"They're not IRISHMEN," came from the sick bed.
"Faith and they are NOW. And it's small wondher the men who sit in Whitehall in London trate them like savages."
"I've seen things since I've been here that would justify almost anything!" cried Angela. "I've seen suffering no one in England dreamt of. Misery, that London, with all its poverty and wretchedness, could not compare with. Were I born in Ireland I should be proud to stake my liberty and my life to protect my own people from such horrible brutality."
The wounded man opened his eyes and looked full at Angela. It was a look at once of gratitude and reverence and admiration.
Her heart leaped within her.
So far no man in the little walled-in zone she had lived in had ever stirred her to an even momentary enthusiasm. They were all so fatuously contented with their environment. Sheltered from birth, their anxiety was chiefly how to make life pass the pleasantest. They occasionally showed a spasmodic excitement over the progress of a cricket or polo match. Their achievements were largely those of the stay-at-home warriors who fought with the quill what others faced death with the sword for. Their inertia disgusted her. Their self-satisfaction spurred her to resentment.
Here was a man in the real heart of life. He was engaged in a struggle that makes existence worth while—the effort to bring a message to his people.
How all the conversations she was forced to listen to in her narrow world rose up before her in their carping meannesses! Her father's brutal diatribes against a people, unfortunate enough to be compelled, from force of circumstance, to live on a portion of land that belonged to him, yet in whose lives he took no interest whatsoever. His only anxiety was to be paid his rents. How, and through what misery, his tenants scraped the money together to do it with, mattered nothing to him. All that DID matter was that he MUST BE PAID.
Then arose a picture of her sister Monica, with her puny social pretensions. Recognition of those in a higher grade bread and meat and drink to her. Adulation and gross flattery the very breath of her nostrils.
Her brother's cheap, narrow platitudes about the rights of rank and wealth.