Lord Kilgobbin Part 9

'A certain Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whom I knew at Rome; one of the prettiest, cleverest, and nicest girls I ever met in my life.'

'Not the daughter of that precious Count Kostalergi you have told me such stories of?'

'The same, but most unlike him in every way. She is here, apparently with an uncle, who is now from home, and she and her cousin invite us to luncheon to-day.'

'What a lark!' said the other dryly.

'We'll go, of course?'

'In weather like this?'

'Why not? Shall we be better off staying here? I now begin to remember how the name of this place was so familiar to me. She was always asking me if I knew or heard of her mother's brother, the Lord Kilgobbin, and, to tell truth, I fancied some one had been hoaxing her with the name, and never believed that there was even a place with such a designation.'

'Kilgobbin does not sound like a lordly t.i.tle. How about Mademoiselle--what is the name?'

'Kostalergi; they call themselves princes.'

'With all my heart. I was only going to say, as you've got a sort of knack of entanglement--is there, or has there been, anything of that sort here?'

'Flirtation--a little of what is called "spooning"--but no more. But why do you ask?'

'First of all, you are an engaged man.'

'All true, and I mean to keep my engagement. I can't marry, however, till I get a mission, or something at home as good as a mission. Lady Maude knows that; her friends know it, but none of us imagine that we are to be miserable in the meantime.'

'I'm not talking of misery. I'd only say, don't get yourself into any mess.

These foreign girls are very wide-awake.'

'Don't believe that, Harry; one of our home-bred damsels would give them a distance and beat them in the race for a husband. It's only in England girls are trained to angle for marriage, take my word for it.'

'Be it so--I only warn you that if you get into any sc.r.a.pe I'll accept none of the consequences. Lord Danesbury is ready enough to say that, because I am some ten years older than you, I should have kept you out of mischief. I never contracted for such a bear-leaders.h.i.+p; though I certainly told Lady Maude I'd turn Queen's evidence against you if you became a traitor.'

'I wonder you never told me that before,' said Walpole, with some irritation of manner.

'I only wonder that I told it now!' replied the other gruffly.

'Then I am to take it, that in your office of guardian, you'd rather we'd decline this invitation, eh?'

'I don't care a rush for it either way, but, looking to the sort of day it is out there, I incline to keep the house.'

'I don't mind bad weather, and I'll go,' said Walpole, in a way that showed temper was involved in the resolution.

Lockwood made no other reply than heaping a quant.i.ty of turf on the fire, and seating himself beside it.

When a man tells his fellow-traveller that he means to go his own road--that companions.h.i.+p has no tie upon him--he virtually declares the partners.h.i.+p dissolved; and while Lockwood sat reflecting over this, he was also canva.s.sing with himself how far he might have been to blame in provoking this hasty resolution.

'Perhaps he was irritated at my counsels, perhaps the notion of anything like guidance offended him; perhaps it was the phrase, "bear-leaders.h.i.+p,"

and the half-threat of betraying him, has done the mischief.' Now the gallant soldier was a slow thinker; it took him a deal of time to arrange the details of any matter in his mind, and when he tried to muster his ideas there were many which would not answer the call, and of those which came, there were not a few which seemed to present themselves in a refractory and unwilling spirit, so that he had almost to suppress a mutiny before he proceeded to his inspection.

Nor did the strong cheroots, which he smoked to clear his faculties and develop his mental resources, always contribute to this end, though their soothing influence certainly helped to make him more satisfied with his judgments.

'Now, look here, Walpole,' said he, determining that he would save himself all unnecessary labour of thought by throwing the burden of the case on the respondent--'Look here; take a calm view of this thing, and see if it's quite wise in you to go back into trammels it cost you some trouble to escape from. You call it spooning, but you won't deny you went very far with that young woman--farther, I suspect, than you've told me yet. Eh! is that true or not?'

He waited a reasonable time for a reply, but none coming, he went on--'I don't want a forced confidence. You may say it's no business of mine, and there I agree with you, and probably if you put _me_ to the question in the same fas.h.i.+on, I'd give you a very short answer. Remember one thing, however, old fellow--I've seen a precious deal more of life and the world than you have! From sixteen years of age, when _you_ were hammering away at Greek verbs and some such balderdash at Oxford, I was up at Rangoon with the very fastest set of men--ay, of women too--I ever lived with in all my life. Half of our fellows were killed off by it. Of course people will say climate, climate! but if I were to give you the history of one day--just twenty-four hours of our life up there--you'd say that the wonder is there's any one alive to tell it.'

He turned around at this, to enjoy the expression of horror and surprise he hoped to have called up, and perceived for the first time that he was alone. He rang the bell, and asked the waiter where the other gentleman had gone, and learned that he had ordered a car, and set out for Kilgobbin Castle more than half an hour before.

'All right,' said he fiercely. 'I wash my hands of it altogether! I'm heartily glad I told him so before he went.' He smoked on very vigorously for half an hour, the burden of his thoughts being perhaps revealed by the summing-up, as he said, 'And when you are "in for it," Master Cecil, and some precious sc.r.a.pe it will be, if I move hand or foot to pull you through it, call me a Major of Marines, that's all--just call me a Major of Marines!' The ineffable horror of such an imputation served as matter for reverie for hours.

CHAPTER IX

A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG

While Lockwood continued thus to doubt and debate with himself, Walpole was already some miles on his way to Kilgobbin. Not, indeed, that he had made any remarkable progress, for the 'mare that was to rowle his honour over in an hour and a quarter,' had to be taken from the field where she had been ploughing since daybreak, while 'the boy' that should drive her, was a little old man who had to be aroused from a condition of drunkenness in a hayloft, and installed in his office.

