1
He fell asleep, after a long, wakeful night, and did not hear the maid
who called him. Mr. Quinn, when he was told of the heaviness of Henry's
slumber, said "Let him lie on!" and so it was that he did not rise until
noon. He came down heavy-eyed and irritable, and wandered about the
garden in which he took no pleasure. Marsh came to him while he was
there, full of enthusiasm because more pupils had attended the Language
class than he had anticipated.
"That girl, Sheila Morgan, wasn't there!"
"Oh!" said Henry.
"I thought she'd be certain to come. She seemed so anxious to join the
class. Perhaps she was prevented. I hope you'll be able to come
to-night, Henry!..."
Henry turned away impatiently. "I don't think I shall go again," he said
in a surly voice.
Marsh stared at him. "Not go again!" he exclaimed.
"No."
"But!..."
"Oh, I'm sick of the class. I'm sick of the whole thing. I'm sick of
Irish!..."
Marsh walked away from him, walked so quickly that Henry knew that he
was trying to subdue the sudden rage that rose in him when people spoke
slightingly of Irish things, and for a few moments he felt sorry and
ready to follow him and apologise for what he had said; but the sorrow
passed as quickly as it came.
"It's absurd of him to behave like that," he said to himself, and went
on his way about the garden.
Presently he saw Marsh approaching him, and he stood still and waited
for him.
"I'm sorry, Henry," Marsh said when he had come up to him.
"It was my fault," Henry replied.
"I ought not to have walked off like that ... but I can't bear to hear
any one talking!..."
"I know you can't," Henry interrupted. "That's why I ought not to have
said what I did!"
But Marsh insisted on bearing the blame. "I ought to have remembered
that you're not feeling well," he said, reproaching himself. "I get so
interested in Ireland that I forget about people's feelings. That's my
chief fault. I know it is. I must try to remember.... I suppose you
didn't really mean what you said?"
"Yes, I did," Henry replied quickly.
"But why?"
"I don't know. I just don't want to. What's the good of it anyhow?..."
Good of it! Henry ought to have known what a passion of patriotism his
scorn for the Language would provoke.
"Oh, all right, John!" he said impatiently. "I've heard all that before,
and I don't want to hear it again. You can argue as much as you like,
but I can't see any sense in wasting time on what's over. And the Irish
language is over and done with. Father's quite right!"
Marsh's anger became intensified. "That's the Belfast spirit in you," he
exclaimed. "The pounds, shillings and pence mood! I know what you think
of the language. You think, what is the commercial value of it? Will it
enable a boy to earn thirty shillings a week in an office? Is it as
useful as Pitman's Shorthand? That's what you're thinking!..."
"No, it's not, but if it were, it would be very sensible!"
"My God, Henry, can't you realise that a nation's language is the sound
of a nation's soul? Don't you understand, man, that if we can't speak
our own language then our souls are silent, dumb, inarticulate?... don't
you see what I mean?... and all the time we're using English, we're like
people who read translations. I don't care whether it is commercially
valuable or not. That's not the point. The point is that it's _us_, that
it's _our_ tongue, _our_ language, that it distinguishes us from the
English, insists on our difference from them. Do you see what I mean,
Henry? We _are_ different, aren't we? You realise that, don't you? We
_are_ different from the English, and nothing will ever make us like
them. My God, I'd hate to be like them!..."
Henry fled from him, and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, ran across
the fields towards Hamilton's farm. As he went up the "loanie," he
remembered that Sheila had struck him in the face in her rage at his
cowardice, and he stopped and wondered whether he should go on or not.
And while he was waiting in the "loanie," she came out of a field,
driving a cow before her.
2
She did not speak, though he waited for her to say something. The cow
ambled up the "loanie," and Sheila, glancing at him as if she did not
recognise him, passed on, following it.
"Sheila!" he called after her, but she did not answer, nor did she turn
round.
"I want to speak to you," he said, going after her.
"I don't want to speak to you," she replied, without looking at him.
"But you must!..." He thrust himself in front of her, and tried to take
hold of her hands, but she eluded him. She lifted the sally rod she had
in her hand and threatened him with it. "I'll lash your face with this
if you handle me," she said.
"All right," he answered, dropping his hands and waiting for her to beat
his face with the slender branch.
She looked at him for a few moments, and then she threw the sally rod
into the hedge.
"What do you want?" she asked, and the tone of her voice was quieter.
The cow, finding that it was not being followed, cropped the grass in
the hedge and as they stood there, facing each other, they could hear
the soft munch-munch as it tore the grass from the ground.
