The news of Nina’s engagement to Walpole soon spread through the castle at Kilgobbin, and gave great satisfaction; even the humbler members of the household were delighted to think there would be a wedding and all its appropriate festivity.
When the tidings at length arrived at Miss O’Shea’s room, so reviving were the effects upon her spirits, that the old lady insisted she should be dressed and carried down to the drawing-room that the bridegroom might be presented to her in all form.
Though Nina herself chafed at such a proceeding, and called it a most ‘insufferable pretension,’ she was perhaps not sorry secretly at the opportunity afforded herself to let the tiresome old woman guess how she regarded her, and what might be their future relations towards each other. ‘Not indeed,’ added she, ‘that we are likely ever to meet again, or that I should recognise her beyond a bow if we should.’
As for Kearney, the announcement that Miss Betty was about to appear in public filled him with unmixed terror, and he muttered drearily as he went, ‘There’ll be wigs on the green for this.’ Nor was Walpole himself pleased at the arrangement. Like most men in his position, he could not be brought to see the delicacy or the propriety of being paraded as an object of public inspection, nor did he perceive the fitness of that display of trinkets which he had brought with him as presents, and the sight of which had become a sort of public necessity.
Not the least strange part of the whole procedure was that no one could tell where or how or with whom it originated. It was like one of those movements which are occasionally seen in political life, where, without the direct intervention of any precise agent, a sort of diffused atmosphere of public opinion suffices to produce results and effect changes that all are ready to disavow but to accept.
The mere fact of the pleasure the prospect afforded to Miss Betty prevented Kate from offering opposition to what she felt to be both bad in taste and ridiculous.
‘That old lady imagines, I believe, that I am to come down like aprétenduin a French vaudeville—dressed in a tail-coat, with a white tie and white gloves, and perhaps receive her benediction. She mistakes herself, she mistakes us. If there was a casket of uncouth old diamonds, or some marvellous old point lace to grace the occasion, we might play our parts with a certain decorous hypocrisy; but to be stared at through a double eye-glass by a snuffy old woman in black mittens, is more than one is called on to endure—eh, Lockwood?’
‘I don’t know. I think I’d go through it all gladly to have the occasion.’
‘Have a little patience, old fellow, it will all come right. My worthy relatives—for I suppose I can call them so now—are too shrewd people to refuse the offer of such a fellow as you. They have that native pride that demands a certain amount of etiquette and deference. They must not seem to rise too eagerly to the fly; but only give them time—give them time, Lockwood.’
‘Ay, but the waiting in this uncertainty is terrible to me.’
‘Let it be certainty, then, and for very little I’ll ensure you! Bear this in mind, my dear fellow, and you’ll see how little need there is for apprehension. You—and the men like you—snug fellows with comfortable estates and no mortgages, unhampered by ties and uninfluenced by connections, are a species of plant that is rare everywhere, but actually never grew at all in Ireland, where every one spent double his income, and seldom dared to move a step without a committee of relations. Old Kearney has gone through that fat volume of the gentry and squirearchy of England last night, and from Sir Simon de Lockwood, who was killed at Creçy, down to a certain major in the Carbineers, he knows you all.’
‘I’ll bet you a thousand they say No.’
‘I’ve not got a thousand to pay if I should lose, but I’ll lay a pony—two, if you like—that you are an accepted man this day—ay, before dinner.’
‘If I only thought so!’
‘Confound it—you don’t pretend you are in love!’
‘I don’t know whether I am or not, but I do know how I should like to bring that nice girl back to Hampshire, and install her at the Dingle. I’ve a tidy stable, some nice shooting, a good trout-stream, and then I should have the prettiest wife in the county.’
‘Happy dog! Yours is the real philosophy of life. The fellows who are realistic enough to reckon up the material elements of their happiness—who have little to speculate on and less to unbelieve—they are right.’
‘If you mean that I’ll never break my heart because I don’t get in for the county, that’s true—I don’t deny it. But come, tell me, is it all settled about your business? Has the uncle been asked?—has he spoken?’
‘He has been asked and given his consent. My distinguished father-in-law, the prince, has been telegraphed to this morning, and his reply may be here to-night or to-morrow. At all events, we are determined that even should he prove adverse, we shall not be deterred from our wishes by the caprice of a parent who has abandoned us.’
‘It’s what people would call a love-match.’
‘I sincerely trust it is. If her affections were not inextricably engaged, it is not possible that such a girl could pledge her future to a man as humble as myself?’
‘That is, she is very much in love withyou?’
‘I hope the astonishment of your question does not arise from its seeming difficulty of belief?’
‘No, not so much that, but I thought there might have been a little heroics, or whatever it is, on your side.’
‘Most dull dragoon, do you not know that, so long as a man spoons, he can talk of his affection for a woman; but that, once she is about to be his wife, or is actually his wife, he limits his avowals toherlove forhim?’
‘I never heard that before. I say, what a swell you are this morning. The cock-pheasants will mistake you for one of them.’
‘Nothing can be simpler, nothing quieter, I trust, than a suit of dark purple knickerbockers; and you may see that my thread stockings and my coarse shoes presuppose a stroll in the plantations, where, indeed, I mean to smoke my morning cigar.’
