‘I am right, Maude,’ said Lord Danesbury as his niece re-entered the drawing-room. ‘This is from Atlee, who is at Athens; but why there I cannot make out as yet. There are, according to the book, two explanations here. 491 means a white dromedary or the chief clerk, and B + 49 = 12 stands for our envoy in Greece or a snuffer-dish.’
‘Don’t you think, my lord, it would be better for you to send this up to Cecil? He has just come in. He has had much experience of these things.’
‘You are quite right, Maude; let Fenton take it up and beg for a speedy transcript of it. I should like to see it at once!’
While his lordship waited for his despatch, he grumbled away about everything that occurred to him, and even, at last, about the presence of the very man, Walpole, who was at that same moment engaged in serving him.
‘Stupid fellow,’ muttered he, ‘why does he ask for extension of his leave? Staying in town here is only another name for spending money. He’ll have to go out at last; better do it at once!’
‘He may have his own reasons, my lord, for delay,’ said Maude, rather to suggest further discussion of the point.
‘He may think he has, I’ve no doubt. These small creatures have always scores of irons in the fire. So it was when I agreed to go to Ireland. There were innumerable fine things and clever things he was to do. There were schemes by which “the Cardinal” was to be cajoled, and the whole Bar bamboozled. Every one was to have office dangled before his eyes, and to be treated so confidentially and affectionately, under disappointment, that even when a man got nothing he would feel he had secured the regard of the Prime Minister! If I took him out to Turkey to-morrow, he’d never be easy till he had a plan “to square” the Grand-Vizier, and entrap Gortschakoff or Miliutin. These men don’t know that a clever fellow no more goes in search of rogueries than a foxhunter looks out for stiff fences. You “take them” when they lie before you, that’s all.’ This little burst of indignation seemed to have the effect on him of a little wholesome exercise, for he appeared to feel himself better and easier after it.
‘Dear me! dear me!’ muttered he, ‘how pleasant one’s life might be if it were not for the clever fellows! I mean, of course,’ added he, after a second or two, ‘the clever fellows who want to impress us with their cleverness.’
Maude would not be entrapped or enticed into what might lead to a discussion. She never uttered a word, and he was silent.
It was in the perfect stillness that followed that Walpole entered the room with the telegram in his hand, and advanced to where Lord Danesbury was sitting.
‘I believe, my lord, I have made out this message in such a shape as will enable you to divine what it means. It runs thus: “Athens, 5th, 12 o’clock. Have seen S——, and conferred at length with him. His estimate of value” or “his price”—for the signs will mean either—“to my thinking enormous. His reasonings certainly strong and not easy to rebut.” That may be possibly rendered, “demands that might probably be reduced.” “I leave to-day, and shall be in England by middle of next week.—ATLEE.”’
Walpole looked keenly at the other’s face as he read the paper, to mark what signs of interest and eagerness the tidings might evoke. There was, however, nothing to be read in those cold and quiet features.
‘I am glad he is coming back,’ said he at length. ‘Let us see: he can reach Marseilles by Monday, or even Sunday night. I don’t see why he should not be here Wednesday, or Thursday at farthest. By the way, Cecil, tell me something about our friend—who is he?’
Walpole Looked Keenly at the Other’s Face As he Read The Paper
‘Don’t know, my lord.’
‘Don’t know! How came you acquainted with him?’
‘Met him at a country-house, where I happened to break my arm, and took advantage of this young fellow’s skill in surgery to engage his services to carry me to town. There’s the whole of it.’
‘Is he a surgeon?’
‘No, my lord, any more than he is fifty other things, of which he has a smattering.’
‘Has he any means—any private fortune?’
‘I suspect not.’
‘Who and what are his family? Are there Atlees in Ireland?’
‘There may be, my lord. There was an Atlee, a college porter, in Dublin; but I heard our friend say that they were only distantly related.’
He could not help watching Lady Maude as he said this, and was rejoiced to see a sudden twitch of her lower lip as if in pain.
‘You evidently sent him over to me, then, on a very meagre knowledge of the man,’ said his lordship rebukingly.
‘I believe, my lord, I said at the time that I had by me a clever fellow, who wrote a good hand, could copy correctly, and was sufficient of a gentleman in his manners to make intercourse with him easy, and not disagreeable.’
‘A very guarded recommendation,’ said Lady Maude, with a smile.
‘Was it not, Maude?’ continued he, his eyes flashing with triumphant insolence.
‘Ifound he could do more than copy a despatch—I found he could write one. He replied to an article in theEdinburghon Turkey, and I saw him write it as I did not know there was another man but myself in England could have done.’
‘Perhaps your lordship had talked over the subject in his presence, or with him?’
‘And if I had, sir? and if all his knowledge on a complex question was such as he could carry away from a random conversation, what a gifted dog he must be to sift the wheat from the chaff—to strip a question of what were mere accidental elements, and to test a difficulty by its real qualities. Atlee is a clever fellow, an able fellow, I assure you. That very telegram before us is a proof how he can deal with a matter on which instruction would be impossible.’
‘Indeed, my lord!’ said Walpole, with well-assumed innocence.
‘I am right glad to know he is coming home. He must demolish that writer in theRevue des Deux Mondesat once—some unprincipled French blackguard, who has been put up to attack me by Thouvenel!’
