Changing Winds Part 80

"Don't be an old a.s.s, Henry. You're not going to improve a rotten bad business by hitting about indiscriminately. I daresay the people who were responsible for the thing were Irishmen. I've always noticed that when anything really dirty is done in Ireland, it's an Irishman who does it...."

"A rotten Unionist!..."

"Irish, all the same! The only thing that you Irish are united about is your habit of blaming the English for your own faults and misbehaviour.

If I had the fellow who was responsible for this business I'd shoot him out of hand. I wouldn't think twice about it. If a man is such an a.s.s as all that, he ought to be put out of the world quick. But then I'm English. The Irish'll make a case out of him. They'll orate over him, and they'll get frightfully cross for a fortnight, and then they'll do nothing. You know as well as I do, Quinny, that the English aren't unfriendly to the Irish, that they really are anxious to do the decent thing by Ireland. It isn't us: it's you. We're not against you ...

you're against yourselves. There are about seventy-five different parties in Ireland, aren't there, and they all hate each other like poison?"

"I wonder if John Marsh was hurt!..."

"I don't suppose so. There'd have been some reference to him in the paper if he'd been hurt."

"This was what he was hinting at when I saw him in Dublin," Henry went on. "He talked about 'doubling it' and said that two could play at that game!"

He was calmer now, and able to talk about the Dublin shooting with some discrimination.

"I don't know why they want to 'run' guns at all," he said. "The t.i.t-for-tat style of politics seems a fairly foolish one.... I think I shall go back to Ireland to-morrow, Gilbert. I feel as if I ought to be there. This business won't end where it is now. I know what John Marsh and Galway and Mineely are like. Whatever bitterness was in them before will be increased enormously by this. Mineely's an Ulsterman, and he'll make somebody pay for this. He doesn't say much ... he's like Connolly ... Connolly's the brains behind Larkin ... but he keeps things inside him, deep down, but safe, so that he can always get at them when he wants them!"

"What sort of man is he, Quinny?" Gilbert asked. "I didn't see him when we were in Dublin."

"He looks like a comfortable tradesman, and he's a kindly sort of chap.

You'd never dream that he was an agitator or that he'd want to lead a rebellion. I don't believe he likes that work, either. I think that inside him his chief desire is for a decent house with a garden, where he can grow sweet peas and cabbages and sit in the evening with his wife and children. He has more balanced knowledge than most of the people he works with. Marsh and Galway have had a better education than Mineely, but they haven't had his experience or his knowledge of men, and so they can't check their enthusiasm. He was in America for a long while, and he's lived in England, too. He wrote a quite good book on the Irish Labour Movement that would have been better if he'd made more allowance for the nature of the times. If the employers hadn't behaved so brutally over the strike, Mineely might have become the solvent of a lot of ill-will in Ireland; but they made a bitter man out of him then, and I suppose it's too late now. He'll go on, getting more and more bitter until.... Do you remember that story by H. G. Wells, Gilbert, called 'In the Days of the Comet'?"

"Is that the green vapour story?"

"Yes. Well, we want a green vapour very badly in Ireland, something to obliterate every memory and leave us all with fresh minds!"

"Miracle-mongering won't lead you very far, Quinny. It's no good howling for a vapour to heal you. You've just got to take your blooming memories and cure 'em yourselves, by the sweat of your brows! And, look here, Quinny, there doesn't seem any good reason why you should dash back to Ireland because of this business. I always think that the worst row in the world would never have come to anything if people hadn't done what you propose to do, rushed into it just because they thought they ought to be there. They congest things ... they use up the air and make the place feel stuffy ... and then they get cross, and somebody shoves somebody else, and before they know where they are, they're splitting each other's skulls. If they'd only remained dispersed...."

"But I'd like to be there!..."

"I know you would. We'd all like to be there, so's we could say afterwards we'd seen the whole thing from beginning to end. That's just why we shouldn't be there. It isn't the princ.i.p.als in the row that make all the trouble, Quinny ... it's the blooming spectators!..."

