Changing Winds Part 76

Henry blushed and turned away shyly, for direct praise always embarra.s.sed him, but he was very pleased with his father's praises which gave him greater pleasure than the praises of any one else, even Gilbert.

"You'll stay home a while, now you're here, Henry, son, won't you?"

"Yes, father, as long as you like!"

"That's right. You'll be able to work away here in peace and quietness.

n.o.body'll disturb you. I suppose you're started on another book?"

Henry told him of "The Wayward Man." ...

"That's a great t.i.tle," he said. "You're a gran' one at gettin' good t.i.tles for your books, Henry. I was readin' a bit in the paper about you the other day, an' I near wrote to the man an' told him you were my son, I was that pleased. Ease this pillow under my head, will you? Thanks, boy!"

He took Henry's hand in his. "I'm right an' glad to have you home again," he said, smiling at him. "Right an' glad!"

2

The whole of "The Wayward Man" was completed before Mr. Quinn was well enough to move about easily. Henry spent the morning and part of the afternoon on his novel, giving the rest of the day to his father.

Sometimes, in his walks, Henry met young farmers and labourers returning from the Orange Hall where they had been doing such drill as can be done indoors. On Sat.u.r.day afternoons, they would set off to join other companies of the Ulster Volunteer Force in a route march. Jamesey McKeown had begun to learn wireless telegraphy and was already expert with flag-signals and the heliograph. Peter Logan, who had married Sheila Morgan, had been promoted to be a sergeant.... "I suppose Sheila's a nurse?" Henry said to him the first time he met him.

"She's nursin' a wean, Mr. Henry!" Logan replied, winking heavily.

"We've a couple already, an' there'll be another afore long. She's as punctual as the clock, Sheila. She's a great woman for fine, healthy childher!"

"Well, that's what you want, isn't it?" Henry said.

"Aye, you're right, sir. You are, indeed. There's nothin' til beat a lot of young childher about the house. Will you come an' see the drill?..."

Henry went to see a display in a field just outside Ballymartin. The men marched and counter-marched, and charged and skirmished, and did physical drill until they were tired and sweating, while their women looked on in pride and pleasure. Sheila was there, too, and Henry went to her and sat beside her while the military manoeuvres took place.

She made no impression on him now ... he saw her simply as a countrywoman in the family way ... a little blowsy and dishevelled and red with exertion.

"For dear sake, Henry!" she said in greeting, holding out her hand to him.

"Well," he said, "when does the war begin?"

"Aw, now," she answered, "don't ask me! Sure, I'm never done coddin'

Peter about it. But it's the grand health, Henry. You'd never believe the differs it's made to that wee lad, Gebbie, that serves in Dobbin's shop. I declare to my G.o.d, he had a back as roun' as a hoop 'til they started these Volunteers, but now he's like a ramrod. He's a marvel, that lad! Teeshie Halpin's taken a notion of him since he straightened up, an' as sure as you're living she'll have him the minute they can sc.r.a.pe a few ha'pence thegether to buy a wheen of furniture. Well, if the Volunteers never does no more nor that, they'll have done well, for dear knows, Andy Gebbie was an affront to the Almighty, an' him stoopin'

that way!"

"But are they going to fight, Sheila?..."

"Ah, get away with you, man!" said Sheila. "What in the name of all that's good an' gracious, would they be fightin' for? Sure, they're lettin' on, to frighten the English out of their wits!" She changed the talk to more interesting discourse. "I've two childher now," she said.

"So Peter was telling me," he answered.

"A wee boy an' a wee girl. An' terrible wee tories they are, too!

They're about somewhere with their aunt Kate. An' how an' all are you, Henry?"

"I'm very well, Sheila."

"You're lookin' gran'. I hear you write books, but I never read noan of them!"

"Would you like to read them?" he asked.

"I would, fine. Dear, oh, I often wonder how anybody can write books. I never was no hand at writin' anything, not even a letter. But I suppose there's a knack in it, an' once you learn it, you're all right!"

"Yes," he replied, "that's about it. I'll send my books to you. I'd have sent them before if I'd thought you'd care to read them!"

"You might 'a' knowed rightly, I'd be glad to have them...."

