Chapter 26

He opened a drawer and took out the few sheets of the novel that were written.

"Is that all?" said Gilbert.

"Yes," Henry answered.

"Cecily doesn't seem to inspire you, Quinny, does she, any more than she inspired me? You haven't written a whole chapter yet.... Do you remember what we swore at Rumpell's?"

"We swore a whole lot of things!..."

"Yes, but the most important thing? We swore we'd become Great. I don't know that any of us ever will be Great.... I get the sensation now and then that we're frightfully crude, even Roger, but we can become something better than one of Cecily's lovers, can't we?"

"I don't know that I want to be anything else...."

"For shame, Quinny!"

Gilbert put the manuscript back into the drawer from which Henry had taken it.

"You'll come to Ireland with me?" he said.

"No, Gilbert, I won't!"

"You will. I'll break your jaw if you don't come. I'll knock the stuffing out of you if you don't come. We can catch the night train and be in Dublin to-morrow morning!..."

"I promised Cecily I wouldn't go...."

"And you promised me you would go. I've packed all the things I want, and it oughtn't to take you long to pack a trunk. I'll come and help you after dinner ... there's the gong ... well just have time if you hop round quickly. Ninian can telephone for a taxi to take us to Euston!"

"It's no good, Gilbert...."

"Come on. I can smell onions, and I'd risk my immortal soul for onions. Boiled, fried, stewed or roasted, Quinny, there's no vegetable to beat them...."

8

"I'm not going, Gilbert!..."

"You are going!"

They had finished dinner and were now in Henry's bedroom. Gilbert had instructed Ninian to telephone for a taxi. Then, shoving Henry before him, he had climbed the stairs to Henry's room and started to pack his trunk.

"You can't make me go!..."

Gilbert took an armful of shirts from the chest of drawers and dropped them into the trunk. "Once, when I was wandering in Walworth," he said, "I heard a costermonger threatening to give another costermonger a thick ear, a bunged-up eye and a mouth full of blood. That's what you'll get if you don't hop round. What suits do you want!"

Henry did not answer. He walked to the window and stood there, peering out at the trees in the garden. A taxi-cab drove up to the door and presently Ninian came bounding up the stairs to tell them of its arrival.

"Tell him to wait," said Gilbert, and Ninian hurried back to do so. "If you won't choose your suits yourself," he went on to Henry, "I shall have to do it for you. Socks, socks, where the hell do you keep your socks?..."

It seemed to Henry that he could see Cecily's face shining out of the darkness. He could feel her arms about him and hear her beautiful voice telling him that she loved him. "I won't go," he said to himself. "I won't go!..."

"If you'd only help to pack, we'd save heaps of money," Gilbert grumbled. "It's sickening to think of that taxi sitting out there totting up tuppences. Come and sit on the lid of this trunk, will you?"

Henry did not move from the window. Gilbert straightened himself. For a moment or two he could not see clearly because he was giddy with stooping. Then he crossed the room and took hold of Henry's arm.

"Come on, Quinny," he said, pulling him towards the trunk.

"What's the good of fussing like this, Gilbert, when I've told you I won't go...."

"Well, sit on the trunk anyhow. I may as well close the thing now I've filled it...."

9

He called Ninian, and between them they carried the luggage downstairs to the cab.

"Now then, Quinny!" said Gilbert.

"I'm not going, I tell you...."

"Get into the cab, damn you. Go on!"

He shoved him forward so that he almost fell against the step of the taxi, and Ninian caught hold of him, and they lifted him and heaved him into the taxi.

"Get in, Ninian," said Gilbert. He turned and shouted up the hall to Roger. "Come on, Roger! You'd better come and see us off!"

None of them spoke during the short drive to Euston. Henry sulked in a corner of the cab, telling himself that it was monstrous of Gilbert to treat him in this fashion, and vowing that nothing would induce him to get into the train ... and then, his mind veering again, telling himself that perhaps it would be a good thing to go to Ireland for a while. Cecily had chopped and changed with him. Why should he not chop and change with her?... Neither Ninian nor Roger made any remark on the peculiarity of the journey to Ireland. They had known in the morning that Gilbert and Henry were going away that night, but it was clear that something had happened since then, that Gilbert was more intent on the journey than Henry.... No doubt, they would know in good time. Probably, Ninian thought to himself, that woman Jayne is mixed up in it....

