Lord Kilgobbin

‘And what is he, or how does he aspire to you? Is the vulgar security of competence to live on – is that enough for one like you? is the well-balanced good-breeding of common politeness enough to fill a heart that should be fed on passionate devotion? You may link yourself to mediocrity, but can you humble your nature to resemble it. Do you believe you can plod on the dreary road of life without an impulse or an ambition, or blend your thoughts with those of a man who has neither?’

She stood still and did not utter a word.

‘There are some – I do not know if you are one of them – who have an almost shrinking dread of poverty.’

‘I am not afraid of poverty.’

‘It has but one antidote, I know – intense love! The all-powerful sense of living for another begets indifference to the little straits and trials of narrow fortune, till the mind at last comes to feel how much there is to live for beyond the indulgence of vulgar enjoyments; and if, to crown all, a high ambition be present, there will be an ecstasy of bliss no words can measure.’

‘Have you failed in Ireland?’ asked she suddenly.

‘Failed, so far as to know that a rebellion will only ratify the subjection of the country to England; a reconquest would be slavery. The chronic discontent that burns in every peasant heart will do more than the appeal to arms. It is slow, but it is certain.’

‘And where is your part?’

‘My part is in another land; my fortune is linked with America – that is, if I care to have a fortune.’

‘Come, come, Donogan,’ cried she, calling him inadvertently by his name, ‘men like you do not give up the battle of life so easily. It is the very essence of their natures to resist pressure and defy defeat.’

‘So I could; so I am ready to show myself. Give me but hope. There are high paths to be trodden in more than one region of the globe. There are great prizes to be wrestled for, but it must be by him who would share them with another. Tell me, Nina,’ said he suddenly, lowering his voice to a tone of exquisite tenderness, ‘have you never, as a little child, played at that game of what is called seeking your fortune, wandered out into some thick wood or along a winding rivulet, to meet whatever little incident imagination might dignify into adventure; and in the chance heroism of your situation have you not found an intense delight? And if so in childhood, why not see if adult years cannot renew the experience? Why not see if the great world be not as dramatic as the small one? I should say it is still more so. I know you have courage.’

‘And what will courage do for me?’ asked she, after a pause.

‘For you, not much; for me, everything.’

‘I do not understand you.’

‘I mean this – that if that stout heart could dare the venture and trust its fate to me – to me, poor, outlawed, and doomed – there would be a grander heroism in a girl’s nature than ever found home in a man’s.’

‘And what should I be?’

‘My wife within an hour; my idol while I live.’

‘There are some who would give this another name than courage,’ said she thoughtfully.

‘Let them call it what they will, Nina. Is it not to the unbounded trust of a nature that is above all others that I, poor, unknown, ignoble as I am, appeal when I ask, Will you be mine? One word – only one – or, better still – ’

He clasped her in his arms as he spoke, and drawing her head towards his, kissed her cheek rapturously.

With wild and fervent words, he now told her rapidly that he had come prepared to make her the declaration, and had provided everything, in the event of her compliance, for their flight. By an unused path through the bog they could gain the main road to Maryborough, where a priest, well known in the Fenian interest, would join them in marriage. The officials of the railroad were largely imbued with the Nationalist sentiment, and Donogan could be sure of safe crossing to Kilkenny, where the members of the party were in great force.

In a very few words he told her how, by the mere utterance of his name, he could secure the faithful services and the devotion of the people in every town or village of the kingdom. ‘The English have done this for us,’ cried he, ‘and we thank them for it. They have popularised rebellion in a way that all our attempts could never have accomplished. How could I, for instance, gain access to those little gatherings at fair or market, in the yard before the chapel, or the square before the court-house – how could I be able to explain to those groups of country-people what we mean by a rising in Ireland? what we purpose by a revolt against England? how it is to be carried on, or for whose benefit? what the prizes of success, what the cost of failure? Yet the English have contrived to embody all these in one word, and that word my name!’

There was a certain artifice, there is no doubt, in the way in which this poorly-clad and not distinguished-looking man contrived to surround himself with attributes of power and influence; and his self-reliance imparted to his voice as he spoke a tone of confidence that was actually dignified. And besides this, there was personal daring – for his life was on the hazard, and it was the very contingency of which he seemed to take the least heed.

