Chapter 29

"Roger hasn't forgotten. He's been spending a great deal of time in Bermondsey lately, and I shouldn't be surprised if the local Tories adopt him as their candidate at the next election. I don't suppose he'll get in. It'll be a pity if he doesn't. Rachel's making it easier for him. Roger says she's popular with the girls in the jam factories ... and of course that's very useful. You see, Rachel tells the girls to tell their mothers to tell their fathers to vote for Roger when the time comes, and the fathers'll have to do it or they'll get a hell of a time from their women. I can tell you, Quinny, Rachel knows what's what. She's going to ask some of the jam-girls out to tea and show them the baby!..."

"Good old British Slop, Gilbert! Do you remember how we swore that we would never have anything to do with Slop?..."

"We've had a lot to do with it. Roger was right. The Slop is there and you've got to make allowances for it, and after all, why shouldn't Rachel show her baby to the girls? Damn it all, a baby is a remarkable thing, when you come to think of it. All that wriggle and bubble and squeak and kick ... and Lord only knows what'll come out of it! We ought to get married, Quinny, and father a few brats. My own notion is to get hold of a nice, large, healthy female of the working-class and set her up in a very ugly house in a very ugly suburb, near a municipal park, and give her three pounds a week for herself, and an allowance for every child she produces. I could have all the pride and pleasure of parenthood without the boredom and nuisance of being a husband, and the youngsters would probably be young giants. The girl wouldn't mind how many she had, and she'd feed 'em herself. There'd be no damned bottle and no damned limitation. And I'd put all the boys in the Navy, and I'd make cooks out of the girls ... _cooks_, Quinny, not food-murderers, and I'd call the first boy Michael John, and the second boy Patrick James and the third boy Peter William and the fourth boy Roger Henry Gilbert Ninian...."

"And what would you call the girls?"

"Wait a minute! I haven't done with the boys yet. And I'd call the fifth boy Matthew. I'd call the first girl Margaret, and the second girl Bridget, and the third girl Rachel, and the fourth girl Mary, and I'm damned if I know what I'd call the fifth girl, so I'd let her mother choose her name. And they'd all know how to swim, and manage a boat, and box, and whistle with two fingers in their mouths, and the girls' chief ambition would be to get married and have babies. They'd have a competition to see who could have the most. And their husbands would all be big, hearty men. Margaret would marry a blacksmith, and Bridget 'ud marry a fisherman, and Rachel 'ud marry a farmer, and Mary'd marry a soldier and the other one would marry a sailor. Mary's man 'ud be a sergeant-major, a fat sergeant-major, and the other one's 'ud be a boatswain or a chief gunner. I'd have so many grandchildren that I'd never be able to remember which were mine and which belonged to the man next door!..."

"You'd want a great deal of money for that lot, Gilbert!"

"I suppose I would. But I think that men of quality ought to have children by strong, healthy women of the working-class. I think there's a lot to be said for the right of the lord, don't you? It was good for the race ... kept up the quality of the breed! I shall have to think seriously about this...."

"You'd better look out for a farmer's daughter while you're here," Henry suggested.

"What! A Welshwoman! Good God, no!! My goodness, Quinny, you ought to bring that fellow, John Marsh, to Wales for a few months. That 'ud cure him of his Slop about nationality. I came to Wales, determined to like the Welsh, and I've failed. That's all. I've failed hopelessly. I told myself that it was absurd to believe that a whole nation could be as bad as English people say the Welsh are ... but it isn't absurd ... of the Welsh anyhow. They're all that everybody says they are, only about ten times worse. I've been all over this country one time and another, and they're simply ... mean. They're a dying race, thank heaven! They've kept themselves to themselves so much that their blood is like water, and so they're simply perishing. They wouldn't absorb or be absorbed ... and so they're just dying out. Your lot were wiser than the Welsh, Quinny!"

"The Irish?"

