‘One More Sitting I Must Have, Sir, for the Hair’
‘I can’t promise you, my dear. Peter Gill has been urging me to go over to Loughrea for the fair; and if we go, we ought to be there by Saturday, and have a quiet look at the stock before the sales begin.’
‘And are you going to be long away?’ said she poutingly, as she leaned over the back of his chair, and suffered her curls to fall half across his face.
‘I’ll be right glad to be back again,’ said he, pressing her head down till he could kiss her cheek, ‘right glad!’
The ‘Blue Goat’ in the small town of Moate is scarcely a model hostel. The entrance-hall is too much encumbered by tramps and beggars of various orders and ages, who not only resort there to take their meals and play at cards, but to divide the spoils and settle the accounts of their several ‘industries,’ and occasionally to clear off other scores which demand police interference. On the left is the bar; the right-hand being used as the office of a land-agent, is besieged by crowds of country-people, in whom, if language is to be trusted, the grievous wrongs of land-tenure are painfully portrayed—nothing but complaint, dogged determination, and resistance being heard on every side. Behind the bar is a long low-ceilinged apartment, the parlourpar excellence, only used by distinguished visitors, and reserved on one especial evening of the week for the meeting of the ‘Goats,’ as the members of a club call themselves—the chief, indeed the founder, being our friend Mathew Kearney, whose title of sovereignty was ‘Buck-Goat,’ and whose portrait, painted by a native artist and presented by the society, figured over the mantel-piece. The village Van Dyck would seem to have invested largely in carmine, and though far from parsimonious of it on the cheeks and the nose of his sitter, he was driven to work off some of his superabundant stock on the cravat, and even the hands, which, though amicably crossed in front of the white-waistcoated stomach, are fearfully suggestive of some recent deed of blood. The pleasant geniality of the countenance is, however, reassuring. Nor—except a decided squint, by which the artist had ambitiously attempted to convey a humoristic drollery to the expression—is there anything sinister in the portrait.
An inscription on the frame announces that this picture of their respected founder was presented, on his fiftieth birthday, ‘To Mathew Kearney, sixth Viscount Kilgobbin’; various devices of ‘caprine’ significance, heads, horns, and hoofs, profusely decorating the frame. If the antiquary should lose himself in researches for the origin of this society, it is as well to admit at once that the landlord’s sign of the ‘Blue Goat’ gave the initiative to the name, and that the worthy associates derived nothing from classical authority, and never assumed to be descendants of fauns or satyrs, but respectable shopkeepers of Moate, and unexceptional judges of ‘poteen.’ A large jug of this insinuating liquor figured on the table, and was called ‘Goat’s-milk’; and if these humoristic traits are so carefully enumerated, it is because they comprised all that was specially droll or quaint in these social gatherings, the members of which were a very commonplace set of men, who discussed their little local topics in very ordinary fashion, slightly elevated, perhaps, in self-esteem, by thinking how little the outer world knew of their dulness and dreariness.
As the meetings were usually determined on by the will of the president, who announced at the hour of separation when they were to reassemble, and as, since his niece’s arrival, Kearney had almost totally forgotten his old associates, the club-room ceased to be regarded as the holy of holies, and was occasionally used by the landlord for the reception of such visitors as he deemed worthy of peculiar honour.
It was on a very wet night of that especially rainy month in the Irish calendar, July, that two travellers sat over a turf fire in this sacred chamber, various articles of their attire being spread out to dry before the blaze, the owners of which actually steamed with the effects of the heat upon their damp habiliments. Some fishing-tackle and two knapsacks, which lay in a corner, showed they were pedestrians, and their looks, voice, and manner proclaimed them still more unmistakably to be gentlemen.
One was a tall, sunburnt, soldierlike man of six or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men. A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly ‘safe’—very meaning epithet—there were no very deep regrets when he ‘exchanged,’ nor was there, perhaps, one man who felt he had lost his ‘pal’ by his going. He was now in the Carbineers, and serving as an extra aide-de-camp to the Viceroy.
Not a little unlike him in most respects was the man who sat opposite him—a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark moustache, and a bearden Henri Quatre, to the effect of which a collar cut in Van Dyck fashion gave an especial significance. Cecil Walpole was disposed to be pictorial in his get-up, and the purple dye of his knickerbocker stockings, the slouching plumage of his Tyrol hat, and the graceful hang of his jacket, had excited envy in quarters where envy was fame. He too was on the viceregal staff, being private secretary to his relative the Lord-Lieutenant, during whose absence in England they had undertaken a ramble to the Westmeath lakes, not very positive whether their object was to angle for trout or to fish for that ‘knowledge of Ireland’ so popularly sought after in our day, and which displays itself so profusely in platform speeches and letters to the Times. Lockwood, not impossibly, would have said it was ‘to do a bit of walking’ he had come. He had gained eight pounds by that indolent Phoenix-Park life he was leading, and he had no fancy to go back to Leicestershire too heavy for his cattle. He was not—few hunting men are—an ardent fisherman; and as for the vexed question of Irish politics, he did not see why he was to trouble his head to unravel the puzzles that were too much for Mr. Gladstone; not to say, that he felt to meddle with these matters was like interfering with another man’s department. ‘I don’t suspect,’ he would say, ‘I should fancy John Bright coming down to “stables” and dictating to me how my Irish horses should be shod, or what was the best bit for a “borer.”’ He saw, besides, that the game of politics was a game of compromises: something was deemed admirable now that had been hitherto almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he pronounced the whole thing an ‘imposition and a humbug.’ ‘I can understand a right and a wrong as well as any man,’ he would say, ‘but I know nothing about things that are neither or both, according to who’s in or who’s out of the Cabinet. Give me the command of twelve thousand men, let me divide them into three flying columns, and if I don’t keep Ireland quiet, draft me into a West Indian regiment, that’s all.’ And as to the idea of issuing special commissions, passing new Acts of Parliament, or suspending old ones, to do what he or any other intelligent soldier could do without any knavery or any corruption, ‘John Bright might tell us,’ but he couldn’t. And here it may be well to observe that it was a favourite form of speech with him to refer to this illustrious public man in this familiar manner; but always to show what a condition of muddle and confusion must ensue if we followed the counsels that name emblematised; nor did he know a more cutting sarcasm to reply to an adversary than when he had said, ‘Oh, John Bright would agree with you,’ or, ‘I don’t think John Bright could go further.’
