The two friends were deposited at the Moate station at a few minutes after midnight, and their available resources amounting to something short of two shillings, and the fare of a car and horse to Kilgobbin being more than three times that amount, they decided to devote their small balance to purposes of refreshment, and then set out for the castle on foot.
‘It is a fine moonlight; I know all the short cuts, and I want a bit of walking besides,’ said Kearney; and though Joe was of a self-indulgent temperament, and would like to have gone to bed after his supper and trusted to the chapter of accidents to reach Kilgobbin by a conveyance some time, any time, he had to yield his consent and set out on the road.
‘The fellow who comes with the letter-bag will fetch over our portmanteau,’ said Dick, as they started.
‘I wish you’d give him directions to take charge of me, too,’ said Joe, who felt very indisposed to a long walk.
‘I likeyou,’ said Dick sneeringly; ‘you are always telling me that you are the sort of fellow for a new colony, life in the bush, and the rest of it, and when it conies to a question of a few miles’ tramp on a bright night in June, you try to skulk it in every possible way. You’re a great humbug, Master Joe.’
‘And you a very small humbug, and there lies the difference between us. The combinations in your mind are so few, that, as in a game of only three cards, there is no skill in the playing; while in my nature, as in that game called tarocco, there are half-a-dozen packs mixed up together, and the address required to play them is considerable.’
‘You have a very satisfactory estimate of your own abilities, Joe.’
‘And why not? If a clever fellow didn’t know he was clever, the opinion of the world on his superiority would probably turn his brain.’
‘And what do you say if his own vanity should do it?’
‘There is really no way of explaining to a fellow like you—’
‘What do you mean by a fellow like me?’ broke in Dick, somewhat angrily.
‘I mean this, that I’d as soon set to work to explain the theory of exchequer bonds to an Eskimo, as to make an unimaginative man understand something purely speculative. What you, and scores of fellows like you, denominate vanity, is only another form of hopefulness. You and your brethren—for you are a large family—do you know what it is to Hope! that is, you have no idea of what it is to build on the foundation of certain qualities you recognise in yourself, and to say that “if I can go so far with such a gift, such another will help me on so much farther.”’
‘I tell you one thing I do hope, which is, that the next time I set out a twelve miles’ walk, I’ll have a companion less imbued with self-admiration.’
‘And you might and might not find him pleasanter company. Cannot you see, old fellow, that the very things you object to in me are what are wanting in you? they are, so to say, the compliments of your own temperament.’
‘Have you a cigar?’
‘Two—take them both. I’d rather talk than smoke just now.’
‘I am almost sorry for it, though it gives me the tobacco.’
‘Are we on your father’s property yet?’
‘Yes; part of that village we came through belongs to us, and all this bog here is ours.’
‘Why don’t you reclaim it? labour costs a mere nothing in this country. Why don’t you drain those tracts, and treat the soil with lime? I’d live on potatoes, I’d make my family live on potatoes, and my son, and my grandson, for three generations, but I’d win this land back to culture and productiveness.’
‘The fee-simple of the soil wouldn’t pay the cost. It would be cheaper to save the money and buy an estate.’
‘That is one, and a very narrow view of it; but imagine the glory of restoring a lost tract to a nation, welcoming back the prodigal, and installing him in his place amongst his brethren. This was all forest once. Under the shade of the mighty oaks here those gallant O’Caharneys your ancestors followed the chase, or rested at noontide, or skedaddled in double-quick before those smart English of the Pale, who I must say treated your forbears with scant courtesy.’
‘We held our own against them for many a year.’
‘Only when it became so small it was not worth taking. Is not your father a Whig?’
‘He’s a Liberal, but he troubles himself little about parties.’
‘He’s a stout Catholic, though, isn’t he?’
‘He is a very devout believer in his Church,’ said Dick with the tone of one who did not desire to continue the theme.
‘Then why does he stop at Whiggery? why not go in for Nationalism and all the rest of it?’
‘And what’s all the rest of it?’
‘Great Ireland—no first flower of the earth or gem of the sea humbug—but Ireland great in prosperity, her harbours full of ships, the woollen trade, her ancient staple, revived: all that vast unused water-power, greater than all the steam of Manchester and Birmingham tenfold, at full work; the linen manufacture developed and promoted—’
‘And the Union repealed?’
‘Of course; that should be first of all. Not that I object to the Union, as many do, on the grounds of English ignorance as to Ireland. My dislike is, that, for the sake of carrying through certain measures necessary to Irish interests, I must sit and discuss questions which have no possible concern for me, and touch me no more than the debates in the Cortes, or the Reichskammer at Vienna. What do you or I care for who rules India, or who owns Turkey? What interest of mine is it whether Great Britain has five ironclads or fifty, or whether the Yankees take Canada, and the Russians Kabul?’
