CHAPTER XLV
SOME IRISHRIES
That which the English irreverently call ‘chaff’ enters largely as an element into Irish life; and when Walpole stigmatised the habit to Joe Atlee as essentially that of the smaller island, he was not far wrong. I will not say that it is a high order of wit – very elegant, or very refined; but it is a strong incentive to good-humour – a vent to good spirits; and being a weapon which every Irishman can wield in some fashion or other, establishes that sort of joust which prevailed in the mêlée tournaments, and where each tilted with whom he pleased.
Any one who has witnessed the progress of an Irish trial, even when the crime was of the very gravest, cannot fail to have been struck by the continual clash of smart remark and smarter rejoinder between the Bench and the Bar; showing how men feel the necessity of ready-wittedness, and a promptitude to repel attack, in which even the prisoner in the dock takes his share, and cuts his joke at the most critical moment of his existence.
The Irish theatre always exhibits traits of this national taste; but a dinner-party, with its due infusion of barristers, is the best possible exemplification of this give and take, which, even if it had no higher merit, is a powerful ally of good-humour, and the sworn foe to everything like over-irritability or morbid self-esteem. Indeed, I could not wish a very conceited man, of a somewhat grave temperament and distant demeanour, a much heavier punishment than a course of Irish dinner-parties; for even though he should come out scathless himself, the outrages to his sense of propriety, and the insults to his ideas of taste, would be a severe suffering.
That breakfast-table at Kilgobbin had some heavy hearts around the board. There was not, with the exception of Walpole, one there who had not, in the doubts that beset his future, grave cause for anxiety; and yet to look at, still more to listen to them, you would have said that Walpole alone had any load of care upon his heart, and that the others were a light-hearted, happy set of people, with whom the world went always well. No cloud! – not even a shadow to darken the road before them. Of this levity, for I suppose I must give it a hard name – the source of much that is best and worst amongst us – our English rulers take no account, and are often as ready to charge us with a conviction, which was no more than a caprice, as they are to nail us down to some determination, which was simply a drollery; and until some intelligent traveller does for us what I lately perceived a clever tourist did for the Japanese, in explaining their modes of thought, impulses, and passions to the English, I despair of our being better known in Downing Street than we now are.
Captain Curtis – for it is right to give him his rank – was fearfully nervous and uneasy, and though he tried to eat his breakfast with an air of unconcern and carelessness, he broke his egg with a tremulous hand, and listened with painful eagerness every time Walpole spoke.
‘I wish somebody would send us the Standard; when it is known that the Lord-Lieutenant’s secretary has turned Fenian,’ said Kilgobbin, ‘won’t there be a grand Tory out-cry over the unprincipled Whigs?’
‘The papers need know nothing whatever of the incident,’ interposed Curtis anxiously, ‘if old Flood is not busy enough to inform them.’
‘Who is old Flood?’ asked Walpole.
‘A Tory J.P., who has copied out a considerable share of your correspondence,’ said Kilgobbin.
‘And four letters in a lady’s hand,’ added Dick, ‘that he imagines to be a treasonable correspondence by symbol.’
‘I hope Mr. Walpole,’ said Kate, ‘will rather accept felony to the law than falsehood to the lady.’
‘You don’t mean to say – ’ began Walpole angrily; then correcting his irritable manner, he added, ‘Am I to suppose my letters have been read?’
‘Well, roughly looked through,’ said Curtis. ‘Just a glance here and there to catch what they meant.’
‘Which I must say was quite unnecessary,’ said Walpole haughtily.
‘It was a sort of journal of yours,’ blundered out Curtis, who had a most unhappy knack of committing himself, ‘that they opened first, and they saw an entry with Kilgobbin Castle at the top of it, and the date last July.’
‘There was nothing political in that, I’m sure,’ said Walpole.
‘No, not exactly, but a trifle rebellious, all the same; the words, “We this evening learned a Fenian song, ‘The time to begin,’ and rather suspect it is time to leave off; the Greek better-looking than ever, and more dangerous.”’
