Lord Kilgobbin

CHAPTER LXXIX

The news of Nina’s engagement to Walpole soon spread through the castle at Kilgobbin, and gave great satisfaction; even the humbler members of the household were delighted to think there would be a wedding and all its appropriate festivity.

When the tidings at length arrived at Miss O’Shea’s room, so reviving were the effects upon her spirits, that the old lady insisted she should be dressed and carried down to the drawing-room that the bridegroom might be presented to her in all form.

Though Nina herself chafed at such a proceeding, and called it a most ‘insufferable pretension,’ she was perhaps not sorry secretly at the opportunity afforded herself to let the tiresome old woman guess how she regarded her, and what might be their future relations towards each other. ‘Not indeed,’ added she, ‘that we are likely ever to meet again, or that I should recognise her beyond a bow if we should.’

As for Kearney, the announcement that Miss Betty was about to appear in public filled him with unmixed terror, and he muttered drearily as he went, ‘There’ll be wigs on the green for this.’ Nor was Walpole himself pleased at the arrangement. Like most men in his position, he could not be brought to see the delicacy or the propriety of being paraded as an object of public inspection, nor did he perceive the fitness of that display of trinkets which he had brought with him as presents, and the sight of which had become a sort of public necessity.

Not the least strange part of the whole procedure was that no one could tell where or how or with whom it originated. It was like one of those movements which are occasionally seen in political life, where, without the direct intervention of any precise agent, a sort of diffused atmosphere of public opinion suffices to produce results and effect changes that all are ready to disavow but to accept.

The mere fact of the pleasure the prospect afforded to Miss Betty prevented Kate from offering opposition to what she felt to be both bad in taste and ridiculous.

‘That old lady imagines, I believe, that I am to come down like a prétendu in a French vaudeville – dressed in a tail-coat, with a white tie and white gloves, and perhaps receive her benediction. She mistakes herself, she mistakes us. If there was a casket of uncouth old diamonds, or some marvellous old point lace to grace the occasion, we might play our parts with a certain decorous hypocrisy; but to be stared at through a double eye-glass by a snuffy old woman in black mittens, is more than one is called on to endure – eh, Lockwood?’

‘I don’t know. I think I’d go through it all gladly to have the occasion.’

‘Have a little patience, old fellow, it will all come right. My worthy relatives – for I suppose I can call them so now – are too shrewd people to refuse the offer of such a fellow as you. They have that native pride that demands a certain amount of etiquette and deference. They must not seem to rise too eagerly to the fly; but only give them time – give them time, Lockwood.’

‘Ay, but the waiting in this uncertainty is terrible to me.’

‘Let it be certainty, then, and for very little I’ll ensure you! Bear this in mind, my dear fellow, and you’ll see how little need there is for apprehension. You – and the men like you – snug fellows with comfortable estates and no mortgages, unhampered by ties and uninfluenced by connections, are a species of plant that is rare everywhere, but actually never grew at all in Ireland, where every one spent double his income, and seldom dared to move a step without a committee of relations. Old Kearney has gone through that fat volume of the gentry and squirearchy of England last night, and from Sir Simon de Lockwood, who was killed at Creçy, down to a certain major in the Carbineers, he knows you all.’

‘I’ll bet you a thousand they say No.’

‘I’ve not got a thousand to pay if I should lose, but I’ll lay a pony – two, if you like – that you are an accepted man this day – ay, before dinner.’

‘If I only thought so!’

‘Confound it – you don’t pretend you are in love!’

‘I don’t know whether I am or not, but I do know how I should like to bring that nice girl back to Hampshire, and install her at the Dingle. I’ve a tidy stable, some nice shooting, a good trout-stream, and then I should have the prettiest wife in the county.’

‘Happy dog! Yours is the real philosophy of life. The fellows who are realistic enough to reckon up the material elements of their happiness – who have little to speculate on and less to unbelieve – they are right.’

‘If you mean that I’ll never break my heart because I don’t get in for the county, that’s true – I don’t deny it. But come, tell me, is it all settled about your business? Has the uncle been asked? – has he spoken?’

‘He has been asked and given his consent. My distinguished father-in-law, the prince, has been telegraphed to this morning, and his reply may be here to-night or to-morrow. At all events, we are determined that even should he prove adverse, we shall not be deterred from our wishes by the caprice of a parent who has abandoned us.’

