Changing Winds Part 56

"Hilloa, Ninian!" Roger murmured, without looking up.

Magnolia entered with Ninian's breakfast and placed it before him.

"Anything in the _Times_?" Ninian said, pouring out coffee.

"Usual stuff. The bacon's salt!..."

The time, Ninian thought, was hardly suitable for a few home-thrusting words on the subject of marriage, so he reminded Roger that he was going to Southampton.

"Tom Arthurs has promised to show me over as much of the _Gigantic_ as we can manage in a couple of hours. That won't be as much as I'd like to see, but I'll try and go over her when she comes back from New York. Any mustard about?"

"You'll be back again to-night, I suppose?"

"Probably. You're right ... this bacon is salt, d.a.m.n it!"

Roger rose from the table and moved to the window where he stood for a while looking out on the garden. It seemed to Ninian that in a moment or two he would speak of his engagement, and so he sat still, waiting for him to begin.

"Well," said Roger, turning away from the window and feeling for his watch, "I must be off. So long, Ninian!"

He went out of the room quickly and in a little while, Ninian heard the street door banging behind him.

"d.a.m.n," he said to himself, "I've just remembered what I was going to say to him!"

He had finished his breakfast and left the house before Gilbert and Henry came down from their rooms. Henry was too tired to talk much, and Gilbert, finding him uncommunicative, made no effort to make conversation. He picked up the _Times_ and contented himself with the morning's news, while Henry read a letter from John Marsh which had come by the first post.

"_I'm interested in your Improved Tories_," he wrote, "_I think the scheme is excellent. You sharpen your wits on other people's, and you keep in touch with all kinds of opinions. That's excellent! Your father, and you, too, used to say we were rather one-eyed in Dublin, and I think there's a good deal of truth in that, so I'm trying to get a group of people in Dublin to form a society somewhat similar to your Improved Tories. Did you ever meet a man called Arthur Griffiths when you were here? He is a very able, but not very sociable, man, and so people do not know him as well as they ought to ... and his tongue is like a flail ... so that most of the people who do know him, don't like him. The Nationalist M. P.'s detest him. Well, several years ago he founded a society which he called the Sinn Fein Movement, and the principle of the thing is excellent up to a point. Do you remember any of your Gaelic? Sinn Fein means 'we ourselves,' and that is the principle of the society. The object is to induce Irishmen to do for themselves, things that are done for them by Englishmen. It ought to appeal to your father. Griffiths got the idea, I think, from Hungary.

We're to withdraw our representatives from the English parliament and start an Irish Government on the basis of a Grand Council of the County Councils. We're to have our own consular service, our own National Bank and Stock Exchange and Civil Service, and a mercantile marine so that we can trade direct with other countries. And we're to nationalise the railways and ca.n.a.ls and bogs (which are to be reclaimed) and take over insurance and education and so forth. All this is to be done by the General Council of the County Councils in opposition to anything of the sort that is done by the English Government in preparation for the day when there is an Irish Government when, of course, the General Council will be merged in the Government. Oh, and we're to have Protection, too!

It seems rather a lot, doesn't it? but the idea is excellent and, if modified considerably, fairly practical. Griffiths has antiquated notions of economics, however, and some of the things he says prevent me from joining him. His great idea is to attract capital to Ireland by telling capitalists how cheap Irish labour is. That seems to me to be an abominable proposal, likely to lead to something worse than Wigan and all those miserable English towns your father dislikes so heartily. And probably, of all his proposals, it is the most likely to succeed. That's why I'm opposed to him at present. I cannot bear the thought of seeing England duplicated in Ireland. But the scheme has merit, and Galway and I are plotting to capture the movement from Griffiths. We think that if we could graft the Sinn Fein on to the Gaelic League, we'd be on the way to establishing Irish independence. Our people are becoming very materialistic, and we must quicken their spirits again somehow. Douglas Hyde is the trouble, of course. He wants to keep the Gaelic League clear of politics. As if you can possibly keep politics out of anything in Ireland! We want to make every Gaelic Leaguer a conscious rebel against English beliefs and English habits. I wish you'd come over and join us.

It'll be very hard, but exhilarating, work. You've no notion of how sordid and money-grubbing and English the ma.s.s of our people are becoming. It's a man's job to destroy that spirit and revive the old, careless, generous, G.o.d-loving Irish one...._"

"Still harping on that old nationality," Henry thought to himself, when he had finished reading the letter.

He was in no mood for thoughts on Ireland. His mind was still full of the idea that had come into his head the previous night. _Why should he not get married?_ The idea attracted and repelled him. It would, he thought, be very pleasant to live with ... with Mary, say ... to love her and be loved by her ... very pleasant ... but one would have to accept responsibilities, and there would probably be children. He would dislike having to leave Ninian and Roger and Gilbert, particularly Gilbert, and his share in the meetings of the Improved Tories would begin to dwindle. On the other hand, there would be Mary ... If he were to lose his friends and the careless, cultured life they led in the Bloomsbury house, he would gain Mary, and perhaps she would more than compensate for them....

Gilbert interrupted his thoughts.

"Rum go, this about Roger, isn't it?" he said.

Henry nodded his head. "I hadn't any idea of it," he replied. "I'd never even heard of her until he said she was coming to dinner!"

