When Atlee returned to dress for dinner, he was sent for hurriedly by Walpole, who told him that Lord Danesbury’s answer had arrived with the order, ‘Send him over at once, and write fully at the same time.’
‘There is an eleven o’clock packet, Atlee, to-night,’ said he: ‘you must manage to start by that. You’ll reach Holyhead by four or thereabouts, and can easily get to the castle by mid-day.’
‘I wish I had had a little more time,’ muttered the other. ‘If I am to present myself before his Excellency in such a “rig” as this—’
‘I have thought of that. We are nearly of the same size and build; you are, perhaps, a trifle taller, but nothing to signify. Now Buckmaster has just sent me a mass of things of all sorts from town; they are in my dressing-room, not yet unpacked. Go up and look at them after dinner: take what suits you—as much—all, if you like—but don’t delay now. It only wants a few minutes of seven o’clock.’
Atlee muttered his thanks hastily, and went his way. If there was a thoughtfulness in the generosity of this action, the mode in which it was performed—the measured coldness of the words—the look of impassive examination that accompanied them, and the abstention from anything that savoured of apology for a liberty—were all deeply felt by the other.
It was true, Walpole had often heard him tell of the freedom with which he had treated Dick Kearney’s wardrobe, and how poor Dick was scarcely sure he could call an article of dress his own, whenever Joe had been the first to go out into the town. The innumerable straits to which he reduced that unlucky chum, who had actually to deposit a dinner-suit at an hotel to save it from Atlee’s rapacity, had amused Walpole; but then these things were all done in the spirit of the honest familiarity that prevailed between them—the tie of truecamaraderiethat neither suggested a thought of obligation on one side nor of painful inferiority on the other. Here it was totally different. These men did not live together with that daily interchange of liberties which, with all their passing contentions, so accustom people to each other’s humours as to establish the soundest and strongest of all friendships. Walpole had adopted Atlee because he found him useful in a variety of ways. He was adroit, ready-witted, and intelligent; a half-explanation sufficed with him on anything—a mere hint was enough to give him for an interview or a reply. He read people readily, and rarely failed to profit by the knowledge. Strange as it may seem, the great blemish of his manner—his snobbery—Walpole rather liked than disliked it. I was a sort of qualifying element that satisfied him, as though it said, ‘With all that fellow’s cleverness, he is not “one of us.” He might make a wittier reply, or write a smarter note; but society has its little tests—not one of which he could respond to.’ And this was an inferiority Walpole loved to cherish and was pleased to think over.
Atlee felt that Walpole might, with very little exercise of courtesy, have dealt more considerately by him.
‘I’m not exactly a valet,’ muttered he to himself, ‘to whom a man flings a waistcoat as he chucks a shilling to a porter. I am more than Mr. Walpole’s equal in many things, which are not accidents of fortune.’
He knew scores of things he could do better than him; indeed, there were very few he could not.
Poor Joe was not, however, aware that it was in the ‘not doing’ lay Walpole’s secret of superiority; that the inborn sense of abstention is the great distinguishing element of the class Walpole belonged to; and he might harass himself for ever, and yet never guess where it was that the distinction evaded him.
Atlee’s manner at dinner was unusually cold and silent. He habitually made the chief efforts of conversation, now he spoke little and seldom. When Walpole talked, it was in that careless discursive way it was his wont to discuss matters with a familiar. He often put questions, and as often went on without waiting for the answers.
As they sat over the dessert and were alone, he adverted to the other’s mission, throwing out little hints, and cautions as to manner, which Atlee listened to in perfect silence, and without the slightest sign that could indicate the feeling they produced.
‘You are going into a new country, Atlee,’ said he at last, ‘and I am sure you will not be sorry to learn something of the geography.’
‘Though it may mar a little of the adventure,’ said the other, smiling.
‘Ah, that’s exactly what I want to warn you against. With us in England, there are none of those social vicissitudes you are used to here. The game of life is played gravely, quietly, and calmly. There are no brilliant successes of bold talkers, nocoups de théâtreof amusingraconteurs: no one tries to push himself into any position of eminence.’
A half-movement of impatience, as Atlee pushed his wine-glass before him, arrested the speaker.
‘I perceive,’ said he stiffly, ‘you regard my counsels as unnecessary.’
‘Not that, sir, so much as hopeless,’ rejoined the other coldly.
‘His Excellency will ask you, probably, some questions about this country: let me warn you not to give him Irish answers.’
‘I don’t think I understand you, sir.’
‘I mean, don’t deal in any exaggerations, avoid extravagance, and never be slapdash.’
‘Oh, these are Irish, then?’
Without deigning reply to this, Walpole went on—
‘Of course you have your remedy for all the evils of Ireland. I never met an Irishman who had not. But I beg you spare his lordship your theory, whatever it is, and simply answer the questions he will ask you.’
‘I will try, sir,’ was the meek reply.
