“What’s going to be the end of it?”
The young officer shrugged his shoulders.
“They’ll go on with this guerrilla game for centuries, unless we wipe out the whole lot. Another Cromwell show! Of course, I’m not supposed to hold opinions, but speaking privately, I’d give them anything less than a Republic, clear out British troops, and let them stew in their own juice. They’d fight like Hell among themselves. That would make less Irish in the world, and save a lot of trouble. What’s your view?”
Bertram’s view was much the same, with regard to “clearing out,” though he believed they wouldn’t go in for civil war among themselves if they had Dominion Home Rule.
“You don’t know them,” said the Captain of Royal Scots.
“I’m half Irish,” Bertram told him, and the officer said, “Oh!” suspiciously, and after that was silent and moved away.
The railway journey to North Wall was uneventful. The line was guarded by troops, and there were many soldiers in the train, wearing steel hats and full fighting kit. Boys again, sullen-looking, and with shifty, nervous eyes.
Then Dublin.
Bertram walked through the streets like a revenant. Dublin belonged to a former life. He had forgotten it for a thousand years—or was it only sixteen? He found his way to Merrion Square, and stood outside his father’s old home—Number 23—and gazed up at its windows through dirty lace curtains.
Inside one of those rooms he had first seen the light of day. Half-forgotten incidents of his childhood came back to him, vividly, with astonishing sharpness of detail. He remembered putting his head once through those railings and not being able to get it out again. That was when he was four years old, or thereabouts. Good Heavens! There were two of the railings bent, where his Irish nurse had pressed them apart with a cry of “Holy Mother of God!” Betty was her name. He remembered now. And there was the ring and wrought iron lion’s head of the door-knocker which he had just been able to reach on tip-toe, later in that early life of his.