Kitabı oku: «Lord Kilgobbin», sayfa 28

CHAPTER LII

A CHANCE AGREEMENT

As Dick Kearney and young O’Shea had never attained any close intimacy – a strange sort of half-jealousy, inexplicable as to its cause, served to keep them apart – it was by mere accident that the two young men met one morning after breakfast in the garden, and on Kearney’s offer of a cigar, the few words that followed led to a conversation.

‘I cannot pretend to give you a choice Havana, like one of Walpole’s,’ said Dick, ‘but you’ll perhaps find it smokeable.’

‘I’m not difficult,’ said the other; ‘and as to Mr. Walpole’s tobacco, I don’t think I ever tasted it.’

‘And I,’ rejoined the other, ‘as seldom as I could; I mean, only when politeness obliged me.’

‘I thought you liked him?’ said Gorman shortly.

‘I? Far from it. I thought him a consummate puppy, and I saw that he looked down on us as inveterate savages.’

‘He was a favourite with your ladies, I think?’

‘Certainly not with my sister, and I doubt very much with my cousin. Do you like him?’

‘No, not at all; but then he belongs to a class of men I neither understand nor sympathise with. Whatever I know of life is associated with downright hard work. As a soldier I had my five hours’ daily drill and the care of my equipments, as a lieutenant I had to see that my men kept to their duty, and whenever I chanced to have a little leisure, I could not give it up to ennui or consent to feel bored and wearied.’

‘And do you mean to say you had to groom your horse and clean your arms when you served in the ranks?’

‘Not always. As a cadet I had a soldier-servant, what we call a “Bursche”; but there were periods when I was out of funds, and barely able to grope my way to the next quarter-day, and at these times I had but one meal a day, and obliged to draw my waist-belt pretty tight to make me feel I had eaten enough. A Bursche costs very little, but I could not spare even that little.’

‘Confoundedly hard that.’

‘All my own fault. By a little care and foresight, even without thrift, I had enough to live as well as I ought; but a reckless dash of the old spendthrift blood I came of would master me now and then, and I’d launch out into some extravagance that would leave me penniless for months after.’

‘I believe I can understand that. One does get horribly bored by the monotony of a well-to-do existence: just as I feel my life here – almost insupportable.’

‘But you are going into Parliament; you are going to be a great public man.’

‘That bubble has burst already; don’t you know what happened at Birr? They tore down all Miller’s notices and mine, they smashed our booths, beat our voters out of the town, and placed Donogan – the rebel Donogan – at the head of the poll, and the head-centre is now M.P. for King’s County.’

‘And he has a right to sit in the House?’

‘There’s the question. The matter is discussed every day in the newspapers, and there are as many for as against him. Some aver that the popular will is a sovereign edict that rises above all eventualities; others assert that the sentence which pronounces a man a felon declares him to be dead in law.’

‘And which side do you incline to?’

‘I believe in the latter: he’ll not be permitted to take his seat.’

‘You’ll have another chance, then?’

‘No; I’ll venture no more. Indeed, but for this same man Donogan, I had never thought of it. He filled my head with ideas of a great part to be played and a proud place to be occupied, and that even without high abilities, a man of a strong will, a fixed resolve, and an honest conscience, might at this time do great things for Ireland.’

‘And then betrayed you?’

‘No such thing; he no more dreamed of Parliament himself than you do now. He knew he was liable to the law, – he was hiding from the police – and well aware that there was a price upon his head.’

‘But if he was true to you, why did he not refuse this honour? why did he not decline to be elected?’

‘They never gave him the choice. Don’t you see, it is one of the strange signs of the strange times we are living in that the people fix upon certain men as their natural leaders and compel them to march in the van, and that it is the force at the back of these leaders that, far more than their talents, makes them formidable in public life.’

‘I only follow it in part. I scarcely see what they aim at, and I do not know if they see it more clearly themselves. And now, what will you turn to?’

‘I wish you could tell me.’

‘About as blank a future as my own,’ muttered Gorman.

‘Come, come, you have a career: you are a lieutenant of lancers; in time you will be a captain, and eventually a colonel, and who knows but a general at last, with Heaven knows how many crosses and medals on your breast.’

‘Nothing less likely – the day is gone by when Englishmen were advanced to places of high honour and trust in the Austrian army. There are no more field-marshals like Nugent than major-generals like O’Connell. I might be made a Rittmeister, and if I lived long enough, and was not superannuated, a major; but there my ambition must cease.’

‘And you are content with that prospect?’

‘Of course I am not. I go back to it with something little short of despair.’

