1
He had been to the offices of Messrs. Kilworth and Kilworth in Kildare
Street, and had seen Sir John Kilworth and settled as much of his
business as could then be done. Now, wondering just what he should do
next, he made his way to Stephen's Green and entered the Park, and while
he was standing on the bridge over the lake, looking at the dark fish in
the water, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turning round, saw John
Marsh.
"I didn't know you were in Dublin," John said, holding out his hand.
"I haven't been here very long," Henry answered, "and I'm going away
again after Easter. I'm going to be married."
"Married!"
"Yes ... to Ninian Graham's sister. I've often talked of you to her. You
must come and stay with us when we get back to Ballymartin."
"Yes. Yes, I should like to! I hope you'll be happy, Henry!" He spoke in
a nervous, agitated way that was not habitual with him, and Henry,
looking more closely at him, saw that he was tired and ill-looking.
"Aren't you well, John?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. Yes, I'm quite well. I'm rather tired, that's all. I've been
working very hard!"
"Still drilling?"
"Yes ... still drilling!"
"What are you doing at Easter, John?" Henry asked.
Marsh looked at him quickly, almost in a startled fashion. "At Easter!"
he repeated. "Oh ... nothing! Why?"
"You and I might go for a long walk through the mountains," Henry
answered. "We could walk to Glendalough and back again. It would just
fill up the Easter holidays. Let's start to-morrow morning. I'm staying
at the Club. You can meet me there!"
"No, I'm sorry, Henry, I can't go with you!..."
"Why not? You said you'd nothing particular to do!"
"I'm going to Mass in the morning...."
"Well, that doesn't matter. We can start after you've been. Come along,
John. You look washed-out, and the tramp'll do you good!..."
Marsh shook his head. "I can't go, Henry," he said. "It isn't only
to-morrow morning that I want to go to Mass ... I want to go the day
after ... and I want to go with all ... all my people on Easter Sunday!"
"You've grown very religious, John. Do you go to Mass every morning?"
"I've been every morning now for a month. You see, one doesn't know ...
well, perhaps I am growing more religious. I won't keep you now. Perhaps
I shall see you again!..."
"Why, of course, you'll see me again. Heaven and earth, man, anybody'd
think you were going to die, the way you talk!"
Marsh did not speak. He smiled when Henry spoke of dying, and then
looked away. They were still standing on the bridge, and he leant on the
parapet and looked down on the lake.
"Queer things, fish!" he said.
"Not nearly so queer as you are," Henry answered. "Why won't you come
with me? You won't want to be cooped up in Dublin all Easter, do you?"
"Cooped up!"
"Yes. Two or three days of mountain air 'ud do you a world of good.
You'd better come with me!"
"No, I can't," he answered so abruptly that Henry did not press the
matter again. "When are you going to be married, Henry?" he asked,
speaking in his old, kindly tone again.
"At the beginning of May ... less than a fortnight now!"
Marsh turned away from the water, and stood with his back to the
parapet. "Why don't you spend Easter with your fiancee?" he said.
"That isn't quite possible, John. I should only be in the way, if I were
there now!"
"Or at Ballymartin. It would be rather nice to spend Easter at
Ballymartin!"
"Well, I will, if you'll come with me...."
"I can't do that. I don't think I should stay in Dublin at Easter if I
were you...."
"Why?"
"Oh, it'll be dull for you. People go away. There's not much to do. I
should go to the North or over to England or somewhere if I were you!"
Henry felt resentful. "You seem damned anxious to get rid of me, John,"
he said. "You won't come into the mountains with me, and you keep on
telling me to clear out of Dublin!"
Marsh turned to him quickly, and put his hand on his arm.
"My dear Henry," he said, very gently, "you know that I don't feel like
that. I thought you'd be ... I thought you'd have a happier Easter out
of Dublin, that was all. That place in Wales, where you went with poor
Farlow...."
"Tre'Arrdur Bay?"
"Yes. Why don't you go there? It really isn't much further than
Glendalough."
"You can't walk to it, John, and you can walk to Glendalough!"
"Oh, well, if you won't go ... you won't go, and there's an end of it.
Good-bye!"
"Wait a bit. Come and dine with me to-night!"
