Lord Kilgobbin

‘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.’

CHAPTER XLVIII

HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE

‘Is it true they have captured Donogan?’ said Nina, coming hurriedly into the library, where Walpole was busily engaged with his correspondence, and sat before a table covered not only with official documents, but a number of printed placards and handbills.

He looked up, surprised at her presence, and by the tone of familiarity in her question, for which he was in no way prepared, and for a second or two actually stared at without answering her.

‘Can’t you tell me? Are they correct in saying he has been caught?’ cried she impatiently.

‘Very far from it. There are the police returns up to last night from Meath, Kildare, and Dublin; and though he was seen at Naas, passed some hours in Dublin, and actually attended a night meeting at Kells, all trace of him has been since lost, and he has completely baffled us. By the Viceroy’s orders, I am now doubling the reward for his apprehension, and am prepared to offer a free pardon to any who shall give information about him, who may not actually have committed a felony.’

‘Is he so very dangerous, then?’

‘Every man who is so daring is dangerous here. The people have a sort of idolatry for reckless courage. It is not only that he has ventured to come back to the country where his life is sacrificed to the law, but he declares openly he is ready to offer himself as a representative for an Irish county, and to test in his own person whether the English will have the temerity to touch the man – the choice of the Irish people.’

‘He is bold,’ said she resolutely.

‘And I trust he will pay for his boldness! Our law-officers are prepared to treat him as a felon, irrespective of all claim to his character as a Member of Parliament.’

‘The danger will not deter him.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know it,’ was the calm reply.

‘Indeed,’ said he, bending a steady look at her. ‘What opportunities, might I ask, have you had to form this same opinion?’

‘Are not the public papers full of him? Have we not an almost daily record of his exploits? Do not your own rewards for his capture impart an almost fabulous value to his life?’

‘His portrait, too, may lend some interest to his story,’ said he, with a half-sneering smile. ‘They say this is very like him.’ And he handed a photograph as he spoke.

‘This was done in New York,’ said she, turning to the back of the card, the better to hide an emotion she could not entirely repress.

‘Yes, done by a brother Fenian, long since in our pay.’

‘How base all that sounds! how I detest such treachery!’

‘How deal with treason without it? Is it like him?’ asked he artlessly.

‘How should I know?’ said she, in a slightly hurried tone. ‘It is not like the portrait in the Illustrated News.’

‘I wonder which is the more like,’ added he thoughtfully, ‘and I fervently hope we shall soon know. There is not a man he confides in who has not engaged to betray him.’

‘I trust you feel proud of your achievement.’

‘No, not proud, but very anxious for its success. The perils of this country are too great for mere sensibilities. He who would extirpate a terrible disease must not fear the knife.’

‘Not if he even kill the patient?’ asked she.

‘That might happen, and would be to be deplored,’ said he, in the same unmoved tone. ‘But might I ask, whence has come all this interest for this cause, and how have you learned so much sympathy with these people?’

‘I read the newspapers,’ said she dryly.

‘You must read those of only one colour, then,’ said he slyly; ‘or perhaps it is the tone of comment you hear about you. Are your sentiments such as you daily listen to from Lord Kilgobbin and his family?’

‘I don’t know that they are. I suspect I’m more of a rebel than he is; but I’ll ask him if you wish it.’

‘On no account, I entreat you. It would compromise me seriously to hear such a discussion even in jest. Remember who I am, mademoiselle, and the office I hold.’

‘Your great frankness, Mr. Walpole, makes me sometimes forget both,’ said she, with well-acted humility.

‘I wish it would do something more,’ said he eagerly. ‘I wish it would inspire a little emulation, and make you deal as openly with me as I long to do with you.’

‘It might embarrass you very much, perhaps.’

‘As how?’ asked he, with a touch of tenderness in his voice.

For a second or two she made no answer, and then, faltering at each word, she said, ‘What if some rebel leader – this man Donogan, for instance – drawn towards you b some secret magic of trustfulness, moved by I know not what need of your sympathy – for there is such a craving void now and then felt in the heart – should tell you some secret thought of his nature – something that he could utter alone to himself – would you bring yourself to use it against him? Could you turn round and say, “I have your inmost soul in my keeping. You are mine now – mine – mine?”’

