Chapter 40

He went to the front of the house, while his breakfast was being prepared, and looked out of the window. In the bushes on the other side of the road, he could see a youth, crawling on his stomach, and dragging a rifle after him. He raised himself on to his knees, and glanced up at the hotel, where there were some soldiers who had been brought in during the night, and when he had raised himself, the soldiers in the upper windows saw him, and fired on him. He got up and ran across the path towards the shelter of the trees, and as he ran, the bullets spattered about him. Then he staggered ... and Henry could not see him again.

3

An ambulance came and the bodies of the rebel and the labourer were put into it and taken away. The horse had been hauled to the pavement, and it lay in a great congealed mess of blood that had poured from a gash in its throat....

4

Later in the morning, the people began to move about, and after a while the streets were full of sightseers. It was possible now to learn something of what happened on the previous day and during the night. There had been fierce fighting in places. Soldiers were hurrying from the Curragh, from the North of Ireland, from England. The thing was serious ... the rebels had seized various strategic points, and were determined to fight hardly. During the night, realising that Stephen's Green was a dangerous place to be in, they had left it for the shelter of the College of Surgeons. Some of them were still there, sniping from safe points.

Henry went out and wandered about the streets. If there were soldiers in Dublin, there were very few, and the rebels still had possession of the city. He listened to the comments of the people who passed him, and as he listened, he realised that there was resentment everywhere against the Sinn Feiners. Behind one of the gates of the Park, a Sinn Feiner was lying face downwards in the hole he had made to be a trench, and the crowd climbed up the railings to gape at him. A youth thrust his way through the people and peered at the dead man, and then he turned to the crowd and said to them, "Let's get the poor chap out and bury him!" A girl looked at him resentfully, and hurried to a towsled woman standing on the kerb, and told her what the youth had said, and instantly the woman rushed at him and hit him about the head and back. "No, ye'll not get him out," she yelled at him. "Let him lie there an' rot like the poor soldiers!"

"They forgot, the Sinn Feiners, that these women's husbands and sons are at the Front!" Henry thought.

What madness was it that possessed them to rise? A little group of men and boys had set itself against a Power in the interests of people who did not desire their services. They could not hope to win the fight ... they had not the gratitude or the good wishes of the people for whom they were fighting. What were they going to do next? They had taken the Post Office and the College of Surgeons and other places because there was no one to prevent them from taking them ... but what were they going to do next? They could not, even the wildest of them, believe that this immunity from attack would last forever. Was there one among them with an idea of the future of Ireland, of the complexities of government?...

He wanted to get hold of a leader of them and ask him just what he proposed to do with Ireland?...

5

The rumours this day were wilder than they were on Monday. A man assured Henry that the Pope had arrived in Ireland on an aeroplane and that Dr. Walsh, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin had committed suicide the minute he heard of the outbreak of the Rebellion. Then the rumour changed, and it was said that the Pope had thrown himself from the roof of the Vatican. Lord Wimborne, the Viceroy, had been taken a prisoner, and was now interned in Liberty Hall.... The Orangemen, sick of England, were marching to the support of the Sinn Feiners, under the leadership of Mr. Joseph Devlin! Ireland was entirely surrounded by German submarines in order to prevent British transports from landing troops....

6

There was looting in Sackville Street. Henry had made his way towards the General Post Office, for he had heard that John Marsh was there, and while he stood about, hoping that he might see him, the looting began. Half-starved people swarmed up from the slums, like locusts, and seized all they could find. They destroyed things in sheer wantonness....

"Well, if a city is content to keep such slums as Dublin has, it must put up with the consequences!" Henry thought. And while he watched, he saw John Marsh going to a shop which was being looted. He hauled a hulking lad out of the broken window and flung him back into the crowd.

"Damn you," he shouted, "are you trying to disgrace your country?" He pointed his rifle at the crowd. "I'll shoot the first one of you that touches a thing!"

