Lord Kilgobbin

‘I have outstayed my leave,’ muttered Gorman, in a tremulous tone. ‘I hope my colonel, with that bland mercy which characterises him, will forgive my fault, and let me ask his pardon.’ And with this, he knelt down on one knee before her, and kissed her hand.

‘What liberties are these, sir?’ cried she, so angrily, that it was not easy to say whether the anger was not real.

‘It is the latest rule introduced into our service,’ said he, with mock humility.

‘Is that a comedy they are acting yonder,’ said Walpole, ‘or is it a proverb?’

‘Whatever the drama,’ replied Kate coldly, ‘I don’t think they want a public.’

‘You may go back to your duty, Herr Lieutenant,’ said Nina proudly, and with a significant glance towards Kate. ‘Indeed, I suspect you have been rather neglecting it of late.’ And with this she sailed majestically away towards the end of the room.

‘I wish I could provoke even that much of jealousy from the other,’ muttered Gorman to himself, as he bit his lip in passion. And certainly, if a look and manner of calm unconcern meant anything, there was little that seemed less likely.

‘I am glad you are going to the piano, Nina,’ said Kate. ‘Mr. Walpole has been asking me by what artifice you could be induced to sing something of Mendelssohn.’

‘I am going to sing an Irish ballad for that Austrian patriot, who, like his national poet, thinks “Ireland a beautiful country to live out of.”’ Though a haughty toss of her head accompanied these words, there was a glance in her eye towards Gorman that plainly invited a renewal of their half-flirting hostilities.

‘When I left it, you had not been here,’ said he, with an obsequious tone, and an air of deference only too marked in its courtesy.

A slight, very faint blush on her cheek showed that she rather resented than accepted the flattery, but she appeared to be occupied in looking through the music-books, and made no rejoinder.

‘We want Mendelssohn, Nina,’ said Kate.

‘Or at least Spohr,’ added Walpole.

‘I never accept dictation about what I sing,’ muttered Nina, only loud enough to be overheard by Gorman. ‘People don’t tell you what theme you are to talk on; they don’t presume to say, “Be serious or be witty.” They don’t tell you to come to the aid of their sluggish natures by passion, or to dispel their dreariness by flights of fancy; and why are they to dare all this to us who speak through song?’

‘Just because you alone can do these things,’ said Gorman, in the same low voice as she had spoken in.

‘Can I help you in your search, dearest?’ said Kate, coming over to the piano.

‘Might I hope to be of use?’ asked Walpole.

‘Mr. O’Shea wants me to sing something for him,’ said Nina coldly. ‘What is it to be?’ asked she of Gorman. With the readiness of one who could respond to any sudden call upon his tact, Gorman at once took up a piece of music from the mass before him, and said, ‘Here is what I have been searching for.’ It was a little Neapolitan ballad, of no peculiar beauty, but one of those simple melodies in which the rapid transition from deep feeling to a wild, almost reckless, gaiety imparts all the character.

‘Yes, I’ll sing that,’ said Nina; and almost in the same breath the notes came floating through the air, slow and sad at first, as though labouring under some heavy sorrow; the very syllables faltered on her lips like a grief struggling for utterance – when, just as a thrilling cadence died slowly away, she burst forth into the wildest and merriest strain, something so impetuous in gaiety, that the singer seemed to lose all control of expression, and floated away in sound with every caprice of enraptured imagination. When in the very whirlwind of this impetuous gladness, as though a memory of a terrible sorrow had suddenly crossed her, she ceased; then, in tones of actual agony, her voice rose to a cry of such utter misery as despair alone could utter. The sounds died slowly away as though lingeringly. Two bold chords followed, and she was silent.

None spoke in the room. Was this real passion, or was it the mere exhibition of an accomplished artist, who could call up expression at will, as easily as a painter could heighten colour? Kate Kearney evidently believed the former, as her heaving chest and her tremulous lip betrayed, while the cold, simpering smile on Walpole’s face, and the ‘brava, bravissima’ in which he broke the silence, vouched how he had interpreted that show of emotion.

