Kitabı oku: «Lord Kilgobbin», sayfa 44
CHAPTER LXXXIV
NEXT MORNING
The whist-party did not break up till nigh morning. The sergeant had once appeared at the drawing-room to announce that all was quiet without. There had been no sign of any rising of the people, nor any disposition to molest the police. Indeed, so peaceful did everything look, and such an air of easy indifference pervaded the country, the police were half disposed to believe that the report of Donogan being in the neighbourhood was unfounded, and not impossibly circulated to draw off attention from some other part of the country.
This was also Lord Kilgobbin’s belief. ‘The man has no friends, or even warm followers, down here. It was the merest accident first led him to this part of the country, where, besides, we are all too poor to be rebels. It’s only down in Meath, where the people are well off, and rents are not too high, that people can afford to be Fenians.’
While he was enunciating this fact to Curtis, they were walking up and down the breakfast-room, waiting for the appearance of the ladies to make tea.
‘I declare it’s nigh eleven o’clock,’ said Curtis, ‘and I meant to have been over two baronies before this hour.’
‘Don’t distress yourself, captain. The man was never within fifty miles of where we are. And why would he? It is not the Bog of Allen is the place for a revolution.’
‘It’s always the way with the people at the Castle,’ grumbled out Curtis. ‘They know more of what’s going on down the country than we that live here! It’s one despatch after another. Head-centre Such-a-one is at the “Three Cripples.” He slept there two nights; he swore in fifteen men last Saturday, and they’ll tell you where he bought a pair of corduroy breeches, and what he ate for his breakfast – ’
‘I wish we had ours,’ broke in Kilgobbin. ‘Where’s Kate all this time?’
‘Papa, papa, I want you for a moment; come here to me quickly,’ cried Kate, whose head appeared for a moment at the door. ‘Here’s very terrible tidings, papa dearest,’ said she, as she drew him along towards his study. ‘Nina is gone! Nina has run away!’
‘Run away for what?’
‘Run away to be married; and she is married. Read this, or I’ll read it for you. A country boy has just brought it from Maryborough.’
Like a man stunned almost to insensibility, Kearney crossed his hands before him, and sat gazing out vacantly before him.
‘Can you listen to me? can you attend to me, dear papa?’
‘Go on,’ said he, in a faint voice.
‘It is written in a great hurry, and very hard to read. It runs thus: “Dearest, – I have no time for explainings nor excuses, if I were disposed to make either, and I will confine myself to a few facts. I was married this morning to Donogan – the rebel: I know you have added the word, and I write it to show how our sentiments are united. As people are prone to put into the lottery the number they have dreamed of, I have taken my ticket in this greatest of all lotteries on the same wise grounds. I have been dreaming adventures ever since I was a little child, and it is but natural that I marry an adventurer.”’
A deep groan from the old man made her stop; but as she saw that he was not changed in colour or feature, she went on —
‘“He says he loves me very dearly, and that he will treat me well. I like to believe both, and I do believe them. He says we shall be very poor for the present, but that he means to become something or somebody later on. I do not much care for the poverty, if there is hope; and he is a man to hope with and to hope from.
‘“You are, in a measure, the cause of all, since it was to tell me he would send away all the witnesses against your husband, that is to be, that I agreed to meet him, and to give me the lease which Miss O’Shea was so rash as to place in Gill’s hands. This I now send you.”’
‘And this she has sent you, Kate?’ asked Kilgobbin.
‘Yes, papa, it is here, and the master of the Swallow’s receipt for Gill as a passenger to Quebec.’
‘Read on.’
‘There is little more, papa, except what I am to say to you – to forgive her.’
‘I can’t forgive her. It was deceit – cruel deceit.’
‘It was not, papa. I could swear there was no forethought. If there had been, she would have told me. She told me everything. She never loved Walpole; she could not love him. She was marrying him with a broken heart. It was not that she loved another, but she knew she could have loved another.’
‘Don’t talk such muddle to me,’ said he angrily. ‘You fancy life is to be all courting, but it isn’t. It’s house-rent, and butchers’ bills, and apothecaries, and the pipe water – it’s shoes, and schooling, and arrears of rent, and rheumatism, and flannel waistcoats, and toothache have a considerable space in Paradise!’ And there was a grim comicality in his utterance of the word.
‘She said no more than the truth of herself,’ broke in Kate. ‘With all her queenly ways, she could face poverty bravely – I know it.’
‘So you can – any of you, if a man’s making love to you. You care little enough what you eat, and not much more what you wear, if he tells you it becomes you; but that’s not the poverty that grinds and crushes. It’s what comes home in sickness; it’s what meets you in insolent letters, in threats of this or menaces of that. But what do you know about it, or why do I speak of it? She’s married a man that could be hanged if the law caught him, and for no other reason, that I see, than because he’s a felon.’
‘I don’t think you are fair to her, papa.’
