When Atlee quitted Walpole’s room, he was far too full of doubt and speculation to wish to join the company in the drawing-room. He had need of time to collect his thoughts, too, and arrange his plans. This sudden departure of his would, he well knew, displease Kearney. It would savour of a degree of impertinence, in treating their hospitality so cavalierly, that Dick was certain to resent, and not less certain to attribute to a tuft-hunting weakness on Atlee’s part of which he had frequently declared he detected signs in Joe’s character.
‘Be it so. I’ll only say, you’ll not see me cultivate “swells” for the pleasure of their society, or even the charms of their cookery. If I turn them to no better uses than display, Master Dick, you may sneer freely at me. I have long wanted to make acquaintance with one of these fellows, and luck has now given me the chance. Let us see if I know how to profit by it.’
And, thus muttering to himself, he took his way to the farmyard, to find a messenger to despatch to the village for post-horses.
The fact that he was not the owner of a half-crown in the world very painfully impressed itself on a negotiation, which, to be prompt, should be prepaid, and which he was endeavouring to explain to two or three very idle but very incredulous listeners—not one of whom could be induced to accept a ten miles’ tramp on a drizzling night without the prompting of a tip in advance.
‘It’s every step of eight miles,’ cried one.
‘No, but it’s ten,’ asseverated another with energy, ‘by rayson that you must go by the road. There’s nobody would venture across the bog in the dark.’
‘Wid five shillings in my hand—’
‘And five more when ye come back,’ continued another, who was terrified at the low estimate so rashly adventured.
‘If one had even a shilling or two to pay for a drink when he got in to Kilbeggan wet through and shivering—’
The speaker was not permitted to finish his ignominiously low proposal, and a low growl of disapprobation smothered his words.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ said Joe angrily, ‘that there’s not a man here will step over to the town to order a chaise and post-horses?’
‘And if yer honour will put his hand in his pocket and tempt us with a couple of crown-pieces, there’s no saying what we wouldn’t do,’ said a little bandy old fellow, who was washing his face at the pump.
‘And are crown-pieces so plentiful with you down here that you can earn them so easily?’ said Atlee, with a sneer.
‘Be me sowl, yer honour, it’s thinking that they’re not so aisy to come at, makes us a bit lazy this evening!’ said a ragged fellow, with a grin, which was quickly followed by a hearty laugh from those around him.
Something that sounded like a titter above his head made Atlee look up, and there, exactly over where he stood, was Nina, leaning over a little stone balcony in front of a window, an amused witness of the scene beneath.
‘I have two words for yourself,’ cried he to her in Italian. ‘Will you come down to the garden for one moment?’
‘Cannot the two words be said in the drawing-room?’ asked she, half saucily, in the same language.
‘No, they cannot be said in the drawing-room,’ continued he sternly.
‘It’s dropping rain. I should get wet.’
‘Take an umbrella, then, but come. Mind me, Signora Nina, I am the bearer of a message for you.’
There was something almost disdainful in the toss of her head as she heard these words, and she hastily retired from the balcony and entered the room.
Atlee watched her, by no means certain what her gesture might portend. Was she indignant with him for the liberty he had taken? or was she about to comply with his request, and meet him? He knew too little of her to determine which was the more likely; and he could not help feeling that, had he only known her longer, his doubt might have been just as great. Her mind, thought he, is perhaps like my own: it has many turnings, and she’s never very certain which one of them she will follow. Somehow, this imputed wilfulness gave her, to his eyes, a charm scarcely second to that of her exceeding beauty. And what beauty it was! The very perfection of symmetry in every feature when at rest, while the varied expressions of her face as she spoke, or smiled, or listened, imparted a fascination which only needed the charm of her low liquid voice to be irresistible.
How she vulgarises that pretty girl, her cousin, by mere contrast! What subtle essence is it, apart from hair and eyes and skin, that spreads an atmosphere of conquest over these natures, and how is it that men have no ascendencies of this sort—nothing that imparts to their superiority the sense that worship of them is in itself an ecstasy?
