Changing Winds Part 8

"Oh, did you?..."

"And then," he went on rapidly, "I thought I'd like to be an actor!..."

They rose at him simultaneously. "A what?" they shouted.

"An actor," he repeated.

They gaped at him for a few moments without speaking. Then Ninian expressed their views. "You're balmy!" he said.

"Clean off your chump!" Gilbert added.

"It seems an odd choice," Roger said, quietly.

Henry blushed. "Of course," he hurried to say, "I've given up the idea.

It was just a notion that came into my head!"

He went on to say that as Gilbert had resolved to be a writer, he did not see any reason why he should not become one too. "I've read an awful lot of books," he said, "so I daresay I could write one. I used to write things when I was a youngster, just like you, Gilbert!"

They gazed dubiously at Henry. A fellow who could make such choices of profession ... a parson or an actor ... was a rum bird, in their opinion, and they told him so. Gilbert said that the conjunction of _actor_ with _parson_ showed that all Henry cared about was the chance to show off. "All you want is to get yourself up," he said. "If you were a parson, you could get yourself up in a surplice!..."

"He'd turn High Churchman," Roger interrupted, "and trot about in chasubles and copes!..."

"And if he were an actor, he could get himself up in terrific style!..."

Gilbert continued.

Henry got up and walked away from them. "It isn't fair," he said, as he went, "to chip me like that. I'm not going to be a parson and I'm not going to be an actor!..."

Gilbert followed him and brought him back to the council.

"All right, Quinny," he said, "we won't chip you any more. Only, don't talk like a soppy a.s.s again, will you? Sit down and listen to me!..."

He forced Henry to sit beside him and then he proceeded to plan their lives for them.

"We'll all go to Cambridge," he said. "That's settled. I arranged that before, didn't I? Well, we all go to the same college, and we all promise to swot hard. We've got to Do Well, d'ye hear?" He said "do well" as if each word had a capital letter. "We've got to be the Pride of our College, d'ye hear, and work so that the dons will shed tears of joy when they hear our names mentioned. I draw the particular attention of Ninian Graham to what I am saying, and I warn him that if he goes on whittling a stick while I'm talking, I shall clout his fat head for him.

I also trust that our young friend, Quinny, will make up his mind to work hard. He's Irish, of course, and we must make allowances for him!..."

There was almost a row when Gilbert said that, and it was not completely averted until Gilbert had admitted that the English had their faults.

"I need not say anything on the subject of hard work to our young friend, Roger," Gilbert continued, when the peace was restored, "beyond warning him of the danger of getting brain-fever. That's all I have to say about that. We're friends, we four, and we've got to do each other credit. Now, when we come down from Cambridge, my proposal is that we all live together in London. We can take a house and get some old girl to look after us. I know one who'll do. She lives in Cornwall, and she can cook ... like anything. Is that agreed?"

"Carried unanimous," said Ninian.

"Good egg!" Gilbert said.

3

But the plan was not carried out as Gilbert had made it. He and Ninian and Roger Carey went to Cambridge, but Henry did not go with them. It was Mr. Quinn who upset the plan. He suddenly gave notice to Rumpell's that Henry would not return to the school.

_You're getting to be too English in your ways, Henry,_ he wrote to his son, _and I want you at home for a while. There's a young fellow called Marsh who can tutor you until you go to the University. I met him in Dublin a while since, and I like him. He's a bit cranky, but he's clever and he'll teach you a lot about Ireland. He's up to his neck in Irish things, and speaks Gaelic and wears an Irish kilt. At least he used to wear one, but he's left it off now, partly because he gets cold in his knees and partly because he's not sure now that the ancient Irish ever wore kilts. I think you'll like him!..._

"My G.o.d," said Gilbert when Henry read this letter to him, "fancy being tutored by a chap who wears petticoats!"

"You ought to talk pretty plainly to your guv'nor, Quinny!" Ninian said.

"I don't think you ought to let him do that sort of thing. Here we've settled that we're all going to Cambridge together, and your guv'nor simply lumps in and upsets everything!"

