Changing Winds Part 33

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

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

"Mind!" Mr. Quinn replied. "No, I don't, Henry. I ... I like it, my son.

Thanks, Henry. I ..." He got up and moved quickly towards the window.

"I'll just go in an' start readin' it now," he said.

2

He returned the ma.n.u.script to Henry on the following afternoon. "I've read worse," he said.

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

"Ah, sure, sir!..."

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

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

"You're not worth ninepence a week!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Eighteenpence!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Very well, then. I'll tell you when I've had enough of your company an'

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

Henry hesitated. He had never talked about money with his father, and he had a curious shyness about doing so now. "I don't know," he replied.

"Would two hundred a year be too much?..."

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

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

"Ah, wheesht with you! Sure, why wouldn't a man be good to his own son.

I suppose now you want to hear what I think of your book?"

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

"I'll give you a couple of years to improve it," Mr. Quinn answered.

"If you can't make it better in that time, you're no good!"

"I suppose not."

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

Get gumption, Henry!"

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

"You are, my son, an' what's more you're tellin' everybody how little you know in that book of yours. Man, dear, women aren't like that!...

Well, never mind! You'll find out for yourself soon enough. Mind, I don't mean to say that there aren't some good things in the book. There are ... plenty! If there weren't, I wouldn't waste my breath talkin' to you about it. But there are things in it that are just guff, Henry, just guff. The kind of romantic slush that a young fellow throws off when he first realises that women are ... well, women, d.a.m.n it! ... I wish to G.o.d, you would write a book about continuous croppin'! Now, there's a subject for a good book! There's none of your d.a.m.ned love about that!..."

3

He had not seen Sheila Morgan since the morning after he had failed to stop the runaway horse. Many times, indeed, she had been in his mind, and often at Trinity, in the long sleepless nights that afflict a young man who is newly conscious of his manhood, he had turned from side to side of his bed in an impotent effort to thrust her from his thoughts.

He made fanciful pictures of her in his imagination, making her very beautiful and gracious. He saw her, then, with long dark hair that had the l.u.s.tre of a moonless night of stars, and he imagined her, sitting close to him, so that her hair fell about his head and shoulder and he could feel the slow movement of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his side. He would close his eyes and think of her lips on his, and her heart beating quickly while his thumped so loudly that it seemed that every one must hear it ... and thinking thus, he would clench his fists with futile force and swear to himself that he would go to her and make her marry him. Once, when he had spent an afternoon at the Zoo in the Phoenix Park, he had lingered for a long while in the house where the tigers are caged because, suddenly, it seemed to him that the graceful beast with the bright eyes resembled Sheila. It moved so easily, and as it moved, its fine skin rippled over its muscles like running water....

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

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

He wondered whether Sheila had altered much, and then he wondered what change four years had made in Mary Graham. Sheila, who had been dominant in his mind in his first year at Trinity, had receded a little into the background by the time he had quitted Dublin, but Mary, never very prominent, had retained her place, neither gaining nor losing position.

It was odd, he thought to himself, that he had not been to Boveyhayne in the four years he had been at T.C.D. Mrs. Graham had invited him there several times, but he had not been able to accept the invitations: once his father had been ill, and he had had to hurry to Portrush, where he was staying, and remain with him until he was well again; and another time he had been with Gilbert Farlow at his home in Kent; and another time had agreed to go tramping in Connacht with Marsh and Galway. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger had spent a holiday at Ballymartin.... Ninian took a whole week to realise that he was in Ulster and not in Scotland, and Gilbert begged hard for the production of a typical Irishman who would say "G.o.d bless your honour!" and "Bedad!" and "Bejabers!" and pretended not to believe that there were not any "typical Irishmen" ... and went away, vowing that they would compel Mr. Quinn to invite them to stay with him in the next vac. It was then that Ninian decided that he would like to be a s.h.i.+pbuilder. Mr. Quinn had taken them to Belfast to see the launch of a new liner, and Tom Arthurs had invited them all to join the luncheon party when the launch was over. The Vicereine had come from Dublin to cut the ribbon which would release the great s.h.i.+p and send it moving like a swan down the greasy slips into the river; and Tom Arthurs had conducted her through the Yard, telling her of the purpose of this machine and that engine until the poor lady began to be dubious of her capacity to launch the liner. There were other guides, explaining, as Tom Arthurs explained, the functions of the Yard to the visitors, but Ninian had contrived to attach himself to Tom Arthurs and he listened to him as he talked, as simply as was possible, of the way in which great s.h.i.+ps are built. Thereafter, Ninian had tongue for none but Tom Arthurs, and he told him, when the party was over and the guests were leaving the Yard, that he would like to work in the Island. Tom had doubted whether Cambridge was the proper preparation for s.h.i.+pbuilding.... "I was out of my apprentices.h.i.+p when I was your age," he said ... but he said that Ninian could think about it more seriously and then come to him when his time at Cambridge was up.

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

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

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