Chapter XIX: Part 19

"It'll be quaren nice to think o' this house havin' a mistress in it again, an' wee weans, mebbe. I was here, a young girl, when your father brought your mother home ... I mind it well ... she was a quiet woman, an' she stud in the hall there as nervous as a child 'til I went forrit to her, an' said, 'Ye're right an' welcome, ma'am!', an' then she plucked up her heart, an' she give me a wee bit of a smile, an' said 'Thank ye, Hannah!' for your father told her who I was. An' she used to come an' talk to me afore you were born ... she was terrible frightened, poor woman. Ay, she was terrible frightened of havin' you! Your father couldn't make her out at all. It was a quare pity!"

He let her ramble on, for he wanted now to hear about his mother, of whom he knew so little. There was a portrait of her in the house, a fair, slight, timid-looking woman who seemed to be shrinking out of the frame. It was odd to think that she was his mother, this frightened woman of whom he had no memory whatever, for whom he had no tender feeling. He had loved his father deeply, but he had no love for his mother. How could he feel love for her? He had never known her!... But now he wanted to know all that Hannah knew about her, for Hannah perhaps had known more about her than any one. Hannah had cared for her, pitied her....

"Yes, Hannah!" he said, so that she might proceed.

"She was sure she was goin' to die, an' I had the quare work to keep her quiet. An' she was terrible feard of dyin'!"

He listened to her with a strange feeling of pain. All that he had endured at the thought of fighting had been endured by his mother at the thought of giving him birth. He felt that now, at last, he knew his mother and could sympathise with her and love her.

"But sure what was the sense of bein' afeard of that," Hannah Went on. "God wouldn't be hard on the like of her, the poor, innocent woman. I toul' lies til her, God forgive me, an' let on to her that people made out that it was worse nor it was to have a child ... but she had a despert bad time of it, for she was a weak woman, with no body in her at all, an' a poor will to suffer things. She never was the better of you!" She smiled at him sadly. "Never! An' she took no interest in nothin' after that ... she could hardly bear to look at you ... an' you her own wee son. She didn't live long after you come, an' mebbe it was as well, for God never made her to contend with anything. I was quaren fond of her. Ye had to like her, she was that helpless. She couldn't thole any one next or near her but myself ... and so I got fond of her, for a body has to like people that depends on them. Will your wife be a fair lady or a dark lady, Master Henry?"

He realised that she wished him to describe Mary to her.

"She's dark," he said. "Not at all like her brother!"

"Ay, he was the big, fair man that was a credit to a woman to have!"

"I have her photograph upstairs," Henry went on, "I'll go and get it. You'd like to see it, wouldn't you?"

"Deed an' I would," she answered.

He got the photograph and gave it to her, and she took it in her hands and looked at it very steadily.

"She's a comely-lookin' girl," she said, handing it to him again. "She has sweet eyes an' a proud way of holdin' her head. She shud be a good wife to you. I'll be glad to see her here, for dear knows, it's lonesome sittin' in the house with no one to look after. I miss your da sore, Master Henry, an' it's seldom you're here now!"

"I'll be here much more in future, Hannah!"

"Well, thank God for that! I like well to see the quality in their houses, an' them not to be runnin' here an' runnin' there, an' not thinkin' of their own place an' their own people. An' I pray to God you'll have fine childher, an' I'll be well-spared to see them growin' up to be a credit to you!"

The old woman's patient service and love seemed very noble to him, and he went to her and took her hand. "You're the only mother I've ever known, Hannah!" he said. "You've always been very good to me!"

"An' why wouldn't I be good to you?" she exclaimed, raising her fine blue eyes to his. "Aren't you the only child I ever had to rear? Dear bless you, son, what else would I be but good to you?"

And suddenly she put her arms about him and kissed him passionately, and as she kissed him, she cried:

"God only knows what I'm girnin' for!" she exclaimed, releasing him and drying her eyes.

3

He wandered about the house, touching a chair or fingering a curtain or looking at a portrait, and wondered how Mary would like her new home. It was not an old house, nor had the Quinns lived in it from the time it was built, and so Henry could not feel about it what Ninian must have felt about Boveyhayne Manor, in which his ancestors had lived for four centuries. But it was his home, in which he had been born, in which his mother and father had died, and it seemed to him to be as full of memories and tradition as Mary's home. The war had broken the line of Grahams, broken a tradition that had survived the dangers of four hundred years. That seemed to Henry to be a pity. Perhaps, he thought, this worship of Family is a foolish thing. There was a danger in being rooted to one place, in letting your blood become too closely mingled, and a tradition might very well become a substitute for life; but when all that was said and admitted, there was a pride in one's breeding that made life seem like a sacrament, and the years but the rungs of a long ladder. Once, in the days of the Bloomsbury house, they had talked of tradition, and some one had related the old story of the American tourist who was shown the sacred light, and told that it had not been out for hundreds of years. "Well, I guess it's out now!" the American replied, blowing the light out. They had made a mock of the horrified priest and had protested that his service to the flame was a waste of life and energy and time. And when they had said all that they had to say, Ninian, speaking more quietly than was his wont, had interjected, "But don't you think the American was rather a cad?"

