1
Soon after Henry had returned to Ballymartin, John Marsh came to Mr.
Quinn's house to prepare him for Trinity. "He'll put you in the way of
knowin' more about Ireland nor I can tell you, Henry," Mr. Quinn said to
his son on the evening before Marsh arrived, "an' a lot more nor you'll
learn at Rumpell's, or, for that matter, at Trinity."
"Then why do you want me to go to Trinity?" Henry asked, still unable to
conceal his disappointment at not being sent to Cambridge with his
friends.
"I've told you that already," Mr. Quinn replied firmly, closing his lips
down tightly. "I want you to have Irish friends as well as English
friends, and I've learned this much from livin', that a man seldom makes
friends ... _friends,_ mind you ... after he's twenty-five. You only
make acquaintances after that age. I'd like well to think there were
people in Ireland that had as tight a hold on your friendship, Henry, as
Gilbert Farlow and them other lads have.... An' there's another thing,"
he went on, leaning forward as he spoke and wagging his forefinger at
Henry. "If you go to Trinity with a kindly feelin' for Ireland, it'll be
something to think there's one man in the place that has a decent
thought for his country an' isn't an imitation Englishman. Who knows
what good you might do there?" He let his speculations consume him. "You
might change the character of the whole college. You ... you might make
it Irish. You ... you might be the means of turnin' the Provost into an
Irishman an' start him takin' an interest in his country. The oul' lad
might turn Fenian an' get transported or hung!..."
When he had ceased to speculate on what might happen if Henry began an
Irish crusade in Trinity, he spoke again of Marsh.
"You'll like him," he said. "I know you will. He's a bit off his head,
of course, but that's neither here nor there. The man's a scholar an' I
think he writes bits of poetry. I've never seen any of his pieces, but
somebody told me he wrote things. I'd like well to have a poet in the
house!"
"Is he a Catholic?" Henry asked.
His father nodded his head. "An' very religious, too, I believe," he
said. "Still, that's neither here nor there. I met him up in Dublin.
Ernest Harper told me about him!"
Ernest Harper was the painter-poet who had influenced so many young men
in Ireland, and Mr. Quinn had come into the circle of his friends
through the Irish co-operative movement. He had made a special visit to
Dublin to consult Harper about the education of his son, telling him of
his desire that Henry should have a strong national sense ... "but none
of your damned theosophy, mind!..." and Harper had recommended John
Marsh to him. Marsh had lately taken his B.A. degree and he was anxious
to earn money in circumstances that would enable him to proceed to his
M.A.
"That lad'll do rightly," said Mr. Quinn, and he arranged to meet Marsh
in the queer, untidy room in Merrion Square where Harper edited his
weekly paper. "He has the walls of the place covered with pictures of
big women with breasts like balloons," Mr. Quinn said afterwards when he
tried to describe Ernest Harper's office, "an' he talks to you about
fairies 'til you'd near believe a leprechaun 'ud hop out of the
coalscuttle if you lifted the lid!"
Soon afterwards, they met, and Mr. Quinn explained his purpose to Marsh.
"I'm not a Nationalist, thank God, nor a Catholic, thank God again, but
I'm Irish an' I want my son to know about Ireland an' to feel as Irish
as I do myself!"
Marsh talked about Nationalism and Freedom and English Misrule, but Mr.
Quinn waved his hands before his face and made a wry expression at him.
"All your talk about the freedom of Ireland is twaddle, John Marsh ...
if you don't mind, I'll begin callin' you John Marsh this minute ... an'
I may as well tell you I don't believe in the tyranny of England. The
English aren't cruel--they're stupid. That's what they are--Thick! As
thick as they can be, an' that's as thick as God thinks it's decent to
let any man be! But they're not cruel. They do cruel things sometimes
because they don't know any better, an' they think they're doin' the
right things when they're only doin' the stupid thing. That's where we
come in! Our job is to teach the English how to do the right thing."