‘Take my message into town,’ said he to a fellow near, ‘and you shall have a sovereign when you come back with the horses’; and with this he strolled away across a little paddock and entered the garden. It was a large, ill-cultivated space, more orchard than garden, with patches of smooth turf, through which daffodils and lilies were scattered, and little clusters of carnations occasionally showed where flower-beds had once existed. ‘What would I not give,’ thought Joe, as he strolled along the velvety sward, over which a clear moonlight had painted the forms of many a straggling branch—‘What would I not give to be the son of a house like this, with an old and honoured name, with an ancestry strong enough to build upon for future pretensions, and then with an old home, peaceful, tranquil, and unmolested, where, as in such a spot as this, one might dream of great things, perhaps more, might achieve them! What books would I not write! What novels, in which, fashioning the hero out of my own heart, I could tell scores of impressions the world had made upon me in its aspect of religion, or of politics, or of society! What essays could I not compose here—the mind elevated by that buoyancy which comes of the consciousness of being free for a great effort! Free from the vulgar interruptions that cling to poverty like a garment, free from the paltry cares of daily subsistence, free from the damaging incidents of a doubtful position and a station that must be continually asserted. That one disparagement, perhaps, worst of all,’ cried he aloud: ‘how is a man to enjoy his estate if he is “put upon his title” every day of the week? One might as well be a French Emperor, and go every spring to the country for a character.’
‘What shocking indignity is this you are dreaming of?’ said a very soft voice near him, and turning he saw Nina, who was moving across the grass, with her dress so draped as to show the most perfect instep and ankle with a very unguarded indifference.
‘This is very damp for you; shall we not come out into the walk?’ said he.
‘It is very damp,’ said she quickly; ‘but I came because you said you had a message for me: is this true?’
‘Do you think I could deceive you?’ said he, with a sort of tender reproachfulness.
‘It might not be so very easy, if you were to try,’ replied she, laughing.
‘That is not the most gracious way to answer me.’
‘Well, I don’t believe we came here to pay compliments; certainly I did not, and my feet are very wet already—look there, and see the ruin of achaussureI shall never replace in this dear land of coarse leather and hobnails.’
As she spoke she showed her feet, around which her bronzed shoes hung limp and misshapen.
‘Would that I could be permitted to dry them with my kisses,’ said he, as, stooping, he wiped them with his handkerchief, but so deferentially and so respectfully, as though the homage had been tendered to a princess. Nor did she for a moment hesitate to accept the service.
‘There, that will do,’ said she haughtily. ‘Now for your message.’
‘We are going away, mademoiselle,’ said Atlee, with a melancholy tone.
‘And who are “we,” sir?’
‘By “we,” mademoiselle, I meant to convey Walpole and myself.’ And now he spoke with the irritation of one who had felt a pull-up.
‘Ah, indeed!’ said she, smiling, and showing her pearly teeth. ‘“We” meant Mr. Walpole and Mr. Atlee.’
‘You should never have guessed it?’ cried he in question.
‘Never—certainly,’ was her cool rejoinder.
‘Well!Hewas less defiant, or mistrustful, or whatever be the name for it. We were only friends of half-an-hour’s growth when he proposed the journey. He asked me to accompany him as a favour; and he did more, mademoiselle: he confided to me a mission—a very delicate and confidential mission—such an office as one does not usually depute to him of whose fidelity or good faith he has a doubt, not to speak of certain smaller qualities, such as tact and good taste.’
‘Of whose possession Mr. Atlee is now asserting himself?’ said she quietly.
He grew crimson at a sarcasm whose impassiveness made it all the more cutting.
‘My mission was in this wise, mademoiselle,’ said he, with a forced calm in his manner. ‘I was to learn from Mademoiselle Kostalergi if she should desire to communicate with Mr. Walpole touching certain family interests in which his counsels might be of use; and in this event, I was to place at her disposal an address by which her letters should reach him.’
‘No, sir,’ said she quietly, ‘you have totally mistaken any instructions that were given you. Mr. Walpole never pretended that I had written or was likely to write to him; he never said that he was in any way concerned in family questions that pertained to me; least of all did he presume to suppose that if I had occasion to address him by letter, I should do so under cover to another.’
‘You discredit my character of envoy, then?’ said he, smiling easily.
‘Totally and completely, Mr. Atlee; and I only wait for you yourself to admit that I am right, to hold out my hand to you and say let us be friends.’
‘I’d perjure myself twice at such a price. Now for the hand.’
‘Not so fast—first the confession,’ said she, with a faint smile.
‘Well, on my honour,’ cried he seriously, ‘he told me he hoped you might write to him. I did not clearly understand about what, but it pointed to some matter in which a family interest was mixed up, and that you might like your communication to have the reserve of secrecy.’
‘All this is but a modified version of what you were to disavow.’
‘Well, I am only repeating it now to show you how far I am going to perjure myself.’