They had argued fiercely then, some of them protesting that the American's disregard of a worn convention was splendid, virile, youthful, god-like. Roger, Henry remembered, had sided with Ninian so far as to admit that the American's behaviour had been too inconsiderate. "He might have discussed the matter with the priest ... tried to persuade him to blow it out himself!" but that was as far as he would go with Ninian.

"I admit," Ninian had retorted, "that it was a foolish tradition ... but don't you think the American was rather a cad. It was better, wasn't it, to have that tradition than to have none at all?"

Now, standing here, in this house that had been his father's, and now was his, and would, in due time, be his son's, if ever he should have a son, it seemed to him that Ninian had been right in his contention. And just as Mary, moving through the Devonshire lanes, had felt that everything proclaimed its Englishness and hers, making them and her part of each other, so he, looking out of the window across the fields, felt something inside him insisting, "You're Irish. You must be proud! You're Irish! You must be proud!..."

He remembered very vividly how his father had led him to this very window once and, pointing towards the fields, had said, "That's land, Henry! _My_ land!..."

And because he had been proud of his land, had been part of it, as it had been part of him, he had been willing to spend himself on it. There seemed to Henry to be in that, all that there was in patriotism. Irrationally, impulsively, unaccountably one loved one's country. The air of it and the earth of it, the winds that blew over it and the seas that encircled it, all these had been mingled to make men, so that when there was danger and threat to a man's country, some native thing in him stirred and compelled him to say, "This is my body! This is my blood!" and sent him out, irrationally, impulsively, unaccountably, to die in its defence. There was here no question of birth or possessions: the slum-man felt this stirring in his nature as strongly as the landlord. In that sudden, swift rising of young men when war was declared, each man instinctively hurrying to the place of enlistment, there were men from slums and men from mansions, all of them, in an instant, made corporate, given unity, brought to communion, partaking of a sacrament, becoming at that moment a sacrament themselves....

4

But if this stirring in one's nature made a man both a sacrament and a partaker of a sacrament, was there not yet something horrible in this spilling of blood, this breaking of bodies? Was this sacrament only to be consummated by the butcher? Was there no healing sacrament which, when a man partook of it, gave him life and more life! Was there not an honourable rivalry among nations, each to be better than the other, to replace this brawling about boundaries, this pettifogging with frontiers? Was there to be no end to this killing and preparing for killing? Would men, from now on, set themselves to the devisal of murderous and more murderous weapons of war until at last an indignant, disgusted God, sick of the smell of blood, threw the earth from Him, caring nothing what happened to it, so that it was out of His consciousness?...

While he looked out of the window, the dusk settled down, and he could see the mists rising from the fields. He drew the curtains, and went and sat down by the fire. There was a faint odour of burning turf in the room, and as he watched the blue spirals of smoke curling up the chimney, he remembered how he had trudged across Dartmoor once, and, suddenly, unexpectedly had turned a corner of the road, and looked down on a village in a hollow, and for a moment or two had imagined he was in Ireland because of the smell of burning turf that came from the cottage chimneys.

"We and they are one," he murmured to himself. "Our differences are but two aspects of the same thing. Our blood and their blood, our earth and their earth, mingled and made sacramental, shall be to the glory of God!"

The door opened, and Hannah came in, carrying a lighted lamp.

"I just thought I'd bring it myself," she said. "I'd be afeard of my life to let Minnie handle it. Dear knows, but she'd set herself on fire, or mebbe the house, an' that'd be a nice thing, an' a new mistress comin' to it. Will I put it down here by your elbow?"

"Anywhere, Hannah!" he answered.

"I'll just rest it here then, where it'll not be too strong for your eyes. Yon ought to have the electric light put in the house. Major Cairnduff has it in his house, an' it's not half the size of this one.... Will I get you something?"

"No, thank you, Hannah!"

"A taste of some thin' to ate, mebbe, or a sup to drink?"

"Nothing, thank you!"

She went over to the fire. "Dear bless us," she said, "that's no sort of a fire at all. What come over you, to let it get that low!"

"I didn't notice it, Hannah!"

"'Deed an' I don't suppose you did ... moidherin' your mind about one thing an' another! There'll be a different story to tell when the mistress comes home. Mark my words, there will! Dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!..."

5

"I'm going to Belfast to-night, Hannah," he said when he had been at home a few weeks. "I want to catch an early train to Dublin to-morrow."

"Yes," she said.

"When I come back, I shall bring my wife with me!"

"God bless us and save us," she exclaimed, "it'll be quare to think of you with a wife, an' it on'y the other day since you were a child, an' me skelpin' you for provokin' me. Well, I'll have the house ready for yous both when you come!"

"Will you tell Matier to harness the horse...."

"I'll tell him this minute. That man's near demented mad at the thought of you marryin'. 'Be the hokey O!' he says whenever I go a-near him, an' then he starts laughin' an' tellin' me it's the great news altogether. 'I wish,' says he, 'the oul' lad was alive. He'd be makin' hell's blazes for joy!' Och, he's cracked, that fella. I tell him many's the time it's in the asylum he should be, but sure, you might as well talk to the potstick as talk to him. He'll drive you to the station with a heart an' a han', and the capers of him when you both come back'll be like nothin' on God's earth!"

