"You're not much of a patriot," Ninian said.

"I don't want to be a damned patriot. I want to be with people I like. I don't see why I should be compelled to go and live with a lot of people I don't know and don't care about, just because I'm Irish and they're Irish, when I really want to be with you and Gilbert and Roger.... I haven't seen Roger since I left Rumpell's and I don't suppose I shall see him for a long time!"

Gilbert tried to mock him out of his anger. "This emotion does you credit, young Quinny!" he said, "and we are touched, Ninian and I. Aren't we, Ninian! But you must be a man, Quinny! Four years hence, we shall all meet in London, Deo volente, and we'll be able to compare the education of Ireland with the education of England. Oh, Lordy God, I sometimes wish we hadn't got minds at all. I think it must be lovely to be a cow ... nothing to do but chew the damned cud all day. No soul to consider, no mind to improve, no anything!..."

Gilbert and he left Boveyhayne together, but Gilbert was only going as far as Templecombe with him, where he was to change on his way to Cheltenham. Ninian and Mary saw them off at Whitcombe, and when he remembered the circumstances in which she had seen him off before, Henry had a longing to take hold of her arm and lead her to the end of the platform, as he had done then, and tell her that he was sorry for everything and beg her to start again where they had left off that day ... but Gilbert was there and Ninian was there, and there was no opportunity, and the train went off, leaving the explanation unmade.

9

"Good-bye, Quinny!" Gilbert said at Templecombe.

"Good-bye, Gilbert!" Henry answered in a low tone.

"I suppose you'll write to me some day?"

"I suppose so. Yes, of course!..."

"Ripping day, isn't it? Shame to be wasting it in a blooming train!"

"Yes!"

He wished that the train would break down so that he need not part from Gilbert yet, but while he was wishing, it began to move. Gilbert stood back from the carriage and waved his hand to him, and Henry leant with his head through the window of his carriage, smiling....

"Damn Trinity," he said, sitting back in his seat, and letting depression envelop him. "Damn and blast Trinity!..."



THE SECOND BOOK

OF

CHANGING WINDS

I write of Youth, of Love, and have Accesse By these, to sing of cleanly-Wantonnesse.

HERRICK.



THE FIRST CHAPTER

1

Henry Quinn climbed into a carriage at Amiens Street station and sat back in his seat and puffed with pleasure, blowing out his breath with a long "poo-ing" sound. He was quit of Trinity College at last! Thank God, he was quit of it at last! The hatred with which he had entered Trinity had, in his four years of graduation, been mitigated ... there were even times when he had kindly thoughts of Trinity ... but every letter he received from Gilbert Farlow or Ninian Graham or Roger Carey stirred the resentment he felt at his separation from his friends who had gone to Cambridge, and so, in spite of the kindlier feeling he now had for the College, he was happy to think that he was quitting it for the last time. "But it isn't Irish," he insisted when his father complained of his lack of love for Trinity. "It's ... it's a hermaphrodite of a college, neither one thing nor another, English nor Irish. I always feel, when I step out of College Green into Trinity, that I've stepped right out of Ireland and landed on the point of a rock in the middle of the Irish Sea ... and the point pricks and is damned uncomfortable!"

"You've got the English habit of damning everything, Henry!" his father replied at a tangent.

But Henry would not be drawn away from his argument.

"The atmosphere of the place is all wrong," he went on. "The Provost looks down the side of his nose at you if he thinks you take an interest in Ireland!"

Mr. Quinn, in his eagerness to defend his College from reproaches which he knew to be deserved, reminded Henry that the Provost had a considerable reputation as a Greek scholar, but his effort only delivered him more completely into Henry's hands.

"But, father," Henry said, "you yourself used to say what's the good of knowing all about Greece when you don't know anything about Ireland. I don't care about Greece and all those rotten little holes in the Aegean ... that's dead and done with ... but I do care about Ireland which isn't dead and done with!"

It was then that Mr. Quinn found consolation. "Well, anyway, you've learned to love Ireland," he said. "Trinity's done that much for you!"

"Trinity hasn't done it for me," Henry answered, "I did it for myself."

Lying back in his seat, waiting for the train to steam out of the station on its journey to Belfast, Henry remembered that conversation with his father, and his mind speculated freely on his attitude towards Trinity. "I don't care," he said, "if I never put my foot inside the gates again!"

Something that Patrick Galway said to him once, when he and John Marsh were talking of Trinity, came back to his memory. "The College is living on Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke," Galway said, and added, "It's like a maiden lady in a suburb giving herself airs because her great-grandfather knew somebody who was great. It hasn't produced a man who's done anything for Ireland, except harm, not in the last hundred years anyhow. Lawyers and parsons and officials, that's the best Trinity can do! If you think of the Irishmen who've done anything fine for Ireland, you'll find that, when they came from universities at all, they came from Oxford or Cambridge, anywhere on God's earth but Trinity. Horace Plunkett was at Oxford...."

"Eton, too!" Marsh had interjected.

"Yes, Eton!" Galway went on. "Think of it! An Irish patriot coming from Eton where you'd think only Irish oppressors would come from! If Plunkett had been educated in an Irish school and sent to Trinity, do you think he'd have done anything decent for Ireland?"

"Yes," Henry had replied promptly. "He's that kind of man!"

"No, he wouldn't," Galway retorted. "They'd have educated the decency out of him, and he'd have been a ... a sort of Lord Ashtown!"

But Henry would have none of that. He would not believe that a man's nature can be altered by pedagogues.

"Horace Plunkett would have been a good Irishman if he'd been born and reared and educated in an Orange Lodge," he said.

"I'm not talking about natures," Galway replied. "I'm talking about beliefs. They'd have told him it was no good trying to build up an Irish nation...."

"He wouldn't have believed them," Henry retorted. "Damn it, Galway, do you think a man like Plunkett would let a lot of fiddling schoolmasters knock him off his balance?"

"I'm a schoolmaster," Galway answered, "and I know what schoolmasters can do!" His voice changed, deepening, as he spoke. "I know what the young teachers in Ireland mean to do!"

"What do they mean to do?" Henry had asked jokingly.

"Make Irishmen," Galway answered.

"If only Trinity would make Irishmen," he went on, "we'd all be saved a deal of trouble. But it won't, and when a man of family, like Plunkett, is born with good will for Ireland, he has to go to England to be educated. And he ought to be educated in Ireland, and he would be if Trinity were worth a damn. I wish I were Provost, I'd teach Irishmen to be proud of their birth!"

"Well, when we've made Ireland a nation," said Henry, chaffing him, "we'll make you Provost of Trinity!" and Galway, though he knew that Henry was jesting, smiled with pleasure.

"When Ireland is a nation!" Marsh murmured dreamily.

2

It was extraordinary, Henry thought, how little at home he had felt in Dublin. He had the feel of Ballymartin in his bones. He had kinship with the people in Belfast. At Rumpell's and at Boveyhayne he had had no sensation of alien origin. He had stepped into the life of the school as naturally as Gilbert Farlow had done, and at Boveyhayne, even when he still had difficulty in catching the dialect of the fishermen, he had felt at home. But in Dublin, he had an uneasy feeling that after all, he was a stranger. In his first year at Trinity, he had been brutally contemptuous of the city and its inhabitants. "They can't even put up the names of the streets so that people can read them," he said to John Marsh soon after he arrived in Dublin. "They're so damned incompetent!" And Marsh had told him to control his Ulster blood. "You're right to be proud of Ulster," he had said, "but you oughtn't to go about talking as if the rest of Ireland were inhabited by fools!"

"I know I oughtn't," Henry replied, "but I can't help it when I see the way these asses are letting Dublin down!"

That was how he felt about Dublin and the Dublin people, that Dublin was being "let down" by her citizens. His first impression of the city was that it was noble, even beautiful, in spite of its untidiness, its distress. He would wander about the streets, gazing at the fine old Georgian houses, tumbling into decay, and feel so much anger against the indifferent citizens that sometimes he felt like hitting the first Dublin man he met ... hitting him hard so that he should bleed!...

"I feel as if Dublin were like an old mansion left by a drunken lord in the charge of a drunken caretaker," he said to Marsh. "It's horrible to see those beautiful houses decaying, but it's more horrible to think that nobody cares!"

Marsh had taken him one Sunday to a house where there were ceilings that were notable even in Dublin which is full of houses with beautiful ceilings.

"If we had houses like that in Belfast," Henry had said, as they came away, "we wouldn't let them become slums!"

"No," retorted Marsh, unable to restrain himself from sneering, "you'd make peep-shows out of them and charge for admission!"

"Well, that would be better than turning them into slums," Henry answered good-humouredly.

"Would it?" Marsh replied.