‘That is, you see, in fact, that Mr. Walpole could never have presumed to give you such instructions—that gentlemen do not send such messages to young ladies—do not presume to say that they dare do so; and last of all, if they ever should chance upon one whose nice tact and cleverness would have fitted him to be the bearer of such a commission, those same qualities of tact and cleverness would have saved him from undertaking it. That is what you see, Mr. Atlee, is it not?’
‘You are right. I see it all.’ And now he seized her hand and kissed it as though he had won the right to that rapturous enjoyment.
She drew her hand away, but so slowly and so gently as to convey nothing of rebuke or displeasure. ‘And so you are going away?’ said she softly.
‘Yes; Walpole has some pressing reason to be at once in Dublin. He is afraid to make the journey without a doctor; but rather than risk delay in sending for one, he is willing to takemeas his body-surgeon, and I have accepted the charge.’
The frankness with which he said this seemed to influence her in his favour, and she said, with a tone of like candour, ‘You were right. His family are people of influence, and will not readily forget such a service.’
Though he winced under the words, and showed that it was not exactly the mode in which he wanted his courtesy to be regarded, she took no account of the passing irritation, but went on—
If you fancy you know something about me, Mr. Atlee,Iknow far more aboutyou. Your chum, Dick Kearney, has been so outspoken as to his friend, that my cousin Kate and I have been accustomed to discuss you like a near acquaintance—what am I saying?—I mean like an old friend.’
‘I am very grateful for this interest; but will you kindly say what is the version my friend Dick has given of me? what are the lights that have fallen upon my humble character?’
‘You Are Right, I See It All,’ and Now he Seized Her Hand And Kissed It
‘Do you fancy that either of us have time at this moment to open so large a question? Would not the estimate of Mr. Joseph Atlee be another mode of discussing the times we live in, and the young gentlemen, more or less ambitious, who want to influence them? would not the question embrace everything, from the difficulties of Ireland to the puzzling embarrassments of a clever young man who has everything in his favour in life, except the only thing that makes life worth living for?’
‘You mean fortune—money?’
‘Of course I mean money. What is so powerless as poverty? do I not know it—not of yesterday, or the day before, but for many a long year? What so helpless, what so jarring to temper, so dangerous to all principle, and so subversive of all dignity? I can afford to say these things, and you can afford to hear them, for there is a sort of brotherhood between us. We claim the same land for our origin. Whatever our birthplace, we are both Bohemians!’
She held out her hand as she spoke, and with such an air of cordiality and frankness that Joe caught the spirit of the action at once, and, bending over, pressed his lips to it, as he said, ‘I seal the bargain.’
‘And swear to it?’
‘I swear to it,’ cried he.
‘There, that is enough. Let us go back, or rather, let me go back alone. I will tell them I have seen you, and heard of your approaching departure.’
A visit to his father was not usually one of those things that young Kearney either speculated on with pleasure beforehand, or much enjoyed when it came. Certain measures of decorum, and some still more pressing necessities of economy, required that he should pass some months of every year at home; but they were always seasons looked forward to with a mild terror, and when the time drew nigh, met with a species of dogged, fierce resolution that certainly did not serve to lighten the burden of the infliction; and though Kate’s experience of this temper was not varied by any exceptions, she would still go on looking with pleasure for the time of his visit, and plotting innumerable little schemes for enjoyment while he should remain. The first day or two after his arrival usually went over pleasantly enough. Dick came back full of his town life, and its amusements; and Kate was quite satisfied to accept gaiety at second-hand. He had so much to tell of balls, picnics, charming rides in the Phoenix, of garden-parties in the beautiful environs of Dublin, or more pretentious entertainments, which took the shape of excursions to Bray or Killiney, that she came at last to learn all his friends and acquaintances by name, and never confounded the stately beauties that he worshipped afar off with the ‘awfully jolly girls’ whom he flirted with quite irresponsibly. She knew, too, all about his male companions, from the flash young fellow-commoner from Downshire, who had a saddle-horse and a mounted groom waiting for him every day after morning lecture, down to that scampish Joe Atlee, with whose scrapes and eccentricities he filled many an idle hour.
Independently of her gift as a good listener, Kate would very willingly have heard all Dick’s adventures and descriptions not only twice but tenth-told; just as the child listens with unwearied attention to the fairy-tale whose end he is well aware of, but still likes the little detail falling fresh upon his ear, so would this young girl make him go over some narratives she knew by heart, and would not suffer him to omit the slightest incident or most trifling circumstance that heightened the history of the story.
