If, then, there was not much of similarity between these two men to attach them to each other, there was what served for a bond of union: they belonged to the same class in life, and used pretty nigh the same forms for their expression of like and dislike; and as in traffic it contributes wonderfully to the facilities of business to use the same money, so in the common intercourse of life will the habit to estimate things at the same value conduce to very easy relations, and something almost like friendship.
While they sat over the fire awaiting their supper, each had lighted a cigar, busying himself from time to time in endeavouring to dry some drenched article of dress, or extracting from damp and dripping pockets their several contents.
‘This, then,’ said the younger man – ‘this is the picturesque Ireland our tourist writers tell us of; and the land where the Times says the traveller will find more to interest him than in the Tyrol or the Oberland.’
‘What about the climate?’ said the other, in a deep bass voice.
‘Mild and moist, I believe, are the epithets; that is, it makes you damp, and it keeps you so.’
‘And the inns?’
‘The inns, it is admitted, might be better; but the traveller is admonished against fastidiousness, and told that the prompt spirit of obligeance, the genial cordiality, he will meet with, are more than enough to repay him for the want of more polished habits and mere details of comfort and convenience.’
‘Rotten humbug! I don’t want cordiality from my innkeeper.’
‘I should think not! As, for instance, a bit of carpet in this room would be worth more than all the courtesy that showed us in.’
‘What was that lake called – the first place I mean?’ asked Lockwood.
‘Lough Brin. I shouldn’t say but with better weather it might be pretty.’
A half-grunt of dissent was all the reply, and Walpole went on —
It’s no use painting a landscape when it is to be smudged all over with Indian ink. There are no tints in mountains swathed in mist, no colour in trees swamped with moisture; everything seems so imbued with damp, one fancies it would take two years in the tropics to dry Ireland.’
‘I asked that fellow who showed us the way here, why he didn’t pitch off those wet rags he wore, and walk away in all the dignity of nakedness.’
A large dish of rashers and eggs, and a mess of Irish stew, which the landlord now placed on the table, with a foaming jug of malt, seemed to rally them out of their ill-temper; and for some time they talked away in a more cheerful tone.
‘Better than I hoped for,’ said Walpole.
‘Fair!’
‘And that ale, too – I suppose it is called ale – is very tolerable.’
‘It’s downright good. Let us have some more of it.’ And he shouted, ‘Master!’ at the top of his voice. ‘More of this,’ said Lockwood, touching the measure. ‘Beer or ale, which is it?’
‘Castle Bellingham, sir,’ replied the landlord; ‘beats all the Bass and Allsopp that ever was brewed.’
‘You think so, eh?’
‘I’m sure of it, sir. The club that sits here had a debate on it one night, and put it to the vote, and there wasn’t one man for the English liquor. My lord there,’ said he, pointing to the portrait, ‘sent an account of it all to Saunders’ newspaper.’
While he left the room to fetch the ale, the travellers both fixed their eyes on the picture, and Walpole, rising, read out the inscription – ‘Viscount Kilgobbin.’
‘There’s no such title,’ said the other bluntly.
‘Lord Kilgobbin – Kilgobbin? Where did I hear that name before?’
‘In a dream, perhaps.’
‘No, no. I have heard it, if I could only remember where and how! I say, landlord, where does his lordship live?’ and he pointed to the portrait.
‘Beyond, at the castle, sir. You can see it from the door without when the weather’s fine.’
‘That must mean on a very rare occasion!’ said Lockwood gravely.
‘No indeed, sir. It didn’t begin to rain on Tuesday last till after three o’clock.’
‘Magnificent climate!’ exclaimed Walpole enthusiastically.
‘It is indeed, sir. Glory be to God!’ said the landlord, with an honest gravity that set them both off laughing.
‘How about this club – does it meet often?’
‘It used, sir, to meet every Thursday evening, and my lord never missed a night, but quite lately he took it in his head not to come out in the evenings. Some say it was the rheumatism, and more says it’s the unsettled state of the country; though, the Lord be praised for it, there wasn’t a man fired at in the neighbourhood since Easter, and he was a peeler.’
‘One of the constabulary?’
