Changing Winds Part 109

"I was here. I've been here since Monday morning!"

He moved a few steps away, and then turned back.

"I've always liked you, Henry," he said, taking Henry's hand in his, "even when you made me angry. I wish you were on our side...."

"I see no sense in this sort of thing, John!"

"I know you don't. And perhaps there isn't any sense in it, but that may not matter. It's something, isn't it, to find men still willing to die for their ideals, even when they know they haven't a chance of success?

The Post Office is full of young boys, who want nothing better than to die for Ireland. Well, that's something, isn't it, in these times when most of our people aren't willing to do anything but make money?

Good-bye again!"

He went back to the Post Office, very erect and very proud and very resolute.

"By G.o.d," said Henry to himself, "I wish I had the heart to feel what he feels!"

7

He was sitting in the smoking-room of the Club, trying to write. He had written to Mary earlier in the evening, a.s.suring her of his welfare, and Driffield, a Treasury official, who had come into the Club for a few moments, had offered to try and get it put into the special mail "pouch"

which was sent from the Castle every day to London. "You mustn't say anything about the Rebellion," he said. "Just say you're all right. I can't promise that it'll go off, but I'll do my best!" The restless, excited feeling which had possessed him since the beginning of the rebellion still held him, and he was unable to continue at anything for long. All day he had wandered about the city, learning more of its backways than he had ever known before. He had penetrated more deeply into the slums than he had done when he had explored them with Gilbert Farlow, and it seemed to him that there was nothing to be done with them or with the people in them. They were decaying together, and the sooner they decayed, the better would it be for Ireland. All his counsels that day were counsels of despair. What was the good of working and building when this was the material out of which a nation must be made? What was the good of trying to make sure foundations when impatient, undisciplined people like John Marsh came and threw one's work to the ground? Was it not better that every Irishman of alert and vigorous mind should leave Ireland to rot, and choose another country where men had stability of mind and purpose?...

"But one must go on trying. If the house be pulled down, we must build it up again. One must go on trying...."

He would get his friends together, and they would plan to save what they could from the wreckage. "And then we'll begin again! Whatever happens, we must begin again!"

He was tired of playing Patience, tired of reading, and tired of sitting still. Perhaps, he thought, he could write. It would be odd afterwards to think that he had written a story during a rebellion.

There was a great German ... who was it? ... Heine or Goethe?... Oh, why couldn't he remember names!... who had gone on writing steadily, though there was battle all about him.... He settled himself to write, though he had no plan in his mind, and as he wrote, he felt that the story, whatever it might grow to be, must be comic. "I feel like a clown making jokes in the circus while his wife is dying," he said to himself....

But his restlessness persisted, and after a while he put his ma.n.u.script aside, and took up a book which he had found in the bookcase: William James's _Pragmatism_: and began to read it. He remembered a discussion of Pragmatism by the Improved Tories, when Gilbert had described a pragmatist as an unfrocked Jesuit....

And while he was burrowing into the first chapter, thinking more of James's graceful style than of his matter, there was a great rattle, an incessant hammer-and-rasp noise in the street.

"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed, jumping up and dropping the book, "what's that?"

Then it ceased, and there was a horrible quietness for a few moments, followed by the crack-crack of rifles, and then again the ra-ra-ra-rat-rat-rat-rattle-rattle....

"Machine guns!" he exclaimed. He knew instinctively that they were machine guns. "It ... it startles you, that noise!"

It went on, rattling, with little pauses now and then as if the gun were taking breath, for an hour or more: a paralysing sound, as if some giant were drawing a great stick swiftly along iron railings.

"I think I'd better put the light out," he said, going across the room to where the switch was, and as he went there was a cracking sound in the window, and a bullet flew across the room and lodged in the wall....

He switched the light off, and stood for a while in the dark. Then he opened the door and went out and stood on the landing. The servants were sitting huddled together on the staircase, nervous looking, indeed, but not frightened. It seemed to him to be remarkable that these girls should have kept their nerve as finely as they had. He smiled at them, as he closed the door behind him.

"They're making a lot of noise, aren't they?" he said.

"Isn't it awful, sir?" one of them answered.

He did not speak of the bullet which had come into the room. "It must have been a stray," he thought, "and there's no sense in upsetting them!"