"Yes. They absorbed all the new blood they could get into their veins, and so, whoever else may perish, the Irish won't. This nationality business is all my eye, Quinny. You don't want one strain in a country. You want hundreds of strains. You want to mingle the bloods. ... I don't believe there's a pure-blooded Irishman in Ireland or out of it.... Oh, the Welsh! Oh, the awful Welsh! Inbreeding in a nation is the very devil ... and it makes 'em so damned uncivil. Oh, a shifty, whining race, the Welsh!..."

2

There are many bays on that coast, and in one of these, where they could easily get to deep water, they bathed every morning, drying themselves in the sun when they were tired of swimming. They would haul themselves out of the sea by clutching at the long tassels of sea-weed, and then lie down on the bare, warm rocks while the sun dried the salt into their skins. Once, while they were lying in this fashion, Gilbert turned to Henry and said, "Have you been to Boveyhayne at all since Ninian went away?"

"No," Henry answered. "I was to have gone with you that Christmas, but my father's illness prevented me, and I haven't been since."

"Why don't you go? They'd be glad to see you, and Ninian'd like it."

"I must go one of these days. How is Mrs. Graham? I suppose you've seen her lately?"

"She was all right when I saw her. Mary's rather nice!"

Henry did not say anything, and Gilbert, having waited for a while, went on.

"I always thought you and Mary...."

He broke off suddenly and sat up. "It's getting a bit chilly," he said. "I think I'll dress!"

"There's no hurry, Gilbert," Henry answered. "You didn't finish what you were saying."

"It's none of my business. I've no right to...."

"Oh, yes, you have, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, sitting up too. "Go on!"

"Well, I always thought that you and Mary were ... well, liked each other. That was why I was so puzzled when you got fond of Cecily. I felt certain that you'd marry Mary. Why don't you, Quinny? She's an awfully nice girl, and you and she are rather good pals, aren't you?"

"I don't know, Gilbert. I think I love Mary better than any one I've ever met, and yet I seem to lose touch with her very easily!"

"Oh, I shouldn't count Cecily. Cecily is anybody's sweetheart!..."

"But it wasn't only Cecily. There was a girl ... a farm-girl in Antrim. I never told you about her. Her name was Sheila Morgan ... she's married now ... and I went straight from Mary to her. Of course, I was a kid then, but still I'd told Mary I was fond of her, and we'd arranged to get married when we grew up ... and then I went home and made love to Sheila Morgan!"

"None of these women held you, Quinny!" said Gilbert.

"No, that's true, and Mary has, although I seldom see her. I thought that I could never love anybody as I loved Sheila Morgan ... until I met Cecily ... and then I thought I should never love any one as I loved her ... but somehow Cecily doesn't hold me now, and Mary does. I can't tell you when I ceased to love Cecily ... I don't really know that I have ceased to love her ... it just weakened, so gradually that I did not notice it weakening. All the same, if I were to see Cecily now, I should probably want her as badly as ever."

"You might, Quinny, but you wouldn't go on wanting her. You see, she wouldn't want you for very long, and my general opinion is that you can't keep on giving if you get nothing in return ... unless, of course, you're a one-eyed ass. A healthy, intelligent man, if he loves a woman who doesn't love him ... well he goes off and loves some one else ... and quite right, too. These devoted fellows who cherish their blighted affections forever ... damn it, they deserve it. They've got no imagination! I don't think Cecily'd hold you now, Quinny, not for very long anyhow. I wish you'd marry Mary. You quite obviously love her, and she quite obviously loves you.... Oh, Lordy God, I wish I could love somebody. I wish I were a young man in a novelette, with a nice, clear-cut face and crisp, curly hair and frightfully gentlemanly ways and no brains so that I could get into the most idiotic messes.... Why aren't there any aphrodisiacs for men who cannot love any one in particular, Quinny! If you'd had the sense to have a sister, I should probably have married her. Roger's family runs to nothing but males, and Rachel can't honestly recommend any of her female relatives to me. If I thought Mary'd have me, I'd marry her, but I know she wouldn't. I used to think it was awful to want to believe in God and not be able to believe in Him, but it's a lot worse to want to love and not be able to love. I shall have to marry an actress. That's all!"

