But whether they stay there or go back to private life, responsibility has put an early mark on them, and they have learnt lessons while they are young which most men do not learn until middle age.
Above them all, filling the Speaker’s chair, lanky, folded like an idol, sat Professor MacNeil. He rested a hand on either arm of the chair and never stirred, even when he growled out a few words in Irish that seemed to come from a subterranean passage.
Leave them there. Those men have brought Ireland to the point on the road where she now stands. They have made her dream dreams and have shown her splendid visions. They took on a great responsibility. Can they guide her the rest of the way to peace and greatness? They must be trusted. But the glass is troubled.
Ireland has become self-conscious. Youth, for a while at least, has taken the place of age. The glass is troubled and wants clearing; but youth can do most things.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LAST OF IRELAND
“God save us!” Mrs. O’Grady exclaimed to Himself when she heard of the truce, and to this day I have not made up my mind whether the exclamation was one of hope or despair.
She had summered in the stifling basement and had grown thin. She toiled hopelessly upstairs with sweat upon her forehead, she limped hopelessly downstairs, groaning with the burden of living, as she stooped to gather into her hands some particularly obvious trail of dust left by her broom.
As she grew lean the man in the street filled out with the new confidence of the truce. He sunned himself at the shop doors, and heard unmoved the sounds of motors back-firing.
One of the avatars who roamed Dublin and called on us now and then, grew prophetic over a lobster salad in the little flat.