lives for them.

"We'll all go to Cambridge," he said. "That's settled. I arranged that
before, didn't I? Well, we all go to the same college, and we all
promise to swot hard. We've got to Do Well, d'ye hear?" He said "do
well" as if each word had a capital letter. "We've got to be the Pride
of our College, d'ye hear, and work so that the dons will shed tears of
joy when they hear our names mentioned. I draw the particular attention
of Ninian Graham to what I am saying, and I warn him that if he goes on
whittling a stick while I'm talking, I shall clout his fat head for him.
I also trust that our young friend, Quinny, will make up his mind to
work hard. He's Irish, of course, and we must make allowances for
him!..."

There was almost a row when Gilbert said that, and it was not completely
averted until Gilbert had admitted that the English had their faults.

"I need not say anything on the subject of hard work to our young
friend, Roger," Gilbert continued, when the peace was restored, "beyond
warning him of the danger of getting brain-fever. That's all I have to
say about that. We're friends, we four, and we've got to do each other
credit. Now, when we come down from Cambridge, my proposal is that we
all live together in London. We can take a house and get some old girl
to look after us. I know one who'll do. She lives in Cornwall, and she
can cook ... like anything. Is that agreed?"

"Carried unanimous," said Ninian.

"Good egg!" Gilbert said.

But the plan was not carried out as Gilbert had made it. He and Ninian
and Roger Carey went to Cambridge, but Henry did not go with them. It
was Mr. Quinn who upset the plan. He suddenly gave notice to Rumpell's
that Henry would not return to the school.

_You're getting to be too English in your ways, Henry,_ he wrote to his
son, _and I want you at home for a while. There's a young fellow called
Marsh who can tutor you until you go to the University. I met him in
Dublin a while since, and I like him. He's a bit cranky, but he's clever
and he'll teach you a lot about Ireland. He's up to his neck in Irish
things, and speaks Gaelic and wears an Irish kilt. At least he used to
wear one, but he's left it off now, partly because he gets cold in his
knees and partly because he's not sure now that the ancient Irish ever
wore kilts. I think you'll like him!..._

"My God," said Gilbert when Henry read this letter to him, "fancy being
tutored by a chap who wears petticoats!"

"You ought to talk pretty plainly to your guv'nor, Quinny!" Ninian said.
"I don't think you ought to let him do that sort of thing. Here we've
settled that we're all going to Cambridge together, and your guv'nor
simply lumps in and upsets everything!"

Henry declared that he would talk to his father and compel him to be
sensible, but his attempt at compulsion was ineffective. Mr. Quinn had
made up his mind that Henry was to spend several months at home, under
the tutelage of John Marsh, and then proceed to Trinity College,
Dublin.

"Trinity College, Dublin!" Henry exclaimed. "But I want to go to
Cambridge!..."

"Well, you can't go then. You'll go to T.C.D. or you'll go nowhere. I'm
a T.C.D. man, an' your gran'da was a T.C.D. man, an' so was his da
before him, an' a damned good college it is, too!" Mr. Quinn had always
called his father his "da" when Mrs. Quinn was alive because she
disliked the word and tried to insist on "papa"; and now he used the
word as a matter of habit. "What do you want to go to an English college
for?" he demanded. "You might as well want to go to that Presbyterian
hole in Belfast!"

"I want to go to Cambridge," Henry replied a little angrily and
therefore a little precisely, "because all my friends are going there.
They're going up next year, and I want to go with them. They're my best
friends!..."

"Make friends in Ireland, then!" Mr. Quinn interrupted. "You don't make
friends with Englishmen ... you make money out of them. That's all
they're fit for!"

He began to laugh when he said that, but Henry still scowled. "I hate to
hear you talking like that, father!" he said. "I know you don't mean
it...."

"Don't I, begod?..."

"No, you don't, but even in fun, I hate to hear you saying it. I like
English people. I'm very fond of Gilbert Farlow!..."

"A nice fellow!" Mr. Quinn murmured, remembering how he had liked
Gilbert when he had visited Rumpell's once to see Henry.

"And Ninian Graham and Roger Carey, I like them, too, and so do you. You
liked them, didn't you?"

"Very nice fellows, both of them, very nice ... for all they're
English!"

Henry wanted to go on ... to talk of Mrs. Graham and of Mary ... but
shyness held his tongue for him.

"It's a habit I've got into," Mr. Quinn said, talking of his
denunciation of the English, "but don't mind me, Henry. Sure, I'm like
all the Ulstermen: my tongue's more bitter nor my behaviour. All the
same, my son, you're goin' to T.C.D., an' that's an end of it. T.C.D.'ll
make a man of you, but Oxford 'ud only make a snivellin' High Church
curate of you ... crawlin' on your belly to an imitation altar an'
lettin' on to be a Catholic!..."

"But I don't want to go to Oxford, father. I want to go to Cambridge!"

"It's all the same, Henry. Oxford'll make a snivellin' parson out of
you, an' Cambridge'll turn you into a snivellin' atheist. I know them
places well, Henry. I'm acquainted with people from both of them. All
the Belfast mill-owners send their sons there, so's they can be made
into imitation Englishmen. An' I tell you there's no differs between
Cambridge an' Oxford. You crawl on your belly to the reredos at Oxford,
an' you crawl on your belly to Darwin an' John Stuart Mill at Cambridge.
They can't do without a priest of some sort at them places, an' I'm a
Protestant, Henry, an' I want no priest at all. Now, at Trinity you'll
crawl on your belly to no one but your God, an' you'll do damn little of
that if you're any sort of man at all!"

Henry had reminded his father of the history and tradition of T.C.D., an
ungracious institution which had taught men to despise Ireland.

"Well, you needn't pay any heed to the Provost, need you," Mr. Quinn
retorted. "Is a man to run away from his country because a fool of a
schoolmaster hasn't the guts to be proud of it? Talk sense, son! We want
education in Ireland, don't we, far more nor any other people want it,
an' how are we goin' to get it if all the young lads go off to Englan'
an' let the schoolmasters starve in Ireland!"

Henry still maintained his position. "But, father," he said, "you
yourself have often told me that Dr. Daniell is an imitation
Englishman...." Dr. Daniell was the Provost of Trinity.

"He is, and so is his whole family. I know them well ... lick-spittles,
the lot of them, an' the lad that's comin' after him, oul' Beattie, is
no better ... a half-baked snob ... I'll tell you a story about him in a
minute ... but all the same, it's not them that matter ... it's the
place and the tradition an' the feel of it all ... do you make me out?"

"Yes, father, I know what you mean!"

"You'd be like a foreigner at Cambridge ... like one of them fellows
that come from India or Germany or places like that ... but at Trinity
you'd be at home, in your own country, Henry, where people with brains
are badly needed!"

He went on like that until he wore down Henry's desire to go to
Cambridge. "I'd rather you didn't go to a university at all," he said,
"than not have you go to T.C.D."

"Very well, father!" said Henry, consenting.

"That's right, my son," the old man said, patting his son on the back.
"An' now I'll tell you that yarn about Beattie. It'll make you split
your sides!"

It appeared that Mr. Quinn had dined at a house in Dublin where Dr.
Beattie was also a guest, and the don was telling tales as was his
custom, of his acquaintances in high places. The poor old clergyman had
a weakness for the company of kings and queens, and liked to tell people
of what he had said to an emperor or of what a prince had said to him.

"I was talking to my friend, the Queen of Spain, a short time ago," Dr.
Beattie had said, "and I made a joke which pleased her majesty. It was
about my friend, the Kaiser, who was present at the time. The Kaiser
heard us laughing, her majesty and me, and he came over to ask us why we
were laughing so heartily, the Queen and me. The Queen was very
embarrassed because, of course, I had been making fun of the Kaiser, but
I did not lose my self-possession. I turned to the Emperor and said,
'Sir, the Queen and I have known each other for a few moments only, but
already we have a secret between us!'" The Kaiser was very tickled by
my retort ... very tickled ... and the Queen told me afterwards that it
was very adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said it was my
Irish wit!...

It was at this point that Mr. Quinn had interrupted. "An' what did your
friend God say?" he had demanded innocently.

Mr. Quinn sat back in his chair, when he had finished telling the story,
and roared loudly with laughter. "You ought to have seen the oul' snob
turnin' red, white an' blue with rage," he shouted at Henry. "Such a
take-down! My God, what a take-down! There he was, the oul' wind-bag,
bletherin' about his friend, the Queen of Spain, an' his friend, the
Emperor of Germany, an' there was me, just waitin' for him, just
waitin', Henry, an' the minute he shut his gob, I jumped in, an' says I
to him, 'An' what did your friend God say?' By the Holy O, that was a
good one! I never enjoyed myself so much as I did that night, an'
everybody else that was there was nearin' burstin' with tryin' not to
laugh. Do you mind Lady Galduff?"

"Yes, father!"

"You mind her rightly, don't you? Well, when you go up to Dublin, you're
to call on her, do you hear? Never mind about her manners. Ask her to
tell you about me an' Dr. Beattie ... the way I asked him about his
friend God. Oh, Holy O!..."

He could proceed no further, for his sides were shaking with laughter
and the tears were streaming down his cheeks and his cheeks were the
colour of beetroot.

"You'll hurt yourself, father," said Henry, "if you laugh like that!"

"Of course," said Mr. Quinn, after a while, "the man's a great scholar,
an' I mebbe did wrong to take him down like that. But I couldn't help
it, Henry. You see, he's always makin' little of Irish things, an' I
have no use for a man like that. Not but what some people think too much
of Ireland an' too little of other places. Many's a time I get ragin'
mad when I hear some of the Nationalists bleatin' about Ireland as if a
bit of bog in the Atlantic were worth the rest of the world put
together. Do you know what, I'm goin' to say somethin' that'll surprise
you. I don't believe Irishmen'll think properly about Ireland 'til they
stop thinkin' about it altogether. We're too self-conscious. We haven't
enough pride an' we've too much conceit. That's the truth. You daren't
say a word of criticism about Ireland for fear you'd have the people
jumpin' down your throat--an' that's a sign of weakness, Henry. Do you
know why the English are as strong as they are? It's because they'll let
you criticise them as much as you like, an' never lose their temper with
you. The only time I ever knew them to be flabby and spineless was when
the Boer War was on ... an' they'd scream in your face if you didn't say
they were actin' like angels. They were only like that _then_, but we're
like it _all_ the time. The fools don't know that the best patriot is
the man that has the courage to own up when his country's in the
wrong!..."

Mr. Quinn suddenly sat up stiffly in his seat and gaped at his son for a
few moments.

"Begod, Henry," he said, "I'm preachin' to you!"

"Yes, father, you are," Henry replied. "But I don't mind. It's rather
interesting!"

But the force had gone out of Mr. Quinn. The thought that he had been
preaching a sermon, delivering a speech, filled him with self-reproach.

"I never meant to start off like that," he said. "I only meant to tell
you what was in my mind. You see, Henry, I love Ireland an' I want to
see her as fine as ever she was ... but she'll never be fine again 'til
she gets back her pride an' her self-respect. The English people have
stolen that from us ... yes, they have, Henry! I knew Arthur Balfour
when he was a young man ... I liked him too ... but I'll never forget
that it was him that turned us into a nation of cadgers. I'm not much of
a thinker, Henry, but the bit of brain I have'll be used for Ireland,
whatever happens. You've got more brains than I have, an' I'd like you
to use them for Ireland, too."

"This is the way I look at things," Mr. Quinn said later on. "The
British people are the best people in the world, an' the Irish people
are the best people in the British Empire, an' the Ulster people are the
best people in Ireland!" He glanced about him for a few moments as if he
were cogitating, and then he gave a chuckle and winked at his son. "An'
begod," he said, "I sometimes think I'm the best man in Ulster!" He
burst out laughing when he had finished. "Ah," he said, half to himself,
as he stroked his fine beard, "I'm the quare oul' cod, so I am!"

"All the same," he went on, speaking soberly, "I'm not coddin' entirely.
The Irish have plenty of brains, but they haven't any discipline, an'
brains are no good unless you can control them. We need knowledge and
experience, Henry, more nor anything else, an' the more knowledge we
bring into the country, the better it'll be for us all. Too much
imagination an' not enough knowledge ... that's what's the matter with
us. The English have knowledge, but they've small imagination!... I
declare to my goodness, the best thing that could happen to the two of
us, the English and the Irish, would be for some one to pass a law
compellin' every Irishwoman to marry an Englishman, an' every
Englishwoman to marry an Irishman. We'd get some stability into Ireland
then ... an' mebbe we'd get some intelligence into England."

