Kitabı oku: «The Landleaguers», sayfa 17
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WHAT WAS NOT DONE WITH THE FUNDS
"She has taken his money all the same." This was said some weeks after the transaction as described in the last chapter, and was spoken by Madame Socani to Mr. Moss.
"How do you know?"
"I know very well. You are so infatuated by that young woman that you will believe nothing against her."
"I am infatuated with her voice; I know what she is going to do in the world. Old Barytone told me that he had never heard such a voice from a woman's mouth since the days of Malibran; and if there is a man who knows one voice from another, it is Barytone. He can taste the richness of the instrument down to its lowest tinkling sound."
"And you would marry such a one as she for her voice."
"And she can act. Ah! if you could have acted as she does, it might have been different."
"She has got a husband just the same as me."
"I don't believe it; but never mind, I would risk all that. And I will do it yet. If you will only keep your toe in your pump, we will have such a company as nothing that Le Gros can do will be able to cut us down."
"And she is taking money from that lord."
"They all take money from lords," he replied. "What does it matter? And she is as stout a piece of goods as ever you came across. She has given me more impudence in the last eight months than ever I took from any of them. And by Jupiter I never so much as got a kiss from her."
"A kiss!" said Madame Socani with great contempt.
"And she has hit me a box on the cheek which I have had to put up with. She has always got a dagger about her somewhere, to give a fellow a prod in her passion." Here Mr. Moss laughed or affected to laugh at the idea of the dagger. "I tell you that she would have it into a fellow in no time."
"Then why don't you leave her alone? A little wizened monkey like that!" It was thus that Madame Socani expressed her opinion of her rival. "A creature without an ounce of flesh on her bones. Her voice won't last long. It never does with those little mean made apes. There was Grisi and Tietjens, – they had something of a body for a voice to come out of. And here is this girl that you think so much of, taking money hand over hand from the very first lord she comes across."
"I don't believe a word of it," said the faithful Moss.
"You'll find that it is true. She will go away to some watering-place in the autumn, and he'll be after her. Did you ever know him spare one of them? or one of them, poor little creatures, that wouldn't rise to his bait?"
"She has got her father with her."
"Her father! What is the good of fathers? He'll take some of the money, that's all. I'll tell you what it is, Moss, if you don't drop her you and I will be two."
"With all my heart, Madame Socani," said Moss. "I have not the slightest intention of dropping her. And as for you and me, we can get on very well apart."
But Madame Socani, though she would be roused by jealousy to make this threat once a month, knew very well that she could not afford to sever herself from Mr. Moss; and she knew also that Mr. Moss was bound to show her some observance, or, at any rate, to find employment for her as long as she could sing.
But Mr. Moss was anxious to find out whether any money arrangements did or did not exist between Miss O'Mahony and the lord, and was resolved to ask the question in a straightforward manner. He had already found out that his old pupil had no power of keeping a secret to herself when thus asked. She would sternly refuse to give any reply; but she would make her refusal in such a manner as to tell the whole truth. In fact, Rachel, among her accomplishments, had not the power of telling a lie in such language as to make herself believed. It was not that she would scruple in the least to declare to Mr. Moss the very opposite to the truth in a matter in which he had, she thought, no business to be inquisitive; but when she did so she had no power to look the lie. You might say of her frequently that she was a downright liar. But of all human beings whom you could meet she was the least sly. "My dear child," the father used to say to her, "words to you are worth nothing, unless it be to sing them. You can make no impression with them in any other way." Therefore it was that Mr. Moss felt that he could learn the truth from simply questioning his pupil.
"Miss O'Mahony, may I say a few words to you?" So said Mr. Moss, having knocked at the door of Rachel's sitting-room. He had some months ago fallen into the habit of announcing himself, when he had come to give her lessons, and would inform the servant that he would take up his own name. Rachel had done what she could do to put an end to the practice, but it still prevailed.
"Certainly, Mr. Moss. Was not the girl there to show you up?"
