In his own country, dwelling on some bare hillside beaten by the rains of the Atlantic, the Irishman might have seemed a picturesque figure. Living the life that was natural to him, digging his native peat, and finding an outlet for his brutal instincts in the folk-fights that formed the immemorial pastime of the country-side, he would have been a harmless subject.
In the streets of London he was a dangerous criminal. The civilized life brought out all that was worst in this wild nature. It galled him with its manifold restraints. It stunned him with its monotony of work. It teased him with its decorum. It stifled him with its lack of air and space. Finally, it drove him to the public-house.
If dirt be matter in the wrong place, so is crime conduct in an unfit historical or geographical environment. If the hooligan had lived a few thousand years earlier he would have been a hero. He would have refreshed himself with his native mead before going into battle, and his strength becoming as the strength of ten, he would have been deemed of supernatural birth. His exploits would have become the theme of bards, divine honours would have been rendered to his memory, and, his figure shining through the mist of saga like a demigod’s, learned students would have been engaged to-day in identifying him with the solar orb.
As it was, Mike Finigan’s history was already written to its end. After a long or short series of savage atrocities, after wounding and maiming a certain number of peaceable citizens, and being punished by sentences ranging from a small fine to six months’ hard labour, according to the magistrate before whom he happened to be brought, one of Mike Finigan’s kicks some day, probably by pure accident, would cause a death; when society, seizing the excuse for which it had been waiting all along, would hang Mike Finigan. A pity that you could not have passed the sentence before the murder, and commuted it to transportation, back to the little shieling in the potato-patch from which you dragged his father, Your Majesty the public!
The effect of alcohol is different on different constitutions, a truism which fanatics forget. On Finigan its effect was to make him a raging wild beast. His unfortunate neighbours would have been the first to bear witness that when the drink was not in him the Irishman was harmless enough. His speech was always coarse, and he was a stranger to soap and water, but those were venial faults in the light of his drunken frolics. At such moments the appearance of the Khalifa himself in their archway would have struck less consternation into the dwellers in the Cooperage than Mike Finigan’s.
After one of these outbursts the Irishman was usually sullen and silent for a day or two, during which period his neighbours found it wisest to leave him alone. He was in that condition, surly, but not dangerous, as he strode forth to silence his assailants.
At the sight of the Duchess he paused, uncertain. Though he had uttered a coarse threat against any Protestant who should invade his own home, he had acquired a tacit respect for the quiet lady who visited his neighbours, and perhaps there were times when he would not have been sorry if the Duchess had disregarded his words, and included his wife and family in her friendly ministrations. A secret shame at having disgraced himself in her eyes caused him to assume a defiant and insolent air as he demanded of the women:
“And what have yez got to say agin me, now I’m here?”
The women shrank back terrorized.
The Duchess thought it useless for her to speak. But Mr. Grimes, anxious to show her Grace how well he could administer a priestly reproof, rashly undertook to answer the bully.