Chapter 38

He wandered about the house, touching a chair or fingering a curtain or looking at a portrait, and wondered how Mary would like her new home. It was not an old house, nor had the Quinns lived in it from the time it was built, and so Henry could not feel about it what Ninian must have felt about Boveyhayne Manor, in which his ancestors had lived for four centuries. But it was his home, in which he had been born, in which his mother and father had died, and it seemed to him to be as full of memories and tradition as Mary's home. The war had broken the line of Grahams, broken a tradition that had survived the dangers of four hundred years. That seemed to Henry to be a pity. Perhaps, he thought, this worship of Family is a foolish thing. There was a danger in being rooted to one place, in letting your blood become too closely mingled, and a tradition might very well become a substitute for life; but when all that was said and admitted, there was a pride in one's breeding that made life seem like a sacrament, and the years but the rungs of a long ladder. Once, in the days of the Bloomsbury house, they had talked of tradition, and some one had related the old story of the American tourist who was shown the sacred light, and told that it had not been out for hundreds of years. "Well, I guess it's out now!" the American replied, blowing the light out. They had made a mock of the horrified priest and had protested that his service to the flame was a waste of life and energy and time. And when they had said all that they had to say, Ninian, speaking more quietly than was his wont, had interjected, "But don't you think the American was rather a cad?"

They had argued fiercely then, some of them protesting that the American's disregard of a worn convention was splendid, virile, youthful, god-like. Roger, Henry remembered, had sided with Ninian so far as to admit that the American's behaviour had been too inconsiderate. "He might have discussed the matter with the priest ... tried to persuade him to blow it out himself!" but that was as far as he would go with Ninian.

"I admit," Ninian had retorted, "that it was a foolish tradition ... but don't you think the American was rather a cad. It was better, wasn't it, to have that tradition than to have none at all?"

Now, standing here, in this house that had been his father's, and now was his, and would, in due time, be his son's, if ever he should have a son, it seemed to him that Ninian had been right in his contention. And just as Mary, moving through the Devonshire lanes, had felt that everything proclaimed its Englishness and hers, making them and her part of each other, so he, looking out of the window across the fields, felt something inside him insisting, "You're Irish. You must be proud! You're Irish! You must be proud!..."

He remembered very vividly how his father had led him to this very window once and, pointing towards the fields, had said, "That's land, Henry! _My_ land!..."

And because he had been proud of his land, had been part of it, as it had been part of him, he had been willing to spend himself on it. There seemed to Henry to be in that, all that there was in patriotism. Irrationally, impulsively, unaccountably one loved one's country. The air of it and the earth of it, the winds that blew over it and the seas that encircled it, all these had been mingled to make men, so that when there was danger and threat to a man's country, some native thing in him stirred and compelled him to say, "This is my body! This is my blood!" and sent him out, irrationally, impulsively, unaccountably, to die in its defence. There was here no question of birth or possessions: the slum-man felt this stirring in his nature as strongly as the landlord. In that sudden, swift rising of young men when war was declared, each man instinctively hurrying to the place of enlistment, there were men from slums and men from mansions, all of them, in an instant, made corporate, given unity, brought to communion, partaking of a sacrament, becoming at that moment a sacrament themselves....

4

But if this stirring in one's nature made a man both a sacrament and a partaker of a sacrament, was there not yet something horrible in this spilling of blood, this breaking of bodies? Was this sacrament only to be consummated by the butcher? Was there no healing sacrament which, when a man partook of it, gave him life and more life! Was there not an honourable rivalry among nations, each to be better than the other, to replace this brawling about boundaries, this pettifogging with frontiers? Was there to be no end to this killing and preparing for killing? Would men, from now on, set themselves to the devisal of murderous and more murderous weapons of war until at last an indignant, disgusted God, sick of the smell of blood, threw the earth from Him, caring nothing what happened to it, so that it was out of His consciousness?...