‘You’re a Fenian, and I am not.’
‘I suppose you’d call yourself an Englishman?’
‘I am an English subject, and I owe my allegiance to England.’
‘Perhaps for that matter, I owe some too; but I owe a great many things that I don’t distress myself about paying.’
‘Whatever your sentiments are on these matters—and, Joe, I am not disposed to think you have any very fixed ones—pray do me the favour to keep them to yourself while under my father’s roof. I can almost promise you he’ll obtrude none of his peculiar opinions onyou, and I hope you will treathimwith a like delicacy.’
‘What will your folks talk, then? I can’t suppose they care for books, art, or the drama. There is no society, so there can be no gossip. If that yonder be the cabin of one of your tenants, I’ll certainly not start the question of farming.’
‘There are poor on every estate,’ said Dick curtly.
‘Now what sort of a rent does that fellow pay—five pounds a year?’
‘More likely five-and-twenty or thirty shillings.’
‘By Jove, I’d like to set up house in that fashion, and make love to some delicately-nurtured miss, win her affections, and bring her home to such a spot. Wouldn’t that be a touchstone of affection, Dick?’
‘If I could believe you were in earnest, I’d throw you neck and heels into that bog-hole.’
‘Oh, if you would!’ cried he, and there was a ring of truthfulness in his voice now there could be no mistaking. Half-ashamed of the emotion his idle speech had called up, and uncertain how best to treat the emergency, Kearney said nothing, and Atlee walked on for miles without a word.
‘You can see the house now. It tops the trees yonder,’ said Dick.
‘That is Kilgobbin Castle, then?’ said Joe slowly.
‘There’s not much of castle left about it. There is a square block of a tower, and you can trace the moat and some remains of outworks.’
‘Shall I make you a confession, Dick? I envy you all that! I envy you what smacks of a race, a name, an ancestry, a lineage. It’s a great thing to be able to “take up the running,” as folks say, instead of making all the race yourself; and there’s one inestimable advantage in it, it rescues you from all indecent haste about asserting your station. You feel yourself to be a somebody and you’ve not hurried to proclaim it. There now, my boy, if you’d have said only half as much as that on the score of your family, I’d have called you an arrant snob. So much for consistency.’
‘What you have said gave me pleasure, I’ll own that.’
‘I suppose it was you planted those trees there. It was a nice thought, and makes the transition from the bleak bog to the cultivated land more easy and graceful. Now I see the castle well. It’s a fine portly mass against the morning sky, and I perceive you fly a flag over it.’
‘When the lord is at home.’
‘Ay, and by the way, do you give him his title while talking to him here?’
‘The tenants do, and the neighbours and strangers do as they please about it.’
‘Does he like it himself?’
‘If I was to guess, I should perhaps say he does like it. Here we are now. Inside this low gate you are within the demesne, and I may bid you welcome to Kilgobbin. We shall build a lodge here one of these days. There’s a good stretch, however, yet to the castle. We call it two miles, and it’s not far short of it.’
‘What a glorious morning. There is an ecstasy in scenting these nice fresh woods in the clear sunrise, and seeing those modest daffodils make their morning toilet.’
‘That’s a fancy of Kate’s. There is a border of such wild flowers all the way to the house.’
‘And those rills of clear water that flank the road, are they of her designing?’
‘That they are. There was a cutting made for a railroad line about four miles from this, and they came upon a sort of pudding-stone formation, made up chiefly of white pebbles. Kate heard of it, purchased the whole mass, and had these channels paved with them from the gate to the castle, and that’s the reason this water has its crystal clearness.’
‘She’s worthy of Shakespeare’s sweet epithet, the “daintiest Kate in Christendom.” Here’s her health!’ and he stooped down, and filling his palm with the running water, drank it off.
‘I see it’s not yet five o’clock. We’ll steal quietly off to bed, and have three or four hours sleep before we show ourselves.’
Cecil Walpole occupied the state-room and the state-bed at Kilgobbin Castle; but the pain of a very serious wound had left him very little faculty to know what honour was rendered him, or of what watchful solicitude he was the object. The fever brought on by his wound had obliterated in his mind all memory of where he was; and it was only now—that is, on the same morning that the young men had arrived at the castle—that he was able to converse without much difficulty, and enjoy the companionship of Lockwood, who had come over to see him and scarcely quitted his bedside since the disaster.