Would it have appeased his lordship’s wrath to know that the writer of this defamatory article was no other than Joe Atlee himself, and that the reply which was to ‘demolish it’ was more than half-written in his desk at that moment?
‘I shall ask,’ continued my lord, ‘I shall ask him, besides, to write a paper on Ireland, and that fiasco of yours, Cecil.’
‘Much obliged, my lord!’
‘Don’t be angry or indignant! A fellow with a neat, light hand like Atlee can, even under the guise of allegation, do more to clear you than scores of vulgar apologists. He can, at least, show that what our distinguished head of the Cabinet calls “the flesh-and-blood argument,” has its full weight with us in our government of Ireland, and that our bitterest enemies cannot say we have no sympathies with the nation we rule over.’
‘I suspect, my lord, that what you have so graciously calledmyfiasco is well-nigh forgotten by this time, and wiser policy would say, “Do not revive it.”’
‘There’s a great policy in saying in “an article” all that could be said in “a debate,” and showing, after all, how little it comes to. Even the feeble grievance-mongers grow ashamed at retailing the review and the newspapers; but, what is better still, if the article be smartly written, they are sure to mistake the peculiarities of style for points in the argument. I have seen some splendid blunders of that kind when I sat in the Lower House! I wish Atlee was in Parliament.’
‘I am not aware that he can speak, my lord.’
‘Neither am I; but I should risk a small bet on it. He is a ready fellow, and the ready fellows are many-sided—eh, Maude?’ Now, though his lordship only asked for his niece’s concurrence in his own sage remark, Walpole affected to understand it as a direct appeal to her opinion of Atlee, and said, ‘Is that your judgment of this gentleman, Maude?’
‘I have no prescription to measure the abilities of such men as Mr. Atlee.’
‘You find him pleasant, witty, and agreeable, I hope?’ said he, with a touch of sarcasm.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘With an admirable memory and great readiness for anapropos?’
‘Perhaps he has.’
‘As a retailer of an incident they tell me he has no rival.’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Of course not. I take it the fellow has tact enough not to tell stories here.’
‘What is all that you are saying there?’ cried his lordship, to whom these few sentences were an ‘aside.’
‘Cecil is praising Mr. Atlee, my lord,’ said Maude bluntly.
‘I did not know I had been, my lord,’ said he. ‘He belongs to that class of men who interest me very little.’
‘What class may that be?’
‘The adventurers, my lord. The fellows who make the campaign of life on the faith that they shall find their rations in some other man’s knapsack.’
‘Ha! indeed. Is that our friend’s line?’
‘Most undoubtedly, my lord. I am ashamed to say that it was entirely my own fault if you are saddled with the fellow at all.’
‘I do not see the infliction—’
‘I mean, my lord, that, in a measure, I put him on you without very well knowing what it was that I did.’
‘Have you heard—do you know anything of the man that should inspire caution or distrust?’
‘Well, these are strong words,’ muttered he hesitatingly.
But Lady Maude broke in with a passionate tone, ‘Don’t you see, my lord, that he does not know anything to this person’s disadvantage; that it is only my cousin’s diplomatic reserve—that commendable caution of his order—suggests his careful conduct? Cecil knows no more of Atlee than we do.’
‘Perhaps not so much,’ said Walpole, with an impertinent simper.
‘Iknow,’ said his lordship, ‘that he is a monstrous clever fellow. He can find you the passage you want or the authority you are seeking for at a moment; and when he writes, he can be rapid and concise too.’
‘He has many rare gifts, my lord,’ said Walpole, with the sly air of one who had said a covert impertinence. ‘I am very curious to know what you mean to do with him.’
‘Mean to do with him? Why, what should I mean to do with him?’
‘The very point I wish to learn. A protégé, my lord, is a parasitic plant, and you cannot deprive it of its double instincts—to cling and to climb.’
‘How witty my cousin has become since his sojourn in Ireland,’ said Maude.
Walpole flushed deeply, and for a moment he seemed about to reply angrily; but, with an effort, he controlled himself, and turning towards the timepiece on the chimney, said, ‘How late! I could not have believed it was past one! I hope, my lord, I have made your despatch intelligible?’
‘Yes, yes; I think so. Besides, he will be here in a day or two to explain.’
‘I shall, then, say good-night, my lord. Good-night, Cousin Maude.’ But Lady Maude had already left the room unnoticed.
Once more in his own room, Walpole returned to the task of that letter to Nina Kostalergi, of which he had made nigh fifty drafts, and not one with which he was satisfied.
It was not really very easy to do what he wished. He desired to seem a warm, rapturous, impulsive lover, who had no thought in life—no other hope or ambition—than the success of his suit. He sought to show that she had so enraptured and enthralled him that, until she consented to share his fortunes, he was a man utterly lost to life and life’s ambitions; and while insinuating what a tremendous responsibility she would take on herself if she should venture by a refusal of him to rob the world of those abilities that the age could ill spare, he also dimly shadowed the natural pride a woman ought to feel in knowing that she was asked to be the partner of such a man, and that one, for whom destiny in all likelihood reserved the highest rewards of public life, was then, with the full consciousness of what he was, and what awaited him, ready to share that proud eminence with her, as a prince might have offered to share his throne.
