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‘Come in, major,’ said Kearney. ‘We’re all friends here. Miss O’Shea, this is Major Lockwood, of the Carbineers – Miss O’Shea.’

Lockwood bowed stiffly, but did not speak.

‘Be attentive to the old woman,’ whispered Walpole. ‘A word from her will make your affair all right.’

‘I have been very desirous to have had the honour of this introduction, madam,’ said Lockwood, as he seated himself at her side.

‘Was not that a clever diversion I accomplished with “the Heavy “?’ said Walpole, as he drew away Kearney and his son into a window.

‘I never heard her much worse than to-day,’ said Dick.

‘I don’t know,’ hesitated Kilgobbin. ‘I suspect she is breaking. There is none of the sustained virulence I used to remember of old. She lapses into half-mildness at moments.’

‘I own I did not catch them, nor, I’m afraid, did Nina,’ said Dick. ‘Look there! I’ll be shot if she’s not giving your friend the major a lesson! When she performs in that way with her hands, you may swear she is didactic.’

‘I think I’ll go to his relief,’ said Walpole; ‘but I own it’s a case for the V.C.’

As Walpole drew nigh, he heard her saying: ‘Marry one of your own race, and you will jog on well enough. Marry a Frenchwoman or a Spaniard, and she’ll lead her own life, and be very well satisfied; but a poor Irish girl, with a fresh heart and a joyous temper – what is to become of her, with your dull habits and your dreary intercourse, your county society and your Chinese manners!’

‘Miss O’Shea is telling me that I must not look for a wife among her countrywomen,’ said Lockwood, with a touching attempt to smile.

‘What I overheard was not encouraging,’ said Walpole; ‘but I think Miss O’Shea takes a low estimate of our social temperament.’

‘Nothing of the kind! All I say is, you’ll do mighty well for each other, or, for aught I know, you might intermarry with the Dutch or the Germans; but it’s a downright shame to unite your slow sluggish spirits with the sparkling brilliancy and impetuous joy of an Irish girl. That’s a union I’d never consent to.’

‘I hope this is no settled resolution,’ said Walpole, speaking in a low whisper; ‘for I want to bespeak your especial influence in my friend’s behalf. Major Lockwood is a most impassioned admirer of Miss Kearney, and has already declared as much to her father.’

‘Come over here, Mat Kearney! come over here this moment!’ cried she, half wild with excitement. ‘What new piece of roguery, what fresh intrigue is this? Will you dare to tell me you had a proposal for Kate, for my own god-daughter, without even so much as telling me?’

‘My dear Miss Betty, be calm, be cool for one minute, and I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Ay, when I’ve found it out, Mat!’

‘I profess I don’t think my friend’s pretensions are discussed with much delicacy, time and place considered,’ said Walpole.

‘We have something to think of as well as delicacy, young man: there’s a woman’s happiness to be remembered.’

‘Here it is, now, the whole business,’ said Kearney. ‘The major there asked me yesterday to get my daughter’s consent to his addresses.’

‘And you never told me,’ cried Miss Betty.

‘No, indeed, nor herself neither; for after I turned it over in my mind, I began to see it wouldn’t do – ’

‘How do you mean not do?’ asked Lockwood.

‘Just let me finish. What I mean is this – if a man wants to marry an Irish girl, he mustn’t begin by asking leave to make love to her – ’

‘Mat’s right!’ cried the old lady stoutly.

‘And above all, he oughtn’t to think that the short cut to her heart is through his broad acres.’

‘Mat’s right – quite right!’

‘And besides this, that the more a man dwells on his belongings, and the settlements, and such like, the more he seems to say, “I may not catch your fancy in everything, I may not ride as boldly or dance as well as somebody else, but never mind – you’re making a very prudent match, and there is a deal of pure affection in the Three per Cents.”’

‘And I’ll give you another reason,’ said Miss Betty resolutely. ‘Kate Kearney cannot have two husbands, and I’ve made her promise to marry my nephew this morning.’

‘What, without any leave of mine?’ exclaimed Kearney.

‘Just so, Mat. She’ll marry him if you give your consent; but whether you will or not, she’ll never marry another.’

