Changing Winds. St. John G. Ervine

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СКАЧАТЬ 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

       Table of Contents

      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 friendship, 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 damned 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 circumstances that would enable him to proceed to his M.A.

      "That lad'll do rightly," said Mr. Quinn, and he arranged to meet Marsh in the queer, untidy room in Merrion Square where Harper edited his weekly paper. "He has the walls of the place covered with pictures of big women with breasts like balloons," Mr. Quinn said afterwards when he tried to describe Ernest Harper's office, "an' he talks to you about fairies 'til you'd near believe a leprechaun 'ud hop out of the coalscuttle if you lifted the lid!"

      Soon afterwards, they met, and Mr. Quinn explained his purpose to Marsh. "I'm not a Nationalist, thank God, nor a Catholic, thank God again, but I'm Irish an' I want my son to know about Ireland an' to feel as Irish as I do myself!"

      Marsh talked about Nationalism and Freedom and English Misrule, but Mr. Quinn waved his hands before his face and made a wry expression at him. "All your talk about the freedom of Ireland is twaddle, John Marsh ... if you don't mind, I'll begin callin' you John Marsh this minute ... an' I may as well tell you I don't believe in the tyranny of England. The English aren't cruel—they're stupid. That's what they are—Thick! As thick as they can be, an' that's as thick as God thinks it's decent to let any man be! But they're not cruel. They do cruel things sometimes because they don't know any better, an' they think they're doin' the right things when they're only doin' the stupid thing. That's where we come in! Our job is to teach the English how to do the right thing." They smiled at him. "An' I'm not coddin,'" he went on. "I mean every word I say. It's not Home Rule for Ireland that's needed—it's Irish Rule for England; an' I'll maintain that 'til my dyin' day.... But that's neither here nor there. I think you're a fool, John Marsh, to go about dreamin' of an Irish Republic ... you don't mind me callin' you a fool, do you? ... but you love Ireland, and I'd forgive a man a great deal for that, so if you'll come an' be tutor to my son, I'll be obliged to you!"

      And John Marsh, smiling at Mr. Quinn, had consented.

      "That's right," Mr. Quinn said, gripping the young man's hand and wringing it heartily. "I like him," he added, turning to Ernest Harper, "an' he'll be good for Henry, an' I daresay I'll be good for him. You've an awful lot of slummage in your skull," he continued, addressing Marsh again, "but begod I'll clear that out!"

      "Slummage?" Marsh asked questioningly.

      "Aye. Do you not know what slummage is?"

      He described it as a heap of steamy, flabby grain that is rejected by distillers after the spirit has been extracted from it. "An' it's only fit to feed pigs with," he said, ending his description. "An' the kind of stuff you're lettin' out of you now is only fit for pub-patriots. How soon can you come to Ballymartin. The sooner the better!"

      He tried to drop the discussion of politics, but was so fond of it himself that before he had settled the date of Marsh's appearance at Ballymartin, he was in the middle of another discussion. His head was full of theories about Ireland and about the world, and he loved to let his theories out of his head for an airing. He very earnestly desired to keep Ireland different from England. "Ireland's the 'country' of this kingdom, an' England's the 'town,'" he sometimes said, or when his mood was bitter, he would say that he wished to preserve Ireland as a place in which gentlemen could live in comfort, leaving England to be the natural home of manufacturers and mill-owners.

      "But it's no good talkin' of separatin' the two countries," he said to Marsh, "an' it's no good talkin' of drivin' the English out of Ireland because you can't tell these times who is English an' who is Irish. We've mingled our blood too closely for any one to be able to tell who's what. If you started clearin' out the English, you'd mebbe clear me out, for my family was planted here by William of Orange ... an' the damnedest set of scoundrels they were, too, by all accounts!... an' mebbe, Marsh, you yourself 'ud be cleared out!... Aye, an' you, too, Ernest Harper, for all you're waggin' your oul' red beard at me. You're Scotch, man, Scotch, to the backbone!..."

      Harper rose at him, wagging his red beard, and filling the air with terrible prophecies!...

      "Ah, quit, man!" said Mr. Quinn, and he turned and winked at Marsh. "Do you know what religion he is?" he said, pointing his finger at Harper. "He's a Nonconformin' Theosophist!" And he roared at his own joke.

      "You can no more separate the destinies of England an' Ireland in the world," he went on, "nor you can separate the waters of the Liffey an' the СКАЧАТЬ