Curtis’s last words were drowned in the laugh that now shook the table; indeed, except Walpole and Nina herself, they actually roared with laughter, which burst out afresh, as Curtis, in his innocence, said, ‘We could not make out about the Greek, but we hoped we’d find out later on.’
‘And I fervently trust you did,’ said Kilgobbin.
‘I’m afraid not; there was something about somebody called Joe, that the Greek wouldn’t have him, or disliked him, or snubbed him – indeed, I forget the words.’
‘You are quite right, sir, to distrust your memory,’ said Walpole; ‘it has betrayed you most egregiously already.’
‘On the contrary,’ burst in Kilgobbin, ‘I am delighted with this proof of the captain’s acuteness; tell us something more, Curtis.’
‘There was then, “From the upper castle yard, Maude,” whoever Maude is, “says, ‘Deny it all, and say you never were there,’ not so easy as she thinks, with a broken right arm, and a heart not quite so whole as it ought to be.”’
‘There, sir – with the permission of my friends here – I will ask you to conclude your reminiscences of my private papers, which can have no possible interest for any one but myself.’
‘Quite wrong in that,’ cried Kilgobbin, wiping his eyes, which had run over with laughter. ‘There’s nothing I’d like so much as to hear more of them.’
‘What was that about his heart?’ whispered Curtis to Kate; ‘was he wounded in the side also?’
‘I believe so,’ said she dryly; ‘but I believe he has got quite over it by this time.’
‘Will you say a word or two about me, Miss Kearney?’ whispered he again; ‘I’m not sure I improved my case by talking so freely; but as I saw you all so outspoken, I thought I’d fall into your ways.’
‘Captain Curtis is much concerned for any fault he may have committed in this unhappy business,’ said Kate, ‘and he trusts that the agitation and excitement of the Donogan escape will excuse him.’
‘That’s your policy now,’ interposed Kilgobbin. ‘Catch the Fenian fellow, and nobody will remember the other incident.’
‘We mean to give out that we know he has got clear away to America,’ said Curtis, with an air of intense cunning. ‘And to lull his suspicions, we have notices in print to say that no further rewards are to be given for his apprehension; so that he’ll get a false confidence, and move about as before.’
‘With such acuteness as yours on his trail, his arrest is certain,’ said Walpole gravely.
‘Well, I hope so, too,’ said Curtis, in good faith for the compliment.’ Didn’t I take up nine men for the search of arms here, though there were only five? One of them turned evidence,’ added he gravely;’ he was the fellow that swore Miss Kearney stood between you and the fire after they wounded you.’
‘You are determined to make Mr. Walpole your friend,’ whispered Nina in his ear; ‘don’t you see, sir, that you are ruining yourself?’
‘I have often been puzzled to explain how it was that crime went unpunished in Ireland,’ said Walpole sententiously.
‘And you know now?’ asked Curtis.
‘Yes; in a great measure, you have supplied me with the information.’
‘I believe it’s all right now,’ muttered the captain to Kate. ‘If the swell owns that I have put him up to a thing or two, he’ll not throw me over.’
‘Would you give me three minutes of your time?’ whispered Gorman O’Shea to Lord Kilgobbin, as they arose from table.
‘Half an hour, my boy, or more if you want it. Come along with me now into my study, and we’ll be safe there from all interruption.’
CHAPTER XLVI
SAGE ADVICE
‘So then you’re in a hobble with your aunt,’ said Mr. Kearney, as he believed he had summed up the meaning of a very blundering explanation by Gorman O’Shea; ‘isn’t that it?’
‘Yes, sir; I suppose it comes to that.’
‘The old story, I’ve no doubt, if we only knew it – as old as the Patriarchs: the young ones go into debt, and think it very hard that the elders dislike the paying it.’
‘No, no; I have no debts – at least, none to speak of.’
‘It’s a woman, then? Have you gone and married some good-looking girl, with no fortune and less family? Who is she?’
‘Not even that, sir,’ said he, half impatient at seeing how little attention had been bestowed on his narrative.