It seems going on all right,’ said Lockwood, as he lifted the iced cloths to look at the smashed limb, which lay swollen and livid on a pillow outside the clothes.
‘It’s not pretty to look at, Harry; but the doctor says “we shall save it”—his phrase for not cutting it off.’
‘They’ve taken up two fellows on suspicion, and I believe they were of the party here that night.’
‘I don’t much care about that. It was a fair fight, and I suspect I did not get the worst of it. What really does grieve me is to think how ingloriously one gets a wound that in real war would have been a title of honour.’
‘If I had to give a V.C. for this affair, it would be to that fine girl I’d give it, and not to you, Cecil.’
‘So should I. There is no question whatever as to our respective shares in the achievement.’
‘And she is so modest and unaffected about it all, and when she was showing me the position and the alcove, she never ceased to lay stress on the safety she enjoyed during the conflict.’
‘Then she said nothing about standing in front of me after I was wounded?’
‘Not a word. She said a great deal about your coolness and indifference to danger, but nothing about her own.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s almost a shame to own it—not that I could have done anything to prevent it—but she did step down one step of the stair and actually cover me from fire.’
‘She’s the finest girl in Europe,’ said Lockwood warmly.
‘And if it was not the contrast with her cousin, I’d almost say one of the handsomest,’ said Cecil.
‘The Greek is splendid, I admit that, though she’ll not speak—she’ll scarcely notice me.’
‘How is that?’
‘I can’t imagine, except it might have been, an awkward speech I made when we were talking over the row. I said, “Where were you? what were you doing all this time? “’
‘And what answer did she make you?’
‘None; not a word. She drew herself proudly up, and opened her eyes so large and full upon me, that I felt I must have appeared some sort of monster to be so stared at.’
‘I’ve seen her do that.’
‘It was very grand and very beautiful; but I’ll be shot if I’d like to stand under it again. From that time to this she has never deigned me more than a mere salutation.’
‘And are you good friends with the other girl?’
‘The best in the world. I don’t see much of her, for she’s always abroad, over the farm, or among the tenants: but when we meet we are very cordial and friendly.’
‘And the father, what is he like?’
‘My lord is a glorious old fellow, full of hospitable plans and pleasant projects; but terribly distressed to think that this unlucky incident should prejudice you against Ireland. Indeed, he gave me to understand that there must have been some mistake or misconception in the matter, for the castle had never been attacked before; and he insists on saying that if you will stop here—I think he said ten years—you’ll not see another such occurrence.’
‘It’s rather a hard way to test the problem though.’
‘What’s more, he included me in the experiment.’
‘And this title? Does he assume it, or expect it to be recognised?’
‘I can scarcely tell you. The Greek girl “my lords” him occasionally; his daughter, never. The servants always do so; and I take it that people use their own discretion about it.’
‘Or do it in a sort of indolent courtesy, as they call Marsala, sherry, but take care at the same time to pass the decanter. I believe you telegraphed to his Excellency?’
‘Yes; and he means to come over next week.’
‘Any news of Lady Maude?’
‘Only that she comes with him, and I’m sorry for it.’
‘So am I—deuced sorry! In a gossiping town like Dublin there will be surely some story afloat about these handsome girls here. She saw the Greek, too, at the Duke of Rigati’s ball at Rome, and she never forgets a name or a face. A pleasant trait in a wife.’
‘Of course the best plan will be to get removed, and be safely installed in our old quarters at the Castle before they arrive.’
‘We must hear what the doctor says.’
‘He’ll say no, naturally, for he’ll not like to lose his patient. He will have to convey you to town, and we’ll try and make him believe it will be the making of him. Don’t you agree with me, Cecil, it’s the thing to do?’
‘I have not thought it over yet. I will to-day. By the way, I know it’s the thing to do,’ repeated he, with an air of determination. ‘There will be all manner of reports, scandals, and falsehoods to no end about this business here; and when Lady Maude learns, as she is sure to learn, that the “Greek girl” is in the story, I cannot measure the mischief that may come of it.’
‘Break off the match, eh?’
‘That is certainly “on the cards.”’
‘I suspect even that would not break your heart.’
‘I don’t say it would, but it would prove very inconvenient in many ways. Danesbury has great claims on his party. He came here as Viceroy dead against his will, and, depend upon it, he made his terms. Then if these people go out, and the Tories want to outbid them, Danesbury could take—ay, and would take—office under them.’
‘I cannot follow all that. All I know is, I like the old boy himself, though he is a bit pompous now and then, and fancies he’s Emperor of Russia.’
‘I wish his niece didn’t imagine she was an imperial princess.’
