Lord Kilgobbin

There was much in the man that she liked. She liked his rugged boldness and determination; she liked his contempt for danger and his self-reliance; and, essentially, she liked how totally different he was to all other men. He had not their objects, their hopes, their fears, and their ways. To share the destiny of such a man was to ensure a life that could not pass unrecorded. There might be storm, and even shipwreck, but there was notoriety – perhaps even fame!

And how mean and vulgar did all the others she had known seem by comparison with him – how contemptible the polished insipidity of Walpole, how artificial the neatly-turned epigrams of Atlee. How would either of these have behaved in such a moment of danger as this man’s? Every minute he passed there was another peril to his life, and yet he had no thought for himself – his whole anxiety was to gain time to appeal to her. He told her she was more to him than his ambition – she saw herself she was more to him than life. The whirlwind rapidity of his eloquence also moved her, and the varied arguments he addressed – now to her heroism, now to her self-sacrifice, now to the power of her beauty, now to the contempt she felt for the inglorious lives of commonplace people – the ignoble herd who passed unnoticed. All these swayed her; and after a long interval, in which she heard him without a word, she said, in a low murmur to herself, ‘I will do it.’

Donogan clasped her to his heart as she said it, and held her some seconds in a fast embrace. ‘At last I know what it is to love,’ cried he, with rapture.

‘Look there!’ cried she, suddenly disengaging herself from his arm. ‘They are in the drawing-room already. I can see them as they pass the windows. I must go back, if it be for a moment, as I should be missed.’

‘Can I let you leave me now?’ he said, and the tears were in his eyes as he spoke.

‘I have given you my word, and you may trust me,’ said she, as she held out her hand.

‘I was forgetting this document: this is the lease or the agreement I told you of.’ She took it, and hurried away.

In less than five minutes afterwards she was among the company in the drawing-room.

‘Here have I been singing a rebel ballad, Nina,’ said Kate, ‘and not knowing the while it was Mr. Atlee who wrote it.’

‘What, Mr. Atlee,’ cried Nina, ‘is the “Time to begin” yours?’ And then, without waiting for an answer, she seated herself at the piano, and striking the chords of the accompaniment with a wild and vigorous hand, she sang —

‘If the moment is come and the hour to need us,
If we stand man to man, like kindred and kin;
If we know we have one who is ready to lead us,
What want we for more than the word to begin?’

The wild ring of defiance in which her clear, full voice gave out these words, seemed to electrify all present, and to a second or two of perfect silence a burst of applause followed, that even Curtis, with all his loyalty, could not refrain from joining.

‘Thank God, you’re not a man, Miss Nina!’ cried he fervently.

‘I’m not sure she’s not more dangerous as she is,’ said Lord Kilgobbin. ‘There’s people out there in the bog, starving and half-naked, would face the Queen’s Guards if they only heard her voice to cheer them on. Take my word for it, rebellion would have died out long ago in Ireland if there wasn’t the woman’s heart to warm it.’

‘If it were not too great a liberty, Mademoiselle Kostalergi,’ said Joe,’ I should tell you that you have not caught the true expression of my song. The brilliant bravura in which you gave the last line, immensely exciting as it was, is not correct. The whole force consists in the concentrated power of a fixed resolve – the passage should be subdued.’

An insolent toss of the head was all Nina’s reply, and there was a stillness in the room, as, exchanging looks with each other, the different persons there expressed their amazement at Atlee’s daring.

‘Who’s for a rubber of whist?’ said Lord Kilgobbin, to relieve the awkward pause. ‘Are you, Curtis? Atlee, I know, is ready.’

‘Here is all prepared,’ said Dick. ‘Captain Curtis told me before dinner that he would not like to go to bed till he had his sergeant’s report, and so I have ordered a broiled bone to be ready at one o’clock, and we’ll sit up as late as he likes after.’

‘Make the stake pounds and fives,’ cried Joe, ‘and I should pronounce your arrangements perfection.’

‘With this amendment,’ interposed my lord, ‘that nobody is expected to pay!’