‘‘Tis bad enough, no doubt,’ continued the old man, still in pursuit of his own reflections; ‘not but there’s scores of things worse; for if a man is a good fellow at heart, he’ll treat the woman all the better for what she has cost him. That is one of the good sides of selfishness; and when you have lived as long as me, Gorman, you’ll find out how often there’s something good to be squeezed out of a bad quality, just as though it were a bit of our nature that was depraved, but not gone to the devil entirely.’
‘There is no woman in the case here, sir,’ said O’Shea bluntly, for these speculations only irritated him.
‘Ho, ho! I have it, then,’ cried the old man. ‘You’ve been burning your fingers with rebellion. It’s the Fenians have got a hold of you.’
‘Nothing of the kind, sir. If you’ll just read these two letters. The one is mine, written on the morning I came here: here is my aunt’s. The first is not word for word as I sent it, but as well as I can remember. At all events, it will show how little I had provoked the answer. There, that’s the document that came along with my trunks, and I have never heard from her since.’
‘“Dear Nephew,”’ read out the old man, after patiently adjusting his spectacles – ‘"O’Shea’s Barn is not an inn,” – And more’s the pity,’ added he; ‘for it would be a model house of entertainment. You’d say any one could have a sirloin of beef or a saddle of mutton; but where Miss Betty gets hers is quite beyond me. “Nor are the horses at public livery,”’ read he out. ‘I think I may say, if they were, that Kattoo won’t be hired out again to the young man that took her over the fences. “As you seem fond of warnings,”’ continued he, aloud – ‘Ho, ho! that’s at you for coming over here to tell me about the search-warrant; and she tells you to mind your own business; and droll enough it is. We always fancy we’re saying an impertinence to a man when we tell him to attend to what concerns him most. It shows, at least, that we think meddling a luxury. And then she adds, “Kilgobbin is welcome to you,” and I can only say you are welcome to Kilgobbin – ay, and in her own words – “with such regularity and order as the meals succeed.” – “All the luggage belonging to you,” etc., and “I am, very respectfully, your Aunt.” By my conscience, there was no need to sign it! That was old Miss Betty all the world over!’ and he laughed till his eyes ran over, though the rueful face of young O’Shea was staring at him all the time. ‘Don’t look so gloomy, O’Shea,’ cried Kearney: ‘I have not so good a cook, nor, I’m sorry to say, so good a cellar, as at the Barn; but there are young faces, and young voices, and young laughter, and a light step on the stairs; and if I know anything, or rather, if I remember anything, these will warm a heart at your age better than ‘44 claret or the crustiest port that ever stained a decanter.’
‘I am turned out, sir – sent adrift on the world,’ said the young man despondently.
‘And it is not so bad a thing after all, take my word for it, boy. It’s a great advantage now and then to begin life as a vagabond. It takes a deal of snobbery out of a fellow to lie under a haystack, and there’s no better cure for pretension than a dinner of cold potatoes. Not that I say you need the treatment – far from it – but our distinguished friend Mr. Walpole wouldn’t be a bit the worse of such an alterative.’
‘If I am left without a shilling in the world?’
‘Then you must try what you can do on sixpence – the whole thing is how you begin. I used not to be able to eat my dinner when I did not see the fellow in a white tie standing before the sideboard, and the two flunkeys in plush and silk stockings at either side of the table; and when I perceived that the decanters had taken their departure, and that it was beer I was given to drink, I felt as if I had dined, and was ready to go out and have a smoke in the open air; but a little time, even without any patience, but just time, does it all.’
‘Time won’t teach a man to live upon nothing.’
‘It would be very hard for him if it did; let him begin by having few wants, and work hard to supply means for them.’
‘Work hard! why, sir, if I laboured from daylight to dark, I’d not earn the wages of the humblest peasant, and I’d not know how to live on it.’
‘Well, I have given you all the philosophy in my budget, and to tell you the truth, Gorman, except so far as coming down in the world in spite of myself, I know mighty little about the fine precepts I have been giving you; but this I know, you have a roof over your head here, and you’re heartily welcome to it; and who knows but your aunt may come to terms all the sooner, because she sees you here?’
