“I don’t imagine there will be much news of Ireland in it,” Iona observed, her eyes wide. “It will be all English affairs, English social news and theaters and financial dealings, and of course a certain amount of what is happening abroad.”
Kezia returned her stare. “The English Parliament governs Ireland, or had you forgotten that?”
“I remember that even in my sleep,” Iona replied. “Every true Irish man or woman does. It’s only you who want to remain in the English pockets who let yourselves forget what it means, the shame and the grief of it, the hunger, the poverty and the injustice.”
“Yes, the whole of England is riding on Ireland’s back, I know that,” Kezia said sarcastically. “So small as Catholic Ireland is, it’s no wonder it finds the weight too much! You must work like galley slaves to keep us all going.”
Emily leaned forward to say something, but Eudora spoke first.
“The hunger was to do with the potato blight,” she said firmly. “And that was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It was an act of God.”
“Who is neither Catholic nor Protestant …” Emily added in.
“ ‘A plague on both your houses!’ ” Charlotte quoted, then wished she had bitten her tongue.
They all turned to stare at her, eyes wide.
“Are you an atheist, Mrs. Pitt?” Eudora asked incredulously. “You don’t follow Mr. Darwin, do you?”
“No, I’m not an atheist,” Charlotte said hastily, the color burning up her cheeks. “I just think to watch two supposedly Christian peoples hating each other over the nature of their beliefs must make God absolutely furious and exasperated with us all It’s ridiculous!”
“You wouldn’t say that, you couldn’t, if you had any understanding of what the real differences are!” Kezia leaned forward, her face filled with emotion, her hands clenched on her deep-wine colored skirts. “Great evils are taught: intolerance, pride, irresponsibility, immorality of all sorts, and the great and beautiful truths of God, of purity, diligence and faith are denied! Can there be a greater evil than that? Can there be anything more worth fighting against? If you care about anything at all, Mrs. Pitt, you surely must care about that? What else on the face of the earth can be as important, as precious, and worth living or laboring for? And if you lose that, what else is left that is of any value at all?”
“Faith and honor, loyalty to one’s own,” Iona answered, her voice thick with emotion. “Pity for the poor of the earth, and the power to forgive, and the love of the true Church. All things which you wouldn’t understand, with your hard heart and your self-satisfied quickness to judge others. If you were to find a man who’ll watch the poor starve and tell them it’s their own fault, go look for a Protestant, preferably a Protestant preacher. He’ll talk about hellfire and light the coals while he’s speaking. There’s nothing pleases him so much, while he’s at his Sunday dinner, as to think some Catholic child’s starvin’, or makes him sleep so sweet as to believe we’ll all be freezin’ in a ditch when he’s driven us out of our homes and repossessed the land that was ours from birth, and our fathers’ fathers’ before that back to the beginnin’ o’ time.”
“That’s a load o’ romantic nonsense, and you know it!” Kezia said, her pale eyes brilliant, almost turquoise in the light. “There’s many a Protestant landlord went bankrupt tryin’ to feed his Catholic tenants during the famine. I know that, my grandfather was one of them. Not a ha’penny did he have left when it was over. The famine was half a century ago. That’s the trouble with you, you all live in the past. You nurture old pains like you’re frightened to let them go. You carry around your griefs as if they were your children! Catholic emancipation’s a fact.”
“Ireland is still ruled by a Protestant Parliament in London!” Iona spoke only to Kezia; there might not have been anyone else in the room.
“And what is it you want?” Kezia shot back at her. “A Catholic Curia in Rome? That is what you want, isn’t it? That we all have to answer to the Pope? You want papist doctrine to be the law of the land, not just for those that believe in it but for everyone. That’s it! That’s the core of it! Well, I’d sooner die than give up my right to freedom of religion.”
Iona’s eyes burned with derision. “So you’re afraid that if we get power, we’ll persecute you—just the way you persecuted us. Then you’ll have to fight for a Protestant emancipation, so you can own your own land instead of centuries of being at the mercy of landlords, so you can vote on the laws of your own land, or practice in the professions like any other man. That’s what frightens you, isn’t it? We’ve learned what oppression is, God knows, we had good enough teachers!”
Eudora intervened, her face pale, her voice tight in her throat.
“Do you want to live in the past forever? Do you want to spoil the chance we have now of ending the hatred and the bloodshed and creating a decent country, under Home Rule at last?”
“Under Parnell?” Kezia said harshly. “Do you think he’ll survive this? Katie O’Shea put an end to that!”
“Don’t be such a hypocrite,” Iona retorted. “Sure he’s as guilty as she is. It’s Captain O’Shea who is the only innocent one.”
“The way I read it,” Charlotte interrupted, “Captain O’Shea threw them together for his own political advancement. Which makes him as guilty as anyone, and for a less honorable reason.”
“He didn’t commit adultery,” Kezia lashed out, her face flushed with anger and indignation. “That is a sin next to murder.”
“And manipulating another man to fall in love with your wife, and then selling her to him for your profit, and when it doesn’t work, pillorying her in public is all right?” Charlotte asked incredulously.
Emily let out a long groan.
Eudora looked around the room frantically.
Suddenly Charlotte wanted to laugh. The whole scene was absurd. But if she did, they would all think she had taken leave of her senses. Perhaps that would not be a bad thing. Anything might be better than this.
“Have another crumpet?” she offered Kezia. “They really are delicious. This conversation is appalling. We have all been unpardonably rude and placed ourselves in positions from which we have no way of retreating with any dignity at all.”
They stared at her as if she had spoken in tongues.