Of a very different stamp was his companion. He was a young gentleman whom we cannot more easily characterise than by calling him, in the cant of the day, ‘of the period.’ He was essentially the most recent product of the age we live in. Manly enough in some things, he was fastidious in others to the very verge of effeminacy; an aristocrat by birth and by predilection, he made a parade of democratic opinions. He affected a sort of Crichtonism in the variety of his gifts, and as linguist, musician, artist, poet, and philosopher, loved to display the scores of things he might be, instead of that mild, very ordinary young gentleman that he was. He had done a little of almost everything: he had been in the Guards, in diplomacy, in the House for a brief session, had made an African tour, written a pleasant little book about the Nile, with the illustrations by his own hand. Still he was greater in promise than performance. There was an opera of his partly finished; a five-act comedy almost ready for the stage; a half-executed group he had left in some studio in Rome, showed what he might have done in sculpture. When his distinguished relative the Marquis of Danesbury recalled him from his post as secretary of legation in Italy, to join him at his Irish seat of government, the phrase in which he invited him to return is not without its significance, and we give it as it occurred in the context: ‘I have no fancy for the post they have assigned me, nor is it what I had hoped for. They say, however, I shall succeed here.Nous verrons. Meanwhile, I remember your often remarking, “There is a great game to be played in Ireland.” Come over at once, then, and let me have a talk with you over it. I shall manage the question of your leave by making you private secretary for the moment. We shall have many difficulties, but Ireland will be the worst of them. Do not delay, therefore, for I shall only go over to be sworn in, etc., and return for the third reading of the Church Bill, and I should like to see you in Dublin (and leave you there) when I go.’
Except that they were both members of the viceregal household, and English by birth, there was scarcely a tie between these very dissimilar natures; but somehow the accidents of daily life, stronger than the traits of disposition, threw them into intimacy, and they agreed it would be a good thing ‘to see something of Ireland’; and with this wise resolve they had set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken them over the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to the Shannon, but with an infirmity of purpose to which lack of sport and disastrous weather were contributing powerfully at the moment we have presented them to our reader.
To employ the phrase which it is possible each might have used, they ‘liked each other well enough’—that is, each found something in the other he ‘could get on with’; but there was no stronger tie of regard or friendship between them, and each thought he perceived some flaw of pretension, or affected wisdom, or selfishness, or vanity, in the other, and actually believed he amused himself by its display. In natures, tastes, and dispositions, they were miles asunder, and disagreement between them would have been unceasing on every subject, had they not been gentlemen. It was this alone—this gentleman element—made their companionship possible, and, in the long run, not unpleasant. So much more has good-breeding to do in the common working of daily life than the more valuable qualities of mind and temperament.
Though much younger than his companion, Walpole took the lead in all the arrangements of the journey, determined where and how long they should halt, and decided on the route next to be taken; the other showing a real or affected indifference on all these matters, and making of his town-bred apathy a very serviceable quality in the midst of Irish barbarism and desolation. On politics, too—if that be the name for such light convictions as they entertained—they differed: the soldier’s ideas being formed on what he fancied would be the late Duke of Wellington’s opinion, and consisted in what he called ‘putting down.’ Walpole was a promising Whig; that is, one who coquets with Radical notions, but fastidiously avoids contact with the mob; and who, fervently believing that all popular concessions are spurious if not stamped with Whig approval, would like to treat the democratic leaders as forgers and knaves.
If, then, there was not much of similarity between these two men to attach them to each other, there was what served for a bond of union: they belonged to the same class in life, and used pretty nigh the same forms for their expression of like and dislike; and as in traffic it contributes wonderfully to the facilities of business to use the same money, so in the common intercourse of life will the habit to estimate things at the same value conduce to very easy relations, and something almost like friendship.
While they sat over the fire awaiting their supper, each had lighted a cigar, busying himself from time to time in endeavouring to dry some drenched article of dress, or extracting from damp and dripping pockets their several contents.
‘This, then,’ said the younger man—‘this is the picturesque Ireland our tourist writers tell us of; and the land where theTimessays the traveller will find more to interest him than in the Tyrol or the Oberland.’
‘What about the climate?’ said the other, in a deep bass voice.
‘Mild and moist, I believe, are the epithets; that is, it makes you damp, and it keeps you so.’
‘And the inns?’
‘The inns, it is admitted, might be better; but the traveller is admonished against fastidiousness, and told that the prompt spirit of obligeance, the genial cordiality, he will meet with, are more than enough to repay him for the want of more polished habits and mere details of comfort and convenience.’
‘Rotten humbug!Idon’t want cordiality from my innkeeper.’
‘I should think not! As, for instance, a bit of carpet in this room would be worth more than all the courtesy that showed us in.’
‘What was that lake called—the first place I mean?’ asked Lockwood.
‘Lough Brin. I shouldn’t say but with better weather it might be pretty.’
