Chapter 13

_"Quinny: How soon can you get quit of that barrack in Dublin where your misguided father thinks you are being taught to be Irish? Cast your eyes on the address at the head of this notepaper. It is a noble house that Roger and I have discovered. Ninian has seen it and he approves of it. I said I'd break his blighted neck for him if he disapproved of it, which may have had something to do with his decision, though not much, for Ninian has become a very muscular young fellow and I shouldn't have liked the job of breaking his neck very much. Roger and I have been here for a week now, and Ninian joins us at the end of the month. He's down at Boveyhayne at present, catching lobsters and sniffing the air, all of which he says is very good for him and would be better for me. And you. And Roger. There is a tablet on the front wall of the house, fixed by the London County Council, which says that Lord Thingamabob used to live here sometime in the eighteenth century. The landlord tried to raise the rent on that account, but we said we were Socialists and would expect the rent to be decreased because of the injury to our principles caused by residence in a house that had been inhabited by a member of the cursed, bloated and effete aristocracy. He begged our pardon and said that in the circumstances, he wouldn't charge anything extra, but he had us in the end, the mouldy worm, for he said that it was the custom to make Socialists pay a quarter's rent in advance. The result was that Roger had to stump up ... I couldn't for I was broke ... which made dear little Roger awfully unpleasant to live with for a whole day. I offered to go back and tell the man that we weren't Socialists at all, but Improved Tories, but he said I'd done enough harm. It's a pity that old Roger hasn't got a better sense of humour._

_We have chosen two rooms for you, one to work in, and the other to sleep in. We're each to have two rooms, so that we can go and be morose in comfort if we want to; but I daresay in the evenings we'll want to be together. I've thought out a scheme of decoration for your room--all pink rosebuds and stuff like that. Roger asked me not to be an ass when I told him of it. His notion is a nice quiet distemper. Perhaps you'd better see to the decoration yourself although I must say I always thought your taste was perfectly damnable._

_By-the-way, there's a ghost in this house. It's supposed to be the ghost of Lord Thingamabob, and I believe it is. I saw it myself three nights ago, and it was as drunk as a fiddler. My God, Quinny, it's a terrible thing to see an intoxicated spook. Roger wouldn't believe me when I told him about it afterwards. He said I was drunk myself and that he heard me tumbling up the stairs to bed. Which is a lie. I did see it, and it was drunk. I heard it hiccough! I wouldn't say it was drunk if it wasn't. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Quinny, and it would be a very dirty trick to slander a poor bogey that can't defend itself. It looked very like its descendant, Lord Middleweight, and it had the same soppy grin that he has when he thinks he's said something clever. Damned ass, that chap!_

_Alexander sent my comedy back. He sent a note along with it and told me what a clever lad I am and more or less hinted that when I've grown up, I can send him another play. I suppose he thinks I'm a kid in knickerbockers. The result of this business is that I'm going to try and get a job as a dramatic critic. If I do, God help the next play he produces. I'm a hurt man, and I shall let the world know about it. I'm half-way through another piece which will take some place by storm, I hope. It's a very bright play, much better than the muck Oscar Wilde wrote, not so melodramatic, and tons better than anything Bernard Shaw has written. It's all about me._

_We've got an old woman called Clutters to housekeep for us. I chose her on account of her name, and it is a piece of good luck that she cooks extraordinarily well. There is also a maid, but we don't know her name, so we call her Magnolia. I'm really writing all this rot to get myself into the "twitter-twitter" mood. One of the characters in my new comedy talks like a character in a book by E. F. Benson, and I have to work myself up into a state of babbling fatuity before I can write her lines for her._

_Come to London as soon as you can._

_Gilbert."_

6

The prospect of settling in London in the society of his schoolfriends pleased him. Marsh and Galway had tried to persuade him to make his home in Dublin, pleading that it was the duty of every educated Irishman to live in Ireland. "We haven't got many educated men on our side," Marsh said, "not a hundred in the whole of Ireland, and we need people like you!" They talked of political schemes that must be prepared for the parliament that would some day be re-established in College Green. "And they can only be prepared by educated men," Marsh said.

