Changing Winds / A Novel

by St. John G. Ervine

He put his arms about her and drew her on to his shoulder. "I'm all right, mother!" he said.

Henry left the room hurriedly. He went to the kitchen and called to Mrs. Clutters. "I won't be in to lunch," he said. "Don't let any one disturb Mrs. Graham and Mr. Graham for a while. They ... they've had bad news!"

Then he went out of the house. The taxi-cab in which Mrs. Graham had come was still standing outside the door.

"I ain't 'ad me fare yet," said the driver.

"All right!" said Henry. "I'll pay it."

He gave Cecily's address to the man, and then he got into the cab.

3

He could hear the newspaper boys crying out the news of the disaster as he was driven swiftly to Cecily's house. The sinking of the great ship had stunned men's minds and humiliated their pride. This beautiful vessel, skilfully built, the greatest ship afloat, had seemed imperishable, the most powerful weapon that man had yet forged to subdue the sea, and in a little while, recoiling from the hidden iceberg, she had foundered, broken as easily as a child's toy, carrying all her vanity and strength to the bottom....

"It isn't true," he kept on saying to himself as if he were trying to contradict the cries of the newsvendors. "She's a Belfast boat and Belfast boats don't go down...."

He felt it oddly, this loss. The drowning of many men and women and children affected him merely as a vague, impersonal thing. "Yes, it's dreadful," he would say when he thought of it, but he was not moved by it. When he remembered Tom Arthurs he was stirred, but less than Ninian had been. He could see him now, just as he had stood in the shipyard that day when John Marsh and Henry had been with him, and he had watched the workmen pouring through the gates. "Those are my pals!" he had said.... Poor Tom Arthurs! Destroyed with the thing that he had conceived and his "pals" had built! But perhaps that was as he would have wished. It would have hurt Tom Arthurs to have lived on after the Gigantic had gone down.... It was not the drowning of a crowd of people or the drowning of Tom Arthurs that most affected Henry. It was the fact that a boat built by Belfast men had foundered on her maiden trip, on a clear, cold night of stars, reeling from the iceberg's blow like a flimsy yacht. He had the Ulsterman's pride in the Ulsterman's power, and he liked to boast that the best ships in the world were built on the Lagan....