A half-grunt of dissent was all the reply, and Walpole went on—
It’s no use painting a landscape when it is to be smudged all over with Indian ink. There are no tints in mountains swathed in mist, no colour in trees swamped with moisture; everything seems so imbued with damp, one fancies it would take two years in the tropics to dry Ireland.’
‘I asked that fellow who showed us the way here, why he didn’t pitch off those wet rags he wore, and walk away in all the dignity of nakedness.’
A large dish of rashers and eggs, and a mess of Irish stew, which the landlord now placed on the table, with a foaming jug of malt, seemed to rally them out of their ill-temper; and for some time they talked away in a more cheerful tone.
‘Better than I hoped for,’ said Walpole.
‘Fair!’
‘And that ale, too—I suppose it is called ale—is very tolerable.’
‘It’s downright good. Let us have some more of it.’ And he shouted, ‘Master!’ at the top of his voice. ‘More of this,’ said Lockwood, touching the measure. ‘Beer or ale, which is it?’
‘Castle Bellingham, sir,’ replied the landlord; ‘beats all the Bass and Allsopp that ever was brewed.’
‘You think so, eh?’
‘I’m sure of it, sir. The club that sits here had a debate on it one night, and put it to the vote, and there wasn’t one man for the English liquor. My lord there,’ said he, pointing to the portrait, ‘sent an account of it all toSaunders’ newspaper.’
While he left the room to fetch the ale, the travellers both fixed their eyes on the picture, and Walpole, rising, read out the inscription—‘Viscount Kilgobbin.’
‘There’s no such title,’ said the other bluntly.
‘Lord Kilgobbin—Kilgobbin? Where did I hear that name before?’
‘In a dream, perhaps.’
‘No, no. Ihaveheard it, if I could only remember where and how! I say, landlord, where does his lordship live?’ and he pointed to the portrait.
‘Beyond, at the castle, sir. You can see it from the door without when the weather’s fine.’
‘That must mean on a very rare occasion!’ said Lockwood gravely.
‘No indeed, sir. It didn’t begin to rain on Tuesday last till after three o’clock.’
‘Magnificent climate!’ exclaimed Walpole enthusiastically.
‘It is indeed, sir. Glory be to God!’ said the landlord, with an honest gravity that set them both off laughing.
‘How about this club—does it meet often?’
‘It used, sir, to meet every Thursday evening, and my lord never missed a night, but quite lately he took it in his head not to come out in the evenings. Some say it was the rheumatism, and more says it’s the unsettled state of the country; though, the Lord be praised for it, there wasn’t a man fired at in the neighbourhood since Easter, andhewas a peeler.’
‘One of the constabulary?’
‘Yes, sir; a dirty, mean chap, that was looking after a poor boy that set fire to Mr. Hagin’s ricks, and that was over a year ago.’
‘And naturally forgotten by this time?’
‘By coorse it was forgotten. Ould Mat Hagin got a presentment for the damage out of the grand-jury, and nobody was the worse for it at all.’
‘And so the club is smashed, eh?’
‘As good as smashed, sir; for whenever any of them comes now of an evening, he just goes into the bar and takes his glass there.’
He sighed heavily as he said this, and seemed overcome with sadness.
‘I’m trying to remember why the name is so familiar to me. I know I have heard of Lord Kilgobbin before,’ said Walpole.
‘Maybe so,’ said the landlord respectfully. ‘You may have read in books how it was at Kilgobbin Castle King James came to stop after the Boyne; that he held a “coort” there in the big drawing-room—they call it the “throne-room” ever since—and slept two nights at the castle afterwards?’
‘That’s something to see, Walpole,’ said Lockwood.
‘So it is. How is that to be managed, landlord? Does his lordship permit strangers to visit the castle?’
‘Nothing easier than that, sir,’ said the host, who gladly embraced a project that should detain his guests at the inn. ‘My lord went through the town this morning on his way to Loughrea fair; but the young ladies is at home; and you’ve only to send over a message, and say you’d like to see the place, and they’ll be proud to show it to you.’
‘Let us send our cards, with a line in pencil,’ said Walpole, in a whisper to his friend.
‘And there are young ladies there?’ asked Lockwood.
‘Two born beauties; it’s hard to say which is handsomest,’ replied the host, overjoyed at the attraction his neighbourhood possessed.
‘I suppose that will do?’ said Walpole, showing what he had written on his card.
‘Yes, perfectly.’
‘Despatch this at once. I mean early to-morrow; and let your messenger ask if there be an answer. How far is it off?’
‘A little over twelve miles, sir; but I’ve a mare in the stable will “rowle” ye over in an hour and a quarter.’
‘All right. We’ll settle on everything after breakfast to-morrow.’ And the landlord withdrew, leaving them once more alone.
‘This means,’ said Lockwood drearily, ‘we shall have to pass a day in this wretched place.’
‘It will take a day to dry our wet clothes; and, all things considered, one might be worse off than here. Besides, I shall want to look over my notes. I have done next to nothing, up to this time, about the Land Question.’
‘I thought that the old fellow with the cow, the fellow I gave a cigar to, had made you up in your tenant-right affair,’ said Lockwood.
‘He gave me a great deal of very valuable information; he exposed some of the evils of tenancy at will as ably as I ever heard them treated, but he was occasionally hard on the landlord.’
‘I suppose one word of truth never came out of his mouth!’
‘On the contrary, real knowledge of Ireland is not to be acquired from newspapers; a man must see Ireland for himself—seeit,’ repeated he, with strong emphasis.
‘And then?’
‘And then, if he be a capable man, a reflecting man, a man in whom the perceptive power is joined to the social faculty—’
‘Look here, Cecil, one hearer won’t make a House: don’t try it on speechifying to me. It’s all humbug coming over to look at Ireland. You may pick up a little brogue, but it’s all you’ll pick up for your journey.’ After this, for him, unusually long speech, he finished his glass, lighted his bedroom candle, and nodding a good-night, strolled away.
