The Celt and Saxon, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Celt and Saxon, Complete

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'The owners of the soil had to do that,' said Patrick. 'I can show the
same in my country, with a difference.'

'Considerably to your benefit.'

'Everything has been crushed there barring the contrary opinion.'

'I could expect such a remark from a rebel.'

'I'm only interpreting the people, sir.'

'Jump out of that tinder-box as soon as you can.'

'When I was in South America, it astonished me that no Englishman had
cast an eye on so inviting a land. Australia is not comparable with it.
And where colonisations have begun without system, and without hard
fighting to teach the settlers to value good leadership and respect their
chiefs, they tumble into Republics.'

Patrick would have liked to fling a word in about the Englishman's cast
of his eye upon inviting lands, but the trot was resumed, the lord of
Earlsfont having delivered his mind, and a minute made it happily too
late for the sarcastic bolt. Glad that his tongue had been kept from
wagging, he trotted along beside his host in the dusky evening over the
once contested land where the gentleman's forefathers had done their
deeds and firmly fixed their descendants. A remainder of dull red fire
prolonged the half-day above the mountain strongholds of the former
owners of the soil, upon which prince and bard and priest, and grappling
natives never wanting for fierceness, roared to-arms in the beacon-flames
from ridge to peak: and down they poured, and back they were pushed by
the inveterate coloniser--stationing at threatened points his old
'artillerymen' of those days and so it ends, that bard and priest and
prince; holy poetry, and divine prescription, and a righteous holding;
are as naught against him. They go, like yonder embers of the winter
sunset before advancing night: and to morrow the beacon-heaps are ashes,
the conqueror's foot stamps on them, the wind scatters them; strangest of
all, you hear victorious lawlessness appealing solemnly to God the law.

Patrick was too young to philosophise upon his ideas; or else the series
of pictures projected by the troops of sensations running through him
were not of a solidity to support any structure of philosophy. He
reverted, though rather in name than in spirit, to the abstractions,
justice, consistency, right. They were too hard to think of, so he
abandoned the puzzle of fitting them to men's acts and their consciences,
and he put them aside as mere titles employed for the uses of a police
and a tribunal to lend an appearance of legitimacy to the decrees of them
that have got the upper hand. An insurrectionary rising of his breast on
behalf of his country was the consequence. He kept it down by turning the
whole hubbub within him to the practical contemplation of a visionary
South America as the region for him and a fighting tenantry. With a
woman, to crown her queen there, the prospect was fair. But where dwelt
the woman possessing majesty suitable to such a dream in her heart or her
head? The best he had known in Ireland and in France, preferred the
charms of society to bold adventure.

All the same, thought he, it's queer counsel, that we should set to work
by buying a bit of land to win a clean footing to rob our neighbours: and
his brains took another shot at Mr. Adister, this time without
penetrating. He could very well have seen the matter he disliked in a man
that he disliked; but the father of Adiante had touched him with the gift
of the miniature.

Patrick was not asked to postpone his departure from Earlsfont, nor was
he invited to come again. Mr. Adister drove him to the station in the
early morning, and gave him a single nod from the phaeton-box for a
good-bye. Had not Caroline assured him at the leave-taking between them
that he had done her uncle great good by his visit, the blank of the
usual ceremonial phrases would have caused him to fancy himself an
intruder courteously dismissed, never more to enter the grand old Hall.
He was further comforted by hearing the stationmaster's exclamation of
astonishment and pleasure at the sight of the squire 'in his place'
handling the reins, which had not been witnessed for many a day and so it
appeared that the recent guest had been exceptionally complimented. 'But
why not a warm word, instead of turning me off to decipher a bit of
Egyptian on baked brick,' he thought, incurably Celtic as he was.