"So long as he doesn't capsize us both into the ditch!..."

"Him capsize you! I'd warm his lug for him if he dar'd to do such a thing!..."

THE TWELFTH CHAPTER

1

He had been to the offices of Messrs. Kilworth and Kilworth in Kildare Street, and had seen Sir John Kilworth and settled as much of his business as could then be done. Now, wondering just what he should do next, he made his way to Stephen's Green and entered the Park, and while he was standing on the bridge over the lake, looking at the dark fish in the water, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turning round, saw John Marsh.

"I didn't know you were in Dublin," John said, holding out his hand.

"I haven't been here very long," Henry answered, "and I'm going away again after Easter. I'm going to be married."

"Married!"

"Yes ... to Ninian Graham's sister. I've often talked of you to her. You must come and stay with us when we get back to Ballymartin."

"Yes. Yes, I should like to! I hope you'll be happy, Henry!" He spoke in a nervous, agitated way that was not habitual with him, and Henry, looking more closely at him, saw that he was tired and ill-looking.

"Aren't you well, John?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I'm quite well. I'm rather tired, that's all. I've been working very hard!"

"Still drilling?"

"Yes ... still drilling!"

"What are you doing at Easter, John?" Henry asked.

Marsh looked at him quickly, almost in a startled fashion. "At Easter!" he repeated. "Oh ... nothing! Why?"

"You and I might go for a long walk through the mountains," Henry answered. "We could walk to Glendalough and back again. It would just fill up the Easter holidays. Let's start to-morrow morning. I'm staying at the Club. You can meet me there!"

"No, I'm sorry, Henry, I can't go with you!..."

"Why not? You said you'd nothing particular to do!"

"I'm going to Mass in the morning...."

"Well, that doesn't matter. We can start after you've been. Come along, John. You look washed-out, and the tramp'll do you good!..."

Marsh shook his head. "I can't go, Henry," he said. "It isn't only to-morrow morning that I want to go to Mass ... I want to go the day after ... and I want to go with all ... all my people on Easter Sunday!"

"You've grown very religious, John. Do you go to Mass every morning?"

"I've been every morning now for a month. You see, one doesn't know ... well, perhaps I am growing more religious. I won't keep you now. Perhaps I shall see you again!..."

"Why, of course, you'll see me again. Heaven and earth, man, anybody'd think you were going to die, the way you talk!"

Marsh did not speak. He smiled when Henry spoke of dying, and then looked away. They were still standing on the bridge, and he leant on the parapet and looked down on the lake.

"Queer things, fish!" he said.

"Not nearly so queer as you are," Henry answered. "Why won't you come with me? You won't want to be cooped up in Dublin all Easter, do you?"

"Cooped up!"

"Yes. Two or three days of mountain air 'ud do you a world of good. You'd better come with me!"

"No, I can't," he answered so abruptly that Henry did not press the matter again. "When are you going to be married, Henry?" he asked, speaking in his old, kindly tone again.

"At the beginning of May ... less than a fortnight now!"

Marsh turned away from the water, and stood with his back to the parapet. "Why don't you spend Easter with your fiancée?" he said.

"That isn't quite possible, John. I should only be in the way, if I were there now!"

"Or at Ballymartin. It would be rather nice to spend Easter at Ballymartin!"

"Well, I will, if you'll come with me...."

"I can't do that. I don't think I should stay in Dublin at Easter if I were you...."

"Why?"

"Oh, it'll be dull for you. People go away. There's not much to do. I should go to the North or over to England or somewhere if I were you!"

Henry felt resentful. "You seem damned anxious to get rid of me, John," he said. "You won't come into the mountains with me, and you keep on telling me to clear out of Dublin!"

Marsh turned to him quickly, and put his hand on his arm.

"My dear Henry," he said, very gently, "you know that I don't feel like that. I thought you'd be ... I thought you'd have a happier Easter out of Dublin, that was all. That place in Wales, where you went with poor Farlow...."

"Tre'Arrdur Bay?"

"Yes. Why don't you go there? It really isn't much further than Glendalough."

"You can't walk to it, John, and you can walk to Glendalough!"

"Oh, well, if you won't go ... you won't go, and there's an end of it. Good-bye!"

"Wait a bit. Come and dine with me to-night!"

"I can't, Henry!" Henry made an angry gesture. "Don't be hurt," Marsh went on quickly. "I have things to attend to. You see, I didn't know you were here. I'm on my way now to a ... a committee meeting. I'll come and see you to-morrow, if I can manage it. I'll lunch with you somewhere!"

"All right. I'll meet you here at one, and we'll lunch at the Shelbourne. By the way, John, aren't there some races on Monday?"

"Yes ... at Fairyhouse!"

"Well, couldn't we go to them? I've never seen a horse-race in my life!..."

"I don't think I can manage that, Henry!..."

