When Walpole hurried into the beech alley which he had seen Nina take, and followed her in all haste, he did not stop to question himself why he did so. Indeed, if prudence were to be consulted, there was every reason in the world why he should rather have left his leave-takings to the care of Mr. Kearney than assume the charge of them himself; but if young gentlemen who fall in love were only to be logical or ‘consequent,’ the tender passion would soon lose some of the contingencies which give it much of its charm, and people who follow such occupations as mine would discover that they had lost one of the principal employments of their lifetime.
As he went along, however, he bethought him that as it was to say good-bye he now followed her, it behoved him to blend his leave-taking with that pledge of a speedy return, which, like the effects of light in landscape, bring out the various tints in the richest colouring, and mark more distinctly all that is in shadow. ‘I shall at least see,’ muttered he to himself, ‘how far my presence here serves to brighten her daily life, and what amount of gloom my absence will suggest.’ Cecil Walpole was one of a class—and I hasten to say it is a class—who, if not very lavish of their own affections, or accustomed to draw largely on their own emotions, are very fond of being loved themselves, and not only are they convinced that as there can be nothing more natural or reasonable than to love them, it is still a highly commendable feature in the person who carries that love to the extent of a small idolatry, and makes it the business of a life. To worship the men of this order constitutes in their eyes a species of intellectual superiority for which they are grateful, and this same gratitude represents to themselves all of love their natures are capable of feeling.
He knew thoroughly that Nina was not alone the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, that the fascinations of her manner, and her grace of movement and gesture, exercised a sway that was almost magic; that in quickness to apprehend and readiness to reply, she scarcely had an equal; and that whether she smiled, or looked pensive, or listened, or spoke, there was an absorbing charm about her that made one forget all else around her, and unable to see any but her; and yet, with all this consciousness, he recognised no trait about her so thoroughly attractive as that she admiredhim.
Let me not be misunderstood. This same sentiment can be at times something very different from a mere egotism—not that I mean to say it was such in the present case. Cecil Walpole fully represented the order he belonged to, and was a most well-looking, well-dressed, and well-bred young gentleman, only suggesting the reflection that, to live amongst such a class pure and undiluted, would be little better than a life passed in the midst of French communism.
I have said that, after his fashion, he was ‘in love’ with her, and so, after his fashion, he wanted to say that he was going away, and to tell her not to be utterly disconsolate till he came back again. ‘I can imagine,’ thought he, ‘how I made her life here, how, in developing the features that attractme, I made her a very different creature to herself.’
It was not at all unpleasant to him to think that the people who should surround her were so unlike himself. ‘The barbarians,’ as he courteously called them to himself, ‘will be very hard to endure. Nor am I very sorry for it, only she must catch nothing of their traits in accommodating herself to their habits. On that I must strongly insist. Whether it be by singing their silly ballads—that four-note melody they call “Irish music,” or through mere imitation, she has already caught a slight accent of the country. She must get rid of this. She will have to divest herself of all her “Kilgobbinries” ere I present her to my friends in town.’ Apart from these disparagements, she could, as he expressed it, ‘hold her own,’ and people take a very narrow view of the social dealings of the world, who fail to see how much occasion a woman has for the exercise of tact and temper and discretion and ready-wittedness and generosity in all the well-bred intercourse of life. Just as Walpole had arrived at that stage of reflection to recognise that she was exactly the woman to suit him and push his fortunes with the world, he reached a part of the wood where a little space had been cleared, and a few rustic seats scattered about to make a halting-place. The sound of voices caught his ear, and he stopped, and now, looking stealthily through the brushwood, he saw Gorman O’Shea as he lay in a lounging attitude on a bench and smoked his cigar, while Nina Kostalergi was busily engaged in pinning up the skirt of her dress in a festoon fashion, which, to Cecil’s ideas at least, displayed more of a marvellously pretty instep and ankle than he thought strictly warranted. Puzzling as this seemed, the first words she spoke gave the explanation.
Nina Kostalergi Was Busily Engaged in Pinning up the Skirt Of Her Dress
‘Don’t flatter yourself, most valiant soldier, that you are going to teach me the “Czardasz.” I learned it years ago from Tassilo Esterhazy; but I asked you to come here to set me right about that half-minuet step that begins it. I believe I have got into the habit of doing the man’s part, for I used to be Pauline Esterhazy’s partner after Tassilo went away.’
‘You had a precious dancing-master in Tassilo,’ growled out O’Shea. ‘The greatest scamp in the Austrian army.’
‘I know nothing of the moralities of the Austrian army, but the count was a perfect gentleman, and a special friend of mine.’
‘I am sorry for it,’ was the gruff rejoinder.
‘You have nothing to grieve for, sir. You have no vested interest to be imperilled by anything that I do.’
‘Let us not quarrel, at all events,’ said he, as he arose with some alacrity and flung away his cigar; and Walpole turned away, as little pleased with what he had heard as dissatisfied with himself for having listened. ‘And we call these things accidents,’ muttered he; ‘but I believe Fortune means more generously by us when she crosses our path in this wise. I almost wish I had gone a step farther, and stood before them. At least it would have finished this episode, and without a word. As it is, a mere phrase will do it—the simple question as to what progress she makes in dancing will show I know all. But do I know all?’ Thus speculating and ruminating, he went his way till he reached the carriage, and drove off at speed, for the first time in his life, really and deeply in love!
He made his journey safely, and arrived at Holyhead by daybreak. He had meant to go over deliberately all that he should say to the Viceroy, when questioned, as he expected to be, on the condition of Ireland. It was an old story, and with very few variations to enliven it.