They smiled at him. "An' I'm not coddin,'" he went on. "I mean every
word I say. It's not Home Rule for Ireland that's needed--it's Irish
Rule for England; an' I'll maintain that 'til my dyin' day.... But
that's neither here nor there. I think you're a fool, John Marsh, to go
about dreamin' of an Irish Republic ... you don't mind me callin' you a
fool, do you? ... but you love Ireland, and I'd forgive a man a great
deal for that, so if you'll come an' be tutor to my son, I'll be obliged
to you!"
And John Marsh, smiling at Mr. Quinn, had consented.
"That's right," Mr. Quinn said, gripping the young man's hand and
wringing it heartily. "I like him," he added, turning to Ernest Harper,
"an' he'll be good for Henry, an' I daresay I'll be good for him. You've
an awful lot of slummage in your skull," he continued, addressing Marsh
again, "but begod I'll clear that out!"
"Slummage?" Marsh asked questioningly.
"Aye. Do you not know what slummage is?"
He described it as a heap of steamy, flabby grain that is rejected by
distillers after the spirit has been extracted from it. "An' it's only
fit to feed pigs with," he said, ending his description. "An' the kind
of stuff you're lettin' out of you now is only fit for pub-patriots.
How soon can you come to Ballymartin. The sooner the better!"
He tried to drop the discussion of politics, but was so fond of it
himself that before he had settled the date of Marsh's appearance at
Ballymartin, he was in the middle of another discussion. His head was
full of theories about Ireland and about the world, and he loved to let
his theories out of his head for an airing. He very earnestly desired to
keep Ireland different from England. "Ireland's the 'country' of this
kingdom, an' England's the 'town,'" he sometimes said, or when his mood
was bitter, he would say that he wished to preserve Ireland as a place
in which gentlemen could live in comfort, leaving England to be the
natural home of manufacturers and mill-owners.
"But it's no good talkin' of separatin' the two countries," he said to
Marsh, "an' it's no good talkin' of drivin' the English out of Ireland
because you can't tell these times who is English an' who is Irish.
We've mingled our blood too closely for any one to be able to tell who's
what. If you started clearin' out the English, you'd mebbe clear me out,
for my family was planted here by William of Orange ... an' the
damnedest set of scoundrels they were, too, by all accounts!... an'
mebbe, Marsh, you yourself 'ud be cleared out!... Aye, an' you, too,
Ernest Harper, for all you're waggin' your oul' red beard at me. You're
Scotch, man, Scotch, to the backbone!..."
Harper rose at him, wagging his red beard, and filling the air with
terrible prophecies!...
"Ah, quit, man!" said Mr. Quinn, and he turned and winked at Marsh. "Do
you know what religion he is?" he said, pointing his finger at Harper.
"He's a Nonconformin' Theosophist!" And he roared at his own joke.
"You can no more separate the destinies of England an' Ireland in the
world," he went on, "nor you can separate the waters of the Liffey an'
the Mersey in the Irish Sea. Bedam, if you can!"
Mr. Quinn liked to throw out these aphorisms, and he spent a great deal
of time in inventing them. Once he flung a company of Dublin gossips
into a rage because he declared that Dublin was called "the whispering
gallery" and "the city of dreadful whispers" because it was populated by
the descendants of informers and spies. That, he declared, was why
Dublin people were so fond of tittle-tattle and tale-bearing and
scandal-mongering. "The English hanged or transported every
decent-minded man in the town, an' left only the spies an' informers,
an' the whole of you are descended from that breed. That's why you can't
keep anything to yourselves, but have to run abut the town tellin'
everybody all the secrets you know!" And he charged them with constantly
giving each other away. He repeated this generalisation about the Dublin
people to John Marsh. "An' I tell you what'll happen to you, young
fellow, one of these days. You'll be hanged or shot or transported or
somethin', an' half the people of this place'll be runnin' like
lightnin' to swear an information against you, as sure as Fate. If ever
you think of startin' a rebellion, John Marsh, go up to Belfast an'
start it. People'll be loyal to you there, but in this place they'd sell
you for a pint of Guinness!"
He was half serious in his warning to Marsh, but ... "I should be glad
to die for Ireland," Marsh replied, and it was said so simply that there
was no priggishness in it. "I can think of no finer fate for an
Irishman."