"No doubt she was. But such ceremony between us is hardly necessary."
"I should prefer to be warned of the coming of my master. I will see to that in future. Such little ceremonies do have their uses."
"Shall I go down and make her say that I am here, and then come up again?"
"It shall not be necessary, but you take a chair and begin!" Then Mr. Moss considered how he had better do so. He knew well that the girl would not answer kindly to such a question as he was desirous of asking. And it might be that she would be very uncivil. He was by no means a coward, but he had a vivid recollection of the gleam of her dagger. He smiled, and she looked at him more suspiciously because of his smile. He was sitting on a sofa opposite to her as she sat on a music-stool which she had turned round, so as to face him, and he fancied that he could see her right hand hide itself among the folds of her dress. "Is it about the theatre?"
"Well, it is; – and yet it isn't."
"I wish it were something about the theatre. It always seems to come more natural between you and me."
"I want you to tell me what you did at last about Lord Castlewell's money."
"Why am I to tell you what I did?"
"For friendship."
"I do not feel any."
"That's an uncivil word to say, mademoiselle."
"But it's true. You have no business to ask me about the lord's money, and I won't be questioned."
"It will be so deleterious to you if you accept it."
"I can take care of myself," she said, jumping off the chair. "I shall have left this place now in another month, and shall utterly disregard the words which anyone at your theatre may say of me. I shall not tell you whether the lord has lent me money or not."
"I know he has."
"Very well. Then leave the room. Knowing as you do that I am living here with my own father, your interference is grossly impertinent."
"Your father is not going with you, I am afraid." She rushed at the bell and pulled it till the bell rope came down from the wire, but nobody answered the bell. "Can it be possible that you should not be anxious to begin your new career under respectable auspices?"
"I will not stand this. Leave the room, sir. This apartment is my own."
"Miss O'Mahony, you see my hand; with this I am ready to offer at once to place you in a position in which the world would look up to you."
"You have done so before, Mr. Moss, and your doing so again is an insult. It would not be done to any young lady unless she were on the stage, and were thought on that account to be open to any man about the theatre to say what he pleased to her."
"Any gentleman is at liberty to make any lady an offer."
"I have answered it. Now leave the room."
"I cannot do so until I have heard that you have not taken money from this reprobate."
At the moment the door opened, and the reprobate entered the room.
"Your servant told me that Mr. Moss was here, and therefore I walked up at once," said the reprobate.
"I am so much obliged to you," said Rachel. "Oh Lord Castlewell! I am so much obliged to you. He tells me in the first place that you are a reprobate."
"Never mind me," said the lord.
"I don't mind what he says of you. He declares that my character will be gone for ever because you have lent my father some money."
"So it will," said Moss, who was not afraid to stand up to his guns.
"And how if she had accepted your offer?"
"No one would have thought of it. Come, my lord, you know the difference. I am anxious only to save her."
"It is to her father I have lent the money, who explained to me the somewhat cruel treatment he had received at the hands of the police. I think you are making an ass of yourself, Mr. Moss."
"Very well, my lord; very well," said Mr. Moss. "All the world no doubt will know that you have lent the money to the Irish Landleaguer because of your political sympathy with him, and will not think for a minute that you have been attracted by our pretty young friend here. It will not suspect that it is she who has paid for the loan!"
"Mr. Moss, you are a brute," said the lord.
"Can't he be turned out of the room?" asked Rachel.
"Well, yes; it is possible," said the lord, who slowly prepared to walk up and take some steps towards expelling Mr. Moss.
"It shall not be necessary," said Mahomet M. M. "You could not get me out, but there would be a terrible row in the house, which could not fail to be disagreeable to Miss O'Mahony. I leave her in your hands, and I do not think I could possibly leave her in worse. I have wished to make her an honest woman; what you want of her you can explain to herself." In saying this Mr. Moss walked downstairs and left the house, feeling, as he went, that he had got the better both of the lord and of the lady.