"Would it?" Henry wondered. The train was now on its way to Belfast, and, looking idly out of the window, he could see the waves of the Irish Sea breaking on the sands at Malahide, heaving suddenly into a glassy-green heap, and then tumbling over into a sprawl of white foam. Would it? he wondered, thinking again of what Marsh had said about the Georgian houses with their wide halls and lovely Adams ceilings. There was no beauty of building at all in Belfast, and no one there seemed anxious that there should be: in all that city, so full of energy and purpose and grit and acuteness of mind, there did not appear to be one man of power who cared for the fine shape or the good look of things; but, after all, was that so very much worse than the state of mind of the Dublin people who, knowing what beauty is, carelessly let it decay? He began to feel bitterly about Ireland and her indifference to culture and beauty. He told himself that Ireland was the land of people who do not care....

"They've got to be made to care!" he said aloud.

But how was it to be done?...

His sense of being an alien in Dublin had persisted all the time that he had lived there. The Dublin people were gregarious and garrulous, and he was solitary and reflective. Marsh and Galway had taken him to houses where people met and talked without stopping, and much conversation with miscellaneous, casually-encountered people bored Henry. He had no gift for ready talk and he disliked crowds and he was unable to carry on a conversation with people whom he did not know, of whose very names he was ignorant. Sometimes, he had envied Marsh and Galway because of the ease with which they could converse with strangers. Marsh would talk about himself and his poems and his work with an innocent vanity that made people like him; but Henry, self-conscious and shy, could not talk of himself or his intentions to any but his intimates. Sitting here, in this carriage, from which, even now, he could see in the distance, veiled in clouds, the high peaks of the Mourne mountains, he tried to explain this difference between Marsh and himself. Why was it that these Dublin men were so lacking in reticence, so eager to communicate, while he and Ulstermen were reserved and eager to keep silent? He set his problem in those terms. He identified himself as a type of the Ulsterman, and began to develop a theory, flattering to himself, to account for the difference between Dublin people and Ulstermen ... until he remembered that Ernest Harper was an Ulsterman. Mr. Quinn had taken Henry to see Harper on the first Sunday evening after they had arrived in Dublin from England, and Harper had received him very charmingly and had talked to him about nationality and co-operation and the Irish drama and the strange inability of Lady Gregory to understand that it was not she who had founded the Abbey Theatre, until Henry, who had never heard of Lady Gregory, began to feel tired. He had waited patiently for a chance to interpolate something into the monologue until hope began to leave him, and then, with a great effort he had interrupted the flow of Harper's vivid talk and had made a reference to a picture hanging on the wall beside him. It showed a flaming fairy in the middle of a dark wood....

"Oh, yes," Harper said, "that's the one I saw!"

"You saw?" Henry had exclaimed in astonishment.

And then he remembered that Harper spoke of fairies as intimately as other men speak of their friends....

"Good God!" he thought, "where am I?" and wondered what Ninian Graham would make of Ernest Harper.

Harper was an Ulsterman, and so was George Russell, whom people called "A. E." Marsh and Galway, now almost inseparable, had taken Henry to hear George Russell speaking on some mystical subject at the Hermetic Club, and Henry, bewildered by the subject, had felt himself irresistibly attracted to the fiery-eyed man who spoke with so little consciousness of his audience. After the meeting was ended, he had walked part of the way home with Russell and had listened to him as he said the whole of his lecture over again ... and he left him with a feeling that Russell was unaware of human presences, that the company of human beings was not necessary to him, that his speech was addressed, not to the visible audience or the visible companion, but to an audience or a companion that no one but himself could see. Was there any one on earth less like the typical Ulsterman than George Russell, who preached mysticism and better business, or Ernest Harper who took penny tramrides to pay visits to the fairies?

No, this theory of some inherent difference between Ulstermen and other Irishmen would not work. There must be some other explanation of Henry's dislike of crowds, his silence in large companies, his inability to assert himself in the presence of strangers. Why was it that he was unable to talk about himself and the things he had done and the things he meant to do as Marsh talked? It was not because he was more modest, had more humility, than Marsh; for in his heart, Henry was vain.... And while he was asking himself this question, suddenly he found the answer. It was because he was afraid to talk about himself, it was because he had not got the courage to be vain and self-assertive in crowds. His inability to talk among strangers, to make people cease their own conversation in order to listen to him, was part of that cowardice that had prevented him from diving into the sea when he went with his father to swim at Cushendall and had sent him shivering into the shelter of the hedge when the runaway horse came galloping down the Ballymena road....

This swift, lightning revelation made him stand up in the carriage and gape at the photographs of Irish scenery in front of him.

"Oh, my God!" he said to himself, "am I always to be tortured like this?"

4

He sat back in his seat and lay against the cushions without moving. He saw himself now very clearly, for he had the power to see himself with the closest fidelity. He knew now that all his explanations were excuses, that the bitter things he had sometimes said of those who had qualities which he had not, were invented to prevent him from admitting that he was without courage. Any fight, mental or physical, unnerved him when it brought him into personal contact with his opponents. He could write wounding things to a man, but he could not say them to him without losing possession of himself and his tongue; and so he passed from the temper of a cool antagonist to that of an enraged shrew. He had tried to explain the garrulity of the Dublin people by saying that they were obliged to talk and to persist in talking because "otherwise they'd start to think!" but he knew now that that was not an accurate explanation, that it was an ill-natured attempt to cover up his own lack of force.

"And that's worse than cowardice," he said to himself, "to excuse my own funkiness by pretending that courage isn't courage!"

He remembered that he had invented a bitter phrase about Yeats one night when he had seen the poet in a house in Dublin. "Yeats is behaving as if he were the archangel Gabriel making the Annunciation!" he had said, and the man to whom he had said it had laughed and asked what Henry thought Yeats was announcing.

"A fresh revision of one of his lyrics," he had replied....

"And I'd give the world," he said now, "to be able to put on his pontifical air!"

He had a shrinking will; his instinct in an emergency was to back away from things. He had not got the capacity to compel men to do his bidding by the simple force of his personality. If he succeeded in persuading people to do things which he suggested to them he was only able to do so after prolonged discussion, sometimes only after everything else had failed. At Rumpell's, Gilbert had made suggestions as if they were commands that must instantly be obeyed ... and they had been instantly obeyed; but when Henry made suggestions, either people did not listen to them or, having listened to them, they acted on some other suggestion, until at last, Henry, disheartened, seldom proposed anything until the last moment, and then he made his proposal in a way which seemed to indicate that he thought little of it; and when some of his suggestions were accepted and had proved, in practice, to be good, his attitude had been, not that of the man who is absolutely sure of himself, but rather of the man who gasps with relief because something that he thought was very likely to be a failure, had proved to be a success.

Depression settled on him so heavily that he began to believe that he was bound to fail in everything that he undertook to do, and when he thought of the bundle of manuscript in his portmanteau, he had a sudden inclination to take it out and fling it through the window of the carriage. He had not spoken of his writing to any one except John Marsh, and to him, he had only said that he intended to write a novel some day. Once, indeed, he had said, "I've written quite a lot of that novel I told you about!" but Marsh, intent on something else, had answered vaguely, "Oh, yes!" and had changed the conversation, leaving Henry to imagine that he had little faith in his power to write. He had been so despondent after that, that he had gone back to College and, having re-read what he had written, had torn the manuscript in pieces and thrown it into the grate because it seemed so dull and tasteless. He had not written a word after that for more than a month, and he might not have written anything for a longer period had he not heard from Gilbert Farlow that he had finished a comedy in three acts and had sent it to Mr. Alexander. The news stimulated him, and in a little while he was itching to write again. In the evening, he began to re-write the story and thereafter it went on, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, until it was finished. His feelings about it changed with remarkable rapidity. He read it over, in its unfinished state, many times, feeling at one time it was excellent, and at another time that it was poor, flatulent stuff, without colour or vivacity.

Writing did not give pleasure to him: it gave him pain. He felt none of that exultation in creating characters which he had been told was part of the pleasures of an author. There were times, indeed, when he felt a mitigated joy in writing because his ideas were fluent and words fell easily off his pen, but even on those occasions, the labour of writing hurt him and exhausted him. The times of pleasurable writing were short interludes between the long stretches of painful writing, little oases that made the journey across the desert just possible. And then there were those periods of appalling misery when, having ended a chapter, he wondered what he should make his people do next. He would leave them, landed neatly at the end of some adventure or emotional crisis, feeling that the story was going on splendidly and that his power to write was full and strong, and then, having written the number of the next chapter, he would reach forward to write the first word ... and suddenly there was devastation in his mind, and "My God! I don't know what to make them do now!" he would say.