Henry acquiesced in his father's wishes, but he did so reluctantly.
Gilbert's plan for their future had attracted him greatly. He saw
himself passing pleasant years at Cambridge in learning and in argument.
There was to be scholarship and company and curiosity and enquiry. They
were to furnish their minds with knowledge and then they were to seek
adventures in the world: a new order of Musketeers: Athos, Porthos,
Aramis and D'Artagnan.... He let the names of the Musketeers slide
through his mind in order, wondering which of them was his prototype ...
but he could not find a resemblance to himself in any of them. He felt
that he would shrink from the deeds which they sought.... His mind went
back again to thoughts of Cambridge. At all events, in the tourneys of
the mind his part would be valiant. He would never shrink from combat
with an intellect.... He supposed it would be possible to do at T.C.D.
some of what he had proposed to do at Cambridge, but somehow T.C.D. did
not interest him. It mattered as little to him as a Welsh University. It
had no hold whatever on his mind. He knew that it was on the level of
Oxford and Cambridge, but that knowledge did not console him. "It
doesn't matter in the way that they do," he said to himself, and then he
remembered something that Gilbert Farlow had said. "T.C.D. isn't Irish
in the way that Oxford and Cambridge are English. It's _in_ Ireland, but
it isn't _of_ Ireland!" Gilbert could always get at the centre of a
thing. "Oxford and Cambridge have lots of faults," Gilbert had said,
"but they're English faults. T.C.D. has lots of faults, but they're not
Irish faults. Do you see what I mean, Quinny? It's ... it's like a
garrison in an unfriendly country ... like ... what d'ye call it? ...
that thing in Irish history ... the Pale! That's it! It's the Pale still
going on being a Pale long after the need for it had ceased. I don't
think that kind of place is much good to Irishmen. You'd better come to
Cambridge!..."

"I can't, Gilbert. My father's set his heart on my going to Trinity, and
I must go. I'd give the world to go with you and Ninian and Roger, but
I'll have to do what he wants. Anyhow, I can join you in London when you
come down, and we can spend our holidays together. I'll get my father to
ask you all to Ireland the first vac. after you've gone up, and perhaps
Mrs. Graham'll ask us all to Boveyhayne...."

Remembering what he had said to Gilbert about Boveyhayne, he remembered
Mary Graham. He had not seen her since he had been to Boveyhayne at
Easter, but he had written several times to her, lengthy letters, and
had received short, shy replies from her; and sometimes he had tried to
induce Ninian to talk about her. But "She isn't a bad little flapper!"
was all that Ninian would say of his sister, and there was little
comfort to be derived from that speech. Now, standing here in this
window-corner, looking over the fields that stretched away to the Antrim
mountains, Henry felt that Mary was slipping swiftly out of his life. It
might be a very long time before he saw her again. ... How beautiful she
had looked that day when she stood on Whitcombe platform and waved her
hand to him as the train steamed out of the station! He _must_ marry
her. Mrs. Graham _must_ ask him to spend the next summer at Boveyhayne
so that he could meet Mary again. Anyhow he would write to her. He would
tell her all he was doing. He would describe his life at Trinity to her.
He would remind her continually of himself, and perhaps she would not
forget him. Girls, of course, were very odd and they changed their minds
an awful lot. Ninian might invite some chap from Cambridge to
Boveyhayne.... That would be like Ninian, to go and spoil everything
without thinking for a moment of what he was doing.... If only Mary and
he were a few years older, they could become formally engaged, and then
everything would be all right, but Mary was so young ...

THE FIFTH CHAPTER

Soon after Henry had returned to Ballymartin, John Marsh came to Mr.
Quinn's house to prepare him for Trinity. "He'll put you in the way of
knowin' more about Ireland nor I can tell you, Henry," Mr. Quinn said to
his son on the evening before Marsh arrived, "an' a lot more nor you'll
learn at Rumpell's, or, for that matter, at Trinity."

"Then why do you want me to go to Trinity?" Henry asked, still unable to
conceal his disappointment at not being sent to Cambridge with his
friends.

"I've told you that already," Mr. Quinn replied firmly, closing his lips
down tightly. "I want you to have Irish friends as well as English
friends, and I've learned this much from livin', that a man seldom makes
friends ... _friends,_ mind you ... after he's twenty-five. You only
make acquaintances after that age. I'd like well to think there were
people in Ireland that had as tight a hold on your friendship, Henry, as
Gilbert Farlow and them other lads have.... An' there's another thing,"
he went on, leaning forward as he spoke and wagging his forefinger at
Henry. "If you go to Trinity with a kindly feelin' for Ireland, it'll be
something to think there's one man in the place that has a decent
thought for his country an' isn't an imitation Englishman. Who knows
what good you might do there?" He let his speculations consume him. "You
might change the character of the whole college. You ... you might make
it Irish. You ... you might be the means of turnin' the Provost into an
Irishman an' start him takin' an interest in his country. The oul' lad
might turn Fenian an' get transported or hung!..."

When he had ceased to speculate on what might happen if Henry began an
Irish crusade in Trinity, he spoke again of Marsh.

"You'll like him," he said. "I know you will. He's a bit off his head,
of course, but that's neither here nor there. The man's a scholar an' I
think he writes bits of poetry. I've never seen any of his pieces, but
somebody told me he wrote things. I'd like well to have a poet in the
house!"

"Is he a Catholic?" Henry asked.

His father nodded his head. "An' very religious, too, I believe," he
said. "Still, that's neither here nor there. I met him up in Dublin.
Ernest Harper told me about him!"

Ernest Harper was the painter-poet who had influenced so many young men
in Ireland, and Mr. Quinn had come into the circle of his friends
through the Irish co-operative movement. He had made a special visit to
Dublin to consult Harper about the education of his son, telling him of
his desire that Henry should have a strong national sense ... "but none
of your damned theosophy, mind!..." and Harper had recommended John
Marsh to him. Marsh had lately taken his B.A. degree and he was anxious
to earn money in circumstances that would enable him to proceed to his
M.A.

"That lad'll do rightly," said Mr. Quinn, and he arranged to meet Marsh
in the queer, untidy room in Merrion Square where Harper edited his
weekly paper. "He has the walls of the place covered with pictures of
big women with breasts like balloons," Mr. Quinn said afterwards when he
tried to describe Ernest Harper's office, "an' he talks to you about
fairies 'til you'd near believe a leprechaun 'ud hop out of the
coalscuttle if you lifted the lid!"

Soon afterwards, they met, and Mr. Quinn explained his purpose to Marsh.
"I'm not a Nationalist, thank God, nor a Catholic, thank God again, but
I'm Irish an' I want my son to know about Ireland an' to feel as Irish
as I do myself!"

Marsh talked about Nationalism and Freedom and English Misrule, but Mr.
Quinn waved his hands before his face and made a wry expression at him.
"All your talk about the freedom of Ireland is twaddle, John Marsh ...
if you don't mind, I'll begin callin' you John Marsh this minute ... an'
I may as well tell you I don't believe in the tyranny of England. The
English aren't cruel--they're stupid. That's what they are--Thick! As
thick as they can be, an' that's as thick as God thinks it's decent to
let any man be! But they're not cruel. They do cruel things sometimes
because they don't know any better, an' they think they're doin' the
right things when they're only doin' the stupid thing. That's where we
come in! Our job is to teach the English how to do the right thing."
They smiled at him. "An' I'm not coddin,'" he went on. "I mean every
word I say. It's not Home Rule for Ireland that's needed--it's Irish
Rule for England; an' I'll maintain that 'til my dyin' day.... But
that's neither here nor there. I think you're a fool, John Marsh, to go
about dreamin' of an Irish Republic ... you don't mind me callin' you a
fool, do you? ... but you love Ireland, and I'd forgive a man a great
deal for that, so if you'll come an' be tutor to my son, I'll be obliged
to you!"

And John Marsh, smiling at Mr. Quinn, had consented.

"That's right," Mr. Quinn said, gripping the young man's hand and
wringing it heartily. "I like him," he added, turning to Ernest Harper,
"an' he'll be good for Henry, an' I daresay I'll be good for him. You've
an awful lot of slummage in your skull," he continued, addressing Marsh
again, "but begod I'll clear that out!"

"Slummage?" Marsh asked questioningly.

"Aye. Do you not know what slummage is?"

He described it as a heap of steamy, flabby grain that is rejected by
distillers after the spirit has been extracted from it. "An' it's only
fit to feed pigs with," he said, ending his description. "An' the kind
of stuff you're lettin' out of you now is only fit for pub-patriots.
How soon can you come to Ballymartin. The sooner the better!"

He tried to drop the discussion of politics, but was so fond of it
himself that before he had settled the date of Marsh's appearance at
Ballymartin, he was in the middle of another discussion. His head was
full of theories about Ireland and about the world, and he loved to let
his theories out of his head for an airing. He very earnestly desired to
keep Ireland different from England. "Ireland's the 'country' of this
kingdom, an' England's the 'town,'" he sometimes said, or when his mood
was bitter, he would say that he wished to preserve Ireland as a place
in which gentlemen could live in comfort, leaving England to be the
natural home of manufacturers and mill-owners.

"But it's no good talkin' of separatin' the two countries," he said to
Marsh, "an' it's no good talkin' of drivin' the English out of Ireland
because you can't tell these times who is English an' who is Irish.
We've mingled our blood too closely for any one to be able to tell who's
what. If you started clearin' out the English, you'd mebbe clear me out,
for my family was planted here by William of Orange ... an' the
damnedest set of scoundrels they were, too, by all accounts!... an'
mebbe, Marsh, you yourself 'ud be cleared out!... Aye, an' you, too,
Ernest Harper, for all you're waggin' your oul' red beard at me. You're
Scotch, man, Scotch, to the backbone!..."

Harper rose at him, wagging his red beard, and filling the air with
terrible prophecies!...

"Ah, quit, man!" said Mr. Quinn, and he turned and winked at Marsh. "Do
you know what religion he is?" he said, pointing his finger at Harper.
"He's a Nonconformin' Theosophist!" And he roared at his own joke.

"You can no more separate the destinies of England an' Ireland in the
world," he went on, "nor you can separate the waters of the Liffey an'
the Mersey in the Irish Sea. Bedam, if you can!"

Mr. Quinn liked to throw out these aphorisms, and he spent a great deal
of time in inventing them. Once he flung a company of Dublin gossips
into a rage because he declared that Dublin was called "the whispering
gallery" and "the city of dreadful whispers" because it was populated by
the descendants of informers and spies. That, he declared, was why
Dublin people were so fond of tittle-tattle and tale-bearing and
scandal-mongering. "The English hanged or transported every
decent-minded man in the town, an' left only the spies an' informers,
an' the whole of you are descended from that breed. That's why you can't
keep anything to yourselves, but have to run abut the town tellin'
everybody all the secrets you know!" And he charged them with constantly
giving each other away. He repeated this generalisation about the Dublin
people to John Marsh. "An' I tell you what'll happen to you, young
fellow, one of these days. You'll be hanged or shot or transported or
somethin', an' half the people of this place'll be runnin' like
lightnin' to swear an information against you, as sure as Fate. If ever
you think of startin' a rebellion, John Marsh, go up to Belfast an'
start it. People'll be loyal to you there, but in this place they'd sell
you for a pint of Guinness!"

He was half serious in his warning to Marsh, but ... "I should be glad
to die for Ireland," Marsh replied, and it was said so simply that there
was no priggishness in it. "I can think of no finer fate for an
Irishman."

Mr. Quinn made a gesture of impatience. "It 'ud be a damn sight better
to live for Ireland," he exclaimed angrily.

Henry was in the garden when John Marsh arrived, accompanied by Mr.
Quinn. Two letters had come to him that morning from England--one from
Gilbert Farlow and the other from Mary Graham, and he was reading them
again for the seventh or eighth time when the dogcart drove up to the
house.

_My dear old ass,_ Gilbert wrote, _why grizzle and grouse at the
Bally Awful! That's my name now for things which can't be helped.
I've taught it to Ninian, but he persists in calling it the Bloody
Awful, which is low. He says that doesn't matter because he is low.
Roger and I have had to clout his head rather severely lately ...
it took two of us to do it.... Roger held his arms while I clouted
him ... because he has become fearfully democratic, meaning by
that, that anybody who knows more than his alphabet is an enemy of
the poor. Roger and I are dead nuts on aristocracy at present. We
go about saying, "My God, I'm a superman!" and try to look like
Bernard Shaw. Roger only succeeds in looking like Little Lord
Fauntleroy. But all this is away from the point, which is, why
grizzle and grouse at the Bally Awful. If your papa will send you
to T.C.D., you must just grin and bear it, my lad. I've never met
anybody from Trinity.... I suppose people do come out of it after
they get into it ... but if you're careful and remember the example
of your little friends, Gilbert and Ninian and Roger, you'll come
to no harm. And when you do come to London, we'll try to improve
what's left of your poor mind. It would be splendid to go to
Ballymartin for the summer. Tell your papa that Ninian and Roger
and I solemnly cursed him three times for preventing you from
coming to Cambridge, and then gave him three cheers for asking us
to Ireland. The top of the morning to you, my broth of a boy, and
the heavens be your bed, bedad and bejabers, as you say in your
country, according to Punch. Yours ever, Gilbert._

_P.S. What about that two bob you owe me?_

Mary's letter was shorter than Gilbert's.