‘I’d give a crown to know where I heard of you before!’ said Walpole, as he stared up at the portrait.
‘Only think of it!’ cried Kate to her cousin, as she received Walpole’s note. ‘Can you fancy, Nina, any one having the curiosity to imagine this old house worth a visit? Here is a polite request from two tourists to be allowed to see the—what is it?—the interesting interior of Kilgobbin Castle!’
‘Which I hope and trust you will refuse. The people who are so eager for these things are invariably tiresome old bores, grubbing for antiquities, or intently bent on adding a chapter to their story of travel. You’ll say No, dearest, won’t you?’
‘Certainly, if you wish it. I am not acquainted with Captain Lockwood, nor his friend Mr. Cecil Walpole.’
‘Did you say Cecil Walpole?’ cried the other, almost snatching the card from her fingers. ‘Of all the strange chances in life, this is the very strangest! What could have brought Cecil Walpole here?’
‘You know him, then?’
‘I should think I do! What duets have we not sung together? What waltzes have we not had? What rides over the Campagna? Oh dear! how I should like to talk over these old times again! Pray tell him he may come, Kate, or let me do it.’
‘And papa away!’
‘It is the castle, dearest, he wants to see, not papa! You don’t know what manner of creature this is! He is one of your refined and supremely cultivated English—mad about archæology and mediæval trumpery. He’ll know all your ancestors intended by every insane piece of architecture, and every puzzling detail of this old house; and he’ll light up every corner of it with some gleam of bright tradition.’
‘I thought these sort of people were bores, dear?’ said Kate, with a sly malice in her look.
‘Of course not. When they are well-bred and well-mannered—-’
‘And perhaps well-looking?’ chimed in Kate.
‘Yes, and so he is—a little of thepetit-maître, perhaps. He’s much of that school which fiction-writers describe as having “finely-pencilled eyebrows, and chins of almost womanlike roundness”; but people in Rome always called him handsome, that is if he be my Cecil Walpole.’
‘Well, then, will you tell YOUR Cecil Walpole, in such polite terms as you know how to coin, that there is really nothing of the very slightest pretension to interest in this old place; that we should be ashamed at having lent ourselves to the delusion that might have led him here; and lastly, that the owner is from home?’
‘What! and is this the Irish hospitality I have heard so much of—the cordial welcome the stranger may reckon on as a certainty, and make all his plans with the full confidence of meeting?’
‘There is such a thing as discretion, also, to be remembered, Nina,’ said Kate gravely.
‘And then there’s the room where the king slept, and the chair that—no, not Oliver Cromwell, but somebody else sat in at supper, and there’s the great patch painted on the floor where your ancestor knelt to be knighted.’
‘He was created a viscount, not a knight!’ said Kate, blushing. ‘And there is a difference, I assure you.’
‘So there is, dearest, and even my foreign ignorance should know that much, and you have the parchment that attests it—a most curious document, that Walpole would be delighted to see. I almost fancy him examining the curious old seal with his microscope, and hear him unfolding all sorts of details one never so much as suspected.’
‘Papa might not like it,’ said Kate, bridling up. ‘Even were he at home, I am far from certain he would receive these gentlemen. It is little more than a year ago there came here a certain book-writing tourist, and presented himself without introduction. We received him hospitably, and he stayed part of a week here. He was fond of antiquarianism, but more eager still about the condition of the people—what kind of husbandry they practised, what wages they had, and what food. Papa took him over the whole estate, and answered all his questions freely and openly. And this man made a chapter of his book upon us, and headed it, “Rack-renting and riotous living,” distorting all he heard and sneering at all he saw.’
‘These are gentlemen, dearest Kate,’ said Nina, holding out the card. ‘Come now, do tell me that I may say you will be happy to see them?’
‘If you must have it so—if you really insist—’
‘I do! I do!’ cried she, half wildly. ‘I should go distracted if you denied me. O Kate! I must own it. It will out. I do cling devotedly, terribly, to that old life of the past. I am very happy here, and you are all good, and kind, and loving to me; but that wayward, haphazard existence, with all its trials and miseries, had got little glimpses of such bliss at times that rose to actual ecstasy.’
‘I was afraid of this,’ said Kate, in a low but firm voice. ‘I thought what a change it would be for you from that life of brightness and festivity to this existence of dull and unbroken dreariness.’
‘No, no, no! Don’t say that! Do not fancy that I am not happier than I ever was or ever believed I could be. It was the castle-building of that time that I was regretting. I imagined so many things, I invented such situations, such incidents, which, with this sad-coloured landscape here and that leaden sky, I have no force to conjure up. It is as though the atmosphere is too weighty for fancy to mount in it. You, my dearest Kate,’ said she, drawing her arm round her, and pressing her towards her, ‘do not know these things, nor need ever know them. Your life is assured and safe. You cannot, indeed, be secure from the passing accidents of life, but they will meet you in a spirit able to confront them. As for me, I was always gambling for existence, and gambling without means to pay my losses if Fortune should turn against me. Do you understand me, child?’
‘Only in part, if even that,’ said she slowly.
‘Let us keep this theme, then, for another time. Now forces messieurs. I am to invite them?’
‘If there was time to ask Miss O’Shea to come over—’
‘Do you not fancy, Kate, that in your father’s house, surrounded with your father’s servants, you are sufficiently the mistress to do without a chaperon? Only preserve that grand austere look you have listened to me with these last ten minutes, and I should like to see the youthful audacity that could brave it. There, I shall go and write my note. You shall see how discreetly and properly I shall word it.’