From the moment when he beheld Mr. Adister's phaeton mounting a hill that
took the first leap for the Cambrian highlands, up to his arrival in
London, scarcely one of his 'ideas' darted out before Patrick, as they
were in the habit of doing, like the enchanted bares of fairyland,
tempting him to pursue, and changing into the form of woman ever, at some
turn of the chase. For as he had travelled down to Earlsfont in the state
of ignorance and hopefulness, bearing the liquid brains of that young
condition, so did his acquisition of a particular fact destructive of
hope solidify them about it as he travelled back: in other words, they
were digesting what they had taken in. Imagination would not have stirred
for a thousand fleeting hares: and principally, it may be, because he was
conscious that no form of woman would anywhere come of them. Woman was
married; she had the ring on her finger! He could at his option look on
her in the miniature, he could think of her as being in the city where
she had been painted; but he could not conjure her out of space; she was
nowhere in the ambient air. Secretly she was a feeling that lay half
slumbering very deep down within him, and he kept the secret, choosing to
be poor rather than call her forth. He was in truth digesting with
difficulty, as must be the case when it is allotted to the brains to
absorb what the soul abhors.

'Poor old Philip!' was his perpetual refrain. 'Philip, the girl you loved
is married; and here's her portrait taken in her last blush; and the man
who has her hasn't a share in that!' Thus, throwing in the ghost of a
sigh for sympathy, it seemed to Patrick that the intelligence would have
to be communicated. Bang is better, thought he, for bad news than
snapping fire and feinting, when you're bound half to kill a fellow, and
a manly fellow.

Determined that bang it should be, he hurried from the terminus to
Philip's hotel, where he had left him, and was thence despatched to the
house of Captain Con O'Donnell, where he created a joyful confusion,
slightly dashed with rigour on the part of the regnant lady; which is not
to be wondered at, considering that both the gentlemen attending her,
Philip and her husband, quitted her table with shouts at the announcement
of his name, and her husband hauled him in unwashed before her, crying
that the lost was found, the errant returned, the Prodigal Pat recovered
by his kinsman! and she had to submit to the introduction of the
disturber: and a bedchamber had to be thought of for the unexpected
guest, and the dinner to be delayed in middle course, and her husband
corrected between the discussions concerning the bedchamber, and either
the guest permitted to appear at her table in sooty day-garb, or else a
great gap commanded in the service of her dishes, vexatious extreme for a
lady composed of orderliness. She acknowledged Patrick's profound salute
and his excuses with just so many degrees in the inclining of her head as
the polite deem a duty to themselves when the ruffling world has
disarranged them.

'Con!' she called to her chattering husband, 'we are in England, if you
please.'

'To be sure, madam,' said the captain, 'and so 's Patrick, thanks to the
stars. We fancied him gone, kidnapped, burned, made a meal of and
swallowed up, under the earth or the water; for he forgot to give us his
address in town; he stood before us for an hour or so, and then the
fellow vanished. We've waited for him gaping. With your permission I'll
venture an opinion that he'll go and dabble his hands and sit with us as
he is, for the once, as it happens.'

'Let it be so,' she rejoined, not pacified beneath her dignity. She named
the bedchamber to a footman.

'And I'll accompany the boy to hurry him on,' said the captain, hurrying
Patrick on as he spoke, till he had him out of the dining-room, when he
whispered: 'Out with your key, and if we can scramble you into your
evening-suit quick we shall heal the breach in the dinner. You dip your
hands and face, I'll have out the dress. You've the right style for her,
my boy: and mind, she is an excellent good woman, worthy of all respect:
but formality's the flattery she likes: a good bow and short speech. Here
we are, and the room's lighted. Off to the basin, give me the key; and
here's hot water in tripping Mary's hands. The portmanteau opens easy.
Quick! the door's shut on rosy Mary. The race is for domestic peace, my
boy. I sacrifice everything I can for it, in decency. 'Tis the secret of
my happiness.'

Patrick's transformation was rapid enough to satisfy the impatient
captain, who said: 'You'll tell her you couldn't sit down in her presence
undressed. I married her at forty, you know, when a woman has reached her
perfect development, and leans a trifle more to ceremonies than to
substance. And where have you been the while?'

'I'll tell you by and by,' said Patrick.

'Tell me now, and don't be smirking at the glass; your necktie's as neat
as a lady's company-smile, equal at both ends, and warranted not to relax
before the evening 's over. And mind you don't set me off talking
over-much downstairs. I talk in her presence like the usher of the Court
to the judge. 'Tis the secret of my happiness.'

'Where are those rascally dress-boots of mine?' cried Patrick.