‘Why go back, then?’

‘Tell me what else to do – tell me what other road in life to take – show me even one alternative.’

The silence that now succeeded lasted several minutes, each immersed in his own thoughts, and each doubtless convinced how little presumption he had to advise or counsel the other.

‘Do you know, O’Shea,’ cried Kearney, ‘I used to fancy that this Austrian life of yours was a mere caprice – that you took “a cast,” as we call it in the hunting-field, amongst those fellows to see what they were like and what sort of an existence was theirs – but that being your aunt’s heir, and with a snug estate that must one day come to you, it was a mere “lark,” and not to be continued beyond a year or two?’

‘Not a bit of it. I never presumed to think I should be my aunt’s heir – and now less than ever. Do you know, that even the small pension she has allowed me hitherto is now about to be withdrawn, and I shall be left to live on my pay?’

‘How much does that mean?’

‘A few pounds more or less than you pay for your saddle-horse at livery at Dycers’.’

‘You don’t mean that?’

‘I do mean it, and even that beggarly pittance is stopped when I am on my leave; so that at this moment my whole worldly wealth is here,’ and he took from his pocket a handful of loose coin, in which a few gold pieces glittered amidst a mass of discoloured and smooth-looking silver.

‘On my oath, I believe you are the richer man of the two,’ cried Kearney, ‘for except a few half-crowns on my dressing-table, and some coppers, I don’t believe I am master of a coin with the Queen’s image.’

‘I say, Kearney, what a horrible take-in we should prove to mothers with daughters to marry!’

‘Not a bit of it. You may impose upon any one else – your tailor, your bootmaker, even the horsy gent that jobs your cabriolet, but you’ll never cheat the mamma who has the daughter on sale.’

Gorman could not help laughing at the more than ordinary irritability with which these words were spoken, and charged him at last with having uttered a personal experience.

‘True, after all!’ said Dick, half indolently. ‘I used to spoon a pretty girl up in Dublin, ride with her when I could, and dance with her at all the balls, and a certain chum of mine – a Joe Atlee – of whom you may have heard – under-took, simply by a series of artful rumours as to my future prospects – now extolling me as a man of fortune and a fine estate, to-morrow exhibiting me as a mere pretender with a mock title and mock income – to determine how I should be treated in this family; and he would say to me, “Dick, you are going to be asked to dinner on Saturday next”; or, “I say, old fellow, they’re going to leave you out of that picnic at Powerscourt. You’ll find the Clancys rather cold at your next meeting.”’

‘And he would be right in his guess?’

‘To the letter! Ay, and I shame to say that the young girl answered the signal as promptly as the mother.’

‘I hope it cured you of your passion?’

‘I don’t know that it did. When you begin to like a girl, and find that she has regularly installed herself in a corner of your heart, there is scarcely a thing she can do you’ll not discover a good reason for; and even when your ingenuity fails, go and pay a visit; there is some artful witchery in that creation you have built up about her – for I heartily believe most of us are merely clothing a sort of lay figure of loveliness with attributes of our fancy – and the end of it is, we are about as wise about our idols as the South Sea savages in their homage to the gods of their own carving.’

‘I don’t think that!’ said Gorman sternly. ‘I could no more invent the fascination that charms me than I could model a Venus or an Ariadne.’

‘I see where your mistake lies. You do all this, and never know you do it. Mind, I am only giving you Joe Atlee’s theory all this time; for though I believe in, I never invented it.’

‘And who is Atlee?’

‘A chum of mine – a clever dog enough – who, as he says himself, takes a very low opinion of mankind, and in consequence finds this a capital world to live in.’

‘I should hate the fellow.’

‘Not if you met him. He can be very companionable, though I never saw any one take less trouble to please. He is popular almost everywhere.’

‘I know I should hate him.’

‘My cousin Nina thought the same, and declared, from the mere sight of his photograph, that he was false and treacherous, and Heaven knows what else besides; and now she’ll not suffer a word in his disparagement. She began exactly as you say you would, by a strong prejudice against him. I remember the day he came down here – her manner towards him was more than distant; and I told my sister Kate how it offended me; and Kate only smiled and said, “Have a little patience, Dick.”’

‘And you took the advice? You did have a little patience?’

‘Yes; and the end is they are firm friends. I’m not sure they don’t correspond.’

‘Is there love in the case, then?’

‘That is what I cannot make out. So far as I know either of them, there is no trustfulness in their dispositions; each of them must see into the nature of the other. I have heard Joe Atlee say, “With that woman for a wife, a man might safely bet on his success in life.” And she herself one day owned, “If a girl was obliged to marry a man without sixpence, she might take Atlee.”’

