"It's a pity to break up the house," Gilbert murmured.

"It'll have to be broken up some day," Roger retorted.

Ninian joined in. "There's talk of a big railway contract in South America, and I might have to go. Hare spoke of sending me. In about six months' time...."

"We might let the house furnished for the remainder of the lease," Roger went on. "Perhaps some one would take the furniture over altogether.... I could use some of it, of course, for my house when I get married!"

"You've settled it then!" said Gilbert.

"Not exactly. I haven't said anything to Rachel yet. The idea occurred to me in the chapel while the parson was saying the Burial Service!"

"I could have hit that fellow," Gilbert exclaimed. "Gabbling it off like that! I suppose he was in a hurry to get home to tea!"

They sat in silence for a while, each of them conjuring up the vision of the cold little service in the cemetery chapel. Magnolia, clothed in black, had sobbed loudly, while Mr. Clutters sniffed and said "A-men" very emphatically, and the parson, regarding the little group of mourners with the curiosity of a man who is bored by death and the ritual of burial, gabbled away: NowisChristrisen fromthedeadandbecomethefirstfruitsofthemthatsleptforsince

Bymancamedeathbymancamealso

Theresurrectionofthedead....

"It means breaking up everything," Gilbert still protested.

"Things are always breaking up," said Roger.

"I suppose so," Gilbert replied.

Henry had not taken part in the conversation, but had lain back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, lazily listening to what they were saying.

"I don't think I'd like to go on living here," he exclaimed, "particularly if Roger and Ninian go away. Perhaps we could share a flat or something, Gilbert?"

"That's a notion," Gilbert answered.

"There's no reason why the Improved Tories should collapse just because I'm going to get married," Roger asserted. "This house really isn't the most convenient place to meet. We might hire a room in a hotel near the Strand and meet there...."

7

The house was let unfurnished. The incoming tenant was willing to take on the remainder of their lease and continue in occupation of the house after its expiry, but he had furniture of his own, and so he had no use for theirs. Roger took his furniture to a small house in Hampstead, and offered to buy most of what was left, but they would not listen to his proposals. "We'll give it to you as a wedding present," they insisted. "If there's anything you don't want, well sell it!" Magnolia was presented with a couple of months' wages and a new dress, and bidden to get another home as soon as she could conveniently do so ... and then the house was abandoned.

"It's funny," said Gilbert, as they shut the door behind them for the last time, "it's funny that we hardly ever thought of that old woman, and yet, the minute she dies, we sort of go to pieces. We didn't even know she'd got a husband. Her name was Jennifer. I saw it on the coffin lid!..."

Their arrangements for quitting the house were not completed for a month after the burial of Mrs. Clutters, and before they finally settled their affairs, Ninian was told that he was to proceed to South America with the junior partner. He was to have a couple of months' leave ... "I shall go down to Boveyhayne," he said ... after which he would leave England for a lengthy while. "And then there were three!" said Gilbert, when Ninian told them of his appointment. "Three little clever boys," he went on, "going up to fame. One little clever boy got married and then there were two!..."

Until they could make some settlement of their future, they decided to live in a boarding house in Russell Square.

"We shall loathe it," Gilbert said, "but that will be good for us!"

8

And then Roger and Rachel got married. They walked into a Registrar's office, with Gilbert and Ninian and Henry to bear them company, and made their declarations of fealty to each other.

"My father would have been horrified," Roger said at luncheon afterwards. "If he'd been alive, Rachel, we'd have had to get married in a church!"

Rachel smiled. "I shouldn't have minded, Roger!" she answered. "You'll laugh, I know, when I tell you that half-way through the service I began to long for a surplice and the Voice that Breathed O'er Eden. A marriage in a church is a lot prettier than one in a Registrar's office!..."

"If only the Mayor of the Borough had performed the ceremony," Gilbert lamented. "In his nice furry red robes and cocked hat, joining you two together in the name of the Borough of Holborn, he 'd have looked rather jolly! Roger, we ought to get the Improved Tories to consider the question of Civil Marriage. We want more beauty in it. Rachel, my dear, I haven't kissed you yet. I look upon myself as Roger's best man, and I ought to kiss you!"

"Very well, Gilbert," she answered, turning her face towards him.

"You've deceived us all, Rachel," he said as he kissed her. "We'd made up our minds to hate you because you were taking our little Roger from us, and at first we thought we were right to hate you because you were so aggressive to us, but you've deceived us. We don't hate you. We like you, Rachel!"

"Do you, Gilbert?" She turned to Ninian and Henry. "Do you like me, too?" she said.

"I shouldn't mind marrying you myself," Ninian replied.

"I don't see why Gilbert should get all the kisses," said Henry. "After all, I more or less gave you away, didn't I? I was there anyhow!...."

So she kissed Ninian and Henry too. Then, a little later, Roger and she went off to spend a honeymoon in Normandy.

9

"I feel horribly lonely somehow," said Gilbert to Henry. Ninian, in a hurry to catch the train for Boveyhayne at Waterloo, had left them at Charing Cross.

Henry nodded his head.

"This marrying and giving in marriage is the devil, isn't it?" Gilbert went on. "We ought to cheer ourselves up, Quinny!"

"We ought, Gilbert!"

"Let's go and see my play. Perhaps that'll make us feel merry and bright!..."

"No," said Henry. "It wouldn't. It 'ud depress us. We'd keep thinking of Ninian and Roger. I think we ought to get drunk, Gilbert, very and incredibly drunk...."

"I should feel like Mrs. Clutters' husband if I did that," Gilbert answered. "Aren't there any other forms of debauchery? Couldn't we go to a music-hall or a picture-palace or something? Or we might discuss our future!..."

"I'm sick of this boarding house we're in," Henry exclaimed.

"So am I, but I don't feel like setting up house again. I'm certain you'd go and get married the moment we'd settled into a place...."

"I'm not a marrying man, Gilbert," Henry interrupted.

"Well, what are you, Quinny?"

"I don't know!"

They were wandering aimlessly along the streets. They had drifted along Regent Street, and then had drifted into Oxford Street, and were going slowly in the direction of Marble Arch.

"Quinny!" said Gilbert after a while.

"Yes?" Henry answered.

"Have you ... have you seen Cecily since you came back?"

"Yes. Twice!"

Gilbert did not ask the question which was on the tip of his tongue, but Henry was willing to give the answer without being asked.

"She didn't appear to know I'd been away," he said.

"She knew all the same!..."

"She just said, 'Hilloa, Paddy I' and went on talking to the other people who were there too. I tried to outstay them, but Jimphy came in the first time, and there was a painter there the second time, who wouldn't budge. He's painting her portrait. I've not seen her since...."

"You're glad, aren't you, that I kidnapped you, Quinny?"

"In a way, yes!"

"You got on with your book, anyhow. You'd never have done that if you'd stayed in town, trailing after Cecily!"

"I can't quite make you out, Gilbert," Henry said, turning to his friend. "Are you in love with Cecily?"

Gilbert nodded his head. "Of course, I am, but what's the good? Cecily doesn't love me any more than she loves you. She doesn't love any man particularly. She's ... just an Appetite. You and I are no more to her than ... than the caramel she ate last Tuesday. The only hope for us is that we shall grow out of this caramel state or at all events get the upper hand of it.... In the meantime, what are we going to do?"

"Work, I suppose. 'Turbulence' is nearly finished, and I'm itching to get on with a new story I've thought of. I'm calling it 'The Wayward Man.' ..."

"We might go into the country...."

"Or hire a furnished flat for a while...."

"Or do something.... Lordy God, Quinny, we're getting frightfully vague and loose-endy. We really must pull ourselves together. There's a bun-shop somewhere about. Suppose we have tea?"

10

They took a furnished flat in Buckingham Street, and lived there while Henry completed "Turbulence" and saw it through the press. Gilbert had finished another comedy soon after the production of "The Magic Casement," and Sir Geoffrey Mundane had asked for a first option on it. "The Magic Casement" was not a great popular success, but it "paid its way," as Sir Geoffrey said. It was performed for a hundred and twenty times in England, and for three weeks in America, where it failed lamentably. "I never did think much of a republic!" Gilbert said when he heard of the play's failure.