In spite of himself, in spite of all he could do, it was on this latter part of his letter his pen ran most freely. He could condense his raptures, he could control in most praiseworthy fashion all the extravagances of passion and the imaginative joys of love, but, for the life of him, he could abate nothing of the triumphant ecstasy that must be the feeling of the woman who had won him—the passionate delight of her who should be his wife, and enter life the chosen one of his affection.
It was wonderful how glibly he could insist on this to himself; and fancying for the moment that he was one of the outer world commenting on the match, say, ‘Yes, let people decry the Walpole class how they might—they are elegant, they are exclusive, they are fastidious, they are all that you like to call the spoiled children of Fortune in their wit, their brilliancy, and their readiness, but they are the only men, the only men in the world, who marry—we’ll not say for “love,” for the phrase is vulgar—but who marry to please themselves! This girl had not a shilling. As to family, all is said when we say she was a Greek! Is there not something downright chivalrous in marrying such a woman? Is it the act of a worldly man?’
He walked the room, uttering this question to himself over and over. Not exactly that he thought disparagingly of worldliness and material advantages, but he had lashed himself into a false enthusiasm as to qualities which he thought had some special worshippers of their own, and whose good opinion might possibly be turned to profit somehow and somewhere, if he only knew how and where. It was a monstrous fine thing he was about to do; that he felt. Where was there another man in his position would take a portionless girl and make her his wife? Cadets and cornets in light-dragoon regiments did these things: they liked their ‘bit of beauty’; and there was a sort of mock-poetry about these creatures that suited that sort of thing; but for a man who wrote his letters from Brookes’s, and whose dinner invitations included all that was great in town, to stoop to such an alliance was as bold a defiance as one could throw at a world of self-seeking and conventionality.
‘That Emperor of the French did it,’ cried he. ‘I cannot recall to my mind another. He did the very same thing I am going to do. To be sure, he had the “pull on me” in one point. As he said himself, “Iam a parvenu.” Now,Icannot go that far! I must justify my act on other grounds, as I hope I can do,’ cried he, after a pause; while, with head erect and swelling chest, he went on: ‘I felt within me the place I yet should occupy. I knew—ay, knew—the prize that awaited me, and I asked myself, “Do you see in any capital of Europe one woman with whom you would like to share this fortune? Is there one sufficiently gifted and graceful to make her elevation seem a natural and fitting promotion, and herself appear the appropriate occupant of the station?”
‘She is wonderfully beautiful: there is no doubt of it. Such beauty as they have never seen here in their lives! Fanciful extravagances in dress, and atrocious hair-dressing, cannot disfigure her; and by Jove! she has tried both. And one has only to imagine that woman dressed and “coifféed,” as she might be, to conceive such a triumph as London has not witnessed for the century! And I do long for such a triumph. If my lord would only invite us here, were it but for a week! We should be asked to Goreham and the Bexsmiths’. My lady never omits to invite a great beauty. It’sherway to protest that she is still handsome, and not at all jealous. How are we to get “asked” to Bruton Street?’ asked he over and over, as though the sounds must secure the answer. ‘Maude will never permit it. The unlucky picture has settledthatpoint. Maude will not suffer her to cross the threshold! But for the portrait I could bespeak my cousin’s favour and indulgence for a somewhat countrified young girl, dowdy and awkward. I could plead for her good looks in thatad misericordiamfashion that disarms jealousy and enlists her generosity for a humble connection she need never see more of! If I could only persuade Maude that I had done an indiscretion, and that I knew it, I should be sure of her friendship. Once make her believe that I have gone clean head over heels into amésalliance, and our honeymoon here is assured. I wish I had not tormented her about Atlee. I wish with all my heart I had kept my impertinences to myself, and gone no further than certain dark hints about what I could say, if I were to be evil-minded. What rare wisdom it is not to fire away one’s last cartridge. I suppose it is too late now. She’ll not forgive me that disparagement before my uncle; that is, if there be anything between herself and Atlee, a point which a few minutes will settle when I see them together. It would not be very difficult to make Atlee regard me as his friend, and as one ready to aid him in this same ambition. Of course he is prepared to see in me the enemy of all his plans. What would he not give, or say, or do, to find me his aider and abettor? Shrewd tactician as the fellow is, he will know all the value of having an accomplice within the fortress; and it would be exactly from a man like myself he might be disposed to expect the most resolute opposition.’
He thought for a long time over this. He turned it over and over in his mind, canvassing all the various benefits any line of action might promise, and starting every doubt or objection he could imagine. Nor was the thought extraneous to his calculations that in forwarding Atlee’s suit to Maude he was exacting the heaviest ‘vendetta’ for her refusal of himself.
‘There is not a woman in Europe,’ he exclaimed, ‘less fitted to encounter small means and a small station—to live a life of petty economies, and be the daily associate of a snob!’
‘What the fellow may become at the end of the race—what place he may win after years of toil and jobbery, I neither know nor care!Shewill be an old woman by that time, and will have had space enough in the interval to mourn over her rejection of me. I shall be a Minister, not impossibly at some court of the Continent; Atlee, to say the best, an Under-Secretary of State for something, or a Poor-Law or Education Chief. There will be just enough of disparity in our stations to fill her woman’s heart with bitterness—the bitterness of having backed the wrong man!
