Changing Winds Part 21

"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 pa.s.sion 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, s.h.i.+llings 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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, pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s in the hedge and as they stood there, facing each other, they could hear the soft munch-munch as it tore the gra.s.s 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.