My Lords of Strogue. Volume 1 of 3. Wingfield Lewis

lulled by tears, had fallen asleep long since upon the floor. Shane walked hither and thither, biting his nails furtively; for he was a brave boy who feared not his father dead, though he trembled in his presence whilst alive. Had he dared he would have gone forth into the street to see the gay folks, the lights, and junketing, for he was high up in his teens and longed to be a man. But it would not do to leave the mother whom he loved and dreaded to the protection of Curran-the low lawyer. He was my lord now, and the head of his house, and must protect her who had hitherto protected him. He marvelled, though, in his slow brain, as it wandered round the knotty subject, over the passage of arms betwixt the ladies; their covert menace; the oath the little lad was made to swear. It was all strange-his mother of all the strangest. Protect her, forsooth! The uncompromising mouth and square chin of her ladyship-the steely glitter of her light grey eye-showed independent will enough for two. Clearly she was intended to protect others, rather than herself to need protection. But her manner was odd, her frown of evil augury. At a moment of soul-stirring woe, such calmness as this of hers could bode no good.

      All through the night she sat reviewing her life, while Shane walked in a fidget, and patient Curran waited. She brooded over the past, examined the threatening future, without moving once or uttering a sound. She was deciding in her mind on a future plan of action which should lead her safely through a sea of dangers. Was she as relentless as she looked? Was this an innately wicked nature, set free at last from duress, revolving how best to abuse its liberty; or was it one at bottom good, but prejudiced and narrow, chained down and warped awry, and dulled by circumstance?

      CHAPTER IV.

      BANISHMENT

      Years went by. The volcano burned blithely, and the upper orders danced on it. No court was more like that of a stage potentate than the court of the Irish Viceroy. No ridottos were so gorgeous as those of Dublin; no equipages so sumptuous; no nobles so magnificently reckless. Mr. Handel averred in broken German that he adored the Hibernian capital, and gave birth to his sublime creations for the edification of Dublin belles. The absentees returned home in troops, finding that in their mother's mansion were many fatted calves; and vied with one another, in the matter of Italian stuccoists and Parisian painters, for the display of a genteel taste. But, as the poet hath it, 'things are not always as they seem.' The crust of the volcano grew daily thinner. What a gnashing of teeth would result from its collapse!

      The Grand Convention fell a victim to its leaders, and from a mighty engine of the national will shrivelled into an antic posturing. Mr. Grattan (the man of eighty-two par excellence) perceived that he was overreached; that perfidious Albion shuffled one by one out of her engagements, that the independence, over which he had crowed like a revolutionary cock, was no more than an illusory phantom. The Renunciation Act was repealable at pleasure, he found, and no renunciation save in name. The horrid Poyning, the objectionable 6th of George III., tossed into limbo with such pomp, might become law again by a mere pen-scratch. Ireland was decked in the frippery of freedom, which, torn off piecemeal, would leave her naked and ashamed. The Volunteers, perceiving that their blaring and strutting had produced nothing real, looked sheepishly at one another and returned to their plain clothes. After all, they were asses in lions' skins; their association a theatrical pageant of national chivalry, which dazzled Europe for an instant till men smelt the sawdust and the orange-peel and recognised in the helmet a dishcover. During all this vapouring and trumpeting, England had held her own, by means of the subservient Lords and the heavily mortgaged Commons. The parliament, too base for shame, smiled unabashed; the Volunteers, conscience-smitten and in despair, broke up and fell to pieces. The Catholics were as much serfs as ever. Derry, whose conscience was troubled with compunctious visitings, went so far as to propose that the Catholics (burning source of trouble in all altercations) should emigrate en masse to Rome as a bodyguard for his Holiness; but the latter, dreading an incursion of three million savages, which would have been like an invasion of the Huns, declined with thanks the present, and the laudable scheme was given up.

      Far-sighted folks became aware that the pretty tricks of the puppets were due to an English punchinello. The fantoccini did credit to their machinist, who was skilful at pulling of wires. Who was he? Why, Mr. Pitt the younger, who would have his dolls jump as he listed, though they should come to be shattered in the jumping. Mr. Pitt, the British premier, set his wits to work to keep all grades and classes squabbling. At one time, to exasperate the Papists, he gave an extra twist to the penal screw; at another, he untwisted it suddenly to anger the Orangemen. Coercion and relief were two reins in his skilled hands wherewith he sawed the mouth of poor rawboned Rosinante, till the harried animal came down upon its haunches. He established a forty-shilling franchise which gave votes to the poorest, most ignorant, and most dependent peasantry in Europe. This he declared was the divine gift of liberty. Nothing of the sort. It merely placed a fresh tool in the hands of large proprietors who were dying to be bribed and charmed to have something new to sell.