Henry would not listen to them. His longing was to be with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian in London. Dublin made very little appeal to him, and the job of regenerating Ireland was so immense that it frightened him. "I haven't got a common ground with you people," he said to Marsh and Galway. "You're Catholic to start off with, and I'm like my father, I think the Catholic religion is a contemptible religion. And you're not interested in anything but Ireland and the Gaelic movement. I'm interested in everything!"

"Don't you want to do _anything_ for Ireland then?" John Marsh had asked.

"Oh, yes! I'll vote for Home Rule when I get a vote," he had replied.

"I know what your end will be," Patrick Galway added in a sullen voice. "You'll become a Chelsea Nationalist ... willing to do anything for Ireland but live in it!"

Well, who would want to live in Ireland with its penny-farthing politics! London for him! London and a sense of bigness, of wide ideas and the constant interplay of many minds!

He would talk to his father about Gilbert's proposal. There would be all sorts of subjects to discuss with him, that and the question of an allowance and the question of a career....

The train ran swiftly through the suburbs of Belfast and presently pulled up at the terminus. He descended from his carriage and called a jarvey who drove him across the city to the Northern Counties station where he took train again. It was late that night when he arrived at Ballymartin.

THE SECOND CHAPTER

1

Mr. Quinn had become more absorbed in the Irish Agricultural Co-Operative Movement, and he used the home farm for experiments in scientific cultivation. His talk, when Henry returned home, was mainly about a theory of tillage which he called "continuous cropping," and it was with difficulty that Henry could persuade him to talk about Gilbert's proposal that he should join the household in Bloomsbury.

"I'm glad you've come home, Henry," he said after breakfast on the morning following Henry's return. "This system of continuous cropping is splendid, but it wants careful attention. You've got to adjust it continually to circumstances ... you can't follow any rules about it ... and if you'll just stay here and help me with it, we'll be able to do wonders with the home farm!"

Henry did not wish to settle in Ballymartin, at all events not for a long time.

"I want to go to London, father!" he said.

"London! What for?" Mr. Quinn exclaimed, and then before Henry could say why he wished to go to London, he added, "You'll have to settle on something, Henry. I always meant you to take over the estate fairly soon, to work things out with me. Don't you want to do that?"

"Not particularly, father!"

"Well, what's to become of you, then? Do you want to go into the Army? It's a bit late!..."

"No, father!"

"Or the Navy? But you should have gone to Osborne long ago if you wanted to do that!"

Henry shook his head.

"Well, what do you want to do. Are you thinkin' of the law?"

"I don't care about the law, father!..."

"I don't care about it myself, Henry. I was no good at it, an' mebbe that's the reason I think so little of it. But we have to have lawyers all the same. It would be a good plan now to sentence criminals to be lawyers, wouldn't it? 'The sentence of the Court is that you be taken from this place an' made to practise at the Bar for the rest of your natural life, an' may the Lord have mercy on your soul!' Begod, Henry, that's a great notion!"

Henry interrupted his father's fancy. "I want to write," he said.

"Write!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed. "Write what?"

"Books. Novels, I think!..."

Mr. Quinn put down his paper and gaped at his son. "Good God," he said, "an author!"

"Yes, father."

"You're daft, Henry!"

Henry got up from his chair, and went across to his father and took hold of his shoulder affectionately. "No, father, I'm not," he answered.

"Yes, you are, I tell you. You're clean cracked!..."

"I've written one novel already."

Mr. Quinn threw out his hands in a despairing gesture. "Oh, well," he said, "if you've committed yourself.... Where is it?"

"It's upstairs in my room. The manuscript, I mean. Of course, it hasn't been published yet."

A servant came into the room to clear away the remains of the breakfast, and Mr. Quinn got up from his chair and walked through the open window on to the terrace.

"What's it about?" he said to Henry who had followed him.

"Oh, love!" Henry answered, seating himself beside his father.

Mr. Quinn grunted. "Huh!" he said, gazing intently at the gravel. "Is it sloppy?"

"I don't think so, father. At least, I hope it isn't!"

"Or dirty?"