As to Dick, however, the dull monotony of the daily life, the small and vulgar interests of the house or the farm, which formed the only topics, the undergrowl of economy that ran through every conversation, as though penuriousness was the great object of existence—but, perhaps more than all these together, the early hours—so overcame him that he at first became low-spirited, and then sulky, seldom appearing save at meal-times, and certainly contributing little to the pleasure of the meeting; so that at last, though she might not easily have been brought to the confession, Kate Kearney saw the time of Dick’s departure approach without regret, and was actually glad to be relieved from that terror of a rupture between her father and her brother of which not a day passed without a menace.
Like all men who aspire to something in Ireland, Kearney desired to see his son a barrister; for great as are the rewards of that high career, they are not the fascinations which appeal most strongly to the squirearchy, who love to think that a country gentleman may know a little law and be never the richer for it—may have acquired a profession, and yet never know what was a client or what a fee.
That Kearney of Kilgobbin Castle should be reduced to tramping his way down the Bachelor’s Walk to the Four Courts, with a stuff bag carried behind him, was not to be thought of; but there were so many positions in life, so many situations for which that gifted creature the barrister of six years’ standing was alone eligible, that Kearney was very anxious his son should be qualified to accept that £1000 or £1800 a year which a gentleman could hold without any shadow upon his capacity, or the slightest reflection on his industry.
Dick Kearney, however, had not only been living a very gay life in town, but, to avail himself of a variety of those flattering attentions which this interested world bestows by preference on men of some pretension, had let it be believed that he was the heir to a very considerable estate, and, by great probability, also to a title. To have admitted that he thought it necessary to follow any career at all, would have been to abdicate these pretensions, and so he evaded that question of the law in all discussions with his father, sometimes affecting to say he had not made up his mind, or that he had scruples of conscience about a barrister’s calling, or that he doubted whether the Bar of Ireland was not, like most high institutions, going to be abolished by Act of Parliament, and all the litigation of the land be done by deputy in Westminster Hall.
On the morning after the visitors took their departure from Kilgobbin, old Kearney, who usually relapsed from any exercise of hospitality into a more than ordinary amount of parsimony, sat thinking over the various economies by which the domestic budget could be squared, and after a very long séance with old Gill, in which the question of raising some rents and diminishing certain bounties was discussed, he sent up the steward to Mr. Richard’s room to say he wanted to speak to him.
Dick at the time of the message was stretched full length on a sofa, smoking a meerschaum, and speculating how it was that the ‘swells’ took to Joe Atlee, and what they saw in that confounded snob, instead of himself. Having in a degree satisfied himself that Atlee’s success was all owing to his intense and outrageous flattery, he was startled from his reverie by the servant’s entrance.
‘How is he this morning, Tim?’ asked he, with a knowing look. ‘Is he fierce—is there anything up—have the heifers been passing the night in the wheat, or has any one come over from Moate with a bill?’
‘No, sir, none of them; but his blood’s up about something. Ould Gill is gone down the stair swearing like mad, and Miss Kate is down the road with a face like a turkey-cock.’
‘I think you’d better say I was out, Tim—that you couldn’t find me in my room.’
‘I daren’t, sir. He saw that little Skye terrier of yours below, and he said to me, “Mr. Dick is sure to be at home; tell him I want him immediately.”’
‘But if I had a bad headache, and couldn’t leave my bed, wouldn’t that be excuse enough?’
‘It would make him come here. And if I was you, sir, I’d go where I could get away myself, and not where he could stay as long as he liked.’
‘There’s something in that. I’ll go, Tim. Say I’ll be down in a minute.’
Very careful to attire himself in the humblest costume of his wardrobe, and specially mindful that neither studs nor watch-chain should offer offensive matter of comment, he took his way towards the dreary little den, which, filled with old top-boots, driving-whips, garden-implements, and fishing-tackle, was known as ‘the lord’s study,’ but whose sole literary ornament was a shelf of antiquated almanacs. There was a strange grimness about his father’s aspect which struck young Kearney as he crossed the threshold. His face wore the peculiar sardonic expression of one who had not only hit upon an expedient, but achieved a surprise, as he held an open letter in one hand and motioned with the other to a seat.
‘I’ve been waiting till these people were gone, Dick—till we had a quiet house of it—to say a few words to you. I suppose your friend Atlee is not coming back here?’
‘I suppose not, sir.’
‘I don’t like him, Dick; and I’m much mistaken if he is a good fellow.’