Kate walked thoughtfully towards a window and looked out, while Nina skipped gaily down the room, and opened her writing-desk, humming an opera air as she wrote:—
‘KILGOBBIN CASTLE.
‘DEAR MR. WALPOLE,—I can scarcely tell you the pleasure I feel at the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, whichever be the most proper to say. My uncle is from home, and will not return till the day after to-morrow at dinner; but my cousin, Miss Kearney, charges me to say how happy she will be to receive you and your fellow-traveller at luncheon to-morrow. Pray not to trouble yourself with an answer, but believe me very sincerely yours, ‘NINA KOSTALERGI.’
‘I was right in saying luncheon, Kate, and not dinner—was I not? It is less formal.’
‘I suppose so; that is, if it was right to invite them at all, of which I have very great misgivings.’
‘I wonder what brought Cecil Walpole down here?’ said Nina, glad to turn the discussion into another channel. ‘Could he have heard that I was here? Probably not. It was a mere chance, I suppose. Strange things these same chances are, that do so much more in our lives than all our plottings!’
‘Tell me something of your friend, perhaps I ought to say your admirer, Nina!’
‘Yes, very much my admirer; not seriously, you know, but in that charming sort of adoration we cultivate abroad, that means anything or nothing. He was not titled, and I am afraid he was not rich, and this last misfortune used to make his attention to me somewhat painful—tohimI mean, not tome; for, of course, as to anything serious, I looked much higher than a poor Secretary of Legation.’
‘Did you?’ asked Kate, with an air of quiet simplicity.
‘I should hope I did,’ said she haughtily; and she threw a glance at herself in a large mirror, and smiled proudly at the bright image that confronted her. ‘Yes, darling, say it out,’ cried she, turning to Kate. ‘Your eyes have uttered the words already.’
‘What words?’
‘Something about insufferable vanity and conceit, and I own to both! Oh, why is it that my high spirits have so run away with me this morning that I have forgotten all reserve and all shame? But the truth is, I feel half wild with joy, and joy inmynature is another name for recklessness.’
‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Kate gravely. ‘At any rate, you give me another reason for wishing to have Miss O’Shea here.’
‘I will not have her—no, not for worlds, Kate, that odious old woman, with her stiff and antiquated propriety. Cecil would quiz her.’
‘I am very certain he would not; at least, if he be such a perfect gentleman as you tell me.’
‘Ah, but you’d never know he did it. The fine tact of these consummate men of the world derives a humoristic enjoyment in eccentricity of character, which never shows itself in any outward sign beyond the heightened pleasure they feel in what other folks might call dulness or mere oddity.’
‘I would not suffer an old friend to be made the subject of even such latent amusement.’
‘Nor her nephew, either, perhaps?’
‘The nephew could take care of himself, Nina; but I am not aware that he will be called on to do so. He is not in Ireland, I believe.’
‘He was to arrive this week. You told me so.’
‘Perhaps he did; I had forgotten it!’ and Kate flushed as she spoke, though whether from shame or anger it was not easy to say. As though impatient with herself at any display of temper, she added hurriedly, ‘Was it not a piece of good fortune, Nina? Papa has left us the key of the cellar, a thing he never did before, and only now because you were here!’
‘What an honoured guest I am!’ said the other, smiling.
‘That you are! I don’t believe papa has gone once to the club since you came here.’
‘Now, if I were to own that I was vain of this, you’d rebuke me, would not you?’
‘Ourlove could scarcely prompt to vanity.’
‘How shall I ever learn to be humble enough in a family of such humility?’ said Nina pettishly. Then quickly correcting herself, she said, ‘I’ll go and despatch my note, and then I’ll come back and ask your pardon for all my wilfulness, and tell you how much I thank you for all your goodness to me.’
And as she spoke she bent down and kissed Kate’s hand twice or thrice fervently.
‘Oh, dearest Nina, not this—not this!’ said Kate, trying to clasp her in her arms; but the other had slipped from her grasp, and was gone.
‘Strange girl,’ muttered Kate, looking after her. ‘I wonder shall I ever understand you, or shall we ever understand each other?’
The morning broke drearily for our friends, the two pedestrians, at the ‘Blue Goat.’ A day of dull aspect and soft rain in midsummer has the added depression that it seems an anachronism. One is in a measure prepared for being weather-bound in winter. You accept imprisonment as the natural fortune of the season, or you brave the elements prepared to let them do their worst, while, if confined to house, you have that solace of snugness, that comfortable chimney-corner which somehow realises an immense amount of the joys we concentrate in the word ‘Home.’ It is in the want of this rallying-point, this little domestic altar, where all gather together in a common worship, that lies the dreary discomfort of being weather-bound in summer, and when the prison is some small village inn, noisy, disorderly, and dirty, the misery is complete.
‘Grand old pig that!’ said Lockwood, as he gazed out upon the filthy yard, where a fat old sow contemplated the weather from the threshold of her dwelling.
‘I wish she’d come out. I want to make a sketch of her,’ said the other.
‘Even one’s tobacco grows too damp to smoke in this blessed climate,’ said Lockwood, as he pitched his cigar away. ‘Heigh-ho! We ‘re too late for the train to town, I see.’
‘You’d not go back, would you?’
‘I should think I would! That old den in the upper castle-yard is not very cheery or very nice, but there is a chair to sit on, and a review and a newspaper to read. A tour in a country and with a climate like this is a mistake.’
‘I suspect it is,’ said Walpole drearily.
‘There is nothing to see, no one to talk to, nowhere to stop at!’
‘All true,’ muttered the other. ‘By the way, haven’t we some plan or project for to-day—something about an old castle or an abbey to see?’
‘Yes, and the waiter brought me a letter. I think it was addressed to you, and I left it on my dressing-table. I had forgotten all about it. I’ll go and fetch it.’