"Oh, damn you, you can't manage anything. Well, all right, I'll see you to-morrow!"

"Good-bye, then!..."

He went off, leaving Henry on the bridge staring after him, and as he went towards the Grafton Street gate, there was something slightly incongruous about his look.

"I know what it is," Henry said to himself. "His coat's too big for him. He always did wear things that didn't fit him!"

2

Marsh did not keep the appointment. Soon after one o'clock, a boy came to Henry, and asked him if he were Mr. Quinn, and when Henry had assured him that he was, he said, "Mr. Marsh bid me to tell you, sir, that he's not able to come. He says he's very sorry, but he can't help it!"

The lad repeated the message almost as if he had learned it by heart. "Oh, very well!" Henry said, offering money to him.

"Ah, sure, that's all right, sir!" the lad said, and then he went away.

"I suppose," Henry said to himself angrily, "he's at his damned drilling again!"

He lunched alone, and then took the tram to Kingstown, and walked from there to Bray along the coast. He felt dispirited and lonely. Jordan and Saxon were out of Dublin ... Jordan was in Sligo, he had heard, and Saxon was staying with his uncle near the mountains. He knew that Crews lived in Bray, but he had forgotten the address. "Perhaps," he thought, "I shall see him in the street...."

"Lordy God!" he exclaimed, "I'd give the world for some one to talk to. John Marsh might have tried to meet me. Fooling about with his ... penny-farthing volunteers!"

"In a little while," he said to himself, as he descended into Killiney and walked along the road by the railway station, "I shall be married to Mary, and then!..."

He remembered what she had said to him at Boveyhayne, "I'd like you to go, Quinny ... I can't pretend that I wouldn't...."

He stood for a while, leaning against the wall and looking out over the crumpled sea. "I don't know," he said to himself, "I don't know!"

3

He climbed to the top of Bray Head, and while he stood there, his mind was full of thoughts that beat backwards and forwards. In olden times, the histories said, Ireland had sent a stream of scholars over the waste places of Europe to fertilise them and make them fruitful. "Now," he thought bitterly, "we send 'bosses' to Tammany Hall...."

He tried to envisage the means whereby Ireland would be brought to the measure and the stature of a dignified and honourable nation ... "not this brawling, whining, cadging, snivelling, Oh-Jesus-have-mercy-on-us disorder!" and he saw only a long, tedious, painful process of self-regeneration. "We must rise on our own wings!"

"But first we must be free, free from the bondage of history, free from the bondage of romance, free from the bondage of politics, free from the bondage of religion, and free from the bondage of our bellies!"

"There are four Irishmen to be conquered and controlled: the Publican, the Priest, the Politician and the Poet...."

"We cannot be friendly with England until we are equal with England ... but England cannot make us equal with her ... we can only do that ourselves!"

"England is our sister ... not our mother!..."

"Catholicism is Death ... and Intolerance is Death. Wherever there is Catholicism there is Decay that will not be stopped until the people protest. Wherever there is Intolerance there is a waste of life, a perversion of energy. When the Protestant ceases, and the Catholic begins, to shout 'To Hell with the Pope,' there will be glory and life in Ireland...."

He tried to plan a means of making a change of mind in Ireland. "We must make opinions and active brains!" and so he saw himself urging his friends to abandon parliaments to the middle-aged and the second-rate, while they bent their minds to the conquest of the schools. "Let the old men make their speeches," he said aloud as if he were addressing a conference. "We'll mould the minds of the children!"

They must exult in service. "I believe in Work ... in the Job Well Done ... in giving oneself without ceasing ... in the holy communion of men labouring together for something which is greater than themselves ... in spending oneself with no reward but to know that one is spent well!..."

They would enlist the young men of generous mind. They would open their minds to the knowledge of the wide world, and would pity the man who was content only to be an islander; and they would give the harvest of their minds to their juniors, so that they, when they grew to manhood, might find greater ease in working for the common good. They would demand, not privileges, but responsibilities. "If we cannot make decisions, even when we decide wrongly, then we are not men!"

"We must kill the Publican, we must subdue the Priest, we must humiliate the Politician, and chasten the Poet...."

"In all our ways, O God, let us guide ourselves!..."

It seemed to him that God was not a Being who miraculously made the world, but a Being who laboured at it, suffered and failed, and rose again and achieved.... He could hear God, stumbling through the Universe, full of the agony of desire, calling continually, "Let there be Light! Let there be Light!..."

4

He looked about him. Behind him, lay the long broken line of the Wicklow mountains, with the Sugar Loaf thrusting its pointed head into the heavens. There in front of him, heaving and tumbling, was the sea: a miracle of healing and cleansing. It would be good, he thought, to spend one's life in the sound of the sea, taking no care for the lives of other men, content that oneself was fed and comfortable. "But that would not be enough. There must be Light and More Light!"

"God," he said, "has many forms. In that place, he is a Quietness ... in this place, a Discontent ... in a third place, a Quest."

"But here, God is a Demand. 'Let there be Light! Let there be more Light!'"