‘I don’t think he is actually a bad fellow, sir. He is often terribly hard up and has to do scores of shifty things, but I never found him out in anything dishonourable or false.’
‘That’s a matter of taste, perhaps. Maybe you and I might differ about what was honourable or what was false. At all events, he was under our roof here, and if those nobs—or swells, I believe you call them—were like to be of use to any of us, we, the people that were entertaining them, were the first to be thought of; but your pleasant friend thought differently, and made such good use of his time that he cut you out altogether, Dick—he left you nowhere.’
‘Really, sir, it never occurred to me till now to take that view of the situation.’
‘Well, take that view of it now, and see how you’ll like it!Youhave your way to work in life as well as Mr. Atlee. From all I can judge, you’re scarcely as well calculated to do it as he is. You have not his smartness, you have not his brains, and you have not his impudence—and, ‘faith, I’m much mistaken but it’s the best of the three!’
‘I don’t perceive, sir, that we are necessarily pitted against each other at all.’
‘Don’t you? Well, so much the worse for you if you don’t see that every fellow that has nothing in the world is the rival of every other fellow that’s in the same plight. For every one that swims, ten, at least, sink.’
‘Perhaps, sir, to begin, I never fully realised the first condition. I was not exactly aware that I was without anything in the world.’
‘I’m coming to that, if you’ll have a little patience. Here is a letter from Tom McKeown, of Abbey Street. I wrote to him about raising a few hundreds on mortgage, to clear off some of our debts, and have a trifle in hand for drainage and to buy stock, and he tells me that there’s no use in going to any of the money-lenders so long as your extravagance continues to be the talk of the town. Ay, you needn’t grow red nor frown that way. The letter was a private one to myself, and I’m only telling it to you in confidence. Hear what he says: “You have a right to make your son a fellow-commoner if you like, and he has a right, by his father’s own showing, to behave like a man of fortune; but neither of you have a right to believe that men who advance money will accept these pretensions as good security, or think anything but the worse of you both for your extravagance.”’
‘And you don’t mean to horsewhip him, sir?’ burst out Dick.
‘Not, at any rate, till I pay off two thousand pounds that I owe him, and two years’ interest at six per cent. that he has suffered me to become his debtor for.’
‘Lame as he is, I’ll kick him before twenty-four hours are over.’
‘If you do, he’ll shoot you like a dog, and it wouldn’t be the first time he handled a pistol. No, no, Master Dick. Whether for better or worse, I can’t tell, but the world is not what it was when I was your age. There’s no provoking a man to a duel nowadays; nor no posting him when he won’t fight. Whether it’s your fortune is damaged or your feelings hurt, you must look to the law to redress you; and to take your cause into your own hands is to have the whole world against you.’
‘And this insult is, then, to be submitted to?’
‘It is, first of all, to be ignored. It’s the same as if you never heard it. Just get it out of your head, and listen to what he says. Tom McKeown is one of the keenest fellows I know; and he has business with men who know not only what’s doing in Downing Street, but what’s going to be done there. Now here’s two things that are about to take place: one is the same as done, for it’s all ready prepared—the taking away the landlord’s right, and making the State determine what rent the tenant shall pay, and how long his tenure will be. The second won’t come for two sessions after, but it will be law all the same. There’s to be no primogeniture class at all, no entail on land, but a subdivision, like in America and, I believe, in France.’
‘I don’t believe it, sir. These would amount to a revolution.’
‘Well, and why not? Ain’t we always going through a sort of mild revolution? What’s parliamentary government but revolution, weakened, if you like, like watered grog, but the spirit is there all the same. Don’t fancy that, because you can give it a hard name, you can destroy it. But hear what Tom is coming to. “Be early,” says he, “take time by the forelock: get rid of your entail and get rid of your land. Don’t wait till the Government does both for you, and have to accept whatever condition the law will cumber you with, but be before them! Get your son to join you in docking the entail; petition before the court for a sale, yourself or somebody for you; and wash your hands clean of it all. It’s bad property, in a very ticklish country,” says Tom—and he dashes the words—“bad property in a very ticklish country; and if you take my advice, you’ll get clear of both.” You shall read it all yourself by-and-by; I am only giving you the substance of it, and none of the reasons.’
‘This is a question for very grave consideration, to say the least of it. It is a bold proposal.’
