Part 96 (1/2)

'I scarcely know. I suppose you understand each other, and are tolerant about capricious moods and ways, which, to strangers, might seem to have a deeper significance. I believe you are not as hasty, or as violent, or as rash as you seem, and I am sure you are not as impulsive in your generosity, or as headlong in your affections. Not exactly that you mean to be false, but you are hypocrites to yourselves.'

'A very flattering picture of us.'

'I do not mean to flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.--You need not curtsy so profoundly.--I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were minded to do so.'

'Pray do not be so minded, then. Pray remember that, even when you wound me, I cannot return the thrust.'

'I know what you mean,' cried Nina rapidly. 'You are veritable Arabs in your estimate of hospitality, and he who has eaten your salt is sacred.'

'You remind me of what I had nigh forgotten, Nina--of our coming guests.'

'Do you know why Walpole and his friend are coming?'

'They are already come, Nina--they are out walking with papa; but what has brought them here I cannot guess, and, since I have heard your description of Ireland, I cannot imagine.'

'Nor can I,' said she indolently, and moved away.

CHAPTER LXXV

MATHEW KEARNEY'S REFLECTIONS

To have his house full of company, to see his table crowded with guests, was nearer perfect happiness than anything Kearney knew; and when he set out, the morning after the arrival of the strangers, to show Major Lockwood where he would find a brace of woodc.o.c.ks, the old man was in such spirits as he had not known for years.

'Why don't your friend Walpole come with us?' asked he of his companion, as they trudged across the bog.

'I believe I can guess,' mumbled out the other; 'but I'm not quite sure I ought to tell.'

'I see,' said Kearney, with a knowing leer; 'he's afraid I'll roast him about that unlucky despatch he wrote. He thinks I'll give him no peace about that bit of stupidity; for you see, major, it _was_ stupid, and nothing less. Of all the things we despise in Ireland, take my word for it, there is nothing we think so little of as a weak Government. We can stand up strong and bold against hard usage, and we gain self-respect by resistance; but when you come down to conciliations and what you call healing measures, we feel as if you were going to humbug us, and there is not a devilment comes into our heads we would not do, just to see how you'll bear it; and it's then your London newspapers cry out: ”What's the use of doing anything for Ireland? We pulled down the Church, and we robbed the landlords, and we're now going to back Cardinal Cullen for them, and there they are murthering away as bad as ever.”'

'Is it not true?' asked the major.

'And whose fault if it _is_ true? Who has broke down the laws in Ireland but yourselves? We Irish never said that many things _you_ called crimes were bad in morals, and when it occurs to you now to doubt if they are crimes, I'd like to ask you, why wouldn't _we_ do them? You won't give us our independence, and so we'll fight for it; and though, maybe, we can't lick you, we'll make your life so uncomfortable to you, keeping us down, that you'll beg a compromise--a healing measure, you'll call it--just as when I won't give Tim Sullivan a lease, he takes a shot at me; and as I reckon the holes in my hat, I think better of it, and take a pound or two off his rent.'

'So that, in fact, you court the policy of conciliation?'

'Only because I'm weak, major--because I'm weak, and that I must live in the neighbourhood. If I could pa.s.s my days out of the range of Tim's carbine, I wouldn't reduce him a s.h.i.+lling.'

'I can make nothing of Ireland or Irishmen either.'

'Why would you? G.o.d help us! we are poor enough and wretched enough; but we're not come down to that yet that a major of dragoons can read us like big print.'

'So far as I see you wish for a strong despotism.'

'In one way it would suit us well. Do you see, major, what a weak administration and uncertain laws do? They set every man in Ireland about righting himself by his own hand. If I know I shall be starved when I am turned out of my holding, I'm not at all so sure I'll be hanged if I shoot my landlord. Make me as certain of the one as the other, and I'll not shoot him.'

'I believe I understand you.'

'No, you don't, nor any c.o.c.kney among you.'