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CHAPTER XLIII

SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS

When Gorman reached his room, into which a rich flood of moonlight was streaming, he extinguished his candle, and, seating himself at the open window, lighted his cigar, seriously believing he was going to reflect on his present condition, and forecast something of the future. Though he had spoken so cavalierly of outstaying his time, and accepting arrest afterwards, the jest was by no means so palatable now that he was alone, and could own to himself that the leave he possessed was the unlimited liberty to be houseless and a vagabond, to have none to claim, no roof to shelter him.

His aunt’s law-agent, the same Mr. McKeown who acted for Lord Kilgobbin, had once told Gorman that all the King’s County property of the O’Sheas was entailed upon him, and that his aunt had no power to alienate it. It is true the old lady disputed this position, and so strongly resented even allusion to it, that, for the sake of inheriting that twelve thousand pounds she possessed in Dutch stock, McKeown warned Gorman to avoid anything that might imply his being aware of this fact.

Whether a general distrust of all legal people and their assertions was the reason, or whether mere abstention from the topic had impaired the force of its truth, or whether – more likely than either – he would not suffer himself to question the intentions of one to whom he owed so much, certain is it young O’Shea almost felt as much averse to the belief as the old lady herself, and resented the thought of its being true, as of something that would detract from the spirit of the affection she had always borne him, and that he repaid by a love as faithful.

‘No, no. Confound it!’ he would say to himself. ‘Aunt Betty loves me, and money has no share in the affection I bear her. If she knew I must be her heir, she’d say so frankly and freely. She’d scorn the notion of doling out to me as benevolence what one day would be my own by right. She is proud and intolerant enough, but she is seldom unjust – never so willingly and consciously. If, then, she has not said O’Shea’s Barn must be mine some time, it is because she knows well it cannot be true. Besides, this very last step of hers, this haughty dismissal of me from her house, implies the possession of a power which she would not dare to exercise if she were but a life-tenant of the property. Last of all, had she speculated ever so remotely on my being the proprietor of Irish landed property, it was most unlikely she would so strenuously have encouraged me to pursue my career as an Austrian soldier, and turn all my thoughts to my prospects under the Empire.’

In fact, she never lost the opportunity of reminding him how unfit he was to live in Ireland or amongst Irishmen.

Such reflections as I have briefly hinted at here took him some time to arrive at, for his thoughts did not come freely, or rapidly make place for others. The sum of them, however, was that he was thrown upon the world, and just at the very threshold of life, and when it held out its more alluring prospects.

There is something peculiarly galling to the man who is wincing under the pang of poverty to find that the world regards him as rich and well off, and totally beyond the accidents of fortune. It is not simply that he feels how his every action will be misinterpreted and mistaken, and a spirit of thrift, if not actual shabbiness, ascribed to all that he does, but he also regards himself as a sort of imposition or sham, who has gained access to a place he has no right to occupy, and to associate on terms of equality with men of tastes and habits and ambitions totally above his own. It was in this spirit he remembered Nina’s chance expression, ‘I don’t suppose you want money!’ There could be no other meaning in the phrase than some foregone conclusion about his being a man of fortune. Of course she acquired this notion from those around her. As a stranger to Ireland, all she knew, or thought she knew, had been conveyed by others. ‘I don’t suppose you want money’ was another way of saying, ‘You are your aunt’s heir. You are the future owner of the O’Shea estates. No vast property, it is true; but quite enough to maintain the position of a gentleman.’

‘Who knows how much of this Lord Kilgobbin or his son Dick believed?’ thought he. ‘But certainly my old playfellow Kate has no faith in the matter, or if she have, it has little weight with her in her estimate of me.

‘It was in this very room I was lodged something like five years ago. It was at this very window I used to sit at night, weaving Heaven knows what dreams of a future. I was very much in love in those days, and a very honest and loyal love it was. I wanted to be very great, and very gallant, and distinguished, and above all, very rich; but only for her, only that she might be surrounded with every taste and luxury that became her, and that she should share them with me. I knew well she was better than me – better in every way: not only purer, and simpler, and more gentle, but more patient, more enduring, more tenacious of what was true, and more decidedly the enemy of what was merely expedient. Then, was she not proud? not with the pride of birth or station, or of an old name and a time-honoured house, but proud that whatever she did or said amongst the tenantry or the neighbours, none ever ventured to question or even qualify the intention that suggested it. The utter impossibility of ascribing a double motive to her, or of imagining any object in what she counselled but the avowed one, gave her a pride that accompanied her through every hour of life.