‘Yes, sir; a dirty, mean chap, that was looking after a poor boy that set fire to Mr. Hagin’s ricks, and that was over a year ago.’
‘And naturally forgotten by this time?’
‘By coorse it was forgotten. Ould Mat Hagin got a presentment for the damage out of the grand-jury, and nobody was the worse for it at all.’
‘And so the club is smashed, eh?’
‘As good as smashed, sir; for whenever any of them comes now of an evening, he just goes into the bar and takes his glass there.’
He sighed heavily as he said this, and seemed overcome with sadness.
‘I’m trying to remember why the name is so familiar to me. I know I have heard of Lord Kilgobbin before,’ said Walpole.
‘Maybe so,’ said the landlord respectfully. ‘You may have read in books how it was at Kilgobbin Castle King James came to stop after the Boyne; that he held a “coort” there in the big drawing-room – they call it the “throne-room” ever since – and slept two nights at the castle afterwards?’
‘That’s something to see, Walpole,’ said Lockwood.
‘So it is. How is that to be managed, landlord? Does his lordship permit strangers to visit the castle?’
‘Nothing easier than that, sir,’ said the host, who gladly embraced a project that should detain his guests at the inn. ‘My lord went through the town this morning on his way to Loughrea fair; but the young ladies is at home; and you’ve only to send over a message, and say you’d like to see the place, and they’ll be proud to show it to you.’
‘Let us send our cards, with a line in pencil,’ said Walpole, in a whisper to his friend.
‘And there are young ladies there?’ asked Lockwood.
‘Two born beauties; it’s hard to say which is handsomest,’ replied the host, overjoyed at the attraction his neighbourhood possessed.
‘I suppose that will do?’ said Walpole, showing what he had written on his card.
‘Yes, perfectly.’
‘Despatch this at once. I mean early to-morrow; and let your messenger ask if there be an answer. How far is it off?’
‘A little over twelve miles, sir; but I’ve a mare in the stable will “rowle” ye over in an hour and a quarter.’
‘All right. We’ll settle on everything after breakfast to-morrow.’ And the landlord withdrew, leaving them once more alone.
‘This means,’ said Lockwood drearily, ‘we shall have to pass a day in this wretched place.’
‘It will take a day to dry our wet clothes; and, all things considered, one might be worse off than here. Besides, I shall want to look over my notes. I have done next to nothing, up to this time, about the Land Question.’
‘I thought that the old fellow with the cow, the fellow I gave a cigar to, had made you up in your tenant-right affair,’ said Lockwood.
‘He gave me a great deal of very valuable information; he exposed some of the evils of tenancy at will as ably as I ever heard them treated, but he was occasionally hard on the landlord.’
‘I suppose one word of truth never came out of his mouth!’
‘On the contrary, real knowledge of Ireland is not to be acquired from newspapers; a man must see Ireland for himself —see it,’ repeated he, with strong emphasis.
‘And then?’
‘And then, if he be a capable man, a reflecting man, a man in whom the perceptive power is joined to the social faculty – ’
‘Look here, Cecil, one hearer won’t make a House: don’t try it on speechifying to me. It’s all humbug coming over to look at Ireland. You may pick up a little brogue, but it’s all you’ll pick up for your journey.’ After this, for him, unusually long speech, he finished his glass, lighted his bedroom candle, and nodding a good-night, strolled away.
‘I’d give a crown to know where I heard of you before!’ said Walpole, as he stared up at the portrait.
CHAPTER VII
THE COUSINS
‘Only think of it!’ cried Kate to her cousin, as she received Walpole’s note. ‘Can you fancy, Nina, any one having the curiosity to imagine this old house worth a visit? Here is a polite request from two tourists to be allowed to see the – what is it? – the interesting interior of Kilgobbin Castle!’
‘Which I hope and trust you will refuse. The people who are so eager for these things are invariably tiresome old bores, grubbing for antiquities, or intently bent on adding a chapter to their story of travel. You’ll say No, dearest, won’t you?’
‘Certainly, if you wish it. I am not acquainted with Captain Lockwood, nor his friend Mr. Cecil Walpole.’