Captain Con pitched the contents of the portmanteau right and left.
'Never mind the boots, my boy. Your legs will be under the table during
dinner, and we'll institute a rummage up here between that and the
procession to the drawing-room, where you'll be examined head to foot,
devil a doubt of it. But say, where have you been? She'll be asking, and
we're in a mess already, and may as well have a place to name to her,
somewhere, to excuse the gash you've made in her dinner. Here they are,
both of 'm, rolled in a dirty shirt!'

Patrick seized the boots and tugged them on, saying 'Earlsfont, then.'

'You've been visiting Earlsfont? Whack! but that's the saving of us! Talk
to her of her brother he sends her his love. Talk to her of the ancestral
hall--it stands as it was on the day of its foundation. Just wait about
five minutes to let her punish us, before you out with it. 'Twill come
best from you. What did you go down there for? But don't stand answering
questions; come along. Don't heed her countenance at the going in: we've
got the talisman. As to the dressing, it's a perfect trick of
harlequinade, and she'll own it after a dose of Earlsfont. And, by the
way, she's not Mrs. Con, remember; she's Mrs. Adister O'Donnell: and
that's best rolled out to Mistress. She's a worthy woman, but she was
married at forty, and I had to take her shaped as she was, for moulding
her at all was out of the question, and the soft parts of me had to be
the sufferers, to effect a conjunction, for where one won't and can't,
poor t' other must, or the union's a mockery. She was cast in bronze at
her birth, if she wasn't cut in bog-root. Anyhow, you'll study her.
Consider her for my sake. Madam, it should be--madam, call her,
addressing her, madam. She hasn't a taste for jokes, and she chastises
absurdities, and England's the foremost country of the globe, indirect
communication with heaven, and only to be connected with such a country
by the tail of it is a special distinction and a comfort for us; we're
that part of the kite!--but, Patrick, she's a charitable soul; she's a
virtuous woman and an affectionate wife, and doesn't frown to see me turn
off to my place of worship while she drum-majors it away to her own; she
entertains Father Boyle heartily, like the good woman she is to good men;
and unfortunate females too have a friend in her, a real friend--that
they have; and that 's a wonder in a woman chaste as ice. I do respect
her; and I'd like to see the man to favour me with an opportunity of
proving it on him! So you'll not forget, my boy; and prepare for a cold
bath the first five minutes. Out with Earlsfont early after that. All
these things are trifles to an unmarried man. I have to attend to 'm, I
have to be politic and give her elbow-room for her natural angles. 'Tis
the secret of my happiness.'

Priming his kinsman thus up to the door of the diningroom, Captain Con
thrust him in.

Mistress Adister O'Donnell's head rounded as by slow attraction to the
clock. Her disciplined husband signified an equal mixture of contrition
and astonishment at the passing of time. He fell to work upon his plate
in obedience to the immediate policy dictated to him.

The unbending English lady contrasted with her husband so signally that
the oddly united couple appeared yoked in a common harness for a
perpetual display of the opposition of the races. She resembled her
brother, the lord of Earlsfont, in her remarkable height and her calm air
of authority and self-sustainment. From beneath a head-dress built of
white curls and costly lace, half enclosing her high narrow forehead, a
pale, thin, straight bridge of nose descended prominently over her sunken
cheeks to thin locked lips. Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter
landscape, enjoyable in pictures, or on skates, otherwise nipping. . . .
Mental directness, of no greater breadth than her principal feature, was
the character it expressed; and candour of spirit shone through the
transparency she was, if that mild taper could be said to shine in proof
of a vitality rarely notified to the outer world by the opening of her
mouth; chiefly then, though not malevolently to command: as the portal of
some snow-bound monastery opens to the outcast, bidding it be known that
the light across the wolds was not deceptive and a glimmer of light
subsists among the silent within. The life sufficed to her. She was like
a marble effigy seated upright, requiring but to be laid at her length
for transport to the cover of the tomb.