"No, it isn't dirty. I _know_ it isn't dirty," Henry said very emphatically.

Mr. Quinn did not answer for a while. He got up from his seat and walked to the end of the terrace where he busied himself for a few moments in tending to a rosebush. Then he returned to the seat where Henry had remained, and said, "Will you let me read it, Henry?"

"Why, yes, father. Of coarse, I will," Henry answered, rising and moving towards the house. "I'd like you to read it," he added. "Perhaps you'll tell me what you think of it?"

"I will," Mr. Quinn replied, closing his lips down tightly.

"I'll just go and get it," Henry said, and he went into the house.

Mr. Quinn remained seated on the terrace, looking rigidly in front of him, until Henry returned, carrying a pile of manuscript. He took the paper from him without speaking, and glanced at the first sheet on which Henry had written in a large, clear hand:

DRUSILLA: A NOVEL BY HENRY QUINN.

and then he turned the page and read what was written on the second sheet:

TO MY FATHER

He looked at the dedication for a longer time than he had looked at the title-page, and his hand trembled a little as he held the paper.

"I thought you wouldn't mind, father!" Henry said.

"Mind!" Mr. Quinn replied. "No, I don't, Henry. I ... I like it, my son. Thanks, Henry. I ..." He got up and moved quickly towards the window. "I'll just go in an' start readin' it now," he said.

2

He returned the manuscript to Henry on the following afternoon. "I've read worse," he said.

He walked to the end of the terrace and then walked back again. Then he shouted for William Henry Matier, who came running to him. He pointed to a daisy on the lawn and asked the gardener what the hell he meant by not keeping the weeds down.

"Ah, sure, sir!..."

"Root the damn thing up," Mr. Quinn shouted at him, "an' don't let me see another about the place or I'll shoot the boots off you! I don't know under God what I keep you for!"

"Now, you don't mean the half you say, sir!..."

"You're not worth ninepence a week!"

"Aw, now," said Matier, who knew his master, "I'm worth more'n that, sir!"

"How much are you worth? Tell me that, William Henry Matier!"

William Henry rooted up the daisy, and then said that he wouldn't like to put too high a price on himself....

"You'd be a fool if you did," Mr. Quinn interrupted.

" ... but I'd mebbe be worth about double what you named yourself, sir!"

"Eighteenpence!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed.

"Aye, that or a bit more. Were you wantin' anything else, sir!" He winked heavily at Henry as he turned away.

"You're not worth the food you eat," Mr. Quinn said.

"Aw, now, sir, you never know what anybody's worth 'til you have need of them," Matier replied. "A man mightn't be worth a damn to you one day, an' he'd mebbe be worth millions to you the next!"

"There's little fear of you bein' worth millions to any one. Run on now an' do your work if you've any work to do!" Mr. Quinn turned to Henry as the gardener went off. "I suppose you'll be wantin' to live in London for the rest of your life?"

"I should like to go there for a while anyway, father!"

"Huh! All you writin' people seem to think there's no life to be seen anywhere but in London. As if people hadn't got bowels here as well as in town!"

"I don't think that, father!..."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter whether you think it or not, you'll not be happy 'til you get to London, I suppose. You'll stay here a wee while anyway, won't you? You've only just come home, an' it's a long time since I saw you last!"

"I'll stay as long as you like, father."

"Very well, then. I'll tell you when I've had enough of your company an' then you can go off to your friends. How much money do you think you'll need in London? Don't ask for too much. I need every ha'penny I have for the work. You've no notion what a lot it costs to experiment wi' land, an' I'm not as rich as you might imagine!"

Henry hesitated. He had never talked about money with his father, and he had a curious shyness about doing so now. "I don't know," he replied. "Would two hundred a year be too much?..."

"I'll spare you two hundred an' fifty!"

"Thank you, father. It's awfully good of you!"

"Ah, wheesht with you! Sure, why wouldn't a man be good to his own son. I suppose now you want to hear what I think of your book?"

Henry smiled self-consciously. "Yes, I should like to know your opinion of it. I thought at first you didn't think much of it. You didn't say anything!..."