‘Is there, then, a real engagement?’ whispered Walpole to Kearney. ‘Has my friend here got his answer?’

‘He’ll not wait for another,’ said Lockwood haughtily, as he arose. ‘I’m for town, Cecil,’ whispered he.

‘So shall I be this evening,’ replied Walpole, in the same tone. ‘I must hurry over to London and see Lord Danesbury. I’ve my troubles too.’ And so saying, he drew his arm within the major’s, and led him away; while Miss Betty, with Kearney on one side of her and Dick on the other, proceeded to recount the arrangement she had made to make over the Barn and the estate to Gorman, it being her own intention to retire altogether from the world and finish her days in the ‘Retreat.’

‘And a very good thing to do, too,’ said Kearney, who was too much impressed with the advantages of the project to remember his politeness.

‘I have had enough of it, Mat,’ added she, in a lugubrious tone; ‘and it’s all backbiting, and lying, and mischief-making, and what’s worse, by the people who might live quietly and let others do the same!’

‘What you say is true as the Bible.’

‘It may be hard to do it, Mat Kearney, but I’ll pray for them in my hours of solitude, and in that blessed Retreat I’ll ask for a blessing on yourself, and that your heart, hard and cruel and worldly as it is now, may be changed; and that in your last days – maybe on the bed of sickness – when you are writhing and twisting with pain, with a bad heart and a worse conscience – when you’ll have nobody but hirelings near you – hirelings that will be robbing you before your eyes, and not waiting till the breath leaves you – when even the drop of drink to cool your lips – ’

‘Don’t – don’t go on that way, Miss Betty. I’ve a cold shivering down the spine of my back this minute, and a sickness creeping all over me.’

‘I’m glad of it. I’m glad that my words have power over your wicked old nature – if it’s not too late.’

‘If it’s miserable and wretched you wanted to make me, don’t fret about your want of success; though whether it all comes too late, I cannot tell you.’

‘We’ll leave that to St. Joseph.’

‘Do so! do so!’ cried he eagerly, for he had a shrewd suspicion he would have better chances of mercy at any hands than her own.

‘As for Gorman, if I find that he has any notions about claiming an acre of the property, I’ll put it all into Chancery, and the suit will outlive him; but if he owns he is entirely dependent on my bounty, I’ll settle the Barn and the land on him, and the deed shall be signed the day he marries your daughter. People tell you that you can’t take your money with you into the next world, Mat Kearney, and a greater lie was never uttered. Thanks to the laws of England, and the Court of Equity in particular, it’s the very thing you can do! Ay, and you can provide, besides, that everybody but the people that had a right to it shall have a share. So I say to Gorman O’Shea, beware what you are at, and don’t go on repeating that stupid falsehood about not carrying your debentures into the next world.’

‘You are a wise woman, and you know life well,’ said he solemnly.

‘And if I am, it’s nothing to sigh over, Mr. Kearney. One is grateful for mercies, but does not groan over them like rheumatism or the lumbago.’

‘Maybe I ‘in a little out of spirits to-day.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder if you were. They tell me you sat over your wine, with that tall man, last night, till nigh one o’clock, and it’s not at your time of life that you can do these sort of excesses with impunity; you had a good constitution once, and there’s not much left of it.’

‘My patience, I’m grateful to see, has not quite deserted me.’

‘I hope there’s other of your virtues you can be more sure of,’ said she, rising, ‘for if I was asked your worst failing, I’d say it was your irritability.’ And with a stern frown, as though to confirm the judicial severity of her words, she nodded her head to him and walked away.

It was only then that Kearney discovered he was left alone, and that Dick had stolen away, though when or how he could not say.

‘I’m glad the boy was not listening to her, for I’m downright ashamed that I bore it,’ was his final reflection as he strolled out to take a walk in the plantation.

CHAPTER LXXX

A NEW ARRIVAL

Though the dinner-party that day at Kilgobbin Castle was deficient in the persons of Lockwood and Walpole, the accession of Joe Atlee to the company made up in a great measure for the loss. He arrived shortly before dinner was announced, and even in the few minutes in the drawing-room, his gay and lively manner, his pleasant flow of small talk, dashed with the lightest of epigrams, and that marvellous variety he possessed, made every one delighted with him.