‘Do I understand you aright?’ said he earnestly. ‘Is it just possible, even possible, that you have that to confide to me which would show that you regard me as a dear friend?’

‘Oh! Mr. Walpole,’ burst she out passionately, ‘do not by the greater power of your intellect seek the mastery over mine. Let the loneliness and isolation of my life here rather appeal to you to pity than suggest the thought of influencing and dominating me.’

‘Would that I might. What would I not give or do to have that power that you speak of.’

‘Is this true?’ said she.

‘It is.’

‘Will you swear it?’

‘Most solemnly.’

She paused for a moment, and a slight tremor shook her mouth; but whether the motion expressed a sentiment of acute pain or a movement of repressed sarcasm, it was very difficult to determine.

‘What is it, then, that you would swear?’ asked she calmly and even coldly.

‘Swear that I have no hope so high, no ambition so great, as to win your heart.’

‘Indeed! And that other heart that you have won – what is to become of it?’

‘Its owner has recalled it. In fact, it was never in my keeping but as a loan.’

‘How strange! At least, how strange to me this sounds. I, in my ignorance, thought that people pledged their very lives in these bargains.’

‘So it ought to be, and so it would be, if this world were not a web of petty interests and mean ambitions; and these, I grieve to say, will find their way into hearts that should be the home of very different sentiments. It was of this order was that compact with my cousin – for I will speak openly to you, knowing it is her to whom you allude. We were to have been married. It was an old engagement. Our friends – that is, I believe, the way to call them – liked it. They thought it a good thing for each of us. Indeed, making the dependants of a good family intermarry is an economy of patronage – the same plank rescues two from drowning. I believe – that is, I fear – we accepted all this in the same spirit. We were to love each other as much as we could, and our relations were to do their best for us.’

‘And now it is all over?’

‘All – and for ever.’

‘How came this about?’

‘At first by a jealousy about you.’

‘A jealousy about me! You surely never dared – ’ and here her voice trembled with real passion, while her eyes flashed angrily.

‘No, no. I am guiltless in the matter. It was that cur Atlee made the mischief. In a moment of weak trustfulness, I sent him over to Wales to assist my uncle in his correspondence. He, of course, got to know Lady Maude Bickerstaffe – by what arts he ingratiated himself into her confidence, I cannot say. Indeed, I had trusted that the fellow’s vulgarity would form an impassable barrier between them, and prevent all intimacy; but, apparently, I was wrong. He seems to have been the companion of her rides and drives, and under the pretext of doing some commissions for her in the bazaars of Constantinople, he got to correspond with her. So artful a fellow would well know what to make of such a privilege.’

‘And is he your successor now?’ asked she, with a look of almost undisguised insolence.

‘Scarcely that,’ said he, with a supercilious smile. ‘I think, if you had ever seen my cousin, you would scarcely have asked the question.’

‘But I have seen her. I saw her at the Odescalchi Palace at Rome. I remember the stare she was pleased to bestow on me as she swept past me. I remember more, her words as she asked, “Is this your Titian Girl I have heard so much of?”’

‘And may hear more of,’ muttered he, almost unconsciously.

‘Yes – even that too; but not, perhaps, in the sense you mean.’ Then, as if correcting herself, she went on, ‘It was a bold ambition of Mr. Atlee. I must say I like the very daring of it.’

‘He never dared it – take my word for it.’

An insolent laugh was her first reply. ‘How little you men know of each other, and how less than little you know of us! You sneer at the people who are moved by sudden impulse, but you forget it is the squall upsets the boat.’

‘I believe I can follow what you mean. You would imply that my cousin’s breach with me might have impelled her to listen to Atlee?’

‘Not so much that as, by establishing himself as her confidant, he got the key of her heart, and let himself in as he pleased.’

‘I suspect he found little to interest him there.’