Mr. Quinn made a gesture of impatience. "It 'ud be a damn sight better
to live for Ireland," he exclaimed angrily.
2
Henry was in the garden when John Marsh arrived, accompanied by Mr.
Quinn. Two letters had come to him that morning from England--one from
Gilbert Farlow and the other from Mary Graham, and he was reading them
again for the seventh or eighth time when the dogcart drove up to the
house.
_My dear old ass,_ Gilbert wrote, _why grizzle and grouse at the
Bally Awful! That's my name now for things which can't be helped.
I've taught it to Ninian, but he persists in calling it the Bloody
Awful, which is low. He says that doesn't matter because he is low.
Roger and I have had to clout his head rather severely lately ...
it took two of us to do it.... Roger held his arms while I clouted
him ... because he has become fearfully democratic, meaning by
that, that anybody who knows more than his alphabet is an enemy of
the poor. Roger and I are dead nuts on aristocracy at present. We
go about saying, "My God, I'm a superman!" and try to look like
Bernard Shaw. Roger only succeeds in looking like Little Lord
Fauntleroy. But all this is away from the point, which is, why
grizzle and grouse at the Bally Awful. If your papa will send you
to T.C.D., you must just grin and bear it, my lad. I've never met
anybody from Trinity.... I suppose people do come out of it after
they get into it ... but if you're careful and remember the example
of your little friends, Gilbert and Ninian and Roger, you'll come
to no harm. And when you do come to London, we'll try to improve
what's left of your poor mind. It would be splendid to go to
Ballymartin for the summer. Tell your papa that Ninian and Roger
and I solemnly cursed him three times for preventing you from
coming to Cambridge, and then gave him three cheers for asking us
to Ireland. The top of the morning to you, my broth of a boy, and
the heavens be your bed, bedad and bejabers, as you say in your
country, according to Punch. Yours ever, Gilbert._
_P.S. What about that two bob you owe me?_
Mary's letter was shorter than Gilbert's.
_I think it's awfully horrid of your father not to let you go to
Cambridge with Ninian and the others. I was so looking forward to
going up in May Week and so was Mother. Of course, we shall go
anyhow, but it would have been much nicer if you had been there.
You would love Boveyhayne if you were here now. The hedges are full
of wild roses and hazelnuts and there is a lovely lot of valaria on
our wall. Old Widger says there will be a lovely lot of
blackberries in September if everything goes well. I went out in a
boat yesterday with Tom Yeo and I caught six dozen mackerel. You
would have blubbed if you'd seen them flopping about in the bottom
of the boat and looking so nice, and they were nice to eat. I love
mackerel, don't you? Mother sends her love. Do write soon. I love
getting letters and you write such nice ones. Your affectionate
friend, Mary Graham. P.S. Love._
Mary always signed herself his affectionate friend. He had tried to make
her sign herself his loving sweetheart, but she said she did not like to
do that.
3
He hurriedly put the letters away, and rose to greet John Marsh who came
across the lawn to him, talking to Mr. Quinn.
"This is John Marsh, Henry," Mr. Quinn said when he came up to him, and
Henry and Marsh shook hands and murmured greetings to each other. "I'll
leave you both here to get acquainted with each other," Mr. Quinn
continued. "I've a few things to do about the house!" He went off at
once, leaving them together, but before he had gone far he turned and
shouted to Henry, "You can show him through the grounds! He'll want to
stretch his legs after bein' so long in the train!"
"Very well, father!" Henry answered, and turned to Marsh.