"You get the tickets, Ninian," Gilbert said when they reached Euston. "Firsts. Democracy's all right in theory, but I don't like it in a railway carriage!"

"Where's the money?" said Ninian.

"Money! What do you want money for? All right! Here you are! You can pay me afterwards, Quinny!"

They had only a few minutes in which to get into the train, and Gilbert, putting his arm in Henry's and hurrying him towards the Irish mail, was glad that the wait would not be long.

"It's ridiculous to behave like this," said Henry, as they shoved him into a carriage.

"I know it is," Gilbert answered. He turned to Roger. "We may want grub during the night. Get some, will you! Sandwiches will do and hard-boiled eggs, if you can get 'em...."

He turned to Henry. "You're my friend, Quinny," he said, "I can't let you make a mucker of everything, can I?"

Henry did not answer.

"I know exactly how you feel," Gilbert went on. "I should feel like it myself if I were in your place, but if I were, Quinny, I'd be damned glad if you'd do the same for me!"

10

"Good Lord!" Gilbert exclaimed, as the train drove out of London, "I forgot to pack your toothpaste...."

THE THIRD BOOK

OF

CHANGING WINDS

... quitted all to save A world from utter loss.

PARADISE LOST.

THE FIRST CHAPTER

1

As the boat turned round the end of the pier and moved up the harbour to her berth, Gilbert, eyeing the passengers, caught sight of Henry and instantly hallooed to him. The passage from Kingstown had been smooth, and Henry, heartened by the sea air and sunshine, pressed eagerly through the throng of passengers so that he might be near the gangway and so be among the first to descend from the steamer. He called a greeting to Gilbert, and then, the boat being berthed, hurried forward to the gangway. He could not get off the steamer as quickly as he wished for the number of passengers on board was very large, and he fidgeted impatiently until he was able to get ashore.

"We'll send this bag on by the waggonette," Gilbert said, when they had shaken hands and congratulated each other on their healthy looks, "and walk over to Tre'Arrdur, and we'll gabble on the way. Here," he added, taking a letter out of his breastpocket, "you can read that while I find the man. It's from Ninian. It came this morning!..."

He seized Henry's bag and hurried off with it, leaving Henry to follow slowly or remain where he was, as he pleased, and then, before Henry had time to do more than take the letter from its envelope and glance carelessly at the first page of it, he came quickly back. "Come up," he said, putting his arm in Henry's. "You can read it as you go along. There's not much in it!"

They left the pier and passed through the station into the street.

"Holyhead," said Gilbert, "is a good place to get drunk in! We won't linger!..."

They took the lower road to Tre'Arrdur Bay because it was quieter than the upper road, and as they walked, Henry read Ninian's letter.

"He seems to like South America," he said, returning the letter to Gilbert when he had finished with it.

Gilbert nodded his head. "That old Tunnel of his doesn't get itself built, does it? But it must be great fun building a railway in a place like that. There's a revolution on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, and the President of the Republic and the Emperor of the Empire are in power for a fortnight and in exile for another one. So Ninian says. He told Roger in his last letter that he had had to kick the emperor's backside for him for interfering with the railway contract.... Oh, by the bye, Rachel's produced an infant. She says it's like Roger, but Roger hopes not. He says it's like nothing on earth. He came to see me off from Euston yesterday and when I asked him to describe it to me, he said he couldn't ... it was indescribable. It looks _raw_, he says. It must be frightfully comic to be a father, Quinny!"

"I don't see anything comic about it," Henry replied. "I'd rather like to be a father myself."

"Well, why don't you become one. They say it's easy enough. First, you get a wife...."

"What sort of an infant is it? Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Great Scott!" said Gilbert, "I forgot to ask that. That was very careless of me. Look out, Quinny, here's a motor, and that's Holy Mountain on the right. We'll go up it to-morrow, if you like. It's not much of a climb. Just enough to jig you up a bit. There's a chap in the hotel who scoots up mountains like a young goat. He asked me to go up Snowdon with him, but when I asked him what the tramfare was, he was slightly snorty in his manner. How's the novel getting on?"

"It'll be out in September. I corrected the final proofs last month. I think it's rather good."

"Better than 'Turbulence' or 'The Wayward Man'?"

"Yes, I think so. I'm calling it 'The Fennels.' That's the name of the people it's about. I've taken an Ulster family and ... well, that's what I've done. I've taken an Ulster family and just shown it. My father likes it much better than anything else I've done, although he was very keen on 'Turbulence.'"