‘The unavailing regrets that beset us for not having taken the left-hand road in life instead of the right are our chief mental resources after forty, and they tell me that we men only know half the poignancy of these miserable recollections. Women have a special adaptiveness for this kind of torture—would seem actually to revel in it.’
He turned once more to his desk, and to the letter. Somehow he could make nothing of it. All the dangers that he desired to avoid so cramped his ingenuity that he could say little beyond platitudes; and he thought with terror of her who was to read them. The scornful contempt with whichshewould treat such a letter was all before him, and he snatched up the paper and tore it in pieces.
‘It must not be done by writing,’ cried he at last. ‘Who is to guess for which of the fifty moods of such a woman a man’s letter is to be composed? What you could saynowyou dared not have written half an hour ago. What would have gone far to gain her love yesterday, to-day will show you the door! It is only by consummate address and skill she can be approached at all, and without her look and bearing, the inflections of her voice, her gestures, her “pose,” to guide you, it would be utter rashness to risk her humour.’
He suddenly bethought him at this moment that he had many things to do in Ireland ere he left England. He had tradesmen’s bills to settle, and ‘traps’ to be got rid of. ‘Traps’ included furniture, and books, and horses, and horse-gear: details which at first he had hoped his friend Lockwood would have taken off his hands; but Lockwood had only written him word that a Jew broker from Liverpool would give him forty pounds for his house effects, and as for ‘the screws,’ there was nothing but an auction.
Most of us have known at some period or other of our lives what it is to suffer from the painful disparagement our chattels undergo when they become objects of sale; but no adverse criticism of your bed or your bookcase, your ottoman or your arm-chair, can approach the sense of pain inflicted by the impertinent comments on your horse. Every imputed blemish is a distinct personality, and you reject the insinuated spavin, or the suggested splint, as imputations on your honour as a gentleman. In fact, you are pushed into the pleasant dilemma of either being ignorant as to the defects of your beast, or wilfully bent on an act of palpable dishonesty. When we remember that every confession a man makes of his unacquaintance with matters ‘horsy’ is, in English acceptance, a count in the indictment against his claim to be thought a gentleman, it is not surprising that there will be men more ready to hazard their characters than their connoisseurship. ‘I’ll go over myself to Ireland,’ said he at last; ‘and a week will do everything.’
Lockwood was seated at his fireside in his quarters, the Upper Castle Yard, when Walpole burst in upon him unexpectedly. ‘What! you here?’ cried the major. ‘Haveyouthe courage to face Ireland again?’
‘I see nothing that should prevent my coming here. Ireland certainly cannot pretend to lay a grievance to my charge.’
‘Maybe not. I don’t understand these things. I only know what people say in the clubs and laugh over at dinner-tables.’
‘I cannot affect to be very sensitive as to these Celtic criticisms, and I shall not ask you to recall them.’
‘They say that Danesbury got kicked out, all for your blunders!’
‘Do they?’ said Walpole innocently.
‘Yes; and they declare that if old Daney wasn’t the most loyal fellow breathing, he’d have thrown you over, and owned that the whole mess was of your own brewing, and that he had nothing to do with it.’
‘Do they, indeed, say that?’
‘That’s not half of it, for they have a story about a woman—some woman you met down at Kilgobbin—who made you sing rebel songs and take a Fenian pledge, and give your word of honour that Donogan should be let escape.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Isn’t it enough? A man must be a glutton for tomfoolery if he could not be satisfied with that.’
‘Perhaps you never heard that the chief of the Cabinet took a very different view of my Irish policy.’
‘Irish policy?’ cried the other, with lifted eyebrows.
‘I said Irish policy, and repeat the words. Whatever line of political action tends to bring legislation into more perfect harmony with the instincts and impulses of a very peculiar people, it is no presumption to call a policy.’
‘With all my heart. Do you mean to deal with that old Liverpool rascal for the furniture?’
‘His offer is almost an insult.’
‘Well, you’ll be gratified to know he retracts it. He says now he’ll only give £35! And as for the screws, Bobbidge, of the Carbineers, will take them both for £50.’
‘Why, Lightfoot alone is worth the money!’
‘Minus the sand-crack.’
‘I deny the sand-crack. She was pricked in the shoeing.’
‘Of course! I never knew a broken knee that wasn’t got by striking the manger, nor a sand-crack that didn’t come of an awkward smith.’
‘What a blessing it would be if all the bad reputations in society could be palliated as pleasantly.’
‘Shall I tell Bobbidge you take his offer? He wants an answer at once.’
‘My dear major, don’t you know that the fellow who says that, simply means to say: “Don’t be too sure that I shall not change my mind.” Look out that you take the ball at the hop!’
‘Lucky if it hops at all.’
‘Is that your experience of life?’ said Walpole inquiringly.
‘It is one of them. Will you take £50 for the screws?’
‘Yes; and as much more for the break and the dog-cart. I want every rap I can scrape together, Harry. I’m going out to Guatemala.’
‘I heard that.’
‘Infernal place; at least, I believe, in climate—reptiles, fevers, assassination—it stands without a rival.’
‘So they tell me.’