Short as his absence was, it gave Walpole time enough to recur to his late judgment on his tour, and once more call it a ‘mistake, a complete mistake.’ The Ireland of wits, dramatists, and romance-writers was a conventional thing, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rain-soaked, dreary-looking, depressed reality. ‘These Irish, they are odd without being droll, just as they are poor without being picturesque; but of all the delusions we nourish about them, there is not one so thoroughly absurd as to call them dangerous.’
He had just arrived at this mature opinion, when his friend re-entered and handed him the note.
‘Here is a piece of luck.Per Bacco!’ cried Walpole, as he ran over the lines. ‘This beats all I could have hoped for. Listen to this—“Dear Mr. Walpole,—I cannot tell you the delight I feel in the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, which is it? “’
‘Who writes this?’
‘A certain Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whom I knew at Rome; one of the prettiest, cleverest, and nicest girls I ever met in my life.’
‘Not the daughter of that precious Count Kostalergi you have told me such stories of?’
‘The same, but most unlike him in every way. She is here, apparently with an uncle, who is now from home, and she and her cousin invite us to luncheon to-day.’
‘What a lark!’ said the other dryly.
‘We’ll go, of course?’
‘In weather like this?’
‘Why not? Shall we be better off staying here? I now begin to remember how the name of this place was so familiar to me. She was always asking me if I knew or heard of her mother’s brother, the Lord Kilgobbin, and, to tell truth, I fancied some one had been hoaxing her with the name, and never believed that there was even a place with such a designation.’
‘Kilgobbin does not sound like a lordly title. How about Mademoiselle—what is the name?’
‘Kostalergi; they call themselves princes.’
‘With all my heart. I was only going to say, as you’ve got a sort of knack of entanglement—is there, or has there been, anything of that sort here?’
‘Flirtation—a little of what is called “spooning”—but no more. But why do you ask?’
‘First of all, you are an engaged man.’
‘All true, and I mean to keep my engagement. I can’t marry, however, till I get a mission, or something at home as good as a mission. Lady Maude knows that; her friends know it, but none of us imagine that we are to be miserable in the meantime.’
‘I’m not talking of misery. I’d only say, don’t get yourself into any mess. These foreign girls are very wide-awake.’
‘Don’t believe that, Harry; one of our home-bred damsels would give them a distance and beat them in the race for a husband. It’s only in England girls are trained to angle for marriage, take my word for it.’
‘Be it so—I only warn you that if you get into any scrape I’ll accept none of the consequences. Lord Danesbury is ready enough to say that, because I am some ten years older than you, I should have kept you out of mischief. I never contracted for such a bear-leadership; though I certainly told Lady Maude I’d turn Queen’s evidence against you if you became a traitor.’
‘I wonder you never told me that before,’ said Walpole, with some irritation of manner.
‘I only wonder that I told it now!’ replied the other gruffly.
‘Then I am to take it, that in your office of guardian, you’d rather we’d decline this invitation, eh?’
‘I don’t care a rush for it either way, but, looking to the sort of day it is out there, I incline to keep the house.’
‘I don’t mind bad weather, and I’ll go,’ said Walpole, in a way that showed temper was involved in the resolution.
Lockwood made no other reply than heaping a quantity of turf on the fire, and seating himself beside it.
When a man tells his fellow-traveller that he means to go his own road—that companionship has no tie upon him—he virtually declares the partnership dissolved; and while Lockwood sat reflecting over this, he was also canvassing with himself how far he might have been to blame in provoking this hasty resolution.
‘Perhaps he was irritated at my counsels, perhaps the notion of anything like guidance offended him; perhaps it was the phrase, “bear-leadership,” and the half-threat of betraying him, has done the mischief.’ Now the gallant soldier was a slow thinker; it took him a deal of time to arrange the details of any matter in his mind, and when he tried to muster his ideas there were many which would not answer the call, and of those which came, there were not a few which seemed to present themselves in a refractory and unwilling spirit, so that he had almost to suppress a mutiny before he proceeded to his inspection.
Nor did the strong cheroots, which he smoked to clear his faculties and develop his mental resources, always contribute to this end, though their soothing influence certainly helped to make him more satisfied with his judgments.
‘Now, look here, Walpole,’ said he, determining that he would save himself all unnecessary labour of thought by throwing the burden of the case on the respondent—‘Look here; take a calm view of this thing, and see if it’s quite wise in you to go back into trammels it cost you some trouble to escape from. You call it spooning, but you won’t deny you went very far with that young woman—farther, I suspect, than you’ve told me yet. Eh! is that true or not?’
He waited a reasonable time for a reply, but none coming, he went on—‘I don’t want a forced confidence. You may say it’s no business of mine, and there I agree with you, and probably if you putmeto the question in the same fashion, I’d give you a very short answer. Remember one thing, however, old fellow—I’ve seen a precious deal more of life and the world than you have! From sixteen years of age, whenyouwere hammering away at Greek verbs and some such balderdash at Oxford, I was up at Rangoon with the very fastest set of men—ay, of women too—I ever lived with in all my life. Half of our fellows were killed off by it. Of course people will say climate, climate! but if I were to give you the history of one day—just twenty-four hours of our life up there—you’d say that the wonder is there’s any one alive to tell it.’
He turned around at this, to enjoy the expression of horror and surprise he hoped to have called up, and perceived for the first time that he was alone. He rang the bell, and asked the waiter where the other gentleman had gone, and learned that he had ordered a car, and set out for Kilgobbin Castle more than half an hour before.