Roger and Rachel had settled in their house in Hampstead soon after Gilbert and Henry had taken the furnished flat, and after a while, some of the old routine of their lives, except that part of it represented by Ninian, went on as before. Most of Ninian's leave was spent in quelling his mother's alarms about his journey to South America. "It's a splendid chance for me, mother!" he insisted. "It's jolly decent of old Hare to give it to me!"

"But it's so far away, Ninian, dear, and if anything were to happen to you!..."

"Nothing'll happen to me, mother ... nothing serious anyhow. Heaps of chaps go off to places like that without turning a hair!"

"But I've only got you, Ninian!" Mrs. Graham objected.

"You've got Mary, too, and I shall come back to you!"

One evening, as they walked along the road that leads to Sidmouth, she put her arm in his, and drew him near to her.

"Ninian, dear," she said very softly and hesitatingly as if she were afraid to say all that was in her mind.

"Yes, mother!"

"Ninian, I sometimes wish ..."

Again she hesitated, and again he said, "Yes, mother?"

Her speech took another direction. "There have been Grahams at Boveyhayne for four hundred years, dear, and there's only you left now."

He looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Well, mother!..."

"My dear, we can't let it go away from us. It's us, and we're it, and if anything were to happen to you, and a stranger were to come here!"

"But, my dear mother," he interrupted, "nothing's going to happen to me, and no one's going to get Boveyhayne away from us. Why should any one?..."

She put her free hand on his sleeve. "When Roger married Rachel," she said, "I wished ... I wished that you were Roger, Ninian!"

"You want me to get married, mother?"

She did not answer, but her clasp on his arm tightened.

"A chap can't marry a girl just for the sake of getting married, mother!..."

"No, dear, I know, but ..."

"I've not seen a girl yet that I wanted particularly. You see, I've been awfully busy at my job!... I know how you feel, mother, about Boveyhayne, and I feel like that myself sometimes. I used to think it was rather rot all this talk about Family and keeping on and ... and that kind of thing, but I can't help feeling proud of ... of all those old chaps who went before me, and ... all that, and I'd hate to break the line ... only I can't just go up to a girl and ... and say, 'We want some ... some babies in our house!' ..."

"No, dear, you can't say that, of course, but there are plenty of nice girls about, and if you would just ... just think of some of them, instead of always thinking of works and tunnels and things!... Of course, I know that tunnels are very interesting, Ninian, but ... but Boveyhayne!..."

She did not say any more. She stood by the gate of a field, looking over the valley of the Axe to the hilly country that separates Dorset from Devon, seeing nothing because her eyes were full of tears. He slipped his arm from hers and put it round her waist and drew her close to him. "All right, mother!" he said.

"My dear!" she said, reaching up and kissing him.

11

They dined together on Ninian's last night in England. Rachel, with fine understanding, insisted that they should dine alone, although they urged her to join them.

"I say, you chaps," Ninian said to them, "you might go and see my mater sometimes. She'd be awfully glad. Quinny, you haven't been to Boveyhayne for centuries. ... If you'd go, now and then, you'd cheer the mater up. She's awfully down in the mouth about me going!"

"Righto, Ninian!" said Gilbert.

"Mary was saying what a long time it was since you were there, Quinny," Ninian went on.

"Did she?" Henry answered.

"Yes. I hope you'll go down sometime."

"I will," he said.



THE SECOND CHAPTER

1

Mrs. Graham invited Gilbert and Henry to spend Christmas at Boveyhayne, and they gladly accepted her invitation, but a week before they were due to go to Devonshire, Mr. Quinn fell ill, and Henry, alarmed by the reports which were sent to him by Hannah, wrote to Mrs. Graham to say that he must travel to Ireland at once. He hurried home to Ballymartin, and found that his father was more ill even than Hannah had hinted.

"I wouldn't have let her send for you, Henry!" he said, apologetically, "only I was afraid ... I mightn't see you again!"

He tried to cheer his father by protesting that in a little while he would be astride his horse again, directing the farm experiments as vigorously as ever, but Mr. Quinn shook his head. "I don't think so, Henry!" he said. "I'll not be fit for much anyway. You'll have to lend a hand with the estate, my son."

"I'll help all I can, father, but I'm not much of an agriculturist!..."

"Well, you can't be everything. That new book of yours ... the one you sent me the other day!..."

"'Turbulence,' father?"

"Aye. It's a gran' book, that. I'd like well to be able to write a book of that sort. I'm proud of you. Henry!"

Henry blushed and turned away shyly, for direct praise always embarrassed him, but he was very pleased with his father's praises which gave him greater pleasure than the praises of any one else, even Gilbert.

"You'll stay home a while, now you're here, Henry, son, won't you?"

"Yes, father, as long as you like!"

"That's right. You'll be able to work away here in peace and quietness. Nobody'll disturb you. I suppose you're started on another book?"

Henry told him of "The Wayward Man." ...

"That's a great title," he said. "You're a gran' one at gettin' good titles for your books, Henry. I was readin' a bit in the paper about you the other day, an' I near wrote to the man an' told him you were my son, I was that pleased. Ease this pillow under my head, will you? Thanks, boy!"

He took Henry's hand in his. "I'm right an' glad to have you home again," he said, smiling at him. "Right an' glad!"

2

The whole of "The Wayward Man" was completed before Mr. Quinn was well enough to move about easily. Henry spent the morning and part of the afternoon on his novel, giving the rest of the day to his father. Sometimes, in his walks, Henry met young farmers and labourers returning from the Orange Hall where they had been doing such drill as can be done indoors. On Saturday afternoons, they would set off to join other companies of the Ulster Volunteer Force in a route march. Jamesey McKeown had begun to learn wireless telegraphy and was already expert with flag-signals and the heliograph. Peter Logan, who had married Sheila Morgan, had been promoted to be a sergeant.... "I suppose Sheila's a nurse?" Henry said to him the first time he met him.

"She's nursin' a wean, Mr. Henry!" Logan replied, winking heavily. "We've a couple already, an' there'll be another afore long. She's as punctual as the clock, Sheila. She's a great woman for fine, healthy childher!"

"Well, that's what you want, isn't it?" Henry said.

"Aye, you're right, sir. You are, indeed. There's nothin' til beat a lot of young childher about the house. Will you come an' see the drill?..."

Henry went to see a display in a field just outside Ballymartin. The men marched and counter-marched, and charged and skirmished, and did physical drill until they were tired and sweating, while their women looked on in pride and pleasure. Sheila was there, too, and Henry went to her and sat beside her while the military manoeuvres took place. She made no impression on him now ... he saw her simply as a countrywoman in the family way ... a little blowsy and dishevelled and red with exertion.

"For dear sake, Henry!" she said in greeting, holding out her hand to him.

"Well," he said, "when does the war begin?"

"Aw, now," she answered, "don't ask me! Sure, I'm never done coddin' Peter about it. But it's the grand health, Henry. You'd never believe the differs it's made to that wee lad, Gebbie, that serves in Dobbin's shop. I declare to my God, he had a back as roun' as a hoop 'til they started these Volunteers, but now he's like a ramrod. He's a marvel, that lad! Teeshie Halpin's taken a notion of him since he straightened up, an' as sure as you're living she'll have him the minute they can scrape a few ha'pence thegether to buy a wheen of furniture. Well, if the Volunteers never does no more nor that, they'll have done well, for dear knows, Andy Gebbie was an affront to the Almighty, an' him stoopin' that way!"

"But are they going to fight, Sheila?..."

"Ah, get away with you, man!" said Sheila. "What in the name of all that's good an' gracious, would they be fightin' for? Sure, they're lettin' on, to frighten the English out of their wits!" She changed the talk to more interesting discourse. "I've two childher now," she said.

"So Peter was telling me," he answered.

"A wee boy an' a wee girl. An' terrible wee tories they are, too! They're about somewhere with their aunt Kate. An' how an' all are you, Henry?"