"I can't, Henry!" Henry made an angry gesture. "Don't be hurt," Marsh
went on quickly. "I have things to attend to. You see, I didn't know you
were here. I'm on my way now to a ... a committee meeting. I'll come and
see you to-morrow, if I can manage it. I'll lunch with you somewhere!"
"All right. I'll meet you here at one, and we'll lunch at the
Shelbourne. By the way, John, aren't there some races on Monday?"
"Yes ... at Fairyhouse!"
"Well, couldn't we go to them? I've never seen a horse-race in my
life!..."
"I don't think I can manage that, Henry!..."
"Oh, damn you, you can't manage anything. Well, all right, I'll see you
to-morrow!"
"Good-bye, then!..."
He went off, leaving Henry on the bridge staring after him, and as he
went towards the Grafton Street gate, there was something slightly
incongruous about his look.
"I know what it is," Henry said to himself. "His coat's too big for him.
He always did wear things that didn't fit him!"
2
Marsh did not keep the appointment. Soon after one o'clock, a boy came
to Henry, and asked him if he were Mr. Quinn, and when Henry had assured
him that he was, he said, "Mr. Marsh bid me to tell you, sir, that he's
not able to come. He says he's very sorry, but he can't help it!"
The lad repeated the message almost as if he had learned it by heart.
"Oh, very well!" Henry said, offering money to him.
"Ah, sure, that's all right, sir!" the lad said, and then he went away.
"I suppose," Henry said to himself angrily, "he's at his damned drilling
again!"
He lunched alone, and then took the tram to Kingstown, and walked from
there to Bray along the coast. He felt dispirited and lonely. Jordan and
Saxon were out of Dublin ... Jordan was in Sligo, he had heard, and
Saxon was staying with his uncle near the mountains. He knew that Crews
lived in Bray, but he had forgotten the address. "Perhaps," he thought,
"I shall see him in the street...."
"Lordy God!" he exclaimed, "I'd give the world for some one to talk to.
John Marsh might have tried to meet me. Fooling about with his ...
penny-farthing volunteers!"
"In a little while," he said to himself, as he descended into Killiney
and walked along the road by the railway station, "I shall be married to
Mary, and then!..."
He remembered what she had said to him at Boveyhayne, "I'd like you to
go, Quinny ... I can't pretend that I wouldn't...."
He stood for a while, leaning against the wall and looking out over the
crumpled sea. "I don't know," he said to himself, "I don't know!"
3
He climbed to the top of Bray Head, and while he stood there, his mind
was full of thoughts that beat backwards and forwards. In olden times,
the histories said, Ireland had sent a stream of scholars over the waste
places of Europe to fertilise them and make them fruitful. "Now," he
thought bitterly, "we send 'bosses' to Tammany Hall...."
He tried to envisage the means whereby Ireland would be brought to the
measure and the stature of a dignified and honourable nation ... "not
this brawling, whining, cadging, snivelling, Oh-Jesus-have-mercy-on-us
disorder!" and he saw only a long, tedious, painful process of
self-regeneration. "We must rise on our own wings!"
"But first we must be free, free from the bondage of history, free from
the bondage of romance, free from the bondage of politics, free from the
bondage of religion, and free from the bondage of our bellies!"
"There are four Irishmen to be conquered and controlled: the Publican,
the Priest, the Politician and the Poet...."
"We cannot be friendly with England until we are equal with England ...
but England cannot make us equal with her ... we can only do that
ourselves!"
"England is our sister ... not our mother!..."
"Catholicism is Death ... and Intolerance is Death. Wherever there is
Catholicism there is Decay that will not be stopped until the people
protest. Wherever there is Intolerance there is a waste of life, a
perversion of energy. When the Protestant ceases, and the Catholic
begins, to shout 'To Hell with the Pope,' there will be glory and life
in Ireland...."
He tried to plan a means of making a change of mind in Ireland. "We must
make opinions and active brains!" and so he saw himself urging his
friends to abandon parliaments to the middle-aged and the second-rate,
while they bent their minds to the conquest of the schools. "Let the old
men make their speeches," he said aloud as if he were addressing a
conference. "We'll mould the minds of the children!"
They must exult in service. "I believe in Work ... in the Job Well Done
... in giving oneself without ceasing ... in the holy communion of men
labouring together for something which is greater than themselves ... in
spending oneself with no reward but to know that one is spent well!..."