With Mr. Moss there was a double motive, neither of which was very bright, but both of which he followed with considerable energy. He had at first been attracted by her good looks, which he had desired to make his own – at the cheapest price at which they might be had in the market. If marriage were necessary, so be it, but it might be that the young lady would not be so exigeant. It was probably the expression of some such feelings in the early days of their acquaintance which had made him so odious to her. Then Frank Jones had come forward; and like any good honest girl, in a position so public, she had at once let the fact of Mr. Jones be made known, so as to protect her. But it had not protected her, and Mr. Moss had been doubly odious. Then, by degrees, he had become aware of the value of her voice, and he perceived the charms that there were in what he pictured to himself as a professional partnership as well as a marriage. Various ideas floated through his mind, down even to the creation of fresh names, grand married names, for his wife. And if she could be got to see it in the light he saw it, what a stroke of business they might do! He was aware that she expressed personal dislike to him; but he did not think much of that. He did not in the least understand the nature of such dislike as she exhibited. He thought himself to be a very good-looking man. He was one of a profession to which she also belonged. He had no idea that he was not a gentleman but that she was a lady. He did not know that there were such things. Madame Socani told him that this young woman was already married to Mr. Jones, but had left that gentleman because he had no money. He did not believe this; but in any case he would be willing to risk it. The peril would be hers and not his. It was his object to establish the partnership, and he did not even yet see any fatal impediment to it.
This lord who had been trapped by her beauty, by that and by her theatrical standing, was an impediment, but could be removed. He had known Lord Castlewell to be in love with a dozen singers, partly because he thought himself to be a judge of music, and partly simply because he had liked their looks. The lord had now taken a fancy to Miss O'Mahony, and had begun by lending her money. That the father should take the money instead of the daughter, was quite natural to his thinking. But he might still succeed in looking after Miss O'Mahony, and rescuing the singer from the lord. By keeping a close watch on her he must make it impossible for the lord to hold her. Therefore, when he went away, leaving the lord and the singer together, he thought that for the present he had got the better of both.
"Why did he tell you that I was a reprobate?" said the lord, when he found himself alone with the lady.
"Well, perhaps it was because you are one, my lord," said Rachel, laughing. She would constantly remember herself, and tell herself that as long as she called him by his title, she was protecting herself from that familiarity which would be dangerous.
"I hope you don't think so."
"Gentlemen generally are reprobates, I believe. It is not disgraceful for a gentleman to be a reprobate, but it is pleasant. The young women I daresay find it pleasant, but then it is disgraceful. I do not mean to disgrace myself, Lord Castlewell."
"I am sure you will not."
"I want you to be sure of it, quite sure. I am a singing girl; but I don't mean to be any man's mistress." He stared at her as she said this. "And I don't mean to be any man's wife, unless I downright love him. Now you may keep out of my way, if you please. I daresay you are a reprobate, my lord; but with that I have got nothing to do. Touching this money, I suppose father has not got it yet?"
"I have sent it."
"You are to get nothing for it, but simply to have it returned, without interest, as soon as I have earned it. You have only to say the word and I will take care that father shall send it you back again."
Lord Castlewell felt that the girl was very unlike others whom he had known, and who had either rejected his offers with scorn or had accepted them with delight. This young lady did neither. She apparently accepted the proffered friendship, and simply desired him to carry his reprobate qualities elsewhere. There was a frankness about her which pleased him much, though it hardly tended to make him in love with her. One thing he did resolve on the spur of the moment, that he would never say a word to her which her father might not hear. It was quite a new sensation to him, this of simple friendship with a singer, with a singer whom he had met in the doubtful custody of Mr. Moss; but he did believe her to be a good girl, – a good girl who could speak out her mind freely; and as such he both respected and liked her. "Of course I shan't take back the money till it becomes due. You'll have to work hard for it before I get it."
"I shall be quite contented to do that, my lord." Then the interview was over and his lordship left the room.