‘Last of all, she believed in me– believed I was going to be one day something very famous and distinguished: a gallant soldier, whose very presence gave courage to the men who followed him, and with a name repeated in honour over Europe. The day was too short for these fancies, for they grew actually as we fed them, and the wildest flight of imagination led us on to the end of the time when there would be but one hope, one ambition, and one heart between us.

‘I am convinced that had any one at that time hinted to her that I was to inherit the O’Shea estates, he would have dealt a most dangerous blow to her affection for me. The romance of that unknown future had a great share in our compact. And then we were so serious about it all – the very gravity it impressed being an ecstasy to our young hearts in the thought of self-importance and responsibility. Nor were we without our little tiffs – those lovers’ quarrels that reveal what a terrible civil war can rage within the heart that rebels against itself. I know the very spot where we quarrelled; I could point to the miles of way we walked side by side without a word; and oh! was it not on that very bed I have passed the night sobbing till I thought my heart would break, all because I had not fallen at her feet and begged her forgiveness ere we parted? Not that she was without her self-accusings too; for I remember one way in which she expressed sorrow for having done me wrong was to send me a shower of rose-leaves from her little terraced garden; and as they fell in shoals across my window, what a balm and bliss they shed over my heart! Would I not give every hope I have to bring it all back again? to live it over once more – to lie at her feet in the grass, affecting to read to her, but really watching her long black lashes as they rested on her cheek, or that quivering lip as it trembled with emotion. How I used to detest that work which employed the blue-veined hand I loved to hold within my own, kissing it at every pause in the reading, or whenever I could pretext a reason to question her! And now, here I am in the self-same place, amidst the same scenes and objects. Nothing changed but herself! She, however, will remember nothing of the past, or if she does, it is with repugnance and regret; her manner to me is a sort of cold defiance, not to dare to revive our old intimacy, nor to fancy that I can take up our acquaintanceship from the past. I almost fancied she looked resentfully at the Greek girl for the freedom to which she admitted me – not but there was in the other’s coquetry the very stamp of that levity other women are so ready to take offence at; in fact, it constitutes amongst women exactly the same sort of outrage, the same breach of honour and loyalty, as cheating at play does amongst men, and the offenders are as much socially outlawed in one case as in the other. I wonder, am I what is called falling in love with the Greek – that is, I wonder, have the charms of her astonishing beauty and the grace of her manner, and the thousand seductions of her voice, her gestures, and her walk, above all, so captivated me that I do not want to go back on the past, and may hope soon to repay Miss Kate Kearney by an indifference the equal of her own? I don’t think so. Indeed, I feel that even when Nina was interesting me most, I was stealing secret glances towards Kate, and cursing that fellow Walpole for the way he was engaging her attention. Little the Greek suspected, when she asked if “I could not fix a quarrel on him,” with what a motive it was that my heart jumped at the suggestion! He is so studiously ceremonious and distant with me; he seems to think I am not one of those to be admitted to closer intimacy. I know that English theory of “the unsafe man,” by which people of unquestionable courage avoid contact with all schooled to other ways and habits than their own. I hate it. “I am unsafe,” to his thinking. Well, if having no reason to care for safety be sufficient, he is not far wrong. Dick Kearney, too, is not very cordial. He scarcely seconded his father’s invitation to me, and what he did say was merely what courtesy obliged. So that in reality, though the old lord was hearty and good-natured, I believe I am here now because Mademoiselle Nina commanded me, rather than from any other reason. If this be true, it is, to say the least, a sorry compliment to my sense of delicacy. Her words were, “You shall stay,” and it is upon this I am staying.’

As though the air of the room grew more hard to breathe with this thought before him, he arose and leaned half-way out of the window.

As he did so, his ear caught the sound of voices. It was Kate and Nina, who were talking on the terrace above his head.