They would enlist the young men of generous mind. They would open their
minds to the knowledge of the wide world, and would pity the man who was
content only to be an islander; and they would give the harvest of their
minds to their juniors, so that they, when they grew to manhood, might
find greater ease in working for the common good. They would demand, not
privileges, but responsibilities. "If we cannot make decisions, even
when we decide wrongly, then we are not men!"
"We must kill the Publican, we must subdue the Priest, we must humiliate
the Politician, and chasten the Poet...."
"In all our ways, O God, let us guide ourselves!..."
It seemed to him that God was not a Being who miraculously made the
world, but a Being who laboured at it, suffered and failed, and rose
again and achieved.... He could hear God, stumbling through the
Universe, full of the agony of desire, calling continually, "Let there
be Light! Let there be Light!..."
4
He looked about him. Behind him, lay the long broken line of the Wicklow
mountains, with the Sugar Loaf thrusting its pointed head into the
heavens. There in front of him, heaving and tumbling, was the sea: a
miracle of healing and cleansing. It would be good, he thought, to spend
one's life in the sound of the sea, taking no care for the lives of
other men, content that oneself was fed and comfortable. "But that would
not be enough. There must be Light and More Light!"
"God," he said, "has many forms. In that place, he is a Quietness ... in
this place, a Discontent ... in a third place, a Quest."
"But here, God is a Demand. 'Let there be Light! Let there be more
Light!'"
5
He went home and wrote to Mary. "_My impulse is to tell you no more than
this, that I love you. I wrote to you this morning, and I have nothing
to add that is news. But I feel an overpowering desire to insist on my
love for you ... to do nothing for ever but love you and love you....
You see the mood I'm in! I went out of Dublin to-day, sulking and
depressed because John Marsh had failed me and I was lonely, but now I'm
extraordinarily happy. I feel that I have only to stretch out my hand
and touch you ... and then I shall be depressed no more. This is not a
letter. It has no beginning and it will have no end. It's an outpouring.
To-night is very beautiful. I went up to my bedroom a few moments ago,
and sat at the window looking over Stephen's Green. There was a blue
mist hanging over the trees, and the sky was full of light and colour. I
do not believe there is any place in the world where one sees so much of
the sky as in Dublin. It reaches up and up until you feel that if a bird
were to pierce the clouds with its beak, it would tear a hole in the
heavens and let the universe in. And while I was sitting there, I felt
very near to you, dearest. In ten days we shall be married, and then you
will come with me and see these places, too. I shall become Irish over
again when I show you my home, and I shall watch Ireland taking hold of
you and absorbing you and making you as Irish as I am. You'll go on
thinking that you're English until some one speaks disparagingly of
Ireland, and then you'll flare up, and you'll be Irish, not only in
nature, but in knowledge. Ireland does that to people, so you cannot
hope to escape. Good-night, my very dear!_"
6
On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to
Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they
were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are
tired and happy. As he crossed O'Connell Bridge, he stood for a few
moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had transmuted the river to
the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and the sunlight made the houses
on the quays look warm and lovely, even though they were old and worn
and discoloured. "In her heart," he thought, "Dublin is still a proud
lady, although her dress be draggled!"
He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were marching towards
Liberty Hall. There were little girls in Gaelic dress at the head of
them, accompanied by a pale, tired-looking woman, with tightened lips,
who stumped heavily by the side of them; and following them, came young
men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry labourers, misshapen by
heavy toil and privation ... and as the company passed by, girls stood
on the pavement and jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with
tightened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed hair....
"They're fools," Henry thought, looking at them as they went wearily on,
"but, by God, they're finer than the people who jeer at them. They ...
they are serving something ... and these Don't-Care-a-Damners aren't
serving anything!..."
There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and said, "Them lads 'ud
run like hell if you were to point a penny pop-gun at them! If a peeler
was to take their names, they'd be shiverin' with fright. They'd fall
out of their trousers with the terror'd be on them!"
Henry did not answer. Indeed, it seemed incredible that there was any
fight in them ... if he had been asked for his opinion, he might have
said something similar to what this stranger had said to him ... but he
hated to hear the man's disparagement, and so he did not make any answer
to him.
"I'd rather have them on my side than have him," he thought as he moved
away, "with the stink of porter on him!"
