Lord Kilgobbin Part 39

'Our friend below-stairs looks as if _that_ was not his failing. I should say that he means a good deal.'

'Oh, I know you are laughing at my stupid phrase--no matter; you understand me, at all events. I don't like that man.'

'd.i.c.k's friends are not fortunate with you. I remember how unfavourably you judged of Mr. Atlee from his portrait.'

'Well, he looked rather better than his picture--less false, I mean; or perhaps it was that he had a certain levity of manner that carried off the perfidy.'

'What an amiable sort of levity!'

'You are too critical on me by half this evening,' said Nina pettishly; and she arose and strolled out upon the leads.

For some time Kate was scarcely aware she had gone. Her head was full of cares, and she sat trying to think some of them 'out,' and see her way to deal with them. At last the door of the room slowly and noiselessly opened, and d.i.c.k put in his head.

'I was afraid you might be asleep, Kate,' said he, entering, 'finding all so still and quiet here.'

'No. Nina and I were chatting here--squabbling, I believe, if I were to tell the truth; and I can't tell when she left me.'

'What could you be quarrelling about?' asked he, as he sat down beside her.

'I think it was with that strange friend of yours. We were not quite agreed whether his manners were perfect, or his habits those of the well-bred world. Then we wanted to know more of him, and each was dissatisfied that the other was so ignorant; and, lastly, we were canva.s.sing that very peculiar taste you appear to have in friends, and were wondering where you find your odd people.'

'So then you don't like Donogan?' said he hurriedly.

'Like whom? And you call him Donogan!'

'The mischief is out,' said he. 'Not that I wanted to have secrets from you; but all the same, I am a precious bungler. His name is Donogan, and what's more, it's Daniel Donogan. He was the same who figured in the dock at, I believe, sixteen years of age, with Smith O'Brien and the others, and was afterwards seen in England in '59, known as a head-centre, and apprehended on suspicion in '60, and made his escape from Dartmoor the same year. There's a very pretty biography in skeleton, is it not?'

'But, my dear d.i.c.k, how are you connected with him?'

'Not very seriously. Don't be afraid. I'm not compromised in any way, nor does he desire that I should be. Here is the whole story of our acquaintance.'

And now he told what the reader already knows of their first meeting and the intimacy that followed it.

'All that will take nothing from the danger of harbouring a man charged as he is,' said she gravely.

'That is to say, if he be tracked and discovered.'

'It is what I mean.'

'Well, one has only to look out of that window, and see where we are, and what lies around us on every side, to be tolerably easy on that score.'

And, as he spoke, he arose and walked out upon the terrace.

'What, were you here all this time?' asked he, as he saw Nina seated on the battlement, and throwing dried leaves carelessly to the wind.

'Yes, I have been here this half-hour, perhaps longer.'

'And heard what we have been saying within there?'

'Some chance words reached me, but I did not follow them.'

'Oh, it was here you were, then, Nina!' cried Kate. 'I am ashamed to say I did not know it.'

'We got so warm in discussing your friend's merits or demerits, that we parted in a sort of huff,' said Nina. 'I wonder was he worth quarrelling for?'

'What should _you_ say?' asked d.i.c.k inquiringly, as he scanned her face.

'In any other land, I might say he was--that is, that some interest might attach to him; but here, in Ireland, you all look so much brighter, and wittier, and more impetuous, and more out of the common than you really are, that I give up all divination of you, and own I cannot read you at all.'

'I hope you like the explanation,' said Kate to her brother, laughing.

'I'll tell my friend of it in the morning,' said d.i.c.k; 'and as he is a great national champion, perhaps he'll accept it as a defiance.'

'You do not frighten me by the threat,' said Nina calmly.

d.i.c.k looked from her face to her sister's and back again to hers, to discern if he might how much she had overheard; but he could read nothing in her cold and impa.s.sive bearing, and he went his way in doubt and confusion.