‘I declare, Nina,’ said Kate, ‘you have stripped every leaf off my poor ivy-geranium; there’s nothing left of it but bare branches.’

‘There goes the last handful,’ said the other, as she threw them over the parapet, some falling on Gorman as he leaned out. ‘It was a bad habit I learned from yourself, child. I remember when I came here, you used to do this each night, like a religious rite.’

‘I suppose they were the dried or withered leaves that I threw away,’ said Kate, with a half-irritation in her voice.

‘No, they were not. They were oftentimes from your prettiest roses, and as I watched you, I saw it was in no distraction or inadvertence you were doing this, for you were generally silent and thoughtful some time before, and there was even an air of sadness about you, as though a painful thought was bringing its gloomy memories.’

‘What an object of interest I have been to you without suspecting it,’ said Kate coldly.

‘It is true,’ said the other, in the same tone; ‘they who make few confidences suggest much ingenuity. If you had a meaning in this act and told me what it was, it is more than likely I had forgotten all about it ere now. You preferred secrecy, and you made me curious.’

‘There was nothing to reward curiosity,’ said she, in the same measured tone; then, after a moment, she added, ‘I’m sure I never sought to ascribe some hidden motive to you. When you left my plants leafless, I was quite content to believe that you were mischievous without knowing it.’

‘I read you differently,’ said Nina. ‘When you do mischief you mean mischief. Now I became so – so – what shall I call it, intriguée about this little “fetish” of yours, that I remember well the night you first left off and never resumed it.’

‘And when was that?’ asked Kate carelessly.

‘On a certain Friday, the night Miss O’Shea dined here last; was it not a Friday?’

‘Fridays, we fancy, are unlucky days,’ said Kate, in a voice of easy indifference.

‘I wonder which are the lucky ones?’ said Nina, sighing. ‘They are certainly not put down in the Irish almanac. By the way, is not this a Friday?’

‘Mr. O’Shea will not call it amongst his unlucky days,’ said Kate laughingly.

‘I almost think I like your Austrian,’ said the other.

‘Only don’t call him my Austrian.’

‘Well, he was yours till you threw him off. No, don’t be angry: I am only talking in that careless slang we all use when we mean nothing, just as people employ counters instead of money at cards; but I like him: he has that easy flippancy in talk that asks for no effort to follow, and he says his little nothings nicely, and he is not too eager as to great ones, or too energetic, which you all are here. I like him.’

‘I fancied you liked the eager and enthusiastic people, and that you felt a warm interest in Donogan’s fate.’

‘Yes, I do hope they’ll not catch him. It would be too horrid to think of any one we had known being hanged! And then, poor fellow, he was very much in love.’

‘Poor fellow!’ sighed out Kate.

‘Not but it was the only gleam of sunlight in his existence; he could go away and fancy that, with Heaven knows what chances of fortune, he might have won me.’

‘Poor fellow!’ cried Kate, more sorrowfully than before.

‘No, far from it, but very “happy fellow” if he could feed his heart with such a delusion.’

‘And you think it fair to let him have this delusion?’

‘Of course I do. I’d no more rob him of it than I’d snatch a life-buoy from a drowning man. Do you fancy, child, that the swimmer will always go about with the corks that have saved his life?’

‘These mock analogies are sorry arguments,’ said Kate.

‘Tell me, does your Austrian sing? I see he understands music, but I hope he can sing.’

‘I can tell you next to nothing of my Austrian – if he must be called so. It is five years since we met, and all I know is how little like he seems to what he once was.’

‘I’m sure he is vastly improved: a hundred times better mannered; with more ease, more quickness, and more readiness in conversation. I like him.’

‘I trust he’ll find out his great good-fortune – that is, if it be not a delusion.’