_I think it's awfully horrid of your father not to let you go to
Cambridge with Ninian and the others. I was so looking forward to
going up in May Week and so was Mother. Of course, we shall go
anyhow, but it would have been much nicer if you had been there.
You would love Boveyhayne if you were here now. The hedges are full
of wild roses and hazelnuts and there is a lovely lot of valaria on
our wall. Old Widger says there will be a lovely lot of
blackberries in September if everything goes well. I went out in a
boat yesterday with Tom Yeo and I caught six dozen mackerel. You
would have blubbed if you'd seen them flopping about in the bottom
of the boat and looking so nice, and they were nice to eat. I love
mackerel, don't you? Mother sends her love. Do write soon. I love
getting letters and you write such nice ones. Your affectionate
friend, Mary Graham. P.S. Love._

Mary always signed herself his affectionate friend. He had tried to make
her sign herself his loving sweetheart, but she said she did not like to
do that.

He hurriedly put the letters away, and rose to greet John Marsh who came
across the lawn to him, talking to Mr. Quinn.

"This is John Marsh, Henry," Mr. Quinn said when he came up to him, and
Henry and Marsh shook hands and murmured greetings to each other. "I'll
leave you both here to get acquainted with each other," Mr. Quinn
continued. "I've a few things to do about the house!" He went off at
once, leaving them together, but before he had gone far he turned and
shouted to Henry, "You can show him through the grounds! He'll want to
stretch his legs after bein' so long in the train!"

"Very well, father!" Henry answered, and turned to Marsh.

His first impression of his tutor was one of insignificance. Marsh's
clothes were cheap and ready-made, and they seemed to be a size too
large for him. That, indeed, was characteristic of him, that he should
always seem to be wearing things which were too big for him. His tie,
too, was rising over the top of his collar.... But the sense of
insignificance disappeared from Henry's mind almost immediately after
Marsh had offered his hand to him and had smiled; and following the
sense of insignificance came a feeling of personal shame that was
incomprehensible to him until he discovered that his shame was caused
because he had thought slightingly of Marsh, even though he had done so
only for a few moments, and had allowed his mind to be concerned about
the trivialities of clothes when it should have been concerned with the
nature of the man who wore them. Henry's mind was oddly perverse; he had
been as fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever Gilbert Farlow
had been, but nevertheless he clung to conventional things with
something like desperation. It was characteristic of him that he should
palliate his submission to the conventional thing by inventing a
sensible excuse for it. He would say that such things were too trivial
to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and declare that one
should save one's energies for bigger battles; but the truth was that he
had not the moral courage to flout a convention, and he had a queer,
instinctive dislike of people who had the courage to do so.... He knew
that this habit of his was likely to distort his judgments and make him
shrink from ordeals of faith, and very often in his mind he tried to
subdue his cowardly fear of conventional disapproval ... without
success. But John Marsh had the power to conquer people. The gentleness
of him, the kindly smile and the look of high intent, made men of meaner
motive feel unaccountably ashamed.

He was a man of middle height and slender build. His high, broad brow
was covered by heavy, rough, tufty hair that was brushed cleanly from
his forehead and cut tidily about the neck so that he did not look
unkempt. His long, straight nose was as large as the nose of a
successful business man, but it was not bulbous nor were the nostrils
wide and distended. It was a delicately-shaped and pointed nose, with
narrow nostrils that were as sensitive as the nostrils of a racehorse:
an adventurous, pointing nose that would lead its owner to valiant
lengths, but would never lead him into low enterprises. He had grey eyes
that were quick to perceive, so that he understood things speedily, and
the kindly, forbearing look in them promised that his understanding
would not be stiffened by harshness, that it would be accompanied by
sympathy so keen that, were it not for the hint of humour which they
also held, he might almost have been mawkish, a sentimentalist too
easily dissolved in tears. His thick eyebrows clung closely to his eyes,
and gave him a look of introspection that mitigated the shrewdness of
his pointing nose. There was some weakness, but not much, in the full,
projecting lower lip and the slightly receding chin that caused his
short, tightened upper lip to look indrawn and strained; and the big,
ungainly, jutting ears consorted oddly with the serious look of high
purpose that marked his face in repose. It was as though Puck had turned
poet and then had turned preacher. One looked at the fleshy lower lip
and the jutting ears, and thought of a careless, impish creature; one
looked at the shapely, pointing nose and the kindly, unflinching eyes,
and thought of a man reckless of himself in the pursuit of some fine
purpose. One saw immediately that he was a man who could be moved easily
when his sympathies were touched ... but that he could hardly be
dissuaded from the fulfilment of his good intent. His Nationalism was
like a cleansing fire; it consumed every impure thing that might
penetrate his life. It was so potent that he did ridiculous things in
asserting it.... It was typical of him that he should gaelicise his
name, and equally typical of him that he should be undecided about the
correct spelling of "John" in the ancient Irish tongue. He had called
himself "Sean" Marsh, and then had called himself "Shane" and "Shaun"
and "Shawn." Once, for a while, he transformed "John" into "Eoin" and
then, tiring of it, had reverted to "Sean." But this restlessness over
his name was not a sign of general instability of purpose. He might vary
in the expression of his belief, but the belief itself was as immovable
as the mountains.

It was said of him that on one occasion he had taken a cheque to a bank
in Dublin to be cashed. An English editor had printed one of his poems
and had paid for it ... and he was not accustomed to receiving money for
his poems, which were printed mostly in little Irish propaganda
journals! He had endorsed the cheque in Gaelic, and the puzzled bank
manager had demanded that it should be endorsed in English.... Marsh had
given him a lecture on Irish history that lasted for the better part of
half-an-hour ... and then, because the manager looked so frightened, he
had consented to sign his name in English.

They left the garden and walked slowly to the top of an ascending field
where an old farm-horse, quit now of work, grazed in peace. It raised
its head as they walked towards it, and gazed at them with blurred eyes,
and then ambled to them. They stood beside it for a few moments while
Marsh patted its neck with one hand and allowed it to nuzzle in the palm
of the other. "I love beasts," he said, "Dogs and cats and birds and
horses and cows ... I think I love cows best because they've got such
big, soft eyes and look so stupid and reproachful ... except that dogs
are very nice and companionable and faithful ... but so are cats...."

"Faithful? Cats?" Henry asked.

"Oh, yes ... quite faithful if they like you. Why should they be
faithful if they don't? Poor, old chap! Poor, old chap!" he murmured,
thrusting his fingers through the horse's worn mane. "Of course, horses
are very nice, too," he went on. "And birds! ... I suppose one loves
all animals. One has to be very brutal to hurt an animal; hasn't one?"

Henry laughed. "The Irish are cruel to animals," he said, "but the
English aren't!"

Marsh flushed. "I've never been in England," he replied, looking away.

"Never?" Henry exclaimed.

"No, and I shall never go there!"

There was a sudden ferocity in his voice that startled Henry. "But why?"
he asked.

"Why?..." Marsh's voice changed its note and became quiet again. "I'm
Irish," he said. "That's why! I don't think that any Irishman ought to
put his foot in England until Ireland is free!"

Henry snapped at him impatiently. "I hate all that kind of talk," he
said.

Marsh looked at him in astonishment. "You hate all ... what talk?" he
asked.

"All that talk about Ireland being free!"

"But don't you want Ireland to be free?" Marsh asked.

They had walked on across the field until they came to a barred gate,
and Marsh climbed on to the top bar and perched himself there while
Henry stood with his back against the gate and fondled the muzzle of the
horse which had followed after them.

"I don't know what you mean when you say you want Ireland to be free!"
Henry exclaimed.

"Don't know what I mean!..." Marsh's voice became very tense again, and
he slipped down from the gate and turned quickly to explain his meaning
to Henry, but Henry did not wait for the explanation. "No," he
interrupted quickly. "Of course, I don't know much about these things,
but I've read some books that father gave me, and I've talked to my
friends ... one of them, Gilbert Farlow, is rather clever and he knows a
lot about politics ... he argues with his father about them ... and I
can't see that there's much difference between England and Ireland.
People here don't seem to me to be any worse off than people over
there!"

"It isn't a question of being worse off or better off," Marsh replied.
"It's a question of being _free._ The English are governed by the
English. The Irish aren't governed by the Irish. That's the difference
between us. What does it matter what your condition is so long as you
know that you are governed by a man of your own breed and blood, and
that at any minute you may be in his place and he in yours, and yet
you'll be men of the same breed and blood? I'd rather be governed badly
by men of my own breed than be governed well by another breed...."

Henry remembered Ulster and his father and all his kinsmen scattered
about the North who had sworn to die in the last ditch rather than be
governed by Nationalists. "That's all very well," he said, "but there
are plenty of people in Ireland who don't want to be governed by your
breed, well or bad!"

"They'd consent if they thought we had the ability to govern well,"
Marsh went on. "Anyhow, we couldn't govern Ireland worse than the
English have governed it!"

"Some people think you could!..."

But Marsh was in no mood to listen to objections. "You can't be free
until you are equal with other people, and we aren't equal with the
English. We aren't equal with anybody but subject people. And they look
down on us, the English do. We're lazy and dirty and ignorant and
superstitious and priest-ridden and impractical and ... and comic!... My
God, _comic_! Whenever I see an Englishman in Ireland, running round and
feeling superior, I want to wring his damned neck ... and I should hate
to wring any one's neck."

Henry tried to interject a remark, but Marsh hurried on, disregarding
his attempt to speak.

"How would they like it if we went over to their country and made
remarks about them?" he exclaimed. "My brother went to London once and
he saw people making love in public ... fellows and girls hugging each
other in the street and sprawling about in the parks ... all over each
other ... and no one took any notice. It wasn't decent.... How would
they like it if we went over there and made remarks about _that?_ ..."

Henry insisted on speaking. "But why should you hate the English?" he
demanded, and added, "I don't hate them. I like them!"

"I didn't say I hated the English," Marsh replied. "I don't. I don't
hate any race. That would be ridiculous. But I hate the belief that the
English are fit to govern us, when they're not, and that we're not fit
to govern ourselves, when we are. I'd rather be governed by Germans than
be governed by the English!..." Henry moved away impatiently. "Yes, I
would," Marsh continued. "At all events, the Germans would govern us
well...."

"You'd hate to be governed by Germans!"

"I'd hate to be governed by any but Irishmen; but the Germans wouldn't
make the muddles and messes that the English make!..."

"You don't know that," Henry said.

But Marsh would not take up the point. He swung off on a generalisation.
"There won't be any peace or happiness in Ireland," he said, "until the
English are driven out of it. Even the Orangemen don't like them.
They're always making fun of them!..."

Henry repeated his assertion that he liked the English, conscious that
there was something feeble in merely repeating it. He wished that he
could say something as forceful as Marsh's statement of his dislike of
England, but he was unable to think of anything adequate to say. "I like
the English," he said again, and when he thought over that talk, there
seemed to be nothing else to say. How could he feel about the English as
John Marsh, who had never lived in England, felt? How could he dislike
them when he remembered Gilbert Farlow and Roger Carey and Ninian
Graham and Mrs. Graham and Old Widger and Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury ...
and Mary Graham. His father had always spoken contemptuously of
Englishmen, but he had never been moved by this violent antipathy to
them which moved Marsh ... and most of his talk against England was only
talk, intended to sting the English out of their complacency ... and he
was eager to preserve the Union between the two countries. But Marsh
wished to be totally separate from England. He was vague, very vague,
about points of defence, and he boggled badly when Henry, trying to
think like a statesman, talked of an Army and a Navy ... his mind
wandered into the mists of Tolstoyianism and then he ended by suggesting
that England would attend to these matters in self-defence. He could not
satisfy Henry's superficial enquiries about the possibilities of trade
conducted in Gaelic ... but he was positive about the need for
separation, complete and irremediable separation, from England.

"We're separated from them physically," he said, "and I want us to be
separated from them politically and spiritually. They're a debased
people!..." Henry muttered angrily at that, for his mind was still full
of Mary Graham. "They're a debased people ... that's why I want to get
free of them ... and all the debasing things in Ireland are part of the
English taint. We've nothing in common with them. They're a race of
factory-hands and manufacturers; we're a race of farmers and poets; and
you can never reconcile us. All you can do is to make us like them ...
or worse!"

Henry remembered how his father had fulminated against the smooth
Englishman who had proposed to turn Glendalough into a place like the
Potteries or Wigan.