How was it that, with all his Irish intelligence well arranged in his mind—the agrarian crime, the ineffective police, the timid juries, the insolence of the popular press, and the arrogant demands of the priesthood—how was it that, ready to state all these obstacles to right government, and prepared to show that it was only by ‘out-jockeying’ the parties, he could hope to win in Ireland still, that Greek girl, and what he called her perfidy, would occupy a most disproportionate share of his thoughts, and a larger place in his heart also? The simple truth is, that though up to this Walpole found immense pleasure in his flirtation with Nina Kostalergi, yet his feeling for her now was nearer love than anything he had experienced before. The bare suspicion that a woman could jilt him, or the possible thought that a rival could be found to supplant him, gave, by the very pain it occasioned, such an interest to the episode, that he could scarcely think of anything else. That the most effectual way to deal with the Greek was to renew his old relations with his cousin Lady Maude was clear enough. ‘At least I shall seem to be the traitor,’ thought he, ‘and she shall not glory in the thought of having deceivedme.’ While he was still revolving these thoughts, he arrived at the castle, and learned as he crossed the door that his lordship was impatient to see him.
Lord Danesbury had never been a fluent speaker in public, while in private life a natural indolence of disposition, improved, so to say, by an Eastern life, had made him so sparing of his words, that at times when he was ill or indisposed he could never be said to converse at all, and his talk consisted of very short sentences strung loosely together, and not unfrequently so ill-connected as to show that an unexpressed thought very often intervened between the uttered fragments. Except to men who, like Walpole, knew him intimately, he was all but unintelligible. The private secretary, however, understood how to fill up the blanks in any discourse, and so follow out indications which, to less practised eyes, left no footmarks behind them.
His Excellency, slowly recovering from a sharp attack of gout, was propped by pillows, and smoking a long Turkish pipe, as Cecil entered the room and saluted him. ‘Come at last,’ was his lordship’s greeting. ‘Ought to have been here weeks ago. Read that.’ And he pushed towards him aTimes, with a mark on the margin: ‘To ask the Secretary for Ireland whether the statement made by certain newspapers in the North of a correspondence between the Castle authorities and the Fenian leader was true, and whether such correspondence could be laid on the table of the House?’
‘Read it out,’ cried the Viceroy, as Walpole conned over the paragraph somewhat slowly to himself.
‘I think, my lord, when you have heard a few words of explanation from me, you will see that this charge has not the gravity these newspaper-people would like to attach to it.’
‘Can’t be explained—nothing could justify—infernal blunder—and must go.’
‘Pray, my lord, vouchsafe me even five minutes.’
‘See it all—balderdash—explain nothing—Cardinal more offended than the rest—and here, read.’ And he pushed a letter towards him, dated Downing Street, and marked private. ‘The idiot you left behind you has been betrayed into writing to the rebels and making conditions with them. To disown him now is not enough.’
‘Really, my lord, I don’t see why I should submit to the indignity of reading more of this.’
His Excellency crushed the letter in his hand, and puffed very vigorously at his pipe, which was nearly extinguished. ‘Must go,’ said he at last, as a fresh volume of smoke rolled forth.
‘That I can believe—that I can understand, my lord. When you tell me you cease to endorse my pledges, I feel I am a bankrupt in your esteem.’
‘Others smashed in the same insolvency—inconceivable blunder—where was Cartwright?—what was Holmes about? No one in Dublin to keep you out of this cursed folly?’
‘Until your lordship’s patience will permit me to say a few words, I cannot hope to justify my conduct.’
‘No justifying—no explaining—no! regular smash and complete disgrace. Must go.’
‘I am quite ready to go. Your Excellency has no need to recall me to the necessity.’
‘Knew it all—and against my will, too—said so from the first—thing I never liked—nor see my way in. Must go—must go.’
‘I presume, my lord, I may leave you now. I want a bath and a cup of coffee.’
‘Answer that!’ was the gruff reply, as he tossed across the table a few lines signed, ‘Bertie Spencer, Private Secretary.’
‘“I am directed to request that Mr. Walpole will enable the Right Honourable Mr. Annihough to give the flattest denial to the inclosed.”’
‘That must be done at once,’ said the Viceroy, as the other ceased to read the note.
‘It is impossible, my lord; I cannot deny my own handwriting.’
‘Annihough will find some road out of it,’ muttered the other. ‘Youwere a fool, and mistook your instructions, or theconstablewas a fool and required a misdirection, or theFenianwas a fool, which he would have been if he gave the pledge you asked for. Must go, all the same.’
‘But I am quite ready to go, my lord,’ rejoined Walpole angrily. ‘There is no need to insist so often on that point.’
‘Who talks—who thinks ofyou, sir?’ cried the other, with an irritated manner. ‘I speak of myself. It isImust resign—no great sacrifice, perhaps, after all; stupid office, false position, impracticable people. Make them all Papists to-morrow, and ask to be Hindus. They’ve got the land, and not content if they can’t shoot the landlords!’
‘If you think, my lord, that by any personal explanation of mine, I could enable the Minister to make his answer in the House more plausible—’
‘Leave the plausibility to himself, sir,’ and then he added, half aloud, ‘he’ll be unintelligible enough withoutyou. There, go, and get some breakfast—come back afterwards, and I’ll dictate my letter of resignation. Maude has had a letter from Atlee. Shrewd fellow, Atlee—done the thing well.’
As Walpole was near the door, his Excellency said, ‘You can have Guatemala, if they have not given it away. It will get you out of Europe, which is the first thing, and with the yellow fever it may do more.’
‘I am profoundly grateful, my lord,’ said he, bowing low.
‘Maude, of course, would not go, so it endsthat.’
‘I am deeply touched by the interest your lordship vouchsafes to my concerns.’
‘Try and live five years, and you’ll have a retiring allowance. The last fellow did, but was eaten by a crocodile out bathing.’ And with this he resumed hisTimes, and turned away, while Walpole hastened off to his room, in a frame of mind very far from comfortable or reassuring.