"I had," Gilbert said, "but I didn't think he was going to let the life force catch hold of him. Close chap, Roger! He never gives himself away ... and that's the sort that's most romantic. You and I are obviously sloppy, Quinny, but somehow we miss all the messes that reticent, close chaps like Roger fall into. You don't much like her, do you?"

"Well, I'm not what you might call smitten by her, but that's because she seems to think I'm wasting time in writing novels. She's too strenuous for me. I like women who relax sometimes. She'll orate to him every night, just as she orated to us, about people's wrongs...."

"Mind, she's clever!" said Gilbert.

"Oh, I don't deny that. That's part of my case against her. Really and truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women?"

"Really and truly, Quinny, I don't. Perhaps that's not the way to put it. I like talking to clever women, but I shouldn't like to marry one of them. I'm clever myself, and perhaps that's why. There isn't room for more than one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man should marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. You can argue with clever women, but you can't kiss them or flirt with them. All the clever ones I've ever known have had something hard in them ... like a lump of steel. Men aren't like that! They can be hard, of course, but they aren't always exhibiting their hardness. Clever women are."

Henry tossed Marsh's letter across the table to Gilbert.

"Read that," he said, "while I look through the _Times_!"

They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the armchairs on either side of the fireplace.

"You know, Quinny," said Gilbert, as he took Marsh's letter out of its envelope, "I often think we're awfully young, all of us!"

"Young?"

"Yes. Immature ... and all that. We're frightfully clever, of course, but really we don't know much, and yet you're writing books and I'm writing plays and Ninian's building Tunnels and Roger's playing ducks and drakes with the law ... and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, I wish Roger hadn't got engaged. That sort of thing makes a man think!"

He read Marsh's letter and then pa.s.sed it back to Henry.

"Seems all right," he said. "It's a pity those Irish fellows haven't got a wider outlook. Sitting there fussing over their mouldy island when there's the whole world to fuss over! I must be off soon. There's a rehearsal of my play this morning...."

"I say, Gilbert," Henry interrupted, "do you think I ought to go and join this Irish Renascence business?"

"How can I tell? It probably won't amount to much. I should take an intelligent interest in it, if I were you. Perhaps you can induce Marsh to come over and talk to the Improved Tories about it. What are you doing this morning?"

"Oh, working!"

"Well, so long!"

"So long, Gilbert. You'll be back to lunch, I suppose?"

"I don't think so. The rehearsals are very long now. You see, the play's to be done on Wednesday...."

2

When Gilbert had gone, Henry, having glanced through the _Times_, went up to his room and began to write, but he did not continue at his ma.n.u.script for very long. The words would not roll lightly off his pen: they fell off and lay inertly about the paper. He was accustomed now to periods during which his mind seemed to have lost its power to operate, and he was not alarmed by them. He knew that it was useless to attempt to do any work that morning, so he left his room and, telling Mrs.

Clutters that he would not return to lunch, went out of the house and wandered about the streets for a while without any purpose. It was not until he saw the sign on a pa.s.sing motor-'bus that he decided on what he should do. "Hyde Park Corner" was on the sign, and he called to the conductor and presently mounted to the roof of the 'bus and was driven towards the Park.

"I wonder," he thought to himself, "whether I shall see Lady Cecily to-day!"

Lady Cecily had curiously disappeared from their lives. Gilbert, absorbed in the production of his play, had not spoken of her again, nor had he made any mention of his proposal to leave London and go to Anglesey. He had resigned from the staff of the _Daily Echo_, and, since he no longer attended first-nights at the theatre, he had not seen Lady Cecily since the night on which "The Ideal Husband" was revived. Henry had said to himself on several occasions that he would go and see Lady Cecily, but he had not done so. He did not care to go alone, and he cared less to ask Gilbert to go with him ... but to-day, as suddenly as she had quitted his thoughts, Lady Cecily came into them again, and, as he sat on top of the omnibus, he hoped that he would see her in the Park. "If not," he said to himself, "I'll call on her this afternoon!"

He descended from the 'bus at Hyde Park Corner and hastily entered the Park. He crossed to the Achilles monument and debated with himself as to whether he should sit down or walk about, and decided to sit down. If Lady Cecily were in the Park, he told himself, she would pa.s.s his chair some time during the morning. He chose a seat near the railings and sat down and waited. There was a continual flow of carriages and cars, but none of them contained Lady Cecily, and when he had been sitting for almost an hour, he told himself that he was not likely to see her that morning. He rose, as he said this to himself, and turned to walk across the gra.s.s towards Rotten Bow, and as he turned, he saw Jimphy. He was not anxious to meet Jimphy again, and he pretended not to see him, but Jimphy came up to him, smiling affably, and said "Hilloa, Quinn, old chap!" so he had to be as amiable as he could in response to the greeting.

Jimphy wanted to know why it was that he and Henry had not met again since the night that "Cecily let a chap in for a d.a.m.n play," and reminded him of their engagement to visit the Empire together. "Anyhow,"

he said, "you can come and lunch with us. Cecily'll be glad to see you.

I said I'd come home to lunch if I could find some one worth bringing with me, so that's all right!"

"How is Lady Cecily?" Henry asked, as he and Jimphy left the Park together.

"Oh, I expect she's all right," Jimphy answered. "I forgot to ask this morning, but if she'd been seedy or anything she'd have told me about it, so I suppose she's all right!"

"When's this play of Farlow's coming on?" Jimphy asked on the doorstep of his house.