"But isn't there some middle course?" he said weakly. "Isn't there some
way of getting at the minerals of Wicklow without making Glendalough a
place like Wigan?"

"Not if the English have anything to do with it," Marsh answered. "I
don't know what Wigan is like.... I suppose it's horrible ... but it's
natural to Englishmen. They trail that sort of place behind them
wherever they go. Slums and sickness and fat, rich men! If they had
anything to do with developing Wicklow they'd make it stink!..."

"Well, I don't know," Henry said wearily, for he soon grew tired of
arguments in which he was an unequal participator. "I like the English
and I can't see any good in just hating them!"

"They found a decent, generous race in Ireland," Marsh exclaimed, "and
they've turned it into a race of cadgers. Your father admits that. Ask
him what he thinks of Arthur Balfour and his Congested Districts
Board!..."

They went back to the house, and as they went, they talked of books, and
as they talked of books, Marsh's mind became assuaged. He had lately
published a little volume of poems and he spoke of it to Henry in a shy
fashion, though his eyes brightened and gleamed as he repeated something
that Ernest Harper had said of them ... but then Ernest Harper always
spoke kindly of the work of young, sincere men.

"I'll give you a copy if you like," Marsh said to Henry.

"Oh, thank you!" Henry exclaimed. "I should love to have it. I suppose,"
he went on, "it's very exciting to have a book published."

"I cried when I first saw my book," Marsh answered very simply. "I
suppose women do that when they first see their babies!..."

But Henry did not know what women do when they first see their babies.

THE SIXTH CHAPTER

All through the summer, Henry and John Marsh worked together, making
Irishry, as Marsh called it. They studied the conventional subjects in
preparation for T. C. D. but their chief studies were of the Irish
tongue and Irish history. Marsh was a Gaelic scholar, and he had made
many translations of Gaelic poems and stories, some of which seemed to
Henry to be of extraordinary beauty, but most of which seemed to him to
be so thoughtless that they were merely lengths of words. There appeared
to be no connexion between these poems and tales and the life he himself
led--and Marsh's point was that the connexion was vital. One evening,
Henry, who had been reading "The Trojan Women" of Euripides, turned to
Marsh and said that the Greek tragedy seemed nearer to him than any of
the Gaelic stories and poems. He expressed his meaning badly, but what
it came to was this, that the continuity of life was not broken in the
Euripidean plays: the life of which Henry was part flowed directly from
the life of which Euripides was part; he had not got the sensation that
he was a stranger looking on at alien things when he had read "The
Trojan Women," "I can imagine all that happening now," he said, "but I
can't imagine any of that Gaelic life recurring. I don't feel any life
in it. It's like something ... something odd suddenly butting into
things ... and then suddenly butting out again ... and leaving no
explanation behind it!"

He tried again, with greater success, to explain what he meant. "It's
like reading topical references in old books," he said. "They mean
nothing to us even when there are footnotes to explain them!"

Marsh had listened patiently to him, though there was anger in his
heart. "You think that all that life is over!" he said, and Henry nodded
his head.

"Listen," said Marsh, taking a letter from his pocket, "here is a poem,
translated from Irish, that was sent to me by a friend of mine in
Dublin. His name is Galway, and I'd like you to know him. Listen! It's
called 'A Song for Mary Magdalene.'"

He read the poem in a slow, crooning voice that seemed always on the
point of becoming ridiculous, but never did become so.

O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the Shuiler[2] Christ is calling thee.

O woman with the wild thing's heart,
Old sin hath set a snare for thee:
In the forest ways forespent thou art,
But the hunter Christ shall pity thee.

O woman spendthrift of thyself,
Spendthrift of all the love in thee,
Sold unto sin for little pelf,
The captain Christ shall ransom thee.

O woman that no lover's kiss
(Tho' many a kiss was given thee)
Could slake thy love, is it not for this
The hero Christ shall die for thee?

They were quiet for a while, and then Marsh turned to Henry and said,
"Is that alien to you?"

"No," he answered, "but I did not say that it was all alien!..."

"Or this?" Marsh interrupted, taking up the manuscript again. "Galway
sent these translations to me so that I might be the first to see them.
He always does that. This one is called 'Lullaby of a Woman of the
Mountain.'"

Little gold head, my house's candle,
You will guide all wayfarers that walk this country.

Little soft mouth that my breast has known,
Mary will kiss you as she passes.

Little round cheek, O smoother than satin,
Iosa will lay His hand upon you.

Mary's kiss on my baby's mouth,
Christ's little hand on my darling's cheek!

House, be still, and ye little grey mice,
Lie close to-night in your hidden lairs.

Moths on the window, fold your wings,
Little black chafers, silence your humming.

Plover and curlew fly not over my house,
Do not speak, wild barnacle, passing over this mountain.

Things of the mountain that wake in the night time,
Do not stir to-night till the daylight whitens.

"That's alive, isn't it?" Marsh, now openly angry, demanded. "Do you
think that song doesn't kindle the hearts of mothers all over the
world?... I can imagine Eve crooning it to little Cain and Abel, and I
can imagine a woman in the Combe crooning it to her child!..." The Combe
was a tract of slum in Dublin. "It's universal and everlasting. You
can't kill that!"

"Then why has it got lost?"

"It isn't lost--it's only covered up. Our task is to dig it out. It's
worth digging out, isn't it? The people in the West still sing songs
like that. Isn't it worth while to try and get all our people to sing
them instead of singing English music-hall stuff?..."

It was in that spirit that Marsh started the Gaelic class in
Ballymartin. "And the Gaelic games," he said to Henry, "we'll revive
them too!" Twice a week, he taught the rudiments of the Irish language
to a mixed class of boys and girls, and every Saturday he led the
Ballymartin hurley team into one of Mr. Quinn's fields....

There had been difficulty in establishing the mixed classes. The farmers
and the villagers, having first declared that Gaelic was useless to
them--"they'd be a lot better learnin' shorthand!" said John
McCracken--then declared that they did not care to have their daughters
"trapesin' about the loanies, lettin' on to be learnin' Irish, an' them
only up to devilment with the lads!" But Marsh overcame that difficulty,
as he overcame most of his difficulties, by persistent attack; and in
the end, the Gaelic class was established, and the Ballymartin boys and
girls were set to the study of O'Growney's primer. Henry was employed as
Marsh's monitor. His duty was to supervise the elementary pupils,
leaving the more advanced ones to the care of Marsh. It was while he was
teaching the Gaelic alphabet to his class, that Henry first met Sheila
Morgan.

She came into the schoolroom one night out of a drift of rain, and as
she stood in the doorway, laughing because the wind had caught her
umbrella and almost torn it out of her hands, he could see the
raindrops glistening on her cheeks. She put the umbrella in a corner of
the room, leaving it open so that it might dry more quickly, and then
she shook her long dark hair back and wiped the rain from her face. He
waited until she had taken off her mackintosh and hung it up in the
cloakroom, and then he went forward to her.

"Have you come to join the class?" he asked, and she smiled and nodded
her head. "It's a coarse sort of a night," she added, coming into the
classroom.

He did not know her name, and he wondered where her home was. He knew
everybody in Ballymartin, and many of the people in the country outside
it, but he had never seen Sheila Morgan before.

"I thought I might as well come," she said, "but I'm only here for a
while!"

Then she did not belong to the village. "Yes?..." he said.

"It's quaren dull in the country," she continued, "an' the classes'll
help to pass the time. I wish it was dancin', but!"

Dancing! They had not made any arrangements for dancing, though the
Gaels were very nimble on their feet. He glanced at Marsh reproachfully.
Why had Marsh omitted to revive the Gaelic dances?

"Perhaps," he said to Sheila, "we can have dancing classes later on...."

"I'll mebbe be gone before you have them," she answered.

"How long are you staying for?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm stopping with my uncle Matthew ... it's him has
Hamilton's farm ... an' I'm stoppin' 'til he knows how his health'll be.
He's bad...."

He remembered Matthew Hamilton. "Is he ill?" he said.

"Aye. He's been sick this while past, an' now he's worse, an' my aunt
Kate asked me to come an' stop with them to help them in the house. He's
not near himself at all. You'd think a pity of him if you seen the way
he's failed next to nothin'.... Is it hard to learn Irish?"

"You'd better come an' try for yourself," he replied, and then he led
her up to Marsh and told him that a new pupil had come to join the
class. There was some awkwardness about names.... "Och, I never told you
my name," she said, laughing as she spoke. "Sheila Morgan!" she
continued. "I live in County Down, but I'm stayin' with my uncle
Matthew," she explained to Marsh.

"Do you know any Gaelic at all?" Marsh asked.

"No," she replied. "I never learned it. Are you goin' to have any
dancin' classes?"

Henry insisted that they ought to have had dancing classes as well as a
hurley team. "The hurley's all right for the boys," he said, "but we've
nothing for the girls...."

"But you'd want boys at the dancin' as well," Sheila interrupted. "I
can't bear dancin' with girls!"

"No, of course not," said Henry.

Marsh considered. "Who's to teach the dancing?" he asked, adding, "I
can't!"

"I'd be willin' to do that," Sheila said. "Mebbe you'd join the class
yourself, Mr. Marsh?"

Marsh laughed, but did not answer.

"It'll be great value," she went on. "There's nothin' to do in the
evenin's ... nothin' at all ... an' it's despert dull at night with
nothin' to do!..."

"I'll think about it," said Marsh. "You can begin your Gaelic study
now," he added. "Mr. Quinn'll give you a lesson!..."

It was Jamesey McKeown who caused the decision to hold the dancing
classes to be made as quickly as it was. Jamesey was one of the pupils
in the advanced section of the Gaelic class ... a bright-witted boy of
thirteen, with a quick, sharp way. One day, Marsh and Henry had climbed
a steep hill outside the village, and when they reached the top of it,
they found Jamesey lying there, looking down on the fields beneath. His
chin was resting in the cup of his upturned palms.

"God save you, Jamesey!" said Marsh, and "God save you kindly!" Jamesey
answered.

The greeting and the reply are not native to Ulster, but Marsh had made
them part of the Gaelic studies, and whenever he encountered friends he
always saluted them so. His pupils, falling in with his whim, replied
to his salute as he wished them to reply, but the older people merely
nodded their heads or said "It's a soft day!" or "It's a brave day!" or,
more abruptly, "Morra, Mr. Marsh!" The Protestants among them suspected
that the Gaelic salutation was a form of furtive Popery....

They sat down beside the boy. "I suppose you'll be leaving school soon,
Jamesey?" Marsh asked.

"Aye, I will in a while," Jamesey answered.

"What class are you in?"

"I'm a monitor, Mr. Marsh. I'm in my first year!..."

Henry sat up and joined in the conversation. "Then you're going to be a
teacher?" he said.

"No, I'm not," Jamesey replied. "My ma put me in for the monitor to get
the bit of extra education. That's all!"

"What are you going to be, Jamesey? A farmer?" said Marsh.

"No. I wouldn't be a farmer for the world!..."

"But why?"

The boy changed his position and faced round to them. "Sure, there's
nothin' to do but work from the dawn till the dark," he said, "an' you
never get no diversion at all. I'm quaren tired of this place, I can
tell you, an' my ma's tired of it too. She wudden be here if she could
help it, but sure she can't. It's terrible in the winter, an' the win'
fit to blow the head off you, an' you with nothin' to do on'y look after
a lot of oul' cows an' pigs an' things. I'm goin' to a town as soon as
I'm oul' enough!..."

They talked to him of the beauty of the country....

"Och, it's all right for a holiday in the summer," he said.

... and they talked to him of the fineness of a farmer's life, but he
would not agree with them. A farmer's life was too hard and too dull. He
was set on joining his brother in Glasgow....

"What does your brother do, Jamesey?" Marsh asked.

"He's a barman."

"A barman!" they repeated, a little blankly.

"Aye. That's what I'm goin' to be ... in the same place as him!"

They did not speak for a while. It seemed to both of them to be
incredible that any one could wish to exchange the loveliness of the
Antrim country for a Glasgow bar....

"What hours does your brother work?" Marsh asked drily.

"He works from eight in the mornin' till eight at night, an' it's later
on Saturdays, but he has a half-day a week til himself, an' he has all
day Sunday. They don't drink on Sunday in Glasgow!"

Marsh smiled. "Don't they?" he said.

"It's long hours," Jamesey admitted, "but he has great diversion. D'ye
know this, Mr. Marsh!" he continued, rolling over on his side and
speaking more quickly, "he can go to a music-hall twice on the one night
an' hear all the latest songs for tuppence. That's all it costs him. He
goes to the gallery an' he hears gran', an' he can go to two music-halls
in the one night ... _in the one night_, mind you ... for fourpence!
Where would you bate that? You never get no diversion of that sort in
this place ... only an oul' magic-lantern an odd time, or the Band of
Hope singin' songs about teetotallers!..."