‘So it is, and so says Tom himself; but he adds: “There’s no time to be lost; for once it gets about how Gladstone’s going to deal with land, and what Bright has in his head for eldest sons, you might as well whistle as try to dispose of that property.” To be sure, he says,’ added he, after a pause—‘he says, “If you insist on holding on—if you cling to the dirty acres because they were your father’s and your great-grandfather’s, and if you think that being Kearney of Kilgobbin is a sort of title, in the name of God stay where you are, but keep down your expenses. Give up some of your useless servants, reduce your saddle-horses”—mysaddle-horses, Dick! “Try if you can live without foxhunting.” Foxhunting! “Make your daughter know that she needn’t dress like a duchess”—poor Kitty’s very like a duchess; “and, above all, persuade your lazy, idle, and very self-sufficient son to take to some respectable line of life to gain his living. I wouldn’t say that he mightn’t be an apothecary; but if he liked law better than physic, I might be able to do something for him in my own office.”’
‘Have you done, sir?’ said Dick hastily, as his father wiped his spectacles, and seemed to prepare for another heat.
‘He goes on to say that he always requires one hundred and fifty guineas fee with a young man; “but we are old friends, Mathew Kearney,” says he, “and we’ll make it pounds.”’
‘To fit me to be an attorney!’ said Dick, articulating each word with a slow and almost savage determination.
‘‘Faith! it would have been well for us if one of the family had been an attorney before now. We’d never have gone into that action about the mill-race, nor had to pay those heavy damages for levelling Moore’s barn. A little law would have saved us from evicting those blackguards at Mullenalick, or kicking Mr. Hall’s bailiff before witnesses.’
To arrest his father’s recollection of the various occasions on which his illegality had betrayed him into loss and damage, Dick blurted out, ‘I’d rather break stones on the road than I’d be an attorney.’
‘Well, you’ll not have to go far for employment, for they are just laying down new metal this moment; and you needn’t lose time over it,’ said Kearney, with a wave of his hand, to show that the audience was over and the conference ended.
‘There’s just one favour I would ask, sir,’ said Dick, with his hand on the lock.
‘You want a hammer, I suppose,’ said his father, with a grin—‘isn’tthatit?’
With something that, had it been uttered aloud, sounded very like a bitter malediction, Dick rushed from the room, slamming the door violently after him as he went.
‘That’s the temper that helps a man to get on in life,’ said the old man, as he turned once more to his accounts, and set to work to see where he had blundered in his figures.
When Dick Kearney left his father, he walked from the house, and not knowing or much caring in what direction he went, turned into the garden.
It was a wild, neglected sort of spot, with fruit-trees of great size, long past bearing, and close underwood in places that barred the passage. Here and there little patches of cultivation appeared, sometimes flowering plants, but oftener vegetables. One long alley, with tall hedges of box, had been preserved, and led to a little mound planted with laurels and arbutus, and known as ‘Laurel Hill’; here a little rustic summer-house had once stood, and still, though now in ruins, showed where, in former days, people came to taste the fresh breeze above the tree-tops, and enjoy the wide range of a view that stretched to the Slieve-Bloom Mountains, nearly thirty miles away.
Young Kearney reached this spot, and sat down to gaze upon a scene every detail of which was well known to him, but of which he was utterly unconscious as he looked. ‘I am turned out to starve,’ cried he aloud, as though there was a sense of relief in thus proclaiming his sorrow to the winds. ‘I am told to go and work upon the roads, to live by my daily labour. Treated like a gentleman until I am bound to that condition by every tie of feeling and kindred, and then bade to know myself as an outcast. I have not even Joe Atlee’s resource—I have not imbibed the instincts of the lower orders, so as to be able to give them back to them in fiction or in song. I cannot either idealise rebellion or make treason tuneful.
‘It is not yet a week since that same Atlee envied me my station as the son and heir to this place, and owned to me that there was that in the sense of name and lineage that more than balanced personal success, and here I am now, a beggar! I can enlist, however, blessings on the noble career that ignores character and defies capacity. I don’t know that I’ll bring much loyalty to Her Majesty’s cause, but I’ll lend her the aid of as broad shoulders and tough sinews as my neighbours.’ And here his voice grew louder and harsher, and with a ring of defiance in it. ‘And no cutting off the entail, my Lord Kilgobbin! no escape from that cruel necessity of an heir! I may carry my musket in the ranks, but I’ll not surrender my birthright!’