‘Did you say Cecil Walpole?’ cried the other, almost snatching the card from her fingers. ‘Of all the strange chances in life, this is the very strangest! What could have brought Cecil Walpole here?’
‘You know him, then?’
‘I should think I do! What duets have we not sung together? What waltzes have we not had? What rides over the Campagna? Oh dear! how I should like to talk over these old times again! Pray tell him he may come, Kate, or let me do it.’
‘And papa away!’
‘It is the castle, dearest, he wants to see, not papa! You don’t know what manner of creature this is! He is one of your refined and supremely cultivated English – mad about archæology and mediæval trumpery. He’ll know all your ancestors intended by every insane piece of architecture, and every puzzling detail of this old house; and he’ll light up every corner of it with some gleam of bright tradition.’
‘I thought these sort of people were bores, dear?’ said Kate, with a sly malice in her look.
‘Of course not. When they are well-bred and well-mannered – ’
‘And perhaps well-looking?’ chimed in Kate.
‘Yes, and so he is – a little of the petit-maître, perhaps. He’s much of that school which fiction-writers describe as having “finely-pencilled eyebrows, and chins of almost womanlike roundness”; but people in Rome always called him handsome, that is if he be my Cecil Walpole.’
‘Well, then, will you tell YOUR Cecil Walpole, in such polite terms as you know how to coin, that there is really nothing of the very slightest pretension to interest in this old place; that we should be ashamed at having lent ourselves to the delusion that might have led him here; and lastly, that the owner is from home?’
‘What! and is this the Irish hospitality I have heard so much of – the cordial welcome the stranger may reckon on as a certainty, and make all his plans with the full confidence of meeting?’
‘There is such a thing as discretion, also, to be remembered, Nina,’ said Kate gravely.
‘And then there’s the room where the king slept, and the chair that – no, not Oliver Cromwell, but somebody else sat in at supper, and there’s the great patch painted on the floor where your ancestor knelt to be knighted.’
‘He was created a viscount, not a knight!’ said Kate, blushing. ‘And there is a difference, I assure you.’
‘So there is, dearest, and even my foreign ignorance should know that much, and you have the parchment that attests it – a most curious document, that Walpole would be delighted to see. I almost fancy him examining the curious old seal with his microscope, and hear him unfolding all sorts of details one never so much as suspected.’
‘Papa might not like it,’ said Kate, bridling up. ‘Even were he at home, I am far from certain he would receive these gentlemen. It is little more than a year ago there came here a certain book-writing tourist, and presented himself without introduction. We received him hospitably, and he stayed part of a week here. He was fond of antiquarianism, but more eager still about the condition of the people – what kind of husbandry they practised, what wages they had, and what food. Papa took him over the whole estate, and answered all his questions freely and openly. And this man made a chapter of his book upon us, and headed it, “Rack-renting and riotous living,” distorting all he heard and sneering at all he saw.’
‘These are gentlemen, dearest Kate,’ said Nina, holding out the card. ‘Come now, do tell me that I may say you will be happy to see them?’
‘If you must have it so – if you really insist – ’
‘I do! I do!’ cried she, half wildly. ‘I should go distracted if you denied me. O Kate! I must own it. It will out. I do cling devotedly, terribly, to that old life of the past. I am very happy here, and you are all good, and kind, and loving to me; but that wayward, haphazard existence, with all its trials and miseries, had got little glimpses of such bliss at times that rose to actual ecstasy.’
‘I was afraid of this,’ said Kate, in a low but firm voice. ‘I thought what a change it would be for you from that life of brightness and festivity to this existence of dull and unbroken dreariness.’
‘No, no, no! Don’t say that! Do not fancy that I am not happier than I ever was or ever believed I could be. It was the castle-building of that time that I was regretting. I imagined so many things, I invented such situations, such incidents, which, with this sad-coloured landscape here and that leaden sky, I have no force to conjure up. It is as though the atmosphere is too weighty for fancy to mount in it. You, my dearest Kate,’ said she, drawing her arm round her, and pressing her towards her, ‘do not know these things, nor need ever know them. Your life is assured and safe. You cannot, indeed, be secure from the passing accidents of life, but they will meet you in a spirit able to confront them. As for me, I was always gambling for existence, and gambling without means to pay my losses if Fortune should turn against me. Do you understand me, child?’