‘I met Walpole and Lockwood at the station, and did my utmost to make them turn back with me. You may laugh, Lord Kilgobbin, but in doing the honours of another man’s house, as I was at that moment, I deem myself without a rival.’

‘I wish with all my heart you had succeeded; there is nothing I like as much as a well-filled table,’ said Kearney.

‘Not that their air and manner,’ resumed Joe, ‘impressed me strongly with the exuberance of their spirits; a pair of drearier dogs I have not seen for some time, and I believe I told them so.’

‘Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it?’ asked Dick.

‘Except on the general grounds of coming away from such fascinating society. Lockwood played sulky, and scarcely vouchsafed a word, and as for Walpole, he made some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn sensibilities – so like what one reads in a French novel, that the very sound of them betrays unreality.’

‘But was it, then, so very impossible to be sorry for leaving this?’ asked Nina calmly.

‘Certainly not for any man but Walpole.’

‘And why not Walpole?’

‘Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and read them so clearly; you to whom the secret anatomy of the “heart” is no mystery, and who understand how to trace the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his small nature. He might be miserable at being separated from himself – there could be no other estrangement would affect him.’

‘This was not always your estimate of your friend,’ said Nina, with a marked emphasis of the last word.

‘Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first hour I met him. Since then, some space of time has intervened, and though it has made no change in him, I hope it has dealt otherwise with me. I have at least reached the point in life where men not only have convictions but avow them.’

‘Come, come; I can remember what precious good-luck you called it to make his acquaintance,’ cried Dick, half angrily.

‘I don’t deny it. I was very nigh drowning at the time, and it was the first plank I caught hold of. I am very grateful to him for the rescue; but I owe him more gratitude for the opportunity the incident gave me to see these men in their intimacy – to know, and know thoroughly, what is the range, what the stamp of those minds by which states are ruled and masses are governed. Through Walpole I knew his master; and through the master I have come to know the slipshod intelligences which, composed of official detail, House of Commons’ gossip, and Times’ leaders, are accepted by us as statesmen. And if – ’ A very supercilious smile on Nina’s mouth arrested him in the current of his speech, and he said, ‘I know, of course, I know the question you are too polite to ask, but which quivers on your lip: “Who is the gifted creature that sees all this incompetence and insufficiency around him?” And I am quite ready to tell you. It is Joseph Atlee – Joseph Atlee, who knows that when he and others like him – for we are a strong coterie – stop the supply of ammunition, these gentlemen must cease firing. Let the Débats and the Times, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the Saturday, and a few more that I need not stop to enumerate, strike work, and let us see how much of original thought you will obtain from your Cabinet sages! It is in the clash and collision of the thinkers outside of responsibility that these world-revered leaders catch the fire that lights up their policy. The Times made the Crimean blunder. The Siècle created the Mexican fiasco. The Kreuz Zeitung gave the first impulse to the Schleswig-Holstein imbroglio; and if I mistake not, the “review” in the last Diplomatic Chronicle will bear results of which he who now speaks to you will not disown the parentage.’

‘The saints be praised! here’s dinner,’ exclaimed Kearney, ‘or this fellow would talk us into a brain-fever. Kate is dining with Miss Betty again – God bless her for it,’ muttered he as he gave his arm to Nina, and led the way.

‘I’ve got you a commission as a “peeler,” Dick,’ said Joe, as they moved along. ‘You’ll have to prove that you can read and write, which is more than they would ask of you if you were going into the Cabinet; but we live in an intellectual age, and we test all the cabin-boys, and it is only the steersman we take on trust.’

Though Nina was eager to resent Atlee’s impertinence on Walpole, she could not help feeling interested and amused by his sketches of his travels.