CHAPTER XXIX

ON A VISIT AT KILGOBBIN

Before Kearney had risen from his bed the next morning, Donogan was in his room, his look elated and his cheek glowing with recent exercise. 'I have had a burst of two hours' sharp walking over the bog,' cried he; 'and it has put me in such spirits as I have not known for many a year. Do you know, Mr. Kearney, that what with the fantastic effects of the morning mists, as they lift themselves over these vast wastes--the glorious patches of blue heather and purple anemone that the sun displays through the fog--and, better than all, the springiness of a soil that sends a thrill to the heart, like a throb of youth itself, there is no walking in the world can compare with a bog at sunrise! There's a sentiment to open a paper on nationalities! I came up with the postboy, and took his letters to save him a couple of miles. Here's one for you, I think from Atlee; and this is also to your address, from Dublin; and here's the last number of the _Pike_, and you'll see they have lost no time. There's a few lines about you. "Our readers will be grateful to us for the tidings we announce to-day, with authority--that Richard Kearney, Esq., son of Mathew Kearney, o Kilgobbin Castle, will contest his native county at the approaching election. It will be a proud day for Ireland when she shall see her representation in the names of those who dignify the exalted station they hold in virtue of their birth and blood, by claims of admitted talent and recognised ability. Mr.

Kearney, junior, has swept the university of its prizes, and the college gate has long seen his name at the head of her prizemen. He contests the seat in the National interest. It is needless to say all our sympathies, and hopes, and best wishes go with him."'

d.i.c.k shook with laughing while the other read out the paragraph in a high-sounding and pretentious tone.

'I hope,' said Kearney at last, 'that the information as to my college successes is not vouched for on authority.'

'Who cares a fig about them? The phrase rounds off a sentence, and n.o.body treats it like an affidavit.'

'But some one may take the trouble to remind the readers that my victories have been defeats, and that in my last examination but one I got "cautioned."'

'Do you imagine, Mr. Kearney, the House of Commons in any way reflects college distinction? Do you look for senior-wranglers and double-firsts on the Treasury bench? and are not the men who carry away distinction the men of breadth, not depth? Is it not the wide acquaintance with a large field of knowledge, and the subtle power to know how other men regard these topics, that make the popular leader of the present day? and remember, it is talk, and not oratory, is the mode. You must be commonplace, and even vulgar, practical, dashed with a small morality, so as not to be cla.s.sed with the low Radical; and if then you have a bit of high-faluting for the peroration, you'll do. The morning papers will call you a young man of great promise, and the whip will never pa.s.s you without a shake-hands.'

'But there are good speakers.'

'There is Bright--I don't think I know another--and he only at times. Take my word for it, the secret of success with "the collective wisdom" is reiteration. Tell them the same thing, not once or twice or even ten, but fifty times, and don't vary very much even the way you tell it. Go on repeating your plat.i.tudes, and by the time you find you are cursing your own stupid persistence, you may swear you have made a convert to your opinions. If you are bent on variety, and must indulge it, ring your changes on the man who brought these views before them--yourself, but beyond these never soar. O'Connell, who had a variety at will for his own countrymen, never tried it in England: he knew better. The chawbacons that we sneer at are not always in smock-frocks, take my word for it; they many of them wear wide-brimmed hats and broadcloth, and sit above the gangway.

Ay, sir,' cried he, warming with the theme, 'once I can get my countrymen fully awakened to the fact of who and what are the men who rule them, I'll ask for no Catholic a.s.sociations, or Repeal Committees, or Nationalist Clubs--the card-house of British supremacy will tumble of itself; there will be no conflict, but simply submission.'

'We're a long day's journey from these convictions, I suspect,' said Kearney doubtfully.

'Not so far, perhaps, as you think. Do you remark how little the English press deal in abuse of us to what was once their custom? They have not, I admit, come down to civility; but they don't deride us in the old fas.h.i.+on, nor tell us, as I once saw, that we are intellectually and physically stamped with inferiority. If it was true, Mr. Kearney, it was stupid to tell it to us.'

'I think we could do better than dwell upon these things.'