Lord Kilgobbin Part 109

'Poor fellows!' replied Atlee. 'Let us hope it does not interfere with their digestion. But seriously, mademoiselle, does it not give you a great notion of our insecurity here in Ireland when you see to what we trust, law and order.

'Never mind him, Curtis,' said Kilgobbin. 'When these fellows are not saying sharp things, they have to be silent.'

While the conversation went briskly on, Nina contrived to glance unnoticed at her watch, and saw that it wanted only a quarter of an hour to nine.

Nine was the hour she had named to Donogan to be in the garden, and she already trembled at the danger to which she had exposed him. She reasoned thus: so reckless and fearless is this man, that, if he should have come determined to see me, and I do not go to meet him, he is quite capable of entering the house boldly, even at the cost of being captured. The very price he would have to pay for his rashness would be its temptation.'

A sudden cast of seriousness overcame her as she thus thought, and Kate, perceiving it, rose at once to retire.

'You were not ill, dearest Nina? I saw you grow pale, and I fancied for a moment you seemed faint.'

'No; a mere pa.s.sing weakness. I shall lie down and be better presently.'

'And then you'll come up to aunt's room--I call G.o.dmother aunt now--and take tea with Gorman and us all.'

'Yes, I'll do that after a little rest. I'll take half an hour or so of quiet,' said she, in broken utterances. 'I suppose the gentlemen will sit over their wine; there's no fear of their breaking-up.'

'Very little _fear_, indeed,' said Kate, laughing at the word. 'Papa made me give out some of his rare old '41 wine to-day, and they're not likely to leave it.'

'Bye-bye, then, for a little while,' said Nina dreamily, for her thoughts had gone off on another track. 'I shall join you later on.'

Kate tripped gaily up the stairs, singing pleasantly as she went, for hers was a happy heart and a hopeful.

Nina lingered for a moment with her hand on the banister, and then hurried to her room.

It was a still cold night of deep winter, a very faint crescent of a new moon was low in the sky, and a thin snowfall, slightly crisped with frost, covered the ground. Nina opened her window and looked out. All was still and quiet without--not a twig moved. She bent her ear to listen, thinking that on the frozen ground a step might perhaps be heard, and it was a relief to her anxiety when she heard nothing. The chill cold air that came in through the window warned her to m.u.f.fle herself well, and she drew the hood of her scarlet cloak over her head. Strong-booted, and with warm gloves, she stood for a moment at her door to listen, and finding all quiet, she slowly descended the stairs and gained the hall. She started affrighted as she entered, thinking there was some one seated at the table, but she rallied in an instant, as she saw it was only the loose horseman's coat or cloak of the chief constable, which, lined with red, and with the gold-laced cap beside it, made up the delusion that alarmed her.

It was not an easy task to withdraw the heavy bolts and bars that secured the ma.s.sive door, and even to turn the heavy key in the lock required an effort; but she succeeded at length, and issued forth into the open.

'How I hope he has not come! how I pray he has not ventured!' said she to herself as she walked along. 'Leave-takings are sad things, and why incur one so full of peril and misery too? When I wrote to him, of course I knew nothing of his danger, and it is exactly his danger will make him come!'

She knew of others to whom such reasonings would not have applied, and a scornful shake of the head showed that she would not think of them at such a moment. The sound of her own footsteps on the crisp ground made her once or twice believe she heard some one coming, and as she stopped to listen, the strong beating of her heart could be counted. It was not fear--at least not fear in the sense of a personal danger--it was that high tension which great anxiety lends to the nerves, exalting vitality to a state in which a sensation is as powerful as a material influence.

She ascended the steps of the little terraced mound of the rendezvous one by one, overwhelmed almost to fainting by some imagined a.n.a.logy with the scaffold, which might be the fate of him she was going to meet.

He was standing under a tree, his arms crossed on his breast, as she came up. The moment she appeared, he rushed to meet her, and throwing himself on one knee, he seized her hand and kissed it.

'Do you know your danger in being here?' she asked, as she surrendered her hand to his grasp.

'I know it all, and this moment repays it tenfold.'

'You cannot know the full extent of the peril; you cannot know that Captain Curtis and his people are in the castle at this moment, that they are in full cry after you, and that every avenue to this spot is watched and guarded.'

'What care I! Have I not this?' And he covered her hand with kisses.

'Every moment that you are here increases your danger, and if my absence should become known, there will be a search after me. I shall never forgive myself if my folly should lead to your being captured.'

'If I could but feel my fate was linked with yours, I'd give my life for it willingly.'

'It was not to listen to such words as these I came here.'

'Remember, dearest, they are the last confessions of one you shall never see more. They are the last cry of a heart that will soon be still for ever.'

'No, no, no!' cried she pa.s.sionately. 'There is life enough left for you to win a worthy name. Listen to me calmly now: I have heard from Curtis within the last hour all his plans for your capture; I know where his patrols are stationed, and the roads they are to watch.'

'And did you care to do this?' said he tenderly.

'I would do more than that to save you.'

'Oh, do not say so!' cried he wildly, 'or you will give me such a desire to live as will make a coward of me.'

'Curtis suspects you will go northward; either he has had information, or computes it from what you have done already.'

'He is wrong, then. When I go hence, it shall be to the court-house at Tullamore, where I mean to give myself up.'

'As what?'

'As what I am--a rebel, convicted, sentenced, and escaped, and still a rebel.'

'You do not, then, care for life?'

'Do I not, for such moments of life as this!' cried he, as, with a wild rapture, he kissed her hand again and again.

'And were I to ask you, you would not try to save your life?'

'To share that life with you there is not anything I would not dare. To live and know you were another's is more than I can face. Tell me, Nina, is it true you are to be the wife of this soldier? I cannot utter his name.'

'I am to be married to Mr. Walpole.'

'What! to that contemptuous young man you have already told me so much of.

How have they brought you down to this?'

'There is no thought of bringing down; his rank and place are above my own--he is by family and connection superior to us all.'

'And what is he, or how does he aspire to you? Is the vulgar security of competence to live on--is that enough for one like you? is the well-balanced good-breeding of common politeness enough to fill a heart that should be fed on pa.s.sionate devotion? You may link yourself to mediocrity, but can you humble your nature to resemble it. Do you believe you can plod on the dreary road of life without an impulse or an ambition, or blend your thoughts with those of a man who has neither?'

She stood still and did not utter a word.

'There are some--I do not know if you are one of them--who have an almost shrinking dread of poverty.'

'I am not afraid of poverty.'

'It has but one antidote, I know--intense love! The all-powerful sense of living for another begets indifference to the little straits and trials of narrow fortune, till the mind at last comes to feel how much there is to live for beyond the indulgence of vulgar enjoyments; and if, to crown all, a high ambition be present, there will be an ecstasy of bliss no words can measure.'

'Have you failed in Ireland?' asked she suddenly.

'Failed, so far as to know that a rebellion will only ratify the subjection of the country to England; a reconquest would be slavery. The chronic discontent that burns in every peasant heart will do more than the appeal to arms. It is slow, but it is certain.'

'And where is your part?'