It sickened him to see the generosity and the youth walking in the
company of the hopelessness of Ireland, training themselves in the
means of killing. "If they'd put all that energy and enthusiasm into
something that will preserve life and make it deeper and finer, nothing
could prevail against them. If only John had more intellect and less
emotion ... if Mineely and Connolly were less bitter!"
He walked along Grafton Street, turning phrases over in his mind, angry
phrases, bitter things that he would say to John Marsh when he met him.
"What have young lads and girls to do with Hate and Death?" he said to
himself, as if he were talking to Marsh. "You're perverting them from
their purpose! You're robbing God of His due ... of the hope that fills
His Heart with each generation!"
"But it's no good talking to him ... he's too fond of spilling over. If
he were like Yeats, content to love Ireland at a distance ... to 'arise
and go now' no further than the Euston Road ... he might achieve
something, and at all events, he'd be harmless!"
He turned out of Grafton Street into Stephen's Green.
"To-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to Fairyhouse!"
And then he went to his Club. He was tired and sleepy, and soon after
supper, he went to bed.
7
It was late when he awoke and so, feeling lazy after his day's climbing,
he resolved that he would not go to the races. "I'll loaf about," he
said, "and to-night I'll go to a theatre." There was a letter from Mary
and one from Roger. "_Gerald Luke was killed in France last week, and so
was Clifford Dartrey. Goeffrey Grant has been wounded badly. The
Improved Tories have suffered heavily in the War...._" Roger wrote.
When he had breakfasted, he left the Club and walked towards Sackville
Street. He would go to the Abbey Theatre, he thought, and book a seat
for the evening performance.
There was an odd, bewildered look about the people who stood in groups
in Sackville Street.
"What's up?" Henry said to a bystander.
"Begod," said the man, "I think there's a rebellion on. That's what this
woman says anyway!"
"A what?"
"A rebellion or something of the sort. You can ask her yourself! Begod,
it's a quare day to have it. The people'll not enjoy themselves at
all...."
Henry turned to the woman who was standing in the centre of the group,
endlessly relating her experience.
"I went to the Gener'l," she said, "an' I said to the man behin' the
counter, 'Gimme two ha'penny postcards an' a penny stamp an' change for
a shillin', if you please!' and I hadn't the words out of my mouth 'til
a man in a green uniform ... one of them Sinn Feiners ... come up to me,
an' pointed a gun at me, an' toul' me to go home. 'Go home yourself!'
says I, an' I give his oul' gun a push with my hand, 'an' who are you to
be orderin' a person about?' 'If you don't go on when I tell you,' says
he, 'I'll shoot you!' an' I declare to my God he looked as if he'd blow
the head off you. 'Well, wait till I get my change anyway,' says I.
'Ye'll get no change here,' says he. 'I will so,' I said, and I turned
to the man behind the counter, but, sure, God bless you, he wasn't
there. 'Well, this bates all,' says I to the Sinn Feiner, 'an if the
peelers catches a houldt of you, you'll get into bother over the head of
this!' I picked up my shillin', an' I went out. The place was full of
them. They were orderin' everybody out, except a couple or three
soldiers that they made prisoners. An' if you were to go down there now,
you'd see them, young fellas that I could bate with my one hand, cocked
up behin' the windas with guns in their hands, an' telling people to
move on out of that...."
Some one came into the group, and said "What's that?" and she turned to
him and began again. "I went in to the Gener'l," she said, "an' I said
to the man behin' the counter, 'Gimme two ha'penny postcards....'"
Henry made his way out of the group of listeners, and walked down the
street towards the General Post Office.
"It's absurd," he said. "Ridiculous! A rebellion!"
But something was toward. On the roof of the Post Office there were two
flags, a green flag with a motto on it, and a tri-colour, orange, white
and green. There was hardly any wind, and the flags hung limply from
their staffs, but as Henry approached the Post Office, the wind stirred,
and the green flag fluttered enough for him to read what was printed on
it. It bore the legend IRISH REPUBLIC.
"It's a poor sort of performance, this!" he said as he came up to the
building.
All the windows on the ground floor were broken, and many of those on
the upper floors, and in each window, on sacks laid on piled furniture,
were one or two young volunteers, each with a rifle cocked....