‘So, I have it, they will be man and wife yet!’

‘Who knows! Have another weed?’

Gorman declined the offered cigar, and again a pause in the conversation followed. At last he suddenly said, ‘She told me she thought she would marry Walpole.’

‘She told you that? How did it come about to make you such a confidence?’

‘Just this way. I was getting a little – not spooney – but attentive, and rather liked hanging after her; and in one of our walks in the wood – and there was no flirting at the time between us – she suddenly said, “I don’t think you are half a bad fellow, lieutenant.” “Thanks for the compliment,” said I coldly. She never heeded my remark, but went on, “I mean, in fact, that if you had something to live for, and somebody to care about, there is just the sort of stuff in you to make you equal to both.” Not exactly knowing what I said, and half, only half in earnest, I answered, “Why can I not have one to care for?” And I looked tenderly into her eyes as I spoke. She did not wince under my glance. Her face was calm, and her colour did not change; and she was full a minute before she said, with a faint sigh, “I suppose I shall marry Cecil Walpole.” “Do you mean,” said I, “against your will?” “Who told you I had a will, sir?” said she haughtily; “or that if I had, I should now be walking here in this wood alone with you? No, no,” added she hurriedly, “you cannot understand me. There is nothing to be offended at. Go and gather me some of those wild flowers, and we’ll talk of something else.”’

‘How like her! – how like her!’ said Dick, and then looked sad and pondered. ‘I was very near falling in love with her myself!’ said he, after a considerable pause.

‘She has a way of curing a man if he should get into such an indiscretion,’ muttered Gorman, and there was bitterness in his voice as he spoke.

‘Listen! listen to that!’ and from an open window of the house there came the prolonged cadence of a full sweet voice, as Nina was singing an Irish ballad air. ‘That’s for my father! “Kathleen Mavourneen” is one of his favourites, and she can make him cry over it.’

‘I’m not very soft-hearted,’ muttered Gorman, ‘but she gave me a sense of fulness in the throat, like choking, the other day, that I vowed to myself I’d never listen to that song again.’

‘It is not her voice – it is not the music – there is some witchery in the woman herself that does it,’ cried Dick, almost fiercely. ‘Take a walk with her in the wood, saunter down one of these alleys in the garden, and I’ll be shot if your heart will not begin to beat in another fashion, and your brain to weave all sorts of bright fancies, in which she will form the chief figure; and though you’ll be half inclined to declare your love, and swear that you cannot live without her, some terror will tell you not to break the spell of your delight, but to go on walking there at her side, and hearing her words just as though that ecstasy could last for ever.’

‘I suspect you are in love with her,’ said O’Shea dryly.

‘Not now. Not now; and I’ll take care not to have a relapse,’ said he gravely.

‘How do you mean to manage that?’

‘The only one way it is possible – not to see her, nor to hear her – not to live in the same land with her. I have made up my mind to go to Australia. I don’t well know what to do when I get there; but whatever it be, and whatever it cost me to bear, I shall meet it without shrinking, for there will be no old associates to look on and remark upon my shabby clothes and broken boots.’

‘What will the passage cost you?’ asked Gorman eagerly.

‘I have ascertained that for about fifty pounds I can land myself in Melbourne, and if I have a ten-pound note after, it is as much as I mean to provide.’

‘If I can raise the money, I’ll go with you,’ said O’Shea.

‘Will you? is this serious? is it a promise?’

‘I pledge my word on it. I’ll go over to the Barn to-day and see my aunt. I thought up to this I could not bring myself to go there, but I will now. It is for the last time in my life, and I must say good-bye, whether she helps me or not.’

‘You’ll scarcely like to ask her for money,’ said Dick.

‘Scarcely – at all events, I’ll see her, and I’ll tell her that I’m going away, with no other thought in my mind than of all the love and affection she had for me, worse luck mine that I have not got them still.’

‘Shall I walk over with – ? would you rather be alone?’

‘I believe so! I think I should like to be alone.’

‘Let us meet, then, on this spot to-morrow, and decide what is to be done?’

‘Agreed!’ cried O’Shea, and with a warm shake-hands to ratify the pledge, they parted: Dick towards the lower part of the garden, while O’Shea turned towards the house.

