Kitabı oku: «Lord Kilgobbin», sayfa 42

CHAPTER LXXXI

AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT

It was no uncommon thing for the tenants to address petitions and complaints in writing to Kate, and it occurred to Nina as not impossible that some one might have bethought him of entreating her intercession in their favour. The look of the letter, and the coarse wax, and the writing, all in a measure strengthened this impression, and it was in the most careless of moods she broke the envelope, scarcely caring to look for the name of the writer, whom she was convinced must be unknown to her.

She had just let her hair fall freely down on her neck and shoulders, and was seated in a deep chair before her fire, as she opened the paper and read, ‘Mademoiselle Kostalergi.’ This beginning, so unlikely for a peasant, made her turn for the name, and she read, in a large full hand, the words ‘DANIEL DONOGAN.’ So complete was her surprise, that to satisfy herself there was no trick or deception, she examined the envelope and the seal, and reflected for some minutes over the mode in which the document had come to her hands. Atlee’s story was a very credible one: nothing more likely than that the boy was charged to deliver the letter at the castle, and simply sought to spare himself so many miles of way, or it might be that he was enjoined to give it to the first traveller he met on his road to Kilgobbin. Nina had little doubt that if Atlee guessed or had reason to know the writer, he would have treated the letter as a secret missive which would give him a certain power over her.

These thoughts did not take her long, and she turned once more to the letter. ‘Poor fellow,’ said she aloud, ‘why does he write to me?’ And her own voice sent back its surmises to her; and as she thought over him standing on the lonely road, his clasped hands before him, and his hair wafted wildly back from his uncovered head, two heavy tears rolled slowly down her cheeks and dropped upon her neck. ‘I am sure he loved me – I know he loved me,’ muttered she, half aloud. ‘I have never seen in any eye the same expression that his wore as he lay that morning in the grass. It was not veneration, it was genuine adoration. Had I been a saint and wanted worship, there was the very offering that I craved – a look of painful meaning, made up of wonder and devotion, a something that said: take what course you may, be wilful, be wayward, be even cruel, I am your slave. You may not think me worthy of a thought, you may be so indifferent as to forget me utterly, but my life from this hour has but one spell to charm, one memory to sustain it. It needed not his last words to me to say that my image would lay on his heart for ever. Poor fellow, I need not have been added to his sorrows, he has had his share of trouble without me!’

It was some time ere she could return to the letter, which ran thus: —

‘MADEMOISELLE KOSTALERGI, – You once rendered me a great service – not alone at some hazard to yourself, but by doing what must have cost you sorely. It is now my turn; and if the act of repayment is not equal to the original debt, let me ask you to believe that it taxes my strength even more than your generosity once taxed your own.

‘I came here a few days since in the hope that I might see you before I leave Ireland for ever; and while waiting for some fortunate chance, I learned that you were betrothed and to be married to the young gentleman who lies ill at Kilgobbin, and whose approaching trial at the assizes is now the subject of so much discussion. I will not tell you – I have no right to tell you – the deep misery with which these tidings filled me. It was no use to teach my heart how vain and impossible were all my hopes with regard to you. It was to no purpose that I could repeat over aloud to myself how hopeless my pretensions must be. My love for you had become a religion, and what I could deny to a hope, I could still believe. Take that hope away, and I could not imagine how I should face my daily life, how interest myself in its ambitions, and even care to live on.

‘These sad confessions cannot offend you, coming from one even as humble as I am. They are all that are left me for consolation – they will soon be all I shall have for memory. The little lamp in the lowly shrine comforts the kneeling worshipper far more than it honours the saint; and the love I bear you is such as this. Forgive me if I have dared these utterances. To save him with whose fortunes your own are to be bound up became at once my object; and as I knew with what ingenuity and craft his ruin had been compassed, it required all my efforts to baffle his enemies. The National press and the National party have made a great cause of this trial, and determined that tenant-right should be vindicated in the person of this man Gill.