Not less adroit, too, was the way in which he showed what a shock and amazement her conduct would occasion in that world of her acquaintances – that world which had hitherto regarded her as essentially a pleasure-seeker, self-indulgent and capricious. ‘“Which of us all,” will they say, “could have done what that girl has done? Which of us, having the world at her feet, her destiny at her very bidding, would go off and brave the storms of life out of the heroism of her own nature? How we all misread her nature! how wrongfully and unfairly we judged her! In what utter ignorance of her real character was every interpretation we made! How scornfully has she, by one act, replied to all our misconstruction of her! What a sarcasm on all our worldliness is her devotion!”’

He was eloquent, after a fashion, and he had, above most men, the charm of a voice of singular sweetness and melody. It was clear as a bell, and he could modulate its tones till, like the drip, drip of water on a rock, they fell one by one upon the ear. Masses had often been moved by the power of his words, and the mesmeric influence of persuasiveness was a gift to do him good service now.

There was much in the man that she liked. She liked his rugged boldness and determination; she liked his contempt for danger and his self-reliance; and, essentially, she liked how totally different he was to all other men. He had not their objects, their hopes, their fears, and their ways. To share the destiny of such a man was to ensure a life that could not pass unrecorded. There might be storm, and even shipwreck, but there was notoriety – perhaps even fame!

And how mean and vulgar did all the others she had known seem by comparison with him – how contemptible the polished insipidity of Walpole, how artificial the neatly-turned epigrams of Atlee. How would either of these have behaved in such a moment of danger as this man’s? Every minute he passed there was another peril to his life, and yet he had no thought for himself – his whole anxiety was to gain time to appeal to her. He told her she was more to him than his ambition – she saw herself she was more to him than life. The whirlwind rapidity of his eloquence also moved her, and the varied arguments he addressed – now to her heroism, now to her self-sacrifice, now to the power of her beauty, now to the contempt she felt for the inglorious lives of commonplace people – the ignoble herd who passed unnoticed. All these swayed her; and after a long interval, in which she heard him without a word, she said, in a low murmur to herself, ‘I will do it.’

Donogan clasped her to his heart as she said it, and held her some seconds in a fast embrace. ‘At last I know what it is to love,’ cried he, with rapture.

‘Look there!’ cried she, suddenly disengaging herself from his arm. ‘They are in the drawing-room already. I can see them as they pass the windows. I must go back, if it be for a moment, as I should be missed.’

‘Can I let you leave me now?’ he said, and the tears were in his eyes as he spoke.

‘I have given you my word, and you may trust me,’ said she, as she held out her hand.

‘I was forgetting this document: this is the lease or the agreement I told you of.’ She took it, and hurried away.

In less than five minutes afterwards she was among the company in the drawing-room.

‘Here have I been singing a rebel ballad, Nina,’ said Kate, ‘and not knowing the while it was Mr. Atlee who wrote it.’

‘What, Mr. Atlee,’ cried Nina, ‘is the “Time to begin” yours?’ And then, without waiting for an answer, she seated herself at the piano, and striking the chords of the accompaniment with a wild and vigorous hand, she sang —

‘If the moment is come and the hour to need us,If we stand man to man, like kindred and kin;If we know we have one who is ready to lead us,What want we for more than the word to begin?’

The wild ring of defiance in which her clear, full voice gave out these words, seemed to electrify all present, and to a second or two of perfect silence a burst of applause followed, that even Curtis, with all his loyalty, could not refrain from joining.

‘Thank God, you’re not a man, Miss Nina!’ cried he fervently.

‘I’m not sure she’s not more dangerous as she is,’ said Lord Kilgobbin. ‘There’s people out there in the bog, starving and half-naked, would face the Queen’s Guards if they only heard her voice to cheer them on. Take my word for it, rebellion would have died out long ago in Ireland if there wasn’t the woman’s heart to warm it.’

‘If it were not too great a liberty, Mademoiselle Kostalergi,’ said Joe,’ I should tell you that you have not caught the true expression of my song. The brilliant bravura in which you gave the last line, immensely exciting as it was, is not correct. The whole force consists in the concentrated power of a fixed resolve – the passage should be subdued.’

An insolent toss of the head was all Nina’s reply, and there was a stillness in the room, as, exchanging looks with each other, the different persons there expressed their amazement at Atlee’s daring.