He had read in a literary journal that some authors planned their stories before they began to write them. They prepared a summary of the tale, and then enlarged the summary. They knew exactly what was to happen in each chapter. A character could not move or rise or sit down or turn pale or look pleased without the author having known about it long before the act was performed. It was as if the author could count the very hairs on the heads of his people. "Just like God!" Henry had said to himself when he had finished reading the article.... He had tried to make a plan, and, after much labour, had completed one; but it was useless to him, for when he came to write out the story, his characters kicked it aside and insisted on behaving in some other way than he had planned that they should behave. It was as if they had taken their destinies into their own hands and insisted on living their lives in accordance with their own wishes instead of living them in accordance with his.... It was fortunate then that he began to read "Tristram Shandy," for when he saw how Sterne's pen, refusing to obey him, had filled some of his pages with curly lines and dots and confusions, had even declined to fill a chapter at all, impudently skipping it, he realised that authors are but creatures in the hands of some force that wills them to create things which they cannot control and sometimes cannot understand.

Writing his book had given him one pleasure. On the day on which he wrote the last word of it, he felt joy. Before he began to write, he had read in Forster's "Life of Dickens" that the great novelist had parted from his characters with pain. Henry parted from his characters with pleasure. "Thank God," he said, as he put down his pen, "I've finished with the brutes!"

He had enjoyed reading the story in its finished state, and when he had packed the manuscript into his portmanteau, he had felt that the story was good, and had sat in a chair dreaming of the success it would make and the praise he would receive for it. He tried to calculate the number of copies that would be sold, basing his calculations on the total population of the British Isles. "There are over forty millions of people in England and Wales alone," he said to himself, "and another ten millions, say, in Scotland and Ireland ... about fifty millions in all. I ought to sell a good many copies ... and then there's America!" He thought that ten per cent. of the population might buy the story, and believed that his estimate was modest until he remembered that ten per cent. of fifty millions is five millions!...

And that made him laugh. Even he, in his wildest imaginings, did not dream of selling five million copies of his novel.

5

He wished now that he had asked John Marsh and Patrick Galway to read the story and tell him what they thought of it. They were honest men, and would criticise his work frankly. At that moment, he had an insatiable longing to know the truth, mingled with a strange fear of knowing it. What he wished to know was whether or not he had the potentialities of a great author in him. He knew that his story was not commonplace stuff, but he was afraid that it might only be middling writing, and he did not wish to be a middling writer. If he could not be a great writer, he did not wish to be a writer at all. There were thousands and thousands of novels in the world which did no more for men than enable them to put their minds to sleep. Henry did not wish to add a book to their number. There were other books, fewer in number than those, which showed that their authors had some feeling for life, but not enough, and these authors went on, year after year, producing one or more novels, each of which "showed promise," but never showed achievement. The life these men pursued always eluded them. It was impossible for Henry to join the crowd of people who produced books which perished with the generation that they pleased. That much he knew. But he was eager that he should not fall into the ranks of the semi-great, the half-clever; and his fear was that his place was in their midst.

While he was ruminating in this manner, he remembered that Gilbert Farlow had written to him a few days before he left Dublin, and he ceased to think of his career as a writer and began to search his pockets for Gilbert's letter.

"I'll show the manuscript to Gilbert," he said to himself. "Old Gilbert loves telling people the truth!"

He found the letter and began to read it. "Quinny," it began, for Gilbert had abandoned "dears" because, he said, he sometimes had to write to people who were detestable:

"Quinny: How soon can you get quit of that barrack in Dublin where your misguided father thinks you are being taught to be Irish? Cast your eyes on the address at the head of this notepaper. It is a noble house that Roger and I have discovered. Ninian has seen it and he approves of it. I said I'd break his blighted neck for him if he disapproved of it, which may have had something to do with his decision, though not much, for Ninian has become a very muscular young fellow and I shouldn't have liked the job of breaking his neck very much. Roger and I have been here for a week now, and Ninian joins us at the end of the month. He's down at Boveyhayne at present, catching lobsters and sniffing the air, all of which he says is very good for him and would be better for me. And you. And Roger. There is a tablet on the front wall of the house, fixed by the London County Council, which says that Lord Thingamabob used to live here sometime in the eighteenth century. The landlord tried to raise the rent on that account, but we said we were Socialists and would expect the rent to be decreased because of the injury to our principles caused by residence in a house that had been inhabited by a member of the cursed, bloated and effete aristocracy. He begged our pardon and said that in the circumstances, he wouldn't charge anything extra, but he had us in the end, the mouldy worm, for he said that it was the custom to make Socialists pay a quarter's rent in advance. The result was that Roger had to stump up ... I couldn't for I was broke ... which made dear little Roger awfully unpleasant to live with for a whole day. I offered to go back and tell the man that we weren't Socialists at all, but Improved Tories, but he said I'd done enough harm. It's a pity that old Roger hasn't got a better sense of humour.

We have chosen two rooms for you, one to work in, and the other to sleep in. We're each to have two rooms, so that we can go and be morose in comfort if we want to; but I daresay in the evenings we'll want to be together. I've thought out a scheme of decoration for your room—all pink rosebuds and stuff like that. Roger asked me not to be an ass when I told him of it. His notion is a nice quiet distemper. Perhaps you'd better see to the decoration yourself although I must say I always thought your taste was perfectly damnable.

By-the-way, there's a ghost in this house. It's supposed to be the ghost of Lord Thingamabob, and I believe it is. I saw it myself three nights ago, and it was as drunk as a fiddler. My God, Quinny, it's a terrible thing to see an intoxicated spook. Roger wouldn't believe me when I told him about it afterwards. He said I was drunk myself and that he heard me tumbling up the stairs to bed. Which is a lie. I did see it, and it was drunk. I heard it hiccough! I wouldn't say it was drunk if it wasn't. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Quinny, and it would be a very dirty trick to slander a poor bogey that can't defend itself. It looked very like its descendant, Lord Middleweight, and it had the same soppy grin that he has when he thinks he's said something clever. Damned ass, that chap!

Alexander sent my comedy back. He sent a note along with it and told me what a clever lad I am and more or less hinted that when I've grown up, I can send him another play. I suppose he thinks I'm a kid in knickerbockers. The result of this business is that I'm going to try and get a job as a dramatic critic. If I do, God help the next play he produces. I'm a hurt man, and I shall let the world know about it. I'm half-way through another piece which will take some place by storm, I hope. It's a very bright play, much better than the muck Oscar Wilde wrote, not so melodramatic, and tons better than anything Bernard Shaw has written. It's all about me.

We've got an old woman called Clutters to housekeep for us. I chose her on account of her name, and it is a piece of good luck that she cooks extraordinarily well. There is also a maid, but we don't know her name, so we call her Magnolia. I'm really writing all this rot to get myself into the "twitter-twitter" mood. One of the characters in my new comedy talks like a character in a book by E. F. Benson, and I have to work myself up into a state of babbling fatuity before I can write her lines for her.

Come to London as soon as you can.

Gilbert."

6

The prospect of settling in London in the society of his schoolfriends pleased him. Marsh and Galway had tried to persuade him to make his home in Dublin, pleading that it was the duty of every educated Irishman to live in Ireland. "We haven't got many educated men on our side," Marsh said, "not a hundred in the whole of Ireland, and we need people like you!" They talked of political schemes that must be prepared for the parliament that would some day be re-established in College Green. "And they can only be prepared by educated men," Marsh said.

Henry would not listen to them. His longing was to be with Gilbert and Roger and Ninian in London. Dublin made very little appeal to him, and the job of regenerating Ireland was so immense that it frightened him. "I haven't got a common ground with you people," he said to Marsh and Galway. "You're Catholic to start off with, and I'm like my father, I think the Catholic religion is a contemptible religion. And you're not interested in anything but Ireland and the Gaelic movement. I'm interested in everything!"

"Don't you want to do anything for Ireland then?" John Marsh had asked.

"Oh, yes! I'll vote for Home Rule when I get a vote," he had replied.

"I know what your end will be," Patrick Galway added in a sullen voice. "You'll become a Chelsea Nationalist ... willing to do anything for Ireland but live in it!"

Well, who would want to live in Ireland with its penny-farthing politics! London for him! London and a sense of bigness, of wide ideas and the constant interplay of many minds!

He would talk to his father about Gilbert's proposal. There would be all sorts of subjects to discuss with him, that and the question of an allowance and the question of a career....

The train ran swiftly through the suburbs of Belfast and presently pulled up at the terminus. He descended from his carriage and called a jarvey who drove him across the city to the Northern Counties station where he took train again. It was late that night when he arrived at Ballymartin.