"How is your father?"

"Oh, much better, thanks, but still a bit shaky. He hates all this Volunteer business in Ireland. You remember John Marsh, don't you, and Galway? You saw them in Dublin that time!..." Gilbert nodded his head and so Henry did not complete his sentence. "Well, they're up to their necks in the opposition Volunteers. I saw John in Dublin yesterday for a few minutes. He was very excited about the gun-running in Ulster! Damned play-acting! He could hardly spare the time to say 'How are you?' to me, he was so anxious to be off to his drilling. He hasn't done any writing for a long time now. He's become very friendly with Mineely!..."

"Is that the Labour man?"

"Yes. I liked him when I met him, but he's frightfully bitter since the strike. He's got more brains than all the others put together, and he influences John tremendously. I don't wonder at his bitterness. The employers _were_ brutal in that strike, Gilbert, and Mineely will never forget it. He'll make trouble for them yet, and they'll deserve all they get. He said to me 'They won't deal reasonably with us, so they can't complain if we deal unreasonably with them. They set the police on to us....'"

"What's he going to do then?"

"I don't know, but he's drilling his men as hard as ever he can. He means to hit back. After he'd spoken about the police, he said, 'The next time we go to them, we'll have guns in our hands. Mebbe they'll listen to us then!' He's like John ... he doesn't care what happens to himself. All those people, John and Galway and Mineely, have a contempt for death that I can't understand. I loathe the thought of dying ... but they don't seem to mind. It's their religion partly, I suppose, but it's something more than religion. If they were poor, like the slum people, I could understand it better. You can't frighten _them_ by threatening to kill them. Their life is such a rotten one that they'd be much better off if they were dead, even if there were no heaven, and I suppose they feel that ... and of course the Catholic religion teaches them to despise life! But it isn't all religious fervour or the apathy of people who're too poor to mind whether they live or die. Marsh and Galway and Mineely are moved by a sort of nationalistic ecstasy ... Marsh and Galway more than Mineely, I think, because there's a bitterness in him that isn't in them. They think of Ireland first, and he thinks of starving workmen first. They're Ireland mad. They really don't value their lives a happorth. They'd love to be martyrised for Ireland. It's a kind of lust, Gilbert. They get a sensual look on their faces ... almost ... when they talk of dying for Ireland."

"It's a little silly of us English people who love life so much to try and govern a people like that," said Gilbert.

2

Much had happened to them in the two years that had elapsed since the day on which Gilbert carried Henry off to Dublin. The Bloomsbury household had come to an end. Suddenly and, as it seemed to them, inexplicably, Mrs. Clutters had died. It had never occurred to any of them that Mrs. Clutters could die. They seldom saw her. The kitchen was her domain, and Magnolia was her messenger. If they had any preferences or prejudices concerning food, they made them known to Magnolia, and Magnolia made them known to Mrs. Clutters. Ninian returning home in an epicurean mood, might announce that he had seen mushrooms in a greengrocer's window. "Magnolia," he would say, "let there be mushrooms!" and Magnolia would answer, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" and behold in the morning there would be mushrooms for breakfast. Or Gilbert would give their opinion of a dish. "Magnolia, we do not like scrambled eggs. We like our eggs boiled, fried, poached, beaten up in milk, Mr. Graham even likes them raw, but none of us like them scrambled!..." and Magnolia would say, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" and so scrambled eggs ceased to be seen on their breakfast table. Magnolia always said, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" If they had informed her that the Judgment Day was to begin that afternoon at three o'clock, Magnolia, they felt sure, would say, "Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" and go on with her work.... There seemed to be no adequate excuse for Mrs. Clutters' death ... "an' everythink goin' on so nice an' all!" as Magnolia said ... and yet she had died. There had been delay in serving breakfast, and Roger, anxious to catch a train, had been impatient.

"Magnolia!" he shouted from the door, "Magnolia!"

"Yes, sir!" Magnolia answered in an agitated voice.

They waited for her to add "Certainly, sir!" but she did not do so, and they looked oddly at each other, feeling that something unusual had happened.

"We're waiting for breakfast," Roger said in a less impatient voice.

"Yes, sir, I'm comin', sir!..."

Magnolia appeared at the door, very red in the face and very worried in her looks, and placed a covered dish in front of Roger who was the father of the four, appointed to carve and to serve.