They dressed in the shelter of the rocks, and then went back to the hotel to lunch.

"I'd like to marry Mary!..." Henry began.

"Why don't you, then?" Gilbert interrupted.

"Because I feel that I must go to her absolutely undivided, Gilbert. Do you know what I mean? I want to be able to go to her, knowing that no other woman can sway me from her for a second. It would be horrible to be married to her and feel something lurking inside me, just waiting for a chance to spring out and ... and make love to some one else!"

"You've changed a lot, Quinny, since the days when you pleaded for infinite variety. You wanted a wife for every mood!..."

Henry laughed. "We did talk a lot of rot when we first went to London," he said, putting his arm in Gilbert's.

"It wasn't all rot. My contributions to the discussion were very sensible. I wonder what's the excitement up there! The papers are in!..."

There was a group of visitors sitting on the seats in front of the hotel and they were reading the newspapers which had just been sent out from Holyhead.

"Let's go and ask," Henry exclaimed, and they both went on more quickly.

"Any news?" Gilbert shouted as they mounted the steps leading from the carriage-way to the terrace.

"Yes. Bad news from Ireland," a visitor answered.

"From Ireland!" Henry said.

"Yes. The Nationalists landed some guns at Howth!..."

"Yes, yes!" Henry said excitedly.

"And there was a scrap between the people and soldiers!..."

"The soldiers!"

The visitor nodded his head. "Some damned ass," he said, "had ordered the soldiers out, and ... well, there was a row. The crowd stoned the soldiers ... and soldiers are human like anybody else ... they fired on the crowd!..."

"Fired on them!"

"Yes. Several people were killed. It's a bad business, a damned bad business!..."

3

There was an unreasonable fury in Henry's heart. "It's a clever joke when the Ulster people do it," he said, raging at Gilbert. "And everybody agrees to look the other way, but it's a crime when the Nationalists do it, and it can only be punished by ... by shooting. I suppose it's absolutely impossible for the English to get any understanding into their thick heads!..."

"Don't be an old ass, Henry. You're not going to improve a rotten bad business by hitting about indiscriminately. I daresay the people who were responsible for the thing were Irishmen. I've always noticed that when anything really dirty is done in Ireland, it's an Irishman who does it...."

"A rotten Unionist!..."

"Irish, all the same! The only thing that you Irish are united about is your habit of blaming the English for your own faults and misbehaviour. If I had the fellow who was responsible for this business I'd shoot him out of hand. I wouldn't think twice about it. If a man is such an ass as all that, he ought to be put out of the world quick. But then I'm English. The Irish'll make a case out of him. They'll orate over him, and they'll get frightfully cross for a fortnight, and then they'll do nothing. You know as well as I do, Quinny, that the English aren't unfriendly to the Irish, that they really are anxious to do the decent thing by Ireland. It isn't us: it's you. We're not against you ... you're against yourselves. There are about seventy-five different parties in Ireland, aren't there, and they all hate each other like poison?"

"I wonder if John Marsh was hurt!..."

"I don't suppose so. There'd have been some reference to him in the paper if he'd been hurt."

"This was what he was hinting at when I saw him in Dublin," Henry went on. "He talked about 'doubling it' and said that two could play at that game!"

He was calmer now, and able to talk about the Dublin shooting with some discrimination.

"I don't know why they want to 'run' guns at all," he said. "The tit-for-tat style of politics seems a fairly foolish one.... I think I shall go back to Ireland to-morrow, Gilbert. I feel as if I ought to be there. This business won't end where it is now. I know what John Marsh and Galway and Mineely are like. Whatever bitterness was in them before will be increased enormously by this. Mineely's an Ulsterman, and he'll make somebody pay for this. He doesn't say much ... he's like Connolly ... Connolly's the brains behind Larkin ... but he keeps things inside him, deep down, but safe, so that he can always get at them when he wants them!"

"What sort of man is he, Quinny?" Gilbert asked. "I didn't see him when we were in Dublin."