THE SECOND CHAPTER

1

Mr. Quinn had become more absorbed in the Irish Agricultural Co-Operative Movement, and he used the home farm for experiments in scientific cultivation. His talk, when Henry returned home, was mainly about a theory of tillage which he called "continuous cropping," and it was with difficulty that Henry could persuade him to talk about Gilbert's proposal that he should join the household in Bloomsbury.

"I'm glad you've come home, Henry," he said after breakfast on the morning following Henry's return. "This system of continuous cropping is splendid, but it wants careful attention. You've got to adjust it continually to circumstances ... you can't follow any rules about it ... and if you'll just stay here and help me with it, we'll be able to do wonders with the home farm!"

Henry did not wish to settle in Ballymartin, at all events not for a long time.

"I want to go to London, father!" he said.

"London! What for?" Mr. Quinn exclaimed, and then before Henry could say why he wished to go to London, he added, "You'll have to settle on something, Henry. I always meant you to take over the estate fairly soon, to work things out with me. Don't you want to do that?"

"Not particularly, father!"

"Well, what's to become of you, then? Do you want to go into the Army? It's a bit late!..."

"No, father!"

"Or the Navy? But you should have gone to Osborne long ago if you wanted to do that!"

Henry shook his head.

"Well, what do you want to do. Are you thinkin' of the law?"

"I don't care about the law, father!..."

"I don't care about it myself, Henry. I was no good at it, an' mebbe that's the reason I think so little of it. But we have to have lawyers all the same. It would be a good plan now to sentence criminals to be lawyers, wouldn't it? 'The sentence of the Court is that you be taken from this place an' made to practise at the Bar for the rest of your natural life, an' may the Lord have mercy on your soul!' Begod, Henry, that's a great notion!"

Henry interrupted his father's fancy. "I want to write," he said.

"Write!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed. "Write what?"

"Books. Novels, I think!..."

Mr. Quinn put down his paper and gaped at his son. "Good God," he said, "an author!"

"Yes, father."

"You're daft, Henry!"

Henry got up from his chair, and went across to his father and took hold of his shoulder affectionately. "No, father, I'm not," he answered.

"Yes, you are, I tell you. You're clean cracked!..."

"I've written one novel already."

Mr. Quinn threw out his hands in a despairing gesture. "Oh, well," he said, "if you've committed yourself.... Where is it?"

"It's upstairs in my room. The manuscript, I mean. Of course, it hasn't been published yet."

A servant came into the room to clear away the remains of the breakfast, and Mr. Quinn got up from his chair and walked through the open window on to the terrace.

"What's it about?" he said to Henry who had followed him.

"Oh, love!" Henry answered, seating himself beside his father.

Mr. Quinn grunted. "Huh!" he said, gazing intently at the gravel. "Is it sloppy?"

"I don't think so, father. At least, I hope it isn't!"

"Or dirty?"

"No, it isn't dirty. I know it isn't dirty," Henry said very emphatically.

Mr. Quinn did not answer for a while. He got up from his seat and walked to the end of the terrace where he busied himself for a few moments in tending to a rosebush. Then he returned to the seat where Henry had remained, and said, "Will you let me read it, Henry?"

"Why, yes, father. Of coarse, I will," Henry answered, rising and moving towards the house. "I'd like you to read it," he added. "Perhaps you'll tell me what you think of it?"

"I will," Mr. Quinn replied, closing his lips down tightly.

"I'll just go and get it," Henry said, and he went into the house.

Mr. Quinn remained seated on the terrace, looking rigidly in front of him, until Henry returned, carrying a pile of manuscript. He took the paper from him without speaking, and glanced at the first sheet on which Henry had written in a large, clear hand:

DRUSILLA: A NOVEL BY HENRY QUINN.

and then he turned the page and read what was written on the second sheet:

TO MY FATHER

He looked at the dedication for a longer time than he had looked at the title-page, and his hand trembled a little as he held the paper.

"I thought you wouldn't mind, father!" Henry said.

"Mind!" Mr. Quinn replied. "No, I don't, Henry. I ... I like it, my son. Thanks, Henry. I ..." He got up and moved quickly towards the window. "I'll just go in an' start readin' it now," he said.

2

He returned the manuscript to Henry on the following afternoon. "I've read worse," he said.

He walked to the end of the terrace and then walked back again. Then he shouted for William Henry Matier, who came running to him. He pointed to a daisy on the lawn and asked the gardener what the hell he meant by not keeping the weeds down.

"Ah, sure, sir!..."

"Root the damn thing up," Mr. Quinn shouted at him, "an' don't let me see another about the place or I'll shoot the boots off you! I don't know under God what I keep you for!"

"Now, you don't mean the half you say, sir!..."

"You're not worth ninepence a week!"

"Aw, now," said Matier, who knew his master, "I'm worth more'n that, sir!"

"How much are you worth? Tell me that, William Henry Matier!"

William Henry rooted up the daisy, and then said that he wouldn't like to put too high a price on himself....

"You'd be a fool if you did," Mr. Quinn interrupted.

" ... but I'd mebbe be worth about double what you named yourself, sir!"

"Eighteenpence!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed.

"Aye, that or a bit more. Were you wantin' anything else, sir!" He winked heavily at Henry as he turned away.

"You're not worth the food you eat," Mr. Quinn said.

"Aw, now, sir, you never know what anybody's worth 'til you have need of them," Matier replied. "A man mightn't be worth a damn to you one day, an' he'd mebbe be worth millions to you the next!"

"There's little fear of you bein' worth millions to any one. Run on now an' do your work if you've any work to do!" Mr. Quinn turned to Henry as the gardener went off. "I suppose you'll be wantin' to live in London for the rest of your life?"

"I should like to go there for a while anyway, father!"

"Huh! All you writin' people seem to think there's no life to be seen anywhere but in London. As if people hadn't got bowels here as well as in town!"

"I don't think that, father!..."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter whether you think it or not, you'll not be happy 'til you get to London, I suppose. You'll stay here a wee while anyway, won't you? You've only just come home, an' it's a long time since I saw you last!"

"I'll stay as long as you like, father."

"Very well, then. I'll tell you when I've had enough of your company an' then you can go off to your friends. How much money do you think you'll need in London? Don't ask for too much. I need every ha'penny I have for the work. You've no notion what a lot it costs to experiment wi' land, an' I'm not as rich as you might imagine!"

Henry hesitated. He had never talked about money with his father, and he had a curious shyness about doing so now. "I don't know," he replied. "Would two hundred a year be too much?..."

"I'll spare you two hundred an' fifty!"

"Thank you, father. It's awfully good of you!"

"Ah, wheesht with you! Sure, why wouldn't a man be good to his own son. I suppose now you want to hear what I think of your book?"

Henry smiled self-consciously. "Yes, I should like to know your opinion of it. I thought at first you didn't think much of it. You didn't say anything!..."

"I'll give you a couple of years to improve it," Mr. Quinn answered. "If you can't make it better in that time, you're no good!"

"I suppose not."

"An' don't hurry over it. Go out an' look about you a bit. There's a lot of stuff in your story that wouldn't be there if you had any gumption. Get gumption, Henry!"

"I'll try, father. Of course, I know I'm very inexperienced...."

"You are, my son, an' what's more you're tellin' everybody how little you know in that book of yours. Man, dear, women aren't like that!... Well, never mind! You'll find out for yourself soon enough. Mind, I don't mean to say that there aren't some good things in the book. There are ... plenty! If there weren't, I wouldn't waste my breath talkin' to you about it. But there are things in it that are just guff, Henry, just guff. The kind of romantic slush that a young fellow throws off when he first realises that women are ... well, women, damn it! ... I wish to God, you would write a book about continuous croppin'! Now, there's a subject for a good book! There's none of your damned love about that!..."

3

He had not seen Sheila Morgan since the morning after he had failed to stop the runaway horse. Many times, indeed, she had been in his mind, and often at Trinity, in the long sleepless nights that afflict a young man who is newly conscious of his manhood, he had turned from side to side of his bed in an impotent effort to thrust her from his thoughts. He made fanciful pictures of her in his imagination, making her very beautiful and gracious. He saw her, then, with long dark hair that had the lustre of a moonless night of stars, and he imagined her, sitting close to him, so that her hair fell about his head and shoulder and he could feel the slow movement of her breasts against his side. He would close his eyes and think of her lips on his, and her heart beating quickly while his thumped so loudly that it seemed that every one must hear it ... and thinking thus, he would clench his fists with futile force and swear to himself that he would go to her and make her marry him. Once, when he had spent an afternoon at the Zoo in the Phoenix Park, he had lingered for a long while in the house where the tigers are caged because, suddenly, it seemed to him that the graceful beast with the bright eyes resembled Sheila. It moved so easily, and as it moved, its fine skin rippled over its muscles like running water....