CHAPTER LIII

A SCRAPE

We have all of us felt how depressing is the sensation felt in a family circle in the first meeting after the departure of their guests. The friends who have been staying some time in your house not only bring to the common stock their share of pleasant converse and companionship, but, in the quality of strangers, they exact a certain amount of effort for their amusement, which is better for him who gives than for the recipient, and they impose that small reserve which excludes the purely personal inconveniences and contrarieties, which unhappily, in strictly family intercourse, have no small space allotted them for discussion.

It is but right to say that they who benefit most by, and most gratefully acknowledge, this boon of the visitors, are the young. The elders, sometimes more disposed to indolence than effort, sometimes irritable at the check essentially put upon many little egotisms of daily use, and oftener than either, perhaps, glad to get back to the old groove of home discussion, unrestrained by the presence of strangers; the elders are now and then given to express a most ungracious gratitude for being once again to themselves, and free to be as confidential and outspoken and disagreeable as their hearts desire.

The dinner at Kilgobbin Castle, on the day I speak of, consisted solely of the Kearney family, and except in the person of the old man himself, no trace of pleasantry could be detected. Kate had her own share of anxieties. A number of notices had been served by refractory tenants for demands they were about to prefer for improvements, under the new land act. The passion for litigation, so dear to the Irish peasant’s heart – that sense of having something to be quibbled for, so exciting to the imaginative nature of the Celt, had taken possession of all the tenants on the estate, and even the well-to-do and the satisfied were now bestirring themselves to think if they had not some grievance to be turned into profit, and some possible hardship to be discounted into an abatement.

Dick Kearney, entirely preoccupied by the thought of his intended journey, already began to feel that the things of home touched him no longer. A few months more and he should be far away from Ireland and her interests, and why should he harass himself about the contests of party or the balance of factions, which never again could have any bearing on his future life. His whole thought was what arrangement he could make with his father by which, for a little present assistance, he might surrender all his right on the entail and give up Kilgobbin for ever.

As for Nina, her complexities were too many and too much interwoven for our investigation; and there were thoughts of all the various persons she had met in Ireland, mingled with scenes of the past, and, more strangely still, the people placed in situations and connections which by no likelihood should they ever have occupied. The thought that the little comedy of everyday life, which she relished immensely, was now to cease for lack of actors, made her serious – almost sad – and she seldom spoke during the meal.

At Lord Kilgobbin’s request, that they would not leave him to take his wine alone, they drew their chairs round the dining-room fire; but, except the bright glow of the ruddy turf, and the pleasant look of the old man himself, there was little that smacked of the agreeable fireside.

‘What has come over you girls this evening?’ said the old man. ‘Are you in love, or has the man that ought to be in love with either of you discovered it was only a mistake he was making?’

‘Ask Nina, sir,’ said Kate gravely.

‘Perhaps you are right, uncle,’ said Nina dreamily.

‘In which of my guesses – the first or the last?’

‘Don’t puzzle me, sir, for I have no head for a subtle distinction. I only meant to say it is not so easy to be in love without mistakes. You mistake realities and traits for something not a bit like them, and you mistake yourself by imagining that you mind them.’

‘I don’t think I understand you,’ said the old man.

‘Very likely not, sir. I do not know if I had a meaning that I could explain.’

‘Nina wants to tell you, my lord, that the right man has not come forward yet, and she does not know whether she’ll keep the place open in her heart for him any longer,’ said Dick, with a half-malicious glance.

‘That terrible Cousin Dick! nothing escapes him,’ said Nina, with a faint smile.

‘Is there any more in the newspapers about that scandal of the Government?’ cried the old man, turning to Kate.

‘Is there not going to be some inquiry as to whether his Excellency wrote to the Fenians?’

‘There are a few words here, papa,’ cried Kate, opening the paper. ‘“In reply to the question of Sir Barnes Malone as to the late communications alleged to have passed between the head of the Irish Government and the head-centre of the Fenians, the Right Honourable the First Lord of the Treasury said, ‘That the question would be more properly addressed to the noble lord the Secretary for Ireland, who was not then in the House. Meanwhile, sir,’ continued he, ‘I will take on myself the responsibility of saying that in this, as in a variety of other cases, the zeal of party has greatly outstripped the discretion that should govern political warfare. The exceptional state of a nation, in which the administration of justice mainly depends on those aids which a rigid morality might disparage – the social state of a people whose integrity calls for the application of means the most certain to disseminate distrust and disunion, are facts which constitute reasons for political action that, however assailable in the mere abstract, the mind of statesmanlike form will at once accept as solid and effective, and to reject which would only show that, in over-looking the consequences of sentiment, a man can ignore the most vital interests of his country.’”’