‘You are very generous to me, and I feel it deeply,’ said the young man; but he was almost choked with the words.
‘You have told me already, Gorman, that your aunt gave you no other reason against coming here than that I had not been to call on you; and I believe you – believe you thoroughly; but tell me now, with the same frankness, was there nothing passing in your mind – had you no suspicions or misgivings, or something of the same kind, to keep you away? Be candid with me now, and speak it out freely.’
‘None, on my honour; I was sorely grieved to be told I must not come, and thought very often of rebelling, so that indeed, when I did rebel, I was in a measure prepared for the penalty, though scarcely so heavy as this.’
‘Don’t take it to heart. It will come right yet – everything comes right if we give it time – and there’s plenty of time to the fellow who is not five-and-twenty. It’s only the old dogs, like myself, who are always doing their match against time, are in a hobble. To feel that every minute of the clock is something very like three weeks of the almanac, flurries a man, when he wants to be cool and collected. Put your hat on a peg, and make your home here. If you want to be of use, Kitty will show you scores of things to do about the garden, and we never object to see a brace of snipe at the end of dinner, though there’s nobody cares to shoot them; and the bog trout – for all their dark colour – are excellent catch, and I know you can throw a line. All I say is, do something, and something that takes you into the open air. Don’t get to lying about in easy-chairs and reading novels; don’t get to singing duets and philandering about with the girls. May I never, if I’d not rather find a brandy-flask in your pocket than Tennyson’s poems!’
CHAPTER XLVII
REPROOF
‘Say it out frankly, Kate,’ cried Nina, as with flashing eyes and heightened colour she paced the drawing-room from end to end, with that bold sweeping stride which in moments of passion betrayed her. ‘Say it out. I know perfectly what you are hinting at.’
‘I never hint,’ said the other gravely; ‘least of all with those I love.’
‘So much the better. I detest an equivoque. If I am to be shot, let me look the fire in the face.’
‘There is no question of shooting at all. I think you are very angry for nothing.’
‘Angry for nothing! Do you call that studied coldness you have observed towards me all day yesterday nothing? Is your ceremonious manner – exquisitely polite, I will not deny – is that nothing? Is your chilling salute when we met – I half believe you curtsied – nothing? That you shun me, that you take pains not to keep my company, never to be with me alone is past denial.’
‘And I do not deny it,’ said Kate, with a voice of calm and quiet meaning.
‘At last, then, I have the avowal. You own that you love me no longer.’
‘No, I own nothing of the kind: I love you very dearly; but I see that our ideas of life are so totally unlike, that unless one should bend and conform to the other, we cannot blend our thoughts in that harmony which perfect confidence requires. You are so much above me in many things, so much more cultivated and gifted – I was going to say civilised, and I believe I might – ’
‘Ta – ta – ta,’ cried Nina impatiently. ‘These flatteries are very ill-timed.’
‘So they would be, if they were flatteries; but if you had patience to hear me out, you’d have learned that I meant a higher flattery for myself.’
‘Don’t I know it? don’t I guess?’ cried the Greek. ‘Have not your downcast eyes told it? and that look of sweet humility that says, “At least I am not a flirt?”’
‘Nor am I,’ said Kate coldly.
‘And I am! Come now, do confess. You want to say it.’
‘With all my heart I wish you were not!’ And Kate’s eyes swam as she spoke.
‘And what if I tell you that I know it – that in the very employment of the arts of what you call coquetry, I am but exercising those powers of pleasing by which men are led to frequent the salon instead of the café, and like the society of the cultivated and refined better than – ’
‘No, no, no!’ burst in Kate. ‘There is no such mock principle in the case. You are a flirt because you like the homage it secures you, and because, as you do not believe in such a thing as an honest affection, you have no scruple about trifling with a man’s heart.’
‘So much for captivating that bold hussar,’ cried Nina.
‘For the moment I was not thinking of him.’
