Changing Winds

Henry stood up... and then turned away from the rock. He caught hold of the sea-weed and slowly lowered himself into the water.

"That wasn't much of a dive," his father said, swimming up to him.

Henry did not answer. He swam across the pool and clambered out on the other side and waited for his father, who followed after him.

"I wish you weren't so nervous," Mr. Quinn said a second time, as he sat down on the sea-weed beside his son.

"So do I, father," Henry replied, "but I can't help it. I try to make myself not feel afraid, but I just can't. If I could only not think about it!..."

"Aye, that's it, Henry. You think too much. Do you mind that bit in Shakespeare about people that think bein' dangerous. BeG.o.d, that's true!

Thin men think, that's what Shakespeare says, an' he's right, though I've known fat men to think, too, but anyway thin men aren't near the swimmers that fat men are. Well, I suppose it's no use complainin'. You can't help thinkin' if you have that kind of a mind... only I wish it didn't make a coward of you!"

A twist of pain pa.s.sed over the boy's face when his father said "Coward," and instantly Mr. Quinn was sorry.

"I didn't mean that exactly," he said very quickly, putting out his hand and touching Henry's bare back. "I didn't mean _coward_, Henry. I know you're not that sort at all. It's just nervousness, that's what it is!"

He scrambled to his feet as he spoke, and stood for a moment or two, slipping about on the wet sea-weed. He slapped his big, hairy chest with his hands, and then he swung his arms over his head in order to send the blood circulating more rapidly through his veins.

"I wish I were as big and strong as you are, father!" said Henry, gazing at his father's muscular frame.

"You're a greedy young rascal," his father answered. "Sure, haven't you more brains in your wee finger than I have in my whole body, an' what more do you want! It would be a poor thing if your father hadn't got something you haven't. Come on, now, an' I'll swim you a race to the end of the pool an' back, an' then we must go home."

He plunged into the water and swam about, making a great noise and splash, and deliberately looking away from his son. He was giving him an opportunity to slip into the water without being seen to shrink from the dive.

"Are you comin', Henry!" he asked, without looking back.

"Yes, father," the boy replied, standing up and looking fearfully into the water. He lifted his hands above his head and drew in his breath. He moved forward, half shutting his eyes, and poised himself on the edge of the rock, ready for the plunge. Then he put his hands down again and lowering himself on to the sea-weed, slipped slowly into the water and struck out. "I'm coming, father!" he said.

"That's right, my son, that's right!" Mr. Quinn replied, looking round.

6

He did not speak of Henry's nervousness again, but it troubled him none the less. He himself was so fearless, so careless of danger, so eager for adventure that he could not understand his son's shrinking from peril.

"I used to think," he said to himself one day, "that boys took their physique from their mothers an' their brains from their fathers, but it doesn't seem to have worked out like that with Henry. He doesn't seem to have got anything from me.... It's a rum business, whatever way you look at it."

THE SECOND CHAPTER

1

Mr. Quinn's horror of the English people was neither consistent nor rigid. When the Armagh schoolmaster was found wanting, Mr. Quinn instantly decided to send Henry to Rumpell's, a famous English school, and here Henry soon made friends of Ninian Graham and Roger Carey and Gilbert Farlow. Gilbert Farlow was the friend for whom he cared most, but his affection for Ninian Graham and Roger Carey was very strong.

Henry's soft nature was naturally affectionate, but there had been little opportunity in his life for a display of

Ca.s.sie was succeeded by Matilda Turnbull, who drank, and was dismissed by Mr. Quinn at the end of a fortnight; and then came Bridget Fallon....

Bridget had the longest hold on his memory, but she, too, disappeared and was seen no more; for Mr. Quinn came on her suddenly one day and found her teaching "Master Henry" to say prayers to the Virgin Mary! She had put a scapular about his neck and had taught him to make the sign of the cross....

"Take that d.a.m.ned rag off my child's neck," Mr. Quinn had roared at her, "an' take yourself off as soon as you can pack your box!"

And Bridget, poor, kindly, devout, gentle Bridget, was sent weeping away.

Long afterwards, Henry had talked to his father about Bridget, and Mr.

Quinn had expressed regret for what he had said about the scapular. "I had no call to say it was a d.a.m.ned rag," he said, "though that's all it was. It meant a lot to her, of course, an' I suppose she was right to try an' make a Catholic of you. But I'd hate to have a son of mine a Catholic, Henry. It's an unmanly religion, only fit for women an'...

an' actors! It's not religion at all... it's funk, Henry, that's what it is! I read 'The Garden of the Soul' one time, an' I'd be ashamed to pray the way that book goes on, with their 'Jesus, Mercy!' 'Mother of G.o.d, pity me!' 'Holy Saints, intercede for me!' Catholics don't pray, Henry; they whine; and I've no use for whinin'. If I can't go to heaven like a man, I'll go to h.e.l.l like one. Anyway, if I commit a sin, I'll not whine about it, an' if G.o.d says to me on the last day, 'Did you commit this sin or that sin?' I'll answer Him to His face an' say, 'Yes, G.o.d, I did, an' if You'd been a man, You'd have done the same Yourself!'"