‘Who’s for a rubber of whist?’ said Lord Kilgobbin, to relieve the awkward pause. ‘Are you, Curtis? Atlee, I know, is ready.’

‘Here is all prepared,’ said Dick. ‘Captain Curtis told me before dinner that he would not like to go to bed till he had his sergeant’s report, and so I have ordered a broiled bone to be ready at one o’clock, and we’ll sit up as late as he likes after.’

‘Make the stake pounds and fives,’ cried Joe, ‘and I should pronounce your arrangements perfection.’

‘With this amendment,’ interposed my lord, ‘that nobody is expected to pay!’

‘I say, Joe,’ whispered Dick, as they drew nigh the table, ‘my cousin is angry with you; why have you not asked her to sing?’

‘Because she expects it; because she’s tossing over the music yonder to provoke it; because she’s in a furious rage with me: that will be nine points of the game in my favour,’ hissed he out between his teeth.

‘You are utterly wrong – you mistake her altogether.’

‘Mistake a woman! Dick, will you tell me what I do know, if I do not read every turn and trick of their tortuous nature? They are occasionally hard to decipher when they’re displeased. It’s very big print indeed when they’re angry.’

‘You’re off, are you?’ asked Nina, as Kate was about to leave.

‘Yes; I’m going to read to him.’

‘To read to him!’ said Nina, laughing. ‘How nice it sounds, when one sums up all existence in a pronoun. Good-night, dearest – good-night,’ and she kissed her twice. And then, as Kate reached the door, she ran towards her, and said, ‘Kiss me again, my dearest Kate!’

‘I declare you have left a tear upon my cheek,’ said Kate.

‘It was about all I could give you as a wedding-present,’ muttered Nina, as she turned away.

‘Are you come to study whist, Nina?’ said Lord Kilgobbin, as she drew nigh the table.

‘No, my lord; I have no talent for games, but I like to look at the players.’

Joe touched Dick with his foot, and shot a cunning glance towards him, as though to say, ‘Was I not correct in all I said?’

‘Couldn’t you sing us something, my dear? we’re not such infatuated gamblers that we’ll not like to hear you – eh, Atlee?’

‘Well, my lord, I don’t know, I’m not sure – that is, I don’t see how a memory for trumps is to be maintained through the fascinating charm of mademoiselle’s voice. And as for cards, it’s enough for Miss Kostalergi to be in the room to make one forget not only the cards, but the Fenians.’

‘If it was only out of loyalty, then, I should leave you!’ said she, and walked proudly away.

CHAPTER LXXXIV

NEXT MORNING

The whist-party did not break up till nigh morning. The sergeant had once appeared at the drawing-room to announce that all was quiet without. There had been no sign of any rising of the people, nor any disposition to molest the police. Indeed, so peaceful did everything look, and such an air of easy indifference pervaded the country, the police were half disposed to believe that the report of Donogan being in the neighbourhood was unfounded, and not impossibly circulated to draw off attention from some other part of the country.

This was also Lord Kilgobbin’s belief. ‘The man has no friends, or even warm followers, down here. It was the merest accident first led him to this part of the country, where, besides, we are all too poor to be rebels. It’s only down in Meath, where the people are well off, and rents are not too high, that people can afford to be Fenians.’

While he was enunciating this fact to Curtis, they were walking up and down the breakfast-room, waiting for the appearance of the ladies to make tea.

‘I declare it’s nigh eleven o’clock,’ said Curtis, ‘and I meant to have been over two baronies before this hour.’

‘Don’t distress yourself, captain. The man was never within fifty miles of where we are. And why would he? It is not the Bog of Allen is the place for a revolution.’

‘It’s always the way with the people at the Castle,’ grumbled out Curtis. ‘They know more of what’s going on down the country than we that live here! It’s one despatch after another. Head-centre Such-a-one is at the “Three Cripples.” He slept there two nights; he swore in fifteen men last Saturday, and they’ll tell you where he bought a pair of corduroy breeches, and what he ate for his breakfast – ’

‘I wish we had ours,’ broke in Kilgobbin. ‘Where’s Kate all this time?’

‘Papa, papa, I want you for a moment; come here to me quickly,’ cried Kate, whose head appeared for a moment at the door. ‘Here’s very terrible tidings, papa dearest,’ said she, as she drew him along towards his study. ‘Nina is gone! Nina has run away!’

‘Run away for what?’