"I don't suppose she'd like to be called a tigress," he had thought to himself, laughing as he did so, "but that's what she's like. She's beautiful...."

And later in that afternoon, he thought he saw a resemblance between Mary Graham and a brown squirrel that sat on a branch and cracked nuts, throwing the shells away carelessly ... the Mary he had known when he first went to Boveyhayne, not the Mary he had seen on his last visit.

He wondered whether Sheila had altered much, and then he wondered what change four years had made in Mary Graham. Sheila, who had been dominant in his mind in his first year at Trinity, had receded a little into the background by the time he had quitted Dublin, but Mary, never very prominent, had retained her place, neither gaining nor losing position. It was odd, he thought to himself, that he had not been to Boveyhayne in the four years he had been at T.C.D. Mrs. Graham had invited him there several times, but he had not been able to accept the invitations: once his father had been ill, and he had had to hurry to Portrush, where he was staying, and remain with him until he was well again; and another time he had been with Gilbert Farlow at his home in Kent; and another time had agreed to go tramping in Connacht with Marsh and Galway. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger had spent a holiday at Ballymartin.... Ninian took a whole week to realise that he was in Ulster and not in Scotland, and Gilbert begged hard for the production of a typical Irishman who would say "God bless your honour!" and "Bedad!" and "Bejabers!" and pretended not to believe that there were not any "typical Irishmen" ... and went away, vowing that they would compel Mr. Quinn to invite them to stay with him in the next vac. It was then that Ninian decided that he would like to be a shipbuilder. Mr. Quinn had taken them to Belfast to see the launch of a new liner, and Tom Arthurs had invited them all to join the luncheon party when the launch was over. The Vicereine had come from Dublin to cut the ribbon which would release the great ship and send it moving like a swan down the greasy slips into the river; and Tom Arthurs had conducted her through the Yard, telling her of the purpose of this machine and that engine until the poor lady began to be dubious of her capacity to launch the liner. There were other guides, explaining, as Tom Arthurs explained, the functions of the Yard to the visitors, but Ninian had contrived to attach himself to Tom Arthurs and he listened to him as he talked, as simply as was possible, of the way in which great ships are built. Thereafter, Ninian had tongue for none but Tom Arthurs, and he told him, when the party was over and the guests were leaving the Yard, that he would like to work in the Island. Tom had doubted whether Cambridge was the proper preparation for shipbuilding.... "I was out of my apprenticeship when I was your age," he said ... but he said that Ninian could think about it more seriously and then come to him when his time at Cambridge was up.

"I'm thinking seriously of it now," said Ninian.

"All right, my boy!" Tom Arthurs answered, laughing, and slapped him on the back. "We'll see what we can do for you!"

And Ninian, flushing like a girl, went away full of happiness, and soon afterwards began to imitate Tom Arthurs' Ulster speech in the hope that people would think he was related to the shipbuilder or, at all events, a countryman of his.

It was odd, indeed, that Henry had not seen Mary in that time, but it was still more odd that he had not seen Sheila. Matt Hamilton had died soon after Henry had entered Trinity, but Mrs. Hamilton still had the farm which, people understood, was to be left to Sheila when her aunt died. He had not cared to go to the farm ... a mixture of pride and shyness prevented him from doing so ... but he had hoped to meet her on the roads about Ballymartin. "Perhaps by this time," he said to himself, "she will have forgotten my funk!" But although he frequently loitered in the roads about the "loanie," he never met her, and it was not until he said some casual things to William Henry Matier that he discovered that she was not at the farm. "I heerd tell she was visitin' friends in Bilfast!" Matier said, and with that he had to be content. Ninian and Gilbert and Roger were at Ballymartin then, and he had little opportunity to mourn over her absence; indeed, when he remembered that they were with him, he was glad that she was not at the farm: their presence would have made difficulties in the way of his intercourse with her. He would try to be alone at Ballymartin, in the next vacation, and then he would be able to bring her to his will again. But he did not spend the next vacation at home, and so, with this and other absences from Ballymartin, he was unable to see her for the whole of his time at Trinity. Neither he nor his father had spoken of her since the day when Mr. Quinn had solemnly led him to the library to rebuke him for his sweethearting. Mr. Quinn, indeed, had almost forgotten about Henry's lovemaking with Sheila, and when he met the girl and remembered that there had been lovemaking between his son and her, he thought to himself that Henry had probably completely forgotten her....

He wished to see her again, and his desire became so strong that he started to walk across the fields to the "loanie" that led to Hamilton's farm before he was aware of what he was about. His mind filled again with the visions he had had of her at Trinity, and he imagined that he saw her every now and then hiding behind a tree, ready to spring out on him and startle him with a loud whoop, or running from him and laughing as she ran....

4

He met her in the "loanie," and for a few moments he did not recognise her. She was sitting on the grass, in the shade of a hedge, huddling a baby close to her breast, and he saw that she was suckling it.

"Oh, Henry, is that you?" she said, starting up hurriedly so that the baby could not suck. She drew her blouse clumsily together, but the fretful child would not be pacified until she had started to feed it again, and so she resumed her seat on the grass.

"I didn't know you were back," she said, holding the baby up to her. "Are you here for long?"

He did not answer immediately. He had not yet completely realised that this was Sheila whom he had been eager to marry, and then when he understood at last that this indeed was she, something inside him kept exclaiming, "But she's got a baby!" and he wondered why she was feeding it.

"Are you married, Sheila?" he said.

She laughed at him, and answered, "That's a quare question to be askin', an' me with this in my arms!" She looked at the baby as she spoke.

"I didn't know you were married," he replied. "I was coming up to the farm to see you!"

"I've been married this year past," she said.

"I didn't know," he murmured. "No one told me!..."

And suddenly he saw that her face was coarser than it had been when he loved her. Her hair was tied untidily about her head, and he could see that her hands, as she held the child, were rough and red, and that her nails were broken and misshapen. Her boots were loosely laced, and she seemed to be sprawling....

"I'm all throughother," she said, as if she realised what was in his mind and was anxious to excuse herself to him. "This wee tory hardly gives me a minute's peace, an' my aunt's not so well as she was!"

He nodded his head, but did not speak.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" he asked after a while.

"It's a boy," she said, "an' the very image of his da. He's a lovely child, Henry. Just look at him!"

He came nearer to her and looked at the baby who had his little fingers at her breast as if he would prevent her from taking it from him. The child, still sucking, looked up at him with greedy-sleepy eyes.

"Isn't he a gran' wee fella?" she went on, eyeing her son proudly.

"Whom did you marry?" he asked.

"You know him well," she answered. "Peter Logan that used to keep the forge ... that's who I married. D'ye mind the way he could bend a bar of iron with his two hands?..."

Henry remembered. "Doesn't he keep the forge now?" he asked.

"No, he sold it to Dan McKittrick when he married me. We needed a man on the farm, an' he's gran' at it. There isn't a one in the place can bate him at the reapin', an' you should see the long, straight furrows he can plough. The child's the image of him, an' I declare by the way he's tuggin' at me ... be quit, will you, you wee tory, an' not be hurtin' me with your greed!... he'll be as strong as his da, an' mebbe stronger!"

"Are you stayin' long?" she said again.

"No," he answered. "I'm going to London!..."

"London! Lord bless us, that's a long way!"

"I'm going soon ... in a day or two," he went on, making his resolution as he spoke. The sight of her bare breast embarrassed him, and he wanted to go away quickly.

"You're a one for roamin' the world, I must say!" she said. "You're no sooner here nor you're away again. Mebbe you'll come up an' see my aunt ... she was talkin' about you only last week ... an' Peter'd be right an' glad to welcome you!"

"No, thanks, not to-day," he answered. "I've something to do at home ... I'm sorry!..."

"But you said you were comin' to see me!..."

"I know, but I've just remembered something ... I'm sorry!" He was speaking in a jerky, agitated manner and he began to move away as if he were afraid that she would detain him. "I'll come another time," he added.

"Well, you're the quare man," she said. "Anybody'd think you were afeard of me, the hurry you're in to run away!"

He laughed nervously. "Of course, I'm not afraid of you," he exclaimed. "Why should I be?"

"I don't know!" She looked at him for a few seconds, and then the whimsical look that he remembered so well came into her eyes. "D'ye mind the way you wanted to marry me, Henry?" she said.

"Yes ... yes! Ha, ha!"

"An' now I've this! It's a quaren funny, isn't it?"

"Funny?"

"Aye, the way things go. I wonder what sort of a child I'd a' had if I'd married you!"

"I really don't know!... I'm afraid I must go now!"

"Well, good-bye, Henry! I'll mebbe see you again some time!"

She held out her hand to him and he took it, and then dropped it quickly.