‘It’s what people would call a love-match.’

‘I sincerely trust it is. If her affections were not inextricably engaged, it is not possible that such a girl could pledge her future to a man as humble as myself?’

‘That is, she is very much in love with you?’

‘I hope the astonishment of your question does not arise from its seeming difficulty of belief?’

‘No, not so much that, but I thought there might have been a little heroics, or whatever it is, on your side.’

‘Most dull dragoon, do you not know that, so long as a man spoons, he can talk of his affection for a woman; but that, once she is about to be his wife, or is actually his wife, he limits his avowals to her love for him?’

‘I never heard that before. I say, what a swell you are this morning. The cock-pheasants will mistake you for one of them.’

‘Nothing can be simpler, nothing quieter, I trust, than a suit of dark purple knickerbockers; and you may see that my thread stockings and my coarse shoes presuppose a stroll in the plantations, where, indeed, I mean to smoke my morning cigar.’

‘She’ll make you give up tobacco, I suppose?’

‘Nothing of the kind – a thorough woman of the world enforces no such penalties as these. True free-trade is the great matrimonial maxim, and for people of small means it is inestimable. The formula may be stated thus – ‘Dine at the best houses, and give tea at your own.’

What other precepts of equal wisdom Walpole was prepared to enunciate were lost to the world by a message informing him that Miss Betty was in the drawing-room, and the family assembled, to see him.

Cecil Walpole possessed a very fair stock of that useful quality called assurance; but he had no more than he needed to enter that large room, where the assembled family sat in a half-circle, and stand to be surveyed by Miss O’Shea’s eye-glass, unabashed. Nor was the ordeal the less trying as he overheard the old lady ask her neighbour, ‘if he wasn’t the image of the Knave of Diamonds.’

‘I thought you were the other man!’ said she curtly, as he made his bow.

‘I deplore the disappointment, madam – even though I do not comprehend it.’

‘It was the picture, the photograph, of the other man I saw – a fine, tall, dark man, with long moustaches.’

‘The fine, tall, dark man, with the long moustaches, is in the house, and will be charmed to be presented to you.’

‘Ay, ay! presented is all very fine; but that won’t make him the bridegroom,’ said she, with a laugh.

‘I sincerely trust it will not, madam.’

‘And it is you, then, are Major Walpole?’

‘Mr. Walpole, madam – my friend Lockwood is the major.’

‘To be sure. I have it right now. You are the young man that got into that unhappy scrape, and got the Lord-Lieutenant turned away – ’

‘I wonder how you endure this,’ burst out Nina, as she arose and walked angrily towards a window.

‘I don’t think I caught what the young lady said; but if it was, that what cannot be cured must be endured, it is true enough; and I suppose that they’ll get over your blunder as they have done many another.’

‘I live in that hope, madam.’

‘Not but it’s a bad beginning in public life; and a stupid mistake hangs long on a man’s memory. You’re young, however, and people are generous enough to believe it might be a youthful indiscretion.’

‘You give me great comfort, madam.’

‘And now you are going to risk another venture?’

‘I sincerely trust on safer grounds.’

‘That’s what they all think. I never knew a man that didn’t believe he drew the prize in matrimony. Ask him, however, six months after he’s tied. Say, “What do you think of your ticket now?” Eh, Mat Kearney? It doesn’t take twenty or thirty years quarrelling and disputing to show one that a lottery with so many blanks is just a swindle.’

A loud bang of the door, as Nina flounced out in indignation, almost shook the room.

‘There’s a temper you’ll know more of yet, young gentleman; and, take my word for it, it’s only in stage-plays that a shrew is ever tamed.’

‘I declare,’ cried Dick, losing all patience, ‘I think Miss O’Shea is too unsparing of us all. We have our faults, I’m sure; but public correction will not make us more comfortable.’

‘It wasn’t your comfort I was thinking of, young man; and if I thought of your poor father’s, I’d have advised him to put you out an apprentice. There’s many a light business – like stationery, or figs, or children’s toys – and they want just as little capital as capacity.’