‘Above all things, let me warn you against a favourite blunder of your countrymen. Don’t endeavour to explain peculiarities of action in this country by singularities of race or origin; don’t try to make out that there are special points of view held that are unknown on the other side of the Channel, or that there are other differences between the two peoples, except such as more rags and greater wretchedness produce. We have got over that very venerable and time-honoured blunder, and do not endeavour to revive it.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Fact, I assure you. It is possible in some remote country-house to chance upon some antiquated Tory who still cherishes these notions; but you’ll not find them amongst men of mind or intelligence, nor amongst any class of our people.’
It was on Atlee’s lip to ask, ‘Who were our people?’ but he forbore by a mighty effort, and was silent.
‘I don’t know if I have any other cautions to give you. Do you?’
‘No, sir. I could not even have reminded you of these, if you had not yourself remembered them.’
‘Oh, I had almost forgotten it. If his Excellency should give you anything to write out, or to copy, don’t smoke while you are over it: he abhors tobacco. I should have given you a warning to be equally careful as regards Lady Maude’s sensibilities; but, on the whole, I suspect you’ll scarcely see her.’
‘Is that all, sir?’ said the other, rising.
‘Well, I think so. I shall be curious to hear how you acquit yourself—how you get on with his Excellency, and how he takes you; and you must write it all to me. Ain’t you much too early? it’s scarcely ten o’clock.’
‘A quarter past ten; and I have some miles to drive to Kingstown.’
‘And not yet packed, perhaps?’ said the other listlessly.
‘No, sir; nothing ready.’
‘Oh! you’ll be in ample time; I’ll vouch for it. You are one of the rough-and-ready order, who are never late. Not but in this same flurry of yours you have made me forget something I know I had to say; and you tell me you can’t remember it?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And yet,’ said the other sententiously, ‘the crowning merit of a private secretary is exactly that sort of memory.Yourintellects, if properly trained, should be the complement of your chief’s. The infinite number of things that are too small and too insignificant forhim, are to have their place, duly docketed and dated, inyourbrain; and the very expression of his face should be an indication to you of what he is looking for and yet cannot remember. Do you mark me?’
‘Half-past ten,’ cried Atlee, as the clock chimed on the mantel-piece; and he hurried away without another word.
It was only as he saw the pitiable penury of his own scanty wardrobe that he could persuade himself to accept of Walpole’s offer.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘the loan of a dress-coat may be the turning-point of a whole destiny. Junot sold all he had to buy a sword, to make his first campaign; all I have is my shame, and here it goes for a suit of clothes!’ And, with these words, he rushed down to Walpole’s dressing-room, and not taking time to inspect and select the contents, carried off the box, as it was, with him. ‘I’ll tell him all when I write,’ muttered he, as he drove away.
When Dick Kearney quitted Kilgobbin Castle for Dublin, he was very far from having any projects in his head, excepting to show his cousin Nina that he could live without her.
‘I believe,’ muttered he to himself, ‘she counts upon me as another “victim.” These coquettish damsels have a theory that the “whole drama of life” is the game of their fascinations and the consequences that come of them, and that we men make it our highest ambition to win them, and subordinate all we do in life to their favour. I should like to show her that one man at least refuses to yield this allegiance, and that whatever her blandishments do with others, with him they are powerless.’
These thoughts were his travelling-companions for nigh fifty miles of travel, and, like most travelling-companions, grew to be tiresome enough towards the end of the journey.
When he arrived in Dublin, he was in no hurry to repair to his quarters in Trinity; they were not particularly cheery in the best of times, and now it was long vacation, with few men in town, and everything sad and spiritless; besides this, he was in no mood to meet Atlee, whose free-and-easy jocularity he knew he would not endure, even with his ordinary patience. Joe had never condescended to write one line since he had left Kilgobbin, and Dick, who felt that in presenting him to his family he had done him immense honour, was proportionately indignant at this show of indifference. But, by the same easy formula with which he could account for anything in Nina’s conduct by her ‘coquetry,’ he was able to explain every deviation from decorum of Joe Atlee’s by his ‘snobbery.’ And it is astonishing how comfortable the thought made him, that this man, in all his smartness and ready wit, in his prompt power to acquire, and his still greater quickness to apply knowledge, was after all a most consummate snob.
He had no taste for a dinner at commons, so he ate his mutton-chop at a tavern, and went to the play. Ineffably bored, he sauntered along the almost deserted streets of the city, and just as midnight was striking, he turned under the arched portal of the college. Secretly hoping that Atlee might be absent, he inserted the key and entered his quarters.
The grim old coal-bunker in the passage, the silent corridor, and the dreary room at the end of it, never looked more dismal than as he surveyed them now by the light of a little wax-match he had lighted to guide his way. There stood the massive old table in the middle, with its litter of books and papers—memories of many a headache; and there was the paper of coarse Cavendish, against which he had so often protested, as well as a pewter-pot—a new infraction against propriety since he had been away. Worse, however, than all assaults on decency, were a pair of coarse highlows, which had been placed within the fender, and had evidently enjoyed the fire so long as it lingered in the grate.
‘So like the fellow! so like him!’ was all that Dick could mutter, and he turned away in disgust.