5

He went home and wrote to Mary. "_My impulse is to tell you no more than this, that I love you. I wrote to you this morning, and I have nothing to add that is news. But I feel an overpowering desire to insist on my love for you ... to do nothing for ever but love you and love you.... You see the mood I'm in! I went out of Dublin to-day, sulking and depressed because John Marsh had failed me and I was lonely, but now I'm extraordinarily happy. I feel that I have only to stretch out my hand and touch you ... and then I shall be depressed no more. This is not a letter. It has no beginning and it will have no end. It's an outpouring. To-night is very beautiful. I went up to my bedroom a few moments ago, and sat at the window looking over Stephen's Green. There was a blue mist hanging over the trees, and the sky was full of light and colour. I do not believe there is any place in the world where one sees so much of the sky as in Dublin. It reaches up and up until you feel that if a bird were to pierce the clouds with its beak, it would tear a hole in the heavens and let the universe in. And while I was sitting there, I felt very near to you, dearest. In ten days we shall be married, and then you will come with me and see these places, too. I shall become Irish over again when I show you my home, and I shall watch Ireland taking hold of you and absorbing you and making you as Irish as I am. You'll go on thinking that you're English until some one speaks disparagingly of Ireland, and then you'll flare up, and you'll be Irish, not only in nature, but in knowledge. Ireland does that to people, so you cannot hope to escape. Good-night, my very dear!_"

6

On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are tired and happy. As he crossed O'Connell Bridge, he stood for a few moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had transmuted the river to the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and the sunlight made the houses on the quays look warm and lovely, even though they were old and worn and discoloured. "In her heart," he thought, "Dublin is still a proud lady, although her dress be draggled!"

He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were marching towards Liberty Hall. There were little girls in Gaelic dress at the head of them, accompanied by a pale, tired-looking woman, with tightened lips, who stumped heavily by the side of them; and following them, came young men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry labourers, misshapen by heavy toil and privation ... and as the company passed by, girls stood on the pavement and jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with tightened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed hair....

"They're fools," Henry thought, looking at them as they went wearily on, "but, by God, they're finer than the people who jeer at them. They ... they are serving something ... and these Don't-Care-a-Damners aren't serving anything!..."

There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and said, "Them lads 'ud run like hell if you were to point a penny pop-gun at them! If a peeler was to take their names, they'd be shiverin' with fright. They'd fall out of their trousers with the terror'd be on them!"

Henry did not answer. Indeed, it seemed incredible that there was any fight in them ... if he had been asked for his opinion, he might have said something similar to what this stranger had said to him ... but he hated to hear the man's disparagement, and so he did not make any answer to him.

"I'd rather have them on my side than have him," he thought as he moved away, "with the stink of porter on him!"

It sickened him to see the generosity and the youth walking in the company of the hopelessness of Ireland, training themselves in the means of killing. "If they'd put all that energy and enthusiasm into something that will preserve life and make it deeper and finer, nothing could prevail against them. If only John had more intellect and less emotion ... if Mineely and Connolly were less bitter!"

He walked along Grafton Street, turning phrases over in his mind, angry phrases, bitter things that he would say to John Marsh when he met him.

"What have young lads and girls to do with Hate and Death?" he said to himself, as if he were talking to Marsh. "You're perverting them from their purpose! You're robbing God of His due ... of the hope that fills His Heart with each generation!"

"But it's no good talking to him ... he's too fond of spilling over. If he were like Yeats, content to love Ireland at a distance ... to 'arise and go now' no further than the Euston Road ... he might achieve something, and at all events, he'd be harmless!"

He turned out of Grafton Street into Stephen's Green.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to Fairyhouse!"

And then he went to his Club. He was tired and sleepy, and soon after supper, he went to bed.

7

It was late when he awoke and so, feeling lazy after his day's climbing, he resolved that he would not go to the races. "I'll loaf about," he said, "and to-night I'll go to a theatre." There was a letter from Mary and one from Roger. "_Gerald Luke was killed in France last week, and so was Clifford Dartrey. Goeffrey Grant has been wounded badly. The Improved Tories have suffered heavily in the War...._" Roger wrote.

When he had breakfasted, he left the Club and walked towards Sackville Street. He would go to the Abbey Theatre, he thought, and book a seat for the evening performance.

There was an odd, bewildered look about the people who stood in groups in Sackville Street.

"What's up?" Henry said to a bystander.

"Begod," said the man, "I think there's a rebellion on. That's what this woman says anyway!"

"A what?"

"A rebellion or something of the sort. You can ask her yourself! Begod, it's a quare day to have it. The people'll not enjoy themselves at all...."

Henry turned to the woman who was standing in the centre of the group, endlessly relating her experience.