His first impression of his tutor was one of insignificance. Marsh's
clothes were cheap and ready-made, and they seemed to be a size too
large for him. That, indeed, was characteristic of him, that he should
always seem to be wearing things which were too big for him. His tie,
too, was rising over the top of his collar.... But the sense of
insignificance disappeared from Henry's mind almost immediately after
Marsh had offered his hand to him and had smiled; and following the
sense of insignificance came a feeling of personal shame that was
incomprehensible to him until he discovered that his shame was caused
because he had thought slightingly of Marsh, even though he had done so
only for a few moments, and had allowed his mind to be concerned about
the trivialities of clothes when it should have been concerned with the
nature of the man who wore them. Henry's mind was oddly perverse; he had
been as fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever Gilbert Farlow
had been, but nevertheless he clung to conventional things with
something like desperation. It was characteristic of him that he should
palliate his submission to the conventional thing by inventing a
sensible excuse for it. He would say that such things were too trivial
to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and declare that one
should save one's energies for bigger battles; but the truth was that he
had not the moral courage to flout a convention, and he had a queer,
instinctive dislike of people who had the courage to do so.... He knew
that this habit of his was likely to distort his judgments and make him
shrink from ordeals of faith, and very often in his mind he tried to
subdue his cowardly fear of conventional disapproval ... without
success. But John Marsh had the power to conquer people. The gentleness
of him, the kindly smile and the look of high intent, made men of meaner
motive feel unaccountably ashamed.
He was a man of middle height and slender build. His high, broad brow
was covered by heavy, rough, tufty hair that was brushed cleanly from
his forehead and cut tidily about the neck so that he did not look
unkempt. His long, straight nose was as large as the nose of a
successful business man, but it was not bulbous nor were the nostrils
wide and distended. It was a delicately-shaped and pointed nose, with
narrow nostrils that were as sensitive as the nostrils of a racehorse:
an adventurous, pointing nose that would lead its owner to valiant
lengths, but would never lead him into low enterprises. He had grey eyes
that were quick to perceive, so that he understood things speedily, and
the kindly, forbearing look in them promised that his understanding
would not be stiffened by harshness, that it would be accompanied by
sympathy so keen that, were it not for the hint of humour which they
also held, he might almost have been mawkish, a sentimentalist too
easily dissolved in tears. His thick eyebrows clung closely to his eyes,
and gave him a look of introspection that mitigated the shrewdness of
his pointing nose. There was some weakness, but not much, in the full,
projecting lower lip and the slightly receding chin that caused his
short, tightened upper lip to look indrawn and strained; and the big,
ungainly, jutting ears consorted oddly with the serious look of high
purpose that marked his face in repose. It was as though Puck had turned
poet and then had turned preacher. One looked at the fleshy lower lip
and the jutting ears, and thought of a careless, impish creature; one
looked at the shapely, pointing nose and the kindly, unflinching eyes,
and thought of a man reckless of himself in the pursuit of some fine
purpose. One saw immediately that he was a man who could be moved easily
when his sympathies were touched ... but that he could hardly be
dissuaded from the fulfilment of his good intent. His Nationalism was
like a cleansing fire; it consumed every impure thing that might
penetrate his life. It was so potent that he did ridiculous things in
asserting it.... It was typical of him that he should gaelicise his
name, and equally typical of him that he should be undecided about the
correct spelling of "John" in the ancient Irish tongue. He had called
himself "Sean" Marsh, and then had called himself "Shane" and "Shaun"
and "Shawn." Once, for a while, he transformed "John" into "Eoin" and
then, tiring of it, had reverted to "Sean." But this restlessness over
his name was not a sign of general instability of purpose. He might vary
in the expression of his belief, but the belief itself was as immovable
as the mountains.
4
It was said of him that on one occasion he had taken a cheque to a bank
in Dublin to be cashed. An English editor had printed one of his poems
and had paid for it ... and he was not accustomed to receiving money for
his poems, which were printed mostly in little Irish propaganda
journals! He had endorsed the cheque in Gaelic, and the puzzled bank
manager had demanded that it should be endorsed in English.... Marsh had
given him a lecture on Irish history that lasted for the better part of
half-an-hour ... and then, because the manager looked so frightened, he
had consented to sign his name in English.
5
They left the garden and walked slowly to the top of an ascending field
where an old farm-horse, quit now of work, grazed in peace. It raised
its head as they walked towards it, and gazed at them with blurred eyes,
and then ambled to them. They stood beside it for a few moments while
Marsh patted its neck with one hand and allowed it to nuzzle in the palm
of the other. "I love beasts," he said, "Dogs and cats and birds and
horses and cows ... I think I love cows best because they've got such
big, soft eyes and look so stupid and reproachful ... except that dogs
are very nice and companionable and faithful ... but so are cats...."
