But the messengers who bore these rigorous intimations to her father bore others to Maeve, and in these the son of Ness was humble as no one could imagine possible, and as his counsellors might not have deemed advisable.
There was no arrangement which she might have suggested that he would not have agreed to, but the difference between them was too radical to be spanned by arrangements.
Maeve was proud; she was vain to boot, and could not consent to be second to any one. Living with Conachúr she had to be second, whatever he or she might desire. Indeed, living with him anywhere she would have to take second place, for the first place came to him so naturally, with such ease and finality, it could not be questioned or revoked, or contrived in any way.
More, and worse, she detested him for he had always dared her and succeeded. She, it is true, had dared him, and on this occasion had succeeded. But she could not live with him and dare him competently, which is just what he could do with her. Even if he abdicated the throne to her he would keep the sceptre, and she could no more take it from him than she could have abstracted the speed from the lightning. If she came back to Emania she would come back dead, or, should it happen that she did come back alive, the king would at last have to kill her or she would kill the king. Conachúr knew it, and at last renounced his vain embassies and hopes.
If we should wonder why he sent them, or why he should hope, the answer lay in his character. That clever, energetic man could not exist with a tame mate. A mere bodily satisfaction he, sated in such satisfactions, would have exhausted in a week, and thereafter he would be without a refreshment which is as much of the mind as of the body, and which, to one of his temperament, has always most of the mind even when it seems fleshy to beastliness. She satisfied cravings of his nature which he himself but dimly understood; and if, with her, the mistress was more apparent than the wife, therein lies the desire and doom of a clever man.
For he was diabolically clever, and, so, not wise, and, so, not great. Only the great escape slavery, and he was the slave to his ego and would be whipped. A great man would not, because he could not, take mean advantages. But the manner in which Conachúr ousted Fergus from his throne will command the admiration of his peers only, and obtain from them the justification which success requires. And yet he could retain the love of his victim, the trust of his people. He was so near to greatness; there were such sterling qualities running with the egotism; he could be so mild in difficulties, so clear-sighted in counsel; he could be so staunch a friend; he could forgive with such royal liberality; he could spend himself so endlessly for his realm. Cúchulain did not think of him as a bad man, nor did Fergus; and as to the latter, he loved and honoured Conachúr above the men of Ireland. Was that a defect or a merit in Fergus? Was he too great or too simple? But it was not for clever tricks he admired Conachúr, nor was it for tricks that his people referred to him as the “wide-eyed, majestic king.”
However he bore the flight in public, he mourned for and craved for Maeve in private, and the illness which comes to a baulked will fell on him, corroding his mind and his temper, so that even Lavarcham left him as much alone as her duties permitted.
Again and again by an effort of the will he would arouse from that sour brooding to throw himself into work and into the grave joviality which had once been his note; but, as instantly, he would relapse visibly to any eye, and might stare so sardonically and uncomprehendingly on a suppliant that the latter would be glad to go away with his tale unlistened to.
Matters were thus when a new plan began to brood in Lavarcham’s mind, so that when she looked on her babe again it began to seem that she looked on a queen, for she intended to marry Deirdre to Conachúr.
All Ulster wished the king to marry again, for a celibate prince is a scandal to the people.