"I'll give you a couple of years to improve it," Mr. Quinn answered. "If you can't make it better in that time, you're no good!"

"I suppose not."

"An' don't hurry over it. Go out an' look about you a bit. There's a lot of stuff in your story that wouldn't be there if you had any gumption. Get gumption, Henry!"

"I'll try, father. Of course, I know I'm very inexperienced...."

"You are, my son, an' what's more you're tellin' everybody how little you know in that book of yours. Man, dear, women aren't like that!... Well, never mind! You'll find out for yourself soon enough. Mind, I don't mean to say that there aren't some good things in the book. There are ... plenty! If there weren't, I wouldn't waste my breath talkin' to you about it. But there are things in it that are just guff, Henry, just guff. The kind of romantic slush that a young fellow throws off when he first realises that women are ... well, women, damn it! ... I wish to God, you would write a book about continuous croppin'! Now, there's a subject for a good book! There's none of your damned love about that!..."

3

He had not seen Sheila Morgan since the morning after he had failed to stop the runaway horse. Many times, indeed, she had been in his mind, and often at Trinity, in the long sleepless nights that afflict a young man who is newly conscious of his manhood, he had turned from side to side of his bed in an impotent effort to thrust her from his thoughts. He made fanciful pictures of her in his imagination, making her very beautiful and gracious. He saw her, then, with long dark hair that had the lustre of a moonless night of stars, and he imagined her, sitting close to him, so that her hair fell about his head and shoulder and he could feel the slow movement of her breasts against his side. He would close his eyes and think of her lips on his, and her heart beating quickly while his thumped so loudly that it seemed that every one must hear it ... and thinking thus, he would clench his fists with futile force and swear to himself that he would go to her and make her marry him. Once, when he had spent an afternoon at the Zoo in the Phoenix Park, he had lingered for a long while in the house where the tigers are caged because, suddenly, it seemed to him that the graceful beast with the bright eyes resembled Sheila. It moved so easily, and as it moved, its fine skin rippled over its muscles like running water....

"I don't suppose she'd like to be called a tigress," he had thought to himself, laughing as he did so, "but that's what she's like. She's beautiful...."

And later in that afternoon, he thought he saw a resemblance between Mary Graham and a brown squirrel that sat on a branch and cracked nuts, throwing the shells away carelessly ... the Mary he had known when he first went to Boveyhayne, not the Mary he had seen on his last visit.

He wondered whether Sheila had altered much, and then he wondered what change four years had made in Mary Graham. Sheila, who had been dominant in his mind in his first year at Trinity, had receded a little into the background by the time he had quitted Dublin, but Mary, never very prominent, had retained her place, neither gaining nor losing position. It was odd, he thought to himself, that he had not been to Boveyhayne in the four years he had been at T.C.D. Mrs. Graham had invited him there several times, but he had not been able to accept the invitations: once his father had been ill, and he had had to hurry to Portrush, where he was staying, and remain with him until he was well again; and another time he had been with Gilbert Farlow at his home in Kent; and another time had agreed to go tramping in Connacht with Marsh and Galway. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger had spent a holiday at Ballymartin.... Ninian took a whole week to realise that he was in Ulster and not in Scotland, and Gilbert begged hard for the production of a typical Irishman who would say "God bless your honour!" and "Bedad!" and "Bejabers!" and pretended not to believe that there were not any "typical Irishmen" ... and went away, vowing that they would compel Mr. Quinn to invite them to stay with him in the next vac. It was then that Ninian decided that he would like to be a shipbuilder. Mr. Quinn had taken them to Belfast to see the launch of a new liner, and Tom Arthurs had invited them all to join the luncheon party when the launch was over. The Vicereine had come from Dublin to cut the ribbon which would release the great ship and send it moving like a swan down the greasy slips into the river; and Tom Arthurs had conducted her through the Yard, telling her of the purpose of this machine and that engine until the poor lady began to be dubious of her capacity to launch the liner. There were other guides, explaining, as Tom Arthurs explained, the functions of the Yard to the visitors, but Ninian had contrived to attach himself to Tom Arthurs and he listened to him as he talked, as simply as was possible, of the way in which great ships are built. Thereafter, Ninian had tongue for none but Tom Arthurs, and he told him, when the party was over and the guests were leaving the Yard, that he would like to work in the Island. Tom had doubted whether Cambridge was the proper preparation for shipbuilding.... "I was out of my apprenticeship when I was your age," he said ... but he said that Ninian could think about it more seriously and then come to him when his time at Cambridge was up.