As Atlee never went to bed till daybreak, it was quite clear that he was from home, and as the college gates could not reopen till morning, Dick was not sorry to feel that he was safe from all intrusion for some hours. With this consolation, he betook him to his bedroom, and proceeded to undress. Scarcely, however, had he thrown off his coat than a heavy, long-drawn respiration startled him. He stopped and listened: it came again, and from the bed. He drew nigh, and there, to his amazement, on his own pillow, lay the massive head of a coarse-looking, vulgar man of about thirty, with a silk handkerchief fastened over it as nightcap. A brawny arm lay outside the bedclothes, with an enormous hand of very questionable cleanness, though one of the fingers wore a heavy gold ring.
Wishing to gain what knowledge he might of his guest before awaking him, Dick turned to inspect his clothes, which, in a wild disorder, lay scattered through the room. They were of the very poorest; but such still as might have belonged to a very humble clerk, or a messenger in a counting-house. A large black leather pocket-book fell from a pocket of the coat, and, in replacing it, Dick perceived it was filled with letters. On one of these, as he closed the clasp, he read the name, ‘Mr. Daniel Donogan, Dartmouth Gaol.’
‘What!’ cried he, ‘is this the great head-centre, Donogan, I have read so much of? and how is he here?’
Though Dick Kearney was not usually quick of apprehension, he was not long here in guessing what the situation meant: it was clear enough that Donogan, being a friend of Joe Atlee, had been harboured here as a safe refuge. Of all places in the capital, none were so secure from the visits of the police as the college; indeed, it would have been no small hazard for the public force to have invaded these precincts. Calculating therefore that Kearney was little likely to leave Kilgobbin at present, Atlee had installed his friend in Dick’s quarters. The indiscretion was a grave one; in fact, there was nothing—even to expulsion itself—might not have followed on discovery.
‘So like him! so like him!’ was all he could mutter, as he arose and walked about the room.
While he thus mused, he turned into Atlee’s bedroom, and at once it appeared why Mr. Donogan had been accommodated in his room. Atlee’s was perfectly destitute of everything: bed, chest of drawers, dressing-table, chair, and bath were all gone. The sole object in the chamber was a coarse print of a well-known informer of the year ‘98, ‘Jemmy O’Brien,’ under whose portrait was written, in Atlee’s hand, ‘Bought in at fourpence-halfpenny, at the general sale, in affectionate remembrance of his virtues, by one who feels himself to be a relative.—J.A.’ Kearney tore down the picture in passion, and stamped upon it; indeed, his indignation with his chum had now passed all bounds of restraint.
‘So like him in everything!’ again burst from him in utter bitterness.
Having thus satisfied himself that he had read the incident aright, he returned to the sitting-room, and at once decided that he would leave Donogan to his rest till morning.
‘It will be time enough then to decide what is to be done,’ thought he.
He then proceeded to relight the fire, and drawing a sofa near, he wrapped himself in a railway-rug, and lay down to sleep. For a long time he could not compose himself to slumber: he thought of Nina and her wiles—ay, they were wiles; he saw them plainly enough. It was true he was no prize—no ‘catch,’ as they call it—to angle for, and such a girl as she was could easily look higher; but still he might swell the list of those followers she seemed to like to behold at her feet offering up every homage to her beauty, even to their actual despair. And he thought of his own condition—very hopeless and purposeless as it was.
‘What a journey, to be sure, was life without a goal to strive for. Kilgobbin would be his one day; but by that time would it be able to pay off the mortgages that were raised upon it? It was true Atlee was no richer, but Atlee was a shifty, artful fellow, with scores of contrivances to go windward of fortune in even the very worst of weather. Atlee would do many a thinghewould not stoop to.’
And as Kearney said this to himself, he was cautious in the use of his verb, and never said ‘could,’ but always ‘would’ do; and oh dear! is it not in this fashion that so many of us keep up our courage in life, and attribute to the want of will what we well know lies in the want of power.
Last of all he bethought himself of this man Donogan, a dangerous fellow in a certain way, and one whose companionship must be got rid of at any price. Plotting over in his mind how this should be done in the morning, he at last fell fast asleep.
So overcome was he by slumber, that he never awoke when that venerable institution called the college woman—the hag whom the virtue of unerring dons insists o imposing as a servant on resident students—entered, made up the fire, swept up the room, and arranged the breakfast-table. It was only as she jogged his arm to ask him for an additional penny to buy more milk, that he awoke and remembered where he was.
‘Will I get yer honour a bit of bacon?’ asked she, in a tone intended to be insinuating.
‘Whatever you like,’ said he drowsily.
‘It’s himself there likes a rasher—when he can get it,’ said she, with a leer, and a motion of her thumb towards the adjoining room.
‘Whom do you mean?’ asked he, half to learn what and how much she knew of his neighbour.
‘Oh! don’t I know him well?—Dan Donogan,’ replied she, with a grin. ‘Didn’t I see him in the dock with Smith O’Brien in ‘48, and wasn’t he in trouble again after he got his pardon; and won’t he always be in trouble?’
‘Hush! don’t talk so loud,’ cried Dick warningly.