"What's this?" Roger demanded when he had removed the cover.

"Please, sir, it's eggs, sir! Fried eggs, sir! That's what it's supposed to be, sir!" Magnolia replied dubiously.

"It's a bad imitation, Magnolia!" Gilbert said. "I think I'll just have bread and marmalade this morning!"

He reached for the marmalade as he spoke, and Henry, eyeing the eggs with disrelish, murmured, "After you, Gilbert!"

"Tell Mrs. Clutters I want her," Roger said to Magnolia.

"Please, sir, she's not very well in herself this mornin'...."

"Not very well!"

"Do you mean to say she's ill?" Ninian shouted.

"Yes, sir. It was me fried the eggs, sir!"

"But ... but she can't be ill," Ninian continued.

"Well, she is, sir. That's what she says any'ow. 'You'll 'ave to cook the breakfis yourself', she says to me, an' when I said I didn't know 'ow, she said 'Well, you must do the best you can, that's all!' an' I done it, sir. She don't look well at all!..."

"How long has she been ill?" Roger asked.

"I don't know, sir. She didn't tell me. She was groanin' a bit yesterday an' the day before, but she wouldn't give in. I said to 'er, 'If I was you, Mrs. Clutters, I'd 'ave a doctor an' chance it!' an' she told me to 'old me tongue, so of course I wasn't goin' to say no more, not after that. I mean to say, I can take a 'int as good as any one...."

"We'd better send for a doctor," Roger said, interrupting Magnolia. "I'll telephone to Dunroon. He lives quite near!" Then he remembered his county court case. "You'd better telephone, Quinny! I _must_ catch this train. Take these ... eggs away, Magnolia. We won't say anything more about them. You did your best!"

"Yes, sir, I did, but I told 'er I didn't know 'ow...."

"All right!" said Roger, passing the dish to her.

3

Dr. Dunroon suggested that they should send for Mrs. Clutters' friends.

"Is it serious, doctor?" Henry asked, and the doctor nodded his head. "She's dying," he said.

"Dying!"

Magnolia, disregarding the conventions, had stood by, openly listening to what they were saying, and when she heard the doctor say that Mrs. Clutters was dying, she let a howl out of her that startled them. The doctor turned to her quickly.

"Hold your tongue," he said, "or she'll hear you. Anybody 'ud think you were dying by the noise you're making!"

Magnolia blubbered away. "I 'ate to 'ear of anybody dyin'," she said. "I never been in a 'ouse before where it's 'appened, an' besides she's been good to me!" Her mind wandered off at a tangent "Any'ow," she said, wiping her eyes, "I done me best. No one can't never say I ain't done me best, an' the best can't do no more!"

"Has she got any friends, Magnolia?..."

It seemed to them to be extraordinary that this woman had lived in their house, had worked and cared for them, and yet was so much a stranger to them that now, in this time of her coming dissolution, they did not know where her friends were to be found, whether indeed, she had any friends. "That's very English," Henry thought; "in Ireland we know all about our servants!"

"Well, I _think_ 'e's 'er 'usband," Magnolia replied. "Any'ow, 'e was drunk when 'e come!..."

They had assumed that Mrs. Clutters was a widow, a childless widow....

"I've seen 'im 'angin' about two-three times, an' when I said to 'er, 'Mrs. Clutters, there's your friend 'angin' about the corner of the street, she tole me to mind me own business, an' then she 'urried out. Of course, it 'adn't got nothink to do with me, 'oo 'e was, an' when she tole me to mind me own business, I took the 'int...."

"Do you know where he lives?" Gilbert asked.

"No, sir, I don't. When she told me to mind me own business!..."

The approach of Death had made Magnolia amazingly garrulous. She said more to them that morning than she had said to them all the rest of the time she had been in their service ... and mixed up with her reminiscences of what Mrs. Clutters had said to her and what she had said to Mrs. Clutters, there was a continual statement of her fear and dislike of death, followed by the assertion that no one 'ad ever died in a house she'd worked in before.

"You'd think she was blaming us for it," Gilbert said afterwards.

"Well, you'd better go and ask her to tell you where her husband lives," Henry said to her, but she shrunk away from him when he said that.

"Oh, I couldn't go near no one what was dyin'," she said. "I ain't used to it, an' I don't like it!"

Ninian shoved her aside. "I'll go," he said.