‘It was the only thing vacant; and they rather affected a difficulty about giving it.’
‘So they do when they send a man to the Gold Coast; and they tell the newspapers to say what a lucky dog he is.’
‘I can stand all that. What really kills me is giving a man the C.B. when he is just booked for some home of yellow fever.’
‘They do that too,’ gravely observed the other, who was beginning to feel the pace of the conversation rather too fast for him. ‘Don’t you smoke?’
‘I’m rather reducing myself to half batta in tobacco. I’ve thoughts of marrying.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Why? It’s not wrong.’
‘No, perhaps not; but it’s stupid.’
‘Come now, old fellow, life out there in the tropics is not so jolly all alone! Alligators are interesting creatures, and cheetahs are pretty pets; but a man wants a little companionship of a more tender kind; and a nice girl who would link her fortunes with one’s own, and help one through the sultry hours, is no bad thing.’
‘The nice girl wouldn’t go there.’
‘I’m not so sure of that. With your great knowledge of life, you must know that there has been a glut in “the nice-girl” market these years back. Prime lots are sold for a song occasionally, and first-rate samples sent as far as Calcutta. The truth is, the fellow who looks like a real buyer may have the pick of the fair, as they call it here.’
So he ought,’ growled out the major.
‘The speech is not a gallant one. You are scarcely complimentary to the ladies, Lockwood.’
‘It was you that talked of a woman like a cow, or a sack of corn, not I.’
‘I employed an illustration to answer one of your own arguments.’
‘Who is she to be?’ bluntly asked the major.
‘I’ll tell you whom I mean to ask, for I have not put the question yet.’
‘A long, fine whistle expressed the other’s astonishment. ‘And are you so sure she’ll say Yes?’
‘I have no other assurance than the conviction that a woman might do worse.’
‘Humph! perhaps she might. I’m not quite certain; but who is she to be?’
‘Do you remember a visit we made together to a certain Kilgobbin Castle.’
‘To be sure I do. A rum old ruin it was.’
‘Do you remember two young ladies we met there?’
‘Perfectly. Are you going to marry both of them?’
‘My intention is to propose to one, and I imagine I need not tell you which?’
‘Naturally, the Irish girl. She saved your life—’
‘Pray let me undeceive you in a double error. It is not the Irish girl; nor did she save my life.’
‘Perhaps not; but she risked her own to save yours. You said so yourself at the time.’
‘We’ll not discuss the point now. I hope I feel duly grateful for the young lady’s heroism, though it is not exactly my intention to record my gratitude in a special license.’
‘A very equivocal sort of repayment,’ grumbled out Lockwood.
‘You are epigrammatic this evening, major.’
‘So, then, it’s the Greek you mean to marry?’
‘It is the Greek I mean to ask.’
‘All right. I hope she’ll take you. I think, on the whole, you suit each other. If I were at all disposed to that sort of bondage, I don’t know a girl I’d rather risk the road with than the Irish cousin, Miss Kearney.’
‘She is very pretty, exceedingly obliging, and has most winning manners.’
‘She is good-tempered, and she is natural—the two best things a woman can be.’
‘Why not come down along with me and try your luck?’
‘When do you go?’
‘By the 10.30 train to-morrow. I shall arrive at Moate by four o’clock, and reach the castle to dinner.’
‘They expect you?’
‘Only so far, that I have telegraphed a line to say I’m going down to bid “Good-bye” before I sail for Guatemala. I don’t suspect they know where that is, but it’s enough when they understand it is far away.’
‘I’ll go with you.’
‘Will you really?’
‘I will. I’ll not say on such an errand as your own, because that requires a second thought or two; but I’ll reconnoitre, Master Cecil, I’ll reconnoitre.’
‘I suppose you know there is no money.’
‘I should think money most unlikely in such a quarter; and it’s better she should have none than a small fortune. I’m an old whist-player, and when I play dummy, there’s nothing I hate more than to see two or three small trumps in my partner’s hand.’
‘I imagine you’ll not be distressed in that way here.’
‘I’ve got enough to come through with; that is, the thing can be done if there be no extravagances.’
‘Does one want for more?’ cried Walpole theatrically.
‘I don’t know that. If it were only ask and have, I should like to be tempted.’
‘I have no such ambition. I firmly believe that the moderate limits a man sets to his daily wants constitute the real liberty of his intellect and his intellectual nature.’
‘Perhaps I’ve no intellectual nature, then,’ growled out Lockwood, ‘for I know how I should like to spend fifteen thousand a year. I suppose I shall have to live on as many hundreds.’
‘It can be done.’
‘Perhaps it may. Have another weed?’
‘No. I told you already I have begun a tobacco reformation.’
‘Does she object to the pipe?’
‘I cannot tell you. The fact is, Lockwood, my future and its fortunes are just as uncertain as your own. This day week will probably have decided the destiny of each of us.’
‘To our success, then!’ cried the major, filling both their glasses.
‘To our success!’ said Walpole, as he drained his, and placed it upside down on the table.
The ‘Blue Goat’ at Moate was destined once more to receive the same travellers whom we presented to our readers at a very early stage of this history.
‘Not much change here,’ cried Lockwood, as he strode into the little sitting-room and sat down. ‘I miss the old fellow’s picture, that’s all.’
