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CHAPTER LXVII

WALPOLE ALONE

Once more in his own room, Walpole returned to the task of that letter to Nina Kostalergi, of which he had made nigh fifty drafts, and not one with which he was satisfied.

It was not really very easy to do what he wished. He desired to seem a warm, rapturous, impulsive lover, who had no thought in life – no other hope or ambition – than the success of his suit. He sought to show that she had so enraptured and enthralled him that, until she consented to share his fortunes, he was a man utterly lost to life and life’s ambitions; and while insinuating what a tremendous responsibility she would take on herself if she should venture by a refusal of him to rob the world of those abilities that the age could ill spare, he also dimly shadowed the natural pride a woman ought to feel in knowing that she was asked to be the partner of such a man, and that one, for whom destiny in all likelihood reserved the highest rewards of public life, was then, with the full consciousness of what he was, and what awaited him, ready to share that proud eminence with her, as a prince might have offered to share his throne.

In spite of himself, in spite of all he could do, it was on this latter part of his letter his pen ran most freely. He could condense his raptures, he could control in most praiseworthy fashion all the extravagances of passion and the imaginative joys of love, but, for the life of him, he could abate nothing of the triumphant ecstasy that must be the feeling of the woman who had won him – the passionate delight of her who should be his wife, and enter life the chosen one of his affection.

It was wonderful how glibly he could insist on this to himself; and fancying for the moment that he was one of the outer world commenting on the match, say, ‘Yes, let people decry the Walpole class how they might – they are elegant, they are exclusive, they are fastidious, they are all that you like to call the spoiled children of Fortune in their wit, their brilliancy, and their readiness, but they are the only men, the only men in the world, who marry – we’ll not say for “love,” for the phrase is vulgar – but who marry to please themselves! This girl had not a shilling. As to family, all is said when we say she was a Greek! Is there not something downright chivalrous in marrying such a woman? Is it the act of a worldly man?’

He walked the room, uttering this question to himself over and over. Not exactly that he thought disparagingly of worldliness and material advantages, but he had lashed himself into a false enthusiasm as to qualities which he thought had some special worshippers of their own, and whose good opinion might possibly be turned to profit somehow and somewhere, if he only knew how and where. It was a monstrous fine thing he was about to do; that he felt. Where was there another man in his position would take a portionless girl and make her his wife? Cadets and cornets in light-dragoon regiments did these things: they liked their ‘bit of beauty’; and there was a sort of mock-poetry about these creatures that suited that sort of thing; but for a man who wrote his letters from Brookes’s, and whose dinner invitations included all that was great in town, to stoop to such an alliance was as bold a defiance as one could throw at a world of self-seeking and conventionality.

‘That Emperor of the French did it,’ cried he. ‘I cannot recall to my mind another. He did the very same thing I am going to do. To be sure, he had the “pull on me” in one point. As he said himself, “I am a parvenu.” Now, I cannot go that far! I must justify my act on other grounds, as I hope I can do,’ cried he, after a pause; while, with head erect and swelling chest, he went on: ‘I felt within me the place I yet should occupy. I knew – ay, knew – the prize that awaited me, and I asked myself, “Do you see in any capital of Europe one woman with whom you would like to share this fortune? Is there one sufficiently gifted and graceful to make her elevation seem a natural and fitting promotion, and herself appear the appropriate occupant of the station?”