‘Miss Betty,’ said Kearney stiffly, ‘this is not the time nor the place for these discussions. Mr. Walpole was polite enough to present himself here to-day to have the honour of making your acquaintance, and to announce his future marriage.’

‘A great event for us all – and we’re proud of it! It’s what the newspapers will call a great day for the Bog of Allen. Eh, Mat? The princess – God forgive me, but I’m always calling her Costigan – but the princess will be set down niece to Lord Kilgobbin; and if you’ – and she addressed Walpole – ‘haven’t a mock-title and a mock-estate, you’ll be the only one without them!’

‘I don’t think any one will deny us our tempers,’ cried Kearney.

‘Here’s Lockwood,’ cried Walpole, delighted to see his friend enter, though he as quickly endeavoured to retreat.

‘Come in, major,’ said Kearney. ‘We’re all friends here. Miss O’Shea, this is Major Lockwood, of the Carbineers – Miss O’Shea.’

Lockwood bowed stiffly, but did not speak.

‘Be attentive to the old woman,’ whispered Walpole. ‘A word from her will make your affair all right.’

‘I have been very desirous to have had the honour of this introduction, madam,’ said Lockwood, as he seated himself at her side.

‘Was not that a clever diversion I accomplished with “the Heavy “?’ said Walpole, as he drew away Kearney and his son into a window.

‘I never heard her much worse than to-day,’ said Dick.

‘I don’t know,’ hesitated Kilgobbin. ‘I suspect she is breaking. There is none of the sustained virulence I used to remember of old. She lapses into half-mildness at moments.’

‘I own I did not catch them, nor, I’m afraid, did Nina,’ said Dick. ‘Look there! I’ll be shot if she’s not giving your friend the major a lesson! When she performs in that way with her hands, you may swear she is didactic.’

‘I think I’ll go to his relief,’ said Walpole; ‘but I own it’s a case for the V.C.’

As Walpole drew nigh, he heard her saying: ‘Marry one of your own race, and you will jog on well enough. Marry a Frenchwoman or a Spaniard, and she’ll lead her own life, and be very well satisfied; but a poor Irish girl, with a fresh heart and a joyous temper – what is to become of her, with your dull habits and your dreary intercourse, your county society and your Chinese manners!’

‘Miss O’Shea is telling me that I must not look for a wife among her countrywomen,’ said Lockwood, with a touching attempt to smile.

‘What I overheard was not encouraging,’ said Walpole; ‘but I think Miss O’Shea takes a low estimate of our social temperament.’

‘Nothing of the kind! All I say is, you’ll do mighty well for each other, or, for aught I know, you might intermarry with the Dutch or the Germans; but it’s a downright shame to unite your slow sluggish spirits with the sparkling brilliancy and impetuous joy of an Irish girl. That’s a union I’d never consent to.’

‘I hope this is no settled resolution,’ said Walpole, speaking in a low whisper; ‘for I want to bespeak your especial influence in my friend’s behalf. Major Lockwood is a most impassioned admirer of Miss Kearney, and has already declared as much to her father.’

‘Come over here, Mat Kearney! come over here this moment!’ cried she, half wild with excitement. ‘What new piece of roguery, what fresh intrigue is this? Will you dare to tell me you had a proposal for Kate, for my own god-daughter, without even so much as telling me?’

‘My dear Miss Betty, be calm, be cool for one minute, and I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Ay, when I’ve found it out, Mat!’

‘I profess I don’t think my friend’s pretensions are discussed with much delicacy, time and place considered,’ said Walpole.

‘We have something to think of as well as delicacy, young man: there’s a woman’s happiness to be remembered.’

‘Here it is, now, the whole business,’ said Kearney. ‘The major there asked me yesterday to get my daughter’s consent to his addresses.’

‘And you never told me,’ cried Miss Betty.

‘No, indeed, nor herself neither; for after I turned it over in my mind, I began to see it wouldn’t do – ’

‘How do you mean not do?’ asked Lockwood.

‘Just let me finish. What I mean is this – if a man wants to marry an Irish girl, he mustn’t begin by asking leave to make love to her – ’

‘Mat’s right!’ cried the old lady stoutly.

‘And above all, he oughtn’t to think that the short cut to her heart is through his broad acres.’

‘Mat’s right – quite right!’

