Changing Winds / A Novel

by St. John G. Ervine

"The Holy Mother of God had damned little to do with it," Henry said to Lander. "It was machine guns...."

3

Lander had obtained a permit for him, so that he could go to England, and in a little while, he would leave the Club and go to Westland Row to catch the train to Kingstown. There was a strange quietness in his heart. He had lived through a terror and had not been afraid. He had seen men immolating themselves gladly because they had believed that by so doing they would make their country a finer one to live in.

"It was the wrong way," he said to himself, "but in the end, nothing matters but that a man shall offer his life for his belief!"

Gilbert Farlow and Ninian Graham had not sought, as he had sought, to escape from destiny or to elude death. It was fore-ordained that old men would make wars and that young men would pay the price of them ... and it is of no use to try to save oneself. John Marsh, too, had had to pay for the incompetence and folly of old men who had wrangled and made bitterness ... And now, in his turn, he must pay the price, too. One must die ... in that there is no choice ... but one may die finely or one may die meanly ... and in that there is choice. Gilbert and Ninian and John, each in his way, had died finely. It might have been that he would have died meanly in Dublin, casually killed, for no purpose, for no cause.... Well, he had not been killed meanly. There was still time for him to live on the level of his friends. If youth has had committed to it the task of redeeming the world from the follies of the Old, Youth must not shrink from the labour, even though it may feel that the Old should redeem themselves....

He would go to Boveyhayne and marry Mary, and then he would take her to his home ... he must do that ... and when he had given his house to her, he would enlist as a soldier. "Life isn't worth while, if one is afraid to lose it ... a year or two more, what do they matter if a job be shirked?" "It isn't the time one lives that matters," he went on, "it's what one does in the time!"

4

As the mail-boat steamed out of the harbour, he climbed to the top deck and stood there gazing back at the shore. Exquisitely beautiful, Ireland looked in the evening glow. Up the river, in an opal mist, he could see Dublin, still sore from her latest wounds, and here close at hand, he saw the waves of mountains reaching far inland, each mountain shining in the light with a great mingling of colours. Beautiful, but more than beautiful! Other lands had beauty, too, more beauty, perhaps, than Ireland, but if he were leaving them as he was now leaving Ireland, he should not feel the grief that he now felt. This was his land ... his own country ... and the elements which had been mingled to make it, had been mingled also to make him, and he and it were one. It was strange that he should carry so heavy a heart to Boveyhayne, when he should have gone there gladly ... but it was not of Mary or his marriage that he was then thinking. It was of the farewell he was making to this old city which had known much grief and many troubles. When he returned to Ireland he would go straight to Ballymartin, by Belfast, from England. He would not see Dublin again. Firmly fixed in his mind, was that belief. He would serve ... and he would die. Foolish, he told himself, to think like that, but, even while he was rebuking himself, the thought thrust itself into his mind again....

5

The boat was almost out of sight of land. He had stood at the end of the deck, gazing back at Ireland until only the clouded head of a mountain could be seen, and then that too had been hidden. He turned and looked forward, and as he did so, he saw in the distance, low in the sea, the hulls of three ships of war. The mail-boat slowed down, as they approached, to let them pass. Naked and lithe, they looked, as they thrust their bodies through the sea, sending the water up from their bows in shining arches. He could see the men standing about the decks, looking steadily ahead ... and then the war-ships passed on to their work, and the mail-boat gathered up speed and plunged on towards Wales. Over there, he thought, somewhere in that haze, is England, and beyond England, France and Flanders and the fields of blood and pain....