As Dick Kearney and young O’Shea had never attained any close intimacy—a strange sort of half-jealousy, inexplicable as to its cause, served to keep them apart—it was by mere accident that the two young men met one morning after breakfast in the garden, and on Kearney’s offer of a cigar, the few words that followed led to a conversation.
‘I cannot pretend to give you a choice Havana, like one of Walpole’s,’ said Dick, ‘but you’ll perhaps find it smokeable.’
‘I’m not difficult,’ said the other; ‘and as to Mr. Walpole’s tobacco, I don’t think I ever tasted it.’
‘And I,’ rejoined the other, ‘as seldom as I could; I mean, only when politeness obliged me.’
‘I thought you liked him?’ said Gorman shortly.
‘I? Far from it. I thought him a consummate puppy, and I saw that he looked down on us as inveterate savages.’
‘He was a favourite with your ladies, I think?’
‘Certainly not with my sister, and I doubt very much with my cousin. Doyoulike him?’
‘No, not at all; but then he belongs to a class of men I neither understand nor sympathise with. WhateverIknow of life is associated with downright hard work. As a soldier I had my five hours’ daily drill and the care of my equipments, as a lieutenant I had to see that my men kept to their duty, and whenever I chanced to have a little leisure, I could not give it up to ennui or consent to feel bored and wearied.’
‘And do you mean to say you had to groom your horse and clean your arms when you served in the ranks?’
‘Not always. As a cadet I had a soldier-servant, what we call a “Bursche”; but there were periods when I was out of funds, and barely able to grope my way to the next quarter-day, and at these times I had but one meal a day, and obliged to draw my waist-belt pretty tight to make me feel I had eaten enough. A Bursche costs very little, but I could not spare even that little.’
‘Confoundedly hard that.’
‘All my own fault. By a little care and foresight, even without thrift, I had enough to live as well as I ought; but a reckless dash of the old spendthrift blood I came of would master me now and then, and I’d launch out into some extravagance that would leave me penniless for months after.’
‘I believe I can understand that. One does get horribly bored by the monotony of a well-to-do existence: just as I feel my life here—almost insupportable.’
‘But you are going into Parliament; you are going to be a great public man.’
‘That bubble has burst already; don’t you know what happened at Birr? They tore down all Miller’s notices and mine, they smashed our booths, beat our voters out of the town, and placed Donogan—the rebel Donogan—at the head of the poll, and the head-centre is now M.P. for King’s County.’
‘And he has a right to sit in the House?’
‘There’s the question. The matter is discussed every day in the newspapers, and there are as many for as against him. Some aver that the popular will is a sovereign edict that rises above all eventualities; others assert that the sentence which pronounces a man a felon declares him to be dead in law.’
‘And which side do you incline to?’
‘I believe in the latter: he’ll not be permitted to take his seat.’
‘You’ll have another chance, then?’
‘No; I’ll venture no more. Indeed, but for this same man Donogan, I had never thought of it. He filled my head with ideas of a great part to be played and a proud place to be occupied, and that even without high abilities, a man of a strong will, a fixed resolve, and an honest conscience, might at this time do great things for Ireland.’
‘And then betrayed you?’
‘No such thing; he no more dreamed of Parliament himself than you do now. He knew he was liable to the law,—he was hiding from the police—and well aware that there was a price upon his head.’
‘But if he was true to you, why did he not refuse this honour? why did he not decline to be elected?’
‘They never gave him the choice. Don’t you see, it is one of the strange signs of the strange times we are living in that the people fix upon certain men as their natural leaders and compel them to march in the van, and that it is the force at the back of these leaders that, far more than their talents, makes them formidable in public life.’
‘I only follow it in part. I scarcely see what they aim at, and I do not know if they see it more clearly themselves. And now, what will you turn to?’
‘I wish you could tell me.’
‘About as blank a future as my own,’ muttered Gorman.
‘Come, come,youhave a career: you are a lieutenant of lancers; in time you will be a captain, and eventually a colonel, and who knows but a general at last, with Heaven knows how many crosses and medals on your breast.’
‘Nothing less likely—the day is gone by when Englishmen were advanced to places of high honour and trust in the Austrian army. There are no more field-marshals like Nugent than major-generals like O’Connell. I might be made a Rittmeister, and if I lived long enough, and was not superannuated, a major; but there my ambition must cease.’
‘And you are content with that prospect?’
‘Of course I am not. I go back to it with something little short of despair.’
‘Why go back, then?’
‘Tell me what else to do—tell me what other road in life to take—show me even one alternative.’
The silence that now succeeded lasted several minutes, each immersed in his own thoughts, and each doubtless convinced how little presumption he had to advise or counsel the other.
‘Do you know, O’Shea,’ cried Kearney, ‘I used to fancy that this Austrian life of yours was a mere caprice—that you took “a cast,” as we call it in the hunting-field, amongst those fellows to see what they were like and what sort of an existence was theirs—but that being your aunt’s heir, and with a snug estate that must one day come to you, it was a mere “lark,” and not to be continued beyond a year or two?’
‘Not a bit of it. I never presumed to think I should be my aunt’s heir—and now less than ever. Do you know, that even the small pension she has allowed me hitherto is now about to be withdrawn, and I shall be left to live on my pay?’
‘How much does that mean?’
‘A few pounds more or less than you pay for your saddle-horse at livery at Dycers’.’
‘You don’t mean that?’
‘I do mean it, and even that beggarly pittance is stopped when I am on my leave; so that at this moment my whole worldly wealth is here,’ and he took from his pocket a handful of loose coin, in which a few gold pieces glittered amidst a mass of discoloured and smooth-looking silver.
‘On my oath, I believe you are the richer man of the two,’ cried Kearney, ‘for except a few half-crowns on my dressing-table, and some coppers, I don’t believe I am master of a coin with the Queen’s image.’
‘I say, Kearney, what a horrible take-in we should prove to mothers with daughters to marry!’