‘All right,’ said he fiercely. ‘I wash my hands of it altogether! I’m heartily glad I told him so before he went.’ He smoked on very vigorously for half an hour, the burden of his thoughts being perhaps revealed by the summing-up, as he said, ‘And when you are “in for it,” Master Cecil, and some precious scrape it will be, if I move hand or foot to pull you through it, call me a Major of Marines, that’s all—just call me a Major of Marines!’ The ineffable horror of such an imputation served as matter for reverie for hours.
While Lockwood continued thus to doubt and debate with himself, Walpole was already some miles on his way to Kilgobbin. Not, indeed, that he had made any remarkable progress, for the ‘mare that was to rowle his honour over in an hour and a quarter,’ had to be taken from the field where she had been ploughing since daybreak, while ‘the boy’ that should drive her, was a little old man who had to be aroused from a condition of drunkenness in a hayloft, and installed in his office.
Nor were these the only difficulties. The roads that led through the bog were so numerous and so completely alike that it only needed the dense atmosphere of a rainy day to make it matter of great difficulty to discover the right track. More than once were they obliged to retrace their steps after a considerable distance, and the driver’s impatience always took the shape of a reproach to Walpole, who, having nothing else to do, should surely have minded where they were going. Now, not only was the traveller utterly ignorant of the geography of the land he journeyed in, but his thoughts were far and away from the scenes around him. Very scattered and desultory thoughts were they, at one time over the Alps and with ‘long-agoes’: nights at Rome clashing with mornings on the Campagna; vast salons crowded with people of many nations, all more or less busy with that great traffic which, whether it take the form of religion, or politics, or social intrigue, hate, love, or rivalry, makes up what we call ‘the world’; or there were sunsets dying away rapidly—as they will do—over that great plain outside the city, whereon solitude and silence are as much masters as on a vast prairie of the West; and he thought of times when he rode back at nightfall beside Nina Kostalergi, when little flashes would cross them of that romance that very worldly folk now and then taste of, and delight in, with a zest all the greater that the sensation is so new and strange to them. Then there was the revulsion from the blaze of waxlights and the glitter of diamonds, the crash of orchestras and the din of conversation, the intoxication of the flattery that champagne only seems to ‘accentuate,’ to the unbroken stillness of the hour, when even the footfall of the horse is unheard, and a dreamy doubt that this quietude, this soothing sense of calm, is higher happiness than all the glitter and all the splendour of the ball-room, and that in the dropping words we now exchange, and in the stray glances, there is a significance and an exquisite delight we never felt till now; for, glorious as is the thought of a returned affection, full of ecstasy the sense of a heart all, all our own, there is, in the first half-doubtful, distrustful feeling of falling in love, with all its chances of success or failure, something that has its moments of bliss nothing of earthly delight can ever equal. To the verge of that possibility Walpole had reached—but gone no further—with Nina Kostalergi. The young men of the age are an eminently calculating and prudent class, and they count the cost of an action with a marvellous amount of accuracy. Is it the turf and its teachings to which this crafty and cold-blooded spirit is owing? Have they learned to ‘square their book’ on life by the lessons of Ascot and Newmarket, and seen that, no matter how probably they ‘stand to win’ on this, they must provide for that, and that no caution or foresight is enough that will not embrace every casualty of any venture?
There is no need to tell a younger son of the period that he must not marry a pretty girl of doubtful family and no fortune. He may have his doubts on scores of subjects: he may not be quite sure whether he ought to remain a Whig with Lord Russell, or go in for Odgerism and the ballot; he may be uncertain about Colenso, and have his misgivings about the Pentateuch; he may not be easy in his mind about the Russians in the East, or the Americans in the West; uncomfortable suspicions may cross him that the Volunteers are not as quick in evolution as the Zouaves, or that England generally does not sing ‘Rule Britannia’ so lustily as she used to do. All these are possible misgivings, but that he should take such a plunge as matrimony, on other grounds than the perfect prudence and profit of the investment, could never occur to him.
As to the sinfulness of tampering with a girl’s affections by what in slang is called ‘spooning,’ it was purely absurd to think of it. You might as well say that playing sixpenny whist made a man a gambler. And then, as to the spooning, it waspartie égale, the lady was no worse off than the gentleman. If there were by any hazard—and this he was disposed to doubt—‘affections’ at stake, the man ‘stood to lose’ as much as the woman. But this was not the aspect in which the case presented itself, flirtation being, in his idea, to marriage what the preliminary canter is to the race—something to indicate the future, but so dimly and doubtfully as not to decide the hesitation of the waverer.
If, then, Walpole was never for a moment what mothers call serious in his attentions to Mademoiselle Kostalergi, he was not the less fond of her society; he frequented the places where she was likely to be met with, and paid her that degree of ‘court’ that only stopped short of being particular by his natural caution. There was the more need for the exercise of this quality at Rome, since there were many there who knew of his engagement with his cousin, Lady Maude, and who would not have hesitated to report on any breach of fidelity. Now, however, all these restraints were withdrawn. They were not in Italy, where London, by a change of venue, takes its ‘records’ to be tried in the dull days of winter. They were in Ireland, and in a remote spot of Ireland, where there were no gossips, no clubs, no afternoon-tea committees, to sit on reputations, and was it not pleasant now to see this nice girl again in perfect freedom? These were, loosely stated, the thoughts which occupied him as he went along, very little disposed to mind how often the puzzled driver halted to decide the road, or how frequently he retraced miles of distance. Men of the world, especially when young in life, and more realistic than they will be twenty years later, proud of the incredulity they can feel on the score of everything and everybody, are often fond of making themselves heroes to their own hearts of some little romance, which shall not cost them dearly to indulge in, and merely engage some loose-lying sympathies without in any way prejudicing their road in life. They accept of these sentimentalities as the vicar’s wife did the sheep in the picture, pleased to ‘have as many as the painter would put in for nothing.’