But Lord Castlewell felt as he went home that this girl was worth more than other girls. She laughed at him for being a lord, but she could accept a favour from him, and then tell him to his face that he should do her no harm because she had accepted it. He had met some terrible rebuffs in his career, the memory of which had been unpleasant to him; and he had been greeted with many smiles, all of which had been insipid. What should he do with this girl, so as to make the best of her? The only thing that occurred to him was to marry her! And yet such a marriage would be altogether out of his line of life.
CHAPTER XXIX.
WHAT WAS DONE WITH THE FUNDS
The £200 was not spent in a manner of which Lord Castlewell would have altogether approved. About the end of August Mr. O'Mahony was summoned back to Ireland, and was induced, at a meeting held at the Rotunda, to give certain pledges which justified the advanced Irish party in putting him forward as a new member for the County of Cavan. The advanced Irish party had no doubt been attracted by the eloquence he had exhibited both in Galway and in London, and by the patriotic sentiments which he had displayed. He was known to be a Republican, and to look for the formation of a Republic to American aid. He had expressed most sincere scorn for everything English, and professed ideas as to Irish property generally in regard to which he was altogether ignorant of their meaning. As he was a sincerely honest man, he did think that something good for his old country would be achieved by Home Rule; though how the Home-Rulers would set to work when Home Rule should be the law of the land, he had not the remotest conception. There were many reasons, therefore, why he should be a fit member for an Irish county. But it must be admitted that he would not have been so unanimously selected had all the peculiarities of his mind been known. It might be probable that he would run riot under the lash of his leader, as others have done both before and since, when he should come to see all the wiles of that strategy which he would be called upon to support. And in such case the quarrel with him would be more internecine than with other foes, such as English members, Scotch members, Conservative Irish members, and Liberal Irish members, not sworn to follow certain leaders. A recreant one out of twenty friends would be regarded with more bitter hatred than perhaps six hundred and thirty ordinary enemies. It might be, therefore, that a time of tribulation was in store for Mr. O'Mahony, but he did not consider these matters very deeply when the cheers rang loud in the hall of the Rotunda; nor did he then reflect that he was about to spend in an injudicious manner the money which must be earned by Rachel's future work.
When Rachel had completed her engagement with Mr. Moss, it had been intended that they should go down to Ambleside and there spend Lord Castlewell's money in the humble innocent enjoyment of nature. There had at that moment been nothing decided as to the County of Cavan. A pork-butcher possessed of some small means and unlimited impudence had put himself forward. But The Twenty had managed to put him through his facings, and had found him to be very ignorant in his use of the Queen's English. Now of late there had come up a notion that the small party required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went down, and Cavan obediently accepted its man. With her father went Rachel, and was carried through the towns of Virginia, Bailyborough, and Ballyjamesduff, in great triumph on a one-horse car.
This occurred about the end of August, and Lord Castlewell's £200 was very soon spent. She had not thought much about it, but had been quite willing to be the daughter of a Member of Parliament, if a constituency could be found willing to select her father. She did not think much of the duties of Parliament, if they came within the reach of her father's ability. She did not in truth think that he could under any circumstances do half a day's work. She had known what it was to practise, and, having determined to succeed, she had worked as only a singer can work who determines that she will succeed. Hour after hour she had gone on before the looking-glass, and even Mr. Moss had expressed his approval. But during the years that she had been so at work, she had never seen her father do anything. She knew that he talked what she called patriotic buncombe. It might be that he would become a very fitting Member of Parliament, but Rachel had her doubt. She could see, however, that the £200 quickly vanished during their triumphant journeyings on the one-horse car. Everybody in County Cavan seemed to know that there was £200 and no more to be spent by the new member. There he was, however, Member of Parliament for the County of Cavan, and his breast was filled with new aspirations. Enmity, the bitterest enmity to everything English, was the one lesson taught him. But he himself had other feelings. What if he could talk over that Speaker, and that Prime Minister, that Government generally, and all the House of Commons, and all the House of Lords! Why should not England go her way and Ireland hers, – England have her monarchy and Ireland her republic, but still with some kind of union between them, as to the nature of which Mr. O'Mahony had no fixed idea in his brain whatsoever. But he knew that he could talk, and he knew also that he must now talk on an arena for admission to which the public would not pay twenty-five cents or more. His breast was much disturbed by the consideration that for all the work which he proposed to do no wages were to be forthcoming.