"I'm very well, Sheila."

"You're lookin' gran'. I hear you write books, but I never read noan of them!"

"Would you like to read them?" he asked.

"I would, fine. Dear, oh, I often wonder how anybody can write books. I never was no hand at writin' anything, not even a letter. But I suppose there's a knack in it, an' once you learn it, you're all right!"

"Yes," he replied, "that's about it. I'll send my books to you. I'd have sent them before if I'd thought you'd care to read them!"

"You might 'a' knowed rightly, I'd be glad to have them...."

3

But Sheila's good-natured scorn for the Ulster Volunteer Force did not convince Henry. One could not look at these drilling men, and feel satisfied that they were pretending to be angry or that they did not mean what they said, when they declared that they would die in the last ditch rather than consent to be governed by Nationalists. Mr. Quinn spent much time in denouncing Sir Edward Carson and his friends, but he did not doubt for a moment that the followers would fight. He had very little faith in the sincerity of the politicians. "That fellow, F. E. Smith," he exclaimed wrathfully, "what in hell is he doin' over here, I'd like to know? I'd like to kick his backside for him, an' pack him back to wherever he come from!" And there was F. E. Robinson, too, bounding about Ulster like a well-polished young gentleman from the Gaiety chorus, and delivering historical orations that filled the crowd with amazement.

"He's the great cod, that lad!" Mr. Quinn said. "He's worse nor Smith. He come down here to Ballymartin, an' he made a speech all about King James's foreign policy, and mentioned a whole lot of people that the Or'ngemen never heard tell of. It would 'a' done well for a lecture at the Queen's College ... you should 'a' seen the men nudgin' one another, an' askin' who he was, an' what in the name of God he was talkin' about! 'Why doesn't he curse the Pope an' 'a' done wi' it!' one fellow said to another. 'That lad curse anybody!' says the other one. 'Sure, he'd near boak[3] himself if he done the like of that!' Aye, there's a lot of bletherin' about the Volunteers, but all the same I don't like the look o' things, an' if they're not careful there'll be bother. It'll take the men at the top all their time to hold the bottom ones down. It ought never to have been allowed to begin with. The minute they started their drillin' an' palaver, they ought to 'a' been stopped. Have you seen John Marsh lately, Henry?"

"I saw him when I was in Dublin a few months ago with Gilbert Farlow. He's drilling, too!..."

"It's fearful, that's what it is. Fightin' an' wranglin' like that! I wish I could get him up here a while. I'd talk to him, an' try an' put some sense into him. Do you think would he come if I was to ask him?"

"I daresay, father. Shall I write to him for you?"

"Aye, do, Henry. I like that fellow quaren well, an' I'd be sorry if any harm come to him. He's the sort gets into any bother that's about! Write to him now, will you, an' you'll catch the evenin' mail!"

Henry got writing materials and wrote the letter in his father's room. "Will that do?" he said, passing it to Mr. Quinn for inspection.

"That'll do fine," Mr. Quinn replied, when he had finished reading it. "Matier'll take it to the letterbox!"

"I don't know what the world's comin' to," he went on, a little fractiously. "There's a fellow wouldn't harm a fly, drillin' and gettin' ready to shoot people. An' Irish people, too! One lot of Irishmen wantin' to shoot another lot!... They're out of their minds, that's what's wrong wi' them. There's Matier ... you'd think at his age, he'd have more sense, but nothin'll do him but he must be off of an evenin' formin' fours. And what for? I'd like to know. I says to him, 'William Henry, who do you want to kill?' 'The Home Rulers an' the Papishes!' says he. 'Quit, man,' says I, 'an' talk sense.' 'I am talkin' sense,' says he. 'You're not,' I says to him. 'D'you mean to stan' there an' tell me you want to kill Hugh Kearney?' 'I do not indeed,' says he. 'What put that notion in your head?' 'Isn't he a Catholic an' a Home Ruler?' says I. I had him properly when I said that, for him an' Hugh Kearney is like brothers to one another. 'Would you kill him?' I says to Matier. 'No, sir, I wouldn't,' he answers me back. 'I'd shed me heart's blood for him!' And he would, too!... I've always been against Home Rule, Henry, an' you know well why, but I'm more against this sort of thing than I am against that, and anyway I'm not so sure it wouldn't be better in the long run. There's too much Socialism in England, an' we have to put up with the results of it because of the Union. The Socialists get this law an' that law passed, an' we have to suffer it in Ireland because we're tied up to England...."

4

John Marsh came to Ballymartin. Henry had sent a private note to him, urging him to accept his father's invitation. "He's very ill," he wrote, "and he would like to see you. I'm afraid he may not get better, although there's a chance...."

"There you are, John Marsh!" Mr. Quinn said to him, as he entered the bedroom. "An' what damned nonsense are you up to now, will you tell me?"

John smiled at him. "You're to get well at once," he answered. "We can't have you lying ill at a time like this!"

"An' aren't you an' the like of you enough to make any man ill? Come here to me, an' let me have a look at you. I can't see you rightly in that light.... You're lookin' pale on it, John. What ails you?"

"I'm tired, that's all. I shall be all right in the morning...."

"You're workin' yourself to death! That's what you're doin'. Sit down there by the side of the bed till I talk to you!"

John drew a chair up to the old man's bedside, and sat down on it as he had been bidden. Henry, anxious lest his father should overtax his strength, sat at the foot of the bed.

"An' what are you drillin' for?" Mr. Quinn demanded of John.

"We must defend ourselves, Mr. Quinn...."

"Defend me granny! An' who's goin' to harm you?" Henry made a motion as if he would quieten his father, but the old man shook him off. "Leave me alone, Henry," he said, "an' let me have my say!" He turned again to John Marsh. "Isn't there the English Army to defend you if anybody tries to injure you? What call have you to start another lot of damned volunteers to be makin' ill-feelin' in the country for?"

"We must be prepared to defend ourselves," John insisted. "We can't trust the English...."

And so they wrangled until Mr. Quinn, too tired to continue, sent Henry and Marsh from his room.

"Take him away an' talk to him, Henry!" he said. "He'll not be happy 'til he's in bother, that lad. Away on with you, John!..."

5

It was while John Marsh was at Ballymartin, that the mutiny at the Curragh Camp took place. The soldiers had been ordered to Ulster to maintain order ... and their officers had refused to go.

"I thought you said we could depend on the English Army," John exclaimed to Mr. Quinn in very excited tones. "This looks like it, doesn't it? If they'd been ordered to march on us, they'd have done it quick enough. That's why we're drilling, Mr. Quinn. We've got to defend ourselves. Supposing the Ulster Volunteers attack us!..."

"They won't," Mr. Quinn snapped at him.

"But supposing they do, are we to sit down and let them do it? I tell you we daren't trust to the English. They'll promise everything and give nothing. That's the nature of them. They're a treacherous race!..."

"I wish to my God you had some sense, John Marsh," said Mr. Quinn.

"Oh, I know you think I'm a madman, but you can't deny facts, and the facts are that the English have systematically betrayed the Irish throughout their history. If there's a war on, they go down on their hands and knees and ask us to win it for them ... they offer us the sun and the moon and the stars for our help ... but the minute they've got over their fright, they start plotting to get out of their promises. They've done it before and they'll do it again. I want our Volunteers to be more than a defensive organisation. I want them to be an offensive organisation. If we don't look out very sharply well find that the English have ruined Ireland again. They've started to do it openly now. You've heard, haven't you, about the Cunard Line and Queenstown?..." It appeared that the Cunard Line had abandoned Queenstown as a port of call for American liners.... That means absolute ruin for Queenstown!... Casement tried to get the Hamburg-Amerika line to send their boats instead, and they'd agreed to do so ... all the preparations were made to welcome the first of their boats ... and then the scheme was abandoned by the Germans. The English Foreign office got at them!... "Oh, of course, it's only Ireland, and Irish people and Irish interests can be neglected and ruined without a blush so long as the English interests are safe.... More and more I'm convinced that we've got to separate from them. They're a common-minded people. You know they are! They're hucksters ... they think in ... in ha'porths!..."