‘That she does! I think she is the haughtiest girl I ever met. To be sure she was a great beauty.’
‘Was, Harry! What do you mean by “was”? Lady Maude is not eight-and-twenty.’
‘Ain’t she, though? Will you have a ten-pound note on it that she’s not over thirty-one; and I can tell you who could decide the wager?’
‘A delicate thought!—a fellow betting on the age of the girl he’s going to marry!’
He Entered and Nina Arose As he Came Forward.
‘Ten o’clock!—nearly half-past ten!’ said Lockwood, rising from his chair. ‘I must go and have some breakfast. I meant to have been down in time to-day, and breakfasted with the old fellow and his daughter; for coming late brings me to atête-à-têtewith the Greek damsel, and it isn’t jolly, I assure you.’
‘Don’t you speak?’
‘Never a word?’ She’s generally reading a newspaper when I go in. She lays it down; but after remarking that she fears I’ll find the coffee cold, she goes on with her breakfast, kisses her Maltese terrier, asks him a few questions about his health, and whether he would like to be in a warmer climate, and then sails away.’
‘And how she walks!’
‘Is she bored here?’
‘She says not.’
‘She can scarcely like these people; they ‘re not the sort of thing she has ever been used to.’
‘She tells me she likes them: they certainly like her.’
‘Well,’ said Lockwood, with a sigh, ‘she’s the most beautiful woman, certainly, I’ve ever seen; and, at this moment, I’d rather eat a crust with a glass of beer under a hedge than I’d go down and sit at breakfast with her.’
‘I’ll be shot if I’ll not tell her that speech the first day I’m down again.’
‘So you may, for by that time I shall have seen her for the last time.’ And with this he strolled out of the room and down the stairs towards the breakfast-parlour.
As he stood at the door he heard the sound of voices laughing and talking pleasantly. He entered, and Nina arose as he came forward, and said, ‘Let me present my cousin—Mr. Richard Kearney, Major Lockwood; his friend, Mr. Atlee.’
The two young men stood up—Kearny stiff and haughty, and Atlee with a sort of easy assurance that seemed to suit his good-looking but certainly snobbish style. As for Lockwood, he was too much a gentleman to have more than one manner, and he received these two men as he would have received any other two of any rank anywhere.
‘These gentlemen have been showing me some strange versions of our little incident here in the Dublin papers,’ said Nina to Lockwood. ‘I scarcely thought we should become so famous.’
‘I suppose they don’t stickle much for truth,’ said Lockwood, as he broke his egg in leisurely fashion.
‘They were scarcely able to provide a special correspondent for the event,’ said Atlee; ‘but I take it they give the main facts pretty accurately and fairly.’
‘Indeed!’ said Lockwood, more struck by the manner than by the words of the speaker. ‘They mention, then, that my friend received a bad fracture of the forearm.’
‘No, I don’t think they do; at least so far as I have seen. They speak of a night attack on Kilgobbin Castle, made by an armed party of six or seven men with faces blackened, and their complete repulse through the heroic conduct of a young lady.’
‘The main facts, then, include no mention of poor Walpole and his misfortune?’
‘I don’t think that we mere Irish attach any great importance to a broken arm, whether it came of a cricket-ball or gun; but we do interest ourselves deeply when an Irish girl displays feats of heroism and courage that men find it hard to rival.’
‘It was very fine,’ said Lockwood gravely.
‘Fine! I should think it was fine!’ burst out Atlee. ‘It was so fine that, had the deed been done on the other side of this narrow sea, the nation would not have been satisfied till your Poet Laureate had commemorated it in verse.’
‘Have they discovered any traces of the fellows?’ said Lockwood, who declined to follow the discussion into this channel.
‘My father has gone over to Moate to-day,’ said Kearney, now speaking for the first time, ‘to hear the examination of two fellows who have been taken up on suspicion.’
‘You have plenty of this sort of thing in your country,’ said Atlee to Nina.
‘Where do you mean when you say my country?’
‘I mean Greece.’
‘But I have not seen Greece since I was a child, so high; I have lived always in Italy.’
‘Well, Italy has Calabria and the Terra del Lavoro.’
‘And how much do we in Rome know about either?’
‘About as much,’ said Lockwood, ‘as Belgravia does of the Bog of Allen.’
‘You’ll return to your friends in civilised life with almost the fame of an African traveller, Major Lockwood,’ said Atlee pertly.
‘If Africa can boast such hospitality, I certainly rather envy than compassionate Doctor Livingstone,’ said he politely.
‘Somebody,’ said Kearney dryly, ‘calls hospitality the breeding of the savage.’