‘She’ll make you give up tobacco, I suppose?’
‘Nothing of the kind—a thorough woman of the world enforces no such penalties as these. True free-trade is the great matrimonial maxim, and for people of small means it is inestimable. The formula may be stated thus—‘Dine at the best houses, and give tea at your own.’
What other precepts of equal wisdom Walpole was prepared to enunciate were lost to the world by a message informing him that Miss Betty was in the drawing-room, and the family assembled, to see him.
Cecil Walpole possessed a very fair stock of that useful quality called assurance; but he had no more than he needed to enter that large room, where the assembled family sat in a half-circle, and stand to be surveyed by Miss O’Shea’s eye-glass, unabashed. Nor was the ordeal the less trying as he overheard the old lady ask her neighbour, ‘if he wasn’t the image of the Knave of Diamonds.’
‘I thought you were the other man!’ said she curtly, as he made his bow.
‘I deplore the disappointment, madam—even though I do not comprehend it.’
‘It was the picture, the photograph, of the other man I saw—a fine, tall, dark man, with long moustaches.’
‘The fine, tall, dark man, with the long moustaches, is in the house, and will be charmed to be presented to you.’
‘Ay, ay! presented is all very fine; but that won’t make him the bridegroom,’ said she, with a laugh.
‘I sincerely trust it will not, madam.’
‘And it is you, then, are Major Walpole?’
‘Mr. Walpole, madam—my friend Lockwood is the major.’
‘To be sure. I have it right now. You are the young man that got into that unhappy scrape, and got the Lord-Lieutenant turned away—’
‘I wonder how you endure this,’ burst out Nina, as she arose and walked angrily towards a window.
‘I don’t think I caught what the young lady said; but if it was, that what cannot be cured must be endured, it is true enough; and I suppose that they’ll get over your blunder as they have done many another.’
‘I live in that hope, madam.’
‘Not but it’s a bad beginning in public life; and a stupid mistake hangs long on a man’s memory. You’re young, however, and people are generous enough to believe it might be a youthful indiscretion.’
‘You give me great comfort, madam.’
‘And now you are going to risk another venture?’
‘I sincerely trust on safer grounds.’
‘That’s what they all think. I never knew a man that didn’t believe he drew the prize in matrimony. Ask him, however, six months after he’s tied. Say, “What do you think of your ticket now?” Eh, Mat Kearney? It doesn’t take twenty or thirty years quarrelling and disputing to show one that a lottery with so many blanks is just a swindle.’
A loud bang of the door, as Nina flounced out in indignation, almost shook the room.
‘There’s a temper you’ll know more of yet, young gentleman; and, take my word for it, it’s only in stage-plays that a shrew is ever tamed.’
‘I declare,’ cried Dick, losing all patience, ‘I think Miss O’Shea is too unsparing of us all. We have our faults, I’m sure; but public correction will not make us more comfortable.’
‘It wasn’tyourcomfort I was thinking of, young man; and if I thought of your poor father’s, I’d have advised him to put you out an apprentice. There’s many a light business—like stationery, or figs, or children’s toys—and they want just as little capital as capacity.’
‘Miss Betty,’ said Kearney stiffly, ‘this is not the time nor the place for these discussions. Mr. Walpole was polite enough to present himself here to-day to have the honour of making your acquaintance, and to announce his future marriage.’
‘A great event for us all—and we’re proud of it! It’s what the newspapers will call a great day for the Bog of Allen. Eh, Mat? The princess—God forgive me, but I’m always calling her Costigan—but the princess will be set down niece to Lord Kilgobbin; and if you’—and she addressed Walpole—‘haven’t a mock-title and a mock-estate, you’ll be the only one without them!’
‘I don’t think any one will deny us our tempers,’ cried Kearney.
‘Here’s Lockwood,’ cried Walpole, delighted to see his friend enter, though he as quickly endeavoured to retreat.
‘Come in, major,’ said Kearney. ‘We’re all friends here. Miss O’Shea, this is Major Lockwood, of the Carbineers—Miss O’Shea.’
Lockwood bowed stiffly, but did not speak.
‘Be attentive to the old woman,’ whispered Walpole. ‘A word from her will make your affair all right.’
‘I have been very desirous to have had the honour of this introduction, madam,’ said Lockwood, as he seated himself at her side.
‘Was not that a clever diversion I accomplished with “the Heavy “?’ said Walpole, as he drew away Kearney and his son into a window.
‘I never heard her much worse than to-day,’ said Dick.
‘I don’t know,’ hesitated Kilgobbin. ‘I suspect she is breaking. There is none of the sustained virulence I used to remember of old. She lapses into half-mildness at moments.’
‘I own I did not catch them, nor, I’m afraid, did Nina,’ said Dick. ‘Look there! I’ll be shot if she’s not giving your friend the major a lesson! When she performs in that way with her hands, you may swear she is didactic.’
‘I think I’ll go to his relief,’ said Walpole; ‘but I own it’s a case for the V.C.’