‘Does he say that they wrote to Donogan?’ cried Kilgobbin, whose patience had been sorely pushed by the Premier’s exordium.

‘Let me read on, papa.’

‘Skip all that, and get down to a simple question and answer, Kitty; don’t read the long sentences.’

‘This is how he winds up, papa. “I trust I have now, sir, satisfied the House that there are abundant reasons why this correspondence should not be produced on the table, while I have further justified my noble friend for a course of action in which the humanity of the man takes no lustre from the glory of the statesman” – then there are some words in Latin – “and the right hon. gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, in which some of the Opposition were heard to join.”’

‘I want to be told, after all, did they write the letter to say Donogan was to be let escape?’

‘Would it have been a great crime, uncle?’ said Nina artlessly.

‘I’m not going into that. I’m only asking what the people over us say is the best way to govern us. I’d like to know, once for all, what was wrong and what was right in Ireland.’

‘Has not the Premier just told you, sir,’ replied Nina, ‘that it is always the reverse of what obtains everywhere else?’

‘I have had enough of it, anyhow,’ cried Dick, who, though not intending it before, now was carried away by a momentary gust of passion to make the avowal.

‘Have you been in the Cabinet all this time, then, without our knowing it?’ asked Nina archly.

‘It is not of the Cabinet I was speaking, mademoiselle. It was of the country.’ And he answered haughtily.

‘And where would you go, Dick, and find better?’ said Kate.

‘Anywhere. I should find better in America, in Canada, in the Far West, in New Zealand – but I mean to try in Australia.’

‘And what will you do when you get there?’ asked Kilgobbin, with a grim humour in his look.

‘Do tell me, Cousin Dick, for who knows that it might not suit me also?’

Young Kearney filled his glass, and drained it without speaking. At last he said, ‘It will be for you, sir, to say if I make the trial. It is clear enough, I have no course open to me here. For a few hundred pounds, or, indeed, for anything you like to give me, you get rid of me for ever. It will be the one piece of economy my whole life comprises.’

‘Stay at home, Dick, and give to your own country the energy you are willing to bestow on a strange land,’ said Kate.

‘And labour side by side with the peasant I have looked down upon since I was able to walk.’

‘Don’t look down on him, then – do it no longer. If you would treat the first stranger you met in the bush as your equal, begin the Christian practice in your own country.’

‘But he needn’t do that at all,’ broke in the old man. ‘If he would take to strong shoes and early rising here at Kilgobbin, he need never go to Geelong for a living. Your great-grandfathers lived here for centuries, and the old house that sheltered them is still standing.’

‘What should I stay for – ?’ He had got thus far when his eyes met Nina’s, and he stopped and hesitated, and, as a deep blush covered his face, faltered out, ‘Gorman O’Shea says he is ready to go with me, and two fellows with less to detain them in their own country would be hard to find.’

‘O’Shea will do well enough,’ said the old man; ‘he was not brought up to kid-leather boots and silk linings in his greatcoat. There’s stuff in him, and if it comes to sleeping under a haystack or dining on a red-herring, he’ll not rise up with rheumatism or heartburn. And what’s better than all, he’ll not think himself a hero because he mends his own boots or lights his own kitchen-fire.’

‘A letter for your honour,’ said the servant, entering with a very informal-looking note on coarse paper, and fastened with a wafer. ‘The gossoon, sir, is waiting for an answer; he run every mile from Moate.’

‘Read it, Kitty,’ said the old man, not heeding the servant’s comment.

‘It is dated “Moate Jail, seven o’clock,”’ said Kitty, as she read: ‘“Dear Sir, – I have got into a stupid scrape, and have been committed to jail. Will you come, or send some one to bail me out. The thing is a mere trifle, but the ‘being locked up’ is very hard to bear. – Yours always, G. O’Shea.”’

‘Is this more Fenian work?’ cried Kilgobbin.

‘I’m certain it is not, sir,’ said Dick. ‘Gorman O’Shea has no liking for them, nor is he the man to sympathise with what he owns he cannot understand. It is a mere accidental row.’

‘At all events, we must see to set him at liberty. Order the gig, Dick, and while they are putting on the harness, I’ll finish this decanter of port. If it wasn’t that we’re getting retired shopkeepers on the bench, we’d not see an O’Shea sent to prison like a gossoon that stole a bunch of turnips.’

‘What has he been doing, I wonder?’ said Nina, as she drew her arm within Kate’s and left the room.

‘Some loud talk in the bar-parlour, perhaps,’ was Kate’s reply, and the toss of her head as she said it implied more even than the words.