‘Not a bit of it. You may impose upon any one else—your tailor, your bootmaker, even the horsy gent that jobs your cabriolet, but you’ll never cheat the mamma who has the daughter on sale.’
Gorman could not help laughing at the more than ordinary irritability with which these words were spoken, and charged him at last with having uttered a personal experience.
‘True, after all!’ said Dick, half indolently. ‘I used to spoon a pretty girl up in Dublin, ride with her when I could, and dance with her at all the balls, and a certain chum of mine—a Joe Atlee—of whom you may have heard—under-took, simply by a series of artful rumours as to my future prospects—now extolling me as a man of fortune and a fine estate, to-morrow exhibiting me as a mere pretender with a mock title and mock income—to determine how I should be treated in this family; and he would say to me, “Dick, you are going to be asked to dinner on Saturday next”; or, “I say, old fellow, they’re going to leave you out of that picnic at Powerscourt. You’ll find the Clancys rather cold at your next meeting.”’
‘And he would be right in his guess?’
‘To the letter! Ay, and I shame to say that the young girl answered the signal as promptly as the mother.’
‘I hope it cured you of your passion?’
‘I don’t know that it did. When you begin to like a girl, and find that she has regularly installed herself in a corner of your heart, there is scarcely a thing she can do you’ll not discover a good reason for; and even when your ingenuity fails, go and pay a visit; there is some artful witchery in that creation you have built up about her—for I heartily believe most of us are merely clothing a sort of lay figure of loveliness with attributes of our fancy—and the end of it is, we are about as wise about our idols as the South Sea savages in their homage to the gods of their own carving.’
‘I don’t think that!’ said Gorman sternly. ‘I could no more invent the fascination that charms me than I could model a Venus or an Ariadne.’
‘I see where your mistake lies. You do all this, and never know you do it. Mind, I am only giving you Joe Atlee’s theory all this time; for though I believe in, I never invented it.’
‘And who is Atlee?’
‘A chum of mine—a clever dog enough—who, as he says himself, takes a very low opinion of mankind, and in consequence finds this a capital world to live in.’
‘I should hate the fellow.’
‘Not if you met him. He can be very companionable, though I never saw any one take less trouble to please. He is popular almost everywhere.’
‘I know I should hate him.’
‘My cousin Nina thought the same, and declared, from the mere sight of his photograph, that he was false and treacherous, and Heaven knows what else besides; and now she’ll not suffer a word in his disparagement. She began exactly as you say you would, by a strong prejudice against him. I remember the day he came down here—her manner towards him was more than distant; and I told my sister Kate how it offended me; and Kate only smiled and said, “Have a little patience, Dick.”’
‘And you took the advice? You did have a little patience?’
‘Yes; and the end is they are firm friends. I’m not sure they don’t correspond.’
‘Is there love in the case, then?’
‘That is what I cannot make out. So far as I know either of them, there is no trustfulness in their dispositions; each of them must see into the nature of the other. I have heard Joe Atlee say, “With that woman for a wife, a man might safely bet on his success in life.” And she herself one day owned, “If a girl was obliged to marry a man without sixpence, she might take Atlee.”’
‘So, I have it, they will be man and wife yet!’
‘Who knows! Have another weed?’
Gorman declined the offered cigar, and again a pause in the conversation followed. At last he suddenly said, ‘She told me she thought she would marry Walpole.’
‘She toldyouthat? How did it come about to makeyousuch a confidence?’
‘Just this way. I was getting a little—not spooney—but attentive, and rather liked hanging after her; and in one of our walks in the wood—and there was no flirting at the time between us—she suddenly said, “I don’t think you are half a bad fellow, lieutenant.” “Thanks for the compliment,” said I coldly. She never heeded my remark, but went on, “I mean, in fact, that if you had something to live for, and somebody to care about, there is just the sort of stuff in you to make you equal to both.” Not exactly knowing what I said, and half, only half in earnest, I answered, “Why can I not have one to care for?” And I looked tenderly into her eyes as I spoke. She did not wince under my glance. Her face was calm, and her colour did not change; and she was full a minute before she said, with a faint sigh, “I suppose I shall marry Cecil Walpole.” “Do you mean,” said I, “against your will?” “Who told you I had a will, sir?” said she haughtily; “or that if I had, I should now be walking here in this wood alone with you? No, no,” added she hurriedly, “you cannot understand me. There is nothing to be offended at. Go and gather me some of those wild flowers, and we’ll talk of something else.”’
‘How like her!—how like her!’ said Dick, and then looked sad and pondered. ‘I was very near falling in love with her myself!’ said he, after a considerable pause.
‘She has a way of curing a man if he should get into such an indiscretion,’ muttered Gorman, and there was bitterness in his voice as he spoke.
‘Listen! listen to that!’ and from an open window of the house there came the prolonged cadence of a full sweet voice, as Nina was singing an Irish ballad air. ‘That’s for my father! “Kathleen Mavourneen” is one of his favourites, and she can make him cry over it.’
‘I’m not very soft-hearted,’ muttered Gorman, ‘but she gave me a sense of fulness in the throat, like choking, the other day, that I vowed to myself I’d never listen to that song again.’
‘It is not her voice—it is not the music—there is some witchery in the woman herself that does it,’ cried Dick, almost fiercely. ‘Take a walk with her in the wood, saunter down one of these alleys in the garden, and I’ll be shot if your heart will not begin to beat in another fashion, and your brain to weave all sorts of bright fancies, in which she will form the chief figure; and though you’ll be half inclined to declare your love, and swear that you cannot live without her, some terror will tell you not to break the spell of your delight, but to go on walking there at her side, and hearing her words just as though that ecstasy could last for ever.’
‘I suspect you are in love with her,’ said O’Shea dryly.
‘Not now. Not now; and I’ll take care not to have a relapse,’ said he gravely.