‘Run away to be married; and she is married. Read this, or I’ll read it for you. A country boy has just brought it from Maryborough.’

Like a man stunned almost to insensibility, Kearney crossed his hands before him, and sat gazing out vacantly before him.

‘Can you listen to me? can you attend to me, dear papa?’

‘Go on,’ said he, in a faint voice.

‘It is written in a great hurry, and very hard to read. It runs thus: “Dearest, – I have no time for explainings nor excuses, if I were disposed to make either, and I will confine myself to a few facts. I was married this morning to Donogan – the rebel: I know you have added the word, and I write it to show how our sentiments are united. As people are prone to put into the lottery the number they have dreamed of, I have taken my ticket in this greatest of all lotteries on the same wise grounds. I have been dreaming adventures ever since I was a little child, and it is but natural that I marry an adventurer.”’

A deep groan from the old man made her stop; but as she saw that he was not changed in colour or feature, she went on —

‘“He says he loves me very dearly, and that he will treat me well. I like to believe both, and I do believe them. He says we shall be very poor for the present, but that he means to become something or somebody later on. I do not much care for the poverty, if there is hope; and he is a man to hope with and to hope from.

‘“You are, in a measure, the cause of all, since it was to tell me he would send away all the witnesses against your husband, that is to be, that I agreed to meet him, and to give me the lease which Miss O’Shea was so rash as to place in Gill’s hands. This I now send you.”’

‘And this she has sent you, Kate?’ asked Kilgobbin.

‘Yes, papa, it is here, and the master of the Swallow’s receipt for Gill as a passenger to Quebec.’

‘Read on.’

‘There is little more, papa, except what I am to say to you – to forgive her.’

‘I can’t forgive her. It was deceit – cruel deceit.’

‘It was not, papa. I could swear there was no forethought. If there had been, she would have told me. She told me everything. She never loved Walpole; she could not love him. She was marrying him with a broken heart. It was not that she loved another, but she knew she could have loved another.’

‘Don’t talk such muddle to me,’ said he angrily. ‘You fancy life is to be all courting, but it isn’t. It’s house-rent, and butchers’ bills, and apothecaries, and the pipe water – it’s shoes, and schooling, and arrears of rent, and rheumatism, and flannel waistcoats, and toothache have a considerable space in Paradise!’ And there was a grim comicality in his utterance of the word.

‘She said no more than the truth of herself,’ broke in Kate. ‘With all her queenly ways, she could face poverty bravely – I know it.’

‘So you can – any of you, if a man’s making love to you. You care little enough what you eat, and not much more what you wear, if he tells you it becomes you; but that’s not the poverty that grinds and crushes. It’s what comes home in sickness; it’s what meets you in insolent letters, in threats of this or menaces of that. But what do you know about it, or why do I speak of it? She’s married a man that could be hanged if the law caught him, and for no other reason, that I see, than because he’s a felon.’

‘I don’t think you are fair to her, papa.’

‘Of course I’m not. Is it likely that at sixty I can be as great a fool as I was at sixteen?’

‘So that means that you once thought in the same way that she does?’

‘I didn’t say any such thing, miss,’ said he angrily. ‘Did you tell Miss Betty what’s happened us?’

‘I just broke it to her, papa, and she made me run away and read the note to you. Perhaps you’ll come and speak to her?’

‘I will,’ said he, rising and preparing to leave the room. ‘I’d rather hear I was a bankrupt this morning than that news!’ And he mounted the stairs, sighing heavily as he went.

‘Isn’t this fine news the morning has brought us, Miss Betty!’ cried he, as he entered the room with a haggard look, and hands clasped before him. ‘Did you ever dream there was such disgrace in store for us?’

‘This marriage, you mean,’ said the old lady dryly.

‘Of course I do – if you call it a marriage at all.’

‘I do call it a marriage – here’s Father Tierney’s certificate, a copy made in his own handwriting: “Daniel Donogan, M.P., of Killamoyle and Innismul, County Kilkenny, to Virginia Kostalergi, of no place in particular, daughter of Prince Kostalergi, of the same localities, contracted in holy matrimony this morning at six o’clock, and witnessed likewise by Morris McCabe, vestry clerk – Mary Kestinogue, her mark.” Do you want more than that?’

‘Do I want more? Do I want a respectable wedding? Do I want a decent man – a gentleman – a man fit to maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have behaved? Is this what we thought of her?’