8
There was a holiday mood on the people. They had come out to enjoy
themselves, and here was an entertainment beyond their dreams of
pleasure.... It was a dangerous kind of joke to play ... one of them
oul' guns might go off, and who knows who might get killed dead ... and
it was a serious thing to seize possession of the Post Office ... if the
peelers was to come an' catch them at it an' bring them before the
magistrates, they'd be damn near transported ... but it was the great
joke all the same. Whoever thought there would be the like of that to
see, and not a penny to pay for it.... The minute the peelers came up
... where in hell were the peelers?
It was then that they began to believe that there was more than a joke
in this rebellion. There were no policemen to be seen anywhere. "That's
strange now! There ought to be a peeler or two about!..."
Then some one, pale and startled, came by. "They've killed a policeman!"
he said. "The unfortunate man! I was coming past the Castle, and I saw a
Sinn Feiner go up to him and blow his brains out. Not a word of warning!
The poor man put up his hand to bid them go back ... they were trying to
get into the Castle ... and the Sinn Feiner lifted his rifle and shot
him dead!..."
"Begod, it's in earnest they are!..."
"But what can they do? They can't hold out against the British Army...."
"They might do a lot, now! They're mad, the whole of them! What in hell
do they want to start a rebellion for?..."
Henry moved away. He went from group to group, listening to one for a
while, and then moving on to another. There were many rumours already
flying through the crowd. The Germans had landed in the West, and were
marching to Dublin. A "mysterious stranger" had been captured on the
coast of Kerry a few days before. "It was Casement!" The German Navy had
made a raid on England, and the British Fleet had been badly beaten....
A youth, holding a rifle with a fixed bayonet, stood on sentry-go in the
middle of the street. He was very pale and tired and nervous-looking,
but looked as resolute as he looked tired. He did not speak to any one,
nor did any one speak to him. He stood there, staring fixedly in front
of him, watching and watching....
There was a sound of rumbling carts, and the noise of people cheering,
and presently a procession of wagons, loaded with cauliflower, and
guarded by armed Volunteers, came out of a side street, and drove up to
the Post Office.
"The Commissariat!" some one said. "Begod they'll be tired of
cauliflower before they're through with that lot!"
It was comical to see those loads of cauliflower being driven past.
Ireland was to fight for freedom with her stomach full of
cauliflower....
There was a Proclamation of the Republic on a wall near by, and he
hurried to read it.
"What's the thing at the head of it?" a woman asked, gazing at the
Gaelic inscription on top of the Proclamation.
"That's Irish," the man beside her replied.
"I know that. What does it mean?"
"Begod, I don't know...."
Henry read the Proclamation through, and then re-read the finely-phrased
end of it!
_We place the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High
God, Whose Blessing we invoke on our arms, and we pray that no one
who serves that cause will dishonour it. In this supreme hour the
Irish nation must by its valour and discipline, and by the
readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common
good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is
called._
"That's John," he said to himself, "or MacDonagh! And they began the
thing by killing an unarmed man! Their fine phrases won't cover that
mean deed!..."
9
He went back to his Club, and on the way, found that the rebels were in
possession of Stephen's Green. The gates were closed, and at each gate
were armed guards. He looked through the railings, and saw some boys
lying on the turf, with their rifles beside them. They did not move nor
look up, but lay very still and quiet, with a strange, preoccupied
expression on their faces. A little further on, other lads were digging
up the earth.
"What are you doing?" he said to one of them, and the lad straightened
himself and wiped the sweat from his brow.
"I don't know, sir!" he said, smiling nervously. "I'm supposed to be
diggin' a trench, but I think I'm diggin' my grave!..."
A trench! When he looked at the poor scraping of earth and sod, he felt
a fierce anger against Marsh and his friends swelling in his heart "They
haven't the gumption to know that this is the worst place they could
have chosen to entrench themselves, even if they knew how to make
trenches!" On all sides of the Green were high houses, from which it
would be easy to pick off every man that lay in the trenches....
There were carts and motor-cars drawn across the street to make a
barricade, and most of the gates of the Green had garden-seats and
planks lying against them. There were even branches, torn from the trees
and shrubs, thrust through the railings....
He went into his Club to lunch. "They're in the College of Surgeons,
sir!" a servant said. "They say Madame's in the Green!..."
"Madame?" he said vaguely.
"Yes. Madame Markiewicz. They killed a policeman...."
"Do you mean the man at the Castle?"