While he looked out of the window, the dusk settled down, and he could see the mists rising from the fields. He drew the curtains, and went and sat down by the fire. There was a faint odour of burning turf in the room, and as he watched the blue spirals of smoke curling up the chimney, he remembered how he had trudged across Dartmoor once, and, suddenly, unexpectedly had turned a corner of the road, and looked down on a village in a hollow, and for a moment or two had imagined he was in Ireland because of the smell of burning turf that came from the cottage chimneys.

"We and they are one," he murmured to himself. "Our differences are but two aspects of the same thing. Our blood and their blood, our earth and their earth, mingled and made sacramental, shall be to the glory of God!"

The door opened, and Hannah came in, carrying a lighted lamp.

"I just thought I'd bring it myself," she said. "I'd be afeard of my life to let Minnie handle it. Dear knows, but she'd set herself on fire, or mebbe the house, an' that'd be a nice thing, an' a new mistress comin' to it. Will I put it down here by your elbow?"

"Anywhere, Hannah!" he answered.

"I'll just rest it here then, where it'll not be too strong for your eyes. Yon ought to have the electric light put in the house. Major Cairnduff has it in his house, an' it's not half the size of this one.... Will I get you something?"

"No, thank you, Hannah!"

"A taste of some thin' to ate, mebbe, or a sup to drink?"

"Nothing, thank you!"

She went over to the fire. "Dear bless us," she said, "that's no sort of a fire at all. What come over you, to let it get that low!"

"I didn't notice it, Hannah!"

"'Deed an' I don't suppose you did ... moidherin' your mind about one thing an' another! There'll be a different story to tell when the mistress comes home. Mark my words, there will! Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!..."

5

"I'm going to Belfast to-night, Hannah," he said when he had been at home a few weeks. "I want to catch an early train to Dublin to-morrow."

"Yes," she said.

"When I come back, I shall bring my wife with me!"

"God bless us and save us," she exclaimed, "it'll be quare to think of you with a wife, an' it on'y the other day since you were a child, an' me skelpin' you for provokin' me. Well, I'll have the house ready for yous both when you come!"

"Will you tell Matier to harness the horse...."

"I'll tell him this minute. That man's near demented mad at the thought of you marryin'. 'Be the hokey O!' he says whenever I go a-near him, an' then he starts laughin' an' tellin' me it's the great news altogether. 'I wish,' says he, 'the oul' lad was alive. He'd be makin' hell's blazes for joy!' Och, he's cracked, that fella. I tell him many's the time it's in the asylum he should be, but sure, you might as well talk to the potstick as talk to him. He'll drive you to the station with a heart an' a han', and the capers of him when you both come back'll be like nothin' on God's earth!"

"So long as he doesn't capsize us both into the ditch!..."

"Him capsize you! I'd warm his lug for him if he dar'd to do such a thing!..."

THE TWELFTH CHAPTER

1

He had been to the offices of Messrs. Kilworth and Kilworth in Kildare Street, and had seen Sir John Kilworth and settled as much of his business as could then be done. Now, wondering just what he should do next, he made his way to Stephen's Green and entered the Park, and while he was standing on the bridge over the lake, looking at the dark fish in the water, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turning round, saw John Marsh.

"I didn't know you were in Dublin," John said, holding out his hand.

"I haven't been here very long," Henry answered, "and I'm going away again after Easter. I'm going to be married."

"Married!"

"Yes ... to Ninian Graham's sister. I've often talked of you to her. You must come and stay with us when we get back to Ballymartin."

"Yes. Yes, I should like to! I hope you'll be happy, Henry!" He spoke in a nervous, agitated way that was not habitual with him, and Henry, looking more closely at him, saw that he was tired and ill-looking.

"Aren't you well, John?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I'm quite well. I'm rather tired, that's all. I've been working very hard!"

"Still drilling?"

"Yes ... still drilling!"

"What are you doing at Easter, John?" Henry asked.

Marsh looked at him quickly, almost in a startled fashion. "At Easter!" he repeated. "Oh ... nothing! Why?"

"You and I might go for a long walk through the mountains," Henry answered. "We could walk to Glendalough and back again. It would just fill up the Easter holidays. Let's start to-morrow morning. I'm staying at the Club. You can meet me there!"