‘He’d not hear me now if I was screechin’; it’s the only time he sleeps hard; for he gets up about three or half-past—before it’s day—and he squeezes through the bars of the window, and gets out into the park, and he takes his exercise there for two hours, most of the time running full speed and keeping himself in fine wind. Do you know what he said to me the other day? “Molly,” says he, “when I know I can get between those bars there, and run round the college park in three minutes and twelve seconds, I feel that there’s not many a gaol in Ireland can howld, and the divil a policeman in the island could catch, me.”’ And she had to lean over the back of a chair to steady herself while she laughed at the conceit.
‘I think, after all,’ said Kearney, ‘I’d rather keep out of the scrape than trust to that way of escaping it.’
‘Hewouldn’t,’ said she. ‘He’d rather be seducin’ soldiers in Barrack Street, or swearing in a new Fenian, or nailing a death-warnin’ on a hall door, than he’d be lord mayor! If he wasn’t in mischief he’d like to be in his grave.’
‘And what comes of it all?’ said Kearney, scarcely giving any exact meaning to his words.
‘That’s what I do be saying myself,’ cried the hag. ‘When they can transport you for singing a ballad, and send you to pick oakum for a green cravat, it’s time to take to some other trade than patriotism!’ And with this reflection she shuffled away, to procure the materials for breakfast.
The fresh rolls, the watercress, a couple of red herrings devilled as those ancient damsels are expert in doing, and a smoking dish of rashers and eggs, flanked by a hissing tea-kettle, soon made their appearance, the hag assuring Kearney that a stout knock with the poker on the back of the grate would summon Mr. Donogan almost instantaneously—so rapidly, indeed, and with such indifference as to raiment, that, as she modestly declared, ‘I have to take to my heels the moment I call him,’ and the modest avowal was confirmed by her hasty departure.
The assurance was so far correct, that scarcely had Kearney replaced the poker, when the door opened, and one of the strangest figures he had ever beheld presented itself in the room. He was a short, thick-set man with a profusion of yellowish hair, which, divided in the middle of the head, hung down on either side to his neck—beard and moustache of the same hue, left little of the face to be seen but a pair of lustrous blue eyes, deep-sunken in their orbits, and a short wide-nostrilled nose, which bore the closest resemblance to a lion’s. Indeed, a most absurd likeness to the king of beasts was the impression produced on Kearney as this wild-looking fellow bounded forward, and stood there amazed at finding a stranger to confront him.
His dress was a flannel-shirt and trousers, and a pair of old slippers which had once been Kearney’s own.
‘I was told by the college woman how I was to summon you, Mr. Donogan,’ said Kearney good-naturedly. ‘You are not offended with the liberty?’
‘Are you Dick?’ asked the other, coming forward.
‘Yes. I think most of my friends know me by that name.’
‘And the old devil has told you mine?’ asked he quickly.
‘No, I believe I discovered that for myself. I tumbled over some of your things last night, and saw a letter addressed to you.’
‘You didn’t read it?’
‘Certainly not. It fell out of your pocket-book, and I put it back there.’
‘So the old hag didn’t blab on me? I’m anxious about this, because it’s got out somehow that I’m back again. I landed at Kenmare in a fishing-boat from the New York packet, theOsprey, on Tuesday fortnight, and three of the newspapers had it before I was a week on shore.’
‘Our breakfast is getting cold; sit down here and let me help you. Will you begin with a rasher?’
Not replying to the invitation, Donogan covered his plate with bacon, and leaning his arm on the table, stared fixedly at Kearney.
‘I’m as glad as fifty pounds of it,’ muttered he slowly to himself.
‘Glad of what?’
‘Glad that you’re not a swell, Mr. Kearney,’ said he gravely. ‘“The Honourable Richard Kearney,” whenever I repeated that to myself, it gave me a cold sweat. I thought of velvet collars and a cravat with a grand pin in it, and a stuck-up creature behind both, that wouldn’t condescend to sit down with me.’
‘I’m sure Joe Atlee gave you no such impression of me.’
A short grunt that might mean anything was all the reply.
‘He was my chum, and knew me better,’ reiterated the other.
‘He knows many a thing he doesn’t say, and he says plenty that he doesn’t know. “Kearney will be a swell,” said I, “and he’ll turn upon me just out of contempt for my condition.’”
‘That was judging me hardly, Mr. Donogan.’
‘No, it wasn’t; it’s the treatment the mangy dogs meet all the world over. Why is England insolent to us, but because we’re poor—answer me that? Are we mangy? Don’t you feel mangy?—I knowIdo!’
Dick smiled a sort of mild contradiction, but said nothing.
‘Now that I see you, Mr. Kearney,’ said the other, ‘I’m as glad as a ten-pound note about a letter I wrote you—’
‘I never received a letter from you.’
‘Sure I know you didn’t! haven’t I got it here?’ And he drew forth a square-shaped packet and held it up before him. ‘I never said that I sent it, nor I won’t send it now: here’s its present address,’ added he, as he threw it on the fire and pressed it down with his foot.
‘Why not have given it to me now?’ asked the other.
‘Because three minutes will tell you all that was in it, and better than writing; for I can reply to anything that wants an explanation, and that’s what a letter cannot. First of all, do you know that Mr. Claude Barry, your county member, has asked for the Chiltern, and is going to resign?’