‘If that is singing, I wonder what is crying,’ cried old Kearney, while he wiped his eyes, very angry at his own weakness.’ And now will any one tell me what it was all about?’

‘A young girl, sir,’ replied Gorman, ‘who, by a great effort, has rallied herself to dispel her sorrow and be merry, suddenly remembers that her sweetheart may not love her, and the more she dwells on the thought, the more firmly she believes it. That was the cry, “He never loved me,” that went to all our hearts.’

‘Faith, then, if Nina has to say that,’ said the old man, ‘Heaven help the others.’

‘Indeed, uncle, you are more gallant than all these young gentlemen,’ said Nina, rising and approaching him.

‘Why they are not all at your feet this moment is more than I can tell. They’re always telling me the world is changed, and I begin to see it now.’

‘I suspect, sir, it’s pretty much what it used to be,’ lisped out Walpole. ‘We are only less demonstrative than our fathers.’

‘Just as I am less extravagant than mine,’ cried Kilgobbin, ‘because I have not got it to spend.’

‘I hope Mademoiselle Nina judges us more mercifully,’ said Walpole.

‘Is that song a favourite of yours?’ asked she of Gorman, without noticing Walpole’s remark in any way.

‘No,’ said he bluntly; ‘it makes me feel like a fool, and, I am afraid, look like one too, when I hear it.’

‘I’m glad there’s even that much blood in you,’ cried old Kearney, who had caught the words. ‘Oh dear! oh dear! England need never be afraid of the young generation.’

‘That seems to be a very painful thought to you, sir,’ said Walpole.

‘And so it is,’ replied he. ‘The lower we bend, the more you’ll lay on us. It was your language, and what you call your civilisation, broke us down first, and the little spirit that fought against either is fast dying out of us.’

‘Do you want Mr. Walpole to become a Fenian, papa?’ asked Kate.

‘You see, they took him for one to-day,’ broke in Dick, ‘when they came and carried off all his luggage.’

‘By the way,’ interposed Walpole, ‘we must take care that that stupid blunder does not get into the local papers, or we shall have it circulated by the London press.’

‘I have already thought of that,’ said Dick, ‘and I shall go into Moate to-morrow and see about it.’

‘Does that mean to say that you desert croquet?’ said Nina imperiously.

‘You have got Lieutenant O’Shea in my place, and a better player than me already.’

‘I fear I must take my leave to-morrow,’ said Gorman, with a touch of real sorrow, for in secret he knew not whither he was going.

‘Would your aunt not spare you to us for a few days?’ said the old man. ‘I am in no favour with her just now, but she would scarcely refuse what we would all deem a great favour.’

‘My aunt would not think the sacrifice too much for her,’ said Gorman, trying to laugh at the conceit.

‘You shall stay,’ murmured Nina, in a tone only audible to him; and by a slight bow he acknowledged the words as a command.

‘I believe my best way,’ said Gorman gaily, ‘will be to outstay my leave, and take my punishment, whatever it be, when I go back again.’

‘That is military morality,’ said Walpole, in a half-whisper to Kate, but to be overheard by Nina. ‘We poor civilians don’t understand how to keep a debtor and creditor account with conscience.’

‘Could you manage to provoke that man to quarrel with you?’ said Nina secretly to Gorman, while her eyes glanced towards Walpole.

‘I think I might; but what then? He wouldn’t fight, and the rest of England would shun me.’

‘That is true,’ said she slowly. ‘When any is injured here, he tries to make money out of it. I don’t suppose you want money?’

‘Not earned in that fashion, certainly. But I think they are saying good-night.’

‘They’re always boasting about the man that found out the safety-lamp,’ said old Kearney, as he moved away; ‘but give me the fellow that invented a flat candlestick!’

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.