"No, I'm sorry, Henry, I can't go with you!..."

"Why not? You said you'd nothing particular to do!"

"I'm going to Mass in the morning...."

"Well, that doesn't matter. We can start after you've been. Come along, John. You look washed-out, and the tramp'll do you good!..."

Marsh shook his head. "I can't go, Henry," he said. "It isn't only to-morrow morning that I want to go to Mass ... I want to go the day after ... and I want to go with all ... all my people on Easter Sunday!"

"You've grown very religious, John. Do you go to Mass every morning?"

"I've been every morning now for a month. You see, one doesn't know ... well, perhaps I am growing more religious. I won't keep you now. Perhaps I shall see you again!..."

"Why, of course, you'll see me again. Heaven and earth, man, anybody'd think you were going to die, the way you talk!"

Marsh did not speak. He smiled when Henry spoke of dying, and then looked away. They were still standing on the bridge, and he leant on the parapet and looked down on the lake.

"Queer things, fish!" he said.

"Not nearly so queer as you are," Henry answered. "Why won't you come with me? You won't want to be cooped up in Dublin all Easter, do you?"

"Cooped up!"

"Yes. Two or three days of mountain air 'ud do you a world of good. You'd better come with me!"

"No, I can't," he answered so abruptly that Henry did not press the matter again. "When are you going to be married, Henry?" he asked, speaking in his old, kindly tone again.

"At the beginning of May ... less than a fortnight now!"

Marsh turned away from the water, and stood with his back to the parapet. "Why don't you spend Easter with your fiancée?" he said.

"That isn't quite possible, John. I should only be in the way, if I were there now!"

"Or at Ballymartin. It would be rather nice to spend Easter at Ballymartin!"

"Well, I will, if you'll come with me...."

"I can't do that. I don't think I should stay in Dublin at Easter if I were you...."

"Why?"

"Oh, it'll be dull for you. People go away. There's not much to do. I should go to the North or over to England or somewhere if I were you!"

Henry felt resentful. "You seem damned anxious to get rid of me, John," he said. "You won't come into the mountains with me, and you keep on telling me to clear out of Dublin!"

Marsh turned to him quickly, and put his hand on his arm.

"My dear Henry," he said, very gently, "you know that I don't feel like that. I thought you'd be ... I thought you'd have a happier Easter out of Dublin, that was all. That place in Wales, where you went with poor Farlow...."

"Tre'Arrdur Bay?"

"Yes. Why don't you go there? It really isn't much further than Glendalough."

"You can't walk to it, John, and you can walk to Glendalough!"

"Oh, well, if you won't go ... you won't go, and there's an end of it. Good-bye!"

"Wait a bit. Come and dine with me to-night!"

"I can't, Henry!" Henry made an angry gesture. "Don't be hurt," Marsh went on quickly. "I have things to attend to. You see, I didn't know you were here. I'm on my way now to a ... a committee meeting. I'll come and see you to-morrow, if I can manage it. I'll lunch with you somewhere!"

"All right. I'll meet you here at one, and we'll lunch at the Shelbourne. By the way, John, aren't there some races on Monday?"

"Yes ... at Fairyhouse!"

"Well, couldn't we go to them? I've never seen a horse-race in my life!..."

"I don't think I can manage that, Henry!..."

"Oh, damn you, you can't manage anything. Well, all right, I'll see you to-morrow!"

"Good-bye, then!..."

He went off, leaving Henry on the bridge staring after him, and as he went towards the Grafton Street gate, there was something slightly incongruous about his look.

"I know what it is," Henry said to himself. "His coat's too big for him. He always did wear things that didn't fit him!"

2

Marsh did not keep the appointment. Soon after one o'clock, a boy came to Henry, and asked him if he were Mr. Quinn, and when Henry had assured him that he was, he said, "Mr. Marsh bid me to tell you, sir, that he's not able to come. He says he's very sorry, but he can't help it!"

The lad repeated the message almost as if he had learned it by heart. "Oh, very well!" Henry said, offering money to him.

