Changing Winds Part 23

I'll not let you seduce a girl on my land, do you hear? They can do that sort of thing in England, if they like ... it's nothin' to me what the English do ... but by G.o.d I'll not have a girl on my land ruined by you or by anybody else!"

Mr. Quinn's voice was more angry than Henry had ever heard it.

"Father," Henry said, "I want to marry Sheila!..."

"What?"

Mr. Quinn's fist had been raised as if he were about to bang his desk to emphasise his words, but he was so startled by Henry's speech that he forgot his intention, and he sat there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, with his fist still suspended in the air, so that Henry almost laughed at his comical look.

"What's that you say?" he said, when he had recovered

"I want to marry her, but she won't have me!"

Mr. Quinn's anger left him. He leant back in his revolving chair and laughed.

"By G.o.d, that's good!" he said. "By G.o.d, it is! Marry her! Oh, dear, oh, dear!"

"I don't know why you're laughing, father!..."

"An' I thought you up to no good. Oh, ho, ho!" He took out his handkerchief and rubbed his eyes. "Well, thank G.o.d, the girl's got more wit nor you have. In the name of G.o.d, lad, what would you marry her for?"

"Because I love her, father!"

"My backside to that for an answer!" Mr. Quinn snapped. "You know well you couldn't marry her, a girl like that!"

"I don't know it at all!..."

"Well, I'll tell you why then. Because you're a gentleman an' she isn't a lady, that's why. There's hundreds of years of breedin' in you, Henry, an' there's no breedin' at all in her, nothin' but good nature an' good looks!..."

"The Hamiltons have lived at their farm for more than a hundred and fifty years, father!"

"So they have, an' decent, good stock they are, but that doesn't put them on our level. Listen, Henry, the one thing that's most important in this world is blood an' breedin'. There's people goes about the world sayin' everybody's as good as everybody else, but you've only got to see people when there's bother on to find out who's good an' who isn't.

It's at times like that that blood an' breedin' come out!..."

It was then that Henry told his father of his cowardice when the horse ran away. He told the whole story, and insisted on Sheila's scorn for him. Mr. Quinn did not speak while the story was being told. He sat at the desk with his chin buried in his fingers, listening patiently. Once or twice he looked up when Henry hesitated in his recital, and once he seemed as if he were about to put out his hand to his son, but he did not do so. He did not speak or move until the story was ended.

"I'm glad you told me, Henry," he said quietly when Henry had finished.

"I'm sorry I thought you were meanin' the girl an injury. I beg your pardon for that, Henry. The girl's a decent girl, a well-meant girl ...

a well-meant girl!... I wish to G.o.d, you were at Trinity, my son! Come on, now, an' have somethin' to ate. BeG.o.d, I'm hungry. I could ate a horse. I could ate two horses!..." He put his arm in Henry's and they left the library together. "You'll get over it, my son, you'll get over it. It does a lad good to break his heart now an' again. Teaches him the way the world works! Opens his mind for him, an' lets him get a notion of the feel of things!..."

They were just outside the dining-room when he said that. Mr. Quinn turned and looked at Henry for a second or two, and it seemed to Henry that he was about to say something intimate to him, but he did not do so: he turned away quickly and opened the door.

"I suppose John Marsh is eatin' all the food," he said with extraordinary heartiness. "Are you eatin' all the food, John Marsh? I'll wring your d.a.m.ned neck if you are!..."

4

That evening, after dinner, Mr. Quinn and John Marsh were sitting together. Henry had gone out of the room for a while, leaving Mr. Quinn to smoke a cigar while John Marsh corrected some exercises by the students of the Language cla.s.s.

"Marsh!" Mr. Quinn said suddenly, after a long silence.

Marsh looked up quickly. "Yes, Mr. Quinn!" he replied.

"Henry's in love!..."

"Is he?"

"Yes. With that girl. Sheila Morgan, Matt Hamilton's niece!"

Marsh put his exercises aside. "Dear me!" he exclaimed.

There did not appear to be anything else to say.

"So I'm goin' to send him away," Mr. Quinn went on.

"Away?"

"Yes. I don't quite know where I shall send him. It's too soon yet to send him up to Trinity. I've a notion of sendin' you an' him on a walkin' tour in Connacht. The pair of you can talk that d.a.m.ned language 'til you're sick of it with the people that understands it!"

Marsh was delighted. He thought that Mr. Quinn's proposal was excellent, and he was certain that it would be very good for Henry to come into contact with people to whom the language was native.

"Wheesht a minute, Marsh!" Mr. Quinn interrupted. "I want to talk to you about Henry. It's a big thing for a lad of his age to fall in love!"

"I suppose it is."

"There's no supposin' about it. It is! He's just at the age when women begin to matter to a man, an' I don't want him to go an' get into any bother over the head of them!"

"Bother?"

"Aye. Do you never think about women, John Marsh?"

"Oh, yes. Sometimes. One can't help it now and then!..."

"No, beG.o.d, one can't!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed. "Do you know this, John Marsh, I never can make out whether G.o.d did a good day's work the day He made women! They're the most unsettlin' things in the world. You'd think to look at me, I was a fairly quiet sort of a steady man, wouldn't you?

Well, I'm not. There's whiles when a woman makes my head buzz ... just the look of her, an' the way she turns her head or moves her legs. I'm a hefty fellow, John Marsh, for all I'm the age I am, an' I know what it is to feel d.a.m.n near silly with desire. But all the same, I can keep control of myself, an' I've never wronged a woman in my life. That's a big thing for any man to be able to say, an' there's few that can say it, but I tell you it's been a h.e.l.l of a fight!..."

He lay back in the chair and puffed smoke above his head for a while. "A h.e.l.l of a fight," he murmured, and then did not speak for a while.

"Yes?" said John Marsh.

"I've been down the lanes of a summer night, an' seen young girls from the farms about, with fine long hair hangin' down their backs, an' them smilin' an' lovely ... an' beG.o.d, I've had to hurry past them, hurry hard, d.a.m.n near run!... Mind you, they were good girls, John Marsh! I don't want you to think they were out lookin' for men. They weren't. But they were young, an' they were just learnin' things, an' I daresay I could have had them if I'd tried ... an' I don't think there's any real harm in men an' women goin' together ... but we've settled, all of us, that, real or no real, there is _some_ sort of harm in it, an' we've agreed to condemn that sort of thing, an' so I submit to the law. Do you follow me?"

"No, not quite. Those sort of things don't arise for me. I'm a Catholic and I obey the Church's laws!..."

"I know you do. But I'm a man, not a Catholic!... Now, don't lose your temper. I couldn't help lettin' that slip out.... What I mean is this.

There's a lot of waywardness in all of us, that's pleasant enough if it's checked when it gets near the limit of things, but there has to be a check!"

"Yes?" Marsh said. "And in my case the check is the Church, the expression on earth of G.o.d's will!..."