‘Of course I’m not. Is it likely that at sixty I can be as great a fool as I was at sixteen?’
‘So that means that you once thought in the same way that she does?’
‘I didn’t say any such thing, miss,’ said he angrily. ‘Did you tell Miss Betty what’s happened us?’
‘I just broke it to her, papa, and she made me run away and read the note to you. Perhaps you’ll come and speak to her?’
‘I will,’ said he, rising and preparing to leave the room. ‘I’d rather hear I was a bankrupt this morning than that news!’ And he mounted the stairs, sighing heavily as he went.
‘Isn’t this fine news the morning has brought us, Miss Betty!’ cried he, as he entered the room with a haggard look, and hands clasped before him. ‘Did you ever dream there was such disgrace in store for us?’
‘This marriage, you mean,’ said the old lady dryly.
‘Of course I do – if you call it a marriage at all.’
‘I do call it a marriage – here’s Father Tierney’s certificate, a copy made in his own handwriting: “Daniel Donogan, M.P., of Killamoyle and Innismul, County Kilkenny, to Virginia Kostalergi, of no place in particular, daughter of Prince Kostalergi, of the same localities, contracted in holy matrimony this morning at six o’clock, and witnessed likewise by Morris McCabe, vestry clerk – Mary Kestinogue, her mark.” Do you want more than that?’
‘Do I want more? Do I want a respectable wedding? Do I want a decent man – a gentleman – a man fit to maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have behaved? Is this what we thought of her?’
‘It is not, Mat Kearney – you say truth. I never believed so well of her till now. I never believed before that she had anything in her head but to catch one of those English puppies, with their soft voices and their sneers about Ireland. I never saw her that she wasn’t trying to flatter them, and to please them, and to sing them down, as she called it herself – the very name fit for it! And that she had the high heart to take a man not only poor, but with a rope round his neck, shows me how I wronged her. I could give her five thousand this morning to make her a dowry, and to prove how I honour her.’
‘Can any one tell who he is? What do we know of him?’
‘All Ireland knows of him; and, after all, Mat Kearney, she has only done what her mother did before her.’
‘Poor Matty!’ said Kearney, as he drew his hand across his eyes.
‘Ay, ay! Poor Matty, if you like; but Matty was a beauty run to seed, and, like the rest of them, she married the first good-looking vagabond she saw. Now, this girl was in the very height and bloom of her beauty, and she took a fellow for other qualities than his whiskers or his legs. They tell me he isn’t even well-looking – so that I have hopes of her.’
‘Well, well,’ said Kearney, ‘he has done you a good turn, anyhow – he has got Peter Gill out of the country.’
‘And it’s the one thing that I can’t forgive him, Mat, just the one thing that’s fretting me now. I was living in hopes to see that scoundrel Peter on the table, and Counsellor Holmes baiting him in a cross-examination. I wanted to see how the lawyer wouldn’t leave him a rag of character or a strip of truth to cover himself with. How he’d tear off his evasions, and confront him with his own lies, till he wouldn’t know what he was saying or where he was sitting! I wanted to hear the description he would give of him to the jury; and I’d go home to my dinner after that, and not wait for the verdict.’
‘All the same, I’m glad we’re rid of Peter.’
‘Of course you are. You’re a man, and well pleased when your enemy runs away; but if you were a woman, Mat Kearney, you’d rather he’d stand out boldly and meet you, and fight his battle to the end. But they haven’t done with me yet. I’ll put that little blackguard attorney, that said my letter was a lease, into Chancery; and it will go hard with me if I don’t have him struck off the rolls. There’s a small legacy of five hundred pounds left me the other day, and, with the blessing of Providence, the Common Pleas shall have it. Don’t shake your head, Mat Kearney. I’m not robbing any one. Your daughter will have enough and to spare – ’
‘Oh, godmother,’ cried Kate imploringly.
‘It wasn’t I, my darling, that said the five hundred would be better spent on wedding-clothes or house-linen. That delicate and refined suggestion was your father’s. It was his lordship made the remark.’
It was a fortunate accident at that conjuncture that a servant should announce the arrival of Mr. Flood, the Tory J.P., who, hearing of Donogan’s escape, had driven over to confer with his brother magistrate. Lord Kilgobbin was not sorry to quit the field, where he’d certainly earned few laurels, and hastened down to meet his colleague.
CHAPTER LXXXV
THE END
While the two justices and Curtis discussed the unhappy condition of Ireland, and deplored the fact that the law-breaker never appealed in vain to the sympathies of a people whose instincts were adverse to discipline, Flood’s estimate of Donogan went very far to reconcile Kilgobbin to Nina’s marriage.