But while Mr. O'Mahony was being elected Member of Parliament for County Cavan, things were going on very sadly in County Galway. Wednesday, the 31st of August, had been the day fixed for the trial of Pat Carroll; and the month of August was quickly wearing itself away. But during the month of August Captain Clayton found occasion more than once to come into the neighbourhood of Headford. And though Mr. Jones was of an opinion that his presence there was adequately accounted for by the details of the coming trial, the two girls evidently thought that some other cause might be added to that which Pat Carroll had produced.
It must be explained that at this period Frank Jones was absent from Morony Castle, looking out for emergency men who could be brought down to the neighbourhood of Headford, in sufficient number to save the crop on Mr. Jones's farm. And with him was Tom Daly, who had some scheme in his own head with reference to his horses and his hounds. Mr. Persse and Sir Jasper Lynch had been threatened with a wide system of boycotting, unless they would give up Tom Daly's animals. A decree had gone forth in the county, that nothing belonging to the hunt should be allowed to live within its precincts. All the bitterness and the cruelty and the horror arising from this order are beyond the limit of this story. But it may be well to explain that at the present moment Frank Jones was away from Castle Morony, working hard on his father's behalf.
And so were the girls working hard – making the butter, and cooking the meat, and attending to the bedrooms. And Peter was busy with them as their lieutenant. It might be thought that the present was no time for love-making, and that Captain Clayton could not have been in the mood. But it may be observed that at any period of special toil in a family, when infinitely more has to be done than at any other time, then love-making will go on with more than ordinary energy. Edith was generally to be found with her hair tucked tight off her face and enveloped in a coarse dairymaid's apron, and Ada, when she ran downstairs, would do so with a housemaid's dusting-brush at her girdle, and they were neither of them, when so attired, in the least afraid of encountering Captain Clayton as he would come out from their father's room. All the world knew that they were being boycotted, and very happy the girls were during the process. "Poor papa" did not like it so well. Poor papa thought of his banker's account, or rather of that bank at which there was, so to say, no longer any account. But the girls were light of heart, and in the pride of their youth. But, alas! they had both of them blundered frightfully. It was Edith, Edith the prudent, Edith the wise, Edith, who was supposed to know everything, who had first gone astray in her blundering, and had taken Ada with her; but the story with its details must be told.
"My pet," she said to her elder sister, as they were standing together at the kitchen dresser, "I know he means to speak to you to-day."
"What nonsense, Edith!"
"It has to be done some day, you know. And he is just the man to come upon one in the time of one's dire distress. Of course we haven't got a halfpenny now belonging to us. I was thinking only the other day how comfortable it is that we never go out of the house because we haven't the means to buy boots. Now Captain Clayton is just the man to be doubly attracted by such penury."
"I don't know why a man is to make an offer to a girl just because he finds her working like a housemaid."
"I do. I can see it all. He is just the man to take you in his arms because he found you peeling potatoes."
"I beg he will do nothing of the kind," said Ada. "He has never said a word to me, or I to him, to justify such a proceeding. I should at once hit him over the head with my brush."
"Here he comes, and now we will see how far I understand such matters."
"Don't go, Edith," said Ada. "Pray don't go. If you go I shall go with you. These things ought always to come naturally, – that is if they come at all."
It did not "come" at that moment, for Edith was so far mistaken that Captain Clayton, after saying a few words to the girls, passed on out of the back-door, intent on special business. "What a wretched individual he is," said Edith. "Fancy pinning one's character on the doings of such a man as that. However, he will be back again to dinner, and you will not be so hard upon him then with your dusting-brush."