As Walpole drew nigh, he heard her saying: ‘Marry one of your own race, and you will jog on well enough. Marry a Frenchwoman or a Spaniard, and she’ll lead her own life, and be very well satisfied; but a poor Irish girl, with a fresh heart and a joyous temper—what is to become of her, with your dull habits and your dreary intercourse, your county society and your Chinese manners!’
‘Miss O’Shea is telling me that I must not look for a wife among her countrywomen,’ said Lockwood, with a touching attempt to smile.
‘What I overheard was not encouraging,’ said Walpole; ‘but I think Miss O’Shea takes a low estimate of our social temperament.’
‘Nothing of the kind! All I say is, you’ll do mighty well for each other, or, for aught I know, you might intermarry with the Dutch or the Germans; but it’s a downright shame to unite your slow sluggish spirits with the sparkling brilliancy and impetuous joy of an Irish girl. That’s a union I’d never consent to.’
‘I hope this is no settled resolution,’ said Walpole, speaking in a low whisper; ‘for I want to bespeak your especial influence in my friend’s behalf. Major Lockwood is a most impassioned admirer of Miss Kearney, and has already declared as much to her father.’
‘Come over here, Mat Kearney! come over here this moment!’ cried she, half wild with excitement. ‘What new piece of roguery, what fresh intrigue is this? Will you dare to tell me you had a proposal for Kate, for my own god-daughter, without even so much as telling me?’
‘My dear Miss Betty, be calm, be cool for one minute, and I’ll tell you everything.’
‘Ay, when I’ve found it out, Mat!’
‘I profess I don’t think my friend’s pretensions are discussed with much delicacy, time and place considered,’ said Walpole.
‘We have something to think of as well as delicacy, young man: there’s a woman’s happiness to be remembered.’
‘Here it is, now, the whole business,’ said Kearney. ‘The major there asked me yesterday to get my daughter’s consent to his addresses.’
‘And you never told me,’ cried Miss Betty.
‘No, indeed, nor herself neither; for after I turned it over in my mind, I began to see it wouldn’t do—’
‘How do you mean not do?’ asked Lockwood.
‘Just let me finish. What I mean is this—if a man wants to marry an Irish girl, he mustn’t begin by asking leave to make love to her—’
‘Mat’s right!’ cried the old lady stoutly.
‘And above all, he oughtn’t to think that the short cut to her heart is through his broad acres.’
‘Mat’s right—quite right!’
‘And besides this, that the more a man dwells on his belongings, and the settlements, and such like, the more he seems to say, “I may not catch your fancy in everything, I may not ride as boldly or dance as well as somebody else, but never mind—you’re making a very prudent match, and there is a deal of pure affection in the Three per Cents.”’
‘And I’ll give you another reason,’ said Miss Betty resolutely. ‘Kate Kearney cannot have two husbands, and I’ve made her promise to marry my nephew this morning.’
‘What, without any leave of mine?’ exclaimed Kearney.
‘Just so, Mat. She’ll marry him if you give your consent; but whether you will or not, she’ll never marry another.’
‘Is there, then, a real engagement?’ whispered Walpole to Kearney. ‘Has my friend here got his answer?’
‘He’ll not wait for another,’ said Lockwood haughtily, as he arose. ‘I’m for town, Cecil,’ whispered he.
‘So shall I be this evening,’ replied Walpole, in the same tone. ‘I must hurry over to London and see Lord Danesbury. I’ve my troubles too.’ And so saying, he drew his arm within the major’s, and led him away; while Miss Betty, with Kearney on one side of her and Dick on the other, proceeded to recount the arrangement she had made to make over the Barn and the estate to Gorman, it being her own intention to retire altogether from the world and finish her days in the ‘Retreat.’
‘And a very good thing to do, too,’ said Kearney, who was too much impressed with the advantages of the project to remember his politeness.
‘I have had enough of it, Mat,’ added she, in a lugubrious tone; ‘and it’s all backbiting, and lying, and mischief-making, and what’s worse, by the people who might live quietly and let others do the same!’
‘What you say is true as the Bible.’
‘It may be hard to do it, Mat Kearney, but I’ll pray for them in my hours of solitude, and in that blessed Retreat I’ll ask for a blessing on yourself, and that your heart, hard and cruel and worldly as it is now, may be changed; and that in your last days—maybe on the bed of sickness—when you are writhing and twisting with pain, with a bad heart and a worse conscience—when you’ll have nobody but hirelings near you—hirelings that will be robbing you before your eyes, and not waiting till the breath leaves you—when even the drop of drink to cool your lips—’
‘Don’t—don’t go on that way, Miss Betty. I’ve a cold shivering down the spine of my back this minute, and a sickness creeping all over me.’
‘I’m glad of it. I’m glad that my words have power over your wicked old nature—if it’s not too late.’
‘If it’s miserable and wretched you wanted to make me, don’t fret about your want of success; though whether it all comes too late, I cannot tell you.’
‘We’ll leave that to St. Joseph.’
‘Do so! do so!’ cried he eagerly, for he had a shrewd suspicion he would have better chances of mercy at any hands than her own.
