Changing Winds Part 11

"No, and I shall never go there!"

There was a sudden ferocity in his voice that startled Henry. "But why?"

he asked.

"Why?..." Marsh's voice changed its note and became quiet again. "I'm Irish," he said. "That's why! I don't think that any Irishman ought to put his foot in England until Ireland is free!"

Henry snapped at him impatiently. "I hate all that kind of talk," he said.

Marsh looked at him in astonishment. "You hate all ... what talk?" he asked.

"All that talk about Ireland being free!"

"But don't you want Ireland to be free?" Marsh asked.

They had walked on across the field until they came to a barred gate, and Marsh climbed on to the top bar and perched himself there while Henry stood with his back against the gate and fondled the muzzle of the horse which had followed after them.

"I don't know what you mean when you say you want Ireland to be free!"

Henry exclaimed.

"Don't know what I mean!..." Marsh's voice became very tense again, and he slipped down from the gate and turned quickly to explain his meaning to Henry, but Henry did not wait for the explanation. "No," he interrupted quickly. "Of course, I don't know much about these things, but I've read some books that father gave me, and I've talked to my friends ... one of them, Gilbert Farlow, is rather clever and he knows a lot about politics ... he argues with his father about them ... and I can't see that there's much difference between England and Ireland.

People here don't seem to me to be any worse off than people over there!"

"It isn't a question of being worse off or better off," Marsh replied.

"It's a question of being _free._ The English are governed by the English. The Irish aren't governed by the Irish. That's the difference between us. What does it matter what your condition is so long as you know that you are governed by a man of your own breed and blood, and that at any minute you may be in his place and he in yours, and yet you'll be men of the same breed and blood? I'd rather be governed badly by men of my own breed than be governed well by another breed...."

Henry remembered Ulster and his father and all his kinsmen scattered about the North who had sworn to die in the last ditch rather than be governed by Nationalists. "That's all very well," he said, "but there are plenty of people in Ireland who don't want to be governed by your breed, well or bad!"

"They'd consent if they thought we had the ability to govern well,"

Marsh went on. "Anyhow, we couldn't govern Ireland worse than the English have governed it!"

"Some people think you could!..."

But Marsh was in no mood to listen to objections. "You can't be free until you are equal with other people, and we aren't equal with the English. We aren't equal with anybody but subject people. And they look down on us, the English do. We're lazy and dirty and ignorant and superst.i.tious and priest-ridden and impractical and ... and comic!... My G.o.d, _comic_! Whenever I see an Englishman in Ireland, running round and feeling superior, I want to wring his d.a.m.ned neck ... and I should hate to wring any one's neck."

Henry tried to interject a remark, but Marsh hurried on, disregarding his attempt to speak.

"How would they like it if we went over to their country and made remarks about them?" he exclaimed. "My brother went to London once and he saw people making love in public ... fellows and girls hugging each other in the street and sprawling about in the parks ... all over each other ... and no one took any notice. It wasn't decent.... How would they like it if we went over there and made remarks about _that?_ ..."

Henry insisted on speaking. "But why should you hate the English?" he demanded, and added, "I don't hate them. I like them!"

"I didn't say I hated the English," Marsh replied. "I don't. I don't hate any race. That would be ridiculous. But I hate the belief that the English are fit to govern us, when they're not, and that we're not fit to govern ourselves, when we are. I'd rather be governed by Germans than be governed by the English!..." Henry moved away impatiently. "Yes, I would," Marsh continued. "At all events, the Germans would govern us well...."

"You'd hate to be governed by Germans!"

"I'd hate to be governed by any but Irishmen; but the Germans wouldn't make the muddles and messes that the English make!..."

"You don't know that," Henry said.

But Marsh would not take up the point. He swung off on a generalisation.

"There won't be any peace or happiness in Ireland," he said, "until the English are driven out of it. Even the Orangemen don't like them.

They're always making fun of them!..."

Henry repeated his a.s.sertion that he liked the English, conscious that there was something feeble in merely repeating it. He wished that he could say something as forceful as Marsh's statement of his dislike of England, but he was unable to think of anything adequate to say. "I like the English," he said again, and when he thought over that talk, there seemed to be nothing else to say. How could he feel about the English as John Marsh, who had never lived in England, felt? How could he dislike them when he remembered Gilbert Farlow and Roger Carey and Ninian Graham and Mrs. Graham and Old Widger and Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury ...

and Mary Graham. His father had always spoken contemptuously of Englishmen, but he had never been moved by this violent antipathy to them which moved Marsh ... and most of his talk against England was only talk, intended to sting the English out of their complacency ... and he was eager to preserve the Union between the two countries. But Marsh wished to be totally separate from England. He was vague, very vague, about points of defence, and he boggled badly when Henry, trying to think like a statesman, talked of an Army and a Navy ... his mind wandered into the mists of Tolstoyianism and then he ended by suggesting that England would attend to these matters in self-defence. He could not satisfy Henry's superficial enquiries about the possibilities of trade conducted in Gaelic ... but he was positive about the need for separation, complete and irremediable separation, from England.

