Changing Winds Part 104

"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, d.a.m.n 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 a.s.sured 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 d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d!" 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d, let us guide ourselves!..."

It seemed to him that G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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!"

"G.o.d," 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, G.o.d 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!_"