Henry declared that he would talk to his father and compel him to be sensible, but his attempt at compulsion was ineffective. Mr. Quinn had made up his mind that Henry was to spend several months at home, under the tutelage of John Marsh, and then proceed to Trinity College, Dublin.

"Trinity College, Dublin!" Henry exclaimed. "But I want to go to Cambridge!..."

"Well, you can't go then. You'll go to T.C.D. or you'll go nowhere. I'm a T.C.D. man, an' your gran'da was a T.C.D. man, an' so was his da before him, an' a d.a.m.ned good college it is, too!" Mr. Quinn had always called his father his "da" when Mrs. Quinn was alive because she disliked the word and tried to insist on "papa"; and now he used the word as a matter of habit. "What do you want to go to an English college for?" he demanded. "You might as well want to go to that Presbyterian hole in Belfast!"

"I want to go to Cambridge," Henry replied a little angrily and therefore a little precisely, "because all my friends are going there.

They're going up next year, and I want to go with them. They're my best friends!..."

"Make friends in Ireland, then!" Mr. Quinn interrupted. "You don't make friends with Englishmen ... you make money out of them. That's all they're fit for!"

He began to laugh when he said that, but Henry still scowled. "I hate to hear you talking like that, father!" he said. "I know you don't mean it...."

"Don't I, beG.o.d?..."

"No, you don't, but even in fun, I hate to hear you saying it. I like English people. I'm very fond of Gilbert Farlow!..."

"A nice fellow!" Mr. Quinn murmured, remembering how he had liked Gilbert when he had visited Rumpell's once to see Henry.

"And Ninian Graham and Roger Carey, I like them, too, and so do you. You liked them, didn't you?"

"Very nice fellows, both of them, very nice ... for all they're English!"

Henry wanted to go on ... to talk of Mrs. Graham and of Mary ... but shyness held his tongue for him.

"It's a habit I've got into," Mr. Quinn said, talking of his denunciation of the English, "but don't mind me, Henry. Sure, I'm like all the Ulstermen: my tongue's more bitter nor my behaviour. All the same, my son, you're goin' to T.C.D., an' that's an end of it. T.C.D.'ll make a man of you, but Oxford 'ud only make a snivellin' High Church curate of you ... crawlin' on your belly to an imitation altar an'

lettin' on to be a Catholic!..."

"But I don't want to go to Oxford, father. I want to go to Cambridge!"

"It's all the same, Henry. Oxford'll make a snivellin' parson out of you, an' Cambridge'll turn you into a snivellin' atheist. I know them places well, Henry. I'm acquainted with people from both of them. All the Belfast mill-owners send their sons there, so's they can be made into imitation Englishmen. An' I tell you there's no differs between Cambridge an' Oxford. You crawl on your belly to the reredos at Oxford, an' you crawl on your belly to Darwin an' John Stuart Mill at Cambridge.

They can't do without a priest of some sort at them places, an' I'm a Protestant, Henry, an' I want no priest at all. Now, at Trinity you'll crawl on your belly to no one but your G.o.d, an' you'll do d.a.m.n little of that if you're any sort of man at all!"

Henry had reminded his father of the history and tradition of T.C.D., an ungracious inst.i.tution which had taught men to despise Ireland.

"Well, you needn't pay any heed to the Provost, need you," Mr. Quinn retorted. "Is a man to run away from his country because a fool of a schoolmaster hasn't the guts to be proud of it? Talk sense, son! We want education in Ireland, don't we, far more nor any other people want it, an' how are we goin' to get it if all the young lads go off to Englan'

an' let the schoolmasters starve in Ireland!"

Henry still maintained his position. "But, father," he said, "you yourself have often told me that Dr. Daniell is an imitation Englishman...." Dr. Daniell was the Provost of Trinity.

"He is, and so is his whole family. I know them well ... lick-spittles, the lot of them, an' the lad that's comin' after him, oul' Beattie, is no better ... a half-baked sn.o.b ... I'll tell you a story about him in a minute ... but all the same, it's not them that matter ... it's the place and the tradition an' the feel of it all ... do you make me out?"

"Yes, father, I know what you mean!"