If, in speaking of Greece, he only gave the substance of the article he had written for the Revue des Deux Mondes, as the paper was yet unpublished all the remarks were novel, and the anecdotes fresh and sparkling. The tone of light banter and raillery in which he described public life in Greece and Greek statesmen, might have lost some of its authority had any one remembered to count the hours the speaker had spent in Athens; and Nina was certainly indignant at the hazardous effrontery of the criticisms. It was not, then, without intention that she arose to retire while Atlee was relating an interesting story of brigandage, and he – determined to repay the impertinence in kind – continued to recount his history as he arose to open the door for her to pass out. Her insolent look as she swept by was met by a smile of admiration on his part that actually made her cheek tingle with anger.

Old Kearney dozed off gently, under the influence of names of places and persons that did not interest him, and the two young men drew their chairs to the fire, and grew confidential at once.

‘I think you have sent my cousin away in bad humour,’ said Dick.

‘I see it,’ said Joe, as he slowly puffed his cigar. ‘That young lady’s head has been so cruelly turned by flattery of late, that the man who does not swing incense before her affronts her.’

‘Yes; but you went out of your way to provoke her. It is true she knows little of Greece or Greeks, but it offends her to hear them slighted or ridiculed; and you took pains to do both.’

‘Contemptible little country! with a mock-army, a mock-treasury, and a mock-chamber. The only thing real is the debt and the brigandage.’

‘But why tell her so? You actually seemed bent on irritating her.’

‘Quite true – so I was. My dear Dick, you have some lessons to learn in life, and one of them is that, just as it is bad heraldry to put colour on colour, it is an egregious blunder to follow flattery by flattery. The woman who has been spoiled by over-admiration must be approached with something else as unlike it as may be – pique – annoy – irritate – outrage, but take care that you interest her Let her only come to feel what a very tiresome thing mere adulation is, and she will one day value your two or three civil speeches as gems of priceless worth. It is exactly because I deeply desire to gain her affections, I have begun in this way.’

‘You have come too late.’

‘How do you mean too late – she is not engaged?’

‘She is engaged – she is to be married to Walpole.’

‘To Walpole!’

‘Yes; he came over a few days ago to ask her. There is some question now – I don’t well understand it – about some family consent, or an invitation – something, I believe, that Nina insists on, to show the world how his family welcome her amongst them; and it is for this he has gone to London, but to be back in eight or nine days, the wedding to take place towards the end of the month.’

‘Is he very much in love?’

‘I should say he is.’

‘And she? Of course she could not possibly care for a fellow like Walpole?’

‘I don’t see why not. He is very much the stamp of man girls admire.’

‘Not girls like Nina; not girls who aspire to a position in life, and who know that the little talents of the salon no more make a man of the world than the tricks of the circus will make a foxhunter. These ambitious women – she is one of them – will marry a hopeless idiot if he can bring wealth and rank and a great name; but they will not take a brainless creature who has to work his way up in the world. If she has accepted Walpole, there is pique in it, or ennui, or that uneasy desire of change that girls suffer from like a malady.’

‘I cannot tell you why, but I know she has accepted him.’

‘Women are not insensible to the value of second thoughts.’

‘You mean she might throw him over – might jilt him?’

‘I’ll not employ the ugly word that makes the wrong it is only meant to indicate; but there are few of our resolves in life to which we might not move amendment, and the changed opinion a woman forms of a man before marriage would become a grievous injury if it happened after.’

‘But must she of necessity change?’

‘If she marry Walpole, I should say certainly. If a girl has fair abilities and a strong temper – and Nina has a good share of each – she will endure faults, actual vices, in a man, but she’ll not stand littleness. Walpole has nothing else; and so I hope to prove to her to-morrow and the day after – in fact, during those eight or ten days you tell me he will be absent.’

‘Will she let you? Will she listen to you?’

‘Not at first – at least, not willingly, or very easily; but I will show her, by numerous little illustrations and even fables, where these small people not only spoil their fortunes in life, but spoil life itself; and what an irreparable blunder it is to link companionship with one of them. I will sometimes make her laugh, and I may have to make her cry – it will not be easy, but I shall do it – I shall certainly make her thoughtful; and if you can do this day by day, so that a woman will recur to the same theme pretty much in the same spirit, you must be a sorry steersman, Master Dick, but you will know how to guide these thoughts and trace the channel they shall follow.’