"Yes, perhaps," he answered, and added, "Good-bye!"

He went off quickly, not looking back until he had reached the foot of the "loanie," and then he stood for a second or two to watch her. She was busy with her baby again. He could see her white breast shining in the sunlight, and her head bent over the sucking child.

"Well, I'm damned," he said to himself, as he hurried off.

And as he hurried home, his mind set on quitting Ballymartin as speedily as possible, he remembered the casual way in which she had spoken of their possibly meeting again. "I'll mebbe see you some time!" she had said. So indifferent to him as that, she was, so happy in her love for her husband whom he remembered as a great big, hairy, tanned man who beat hot iron with heavy hammers and bent it into wheels and shoes for horses.

"She takes more interest in that putty-faced brat of hers than she does in me," he said to himself, angrily, and then, so swift were his changes of mood, he began to laugh. "Of course, she does," he said aloud. "Why shouldn't she? It's hers, isn't it?"

He remembered her young beauty and contrasted it with her appearance when he saw her in the "loanie" with her child. In a few years, he thought, she would be like any village woman, worn out, misshapen, tired, with gnarled knuckles and thickened hands. Already she had begun to neglect her hair....

"It's a damned shame," he murmured. "If she'd married me she'd have kept her looks!..."

"But she wouldn't marry me," he went on. "I wasn't man enough for her.... My God, I wish I was out of this!"

5

"Father," he said when he got home, "I'd like to go to London at once!"

"You can't go this minute, my son. There's no train the night!"

"I mean, I want to go as soon as possible!"

Mr. Quinn glanced sharply at him. "You're in a desperate hurry all of a sudden," he said. "What's up?"

"Nothing, father, only I want to get to work, and I can't work here!..."

"Restless, are you? I was hopin' you'd give me a bit of your company a while longer!..."

"I'm sorry, father!..."

"That's all right, my boy, that's all right. When do you want to go?"

"To-morrow!"

"You've only been home a short time.... Never mind! I'll come up to Belfast an' see you off. There's a Co-operative Conference there the day after the morra, an' I may as well go up with you as go up alone!"

Henry knew that his father was hurt by his sudden decision to leave Ballymartin, and he felt sorry for the old man's disappointment, but he felt, too, that he could not bear to stay near Hamilton's farm at present, knowing that Sheila, whom he had loved and idealised, was likely to meet him in the roads at any moment, a baby in her arms, perhaps at her breast, and a husband somewhere near at hand.

"I must go," he told himself. "I must get over this...."

6

Mr. Quinn and he travelled to Belfast together on the following morning, and they spent the hour before the steamer sailed for Liverpool in pacing up and down the deck.

"You can write to me when you get to London," Mr. Quinn said, and Henry nodded his head.

He was very conscious now of his father's disappointment, and although he was determined to go to London, he was moved by the affectionate way in which the old man tried to provide for his needs on the journey.

"Hap yourself well," he had said when they crossed the gangway on to the boat. "These steamers never give you enough clothes on your bunk. I'd put my overcoat on top of the quilt if I were you!..."

They stood for a time looking across the Lagan at the shipyard, and talked about the possibility of Ninian Graham entering the shipbuilding firm, and then they moved to the side of the boat that was against the quay-wall. The hour at which the steamer was to depart was drawing near and the number of passengers had increased. They could hear the noise of the machinery as the cargo was lowered from the quay into the hold, and now and then, the squealing of pigs as the drovers pushed them up the gangways. A herd of cattle came through the sheds and stumbled in a startled, stupid fashion on to the lower decks, while the drovers thwacked them and shouted at them. There was a small crowd of people, friends of passengers and casual onlookers, standing on the quay waiting to see the ship go out, and some of them were shouting messages to their friends. Henry had always liked to watch crowds at times such as this, and often in Dublin, he had spent a while in Westland Row Station, looking at the people who were going to England. He was so interested in the crowd on the quay that he did not hear his father speaking to him.

"I want to speak to you, Henry," the old man said, and then receiving no answer, he said again, "I want to speak to you, Henry!"

"Yes, father?" Henry answered, without looking up.

"Turn round a minute, Henry!..." He hesitated, and Henry turning round, saw that his father was embarrassed.

"What is it, father?" he said.

"I just wanted to say something to you, Henry. You see, you're beginnin' another life ... out of my control, if you follow me ... not that I ever tried to boss you...."

"No, father, you've never done that. You've been awfully decent to me!"

"Ah, now, no more of that! I just wanted to say somethin' to you, only I don't rightly know how to begin...." He fumbled for words and then, as if making a reckless plunge, he blurted out, "Do you know much, Henry?"

"Know much?" Henry answered vaguely.

"Aye. About women an' things? Did you know any women in Dublin?"

"Oh, yes, a few!" Henry answered.

"Did ... did you have anything to do with them?"

"Anything to do with them!"

"Aye!"

Henry began to comprehend his father's questions. "Oh, I ... I kissed one or two of them!" he said.

"Was that all?" Mr. Quinn's voice was so low that Henry had difficulty in hearing him.

"Yes, father," he answered.

"You know, don't you, that there's other things than kisses? Or do you not know it?"

Henry nodded his head.

"I'm ... I'm not interferin' with you, Henry. I'm not just askin' for the sake of askin' ... but ... well, do you know anything about those ... things?"

He moved slightly as he spoke, as if, by moving, he could take the edge off his question.

"I know about them, father. Something!" Henry said huskily, for his father's questions embarrassed him strangely.

"You've never ... you've never!..."

"No, father!"

Mr. Quinn turned away and looked over the side of the boat. He seemed to be watching a piece of orange peel which floated between the wall and the side of the boat. The first bell of warning to friends of passengers was sounded, and he turned sharply and looked at his son. "I'll have to be goin' soon," he said.

"That's only the first bell, father," Henry replied. "There's plenty of time yet!"

"Aye!" Mr. Quinn glanced about the deck which was now covered by passengers. "You'll have plenty of company goin' over," he said.

"Yes!"

They were making conversation with difficulty. Mr. Quinn felt nervous and a little unhappy because Henry was leaving him so soon, and Henry felt disturbed because of the strange conversation he had just had with his father. He had a shamed sense of intrusion into privacies.

"It's very interestin' to see a boat goin' out to sea," Mr. Quinn was saying. "I used to come down here many's a time when I was a young fellow just to watch the steamers goin' out. Did you ever stan' on top of a hill an' watch a boat sailin' out to sea?"

"No, I don't remember doing that!"

"It's a fine sight, that! You see her lights shinin' in the dark a long way off, but you can't see her, except mebbe the foam she makes, an' begod you near want to cry. That's the way it affects me anyway.... Henry, if you ever get into any bother over the head of a woman, you'll tell me, won't you, an' I'll stan' by you!" He said this so suddenly, coming close to Henry as he said it, that Henry was startled. "You'll not forget," he went on.

"No, father, I won't forget!"

"I've been wantin' to say that to you for a good while, but it's a hard thing for a man to say to his own son. I could say it easier to somebody else's son nor I can to you. London's a quare place for a young fella, Henry, but it's no good preachin' to men about women ... no good at all. The only thing you can do is to stan' by a man when he gets into bother. That's all, except to hope to God he'll not disgrace his name if he's your son. You know where to write to, Henry, if you need any help!... Hilloa, there's the second bell!"

They could hear the sailors calling out "Any more for the shore!" and the sound of hurried farewells and the shuffle of awkward feet along the gangways.

"Good-bye, Henry!"

"Good-bye, father!"

"You'll not forget to write now an' awhile?"

"I'll write to you the minute I get to London!"

"Ah, don't hurry yourself! You'll mebbe be tired out when you arrive. Just wait 'til the mornin', an' write at your leisure...."

"Hurry up, sir!" an impatient sailor said.

"Ah, sure, there's plenty of time, man! Good-bye, Henry! I believe I'm the last one to go ashore. Well, so long!"

They shook hands, and then the old man went down the gangway.

"Any more for the shore?" the sailor shouted, unloosing the rope that held the gangway fast to the ship. Then the gangway was cast off. A bell rang, and in an instant the sound of the screws beating in the water was heard. A shudder ran through the boat as the engines began to move, and slowly the gap between the ship and the quay widened. Henry smiled at his father, and the old man blinked and smiled back. The passengers leant against the side of the boat and shouted farewells and messages to their friends on shore. "Mind an' write!" "Remember me to every one, will you!" "Tell Maggie I was askin' for her!" Then hats were waved and handkerchiefs were floated like flags.... A woman stood near to Henry and cried miserably to herself.... The ship swung into the middle of the Lagan and began to move down towards the sea. Henry could still see his father, standing under the yellow glare of a large lamp hanging from the shed. He had taken off his hat, and was waving it to his son. It seemed to Henry suddenly that the old man's hair was very grey and thin.... He took out his handkerchief and waved it vigorously in response. Somewhere in the steerage people were singing a hymn:

'Til we me .. ee .. eet, 'til we me .. eet, 'Til we meet at Je . e . su's feet ... Jesu's feet, 'Til we me .. ee .. eet, 'til we me .. eet, God be with you 'til we meet again!