Now Captain Con was by nature ruddy as an Indian summer flushed in all
its leaves. The corners of his face had everywhere a frank ambush, or
child's hiding-place, for languages and laughter. He could worm with a
smile quite his own the humour out of men possessing any; and even under
rigorous law, and it could not be disputed that there was rigour in the
beneficent laws imposed upon him by his wife, his genius for humour and
passion for sly independence came up and curled away like the smoke of
the illicit still, wherein the fanciful discern fine sprites indulging in
luxurious grimaces at a government long-nosed to no purpose. Perhaps, as
Patrick said of him to Caroline Adister, he was a bard without a theme.
He certainly was a man of speech, and the having fearfully to contain
himself for the greater number of the hours of the day, for the
preservation of the domestic felicity he had learnt to value, fathered
the sentiment of revolt in his bosom.

By this time, long after five minutes had elapsed, the frost presiding at
the table was fast withering Captain Con; and he was irritable to hear
why Patrick had gone off to Earlsfont, and what he had done there, and
the adventures he had tasted on the road; anything for warmth. His
efforts to fish the word out of Patrick produced deeper crevasses in the
conversation, and he cried to himself: Hats and crape-bands! mightily
struck by an idea that he and his cousins were a party of hired mourners
over the meat they consumed. Patrick was endeavouring to spare his
brother a mention of Earlsfont before they had private talk together. He
answered neither to a dip of the hook nor to a pull.

'The desert where you 've come from 's good,' said the captain, sharply
nodding.

Mrs. Adister O'Donnell ejaculated: 'Wine!' for a heavy comment upon one
of his topics, and crushed it.

Philip saw that Patrick had no desire to spread, and did not trouble him.

'Good horses in the stable too,' said the captain.

Patrick addressed Mrs. Adister: 'I have hardly excused myself to you,
madam.'

Her head was aloft in dumb apostrophe of wearifulness over another of her
husband's topics.

'Do not excuse yourself at all,' she said.

The captain shivered. He overhauled his plotting soul publicly: 'Why
don't you out with it yourself!' and it was wonderful why he had not done
so, save that he was prone to petty conspiracy, and had thought
reasonably that the revelation would be damp, gunpowder, coming from him.
And for when he added: 'The boy's fresh from Earlsfont; he went down to
look at the brav old house of the Adisters, and was nobly welcomed and
entertained, and made a vast impression,' his wife sedately remarked to
Patrick, 'You have seen my brother Edward.'

'And brings a message of his love to you, my dear,' the Captain bit his
nail harder.

'You have a message for me?' she asked; and Patrick replied: 'The captain
is giving a free translation. I was down there, and I took the liberty of
calling on Mr. Adister, and I had a very kind reception. We hunted, we
had a good day with the hounds. I think I remember hearing that you go
there at Christmas, madam.'

'Our last Christmas at Earlsfont was a sad meeting for the family. My
brother Edward is well?'

'I had the happiness to be told that I had been of a little service in
cheering him.'

'I can believe it,' said Mrs. Adister, letting her eyes dwell on the
young man; and he was moved by the silvery tremulousness of her voice.

She resumed: 'You have the art of dressing in a surprisingly short time.'

'There!' exclaimed Captain Con: for no man can hear the words which prove
him a prophet without showing excitement. 'Didn't I say so? Patrick's a
hero for love or war, my dear. He stood neat and trim from the silk socks
to the sprig of necktie in six minutes by my watch. And that's witness to
me that you may count on him for what the great Napoleon called
two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage; not too common even in his immortal
army:--when it's pitch black and frosty cold, and you're buried within in
a dream of home, and the trumpet springs you to your legs in a trice,
boots and trowsers, coat and sword-belt and shako, and one twirl to the
whiskers, and away before a second snap of the fingers to where the great
big bursting end of all things for you lies crouching like a
Java-Tiger--a ferocious beast painted undertaker's colour--for a leap at
you in particular out of the dark;--never waiting an instant to ask
what's the matter and pretend you don't know. That's rare, Philip; that's
bravery; Napoleon knew the thing; and Patrick has it; my hand's on the
boy's back for that.'

The captain was permitted to discourse as he pleased: his wife was wholly
given to the recent visitor to Earlsfont, whom she informed that Caroline
was the youngest daughter of General Adister, her second brother, and an
excellent maiden, her dear Edward's mainstay in his grief. At last she
rose, and was escorted to the door by all present. But Captain Con rather
shame-facedly explained to Patrick that it was a sham departure; they had
to follow without a single spin to the claretjug: he closed the door
merely to state his position; how at half-past ten he would be a free
man, according to the convention, to which his wife honourably adhered,
so he had to do likewise, as regarded his share of it. Thereupon he
apologised to the brothers, bitterly regretting that, with good wine in
the cellar, his could be no house for claret; and promising them they
should sit in their shirts and stretch their legs, and toast the old
country and open their hearts, no later than the minute pointing to the
time for his deliverance.