That was the principal burden of Jamesey's complaint, that there was no
diversion in Ballymartin. "If you were to go up the street now," he
said, "you'd see the fellas stan'in' at the corner, houl'in' up the
wall, an' wonderin' what the hell to do with themselves, an' never
gettin' no answer!..."

"You never hear noan of the latest songs here," he complained again. "I
got a quare cut from my brother once, me singin' a song that I thought
was new, an' he toul' me it was as oul' as the hills. It was more nor a
year oul', anyway!..."

They came away from the hill in a mood of depression. It seemed to Henry
that the Gaelic Movement could never take root in that soil. What was
the good of asking Jamesey McKeown to sing Gaelic songs and till the
land when his heart was hungering for the tuppeny excitements of a
Glasgow music-hall? What would Jamesey McKeown make of Galway's
translations? Would

O woman of the gleaming hair
(Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee),
Weary thou turnest from the common stare,
For the Shuiler Christ is calling thee.

bind him to the nurture of the earth when

What ho! she bumps

called him to Glasgow?

"We must think of something!" Marsh was saying, but Henry was busy with
his own thoughts and paid no heed to him.

What, after all, had a farm to offer a quick-witted man or woman? That
girl, Lizzie McCamley of whom his father had spoken once, she had
preferred to go to Belfast and work in a linen mill and live in a slum
rather than continue in the country; and Jamesey McKeown, who was so
quick and eager and anxious to succeed, had weighed farms and fields and
hills and valleys in the balance and found them of less weight and value
than a Glasgow bar and a Glasgow music-hall. Henry remembered that his
father was more interested in the land than most men--and he resolved to
ask for his opinion. What was the good of all this co-operation, this
struggle to discover the best way of making the earth yield up the means
of life, this effort to increase and multiply, when nothing they could
do seemed to make the work attractive to those who did it?...

Marsh was still murmuring to him. "I see," he was saying, "that
something must be done. That girl ... what's her name?... Sheila
something?..."

"Sheila Morgan!" Henry said.

"Yes. Sheila Morgan ... she said something about dancing classes, didn't
she? We'll start a dancing class ... we'll teach them the Gaelic
dances!..."

It suddenly seemed funny to Henry that Marsh should propose to solve the
Land Problem ... the real Land Problem ... by means of dancing classes.

"They'll want more than that," he said. "They can't always be dancing!"

"No," Marsh answered, "but we can begin with that!"

Marsh's depression swiftly left him. He began to speculate on the future
of the countryside when the Gaelic revival was complete. There would be
Gaelic games, Gaelic songs, Gaelic dances and a Gaelic literature. "I
don't see why we shouldn't have a theatre in every village, with village
actors and village plays.... There must be a great deal of talent hidden
away in these houses that never comes out because there is no one to
bring it out.... I wish you were older, Henry, and were quit of Trinity.
You and I ... and Galway ... of course, we must have Galway ... might
start the Movement on a swifter course than it has now!..." He broke off
and made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, my God, why can't a man do more!"
he said.

Henry put the question to his father, and Mr. Quinn considered it for a
while.

"I don't know," he answered, "what to say. You'd think people would find
more to interest them in the land than in anything else ... but they
don't. There's so much to do, an' it's so varied, an' you have it all
under your own eye ... you begin it an' carry it on and you end it ...
an' yet somehow!... An' then the whole family understands it and can
take an interest in it. You'd think that that would hold them. There
isn't any other trade in the world that'll take up a whole family an'
give them all somethin' to talk about an' think over an' join in. But
I've never known a bright boy or girl on a farm that wasn't itchin' to
get away from it to a town!"

"But something'll have to be done, father!" Henry urged. "We must have
farmers!..."

"Aye, something'll have to be done, but I'm damned if I know what. I
suppose when they've developed machinery more an' can make transit
easier ... but sometimes I half think we'll have to breed people for the
land ... thick people, slow-witted people, clods ... an' just let them
root an' dig and grub an' ... an' breed!" He got up as he spoke, and
paced about the room. "No, Henry, I've got no remedy for you! The
Almighty God'll have to think of a plan, _I_ can't!"

Sheila Morgan did not know any of the ancient Gaelic dances, nor did any
one in Ballymartin. She knew how to waltz and she could dance the polka
and the schottishe. "An' that's all you need!" she said. There were two
old women in the village who danced a double reel, and Paddy Kane was a
great lad at jigs....

"Perhaps later on," Marsh said, "we can get some one to teach them
Gaelic dances!"

And so the classes began. Marsh had announced at the Language class that
the first of the Dancing Classes would be held on the following Thursday
... and on Thursday every boy and girl and young man and woman in
Ballymartin had crowded into the schoolroom where the class was to be
held.

"There are more here than come to the Language class," Marsh exclaimed
in astonishment when he entered the room.

"Dancing seems to be more popular than Gaelic," Henry replied.

"I don't know how we shall teach them all," Marsh went on. "I can't
dance ... and she can't possibly teach them all!"

But there was no need to teach them to dance--they had all learned to
dance "from their cradles," as some one said, and in a little while the
room was full of dancing couples.

Sheila Morgan had gone smilingly to John Marsh as he entered the room.
"We're all ready," she said, and waited.

"Oh, yes!" he replied, a little vaguely.

She looked at him for a few moments, and then went on. "If you were to
lead off," she suggested.

"Me? But I can't dance!..."

"You can't dance!"

"No," he continued. "Somehow, I've never learnt to dance!" She looked
disappointed. "I thought mebbe you an' me 'ud lead off," she said.

"I'm sorry," he replied. "Perhaps Mr. Quinn can dance!..."

Henry gave his arm to her and they walked off, to begin the slow
procession round the room until all the couples were ready.

"I think Mr. Marsh is the only one in the place that can't dance,"
Sheila said, as she placed her hand on Henry's shoulder.

He put his arm round her waist and they moved off in the dance. "I
suppose he is," he answered.

He danced with her several times. Her cheeks were glowing and the lustre
of her eyes was like the sparkle of the stars. Her lips were slightly
parted, and now and then her breath came quickly. As they swung round
and round, she sometimes closed her eyes and then slowly opened them
again. He became aware of some strange emotion that he had never known
before.

"I love dancin'," she murmured, half to herself.

"Yes," he replied, scarcely knowing that he was speaking.

"I love dancin'," she said again, and again he said "Yes" and no
more....

He led her to a seat at the side of the room and sat down on the chair
next to it. They did not speak, but sat there watching the swift
movements of the other dancers. Marsh was somewhere at the other end of
the room, looking on ... a little puzzled, a little disturbed ... but
pleased, too, because the dancers were pleased. He was wondering why the
interest in the Gaelic language was not so strong as the interest in the
waltz. "A foreign dance, too ... not Gaelic at all!"

But Henry had forgotten the Gaelic movement, and was conscious only of
the girl beside him and her glowing cheeks and her bright eyes and the
softness of her.... She was older than he was, a couple of years and he
noticed that she had just "put up" her hair. It had been hanging loosely
when he first saw her, and he wondered which he liked better, the loose,
hanging hair, or the hair bound round her head. Her slender white neck
was revealed now that her hair was up, and it was very beautiful, but he
thought that after all, his first sight of her, as she stood in the
doorway, the raindrops still on her face, and flung back the long, loose
strands of dark hair that lay about her shoulders ... he still thought
that was the loveliest vision of her he had seen....

Then he remembered Mary Graham. She, too, had long loose hair that lay
in dark lengths about her shoulders, and her eyes, too, could shine ...
but she was a girl, and Sheila was a woman!... He was engaged to Mary,
of course ... well, was it an engagement? They had been sweethearts and
he had told her he loved her and she had said that she would marry him
... and all that ... but they were kids when that happened. Ninian had
called him a sloppy ass!... This was different. His feeling for Sheila
Morgan was different from his feeling for Mary Graham. He had never felt
for any one as he felt for Sheila. He seemed unaccountably to be more
aware of Sheila than he was of Mary. He could not altogether understand
this difference of sensation ... but sometimes when he had been with
Mary, he had forgotten that she was a girl ... she was just some one
with whom he was playing a game or going for a walk or taking a bathe in
the sea. But he could not forget that Sheila was a woman. When he had
danced with her and his arm was about her waist and her fingers were in
his ... he seemed to grow up. He felt as if something at which he had
been gazing uncomprehendingly for a long time, had suddenly become known
to him. He recognised something ... understood something which had
puzzled him.

"Let's dance again," he said, standing up before her.

"All right," she answered, rising and going to him.

"I love dancing," he said to her.

"Yes," she murmured in reply.

When the dance was over, he took her to her uncle's farm. Marsh,
overcome by headache, had gone home before the dance was ended, and
Henry felt glad of this. He waited in the porch of the schoolhouse while
Sheila put on her coat and wrap, and wondered why his feeling for her
was so different from his feeling for Mary Graham, and while he
wondered, she came to him, gathering up her skirts.

"Isn't the sky lovely?" she said, glancing up at the stars, as they
walked out of the school-yard into the road.

He glanced up too, but did not answer.

"Millions an' millions of them," she said. "You'd wonder the sky 'ud
hold them all!"

"Yes," he said.

"Many's a time I wonder about the stars," she went on. "Do you ever
wonder about them?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you think there's people in them, the same as there is on the
earth?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"This is a star, too, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes."

"An' shines just like them does?"

"Yes, I think so!"

"That's quare!" She walked on for a few yards without speaking, and her
eyes were fixed steadily on the starry fields. "It's funny," she said,
"to think mebbe there's people up there lookin' at us an' them mebbe
thinkin' about this place what we're thinkin' of them. Wouldn't you love
to be able to fly up to one of them an' just see if it's true?..."

He laughed at her and she laughed in response. "I'm talkin' blether,"
she said, stumbling over a stone in the road.

"Mind!" he warned her, putting out his hand to steady her.

"I was nearly down that time," she said. "These roads is awful in the
dark ... you can't see where you're goin' or what's in the way!"

"No," he replied.

Her arms were crooked because she was holding her skirts about her
ankles, and as she stumbled against him a second time, he put out his
hand and caught hold of her arm, and this time he did not withdraw it.
He slipped his arm inside hers and drew her close to him, and so they
walked on in the starlight up the rough road that led to Matthew
Hamilton's farm.

"It's quaren late," she said, moving nearer to him.

"Yes," he answered.

There was a rustle in the trees as the night wind blew through the
branches, and they could hear the silken murmur of the corn as it bent
before the breeze. Now and then there was a flutter of wings in a hedge
as they passed by, and the low murmurs of cattle and sheep came from the
fields.

"I wish it were next Thursday," he said.

"So do I," she replied.

"I wish we could have two dancing-classes in the week instead of one!"

"So do I," she said.

"But we can't manage that," he continued. "You see we have two nights
for the Language class!..."

"You could have one night for the Language class," she said, "and two
nights for dancing!"

"I don't think Marsh would like that," he answered.

They walked on for a while, thinking of what Marsh would say, and then
she broke the silence.

"I don't see the good of them oul' language classes," she said.

"Don't you?"

"No. I'd rather be dancin' any day!..."

He left her at the gate that led into the farmyard.

"Good-night," he said, holding out his hand to her.

"Good-night!" she replied.

But still he did not move away nor did she open the gate and pass into
the yard.

"I shall look forward to Thursday," he said.

"So shall I!"

"Good-night!"

He still held her hand in his and as she made a movement to draw it
away, he suddenly pulled her to him and put his arms about her and
kissed her.

"Sheila!" he said.

"Let me go!" she whispered.

She drew away from him, and stood looking at him for a few moments. Then
she pushed the gate open and walked into the yard.

"Good-night!" she said.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Shuiler: a tramp or beggar.]

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

His habit had been to work in the morning with Marsh, and then, after
light luncheon, they walked through the country during the afternoon,
climbing hills or tramping heavily through the fields or, going off on
bicycles, to bathe at Cushendall. Sometimes, Mr. Quinn accompanied them
on these expeditions, and then they had fierce arguments about Ireland,
but more often Marsh and Henry went off together, leaving Mr. Quinn
behind to ponder over some problem of agriculture or to wrangle with
William Henry Matier on what was and what was not a fair day's work. But
now, Henry began to scheme to be alone. On the day after he had taken
Sheila Morgan to her uncle's farm, he had been so restless and
inattentive during his morning's work that Marsh had asked him if he
were ill.

"I'm rather headachy," he had answered, and had gladly accepted the
offer to quit work for the day.

"Would you like to go out for a walk?" Marsh had asked. "The fresh
air!..."

And Henry had replied, "No, thanks! I think I'll just go up to my room!"