‘As for Gorman, if I find that he has any notions about claiming an acre of the property, I’ll put it all into Chancery, and the suit will outlivehim; but if he owns he is entirely dependent on my bounty, I’ll settle the Barn and the land on him, and the deed shall be signed the day he marries your daughter. People tell you that you can’t take your money with you into the next world, Mat Kearney, and a greater lie was never uttered. Thanks to the laws of England, and the Court of Equity in particular, it’s the very thing you can do! Ay, and you can provide, besides, that everybody but the people that had a right to it shall have a share. So I say to Gorman O’Shea, beware what you are at, and don’t go on repeating that stupid falsehood about not carrying your debentures into the next world.’
‘You are a wise woman, and you know life well,’ said he solemnly.
‘And if I am, it’s nothing to sigh over, Mr. Kearney. One is grateful for mercies, but does not groan over them like rheumatism or the lumbago.’
‘Maybe I ‘in a little out of spirits to-day.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder if you were. They tell me you sat over your wine, with that tall man, last night, till nigh one o’clock, and it’s not at your time of life that you can do these sort of excesses with impunity; you had a good constitution once, and there’s not much left of it.’
‘My patience, I’m grateful to see, has not quite deserted me.’
‘I hope there’s other of your virtues you can be more sure of,’ said she, rising, ‘for if I was asked your worst failing, I’d say it was your irritability.’ And with a stern frown, as though to confirm the judicial severity of her words, she nodded her head to him and walked away.
It was only then that Kearney discovered he was left alone, and that Dick had stolen away, though when or how he could not say.
‘I’m glad the boy was not listening to her, for I’m downright ashamed that I bore it,’ was his final reflection as he strolled out to take a walk in the plantation.
Though the dinner-party that day at Kilgobbin Castle was deficient in the persons of Lockwood and Walpole, the accession of Joe Atlee to the company made up in a great measure for the loss. He arrived shortly before dinner was announced, and even in the few minutes in the drawing-room, his gay and lively manner, his pleasant flow of small talk, dashed with the lightest of epigrams, and that marvellous variety he possessed, made every one delighted with him.
‘I met Walpole and Lockwood at the station, and did my utmost to make them turn back with me. You may laugh, Lord Kilgobbin, but in doing the honours of another man’s house, as I was at that moment, I deem myself without a rival.’
‘I wish with all my heart you had succeeded; there is nothing I like as much as a well-filled table,’ said Kearney.
‘Not that their air and manner,’ resumed Joe, ‘impressed me strongly with the exuberance of their spirits; a pair of drearier dogs I have not seen for some time, and I believe I told them so.’
‘Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it?’ asked Dick.
‘Except on the general grounds of coming away from such fascinating society. Lockwood played sulky, and scarcely vouchsafed a word, and as for Walpole, he made some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn sensibilities—so like what one reads in a French novel, that the very sound of them betrays unreality.’
‘But was it, then, so very impossible to be sorry for leaving this?’ asked Nina calmly.
‘Certainly not for any man but Walpole.’
‘And why not Walpole?’
‘Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and read them so clearly; you to whom the secret anatomy of the “heart” is no mystery, and who understand how to trace the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his small nature. He might be miserable at being separated from himself—there could be no other estrangement would affecthim.’
‘This was not always your estimate of yourfriend,’ said Nina, with a marked emphasis of the last word.
‘Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first hour I met him. Since then, some space of time has intervened, and though it has made no change in him, I hope it has dealt otherwise with me. I have at least reached the point in life where men not only have convictions but avow them.’
‘Come, come; I can remember what precious good-luck you called it to make his acquaintance,’ cried Dick, half angrily.
‘I don’t deny it. I was very nigh drowning at the time, and it was the first plank I caught hold of. I am very grateful to him for the rescue; but I owe him more gratitude for the opportunity the incident gave me to see these men in their intimacy—to know, and know thoroughly, what is the range, what the stamp of those minds by which states are ruled and masses are governed. Through Walpole I knew his master; and through the master I have come to know the slipshod intelligences which, composed of official detail, House of Commons’ gossip, andTimes’ leaders, are accepted by us as statesmen. And if—’ A very supercilious smile on Nina’s mouth arrested him in the current of his speech, and he said, ‘I know, of course, I know the question you are too polite to ask, but which quivers on your lip: “Who is the gifted creature that sees all this incompetence and insufficiency around him?” And I am quite ready to tell you. It is Joseph Atlee—Joseph Atlee, who knows that when he and others like him—for we are a strong coterie—stop the supply of ammunition, these gentlemen must cease firing. Let theDébatsand theTimes, theRevue des Deux Mondesand theSaturday, and a few more that I need not stop to enumerate, strike work, and let us see how much of original thought you will obtain from your Cabinet sages! It is in the clash and collision of the thinkers outside of responsibility that these world-revered leaders catch the fire that lights up their policy. TheTimesmade the Crimean blunder. TheSièclecreated the Mexican fiasco. TheKreuz Zeitunggave the first impulse to the Schleswig-Holstein imbroglio; and if I mistake not, the “review” in the lastDiplomatic Chroniclewill bear results of which he who now speaks to you will not disown the parentage.’