6

The attempt to bring John Marsh to reason was a failure, and he went back to Dublin more resolved to make the Volunteers an offensive body than he had been when he arrived. He had seen a review of the Ulster Volunteer Force in Belfast and the setness of the men impressed him. "They'll fight all right," he said. "I don't suppose their leaders have any stomach for fighting, but the men have plenty. By God, I wish they were on our side!"

"Well, why don't you try to get them on your side!" Henry demanded. "Your notion of conciliating them is to start getting ready to fight them!"

"We have tried to conciliate them," Marsh replied. "When Carson formed his Provisional Government, some of us asked him to extend it to the whole of Ireland. Do you think we wouldn't rather have Carson than Redmond? He's got some stuff in him anyhow, but Redmond!..."

He made a gesture of contempt. "I've no use," he said, "for a man who looks so like Napoleon without being Napoleon!"

"But Carson wouldn't," he went on. "It's all very well to say 'Conciliate Ulster!' but Ulster won't let us conciliate her. The Ulster people have nothing but contempt for us, and they ram Belfast down our throats until we're sick of it. And a lot of their prosperity is just good luck and ... and favour. They've been well looked after by the English, and they're near everything ... coalfields and Lancashire. Do you think if Galway was where Belfast is, it wouldn't be as prosperous? If they're so almighty clever as they say they are, why don't they come and lead us, instead of clinging on to England like a pampered kid?..."

Henry listened patiently to John. There must, he thought, be some powerful motive for so much passion. He had come to look upon nationality as a contemptible thing, a fretful preoccupation with little affairs, but when he faced the fury of John Marsh, he could not deny that this passion, whether it be little or big, will bring the world to broils until it be satisfied. He did not now feel that irritation which he had formerly felt when John derided the English or called them by opprobrious names. He could make allowances for the anger of the dispossessed. "That kind of talk," he thought, "kills itself. Marsh has only to let himself go along enough, and he'll let himself go altogether. He'll exhaust his abuse...."

He remembered that when Gilbert and he had arrived in Dublin after their flight from London, they had tried to discover just what Marsh and his friends meant to do with Ireland when they had gained control of the country ... but Marsh and his friends had no plans. They talked vaguely of the national spirit and of self-government, but they could not be induced to name a specific reform to which they would set their minds. Some one had given a copy of Dale's Report of Irish Elementary Education to Henry, and he had read it with something like horror. It seemed to him that here was the whole Irish problem, that when this was solved, everything was solved ... but when he spoke of it to Marsh and his friends he found that most of them had never heard of Dale's Report, were scarcely aware of the fact that there was an Irish education problem. "We'll deal with that after we've got Home Rule," they would say, waving their hands in the airy fashion in which futile people always wave their hands. And so it was with everything else. They would deal with that after they had got Home Rule. Gilbert and Henry had explored the Combe and the dreadful swamp of slums reaching up from Ringsend and spilling almost into the gardens of Merrion Square....

"But don't they know about this?" Gilbert asked in amazement. "I mean, haven't they any eyes ... or noses?"

"They'll deal with that after they've got Home Rule," Henry answered miserably.

They had gone back to their lodgings in a state of deep depression. Wherever one went in Dublin, one was followed by little whining children, demanding alms in the cadging voice of the professional beggar, and many of them were hopelessly diseased....

"I thought the Irish were very religious and moral?" Gilbert said once, as they passed a group of sickly children sitting at the entrance to a court of Baggot Street.

"Why?" Henry replied.

"These kids are syphilitic," Gilbert answered. "The place is full of syphilis!"

"Dublin is a garrison town and a University town," said Henry, with a shrug of his shoulders. "There are eight barracks in Dublin ... it's the most be-barracked city in the Kingdom.... Oh, we're terribly moral, we Irish. As moral as ostriches. If you pick up a Dublin newspaper, it's a million to one you'll see a reference to 'the innate purity of the Irish women,' written probably by a boozy reporter. No, Gilbert, you're wrong about these kids. They're not syphilitic.... Good Lord, no! That's English misgovernment. Wait 'til they've got Home Rule ... and those kids won't be syphilitic any more!..."

They had met a man at Ernest Harper's who wore the kilt of the Gael, and had listened to him while he bleated about the beautiful purity of the Irish women. He was a convert to Catholicism and Nationalism and anti-Englishism, and he had the appearance of a nicely-brought-up saint. "He looks as if he had just committed a miracle, and is afraid he may do it again!" Gilbert whispered to Henry. This man purred at them. "The priests have kept Ireland pure," he murmured. "Many harsh things have been said about them, but no one has ever denied that they have kept Ireland pure!"

"I do," said Henry, full of desire to shock the Celt.

"You do?..."

"Anybody can keep a man pure by putting him in prison. That's what the priests have done. They've put the Irish people in gaol!..."

The kilted Celt shrank away from him. He was sorry, but he could not possibly sit still and listen to such conversation. He hoped that he was as broad-minded as any one, but there were limits.... Very wisely, he thought, the Church!...

"Blast the Church!" said Henry, and the kilted Celt had gone shivering away from him.

"That kind of person makes me foam at the mouth," Henry muttered to Gilbert "The Irish people aren't any purer than any other race. It's all bunkum, this talk about their 'innate purity.' If you clap the population into gaol, you can keep them 'pure,' in act anyhow, and if the priests won't let the sexes mingle openly, they can get up a spurious purity just like that. If a girl gets into trouble in Ireland, she goes to the priest and confesses, and the priest takes jolly good care that the man marries her. That's why the rate of illegitimacy is so low. And anyhow, the bulk of the people are agricultural, and country people are more continent than any other people. It's the same in England, but the English don't go about bleating of their 'innate purity.' I tell you, Gilbert, the trouble with this country is self-consciousness...."

"Home Rule ought to cure that!" said Gilbert.

"That's why I'm a Home Ruler," Henry replied. "If you chaff these people, they get angry and want to fight. If anybody were to get up in a public hall and say about the Irish one-quarter of the things that Bernard Shaw says in public about the English, the audience would flay him alive and wreck the building. They're too little to stand chaff easily. It takes a big people to bear criticism good-naturedly.... All the same, Gilbert, your damned countrymen are to blame for all this!"

"I know that," said Gilbert, "but your damned countrymen seem determined to remain like it!"

8

Mr. Quinn and Henry had talked of Ireland and of John Marsh, after John had returned to Dublin.

"Sometimes," said Mr. Quinn, "I think that the best thing for Ireland would be to let the two sides fight. That might bring them together. One damned good scrap ... and they might shake hands and become reconciled. There was as much antagonism and bitterness between the North and South in America as there is between the North and South in Ireland ... and on the whole, I think the Civil War did a lot of good!"

"It's a damned queer country, Henry!" he went on, lying down and drawing the bedclothes up about his neck. "Damned queer!"

"I suppose they all know what they're up to," he continued, looking intently at the ceiling. "But I don't!"

"Are you comfortable, father?" Henry asked, bending anxiously over Mr. Quinn who had a grey, tired look on his face.

"Yes, thank you, Henry, I'm ... I'm comfortable enough!" He turned his head slightly and gazed at Henry for a few moments without speaking. Then he smiled at him. "I tried hard to make an Irishman out of you, Henry," he said.

"I am an Irishman, father!"

"Aye, but a very Irishman. Many's a time I wonder what you are. What are you, Henry? You're not English an' you're not Irish. What are you?"

"I don't know, father. I'm very Irish when I'm in England, and I'm very English when I'm here!"

"That's no good, Henry. All you do is to make both sides angry. You should be something all the time!"

"I try to be fair," said Henry.

"That'll not lead you very far. Well, well, the world's the world, and there's an end of it!"