‘She is wonderfully beautiful: there is no doubt of it. Such beauty as they have never seen here in their lives! Fanciful extravagances in dress, and atrocious hair-dressing, cannot disfigure her; and by Jove! she has tried both. And one has only to imagine that woman dressed and “coifféed,” as she might be, to conceive such a triumph as London has not witnessed for the century! And I do long for such a triumph. If my lord would only invite us here, were it but for a week! We should be asked to Goreham and the Bexsmiths’. My lady never omits to invite a great beauty. It’s her way to protest that she is still handsome, and not at all jealous. How are we to get “asked” to Bruton Street?’ asked he over and over, as though the sounds must secure the answer. ‘Maude will never permit it. The unlucky picture has settled that point. Maude will not suffer her to cross the threshold! But for the portrait I could bespeak my cousin’s favour and indulgence for a somewhat countrified young girl, dowdy and awkward. I could plead for her good looks in that ad misericordiam fashion that disarms jealousy and enlists her generosity for a humble connection she need never see more of! If I could only persuade Maude that I had done an indiscretion, and that I knew it, I should be sure of her friendship. Once make her believe that I have gone clean head over heels into a mésalliance, and our honeymoon here is assured. I wish I had not tormented her about Atlee. I wish with all my heart I had kept my impertinences to myself, and gone no further than certain dark hints about what I could say, if I were to be evil-minded. What rare wisdom it is not to fire away one’s last cartridge. I suppose it is too late now. She’ll not forgive me that disparagement before my uncle; that is, if there be anything between herself and Atlee, a point which a few minutes will settle when I see them together. It would not be very difficult to make Atlee regard me as his friend, and as one ready to aid him in this same ambition. Of course he is prepared to see in me the enemy of all his plans. What would he not give, or say, or do, to find me his aider and abettor? Shrewd tactician as the fellow is, he will know all the value of having an accomplice within the fortress; and it would be exactly from a man like myself he might be disposed to expect the most resolute opposition.’

He thought for a long time over this. He turned it over and over in his mind, canvassing all the various benefits any line of action might promise, and starting every doubt or objection he could imagine. Nor was the thought extraneous to his calculations that in forwarding Atlee’s suit to Maude he was exacting the heaviest ‘vendetta’ for her refusal of himself.

‘There is not a woman in Europe,’ he exclaimed, ‘less fitted to encounter small means and a small station – to live a life of petty economies, and be the daily associate of a snob!’

‘What the fellow may become at the end of the race – what place he may win after years of toil and jobbery, I neither know nor care! She will be an old woman by that time, and will have had space enough in the interval to mourn over her rejection of me. I shall be a Minister, not impossibly at some court of the Continent; Atlee, to say the best, an Under-Secretary of State for something, or a Poor-Law or Education Chief. There will be just enough of disparity in our stations to fill her woman’s heart with bitterness – the bitterness of having backed the wrong man!

‘The unavailing regrets that beset us for not having taken the left-hand road in life instead of the right are our chief mental resources after forty, and they tell me that we men only know half the poignancy of these miserable recollections. Women have a special adaptiveness for this kind of torture – would seem actually to revel in it.’

He turned once more to his desk, and to the letter. Somehow he could make nothing of it. All the dangers that he desired to avoid so cramped his ingenuity that he could say little beyond platitudes; and he thought with terror of her who was to read them. The scornful contempt with which she would treat such a letter was all before him, and he snatched up the paper and tore it in pieces.

‘It must not be done by writing,’ cried he at last. ‘Who is to guess for which of the fifty moods of such a woman a man’s letter is to be composed? What you could say now you dared not have written half an hour ago. What would have gone far to gain her love yesterday, to-day will show you the door! It is only by consummate address and skill she can be approached at all, and without her look and bearing, the inflections of her voice, her gestures, her “pose,” to guide you, it would be utter rashness to risk her humour.’

He suddenly bethought him at this moment that he had many things to do in Ireland ere he left England. He had tradesmen’s bills to settle, and ‘traps’ to be got rid of. ‘Traps’ included furniture, and books, and horses, and horse-gear: details which at first he had hoped his friend Lockwood would have taken off his hands; but Lockwood had only written him word that a Jew broker from Liverpool would give him forty pounds for his house effects, and as for ‘the screws,’ there was nothing but an auction.