"I went to the Gener'l," she said, "an' I said to the man behin' the counter, 'Gimme two ha'penny postcards an' a penny stamp an' change for a shillin', if you please!' and I hadn't the words out of my mouth 'til a man in a green uniform ... one of them Sinn Feiners ... come up to me, an' pointed a gun at me, an' toul' me to go home. 'Go home yourself!' says I, an' I give his oul' gun a push with my hand, 'an' who are you to be orderin' a person about?' 'If you don't go on when I tell you,' says he, 'I'll shoot you!' an' I declare to my God he looked as if he'd blow the head off you. 'Well, wait till I get my change anyway,' says I. 'Ye'll get no change here,' says he. 'I will so,' I said, and I turned to the man behind the counter, but, sure, God bless you, he wasn't there. 'Well, this bates all,' says I to the Sinn Feiner, 'an if the peelers catches a houldt of you, you'll get into bother over the head of this!' I picked up my shillin', an' I went out. The place was full of them. They were orderin' everybody out, except a couple or three soldiers that they made prisoners. An' if you were to go down there now, you'd see them, young fellas that I could bate with my one hand, cocked up behin' the windas with guns in their hands, an' telling people to move on out of that...."

Some one came into the group, and said "What's that?" and she turned to him and began again. "I went in to the Gener'l," she said, "an' I said to the man behin' the counter, 'Gimme two ha'penny postcards....'"

Henry made his way out of the group of listeners, and walked down the street towards the General Post Office.

"It's absurd," he said. "Ridiculous! A rebellion!"

But something was toward. On the roof of the Post Office there were two flags, a green flag with a motto on it, and a tri-colour, orange, white and green. There was hardly any wind, and the flags hung limply from their staffs, but as Henry approached the Post Office, the wind stirred, and the green flag fluttered enough for him to read what was printed on it. It bore the legend IRISH REPUBLIC.

"It's a poor sort of performance, this!" he said as he came up to the building.

All the windows on the ground floor were broken, and many of those on the upper floors, and in each window, on sacks laid on piled furniture, were one or two young volunteers, each with a rifle cocked....

8

There was a holiday mood on the people. They had come out to enjoy themselves, and here was an entertainment beyond their dreams of pleasure.... It was a dangerous kind of joke to play ... one of them oul' guns might go off, and who knows who might get killed dead ... and it was a serious thing to seize possession of the Post Office ... if the peelers was to come an' catch them at it an' bring them before the magistrates, they'd be damn near transported ... but it was the great joke all the same. Whoever thought there would be the like of that to see, and not a penny to pay for it.... The minute the peelers came up ... where in hell were the peelers?

It was then that they began to believe that there was more than a joke in this rebellion. There were no policemen to be seen anywhere. "That's strange now! There ought to be a peeler or two about!..."

Then some one, pale and startled, came by. "They've killed a policeman!" he said. "The unfortunate man! I was coming past the Castle, and I saw a Sinn Feiner go up to him and blow his brains out. Not a word of warning! The poor man put up his hand to bid them go back ... they were trying to get into the Castle ... and the Sinn Feiner lifted his rifle and shot him dead!..."

"Begod, it's in earnest they are!..."

"But what can they do? They can't hold out against the British Army...."

"They might do a lot, now! They're mad, the whole of them! What in hell do they want to start a rebellion for?..."

Henry moved away. He went from group to group, listening to one for a while, and then moving on to another. There were many rumours already flying through the crowd. The Germans had landed in the West, and were marching to Dublin. A "mysterious stranger" had been captured on the coast of Kerry a few days before. "It was Casement!" The German Navy had made a raid on England, and the British Fleet had been badly beaten....

A youth, holding a rifle with a fixed bayonet, stood on sentry-go in the middle of the street. He was very pale and tired and nervous-looking, but looked as resolute as he looked tired. He did not speak to any one, nor did any one speak to him. He stood there, staring fixedly in front of him, watching and watching....

There was a sound of rumbling carts, and the noise of people cheering, and presently a procession of wagons, loaded with cauliflower, and guarded by armed Volunteers, came out of a side street, and drove up to the Post Office.

"The Commissariat!" some one said. "Begod they'll be tired of cauliflower before they're through with that lot!"

It was comical to see those loads of cauliflower being driven past. Ireland was to fight for freedom with her stomach full of cauliflower....

There was a Proclamation of the Republic on a wall near by, and he hurried to read it.

"What's the thing at the head of it?" a woman asked, gazing at the Gaelic inscription on top of the Proclamation.

"That's Irish," the man beside her replied.

"I know that. What does it mean?"

"Begod, I don't know...."

Henry read the Proclamation through, and then re-read the finely-phrased end of it!

_We place the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High
God, Whose Blessing we invoke on our arms, and we pray that no one
who serves that cause will dishonour it. In this supreme hour the
Irish nation must by its valour and discipline, and by the
readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common
good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is
called._

"That's John," he said to himself, "or MacDonagh! And they began the thing by killing an unarmed man! Their fine phrases won't cover that mean deed!..."

9

He went back to his Club, and on the way, found that the rebels were in possession of Stephen's Green. The gates were closed, and at each gate were armed guards. He looked through the railings, and saw some boys lying on the turf, with their rifles beside them. They did not move nor look up, but lay very still and quiet, with a strange, preoccupied expression on their faces. A little further on, other lads were digging up the earth.

"What are you doing?" he said to one of them, and the lad straightened himself and wiped the sweat from his brow.

