Changing Winds Part 9

"You'd be like a foreigner at Cambridge ... like one of them fellows that come from India or Germany or places like that ... but at Trinity you'd be at home, in your own country, Henry, where people with brains are badly needed!"

He went on like that until he wore down Henry's desire to go to Cambridge. "I'd rather you didn't go to a university at all," he said, "than not have you go to T.C.D."

"Very well, father!" said Henry, consenting.

"That's right, my son," the old man said, patting his son on the back.

"An' now I'll tell you that yarn about Beattie. It'll make you split your sides!"

It appeared that Mr. Quinn had dined at a house in Dublin where Dr.

Beattie was also a guest, and the don was telling tales as was his custom, of his acquaintances in high places. The poor old clergyman had a weakness for the company of kings and queens, and liked to tell people of what he had said to an emperor or of what a prince had said to him.

"I was talking to my friend, the Queen of Spain, a short time ago," Dr.

Beattie had said, "and I made a joke which pleased her majesty. It was about my friend, the Kaiser, who was present at the time. The Kaiser heard us laughing, her majesty and me, and he came over to ask us why we were laughing so heartily, the Queen and me. The Queen was very embarra.s.sed because, of course, I had been making fun of the Kaiser, but I did not lose my self-possession. I turned to the Emperor and said, 'Sir, the Queen and I have known each other for a few moments only, but already we have a secret between us!'" The Kaiser was very tickled by my retort ... very tickled ... and the Queen told me afterwards that it was very adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said it was my Irish wit!...

It was at this point that Mr. Quinn had interrupted. "An' what did your friend G.o.d say?" he had demanded innocently.

Mr. Quinn sat back in his chair, when he had finished telling the story, and roared loudly with laughter. "You ought to have seen the oul' sn.o.b turnin' red, white an' blue with rage," he shouted at Henry. "Such a take-down! My G.o.d, what a take-down! There he was, the oul' wind-bag, bletherin' about his friend, the Queen of Spain, an' his friend, the Emperor of Germany, an' there was me, just waitin' for him, just waitin', Henry, an' the minute he shut his gob, I jumped in, an' says I to him, 'An' what did your friend G.o.d say?' By the Holy O, that was a good one! I never enjoyed myself so much as I did that night, an'

everybody else that was there was nearin' burstin' with tryin' not to laugh. Do you mind Lady Galduff?"

"Yes, father!"

"You mind her rightly, don't you? Well, when you go up to Dublin, you're to call on her, do you hear? Never mind about her manners. Ask her to tell you about me an' Dr. Beattie ... the way I asked him about his friend G.o.d. Oh, Holy O!..."

He could proceed no further, for his sides were shaking with laughter and the tears were streaming down his cheeks and his cheeks were the colour of beetroot.

"You'll hurt yourself, father," said Henry, "if you laugh like that!"

4

"Of course," said Mr. Quinn, after a while, "the man's a great scholar, an' I mebbe did wrong to take him down like that. But I couldn't help it, Henry. You see, he's always makin' little of Irish things, an' I have no use for a man like that. Not but what some people think too much of Ireland an' too little of other places. Many's a time I get ragin'

mad when I hear some of the Nationalists bleatin' about Ireland as if a bit of bog in the Atlantic were worth the rest of the world put together. Do you know what, I'm goin' to say somethin' that'll surprise you. I don't believe Irishmen'll think properly about Ireland 'til they stop thinkin' about it altogether. We're too self-conscious. We haven't enough pride an' we've too much conceit. That's the truth. You daren't say a word of criticism about Ireland for fear you'd have the people jumpin' down your throat--an' that's a sign of weakness, Henry. Do you know why the English are as strong as they are? It's because they'll let you criticise them as much as you like, an' never lose their temper with you. The only time I ever knew them to be flabby and spineless was when the Boer War was on ... an' they'd scream in your face if you didn't say they were actin' like angels. They were only like that _then_, but we're like it _all_ the time. The fools don't know that the best patriot is the man that has the courage to own up when his country's in the wrong!..."