"We're separated from them physically," he said, "and I want us to be separated from them politically and spiritually. They're a debased people!..." Henry muttered angrily at that, for his mind was still full of Mary Graham. "They're a debased people ... that's why I want to get free of them ... and all the debasing things in Ireland are part of the English taint. We've nothing in common with them. They're a race of factory-hands and manufacturers; we're a race of farmers and poets; and you can never reconcile us. All you can do is to make us like them ...

or worse!"

Henry remembered how his father had fulminated against the smooth Englishman who had proposed to turn Glendalough into a place like the Potteries or Wigan.

"But isn't there some middle course?" he said weakly. "Isn't there some way of getting at the minerals of Wicklow without making Glendalough a place like Wigan?"

"Not if the English have anything to do with it," Marsh answered. "I don't know what Wigan is like.... I suppose it's horrible ... but it's natural to Englishmen. They trail that sort of place behind them wherever they go. Slums and sickness and fat, rich men! If they had anything to do with developing Wicklow they'd make it stink!..."

"Well, I don't know," Henry said wearily, for he soon grew tired of arguments in which he was an unequal partic.i.p.ator. "I like the English and I can't see any good in just hating them!"

"They found a decent, generous race in Ireland," Marsh exclaimed, "and they've turned it into a race of cadgers. Your father admits that. Ask him what he thinks of Arthur Balfour and his Congested Districts Board!..."

They went back to the house, and as they went, they talked of books, and as they talked of books, Marsh's mind became a.s.suaged. He had lately published a little volume of poems and he spoke of it to Henry in a shy fashion, though his eyes brightened and gleamed as he repeated something that Ernest Harper had said of them ... but then Ernest Harper always spoke kindly of the work of young, sincere men.

"I'll give you a copy if you like," Marsh said to Henry.

"Oh, thank you!" Henry exclaimed. "I should love to have it. I suppose,"

he went on, "it's very exciting to have a book published."

"I cried when I first saw my book," Marsh answered very simply. "I suppose women do that when they first see their babies!..."

But Henry did not know what women do when they first see their babies.

THE SIXTH CHAPTER

1

All through the summer, Henry and John Marsh worked together, making Irishry, as Marsh called it. They studied the conventional subjects in preparation for T. C. D. but their chief studies were of the Irish tongue and Irish history. Marsh was a Gaelic scholar, and he had made many translations of Gaelic poems and stories, some of which seemed to Henry to be of extraordinary beauty, but most of which seemed to him to be so thoughtless that they were merely lengths of words. There appeared to be no connexion between these poems and tales and the life he himself led--and Marsh's point was that the connexion was vital. One evening, Henry, who had been reading "The Trojan Women" of Euripides, turned to Marsh and said that the Greek tragedy seemed nearer to him than any of the Gaelic stories and poems. He expressed his meaning badly, but what it came to was this, that the continuity of life was not broken in the Euripidean plays: the life of which Henry was part flowed directly from the life of which Euripides was part; he had not got the sensation that he was a stranger looking on at alien things when he had read "The Trojan Women," "I can imagine all that happening now," he said, "but I can't imagine any of that Gaelic life recurring. I don't feel any life in it. It's like something ... something odd suddenly b.u.t.ting into things ... and then suddenly b.u.t.ting out again ... and leaving no explanation behind it!"

He tried again, with greater success, to explain what he meant. "It's like reading topical references in old books," he said. "They mean nothing to us even when there are footnotes to explain them!"

Marsh had listened patiently to him, though there was anger in his heart. "You think that all that life is over!" he said, and Henry nodded his head.

"Listen," said Marsh, taking a letter from his pocket, "here is a poem, translated from Irish, that was sent to me by a friend of mine in Dublin. His name is Galway, and I'd like you to know him. Listen! It's called 'A Song for Mary Magdalene.'"

He read the poem in a slow, crooning voice that seemed always on the point of becoming ridiculous, but never did become so.

O woman of the gleaming hair (Wild hair that won men's gaze to thee), Weary thou turnest from the common stare, For the Shuiler[2] Christ is calling thee.