"No, sir. I didn't hear of him. They killed this one on the other side
of the Green. There's cold lamb and cold chicken, sir!"
"I'll have lamb!..."
He hurried over his meal. He had little appetite for eating, and when he
had finished, he went to the smoking-room and wrote to Mary. "_Don't be
alarmed if you see anything about an Irish Rebellion in the
newspapers_," he wrote. "_It will probably be over by to-morrow. I'm
quite all right. You're not to worry!..._" And when he had finished it
he went out and posted it. "Good Lord!" he said aloud, as the letter
fell into the box, "I forgot that they've got hold of the General. I
don't suppose there'll be a collection!"
He returned to the Club, but he could not keep still. There was no one,
except the servants and himself, in the house, and the emptiness of it
made him feel restless. Looking out of the window, he saw little girls,
like those he had seen on Sunday night, running about the Green, busy on
errands....
"The Kids' Rebellion!" he said to himself....
He left the club, and walked round the Green again, and as he passed the
College of Surgeons, two men appeared on the roof, and proceeded to
unfold the Republican tri-colour. They were clumsy, and they fumbled
with it, entangling the cords ... but at last they got it free, and then
they hauled it to the top of the flagstaff. The people on the pavement
below watched it as it fluttered in the light breeze, but none of them
spoke or cheered. The rebels in the Green made no sound either. The
Republican flag was hauled to its place in silence.
"They don't seem very grateful for their deliverance," Henry thought,
glancing at the bystanders as he moved up the street. There was a crowd
of people on the edge of the pavement, and he thrust himself into it,
and glanced over the shoulder of a woman at the ground. There was a mess
of thick, congealing blood splashed on the road and the kerb.
"That's where the peeler was killed!" the woman said to him....
He edged out of the crowd as quickly as he could, feeling sick with
horror, and again he felt a bitter anger against John Marsh.
"He was going to Mass every morning, damn him, to make sure of his own
soul, but he didn't give the policeman time to make any preparation. All
his high motives and his idealism tumble down to that ... that mess on
the pavement!..."
10
"But what's the Government doing?" he wondered.
There were no police, no soldiers, no authority anywhere. It seemed
unbelievable that a number of armed youths and men could seize a capital
city without opposition of any kind. He wondered whether there was any
truth in the rumours that had been floating about the city all day.
Could it possibly be that the Germans had effected a landing in Ireland
and were marching on the city? Could it be true that the British Fleet
had been destroyed by the German Fleet? Had the Government thrown up the
sponge?...
He met O'Dowd, an official whom he had seen several times at the Club.
"Where's the Government?" he asked....
"Well, to tell you the truth, Quinn, I don't know. I believe there's an
election going on at Trinity College. It's a damned comic affair, this!"
"Comic!"
"Well, I mean to say, it's a bit rum, isn't it?"
11
He went back to the Club in the evening. There were no lights in the
streets, and as the dusk settled down, the crowds of holiday-makers
began to move homewards. There were no trams running and few cars to be
seen, and the tired crowd that had been standing or walking about all
day, dragged itself home listlessly and heavily. There was a sense of
foreboding over the people, and some of them glanced apprehensively
about them. The thing had been funny in the daylight, but it was getting
dark now ... and who knew what might be lurking in the shadows? It was
strange that there were no police to be seen anywhere, and stranger
still that the soldiers had not appeared....
There was a Sinn Feiner on guard at the gate near Henry's Club, and
sitting at the open window, Henry could see him very distinctly: a
little, red-haired, angry man, who chewed his moustache and gaped about
him with bloodshot eyes. There were other Sinn Feiners with him, but he
was the most distinctive. He could not stay still: he moved about
continually, going into the Park and coming out again, challenging
passers-by, sloping his rifle and ordering it, and then sloping it
again. "The thing's getting on his nerves," Henry thought, as he watched
him; and while he watched, an elderly man came past the Shelbourne Hotel
in the uniform of a naval officer. The Sinn Feiners saw him, and the
red-haired man ordered his subordinates to arrest him. They ran across
the street and attempted to seize him, but he resisted, and raised his
walking stick to defend himself. A rebel caught hold of the stick, and
the two men stood there, against a gateway, struggling to wrest the
stick from each other. The up-and-down movement of their arms was like
the quick, jerky movement of figures in a film, and for a moment or two,
Henry wanted to laugh ... but the desire died when he saw the red-haired
man raising his rifle and aiming at the old man's heart....