"What do you want?" Sheila said again.
"I want to speak to you!..."
"Well, speak away!"
But he did not know what to say to her. He thought that perhaps if he
were to explain, she would forgive, but now that the opportunity to
explain was open to him, he did not know what to say.
"Are you turned dummy or what?" she asked, and the cruelty in her voice
was deliberate.
"Sheila," he began, hesitatingly.
"Well?"
"I'm sorry about last night!"
"What's the good of bein' sorry?..."
"I meant to stop it!..."
"I daresay," she said, laughing at him.
"I did. I did, indeed. I can't help feeling nervous. I've always been
like that. I want to do things ... I try to do them ... but something
inside me runs away ... that's what it is, Sheila ... it isn't me that
runs away ... it's something inside me!"
"Bosh," she said.
"It's true, Sheila. My father could tell you that. I always funk things,
not because I want to funk them, but because I can't help it. I'd give
the world to be able to stop a horse, like that one last night, but I
can't do it. I get paralysed somehow!..."
"I never heard of any one like that before," she exclaimed.
"No, I don't suppose you have. If you knew how ashamed I feel of myself,
you'd feel sorry for me. I was awake the whole night!"
"Were you?"
"Yes. I kept on thinking you were angry with me and that I was a coward,
and I could feel your fist in my face!..."
"I'm sorry I hit you, Henry!"
"It doesn't matter," he replied. "It served me right. And then when I
did sleep, I kept on dreaming about it. Do you know, Sheila, I fell over
the horse last night in the dark ... they left it lying in the road
after they shot it ... and my hands slithered in the blood!..."
"Aw, the poor baste!" she said, and she began to cry. "The poor dumb
baste!"
"And I kept on dreaming of that ... my hands dribbling in blood....
och!..."
He could not go on because the recollection of his dreams horrified him.
They had moved to the side of the "loanie" and he mechanically stopped
and plucked a long grass and began to wind it round his fingers.
"I think and think about things," he murmured at last.
She put out her hand and touched his arm. "Poor Henry," she said.
He threw the grass away and seized her hand in his.
"Then you'll forgive me?" he said eagerly.
She nodded her head.
"And you'll still be my sweetheart, won't you, and go for walks with
me?..."
She withdrew her hand from his. "No, Henry," she said, "you an' me can't
go courtin' no more!"
"But why?"
"Because I couldn't marry a man was afeard of things. I'd never be happy
with a man like that. I'd fall out with you if you were a collie, I know
I would, an' I'd be miserable if my man hadn't the pluck of any other
man. I'm sorry I bate you last night, but I'd do it again if it happened
another time ... an' there'd be no good in that!"
"But you said you'd marry me!..."
"Och, sure, Henry, you know well I couldn't marry you. You wouldn't be
let. I'm a poor girl, an' you're a high-up lad. Whoever heard tell of
the like of us marryin', except mebbe in books. I knew well we'd never
marry, but I liked goin' about with you, an' listenin' to your crack,
an' you kissin' me an' tellin' me the way you loved me. You've a quare
nice English voice on you, an' you know it well, an' I just liked to
hear it ... but didn't I know rightly, you'd never marry the like of
me!"
"I will, Sheila, I will!"
"Ah, wheesht with you. What good 'ud a man like you be to a girl like
me. I'll have this farm when my Uncle Matt dies, an' what use 'ud you be
on it, will you tell me, you that runs away cryin' from a frightened
horse?"
"You could sell the farm!..."
"Sell the farm!" she exclaimed. "Dear bless us, boy, what are you sayin'
at all? Sell this farm, an' it's been in our family these generations
past! There's been Hamiltons in this house for a hundred an' fifty years
an' more. I wouldn't sell it for the world!"
"But I must have you, Sheila. I must marry you!"
"Why must you?"
"I just must!..."
She turned to look at the grazing cow, and then turned back to him.
"That's chile's talk," she said. "You must because you must. Away on
home now, an' lave me to do my work. Sure, you're not left school yet!"
She left him abruptly, and walked up to the cow, slapping its flanks and
shouting "Kimmup, there! Kimmup!" and the beast tossed its head, and ran
forward a few paces, and then sauntered slowly up the "loanie" towards
the byre.
"Good-bye, Henry!" Sheila called out when she had gone a little way.
"Will you be at the class to-night!" he shouted after her.
"I will not," she answered. "I'm not goin' to the class no more!"