He had gone to his room and then, listening until he had heard Marsh go
out, he had descended the stairs and, almost on tiptoe, had gone out of
the house by a side-door, and, slipping through the paddock as if he
were anxious not to be seen, had run swiftly through the meadows and
cornfields until he reached the road that led to Hamilton's farm. He had
not decided what he was going to do when he had reached the farm. Sheila
would probably be busy about the house or she might have work to do in
the farmyard. Now that her uncle was ill, some of his labour would have
to be done by others. But he would be less in the way, he thought, in
the morning than he would be in the evening when the cows were being
milked ... though he might offer to help her to strain the milk and
churn it, if she did that, and he could scald the milk-pans and ... do
lots of things! The evening, however, was still a long way off, but the
morning was ... _now!_ And he wished very much to be with Sheila ... now
... this moment!

He saw her before she saw him. She had her back to him, and she was
bending over her uncle who was sitting at the door of the farmhouse,
with a rug wrapped round his legs. Henry, suddenly shy, stood still in
the "loanie," looking at her and trying to think of something to say to
her which would make his appearance there at that hour natural; but
before he had thought of something that was suitable, she turned and saw
him, and so he went forward, tongue-tied and awkward.

"Here's Mr. Quinn!" she said to her uncle ... she had never known him as
Master Henry, and she had not yet learned to call him by his Christian
name alone.

The farmer looked up. "You mane Mr. Henry," he said, and Henry,
listening to him, felt that at last he was near manhood, for people were
shedding the "Master."

"Good-morning, Hamilton!" he said, holding out his hand to the farmer.
"How're you to-day?"

"Middlin', sir ... only middlin'. This is the first I've been out of the
house this long while, but the day's that warm, I just thought I'd like
to get a heat of the sun, bad or no bad. It's a terrible thing to be
helpless like this ... not able to do a han's-turn for yourself!..."

"Ah, quit, Uncle Matt!" Sheila interjected. "Sure, you'll soon be all
right an' runnin' about like a two-year oul'!" She turned to Henry.
"He's an awful man for wantin' to be doin' things, an' it's sore work
tryin' to get him to sit still the way the doctor says he's to sit.
Always wantin' to be up an' doin' somethin'! Aren't you, Uncle Matt?"

"Ay, daughter, I am. I was always the lad for work!..."

"You're a terrible oul' provoker, so you are. You're just jealous,
that's it, an' you're heart-feard we'll mebbe all learn how to look
after the farm better nor you can!"

The old man smiled and took hold of her hand and fondled it. "You're the
right wee girl," he said affectionately. "Always doin' your best to keep
a man's heart up!"

"Indeed, then," she said briskly, "you gimme enough to do to keep your
heart up. You're worse nor a cradleful of childher!... Here, let me wrap
this shawl about your shoulders! Aren't you the oul' footer to be
lettin' it slip down like that?... There now!"

He lay back in his chair while she folded the shawl about him, and
smiled at her. "God content you, daughter!" he murmured.

"Well!" she said to Henry as they moved towards the byre.

He had sat with the farmer for a while, talking of the weather and the
crops and the prospects of the harvest, and then, seeing Sheila going
across the yard, he had followed her.

"Well?" she said, looking at him quizzically.

He did not know what to say, so he stood there smiling at her. Her arms
were bare to the bend, and the neck of her blouse was open so that he
saw her firm, brown throat.

"Well!" he replied, still smiling, and "Well?" she said again.

She went into the byre, and he followed her to the door, and stood
peering into the dark interior where a sick cow lay lowing softly.

"Is that all you have to say for yourself?" Sheila called to him.

"I have a whole lot to say," he replied, "but I don't know how to say
it!"

She laughed at that, and he liked the strong, quick sound of her
laughter. "You're the quare wee fella," she exclaimed.

_Wee fellow!_ He flushed and straightened himself.

"I was passing along the road," he said stiffly, "and I thought I'd come
up and see your uncle!..."

"Oh!" she answered.

"Yes. My father was wondering yesterday how he was getting on, so I just
thought I'd come over and see him. I suppose you're busy?"

"You suppose right!"

He moved a step or two away from the door of the byre. "Then I won't
hinder you in your work," he said.

"You're not hinderin' me," she replied, coming out of the dark byre as
she spoke. "It would take the quare man to hinder _me_! Where's Mr.
Marsh this mornin'?"

"Oh, somewhere!"

"I thought you an' him was always thegether. You're always about
anyway!"

He felt strangely boyish while she was talking. Last night, when he had
drawn her to him and had kissed her soft, moist lips, he had felt
suddenly adult. While his arms were about her, he was conscious of
manhood, of something new in his life, something that he had been
growing to, but until that moment had not yet reached ... and now,
standing in the strong sunlight and looking into her firm, laughing
eyes, his manhood seemed to have receded from him, and once more he was
... a wee fellow, a schoolboy, a bit of a lad.... His vexation must have
been apparent in his expression, for she said "What ails you?" to him.

"Nothing," he replied, turning away.

It was she who was making him feel schoolboyish again. She looked so
capable and so assured, standing outside the byre-door, with a small
crock in her hands, that he felt that she was many years older than he
was, that she knew far more than he could hope to know for a long
time....

She put the crock down and came close to him and took hold of his arm.
"What ails you?" she said again, peering up into his face and smiling at
him.

He looked at her with sulky eyes. "You're making fun of me," he said.

She shook his arm and pushed him. "G'long with you!" she said. "A big
lump of a fella like you, actin' the chile!..." She picked up the crock
and handed it to him. "Here," she said, "carry that into the house, will
you, an' ask me aunt Kate to give you the full of it with yella male,
an' then hurry back. I'll be up in the hayloft," she added, moving off.

He laid the crock of yellow meal down on a wooden box in the barn, and
then climbed up the ladder to the hayloft.

"Wheesht," she said, holding up her hand. "There's a hen sittin' here,
an' I don't want her disturbed!" He climbed into the loft as quietly as
he could. "They'll soon be out now," she went on, "the lovely wee
things!... What did you come here for, the day?"

"To see you!" he answered.

"Then that was a lie about comin' to see my Uncle Matt?"

He nodded his head.

"I thought as much. Sit down here by the side of me!"

He sat down on the hay where she bade him. "Are you angry with me?" he
asked, making a wisp of hay.

"What would I be angry for?"

He did not know. Last night, perhaps, when he had kissed her?

"Oh, that!" she said. "Sure, that's nothin'!"

"Nothing?"

Why, then, had she left him so suddenly? She must have known how much he
had to say to her....

"Look at the time it was!" she exclaimed. "An' me havin' to get up at
five an' let the cows out.... _You_ weren't up at no five, I'll bet!" He
had risen at eight. "Eight!" she exclaimed. "That's no hour of the day
to be risin'. If you were married to me, I'd make you skip long before
that hour!"

Married to her!...

"Sheila," he whispered, taking hold of her arm.

"Well?" she said, thrusting a hay-stalk into his hair.

"I love you, Sheila!" he whispered, coming closer to her.

"Do you, indeed?" she answered.

"I do, Sheila, I do...."

He raised himself so that he was kneeling in front of her. His shyness
had left him now, and the words were pouring rapidly out of his mouth.

"The minute I saw you in the door of the schoolroom that night, I was in
love with you. I was, indeed!"

"Were you?"

"Yes. I couldn't help it, Sheila, and the worst of it was I didn't know
what to say to you. And then, last night ... when we were walking up the
'loanie' together and I was holding your arm ... you know!... like
this...." He took hold of her arm as he spoke and pressed it in his....
"I felt like ... like...."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Like anything. You _will_ marry me, Sheila? You _do_ love
me?..."

She withdrew her arm from his and struck him lightly with a wisp of hay.
"You're in a terrible hurry all of a sudden!" she said. "One minute you
hardly know me, an' the next minute you're gettin' ready to be married
to me. You're a despert wee fella!"

_Wee fellow_ again!

"I'm not so very young," he said.

"What age are you?" she asked.

"I'm nearly seventeen," he replied.

She jumped up and stood over him. "God save us," she said, "that's the
powerful age. You'd nearly bate Methusaleh!"

He stood up beside her. "Now, you're laughing at me again," he
complained.

"No, I'm not," she answered.

She laid her hand on his shoulder and gripped it firmly, and stood thus,
looking at him intently. Then she drew him into her arms and kissed him.
"I like you quaren well," she said, holding him to her.

"Do you, Sheila?"

"Aye, of course I do, or I wouldn't be huggin' you like this, would I?
Did you bring the yella male?"

He nodded his head. "It's down below," he said.

"Dear, oh, dear," she sighed. "I've wasted a terrible lot of time on
you, Mr. Quinn!..."

"Call me 'Henry,'" he said.

"I'll call you 'Harry,'" she answered.

"You can call me anything you like!..."

She pinched his cheek. "You're a dear wee fella," she said. He did not
mind being called a "wee fella" now. "But you're keepin' me from my
work," she went on.

He seized her hand impetuously. "Take a day off," he said, "and we'll go
for a long walk together!"

She laughed at him. "You quality people is the great ones for talk," she
replied. "An' how could I take a day off an' me with my work to do?"

"Well, this evening then," he urged.

"There'll be the cows to milk!..."

"I'll come and help you."

"But sure you can't milk!"

"No, I can't milk, of course, but I can do anything else you want done.
I can hold things and ... and run messages ... and just help you. Can't
I? And then, when you've finished your work, we'll go and sit in the
clover field...."

"An' get our death of cold sittin' on the damp ground. Dear O, but men
talks quare blether!"

He tried to persuade her that dew was not damping. ... "Ah, quit!" she
exclaimed ... and then he begged for her company in a walk along the
Ballymena Road.

"I suppose I'll have to give in to you," she said. "You're a terrible
fella for coaxin'!"

She moved towards the trap where the head of the ladder showed, and
prepared to descend from the loft.

"What time will I come for you?" he asked, following her.

"Half-seven," she answered, going down the ladder. "I'll be well done my
work then!"

He stood above her, looking down through the trap. "We generally have
dinner at half-past seven," he said.

"You should have your dinner in the middle of the day, like us," she
answered, and added, decisively, "It's half-seven or never!"

"All right," he exclaimed, stooping down carefully and putting his feet
on a rung of the ladder. "I'll come for you then. I'll manage it
somehow."

He told his father that he did not want any dinner. John Marsh had
enquired about his headache, and Henry had said that it was better, but
that he thought he would like to be quiet that evening. He said, too,
that he had made up his mind to go for a long, lonely walk. "But what
about your dinner?" Mr. Quinn had said, and he had answered that he did
not want any. "If I'm hungry," he added, "I can have something before I
go to bed."

He felt vaguely irritated with John Marsh who first pestered him ...
that was the word Henry used in his mind ... with sympathy and then
lamented that his headache would prevent him from helping that evening
at the Gaelic language class. "Still, I suppose well manage," he ended
regretfully.

"I don't suppose there'll be many at the class," Henry replied almost
sneeringly.

"Why?" said Marsh.

"Oh, well," Henry went on, "after last night!..."

"You mean that they think more of dancing than they do of the language?"
Marsh interrupted, and there was so much of anxiety in the tone of his
voice that Henry regretted that he had sneered at him.

"Well, that's natural," he said, trying to think of some phrase that
would mitigate the unkindness of what he was saying, and failing to
think of it. "After all, it _is_ much more fun to dance than to learn
grammar...."

"But this is the _Irish_ language," Marsh persisted, as if the Irishness
of the tongue transcended the drudgery of learning grammar.

Mr. Quinn crumpled the _Northern Whig_ and threw it at Marsh's head.
"You an' your oul' language!" he exclaimed. "What good'll it do anybody
but a lot of professors. Here's the world tryin' to get Latin an' Greek
out of the universities, an' here's you tryin' to get another dead
language into them!"

There followed an argument that developed into a wrangle, in the midst
of which Henry, flinging a consolatory speech to Marsh, escaped from the
house. "You'll get all the keen ones to-night," he said. "That'll be
some consolation to you!"

It was too soon to go up to Hamilton's farm. The dairy work would hardly
be done, and there would be the evening meal to prepare, and he knew
that he would not be welcome in the middle of that activity. He did not
wish to return to the room where his father and John Marsh were arguing
about the Irish language, nor did he wish to go and sit in his own room
until the time came to go and meet Sheila. If Hannah were to make some
sandwiches for him, in case he should feel hungry, he would go to the
bottom fields and lie in the long grass by the brook until it was time
to meet Sheila. He went downstairs to the kitchen and found Hannah busy
with the night's dinner.

"Well, Master Henry!" she said.

He told her of his headache and his desire for a solitary walk, and
asked her to cut sandwiches for him.

"I will with a heart an' a half," she said, "when I've strained these
potatoes. Sit down there a while an' content yourself till I've
done...."