Most of us have known at some period or other of our lives what it is to suffer from the painful disparagement our chattels undergo when they become objects of sale; but no adverse criticism of your bed or your bookcase, your ottoman or your arm-chair, can approach the sense of pain inflicted by the impertinent comments on your horse. Every imputed blemish is a distinct personality, and you reject the insinuated spavin, or the suggested splint, as imputations on your honour as a gentleman. In fact, you are pushed into the pleasant dilemma of either being ignorant as to the defects of your beast, or wilfully bent on an act of palpable dishonesty. When we remember that every confession a man makes of his unacquaintance with matters ‘horsy’ is, in English acceptance, a count in the indictment against his claim to be thought a gentleman, it is not surprising that there will be men more ready to hazard their characters than their connoisseurship. ‘I’ll go over myself to Ireland,’ said he at last; ‘and a week will do everything.’

CHAPTER LXVIII

THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE

Lockwood was seated at his fireside in his quarters, the Upper Castle Yard, when Walpole burst in upon him unexpectedly. ‘What! you here?’ cried the major. ‘Have you the courage to face Ireland again?’

‘I see nothing that should prevent my coming here. Ireland certainly cannot pretend to lay a grievance to my charge.’

‘Maybe not. I don’t understand these things. I only know what people say in the clubs and laugh over at dinner-tables.’

‘I cannot affect to be very sensitive as to these Celtic criticisms, and I shall not ask you to recall them.’

‘They say that Danesbury got kicked out, all for your blunders!’

‘Do they?’ said Walpole innocently.

‘Yes; and they declare that if old Daney wasn’t the most loyal fellow breathing, he’d have thrown you over, and owned that the whole mess was of your own brewing, and that he had nothing to do with it.’

‘Do they, indeed, say that?’

‘That’s not half of it, for they have a story about a woman – some woman you met down at Kilgobbin – who made you sing rebel songs and take a Fenian pledge, and give your word of honour that Donogan should be let escape.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Isn’t it enough? A man must be a glutton for tomfoolery if he could not be satisfied with that.’

‘Perhaps you never heard that the chief of the Cabinet took a very different view of my Irish policy.’

‘Irish policy?’ cried the other, with lifted eyebrows.

‘I said Irish policy, and repeat the words. Whatever line of political action tends to bring legislation into more perfect harmony with the instincts and impulses of a very peculiar people, it is no presumption to call a policy.’

‘With all my heart. Do you mean to deal with that old Liverpool rascal for the furniture?’

‘His offer is almost an insult.’

‘Well, you’ll be gratified to know he retracts it. He says now he’ll only give £35! And as for the screws, Bobbidge, of the Carbineers, will take them both for £50.’

‘Why, Lightfoot alone is worth the money!’

‘Minus the sand-crack.’

‘I deny the sand-crack. She was pricked in the shoeing.’

‘Of course! I never knew a broken knee that wasn’t got by striking the manger, nor a sand-crack that didn’t come of an awkward smith.’

‘What a blessing it would be if all the bad reputations in society could be palliated as pleasantly.’

‘Shall I tell Bobbidge you take his offer? He wants an answer at once.’

‘My dear major, don’t you know that the fellow who says that, simply means to say: “Don’t be too sure that I shall not change my mind.” Look out that you take the ball at the hop!’

‘Lucky if it hops at all.’

‘Is that your experience of life?’ said Walpole inquiringly.

‘It is one of them. Will you take £50 for the screws?’

‘Yes; and as much more for the break and the dog-cart. I want every rap I can scrape together, Harry. I’m going out to Guatemala.’

‘I heard that.’

‘Infernal place; at least, I believe, in climate – reptiles, fevers, assassination – it stands without a rival.’

‘So they tell me.’

‘It was the only thing vacant; and they rather affected a difficulty about giving it.’

‘So they do when they send a man to the Gold Coast; and they tell the newspapers to say what a lucky dog he is.’

‘I can stand all that. What really kills me is giving a man the C.B. when he is just booked for some home of yellow fever.’