"I don't know, sir!" he said, smiling nervously. "I'm supposed to be diggin' a trench, but I think I'm diggin' my grave!..."

A trench! When he looked at the poor scraping of earth and sod, he felt a fierce anger against Marsh and his friends swelling in his heart "They haven't the gumption to know that this is the worst place they could have chosen to entrench themselves, even if they knew how to make trenches!" On all sides of the Green were high houses, from which it would be easy to pick off every man that lay in the trenches....

There were carts and motor-cars drawn across the street to make a barricade, and most of the gates of the Green had garden-seats and planks lying against them. There were even branches, torn from the trees and shrubs, thrust through the railings....

He went into his Club to lunch. "They're in the College of Surgeons, sir!" a servant said. "They say Madame's in the Green!..."

"Madame?" he said vaguely.

"Yes. Madame Markiewicz. They killed a policeman...."

"Do you mean the man at the Castle?"

"No, sir. I didn't hear of him. They killed this one on the other side of the Green. There's cold lamb and cold chicken, sir!"

"I'll have lamb!..."

He hurried over his meal. He had little appetite for eating, and when he had finished, he went to the smoking-room and wrote to Mary. "_Don't be alarmed if you see anything about an Irish Rebellion in the newspapers_," he wrote. "_It will probably be over by to-morrow. I'm quite all right. You're not to worry!..._" And when he had finished it he went out and posted it. "Good Lord!" he said aloud, as the letter fell into the box, "I forgot that they've got hold of the General. I don't suppose there'll be a collection!"

He returned to the Club, but he could not keep still. There was no one, except the servants and himself, in the house, and the emptiness of it made him feel restless. Looking out of the window, he saw little girls, like those he had seen on Sunday night, running about the Green, busy on errands....

"The Kids' Rebellion!" he said to himself....

He left the club, and walked round the Green again, and as he passed the College of Surgeons, two men appeared on the roof, and proceeded to unfold the Republican tri-colour. They were clumsy, and they fumbled with it, entangling the cords ... but at last they got it free, and then they hauled it to the top of the flagstaff. The people on the pavement below watched it as it fluttered in the light breeze, but none of them spoke or cheered. The rebels in the Green made no sound either. The Republican flag was hauled to its place in silence.

"They don't seem very grateful for their deliverance," Henry thought, glancing at the bystanders as he moved up the street. There was a crowd of people on the edge of the pavement, and he thrust himself into it, and glanced over the shoulder of a woman at the ground. There was a mess of thick, congealing blood splashed on the road and the kerb.

"That's where the peeler was killed!" the woman said to him....

He edged out of the crowd as quickly as he could, feeling sick with horror, and again he felt a bitter anger against John Marsh.

"He was going to Mass every morning, damn him, to make sure of his own soul, but he didn't give the policeman time to make any preparation. All his high motives and his idealism tumble down to that ... that mess on the pavement!..."

10

"But what's the Government doing?" he wondered.

There were no police, no soldiers, no authority anywhere. It seemed unbelievable that a number of armed youths and men could seize a capital city without opposition of any kind. He wondered whether there was any truth in the rumours that had been floating about the city all day. Could it possibly be that the Germans had effected a landing in Ireland and were marching on the city? Could it be true that the British Fleet had been destroyed by the German Fleet? Had the Government thrown up the sponge?...

He met O'Dowd, an official whom he had seen several times at the Club. "Where's the Government?" he asked....

"Well, to tell you the truth, Quinn, I don't know. I believe there's an election going on at Trinity College. It's a damned comic affair, this!"

"Comic!"

"Well, I mean to say, it's a bit rum, isn't it?"

11

He went back to the Club in the evening. There were no lights in the streets, and as the dusk settled down, the crowds of holiday-makers began to move homewards. There were no trams running and few cars to be seen, and the tired crowd that had been standing or walking about all day, dragged itself home listlessly and heavily. There was a sense of foreboding over the people, and some of them glanced apprehensively about them. The thing had been funny in the daylight, but it was getting dark now ... and who knew what might be lurking in the shadows? It was strange that there were no police to be seen anywhere, and stranger still that the soldiers had not appeared....

There was a Sinn Feiner on guard at the gate near Henry's Club, and sitting at the open window, Henry could see him very distinctly: a little, red-haired, angry man, who chewed his moustache and gaped about him with bloodshot eyes. There were other Sinn Feiners with him, but he was the most distinctive. He could not stay still: he moved about continually, going into the Park and coming out again, challenging passers-by, sloping his rifle and ordering it, and then sloping it again. "The thing's getting on his nerves," Henry thought, as he watched him; and while he watched, an elderly man came past the Shelbourne Hotel in the uniform of a naval officer. The Sinn Feiners saw him, and the red-haired man ordered his subordinates to arrest him. They ran across the street and attempted to seize him, but he resisted, and raised his walking stick to defend himself. A rebel caught hold of the stick, and the two men stood there, against a gateway, struggling to wrest the stick from each other. The up-and-down movement of their arms was like the quick, jerky movement of figures in a film, and for a moment or two, Henry wanted to laugh ... but the desire died when he saw the red-haired man raising his rifle and aiming at the old man's heart....

