Lord Kilgobbin

‘Is that all, sir?’ said the other, rising.

‘Well, I think so. I shall be curious to hear how you acquit yourself – how you get on with his Excellency, and how he takes you; and you must write it all to me. Ain’t you much too early? it’s scarcely ten o’clock.’

‘A quarter past ten; and I have some miles to drive to Kingstown.’

‘And not yet packed, perhaps?’ said the other listlessly.

‘No, sir; nothing ready.’

‘Oh! you’ll be in ample time; I’ll vouch for it. You are one of the rough-and-ready order, who are never late. Not but in this same flurry of yours you have made me forget something I know I had to say; and you tell me you can’t remember it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And yet,’ said the other sententiously, ‘the crowning merit of a private secretary is exactly that sort of memory. Your intellects, if properly trained, should be the complement of your chief’s. The infinite number of things that are too small and too insignificant for him, are to have their place, duly docketed and dated, in your brain; and the very expression of his face should be an indication to you of what he is looking for and yet cannot remember. Do you mark me?’

‘Half-past ten,’ cried Atlee, as the clock chimed on the mantel-piece; and he hurried away without another word.

It was only as he saw the pitiable penury of his own scanty wardrobe that he could persuade himself to accept of Walpole’s offer.

‘After all,’ he said, ‘the loan of a dress-coat may be the turning-point of a whole destiny. Junot sold all he had to buy a sword, to make his first campaign; all I have is my shame, and here it goes for a suit of clothes!’ And, with these words, he rushed down to Walpole’s dressing-room, and not taking time to inspect and select the contents, carried off the box, as it was, with him. ‘I’ll tell him all when I write,’ muttered he, as he drove away.

CHAPTER XXVI

DICK KEARNEY’S CHAMBERS

When Dick Kearney quitted Kilgobbin Castle for Dublin, he was very far from having any projects in his head, excepting to show his cousin Nina that he could live without her.

‘I believe,’ muttered he to himself, ‘she counts upon me as another “victim.” These coquettish damsels have a theory that the “whole drama of life” is the game of their fascinations and the consequences that come of them, and that we men make it our highest ambition to win them, and subordinate all we do in life to their favour. I should like to show her that one man at least refuses to yield this allegiance, and that whatever her blandishments do with others, with him they are powerless.’

These thoughts were his travelling-companions for nigh fifty miles of travel, and, like most travelling-companions, grew to be tiresome enough towards the end of the journey.

When he arrived in Dublin, he was in no hurry to repair to his quarters in Trinity; they were not particularly cheery in the best of times, and now it was long vacation, with few men in town, and everything sad and spiritless; besides this, he was in no mood to meet Atlee, whose free-and-easy jocularity he knew he would not endure, even with his ordinary patience. Joe had never condescended to write one line since he had left Kilgobbin, and Dick, who felt that in presenting him to his family he had done him immense honour, was proportionately indignant at this show of indifference. But, by the same easy formula with which he could account for anything in Nina’s conduct by her ‘coquetry,’ he was able to explain every deviation from decorum of Joe Atlee’s by his ‘snobbery.’ And it is astonishing how comfortable the thought made him, that this man, in all his smartness and ready wit, in his prompt power to acquire, and his still greater quickness to apply knowledge, was after all a most consummate snob.

He had no taste for a dinner at commons, so he ate his mutton-chop at a tavern, and went to the play. Ineffably bored, he sauntered along the almost deserted streets of the city, and just as midnight was striking, he turned under the arched portal of the college. Secretly hoping that Atlee might be absent, he inserted the key and entered his quarters.

The grim old coal-bunker in the passage, the silent corridor, and the dreary room at the end of it, never looked more dismal than as he surveyed them now by the light of a little wax-match he had lighted to guide his way. There stood the massive old table in the middle, with its litter of books and papers – memories of many a headache; and there was the paper of coarse Cavendish, against which he had so often protested, as well as a pewter-pot – a new infraction against propriety since he had been away. Worse, however, than all assaults on decency, were a pair of coarse highlows, which had been placed within the fender, and had evidently enjoyed the fire so long as it lingered in the grate.