But it was impossible for them to control the looters, and while John guarded one shop, the crowd passed on to another.

"John!" said Henry, going up to him and touching his arm.

He started and turned round. His face was drawn and haggard and very pale.

"Henry!" he said, smiling. "I wondered who it was. I wish you'd gone away when I asked you to go. It wasn't because I wanted to get rid of you, Henry. I wanted you to be out of this ... so that you could go and get married in peace!"

"You can't win, John. You know you can't win!..."

"I know we can't win a military success! ..." He drew his hand across his eyes. "My God, I'm tired, Henry!" he said. "I'm worn out. I haven't slept since Saturday night...."

"John!"

"Yes, Henry, what is it?"

"Come away with me. You know you can't win ... you can't possibly win. Well go over to England together...."

"I'm fighting England, Henry, not visiting it!"

"You can hide there for a while ... until you can get away to France or America!"

"Go away and leave them now, Henry?"

"Yes. The longer you hold out, the worse it'll be for everybody. The people are against you ... I've heard things to-day that I never expected to hear in Dublin...."

"I know they're against us. We thought there would be more on our side, but that's all the more reason why we should fight. The people are getting too English in their ways, Henry ... they think too much of money. All those women in the Combe ... do you know why they're against us? ... because they can't get their separation allowances! We won't win a military success ... we all know that ... McDonagh and Pearse and Connolly and Mineely and all of us ... we know that ... but well win a spiritual success!"

"A spiritual success?"

"Yes. Well remind the people that Ireland is not yet a nation and that there are Irishmen who are still willing to die for their country. They've become very English, but they're not altogether English, Henry. They've still some of the old Irish spirit in them, and we may quicken that!"

"Nothing will ever convince you, I suppose, that the English aren't a robber race?..."

"Nothing. I daresay the mass of the people are decent enough, but I don't know and I don't care. All that matters to me is that my countrymen shall not become like them!..."

"You're ruining the work of thirty years, John. Blowing it up in a childish rage!..."

"You always thought I was a fool, Henry, but I don't think as you think. We won the Home Rule Act by fair and constitutional means ... and they've done us out of it. The Ulster men had only to yell at them, and they gave in. Do you think they'll keep their word after the War?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't. They'll use that damned Amending Act to cheat us as they've cheated us before. No, Henry, this is a poor hope, but it is a hope. You see, when we're beaten and those of us who are left alive, surrender, the English will be sure to do the right thing ... from our point of view! That's one of the things we count on. They'll put us down with great firmness. They'll make an example of us. They'll shoot us, Henry ... and when they do that, we'll win. We're not popular now ... oh, I don't need you to tell me that ... but we'll be popular then. The English will make us popular!"

"Isn't it a little mean, John, to hit them when they aren't looking?"

"Mean! They've hit us often enough, haven't they? They got us on the ground when we were sick and kicked us. Why shouldn't we take advantage of them?"

"The Germans!..."

"Why shouldn't we go to the Germans, or to any one who is willing to help us? Wolfe Tone went to the French!..."

"You won't come away with me?"

"No. I came here to die, Henry, not to be safe!"

They stood for a few moments in silence, looking at each other, and then John put out his hand to Henry who took it in his.

"I must get back now," John said. "Good-bye, Henry. I don't suppose I shall ever see you again. If we lose, you and your friends can come and try your way. I've always wanted to die for Ireland ever since I was able to understand anything about my country, and I shall get my wish soon. Good-bye, Henry!"

"Good-bye, John!"

"I hope you and your wife will be very happy!" He made a wry smile, as he went on. "I'm afraid you won't be able to get to England just as soon as you wished. If you'd gone when I asked you to go!..."

"I must get back now," he said again.

"Yes, John!"

"I'm glad I saw you. I wondered last night where you were...."

"And I wondered where you were."

"I was here. I've been here since Monday morning!"

He moved a few steps away, and then turned back.

