'The French, the French!' retorted Curran. 'Much good may they do us! A revolution achieved by such means would merely mean a change of masters. You live in a fool's paradise, Theobald. I can see farther into futurity than you, for I'm older, worse luck. I see a time coming--nay, it's close at hand--when a spectre will be set up and nicknamed Justice; which, if God wills, it shall be my mission to tear down. Yet what may I do with my little weight? A mean weak man with feeble health. May I be the log to stop the wheels of the triumphal car? Verily, the ways of Heaven are inscrutable!'
It was rarely that the little advocate spoke out so plainly. His friends knew that he ever regarded his country with the idolatry of a lover, that to her he gave freely all he had to give; through the stages of her pride, her hope, her struggles and despondency, his heart was hers for better and for worse; and therefore many marvelled that, actively, he should have held aloof from the patriot band. Nobody could charge him with cowardice. Terence himself had never solved this mystery, although as his junior he saw more than most of the workings of Curran's mind. He had wondered at his chief's coldness in a careless way, till now, when it became patent to him, as to the rest, that Curran's second sight beheld the possibility of state trials in the future, where one would be needed to stand up for the accused whose heart was steadfast, whose courage was indomitable. Terence felt sure his chief was wrong--the beardless are always wisest in their own esteem--for to the honest boy it seemed impossible that Albion could be so base.
Yet the notion was grand that, despising dignities, the little lawyer should be keeping himself in reserve for a Herculean labour, that he should be deliberately laying himself out to stand by those whom others would desert; and so, to the knot of bystanders in the gloaming, the ugly pigmy of a man appeared sublime, as he sat in an attitude of profound dejection, with the sweat of strong emotion in beads upon his forehead and on the black elflocks of his untidy hair.
The jolly giant Cassidy rapped out a huge oath, and vowed with a string of expletives that he should be 'shillooed' forthwith. The Emmett brothers fairly wept; tears stood in the eyes of the statuesque Doreen; Theobald knelt down before him on the dewy grass, and entreated a farewell blessing ere he went.
'The Lord bless and keep you, my poor friend!' Curran whispered in a broken voice. 'Whether He wills that you should die an exile, or that you should return to us with glory, God be with you! May it never be my lot to stand up in court for you! or if it must be so, may inspired words be given me to save you from your danger! Now we must be separating, or we'll have the Castle spies on us.'
Followed by many a God-speed Tone vanished in the darkness. All listened to his retreating steps, wondering when and how they might ever meet again. Curran heaved a sigh, and was the cynical man of the world once more, with the dancing eye and whimsical half-melancholy smile, who threw all the judges on circuit into convulsions with his wit, and stirred the jury to unseemly laughter.
'Terence,' he said, linking his arm in that of his junior, while the young ladies, helped by the Emmetts, mounted their horses, 'you were wrong to come here. My lady will be angry if you mix with the common riffraff. What would you say if she pulled her purse-strings tight, you extravagant young dog? The idea of one of your birth worrying himself about the people's wrongs is of course preposterous; therefore, to please your mother, you had best give them a wide berth. My Lord Clare shall get you a snug post with nothing to do, and vast emoluments such as becomes a lord's brother, and then you'll be rich and independent in no time, while I am still prosing over briefs.'
Terence, in whose face the wicked Glandore expression was tempered by good-nature, was not pleased with the banter of his chief, for his cousin was at his elbow, who always persisted in looking on him as a boy, though he was a great fellow of four-and-twenty who was constantly arraying himself in gorgeous clothes to please her. A tantalising cousin was Miss Doreen to him; suggesting broidered capes and becoming ruffles when amiably disposed, which, when with pain and grief he got them made, received no notice from her whatsoever. He chose to imagine that he was desperately in love with the beautiful Miss Wolfe, and was proud of his passion, though she laughed at him. Vainly he sighed; yet no worm fed upon his damask cheek. Albeit he pretended to be very wretched, he was not; for his life was before him and he enjoyed it thoroughly, and was the victim of an amazing appetite, and would probably have forgotten all about Miss Wolfe in a week (though he would have smitten you with a big stick if you dared to hint as much) if her lithe figure had been removed from his sight for that brief period. Sometimes he took it into his head that she fancied Shane, and then he was pierced through and through with jealousy, for the brothers never could get on, and the younger one knew my lord to be not only thick of skull, but drunken and dissolute too, even beyond the average of his compeers; a fire-eater, whose hand was never off his sword, who cared more for dogs than women, more for himself than either, and who as a husband would be certain to bring misery upon the girl. Then again he would be consoled for an instant by the reflection that it does not answer at all for first cousins to marry; and then his longings would get the better of him, as he marked the wealth of the brown hair which had a golden ripple through it, the finely developed bust, the eyes like peatwater. She was interesting, and his heart was soft. He watched her furtively sometimes in her fits of sadness; when she sat behind a tambour at the Strogue hall-window, gazing, with eyes that saw nothing, at the fishing-boats upon the bay, as they splashed along with yellow sails and clumsy oars upon their mirrored doubles, till tears fell one by one upon her work, like thunderdrops upon a window-pane; and he could tell that she was dreaming of her people. Then his heart yearned towards Doreen. He longed to seize her in his lusty arms, crying:
'My beloved! I am poor, and you are rich' (for Mr. Wolfe had put by a cosy nest-egg). 'Our tastes are simple. I will try to live upon love and my allowance. You shall keep all your fortune to yourself--only be mine, my very own!' But somehow he never said the words, for something told him that she would only smile, and on second thoughts he was glad he had not spoken.
It would have been wrong in her to scoff, for the proposal would have been as unusual as disinterested; but girls will laugh at improper moments. Miss Wolfe was an heiress as times went, and likely to be richer; impecunious squires and squireens were legion; and the abduction clubs not yet quite stamped out. This, indeed, was one reason why she spent most of her time at Strogue instead of with her father in Dublin; for he, easygoing in most things, was painfully alive to the possibility of finding his daughter stolen one day when he was in court, to be bucketed about the country without a change of linen till his reluctant consent was wrung to a match with some ne'er-do-well.