think well of her. And that was the main reason,
she said, why Miss Adiante broke with him and went abroad her dear child
wouldn't have Mr. Philip abused for fortune-hunting. As for the religion,
they could each have practised their own: her father would have consented
to the fact, when it came on him in that undeniable shape of two made
one. She says, Miss Adiante has a mighty soul; she has brave ideas. Miss
Deenly, she calls her. Ay, and so has Philip: though the worst is,
they're likely to drive him out of the army into politics and Parliament;
and an Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances. Ah, but
she would have kept him straight. Not a soldier alive knows the use of
cavalry better than my brother. He wanted just that English wife to
steady him and pour drops of universal fire into him; to keep him face to
face with the world, I mean; letting him be true to his country in a fair
degree, but not an old rainpipe and spout. She would have held him to his
profession. And, Oh dear! She's a friend worth having, lost to Ireland. I
see what she could have done there. Something bigger than an island, too,
has to be served in our days: that is, if we don't forget our duty at
home. Poor Paddy, and his pig, and his bit of earth! If you knew what we
feel for him! I'm a landlord, but I'm one with my people about evictions.
We Irish take strong root. And honest rent paid over to absentees,
through an agent, if you think of it, seems like flinging the money
that's the sweat of the brow into a stone conduit to roll away to a giant
maw hungry as the sea. It's the bleeding to death of our land!
Transactions from hand to hand of warm human flesh-nothing else will do:
I mean, for men of our blood. Ah! she would have kept my brother
temperate in his notions and his plans. And why absentees, Miss Adister?
Because we've no centre of home life: the core has been taken out of us;
our country has no hearth-fire. I'm for union; only there should be
justice, and a little knowledge to make allowance for the natural
cravings of a different kind of people. Well, then, and I suppose that
inter-marriages are good for both. But here comes a man, the boldest and
handsomest of his race, and he offers himself to the handsomest and
sweetest of yours, and she leans to him, and the family won't have him.
For he's an Irishman and a Catholic. Who is it then opposed the proper
union of the two islands? Not Philip. He did his best; and if he do