‘I have seen enough of what is intended here to be aware what mischief may be worked by hard swearing, a violent press, and a jury not insensible to public opinion – evils, if you like, but evils that are less of our own growing than the curse ill-government has brought upon us. It has been decided in certain councils – whose decrees are seldom gainsaid – that an example shall be made of Captain Gorman O’Shea, and that no effort shall be spared to make his case a terror and a warning to Irish landowners; how they attempt by ancient process of law to subvert the concessions we have wrung from our tyrants.

‘A jury to find him guilty will be sworn; and let us see the judge – in defiance of a verdict given from the jury-box, without a moment’s hesitation or the shadow of dissent – let us see the judge who will dare to diminish the severity of the sentence. This is the language, these are the very words of those who have more of the rule of Ireland in their hands than the haughty gentlemen, honourable and right honourable, who sit at Whitehall.

‘I have heard this opinion too often of late to doubt how much it is a fixed determination of the party; and until now – until I came here, and learned what interest his fate could have for me – I offered no opposition to these reasonings. Since then I have bestirred myself actively. I have addressed the committee here who have taken charge of the prosecution; I have written to the editors of the chief newspapers; I have even made a direct appeal to the leading counsel for the prosecution, and tried to persuade them that a victory here might cost us more than a defeat, and that the country at large, who submit with difficulty to the verdict of absolving juries, will rise with indignation at this evidence of a jury prepared to exercise a vindictive power, and actually make the law the agent of reprisal. I have failed in all – utterly failed. Some reproach me as faint-hearted and craven; some condescend to treat me as merely mistaken and misguided; and some are bold enough to hint that, though as a military authority I stand without rivalry, as a purely political adviser, my counsels are open to dispute.

‘I have still a power, however, through the organisation of which I am a chief; and by this power I have ordered Gill to appear before me, and in obedience to my commands, he will sail this night for America. With him will also leave the two other important witnesses in this cause; so that the only evidence against Captain O’Shea will be some of those against whom he has himself instituted a cross charge for assault. That the prosecution can be carried on with such testimony need not be feared. Our press will denounce the infamous arts by which these witnesses have been tampered with, and justice has been defeated. The insults they may hurl at our oppressors – for once unjustly – will furnish matter for the Opposition journals to inveigh against our present Government, and some good may come even of this. At all events, I shall have accomplished what I sought. I shall have saved from a prison the man I hate most on earth, the man who, robbing me of what never could be mine, robs me of every hope, of every ambition, making my love as worthless as my life! Have I not repaid you? Ask your heart which of us has done more for the other?

‘The contract on which Gill based his right as a tenant, and which would have sustained his action, is now in my hands; and I will – if you permit me – place it in yours. This may appear an ingenious device to secure a meeting with you; but though I long to see you once more, were it but a minute, I would not compass it by a fraud. If, then, you will not see me, I shall address the packet to you through the post.

‘I have finished. I have told you what it most concerns you to know, and what chiefly regards your happiness. I have done this as coldly and impassively, I hope, as though I had no other part in the narrative than that of the friend whose friendship had a blessed office. I have not told you of the beating heart that hangs over this paper, nor will I darken one bright moment of your fortune by the gloom of mine. If you will write me one line – a farewell if it must be – send it to the care of Adam Cobb, “Cross Keys,” Moate, where I shall find it up to Thursday next. If – and oh! how shall I bless you for it – if you will consent to see me, to say one word, to let me look on you once more, I shall go into my banishment with a bolder heart, as men go into battle with an amulet. DANIEL DONOGAN.’

‘Shall I show this to Kate?’ was the first thought of Nina as she laid the letter down. ‘Is it a breach of confidence to let another than myself read these lines? Assuredly they were meant for my eyes alone. Poor fellow!’ said she, once more aloud. ‘It was very noble in him to do this for one he could not but regard as a rival.’ And then she asked herself how far it might consist with honour to derive benefit from his mistake – since mistake it was – in believing O’Shea was her lover, and to be her future husband.

‘There can be little doubt Donogan would never have made the sacrifice had he known that I am about to marry Walpole.’ From this she rambled on to speculate on how far might Donogan’s conduct compromise or endanger him with his own party, and if – which she thought well probable – there was a distinct peril in what he was doing, whether he would have incurred that peril if he really knew the truth, and that it was not herself he was serving.

