Changing Winds Part 105

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 trans.m.u.ted 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, they're finer than the people who jeer at them. They ...

they are serving something ... and these Don't-Care-a-d.a.m.ners aren't serving anything!..."

There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and said, "Them lads 'ud run like h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d 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.

"BeG.o.d," 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! BeG.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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, c.o.c.ked 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 c.o.c.ked....

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 d.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l 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!..."

"BeG.o.d, 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 h.e.l.l 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 Cas.e.m.e.nt!" 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. "BeG.o.d 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?"