‘No, I have not heard it.’
‘Well, it’s a fact. They are going to make him a second secretary somewhere, and pension him off. He has done his work: he voted an Arms Bill and an Insurrection Act, and he had the influenza when the amnesty petition was presented, and sure no more could be expected from any man.’
‘The question scarcely concerns me; our interest in the county is so small now, we count for very little.’
‘And don’t you know how to make your influence greater?’
‘I cannot say that I do.’
‘Go to the poll yourself, Richard Kearney, and be the member.’
‘You are talking of an impossibility, Mr. Donogan. First of all, we have no fortune, no large estates in the county, with a wide tenantry and plenty of votes; secondly, we have no place amongst the county families, as our old name and good blood might have given us; thirdly, we are of the wrong religion, and, I take it, with as wrong politics; and lastly, we should not know what to do with the prize if we had won it.’
‘Wrong in every one of your propositions—wholly wrong,’ cried the other. ‘The party that will send you in won’t want to be bribed, and they’ll be proud of a man who doesn’t overtop them with his money. You don’t need the big families, for you’ll beat them. Your religion is the right one, for it will give you the Priests; and your politics shall be Repeal, and it will give you the Peasants; and as to not knowing what to do when you’re elected, are you so mighty well off in life that you’ve nothing to wish for?’
‘I can scarcely say that,’ said Dick, smiling.
‘Give me a few minutes’ attention,’ said Donogan, ‘and I think I’ll show you that I’ve thought this matter out and out; indeed, before I sat down to write to you, I went into all the details.’
And now, with a clearness and a fairness that astonished Kearney, this strange-looking fellow proceeded to prove how he had weighed the whole difficulty, and saw how, in the nice balance of the two great parties who would contest the seat, the Repealer would step in and steal votes from both.
He showed not only that he knew every barony of the county, and every estate and property, but that he had a clear insight into the different localities where discontent prevailed, and places where there was something more than discontent.
‘It is down there,’ said he significantly, ‘that I can be useful. The man that has had his foot in the dock, and only escaped having his head in the noose, is never discredited in Ireland. Talk Parliament and parliamentary tactics to the small shopkeepers in Moate, and leave me to talk treason to the people in the bog.’
‘But I mistake you and your friends greatly,’ said Kearney, ‘if these were the tactics you always followed; I thought that you were the physical-force party, who sneered at constitutionalism and only believed in the pike.’
‘So we did, so long as we saw O’Connell and the lawyers working the game of that grievance for their own advantage, and teaching the English Government how to rule Ireland by a system of concession tothemand totheirfriends. Now, however, we begin to perceive that to assault that heavy bastion of Saxon intolerance, we must have spies in the enemy’s fortress, and for this we send in so many members to the Whig party. There are scores of men who will aid us by their vote who would not risk a bone in our cause. Theirs is a sort of subacute patriotism; but it has its use. It smashes an Established Church, breaks down Protestant ascendency, destroys the prestige of landed property, and will in time abrogate entail and primogeniture, and many another fine thing; and in this way it clears the ground for our operations, just as soldiers fell trees and level houses lest they interfere with the range of heavy artillery.’
‘So that the place you would assign me is that very honourable one you have just called a “spy in the camp”?’
‘By a figure I said that, Mr. Kearney; but you know well enough what I meant was, that there’s many a man will help us on the Treasury benches that would not turn out on Tallaght; and we want both. I won’t say,’ added he, after a pause, ‘I’d not rather see you a leader in our ranks than a Parliament man. I was bred a doctor, Mr. Kearney, and I must take an illustration from my own art. To make a man susceptible of certain remedies, you are often obliged to reduce his strength and weaken his constitution. So it is here. To bring Ireland into a condition to be bettered by Repeal, you must crush the Church and smash the bitter Protestants. The Whigs will do these for us, but we must help them. Do you understand me now?’
‘I believe I do. In the case you speak of, then, the Government will support my election.’
‘Against a Tory, yes; but not against a pure Whig—a thorough-going supporter, who would bargain for nothing for his country, only something for his own relations.’
‘If your project has an immense fascination for me at one moment, and excites my ambition beyond all bounds, the moment I turn my mind to the cost, and remember my own poverty, I see nothing but hopelessness.’
‘That’s not my view of it, nor when you listen to me patiently, will it, I believe, be yours. Can we have another talk over this in the evening?’
‘To be sure! we’ll dine here together at six.’
‘Oh, never mind me, think of yourself, Mr. Kearney, and your own engagements. As to the matter of dining, a crust of bread and a couple of apples are fully as much as I want or care for.’
‘We’ll dine together to-day at six,’ said Dick, ‘and bear in mind, I am more interested in this than you are.’
As they were about to sit down to dinner on that day, a telegram, re-directed from Kilgobbin, reached Kearney’s hand. It bore the date of that morning from Plmnuddm Castle, and was signed ‘Atlee.’ Its contents were these: ‘H. E. wants to mark the Kilgobbin defence with some sign of approval. What shall it be? Reply by wire.’