He watched her as she went on up the "loanie" after the cow, hoping that
she would turn again and call to him, but she did not look round. He
could hear her calling to the beast, "Gwon now! Gwon out of that now!"
and then he saw the cow turn into the yard, and in a moment or two
Sheila followed it. He thought that she must turn to look at him then,
and he was ready to wave his hand to her, but she did not look round.
"Gwon now! Gwon up out of that!" was all that he heard her saying.
3
His father was standing at the front door when he returned home. Mr.
Quinn's face was set and grave looking, and he did not smile at his son.
"I want you, Henry," he said, beckoning to him.
"Yes, father?" Henry replied, looking at his father in a questioning
fashion. "Is anything wrong?"
Mr. Quinn did not answer. He turned and led the way to the library.
"Sit down," he said, when Henry had entered the room and shut the door.
"What is it, father?"
"Henry, what's between you an' that niece of Matt Hamilton's?"
"Between us!"
"Aye, between you. You were out on the Ballymena road with her last
night when I thought you were in bed with a sore head."
All the romance of his love for Sheila Morgan suddenly died out, and he
was conscious of nothing but his father's stern look and the stiff set
of his lips as he sat there at his writing-table, demanding what there
was between Henry and Sheila.
"I'm in love with her, father!" he answered.
"Are you?"
"Yes, father, but she's not in love with me. She's just told me so."
"You've seen her this mornin' again?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'm glad she has more sense nor you seem to have. Damn it, Henry,
are you a fool or what? The whole of Ballymartin's talkin' about the
pair of you. Do you think that you can walk up the road with a
farm-girl, huggin' her an' kissin' her an' doin' God knows what, an' the
whole place not know about it?"
"I didn't think of that, father!..."
"Didn't think of it!... Look here, Henry, Sheila Morgan's a respectable
girl, do you hear? an' I'll not have you makin' a fool of her. I know
there's some men thinks they have a right to their tenants' daughters,
but by God if you harmed a girl on my land, Henry, I'd shoot you with my
own hands. Do you hear me?"
Henry looked at his father uncomprehendingly. "Harm her, father!" he
said.
"Aye, harm her! What do you think a girl like that, as good-lookin' as
her, gets out of goin' up the road with a lad like you that's born above
her! A bellyful of pain, that's all!"
"I don't know what you mean, father!"
"Well, it's time you learned. I'll talk to you plumb an' plain, Henry.
I'll not let you seduce a girl on my land, do you hear? They can do that
sort of thing in England, if they like ... it's nothin' to me what the
English do ... but by God I'll not have a girl on my land ruined by you
or by anybody else!"
Mr. Quinn's voice was more angry than Henry had ever heard it.
"Father," Henry said, "I want to marry Sheila!..."
"What?"
Mr. Quinn's fist had been raised as if he were about to bang his desk to
emphasise his words, but he was so startled by Henry's speech that he
forgot his intention, and he sat there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, with
his fist still suspended in the air, so that Henry almost laughed at his
comical look.
"What's that you say?" he said, when he had recovered
"I want to marry her, but she won't have me!"
Mr. Quinn's anger left him. He leant back in his revolving chair and
laughed.
"By God, that's good!" he said. "By God, it is! Marry her! Oh, dear, oh,
dear!"
"I don't know why you're laughing, father!..."
"An' I thought you up to no good. Oh, ho, ho!" He took out his
handkerchief and rubbed his eyes. "Well, thank God, the girl's got more
wit nor you have. In the name of God, lad, what would you marry her
for?"
"Because I love her, father!"
"My backside to that for an answer!" Mr. Quinn snapped. "You know well
you couldn't marry her, a girl like that!"
"I don't know it at all!..."
"Well, I'll tell you why then. Because you're a gentleman an' she isn't
a lady, that's why. There's hundreds of years of breedin' in you, Henry,
an' there's no breedin' at all in her, nothin' but good nature an' good
looks!..."
"The Hamiltons have lived at their farm for more than a hundred and
fifty years, father!"
"So they have, an' decent, good stock they are, but that doesn't put
them on our level. Listen, Henry, the one thing that's most important in
this world is blood an' breedin'. There's people goes about the world
sayin' everybody's as good as everybody else, but you've only got to
see people when there's bother on to find out who's good an' who isn't.
It's at times like that that blood an' breedin' come out!..."