‘How do you mean to manage that?’
‘The only one way it is possible—not to see her, nor to hear her—not to live in the same land with her. I have made up my mind to go to Australia. I don’t well know what to do when I get there; but whatever it be, and whatever it cost me to bear, I shall meet it without shrinking, for there will be no old associates to look on and remark upon my shabby clothes and broken boots.’
‘What will the passage cost you?’ asked Gorman eagerly.
‘I have ascertained that for about fifty pounds I can land myself in Melbourne, and if I have a ten-pound note after, it is as much as I mean to provide.’
‘If I can raise the money, I’ll go with you,’ said O’Shea.
‘Will you? is this serious? is it a promise?’
‘I pledge my word on it. I’ll go over to the Barn to-day and see my aunt. I thought up to this I could not bring myself to go there, but I will now. It is for the last time in my life, and I must say good-bye, whether she helps me or not.’
‘You’ll scarcely like to ask her for money,’ said Dick.
‘Scarcely—at all events, I’ll see her, and I’ll tell her that I’m going away, with no other thought in my mind than of all the love and affection she had for me, worse luck mine that I have not got them still.’
‘Shall I walk over with—? would you rather be alone?’
‘I believe so! I think I should like to be alone.’
‘Let us meet, then, on this spot to-morrow, and decide what is to be done?’
‘Agreed!’ cried O’Shea, and with a warm shake-hands to ratify the pledge, they parted: Dick towards the lower part of the garden, while O’Shea turned towards the house.
We have all of us felt how depressing is the sensation felt in a family circle in the first meeting after the departure of their guests. The friends who have been staying some time in your house not only bring to the common stock their share of pleasant converse and companionship, but, in the quality of strangers, they exact a certain amount of effort for their amusement, which is better for him who gives than for the recipient, and they impose that small reserve which excludes the purely personal inconveniences and contrarieties, which unhappily, in strictly family intercourse, have no small space allotted them for discussion.
It is but right to say that they who benefit most by, and most gratefully acknowledge, this boon of the visitors, are the young. The elders, sometimes more disposed to indolence than effort, sometimes irritable at the check essentially put upon many little egotisms of daily use, and oftener than either, perhaps, glad to get back to the old groove of home discussion, unrestrained by the presence of strangers; the elders are now and then given to express a most ungracious gratitude for being once again to themselves, and free to be as confidential and outspoken and disagreeable as their hearts desire.
The dinner at Kilgobbin Castle, on the day I speak of, consisted solely of the Kearney family, and except in the person of the old man himself, no trace of pleasantry could be detected. Kate had her own share of anxieties. A number of notices had been served by refractory tenants for demands they were about to prefer for improvements, under the new land act. The passion for litigation, so dear to the Irish peasant’s heart—that sense of having something to be quibbled for, so exciting to the imaginative nature of the Celt, had taken possession of all the tenants on the estate, and even the well-to-do and the satisfied were now bestirring themselves to think if they had not some grievance to be turned into profit, and some possible hardship to be discounted into an abatement.
Dick Kearney, entirely preoccupied by the thought of his intended journey, already began to feel that the things of home touched him no longer. A few months more and he should be far away from Ireland and her interests, and why should he harass himself about the contests of party or the balance of factions, which never again could have any bearing on his future life. His whole thought was what arrangement he could make with his father by which, for a little present assistance, he might surrender all his right on the entail and give up Kilgobbin for ever.
As for Nina, her complexities were too many and too much interwoven for our investigation; and there were thoughts of all the various persons she had met in Ireland, mingled with scenes of the past, and, more strangely still, the people placed in situations and connections which by no likelihood should they ever have occupied. The thought that the little comedy of everyday life, which she relished immensely, was now to cease for lack of actors, made her serious—almost sad—and she seldom spoke during the meal.
At Lord Kilgobbin’s request, that they would not leave him to take his wine alone, they drew their chairs round the dining-room fire; but, except the bright glow of the ruddy turf, and the pleasant look of the old man himself, there was little that smacked of the agreeable fireside.
‘What has come over you girls this evening?’ said the old man. ‘Are you in love, or has the man that ought to be in love with either of you discovered it was only a mistake he was making?’
‘Ask Nina, sir,’ said Kate gravely.
‘Perhaps you are right, uncle,’ said Nina dreamily.
‘In which of my guesses—the first or the last?’
‘Don’t puzzle me, sir, for I have no head for a subtle distinction. I only meant to say it is not so easy to be in love without mistakes. You mistake realities and traits for something not a bit like them, and you mistake yourself by imagining that you mind them.’
‘I don’t think I understand you,’ said the old man.
‘Very likely not, sir. I do not know if I had a meaning that I could explain.’
‘Nina wants to tell you, my lord, that the right man has not come forward yet, and she does not know whether she’ll keep the place open in her heart for him any longer,’ said Dick, with a half-malicious glance.
‘That terrible Cousin Dick! nothing escapes him,’ said Nina, with a faint smile.
‘Is there any more in the newspapers about that scandal of the Government?’ cried the old man, turning to Kate.
‘Is there not going to be some inquiry as to whether his Excellency wrote to the Fenians?’
‘There are a few words here, papa,’ cried Kate, opening the paper. ‘“In reply to the question of Sir Barnes Malone as to the late communications alleged to have passed between the head of the Irish Government and the head-centre of the Fenians, the Right Honourable the First Lord of the Treasury said, ‘That the question would be more properly addressed to the noble lord the Secretary for Ireland, who was not then in the House. Meanwhile, sir,’ continued he, ‘I will take on myself the responsibility of saying that in this, as in a variety of other cases, the zeal of party has greatly outstripped the discretion that should govern political warfare. The exceptional state of a nation, in which the administration of justice mainly depends on those aids which a rigid morality might disparage—the social state of a people whose integrity calls for the application of means the most certain to disseminate distrust and disunion, are facts which constitute reasons for political action that, however assailable in the mere abstract, the mind of statesmanlike form will at once accept as solid and effective, and to reject which would only show that, in over-looking the consequences of sentiment, a man can ignore the most vital interests of his country.’”’