‘Read that, and tell us what you think of it.’
‘Joe Atlee at the Viceroy’s castle in Wales!’ cried the other. ‘We’re going up the ladder hand over head, Mr. Kearney! A week ago his ambition was bounded on the south by Ship Street, and on the east by the Lower Castle Yard.’
‘How do you understand the despatch?’ asked Kearney quickly.
‘Easily enough. His Excellency wants to know what you’ll have for shooting down three—I think they were three—Irishmen.’
‘The fellows came to demand arms, and with loaded guns in their hands.’
‘And if they did! Is not the first right of a man the weapon that defends him? He that cannot use it or does not possess it, is a slave. By what prerogative has Kilgobbin Castle within its walls what can take the life of any, the meanest, tenant on the estate?’
‘I am not going to discuss this with you; I think I have heard most of it before, and was not impressed when I did so. What I asked was, what sort of a recognition one might safely ask for and reasonably expect?’
‘That’s not long to look for. Let them support you in the county. Telegraph back, “I’m going to stand, and, if I get in, will be a Whig whenever I am not a Nationalist. Will the party stand by me?”’
‘Scarcely with that programme.’
‘And do you think that the priests’ nominees, who are three-fourths of the Irish members, offer better terms? Do you imagine that the men that crowd the Whig lobby have not reserved their freedom of action about the Pope, and the Fenian prisoners, and the Orange processionists? If they were not free so far, I’d ask you with the old Duke, How is Her Majesty’s Government to be carried on?’
Kearney shook his head in dissent.
‘And that’s not all,’ continued the other; ‘but you must write to the papers a flat contradiction of that shooting story. You must either declare that it never occurred at all, or was done by that young scamp from the Castle, who happily got as much as he gave.’
‘That I could not do,’ said Kearney firmly.
‘And it is that precisely that you must do,’ rejoined the other. ‘If you go into the House to represent the popular feeling of Irishmen, the hand that signs the roll must not be stained with Irish blood.’
‘You forget; I was not within fifty miles of the place.’
‘And another reason to disavow it. Look here, Mr. Kearney: if a man in a battle was to say to himself, I’ll never give any but a fair blow, he’d make a mighty bad soldier. Now, public life is a battle, and worse than a battle in all that touches treachery and falsehood. If you mean to do any good in the world, to yourself and your country, take my word for it, you’ll have to do plenty of things that you don’t like, and, what’s worse, can’t defend.’
‘The soup is getting cold all this time. Shall we sit down?’
‘No, not till we answer the telegram. Sit down and say what I told you.’
‘Atlee will say I’m mad. He knows that I have not a shilling in the world.’
‘Riches is not the badge of the representation,’ said the other.
‘They can at least pay the cost of the elections.’
‘Well, we’ll pay ours too—not all at once, but later on; don’t fret yourself about that.’
‘They’ll refuse me flatly.’
‘No, we have a lien on the fine gentleman with the broken arm. What would the Tories give for that story, told as I could tell it to them? At all events, whatever you do in life, remember this—that if asked your price for anything you have done, name the highest, and take nothing if it’s refused you. It’s a waiting race, but I never knew it fail in the end.’
Kearney despatched his message, and sat down to the table, far too much flurried and excited to care for his dinner. Not so his guest, who ate voraciously, seldom raising his head and never uttering a word. ‘Here’s to the new member for King’s County,’ said he at last, and he drained off his glass; ‘and I don’t know a pleasanter way of wishing a man prosperity than in a bumper. Has your father any politics, Mr. Kearney?’
‘He thinks he’s a Whig, but, except hating the Established Church and having a print of Lord Russell over the fireplace, I don’t know he has other reason for the opinion.’
‘All right; there’s nothing finer for a young man entering public life than to be able to sneer at his father for a noodle. That’s the practical way to show contempt for the wisdom of our ancestors. There’s no appeal the public respond to with the same certainty as that of the man who quarrels with his relations for the sake of his principles, and whether it be a change in your politics or your religion, they’re sure to uphold you.’
‘If differing with my father will ensure my success, I can afford to be confident,’ said Dick, smiling.
‘Your sister has her notions about Ireland, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes, I believe she has; but she fancies that laws and Acts of Parliament are not the things in fault, but ourselves and our modes of dealing with the people, that were not often just, and were always capricious. I am not sure how she works out her problem, but I believe we ought to educate each other; and that in turn, for teaching the people to read and write, there are scores of things to be learned from them.’
‘And the Greek girl?’
‘The Greek girl’—began Dick haughtily, and with a manner that betokened rebuke, and which suddenly changed as he saw that nothing in the other’s manner gave any indication of intended freedom or insolence—‘The Greek is my first cousin, Mr. Donogan,’ said he calmly; ‘but I am anxious to know how you have heard of her, or indeed of any of us.’
‘From Joe—Joe Atlee! I believe we have talked you over—every one of you—till I know you all as well as if I lived in the castle and called you by your Christian names. Do you know, Mr. Kearney’—and his voice trembled now as he spoke—‘that to a lone and desolate man like myself, who has no home, and scarcely a country, there is something indescribably touching in the mere picture of the fireside, and the family gathered round it, talking over little homely cares and canvassing the changes of each day’s fortune. I could sit here half the night and listen to Atlee telling how you lived, and the sort of things that interested you.’