"Oh, my God, he's going to shoot him!" he shouted out, jumping up from his seat and leaning out of the window. "Don't shoot him ... don't shoot him!" he cried. It seemed to him that he was yelling at the top of his voice, but that could not have been so, for no one turned to look ... and yet he could hear the red-haired man distinctly.

"I have ye covered," he was saying, "an' I'll shoot ye if ye don't give in!..."

The old man held on to the stick for a moment or two, and then, straightening himself, he surrendered; and the rebels led him into the Park. Through the trees, Henry could see him being conducted before a rebel officer who saluted him and began to interrogate him. Then the procession moved off into the centre of the Park, and the little angry, red-haired man returned to the gate.

"In the morning," Henry exclaimed to himself, "in the morning, that little swine will sing another song!"

12

A horse-drawn cab came down the street, and as it approached, the guard at the gate turned out, and challenged the driver. "Halt!" they shouted.

"Ah, g'long with you!" the driver replied, whipping up his horse.

"Halt!" they called again, and a third time "Halt!" but the driver did not heed them, and then they fired at him.... There was a clatter of hooves on the street, and the horse fell to the ground, striking sparks from the stones as it struggled to rise again. The driver did not pause: he jumped from his box with amazing celerity and disappeared so swiftly that the rebels could not catch him. And while the horse lay struggling on the street, a motor-car came by, and again the rebels sent out their challenge, and again the challenge was ignored. "Halt! Halt! Halt!..." The chauffeur drove on, and the rebels fired on the occupants of the car. There was a swift application of brakes, and the car slithered up against the pavement ... and as it slithered, a man stood up beside the driver, holding his hand to his side, and yelled, "Oh, I'm dead! I'm dead!..."

The chauffeur hurried away....

The rebels gathered round the shrieking man. "Why didn't you stop when we challenged you!" they demanded.

"Aw! Aw! Aw!" he answered....

"Like a stuck pig!" thought Henry. "Squealing like a stuck pig!"

His head was rolling, but he was able to walk. "He's not much hurt," Henry murmured to himself, "but he's damned frightened."

"Aw, what did ye do it for? Aw! Aw! Aw!..."

"Take him to the hospital!..."

They led him a little way towards the hospital of St. Vincent de Paul, and then, for some reason, changed their minds, and took him into the Park. It was difficult now to see what was happening. There was a derelict tram near the club, and beyond that, still pawing at the ground, was the wounded horse....

"Why don't they shoot the poor beast!" Henry exclaimed.

But it would not enter their minds to put the animal out of pain. They were Catholics, and Catholic peoples, the world over, are cruel to beasts. Too intent on pitying their own souls, to have pity on animals....

13

He closed the shutters and turned on the light. "I wonder where John is?" he thought as he did so. "_This_ is why he couldn't come to Glendalough with me. What the hell does he think he's going to gain by it?" He glanced about the room. "It's damned odd," he said aloud, "but I don't feel frightened. I should have thought I'd feel scared.... Of course, as there was going to be a rebellion, I'm rather glad I'm here to see it!"

He went to his bedroom and got a pack of patience cards.

"There'll be no theatre to-night!" he said. "I think I'll play 'Miss Milligan.' ..."

14

The silence of the house made him feel restless.

"I'll go to bed," he exclaimed. "I may as well get all the sleep I can."

He went to his room, and stumbled towards the windows.

"I'll close the shutters while I'm undressing;" he went on. "I don't want to be 'potted' needlessly!"

He tried to see into the Park, but the great masses of trees that undulated like a rough sea, prevented him from seeing anything. There were figures at the gate ... on guard!

"I wonder if that little red-haired man's still there," he thought. "Poor devils! Some of them must feel damned queer to-night!..."

He closed the shutters, and switched the light on, and then, when he had undressed he darkened the room again. "I must have some air," he said, opening the shutters.

He climbed into bed. Now and then a rifle-shot was fired, and sometimes there was a succession of shots....

"In the morning," he said, as he turned on his side and closed his eyes, "they'll be cleared out of that!..."

THE THIRTEENTH CHAPTER

1

He awoke suddenly, and sat up in bed. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "I've been asleep!" It was still dark, but less dark than it was when he came to bed. He could just see the time by holding his watch close to his eyes. "Four," he murmured. It was strange that he should have slept at all, for there had been spasmodic firing all night. He got out of bed, and went across his room to the window, and looked out, and as he looked, the wounded horse struggled to rise, pawing the ground feebly, and then fell over on its side. "It isn't dead!..." When he had looked at it last, it had been lying very still, and he had thought it was dead.

He looked across the road to the Park gates, but could not see any one standing there. "Perhaps they've gone!" There was a shapeless thing lying on the ground, outside the gates, but he could not make out what it was. In the dim light, it looked like a great piece of paper ... the debris of a windy day.

There was no movement anywhere ... the horse was still now ... but now and then a single shot rang out, and then came a volley. "You'd think they were just trying to make a noise! I wonder what's been happening all night," he said, as he went back to bed.

2