Changing Winds. St. John G. Ervine

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 God. 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!"

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      "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.

      "Begod, 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."

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      "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' begod," 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 pass 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."

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      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 passing pleasant years at Cambridge in learning and in argument. There was to be scholarship 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...."

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