‘But I deny that we are savage,’ cried Atlee. ‘I contend for it that all our civilisation is higher, and that class for class we are in a more advanced culture than the English; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to ours; that throughout our middle classes there is not only a higher morality but a higher refinement than with you.’
‘I read in one of the most accredited journals of England the other day that Ireland had never produced a poet, could not even show a second-rate humorist,’ said Kearney.
‘Swift and Sterne were third-rate, or perhaps, English,’ said Atlee.
‘These are themes I’ll not attempt to discuss,’ said Lockwood; ‘but I know one thing, it takes three times as much military force to govern the smaller island.’
‘That is to say, to govern the country afteryourfashion; but leave it to ourselves. Pack your portmanteaus and go away, and then see if we’ll need this parade of horse, foot, and dragoons; these batteries of guns and these brigades of peelers.’
‘You’d be the first to beg us to come back again.’
‘Doubtless, as the Greeks are begging the Turks. Eh, mademoiselle; can you fancy throwing yourself at the feet of a Pasha and asking leave to be his slave?’
‘The only Greek slave I ever heard of,’ said Lockwood, ‘was in marble and made by an American.’
‘Come into the drawing-room and I’ll sing you something,’ said Nina, rising.
‘Which will be far nicer and pleasanter than all this discussion,’ said Joe.
‘And if you’ll permit me,’ said Lockwood, ‘we’ll leave the drawing-room door open and let poor Walpole hear the music.’
‘Would it not be better first to see if he’s asleep?’ said she.
‘That’s true. I’ll step up and see.’
Lockwood hurried away, and Joe Atlee, leaning back in his chair, said, ‘Well, we gave the Saxon a canter, I think. As you know, Dick, that fellow is no end of a swell.’
‘You know nothing about him,’ said the other gruffly.
‘Only so much as newspapers could tell me. He’s Master of the Horse in the Viceroy’s household, and the other fellow is Private Secretary, and some connection besides. I say, Dick, it’s all King James’s times back again. There has not been so much grandeur here for six or eight generations.’
‘There has not been a more absurd speech made than that, within the time.’
‘And he is really somebody?’ said Nina to Atlee.
‘Agran signore davvero,’ said he pompously. ‘If you don’t sing your very best for him, I’ll swear you are a republican.’
‘Come, take my arm, Nina. I may call you Nina, may I not?’ whispered Kearney.
‘Certainly, if I may call you Joe.’
‘You may, if you like,’ said he roughly, ‘but my name is Dick.’
‘I am Beppo, and very much at your orders,’ said Atlee, stepping forward and leading her away.
They were assembled in the drawing-room before dinner, when Lord Kilgobbin arrived, heated, dusty, and tired, after his twelve miles’ drive. ‘I say, girls,’ said he, putting his head inside the door, ‘is it true that our distinguished guest is not coming down to dinner, for, if so, I’ll not wait to dress?’
‘No, papa; he said he’d stay with Mr. Walpole. They’ve been receiving and despatching telegrams all day, and seem to have the whole world on their hands,’ said Kate.
‘Well, sir, what did you do at the sessions?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ broke in Nina, eager to show her more mindful regard to his rank than Atlee displayed; ‘tell us your news?’
‘I suspect we have got two of them, and are on the traces of the others. They are Louth men, and were sent special here to give me a lesson, as they call it. That’s what our blessed newspapers have brought us to. Some idle vagabond, at his wits’ end for an article, fastens on some unlucky country gentleman, neither much better nor worse than his neighbours, holds him up to public reprobation, perfectly sure that within a week’s time some rascal who owes him a grudge—the fellow he has evicted for non-payment of rent, the blackguard he prosecuted for perjury, or some other of the like stamp—will write a piteous letter to the editor, relating his wrongs. The next act of the drama is a notice on the hall door, with a coffin at the top; and the piece closes with a charge of slugs in your body, as you are on your road to mass. Now, if I had the making of the laws, the first fellow I’d lay hands on would be the newspaper writer. Eh, Master Atlee, am I right?’
‘I go with you to the furthest extent, my lord.’
‘I vote we hang Joe, then,’ cried Dick. ‘He is the only member of the fraternity I have any acquaintance with.’
‘What—do you tell me that you write for the papers?’ asked my lord slyly.
‘He’s quizzing, sir; he knows right well I have no gifts of that sort.’
‘Here’s dinner, papa. Will you give Nina your arm? Mr. Atlee, you are to take me.’
‘You’ll not agree with me, Nina, my dear,’ said the old man, as he led her along; ‘but I’m heartily glad we have not that great swell who dined with us yesterday.’