"The soldiers are firing across the Green," he said aloud, "at the College of Surgeons. I think we're safe enough here, but I'd keep away from the windows!..."

"Yes, sir, we are!"

He went to his room, and sat at the window. At this height it was unlikely that any stray bullet would come near him. But he could not see any one. He could hear the wild-fowl crying in the Park ... distinctly, in the pause of the firing, he could hear a duck's quack-quack....

8

He went to bed, and tried to sleep, but could not. The firing from the machine-guns was intermittent now, but it still went on, and there was a continuous crackling of rifle-fire. Several times he got up and looked out ... he had a curious and persistent desire to see whatever was going on ... to be in it ... extraordinarily he was anxious not to miss anything. _He was neither afraid nor aware of the fact that he was not afraid._ He had simply the sensation that exciting things were happening, that he wanted to see as much of them as possible, that he was excited, that his blood was flowing rapidly through his veins, that there was something hitting the inside of his head, thumping it. Then when he was tired of straining to see into the darkness, he went back to bed again, and closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And sometimes he succeeded in sleeping for a while ... but always the noise of the machine-guns woke him....

He went to the window when the dawn broke, and looked across the Green to the College of Surgeons.

"It's still flying," he muttered as he watched the tri-colour flowing in the wind.

9

And now the Rebellion began to bore him. He could not work, and the walks he could take were circ.u.mscribed. He walked down to Trinity College and stood there, watching the soldiers on the roof of the College as they fired up Dame Street to where some Sinn Feiners were in occupation of a newspaper office, or along Westmoreland Street towards the Post Office. Wherever he went, there was the sound of bullets being fired ... but after a while, the sound ceased to affect him. There were snipers on many roofs ... and people had been killed by stray bullets ... but, although the sudden crack of a rifle overhead made him jump, the boredom grew and increased. He wanted to get on with his work....

The soldiers were pouring into Dublin now ... more and more of them.

"It'll be over soon," he said to himself.

It seemed to him then that the thing he would remember always was the dead horse which still lay on the pavement, becoming more and more offensive. Wherever he went, he met people who said to him, "Have you seen the dead horse?" Impossible to forget the corrupting beast, impossible to refrain from saying too, "Have you seen the dead horse?"

Magnify that immensely, increase enormously the noise, and one had the War! Noise and stench and dead men and boredom!...

He wandered about the streets, seeing the same people, listening to the same statements, making the same remarks, wondering vaguely about food.

He had seen high officials carrying loaves under their arms, and little jugs of milk....

"I wish to G.o.d it was over," he exclaimed. "I'm sick of this ...

idleness!"

He spoke to a soldier in Merrion Square. "Do you like Dublin?" he said.

"Oh, fine!" he answered. "We've been treated champion. I 'aven't seen much of it yet, of course," he went on. "I've been 'ere ever since I landed!" He pointed to the pavement. "But I know this bit d.a.m.n well. You know," he went on, "we thought we was in France when we arrived 'ere.

Couldn't make it out when we saw all the signs in English. I says to a chap, as we was walking along, ''I,' I says, 'is this Boolone?' 'Naow,'

'e says, 'it's Ireland.'"

"And what did you say?" said Henry.

"I said 'Blimey!'" He moved to the kerb as the soldier further along the street called "Pa.s.s these men along" and when he had called the warning to the next soldier, he returned to Henry. "I say," he said, "wot are these Sinn Feiners? I mean to say 'oo are they? Are they Irish, too?"

Henry tried to explain who the Sinn Feiners were.

"But wot they want to do? Wot's the point of all this ... this 'umbuggin' about? We don't want to fight Irish people ... we want to fight Germans!..." He looked about for a moment, and then added, as if to clinch his statement, "I mean to say, I _know_ an Irish chap ... 'e's a friend of mine ... but I don't know no b.l.o.o.d.y Germans, an' wot's more I wouldn't know them neither ... dirty lot, I calls 'em!"

"You know," he went on, "this is about the 'ottest bit of work a chap could 'ave to do. These snipers, you know, they get on your nerves. I mean to say, 'ere you are, standin' 'ere, you might say, in the dark an'

suddenly a bullet d.a.m.n near 'its you ... or mebbe it does 'it you ...