It was then that Henry told his father of his cowardice when the horse
ran away. He told the whole story, and insisted on Sheila's scorn for
him. Mr. Quinn did not speak while the story was being told. He sat at
the desk with his chin buried in his fingers, listening patiently. Once
or twice he looked up when Henry hesitated in his recital, and once he
seemed as if he were about to put out his hand to his son, but he did
not do so. He did not speak or move until the story was ended.
"I'm glad you told me, Henry," he said quietly when Henry had finished.
"I'm sorry I thought you were meanin' the girl an injury. I beg your
pardon for that, Henry. The girl's a decent girl, a well-meant girl ...
a well-meant girl!... I wish to God, you were at Trinity, my son! Come
on, now, an' have somethin' to ate. Begod, I'm hungry. I could ate a
horse. I could ate two horses!..." He put his arm in Henry's and they
left the library together. "You'll get over it, my son, you'll get over
it. It does a lad good to break his heart now an' again. Teaches him the
way the world works! Opens his mind for him, an' lets him get a notion
of the feel of things!..."
They were just outside the dining-room when he said that. Mr. Quinn
turned and looked at Henry for a second or two, and it seemed to Henry
that he was about to say something intimate to him, but he did not do
so: he turned away quickly and opened the door.
"I suppose John Marsh is eatin' all the food," he said with
extraordinary heartiness. "Are you eatin' all the food, John Marsh? I'll
wring your damned neck if you are!..."
4
That evening, after dinner, Mr. Quinn and John Marsh were sitting
together. Henry had gone out of the room for a while, leaving Mr. Quinn
to smoke a cigar while John Marsh corrected some exercises by the
students of the Language class.
"Marsh!" Mr. Quinn said suddenly, after a long silence.
Marsh looked up quickly. "Yes, Mr. Quinn!" he replied.
"Henry's in love!..."
"Is he?"
"Yes. With that girl. Sheila Morgan, Matt Hamilton's niece!"
Marsh put his exercises aside. "Dear me!" he exclaimed.
There did not appear to be anything else to say.
"So I'm goin' to send him away," Mr. Quinn went on.
"Away?"
"Yes. I don't quite know where I shall send him. It's too soon yet to
send him up to Trinity. I've a notion of sendin' you an' him on a
walkin' tour in Connacht. The pair of you can talk that damned language
'til you're sick of it with the people that understands it!"
Marsh was delighted. He thought that Mr. Quinn's proposal was excellent,
and he was certain that it would be very good for Henry to come into
contact with people to whom the language was native.
"Wheesht a minute, Marsh!" Mr. Quinn interrupted. "I want to talk to you
about Henry. It's a big thing for a lad of his age to fall in love!"
"I suppose it is."
"There's no supposin' about it. It is! He's just at the age when women
begin to matter to a man, an' I don't want him to go an' get into any
bother over the head of them!"
"Bother?"
"Aye. Do you never think about women, John Marsh?"
"Oh, yes. Sometimes. One can't help it now and then!..."
"No, begod, one can't!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed. "Do you know this, John
Marsh, I never can make out whether God did a good day's work the day He
made women! They're the most unsettlin' things in the world. You'd think
to look at me, I was a fairly quiet sort of a steady man, wouldn't you?
Well, I'm not. There's whiles when a woman makes my head buzz ... just
the look of her, an' the way she turns her head or moves her legs. I'm a
hefty fellow, John Marsh, for all I'm the age I am, an' I know what it
is to feel damn near silly with desire. But all the same, I can keep
control of myself, an' I've never wronged a woman in my life. That's a
big thing for any man to be able to say, an' there's few that can say
it, but I tell you it's been a hell of a fight!..."
He lay back in the chair and puffed smoke above his head for a while. "A
hell of a fight," he murmured, and then did not speak for a while.
"Yes?" said John Marsh.
"I've been down the lanes of a summer night, an' seen young girls from
the farms about, with fine long hair hangin' down their backs, an' them
smilin' an' lovely ... an' begod, I've had to hurry past them, hurry
hard, damn near run!... Mind you, they were good girls, John Marsh! I
don't want you to think they were out lookin' for men. They weren't. But
they were young, an' they were just learnin' things, an' I daresay I
could have had them if I'd tried ... an' I don't think there's any real
harm in men an' women goin' together ... but we've settled, all of us,
that, real or no real, there is _some_ sort of harm in it, an' we've
agreed to condemn that sort of thing, an' so I submit to the law. Do you
follow me?"
"No, not quite. Those sort of things don't arise for me. I'm a Catholic
and I obey the Church's laws!..."