‘And supposing, which I do not believe, that you could get her to break with Walpole, what could you offer her?’

‘Myself!’

‘Inestimable boon, doubtless; but what of fortune – position or place in life?’

‘The first Napoleon used to say that the “power of the unknown number was incommensurable”; and so I don’t despair of showing her that a man like myself may be anything.’

Dick shook his head doubtingly, and the other went on: ‘In this round game we call life it is all “brag.” The fellow with the worst card in the pack, if he’ll only risk his head on it, keep a bold face to the world and his own counsel, will be sure to win. Bear in mind, Dick, that for some time back I have been keeping the company of these great swells who sit highest in the Synagogue, and dictate to us small Publicans. I have listened to their hesitating counsels and their uncertain resolves; I have seen the blotted despatches and equivocal messages given, to be disavowed if needful; I have assisted at those dress rehearsals where speech was to follow speech, and what seemed an incautious avowal by one was to be “improved” into a bold declaration by another “in another place”; in fact, my good friend, I have been near enough to measure the mighty intelligences that direct us, and if I were not a believer in Darwin, I should be very much shocked for what humanity was coming to. It is no exaggeration that I say, if you were to be in the Home Office, and I at the Foreign Office, without our names being divulged, there is not a man or woman in England would be the wiser or the worse; though if either of us were to take charge of the engine of the Holyhead line, there would be a smash or an explosion before we reached Rugby.’

‘All that will not enable you to make a settlement on Nina Kostalergi.’

‘No; but I’ll marry her all the same.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Will you have a bet on it, Dick? What will you wager?’

‘A thousand – ten, if I had it; but I’ll give you ten pounds on it, which is about as much as either of us could pay.’

‘Speak for yourself, Master Dick. As Robert Macaire says, “Je viens de toucher mes dividendes,” and I am in no want of money. The fact is, so long as a man can pay for certain luxuries in life, he is well off: the strictly necessary takes care of itself.’

‘Does it? I should like to know how.’

‘With your present limited knowledge of life, I doubt if I could explain it to you, but I will try one of these mornings. Meanwhile, let us go into the drawing-room and get mademoiselle to sing for us. She will sing, I take it?’

‘Of course – if asked by you.’ And there was the very faintest tone of sneer in the words.

And they did go, and mademoiselle did sing all that Atlee could ask her for, and she was charming in every way that grace and beauty and the wish to please could make her. Indeed, to such extent did she carry her fascinations that Joe grew thoughtful at last, and muttered to himself, ‘There is vendetta in this. It is only a woman knows how to make a vengeance out of her attractions.’

‘Why are you so serious, Mr. Atlee?’ asked she at last.

‘I was thinking – I mean, I was trying to think – yes, I remember it now,’ muttered he. ‘I have had a letter for you all this time in my pocket.’

‘A letter from Greece?’ asked she impatiently.

‘No – at least I suspect not. It was given me as I drove through the bog by a barefooted boy, who had trotted after the car for miles, and at length overtook us by the accident of the horse picking up a stone in his hoof. He said it was for “some one at the castle,” and I offered to take charge of it – here it is,’ and he produced a square-shaped envelope of common coarse-looking paper, sealed with red wax, and a shamrock for impress.

‘A begging-letter, I should say, from the outside,’ said Dick.

‘Except that there is not one so poor as to ask aid from me,’ added Nina, as she took the document, glanced at the writing, and placed it in her pocket.

As they separated for the night, and Dick trotted up the stairs at Atlee’s side, he said, ‘I don’t think, after all, my ten pounds is so safe as I fancied.’

‘Don’t you?’ replied Joe. ‘My impressions are all the other way, Dick. It is her courtesy that alarms me. The effort to captivate where there is no stake to win, means mischief. She’ll make me in love with her whether I will or not.’ The bitterness of his tone, and the impatient bang he gave his door as he passed in, betrayed more of temper than was usual for him to display, and as Dick sought his room, he muttered to himself, ‘I’m glad to see that these over-cunning fellows are sure to meet their match, and get beaten even at the game of their own invention.’