The slurring, sentimental sounds became extraordinarily human and moving in the dusky glow, and he felt tempted to hum the words under his breath in harmony with the singers in the steerage; but two men were standing behind him, and he was afraid they would overhear him. He could hear one of them saying to his companion, "I always say, eat as much as you can stuff inside you, an' run the risk of bein' sick. Some people makes a point of eatin' nothin' at all when they're crossin' the Channel, but they're sick all the same, an' they damn near throw off their insides. A drop of whiskey is a good thing!..."

The boat was making way now, and the people on the quay were ceasing to have separate outlines: they were merging in a big, dark blur under the yellow light. Henry could not see his father at the spot where he had stood when the ship moved away, and he felt disappointed when he thought to himself that the old man had not waited until the last moment. Then he saw a figure hurrying along the quays, waving a large white handkerchief.... It was his father, trying to keep pace with the boat, and Henry shouted to him and waved his hands to him in a kind of delirium. Gradually the boat outstripped the old man, and at last he stood still and watched it disappearing into the darkness. He was still waving to Henry, but no sound came from him. He seemed to be terribly alone there on the dark quay.... Henry shuddered in the night air, and glancing about him saw that most of the passengers had gone down to the saloon or to their cabins. He, too, was almost alone. He turned to look again at his father, straining to catch the last glimpse of him, and while he was straining thus, he heard the old man's voice vibrating across the river to him. "Good-bye Henry!" he shouted. "God bless you, son!" and Henry felt that he must leap overboard and swim back to the shore. He waved his handkerchief towards the place where his father was standing and tried to shout "Good-bye, father!" to him, but his voice rattled weakly in his throat, and he felt tears starting in his eyes.

"It's silly of me to behave like this," he murmured to himself, rubbing his eyes with his hand.

The boat had passed between the Twin Islands and was now sailing swiftly down the Lough towards the Irish Sea. The lights on the quay faded into a faint yellow blur, like little lost stars, and presently, when the cold airs of the sea struck him sharply, he turned and went towards the saloon.

"I hope to goodness it'll be smooth all the way over," he said to himself.



THE THIRD CHAPTER

1

Roger Carey and Gilbert Farlow met him at Euston.

"Hilloa, Quinny!" Gilbert said, "I've been made a dramatic critic, and I'm to do my first play to-night!"

"Hurray!" he answered, and turned to greet Roger.

"We've bagged a taxi," Gilbert went on. "The driver looks cheeky ... that's why we hired him. We'll give him a tuppenny tip and then we'll give him in charge!..."

"All taxi drivers are cheeky," Roger interrupted.

"But this is a very cheeky one!... Hi, porter!"

It was extraordinarily good to be with Gilbert and Roger again; extraordinarily good to hear Gilbert's exaggerated speech and see him ordering people about without hurting their feelings; extraordinarily good to listen to Roger's slow, unflickering voice as he stated the facts ... for Roger had always stated the facts. In all their discussions, it was Roger who reminded them of the essential things, refusing persistently to be carried away by Gilbert's imagination or Ninian's impatience. People were sometimes irritated by Roger's slow, imperturbable way of speaking ... they called him a prig ... but as they knew him better, they lost their irritation and thought of him with respect. "But we're all prigs," Gilbert said once in reply to some one who sneered at Roger. "Ninian and Quinny and Roger and me, we're frightful prigs. That's because we're so much brainier than most people. Of course, Roger was Second Wrangler, and that affects a man, I suppose, but he's terribly clever, young Roger is!..."

As they drove home, Gilbert told their news to Henry.

"Ninian's coming up to-morrow ... sooner than he meant to. He's very keen on going to Harland and Wolff's, but he's afraid he's too old to begin building ships. Tom Arthurs says he ought to have gone straight to the Island from Rumpell's instead of going to Cambridge, and poor old Ninian was horribly blasphemous about it all. It's funny to hear him trying to talk like an Orangeman ... he mixes it up with Devonshire dialect ... and thinks he's imitating Tom Arthurs. I suppose he'll have to content himself with building railways and things like that. It's a great pity!"

"I don't believe he really wants to be a shipbuilder," Roger said. "He likes Tom Arthurs, and he wants to be what Arthurs is. That's all. If Arthurs were a comedian, Ninian would want to be a comedian, too!"

"It must be splendid," Henry murmured, "to be able to influence people like that!"

The taxi drew up to the door of a house in one of the quieter Bloomsbury squares, and Henry, looking out of the window, while Gilbert opened the door of the cab, saw that the garden in the centre of the square was very green. He could see figures in white flannels running and jumping, and the sound of tennis balls, as they collided with the racquets, pleased him.

"Your room overlooks the square," Gilbert said, as Henry got out of the cab.

"Splendid!" he replied. "I shall imagine I'm in Dublin when I look out of the window. It's just like Merrion Square!..."

"Well, pay the cabby, will you? I'm broke!" said Gilbert.

"You always are," Roger murmured.

2

Ninian joined them on the following day, very cheerless and irritable. It was impossible for him to enter the shipbuilding firm owing to his age, and so he had decided to enter the offices of a firm of engineers in London. "Anybody can build a damned railway," he said, "but it takes a man to build a ship. I'd love to build a liner ... one that could cross the Atlantic in four days!"

"Four days!" Gilbert scoffed. "My dear Ninian, boats don't crawl across the ocean! People want boats that will take them to New York in twenty-four hours!..."

"And now, young fellows!" he went on, "it's time that we thought seriously about our immortal souls!"

"Oh, is it?" said Ninian.

"Yes, it is," Gilbert replied.

They had dined, and were now sitting in Gilbert's room in the lax attitude of people who have eaten well and are content.

"Here we are," Gilbert went on, using his pipe as a modulator of his points, "four bright lads simply bursting with brains, and the question is, what is to become of us? The Boy: What Will He Become? Take Roger, for example, will he become Lord Chancellor of England, or a footling little Registrar of a footling County Court?..."

"I haven't had a brief yet," Roger interrupted, "so that question's somewhat premature, isn't it?"

"I'm not talking about now ... I'm talking about the future," Gilbert replied. "We ought to have some notion of what we're going to do with our lives.... As a matter of fact," he continued, "your career's fairly certain, Roger. With all that brain oozing out of you, you're bound to become great. But what about little Ninian here? And Quinny? And me? Ninian's a discontented sort of bloke, and he's quite likely to make a mess of things unless we look after him. He may turn out to be a very great engineer or he may go back to Boveyhayne and play the turnip-headed squire!..."

"Always rotting a chap," Ninian mumbled.

"And Quinny ... what about little Quinny? He's written a novel!..."

"Written a what?" Ninian demanded, sitting up sharply.

"Have you, Quinny?" said Roger.

Henry blushed and nodded his head. "It isn't good," he said. "I shall have to re-write it!"

"My Lord," said Ninian, "fancy one of us writing a book!"

Gilbert slapped him on the side of the head. "You forget, Ninian, that I've written a play!..."

"A play's not a book!..."

"My plays are books," Gilbert retorted. "Well, now," he went on, "what's to become of little Quinny: a tip-top novelist with a limited circulation or a third-rater who sells millions?"

"What about yourself?" Ninian said.

"I'm coming to myself. Will I become a great dramatist, like Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw and all those chaps, or merely turn out hack plays?..."

"And the answer is?"

"I don't know, but I'll tell you in ten years' time. We're a brainy lot of lads, and I'm the brainiest of the lot!..."

"Oh, no, you're not," said Ninian. "I've quite a respectable amount of brain myself, but the very best brain in the room belongs to Roger. Doesn't it, Roger?"

"I don't despise my brain, Ninian!" Roger answered.

"Observe the modest demeanour of the truly great man," Gilbert exclaimed. "You'll have to go into politics, Roger. It isn't any good being a barrister unless you do!"

"I've thought of that," Roger answered. "At the moment, I'm wondering which side I'm on. I might manage to get a seat as a Liberal, but I don't believe it would be of much use to me if I got it. I think I shall join the Tories!..."

"Are you a Tory?" Ninian said, "I thought you were a Liberal!"

"No, I'm a barrister. You see," he went on, as if he were arguing a case, "the Liberal majority is too big and there are far too many clever young men in the party. I should only be one of a crowd if I went into the House now as a Liberal ... and of course I'm not likely to be given a chance of standing for a seat because they've a lot of people on the list already. But the Tories have hardly any clever chaps left. There's Balfour and there's Chamberlain ... and then what is there?"