"Faithful? Cats?" Henry asked.
"Oh, yes ... quite faithful if they like you. Why should they be
faithful if they don't? Poor, old chap! Poor, old chap!" he murmured,
thrusting his fingers through the horse's worn mane. "Of course, horses
are very nice, too," he went on. "And birds! ... I suppose one loves
all animals. One has to be very brutal to hurt an animal; hasn't one?"
Henry laughed. "The Irish are cruel to animals," he said, "but the
English aren't!"
Marsh flushed. "I've never been in England," he replied, looking away.
"Never?" Henry exclaimed.
"No, and I shall never go there!"
There was a sudden ferocity in his voice that startled Henry. "But why?"
he asked.
"Why?..." Marsh's voice changed its note and became quiet again. "I'm
Irish," he said. "That's why! I don't think that any Irishman ought to
put his foot in England until Ireland is free!"
Henry snapped at him impatiently. "I hate all that kind of talk," he
said.
Marsh looked at him in astonishment. "You hate all ... what talk?" he
asked.
"All that talk about Ireland being free!"
"But don't you want Ireland to be free?" Marsh asked.
They had walked on across the field until they came to a barred gate,
and Marsh climbed on to the top bar and perched himself there while
Henry stood with his back against the gate and fondled the muzzle of the
horse which had followed after them.
"I don't know what you mean when you say you want Ireland to be free!"
Henry exclaimed.
"Don't know what I mean!..." Marsh's voice became very tense again, and
he slipped down from the gate and turned quickly to explain his meaning
to Henry, but Henry did not wait for the explanation. "No," he
interrupted quickly. "Of course, I don't know much about these things,
but I've read some books that father gave me, and I've talked to my
friends ... one of them, Gilbert Farlow, is rather clever and he knows a
lot about politics ... he argues with his father about them ... and I
can't see that there's much difference between England and Ireland.
People here don't seem to me to be any worse off than people over
there!"
"It isn't a question of being worse off or better off," Marsh replied.
"It's a question of being _free._ The English are governed by the
English. The Irish aren't governed by the Irish. That's the difference
between us. What does it matter what your condition is so long as you
know that you are governed by a man of your own breed and blood, and
that at any minute you may be in his place and he in yours, and yet
you'll be men of the same breed and blood? I'd rather be governed badly
by men of my own breed than be governed well by another breed...."
Henry remembered Ulster and his father and all his kinsmen scattered
about the North who had sworn to die in the last ditch rather than be
governed by Nationalists. "That's all very well," he said, "but there
are plenty of people in Ireland who don't want to be governed by your
breed, well or bad!"
"They'd consent if they thought we had the ability to govern well,"
Marsh went on. "Anyhow, we couldn't govern Ireland worse than the
English have governed it!"
"Some people think you could!..."
But Marsh was in no mood to listen to objections. "You can't be free
until you are equal with other people, and we aren't equal with the
English. We aren't equal with anybody but subject people. And they look
down on us, the English do. We're lazy and dirty and ignorant and
superstitious and priest-ridden and impractical and ... and comic!... My
God, _comic_! Whenever I see an Englishman in Ireland, running round and
feeling superior, I want to wring his damned neck ... and I should hate
to wring any one's neck."
Henry tried to interject a remark, but Marsh hurried on, disregarding
his attempt to speak.
"How would they like it if we went over to their country and made
remarks about them?" he exclaimed. "My brother went to London once and
he saw people making love in public ... fellows and girls hugging each
other in the street and sprawling about in the parks ... all over each
other ... and no one took any notice. It wasn't decent.... How would
they like it if we went over there and made remarks about _that?_ ..."
Henry insisted on speaking. "But why should you hate the English?" he
demanded, and added, "I don't hate them. I like them!"