Mrs. Adister accepted her husband's proffered arm unhesitatingly at the
appointed stroke of the clock. She said: 'Yes,' in agreement with him, as
if she had never heard him previously enunciate the formula, upon his
pious vociferation that there should be no trifling with her hours of
rest.

'You can find your way to my cabin,' he said to Philip over his shoulder,
full of solicitude for the steps of the admirable lady now positively
departing.

As soon as the brothers were alone, Philip laid his hand on Patrick,
asking him, 'What does it mean?'

Patrick fired his cannon-shot: 'She's married!' Consulting his feelings
immediately after, he hated himself for his bluntness.

Philip tossed his head. 'But why did you go down there?'

'I went,' said Patrick, 'well, I went . . . . I thought you looked
wretched, and I went with an idea of learning where she was, and seeing
if I couldn't do something. It's too late now; all's over.'

'My dear boy, I've worse than that to think of.'

'You don't mind it?'

'That's old news, Patrick.'

'You don't care for her any more, Philip?'

'You wouldn't have me caring for a married woman?'

'She has a perfect beast for a husband.'

'I'm sorry she didn't make a better choice.'

'He's a prince.'

'So I hear.'

'Ah! And what worse, Philip, can you be having to think of?'

'Affairs,' Philip replied, and made his way to the cabin of Captain Con,
followed in wonderment by Patrick, who would hardly have been his dupe to
suppose him indifferent and his love of Adiante dead, had not the thought
flashed on him a prospect of retaining the miniature for his own, or for
long in his custody.

CHAPTER IX

THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN

Patrick left his brother at the second flight of stairs to run and fling
on a shooting-jacket, into which he stuffed his treasure, after one peep
that eclipsed his little dream of being allowed to keep it; and so he saw
through Philip.

The captain's cabin was the crown of his house-top, a builder's addition
to the roof, where the detestable deeds he revelled in, calling them
liberty, could be practised, according to the convention, and no one save
rosy Mary, in her sense of smell, when she came upon her morning business
to clean and sweep, be any the wiser of them, because, as it is known to
the whole world, smoke ascends, and he was up among the chimneys. Here,
he would say to his friends and fellow-sinners, you can unfold, unbosom,
explode, do all you like, except caper, and there 's a small square of
lead between the tiles outside for that, if the spirit of the jig comes
upon you with violence, as I have had it on me, and eased myself mightily
there, to my own music; and the capital of the British Empire below me.
Here we take our indemnity for subjection to the tyrannical female ear,
and talk like copious rivers meandering at their own sweet will. Here we
roll like dogs in carrion, and no one to sniff at our coats. Here we sing
treason, here we flout reason, night is out season at half-past ten.

This introductory ode to Freedom was his throwing off of steam, the
foretaste of what he contained. He rejoined his cousins, chirping
variations on it, and attired in a green silken suit of airy Ottoman
volume, full of incitement to the legs and arms to swing and set him up
for a Sultan. 'Now Phil, now Pat,' he cried, after tenderly pulling the
door to and making sure it was shut, 'any tale you've a mind
for--infamous and audacious! You're licensed by the gods up here, and may
laugh at them too, and their mothers and grandmothers, if the fit seizes
ye, and the heartier it is the greater the exemption. We're pots that
knock the lid and must pour out or boil over and destroy the furniture.
My praties are ready for peelin', if ever they were in this world! Chuck
wigs from sconces, and off with your buckram. Decency's a dirty petticoat
in the Garden of Innocence. Naked we stand, boys! we're not afraid of
nature. You're in the annexe of Erin, Pat, and devil a constable at the
keyhole; no rats; I'll say that for the Government, though it's a
despotism with an iron bridle on the tongue outside to a foot of the
door. Arctic to freeze the boldest bud of liberty! I'd like a French
chanson from ye, Pat, to put us in tune, with a right revolutionary
hurling chorus, that pitches Kings' heads into the basket like autumn
apples. Or one of your hymns in Gaelic sung ferociously to sound as
horrid to the Saxon, the wretch. His reign 's not for ever; he can't
enter here. You're in the stronghold defying him. And now cigars, boys,
pipes; there are the boxes, there are the bowls. I can't smoke till I
have done steaming. I'll sit awhile silently for the operation.
Christendom hasn't such a man as your cousin Con for feeling himself a
pig-possessed all the blessed day, acting the part of somebody else, till
it takes me a quarter of an hour of my enfranchisement and restoration of
my natural man to know myself again. For the moment, I'm froth, scum,
horrid boiling hissing dew of the agony of transformation; I am; I'm that
pig disgorging the spirit of wickedness from his poor stomach.'