‘The saints be praised! here’s dinner,’ exclaimed Kearney, ‘or this fellow would talk us into a brain-fever. Kate is dining with Miss Betty again—God bless her for it,’ muttered he as he gave his arm to Nina, and led the way.
‘I’ve got you a commission as a “peeler,” Dick,’ said Joe, as they moved along. ‘You’ll have to prove that you can read and write, which is more than they would ask of you if you were going into the Cabinet; but we live in an intellectual age, and we test all the cabin-boys, and it is only the steersman we take on trust.’
Though Nina was eager to resent Atlee’s impertinence on Walpole, she could not help feeling interested and amused by his sketches of his travels.
If, in speaking of Greece, he only gave the substance of the article he had written for theRevue des Deux Mondes, as the paper was yet unpublished all the remarks were novel, and the anecdotes fresh and sparkling. The tone of light banter and raillery in which he described public life in Greece and Greek statesmen, might have lost some of its authority had any one remembered to count the hours the speaker had spent in Athens; and Nina was certainly indignant at the hazardous effrontery of the criticisms. It was not, then, without intention that she arose to retire while Atlee was relating an interesting story of brigandage, and he—determined to repay the impertinence in kind—continued to recount his history as he arose to open the door for her to pass out. Her insolent look as she swept by was met by a smile of admiration on his part that actually made her cheek tingle with anger.
Old Kearney dozed off gently, under the influence of names of places and persons that did not interest him, and the two young men drew their chairs to the fire, and grew confidential at once.
‘I think you have sent my cousin away in bad humour,’ said Dick.
‘I see it,’ said Joe, as he slowly puffed his cigar. ‘That young lady’s head has been so cruelly turned by flattery of late, that the man who does not swing incense before her affronts her.’
‘Yes; but you went out of your way to provoke her. It is true she knows little of Greece or Greeks, but it offends her to hear them slighted or ridiculed; and you took pains to do both.’
‘Contemptible little country! with a mock-army, a mock-treasury, and a mock-chamber. The only thing real is the debt and the brigandage.’
‘But why tell her so? You actually seemed bent on irritating her.’
‘Quite true—so I was. My dear Dick, you have some lessons to learn in life, and one of them is that, just as it is bad heraldry to put colour on colour, it is an egregious blunder to follow flattery by flattery. The woman who has been spoiled by over-admiration must be approached with something else as unlike it as may be—pique—annoy—irritate—outrage, but take care that you interest her Let her only come to feel what a very tiresome thing mere adulation is, and she will one day value your two or three civil speeches as gems of priceless worth. It is exactly because I deeply desire to gain her affections, I have begun in this way.’
‘You have come too late.’
‘How do you mean too late—she is not engaged?’
‘She is engaged—she is to be married to Walpole.’
‘To Walpole!’
‘Yes; he came over a few days ago to ask her. There is some question now—I don’t well understand it—about some family consent, or an invitation—something, I believe, that Nina insists on, to show the world how his family welcome her amongst them; and it is for this he has gone to London, but to be back in eight or nine days, the wedding to take place towards the end of the month.’
‘Is he very much in love?’
‘I should say he is.’
‘And she? Of course she could not possibly care for a fellow like Walpole?’
‘I don’t see why not. He is very much the stamp of man girls admire.’
‘Not girls like Nina; not girls who aspire to a position in life, and who know that the little talents of the salon no more make a man of the world than the tricks of the circus will make a foxhunter. These ambitious women—she is one of them—will marry a hopeless idiot if he can bring wealth and rank and a great name; but they will not take a brainless creature who has to work his way up in the world. If she has accepted Walpole, there is pique in it, or ennui, or that uneasy desire of change that girls suffer from like a malady.’
‘I cannot tell you why, but I know she has accepted him.’
‘Women are not insensible to the value of second thoughts.’
‘You mean she might throw him over—might jilt him?’
‘I’ll not employ the ugly word that makes the wrong it is only meant to indicate; but there are few of our resolves in life to which we might not move amendment, and the changed opinion a woman forms of a man before marriage would become a grievous injury if it happened after.’
‘But must she of necessity change?’
‘If she marry Walpole, I should say certainly. If a girl has fair abilities and a strong temper—and Nina has a good share of each—she will endure faults, actual vices, in a man, but she’ll not stand littleness. Walpole has nothing else; and so I hope to prove to her to-morrow and the day after—in fact, during those eight or ten days you tell me he will be absent.’
‘Will she let you? Will she listen to you?’
‘Not at first—at least, not willingly, or very easily; but I will show her, by numerous little illustrations and even fables, where these small people not only spoil their fortunes in life, but spoil life itself; and what an irreparable blunder it is to link companionship with one of them. I will sometimes make her laugh, and I may have to make her cry—it will not be easy, but I shall do it—I shall certainly make her thoughtful; and if you can do this day by day, so that a woman will recur to the same theme pretty much in the same spirit, you must be a sorry steersman, Master Dick, but you will know how to guide these thoughts and trace the channel they shall follow.’