He took the sandwiches from her and went off to the bottom fields. The
sky was full of mingled colours and long torn clouds that looked like
flights of angels, and hidden in the fold of one great white strip of
cloud that stretched up into the heavens, the sickle moon shone faintly,
waiting for the setting sun to disappear so that she should shine out
with unchallenged refulgence. He stood a while to look at the glory of
the sky, and munched his sandwiches while he looked. He had always had a
sensuous love of fine shapes and looks; the big bare branches of an old
tree showing darkly against a winter sky or the changing colour of
clouds at sunset, transfused at one moment to the look of filmy gold as
the sun sent his rays shining upwards, darkened at the next, when the
sun had vanished, so that they had the colour of smoke and made a stain
as if God had drawn a sooty thumb across the sky; but now his
sensuousness had developed, and he found himself full of admiration for
things which hitherto he had not observed. That evening, when the
cart-horses were led home, he had suddenly perceived that their great
limbs were beautiful. He had stood still in the lane to watch them going
by, and had liked the heavy plunging sound of their hoofs on the rough
road, and the faded look of the long hair that hung about their houghs;
but more than these he had liked the great round limbs of them, so full
of strength. He remembered that once at Boveyhayne, Mary Graham and he
had argued about the sea-gulls. She had "just loved" them, but he had
qualified his admiration. He liked the long, motionless flight of the
gulls as they circled through the air, and the whiteness of their
shapely bodies and the grey feathers on their backs, but he disliked the
small heads they had and the long yellow beaks and the little black eyes
and the harsh cry ... and he had almost sickened when he saw them
feeding on the entrails that were thrown to them by the fishermen....
But now, since he had fallen in love with Sheila Morgan, it seemed to
him that everything in the world was beautiful; and lying here in the
long grass, he yielded himself to the loveliness of the earth. He lay
back and closed his eyes and listened to the sounds that filled the air,
the noise of pleased, tired things at peace and the subdued songs of
roosting birds. He could hear shouts from the labourers in the distant
hayfields and, now and then, the slow rattle of a country cart as it
moved clumsily along the uneven roads that led from the fields to the
farmyards. There was a drowsy buzz of insects that mingled oddly with
the burble of the stream and the lowing of the cattle.... He lay there
and listened to a lark as it flew up from the ground with a queer,
agitated flutter of wings, watching it as it ascended high and higher
until it became a tiny speck, and then he sat up and watched it as it
descended again, still flying with that queer, agitated flutter of
wings, until it came near the earth, when its song suddenly ceased and
it changed its flight and fell swiftly to its nest.

He rose up from the grass and walked over to the stream and dipped his
hands into it, splashing the water on to the grass beside him. The
sunlight shone on his hand and made the wet hairs shine like golden
threads....

He was kneeling there at the side of the stream, looking at the wet glow
of his hand when the fear of death came to him, and instantly he was
terrified when he thought that he might die. The consciousness of life
was in him and the desire to continue and to experience and to know were
quickening and increasing. It seemed to him then that if he were to die
at that moment, he would have been cheated of his inheritance, that he
would have a grievance against God for all eternity.... He moved away
from the brook and sank back into the grass, shaken and disconcerted.
Until that moment, he had never thought of death except as a vague,
inevitable thing that came to all creatures some time ... generally when
they were old and had lost the savour of life. He had never seen a dead
man or woman and he was unfamiliar with the rites of burial. He knew,
indeed, that people die before they grow old, that children die, but
until that moment, death had not become a personal thing, a thing that
might descend on _him_....

He shut his eyes and tried to dose the thought of death out of his mind,
but it would not go away. He began to sing disconnected staves of songs
in the hope that he would forget that he was mortal.... There was a song
that Bridget Fallon had taught him when he was a child, and now after
many years, he was singing it again:

There were three lords came out of Spain,
They came to court my daughter Jane.
My daughter Jane, she is too young,
And cannot bear your flatt'ring tongue.
So fare you well, make no delay,
But come again another day....

But the thought of death still lay heavy on his mind, and so he got up
and left the field and hurried along the road that led to Hamilton's
farm.

"Oh, my God," he cried to himself, "if I were to die now, just when I'm
beginning to know things!..."

He began to run, as if he would run away from his own thoughts. The torn
strips of clouds, that had looked like molten gold, were now darkening,
and their darkness seemed ominous to him. The steepness of the "loanie"
made him pant and presently he slackened his pace and slowed-down to
walking. His eyes felt hot and stiff in their sockets and when he put
his hand on his forehead, he felt that it was wet with sweat.

"I'm frightened," he said to himself. "Scared!..."

He wiped his forehead and then crumpled his handkerchief in his hot
palms.

"I'm rattled," he went on to himself. "That's what I am. Oh, my God, I
_am_ scared!..."

He looked about him helplessly. He could see a man tossing hay in a
field near by, and he watched the rhythmical movement of his fork as it
rose and fell.

"I couldn't die now," he thought. "I _couldn't_. It wouldn't be fair. I
wouldn't let myself die ... I wouldn't!"

And as suddenly as the fear of death had fallen on him, it left him.

"Good Lord!" he said aloud, "what an ass I am!"

Sheila was sitting on a stool in front of the door. Her uncle had gone
to bed, and her aunt, tired after her day's work and her attendance on
the sick man, was lying on the sofa, dosing.

"I wondered were you comin'," Sheila said as he came up to her.

"You knew I'd come," he answered.

"I didn't know anything of the sort," she exclaimed, getting up from the
stool. "Fellas has disappointed me before this."

"Have you had other sweethearts?" he asked, frowning.

She laughed at him. "I've had boys since I was that high," she replied,
holding out her hand to indicate her height when she first had a
sweetheart. "What are you lookin' so sore about? D'ye think no one never
looked at me 'til you came along? For dear sake!"

She rallied him. Was she the first girl he had ever loved? Was she? Ah,
he was afraid to answer. As if she did not know! Of course, she was not
the first, and dear knows she might not be the last....

"I'll never love any one but you, Sheila!..."

"Wheesht will you, or my aunt'll hear you!"

"I don't care who hears me!..."

"Well, I do then. Come on down the loanie a piece, an' you can say what
you like. I love the way you talk ... you've got the quare nice English
accent!"

He followed her across the farmyard and through the gate into the
"loanie."

"My father wouldn't like to hear you saying that," he said.

"Why?" she asked. "Does he not like the English way of talkin'?"

"Indeed, he does not. He loves the way you talk, the way all the Ulster
people talk!..."

"What! Broad an' coarse like me?" she interrupted.

Henry nodded his head. "He doesn't think it's coarse," he said. "He
thinks it's fine!"

Sheila pondered on this for a few moments. "He must be a quare man, your
da!" she said.

They walked to the foot of the "loanie" and then turned along the
Ballymena road.

"Does he know you come out with me?" she said.

"Who?" he answered.

"Your da."

"No. You see!..." He did not know what to say. It had not occurred to
him to talk about Sheila to his father, and he realised now that if it
had, he probably would not have done so.

"But if you're goin' to marry me?..." Sheila was saying.

"Oh, of course," he replied. "Of course, I shall have to tell him about
you, won't I? I just didn't think of it.... Then you're going to marry
me, Sheila?" he demanded, turning to her quickly.

"Och, I don't know," she answered. "I'm too young to be married yet, an'
you're younger nor me, an' mebbe we'd change our minds, an' anyway
there's a quare differs atween us."

"What difference is there between us?" he said, indignantly.

"Aw, there's a quare deal of differs," she maintained. "A quare deal.
You're a quality-man!..."

"As if that matters," he interrupted.

"It matters a quare lot," she said.

They sat down on a bank by the roadside and he took hold of her hand and
pressed it, and then he put his arm about her and drew her head down on
to his shoulder.

"Somebody'll see you," she whispered.

"There's no one in sight," he replied.

"Do you love me an awful lot?" she asked, looking up at him.

"You know I do."

"More nor anybody in the world?"

He bent over and kissed her. "More than anybody in the world," he
answered.

"You're not just lettin' on?" she continued.

"Letting on!"

"Aye. Makin' out you love me, an' you on'y passin' the time, divertin'
yourself?"

He was angry with her. How could she imagine that he would pretend to
love her?...

"I do love you," he insisted, "and I'll always love you. I feel that ...
that!..."

He fumbled for words to express his love for her, but could not find
any.

"Ah, well," she said, "it doesn't matter whether you're pretendin' or
not. I'm quaren happy anyway!"

She struggled out of his embrace and put her arms round his neck and
kissed him. She remained thus with her arms round him and her face close
to his, gazing into his eyes as if she were searching for something....

"What are you thinkin', Sheila?" he asked.

"Nothin'," she said, and she drew him to her and kissed him again.

"I wish I was older," he exclaimed presently.

"Why?"

"Because I could marry you, then, and we'd go away and see all the
places in the world...."

"I'd rather go to Portrush for my honeymoon," she said. "I went there
for a trip once!"

"We'd go to Portrush too. We'd go to all the places. I'd take you to
England and Scotland and Wales, and then we'd go to France and Spain and
Italy and Africa and India and all the places."

"I'd be quaren tired goin' to all them places," she murmured.

"And then when we'd seen everything, we'd come back to Ireland and start
a farm...."

She sat up and smiled at him. "An' keep cows an' horses," she said.

"Yes, and pigs and sheep and hens and ... all the things they have.
Ducks and things!"

"I'd love that," she said, delighted.

"We'd go up to Belfast every now and then, and look at the shops and buy
things!...."

"An' go to the theatre an' have our tea at an eatin'-house?"

"We'd go to an hotel for our tea," he said.

"Oh, no, I'd be near afeard of them places. I wasn't reared up to that
sort of place, an' I wouldn't know what to do, an' all the people
lookin' at me, an' the waiters watchin' every bite you put in your
mouth, 'til you'd near think they'd grudged you your food!"

They made plans over which they laughed, and they mocked each other,
teasing and pretending to anger, and he pulled her hair and kissed her,
and she slapped his cheeks and kissed him.

"I'd give the world," she said, "to have my photograph took in a
low-neck dress. Abernethy does them grand!..." She stopped suddenly and
turned her head slightly from him in a listening attitude.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Wheesht!" she replied, and then added, "D'ye hear anything?"

He listened for a moment or two, and then said, "Yes, it sounds like a
horse gallopin'...." They listened again, and then she proceeded. "You'd
near think it was runnin' away," she said.

The sound of hooves rapidly beating the ground and the noise of
quickly-revolving wheels came nearer.

"It _is_ runnin' away," she said, getting up from the bank and moving
into the middle of the road where she stood looking in the direction
from which the sound came.

"Don't stand in the road," Henry shouted to her. "You might get hurt."

She did not move nor did she appear to hear what he was saying. He had a
strange sensation of shrinking, a desire not to be there, but he subdued
it and went to join her in the middle of the road.

"Here it is," she said, turning to him and pointing to where the road
made a sudden swerve.

He looked and saw a galloping horse, head down, coming rapidly towards
them. There was a light cart behind it, bumping and swaying so that it
seemed likely to be overturned, but there was no driver. It was still
some way off, and he had time to think that he ought to stop the
frightened animal. If it were allowed to go on, it might kill some one
in the village. There would be children playing about in the street....

"I'll stop it," he said to himself, and half-consciously he buttoned his
coat.

He tried to remember just what he ought to do. William Henry Matier had
told, him not to stand right in front of a runaway horse, but to move to
the side so that he could run with it. He would do that, and then he
would spring at its head and haul the reins so tightly that the bit
would slip back into the horse's mouth.... He moved from the middle of
the road, and was conscious that Sheila had moved, too. His breath was
coming quickly, and he felt again that sense of shrinking, that curious
desire to run away. He saw a wheel of the cart lurch up as it passed
over a stone in the road, and instantly panic seized him. "My God," he
thought, "if that had been me!... He saw himself flung to the ground by
the maddened horse and the wheel passing over his body, crunching his
flesh and bones. He had the sensation of blood gushing from his mouth,
and for a moment or two he felt as if he had actually suffered the
physical shock of being broken beneath the cart wheel....

"I can't!" he muttered, and then he turned and ran swiftly to the side
of the road and climbed on to the bank, struggling to break through the
thorn hedge at the top of it. His hands were torn and bleeding and once
he slipped and fell forward and his face was scratched by the thorns....

He had thrown himself over the hedge and had lain there, with his eyes
closed, trembling. He was crying now, not with fright, but with remorse.
He had failed in courage, and perhaps the horse had dashed into the
village and killed a child.... He wondered what Sheila would say, and
then he started up, his eyes wide with horror, thinking that perhaps
Sheila had been killed. He climbed up the bank, and jumped over the low
hedge into the roadway. There were some men approaching him, coming
from the direction in which the horse had come, but he did not pay any
heed to them. He began to run towards the village. A little distance
from the place where he and Sheila had stood to watch the oncoming
animal, the road made another bend, and when he had reached this bend,
he met Sheila.