"We'd better get some one to look after her," Gilbert proposed when Ninian had gone. "Magnolia's no damn good!..."

"No, sir, I ain't ... not with dead people I ain't!"

"Clear out, Magnolia!" Gilbert shouted at her. "Go and make the beds or sit in the kitchen or something!"

"Yes, sir, certainly, sir!" Magnolia answered, and then she left the room.

"I've never felt such a helpless ass in my life before," Gilbert went on when she had shut the door behind her. "I simply don't know what to do!"

"We can't do anything," Henry murmured. "Dunroon said he'd come in again in a short while. Perhaps if we were to get a nurse or somebody. There's sure to be a Nurses' Home near to. Can't we ring up somebody?"

He got hold of the telephone book and began to turn over the pages rapidly.

"What are you looking for?" Gilbert asked.

"Nursing Homes," he answered.

"That's no good. Let's send round to Dunroon's!..."

"He won't be there!"

"Some one'll be there. We'll ring 'em up!..."

Dr. Dunroon's secretary was there, and she knew exactly what to do. "Oh, very well," she said in a voice so calm that Gilbert felt reassured. "I'll send some one round as soon as possible!"

Ninian came down the stairs before they had finished telephoning to Dr. Dunroon's secretary.

"I'm going to fetch her husband," he whispered to Henry, and then he left them.

4

"Let's go out," Gilbert said suddenly to Henry.

The nurse had arrived, and was busy in attendance on Mrs. Clutters. Magnolia, full of the antagonism which servants instinctively feel towards nurses, was maintaining a grievance in the kitchen. "Givin' 'er orders, as if she was some one!" she was mumbling to herself. "Too bossy, she is!..."

"It's no good trying to do any work to-day," Gilbert went on. "I ... I couldn't make up things with her ... up there!"

They told Magnolia that they would have their meals out, and that she need not trouble to cook anything for them, and they sent for the nurse and explained their circumstances to her. "That's all right," she said cheerfully, "I'll look after myself!"

They set off towards Hampstead, but after a while they found themselves returning to Bloomsbury. They could not keep away from the house.... They tried to eat a meal at the Vienna Café, but they could not swallow the food, so they paid their bill and went away. They wandered into the British Museum, and tried to interest themselves in Egyptology....

"This female," said Gilbert, pointing to the mummy of the Priestess of Amen-Ra, "is supposed to bring frightful ill-luck to you if you squint at her. There was a fellow at Cambridge who was cracked about her ... used to come here in vac. and make love to her ... sit here for hours spooning with a corpse. I often wanted to smack his face for him!"

"Pose, I expect!" Henry replied. "I should have thought it was rather dull to get smitten on a woman who's as dead as this one is...."

They remembered Mrs. Clutters....

"Let's go back and see what's happened," Gilbert said, turning away from the case which held the Priestess....

Ninian met them in the hall. "She's dead," he said. "Her husband's in the kitchen. I found him in a lodging-house in Camden Town, and I should say he's a first-class rotter!"

5

They sat together that evening without speaking. There was to have been a meeting of the Improved Tories to talk over Roger's plan for enlarging the Army and mitigating the problem of unemployment. They could not get messages to people in time, and so part of the evening was spent in whispered explanations at the door to those who turned up.

"I think I'll go to bed," Ninian said, but he did not move, nor did any of them move. It was as if they wished to keep together as long as possible.

Magnolia, red-eyed from weeping, had come to them earlier in the evening, declaring that she was frightened.

"What are you afraid of?" Roger snapped at her.

"'Er!" she answered.

"But she's dead!..."

"Yes, sir," Magnolia said, "that's why! I don't like goin' upstairs be meself, sir!..."

"Oh, rubbish, Magnolia!" Roger exclaimed.

"I can't 'elp bein' afraid, sir. I know she's dead an' can't do me no 'arm ... not that she'd want to do me any 'arm ... I will say that for 'er ... but some'ow I'm afraid all the same, sir. I can't 'elp it!"

"I want to get a book out of my room," Henry interjected, "so I'll go upstairs with her!"

"Oh, thank you, sir," said Magnolia gratefully. "I know she wouldn't 'arm me if she could 'elp it, not if she was alive any'ow, but they're different when they're dead!..." She broke down, blubbering hopelessly. "Oh, I wish I was 'ome," she moaned.

"Come on, Magnolia!" Henry said, opening the door for her.