Mr. Quinn suddenly sat up stiffly in his seat and gaped at his son for a few moments.

"BeG.o.d, Henry," he said, "I'm preachin' to you!"

"Yes, father, you are," Henry replied. "But I don't mind. It's rather interesting!"

But the force had gone out of Mr. Quinn. The thought that he had been preaching a sermon, delivering a speech, filled him with self-reproach.

"I never meant to start off like that," he said. "I only meant to tell you what was in my mind. You see, Henry, I love Ireland an' I want to see her as fine as ever she was ... but she'll never be fine again 'til she gets back her pride an' her self-respect. The English people have stolen that from us ... yes, they have, Henry! I knew Arthur Balfour when he was a young man ... I liked him too ... but I'll never forget that it was him that turned us into a nation of cadgers. I'm not much of a thinker, Henry, but the bit of brain I have'll be used for Ireland, whatever happens. You've got more brains than I have, an' I'd like you to use them for Ireland, too."

5

"This is the way I look at things," Mr. Quinn said later on. "The British people are the best people in the world, an' the Irish people are the best people in the British Empire, an' the Ulster people are the best people in Ireland!" He glanced about him for a few moments as if he were cogitating, and then he gave a chuckle and winked at his son. "An'

beG.o.d," he said, "I sometimes think I'm the best man in Ulster!" He burst out laughing when he had finished. "Ah," he said, half to himself, as he stroked his fine beard, "I'm the quare oul' cod, so I am!"

"All the same," he went on, speaking soberly, "I'm not coddin' entirely.

The Irish have plenty of brains, but they haven't any discipline, an'

brains are no good unless you can control them. We need knowledge and experience, Henry, more nor anything else, an' the more knowledge we bring into the country, the better it'll be for us all. Too much imagination an' not enough knowledge ... that's what's the matter with us. The English have knowledge, but they've small imagination!... I declare to my goodness, the best thing that could happen to the two of us, the English and the Irish, would be for some one to pa.s.s a law compellin' every Irishwoman to marry an Englishman, an' every Englishwoman to marry an Irishman. We'd get some stability into Ireland then ... an' mebbe we'd get some intelligence into England."

6

Henry acquiesced in his father's wishes, but he did so reluctantly.

Gilbert's plan for their future had attracted him greatly. He saw himself pa.s.sing pleasant years at Cambridge in learning and in argument.

There was to be scholars.h.i.+p and company and curiosity and enquiry. They were to furnish their minds with knowledge and then they were to seek adventures in the world: a new order of Musketeers: Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan.... He let the names of the Musketeers slide through his mind in order, wondering which of them was his prototype ...

but he could not find a resemblance to himself in any of them. He felt that he would shrink from the deeds which they sought.... His mind went back again to thoughts of Cambridge. At all events, in the tourneys of the mind his part would be valiant. He would never shrink from combat with an intellect.... He supposed it would be possible to do at T.C.D.

some of what he had proposed to do at Cambridge, but somehow T.C.D. did not interest him. It mattered as little to him as a Welsh University. It had no hold whatever on his mind. He knew that it was on the level of Oxford and Cambridge, but that knowledge did not console him. "It doesn't matter in the way that they do," he said to himself, and then he remembered something that Gilbert Farlow had said. "T.C.D. isn't Irish in the way that Oxford and Cambridge are English. It's _in_ Ireland, but it isn't _of_ Ireland!" Gilbert could always get at the centre of a thing. "Oxford and Cambridge have lots of faults," Gilbert had said, "but they're English faults. T.C.D. has lots of faults, but they're not Irish faults. Do you see what I mean, Quinny? It's ... it's like a garrison in an unfriendly country ... like ... what d'ye call it? ...

that thing in Irish history ... the Pale! That's it! It's the Pale still going on being a Pale long after the need for it had ceased. I don't think that kind of place is much good to Irishmen. You'd better come to Cambridge!..."

