Changing Winds. St. John G. Ervine
mind to be concerned about the trivialities of clothes when it should have been concerned with the nature of the man who wore them. Henry's mind was oddly perverse; he had been as fierce in his denunciation of convention as ever Gilbert Farlow had been, but nevertheless he clung to conventional things with something like desperation. It was characteristic of him that he should palliate his submission to the conventional thing by inventing a sensible excuse for it. He would say that such things were too trivial to be worth the trouble of a fight or a revolt, and declare that one should save one's energies for bigger battles; but the truth was that he had not the moral courage to flout a convention, and he had a queer, instinctive dislike of people who had the courage to do so.... He knew that this habit of his was likely to distort his judgments and make him shrink from ordeals of faith, and very often in his mind he tried to subdue his cowardly fear of conventional disapproval ... without success. But John Marsh had the power to conquer people. The gentleness of him, the kindly smile and the look of high intent, made men of meaner motive feel unaccountably ashamed.
He was a man of middle height and slender build. His high, broad brow was covered by heavy, rough, tufty hair that was brushed cleanly from his forehead and cut tidily about the neck so that he did not look unkempt. His long, straight nose was as large as the nose of a successful business man, but it was not bulbous nor were the nostrils wide and distended. It was a delicately-shaped and pointed nose, with narrow nostrils that were as sensitive as the nostrils of a racehorse: an adventurous, pointing nose that would lead its owner to valiant lengths, but would never lead him into low enterprises. He had grey eyes that were quick to perceive, so that he understood things speedily, and the kindly, forbearing look in them promised that his understanding would not be stiffened by harshness, that it would be accompanied by sympathy so keen that, were it not for the hint of humour which they also held, he might almost have been mawkish, a sentimentalist too easily dissolved in tears. His thick eyebrows clung closely to his eyes, and gave him a look of introspection that mitigated the shrewdness of his pointing nose. There was some weakness, but not much, in the full, projecting lower lip and the slightly receding chin that caused his short, tightened upper lip to look indrawn and strained; and the big, ungainly, jutting ears consorted oddly with the serious look of high purpose that marked his face in repose. It was as though Puck had turned poet and then had turned preacher. One looked at the fleshy lower lip and the jutting ears, and thought of a careless, impish creature; one looked at the shapely, pointing nose and the kindly, unflinching eyes, and thought of a man reckless of himself in the pursuit of some fine purpose. One saw immediately that he was a man who could be moved easily when his sympathies were touched ... but that he could hardly be dissuaded from the fulfilment of his good intent. His Nationalism was like a cleansing fire; it consumed every impure thing that might penetrate his life. It was so potent that he did ridiculous things in asserting it.... It was typical of him that he should gaelicise his name, and equally typical of him that he should be undecided about the correct spelling of "John" in the ancient Irish tongue. He had called himself "Sean" Marsh, and then had called himself "Shane" and "Shaun" and "Shawn." Once, for a while, he transformed "John" into "Eoin" and then, tiring of it, had reverted to "Sean." But this restlessness over his name was not a sign of general instability of purpose. He might vary in the expression of his belief, but the belief itself was as immovable as the mountains.
4
It was said of him that on one occasion he had taken a cheque to a bank in Dublin to be cashed. An English editor had printed one of his poems and had paid for it ... and he was not accustomed to receiving money for his poems, which were printed mostly in little Irish propaganda journals! He had endorsed the cheque in Gaelic, and the puzzled bank manager had demanded that it should be endorsed in English.... Marsh had given him a lecture on Irish history that lasted for the better part of half-an-hour ... and then, because the manager looked so frightened, he had consented to sign his name in English.
5
They left the garden and walked slowly to the top of an ascending field where an old farm-horse, quit now of work, grazed in peace. It raised its head as they walked towards it, and gazed at them with blurred eyes, and then ambled to them. They stood beside it for a few moments while Marsh patted its neck with one hand and allowed it to nuzzle in the palm of the other. "I love beasts," he said, "Dogs and cats and birds and horses and cows ... I think I love cows best because they've got such big, soft eyes and look so stupid and reproachful ... except that dogs are very nice and companionable and faithful ... but so are cats...."
"Faithful? Cats?" Henry asked.
"Oh, yes ... quite faithful if they like you. Why should they be faithful if they don't? Poor, old chap! Poor, old chap!" he murmured, thrusting his fingers through the horse's worn mane. "Of course, horses are very nice, too," he went on. "And birds! ... I suppose one loves all animals. One has to be very brutal to hurt an animal; hasn't one?"
Henry laughed. "The Irish are cruel to animals," he said, "but the English aren't!"
Marsh flushed. "I've never been in England," he replied, looking away.
"Never?" Henry exclaimed.
"No, and I shall never go there!"
There was a sudden ferocity in his voice that startled Henry. "But why?" he asked.
"Why?..." Marsh's voice changed its note and became quiet again. "I'm Irish," he said. "That's why! I don't think that any Irishman ought to put his foot in England until Ireland is free!"
Henry snapped at him impatiently. "I hate all that kind of talk," he said.
Marsh looked at him in astonishment. "You hate all ... what talk?" he asked.
"All that talk about Ireland being free!"
"But don't you want Ireland to be free?" Marsh asked.
They had walked on across the field until they came to a barred gate, and Marsh climbed on to the top bar and perched himself there while Henry stood with his back against the gate and fondled the muzzle of the horse which had followed after them.
"I don't know what you mean when you say you want Ireland to be free!" Henry exclaimed.
"Don't know what I mean!..." Marsh's voice became very tense again, and he slipped down from the gate and turned quickly to explain his meaning to Henry, but Henry did not wait for the explanation. "No," he interrupted quickly. "Of course, I don't know much about these things, but I've read some books that father gave me, and I've talked to my friends ... one of them, Gilbert Farlow, is rather clever and he knows a lot about politics ... he argues with his father about them ... and I can't see that there's much difference between England and Ireland. People here don't seem to me to be any worse off than people over there!"
"It isn't a question of being worse off or better off," Marsh replied. "It's a question of being free. The English are governed by the English. The Irish aren't governed by the Irish. That's the difference between us. What does it matter what your condition is so long as you know that you are governed by a man of your own breed and blood, and that at any minute you may be in his place and he in yours, and yet you'll be men of the same breed and blood? I'd rather be governed badly by men of my own breed than be governed well by another breed...."
Henry remembered Ulster and his father and all his kinsmen scattered about the North who had sworn to die in the last ditch rather than be governed by Nationalists. "That's all very well," he said, "but there are plenty of people in Ireland who don't want to be governed by your breed, well or bad!"
"They'd consent if they thought we had the ability to govern well," Marsh went on. "Anyhow, we couldn't govern Ireland worse than the English have governed it!"
"Some people think you could!..."
But Marsh was in no mood to listen to objections.