"I didn't say I hated the English," Marsh replied. "I don't. I don't
hate any race. That would be ridiculous. But I hate the belief that the
English are fit to govern us, when they're not, and that we're not fit
to govern ourselves, when we are. I'd rather be governed by Germans than
be governed by the English!..." Henry moved away impatiently. "Yes, I
would," Marsh continued. "At all events, the Germans would govern us
well...."
"You'd hate to be governed by Germans!"
"I'd hate to be governed by any but Irishmen; but the Germans wouldn't
make the muddles and messes that the English make!..."
"You don't know that," Henry said.
But Marsh would not take up the point. He swung off on a generalisation.
"There won't be any peace or happiness in Ireland," he said, "until the
English are driven out of it. Even the Orangemen don't like them.
They're always making fun of them!..."
Henry repeated his assertion that he liked the English, conscious that
there was something feeble in merely repeating it. He wished that he
could say something as forceful as Marsh's statement of his dislike of
England, but he was unable to think of anything adequate to say. "I like
the English," he said again, and when he thought over that talk, there
seemed to be nothing else to say. How could he feel about the English as
John Marsh, who had never lived in England, felt? How could he dislike
them when he remembered Gilbert Farlow and Roger Carey and Ninian
Graham and Mrs. Graham and Old Widger and Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury ...
and Mary Graham. His father had always spoken contemptuously of
Englishmen, but he had never been moved by this violent antipathy to
them which moved Marsh ... and most of his talk against England was only
talk, intended to sting the English out of their complacency ... and he
was eager to preserve the Union between the two countries. But Marsh
wished to be totally separate from England. He was vague, very vague,
about points of defence, and he boggled badly when Henry, trying to
think like a statesman, talked of an Army and a Navy ... his mind
wandered into the mists of Tolstoyianism and then he ended by suggesting
that England would attend to these matters in self-defence. He could not
satisfy Henry's superficial enquiries about the possibilities of trade
conducted in Gaelic ... but he was positive about the need for
separation, complete and irremediable separation, from England.
"We're separated from them physically," he said, "and I want us to be
separated from them politically and spiritually. They're a debased
people!..." Henry muttered angrily at that, for his mind was still full
of Mary Graham. "They're a debased people ... that's why I want to get
free of them ... and all the debasing things in Ireland are part of the
English taint. We've nothing in common with them. They're a race of
factory-hands and manufacturers; we're a race of farmers and poets; and
you can never reconcile us. All you can do is to make us like them ...
or worse!"
Henry remembered how his father had fulminated against the smooth
Englishman who had proposed to turn Glendalough into a place like the
Potteries or Wigan.
"But isn't there some middle course?" he said weakly. "Isn't there some
way of getting at the minerals of Wicklow without making Glendalough a
place like Wigan?"
"Not if the English have anything to do with it," Marsh answered. "I
don't know what Wigan is like.... I suppose it's horrible ... but it's
natural to Englishmen. They trail that sort of place behind them
wherever they go. Slums and sickness and fat, rich men! If they had
anything to do with developing Wicklow they'd make it stink!..."
"Well, I don't know," Henry said wearily, for he soon grew tired of
arguments in which he was an unequal participator. "I like the English
and I can't see any good in just hating them!"
"They found a decent, generous race in Ireland," Marsh exclaimed, "and
they've turned it into a race of cadgers. Your father admits that. Ask
him what he thinks of Arthur Balfour and his Congested Districts
Board!..."
They went back to the house, and as they went, they talked of books, and
as they talked of books, Marsh's mind became assuaged. He had lately
published a little volume of poems and he spoke of it to Henry in a shy
fashion, though his eyes brightened and gleamed as he repeated something
that Ernest Harper had said of them ... but then Ernest Harper always
spoke kindly of the work of young, sincere men.
"I'll give you a copy if you like," Marsh said to Henry.
"Oh, thank you!" Henry exclaimed. "I should love to have it. I suppose,"
he went on, "it's very exciting to have a book published."
"I cried when I first saw my book," Marsh answered very simply. "I
suppose women do that when they first see their babies!..."
But Henry did not know what women do when they first see their babies.