For a few seconds there was a silence – a silence so complete that Gorman could hear the rustle of a dress as Nina moved from her place, and seated herself on the battlement of the terrace. He then could catch the low murmuring sounds of her voice, as she hummed an air to herself, and at length traced it to be the song she had sung that same evening in the drawing-room. The notes came gradually more and more distinct, the tones swelled out into greater fulness, and at last, with one long-sustained cadence of thrilling passion, she cried, ‘Non mi amava – non mi amava!’ with an expression of heart-breaking sorrow, the last syllables seeming to linger on the lips as if a hope was deserting them for ever. ‘Oh, non mi amava!’ cried she, and her voice trembled as though the avowal of her despair was the last effort of her strength. Slowly and faintly the sounds died away, while Gorman, leaning out to the utmost to catch the dying notes, strained his hearing to drink them in. All was still, and then suddenly, with a wild roulade that sounded at first like the passage of a musical scale, she burst out into a fit of laughter, crying ‘Non mi amava,’ through the sounds, in a half-frantic mockery. ‘No, no, non mi amava,’ laughed she out, as she walked back into the room. The window was now closed with a heavy bang, and all was silent in the house.

‘And these are the affections we break our hearts for!’ cried Gorman, as he threw himself on his bed, and covered his face with both his hands.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE HEAD CONSTABLE

The Inspector, or, to use the irreverent designation of the neighbourhood, the Head Peeler, who had carried away Walpole’s luggage and papers, no sooner discovered the grave mistake he had committed, than he hastened to restore them, and was waiting personally at Kilgobbin Castle to apologise for the blunder, long before any of the family had come downstairs. His indiscretion might cost him his place, and Captain Curtis, who had to maintain a wife and family, three saddle-horses, and a green uniform with more gold on it than a field-marshal’s, felt duly anxious and uneasy for what he had done.

‘Who is that gone down the road?’ asked he, as he stood at the window, while a woman was setting the room in order.

‘Sure it’s Miss Kate taking the dogs out. Isn’t she always the first up of a morning?’ Though the captain had little personal acquaintance with Miss Kearney, he knew her well by reputation, and knew therefore that he might safely approach her to ask a favour. He overtook her at once, and in a few words made known the difficulty in which he found himself.

‘Is it not after all a mere passing mistake, which once apologised for is forgotten altogether?’ asked she. ‘Mr. Walpole is surely not a person to bear any malice for such an incident?’

‘I don’t know that, Miss Kearney,’ said he doubtingly. ‘His papers have been thoroughly ransacked, and old Mr. Flood, the Tory magistrate, has taken copies of several letters and documents, all of course under the impression that they formed part of a treasonable correspondence.’

‘Was it not very evident that the papers could not have belonged to a Fenian leader? Was not any mistake in the matter easily avoided?’

‘Not at once, because there was first of all a sort of account of the insurrectionary movement here, with a number of queries, such as, “Who is M – ?” “Are F. Y – and McCausland the same person?” “What connection exists between the Meath outrages and the late events in Tipperary?” “How is B – to explain his conduct sufficiently to be retained in the Commission of the Peace?” In a word, Miss Kearney, all the troublesome details by which a Ministry have to keep their own supporters in decent order, are here hinted at, if not more, and it lies with a batch of red-hot Tories to make a terrible scandal out of this affair.’

‘It is graver than I suspected,’ said she thoughtfully.

‘And I may lose my place,’ muttered Curtis, ‘unless, indeed, you would condescend to say a word for me to Mr. Walpole.’

‘Willingly, if it were of any use, but I think my cousin, Mademoiselle Kostalergi, would be likelier of success, and here she comes.’

Nina came forward at that moment, with that indolent grace of movement with which she swept the greensward of the lawn as though it were the carpet of a saloon. With a brief introduction of Mr. Curtis, her cousin Kate, in a few words, conveyed the embarrassment of his present position, and his hope that a kindly intercession might avert his danger.

‘What droll people you must be not to find out that the letters of a Viceroy’s secretary could not be the correspondence of a rebel leader,’ said Nina superciliously.

‘I have already told Miss Kearney how that fell out,’ said he; ‘and I assure you there was enough in those papers to mystify better and clearer heads.’

‘But you read the addresses, and saw how the letters began, “My dear Mr. Walpole,” or “Dear Walpole”?’

‘And thought they had been purloined. Have I not found “Dear Clarendon” often enough in the same packet with cross-bones and a coffin.’

‘What a country!’ said Nina, with a sigh.

‘Very like Greece, I suppose,’ said Kate tartly; then, suddenly, ‘Will you undertake to make this gentleman’s peace with Mr. Walpole, and show how the whole was a piece of ill-directed zeal?’

‘Indiscreet zeal.’