‘Of whom, then?’
‘Of that poor Captain Curtis, who has just ridden away.’
‘Oh, indeed!’
‘Yes. He has a pretty wife and three nice little girls, and they are the happiest people in the world. They love each other, and love their home – so, at least, I am told, for I scarcely know them myself.’
‘And what have I done with him?’
‘Sent him away sad and doubtful – very doubtful if the happiness he believed in was the real article after all, and disposed to ask himself how it was that his heart was beating in a new fashion, and that some new sense had been added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife’s bright look will be meaningless.’
‘And I have done all this? Poor me!’
‘Yes, and done it so often, that it leaves no remorse behind it.’
‘And the same, I suppose, with the others?’
‘With Mr. Walpole, and Dick, and Mr. O’Shea, and Mr. Atlee too, when he was here, in their several ways.’
‘Oh, in theirs, not in mine, then?’
‘I am but a bungler in my explanation. I wished to say that you adapted your fascinations to the tastes of each.’
‘What a siren!’
‘Well, yes – what a siren; for they’re all in love in some fashion or other; but I could have forgiven you these, had you spared the married man.’
‘So you actually envy that poor prisoner the gleam of light and the breath of cold air that comes between his prison bars – that one moment of ecstasy that reminds him how he once was free and at large, and no manacles to weigh him down? You will not let him even touch bliss in imagination? Are you not more cruel than me?’
‘This is mere nonsense,’ said Kate boldly. ‘You either believe that man was fooling you, or that you have sent him away unhappy? Take which of these you like.’
‘Can’t your rustic nature see that there is a third case, quite different from both, and that Harry Curtis went off believing – ’
‘Was he Harry Curtis?’ broke in Kate.
‘He was dear Harry when I said good-bye,’ said Nina calmly.
‘Oh, then, I give up everything – I throw up my brief.’
‘So you ought, for you have lost your cause long ago.’
‘Even that poor Donogan was not spared, and Heaven knows he had troubles enough on his head to have pleaded some pity for him.’
‘And is there no kind word to say of me, Kate?’
‘O Nina, how ashamed you make me of my violence, when I dare to blame you! but if I did not love you so dearly, I could better bear you should have a fault.’
‘I have only one, then?’
‘I know of no great one but this. I mean, I know of none that endangers good-nature and right feeling.’
‘And are you so sure that this does? Are you so sure that what you are faulting is not the manner and the way of a world you have not seen? that all these levities, as you would call them, are not the ordinary wear of people whose lives are passed where there is more tolerance and less pain?’
‘Be serious, Nina, for a moment, and own that it was by intention you were in the approach when Captain Curtis rode away: that you said something to him, or looked something – perhaps both – on which he got down from his horse and walked beside you for full a mile?’
‘All true,’ said Nina calmly. ‘I confess to every part of it.’
‘I’d far rather that you said you were sorry for it.’
‘But I am not; I’m very glad – I’m very proud of it.
Yes, look as reproachfully as you like, Kate! “very proud” was what I said.’
‘Then I am indeed sorry,’ said Kate, growing pale as she spoke.
‘I don’t think, after all this sharp lecturing of me, that you deserve much of my confidence, and if I make you any, Kate, it is not by way of exculpation; for I do not accept your blame; it is simply out of caprice – mind that, and that I am not thinking of defending myself.’
‘I can easily believe that,’ said Kate dryly.
And the other continued: ‘When Captain Curtis was talking to your father, and discussing the chances of capturing Donogan, he twice or thrice mentioned Harper and Fry – names which somehow seemed familiar to me; and on thinking the matter over when I went to my room, I opened Donogan’s pocket-book and there found how these names had become known to me. Harper and Fry were tanners, in Cork Street, and theirs was one of the addresses by which, if I had occasion to warn Donogan, I could write to him. On hearing these names from Curtis, it struck me that there might be treachery somewhere. Was it that these men themselves had turned traitors to the cause? or had another betrayed them? Whichever way the matter went, Donogan was evidently in great danger; for this was one of the places he regarded as perfectly safe.