3

But Sheila's good-natured scorn for the Ulster Volunteer Force did not convince Henry. One could not look at these drilling men, and feel satisfied that they were pretending to be angry or that they did not mean what they said, when they declared that they would die in the last ditch rather than consent to be governed by Nationalists. Mr. Quinn spent much time in denouncing Sir Edward Carson and his friends, but he did not doubt for a moment that the followers would fight. He had very little faith in the sincerity of the politicians. "That fellow, F. E.

Smith," he exclaimed wrathfully, "what in h.e.l.l is he doin' over here, I'd like to know? I'd like to kick his backside for him, an' pack him back to wherever he come from!" And there was F. E. Robinson, too, bounding about Ulster like a well-polished young gentleman from the Gaiety chorus, and delivering historical orations that filled the crowd with amazement.

"He's the great cod, that lad!" Mr. Quinn said. "He's worse nor Smith.

He come down here to Ballymartin, an' he made a speech all about King James's foreign policy, and mentioned a whole lot of people that the Or'ngemen never heard tell of. It would 'a' done well for a lecture at the Queen's College ... you should 'a' seen the men nudgin' one another, an' askin' who he was, an' what in the name of G.o.d he was talkin' about!

'Why doesn't he curse the Pope an' 'a' done wi' it!' one fellow said to another. 'That lad curse anybody!' says the other one. 'Sure, he'd near boak[3] himself if he done the like of that!' Aye, there's a lot of bletherin' about the Volunteers, but all the same I don't like the look o' things, an' if they're not careful there'll be bother. It'll take the men at the top all their time to hold the bottom ones down. It ought never to have been allowed to begin with. The minute they started their drillin' an' palaver, they ought to 'a' been stopped. Have you seen John Marsh lately, Henry?"

"I saw him when I was in Dublin a few months ago with Gilbert Farlow.

He's drilling, too!..."

"It's fearful, that's what it is. Fightin' an' wranglin' like that! I wish I could get him up here a while. I'd talk to him, an' try an' put some sense into him. Do you think would he come if I was to ask him?"

"I daresay, father. Shall I write to him for you?"

"Aye, do, Henry. I like that fellow quaren well, an' I'd be sorry if any harm come to him. He's the sort gets into any bother that's about! Write to him now, will you, an' you'll catch the evenin' mail!"

Henry got writing materials and wrote the letter in his father's room.

"Will that do?" he said, pa.s.sing it to Mr. Quinn for inspection.

"That'll do fine," Mr. Quinn replied, when he had finished reading it.

"Matier'll take it to the letterbox!"

"I don't know what the world's comin' to," he went on, a little fractiously. "There's a fellow wouldn't harm a fly, drillin' and gettin'

ready to shoot people. An' Irish people, too! One lot of Irishmen wantin' to shoot another lot!... They're out of their minds, that's what's wrong wi' them. There's Matier ... you'd think at his age, he'd have more sense, but nothin'll do him but he must be off of an evenin'

formin' fours. And what for? I'd like to know. I says to him, 'William Henry, who do you want to kill?' 'The Home Rulers an' the Papishes!'

says he. 'Quit, man,' says I, 'an' talk sense.' 'I am talkin' sense,'

says he. 'You're not,' I says to him. 'D'you mean to stan' there an'

tell me you want to kill Hugh Kearney?' 'I do not indeed,' says he.

'What put that notion in your head?' 'Isn't he a Catholic an' a Home Ruler?' says I. I had him properly when I said that, for him an' Hugh Kearney is like brothers to one another. 'Would you kill him?' I says to Matier. 'No, sir, I wouldn't,' he answers me back. 'I'd shed me heart's blood for him!' And he would, too!... I've always been against Home Rule, Henry, an' you know well why, but I'm more against this sort of thing than I am against that, and anyway I'm not so sure it wouldn't be better in the long run. There's too much Socialism in England, an' we have to put up with the results of it because of the Union. The Socialists get this law an' that law pa.s.sed, an' we have to suffer it in Ireland because we're tied up to England...."

4

John Marsh came to Ballymartin. Henry had sent a private note to him, urging him to accept his father's invitation. "_He's very ill,_" he wrote, "_and he would like to see you. I'm afraid he may not get better, although there's a chance...._"

"There you are, John Marsh!" Mr. Quinn said to him, as he entered the bedroom. "An' what d.a.m.ned nonsense are you up to now, will you tell me?"