‘They do that too,’ gravely observed the other, who was beginning to feel the pace of the conversation rather too fast for him. ‘Don’t you smoke?’

‘I’m rather reducing myself to half batta in tobacco. I’ve thoughts of marrying.’

‘Don’t do that.’

‘Why? It’s not wrong.’

‘No, perhaps not; but it’s stupid.’

‘Come now, old fellow, life out there in the tropics is not so jolly all alone! Alligators are interesting creatures, and cheetahs are pretty pets; but a man wants a little companionship of a more tender kind; and a nice girl who would link her fortunes with one’s own, and help one through the sultry hours, is no bad thing.’

‘The nice girl wouldn’t go there.’

‘I’m not so sure of that. With your great knowledge of life, you must know that there has been a glut in “the nice-girl” market these years back. Prime lots are sold for a song occasionally, and first-rate samples sent as far as Calcutta. The truth is, the fellow who looks like a real buyer may have the pick of the fair, as they call it here.’

So he ought,’ growled out the major.

‘The speech is not a gallant one. You are scarcely complimentary to the ladies, Lockwood.’

‘It was you that talked of a woman like a cow, or a sack of corn, not I.’

‘I employed an illustration to answer one of your own arguments.’

‘Who is she to be?’ bluntly asked the major.

‘I’ll tell you whom I mean to ask, for I have not put the question yet.’

‘A long, fine whistle expressed the other’s astonishment. ‘And are you so sure she’ll say Yes?’

‘I have no other assurance than the conviction that a woman might do worse.’

‘Humph! perhaps she might. I’m not quite certain; but who is she to be?’

‘Do you remember a visit we made together to a certain Kilgobbin Castle.’

‘To be sure I do. A rum old ruin it was.’

‘Do you remember two young ladies we met there?’

‘Perfectly. Are you going to marry both of them?’

‘My intention is to propose to one, and I imagine I need not tell you which?’

‘Naturally, the Irish girl. She saved your life – ’

‘Pray let me undeceive you in a double error. It is not the Irish girl; nor did she save my life.’

‘Perhaps not; but she risked her own to save yours. You said so yourself at the time.’

‘We’ll not discuss the point now. I hope I feel duly grateful for the young lady’s heroism, though it is not exactly my intention to record my gratitude in a special license.’

‘A very equivocal sort of repayment,’ grumbled out Lockwood.

‘You are epigrammatic this evening, major.’

‘So, then, it’s the Greek you mean to marry?’

‘It is the Greek I mean to ask.’

‘All right. I hope she’ll take you. I think, on the whole, you suit each other. If I were at all disposed to that sort of bondage, I don’t know a girl I’d rather risk the road with than the Irish cousin, Miss Kearney.’

‘She is very pretty, exceedingly obliging, and has most winning manners.’

‘She is good-tempered, and she is natural – the two best things a woman can be.’

‘Why not come down along with me and try your luck?’

‘When do you go?’

‘By the 10.30 train to-morrow. I shall arrive at Moate by four o’clock, and reach the castle to dinner.’

‘They expect you?’

‘Only so far, that I have telegraphed a line to say I’m going down to bid “Good-bye” before I sail for Guatemala. I don’t suspect they know where that is, but it’s enough when they understand it is far away.’

‘I’ll go with you.’

‘Will you really?’

‘I will. I’ll not say on such an errand as your own, because that requires a second thought or two; but I’ll reconnoitre, Master Cecil, I’ll reconnoitre.’

‘I suppose you know there is no money.’

‘I should think money most unlikely in such a quarter; and it’s better she should have none than a small fortune. I’m an old whist-player, and when I play dummy, there’s nothing I hate more than to see two or three small trumps in my partner’s hand.’

‘I imagine you’ll not be distressed in that way here.’

‘I’ve got enough to come through with; that is, the thing can be done if there be no extravagances.’

‘Does one want for more?’ cried Walpole theatrically.

‘I don’t know that. If it were only ask and have, I should like to be tempted.’