9

Sitting in the garden that evening, looking towards the hazy hills, Henry wondered, too, what he was. Indeed, he told himself, he loved Ireland, but then he loved England, also. Once, when he was in Trinity, he had trudged up into the mountains, and had sat on a stone and gazed down on the city and, beyond it, to the sea, and while he had sat there, a great love of his country had come into his heart, and he had found himself irrationally loving the earth about him, just because it was Irish earth. He had tried to check this love which was conquering him, and he had scraped up a handful of earth and rubbed his fingers in it. "Soil," he had murmured aloud. "Just soil ... like any other soil!" and then, suddenly, overpoweringly, irresistibly, something had quickened in him, and while he was murmuring that the earth he had scraped up was "just soil," he had raised it to his lips and had kissed it.... And as quickly as the impulse to kiss the earth came to him, came also revulsion. "That was a sloppy thing to do," he said to himself, and he flung the earth away from him.

He had stayed there until the evening, lulled by the warm wind that blew about the mountains, and soothed by the soft, kindly smell of burning turf. There was an odour of smouldering furze near by, and the air was full of pleasant sounds: the rattle of carts, the call of a man to a dog, the whinnying of horses and the deep lowing of cows. He turned on his side and looked seawards. The sun had set in a great field of golden cloud, throwing splashes of light down the sides of the mountains and turning little rain-pools into pools of fire; but now the dusk was settling down, and as Henry looked towards the sea, he saw lights shining out of the houses, making warm and comforting signals in the dark. Dublin lay curled about the Bay, covered by smoke that was pierced here and there by the chimney-stacks of factories. There, beneath him, were little rocking lights on the boats and ships that lay in Kingstown Harbour or drifted up and down the Irish Sea, and over there, across the Bay, the great high hump of Howth thrust itself upwards. A tired ship sailed slowly up to the city, trailing a long line of white foam behind her.... He stood up and looked about him; and again the love of Ireland came into his heart, and this time he did not try to check it. He yielded to it, giving himself up to it completely....

"You can't help it," he murmured to himself. "You simply can't help it!..."

But he loved England, too. There had been nights when he had loved London as a man might love his mother ... when the curve of the Thames, and the dark shine of its water against the arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the bulging dome of St. Paul's rising proudly out of the haze and smoke, and the view of the little humpy hills at Harrow that was seen from the Hampstead Heath ... when all these became like living things that loved him and were loved by him. Once, with Gilbert, he had wandered over Romney Marsh, from Hythe to Rye, and had felt that Kent and Sussex were as close to him as Antrim and Down. And Devonshire, from north and south, was friendly and native to him. He had tramped about Exmoor and had seen the red deer running swiftly from the hunt, and had climbed a bare scarp of Dartmoor, startling the wild ponies so that they ran off with their long tails flying in the air, scattering the flocks of sheep in their flight. The very names of the Devonshire rivers were like homely music to him, and he would say the names over to himself for the pleasure of their sound: Taw and Tamar and Torridge, the Teign and the Dart and the Exe, and the rivers about Boveyhayne, the Sid and the Otter, the Coly, the Axe and the Yarty....

"I'm not de-nationalised," he insisted. "I love Ireland and England. I'm part of them and they are part of me, and we shall never be separate...."

10

He had stayed at Ballymartin until he had completed "The Wayward Man." His father's health had varied greatly, but soon after the publication of the new novel, it mended and, although he did not recover his old strength and vigour, he was well enough to move about and superintend the work on his farm.

"You can go back to London now, Henry!" he said to his son one morning, after breakfast. "I know you're just itchin' to get back there, an' I'm sure I'm sick, sore an' tired of the sight of you. Away off with you, now!" And Henry, protesting that he did not wish to go, had gone to London. Gilbert's second comedy, "Sylvia," had been produced by Sir Geoffrey Mundane and, like "The Magic Casement," had achieved a fair amount of success. "But I haven't done anything big yet," Gilbert complained to Henry. "My aim's better than it was, but I'm still missing the point. Perhaps the next one will hit it...."

In London, Henry began "The Fennels," but after he had written a couple of chapters, he found himself unable to proceed with it.

"I must go back to Ireland," he said to Gilbert. "I want the feel of Ulster. I can't get it into this book unless I'm there, somehow!" And so, sooner than he had anticipated, he returned to Ballymartin, where "The Fennels" was finished, and there he stayed until Gilbert wrote and asked him to join him at Tre'Arrdur Bay.

"You can't get much nearer to Ireland than that," he wrote: "You hop into the boat at Kingstown and hop out of it again at Holyhead and there you are!..."

"I shall be back again in a month, father!" he had said to Mr. Quinn, and then he had taken train to Belfast, where he was to change for Dublin and thence go to Wales.

In Belfast, there was great excitement because the Ulster Volunteers had successfully landed a cargo of guns that were purchased in Germany. The Volunteers had seized the coastguard stations at Larne and at Donaghadee and Bangor, overawing the police, and there had been much jocularity. It was all done in excellent taste. Had it not been for the death of a coastguard through heart failure, there would have been nothing to mar the jolly entertainment....

11

"I suppose John Marsh was sick about the gun-running in Ulster?" said Gilbert to Henry, as they approached the hotel at Tre'Arrdur Bay at which they were to stay.

"No, I don't think so. He seemed to think it was rather fine of the Ulstermen to do it. You see, it's put the Government in a hole, and that pleases him. He was very mysterious in his talk, and full of hints!..."

"Are they going to run guns, too?" Gilbert asked.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Henry. "One of these days a gun'll go off, and then they'll stop playing the fool, I suppose!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Transcriber's note: No footnote text was found for this footnote marker.]



THE THIRD CHAPTER

1

"Roger's getting all his facts in fine trim for the book on a National Army," Gilbert said after lunch. "The thing's been much bigger than any of us imagined, but Roger's a sticker, and he's got a lot done!"

"I'd nearly forgotten about that business," Henry replied.

"Roger hasn't forgotten. He's been spending a great deal of time in Bermondsey lately, and I shouldn't be surprised if the local Tories adopt him as their candidate at the next election. I don't suppose he'll get in. It'll be a pity if he doesn't. Rachel's making it easier for him. Roger says she's popular with the girls in the jam factories ... and of course that's very useful. You see, Rachel tells the girls to tell their mothers to tell their fathers to vote for Roger when the time comes, and the fathers'll have to do it or they'll get a hell of a time from their women. I can tell you, Quinny, Rachel knows what's what. She's going to ask some of the jam-girls out to tea and show them the baby!..."

"Good old British Slop, Gilbert! Do you remember how we swore that we would never have anything to do with Slop?..."

"We've had a lot to do with it. Roger was right. The Slop is there and you've got to make allowances for it, and after all, why shouldn't Rachel show her baby to the girls? Damn it all, a baby is a remarkable thing, when you come to think of it. All that wriggle and bubble and squeak and kick ... and Lord only knows what'll come out of it! We ought to get married, Quinny, and father a few brats. My own notion is to get hold of a nice, large, healthy female of the working-class and set her up in a very ugly house in a very ugly suburb, near a municipal park, and give her three pounds a week for herself, and an allowance for every child she produces. I could have all the pride and pleasure of parenthood without the boredom and nuisance of being a husband, and the youngsters would probably be young giants. The girl wouldn't mind how many she had, and she'd feed 'em herself. There'd be no damned bottle and no damned limitation. And I'd put all the boys in the Navy, and I'd make cooks out of the girls ... cooks, Quinny, not food-murderers, and I'd call the first boy Michael John, and the second boy Patrick James and the third boy Peter William and the fourth boy Roger Henry Gilbert Ninian...."

"And what would you call the girls?"

"Wait a minute! I haven't done with the boys yet. And I'd call the fifth boy Matthew. I'd call the first girl Margaret, and the second girl Bridget, and the third girl Rachel, and the fourth girl Mary, and I'm damned if I know what I'd call the fifth girl, so I'd let her mother choose her name. And they'd all know how to swim, and manage a boat, and box, and whistle with two fingers in their mouths, and the girls' chief ambition would be to get married and have babies. They'd have a competition to see who could have the most. And their husbands would all be big, hearty men. Margaret would marry a blacksmith, and Bridget 'ud marry a fisherman, and Rachel 'ud marry a farmer, and Mary'd marry a soldier and the other one would marry a sailor. Mary's man 'ud be a sergeant-major, a fat sergeant-major, and the other one's 'ud be a boatswain or a chief gunner. I'd have so many grandchildren that I'd never be able to remember which were mine and which belonged to the man next door!..."