"Nothing!" said Gilbert.

"A clever man of my age has the chance of a lifetime with the Tories now," Roger continued. "Look at F. E. Robinson ... and he's only a third-rater!"

Gilbert told a story of the early days of the Tory Party after the General Election of 1900 when the Tories had been completely routed by the Liberals. "The Tory remnant was as thick-headed as it could be," he said, "and the Liberals were bursting with brains. Balfour came into the House one night ... he'd just been re-elected ... and he sat down beside Chamberlain. They were frightfully blue. Balfour had a look at the Liberals, and then he turned to his own back-benches and had a look at the Tories. Of course, it may not be true, but they say he went pale with fright. He turned to Chamberlain and said, "My God, Joseph!" and then Chamberlain turned and looked at the Tories and said, "My God, Arthur!" You see, Chamberlain never noticed things until Balfour pointed them out to him, and then he noticed them too much. They went out of the House immediately afterwards and shook hands with each other, and Chamberlain said 'Arthur, we're the Opposition!' And so they were. Poor Balfour was awfully lonely after Chamberlain crocked up. Not a soul on his own side that was fit to talk to! It was easy enough for F. E. Robinson to make a name in a crowd like that. And they loathe him, too. He's such a bounder! But they need a fellow to heave mud, so they put up with him. Roger's got more brains in his little finger than that fellow has in his whole body. Haven't you, Roger?"

"People don't have brains in their little fingers," Roger answered.

"You should join the Tories, Roger," Ninian said. "There really isn't much difference between them. My father was a Conservative, but my Uncle Geoffrey was a Liberal. When father was in, uncle was out. It amounted to the same thing in the end!..."

"But Roger ought to be a different sort of Tory!" Gilbert exclaimed. "It's no good having all his brain if he's just going to peddle around with the same old stuff...."

"I don't intend to do that," said Roger.

"Well, what do you intend to do?"

Ninian seized a cushion and put it behind his back.

"Let's have a good old argle-bargle," he said. "What do you say, Quinny?"

Henry, who had not joined in the discussion, leant forward and smiled. "Oh, I like listening to you," he answered. "You're all so sure of yourselves!..."

Gilbert turned on him. "Well, aren't you sure of yourself?" he demanded.

"No, I'm not," Henry answered. "I never am!"

"That's queer," said Gilbert.

"Damned queer," said Ninian.

"Why are you so uncertain of yourself?" Roger asked.

"Don't you feel sure that you'll be a great novelist?" Gilbert added before Henry had time to reply to Roger's question.

"I know jolly well I shall be a clinking good engineer!" Ninian said.

Henry had a shy unwillingness to discuss himself in front of the others, although they were his closest friends. He felt that he could not sit still while they watched him as he told them of his ambitions and his fears.

"Oh, don't let's talk about me," he said. "Go on with your argle-bargle." He was speaking hurriedly, so that he had difficulty in articulating his words. "You were saying something, Ninian, weren't you ... no, it was you, Roger, about politics!..."

"Oh, yes!" Roger answered.

"Rum chap, you are!" Gilbert said to Henry in a low voice.

3

"You see," said Roger, "my notion is to restore the prestige of the Tories. Somehow, they've let themselves get the reputation of being consciously heartless. The Liberals go about proclaiming that they are the friends of the poor, and the inference is that the Tories are the friends of the rich!"

"So they are," said Ninian.

"So are the Liberals!" said Roger.

"So's everybody!" said Gilbert.

"But the Tories aren't culpably the friends of the rich," Roger continued. "I mean, they don't go into parliament with the intention of exploiting poor men for the benefit of rich men. It isn't true that they are indifferent to the fate of poor men; but they have allowed the Liberals to give them that character. I've always said that the Tories have the courage of the Liberals' convictions!..."

Gilbert lay back on the floor with his arms under his head. "I remember the first time you said that. It was in the Union!" he exclaimed.

"I shall say it again in the House some day," Roger retorted. "I'm not trying to be funny when I say that. I think the history of the Tory Party shows very plainly that the Tories have done very admirable things for the working-people: Factory Acts and Housing schemes and Workmen's Compensation Acts. Well, I want the Tory Party to remember that it is the custodian of the decency of England. It isn't decent that there should be hungry children and unemployed men and badly-housed families. That kind of thing is intolerable to a gentleman, and a Tory is a gentleman. It seems to me inconceivable that a Tory should be willing to make money by cheating a child out of a meal ... but there are plenty of Liberals who do that. And I'm against all this legislation which makes some public authority do things for people which they ought to be doing for themselves. I mean, I hate the notion of the State feeding hungry school-children because the parents cannot afford to feed them, when the proper thing to do is to see that the parents are paid enough for their work to enable them to feed their children themselves. I suppose I'm sloppy ... the Fabians used to say so at Cambridge ... but I prefer the spectacle of a family round its own table to the spectacle of a crowd of assorted youngsters round a municipal school table! And I don't think we're getting the most out of our people! Just think of the millions of men and women in this country who really do not earn more than their keep! That isn't good enough. If you can only just keep yourself going, then you've no right to go ... except to hell as quickly as possible. My idea is that we waste potentialities at present, not by squandering them, but by never using them. All those poor people, for example, how do we know that some of them, if given an opportunity, would not be amazingly worth while! There must be a great deal of brain-power simply chucked away or misused. I know that lots of people believe that men of genius work their way up to their level no matter how low down they begin, but I doubt that, and anyhow I'm not talking of geniuses ... I'm talking of the average clever man ... there must be men of good average quality lost in slums because none of us have taken the trouble to clear the ground for them. And the ground has to be cleared! You can't grow wheat on a sour soil. I often think when I see some hooligan brought into Court that, given a real chance, he might have been a better judge than the man who sends him to gaol. The Tory's job is to restore the balance of things. It isn't only to maintain the level, but to raise it and to keep on raising it.... I believe in the State of Poise, of equitable adjustment, in which every man will be able to move easily to his proper place.... There are so many obstacles now in the way of man finding his place that, even if he has the strength to get over them, he probably won't have the strength to fill it...."

"My view, perhaps, is narrower than yours, Roger," Henry said, "but I see all these people chiefly as men and women who are shut out of things: books and pictures and plays and music and all the decent things. I don't believe that if they had the chance they would all read Meredith and admire Whistler and go to see Shaw's plays and want to listen to Wagner ... that's not the point, and anyhow the middle and the upper classes are not all marvellously cultured. My point is that their lives are such that they don't even know of Meredith and Whistler and Shaw and Wagner. They don't even know of the second-rate people or the third rate. Magnolia, for instance ... I suppose she reads novelettes, and when she grows out of novelettes, she won't read anything. And she can't afford to go to a West End theatre.... When I think of these people, millions of 'em, I think of them as people like Magnolia, completely shut out of things like that, not even aware of them...."

They spent the remainder of the evening in argument, their talk ranging over the wide field of human activity. They established a system of continual criticism of existing institutions. "Challenge everything," said Gilbert; "make it justify its existence." They tried to discover the truth about things, to shed their prejudices and to see the facts of life exactly as they were. "The great thing is to get rid of Slop!" said Roger. "We've got to convince the judge as well as move the jury. It isn't enough to make the jury feel sloppy ... any ass can do that. You've got to convince the old chap on the bench or you won't get a verdict. That's my belief, and I believe, too, that the jury is more likely to listen to reason than people imagine!"

They did not finish their argument that evening nor on any particular evening. They were spread over a long period, and were part of the process of clearing their minds of cobwebs.

Gilbert had dedicated his life to the renascence of the drama and had written a couple of plays which, he admitted to his friends, had not got the right stuff in them. "I don't know enough yet," he said once to Henry, "but I'm learning...." His dramatic criticism was very pointed, and he speedily acquired a reputation among people who are interested in the theatre, as an acute but harsh critic, and already attempts had been made by theatrical managers either to bribe him or get him dismissed from his paper. The bribing process was quite delicately operated. One manager wrote to him, charmingly plaintive about his criticism, and invited him to put himself in the manager's place. "I assure you," he wrote, "I would willingly produce good work if I could get it, but I can't. Come and see me, and I'll show you a pile of plays that have arrived within the last fortnight. I know quite well, without reading them, that not one of them will be of the slightest worth!" And Gilbert had gone to see him, and had been received very charmingly and told how clever he was, and then the manager had offered to appoint him reader of plays at a pleasant fee!... Following that attempt at bribery came the anger of an actor-knight who declined to admit Gilbert to his theatre, a piece of petulance which delighted him.