Now, Cecil Walpole never intended that this little Irish episode—and episode he determined it should be—should in any degree affect the serious fortunes of his life. He was engaged to his cousin, Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, and they would be married some day. Not that either was very impatient to exchange present comfort—and, on her side, affluence—for a marriage on small means, and no great prospects beyond that. They were not much in love. Walpole knew that the Lady Maude’s fortune was small, but the man who married her must ‘be taken care of,’ and by either side, for there were as many Tories as Whigs in the family, and Lady Maude knew that half-a-dozen years ago, she would certainly not have accepted Walpole; but that with every year her chances of a betterpartiwere diminishing; and, worse than all this, each was well aware of the inducements by which the other was influenced. Nor did the knowledge in any way detract from their self-complacence or satisfaction with the match.
Lady Maude was to accompany her uncle to Ireland, and do the honours of his court, for he was a bachelor, and pleaded hard with his party on that score to be let off accepting the viceroyalty.
Lady Maude, however, had not yet arrived, and even if she had, how should she ever hear of an adventure in the Bog of Allen!
But was there to be an adventure? and, if so, what sort of adventure? Irishmen, Walpole had heard, had all the jealousy about their women that characterises savage races, and were ready to resent what, in civilised people, no one would dream of regarding as matter for umbrage. Well, then, it was only to be more cautious—more on one’s guard—besides the tact, too, which a knowledge of life should give—
‘Eh, what’s this? Why are you stopping here?’
This was addressed now to the driver, who had descended from his box, and was standing in advance of the horse.
‘Why don’t I drive on, is it?’ asked he, in a voice of despair. ‘Sure, there’s no road.’
‘And does it stop here?’ cried Walpole in horror, for he now perceived that the road really came to an abrupt ending in the midst of the bog.
‘Begorra, it’s just what it does. Ye see, your honour,’ added he, in a confidential tone, ‘it’s one of them tricks the English played us in the year of the famine. They got two millions of money to make roads in Ireland, but they were so afraid it would make us prosperous and richer than themselves, that they set about making roads that go nowhere. Sometimes to the top of a mountain, or down to the sea, where there was no harbour, and sometimes, like this one, into the heart of a bog.’
‘That was very spiteful and very mean, too,’ said Walpole.
‘Wasn’t it just mean, and nothing else! and it’s five miles we’ll have to go back now to the cross-roads. Begorra, your honour, it’s a good dhrink ye’ll have to give me for this day’s work.’
‘You forget, my friend, that but for your own confounded stupidity, I should have been at Kilgobbin Castle by this time.’
‘And ye’ll be there yet, with God’s help!’ said he, turning the horse’s head. ‘Bad luck to them for the road-making, and it’s a pity, after all, it goes nowhere, for it’s the nicest bit to travel in the whole country.’
‘Come now, jump up, old fellow, and make your beast step out. I don’t want to pass the night here.’
‘You wouldn’t have a dhrop of whisky with your honour?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Nor even brandy?’
‘No, not even brandy.’
‘Musha, I’m thinking you must be English,’ muttered he, half sulkily.
‘And if I were, is there any great harm in that?’
‘By coorse not; how could ye help it? I suppose we’d all of us be better if we could. Sit a bit more forward, your honour; the belly band does be lifting her, and as you’re doing nothing, just give her a welt of that stick in your hand, now and then, for I lost the lash off my whip, and I’ve nothing but this!’ And he displayed the short handle of what had once been a whip, with a thong of leather dangling at the end.
‘I must say I wasn’t aware that I was to have worked my passage,’ said Walpole, with something between drollery and irritation.
‘She doesn’t care for bating—stick her with the end of it. That’s the way. We’ll get on elegant now. I suppose you was never here before?’
‘No; and I think I can promise you I’ll not come again.’
‘I hope you will, then, and many a time too. This is the Bog of Allen you’re travelling now, and they tell there’s not the like of it in the three kingdoms.’
‘I trust there’s not!’
‘The English, they say, has no bogs. Nothing but coal.’
‘Quite true.’
‘Erin,ma bouchalyou are! first gem of the say! that’s what Dan O’Connell always called you. Are you gettin’ tired with the stick?’
‘I’m tired of your wretched old beast, and your car, and yourself, too,’ said Walpole; ‘and if I were sure that was the castle yonder, I’d make my way straight to it on foot.’
‘And why wouldn’t you, if your honour liked it best? Why would ye be beholden to a car if you’d rather walk. Only mind the bog-holes: for there’s twenty feet of water in some of them, and the sides is so straight, you’ll never get out if you fall in.’
‘Drive on, then. I’ll remain where I am; but don’t bother me with your talk; and no more questioning.’
‘By coorse I won’t—why would I? Isn’t your honour a gentleman, and haven’t you a right to say what you plaze; and what am I but a poor boy, earning his bread. Just the way it is all through the world; some has everything they want and more besides, and others hasn’t a stitch to their backs, or maybe a pinch of tobacco to put in a pipe.’
This appeal was timed by seeing that Walpole had just lighted a fresh cigar, whose fragrant fumes were wafted across the speaker’s nose.
Firm to his determination to maintain silence, Walpole paid no attention to the speech, nor uttered a word of any kind; and as a light drizzling rain had now begun to fall, and obliged him to shelter himself under an umbrella, he was at length saved from his companion’s loquacity. Baffled, but not beaten, the old fellow began to sing, at first in a low, droning tone; but growing louder as the fire of patriotism warmed him, he shouted, to a very wild and somewhat irregular tune, a ballad, of which Walpole could not but hear the words occasionally, while the tramping of the fellow’s feet on the foot-board kept time to his song:—