‘Only in part, if even that,’ said she slowly.
‘Let us keep this theme, then, for another time. Now for ces messieurs. I am to invite them?’
‘If there was time to ask Miss O’Shea to come over – ’
‘Do you not fancy, Kate, that in your father’s house, surrounded with your father’s servants, you are sufficiently the mistress to do without a chaperon? Only preserve that grand austere look you have listened to me with these last ten minutes, and I should like to see the youthful audacity that could brave it. There, I shall go and write my note. You shall see how discreetly and properly I shall word it.’
Kate walked thoughtfully towards a window and looked out, while Nina skipped gaily down the room, and opened her writing-desk, humming an opera air as she wrote: —
‘KILGOBBIN CASTLE.
‘DEAR MR. WALPOLE, – I can scarcely tell you the pleasure I feel at the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, whichever be the most proper to say. My uncle is from home, and will not return till the day after to-morrow at dinner; but my cousin, Miss Kearney, charges me to say how happy she will be to receive you and your fellow-traveller at luncheon to-morrow. Pray not to trouble yourself with an answer, but believe me very sincerely yours, ‘NINA KOSTALERGI.’
‘I was right in saying luncheon, Kate, and not dinner – was I not? It is less formal.’
‘I suppose so; that is, if it was right to invite them at all, of which I have very great misgivings.’
‘I wonder what brought Cecil Walpole down here?’ said Nina, glad to turn the discussion into another channel. ‘Could he have heard that I was here? Probably not. It was a mere chance, I suppose. Strange things these same chances are, that do so much more in our lives than all our plottings!’
‘Tell me something of your friend, perhaps I ought to say your admirer, Nina!’
‘Yes, very much my admirer; not seriously, you know, but in that charming sort of adoration we cultivate abroad, that means anything or nothing. He was not titled, and I am afraid he was not rich, and this last misfortune used to make his attention to me somewhat painful – to him I mean, not to me; for, of course, as to anything serious, I looked much higher than a poor Secretary of Legation.’
‘Did you?’ asked Kate, with an air of quiet simplicity.
‘I should hope I did,’ said she haughtily; and she threw a glance at herself in a large mirror, and smiled proudly at the bright image that confronted her. ‘Yes, darling, say it out,’ cried she, turning to Kate. ‘Your eyes have uttered the words already.’
‘What words?’
‘Something about insufferable vanity and conceit, and I own to both! Oh, why is it that my high spirits have so run away with me this morning that I have forgotten all reserve and all shame? But the truth is, I feel half wild with joy, and joy in my nature is another name for recklessness.’
‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Kate gravely. ‘At any rate, you give me another reason for wishing to have Miss O’Shea here.’
‘I will not have her – no, not for worlds, Kate, that odious old woman, with her stiff and antiquated propriety. Cecil would quiz her.’
‘I am very certain he would not; at least, if he be such a perfect gentleman as you tell me.’
‘Ah, but you’d never know he did it. The fine tact of these consummate men of the world derives a humoristic enjoyment in eccentricity of character, which never shows itself in any outward sign beyond the heightened pleasure they feel in what other folks might call dulness or mere oddity.’
‘I would not suffer an old friend to be made the subject of even such latent amusement.’
‘Nor her nephew, either, perhaps?’
‘The nephew could take care of himself, Nina; but I am not aware that he will be called on to do so. He is not in Ireland, I believe.’
‘He was to arrive this week. You told me so.’
‘Perhaps he did; I had forgotten it!’ and Kate flushed as she spoke, though whether from shame or anger it was not easy to say. As though impatient with herself at any display of temper, she added hurriedly, ‘Was it not a piece of good fortune, Nina? Papa has left us the key of the cellar, a thing he never did before, and only now because you were here!’
‘What an honoured guest I am!’ said the other, smiling.
‘That you are! I don’t believe papa has gone once to the club since you came here.’
‘Now, if I were to own that I was vain of this, you’d rebuke me, would not you?’
‘Our love could scarcely prompt to vanity.’