"He looks like a comfortable tradesman, and he's a kindly sort of chap. You'd never dream that he was an agitator or that he'd want to lead a rebellion. I don't believe he likes that work, either. I think that inside him his chief desire is for a decent house with a garden, where he can grow sweet peas and cabbages and sit in the evening with his wife and children. He has more balanced knowledge than most of the people he works with. Marsh and Galway have had a better education than Mineely, but they haven't had his experience or his knowledge of men, and so they can't check their enthusiasm. He was in America for a long while, and he's lived in England, too. He wrote a quite good book on the Irish Labour Movement that would have been better if he'd made more allowance for the nature of the times. If the employers hadn't behaved so brutally over the strike, Mineely might have become the solvent of a lot of ill-will in Ireland; but they made a bitter man out of him then, and I suppose it's too late now. He'll go on, getting more and more bitter until.... Do you remember that story by H. G. Wells, Gilbert, called 'In the Days of the Comet'?"

"Is that the green vapour story?"

"Yes. Well, we want a green vapour very badly in Ireland, something to obliterate every memory and leave us all with fresh minds!"

"Miracle-mongering won't lead you very far, Quinny. It's no good howling for a vapour to heal you. You've just got to take your blooming memories and cure 'em yourselves, by the sweat of your brows! And, look here, Quinny, there doesn't seem any good reason why you should dash back to Ireland because of this business. I always think that the worst row in the world would never have come to anything if people hadn't done what you propose to do, rushed into it just because they thought they ought to be there. They congest things ... they use up the air and make the place feel stuffy ... and then they get cross, and somebody shoves somebody else, and before they know where they are, they're splitting each other's skulls. If they'd only remained dispersed...."

"But I'd like to be there!..."

"I know you would. We'd all like to be there, so's we could say afterwards we'd seen the whole thing from beginning to end. That's just why we shouldn't be there. It isn't the principals in the row that make all the trouble, Quinny ... it's the blooming spectators!..."

4

He let himself be persuaded by Gilbert to stay in Wales, and they spent the next two or three days in tramping about the island of Anglesey. The days were bright and sunny, and the rich sparkle of the sea tempted them frequently to the water. There were many visitors at the hotel, some of whom were Irish people from Dublin, but mostly they came from Liverpool and Manchester; and with several of them, Gilbert and Henry became friendly. There was a schoolmaster who made a profession of mountain-climbing and a hobby of religion; and a doctor who told comic stories and talked with good temper about Home Rule, to which he was opposed; and a splendid old man, with his wife, who was interested in co-operation and was eager to limit armaments; and a wine merchant from Liverpool who had come to the conclusion that the world, on the whole, was quite a decent place to live in; and a dreadful little stockbroker who belonged to the Bloody school of politicians and talked about the Empire as if it were a music-hall; and an agent of some sort from Manchester who had reached that stage of prosperity at which he was beginning to wonder whether, after all, Nonconformity was not a grievous heresy and the Church of England a sure means of salvation. And there were others, vague people of the middle class, kindly and comfortable and inarticulate, with no particular opinions on anything except the desirability of four good meals every day and a month's holiday in the summer. There were daughters, too ... all sorts and conditions of daughters! Some that were hearty and athletic, living either in the sea or on the golf-links; and others that were full of their sex, unable to forget that men are men and women are women, and never the two shall come together but there shall be wooing and marrying.... There were a few who were eager to use their minds ... and they quoted their parents and the morning papers to Gilbert and Henry....

Surprisingly, their feeling about the Howth gun-raid became cool. In that exquisite sunlight, beneath the wide reach of blue sky, it was impossible to experience rancour or maintain anger. They swam and basked and swam again, and let their eyes look gladly on young shapely girls, running across the grassy tops of the piled rocks, and were sure that there could be nothing on earth more beautiful than the spectacle of pink arms gleaming through white muslin, unless it might be the full brown ears of wheat now bending in the ripening rays of sunshine.... And again, after dinner, they would sit in a high, grassy corner of the bay, listening to the lap of the sea beneath them, while the stars threw their faint reflections on the returning tide....