‘Well, indiscreet, if you like it better.’

‘And you fancied, then, that all the fine linen and purple you carried away were the properties of a head-centre?’

‘We thought so.’

‘And the silver objects of the dressing-table, and the ivory inlaid with gold, and the trifles studded with turquoise?’

‘They might have been Donogan’s. Do you know, mademoiselle, that this same Donogan was a man of fortune, and in all the society of the first men at Oxford when – a mere boy at the time – he became a rebel?’

‘How nice of him! What a fine fellow!’

‘I’d say what a fool!’ continued Curtis. ‘He had no need to risk his neck to achieve a station, the thing was done for him. He had a good house and a good estate in Kilkenny; I have caught salmon in the river that washes the foot of his lawn.’

‘And what has become of it; does he still own it?’

‘Not an acre – not a rood of it; sold every square yard of it to throw the money into the Fenian treasury. Rifled artillery, Colt’s revolvers, Remington’s, and Parrot guns have walked off with the broad acres.’

‘Fine fellow – a fine fellow!’ cried Nina enthusiastically.

‘That fine fellow has done a deal of mischief,’ said Kate thoughtfully.

‘He has escaped, has he not?’ asked Nina.

‘We hope not – that is, we know that he is about to sail for St. John’s by a clipper now in Belfast, and we shall have a fast steam-corvette ready to catch her in the Channel. He’ll be under Yankee colours, it is true, and claim an American citizenship; but we must run risks sometimes, and this is one of those times.’

‘But you know where he is now? Why not apprehend him on shore?’

‘The very thing we do not know, mademoiselle. I’d rather be sure of it than have five thousand pounds in my hand. Some say he is here, in the neighbourhood; some that he is gone south; others declare that he has reached Liverpool. All we really do know is about the ship that he means to sail in, and on which the second mate has informed us.’

‘And all your boasted activity is at fault,’ said she insolently, ‘when you have to own you cannot track him.’

‘Nor is it so easy, mademoiselle, where a whole population befriend and feel for him.’

‘And if they do, with what face can you persecute what has the entire sympathy of a nation?’

‘Don’t provoke answers which are sure not to satisfy you, and which you could but half comprehend; but tell Mr. Curtis you will use your influence to make Mr. Walpole forget this mishap.’

‘But I do want to go to the bottom of this question. I will insist on learning why people rebel here.’

‘In that case, I’ll go home to breakfast, and I’ll be quite satisfied if I see you at luncheon,’ said Kate.

‘Do, pray, Mr. Curtis, tell me all about it. Why do some people shoot the others who are just as much Irish as themselves? Why do hungry people kill the cattle and never eat them? And why don’t the English go away and leave a country where nobody likes them? If there be a reason for these things, let me hear it.’

‘Bye-bye,’ said Kate, waving her hand, as she turned away.

‘You are so ungenerous,’ cried Nina, hurrying after her; ‘I am a stranger, and would naturally like to learn all that I could of the country and the people; here is a gentleman full of the very knowledge I am seeking. He knows all about these terrible Fenians. What will they do with Donogan if they take him?’

‘Transport him for life; they’ll not hang him, I think.’

‘That’s worse than hanging. I mean – that is – Miss Kearney would rather they’d hang him.’

‘I have not said so,’ replied Kate, ‘and I don’t suspect I think so, either.’

‘Well,’ said Nina, after a pause, ‘let us go back to breakfast. You’ll see Mr. Walpole – he’s sure to be down by that time; and I’ll tell him what you wish is, that he must not think any more of the incident; that it was a piece of official stupidity, done, of course, out of the best motives; and that if he should cut a ridiculous figure at the end, he has only himself to blame for the worse than ambiguity of his private papers.’

‘I do not know that I ‘d exactly say that,’ said Kate, who felt some difficulty in not laughing at the horror-struck expression of Mr. Curtis’s face.

‘Well, then, I’ll say – this was what I wished to tell you, but my cousin Kate interposed and suggested that a little adroit flattery of you, and some small coquetries that might make you believe you were charming, would be the readiest mode to make you forget anything disagreeable, and she would charge herself with the task.’

‘Do so,’ said Kate calmly; ‘and let us now go back to breakfast.’