"I'm thinking seriously of it now," said Ninian.

"All right, my boy!" Tom Arthurs answered, laughing, and slapped him on the back. "We'll see what we can do for you!"

And Ninian, flushing like a girl, went away full of happiness, and soon afterwards began to imitate Tom Arthurs' Ulster speech in the hope that people would think he was related to the shipbuilder or, at all events, a countryman of his.

It was odd, indeed, that Henry had not seen Mary in that time, but it was still more odd that he had not seen Sheila. Matt Hamilton had died soon after Henry had entered Trinity, but Mrs. Hamilton still had the farm which, people understood, was to be left to Sheila when her aunt died. He had not cared to go to the farm ... a mixture of pride and shyness prevented him from doing so ... but he had hoped to meet her on the roads about Ballymartin. "Perhaps by this time," he said to himself, "she will have forgotten my funk!" But although he frequently loitered in the roads about the "loanie," he never met her, and it was not until he said some casual things to William Henry Matier that he discovered that she was not at the farm. "I heerd tell she was visitin' friends in Bilfast!" Matier said, and with that he had to be content. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger were at Ballymartin then, and he had little opportunity to mourn over her absence; indeed, when he remembered that they were with him, he was glad that she was not at the farm: their presence would have made difficulties in the way of his intercourse with her. He would try to be alone at Ballymartin, in the next vacation, and then he would be able to bring her to his will again. But he did not spend the next vacation at home, and so, with this and other absences from Ballymartin, he was unable to see her for the whole of his time at Trinity. Neither he nor his father had spoken of her since the day when Mr. Quinn had solemnly led him to the library to rebuke him for his sweethearting. Mr. Quinn, indeed, had almost forgotten about Henry's lovemaking with Sheila, and when he met the girl and remembered that there had been lovemaking between his son and her, he thought to himself that Henry had probably completely forgotten her....

He wished to see her again, and his desire became so strong that he started to walk across the fields to the "loanie" that led to Hamilton's farm before he was aware of what he was about. His mind filled again with the visions he had had of her at Trinity, and he imagined that he saw her every now and then hiding behind a tree, ready to spring out on him and startle him with a loud whoop, or running from him and laughing as she ran....

4

He met her in the "loanie," and for a few moments he did not recognise her. She was sitting on the grass, in the shade of a hedge, huddling a baby close to her breast, and he saw that she was suckling it.

"Oh, Henry, is that you?" she said, starting up hurriedly so that the baby could not suck. She drew her blouse clumsily together, but the fretful child would not be pacified until she had started to feed it again, and so she resumed her seat on the grass.

"I didn't know you were back," she said, holding the baby up to her. "Are you here for long?"

He did not answer immediately. He had not yet completely realised that this was Sheila whom he had been eager to marry, and then when he understood at last that this indeed was she, something inside him kept exclaiming, "But she's got a baby!" and he wondered why she was feeding it.

"Are you married, Sheila?" he said.

She laughed at him, and answered, "That's a quare question to be askin', an' me with this in my arms!" She looked at the baby as she spoke.

"I didn't know you were married," he replied. "I was coming up to the farm to see you!"

"I've been married this year past," she said.

"I didn't know," he murmured. "No one told me!..."

And suddenly he saw that her face was coarser than it had been when he loved her. Her hair was tied untidily about her head, and he could see that her hands, as she held the child, were rough and red, and that her nails were broken and misshapen. Her boots were loosely laced, and she seemed to be sprawling....

"I'm all throughother," she said, as if she realised what was in his mind and was anxious to excuse herself to him. "This wee tory hardly gives me a minute's peace, an' my aunt's not so well as she was!"

He nodded his head, but did not speak.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" he asked after a while.