‘I do agree with you, uncle—I dislike him.’
‘Perhaps I am unjust to him; but I thought he treated us all with a sort of bland pity that I found very offensive.’
‘Yes; I thought that too. His manner seemed to say, “I am very sorry for you, but what can be done?”’
‘Is the other fellow—the wounded one—as bad?’
She pursed up her lip, slightly shrugged her shoulders, and then said, ‘There’s not a great deal to choose between them; but I think I like him better.’
‘How do you like Dick, eh?’ said he, in a whisper.
‘Oh, so much,’ said she, with one of her half-downcast looks, but which never prevented her seeing what passed in her neighbour’s face.
‘Well, don’t let him fall in love withyou,’ said he, with a smile, ‘for it would be bad for you both.’
‘But why should he?’ said she, with an air of innocence.
‘Just because I don’t see how he is to escape it. What’s Master Atlee saying to you, Kitty?’
‘He’s giving me some hints about horse-breaking,’ said she quietly.
‘Is he, by George? Well, I ‘d like to see him follow you over that fallen timber in the back lawn. We’ll have you out, Master Joe, and give you a field-day to-morrow,’ said the old man.
‘I vote we do,’ cried Dick; ‘unless, better still, we could persuade Miss Betty to bring the dogs over and give us a cub-hunt.’
‘I want to see a cub-hunt,’ broke in Nina.
‘Do you mean that you ride to hounds, Cousin Nina?’ asked Dick.
‘I should think that any one who has taken the ox-fences on the Roman Campagna, as I have, might venture to face your small stone-walls here.’
‘That’s plucky, anyhow; and I hope, Joe, it will put you on your metal to show yourself worthy of your companionship. What is old Mathew looking so mysteriously about? What do you want?’
The old servant thus addressed had gone about the room with the air of one not fully decided to whom to speak, and at last he leaned over Miss Kearney’s shoulder, and whispered a few words in her ear. ‘Of course not, Mat!’ said she, and then turning to her father—‘Mat has such an opinion of my medical skill, he wants me to see Mr. Walpole, who, it seems, has got up, and evidently increased his pain by it.’
‘Oh, but is there no doctor near us?’ asked Nina eagerly.
‘I’d go at once,’ said Kate frankly, ‘but my skill does not extend to surgery.’
‘I have some little knowledge in that way: I studied and walked the hospitals for a couple of years,’ broke out Joe. ‘Shall I go up to him?’
‘By all means,’ cried several together, and Joe rose and followed Mathew upstairs.
‘Oh, are you a medical man?’ cried Lockwood, as the other entered.
‘After a fashion, I may say I am. At least, I can tell you where my skill will come to its limit, and that is something.’
‘Look here, then—he would insist on getting up, and I fear he has displaced the position of the bones. You must be very gentle, for the pain is terrific.’
‘No; there’s no great mischief done—the fractured parts are in a proper position. It is the mere pain of disturbance. Cover it all over with the ice again, and’—here he felt his pulse—‘let him have some weak brandy-and-water.’
‘That’s sensible advice—I feel it. I am shivery all over,’ said Walpole.
‘I’ll go and make a brew for you,’ cried Joe, ‘and you shall have it as hot as you can drink it.’
He had scarcely left the room, when he returned with the smoking compound.
‘You’re such a jolly doctor,’ said Walpole, ‘I feel sure you’d not refuse me a cigar?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Only think! that old barbarian who was here this morning said I was to have nothing but weak tea or iced lemonade.’
Lockwood selected a mild-looking weed, and handed it to his friend, and was about to offer one to Atlee, when he said—
‘But we have taken you from your dinner—pray go back again.’
‘No, we were at dessert. I’ll stay here and have a smoke, if you will let me. Will it bore you, though?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Walpole, ‘your company will be a great boon to us; and as for myself, you have done me good already.’
‘What would you say, Major Lockwood, to taking my place below-stairs? They are just sitting over their wine—some very pleasant claret—and the young ladies, I perceive, here, give half an hour of their company before they leave the dining-room.’
‘Here goes, then,’ said Lockwood. ‘Now that you remind me of it, I do want a glass of wine.’
Lockwood found the party below-stairs eagerly discussing Joe Atlee’s medical qualifications, and doubting whether, if it was a knowledge of civil engineering or marine gunnery had been required, he would not have been equally ready to offer himself for the emergency.
‘I’ll lay my life on it, if the real doctor arrives, Joe will take the lead in the consultation,’ cried Dick: ‘he is the most unabashable villain in Europe.’
