Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886

by Various

Mat's speeches, the articles in the newspapers, and the vigorous efforts of the few honest men in the town, had at last roused Ballybay until it began to share some of the profound horror and indignation which the action of Crowe had provoked throughout the country generally. There was but one more thing necessary, and the defeat of Crowe was certain; if the bishop joined in the opposition, there was no possibility of his winning.

All Ireland waited in painful tension to see what the verdict of the bishop would be. Mat heard it before anybody else, for a young curate who lived in the College House with the bishop, and was a fierce Nationalist, gave Mat a daily bulletin; the bishop resolved to support the Solicitor-General.

At first nobody would believe the tale; but the next day it was put beyond all doubt, and Mat was almost suffocated by his own wrath as he saw the "Seraph," with his divine face, arm in arm with the perjured ruffian that had brought sorrow to so many thousands of homes.

Mat fought on, but it was no longer with any strong hope of winning. His face grew darker every day, and the lines became drawn about his eyes, for there was another struggle going on in his mind at this moment, as well as the political contest in which he was engaged.

The reader may remember the monitor of the school in which Mat was a pupil when the eviction of the widow Cunningham took place. The monitor was now the teacher of the National School, and Mat and he had begun to have many colloquies.

Michael Reed was regarded as a very sardonic and disagreeable person by most of the people of Ballybay. His hatchet face seemed appropriate to a man who never seemed to agree with the opinion of anybody else, who sneered, it was thought, all round, who laughed when other people wept, and who derided the moments of exultant hope. He had always been among those who hated and distrusted Crowe, and Mat, who was intolerant himself, rather avoided him, while he still had faith in the traitor. But the wreck of all his illusions sent him repentant to Reed, and they had many conversations, in which Mat found himself listening willingly and after a while even greedily, to ideas that a short time before he would have been himself the first to denounce as folly and madness.

The idea of Reed was that the only way to work out the freedom of Ireland was by force of arms. Mat at first was inclined to laugh at the idea; but an impressionable and vehement nature such as his was ill calculated to cope for a lengthened time with a nature precise, cold, and stubborn like that of Reed. Strength of will and tenacity of opinion make their way against better judgment, especially if there can be no doubt of the sincerity of the man of such a temper, and the rigid eye, the proud air, and the whole attitude of Reed spoke, and spoke truly, of a life of absolute purity, and of a fanaticism of Spartan endurance.

There was one consequence of the acceptance of the ideas of Reed, and from this, with all his devotion and rage and sorrow for the pitiable condition of his country, Mat still shrank. A revolutionary could not marry or be engaged to marry; for what man had the right to tie to his dark and uncertain fate the life of a woman—perhaps of children?

The defeat of Crowe would once more restore faith to the people in constitutional resources, and would save them from the cynicism and apathy which might require a revolutionary movement to rouse them once more to hope and action. And thus in fighting against Crowe, Mat now felt as if he were fighting not merely for his country, but for his own dear life.

Then if Crowe were defeated, Mat could return to his work in London, and resume his efforts in carrying out the sacred purpose of raising his father and mother from poverty; for of marriage he could not think unless he were in a position to help his father and mother more than he had done hitherto. If he ever dared to think of marriage otherwise, there came before him the gaunt image of his mother pointing to her faded and ragged workbox with its awful pawn-tickets and bank bills.