‘The insufferable insolence of that speech! Can you men never be brought to see that we are not all alike to each of you; that our natures have their separate watchwords, and that the soul which would vibrate with tenderness to this, is to that a dead and senseless thing, with no trace or touch of feeling about it?’

‘I only believe this in part.’

‘Believe it wholly, then, or own that you know nothing of love – no more than do those countless thousands who go through life and never taste its real ecstasy, nor its real sorrow; who accept convenience, or caprice, or flattered vanity as its counterfeit, and live out the delusion in lives of discontent. You have done wrong to break with your cousin. It is clear to me you suited each other.’

‘This is sarcasm.’

‘If it is, I am sorry for it. I meant it for sincerity. In your career, ambition is everything. The woman that could aid you on your road would be the real helpmate. She who would simply cross your path by her sympathies, or her affections, would be a mere embarrassment. Take the very case before us. Would not Lady Maude point out to you how, by the capture of this rebel, you might so aid your friends as to establish a claim for recompense? Would she not impress you with the necessity of showing how your activity redounded to the credit of your party? She would neither interpose with ill-timed appeals to your pity or a misplaced sympathy. She would help the politician, while another might hamper the man.’

‘All that might be true, if the game of political life were played as it seems to be on the surface, and my cousin was exactly the sort of woman to use ordinary faculties with ability and acuteness; but there are scores of things in which her interference would have been hurtful, and her secrecy dubious. I will give you an instance, and it will serve to show my implicit confidence in yourself. Now with respect to this man, Donogan, there is nothing we wish less than to take him. To capture means to try – to try means to hang him – and how much better, or safer, or stronger are we when it is done? These fellows, right or wrong, represent opinions that are never controverted by the scaffold, and every man who dies for his convictions leaves a thousand disciples who never believed in him before. It is only because he braves us that we pursue him, and in the face of our opponents and Parliament we cannot do less. So that while we are offering large rewards for his apprehension, we would willingly give double the sum to know he had escaped. Talk of the supremacy of the Law – the more you assert that here, the more ungovernable is this country by a Party. An active Attorney-General is another word for three more regiments in Ireland.’

‘I follow you with some difficulty; but I see that you would like this man to get away, and how is that to be done?’

‘Easily enough, when once he knows that it will be safe for him to go north. He naturally fears the Orangemen of the northern counties. They will, however, do nothing without the police, and the police have got their orders throughout Antrim and Derry. Here – on this strip of paper – here are the secret instructions: – “To George Dargan, Chief Constable, Letterkenny District. Private and confidential. – It is, for many reasons, expedient that the convict Donogan, on a proper understanding that he will not return to Ireland, should be suffered to escape. If you are, therefore, in a position to extort a pledge from him to this extent – and it should be explicit and beyond all cavil – you will, taking due care not to compromise your authority in your office, aid him to leave the country, even to the extent of moneyed assistance.” To this are appended directions how he is to proceed to carry out these instructions: what he may, and what he may not do, with whom he may seek for co-operation, and where he is to maintain a guarded and careful secrecy. Now, in telling you all this, Mademoiselle Kostalergi, I have given you the strongest assurance in my power of the unlimited trust I have in you. I see how the questions that agitate this country interest you. I read the eagerness with which you watch them, but I want you to see more. I want you to see that the men who purpose to themselves the great task of extricating Ireland from her difficulties must be politicians in the highest sense of the word, and that you should see in us statesmen of an order that can weigh human passions and human emotions – and see that hope and fear, and terror and gratitude, sway the hearts of men who, to less observant eyes, seem to have no place in their natures but for rebellion. That this mode of governing Ireland is the one charm to the Celtic heart, all the Tory rule of the last fifty years, with its hangings and banishments and other terrible blunders, will soon convince you. The Priest alone has felt the pulse of this people, and we are the only Ministers of England who have taken the Priest into our confidence. I own to you I claim some credit for myself in this discovery. It was in long reflecting over the ills of Ireland that I came to see that where the malady has so much in its nature that is sensational and emotional, so must the remedy be sensational too. The Tories were ever bent on extirpating —we devote ourselves to “healing measures.” Do you follow me?’