‘So like the fellow! so like him!’ was all that Dick could mutter, and he turned away in disgust.

As Atlee never went to bed till daybreak, it was quite clear that he was from home, and as the college gates could not reopen till morning, Dick was not sorry to feel that he was safe from all intrusion for some hours. With this consolation, he betook him to his bedroom, and proceeded to undress. Scarcely, however, had he thrown off his coat than a heavy, long-drawn respiration startled him. He stopped and listened: it came again, and from the bed. He drew nigh, and there, to his amazement, on his own pillow, lay the massive head of a coarse-looking, vulgar man of about thirty, with a silk handkerchief fastened over it as nightcap. A brawny arm lay outside the bedclothes, with an enormous hand of very questionable cleanness, though one of the fingers wore a heavy gold ring.

Wishing to gain what knowledge he might of his guest before awaking him, Dick turned to inspect his clothes, which, in a wild disorder, lay scattered through the room. They were of the very poorest; but such still as might have belonged to a very humble clerk, or a messenger in a counting-house. A large black leather pocket-book fell from a pocket of the coat, and, in replacing it, Dick perceived it was filled with letters. On one of these, as he closed the clasp, he read the name, ‘Mr. Daniel Donogan, Dartmouth Gaol.’

‘What!’ cried he, ‘is this the great head-centre, Donogan, I have read so much of? and how is he here?’

Though Dick Kearney was not usually quick of apprehension, he was not long here in guessing what the situation meant: it was clear enough that Donogan, being a friend of Joe Atlee, had been harboured here as a safe refuge. Of all places in the capital, none were so secure from the visits of the police as the college; indeed, it would have been no small hazard for the public force to have invaded these precincts. Calculating therefore that Kearney was little likely to leave Kilgobbin at present, Atlee had installed his friend in Dick’s quarters. The indiscretion was a grave one; in fact, there was nothing – even to expulsion itself – might not have followed on discovery.

‘So like him! so like him!’ was all he could mutter, as he arose and walked about the room.

While he thus mused, he turned into Atlee’s bedroom, and at once it appeared why Mr. Donogan had been accommodated in his room. Atlee’s was perfectly destitute of everything: bed, chest of drawers, dressing-table, chair, and bath were all gone. The sole object in the chamber was a coarse print of a well-known informer of the year ‘98, ‘Jemmy O’Brien,’ under whose portrait was written, in Atlee’s hand, ‘Bought in at fourpence-halfpenny, at the general sale, in affectionate remembrance of his virtues, by one who feels himself to be a relative. – J.A.’ Kearney tore down the picture in passion, and stamped upon it; indeed, his indignation with his chum had now passed all bounds of restraint.

‘So like him in everything!’ again burst from him in utter bitterness.

Having thus satisfied himself that he had read the incident aright, he returned to the sitting-room, and at once decided that he would leave Donogan to his rest till morning.

‘It will be time enough then to decide what is to be done,’ thought he.

He then proceeded to relight the fire, and drawing a sofa near, he wrapped himself in a railway-rug, and lay down to sleep. For a long time he could not compose himself to slumber: he thought of Nina and her wiles – ay, they were wiles; he saw them plainly enough. It was true he was no prize – no ‘catch,’ as they call it – to angle for, and such a girl as she was could easily look higher; but still he might swell the list of those followers she seemed to like to behold at her feet offering up every homage to her beauty, even to their actual despair. And he thought of his own condition – very hopeless and purposeless as it was.

‘What a journey, to be sure, was life without a goal to strive for. Kilgobbin would be his one day; but by that time would it be able to pay off the mortgages that were raised upon it? It was true Atlee was no richer, but Atlee was a shifty, artful fellow, with scores of contrivances to go windward of fortune in even the very worst of weather. Atlee would do many a thing he would not stoop to.’

And as Kearney said this to himself, he was cautious in the use of his verb, and never said ‘could,’ but always ‘would’ do; and oh dear! is it not in this fashion that so many of us keep up our courage in life, and attribute to the want of will what we well know lies in the want of power.