So it was that, in his childhood, no woman made a lasting impression on Henry's affectionate nature. No one, indeed, filled his affections except his father. Henry's love for his father was unfathomable. Their natures were so dissimilar that they never clashed. There were things about Henry, his nervousness, his sudden accessions of fright, which puzzled Mr. Quinn, and might, had he been a smaller man than he was, have made him angry with the boy, contemptuous of him; but when Mr.

Quinn came across some part of Henry's nature which was incomprehensible to him, he tried first, to understand and then, failing that, to be tolerant. "We all have our natures," he used to say to himself, "an'

it's no use complainin' because people are different. Sure, that's what makes them interestin' anyway!"

2

But Henry's affection for Gilbert Farlow and Ninian Graham and Roger Carey was a new affection, a thing that came spontaneously to him. There were other boys at Rumpell's whom he liked and others for whom he felt neither like nor dislike, but just the ordinary tolerance of temporary encounters and pa.s.sing life; and there were a few for whom he felt a hatred so venomous that it sometimes frightened him. There was Cobain, a brutal, thick-jawed fellow who thumped small boys whenever they came near him, and there was Mullally!... He could not describe his feeling for Mullally! It was so strong that he could not sit still in the same room with him, could not speak civilly to him. And yet Mullally was civil enough to him, was anxious even to be friendly with him. There was something of a flabby sort in Mullally's nature that made Henry instinctively angry with him: his vague features, his weak, wandering eyes, peering from behind large gla.s.ses, his tow-coloured hair that seemed to have "washed-out," and above all, his squeaky voice that piped on one jerky note....

It was Gilbert Farlow who gave Mullally his nick-name. (It was the time of the Boer War, and the nick-name came easily enough.) "He isn't a man," said Gilbert; "he's a regrettable incident!"

Gilbert Farlow, though he was the youngest and the slightest of the four boys, was the leader of them. He had the gift of vivid language. He could cut a man with a name as sharply as if it were a knife. He invented new oaths for the delight of Ninian Graham, who had a taste for strong language but no genius in developing it. It was he who appointed Roger to the office of Purse-Bearer because Roger was careful. It was he who decided that their pocket-money, with small exceptions, should be spent conjointly, and that no money should be spent unless three out of four consented to the expenditure. ("d.a.m.n it, is it my money or is it not?" said Ninian when the rule was proposed, and "Fined sixpence for cheek!" Gilbert replied, ordering Roger to collect the sixpence which was then divided between the three who had not murmured.) It was he who declared that "Henry" was too long and "Quinn," too short (though Roger said the words were exactly the same length) and insisted on calling Henry "Quinny" (which Roger said was actually longer than either of the displaced words. "Well, it sounds shorter," said Gilbert decisively).

Gilbert planned their lives for them. "We'll all go to Cambridge," he said, "and then we'll become Great!"

"Righto!" said Ninian.

"If any of our people propose to send us to Oxford, there's to be a row!

Sloppy a.s.ses go to Oxford... fellows like Mullally!" Henry made a terrible grimace at the mention of Mullally's name and Gilbert, swift to notice the grimace, pointed the moral, "Well, Quinny, if your guv'nor tries to send you to Oxford, don't let him. Remember Mullally, the...

the boiled worm!" he continued, "an' say you won't go!"

"But my father was at Oxford," said Roger quietly.

"Your father was a parson and didn't know any better," Gilbert replied.

"And that reminds me, if one of us becomes a parson, the rest of us give him the chuck. Is that agreed?"

Ninian held up both his hands. "Carried unanimous!" he said.

"I don't know!" Henry objected. "I used to think it'd be rather nice to be a parson... standing in the pulpit in a surplice and talking like that to people!"

Gilbert got up from the gra.s.s where they were sitting. "He'll have to be scragged," he said.

"Righto!" said Ninian, and the three of them seized Henry and flung him to the ground and sat on him until he swore by the blood of his forefathers that he would never, never consent to be a clergyman. "Or give pi-jaws of any sort!" said Gilbert.

"Lemme go!" Henry squeaked, struggling to throw them off his back.

"When you've promised!..."

"Oh, all right, then!"

They released him and he stood up and straightened his clothes and searched his mind for something of a devastating character to say.