"I can't, Gilbert. My father's set his heart on my going to Trinity, and I must go. I'd give the world to go with you and Ninian and Roger, but I'll have to do what he wants. Anyhow, I can join you in London when you come down, and we can spend our holidays together. I'll get my father to ask you all to Ireland the first vac. after you've gone up, and perhaps Mrs. Graham'll ask us all to Boveyhayne...."

7

Remembering what he had said to Gilbert about Boveyhayne, he remembered Mary Graham. He had not seen her since he had been to Boveyhayne at Easter, but he had written several times to her, lengthy letters, and had received short, shy replies from her; and sometimes he had tried to induce Ninian to talk about her. But "She isn't a bad little flapper!"

was all that Ninian would say of his sister, and there was little comfort to be derived from that speech. Now, standing here in this window-corner, looking over the fields that stretched away to the Antrim mountains, Henry felt that Mary was slipping swiftly out of his life. It might be a very long time before he saw her again. ... How beautiful she had looked that day when she stood on Whitcombe platform and waved her hand to him as the train steamed out of the station! He _must_ marry her. Mrs. Graham _must_ ask him to spend the next summer at Boveyhayne so that he could meet Mary again. Anyhow he would write to her. He would tell her all he was doing. He would describe his life at Trinity to her.

He would remind her continually of himself, and perhaps she would not forget him. Girls, of course, were very odd and they changed their minds an awful lot. Ninian might invite some chap from Cambridge to Boveyhayne.... That would be like Ninian, to go and spoil everything without thinking for a moment of what he was doing.... If only Mary and he were a few years older, they could become formally engaged, and then everything would be all right, but Mary was so young ...

THE FIFTH CHAPTER

1

Soon after Henry had returned to Ballymartin, John Marsh came to Mr.

Quinn's house to prepare him for Trinity. "He'll put you in the way of knowin' more about Ireland nor I can tell you, Henry," Mr. Quinn said to his son on the evening before Marsh arrived, "an' a lot more nor you'll learn at Rumpell's, or, for that matter, at Trinity."

"Then why do you want me to go to Trinity?" Henry asked, still unable to conceal his disappointment at not being sent to Cambridge with his friends.

"I've told you that already," Mr. Quinn replied firmly, closing his lips down tightly. "I want you to have Irish friends as well as English friends, and I've learned this much from livin', that a man seldom makes friends ... _friends,_ mind you ... after he's twenty-five. You only make acquaintances after that age. I'd like well to think there were people in Ireland that had as tight a hold on your friends.h.i.+p, Henry, as Gilbert Farlow and them other lads have.... An' there's another thing,"

he went on, leaning forward as he spoke and wagging his forefinger at Henry. "If you go to Trinity with a kindly feelin' for Ireland, it'll be something to think there's one man in the place that has a decent thought for his country an' isn't an imitation Englishman. Who knows what good you might do there?" He let his speculations consume him. "You might change the character of the whole college. You ... you might make it Irish. You ... you might be the means of turnin' the Provost into an Irishman an' start him takin' an interest in his country. The oul' lad might turn Fenian an' get transported or hung!..."

When he had ceased to speculate on what might happen if Henry began an Irish crusade in Trinity, he spoke again of Marsh.

"You'll like him," he said. "I know you will. He's a bit off his head, of course, but that's neither here nor there. The man's a scholar an' I think he writes bits of poetry. I've never seen any of his pieces, but somebody told me he wrote things. I'd like well to have a poet in the house!"

"Is he a Catholic?" Henry asked.

His father nodded his head. "An' very religious, too, I believe," he said. "Still, that's neither here nor there. I met him up in Dublin.

Ernest Harper told me about him!"

Ernest Harper was the painter-poet who had influenced so many young men in Ireland, and Mr. Quinn had come into the circle of his friends through the Irish co-operative movement. He had made a special visit to Dublin to consult Harper about the education of his son, telling him of his desire that Henry should have a strong national sense ... "but none of your d.a.m.ned theosophy, mind!..." and Harper had recommended John Marsh to him. Marsh had lately taken his B.A. degree and he was anxious to earn money in circ.u.mstances that would enable him to proceed to his M.A.