"You'd want a great deal of money for that lot, Gilbert!"

"I suppose I would. But I think that men of quality ought to have children by strong, healthy women of the working-class. I think there's a lot to be said for the right of the lord, don't you? It was good for the race ... kept up the quality of the breed! I shall have to think seriously about this...."

"You'd better look out for a farmer's daughter while you're here," Henry suggested.

"What! A Welshwoman! Good God, no!! My goodness, Quinny, you ought to bring that fellow, John Marsh, to Wales for a few months. That 'ud cure him of his Slop about nationality. I came to Wales, determined to like the Welsh, and I've failed. That's all. I've failed hopelessly. I told myself that it was absurd to believe that a whole nation could be as bad as English people say the Welsh are ... but it isn't absurd ... of the Welsh anyhow. They're all that everybody says they are, only about ten times worse. I've been all over this country one time and another, and they're simply ... mean. They're a dying race, thank heaven! They've kept themselves to themselves so much that their blood is like water, and so they're simply perishing. They wouldn't absorb or be absorbed ... and so they're just dying out. Your lot were wiser than the Welsh, Quinny!"

"The Irish?"

"Yes. They absorbed all the new blood they could get into their veins, and so, whoever else may perish, the Irish won't. This nationality business is all my eye, Quinny. You don't want one strain in a country. You want hundreds of strains. You want to mingle the bloods. ... I don't believe there's a pure-blooded Irishman in Ireland or out of it.... Oh, the Welsh! Oh, the awful Welsh! Inbreeding in a nation is the very devil ... and it makes 'em so damned uncivil. Oh, a shifty, whining race, the Welsh!..."

2

There are many bays on that coast, and in one of these, where they could easily get to deep water, they bathed every morning, drying themselves in the sun when they were tired of swimming. They would haul themselves out of the sea by clutching at the long tassels of sea-weed, and then lie down on the bare, warm rocks while the sun dried the salt into their skins. Once, while they were lying in this fashion, Gilbert turned to Henry and said, "Have you been to Boveyhayne at all since Ninian went away?"

"No," Henry answered. "I was to have gone with you that Christmas, but my father's illness prevented me, and I haven't been since."

"Why don't you go? They'd be glad to see you, and Ninian'd like it."

"I must go one of these days. How is Mrs. Graham? I suppose you've seen her lately?"

"She was all right when I saw her. Mary's rather nice!"

Henry did not say anything, and Gilbert, having waited for a while, went on.

"I always thought you and Mary...."

He broke off suddenly and sat up. "It's getting a bit chilly," he said. "I think I'll dress!"

"There's no hurry, Gilbert," Henry answered. "You didn't finish what you were saying."

"It's none of my business. I've no right to...."

"Oh, yes, you have, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, sitting up too. "Go on!"

"Well, I always thought that you and Mary were ... well, liked each other. That was why I was so puzzled when you got fond of Cecily. I felt certain that you'd marry Mary. Why don't you, Quinny? She's an awfully nice girl, and you and she are rather good pals, aren't you?"

"I don't know, Gilbert. I think I love Mary better than any one I've ever met, and yet I seem to lose touch with her very easily!"

"Oh, I shouldn't count Cecily. Cecily is anybody's sweetheart!..."

"But it wasn't only Cecily. There was a girl ... a farm-girl in Antrim. I never told you about her. Her name was Sheila Morgan ... she's married now ... and I went straight from Mary to her. Of course, I was a kid then, but still I'd told Mary I was fond of her, and we'd arranged to get married when we grew up ... and then I went home and made love to Sheila Morgan!"

"None of these women held you, Quinny!" said Gilbert.

"No, that's true, and Mary has, although I seldom see her. I thought that I could never love anybody as I loved Sheila Morgan ... until I met Cecily ... and then I thought I should never love any one as I loved her ... but somehow Cecily doesn't hold me now, and Mary does. I can't tell you when I ceased to love Cecily ... I don't really know that I have ceased to love her ... it just weakened, so gradually that I did not notice it weakening. All the same, if I were to see Cecily now, I should probably want her as badly as ever."

"You might, Quinny, but you wouldn't go on wanting her. You see, she wouldn't want you for very long, and my general opinion is that you can't keep on giving if you get nothing in return ... unless, of course, you're a one-eyed ass. A healthy, intelligent man, if he loves a woman who doesn't love him ... well he goes off and loves some one else ... and quite right, too. These devoted fellows who cherish their blighted affections forever ... damn it, they deserve it. They've got no imagination! I don't think Cecily'd hold you now, Quinny, not for very long anyhow. I wish you'd marry Mary. You quite obviously love her, and she quite obviously loves you.... Oh, Lordy God, I wish I could love somebody. I wish I were a young man in a novelette, with a nice, clear-cut face and crisp, curly hair and frightfully gentlemanly ways and no brains so that I could get into the most idiotic messes.... Why aren't there any aphrodisiacs for men who cannot love any one in particular, Quinny! If you'd had the sense to have a sister, I should probably have married her. Roger's family runs to nothing but males, and Rachel can't honestly recommend any of her female relatives to me. If I thought Mary'd have me, I'd marry her, but I know she wouldn't. I used to think it was awful to want to believe in God and not be able to believe in Him, but it's a lot worse to want to love and not be able to love. I shall have to marry an actress. That's all!"

They dressed in the shelter of the rocks, and then went back to the hotel to lunch.

"I'd like to marry Mary!..." Henry began.

"Why don't you, then?" Gilbert interrupted.

"Because I feel that I must go to her absolutely undivided, Gilbert. Do you know what I mean? I want to be able to go to her, knowing that no other woman can sway me from her for a second. It would be horrible to be married to her and feel something lurking inside me, just waiting for a chance to spring out and ... and make love to some one else!"

"You've changed a lot, Quinny, since the days when you pleaded for infinite variety. You wanted a wife for every mood!..."

Henry laughed. "We did talk a lot of rot when we first went to London," he said, putting his arm in Gilbert's.

"It wasn't all rot. My contributions to the discussion were very sensible. I wonder what's the excitement up there! The papers are in!..."

There was a group of visitors sitting on the seats in front of the hotel and they were reading the newspapers which had just been sent out from Holyhead.

"Let's go and ask," Henry exclaimed, and they both went on more quickly.

"Any news?" Gilbert shouted as they mounted the steps leading from the carriage-way to the terrace.

"Yes. Bad news from Ireland," a visitor answered.

"From Ireland!" Henry said.

"Yes. The Nationalists landed some guns at Howth!..."

"Yes, yes!" Henry said excitedly.

"And there was a scrap between the people and soldiers!..."

"The soldiers!"

The visitor nodded his head. "Some damned ass," he said, "had ordered the soldiers out, and ... well, there was a row. The crowd stoned the soldiers ... and soldiers are human like anybody else ... they fired on the crowd!..."

"Fired on them!"

"Yes. Several people were killed. It's a bad business, a damned bad business!..."

3

There was an unreasonable fury in Henry's heart. "It's a clever joke when the Ulster people do it," he said, raging at Gilbert. "And everybody agrees to look the other way, but it's a crime when the Nationalists do it, and it can only be punished by ... by shooting. I suppose it's absolutely impossible for the English to get any understanding into their thick heads!..."

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

"A rotten Unionist!..."

"Irish, all the same! The only thing that you Irish are united about is your habit of blaming the English for your own faults and misbehaviour. If I had the fellow who was responsible for this business I'd shoot him out of hand. I wouldn't think twice about it. If a man is such an ass as all that, he ought to be put out of the world quick. But then I'm English. The Irish'll make a case out of him. They'll orate over him, and they'll get frightfully cross for a fortnight, and then they'll do nothing. You know as well as I do, Quinny, that the English aren't unfriendly to the Irish, that they really are anxious to do the decent thing by Ireland. It isn't us: it's you. We're not against you ... you're against yourselves. There are about seventy-five different parties in Ireland, aren't there, and they all hate each other like poison?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is that the green vapour story?"