‘It is not, Mat Kearney – you say truth. I never believed so well of her till now. I never believed before that she had anything in her head but to catch one of those English puppies, with their soft voices and their sneers about Ireland. I never saw her that she wasn’t trying to flatter them, and to please them, and to sing them down, as she called it herself – the very name fit for it! And that she had the high heart to take a man not only poor, but with a rope round his neck, shows me how I wronged her. I could give her five thousand this morning to make her a dowry, and to prove how I honour her.’

‘Can any one tell who he is? What do we know of him?’

‘All Ireland knows of him; and, after all, Mat Kearney, she has only done what her mother did before her.’

‘Poor Matty!’ said Kearney, as he drew his hand across his eyes.

‘Ay, ay! Poor Matty, if you like; but Matty was a beauty run to seed, and, like the rest of them, she married the first good-looking vagabond she saw. Now, this girl was in the very height and bloom of her beauty, and she took a fellow for other qualities than his whiskers or his legs. They tell me he isn’t even well-looking – so that I have hopes of her.’

‘Well, well,’ said Kearney, ‘he has done you a good turn, anyhow – he has got Peter Gill out of the country.’

‘And it’s the one thing that I can’t forgive him, Mat, just the one thing that’s fretting me now. I was living in hopes to see that scoundrel Peter on the table, and Counsellor Holmes baiting him in a cross-examination. I wanted to see how the lawyer wouldn’t leave him a rag of character or a strip of truth to cover himself with. How he’d tear off his evasions, and confront him with his own lies, till he wouldn’t know what he was saying or where he was sitting! I wanted to hear the description he would give of him to the jury; and I’d go home to my dinner after that, and not wait for the verdict.’

‘All the same, I’m glad we’re rid of Peter.’

‘Of course you are. You’re a man, and well pleased when your enemy runs away; but if you were a woman, Mat Kearney, you’d rather he’d stand out boldly and meet you, and fight his battle to the end. But they haven’t done with me yet. I’ll put that little blackguard attorney, that said my letter was a lease, into Chancery; and it will go hard with me if I don’t have him struck off the rolls. There’s a small legacy of five hundred pounds left me the other day, and, with the blessing of Providence, the Common Pleas shall have it. Don’t shake your head, Mat Kearney. I’m not robbing any one. Your daughter will have enough and to spare – ’

‘Oh, godmother,’ cried Kate imploringly.

‘It wasn’t I, my darling, that said the five hundred would be better spent on wedding-clothes or house-linen. That delicate and refined suggestion was your father’s. It was his lordship made the remark.’

It was a fortunate accident at that conjuncture that a servant should announce the arrival of Mr. Flood, the Tory J.P., who, hearing of Donogan’s escape, had driven over to confer with his brother magistrate. Lord Kilgobbin was not sorry to quit the field, where he’d certainly earned few laurels, and hastened down to meet his colleague.

CHAPTER LXXXV

THE END

While the two justices and Curtis discussed the unhappy condition of Ireland, and deplored the fact that the law-breaker never appealed in vain to the sympathies of a people whose instincts were adverse to discipline, Flood’s estimate of Donogan went very far to reconcile Kilgobbin to Nina’s marriage.

‘Out of Ireland, you’ll see that man has stuff in him to rise to eminence and station. All the qualities of which home manufacture would only make a rebel will combine to form a man of infinite resource and energy in America. Have you never imagined, Mr. Kearney, that if a man were to employ the muscular energy to make his way through a drawing-room that he would use to force his passage through a mob, the effort would be misplaced, and the man himself a nuisance? Our old institutions, with all their faults, have certain ordinary characteristics that answer to good-breeding and good manners – reverence for authority, respect for the gradations of rank, dislike to civil convulsion, and such like. We do not sit tamely by when all these are threatened with overthrow; but there are countries where there are fewer of these traditions, and men like Donogan find their place there.’

While they debated such points as these within-doors, Dick Kearney and Atlee sat on the steps of the hall door and smoked their cigars.

‘I must say, Joe,’ said Dick, ‘that your accustomed acuteness cuts but a very poor figure in the present case. It was no later than last night you told me that Nina was madly in love with you. Do you remember, as we went upstairs to bed, what you said on the landing? “That girl is my own. I may marry her to-morrow, or this day three months.”’