‘I have no such ambition. I firmly believe that the moderate limits a man sets to his daily wants constitute the real liberty of his intellect and his intellectual nature.’

‘Perhaps I’ve no intellectual nature, then,’ growled out Lockwood, ‘for I know how I should like to spend fifteen thousand a year. I suppose I shall have to live on as many hundreds.’

‘It can be done.’

‘Perhaps it may. Have another weed?’

‘No. I told you already I have begun a tobacco reformation.’

‘Does she object to the pipe?’

‘I cannot tell you. The fact is, Lockwood, my future and its fortunes are just as uncertain as your own. This day week will probably have decided the destiny of each of us.’

‘To our success, then!’ cried the major, filling both their glasses.

‘To our success!’ said Walpole, as he drained his, and placed it upside down on the table.

CHAPTER LXIX

AT KILGOBBIN CASTLE

The ‘Blue Goat’ at Moate was destined once more to receive the same travellers whom we presented to our readers at a very early stage of this history.

‘Not much change here,’ cried Lockwood, as he strode into the little sitting-room and sat down. ‘I miss the old fellow’s picture, that’s all.’

‘Ah! by the way,’ said Walpole to the landlord, ‘you had my Lord Kilgobbin’s portrait up there the last time I came through here.’

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ said the man, smoothing down his hair and looking apologetically. ‘But the Goats and my lord, who was the Buck Goat, got into a little disagreement, and they sent away his picture, and his lordship retired from the club, and – and – that was the way of it.’

‘A heavy blow to your town, I take it,’ said the major, as he poured out his beer.

‘Well, indeed, your honour, I won’t say it was. You see, sir, times is changed in Ireland. We don’t care as much as we used about the “neighbouring gentry,” as they called them once; and as for the lord, there! he doesn’t spend a hundred a year in Moate.’

‘How is that?’

‘They get what they want by rail from Dublin, your honour; and he might as well not be here at all.’

‘Can we have a car to carry us over to the castle?’ asked Walpole, who did not care to hear more of local grievances.

‘Sure, isn’t my lord’s car waiting for you since two o’clock!’ said the host spitefully, for he was not conciliated by a courtesy that was to lose him a fifteen-shilling fare. ‘Not that there’s much of a horse between the shafts, or that old Daly himself is an elegant coachman,’ continued the host; ‘but they’re ready in the yard when you want them.’

The travellers had no reason to delay them in their present quarters, and taking their places on the car, set out for the castle.

‘I scarcely thought when I last drove this road,’ said Walpole, ‘that the next time I was to come should be on such an errand as my present one.’

‘Humph!’ ejaculated the other. ‘Our noble relative that is to be does not shine in equipage. That beast is dead lame.’

‘If we had our deserts, Lockwood, we should be drawn by a team of doves, with the god Cupid on the box.’

‘I’d rather have two posters and a yellow postchaise.’

A drizzling rain that now began to fall interrupted all conversation, and each sank back into his own thoughts for the rest of the way.

Lord Kilgobbin, with his daughter at his side, watched the car from the terrace of the castle as it slowly wound its way along the bog road.

‘As well as I can see, Kate, there is a man on each side of the car,’ said Kearney, as he handed his field-glass to his daughter.

‘Yes, papa, I see there are two travellers.’

‘And I don’t well know why there should be even one! There was no such great friendship between us that he need come all this way to bid us good-bye.’

‘Considering the mishap that befell him here, it is a mark of good feeling to desire to see us all once more, don’t you think so?’

‘May be so,’ muttered he drearily. ‘At all events, it’s not a pleasant house he’s coming to. Young O’Shea there upstairs, just out of a fever; and old Miss Betty, that may arrive any moment.’

‘There’s no question of that. She says it would be ten days or a fortnight before she is equal to the journey.’

‘Heaven grant it! – hem – I mean that she’ll be strong enough for it by that time. At all events, if it is the same as to our fine friend, Mr. Walpole, I wish he’d have taken his leave of us in a letter.’