Last of all he bethought himself of this man Donogan, a dangerous fellow in a certain way, and one whose companionship must be got rid of at any price. Plotting over in his mind how this should be done in the morning, he at last fell fast asleep.

So overcome was he by slumber, that he never awoke when that venerable institution called the college woman – the hag whom the virtue of unerring dons insists o imposing as a servant on resident students – entered, made up the fire, swept up the room, and arranged the breakfast-table. It was only as she jogged his arm to ask him for an additional penny to buy more milk, that he awoke and remembered where he was.

‘Will I get yer honour a bit of bacon?’ asked she, in a tone intended to be insinuating.

‘Whatever you like,’ said he drowsily.

‘It’s himself there likes a rasher – when he can get it,’ said she, with a leer, and a motion of her thumb towards the adjoining room.

‘Whom do you mean?’ asked he, half to learn what and how much she knew of his neighbour.

‘Oh! don’t I know him well? – Dan Donogan,’ replied she, with a grin. ‘Didn’t I see him in the dock with Smith O’Brien in ‘48, and wasn’t he in trouble again after he got his pardon; and won’t he always be in trouble?’

‘Hush! don’t talk so loud,’ cried Dick warningly.

‘He’d not hear me now if I was screechin’; it’s the only time he sleeps hard; for he gets up about three or half-past – before it’s day – and he squeezes through the bars of the window, and gets out into the park, and he takes his exercise there for two hours, most of the time running full speed and keeping himself in fine wind. Do you know what he said to me the other day? “Molly,” says he, “when I know I can get between those bars there, and run round the college park in three minutes and twelve seconds, I feel that there’s not many a gaol in Ireland can howld, and the divil a policeman in the island could catch, me.”’ And she had to lean over the back of a chair to steady herself while she laughed at the conceit.

‘I think, after all,’ said Kearney, ‘I’d rather keep out of the scrape than trust to that way of escaping it.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ said she. ‘He’d rather be seducin’ soldiers in Barrack Street, or swearing in a new Fenian, or nailing a death-warnin’ on a hall door, than he’d be lord mayor! If he wasn’t in mischief he’d like to be in his grave.’

‘And what comes of it all?’ said Kearney, scarcely giving any exact meaning to his words.

‘That’s what I do be saying myself,’ cried the hag. ‘When they can transport you for singing a ballad, and send you to pick oakum for a green cravat, it’s time to take to some other trade than patriotism!’ And with this reflection she shuffled away, to procure the materials for breakfast.

The fresh rolls, the watercress, a couple of red herrings devilled as those ancient damsels are expert in doing, and a smoking dish of rashers and eggs, flanked by a hissing tea-kettle, soon made their appearance, the hag assuring Kearney that a stout knock with the poker on the back of the grate would summon Mr. Donogan almost instantaneously – so rapidly, indeed, and with such indifference as to raiment, that, as she modestly declared, ‘I have to take to my heels the moment I call him,’ and the modest avowal was confirmed by her hasty departure.

The assurance was so far correct, that scarcely had Kearney replaced the poker, when the door opened, and one of the strangest figures he had ever beheld presented itself in the room. He was a short, thick-set man with a profusion of yellowish hair, which, divided in the middle of the head, hung down on either side to his neck – beard and moustache of the same hue, left little of the face to be seen but a pair of lustrous blue eyes, deep-sunken in their orbits, and a short wide-nostrilled nose, which bore the closest resemblance to a lion’s. Indeed, a most absurd likeness to the king of beasts was the impression produced on Kearney as this wild-looking fellow bounded forward, and stood there amazed at finding a stranger to confront him.

His dress was a flannel-shirt and trousers, and a pair of old slippers which had once been Kearney’s own.

‘I was told by the college woman how I was to summon you, Mr. Donogan,’ said Kearney good-naturedly. ‘You are not offended with the liberty?’

‘Are you Dick?’ asked the other, coming forward.