“Oh! we do. I don’t complain of your seeing it. It isn’t your discovery. Have you read or heard the truest words that were ever said of Ireland—by that man Shaw? In John Bull’s Other Island.... That laughing scene about the pig. ’Nowhere else could such a scene cause a burst of happiness among the people.’ That’s the very guts of things here; eh?”
“It’s his best play,” said Oswald, avoiding too complete an assent.
“It gets there,” Powys admitted, “anyhow. The way all them fools come into the shanty and snigger.”...
The last dregs of the procession passed reluctantly out of the way. It faded down Grafton Street into a dust cloud and a confusion of band noises. The policemen prepared to release the congested traffic. Peter leaned out to count the number of trams and automobiles that had been held up. He was still counting when the automobile turned the corner.
They shook Dublin off and spun cheerfully through the sunshine along the coast road to Howth. It was a sparkling bright afternoon, and the road was cheerful with the prim happiness of many couples of Irish lovers. But that afternoon peace was the mask worn by one particular day. If the near future could have cast a phantom they would have seen along this road a few weeks ahead of them the gun-runners of Howth marching to the first foolish bloodshed in Dublin streets....
They saw Howth Castle, made up now by Lutyens to look as it ought to have looked and never had looked in the past. The friend Powys had brought wanted to talk to some of the castle people, and while these two stayed behind Oswald and Peter went on, between high hedges of clipped beech and up a steep, winding path amidst great bushes of rhododendron in full flower to the grey rock and heather of the crest. They stood in the midst of one of the most beautiful views in the world. Northward they looked over Ireland’s Eye at Lambay and the blue Mourne mountains far away; eastward was the lush green of Meath, southward was the long beach of the bay sweeping round by Dublin to Dalkey, backed by more blue mountains that ran out eastward to the Sugar Loaf. Below their feet the pale castle clustered amidst its rich greenery, and to the east, the level blue sea sustained one single sunlit sail. It was rare that the sense of beauty flooded Peter, as so often it flooded Joan, but this time he was transported.
“But this is altogether beautiful,” he said, like one who is taken by surprise.
And then as if to himself: “How beautiful life might be! How splendid life might be!”
Oswald was standing on a ledge below Peter, and with his back to him. He waited through a little interval to see if Peter would say any more. Then he pricked him with “only it isn’t.”
“No,” said Peter, with the sunlight gone out of his voice. “It isn’t.”