"I've always liked you, Henry," he said, taking Henry's hand in his, "even when you made me angry. I wish you were on our side...."

"I see no sense in this sort of thing, John!"

"I know you don't. And perhaps there isn't any sense in it, but that may not matter. It's something, isn't it, to find men still willing to die for their ideals, even when they know they haven't a chance of success? The Post Office is full of young boys, who want nothing better than to die for Ireland. Well, that's something, isn't it, in these times when most of our people aren't willing to do anything but make money? Good-bye again!"

He went back to the Post Office, very erect and very proud and very resolute.

"By God," said Henry to himself, "I wish I had the heart to feel what he feels!"

7

He was sitting in the smoking-room of the Club, trying to write. He had written to Mary earlier in the evening, assuring her of his welfare, and Driffield, a Treasury official, who had come into the Club for a few moments, had offered to try and get it put into the special mail "pouch" which was sent from the Castle every day to London. "You mustn't say anything about the Rebellion," he said. "Just say you're all right. I can't promise that it'll go off, but I'll do my best!" The restless, excited feeling which had possessed him since the beginning of the rebellion still held him, and he was unable to continue at anything for long. All day he had wandered about the city, learning more of its backways than he had ever known before. He had penetrated more deeply into the slums than he had done when he had explored them with Gilbert Farlow, and it seemed to him that there was nothing to be done with them or with the people in them. They were decaying together, and the sooner they decayed, the better would it be for Ireland. All his counsels that day were counsels of despair. What was the good of working and building when this was the material out of which a nation must be made? What was the good of trying to make sure foundations when impatient, undisciplined people like John Marsh came and threw one's work to the ground? Was it not better that every Irishman of alert and vigorous mind should leave Ireland to rot, and choose another country where men had stability of mind and purpose?...

"But one must go on trying. If the house be pulled down, we must build it up again. One must go on trying...."

He would get his friends together, and they would plan to save what they could from the wreckage. "And then we'll begin again! Whatever happens, we must begin again!"

He was tired of playing Patience, tired of reading, and tired of sitting still. Perhaps, he thought, he could write. It would be odd afterwards to think that he had written a story during a rebellion. There was a great German ... who was it? ... Heine or Goethe?... Oh, why couldn't he remember names!... who had gone on writing steadily, though there was battle all about him.... He settled himself to write, though he had no plan in his mind, and as he wrote, he felt that the story, whatever it might grow to be, must be comic. "I feel like a clown making jokes in the circus while his wife is dying," he said to himself....

But his restlessness persisted, and after a while he put his manuscript aside, and took up a book which he had found in the bookcase: William James's _Pragmatism_: and began to read it. He remembered a discussion of Pragmatism by the Improved Tories, when Gilbert had described a pragmatist as an unfrocked Jesuit....

And while he was burrowing into the first chapter, thinking more of James's graceful style than of his matter, there was a great rattle, an incessant hammer-and-rasp noise in the street.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, jumping up and dropping the book, "what's that?"

Then it ceased, and there was a horrible quietness for a few moments, followed by the crack-crack of rifles, and then again the ra-ra-ra-rat-rat-rat-rattle-rattle....

"Machine guns!" he exclaimed. He knew instinctively that they were machine guns. "It ... it startles you, that noise!"

It went on, rattling, with little pauses now and then as if the gun were taking breath, for an hour or more: a paralysing sound, as if some giant were drawing a great stick swiftly along iron railings.

"I think I'd better put the light out," he said, going across the room to where the switch was, and as he went there was a cracking sound in the window, and a bullet flew across the room and lodged in the wall....

He switched the light off, and stood for a while in the dark. Then he opened the door and went out and stood on the landing. The servants were sitting huddled together on the staircase, nervous looking, indeed, but not frightened. It seemed to him to be remarkable that these girls should have kept their nerve as finely as they had. He smiled at them, as he closed the door behind him.