The more she canvassed these doubts, the more she found the difficulty of resolving them, nor indeed was there any other way than one – distinctly to ask Donogan if he would persist in his kind intentions when he knew that the benefit was to revert to her cousin and not to herself. So far as the evidence of Gill at the trial was concerned, the man’s withdrawal was already accomplished, but would Donogan be as ready to restore the lease, and would he, in fact, be as ready to confront the danger of all this interference, as at first? She could scarcely satisfy her mind how she would wish him to act in the contingency! She was sincerely fond of Kate, she knew all the traits of honesty and truth in that simple character, and she valued the very qualities of straightforwardness and direct purpose in which she knew she was herself deficient. She would have liked well to secure that dear girl’s happiness, and it would have been an exquisite delight to her to feel that she had been an aid to her welfare; and yet, with all this, there was a subtle jealousy that tortured her in thinking, ‘What will this man have done to prove his love for me? Where am I, and what are my interests in all this?’ There was a poison in this doubt that actually extended to a state of fever. ‘I must see him,’ she said at last, speaking aloud to herself. ‘I must let him know the truth. If what he proposes shall lead him to break with his party or his friends, it is well he should see for what and for whom he is doing it.’

And then she persuaded herself she would like to hear Donogan talk, as once before she had heard him talk, of his hopes and his ambitions. There was something in the high-sounding inspirations of the man, a lofty heroism in all he said, that struck a chord in her Greek nature. The cause that was so intensely associated with danger that life was always on the issue, was exactly the thing to excite her heart, and, like the trumpet-blast to the charger, she felt stirred to her inmost soul by whatever appealed to reckless daring and peril. ‘He shall tell me what he intends to do – his plans, his projects, and his troubles. He shall tell me of his hopes, what he desires in the future, and where he himself will stand when his efforts have succeeded; and oh!’ thought she, ‘are not the wild extravagances of these men better a thousand times than the well-turned nothings of the fine gentlemen who surround us? Are not their very risks and vicissitudes more manly teachings than the small casualties of the polished world? If life were all “salon,” taste perhaps might decide against them; but it is not all “salon,” or, if it were, it would be a poorer thing even than I think it!’ She turned to her desk as she said this, and wrote: —

‘DEAR MR. DONOGAN, – I wish to thank you in person for the great kindness you have shown me, though there is some mistake on your part in the matter. I cannot suppose you are able to come here openly, but if you will be in the garden on Saturday evening at 9 o’clock, I shall be there to meet you. I am, very truly yours,

‘NINA KOSTALERGI.’

‘Very imprudent – scarcely delicate – perhaps, all this, and for a girl who is to be married to another man in some three weeks hence, but I will tell Cecil Walpole all when he returns, and if he desires to be off his engagement, he shall have the liberty. I have one-half at least of the Bayard Legend, and if I cannot say I am “without reproach,” I am certainly without fear.’

The letter-bag lay in the hall, and Nina went down at once and deposited her letter in it; this done, she lay down on her bed, not to sleep, but to think over Donogan and his letter till daybreak.

CHAPTER LXXXII

THE BREAKFAST-ROOM

‘Strange house this,’ said Joseph Atlee, as Nina entered the room the next morning where he sat alone at breakfast. ‘Lord Kilgobbin and Dick were here a moment ago, and disappeared suddenly; Miss Kearney for an instant, and also left as abruptly; and now you have come, I most earnestly hope not to fly away in the same fashion.’

‘No; I mean to eat my breakfast, and so far to keep you company.’

‘I thank the tea-urn for my good fortune,’ said he solemnly.

‘A tête-à-tête with Mr. Atlee is a piece of good-luck,’ said Nina, as she sat down. ‘Has anything occurred to call our hosts away?’

‘In a house like this,’ said he jocularly, ‘where people are marrying or giving in marriage at every turn, what may not happen? It may be a question of the settlement, or the bridecake, or white satin “slip” – if that’s the name for it – the orange-flowers, or the choice of the best man – who knows?’

‘You seem to know the whole bead-roll of wedding incidents.’