‘What was to be done? I dared not ask advice on any side. To reveal the suspicions which were tormenting me required that I should produce this pocket-book, and to whom could I impart this man’s secret? I thought of your brother Dick, but he was from home, and even if he had not been, I doubt if I should have told him. I should have come to you, Kate, but that grand rebukeful tone you had taken up this last twenty-four hours repelled me; and finally, I took counsel with myself. I set off just before Captain Curtis started, to what you have called waylay him in the avenue.
‘Just below the beech-copse he came up; and then that small flirtation of the drawing-room, which has caused you so much anger and me such a sharp lesson, stood me in good stead, and enabled me to arrest his progress by some chance word or two, and at last so far to interest him that he got down and walked along at my side. I shall not shock you by recalling the little tender “nothings” that passed between us, nor dwell on the small mockeries of sentiment which we exchanged – I hope very harmlessly – but proceed at once to what I felt my object. He was profuse of his gratitude for what I had done for him with Walpole, and firmly believed that my intercession alone had saved him; and so I went on to say that the best reparation he could make for his blunder would be some exercise of well-directed activity when occasion should offer. “Suppose, for instance,” said I, “you could capture this man Donogan?”
‘“The very thing I hope to do,” cried he. “The train is laid already. One of my constables has a brother in a well-known house in Dublin, the members of which, men of large wealth and good position, have long been suspected of holding intercourse with the rebels. Through his brother, himself a Fenian, this man has heard that a secret committee will meet at this place on Monday evening next, at which Donogan will be present. Molloy, another head-centre, will also be there, and Cummings, who escaped from Carrickfergus.” I took down all the names, Kate, the moment we parted, and while they were fresh in my memory. “We’ll draw the net on them all,” said he; “and such a haul has not been made since ‘98. The rewards alone will amount to some thousands.” It was then I said, “And is there no danger, Harry? “’
‘O Nina!’
‘Yes, darling, it was very dreadful, and I felt it so; but somehow one is carried away by a burst of feeling at certain moments, and the shame only comes too late. Of course it was wrong of me to call him Harry, and he, too, with a wife at home, and five little girls – or three, I forget which – should never have sworn that he loved me, nor said all that mad nonsense about what he felt in that region where chief constables have their hearts; but I own to great tenderness and a very touching sensibility on either side. Indeed, I may add here, that the really sensitive natures amongst men are never found under forty-five; but for genuine, uncalculating affection, for the sort of devotion that flings consequences to the winds, I say, give me fifty-eight or sixty.’
‘Nina, do not make me hate you,’ said Kate gravely.
‘Certainly not, dearest, if a little hypocrisy will avert such a misfortune. And so to return to my narrative, I learned, as accurately as a gentleman so much in love could condescend to inform me, of all the steps taken to secure Donogan at this meeting, or to capture him later on if he should try to make his escape by sea.’
‘You mean, then, to write to Donogan and apprise him of his danger?’
‘It is done. I wrote the moment I got back here. I addressed him as Mr. James Bredin, care of Jonas Mullory, Esq., 41 New Street, which was the first address in the list he gave me. I told him of the peril he ran, and what his friends were also threatened by, and I recounted the absurd seizure of Mr. Walpole’s effects here; and, last of all, what a dangerous rival he had in this Captain Curtis, who was ready to desert wife, children, and the constabulary to-morrow for me; and assuring him confidentially that I was well worth greater sacrifices of better men, I signed my initials in Greek letters.’
‘Marvellous caution and great discretion,’ said Kate solemnly.
‘And now come over to the drawing-room, where I have promised to sing for Mr. O’Shea some little ballad that he dreamed over all the night through; and then there’s something else – what is it? what is it?’
‘How should I know, Nina? I was not present at your arrangement.’
‘Never mind; I’ll remember it presently. It will come to my recollection while I’m singing that song.’
‘If emotion is not too much for you.’
‘Just so, Kate – sensibilities permitting; and, indeed,’ she said,’ I remember it already. It was luncheon.’