4

He let himself be persuaded by Gilbert to stay in Wales, and they spent the next two or three days in tramping about the island of Anglesey. The days were bright and sunny, and the rich sparkle of the sea tempted them frequently to the water. There were many visitors at the hotel, some of whom were Irish people from Dublin, but mostly they came from Liverpool and Manchester; and with several of them, Gilbert and Henry became friendly. There was a schoolmaster who made a profession of mountain-climbing and a hobby of religion; and a doctor who told comic stories and talked with good temper about Home Rule, to which he was opposed; and a splendid old man, with his wife, who was interested in co-operation and was eager to limit armaments; and a wine merchant from Liverpool who had come to the conclusion that the world, on the whole, was quite a decent place to live in; and a dreadful little stockbroker who belonged to the b.l.o.o.d.y school of politicians and talked about the Empire as if it were a music-hall; and an agent of some sort from Manchester who had reached that stage of prosperity at which he was beginning to wonder whether, after all, Nonconformity was not a grievous heresy and the Church of England a sure means of salvation. And there were others, vague people of the middle cla.s.s, kindly and comfortable and inarticulate, with no particular opinions on anything except the desirability of four good meals every day and a month's holiday in the summer. There were daughters, too ... all sorts and conditions of daughters! Some that were hearty and athletic, living either in the sea or on the golf-links; and others that were full of their s.e.x, unable to forget that men are men and women are women, and never the two shall come together but there shall be wooing and marrying.... There were a few who were eager to use their minds ... and they quoted their parents and the morning papers to Gilbert and Henry....

Surprisingly, their feeling about the Howth gun-raid became cool. In that exquisite sunlight, beneath the wide reach of blue sky, it was impossible to experience rancour or maintain anger. They swam and basked and swam again, and let their eyes look gladly on young shapely girls, running across the gra.s.sy tops of the piled rocks, and were sure that there could be nothing on earth more beautiful than the spectacle of pink arms gleaming through white muslin, unless it might be the full brown ears of wheat now bending in the ripening rays of suns.h.i.+ne.... And again, after dinner, they would sit in a high, gra.s.sy corner of the bay, listening to the lap of the sea beneath them, while the stars threw their faint reflections on the returning tide....

Exquisite peace and quiet, long days of rich pleasure and sweet nights of rest, kindliness and laughter and the friendly word of casual acquaintances ... and over all, the enduring beauty of this world.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER

1

Gilbert looked up from the paper as Henry came out of the hotel.

"I say, Quinny," he said, "I think there's going to be a war!"

"A what?" Henry exclaimed.

"A war!..."

"But where?"

Henry sat down on the long seat beside Gilbert, and looked over his shoulder at the paper.

"All over the place!" Gilbert answered. "The Austrians want to have a go at the Serbians, and the Russians mean to have one at the Austrians, and then the Germans will have to help the Austrians, and that'll bring the French in, and ... and then I suppose we shall shove in some where!"

Henry took the paper from Gilbert's hands. "But what have we got to do with it?" he said, hastily scanning the telegrams with which the news columns were filled.

"I dunno!..."

"It's ridiculous.... What's there to fight about? d.a.m.n it all, my novel's coming out in a month! What's it about?"

"You remember that Archduke chap who got blown up the other day?..."

"Yes, I remember!"

"Well, that's what it's about!"

"But, good G.o.d, man, they can't have a war about a thing like that...."

"It looks as if they thought they could. Anyhow, they're going to try!"

said Gilbert.

"Just because an Archduke got killed? d.a.m.n it, Gilbert, that's what they're for!..."

There was a queer look of fright in the faces of the visitors to the hotel. The boy from Holyhead had been slow in coming with the papers, and the first news that came to them came from a man who had been into the town that morning.

"There's going to be a war," he had shouted to the group of people sitting on the terrace.

"Don't be an a.s.s!" they had shouted back at him.

"Yes, there is. The whole blooming world'll be sc.r.a.pping presently!" He spoke with the queer gaiety of a man who has abandoned all hope. "Just as I was getting on my feet, too!" he went on. He suddenly unburdened himself to a man who had only arrived at the hotel late on the previous evening ... they had never seen each other before ... but now they were revealing intimacies....

"Just getting on my feet," the man who had brought the news went on.

"It'll be very bad for business, I'm afraid!..."

"Bad. Goo' Lor', man, it's ruin ... absolute ruin! I'll be up the pole, that's where I'll be. And I was thinking of getting married, too. Just thinking of it, you know ... nothing settled or anything ... and now ...

d.a.m.n it, what they want to go and have a war for? _We_ don't want one!"

Then the boy with the newspapers appeared, and they rushed at him and tore the papers from his bag....