1
On Sunday morning, he met Lander, who had a military pass, and together
they went to Sackville Street.... There were some who had said that this
was the proudest street in the world. It had little pride now. Where
there had been shops and hotels, there were now heaps of rubble and
calcined bricks. The street was covered with grey ash that was still
hot, and one had to walk warily lest one's feet should be burnt. The
Post Office still stood, but the roof was gone and the inside of it was
empty: a hulk, a disembowelled carcase....
"MacDonagh and Pearse and Connolly have been taken," said Lander. "They
say Connolly's badly wounded...."
"Have you heard anything of ... of John Marsh?"
"Yes. He's dead. They say he was killed soon after the fighting began
... in the street!..."
Henry did not speak. He glanced about him at the ruin and wreck of a
city which, though it had many times filled him with anger, yet filled
him also with love; and for a while he could not see clearly....
Somewhere in this street, John Marsh had been killed. He had died, as he
had desired, for Ireland, and a man can do no more than give his life
for his country ... but what was the good of his dying? It was not
enough that a man should die ... he must also die well and to purpose.
Oh, indeed, John had believed that such a death as this would be a good
death, to much purpose, but it is not the dead who can judge of that ...
it is the living to whom now and forever is the task of judging what the
dead have done.
"It's a pity," said Lander, "that the slums weren't destroyed, too!..."
"Perhaps," Henry answered, "we can build a finer city after this!"
"Perhaps," said Lander dubiously, for Lander knew the ways of men and
had small faith in them.
2
They walked along the quays until they reached the Four Courts, and
while they were standing there, a sickly woman, with a fretful, whining
voice, plucked at Henry's arm.
"Is it over, mister?" she said, and when he nodded his head, she turned
away, exclaiming fervently, "Oh, thanks be to the Holy Mother of God!"
"The Holy Mother of God had damned little to do with it," Henry said to
Lander. "It was machine guns...."
3
Lander had obtained a permit for him, so that he could go to England,
and in a little while, he would leave the Club and go to Westland Row to
catch the train to Kingstown. There was a strange quietness in his
heart. He had lived through a terror and had not been afraid. He had
seen men immolating themselves gladly because they had believed that by
so doing they would make their country a finer one to live in.
"It was the wrong way," he said to himself, "but in the end, nothing
matters but that a man shall offer his life for his belief!"
Gilbert Farlow and Ninian Graham had not sought, as he had sought, to
escape from destiny or to elude death. It was fore-ordained that old men
would make wars and that young men would pay the price of them ... and
it is of no use to try to save oneself. John Marsh, too, had had to pay
for the incompetence and folly of old men who had wrangled and made
bitterness ... And now, in his turn, he must pay the price, too. One
must die ... in that there is no choice ... but one may die finely or
one may die meanly ... and in that there is choice. Gilbert and Ninian
and John, each in his way, had died finely. It might have been that he
would have died meanly in Dublin, casually killed, for no purpose, for
no cause.... Well, he had not been killed meanly. There was still time
for him to live on the level of his friends. If youth has had committed
to it the task of redeeming the world from the follies of the Old, Youth
must not shrink from the labour, even though it may feel that the Old
should redeem themselves....
He would go to Boveyhayne and marry Mary, and then he would take her to
his home ... he must do that ... and when he had given his house to her,
he would enlist as a soldier. "Life isn't worth while, if one is afraid
to lose it ... a year or two more, what do they matter if a job be
shirked?" "It isn't the time one lives that matters," he went on, "it's
what one does in the time!"
4
As the mail-boat steamed out of the harbour, he climbed to the top deck
and stood there gazing back at the shore. Exquisitely beautiful, Ireland
looked in the evening glow. Up the river, in an opal mist, he could see
Dublin, still sore from her latest wounds, and here close at hand, he
saw the waves of mountains reaching far inland, each mountain shining in
the light with a great mingling of colours. Beautiful, but more than
beautiful! Other lands had beauty, too, more beauty, perhaps, than
Ireland, but if he were leaving them as he was now leaving Ireland, he
should not feel the grief that he now felt. This was his land ... his
own country ... and the elements which had been mingled to make it, had
been mingled also to make him, and he and it were one. It was strange
that he should carry so heavy a heart to Boveyhayne, when he should have
gone there gladly ... but it was not of Mary or his marriage that he was
then thinking. It was of the farewell he was making to this old city
which had known much grief and many troubles. When he returned to
Ireland he would go straight to Ballymartin, by Belfast, from England.
He would not see Dublin again. Firmly fixed in his mind, was that
belief. He would serve ... and he would die. Foolish, he told himself,
to think like that, but, even while he was rebuking himself, the thought
thrust itself into his mind again....
5
The boat was almost out of sight of land. He had stood at the end of the
deck, gazing back at Ireland until only the clouded head of a mountain
could be seen, and then that too had been hidden. He turned and looked
forward, and as he did so, he saw in the distance, low in the sea, the
hulls of three ships of war. The mail-boat slowed down, as they
approached, to let them pass. Naked and lithe, they looked, as they
thrust their bodies through the sea, sending the water up from their
bows in shining arches. He could see the men standing about the decks,
looking steadily ahead ... and then the war-ships passed on to their
work, and the mail-boat gathered up speed and plunged on towards Wales.
Over there, he thought, somewhere in that haze, is England, and beyond
England, France and Flanders and the fields of blood and pain....