‘It is a dull répertoire after all, for whether the piece be melodrama, farce, genteel comedy, or harrowing tragedy, it has to be played by the same actors.’

‘What would you have – marriages cannot be all alike. There must be many marriages for things besides love: for ambition, for interest, for money, for convenience.’

‘Convenience is exactly the phrase I wanted and could not catch.’

‘It is not the word I wanted, nor do I think we mean the same thing by it.’

‘What I mean is this,’ said Atlee, with a firm voice, ‘that when a young girl has decided in her own mind that she has had enough of that social bondage of the daughter, and cannot marry the man she would like, she will marry the man that she can.’

‘And like him too,’ added Nina, with a strange, dubious sort of smile.

‘Yes, and like him too; for there is a curious feature in the woman’s nature that, without any falsehood or disloyalty, permits her to like different people in different ways, so that the quiet, gentle, almost impassive woman might, if differently mated, have been a being of fervid temper, headstrong and passionate. If it were not for this species of accommodation, marriage would be a worse thing than it is.’

‘I never suspected you of having made a study of the subject. Since when have you devoted your attention to the theme?’

‘I could answer in the words of Wilkes – since I have had the honour to know your Royal Highness; but perhaps you might be displeased with the flippancy.’

‘I should think that very probable,’ said she gravely.

‘Don’t look so serious. Remember that I did not commit myself after all.’

‘I thought it was possible to discuss this problem without a personality.’

‘Don’t you know that, let one deal in abstractions as long as he will, he is only skirmishing around special instances. It is out of what I glean from individuals I make up my generalities.’

‘Am I to understand by this that I have supplied you with the material of one of these reflections?’

‘You have given me the subject of many. If I were to tell you how often I have thought of you, I could not answer for the words in which I might tell it.’

‘Do not tell it, then.’

‘I know – I am aware – I have heard since I came here that there is a special reason why you could not listen to me.’

‘And being so, why do you propose that I should hear you?’

‘I will tell you,’ said he, with an earnestness that almost startled her: ‘I will tell you, because there are things on which a doubt or an equivocation are actually maddening; and I will not, I cannot, believe that you have accepted Cecil Walpole.’

‘Will you please to say why it should seem so incredible?’

‘Because I have seen you not merely in admiration, and that admiration would be better conveyed by a stronger word; and because I have measured you with others infinitely beneath you in every way, and who are yet soaring into very high regions indeed; because I have learned enough of the world to know that alongside of – often above – the influence that men are wielding in life by their genius and their capacity, there is another power exercised by women of marvellous beauty, of infinite attractions, and exquisite grace, which sways and moulds the fate of mankind far more than Cabinets and Councils. There are not above half a dozen of these in Europe, and you might be one added to the number.’

‘Even admitting all this – and I don’t see that I should go so far – it is no answer to my question.’

‘Must I then say there can be no – not companionship, that’s not the word; no, I must take the French expression, and call it solidarité– there can be no solidarité of interests, of objects, of passions, or of hopes, between people so widely dissevered as you and Walpole. I am so convinced of this, that still I can dare to declare I cannot believe you could marry him.’

‘And if I were to tell you it were true?’

‘I should still regard it as a passing caprice, that the mere mention of to-morrow would offend you. It is no disparagement of Walpole to say he is unworthy of you, for who would be worthy? but the presumption of his daring is enough to excite indignation – at least, I feel it such. How he could dare to link his supreme littleness with consummate perfection; to freight the miserable barque of his fortunes with so precious a cargo; to encounter the feeling – and there is no escape for it – “I must drag that woman down, not alone into obscurity, but into all the sordid meanness of a small condition, that never can emerge into anything better.” He cannot disguise from himself that it is not within his reach to attain power, or place, or high consideration. Such men make no name in life; they leave no mark on their time. They are heaven-born subordinates, and never refute their destiny. Does a woman with ambition – does a woman conscious of her own great merits – condescend to ally herself, not alone with small fortune – that might be borne – but with the smaller associations that make up these men’s lives? with the peddling efforts to mount even one rung higher of that crazy little ladder of their ambition – to be a clerk of another grade – a creature of some fifty pounds more – a being in an upper office?’