‘And besides this, that the more a man dwells on his belongings, and the settlements, and such like, the more he seems to say, “I may not catch your fancy in everything, I may not ride as boldly or dance as well as somebody else, but never mind – you’re making a very prudent match, and there is a deal of pure affection in the Three per Cents.”’

‘And I’ll give you another reason,’ said Miss Betty resolutely. ‘Kate Kearney cannot have two husbands, and I’ve made her promise to marry my nephew this morning.’

‘What, without any leave of mine?’ exclaimed Kearney.

‘Just so, Mat. She’ll marry him if you give your consent; but whether you will or not, she’ll never marry another.’

‘Is there, then, a real engagement?’ whispered Walpole to Kearney. ‘Has my friend here got his answer?’

‘He’ll not wait for another,’ said Lockwood haughtily, as he arose. ‘I’m for town, Cecil,’ whispered he.

‘So shall I be this evening,’ replied Walpole, in the same tone. ‘I must hurry over to London and see Lord Danesbury. I’ve my troubles too.’ And so saying, he drew his arm within the major’s, and led him away; while Miss Betty, with Kearney on one side of her and Dick on the other, proceeded to recount the arrangement she had made to make over the Barn and the estate to Gorman, it being her own intention to retire altogether from the world and finish her days in the ‘Retreat.’

‘And a very good thing to do, too,’ said Kearney, who was too much impressed with the advantages of the project to remember his politeness.

‘I have had enough of it, Mat,’ added she, in a lugubrious tone; ‘and it’s all backbiting, and lying, and mischief-making, and what’s worse, by the people who might live quietly and let others do the same!’

‘What you say is true as the Bible.’

‘It may be hard to do it, Mat Kearney, but I’ll pray for them in my hours of solitude, and in that blessed Retreat I’ll ask for a blessing on yourself, and that your heart, hard and cruel and worldly as it is now, may be changed; and that in your last days – maybe on the bed of sickness – when you are writhing and twisting with pain, with a bad heart and a worse conscience – when you’ll have nobody but hirelings near you – hirelings that will be robbing you before your eyes, and not waiting till the breath leaves you – when even the drop of drink to cool your lips – ’

‘Don’t – don’t go on that way, Miss Betty. I’ve a cold shivering down the spine of my back this minute, and a sickness creeping all over me.’

‘I’m glad of it. I’m glad that my words have power over your wicked old nature – if it’s not too late.’

‘If it’s miserable and wretched you wanted to make me, don’t fret about your want of success; though whether it all comes too late, I cannot tell you.’

‘We’ll leave that to St. Joseph.’

‘Do so! do so!’ cried he eagerly, for he had a shrewd suspicion he would have better chances of mercy at any hands than her own.

‘As for Gorman, if I find that he has any notions about claiming an acre of the property, I’ll put it all into Chancery, and the suit will outlive him; but if he owns he is entirely dependent on my bounty, I’ll settle the Barn and the land on him, and the deed shall be signed the day he marries your daughter. People tell you that you can’t take your money with you into the next world, Mat Kearney, and a greater lie was never uttered. Thanks to the laws of England, and the Court of Equity in particular, it’s the very thing you can do! Ay, and you can provide, besides, that everybody but the people that had a right to it shall have a share. So I say to Gorman O’Shea, beware what you are at, and don’t go on repeating that stupid falsehood about not carrying your debentures into the next world.’

‘You are a wise woman, and you know life well,’ said he solemnly.

‘And if I am, it’s nothing to sigh over, Mr. Kearney. One is grateful for mercies, but does not groan over them like rheumatism or the lumbago.’

‘Maybe I ‘in a little out of spirits to-day.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder if you were. They tell me you sat over your wine, with that tall man, last night, till nigh one o’clock, and it’s not at your time of life that you can do these sort of excesses with impunity; you had a good constitution once, and there’s not much left of it.’

‘My patience, I’m grateful to see, has not quite deserted me.’

‘I hope there’s other of your virtues you can be more sure of,’ said she, rising, ‘for if I was asked your worst failing, I’d say it was your irritability.’ And with a stern frown, as though to confirm the judicial severity of her words, she nodded her head to him and walked away.

It was only then that Kearney discovered he was left alone, and that Dick had stolen away, though when or how he could not say.