"Ah, sure, that's all right, sir!" the lad said, and then he went away.

"I suppose," Henry said to himself angrily, "he's at his damned drilling again!"

He lunched alone, and then took the tram to Kingstown, and walked from there to Bray along the coast. He felt dispirited and lonely. Jordan and Saxon were out of Dublin ... Jordan was in Sligo, he had heard, and Saxon was staying with his uncle near the mountains. He knew that Crews lived in Bray, but he had forgotten the address. "Perhaps," he thought, "I shall see him in the street...."

"Lordy God!" he exclaimed, "I'd give the world for some one to talk to. John Marsh might have tried to meet me. Fooling about with his ... penny-farthing volunteers!"

"In a little while," he said to himself, as he descended into Killiney and walked along the road by the railway station, "I shall be married to Mary, and then!..."

He remembered what she had said to him at Boveyhayne, "I'd like you to go, Quinny ... I can't pretend that I wouldn't...."

He stood for a while, leaning against the wall and looking out over the crumpled sea. "I don't know," he said to himself, "I don't know!"

3

He climbed to the top of Bray Head, and while he stood there, his mind was full of thoughts that beat backwards and forwards. In olden times, the histories said, Ireland had sent a stream of scholars over the waste places of Europe to fertilise them and make them fruitful. "Now," he thought bitterly, "we send 'bosses' to Tammany Hall...."

He tried to envisage the means whereby Ireland would be brought to the measure and the stature of a dignified and honourable nation ... "not this brawling, whining, cadging, snivelling, Oh-Jesus-have-mercy-on-us disorder!" and he saw only a long, tedious, painful process of self-regeneration. "We must rise on our own wings!"

"But first we must be free, free from the bondage of history, free from the bondage of romance, free from the bondage of politics, free from the bondage of religion, and free from the bondage of our bellies!"

"There are four Irishmen to be conquered and controlled: the Publican, the Priest, the Politician and the Poet...."

"We cannot be friendly with England until we are equal with England ... but England cannot make us equal with her ... we can only do that ourselves!"

"England is our sister ... not our mother!..."

"Catholicism is Death ... and Intolerance is Death. Wherever there is Catholicism there is Decay that will not be stopped until the people protest. Wherever there is Intolerance there is a waste of life, a perversion of energy. When the Protestant ceases, and the Catholic begins, to shout 'To Hell with the Pope,' there will be glory and life in Ireland...."

He tried to plan a means of making a change of mind in Ireland. "We must make opinions and active brains!" and so he saw himself urging his friends to abandon parliaments to the middle-aged and the second-rate, while they bent their minds to the conquest of the schools. "Let the old men make their speeches," he said aloud as if he were addressing a conference. "We'll mould the minds of the children!"

They must exult in service. "I believe in Work ... in the Job Well Done ... in giving oneself without ceasing ... in the holy communion of men labouring together for something which is greater than themselves ... in spending oneself with no reward but to know that one is spent well!..."

They would enlist the young men of generous mind. They would open their minds to the knowledge of the wide world, and would pity the man who was content only to be an islander; and they would give the harvest of their minds to their juniors, so that they, when they grew to manhood, might find greater ease in working for the common good. They would demand, not privileges, but responsibilities. "If we cannot make decisions, even when we decide wrongly, then we are not men!"

"We must kill the Publican, we must subdue the Priest, we must humiliate the Politician, and chasten the Poet...."

"In all our ways, O God, let us guide ourselves!..."

It seemed to him that God was not a Being who miraculously made the world, but a Being who laboured at it, suffered and failed, and rose again and achieved.... He could hear God, stumbling through the Universe, full of the agony of desire, calling continually, "Let there be Light! Let there be Light!..."

4

He looked about him. Behind him, lay the long broken line of the Wicklow mountains, with the Sugar Loaf thrusting its pointed head into the heavens. There in front of him, heaving and tumbling, was the sea: a miracle of healing and cleansing. It would be good, he thought, to spend one's life in the sound of the sea, taking no care for the lives of other men, content that oneself was fed and comfortable. "But that would not be enough. There must be Light and More Light!"