‘And supposing, which I do not believe, that you could get her to break with Walpole, what couldyouoffer her?’
‘Myself!’
‘Inestimable boon, doubtless; but what of fortune—position or place in life?’
‘The first Napoleon used to say that the “power of the unknown number was incommensurable”; and so I don’t despair of showing her that a man like myself may be anything.’
Dick shook his head doubtingly, and the other went on: ‘In this round game we call life it is all “brag.” The fellow with the worst card in the pack, if he’ll only risk his head on it, keep a bold face to the world and his own counsel, will be sure to win. Bear in mind, Dick, that for some time back I have been keeping the company of these great swells who sit highest in the Synagogue, and dictate to us small Publicans. I have listened to their hesitating counsels and their uncertain resolves; I have seen the blotted despatches and equivocal messages given, to be disavowed if needful; I have assisted at those dress rehearsals where speech was to follow speech, and what seemed an incautious avowal by one was to be “improved” into a bold declaration by another “in another place”; in fact, my good friend, I have been near enough to measure the mighty intelligences that direct us, and if I were not a believer in Darwin, I should be very much shocked for what humanity was coming to. It is no exaggeration that I say, if you were to be in the Home Office, and I at the Foreign Office, without our names being divulged, there is not a man or woman in England would be the wiser or the worse; though if either of us were to take charge of the engine of the Holyhead line, there would be a smash or an explosion before we reached Rugby.’
‘All that will not enable you to make a settlement on Nina Kostalergi.’
‘No; but I’ll marry her all the same.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Will you have a bet on it, Dick? What will you wager?’
‘A thousand—ten, if I had it; but I’ll give you ten pounds on it, which is about as much as either of us could pay.’
‘Speak for yourself, Master Dick. As Robert Macaire says, “Je viens de toucher mes dividendes,” and I am in no want of money. The fact is, so long as a man can pay for certain luxuries in life, he is well off: the strictly necessary takes care of itself.’
‘Does it? I should like to know how.’
‘With your present limited knowledge of life, I doubt if I could explain it to you, but I will try one of these mornings. Meanwhile, let us go into the drawing-room and get mademoiselle to sing for us. She will sing, I take it?’
‘Of course—if asked by you.’ And there was the very faintest tone of sneer in the words.
And they did go, and mademoiselle did sing all that Atlee could ask her for, and she was charming in every way that grace and beauty and the wish to please could make her. Indeed, to such extent did she carry her fascinations that Joe grew thoughtful at last, and muttered to himself, ‘There is vendetta in this. It is only a woman knows how to make a vengeance out of her attractions.’
‘Why are you so serious, Mr. Atlee?’ asked she at last.
‘I was thinking—I mean, I was trying to think—yes, I remember it now,’ muttered he. ‘I have had a letter for you all this time in my pocket.’
‘A letter from Greece?’ asked she impatiently.
‘No—at least I suspect not. It was given me as I drove through the bog by a barefooted boy, who had trotted after the car for miles, and at length overtook us by the accident of the horse picking up a stone in his hoof. He said it was for “some one at the castle,” and I offered to take charge of it—here it is,’ and he produced a square-shaped envelope of common coarse-looking paper, sealed with red wax, and a shamrock for impress.
‘A begging-letter, I should say, from the outside,’ said Dick.
‘Except that there is not one so poor as to ask aid from me,’ added Nina, as she took the document, glanced at the writing, and placed it in her pocket.
As they separated for the night, and Dick trotted up the stairs at Atlee’s side, he said, ‘I don’t think, after all, my ten pounds is so safe as I fancied.’
‘Don’t you?’ replied Joe. ‘My impressions are all the other way, Dick. It is her courtesy that alarms me. The effort to captivate where there is no stake to win, means mischief. She’ll make me in love with her whether I will or not.’ The bitterness of his tone, and the impatient bang he gave his door as he passed in, betrayed more of temper than was usual for him to display, and as Dick sought his room, he muttered to himself, ‘I’m glad to see that these over-cunning fellows are sure to meet their match, and get beaten even at the game of their own invention.’
It was no uncommon thing for the tenants to address petitions and complaints in writing to Kate, and it occurred to Nina as not impossible that some one might have bethought him of entreating her intercession in their favour. The look of the letter, and the coarse wax, and the writing, all in a measure strengthened this impression, and it was in the most careless of moods she broke the envelope, scarcely caring to look for the name of the writer, whom she was convinced must be unknown to her.
She had just let her hair fall freely down on her neck and shoulders, and was seated in a deep chair before her fire, as she opened the paper and read, ‘Mademoiselle Kostalergi.’ This beginning, so unlikely for a peasant, made her turn for the name, and she read, in a large full hand, the words ‘DANIEL DONOGAN.’ So complete was her surprise, that to satisfy herself there was no trick or deception, she examined the envelope and the seal, and reflected for some minutes over the mode in which the document had come to her hands. Atlee’s story was a very credible one: nothing more likely than that the boy was charged to deliver the letter at the castle, and simply sought to spare himself so many miles of way, or it might be that he was enjoined to give it to the first traveller he met on his road to Kilgobbin. Nina had little doubt that if Atlee guessed or had reason to know the writer, he would have treated the letter as a secret missive which would give him a certain power over her.