‘How shall I ever learn to be humble enough in a family of such humility?’ said Nina pettishly. Then quickly correcting herself, she said, ‘I’ll go and despatch my note, and then I’ll come back and ask your pardon for all my wilfulness, and tell you how much I thank you for all your goodness to me.’
And as she spoke she bent down and kissed Kate’s hand twice or thrice fervently.
‘Oh, dearest Nina, not this – not this!’ said Kate, trying to clasp her in her arms; but the other had slipped from her grasp, and was gone.
‘Strange girl,’ muttered Kate, looking after her. ‘I wonder shall I ever understand you, or shall we ever understand each other?’
CHAPTER VIII
SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER
The morning broke drearily for our friends, the two pedestrians, at the ‘Blue Goat.’ A day of dull aspect and soft rain in midsummer has the added depression that it seems an anachronism. One is in a measure prepared for being weather-bound in winter. You accept imprisonment as the natural fortune of the season, or you brave the elements prepared to let them do their worst, while, if confined to house, you have that solace of snugness, that comfortable chimney-corner which somehow realises an immense amount of the joys we concentrate in the word ‘Home.’ It is in the want of this rallying-point, this little domestic altar, where all gather together in a common worship, that lies the dreary discomfort of being weather-bound in summer, and when the prison is some small village inn, noisy, disorderly, and dirty, the misery is complete.
‘Grand old pig that!’ said Lockwood, as he gazed out upon the filthy yard, where a fat old sow contemplated the weather from the threshold of her dwelling.
‘I wish she’d come out. I want to make a sketch of her,’ said the other.
‘Even one’s tobacco grows too damp to smoke in this blessed climate,’ said Lockwood, as he pitched his cigar away. ‘Heigh-ho! We ‘re too late for the train to town, I see.’
‘You’d not go back, would you?’
‘I should think I would! That old den in the upper castle-yard is not very cheery or very nice, but there is a chair to sit on, and a review and a newspaper to read. A tour in a country and with a climate like this is a mistake.’
‘I suspect it is,’ said Walpole drearily.
‘There is nothing to see, no one to talk to, nowhere to stop at!’
‘All true,’ muttered the other. ‘By the way, haven’t we some plan or project for to-day – something about an old castle or an abbey to see?’
‘Yes, and the waiter brought me a letter. I think it was addressed to you, and I left it on my dressing-table. I had forgotten all about it. I’ll go and fetch it.’
Short as his absence was, it gave Walpole time enough to recur to his late judgment on his tour, and once more call it a ‘mistake, a complete mistake.’ The Ireland of wits, dramatists, and romance-writers was a conventional thing, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rain-soaked, dreary-looking, depressed reality. ‘These Irish, they are odd without being droll, just as they are poor without being picturesque; but of all the delusions we nourish about them, there is not one so thoroughly absurd as to call them dangerous.’
He had just arrived at this mature opinion, when his friend re-entered and handed him the note.
‘Here is a piece of luck. Per Bacco!’ cried Walpole, as he ran over the lines. ‘This beats all I could have hoped for. Listen to this – “Dear Mr. Walpole, – I cannot tell you the delight I feel in the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, which is it? “’
‘Who writes this?’
‘A certain Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whom I knew at Rome; one of the prettiest, cleverest, and nicest girls I ever met in my life.’
‘Not the daughter of that precious Count Kostalergi you have told me such stories of?’
‘The same, but most unlike him in every way. She is here, apparently with an uncle, who is now from home, and she and her cousin invite us to luncheon to-day.’
‘What a lark!’ said the other dryly.
‘We’ll go, of course?’
‘In weather like this?’
‘Why not? Shall we be better off staying here? I now begin to remember how the name of this place was so familiar to me. She was always asking me if I knew or heard of her mother’s brother, the Lord Kilgobbin, and, to tell truth, I fancied some one had been hoaxing her with the name, and never believed that there was even a place with such a designation.’
‘Kilgobbin does not sound like a lordly title. How about Mademoiselle – what is the name?’
‘Kostalergi; they call themselves princes.’
‘With all my heart. I was only going to say, as you’ve got a sort of knack of entanglement – is there, or has there been, anything of that sort here?’
‘Flirtation – a little of what is called “spooning” – but no more. But why do you ask?’
