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!"