‘Does he say that they wrote to Donogan?’ cried Kilgobbin, whose patience had been sorely pushed by the Premier’s exordium.
‘Let me read on, papa.’
‘Skip all that, and get down to a simple question and answer, Kitty; don’t read the long sentences.’
‘This is how he winds up, papa. “I trust I have now, sir, satisfied the House that there are abundant reasons why this correspondence should not be produced on the table, while I have further justified my noble friend for a course of action in which the humanity of the man takes no lustre from the glory of the statesman”—then there are some words in Latin—“and the right hon. gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, in which some of the Opposition were heard to join.”’
‘I want to be told, after all, did they write the letter to say Donogan was to be let escape?’
‘Would it have been a great crime, uncle?’ said Nina artlessly.
‘I’m not going into that. I’m only asking what the people over us say is the best way to govern us. I’d like to know, once for all, what was wrong and what was right in Ireland.’
‘Has not the Premier just told you, sir,’ replied Nina, ‘that it is always the reverse of what obtains everywhere else?’
‘I have had enough of it, anyhow,’ cried Dick, who, though not intending it before, now was carried away by a momentary gust of passion to make the avowal.
‘Have you been in the Cabinet all this time, then, without our knowing it?’ asked Nina archly.
‘It is not of the Cabinet I was speaking, mademoiselle. It was of the country.’ And he answered haughtily.
‘And where would you go, Dick, and find better?’ said Kate.
‘Anywhere. I should find better in America, in Canada, in the Far West, in New Zealand—but I mean to try in Australia.’
‘And what will you do when you get there?’ asked Kilgobbin, with a grim humour in his look.
‘Do tell me, Cousin Dick, for who knows that it might not suit me also?’
Young Kearney filled his glass, and drained it without speaking. At last he said, ‘It will be for you, sir, to say if I make the trial. It is clear enough, I have no course open to me here. For a few hundred pounds, or, indeed, for anything you like to give me, you get rid of me for ever. It will be the one piece of economy my whole life comprises.’
‘Stay at home, Dick, and give to your own country the energy you are willing to bestow on a strange land,’ said Kate.
‘And labour side by side with the peasant I have looked down upon since I was able to walk.’
‘Don’t look down on him, then—do it no longer. If you would treat the first stranger you met in the bush as your equal, begin the Christian practice in your own country.’
‘But he needn’t do that at all,’ broke in the old man. ‘If he would take to strong shoes and early rising here at Kilgobbin, he need never go to Geelong for a living. Your great-grandfathers lived here for centuries, and the old house that sheltered them is still standing.’
‘What should I stay for—?’ He had got thus far when his eyes met Nina’s, and he stopped and hesitated, and, as a deep blush covered his face, faltered out, ‘Gorman O’Shea says he is ready to go with me, and two fellows with less to detain them in their own country would be hard to find.’
‘O’Shea will do well enough,’ said the old man; ‘he was not brought up to kid-leather boots and silk linings in his greatcoat. There’s stuff inhim, and if it comes to sleeping under a haystack or dining on a red-herring, he’ll not rise up with rheumatism or heartburn. And what’s better than all, he’ll not think himself a hero because he mends his own boots or lights his own kitchen-fire.’
‘A letter for your honour,’ said the servant, entering with a very informal-looking note on coarse paper, and fastened with a wafer. ‘The gossoon, sir, is waiting for an answer; he run every mile from Moate.’
‘Read it, Kitty,’ said the old man, not heeding the servant’s comment.
‘It is dated “Moate Jail, seven o’clock,”’ said Kitty, as she read: ‘“Dear Sir,—I have got into a stupid scrape, and have been committed to jail. Will you come, or send some one to bail me out. The thing is a mere trifle, but the ‘being locked up’ is very hard to bear.—Yours always, G. O’Shea.”’
‘Is this more Fenian work?’ cried Kilgobbin.
‘I’m certain it is not, sir,’ said Dick. ‘Gorman O’Shea has no liking for them, nor is he the man to sympathise with what he owns he cannot understand. It is a mere accidental row.’
‘At all events, we must see to set him at liberty. Order the gig, Dick, and while they are putting on the harness, I’ll finish this decanter of port. If it wasn’t that we’re getting retired shopkeepers on the bench, we’d not see an O’Shea sent to prison like a gossoon that stole a bunch of turnips.’
‘What has he been doing, I wonder?’ said Nina, as she drew her arm within Kate’s and left the room.
‘Some loud talk in the bar-parlour, perhaps,’ was Kate’s reply, and the toss of her head as she said it implied more even than the words.
While Lord Kilgobbin and his son are plodding along towards Moate with a horse not long released from the harrow, and over a road which the late rains had sorely damaged, the moment is not inopportune to explain the nature of the incident, small enough in its way, that called on them for this journey at nightfall. It befell that when Miss Betty, indignant at her nephew’s defection, and outraged that he should descend to call at Kilgobbin, determined to cast him off for ever, she also resolved upon a project over which she had long meditated, and to which the conversation at her late dinner greatly predisposed her.
The growing unfertility of the land, the sturdy rejection of the authority of the Church, manifested in so many ways by the people, had led Miss O’Shea to speculate more on the insecurity of landed property in Ireland than all the long list of outrages scheduled at assizes, or all the burning haggards that ever flared in a wintry sky. Her notion was to retire into some religious sisterhood, and away from life and its cares, to pass her remaining years in holy meditation and piety. She would have liked to have sold her estate and endowed some house or convent with the proceeds, but there were certain legal difficulties that stood in the way, and her law-agent, McKeown, must be seen and conferred with about these.