‘First of all, you are an engaged man.’
‘All true, and I mean to keep my engagement. I can’t marry, however, till I get a mission, or something at home as good as a mission. Lady Maude knows that; her friends know it, but none of us imagine that we are to be miserable in the meantime.’
‘I’m not talking of misery. I’d only say, don’t get yourself into any mess. These foreign girls are very wide-awake.’
‘Don’t believe that, Harry; one of our home-bred damsels would give them a distance and beat them in the race for a husband. It’s only in England girls are trained to angle for marriage, take my word for it.’
‘Be it so – I only warn you that if you get into any scrape I’ll accept none of the consequences. Lord Danesbury is ready enough to say that, because I am some ten years older than you, I should have kept you out of mischief. I never contracted for such a bear-leadership; though I certainly told Lady Maude I’d turn Queen’s evidence against you if you became a traitor.’
‘I wonder you never told me that before,’ said Walpole, with some irritation of manner.
‘I only wonder that I told it now!’ replied the other gruffly.
‘Then I am to take it, that in your office of guardian, you’d rather we’d decline this invitation, eh?’
‘I don’t care a rush for it either way, but, looking to the sort of day it is out there, I incline to keep the house.’
‘I don’t mind bad weather, and I’ll go,’ said Walpole, in a way that showed temper was involved in the resolution.
Lockwood made no other reply than heaping a quantity of turf on the fire, and seating himself beside it.
When a man tells his fellow-traveller that he means to go his own road – that companionship has no tie upon him – he virtually declares the partnership dissolved; and while Lockwood sat reflecting over this, he was also canvassing with himself how far he might have been to blame in provoking this hasty resolution.
‘Perhaps he was irritated at my counsels, perhaps the notion of anything like guidance offended him; perhaps it was the phrase, “bear-leadership,” and the half-threat of betraying him, has done the mischief.’ Now the gallant soldier was a slow thinker; it took him a deal of time to arrange the details of any matter in his mind, and when he tried to muster his ideas there were many which would not answer the call, and of those which came, there were not a few which seemed to present themselves in a refractory and unwilling spirit, so that he had almost to suppress a mutiny before he proceeded to his inspection.
Nor did the strong cheroots, which he smoked to clear his faculties and develop his mental resources, always contribute to this end, though their soothing influence certainly helped to make him more satisfied with his judgments.
‘Now, look here, Walpole,’ said he, determining that he would save himself all unnecessary labour of thought by throwing the burden of the case on the respondent – ‘Look here; take a calm view of this thing, and see if it’s quite wise in you to go back into trammels it cost you some trouble to escape from. You call it spooning, but you won’t deny you went very far with that young woman – farther, I suspect, than you’ve told me yet. Eh! is that true or not?’
He waited a reasonable time for a reply, but none coming, he went on – ‘I don’t want a forced confidence. You may say it’s no business of mine, and there I agree with you, and probably if you put me to the question in the same fashion, I’d give you a very short answer. Remember one thing, however, old fellow – I’ve seen a precious deal more of life and the world than you have! From sixteen years of age, when you were hammering away at Greek verbs and some such balderdash at Oxford, I was up at Rangoon with the very fastest set of men – ay, of women too – I ever lived with in all my life. Half of our fellows were killed off by it. Of course people will say climate, climate! but if I were to give you the history of one day – just twenty-four hours of our life up there – you’d say that the wonder is there’s any one alive to tell it.’
He turned around at this, to enjoy the expression of horror and surprise he hoped to have called up, and perceived for the first time that he was alone. He rang the bell, and asked the waiter where the other gentleman had gone, and learned that he had ordered a car, and set out for Kilgobbin Castle more than half an hour before.
‘All right,’ said he fiercely. ‘I wash my hands of it altogether! I’m heartily glad I told him so before he went.’ He smoked on very vigorously for half an hour, the burden of his thoughts being perhaps revealed by the summing-up, as he said, ‘And when you are “in for it,” Master Cecil, and some precious scrape it will be, if I move hand or foot to pull you through it, call me a Major of Marines, that’s all – just call me a Major of Marines!’ The ineffable horror of such an imputation served as matter for reverie for hours.