The captain drooped to represent the state of the self-relieving victim
of the evil one; but fearful lest either of his cousins should usurp the
chair and thwart his chance of delivering himself, he rattled away
sympathetically with his posture in melancholy: 'Ay, we're poor
creatures; pigs and prophets, princes and people, victors and vanquished,
we 're waves of the sea, rolling over and over, and calling it life!
There's no life save the eternal. Father Boyle's got the truth. Flesh is
less than grass, my sons; 'tis the shadow that crosses the grass. I love
the grass. I could sit and watch grassblades for hours. I love an old
turf mound, where the grey grass nods and seems to know the wind and have
a whisper with it, of ancient times maybe and most like; about the big
chief lying underneath in the last must of his bones that a breath of air
would scatter. They just keep their skeleton shape as they are; for the
turf mound protects them from troubles: 'tis the nurse to that delicate
old infant!--Waves of the sea, did I say? We're wash in a hog-trough for
Father Saturn to devour; big chief and suckling babe, we all go into it,
calling it life! And what hope have we of reading the mystery? All we can
see is the straining of the old fellow's hams to push his old snout
deeper into the gobble, and the ridiculous curl of a tail totally devoid
of expression! You'll observe that gluttons have no feature; they're jaws
and hindquarters; which is the beginning and end of 'm; and so you may
say to Time for his dealing with us: so let it be a lesson to you not to
bother your wits, but leave the puzzle to the priest. He understands it,
and why? because he was told. There 's harmony in his elocution, and
there's none in the modern drivel about where we're going and what we
came out of. No wonder they call it an age of despair, when you see the
big wigs filing up and down the thoroughfares with a great advertisement
board on their shoulders, proclaiming no information to the multitude,
but a blank note of interrogation addressed to Providence, as if an
answer from above would be vouchsafed to their impudence! They haven't
the first principles of good manners. And some of 'm in a rage bawl the
answer for themselves. Hear that! No, Phil; No, Pat, no: devotion's good
policy.--You're not drinking! Are you both of ye asleep? why do ye leave
me to drone away like this, when it 's conversation I want, as in the
days of our first parents, before the fig-leaf?--and you might have that
for scroll and figure on the social banner of the hypocritical Saxon,
who's a gormandising animal behind his decency, and nearer to the
Arch-devourer Time than anything I can imagine: except that with a little
exertion you can elude him. The whisky you've got between you 's virgin
of the excise. I'll pay double for freepeaty any day. Or are you for
claret, my lads? No? I'm fortified up here to stand a siege in my old
round tower, like the son of Eremon that I am. Lavra Con! Con speaks at
last! I don't ask you, Pat, whether you remember Maen, who was born dumb,
and had for his tutors Ferkelne the bard and Crafting the harper, at
pleasant Dinree: he was grandson of Leary Lore who was basely murdered by
his brother Cova, and Cova spared the dumb boy, thinking a man without a
tongue harmless, as fools do: being one of their savings-bank tricks, to
be repaid them, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns at
compound interest, have no fear. So one day Maen had an insult put on
him; and 'twas this for certain: a ruffian fellow of the Court swore he
couldn't mention the name of his father; and in a thundering fury Maen
burst his tongue-tie, and the Court shouted Lavra Maen: and he had to go
into exile, where he married in the middle of delicious love-adventures
the beautiful Moira through the cunning of Craftine the harper. There's
been no harper in my instance but plenty of ruffians to swear I'm too
comfortable to think of my country.' The captain holloaed. 'Do they hear
that? Lord! but wouldn't our old Celtic fill the world with poetry if
only we were a free people to give our minds to 't, instead of to the
itch on our backs from the Saxon horsehair shirt we're forced to wear.
For, Pat, as you know, we're a loving people, we're a loyal people, we
burn to be enthusiastic, but when our skins are eternally irritated, how