‘Ah! by the way,’ said Walpole to the landlord, ‘you had my Lord Kilgobbin’s portrait up there the last time I came through here.’
‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ said the man, smoothing down his hair and looking apologetically. ‘But the Goats and my lord, who was the Buck Goat, got into a little disagreement, and they sent away his picture, and his lordship retired from the club, and—and—that was the way of it.’
‘A heavy blow to your town, I take it,’ said the major, as he poured out his beer.
‘Well, indeed, your honour, I won’t say it was. You see, sir, times is changed in Ireland. We don’t care as much as we used about the “neighbouring gentry,” as they called them once; and as for the lord, there! he doesn’t spend a hundred a year in Moate.’
‘How is that?’
‘They get what they want by rail from Dublin, your honour; and he might as well not be here at all.’
‘Can we have a car to carry us over to the castle?’ asked Walpole, who did not care to hear more of local grievances.
‘Sure, isn’t my lord’s car waiting for you since two o’clock!’ said the host spitefully, for he was not conciliated by a courtesy that was to lose him a fifteen-shilling fare. ‘Not that there’s much of a horse between the shafts, or that old Daly himself is an elegant coachman,’ continued the host; ‘but they’re ready in the yard when you want them.’
The travellers had no reason to delay them in their present quarters, and taking their places on the car, set out for the castle.
‘I scarcely thought when I last drove this road,’ said Walpole, ‘that the next time I was to come should be on such an errand as my present one.’
‘Humph!’ ejaculated the other. ‘Our noble relative that is to be does not shine in equipage. That beast is dead lame.’
‘If we had our deserts, Lockwood, we should be drawn by a team of doves, with the god Cupid on the box.’
‘I’d rather have two posters and a yellow postchaise.’
A drizzling rain that now began to fall interrupted all conversation, and each sank back into his own thoughts for the rest of the way.
Lord Kilgobbin, with his daughter at his side, watched the car from the terrace of the castle as it slowly wound its way along the bog road.
‘As well as I can see, Kate, there is a man on each side of the car,’ said Kearney, as he handed his field-glass to his daughter.
‘Yes, papa, I see there are two travellers.’
‘And I don’t well know why there should be even one! There was no such great friendship between us that he need come all this way to bid us good-bye.’
‘Considering the mishap that befell him here, it is a mark of good feeling to desire to see us all once more, don’t you think so?’
‘May be so,’ muttered he drearily. ‘At all events, it’s not a pleasant house he’s coming to. Young O’Shea there upstairs, just out of a fever; and old Miss Betty, that may arrive any moment.’
‘There’s no question of that. She says it would be ten days or a fortnight before she is equal to the journey.’
‘Heaven grant it!—hem—I mean that she’ll be strong enough for it by that time. At all events, if it is the same as to our fine friend, Mr. Walpole, I wish he’d have taken his leave of us in a letter.’
‘It is something new, papa, to see you so inhospitable.’
‘But I am not inhospitable, Kitty. Show me the good fellow that would like to pass an evening with me and think me good company, and he shall have the best saddle of mutton and the raciest bottle of claret in the house. But it’s only mock-hospitality to be entertaining the man that only comes out of courtesy and just stays as long as good manners oblige him.’
‘I do not know that I should undervalue politeness, especially when it takes the shape of a recognition.’
‘Well, be it so,’ sighed he, almost drearily. ‘If the young gentleman is so warmly attached to us all that he cannot tear himself away till he has embraced us, I suppose there’s no help for it. Where is Nina?’
‘She was reading to Gorman when I saw her. She had just relieved Dick, who has gone out for a walk.’
‘A jolly house for a visitor to come to!’ cried he sarcastically.
‘We are not very gay or lively, it is true, papa; but it is not unlikely that the spirit in which our guest comes here will not need much jollity.’
‘I don’t take it as a kindness for a man to bring me his depression and his low spirits. I’ve always more of my own than I know what to do with. Two sorrows never made a joy, Kitty.’
‘There! they are lighting the lamps,’ cried she suddenly. ‘I don’t think they can be more than three miles away.’
‘Have you rooms ready, if there be two coming?’
‘Yes, papa, Mr. Walpole will have his old quarters; and the stag-room is in readiness if there be another guest.’
‘I’d like to have a house as big as the royal barracks, and every room of it occupied!’ cried Kearney, with a mellow ring in his voice. ‘They talk of society and pleasant company; but for real enjoyment there’s nothing to compare with what a man has under his own roof! No claret ever tastes so good as the decanter he circulates himself. I was low enough half an hour ago, and now the mere thought of a couple of fellows to dine with me cheers me up and warms my heart! I’ll give them the green seal, Kitty; and I don’t know there’s another house in the county could put a bottle of ‘46 claret before them.’
‘So you shall, papa. I’ll go to the cellar myself and fetch it.’
Kearney hastened to make the moderate toilet he called dressing for dinner, and was only finished when his old servant informed him that two gentlemen had arrived and gone up to their rooms.
‘I wish it was two dozen had come,’ said Kearney, as he descended to the drawing-room.