Exquisite peace and quiet, long days of rich pleasure and sweet nights of rest, kindliness and laughter and the friendly word of casual acquaintances ... and over all, the enduring beauty of this world.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER

1

Gilbert looked up from the paper as Henry came out of the hotel.

"I say, Quinny," he said, "I think there's going to be a war!"

"A what?" Henry exclaimed.

"A war!..."

"But where?"

Henry sat down on the long seat beside Gilbert, and looked over his shoulder at the paper.

"All over the place!" Gilbert answered. "The Austrians want to have a go at the Serbians, and the Russians mean to have one at the Austrians, and then the Germans will have to help the Austrians, and that'll bring the French in, and ... and then I suppose we shall shove in some where!"

Henry took the paper from Gilbert's hands. "But what have we got to do with it?" he said, hastily scanning the telegrams with which the news columns were filled.

"I dunno!..."

"It's ridiculous.... What's there to fight about? Damn it all, my novel's coming out in a month! What's it about?"

"You remember that Archduke chap who got blown up the other day?..."

"Yes, I remember!"

"Well, that's what it's about!"

"But, good God, man, they can't have a war about a thing like that...."

"It looks as if they thought they could. Anyhow, they're going to try!" said Gilbert.

"Just because an Archduke got killed? Damn it, Gilbert, that's what they're for!..."

There was a queer look of fright in the faces of the visitors to the hotel. The boy from Holyhead had been slow in coming with the papers, and the first news that came to them came from a man who had been into the town that morning.

"There's going to be a war," he had shouted to the group of people sitting on the terrace.

"Don't be an ass!" they had shouted back at him.

"Yes, there is. The whole blooming world'll be scrapping presently!" He spoke with the queer gaiety of a man who has abandoned all hope. "Just as I was getting on my feet, too!" he went on. He suddenly unburdened himself to a man who had only arrived at the hotel late on the previous evening ... they had never seen each other before ... but now they were revealing intimacies....

"Just getting on my feet," the man who had brought the news went on.

"It'll be very bad for business, I'm afraid!..."

"Bad. Goo' Lor', man, it's ruin ... absolute ruin! I'll be up the pole, that's where I'll be. And I was thinking of getting married, too. Just thinking of it, you know ... nothing settled or anything ... and now ... damn it, what they want to go and have a war for? _We_ don't want one!"

Then the boy with the newspapers appeared, and they rushed at him and tore the papers from his bag....

"By Jove!" they said, "it's ... it's true!"

"I told you it was true. You wouldn't believe me when I told you. You know, it's a Bit Thick, that's what it is. I've been a Liberal all my life, same as my father ... and then this goes and happens! What _is_ a chap to do?..."

He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, carrying an atlas.

"Where the 'ell is Serbia anyway?" he demanded. "I can't find the damn place on the map!"

2

They stood about, gaping at each other, unable to realise what had happened to them. One of the windows of the drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women's voices came through it to the terrace. Monotonously, exasperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question through the bewildered speeches of the women ... "But what's it about? That's what I want to know. I've asked everybody, but nobody seems to know!" Some one made an inaudible reply to the querulous voice, and then it went on: "Serbia! That's what some one else said, but we aren't Serbia. We're England, and I don't see what we've got to do with it. If they want to go and fight, let them. That's what I say!..."

Gilbert and Henry sat in the middle of the group on the terrace, listening to what was being said about them. They had thrown the newspapers aside ... there was hysteria in the headlines ... and were sitting in a sort of stupor, wondering what would happen next. The buzzing voice, demanding to be told what the war was about, still droned through the window, irritating them vaguely until the man who had first brought the news got up from his seat, and went to the window and shut it noisily.

"Damn 'er," he said, as he came back to his seat. "'Oo cares whether she knows what it's about or not! What's it got to do with 'er any'ow. She won't 'ave to do none of the fightin'!"

Fighting!

Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, there would be fighting ... and perhaps England would be drawn into the war, and then!...

A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, and called to them. "Coming to bathe?" she said.