‘It is something new, papa, to see you so inhospitable.’

‘But I am not inhospitable, Kitty. Show me the good fellow that would like to pass an evening with me and think me good company, and he shall have the best saddle of mutton and the raciest bottle of claret in the house. But it’s only mock-hospitality to be entertaining the man that only comes out of courtesy and just stays as long as good manners oblige him.’

‘I do not know that I should undervalue politeness, especially when it takes the shape of a recognition.’

‘Well, be it so,’ sighed he, almost drearily. ‘If the young gentleman is so warmly attached to us all that he cannot tear himself away till he has embraced us, I suppose there’s no help for it. Where is Nina?’

‘She was reading to Gorman when I saw her. She had just relieved Dick, who has gone out for a walk.’

‘A jolly house for a visitor to come to!’ cried he sarcastically.

‘We are not very gay or lively, it is true, papa; but it is not unlikely that the spirit in which our guest comes here will not need much jollity.’

‘I don’t take it as a kindness for a man to bring me his depression and his low spirits. I’ve always more of my own than I know what to do with. Two sorrows never made a joy, Kitty.’

‘There! they are lighting the lamps,’ cried she suddenly. ‘I don’t think they can be more than three miles away.’

‘Have you rooms ready, if there be two coming?’

‘Yes, papa, Mr. Walpole will have his old quarters; and the stag-room is in readiness if there be another guest.’

‘I’d like to have a house as big as the royal barracks, and every room of it occupied!’ cried Kearney, with a mellow ring in his voice. ‘They talk of society and pleasant company; but for real enjoyment there’s nothing to compare with what a man has under his own roof! No claret ever tastes so good as the decanter he circulates himself. I was low enough half an hour ago, and now the mere thought of a couple of fellows to dine with me cheers me up and warms my heart! I’ll give them the green seal, Kitty; and I don’t know there’s another house in the county could put a bottle of ‘46 claret before them.’

‘So you shall, papa. I’ll go to the cellar myself and fetch it.’

Kearney hastened to make the moderate toilet he called dressing for dinner, and was only finished when his old servant informed him that two gentlemen had arrived and gone up to their rooms.

‘I wish it was two dozen had come,’ said Kearney, as he descended to the drawing-room.

‘It is Major Lockwood, papa,’ cried Kate, entering and drawing him into a window-recess; ‘the Major Lockwood that was here before, has come with Mr. Walpole. I met him in the hall while I had the basket with the wine in my hand, and he was so cordial and glad to see me you cannot think.’

‘He knew that green wax, Kitty. He tasted that “bin” when he was here last.’

‘Perhaps so; but he certainly seemed overjoyed at something.’

‘Let me see,’ muttered he, ‘wasn’t he the big fellow with the long moustaches?’

‘A tall, very good-looking man; dark as a Spaniard, and not unlike one.’

‘To be sure, to be sure. I remember him well. He was a capital shot with the pistol, and he liked his wine. By the way, Nina did not take to him.’

‘How do you remember that, papa?’ said she archly.

If I don’t mistake, she told me so, or she called him a brute, or a savage, or some one of those things a man is sure to be, when a woman discovers he will not be her slave.’

Nina entering at the moment cut short all rejoinder, and Kearney came forward to meet her with his hand out.

‘Shake out your lower courses, and let me look at you,’ cried he, as he walked round her admiringly. ‘Upon my oath, it’s more beautiful than ever you are! I can guess what a fate is reserved for those dandies from Dublin.’

‘Do you like my dress, sir? Is it becoming?’ asked she.

‘Becoming it is; but I’m not sure whether I like it.’

‘And how is that, sir?’

‘I don’t see how, with all that floating gauze and swelling lace, a man is to get an arm round you at all – ’

‘I cannot perceive the necessity, sir,’ and the insolent toss of her head, more forcibly even than her words, resented such a possibility.