‘And the prince – for he ought to be at least a prince who should make me the offer of his name – whence is he to come, Mr. Atlee?’

‘There are men who are not born to princely station, who by their genius and their determination are just as sure to become famous, and who need but the glorious prize of such a woman’s love – No, no, don’t treat what I say as rant and rodomontade; these are words of sober sense and seriousness.’

‘Indeed!’ said she, with a faint sigh. ‘So that it really amounts to this – that I shall actually have missed my whole fortune in life – thrown myself away – all because I would not wait for Mr. Atlee to propose to me.’

Nothing less than Atlee’s marvellous assurance and self-possession could have sustained this speech unabashed.

‘You have only said what my heart has told me many a day since.’

‘But you seem to forget,’ added she, with a very faint curl of scorn on her lip, ‘that I had no more to guide me to the discovery of Mr. Atlee’s affection than that of his future greatness. Indeed, I could more readily believe in the latter than the former.’

‘Believe in both,’ cried he warmly. ‘If I have conquered difficulties in life, if I have achieved some successes – now for a passing triumph, now for a moment of gratified vanity, now for a mere caprice – try me by a mere hope – I only plead for a hope – try me by hope of being one day worthy of calling that hand my own.’

As he spoke, he tried to grasp her hand; but she withdrew it coldly and slowly, saying, ‘I have no fancy to make myself the prize of any success in life, political or literary; nor can I believe that the man who reasons in this fashion has any really high ambition. Mr. Atlee,’ added she, more gravely, ‘your memory may not be as good as mine, and you will pardon me if I remind you that, almost at our first meeting, we struck up a sort of friendship, on the very equivocal ground of a common country. We agreed that each of us claimed for their native land the mythical Bohemia, and we agreed, besides, that the natives of that country are admirable colleagues, but not good partners.’

‘You are not quite fair in this,’ he began; but before he could say more Dick Kearney entered hurriedly, and cried out, ‘It’s all true. The people are in wild excitement, and all declare that they will not let him be taken. Oh! I forgot,’ added he. ‘You were not here when my father and I were called away by the despatch from the police-station, to say that Donogan has been seen at Moate, and is about to hold a meeting on the bog. Of course, this is mere rumour; but the constabulary are determined to capture him, and Curtis has written to inform my father that a party of police will patrol the grounds here this evening.’

‘And if they should take him, what would happen – to him, I mean?’ asked Nina coldly.

‘An escaped convict is usually condemned to death; but I suppose they would not hang him,’ said Dick.

‘Hang him!’ cried Atlee; ‘nothing of the kind. Mr. Gladstone would present him with a suit of clothes, a ten-pound note, and a first-class passage to America. He would make a “healing measure” of him.’

‘I must say, gentlemen,’ said Nina scornfully, ‘you can discuss your friend’s fate with a marvellous equanimity.’

‘So we do,’ rejoined Atlee. ‘He is another Bohemian.’

‘Don’t say so, sir,’ said she passionately. ‘The men who put their lives on a venture – and that venture not a mere gain to themselves – are in nowise the associates of those poor adventurers who are gambling for their daily living. He is a rebel, if you like; but he believes in rebellion. How much do you believe in, Mr. Atlee?’

‘I say, Joe, you are getting the worst of this discussion. Seriously, however, I hope they’ll not catch poor Donogan; and my father has asked Curtis to come over and dine here, and I trust to a good fire and some old claret to keep him quiet for this evening, at least. We must not molest the police; but there’s no great harm done if we mislead them.’

‘Once in the drawing-room, if Mademoiselle Kostalergi will only condescend to aid us,’ added Atlee, ‘I think Curtis will be more than a chief constable if he will bethink him of his duty.’

‘You are a strange set of people, you Irish,’ said Nina, as she walked away. ‘Even such of you as don’t want to overthrow the Government are always ready to impede its march and contribute to its difficulties.’

‘She only meant that for an impertinence,’ said Atlee, after she left the room; ‘but she was wonderfully near the truth, though not truthfully expressed.’