Her moods of passion were usually so very violent that she would stop at nothing; and in the torrent of her anger she would decide on a course of action which would colour a whole lifetime. On the present occasion her first step was to write and acquaint McKeown that she would be at Moodie’s Hotel, Dominick Street, the same evening, and begged he might call there at eight or nine o’clock, as her business with him was pressing. Her next care was to let the house and lands of O’Shea’s Barn to Peter Gill, for the term of one year, at a rent scarcely more than nominal, the said Gill binding himself to maintain the gardens, the shrubberies, and all the ornamental plantings in their accustomed order and condition. In fact, the extreme moderation of the rent was to be recompensed by the large space allotted to unprofitable land, and the great care he was pledged to exercise in its preservation; and while nominally the tenant, so manifold were the obligations imposed on him, he was in reality very little other than the caretaker of O’Shea’s Barn and its dependencies. No fences were to be altered, or boundaries changed. All the copses of young timber were to be carefully protected by palings as heretofore, and even the ornamental cattle—the shorthorns, and the Alderneys, and a few favourite ‘Kerries,’—were to be kept on the allotted paddocks; and to old Kattoo herself was allotted a loose box, with a small field attached to it, where she might saunter at will, and ruminate over the less happy quadrupeds that had to work for their subsistence.
Now, though Miss Betty, in the full torrent of her anger, had that much of method in her madness to remember the various details, whose interests were the business of her daily life, and so far made provision for the future of her pet cows and horses and dogs and guinea-fowls, so that if she should ever resolve to return she should find all as she had left it, the short paper of agreement by which she accepted Gill as her tenant was drawn up by her own hand, unaided by a lawyer; and, whether from the intemperate haste of the moment, or an unbounded confidence in Gill’s honesty and fidelity, was not only carelessly expressed, but worded in a way that implied how her trustfulness exonerated her from anything beyond the expression of what she wished for, and what she believed her tenant would strictly perform. Gill’s repeated phrase of ‘Whatever her honour’s ladyship liked’ had followed every sentence as she read the document aloud to him; and the only real puzzle she had was to explain to the poor man’s simple comprehension that she was not making a hard bargain with him, but treating him handsomely and in all confidence.
Shrewd and sharp as the old lady was, versed in the habits of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, she was thoroughly convinced by the simple and unreasoning concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and the hearty assurance he always gave ‘that her honour knew what was best. God reward and keep her long in the way to do it!’—with all this, Miss O’Shea had not accomplished the first stage of her journey to Dublin, when Peter Gill was seated in the office of Pat McEvoy, the attorney at Moate—smart practitioner, who had done more to foster litigation between tenant and landlord than all the ‘grievances’ that ever were placarded by the press.
‘When did you get this, Peter?’ said the attorney, as he looked about, unable to find a date.
‘This morning, sir, just before she started.’
‘You’ll have to come before the magistrate and make an oath of the date, and, by my conscience, it’s worth the trouble.’
‘Why, sir, what’s in it?’ cried Peter eagerly.
‘I’m no lawyer if she hasn’t given you a clear possession of the place, subject to certain trusts, and even for the non-performance of these there is no penalty attached. When Councillor Holmes comes down at the assizes, I’ll lay a case before him, and I’ll wager a trifle, Peter, you will turn out to be an estated gentleman.’
‘Blood alive!’ was all Peter could utter.
Though the conversation that ensued occupied more than an hour, it is not necessary that we should repeat what occurred, nor state more than the fact that Peter went home fully assured that if O’Shea’s Barn was not his own indisputably, it would be very hard to dispossess him, and that, at all events, the occupation was secure to him for the present. The importance that the law always attaches to possession Mr. McEvoy took care to impress on Gill’s mind, and he fully convinced him that a forcible seizure of the premises was far more to be apprehended than the slower process of a suit and a verdict.
It was about the third week after this opinion had been given, when young O’Shea walked over from Kilgobbin Castle to the Barn, intending to see his aunt and take his farewell of her.
Though he had steeled his heart against the emotion such a leave-taking was likely to evoke, he was in nowise prepared for the feelings the old place itself would call up, and as he opened a little wicket that led by a shrubbery walk to the cottage, he was glad to throw himself on the first seat he could find and wait till his heart could beat more measuredly. What a strange thing was life—at least that conventional life we make for ourselves—was his thought now. ‘Here am I ready to cross the globe, to be the servant, the labourer of some rude settler in the wilds of Australia, and yet I cannot be the herdsman here, and tend the cattle in the scenes that I love, where every tree, every bush, every shady nook, and every running stream is dear to me. I cannot serve my own kith and kin, but must seek my bread from the stranger! This is our glorious civilisation. I should like to hear in what consists its marvellous advantage.’
And then he began to think of those men of whom he had often heard—gentlemen and men of refinement—who had gone out to Australia, and who, in all the drudgery of daily labour—herding cattle on the plains or conducting droves of horses long miles of way—still managed to retain the habits of their better days, and, by the instinct of the breeding, which had become a nature, to keep intact in their hearts the thoughts and the sympathies and the affections that made them gentlemen.
‘If my dear aunt only knew me as I know myself, she would let me stay here and serve her as the humblest labourer on her land. I can see no indignity in being poor and faring hardly. I have known coarse food and coarse clothing, and I never found that they either damped my courage or soured my temper.’
It might not seem exactly the appropriate moment to have bethought him of the solace of companionship in such poverty, but somehow his thoughtsdidtake that flight, and unwarrantable as was the notion, he fancied himself returning at nightfall to his lowly cabin, and a certain girlish figure, whom our reader knows as Kate Kearney, standing watching for his coming.
