Changing Winds. St. John G. Ervine
They had stripped on the beach, and clambered over the rocks to a place where a deep, broad pool was separated from the Irish Sea by a thick wedge of rock, covered by long, yellow sea-weed. There was a swell on the sea, and so Mr. Quinn decided to swim in the pool. "This is a good place for a dive," he said, standing on the edge of the flat rock and looking down into the deep pool, and then he put his hands above his head and, bending forward, dived down into the water so finely that there was hardly any splash. He came up, puffing and blowing, shaking the water from his eyes and hair, and swam up and down the pool, now on his back, now on his side, and then suddenly with a shout he would curl himself up and dive and swim beneath the water, and again come up, red and shiny and puffing and blowing and shouting, "Aw, that's grand! Aw, that's grand!" He could stand on his hands in the water and turn somersaults and find pennies on the sandy bottom. He loved all sport, but the sport that he loved best was swimming. He liked to sit on a rock and let great waves come and hit him hearty thumps in the back. He liked to bury his face in the water. He liked the feel of the water on his body. He liked to stand up in the sunshine and watch the drops of water glistening on his body. He liked to lie on the sea-weed or the sand after his swim and let the sun dry him. "It's great health, this!" he would say, kicking and splashing in the sea.
"Come on," he shouted to Henry, after he had dived.
Henry was sitting on the sea-weed, with his arms clutched tightly round his shins, shivering a little in the wind.
"You'll catch your death of cold if you sit there instead of jumpin' in," his father called to him. "Dive, man! That's a grand place!"
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. Begod, 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 passed 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 affection. His mother was not even a memory to him, for she had died while he was still a baby. Old Cassie Arnott had nursed him, but Cassie, at an age when it seemed impossible for her to feel any emotion for men, had suddenly married and had gone off to Belfast. His memory of her speedily faded. Cassie 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 damned 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 damned 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 God, 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 hell like one. Anyway, if I commit a sin, I'll not whine about it, an' if God 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, God, 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.