‘Well, he has put Cecil all right,’ said Lockwood: ‘he has settled the arm most comfortably on the pillow, the pain is decreasing every moment, and by his pleasant and jolly talk he is making Walpole even forget it at times.’
This was exactly what Atlee was doing. Watching carefully the sick man’s face, he plied him with just that amount of amusement that he could bear without fatigue. He told him the absurd versions that had got abroad of the incident in the press; and cautiously feeling his way, went on to tell how Dick Kearney had started from town full of the most fiery intentions towards that visitor whom the newspapers called a ‘noted profligate’ of London celebrity. ‘If you had not been shot before, we were to have managed it for you now,’ said he.
‘Surely these fellows who wrote this had never heard of me.’
‘Of course they had not, further than you were on the Viceroy’s staff; but is not that ample warranty for profligacy? Besides, the real intention was not to assail you, but the people here who admitted you.’ Thus talking, he led Walpole to own that he had no acquaintanceship with the Kearneys, that a mere passing curiosity to see the interesting house had provoked his request, to which the answer, coming from an old friend, led to his visit. Through this channel Atlee drew him on to the subject of the Greek girl and her parentage. As Walpole sketched the society of Rome, Atlee, who had cultivated the gift of listening fully as much as that of talking, knew where to seem interested by the views of life thrown out, and where to show a racy enjoyment of the little humoristic bits of description which the other was rather proud of his skill in deploying; and as Atlee always appeared so conversant with the family history of the people they were discussing, Walpole spoke with unbounded freedom and openness.
‘You must have been astonished to meet the “Titian Girl” in Ireland?’ said Joe at last, for he had caught up the epithet dropped accidentally in the other’s narrative, and kept it for use.
‘Was I not! but if my memory had been clearer, I should have remembered she had Irish connections. I had heard of Lord Kilgobbin on the other side of the Alps.’
‘I don’t doubt that the title would meet a readier acceptance there than here.’
‘Ah, you think so!’ cried Walpole. ‘What is the meaning of a rank that people acknowledge or deny at pleasure? Is this peculiar to Ireland?’
‘If you had asked whether persons anywhere else would like to maintain such a strange pretension, I might perhaps have answered you.’
‘For the few minutes of this visit to me, I liked him; he seemed frank, hearty, and genial.’
‘I suppose he is, and I suspect this folly of the lordship is no fancy of his own.’
‘Nor the daughter’s, then, I’ll be bound?’
‘No; the son, I take it, has all the ambition of the house.’
‘Do you know them well?’
‘No, I never saw them till yesterday. The son and I are chums: we live together, and have done so these three years.’
‘You like your visit here, however?’
‘Yes. It’s rather good fun on the whole. I was afraid of the indoor life when I was coming down, but it’s pleasanter than I looked for.’
‘When I asked you the question, it was not out of idle curiosity. I had a strong personal interest in your answer. In fact, it was another way of inquiring whether it would be a great sacrifice to tear yourself away from this.’
‘No, inasmuch as the tearing-away process must take place in a couple of days—three at farthest.’
‘That makes what I have to propose all the easier. It is a matter of great urgency for me to reach Dublin at once. This unlucky incident has been so represented by the newspapers as to give considerable uneasiness to the Government, and they are even threatened with a discussion on it in the House. Now, I’d start to-morrow, if I thought I could travel with safety. You have so impressed me with your skill, that, if I dared, I’d ask you to convoy me up. Of course I mean as my physician.’
‘But I’m not one, nor ever intend to be.’
‘You studied, however?’
‘As I have done scores of things. I know a little bit of criminal law, have done some shipbuilding, rodehaute écolein Cooke’s circus, and, after M. Dumas, I am considered the best amateur macaroni-maker in Europe.’
‘And which of these careers do you intend to abide by?’
‘None, not one of them. “Financing” is the only pursuit that pays largely. I intend to go in for money.’
‘I should like to hear your ideas on that subject.’
‘So you shall, as we travel up to town.’
‘You accept my offer, then?’
‘Of course I do. I am delighted to have so many hours in your company. I believe I can safely say I have that amount of skill to be of service to you. One begins his medical experience with fractures. They are the pothooks and hangers of surgery, and I have gone that far. Now, what are your plans?’
‘My plans are to leave this early to-morrow, so as to rest during the hot hours of the day, and reach Dublin by nightfall. Why do you smile?’
‘I smile at your notion of climate; but I never knew any man who had been once in Italy able to disabuse himself of the idea that there were three or four hours every summer day to be passed with closed shutters and iced drinks.’