There was no one to be seen about as he approached the house. The hall door, however, lay open. He entered and passed on to the little breakfast-parlour on the left. The furniture was the same as before, but a coarse fustian jacket was thrown on the back of a chair, and a clay-pipe and a paper of tobacco stood on the table. While he was examining these objects with some attention, a very ragged urchin, of some ten or eleven years, entered the room with a furtive step, and stood watching him. From this fellow, all that he could hear was that Miss Betty was gone away, and that Peter was at the Kilbeggan Market, and though he tried various questions, no other answers than these were to be obtained. Gorman now tried to see the drawing-room and the library, but these, as well as the dining-room, were all locked. He next essayed the bedrooms, but with the same unsuccess. At length he turned to his own well-known corner—the well-remembered little ‘green-room’—which he loved to think his own. This too was locked, but Gorman remembered that by pressing the door underneath with his walking-stick, he could lift the bolt from the old-fashioned receptacle that held it, and open the door. Curious to have a last look at a spot dear by so many memories, he tried the old artifice and succeeded.
He had still on his watch-chain the little key of an old marquetrie cabinet, where he was wont to write, and now he was determined to write a last letter to his aunt from the old spot, and send her his good-bye from the very corner where he had often come to wish her ‘good-night.’
He opened the window and walked out on the little wooden balcony, from which the view extended over the lawn and the broad belt of wood that fenced the demesne. The Sliebh Bloom Mountain shone in the distance, and in the calm of an evening sunlight the whole picture had something in its silence and peacefulness of almost rapturous charm.
Who is there amongst us that has not felt, in walking through the rooms of some uninhabited house, with every appliance of human comfort strewn about, ease and luxury within, wavy trees and sloping lawn or eddying waters without—who, in seeing all these, has not questioned himself as to why this should be deserted? and why is there none to taste and feel all the blessedness of such a lot as life here should offer? Is not the world full of these places? is not the puzzle of this query of all lands and of all peoples? That ever-present delusion of what we should do—what be if we were aught other than ourselves: how happy, how contented, how unrepining, and how good—ay, even our moral nature comes into the compact—this delusion, I say, besets most of us through life, and we never weary of believing how cruelly fate has treated us, and how unjust destiny has been to a variety of good gifts and graces which are doomed to die unrecognised and unrequited.
I will not go to the length of saying that Gorman O’Shea’s reflections went thus far, though they did go to the extent of wondering why his aunt had left this lovely spot, and asked himself, again and again, where she could possibly have found anything to replace it.
‘My dearest aunt,’ wrote he, ‘in my own old room at the dear old desk, and on the spot knitted to my heart by happiest memories, I sit down to send you my last good-bye ere I leave Ireland for ever.
‘It is in no mood of passing fretfulness or impatience that I resolve to go and seek my fortune in Australia. As I feel now, believing you are displeased with me, I have no heart to go further into the question of my own selfish interests, nor say why I resolve to give up soldiering, and why I turn to a new existence. Had I been to you what I have hitherto been, had I the assurance that I possessed the old claim on your love which made me regard you as a dear mother, I should tell you of every step that has led me to this determination, and how carefully and anxiously I tried to study what might be the turning-point of my life.’
When he had written thus far, and his eyes had already grown glassy with the tears which would force their way across them, a heavy foot was heard on the stairs, the door was burst rudely open, and Peter Gill stood before him.
No longer, however, the old peasant in shabby clothes, and with his look half-shy, half-sycophant, but vulgarly dressed in broadcloth and bright buttons, a tall hat on his head, and a crimson cravat round his neck. His face was flushed, and his eye flashing and insolent, so that O’Shea only feebly recognised him by his voice.
‘You thought you’d be too quick for me, young man,’ said the fellow, and the voice in its thickness showed he had been drinking, ‘and that you would do your bit of writing there before I’d be back, but I was up to you.’
‘I really do not know what you mean,’ cried O’Shea, rising; ‘and as it is only too plain you have been drinking, I do not care to ask you.’
‘Whether I was drinking or no is my own business; there’s none to call me to account now. I am here in my own house, and I order you to leave it, and if you don’t go by the way you came in, by my soul you’ll go by that window!’ A loud bang of his stick on the floor gave the emphasis to the last words, and whether it was the action or the absurd figure of the man himself overcame O’Shea, he burst out in a hearty laugh as he surveyed him. ‘I’ll make it no laughing matter to you,’ cried Gill, wild with passion, and stepping to the door he cried out, ‘Come up, boys, every man of ye: come up and see the chap that’s trying to turn me out of my holding.’
The sound of voices and the tramp of feet outside now drew O’Shea to the window, and passing out on the balcony, he saw a considerable crowd of country-people assembled beneath. They were all armed with sticks, and had that look of mischief and daring so unmistakable in a mob. As the young man stood looking at them, some one pointed him out to the rest, and a wild yell, mingled with hisses, now broke from the crowd. He was turning away from the spot in disgust when he found that Gill had stationed himself at the window, and barred the passage.
‘The boys want another look at ye,’ said Gill insolently; ‘go back and show yourself: it is not every day they see an informer.’
‘Stand back, you old fool, and let me pass,’ cried O’Shea.
‘Touch me if you dare; only lay one finger on me in my own house,’ said the fellow, and he grinned almost in his face as he spoke.
‘Stand back,’ said Gorman, and suiting the action to the word, he raised his arm to make space for him to pass out. Gill, no sooner did he feel the arm graze his chest, than he struck O’Shea across the face; and though the blow was that of an old man, the insult was so maddening that O’Shea, seizing him by the arms, dragged him out upon the balcony.
‘He’s going to throw the old man over,’ cried several of those beneath, and amidst the tumult of voices, a number soon rushed up the stairs and out on the balcony, where the old fellow was clinging to O’Shea’s legs in his despairing attempt to save himself. The struggle scarcely lasted many seconds, for the rotten wood-work of the balcony creaked and trembled, and at last gave way with a crash, bringing the whole party to the ground together.