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

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

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

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

4

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

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

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



THE FOURTH CHAPTER

1

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

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

"A what?" Henry exclaimed.

"A war!..."

"But where?"

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

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

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

"I dunno!..."

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

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

"Yes, I remember!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Bad. Goo' Lor', man, it's ruin ... absolute ruin! I'll be up the pole, that's where I'll be. And I was thinking of getting married, too. Just thinking of it, you know ... nothing settled or anything ... and now ... damn it, what they want to go and have a war for? We don't want one!"

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

"By Jove!" they said, "it's ... it's true!"

"I told you it was true. You wouldn't believe me when I told you. You know, it's a Bit Thick, that's what it is. I've been a Liberal all my life, same as my father ... and then this goes and happens! What is a chap to do?..."

He wailed away, filling the air with prophecies of doom and disaster. They could hear him, as he rushed about the hotel telling the news, taking people into corners and informing them that it was a Bit Thick. There was something pitiful about him ... he had climbed to a comfortable competence from a hard beginning ... and something comical, too, something that made them all wish to laugh. The veneer of manners which he had acquired with so much trouble had worn off in a moment, and the careful speech, the rigid insistence on aspirates, to speak, took to its heels. He appeared to them suddenly, carrying an atlas.

"Where the 'ell is Serbia anyway?" he demanded. "I can't find the damn place on the map!"

2

They stood about, gaping at each other, unable to realise what had happened to them. One of the windows of the drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women's voices came through it to the terrace. Monotonously, exasperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question through the bewildered speeches of the women ... "But what's it about? That's what I want to know. I've asked everybody, but nobody seems to know!" Some one made an inaudible reply to the querulous voice, and then it went on: "Serbia! That's what some one else said, but we aren't Serbia. We're England, and I don't see what we've got to do with it. If they want to go and fight, let them. That's what I say!..."

Gilbert and Henry sat in the middle of the group on the terrace, listening to what was being said about them. They had thrown the newspapers aside ... there was hysteria in the headlines ... and were sitting in a sort of stupor, wondering what would happen next. The buzzing voice, demanding to be told what the war was about, still droned through the window, irritating them vaguely until the man who had first brought the news got up from his seat, and went to the window and shut it noisily.

"Damn 'er," he said, as he came back to his seat. "'Oo cares whether she knows what it's about or not! What's it got to do with 'er any'ow. She won't 'ave to do none of the fightin'!"

Fighting!

Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, there would be fighting ... and perhaps England would be drawn into the war, and then!...

A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, and called to them. "Coming to bathe?" she said.

They looked at her vacantly. "Bathe!" said Henry.

"Yes. It's a ripping morning!"

They stood up, and looked towards the sea that was white with sunshine ... and then turned away again. It seemed to Henry as if, down there by the rocks, in a splash of sunlight, a corpse were lying ... festering.... He sat down again, mechanically picking up a newspaper and reading once more the telegrams he had already read many times.

"Come along," the girl said. "You might just as well bathe!"

Gilbert looked up at her and smiled. "I was just wondering," he said, "what one ought to do!"

3

The banks had closed, and there was an alarm about money and a deeper alarm about food.... Panic suddenly came upon them, and in a short while, visitors began to pack their trunks in their eagerness to get home. The women felt that they would be safer at home ... they wanted to be in familiar places. "I really ought to be at home to look after my house," a man said to Henry. "They're a rough lot in our town, and if there's any shortage of food ... they'll loot, of course! I don't like breaking my holiday, but!..."

He did not complete his sentence ... no one ever completed a sentence then ... but went indoors....

And telegrams came incessantly, telegrams calling people home, telegrams announcing that others were not coming, telegrams containing information of the war....

"I suppose," said Gilbert, "if anything comes of this, well have to do something!..."

"Do something?" Henry murmured.

"Yes, I suppose so...."

Perkins came to him, Perkins who had an agency in Manchester.

"You know," he said, "I don't call this place safe. It's right on the coast ... slap-up against the sea ... and you know, if a German cruiser was to drop a shell right in the middle of us, we'd look damn silly, I can tell you!"

"We have a navy too," said Gilbert.

"Yes, I know all about that, but that wouldn't be much consolation to me if I was to get blown up, would it? You know, I do think they ought to draw the blinds down at night so's the light won't show out at sea. I mean to say, there's no sense in running risks, is there?"

"No ... no, of course not!"

"I think I'll go and suggest that to the proprietor. I've just been up to Manchester to see how things are going on there. Bit excited, of course. Nobody seems to know what to do, so they just sit down and cancel everything. Silly, I call it. I went to my office to get my letters, and every blessed one was cancelling an order. I mean to say, that's no way to go on ... losing their heads like that. And you know they'll need my stuff later on ... if we go in!"

"Your stuff?" Henry said.

"Yes. I deal in black!..."

"Christ!" said Gilbert, getting up and walking away.

"Your friend seems a bit upset, doesn't he?" Mr. Perkins murmured to Henry.

4

They went into Holyhead, and wandered aimlessly about the station. Marvellously, men in uniform appeared everywhere. The reservists, naval and military, had been called up, and while Gilbert and Henry stood in the station, a large number of them went away, leaving tearful, puzzled women on the platform. That morning the boots at the hotel had been called up to join his Territorial regiment. He had been carrying a trunk on his back, when the call came to him, and, chuckling, he dropped the trunk, and skipped off to get ready. "I'm wanted," he said ... and then he went off.

And still people went about, bemused and frightened, demanding what it was about....

"Well have to go in," some one said in the station. "I can't see how we can stay out!..."

"I can't see that at all," his neighbour replied. "We've got nothing to do with it!"

"If the Germans won't leave the Belgians alone!..."

Perkins interrupted again. "We've got a Belgian cook in our hotel," he said. "It ... it sort of brings it all home to you, that!"

There were rumours that the working-people were resolute against the war....

"And so are the employers," said Perkins. "I can tell you that. I've not met anybody yet who wants a war!"

And as the rumours flew about, they grew. One could see a rumour begin and swell and change and increase.

"I tell you what," said Perkins. "These Germans have been damn well asking for it, and I hope they'll damn well get it. I know a few Germans ... Manchester's full of 'em ... and I don't like 'em. As a nation, I don't like 'em. They ... they get on my nerves, that's what they do!"

There was talk about German organisation, German efficiency, German militarism....

"They don't think anything of a civilian in Germany. The soldier's everything. And women ... oh, my God, the way they treat women! I've seen German officers ... I've seen 'em myself ... chaps that are supposed to be gentlemen ... going along the street, and shoving women off the pavement!..."

"You know," said Perkins, "I don't really think much of the Germans myself. I mean to say, they got no initiative. That's what's the matter with 'em. Do you know what a German does when he wants to go across the street? He goes up to a policeman and asks him. And what does the policeman do? Shoves him off the pavement!... I'd break his jaw for him if he shoved me!"

They stayed on, wondering sometimes why they stayed, and then at midnight, a troop train steamed into the station, and a crowd of tired soldiers alighted from the carriages and prepared to embark.

"My God, it's begun!" said Perkins. "Where you chaps going to?" he asked of a soldier.

"I dunno," the soldier answered. "Ireland, I think. I 'eard we was goin' to put down these bleedin' Orangemen that's bin makin' so much fuss lately, but some'ow I don't think that's it. 'Ere, mate," he added, thrusting a dirty envelope into Perkins's hand. "That's my wife's address. I 'adn't time to write to 'er ... we was sent off in a 'urry ... you might just drop 'er a line, will you an' say I'm off!..."

"Right you are," said Perkins.

"Tell 'er I think I'm off to France, see, on'y I don't know, see! There's a rumour we're goin' to Ireland, but I don't think so. You better tell 'er that. An' I'm all right, see. So far any'ow!..."

"God!" said Perkins, as the soldiers moved towards the transport, "don't it make you feel as if you wanted to cry!..."