The thought that he had at length determined on the path he should follow aroused his courage and made his heart lighter; and then there was that in the manner he was vindicating his station and his claim that seemed to savour of heroism. He began to fancy his comrades regarding him with a certain deference, and treating him with a respect that recognised his condition. ‘I know the shame my father will feel when he sees to what he has driven me. What an offence to his love of rank and station to behold his son in the coarse uniform of a private! An only son and heir, too! I can picture to myself his shock as he reads the letter in which I shall say good-bye, and then turn to tell my sister that her brother is a common soldier, and in this way lost to her for ever!
‘And what is it all about? What terrible things have I done? What entanglements have I contracted? Where have I forged? Whose name have I stolen? whose daughter seduced? What is laid to my charge, beyond that I have lived like a gentleman, and striven to eat and drink and dress like one? And I’ll wager my life that for one who will blame him, there will be ten—no, not ten, fifty—to condemn me. I had a kind, trustful, affectionate father, restricting himself in scores of ways to give me my education among the highest class of my contemporaries. I was largely supplied with means, indulged in every way, and if I turned my steps towards home, welcomed with love and affection.’
‘And fearfully spoiled by all the petting he met with,’ said a soft voice leaning over his shoulder, while a pair of very liquid grey eyes gazed into his own.
‘What, Nina!—Mademoiselle Nina, I mean,’ said he, ‘have you been long there?’
‘Long enough to hear you make a very pitiful lamentation over a condition that I, in my ignorance, used to believe was only a little short of Paradise.’
‘You fancied that, did you?’
‘Yes, I did so fancy it.’
‘Might I be bold enough to ask from what circumstance, though? I entreat you to tell me, what belongings of mine, what resources of luxury or pleasure, what incident of my daily life, suggested this impression of yours?’
‘Perhaps, as a matter of strict reasoning, I have little to show for my conviction, but if you ask me why I thought as I did, it was simply from contrasting your condition with my own, and seeing that in everything where my lot has gloom and darkness, if not worse, yours, my ungrateful cousin, was all sunshine.’
‘Let us see a little of this sunshine, Cousin Nina. Sit down here beside me, and show me, I pray, some of those bright tints that I am longing to gaze on.’
‘There’s not room for both of us on that bench.’
‘Ample room; we shall sit the closer.’
‘No, Cousin Dick; give me your arm and we’ll take a stroll together.’
‘Which way shall it be?’
‘You shall choose, cousin.’
‘If I have the choice, then, I’ll carry you off, Nina, for I’m thinking of bidding good-bye to the old house and all within it.’
‘I don’t think I’ll consent that far,’ said she, smiling. ‘I have had my experience of what it is to be without a home, or something very nearly that. I’ll not willingly recall the sensation. But what has put such gloomy thoughts in your head? What, or rather who is driving you to this?’
‘My father, Nina, my father!’
‘This is past my comprehending.’
‘I’ll make it very intelligible. My father, by way of curbing my extravagance, tells me I must give up all pretension to the life of a gentleman, and go into an office as a clerk. I refuse. He insists, and tells me, moreover, a number of little pleasant traits of my unfitness to do anything, so that I interrupt him by hinting that I might possibly break stones on the highway. He seizes the project with avidity, and offers to supply me with a hammer for my work. All fact, on my honour! I am neither adding to nor concealing. I am relating what occurred little more than an hour ago, and I have forgotten nothing of the interview. He, as I said, offers to give me a stone-hammer. And now I ask you, is it for me to accept this generous offer, or would it be better to wander over that bog yonder, and take my chance of a deep pool, or the bleak world where immersion and death are just as sure, though a little slower in coming?’
‘Have you told Kate of this?’
‘No, I have not seen her. I don’t know, if I had seen her, that I should have told her. Kate has so grown to believe all my father’s caprices to be absolute wisdom, that even his sudden gusts of passion seem to her like flashes of a bright intelligence, too quick and too brilliant for mere reason. She could give me no comfort nor counsel either.’
‘I am not of your mind,’ said she slowly. ‘She has the great gift of what people so mistakingly callcommonsense.’
‘And she’d recommend me, perhaps, not to quarrel with my father, and to go and break the stones.’
‘Were you ever in love, Cousin Dick?’ asked she, in a tone every accent of which betokened earnestness and even gravity.
‘Perhaps I might say never. I have spooned or flirted or whatever the name of it might be, but I was never seriously attached to one girl, and unable to think of anything but her. But what has your question to do with this?’