"Oh, my God, he's going to shoot him!" he shouted out, jumping up from
his seat and leaning out of the window. "Don't shoot him ... don't shoot
him!" he cried. It seemed to him that he was yelling at the top of his
voice, but that could not have been so, for no one turned to look ...
and yet he could hear the red-haired man distinctly.
"I have ye covered," he was saying, "an' I'll shoot ye if ye don't give
in!..."
The old man held on to the stick for a moment or two, and then,
straightening himself, he surrendered; and the rebels led him into the
Park. Through the trees, Henry could see him being conducted before a
rebel officer who saluted him and began to interrogate him. Then the
procession moved off into the centre of the Park, and the little angry,
red-haired man returned to the gate.
"In the morning," Henry exclaimed to himself, "in the morning, that
little swine will sing another song!"
12
A horse-drawn cab came down the street, and as it approached, the guard
at the gate turned out, and challenged the driver. "Halt!" they shouted.
"Ah, g'long with you!" the driver replied, whipping up his horse.
"Halt!" they called again, and a third time "Halt!" but the driver did
not heed them, and then they fired at him.... There was a clatter of
hooves on the street, and the horse fell to the ground, striking sparks
from the stones as it struggled to rise again. The driver did not pause:
he jumped from his box with amazing celerity and disappeared so swiftly
that the rebels could not catch him. And while the horse lay struggling
on the street, a motor-car came by, and again the rebels sent out their
challenge, and again the challenge was ignored. "Halt! Halt! Halt!..."
The chauffeur drove on, and the rebels fired on the occupants of the
car. There was a swift application of brakes, and the car slithered up
against the pavement ... and as it slithered, a man stood up beside the
driver, holding his hand to his side, and yelled, "Oh, I'm dead! I'm
dead!..."
The chauffeur hurried away....
The rebels gathered round the shrieking man. "Why didn't you stop when
we challenged you!" they demanded.
"Aw! Aw! Aw!" he answered....
"Like a stuck pig!" thought Henry. "Squealing like a stuck pig!"
His head was rolling, but he was able to walk. "He's not much hurt,"
Henry murmured to himself, "but he's damned frightened."
"Aw, what did ye do it for? Aw! Aw! Aw!..."
"Take him to the hospital!..."
They led him a little way towards the hospital of St. Vincent de Paul,
and then, for some reason, changed their minds, and took him into the
Park. It was difficult now to see what was happening. There was a
derelict tram near the club, and beyond that, still pawing at the
ground, was the wounded horse....
"Why don't they shoot the poor beast!" Henry exclaimed.
But it would not enter their minds to put the animal out of pain. They
were Catholics, and Catholic peoples, the world over, are cruel to
beasts. Too intent on pitying their own souls, to have pity on
animals....
13
He closed the shutters and turned on the light. "I wonder where John
is?" he thought as he did so. "_This_ is why he couldn't come to
Glendalough with me. What the hell does he think he's going to gain by
it?" He glanced about the room. "It's damned odd," he said aloud, "but I
don't feel frightened. I should have thought I'd feel scared.... Of
course, as there was going to be a rebellion, I'm rather glad I'm here
to see it!"
He went to his bedroom and got a pack of patience cards.
"There'll be no theatre to-night!" he said. "I think I'll play 'Miss
Milligan.' ..."
14
The silence of the house made him feel restless.
"I'll go to bed," he exclaimed. "I may as well get all the sleep I can."
He went to his room, and stumbled towards the windows.
"I'll close the shutters while I'm undressing;" he went on. "I don't
want to be 'potted' needlessly!"
He tried to see into the Park, but the great masses of trees that
undulated like a rough sea, prevented him from seeing anything. There
were figures at the gate ... on guard!
"I wonder if that little red-haired man's still there," he thought.
"Poor devils! Some of them must feel damned queer to-night!..."
He closed the shutters, and switched the light on, and then, when he had
undressed he darkened the room again. "I must have some air," he said,
opening the shutters.
He climbed into bed. Now and then a rifle-shot was fired, and sometimes
there was a succession of shots....
"In the morning," he said, as he turned on his side and closed his eyes,
"they'll be cleared out of that!..."