Ireland -- Fiction; Land League (Ireland) -- Fiction; Land tenure -- Fiction; Political fiction
"And what would become of him; and what would become of me? And what
would become of the dreadful little impediments which might follow?
Of course to me Frank Jones is the best of men. I can't have him;
and that is just all about it. I am not going to give up the world
because Frank Jones is lost. Love is not to be lord of all with me.
I shall steer my little boat among the shiny waters of the London
theatres, and may perhaps venture among the waves of Paris and
New York; but I shall do so always with my eyes open. Gas is the
atmosphere in which I am destined to glitter; and if a Marquis comes
in the way,--why, I shall do the best I can with the Marquis. I won't
bring you to trouble if I can help it, or anyone else with whom I
have to do. So good-night, father." Then she kissed his forehead,
and went up to bed leaving him to wonder at the intricacies of his
position.
He had that night been specially eloquent and awfully indignant as
to the wrongs done to Ireland by England. He had dealt with millions
of which Great Britain was supposed by him to have robbed her poor
sister. He was not a good financier, but he did in truth believe in
the millions. He had not much capacity for looking into questions of
political economy, but he had great capacity for arguing about them
and for believing his own arguments. The British Parliament was to
him an abomination. He read the papers daily, and he saw that the
number of votes on his side fell from sixty to forty, and thirty, and
twenty; and he found also that the twenty were men despised by their
own countrymen as well as Englishmen; that they were men trained to
play a false game in order to achieve their objects;--and yet he
believed in the twenty against all the world, and threw in his lot
without a scruple and without a doubt. Nor did he understand at all
the strength of his own words. He had been silenced in Ireland and
had rigorously obeyed the pledge that he had given. For he was a
man to whom personally his word was a bond. Now he had come over to
London, and being under no promise, had begun again to use the words
which came to him without an effort. As he would sweep back his long
hair from his brows, and send sparks of fire out of his eyes, he
would look to be the spirit of patriotic indignation; but he did not
know that he was thus powerful. To tell the truth,--and as he had
said,--to earn a few shillings was the object of his ambition. But
now, on this evening, three London policemen in their full police
uniform, with their fearful police helmets on, had appeared in the
room in which his dramatic associates had on this evening given way
to Gerald O'Mahony's eloquence. Nothing had been said to him; but as
he came home he was aware that two policemen had watched him. And he
was aware also that his words had been taken down in shorthand. Then
he had encountered his daughter, and all her love troubles. He had
heard her expound her views as to life, and had listened as she
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