"God," he said, "has many forms. In that place, he is a Quietness ... in this place, a Discontent ... in a third place, a Quest."

"But here, God is a Demand. 'Let there be Light! Let there be more Light!'"

5

He went home and wrote to Mary. "_My impulse is to tell you no more than this, that I love you. I wrote to you this morning, and I have nothing to add that is news. But I feel an overpowering desire to insist on my love for you ... to do nothing for ever but love you and love you.... You see the mood I'm in! I went out of Dublin to-day, sulking and depressed because John Marsh had failed me and I was lonely, but now I'm extraordinarily happy. I feel that I have only to stretch out my hand and touch you ... and then I shall be depressed no more. This is not a letter. It has no beginning and it will have no end. It's an outpouring. To-night is very beautiful. I went up to my bedroom a few moments ago, and sat at the window looking over Stephen's Green. There was a blue mist hanging over the trees, and the sky was full of light and colour. I do not believe there is any place in the world where one sees so much of the sky as in Dublin. It reaches up and up until you feel that if a bird were to pierce the clouds with its beak, it would tear a hole in the heavens and let the universe in. And while I was sitting there, I felt very near to you, dearest. In ten days we shall be married, and then you will come with me and see these places, too. I shall become Irish over again when I show you my home, and I shall watch Ireland taking hold of you and absorbing you and making you as Irish as I am. You'll go on thinking that you're English until some one speaks disparagingly of Ireland, and then you'll flare up, and you'll be Irish, not only in nature, but in knowledge. Ireland does that to people, so you cannot hope to escape. Good-night, my very dear!_"

6

On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are tired and happy. As he crossed O'Connell Bridge, he stood for a few moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had transmuted the river to the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and the sunlight made the houses on the quays look warm and lovely, even though they were old and worn and discoloured. "In her heart," he thought, "Dublin is still a proud lady, although her dress be draggled!"

He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were marching towards Liberty Hall. There were little girls in Gaelic dress at the head of them, accompanied by a pale, tired-looking woman, with tightened lips, who stumped heavily by the side of them; and following them, came young men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry labourers, misshapen by heavy toil and privation ... and as the company passed by, girls stood on the pavement and jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with tightened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed hair....

"They're fools," Henry thought, looking at them as they went wearily on, "but, by God, they're finer than the people who jeer at them. They ... they are serving something ... and these Don't-Care-a-Damners aren't serving anything!..."

There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and said, "Them lads 'ud run like hell if you were to point a penny pop-gun at them! If a peeler was to take their names, they'd be shiverin' with fright. They'd fall out of their trousers with the terror'd be on them!"

Henry did not answer. Indeed, it seemed incredible that there was any fight in them ... if he had been asked for his opinion, he might have said something similar to what this stranger had said to him ... but he hated to hear the man's disparagement, and so he did not make any answer to him.

"I'd rather have them on my side than have him," he thought as he moved away, "with the stink of porter on him!"

It sickened him to see the generosity and the youth walking in the company of the hopelessness of Ireland, training themselves in the means of killing. "If they'd put all that energy and enthusiasm into something that will preserve life and make it deeper and finer, nothing could prevail against them. If only John had more intellect and less emotion ... if Mineely and Connolly were less bitter!"

He walked along Grafton Street, turning phrases over in his mind, angry phrases, bitter things that he would say to John Marsh when he met him.

"What have young lads and girls to do with Hate and Death?" he said to himself, as if he were talking to Marsh. "You're perverting them from their purpose! You're robbing God of His due ... of the hope that fills His Heart with each generation!"

"But it's no good talking to him ... he's too fond of spilling over. If he were like Yeats, content to love Ireland at a distance ... to 'arise and go now' no further than the Euston Road ... he might achieve something, and at all events, he'd be harmless!"

He turned out of Grafton Street into Stephen's Green.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to Fairyhouse!"

And then he went to his Club. He was tired and sleepy, and soon after supper, he went to bed.

7