can we sing? In a freer Erin I'd be the bard of the land, never doubt it.
What am I here but a discontented idle lout crooning over the empty
glories of our isle of Saints! You feel them, Pat. Phil's all for his
British army, his capabilities of British light cavalry. Write me the
history of the Enniskillens. I'll read it. Aha, my boy, when they 're off
at the charge! And you'll oblige me with the tale of Fontenoy. Why, Phil
has an opportunity stretching forth a hand to him now more than halfway
that comes to a young Irishman but once in a century: backed by the
entire body of the priesthood of Ireland too! and if only he was a
quarter as full of the old country as you and I, his hair would stand up
in fire for the splendid gallop at our head that's proposed to him. His
country's gathered up like a crested billow to roll him into Parliament;
and I say, let him be there, he 's the very man to hurl his gauntlet, and
tell 'm, Parliament, so long as you are parliamentary, which means the
speaking of our minds, but if you won't have it, then-and it 's on your
heads before Europe and the two Americas. We're dying like a nun that 'd
be out of her cloister, we're panting like the wife who hears of her
husband coming home to her from the field of honour, for that young man.
And there he is; or there he seems to be; but he's dead: and the
fisherman off the west coast after dreaming of a magical haul, gets more
fish than disappointment in comparison with us when we cast the net for
Philip. Bring tears of vexation at the emptiness we pull back for our
pains. Oh, Phil! and to think of your youth! We had you then. At least we
had your heart. And we should have had the length and strength of you,
only for a woman fatal to us as the daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the
beautiful Nesta:--and beautiful she was to match the mother of the curses
trooping over to Ireland under Strongbow, that I'll grant you. But she
reined you in when you were a real warhorse ramping and snorting flame
from your nostrils, challenging any other to a race for Ireland; ay, a
Cuchullin you were, Philip, Culann's chain-bound: but she unmanned you.
She soaked the woman into you and squeezed the hero out of you. All for
Adiante! or a country left to slavery! that's the tale. And what are you
now? A paltry captain of hussars on the General's staff! One O'Donnell in
a thousand! And what is she?--you needn't frown, Phil; I'm her relative
by marriage, and she 's a lady. More than that, she shot a dart or two
into my breast in those days, she did, I'll own it: I had the catch of
the breath that warns us of convulsions. She was the morning star for
beauty, between night and day, and the best colour of both. Welshmen and
Irishmen and Englishmen tumbled into the pit, which seeing her was, and
there we jostled for a glimpse quite companionably; we were too hungry
for quarrelling; and to say, I was one of 'm, is a title to subsequent
friendship. True; only mark me, Philip, and you, Patrick: they say she
has married a prince, and I say no; she's took to herself a husband in
her cradle; she's married ambition. I tell you, and this prince of hers
is only a step she has taken, and if he chases her first mate from her
bosom, he'll prove himself cleverer than she, and I dare him to the
trial. For she's that fiery dragon, a beautiful woman with brains--which
Helen of Troy hadn't, combustible as we know her to have been: but brains
are bombshells in comparison with your old-fashioned pine-brands for
kindling men and cities. Ambition's the husband of Adiante Adister, and
all who come nigh her are steps to her aim. She never consulted her
father about Prince Nikolas; she had begun her march and she didn't mean
to be arrested. She simply announced her approaching union; and as she
couldn't have a scion of one of the Royal House of Europe, she put her
foot on Prince Nikolas. And he 's not to fancy he 's in for a peaceful
existence; he's a stone in a sling, and probably mistaken the rocking
that's to launch him through the air for a condition of remarkable ease,
perfectly remarkable in its lullaby motion; ha! well, and I've not heard
of ambition that didn't kill its votary: somehow it will; 'tis sure to.
There she lies!'

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