"They're making a lot of noise, aren't they?" he said.

"Isn't it awful, sir?" one of them answered.

He did not speak of the bullet which had come into the room. "It must have been a stray," he thought, "and there's no sense in upsetting them!"

"The soldiers are firing across the Green," he said aloud, "at the College of Surgeons. I think we're safe enough here, but I'd keep away from the windows!..."

"Yes, sir, we are!"

He went to his room, and sat at the window. At this height it was unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly, in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack....

8

He went to bed, and tried to sleep, but could not. The firing from the machine-guns was intermittent now, but it still went on, and there was a continuous crackling of rifle-fire. Several times he got up and looked out ... he had a curious and persistent desire to see whatever was going on ... to be in it ... extraordinarily he was anxious not to miss anything. _He was neither afraid nor aware of the fact that he was not afraid._ He had simply the sensation that exciting things were happening, that he wanted to see as much of them as possible, that he was excited, that his blood was flowing rapidly through his veins, that there was something hitting the inside of his head, thumping it. Then when he was tired of straining to see into the darkness, he went back to bed again, and closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And sometimes he succeeded in sleeping for a while ... but always the noise of the machine-guns woke him....

He went to the window when the dawn broke, and looked across the Green to the College of Surgeons.

"It's still flying," he muttered as he watched the tri-colour flowing in the wind.

9

And now the Rebellion began to bore him. He could not work, and the walks he could take were circumscribed. He walked down to Trinity College and stood there, watching the soldiers on the roof of the College as they fired up Dame Street to where some Sinn Feiners were in occupation of a newspaper office, or along Westmoreland Street towards the Post Office. Wherever he went, there was the sound of bullets being fired ... but after a while, the sound ceased to affect him. There were snipers on many roofs ... and people had been killed by stray bullets ... but, although the sudden crack of a rifle overhead made him jump, the boredom grew and increased. He wanted to get on with his work....

The soldiers were pouring into Dublin now ... more and more of them.

"It'll be over soon," he said to himself.

It seemed to him then that the thing he would remember always was the dead horse which still lay on the pavement, becoming more and more offensive. Wherever he went, he met people who said to him, "Have you seen the dead horse?" Impossible to forget the corrupting beast, impossible to refrain from saying too, "Have you seen the dead horse?" Magnify that immensely, increase enormously the noise, and one had the War! Noise and stench and dead men and boredom!...

He wandered about the streets, seeing the same people, listening to the same statements, making the same remarks, wondering vaguely about food. He had seen high officials carrying loaves under their arms, and little jugs of milk....

"I wish to God it was over," he exclaimed. "I'm sick of this ... idleness!"

He spoke to a soldier in Merrion Square. "Do you like Dublin?" he said.

"Oh, fine!" he answered. "We've been treated champion. I 'aven't seen much of it yet, of course," he went on. "I've been 'ere ever since I landed!" He pointed to the pavement. "But I know this bit damn well. You know," he went on, "we thought we was in France when we arrived 'ere. Couldn't make it out when we saw all the signs in English. I says to a chap, as we was walking along, ''I,' I says, 'is this Boolone?' 'Naow,' 'e says, 'it's Ireland.'"

"And what did you say?" said Henry.

"I said 'Blimey!'" He moved to the kerb as the soldier further along the street called "Pass these men along" and when he had called the warning to the next soldier, he returned to Henry. "I say," he said, "wot are these Sinn Feiners? I mean to say 'oo are they? Are they Irish, too?"

Henry tried to explain who the Sinn Feiners were.

"But wot they want to do? Wot's the point of all this ... this 'umbuggin' about? We don't want to fight Irish people ... we want to fight Germans!..." He looked about for a moment, and then added, as if to clinch his statement, "I mean to say, I _know_ an Irish chap ... 'e's a friend of mine ... but I don't know no bloody Germans, an' wot's more I wouldn't know them neither ... dirty lot, I calls 'em!"