‘Out of Ireland, you’ll see that man has stuff in him to rise to eminence and station. All the qualities of which home manufacture would only make a rebel will combine to form a man of infinite resource and energy in America. Have you never imagined, Mr. Kearney, that if a man were to employ the muscular energy to make his way through a drawing-room that he would use to force his passage through a mob, the effort would be misplaced, and the man himself a nuisance? Our old institutions, with all their faults, have certain ordinary characteristics that answer to good-breeding and good manners – reverence for authority, respect for the gradations of rank, dislike to civil convulsion, and such like. We do not sit tamely by when all these are threatened with overthrow; but there are countries where there are fewer of these traditions, and men like Donogan find their place there.’
While they debated such points as these within-doors, Dick Kearney and Atlee sat on the steps of the hall door and smoked their cigars.
‘I must say, Joe,’ said Dick, ‘that your accustomed acuteness cuts but a very poor figure in the present case. It was no later than last night you told me that Nina was madly in love with you. Do you remember, as we went upstairs to bed, what you said on the landing? “That girl is my own. I may marry her to-morrow, or this day three months.”’
‘And I was right.’
‘So right were you that she is at this moment the wife of another.’
‘And cannot you see why?’
‘I suppose I can: she preferred him to you, and I scarcely blame her.’
‘No such thing; there was no thought of preference in the matter. If you were not one of those fellows who mistake an illustration, and see everything in a figure but the parallel, I should say that I had trained too finely. Now had she been thoroughbred, I was all right; as a cocktail, I was all wrong.’
‘I own I cannot follow you.’
‘Well, the woman was angry, and she married that fellow out of pique.’
‘Out of pique?’
‘I repeat it. It was a pure case of temper. I would not ask her to sing. I even found fault with the way she gave the rebel ballad. I told her there was an old lady – Americanly speaking – at the corner of College Green, who enunciated the words better, and then I sat down to whist, and would not even vouchsafe a glance in return for those looks of alternate rage or languishment she threw across the table. She was frantic. I saw it. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done. I vow she’d have married even you at that moment. And with all that, she’d not have done it if she’d been “clean-bred.” Come, come, don’t flare up, and look as if you’d strike me. On the mother’s side she was a Kearney, and all the blood of loyalty in her veins; but there must have been something wrong with the Prince of Delos. Dido was very angry, but her breeding saved her; she didn’t take a head-centre because she quarrelled with Æneas.’
‘You are, without exception, the most conceited – ’
‘No, not ass – don’t say ass, for I’m nothing of the kind. Conceited, if you like, or rather if your natural politeness insists on saying it, and cannot distinguish between the vanity of a puppy and the self-consciousness of real power; but come, tell me of something pleasanter than all this personal discussion – how did mademoiselle convey her tidings? have you seen her note? was it “transport”? was it high-pitched, or apologetic?’
‘Kate read it to me, and I thought it reasonable enough. She had done a daring thing, and she knew it; she hoped the best, and in any case she was not faint-hearted.’
‘Any mention of me?’
‘Not a word – your name does not occur.’
‘I thought not; she had not pluck for that. Poor girl, the blow is heavier than I meant it.’
‘She speaks of Walpole; she incloses a few lines to him, and tells my sister where she will find a small packet of trinkets and such like he had given her.’
‘Natural enough all that. There was no earthly reason why she shouldn’t be able to talk of Walpole as easily as of Colenso or the cattle plague; but you see she could not trust herself to approach my name.’
‘You’ll provoke me to kick you, Atlee.’
‘In that case I shall sit where I am. But I was going to remark that as I shall start for town by the next train, and intend to meet Walpole, if your sister desires it, I shall have much pleasure in taking charge of that note to his address.’
‘All right, I’ll tell her. I see that she and Miss Betty are about to drive over to O’Shea’s Barn, and I’ll give your message at once.’
While Dick hastened away on his errand, Joe Atlee sat alone, musing and thoughtful. I have no reason to presume my reader cares for his reflections, nor to know the meaning of a strange smile, half scornful and half sad, that played upon his face. At last he rose slowly, and stood looking up at the grim old castle, and its quaint blending of ancient strength and modern deformity. ‘Life here, I take it, will go on pretty much as before. All the acts of this drama will resemble each other, but my own little melodrama must open soon. I wonder what sort of house there will be for Joe Atlee’s benefit.’
Atlee was right. Kilgobbin Castle fell back to the ways in which our first chapter found it, and other interests – especially those of Kate’s approaching marriage – soon effaced the memory of Nina’s flight and runaway match. By that happy law by which the waves of events follow and obliterate each other, the present glided back into the past, and the past faded till its colours grew uncertain.
On the second evening after Nina’s departure, Atlee stood on the pier of Kingstown as the packet drew up at the jetty. Walpole saw him, and waved his hand in friendly greeting. ‘What news from Kilgobbin?’ cried he, as he landed.
‘Nothing very rose-coloured,’ said Atlee, as he handed the note.
‘Is this true?’ said Walpole, as a slight tremor shook his voice.
‘All true.’
‘Isn’t it Irish? – Irish the whole of it.’
‘So they said down there, and, stranger than all, they seemed rather proud of it.’