‘I’m glad the boy was not listening to her, for I’m downright ashamed that I bore it,’ was his final reflection as he strolled out to take a walk in the plantation.

CHAPTER LXXX

Though the dinner-party that day at Kilgobbin Castle was deficient in the persons of Lockwood and Walpole, the accession of Joe Atlee to the company made up in a great measure for the loss. He arrived shortly before dinner was announced, and even in the few minutes in the drawing-room, his gay and lively manner, his pleasant flow of small talk, dashed with the lightest of epigrams, and that marvellous variety he possessed, made every one delighted with him.

‘I met Walpole and Lockwood at the station, and did my utmost to make them turn back with me. You may laugh, Lord Kilgobbin, but in doing the honours of another man’s house, as I was at that moment, I deem myself without a rival.’

‘I wish with all my heart you had succeeded; there is nothing I like as much as a well-filled table,’ said Kearney.

‘Not that their air and manner,’ resumed Joe, ‘impressed me strongly with the exuberance of their spirits; a pair of drearier dogs I have not seen for some time, and I believe I told them so.’

‘Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it?’ asked Dick.

‘Except on the general grounds of coming away from such fascinating society. Lockwood played sulky, and scarcely vouchsafed a word, and as for Walpole, he made some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn sensibilities – so like what one reads in a French novel, that the very sound of them betrays unreality.’

‘But was it, then, so very impossible to be sorry for leaving this?’ asked Nina calmly.

‘Certainly not for any man but Walpole.’

‘And why not Walpole?’

‘Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and read them so clearly; you to whom the secret anatomy of the “heart” is no mystery, and who understand how to trace the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his small nature. He might be miserable at being separated from himself – there could be no other estrangement would affect him.’

‘This was not always your estimate of your friend,’ said Nina, with a marked emphasis of the last word.

‘Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first hour I met him. Since then, some space of time has intervened, and though it has made no change in him, I hope it has dealt otherwise with me. I have at least reached the point in life where men not only have convictions but avow them.’

‘Come, come; I can remember what precious good-luck you called it to make his acquaintance,’ cried Dick, half angrily.

‘I don’t deny it. I was very nigh drowning at the time, and it was the first plank I caught hold of. I am very grateful to him for the rescue; but I owe him more gratitude for the opportunity the incident gave me to see these men in their intimacy – to know, and know thoroughly, what is the range, what the stamp of those minds by which states are ruled and masses are governed. Through Walpole I knew his master; and through the master I have come to know the slipshod intelligences which, composed of official detail, House of Commons’ gossip, and Times’ leaders, are accepted by us as statesmen. And if – ’ A very supercilious smile on Nina’s mouth arrested him in the current of his speech, and he said, ‘I know, of course, I know the question you are too polite to ask, but which quivers on your lip: “Who is the gifted creature that sees all this incompetence and insufficiency around him?” And I am quite ready to tell you. It is Joseph Atlee – Joseph Atlee, who knows that when he and others like him – for we are a strong coterie – stop the supply of ammunition, these gentlemen must cease firing. Let the Débats and the Times, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the Saturday, and a few more that I need not stop to enumerate, strike work, and let us see how much of original thought you will obtain from your Cabinet sages! It is in the clash and collision of the thinkers outside of responsibility that these world-revered leaders catch the fire that lights up their policy. The Times made the Crimean blunder. The Siècle created the Mexican fiasco. The Kreuz Zeitung gave the first impulse to the Schleswig-Holstein imbroglio; and if I mistake not, the “review” in the last Diplomatic Chronicle will bear results of which he who now speaks to you will not disown the parentage.’

‘The saints be praised! here’s dinner,’ exclaimed Kearney, ‘or this fellow would talk us into a brain-fever. Kate is dining with Miss Betty again – God bless her for it,’ muttered he as he gave his arm to Nina, and led the way.

‘I’ve got you a commission as a “peeler,” Dick,’ said Joe, as they moved along. ‘You’ll have to prove that you can read and write, which is more than they would ask of you if you were going into the Cabinet; but we live in an intellectual age, and we test all the cabin-boys, and it is only the steersman we take on trust.’

Though Nina was eager to resent Atlee’s impertinence on Walpole, she could not help feeling interested and amused by his sketches of his travels.