"You know," he went on, "this is about the 'ottest bit of work a chap could 'ave to do. These snipers, you know, they get on your nerves. I mean to say, 'ere you are, standin' 'ere, you might say, in the dark an' suddenly a bullet damn near 'its you ... or mebbe it does 'it you ... one of our chaps was killed in front of that 'ouse last night ... they been swillin' the blood away, see!..." Henry looked across the road to where a man was vigorously brooming the wet pavement. The soldier proceeded: "Well, you don't know where it's comin' from. 'E's up on one of these 'ere roofs, 'idin', an' you're down 'ere ... exposed. 'E kneels be'ind the parapet, an' 'as a shot at you, an' then 'e 'ops along the roof to another place, an' 'as another shot at you.... You don't 'alf begin to feel a bit jiggery when that's 'appening'...."

10

There was no malice in that soldier. He was puzzled, as puzzled as he would have been if his brother had suddenly seized a rifle and lain in wait for him. He looked upon the Irish as his comrades, not his enemies. "I mean to say, we're all the same, I mean to say!..." He had been in camp at Watford. "We was in a picture-palace, me an' my pal ... a whole lot of us was there ... and then a message was put on the screen: 'All the Dashes report at once!' I never thought nothink of it you know. Of course, I went all right. But I thought it was just one of these bloomin' spoof entrainments. They done that to us before ... two or three times ... just to see 'ow quick they could do it ... an' I was gettin' 'a bit fed-up with it. I'd said 'Good-bye' to a girl three times ... an' it was gettin' a bit monotonous. 'At it again,' I says to my pal, as we hooked back to the camp, but when we was in the train, an' it didn't stop an' go back again, I says to 'im, ''Illoa,' I says, 'we're off!' An' I 'adn't said 'Good-bye' to 'er this time. I thought to myself, 'I won't make a bloomin' ass of myself this time!' An' there we was ... off at last! 'This is a nice-old-'ow-d'ye-do!' I says. I didn't want the girl to think I was 'oppin' it like that ... sayin' nothink or anythink.... When we got to Kingstown an' 'eard we was in Ireland ... well, I mean to say, it _surprised_ me, I tell you.... Wot I can't make out is, wot's it all about? I mean to say, wot do these chaps want?"

"They want to be free!..."

"But ain't they free? I mean to say, ain't they as free as me?"

"They don't think so."

"Well, wot can I do that they can't do?"

Henry did not know. "You ast me anythink," the soldier went on, "they're a lot freer'n wot we are. I mean to say, we got conscription in our country, but they ain't got it 'ere...."

There was another interruption, to enable a motor-cyclist to pass along. When he returned to Henry, he said, "You know, when we got 'ere, an' all the people come out their 'ouses an' treated us like their long-lost brother, we couldn't make it out at all, an' when we 'eard about the Sinn Feiners, we didn't know wot to think. I mean to say, we didn't know 'oo they was. One of our chaps thought they was black ... you know ... niggers ... but I told 'im not to be a bloody fool. 'They don't 'ave niggers in Ireland,' I says, 'They're the same as us,' I says. 'I mean to say ... they're _white_!...'"

12

He wrote to Mary again, hoping that he would be able to get it into the Castle "pouch," and then he went to seek for Driffield who had promised to try and send his previous letter to England by the same means, and Driffield, very dubious, took the letter and said he would do what he could. She would be full of alarm ... he did not know whether she had received his messages, and, of course, he had received none from her. It was Thursday now, and still the rebellion was not suppressed. The city was full of dead and wounded men and women, and there was difficulty about burial. He thought of people in the first grief for their dead, unwilling that the hour of interment should come ... and then, when it came, and there could not be interment, suddenly finding their grief turned to consternation, and what had been the object of mourning love, become abhorrent, so that there was an unquenchable desire, a craving that it might be taken away....