‘So that you’d actually like to look at us?’
Donogan’s eyes grew glassy, and his lips trembled, but he could not utter a word.
‘So you shall, then,’ cried Dick resolutely. ‘We’ll start to-morrow by the early train. You’ll not object to a ten miles’ walk, and we’ll arrive for dinner.’
‘Do you know who it is you are inviting to your father’s house? Do you know that I am an escaped convict, with a price on my head this minute? Do you know the penalty of giving me shelter, or even what the law calls comfort?’
‘I know this, that in the heart of the Bog of Allen, you’ll be far safer than in the city of Dublin; that none shall ever learn who you are, nor, if they did, is there one—the poorest in the place—would betray you.’
‘It is of you, sir, I’m thinking, not of me,’ said Donogan calmly.
‘Don’t fret yourself about us. We are well known in our county, and above suspicion. Whenever you yourself should feel that your presence was like to be a danger, I am quite willing to believe you’d take yourself off.’
‘You judge me rightly, sir, and I am proud to see it; but how are you to present me to your friends?’
‘As a college acquaintance—a friend of Atlee’s and of mine—a gentleman who occupied the room next me. I can surely say that with truth.’
‘And dined with you every day since you knew him. Why not add that?’
He laughed merrily over this conceit, and at last Donogan said, ‘I’ve a little kit of clothes—something decenter than these—up in Thomas Street, No. 13, Mr. Kearney; the old house Lord Edward was shot in, and the safest place in Dublin now, because it is so notorious. I’ll step up for them this evening, and I’ll be ready to start when you like.’
‘Here’s good fortune to us, whatever we do next,’ said Kearney, filling both their glasses; and they touched the brims together, and clinked them before they drained them.
Kate Kearney’s room was on the top of the castle, and ‘gave’ by a window over the leads of a large square tower. On this space she had made a little garden of a few flowers, to tend which was of what she called her ‘dissipations.’
‘Is Not That As Fine As Your Boasted Campagna?’
Some old packing-cases filled with mould sufficed to nourish a few stocks and carnations, a rose or two, and a mass of mignonette, which possibly, like the children of the poor, grew up sturdy and healthy from some of the adverse circumstances of their condition. It was a very favourite spot with her; and if she came hither in her happiest moments, it was here also her saddest hours were passed, sure that in the cares and employments of her loved plants she would find solace and consolation. It was at this window Kate now sat with Nina, looking over the vast plain, on which a rich moonlight was streaming, the shadows of fast-flitting clouds throwing strange and fanciful effects over a space almost wide enough to be a prairie.
‘What a deal have mere names to do with our imaginations, Nina!’ said Kate. ‘Is not that boundless sweep before us as fine as your boasted Campagna? Does not the night wind career over it as joyfully, and is not the moonlight as picturesque in its breaks by turf-clamp and hillock as by ruined wall and tottering temple? In a word, are not we as well here, to drink in all this delicious silence, as if we were sitting on your loved Pincian?’
‘Don’t ask me to share such heresies. I see nothing out there but bleak desolation. I don’t know if it ever had a past; I can almost swear it will have no future. Let us not talk of it.’
‘What shall we talk of?’ asked Kate, with an arch smile.
‘You know well enough what led me up here. I want to hear what you know of that strange man Dick brought here to-day to dinner.’
‘I never saw him before—never even heard of him.’
‘Do you like him?’
‘I have scarcely seen him.’
‘Don’t be so guarded and reserved. Tell me frankly the impression he makes on you. Is he not vulgar—very vulgar?’
‘How should I say, Nina? Of all the people you ever met, who knows so little of the habits of society as myself? Those fine gentlemen who were here the other day shocked my ignorance by numberless little displays of indifference. Yet I can feel that they must have been paragons of good-breeding, and that what I believed to be a very cool self-sufficiency, was in reality the very latest London version of good manners.’
‘Oh, you did not like that charming carelessness of Englishmen that goes where it likes and when it likes, that does not wait to be answered when it questions, and only insists on one thing, which is—“not to be bored.” If you knew, dearest Kate, how foreigners school themselves, and strive to catch up that insouciance, and never succeed—never!’
‘My brother’s friend certainly is no adept in it.’
‘He is insufferable. I don’t know that the man ever dined in the company of ladies before; did you remark that he did not open the door as we left the dinner-room? and if your brother had not come over, I should have had to open it for myself. I declare I’m not sure he stood up as we passed.’
‘Oh yes; I saw him rise from his chair.’
‘I’ll tell you what you did not see. You did not see him open his napkin at dinner. He stole his roll of bread very slyly from the folds, and then placed the napkin, carefully folded, beside him.’
‘You seem to have observed him closely, Nina.’
‘I did so, because I saw enough in his manner to excite suspicion of his class, and I want to know what Dick means by introducing him here.’