"You needn't hurry _now_," she said.

He did not hear the emphasis she laid on the word "now." "Are you all
right?" he asked anxiously.

She did not answer, but strode on past him.

"Are you all right?" he repeated, following after her.

"It's a bit late to ask that," she said, turning and facing him. "I
might 'a' been killed for all you cared, so long as you were safe
yourself!"

He shrank back from her, unable to answer, and the men came up, before
she could say anything else to him.

"Did ye see the horse runnin' away?" one of them said to her.

"You'll find it down the road a piece," she replied. "It's leg's broke.
It tum'led an' fell. Yous'll have to shoot it, I s'pose!"

They supposed they would. The driver had been drinking and in his
drunkenness he had thrashed the poor beast. ... "But he'll never thrash
another horse, the same lad," said the man who told them of the
circumstances. "He was pitched out on his head, an' he wasn't worth
picking up when they lifted him. Killed dead, an' him as drunk as a
fiddler! Begod, I wouldn't like to die that way! It 'ud be a quare thing
to go afore your Maker an' you stinkin' wi' drink!"

The men went on, leaving Sheila and Henry together. She stood watching
the men, oblivious seemingly of Henry's presence, until he put out his
hand and touched hers.

"Sheila!" he said.

She snatched her hand away from him. "Lave me alone!" she exclaimed, and
moved to the side of the road further from him.

"I meant to try and stop it," he said, "but somehow I couldn't I ... I
did my best!"

He had followed her and was standing before her, pleading with her, but
she would not look at him. He stood for a while, thinking of something
to say, and then put out his hand again and touched hers. "Sheila," he
said.

She swung round swiftly and struck him in the face with her clenched
fist.

"How dare you touch me!" she cried and her eyes were full of fury.

"Sheila!"

"Don't lay a finger on me ... you ... you coward you! You were afeard to
stop it, an' you run away, cryin' like a wee ba!" He tried to come to
her again, but she shrunk away from him. "Don't come a-near me," she
shouted at him. "I couldn't thole you near me. I'd be sick!..."

She stopped in her speech and walked away from him. He stared after her,
unable to think or move. He could feel the smart of her blow tingling in
his face, and he put his hand up mechanically to his cheek, and as he
did so, he saw that his hand was still trembling. He could see her
walking quickly on, her head erect and her hands clenched tightly by her
side. He wanted to run after her, but he could not move. He tried to
call to her, but his lips would not open....

The light was fading out of the sky, and the night was covering up the
hills and fields, but still he stood there, staring up the road along
which she had passed out of his sight. People passed him in the dusk and
greeted him, but he did not answer, nor was he aware when they turned to
look at him. Once, he was conscious of a loud report and a clatter of
feet, but he did not think of it or of what it meant. In his mind,
smashing like the blows of a hammer, came ceaselessly the sound of
Sheila's voice, calling him a coward....

It was quite dark when he moved away. His mouth was very dry and his
eyes were hot and sore, and his legs dragged as he walked. He was tired
and miserable and he had a frightful sense of age. That morning he had
wakened to manhood, full of pleasure in the beauty of living and growing
things; now, he was like an old man, longing for death but afraid to
lose his life. There were stars above him, but no moon, and the tall
trunks of the trees stood up like black phantoms before him, moaning and
crying in the wind. He could hear the screech-owls hooting in the dark,
and the lonely yelp of a dog on a farm.

He began to hurry, walking quickly and then running, afraid to look
back, almost afraid to look forward ... and as he ran, suddenly he fell
on something soft. His hands slipped on wetness that smelt....

In the darkness he had fallen over the body of the horse which had been
shot while he was standing where Sheila had left him. He gaped at it
with distended eyes, and then, with a loud cry, he jumped up and fled
home, with fear raging in his heart.

THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

He fell asleep, after a long, wakeful night, and did not hear the maid
who called him. Mr. Quinn, when he was told of the heaviness of Henry's
slumber, said "Let him lie on!" and so it was that he did not rise until
noon. He came down heavy-eyed and irritable, and wandered about the
garden in which he took no pleasure. Marsh came to him while he was
there, full of enthusiasm because more pupils had attended the Language
class than he had anticipated.

"That girl, Sheila Morgan, wasn't there!"

"Oh!" said Henry.

"I thought she'd be certain to come. She seemed so anxious to join the
class. Perhaps she was prevented. I hope you'll be able to come
to-night, Henry!..."

Henry turned away impatiently. "I don't think I shall go again," he said
in a surly voice.

Marsh stared at him. "Not go again!" he exclaimed.

"No."

"But!..."

"Oh, I'm sick of the class. I'm sick of the whole thing. I'm sick of
Irish!..."

Marsh walked away from him, walked so quickly that Henry knew that he
was trying to subdue the sudden rage that rose in him when people spoke
slightingly of Irish things, and for a few moments he felt sorry and
ready to follow him and apologise for what he had said; but the sorrow
passed as quickly as it came.

"It's absurd of him to behave like that," he said to himself, and went
on his way about the garden.

Presently he saw Marsh approaching him, and he stood still and waited
for him.

"I'm sorry, Henry," Marsh said when he had come up to him.

"It was my fault," Henry replied.

"I ought not to have walked off like that ... but I can't bear to hear
any one talking!..."

"I know you can't," Henry interrupted. "That's why I ought not to have
said what I did!"

But Marsh insisted on bearing the blame. "I ought to have remembered
that you're not feeling well," he said, reproaching himself. "I get so
interested in Ireland that I forget about people's feelings. That's my
chief fault. I know it is. I must try to remember.... I suppose you
didn't really mean what you said?"

"Yes, I did," Henry replied quickly.

"But why?"

"I don't know. I just don't want to. What's the good of it anyhow?..."

Good of it! Henry ought to have known what a passion of patriotism his
scorn for the Language would provoke.

"Oh, all right, John!" he said impatiently. "I've heard all that before,
and I don't want to hear it again. You can argue as much as you like,
but I can't see any sense in wasting time on what's over. And the Irish
language is over and done with. Father's quite right!"

Marsh's anger became intensified. "That's the Belfast spirit in you," he
exclaimed. "The pounds, shillings and pence mood! I know what you think
of the language. You think, what is the commercial value of it? Will it
enable a boy to earn thirty shillings a week in an office? Is it as
useful as Pitman's Shorthand? That's what you're thinking!..."

"No, it's not, but if it were, it would be very sensible!"

"My God, Henry, can't you realise that a nation's language is the sound
of a nation's soul? Don't you understand, man, that if we can't speak
our own language then our souls are silent, dumb, inarticulate?... don't
you see what I mean?... and all the time we're using English, we're like
people who read translations. I don't care whether it is commercially
valuable or not. That's not the point. The point is that it's _us_, that
it's _our_ tongue, _our_ language, that it distinguishes us from the
English, insists on our difference from them. Do you see what I mean,
Henry? We _are_ different, aren't we? You realise that, don't you? We
_are_ different from the English, and nothing will ever make us like
them. My God, I'd hate to be like them!..."

Henry fled from him, and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, ran across
the fields towards Hamilton's farm. As he went up the "loanie," he
remembered that Sheila had struck him in the face in her rage at his
cowardice, and he stopped and wondered whether he should go on or not.
And while he was waiting in the "loanie," she came out of a field,
driving a cow before her.

She did not speak, though he waited for her to say something. The cow
ambled up the "loanie," and Sheila, glancing at him as if she did not
recognise him, passed on, following it.

"Sheila!" he called after her, but she did not answer, nor did she turn
round.

"I want to speak to you," he said, going after her.

"I don't want to speak to you," she replied, without looking at him.

"But you must!..." He thrust himself in front of her, and tried to take
hold of her hands, but she eluded him. She lifted the sally rod she had
in her hand and threatened him with it. "I'll lash your face with this
if you handle me," she said.

"All right," he answered, dropping his hands and waiting for her to beat
his face with the slender branch.

She looked at him for a few moments, and then she threw the sally rod
into the hedge.

"What do you want?" she asked, and the tone of her voice was quieter.

The cow, finding that it was not being followed, cropped the grass in
the hedge and as they stood there, facing each other, they could hear
the soft munch-munch as it tore the grass from the ground.

"What do you want?" Sheila said again.

"I want to speak to you!..."

"Well, speak away!"

But he did not know what to say to her. He thought that perhaps if he
were to explain, she would forgive, but now that the opportunity to
explain was open to him, he did not know what to say.

"Are you turned dummy or what?" she asked, and the cruelty in her voice
was deliberate.

"Sheila," he began, hesitatingly.

"Well?"

"I'm sorry about last night!"

"What's the good of bein' sorry?..."

"I meant to stop it!..."

"I daresay," she said, laughing at him.

"I did. I did, indeed. I can't help feeling nervous. I've always been
like that. I want to do things ... I try to do them ... but something
inside me runs away ... that's what it is, Sheila ... it isn't me that
runs away ... it's something inside me!"

"Bosh," she said.

"It's true, Sheila. My father could tell you that. I always funk things,
not because I want to funk them, but because I can't help it. I'd give
the world to be able to stop a horse, like that one last night, but I
can't do it. I get paralysed somehow!..."

"I never heard of any one like that before," she exclaimed.

"No, I don't suppose you have. If you knew how ashamed I feel of myself,
you'd feel sorry for me. I was awake the whole night!"

"Were you?"

"Yes. I kept on thinking you were angry with me and that I was a coward,
and I could feel your fist in my face!..."

"I'm sorry I hit you, Henry!"

"It doesn't matter," he replied. "It served me right. And then when I
did sleep, I kept on dreaming about it. Do you know, Sheila, I fell over
the horse last night in the dark ... they left it lying in the road
after they shot it ... and my hands slithered in the blood!..."

"Aw, the poor baste!" she said, and she began to cry. "The poor dumb
baste!"

"And I kept on dreaming of that ... my hands dribbling in blood....
och!..."

He could not go on because the recollection of his dreams horrified him.
They had moved to the side of the "loanie" and he mechanically stopped
and plucked a long grass and began to wind it round his fingers.

"I think and think about things," he murmured at last.

She put out her hand and touched his arm. "Poor Henry," she said.

He threw the grass away and seized her hand in his.

"Then you'll forgive me?" he said eagerly.

She nodded her head.

"And you'll still be my sweetheart, won't you, and go for walks with
me?..."

She withdrew her hand from his. "No, Henry," she said, "you an' me can't
go courtin' no more!"

"But why?"

"Because I couldn't marry a man was afeard of things. I'd never be happy
with a man like that. I'd fall out with you if you were a collie, I know
I would, an' I'd be miserable if my man hadn't the pluck of any other
man. I'm sorry I bate you last night, but I'd do it again if it happened
another time ... an' there'd be no good in that!"

"But you said you'd marry me!..."

"Och, sure, Henry, you know well I couldn't marry you. You wouldn't be
let. I'm a poor girl, an' you're a high-up lad. Whoever heard tell of
the like of us marryin', except mebbe in books. I knew well we'd never
marry, but I liked goin' about with you, an' listenin' to your crack,
an' you kissin' me an' tellin' me the way you loved me. You've a quare
nice English voice on you, an' you know it well, an' I just liked to
hear it ... but didn't I know rightly, you'd never marry the like of
me!"

"I will, Sheila, I will!"

"Ah, wheesht with you. What good 'ud a man like you be to a girl like
me. I'll have this farm when my Uncle Matt dies, an' what use 'ud you be
on it, will you tell me, you that runs away cryin' from a frightened
horse?"

"You could sell the farm!..."

"Sell the farm!" she exclaimed. "Dear bless us, boy, what are you sayin'
at all? Sell this farm, an' it's been in our family these generations
past! There's been Hamiltons in this house for a hundred an' fifty years
an' more. I wouldn't sell it for the world!"

"But I must have you, Sheila. I must marry you!"

"Why must you?"

"I just must!..."

She turned to look at the grazing cow, and then turned back to him.
"That's chile's talk," she said. "You must because you must. Away on
home now, an' lave me to do my work. Sure, you're not left school yet!"
She left him abruptly, and walked up to the cow, slapping its flanks and
shouting "Kimmup, there! Kimmup!" and the beast tossed its head, and ran
forward a few paces, and then sauntered slowly up the "loanie" towards
the byre.

"Good-bye, Henry!" Sheila called out when she had gone a little way.

"Will you be at the class to-night!" he shouted after her.

"I will not," she answered. "I'm not goin' to the class no more!"

He watched her as she went on up the "loanie" after the cow, hoping that
she would turn again and call to him, but she did not look round. He
could hear her calling to the beast, "Gwon now! Gwon out of that now!"
and then he saw the cow turn into the yard, and in a moment or two
Sheila followed it. He thought that she must turn to look at him then,
and he was ready to wave his hand to her, but she did not look round.
"Gwon now! Gwo

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