the girl. "Are you quite sure that it isn't an
Englishman that you hate?"
"Well, and what if I do? I hate all Englishmen, and I'm the first
Irishman who has ever had the power to put his hatred into acts instead
of words -- and you, an Irish girl, with six generations of Irish blood in
your veins, you, to talk to me like this. What are you thinking about,
Norah? Is that what you call patriotism?"
"Patriotism!" she echoed, unclasping her hands, and holding her right
hand out towards him. "I'm as Irish as you are, and as Spanish, too, for
the matter of that, for the same blood is to the veins of both of us.
You're a scholar and a genius, and all the rest of it, I grant you; but
haven't you learned history enough to know that Ireland never was
independent, and never could be? What brought the English here first?
Four miserable provinces that called themselves kingdoms, and all
fighting against each other, and the king of one of them stole the wife
of the king of another of them, and that's how the English came.
"I love Ireland as well as you do, John, but Ireland is not worth setting
the world swimming in blood for. You're lighting a match-box to set
the world ablaze with. It isn't Ireland only, remember. There are Irish
all over the world, millions of them, and remember how the Irish
fought in the African War. I don't mean Lynch and his traitors, but the
Dublin boys. Who were the first in and the last out -- Irishmen, but they
had the sense to know that they were British first and Irish afterwards. I
tell you, you shall be shot for what you've done, and if I wasn't the
daughter of your father and mother, I'd inform against you now."
"And if you did, Norah, you would do very little good to the Saxon
cause," replied her brother, pointing with his thumb out of one of the
windows. "You see that yacht in the bay there. Everything is on board
of her. If you went out into the street now, gave me in charge of the
constabulary, to those two men in front of the hotel there, it would
make no difference. There's nothing to be proved, no, not even if my
own sister tried to swear my life and liberty away. It would only be that
the Germans and the Russians, and the Austrians, and the rest of them
would work out my ideas instead of me working them out, and it might
be that they would make a worse use of them. You've half an hour to
give me up, if you like."
And then he began to collect the papers that were scattered about the
big drawing-table, sorting them out and folding them up and then
taking other papers and plans from the drawers and packing them into a
little black dispatch box.
"But, John, John," she said, crossing the room, and putting her hand on
his shoulder. "Don't tell me that you're going to plunge the world in war
just for this. Think of what it means -- the tens of thousands of lives
that will be lost, the thousands of homes that will be made desolate, the
women who will be crying for their husbands, and the children for their
fathers, the dead men buried in graves that will never have a name on
them, and the wounded, broken men coming back to their homes that
they will never be able to keep up again, not only here and in England,
but all over Europe and perhaps in America as well! Genius you may
be; but what are you that you should bring calamity like this upon
humanity?"
"I'm an Irishman, and I hate England, and that's enough," he replied
sullenly, as he went on packing his papers.
"You hate that Englishman worse than you hate England, John."
"And I wouldn't wonder if you loved that Englishman more than you
loved Ireland, Norah," he replied, with a snarl in his voice.
"And if I did," she said, with blazing eyes and flaming checks, "isn't
England nearer to Ireland than America?"
"Geographically, perhaps, but in sentiment--"
"Sentiment! Yes, when you have finished with this bloody business of
yours that you have begun on, go you through Ireland and England and
Europe, and ask the widows and the fatherless, and the girls who kissed
their lovers 'good-bye,' and never saw them again, what they think of
that sentiment! But it's no use arguing with you now; there's your
German yacht. You're no brother of mine. You've made me sorry that
we had the same father and mother."
As she spoke, she went to the door, opened it
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