‘Well, I believe I was thinking of a fiercer sun and a hotter soil than these. To return to my project: we can find means of posting, carriage and horses, in the village. I forget its name.’
‘I’ll take care of all that. At what hour will you start?’
‘I should say by six or seven. I shall not sleep; and I shall be all impatience till we are away.’
‘Well, is there anything else to be thought of?’
‘There is—that is, I have something on my mind, and I am debating with myself how far, on a half-hour’s acquaintance, I can make you a partner in it.’
‘I cannot help you by my advice. I can only say that if you like to trust me, I’ll know how to respect the confidence.’
Walpole looked steadily and steadfastly at him, and the examination seemed to satisfy him, for he said, ‘I will trust you—not that the matter is a secret in any sense that involves consequences; but it is a thing that needs a little tact and discretion, a slight exercise of a light hand, which is what my friend Lockwood fails in. Now you could do it.’
‘If I can, I will. What is it?’
‘Well, the matter is this. I have written a few lines here, very illegibly and badly, as you may believe, for they were with my left hand; and besides having the letter conveyed to its address, I need a few words of explanation.’
‘The Titian Girl,’ muttered Joe, as though thinking aloud.
‘Why do you say so?’
‘Oh, it was easy enough to see her greater anxiety and uneasiness about you. There was an actual flash of jealousy across her features when Miss Kearney proposed coming up to see you.’
‘And was this remarked, think you?’
‘Only by me.Isaw, and let her see I saw it, and we understood each other from that moment.’
‘I mustn’t let you mistake me. You are not to suppose that there is anything between Mademoiselle Kostalergi and myself. I knew a good deal about her father, and there were family circumstances in which I was once able to be of use; and I wished to let her know that if at any time she desired to communicate with me, I could procure an address, under which she could write with freedom.’
‘As for instance: “J. Atlee, 48 Old Square, Trinity College, Dublin.”’
‘Well, I did not think of that at the moment,’ said Walpole, smiling. ‘Now,’ continued he, ‘though I have written all this, it is so blotted and disgraceful generally—done with the left hand, and while in great pain—that I think it would be as well not to send the letter, but simply a message—’
Atlee nodded, and Walpole went on: ‘A message to say that I was wishing to write, but unable; and that if I had her permission, so soon as my fingers could hold a pen, to finish—yes, to finish that communication I had already begun, and if she felt there was no inconvenience in writing to me, under cover to your care, I should pledge myself to devote all my zeal and my best services to her interests.’
‘In fact, I am to lead her to suppose she ought to have the most implicit confidence in you, and to believe in me, because I say so.’
‘I do not exactly see that these are my instructions to you.’
‘Well, you certainly want to write to her.’
‘I don’t know that I do.’
‘At all events, you want her to write toyou.’
‘You are nearer the mark now.’
‘That ought not to be very difficult to arrange. I’ll go down now and have a cup of tea, and I may, I hope, come up and see you again before bed-time.’
‘Wait one moment,’ cried Walpole, as the other was about to leave the room. ‘Do you see a small tray on that table yonder, with some trinkets? Yes, that is it. Well, will you do me the favour to choose something amongst them as your fee? Come, come, you know you are my doctor now, and I insist on this. There’s nothing of any value there, and you will have no misgivings.’
‘Am I to take it haphazard?’ asked Atlee.
‘Whatever you like,’ said the other indolently.
‘I have selected a ring,’ said Atlee, as he drew it on his finger.
‘Not an opal?’
‘Yes, it is an opal with brilliants round it.’
‘I’d rather you’d taken all the rest than that. Not that I ever wear it, but somehow it has a bit of memory attached to it!’
‘Do you know,’ said Atlee gravely, ‘you are adding immensely to the value I desired to see in it? I wanted something as a souvenir of you—what the Germans call anAndenken, and here is evidently what has some secret clue to your affections. It was not an old love-token?’
‘No; or I should certainly not part with it.’
‘It did not belong to a friend now no more?’
‘Nor that either,’ said he, smiling at the other’s persistent curiosity.
‘Then if it be neither the gift of an old love nor a lost friend, I’ll not relinquish it,’ cried Joe.
‘Be it so,’ said Walpole, half carelessly. ‘Mine was a mere caprice after all. It is linked with a reminiscence—there’s the whole of it; but if you care for it, pray keep it.’
‘I do care for it, and I will keep it.’
It was a very peculiar smile that curled Walpole’s lip as he heard this speech, and there was an expression in his eyes that seemed to say, ‘What manner of man is this, what sort of nature, new and strange to me, is he made of?’
‘Bye-bye!’ said Atlee carelessly, and he strolled away.