These thoughts did not take her long, and she turned once more to the letter. ‘Poor fellow,’ said she aloud, ‘why does he write tome?’ And her own voice sent back its surmises to her; and as she thought over him standing on the lonely road, his clasped hands before him, and his hair wafted wildly back from his uncovered head, two heavy tears rolled slowly down her cheeks and dropped upon her neck. ‘I am sure he loved me—I know he loved me,’ muttered she, half aloud. ‘I have never seen in any eye the same expression that his wore as he lay that morning in the grass. It was not veneration, it was genuine adoration. Had I been a saint and wanted worship, there was the very offering that I craved—a look of painful meaning, made up of wonder and devotion, a something that said: take what course you may, be wilful, be wayward, be even cruel, I am your slave. You may not think me worthy of a thought, you may be so indifferent as to forget me utterly, but my life from this hour has but one spell to charm, one memory to sustain it. It needed not his last words to me to say that my image would lay on his heart for ever. Poor fellow,Ineed not have been added to his sorrows, he has had his share of trouble withoutme!’
It was some time ere she could return to the letter, which ran thus:—
‘MADEMOISELLE KOSTALERGI,—You once rendered me a great service—not alone at some hazard to yourself, but by doing what must have cost you sorely. It is nowmyturn; and if the act of repayment is not equal to the original debt, let me ask you to believe that it taxesmystrength even more thanyourgenerosity once taxed your own.
‘I came here a few days since in the hope that I might see you before I leave Ireland for ever; and while waiting for some fortunate chance, I learned that you were betrothed and to be married to the young gentleman who lies ill at Kilgobbin, and whose approaching trial at the assizes is now the subject of so much discussion. I will not tell you—I have no right to tell you—the deep misery with which these tidings filled me. It was no use to teach my heart how vain and impossible were all my hopes with regard to you. It was to no purpose that I could repeat over aloud to myself how hopeless my pretensions must be. My love for you had become a religion, and what I could deny to a hope, I could still believe. Take that hope away, and I could not imagine how I should face my daily life, how interest myself in its ambitions, and even care to live on.
‘These sad confessions cannot offend you, coming from one even as humble as I am. They are all that are left me for consolation—they will soon be all I shall have for memory. The little lamp in the lowly shrine comforts the kneeling worshipper far more than it honours the saint; and the love I bear you is such as this. Forgive me if I have dared these utterances. To save him with whose fortunes your own are to be bound up became at once my object; and as I knew with what ingenuity and craft his ruin had been compassed, it required all my efforts to baffle his enemies. The National press and the National party have made a great cause of this trial, and determined that tenant-right should be vindicated in the person of this man Gill.
‘I have seen enough of what is intended here to be aware what mischief may be worked by hard swearing, a violent press, and a jury not insensible to public opinion—evils, if you like, but evils that are less of our own growing than the curse ill-government has brought upon us. It has been decided in certain councils—whose decrees are seldom gainsaid—that an example shall be made of Captain Gorman O’Shea, and that no effort shall be spared to make his case a terror and a warning to Irish landowners; how they attempt by ancient process of law to subvert the concessions we have wrung from our tyrants.
‘A jury to find him guilty will be sworn; and let us see the judge—in defiance of a verdict given from the jury-box, without a moment’s hesitation or the shadow of dissent—let us see the judge who will dare to diminish the severity of the sentence. This is the language, these are the very words of those who have more of the rule of Ireland in their hands than the haughty gentlemen, honourable and right honourable, who sit at Whitehall.
‘I have heard this opinion too often of late to doubt how much it is a fixed determination of the party; and until now—until I came here, and learned what interest his fate could have for me—I offered no opposition to these reasonings. Since then I have bestirred myself actively. I have addressed the committee here who have taken charge of the prosecution; I have written to the editors of the chief newspapers; I have even made a direct appeal to the leading counsel for the prosecution, and tried to persuade them that a victory here might cost us more than a defeat, and that the country at large, who submit with difficulty to the verdict of absolving juries, will rise with indignation at this evidence of a jury prepared to exercise a vindictive power, and actually make the law the agent of reprisal. I have failed in all—utterly failed. Some reproach me as faint-hearted and craven; some condescend to treat me as merely mistaken and misguided; and some are bold enough to hint that, though as a military authority I stand without rivalry, as a purely political adviser, my counsels are open to dispute.
‘I have still a power, however, through the organisation of which I am a chief; and by this power I have ordered Gill to appear before me, and in obedience to my commands, he will sail this night for America. With him will also leave the two other important witnesses in this cause; so that the only evidence against Captain O’Shea will be some of those against whom he has himself instituted a cross charge for assault. That the prosecution can be carried on with such testimony need not be feared. Our press will denounce the infamous arts by which these witnesses have been tampered with, and justice has been defeated. The insults they may hurl at our oppressors—for once unjustly—will furnish matter for the Opposition journals to inveigh against our present Government, and some good may come even of this. At all events, I shall have accomplished what I sought. I shall have saved from a prison the man I hate most on earth, the man who, robbing me of what never could be mine, robs me of every hope, of every ambition, making my love as worthless as my life! Have I not repaid you? Ask your heart which of us has done more for the other?