In the morning, they knew that England had declared war on Germany.

"Of course," said Gilbert, "we couldn't keep out of it. We simply had to go in!"

They had gone down to the bay to bathe. "This'll be my last," Gilbert muttered as they stripped, "for a while anyhow!"

"But you're not going yet," Henry said.

"I think so," Gilbert replied. "I don't know how the trains are running, but I shall try to get back to London to-night."

"But why?..."

"Oh, I expect they'll need chaps. Don't you think they will?"

"Do you mean you're going to ... enlist?"

"Yes. That seems the obvious thing to do. They're sure to need people," Gilbert answered.

"I suppose so," said Henry.

"I don't quite fancy myself as a soldier, Quinny. I'm not what you'd call a bellicose chap. I shan't enjoy it very much, and I expect I shall be damned scared when it comes to ... to charging and that sort of thing ... but a chap must do his share...."

"I suppose so," Henry said again.

It seemed to him to be utterly absurd that Gilbert should become a soldier, that his sensitive mind should be diverted from its proper functions to the bloody business of war.

"I've always jibbed a bit when I heard people talking about England in the way that awful stockbroker in the hotel talks about it," Gilbert was saying, "and I loathe the Kipling flag-flapper, all bounce and brag and bloodies ... but I feel fond of England to-day, Quinny, and nothing else seems to matter much. And anyhow fighting's such a filthy job that it ought to be shared by everybody that can take a hand in it at all. It doesn't seem right somehow to do your fighting by proxy. I should hate to think that I let some one else save my skin when I'm perfectly able to save it myself...."

"But you've other work to do, Gilbert, more important work than that. There are plenty of people to do that job, but there aren't many people to do yours. Supposing you went out and ... and got ... killed?..."

"There's that risk, of course," said Gilbert, "but after all, I don't know that my life is of greater value than another man's. A clerk's life is of as much consequence to him as mine is to me."

"I daresay it is, Gilbert, but is it of as much consequence to England? I know it sounds priggish to say that, but some lives are of more value than others, and it's silly to pretend that they're not."

"I should have agreed with you about that last week, Quinny. You remember my doctrine of aristocracy?... Well, somehow I don't feel like that now. I just don't feel like it. Those chaps we saw at Holyhead, going off to France ... I shouldn't like to put my plays against the life of any one of them. I couldn't help thinking last night, while I was lying in bed, that there I was, snugly tucked up, and out there ... somewhere!..." He pointed out towards the Irish Sea ... "those chaps were sailing to ... to fight for me. I felt ashamed of myself, and I don't like to feel ashamed of myself. You saw that soldier giving his wife's address to Perkins? Poor devil, he hadn't had time to say 'Good-bye' to her, and perhaps he won't come back. I should feel like a cad if I let myself believe that my plays were worth more than that man's life. And anyhow, if I don't write the plays, some one else will. I've always believed that if there's a good job to be done in the world, it'll get done by somebody. If this chap fails to do it, it'll be done by some other chap.... Will you come into Holyhead with me and enquire about trains? There's a rumour that a whole lot of them have been taken off. They're shifting troops about...."

6

Gilbert was to travel by the Irish mail the next day. He had made up his mind definitely to go to London and enlist, and Henry, having failed to dissuade him from his decision, resolved to go to London with him. They had talked about the war all day, insisting to each other that it could not be of long duration. There was a while, during the first two or three days' fighting, when the Germans seemed to have been held by the Belgians, that they had the wildest hopes. "If the Belgians can keep them back, what will happen when the French and British get at them?" But that time of jubilee hope did not last long, and again the air was full of rumours of disaster and misfortune. The Black Watch had been cut to pieces....

There was a sense of fear in every heart, not of physical cowardice, but of doubt of the stability of things. This horrible disaster had been foretold many times, so frequently, indeed, that it had become a joke, and novelists had written horrific accounts of the ills that would swiftly follow after the outbreak of hostilities. Credit would disappear ... and all that pretence at wealth, the pieces of paper and the scrips and shares, would be revealed at last as ... pieces of paper. Silver, even, would be treated with contempt, and there would be a scramble for gold. And people would begin to hoard things ... and no one would trust any one else. There would be suspicion and fear and greed and hate ... and very swiftly and very surely, civilisation would reel and topple and fall to pieces.... At any moment that might happen. So far, indeed, things were still steady ... calamity had not come so quickly as imaginative men had foretold ... but presently, when the slums ... the rich man's reproach ... had become hungrier than they usually were, there would be rioting ... and killing.... One began to be frightfully conscious of the slums ... and the rage of desperate, starving people. One imagined the obsessing thought in each mind: Here we are, eating and drinking and being waited upon ... and perhaps to-morrow!...

But no one, in forecasting the European Disaster, had made allowance for the obstinacy of man or taken into account the resisting power of human society. As if man, having built up this mighty structure of civilisation, would let it be flung down in a moment without trying to save some of it! As if man, having in pain and bloody sweat discovered his soul, would let it get lost without struggling to hold and preserve it!...

Gilbert and Henry came into the drawing-room, where the women were whispering to each other. Inexplicably, almost unconsciously, their voices had fallen to whispers ... as if they were in church or a corpse were above in a bedroom.... Four of the women were playing Bridge, but none of them wished to play Bridge; and as Gilbert and Henry entered the room, they put down their cards and looked round at them.

"Is there any more news?" one of them said, and Gilbert told them of the rumours that had been heard in Holyhead.

"They say the Black Watch have been cut to pieces," he said.

The whispering stopped.... They could hear the clock's regular tick-tick....

"Oh, the poor men ... the poor men!" an old woman said, and her fingers began to twitch....

Almost mechanically, the Bridge players picked up their cards. "It's your lead, partner!" one of them said, and then she threw down her cards, and rising from her chair, went swiftly from the room.

"Oh, the poor men ... the poor men!" the old woman moaned.

7

They sat on the rocks after tea and while they sat there, they saw a great ship sailing up the sea, beautiful and proud and swift; and they jumped up and climbed to the highest point of the cliff to watch her go by. They knew her, for there had been anxiety about her for two days, and as they watched her sailing past, they cheered and waved their hands although no one on the great vessel could see them. A girl came running to them....

"What is it?" she said.

"It's the Lusitania," they answered. "She's dodged them, damn them!"

"Oh, hurrah!" the girl shouted. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"

8

And then the strain lifted. The Lusitania had won home to safety. The Germans, greedy for this great prize, had failed to find her. Civilisation still held good ... if the world were to go down in the fight, it would go down proudly, hitting hard, hitting until the last....



THE FIFTH CHAPTER

1

It was odd, that journey from Holyhead to London, odd and silent; for all the way from Wales to Euston they passed but one train. They drove through the long stretch of England, past wide and windy fields where the harvesters were cutting the corn, through the dark towns of the Potteries, by the collieries where the wheels still revolved as the cages were lowered and raised, and then, plunging into the outer areas of London, they drove swiftly up to the station. In the evening, they went to Hampstead to see Roger and Rachel, and found them reading newspapers.

"I don't seem able to do anything else," said Roger. "I buy every edition that comes out. I read the damn things over and over, and then I read them again...."

Rachel nodded her head. "So do I," she said.

A girl came in, a friend of Rachel, who had been in Finland when the war began. She had hurried home by Berlin, where she had spent an hour or two, while waiting for a train, before England declared war on Germany....

"What were they like?" Gilbert asked.

"Wild with excitement. We went to a restaurant to get something to eat, and while we were there, the news came that Russia was at war with them.... My goodness! There was a Russian in the room, and they went for him!... I had my aunt with me, and I was afraid she'd get hurt, so we cleared out as quickly as we could, and when we got to the station, we had to fight to get into the train. My aunt fainted ... and they were beastly to us, oh, beastly! I tried to get things for her, but they wouldn't give us anything! They kept on telling us we'd be shot, and threatening us!... They were frightened, those big fat men were frightened. If you'd touched them suddenly, they'd have squealed ... like panic-stricken rabbits!..."