Lord Kilgobbin

It was on a very wet night of that especially rainy month in the Irish calendar, July, that two travellers sat over a turf fire in this sacred chamber, various articles of their attire being spread out to dry before the blaze, the owners of which actually steamed with the effects of the heat upon their damp habiliments. Some fishing-tackle and two knapsacks, which lay in a corner, showed they were pedestrians, and their looks, voice, and manner proclaimed them still more unmistakably to be gentlemen.

One was a tall, sunburnt, soldierlike man of six or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men. A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly ‘safe’ – very meaning epithet – there were no very deep regrets when he ‘exchanged,’ nor was there, perhaps, one man who felt he had lost his ‘pal’ by his going. He was now in the Carbineers, and serving as an extra aide-de-camp to the Viceroy.

Not a little unlike him in most respects was the man who sat opposite him – a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark moustache, and a beard en Henri Quatre, to the effect of which a collar cut in Van Dyck fashion gave an especial significance. Cecil Walpole was disposed to be pictorial in his get-up, and the purple dye of his knickerbocker stockings, the slouching plumage of his Tyrol hat, and the graceful hang of his jacket, had excited envy in quarters where envy was fame. He too was on the viceregal staff, being private secretary to his relative the Lord-Lieutenant, during whose absence in England they had undertaken a ramble to the Westmeath lakes, not very positive whether their object was to angle for trout or to fish for that ‘knowledge of Ireland’ so popularly sought after in our day, and which displays itself so profusely in platform speeches and letters to the Times. Lockwood, not impossibly, would have said it was ‘to do a bit of walking’ he had come. He had gained eight pounds by that indolent Phoenix-Park life he was leading, and he had no fancy to go back to Leicestershire too heavy for his cattle. He was not – few hunting men are – an ardent fisherman; and as for the vexed question of Irish politics, he did not see why he was to trouble his head to unravel the puzzles that were too much for Mr. Gladstone; not to say, that he felt to meddle with these matters was like interfering with another man’s department. ‘I don’t suspect,’ he would say, ‘I should fancy John Bright coming down to “stables” and dictating to me how my Irish horses should be shod, or what was the best bit for a “borer.”’ He saw, besides, that the game of politics was a game of compromises: something was deemed admirable now that had been hitherto almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he pronounced the whole thing an ‘imposition and a humbug.’ ‘I can understand a right and a wrong as well as any man,’ he would say, ‘but I know nothing about things that are neither or both, according to who’s in or who’s out of the Cabinet. Give me the command of twelve thousand men, let me divide them into three flying columns, and if I don’t keep Ireland quiet, draft me into a West Indian regiment, that’s all.’ And as to the idea of issuing special commissions, passing new Acts of Parliament, or suspending old ones, to do what he or any other intelligent soldier could do without any knavery or any corruption, ‘John Bright might tell us,’ but he couldn’t. And here it may be well to observe that it was a favourite form of speech with him to refer to this illustrious public man in this familiar manner; but always to show what a condition of muddle and confusion must ensue if we followed the counsels that name emblematised; nor did he know a more cutting sarcasm to reply to an adversary than when he had said, ‘Oh, John Bright would agree with you,’ or, ‘I don’t think John Bright could go further.’

Of a very different stamp was his companion. He was a young gentleman whom we cannot more easily characterise than by calling him, in the cant of the day, ‘of the period.’ He was essentially the most recent product of the age we live in. Manly enough in some things, he was fastidious in others to the very verge of effeminacy; an aristocrat by birth and by predilection, he made a parade of democratic opinions. He affected a sort of Crichtonism in the variety of his gifts, and as linguist, musician, artist, poet, and philosopher, loved to display the scores of things he might be, instead of that mild, very ordinary young gentleman that he was. He had done a little of almost everything: he had been in the Guards, in diplomacy, in the House for a brief session, had made an African tour, written a pleasant little book about the Nile, with the illustrations by his own hand. Still he was greater in promise than performance. There was an opera of his partly finished; a five-act comedy almost ready for the stage; a half-executed group he had left in some studio in Rome, showed what he might have done in sculpture. When his distinguished relative the Marquis of Danesbury recalled him from his post as secretary of legation in Italy, to join him at his Irish seat of government, the phrase in which he invited him to return is not without its significance, and we give it as it occurred in the context: ‘I have no fancy for the post they have assigned me, nor is it what I had hoped for. They say, however, I shall succeed here. Nous verrons. Meanwhile, I remember your often remarking, “There is a great game to be played in Ireland.” Come over at once, then, and let me have a talk with you over it. I shall manage the question of your leave by making you private secretary for the moment. We shall have many difficulties, but Ireland will be the worst of them. Do not delay, therefore, for I shall only go over to be sworn in, etc., and return for the third reading of the Church Bill, and I should like to see you in Dublin (and leave you there) when I go.’

Except that they were both members of the viceregal household, and English by birth, there was scarcely a tie between these very dissimilar natures; but somehow the accidents of daily life, stronger than the traits of disposition, threw them into intimacy, and they agreed it would be a good thing ‘to see something of Ireland’; and with this wise resolve they had set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken them over the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to the Shannon, but with an infirmity of purpose to which lack of sport and disastrous weather were contributing powerfully at the moment we have presented them to our reader.

To employ the phrase which it is possible each might have used, they ‘liked each other well enough’ – that is, each found something in the other he ‘could get on with’; but there was no stronger tie of regard or friendship between them, and each thought he perceived some flaw of pretension, or affected wisdom, or selfishness, or vanity, in the other, and actually believed he amused himself by its display. In natures, tastes, and dispositions, they were miles asunder, and disagreement between them would have been unceasing on every subject, had they not been gentlemen. It was this alone – this gentleman element – made their companionship possible, and, in the long run, not unpleasant. So much more has good-breeding to do in the common working of daily life than the more valuable qualities of mind and temperament.

Though much younger than his companion, Walpole took the lead in all the arrangements of the journey, determined where and how long they should halt, and decided on the route next to be taken; the other showing a real or affected indifference on all these matters, and making of his town-bred apathy a very serviceable quality in the midst of Irish barbarism and desolation. On politics, too – if that be the name for such light convictions as they entertained – they differed: the soldier’s ideas being formed on what he fancied would be the late Duke of Wellington’s opinion, and consisted in what he called ‘putting down.’ Walpole was a promising Whig; that is, one who coquets with Radical notions, but fastidiously avoids contact with the mob; and who, fervently believing that all popular concessions are spurious if not stamped with Whig approval, would like to treat the democratic leaders as forgers and knaves.

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!’