‘I say, Joe,’ whispered Dick, as they drew nigh the table, ‘my cousin is angry with you; why have you not asked her to sing?’

‘Because she expects it; because she’s tossing over the music yonder to provoke it; because she’s in a furious rage with me: that will be nine points of the game in my favour,’ hissed he out between his teeth.

‘You are utterly wrong – you mistake her altogether.’

‘Mistake a woman! Dick, will you tell me what I do know, if I do not read every turn and trick of their tortuous nature? They are occasionally hard to decipher when they’re displeased. It’s very big print indeed when they’re angry.’

‘You’re off, are you?’ asked Nina, as Kate was about to leave.

‘Yes; I’m going to read to him.’

‘To read to him!’ said Nina, laughing. ‘How nice it sounds, when one sums up all existence in a pronoun. Good-night, dearest – good-night,’ and she kissed her twice. And then, as Kate reached the door, she ran towards her, and said, ‘Kiss me again, my dearest Kate!’

‘I declare you have left a tear upon my cheek,’ said Kate.

‘It was about all I could give you as a wedding-present,’ muttered Nina, as she turned away.

‘Are you come to study whist, Nina?’ said Lord Kilgobbin, as she drew nigh the table.

‘No, my lord; I have no talent for games, but I like to look at the players.’

Joe touched Dick with his foot, and shot a cunning glance towards him, as though to say, ‘Was I not correct in all I said?’

‘Couldn’t you sing us something, my dear? we’re not such infatuated gamblers that we’ll not like to hear you – eh, Atlee?’

‘Well, my lord, I don’t know, I’m not sure – that is, I don’t see how a memory for trumps is to be maintained through the fascinating charm of mademoiselle’s voice. And as for cards, it’s enough for Miss Kostalergi to be in the room to make one forget not only the cards, but the Fenians.’

‘If it was only out of loyalty, then, I should leave you!’ said she, and walked proudly away.

CHAPTER LXXXIV

NEXT MORNING

The whist-party did not break up till nigh morning. The sergeant had once appeared at the drawing-room to announce that all was quiet without. There had been no sign of any rising of the people, nor any disposition to molest the police. Indeed, so peaceful did everything look, and such an air of easy indifference pervaded the country, the police were half disposed to believe that the report of Donogan being in the neighbourhood was unfounded, and not impossibly circulated to draw off attention from some other part of the country.

This was also Lord Kilgobbin’s belief. ‘The man has no friends, or even warm followers, down here. It was the merest accident first led him to this part of the country, where, besides, we are all too poor to be rebels. It’s only down in Meath, where the people are well off, and rents are not too high, that people can afford to be Fenians.’

While he was enunciating this fact to Curtis, they were walking up and down the breakfast-room, waiting for the appearance of the ladies to make tea.

‘I declare it’s nigh eleven o’clock,’ said Curtis, ‘and I meant to have been over two baronies before this hour.’

‘Don’t distress yourself, captain. The man was never within fifty miles of where we are. And why would he? It is not the Bog of Allen is the place for a revolution.’

‘It’s always the way with the people at the Castle,’ grumbled out Curtis. ‘They know more of what’s going on down the country than we that live here! It’s one despatch after another. Head-centre Such-a-one is at the “Three Cripples.” He slept there two nights; he swore in fifteen men last Saturday, and they’ll tell you where he bought a pair of corduroy breeches, and what he ate for his breakfast – ’

‘I wish we had ours,’ broke in Kilgobbin. ‘Where’s Kate all this time?’

‘Papa, papa, I want you for a moment; come here to me quickly,’ cried Kate, whose head appeared for a moment at the door. ‘Here’s very terrible tidings, papa dearest,’ said she, as she drew him along towards his study. ‘Nina is gone! Nina has run away!’

‘Run away for what?’

‘Run away to be married; and she is married. Read this, or I’ll read it for you. A country boy has just brought it from Maryborough.’

Like a man stunned almost to insensibility, Kearney crossed his hands before him, and sat gazing out vacantly before him.

‘Can you listen to me? can you attend to me, dear papa?’