‘Everything. If you really loved a girl—that is, if she filled every corner of your heart, if she was first in every plan and project of your life, not alone her wishes and her likings, but her very words and the sound of her voice—if you saw her in everything that was beautiful, and heard her in every tone that delighted you—if to be moving in the air she breathed was ecstasy, and that heaven itself without her was cheerless—if—’
‘Oh, don’t go on, Nina. None of these ecstasies could ever be mine. I have no nature to be moved or moulded in this fashion. I might be very fond of a girl, but she’d never drive me mad if she left me for another.’
‘I hope she may, then, if it be with such false money you would buy her,’ said she fiercely. ‘Do you know,’ added she, after a pause, ‘I was almost on the verge of saying, go and break the stones; themétieris not much beneath you, after all!’
‘This is scarcely civil, mademoiselle; see what my candour has brought upon me!’
‘Be as candid as you like upon the faults of your nature. Tell every wickedness that you have done or dreamed of, but don’t own to cold-heartedness. Forthatthere is no sympathy!’
‘Let us go back a bit, then,’ said he, ‘and let us suppose that I did love in the same fervent and insane manner you spoke of, what and how would it help me here?’
‘Of course it would. Of all the ingenuity that plotters talk of, of all the imagination that poets dream, there is nothing to compare with love. To gain a plodding subsistence a man will do much. To win the girl he loves, to make her his own, he will do everything: he will strive, and strain, and even starve to win her. Poverty will have nothing mean if confronted for her, hardship have no suffering if endured for her sake. With her before him, all the world shows but one goal; without her, life is a mere dreary task, and himself a hired labourer.’
‘I confess, after all this, that I don’t see how breaking stones would be more palatable to me because some pretty girl that I was fond of saw me hammering away at my limestone!’
‘If you could have loved as I would wish you to love, your career had never fallen to this. The heart that loved would have stimulated the head that thought. Don’t fancy that people are only better because they are in love, but they are greater, bolder, brighter, more daring in danger, and more ready in every emergency. So wonder-working is the real passion that even in the base mockery of Love men have risen to genius. Look what it made Petrarch, and I might say Byron too, though he never loved worthy of the name.’
‘And how came you to know all this, cousin mine? I’m really curious to know that.’
‘I was reared in Italy, Cousin Dick, and I have made a deep study of nature through French novels.’
Now there was a laughing devilry in her eye as she said this that terribly puzzled the young fellow, for just at the very moment her enthusiasm had begun to stir his breast, her merry mockery wafted it away as with a storm-wind.
‘I wish I knew if you were serious,’ said he gravely.
‘Just as serious as you were when you spoke of being ruined.’
‘I was so, I pledge my honour. The conversation I reported to you really took place; and when you joined me, I was gravely deliberating with myself whether I should take a header into a deep pool or enlist as a soldier.’
‘Fie, fie! how ignoble all that is. You don’t know the hundreds of thousands of things one can do in life. Do you speak French or Italian?’
‘I can read them, but not freely; but how are they to help me?’
‘You shall see: first of all, let me be your tutor. We shall take two hours, three if you like, every morning. Are you free now from all your college studies?’
‘I can be after Wednesday next. I ought to go up for my term examination.’
‘Well, do so; but mind, don’t bring down Mr. Atlee with you.’
‘My chum is no favourite of yours?’
‘That’s as it may be,’ said she haughtily. ‘I have only said let us not have the embarrassment, or, if you like it, the pleasure of his company. I’ll give you a list of books to bring down, and my life be on it, butmycourse of study will surpass what you have been doing at Trinity. Is it agreed?’
‘Give me till to-morrow to think of it, Nina.’
‘That does not sound like a very warm acceptance; but be it so: till to-morrow.’
‘Here are some of Kate’s dogs,’ cried he angrily. ‘Down, Fan, down! I say. I’ll leave you now before she joins us. Mind, not a word of what I told you.’
And, without another word, he sprang over a low fence, and speedily disappeared in the copse beyond it.
‘Wasn’t that Dick I saw making his escape?’ cried Kate, as she came up.
‘Yes, we were taking a walk together, and he left me very abruptly.’
‘I wish I had not spoiled atête-à-tête,’ said Kate merrily.
‘It is no great mischief: we can always renew it.’
‘Dear Nina,’ said the other caressingly, as she drew her arm around her—‘dear, dear Nina, do not, do not, I beseech you.’
‘Don’t what, child?—you must not speak in riddles.’
‘Don’t make that poor boy in love with you. You yourself told me you could save him from it if you liked.’
‘And so I shall, Kate, if you don’t dictate or order me. Leave me quite to myself, and I shall be most merciful.’