Changing Winds. St. John G. Ervine

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СКАЧАТЬ to be too English in your ways, Henry, he wrote to his son, and I want you at home for a while. There's a young fellow called Marsh who can tutor you until you go to the University. I met him in Dublin a while since, and I like him. He's a bit cranky, but he's clever and he'll teach you a lot about Ireland. He's up to his neck in Irish things, and speaks Gaelic and wears an Irish kilt. At least he used to wear one, but he's left it off now, partly because he gets cold in his knees and partly because he's not sure now that the ancient Irish ever wore kilts. I think you'll like him!...

      "My God," said Gilbert when Henry read this letter to him, "fancy being tutored by a chap who wears petticoats!"

      "You ought to talk pretty plainly to your guv'nor, Quinny!" Ninian said. "I don't think you ought to let him do that sort of thing. Here we've settled that we're all going to Cambridge together, and your guv'nor simply lumps in and upsets everything!"

      Henry declared that he would talk to his father and compel him to be sensible, but his attempt at compulsion was ineffective. Mr. Quinn had made up his mind that Henry was to spend several months at home, under the tutelage of John Marsh, and then proceed to Trinity College, Dublin.

      "Trinity College, Dublin!" Henry exclaimed. "But I want to go to Cambridge!..."

      "Well, you can't go then. You'll go to T.C.D. or you'll go nowhere. I'm a T.C.D. man, an' your gran'da was a T.C.D. man, an' so was his da before him, an' a damned good college it is, too!" Mr. Quinn had always called his father his "da" when Mrs. Quinn was alive because she disliked the word and tried to insist on "papa"; and now he used the word as a matter of habit. "What do you want to go to an English college for?" he demanded. "You might as well want to go to that Presbyterian hole in Belfast!"

      "I want to go to Cambridge," Henry replied a little angrily and therefore a little precisely, "because all my friends are going there. They're going up next year, and I want to go with them. They're my best friends!..."

      "Make friends in Ireland, then!" Mr. Quinn interrupted. "You don't make friends with Englishmen ... you make money out of them. That's all they're fit for!"

      He began to laugh when he said that, but Henry still scowled. "I hate to hear you talking like that, father!" he said. "I know you don't mean it...."

      "Don't I, begod?..."

      "No, you don't, but even in fun, I hate to hear you saying it. I like English people. I'm very fond of Gilbert Farlow!..."

      "A nice fellow!" Mr. Quinn murmured, remembering how he had liked Gilbert when he had visited Rumpell's once to see Henry.

      "And Ninian Graham and Roger Carey, I like them, too, and so do you. You liked them, didn't you?"

      "Very nice fellows, both of them, very nice ... for all they're English!"

      Henry wanted to go on ... to talk of Mrs. Graham and of Mary ... but shyness held his tongue for him.

      "It's a habit I've got into," Mr. Quinn said, talking of his denunciation of the English, "but don't mind me, Henry. Sure, I'm like all the Ulstermen: my tongue's more bitter nor my behaviour. All the same, my son, you're goin' to T.C.D., an' that's an end of it. T.C.D.'ll make a man of you, but Oxford 'ud only make a snivellin' High Church curate of you ... crawlin' on your belly to an imitation altar an' lettin' on to be a Catholic!..."

      "But I don't want to go to Oxford, father. I want to go to Cambridge!"

      "It's all the same, Henry. Oxford'll make a snivellin' parson out of you, an' Cambridge'll turn you into a snivellin' atheist. I know them places well, Henry. I'm acquainted with people from both of them. All the Belfast mill-owners send their sons there, so's they can be made into imitation Englishmen. An' I tell you there's no differs between Cambridge an' Oxford. You crawl on your belly to the reredos at Oxford, an' you crawl on your belly to Darwin an' John Stuart Mill at Cambridge. They can't do without a priest of some sort at them places, an' I'm a Protestant, Henry, an' I want no priest at all. Now, at Trinity you'll crawl on your belly to no one but your God, an' you'll do damn little of that if you're any sort of man at all!"

      Henry had reminded his father of the history and tradition of T.C.D., an ungracious institution which had taught men to despise Ireland.

      "Well, you needn't pay any heed to the Provost, need you," Mr. Quinn retorted. "Is a man to run away from his country because a fool of a schoolmaster hasn't the guts to be proud of it? Talk sense, son! We want education in Ireland, don't we, far more nor any other people want it, an' how are we goin' to get it if all the young lads go off to Englan' an' let the schoolmasters starve in Ireland!"

      Henry still maintained his position. "But, father," he said, "you yourself have often told me that Dr. Daniell is an imitation Englishman...." Dr. Daniell was the Provost of Trinity.

      "He is, and so is his whole family. I know them well ... lick-spittles, the lot of them, an' the lad that's comin' after him, oul' Beattie, is no better ... a half-baked snob ... I'll tell you a story about him in a minute ... but all the same, it's not them that matter ... it's the place and the tradition an' the feel of it all ... do you make me out?"

      "Yes, father, I know what you mean!"

      "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 embarrassed 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 God 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' snob turnin' red, white an' blue with rage," he shouted at Henry. "Such a take-down! My God, 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 God 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 СКАЧАТЬ