‘It is Major Lockwood, papa,’ cried Kate, entering and drawing him into a window-recess; ‘the Major Lockwood that was here before, has come with Mr. Walpole. I met him in the hall while I had the basket with the wine in my hand, and he was so cordial and glad to see me you cannot think.’
‘He knew that green wax, Kitty. He tasted that “bin” when he was here last.’
‘Perhaps so; but he certainly seemed overjoyed at something.’
‘Let me see,’ muttered he, ‘wasn’t he the big fellow with the long moustaches?’
‘A tall, very good-looking man; dark as a Spaniard, and not unlike one.’
‘To be sure, to be sure. I remember him well. He was a capital shot with the pistol, and he liked his wine. By the way, Nina did not take to him.’
‘How do you remember that, papa?’ said she archly.
If I don’t mistake, she told me so, or she called him a brute, or a savage, or some one of those things a man is sure to be, when a woman discovers he will not be her slave.’
Nina entering at the moment cut short all rejoinder, and Kearney came forward to meet her with his hand out.
‘Shake out your lower courses, and let me look at you,’ cried he, as he walked round her admiringly. ‘Upon my oath, it’s more beautiful than ever you are! I can guess what a fate is reserved for those dandies from Dublin.’
‘Do you like my dress, sir? Is it becoming?’ asked she.
‘Becoming it is; but I’m not sure whether I like it.’
‘And how is that, sir?’
‘I don’t see how, with all that floating gauze and swelling lace, a man is to get an arm round you at all—’
‘I cannot perceive the necessity, sir,’ and the insolent toss of her head, more forcibly even than her words, resented such a possibility.
When Atlee arrived at Bruton Street, the welcome that met him was almost cordial. Lord Danesbury—not very demonstrative at any time—received him with warmth, and Lady Maude gave him her hand with a sort of significant cordiality that overwhelmed him with delight. The climax of his enjoyment was, however, reached when Lord Danesbury said to him, ‘We are glad to see you at home again.’
This speech sank deep into his heart, and he never wearied of repeating it over and over to himself. When he reached his room, where his luggage had already preceded him, and found his dressing articles laid out, and all the little cares and attentions which well-trained servants understand awaiting him, he muttered, with a tremulous sort of ecstasy, ‘This is a very glorious way to come home!’
The rich furniture of the room, the many appliances of luxury and ease around him, the sense of rest and quiet, so delightful after a journey, all appealed to him as he threw himself into a deep-cushioned chair. He cried aloud, ‘Home! home! Is this indeed home? What a different thing from that mean life of privation and penury I have always been associating with this word—from that perpetual struggle with debt—the miserable conflict that went on through every day, till not an action, not a thought, remained untinctured with money, and if a momentary pleasure crossed the path, the cost of it as certain to tarnish all the enjoyment! Such was the only home I have ever known, or indeed imagined.’
It is said that the men who have emerged from very humble conditions in life, and occupy places of eminence or promise, are less overjoyed at this change of fortune than impressed with a kind of resentment towards the destiny that once had subjected them to privation. Their feeling is not so much joy at the present as discontent with the past.
‘Why was I not born to all this?’ cried Atlee indignantly. ‘What is there in me, or in my nature, that this should be a usurpation? Why was I not schooled at Eton, and trained at Oxford? Why was I not bred up amongst the men whose competitor I shall soon find myself? Why have I not their ways, their instincts, their watchwords, their pastimes, and even their prejudices, as parts of my very nature? Why am I to learn these late in life, as a man learns a new language, and never fully catches the sounds or the niceties? Is there any competitorship I should flinch from, any rivalry I should fear, if I had but started fair in the race?’
This sense of having been hardly treated by Fortune at the outset, marred much of his present enjoyment, accompanied as it was by a misgiving that, do what he might, that early inferiority would cling to him, like some rag of a garment that he must wear over all his ‘braverie,’ proclaiming as it did to the world, ‘This is from what I sprung originally.’
It was not by any exercise of vanity that Atlee knew he talked better, knew more, was wittier and more ready-witted than the majority of men of his age and standing. The consciousness that he could do scores of thingstheycould not do was not enough, tarnished as it was by a misgiving that, by some secret mystery of breeding, some freemasonry of fashion, he was not one of them, and that this awkward fact was suspended over him for life, to arrest his course in the hour of success, and balk him at the very moment of victory.
‘Till a man’s adoption amongst them is ratified by a marriage, he is not safe,’ muttered he. ‘Till the fate and future of one of their own is embarked in the same boat with himself, they’ll not grieve over his shipwreck.’
Could he but call Lady Maude his wife! Was this possible? There were classes in which affections went for much, where there was such a thing as engaging these same affections, and actually pledging all hope of happiness in life on the faith of such engagements. These, it is true, were the sentiments that prevailed in humbler walks of life, amongst those lowly-born people whose births and marriages were not chronicled in gilt-bound volumes. The Lady Maudes of the world, whatever imprudences they might permit themselves, certainly never ‘fell in love.’ Condition and place in the world were far too serious things to be made the sport of sentiment. Love was a very proper thing in three-volume novels, and Mr. Mudie drove a roaring trade in it; but in the well-bred world, immersed in all its engagements, triple-deep in its projects and promises for pleasure, where was the time, where the opportunity, for this pleasant fooling? That luxurious selfishness in which people delight to plan a future life, and agree to think that they have in themselves what can confront narrow fortune and difficulty—these had no place in the lives of persons of fashion! In that coquetry of admiration and flattery which in the language of slang is called spooning, young persons occasionally got so far acquainted that they agreed to be married, pretty much as they agreed to waltz or to polka together; but it was always with the distinct understanding that they were doing what mammas would approve of, and family solicitors of good conscience could ratify. No tyrannical sentimentality, no uncontrollable gush of sympathy, no irresistible convictions about all future happiness being dependent on one issue, overbore these natures, and made them insensible to title, and rank, and station, and settlements.