‘Papa liked him; at least he said that after we left the room a good deal of his shyness wore off, and that he conversed pleasantly and well. Above all, he seems to know Ireland perfectly.’
‘Indeed!’ said she, half disdainfully.
‘So much so that I was heartily sorry to leave the room when I heard them begin the topic; but I saw papa wished to have some talk with him, and I went.’
‘They were gallant enough not to join us afterwards, though I think we waited tea till ten.’
‘Till nigh eleven, Nina; so that I am sure they must have been interested in their conversation.’
‘I hope the explanation excuses them.’
‘I don’t know that they are aware they needed an apology. Perhaps they were affecting a little of that British insouciance you spoke of—’
‘They had better not. It will sit most awkwardly on their Irish habits.’
‘Some day or other I’ll give you a formal battle on this score, Nina, and I warn you you’ll not come so well out of it.’
‘Whenever you like. I accept the challenge. Make this brilliant companion of your brother’s the type, and it will test your cleverness, I promise you. Do you even know his name?’
‘Mr. Daniel, my brother called him; but I know nothing of his country or of his belongings.’
‘Daniel is a Christian name, not a family name, is it not? We have scores of people like that—Tommasina, Riccardi, and such like—in Italy, but they mean nothing.’
‘Our friend below-stairs looks as ifthatwas not his failing. I should say that he means a good deal.’
‘Oh, I know you are laughing at my stupid phrase—no matter; you understand me, at all events. I don’t like that man.’
‘Dick’s friends are not fortunate with you. I remember how unfavourably you judged of Mr. Atlee from his portrait.’
‘Well, he looked rather better than his picture—less false, I mean; or perhaps it was that he had a certain levity of manner that carried off the perfidy.’
‘What an amiable sort of levity!’
‘You are too critical on me by half this evening,’ said Nina pettishly; and she arose and strolled out upon the leads.
For some time Kate was scarcely aware she had gone. Her head was full of cares, and she sat trying to think some of them ‘out,’ and see her way to deal with them. At last the door of the room slowly and noiselessly opened, and Dick put in his head.
‘I was afraid you might be asleep, Kate,’ said he, entering, ‘finding all so still and quiet here.’
‘No. Nina and I were chatting here—squabbling, I believe, if I were to tell the truth; and I can’t tell when she left me.’
‘What could you be quarrelling about?’ asked he, as he sat down beside her.
‘I think it was with that strange friend of yours. We were not quite agreed whether his manners were perfect, or his habits those of the well-bred world. Then we wanted to know more of him, and each was dissatisfied that the other was so ignorant; and, lastly, we were canvassing that very peculiar taste you appear to have in friends, and were wondering where you find your odd people.’
‘So then you don’t like Donogan?’ said he hurriedly.
‘Like whom? And you call him Donogan!’
‘The mischief is out,’ said he. ‘Not that I wanted to have secrets from you; but all the same, I am a precious bungler. His name is Donogan, and what’s more, it’s Daniel Donogan. He was the same who figured in the dock at, I believe, sixteen years of age, with Smith O’Brien and the others, and was afterwards seen in England in ‘59, known as a head-centre, and apprehended on suspicion in ‘60, and made his escape from Dartmoor the same year. There’s a very pretty biography in skeleton, is it not?’
‘But, my dear Dick, how are you connected with him?’
‘Not very seriously. Don’t be afraid. I’m not compromised in any way, nor does he desire that I should be. Here is the whole story of our acquaintance.’
And now he told what the reader already knows of their first meeting and the intimacy that followed it.
‘All that will take nothing from the danger of harbouring a man charged as he is,’ said she gravely.
‘That is to say, if he be tracked and discovered.’
‘It is what I mean.’
‘Well, one has only to look out of that window, and see where we are, and what lies around us on every side, to be tolerably easy on that score.’
And, as he spoke, he arose and walked out upon the terrace.
‘What, were you here all this time?’ asked he, as he saw Nina seated on the battlement, and throwing dried leaves carelessly to the wind.
‘Yes, I have been here this half-hour, perhaps longer.’
‘And heard what we have been saying within there?’
‘Some chance words reached me, but I did not follow them.’
‘Oh, it was here you were, then, Nina!’ cried Kate. ‘I am ashamed to say I did not know it.’
‘We got so warm in discussing your friend’s merits or demerits, that we parted in a sort of huff,’ said Nina. ‘I wonder was he worth quarrelling for?’
‘What shouldyousay?’ asked Dick inquiringly, as he scanned her face.
‘In any other land, I might say he was—that is, that some interest might attach to him; but here, in Ireland, you all look so much brighter, and wittier, and more impetuous, and more out of the common than you really are, that I give up all divination of you, and own I cannot read you at all.’
‘I hope you like the explanation,’ said Kate to her brother, laughing.
‘I’ll tell my friend of it in the morning,’ said Dick; ‘and as he is a great national champion, perhaps he’ll accept it as a defiance.’
‘You do not frighten me by the threat,’ said Nina calmly.
Dick looked from her face to her sister’s and back again to hers, to discern if he might how much she had overheard; but he could read nothing in her cold and impassive bearing, and he went his way in doubt and confusion.