"I know you do. But I'm a man, not a Catholic!... Now, don't lose your
temper. I couldn't help lettin' that slip out.... What I mean is this.
There's a lot of waywardness in all of us, that's pleasant enough if
it's checked when it gets near the limit of things, but there has to be
a check!"
"Yes?" Marsh said. "And in my case the check is the Church, the
expression on earth of God's will!..."
"Well, in my case it isn't. In my case it's my sense of responsibility
as a gentleman. We've got ourselves into crowds that must be controlled
somehow, and there isn't much room for wayward people in a crowd. That's
why geniuses get such a rotten time. Now, my notion of a gentleman is a
man who controls the crowd by controllin' himself. D'you follow me? He
knows that the crowd'll bust up an' become a dirty riot if it's let out
of control, an' he knows that he can influence it best an' keep the whip
hand of it, if it knows that he isn't doin' anything that he tells it
not to do. D'you see?"
"Yes," Marsh said. "That's the Catholic religion!..."
"I know as well as I'm livin'," Mr. Quinn went on, "that I have enough
power over myself to know when to stop an' when to go on. That's been
bred in me. That's why I'm a gentleman. But I know that if I let myself
do things that I can control, I'll be givin' an example to hundreds of
other people who aren't gentlemen an' can't control themselves ... don't
know when to stop an' when to go on ... an' so I don't do them. An'
that's a gentleman's job, John Marsh, an' when gentlemen stop that, then
begod it's good-bye to a decent community. That's why England's goin' to
blazes ... because her gentlemen have forgotten the first job of the
gentleman: to keep himself in strict control, to be reticent, to conceal
his feelings!"
But John Marsh would not agree with him. "England is going to blazes,"
he said, "because England has lost her religion. If England were
Catholic, England would be noble again!..."
"Just like France and Spain and Italy," Mr. Quinn replied. "Bosh, John
Marsh, bosh! I tell you, the test of a nation is this question of
gentlemen!..."
"The test of a nation is its belief in God ... its church," said John
Marsh.
"Well, Ireland believes in God, doesn't it? The Catholic Church is
fairly strong here, isn't it? An' what sort of a Church is it? A
gentleman's church or a peasant's church? Look at the priests, John
Marsh, look at them! My God, _what_ bounders! Little greedy, grubbin'
blighters, livin' for their Easter offerin's, an' doin' damn little for
their money. What do you think takes them into the church? Love of God?
Love of man? No, bedam if it is. Conceit an' snobbery an' the desire for
a soft job takes about nine out of ten of them.... Well, well, I'm
runnin' away from myself. What I want to say is this: the Catholic
church'll never be worth a damn in Ireland or anywhere else, 'til its
priests are gentlemen. No church is worth a damn unless its priests are
gentlemen!"
"But what do you mean by gentlemen, Mr. Quinn?"
"I mean men who are keepin' a tight hold on themselves. Mortifyin' their
flesh ... all that sort of stuff ... so that they won't give the mob an
excuse for breakin' loose!"
Marsh wondered why Mr. Quinn was talking in this strain and tried to
draw him back to the subject of Henry's love of Sheila.
"I'm comin' to that," said Mr. Quinn, pointing his cigar at him.
"Listen, John, there were two men that might have done big things in
Irelan' and Englan'--Parnell an' Lord Randolph Churchill, an' they
didn't because they weren't gentlemen. They couldn't control themselves.
There isn't a house in Ulster that hasn't got the photographs of those
two men in some album...."
"Parnell?" Marsh exclaimed.
"Aye, Parnell. Him an' Randy Churchill side by side in the one album!
Lord bless me, John Marsh, the Ulster people took great pride in
Parnell, even the bitterest Orangeman among them, because he was a man,
an' not a gas-bag like Dan O'Connell. Of course, he was a
Protestant!... But he couldn't keep from nuzzlin' over a woman ... an'
up went everything. An' Randy Churchill ... I mind him well, a
flushed-lookin' man.... I heard him talkin' in Belfast one time ... he
bust up everything because he would not control himself. If he'd been a
gentleman ... but he wasn't ... the Churchills never were.... Nor was
Parnell. Well, now, I don't want Henry to go to bits like that. Henry's
got power of some sort, John ... I don't know what sort ... but there's
power in him ... and I want it to come out right. He's the sort that'll
go soft on women if he's not careful. He'd be off after every young,
nice-lookin' girl he meets if he were let ... an' God knows what the end
of that would be. There's this girl, Sheila Morgan ... you've seen
her?..."