In one word, Atlee, after due consideration, satisfied his mind that, though a man might gain the affections of the doctor’s daughter or the squire’s niece, and so establish him as an element of her happiness that friends would overlook all differences of fortune, and try to make some sort of compromise with Fate, all these were unsuited to the sphere in which Lady Maude moved. It was, indeed, a realm where this coinage did not circulate. To enable him to address her with any prospect of success, he should be able to show—ay, and to show argumentatively—that she was, in listening to him, about to do something eminently prudent and worldly-wise. She must, in short, be in a position to show her friends and ‘society’ that she had not committed herself to anything wilful or foolish—had not been misled by a sentiment or betrayed by a sympathy; and that the well-bred questioner who inquired, ‘Why did she marry Atlee?’ should be met by an answer satisfactory and convincing.
In the various ways he canvassed the question and revolved it with himself, there was one consideration which, if I were at all concerned for his character for gallantry, I should be reluctant to reveal; but as I feel little interest on this score, I am free to own was this. He remembered that as Lady Maude was no longer in her first youth, there was reason to suppose she might listen to addresses now which, some years ago, would have met scant favour in her eyes.
In the matrimonial Lloyd’s, if there were such a body, she would not have figured A No. 1; and the risks of entering the conjugal state have probably called for an extra premium. Atlee attached great importance to this fact; but it was not the less a matter which demanded the greatest delicacy of treatment. He must know it, and he must not know it. He must see that she had been the belle of many seasons, and he must pretend to regard her as fresh to the ways of life, and new to society. He trusted a good deal to his tact to do this, for while insinuating to her the possible future of such a man as himself—the high place, and the great rewards which, in all likelihood, awaited him—there would come an opportune moment to suggest, that to any one less gifted, less conversant with knowledge of life than herself, such reasonings could not be addressed.
‘It could never be,’ cried he aloud; ‘to some miss fresh from the schoolroom and the governess, I could dare to talk a language only understood by those who have been conversant with high questions, and moved in the society of thoughtful talkers.’
There is no quality so dangerous to eulogise as experience, and Atlee thought long over this. One determination or another must speedily be come to. If there was no likelihood of success with Lady Maude, he must not lose his chances with the Greek girl. The sum, whatever it might be, which her father should obtain for his secret papers, would constitute a very respectable portion. ‘I have a stronger reason to fight for liberal terms,’ thought he, ‘than the Prince Kostalergi imagines; and, fortunately, that fine parental trait, that noble desire to make a provision for his child, stands out so clearly in my brief, I should be a sorry advocate if I could not employ it.’
In the few words that passed between Lord Danesbury and himself on arriving, he learned that there was but little chance of winning his election for the borough. Indeed, he bore the disappointment jauntily and good-humouredly. That great philosophy of not attaching too much importance to any one thing in life, sustained him in every venture. ‘Bet on the field—never back the favourite,’ was his formula for inculcating the wisdom of trusting to the general game of life, rather than to any particular emergency. ‘Back the field,’ he would say, ‘and you must be unlucky, or you’ll come right in the long run.’
They dined that day alone, that is, they were but three at table; and Atlee enjoyed the unspeakable pleasure of hearing them talk with the freedom and unconstraint people only indulge in when ‘at home.’ Lord Danesbury discussed confidential questions of political importance: told how his colleagues agreed in this, or differed on that; adverted to the nice points of temperament which made one man hopeful and that other despondent or distrustful; he exposed the difficulties they had to meet in the Commons, and where the Upper House was intractable; and even went so far in his confidences as to admit where the criticisms of the Press were felt to be damaging to the administration.
‘The real danger of ridicule,’ said he, ‘is not the pungency of the satire, it is the facility with which it is remembered and circulated. The man who reads the strong leader in theTimesmay have some general impression of being convinced, but he cannot repeat its arguments or quote its expressions. The pasquinade or the squib gets a hold on the mind, and in its very drollery will ensure its being retained there.’
Atlee was not a little gratified to hear that this opinion was delivered apropos to a short paper of his own, whose witty sarcasms on the Cabinet were exciting great amusement in town, and much curiosity as to the writer.
‘He has not seen “The Whitebait Dinner” yet,’ said Lady Maude; ‘the cleverestjeu d’espritof the day.’
‘Ay, or of any day,’ broke in Lord Danesbury. ‘Even theAnti-Jacobinhas nothing better. The notion is this. The Devil happens to be taking a holiday, and he is in town just at the time of the Ministerial dinner, and hearing that he is at Claridge’s, the Cabinet, ashamed at the little attention bestowed on a crowned head, ask him down to Greenwich. He accepts, and to kill an hour—