Before dinner the Captain did return, and found himself alone with Edith in the kitchen. It was her turn on this occasion to send up whatever meal in the shape of dinner Castle Morony could afford. "There you have it, sir," she said, pointing to a boiled neck of mutton, which had been cut from the remains of a sheep sent in to supply the family wants.
"I see," said he. "It will make a very good dinner, – or a very bad one, according to circumstances, as they may fall out before the dinner leaves the kitchen."
"Then they will have to fall out very quickly," said Edith. But the colour had flown to her face, and in that moment she had learned to suspect the truth. And her mind flew back rapidly over all her doings and sayings for the last three months. If it was so, she could never forgive herself. If it was so, Ada would never forgive her. If it was so, they two and Captain Yorke Clayton must be separated for ever. "Well; what is it?" she said, roughly. The joint of meat had fallen from her hands, and she looked up at Captain Clayton with all the anger she could bring into her face.
"Edith," he said, "you surely know that I love you."
"I know nothing of the kind. There can be no reason why I should know it, – why I should guess it. It cannot be so without grievous wrong on your part."
"What wrong?"
"Base wrong done to my sister," she answered. Then she remembered that she had betrayed her sister, and she remembered too how much of the supposed love-making had been done by her own words, and not by any spoken by Captain Clayton. And there came upon her at that moment a remembrance also of that other moment in which she had acknowledged to herself that she had loved this man, and had told herself that the love was vain, and had sworn to herself that she would never stand in Ada's way, and had promised to herself that all things should be happy to her as this man's sister-in-law. Acting then on this idea merely because Ada had been beautiful she had gone to work, – and this had come of it! In that minute that was allowed to her as the boiled mutton was cooling on the dresser beneath her hand, all this passed through her mind.
"Wrong done by me to Ada!" said the Captain.
"I have said it; but if you are a gentleman you will forget it. I know that you are a gentleman, – a gallant man, such as few I think exist anywhere. Captain Clayton, there are but two of us. Take the best; take the fairest; take the sweetest. Let all this be as though it had never been spoken. I will be such a sister to you as no man ever won for himself. And Ada will be as loving a wife as ever graced a man's home. Let it be so, and I will bless every day of your life."
"No," he said slowly, "I cannot let it be like that. I have learned to love you and you only, and I thought that you had known it."
"Never!"
"I had thought so. It cannot be as you propose. I shall never speak of your sister to a living man. I shall never whisper a word of her regard even here in her own family. But I cannot change my heart as you propose. Your sister is beautiful, and sweet, and good; but she is not the girl who has crept into my heart, and made a lasting home for herself there, – if the girl who has done so would but accept it. Ada is not the girl whose brightness, whose bravery, whose wit and ready spirit have won me. These things go, I think, without any effort. I have known that there has been no attempt on your part; but the thing has been done and I had hoped that you were aware of it. It cannot now be undone. I cannot be passed on to another. Here, here, here is what I want," and he put his two hands upon her shoulders. "There is no other girl in all Ireland that can supply her place if she be lost to me."
He had spoken very solemnly, and she had stood there in solemn mood listening to him. By degrees the conviction had come upon her that he was in earnest, and was not to be changed in his purpose by anything that she could say to him. She had blundered, had blundered awfully. She had thought that with a man beauty would be everything; but with this man beauty had been nothing; nor had good temper and a sense of duty availed anything. She rushed into the dining-room carrying the boiled mutton with her, and he followed. What should she do now? Ada would yield – would give him up – would retire into the background, and would declare that Edith should be made happy, but would never lift up her head again. And she – she herself – could also give him up, and would lift up her head again. She knew that she had a power of bearing sorrow, and going on with the work of the world, in spite of all troubles, which Ada did not possess. It might, therefore, have all been settled, but that the man was stubborn, and would not be changed. "Of course, he is a man," said Edith to herself, as she put the mutton down. "Of course he must have it all to please himself. Of course he will be selfish."
"I thought you were never coming with our morsel of dinner," said Mr. Jones.