‘The contract on which Gill based his right as a tenant, and which would have sustained his action, is now in my hands; and I will—if you permit me—place it in yours. This may appear an ingenious device to secure a meeting with you; but though I long to see you once more, were it but a minute, I would not compass it by a fraud. If, then, you will not see me, I shall address the packet to you through the post.
‘I have finished. I have told you what it most concerns you to know, and what chiefly regards your happiness. I have done this as coldly and impassively, I hope, as though I had no other part in the narrative than that of the friend whose friendship had a blessed office. I have not told you of the beating heart that hangs over this paper, nor will I darken one bright moment of your fortune by the gloom of mine. If you will write me one line—a farewell if it must be—send it to the care of Adam Cobb, “Cross Keys,” Moate, where I shall find it up to Thursday next. If—and oh! how shall I bless you for it—if you will consent to see me, to say one word, to let me look on you once more, I shall go into my banishment with a bolder heart, as men go into battle with an amulet. DANIEL DONOGAN.’
‘Shall I show this to Kate?’ was the first thought of Nina as she laid the letter down. ‘Is it a breach of confidence to let another than myself read these lines? Assuredly they were meant for my eyes alone. Poor fellow!’ said she, once more aloud. ‘It was very noble in him to do this for one he could not but regard as a rival.’ And then she asked herself how far it might consist with honour to derive benefit from his mistake—since mistake it was—in believing O’Shea was her lover, and to be her future husband.
‘There can be little doubt Donogan would never have made the sacrifice had he known that I am about to marry Walpole.’ From this she rambled on to speculate on how far might Donogan’s conduct compromise or endanger him with his own party, and if—which she thought well probable—there was a distinct peril in what he was doing, whether he would have incurred that peril if he really knew the truth, and that it was not herself he was serving.
The more she canvassed these doubts, the more she found the difficulty of resolving them, nor indeed was there any other way than one—distinctly to ask Donogan if he would persist in his kind intentions when he knew that the benefit was to revert to her cousin and not to herself. So far as the evidence of Gill at the trial was concerned, the man’s withdrawal was already accomplished, but would Donogan be as ready to restore the lease, and would he, in fact, be as ready to confront the danger of all this interference, as at first? She could scarcely satisfy her mind how she would wish him to act in the contingency! She was sincerely fond of Kate, she knew all the traits of honesty and truth in that simple character, and she valued the very qualities of straightforwardness and direct purpose in which she knew she was herself deficient. She would have liked well to secure that dear girl’s happiness, and it would have been an exquisite delight to her to feel that she had been an aid to her welfare; and yet, with all this, there was a subtle jealousy that tortured her in thinking, ‘What will this man have done to prove his love forme? Where am I, and what are my interests in all this?’ There was a poison in this doubt that actually extended to a state of fever. ‘I must see him,’ she said at last, speaking aloud to herself. ‘I must let him know the truth. If what he proposes shall lead him to break with his party or his friends, it is well he should see for what and for whom he is doing it.’
And then she persuaded herself she would like to hear Donogan talk, as once before she had heard him talk, of his hopes and his ambitions. There was something in the high-sounding inspirations of the man, a lofty heroism in all he said, that struck a chord in her Greek nature. The cause that was so intensely associated with danger that life was always on the issue, was exactly the thing to excite her heart, and, like the trumpet-blast to the charger, she felt stirred to her inmost soul by whatever appealed to reckless daring and peril. ‘He shall tell me what he intends to do—his plans, his projects, and his troubles. He shall tell me of his hopes, what he desires in the future, and where he himself will stand when his efforts have succeeded; and oh!’ thought she, ‘are not the wild extravagances of these men better a thousand times than the well-turned nothings of the fine gentlemen who surround us? Are not their very risks and vicissitudes more manly teachings than the small casualties of the polished world? If life were all “salon,” taste perhaps might decide against them; but it is not all “salon,” or, if it were, it would be a poorer thing even than I think it!’ She turned to her desk as she said this, and wrote:—
‘DEAR MR. DONOGAN,—I wish to thank you in person for the great kindness you have shown me, though there is some mistake on your part in the matter. I cannot suppose you are able to come here openly, but if you will be in the garden on Saturday evening at 9 o’clock, I shall be there to meet you. I am, very truly yours,
‘NINA KOSTALERGI.’
‘Very imprudent—scarcely delicate—perhaps, all this, and for a girl who is to be married to another man in some three weeks hence, but I will tell Cecil Walpole all when he returns, and if he desires to be off his engagement, he shall have the liberty. I have one-half at least of the Bayard Legend, and if I cannot say I am “without reproach,” I am certainly without fear.’
The letter-bag lay in the hall, and Nina went down at once and deposited her letter in it; this done, she lay down on her bed, not to sleep, but to think over Donogan and his letter till daybreak.