Nor were these the only difficulties. The roads that led through the bog were so numerous and so completely alike that it only needed the dense atmosphere of a rainy day to make it matter of great difficulty to discover the right track. More than once were they obliged to retrace their steps after a considerable distance, and the driver's impatience always took the shape of a reproach to Walpole, who, having nothing else to do, should surely have minded where they were going. Now, not only was the traveller utterly ignorant of the geography of the land he journeyed in, but his thoughts were far and away from the scenes around him. Very scattered and desultory thoughts were they, at one time over the Alps and with 'long-agoes': nights at Rome clas.h.i.+ng with mornings on the Campagna; vast salons crowded with people of many nations, all more or less busy with that great traffic which, whether it take the form of religion, or politics, or social intrigue, hate, love, or rivalry, makes up what we call 'the world'; or there were sunsets dying away rapidly--as they will do--over that great plain outside the city, whereon solitude and silence are as much masters as on a vast prairie of the West; and he thought of times when he rode back at nightfall beside Nina Kostalergi, when little flashes would cross them of that romance that very worldly folk now and then taste of, and delight in, with a zest all the greater that the sensation is so new and strange to them. Then there was the revulsion from the blaze of waxlights and the glitter of diamonds, the crash of orchestras and the din of conversation, the intoxication of the flattery that champagne only seems to 'accentuate,'

to the unbroken stillness of the hour, when even the footfall of the horse is unheard, and a dreamy doubt that this quietude, this soothing sense of calm, is higher happiness than all the glitter and all the splendour of the ball-room, and that in the dropping words we now exchange, and in the stray glances, there is a significance and an exquisite delight we never felt till now; for, glorious as is the thought of a returned affection, full of ecstasy the sense of a heart all, all our own, there is, in the first half-doubtful, distrustful feeling of falling in love, with all its chances of success or failure, something that has its moments of bliss nothing of earthly delight can ever equal. To the verge of that possibility Walpole had reached--but gone no further--with Nina Kostalergi. The young men of the age are an eminently calculating and prudent cla.s.s, and they count the cost of an action with a marvellous amount of accuracy. Is it the turf and its teachings to which this crafty and cold-blooded spirit is owing? Have they learned to 'square their book' on life by the lessons of Ascot and Newmarket, and seen that, no matter how probably they 'stand to win' on this, they must provide for that, and that no caution or foresight is enough that will not embrace every casualty of any venture?

There is no need to tell a younger son of the period that he must not marry a pretty girl of doubtful family and no fortune. He may have his doubts on scores of subjects: he may not be quite sure whether he ought to remain a Whig with Lord Russell, or go in for Odgerism and the ballot; he may be uncertain about Colenso, and have his misgivings about the Pentateuch; he may not be easy in his mind about the Russians in the East, or the Americans in the West; uncomfortable suspicions may cross him that the Volunteers are not as quick in evolution as the Zouaves, or that England generally does not sing 'Rule Britannia' so l.u.s.tily as she used to do. All these are possible misgivings, but that he should take such a plunge as matrimony, on other grounds than the perfect prudence and profit of the investment, could never occur to him.

As to the sinfulness of tampering with a girl's affections by what in slang is called 'spooning,' it was purely absurd to think of it. You might as well say that playing sixpenny whist made a man a gambler. And then, as to the spooning, it was _partie egale_, the lady was no worse off than the gentleman. If there were by any hazard--and this he was disposed to doubt--'affections' at stake, the man 'stood to lose' as much as the woman.

But this was not the aspect in which the case presented itself, flirtation being, in his idea, to marriage what the preliminary canter is to the race--something to indicate the future, but so dimly and doubtfully as not to decide the hesitation of the waverer.

If, then, Walpole was never for a moment what mothers call serious in his attentions to Mademoiselle Kostalergi, he was not the less fond of her society; he frequented the places where she was likely to be met with, and paid her that degree of 'court' that only stopped short of being particular by his natural caution. There was the more need for the exercise of this quality at Rome, since there were many there who knew of his engagement with his cousin, Lady Maude, and who would not have hesitated to report on any breach of fidelity. Now, however, all these restraints were withdrawn.

They were not in Italy, where London, by a change of venue, takes its 'records' to be tried in the dull days of winter. They were in Ireland, and in a remote spot of Ireland, where there were no gossips, no clubs, no afternoon-tea committees, to sit on reputations, and was it not pleasant now to see this nice girl again in perfect freedom? These were, loosely stated, the thoughts which occupied him as he went along, very little disposed to mind how often the puzzled driver halted to decide the road, or how frequently he retraced miles of distance. Men of the world, especially when young in life, and more realistic than they will be twenty years later, proud of the incredulity they can feel on the score of everything and everybody, are often fond of making themselves heroes to their own hearts of some little romance, which shall not cost them dearly to indulge in, and merely engage some loose-lying sympathies without in any way prejudicing their road in life. They accept of these sentimentalities as the vicar's wife did the sheep in the picture, pleased to 'have as many as the painter would put in for nothing.'

Now, Cecil Walpole never intended that this little Irish episode--and episode he determined it should be--should in any degree affect the serious fortunes of his life. He was engaged to his cousin, Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, and they would be married some day. Not that either was very impatient to exchange present comfort--and, on her side, affluence--for a marriage on small means, and no great prospects beyond that. They were not much in love. Walpole knew that the Lady Maude's fortune was small, but the man who married her must 'be taken care of,' and by either side, for there were as many Tories as Whigs in the family, and Lady Maude knew that half-a-dozen years ago, she would certainly not have accepted Walpole; but that with every year her chances of a better _parti_ were diminis.h.i.+ng; and, worse than all this, each was well aware of the inducements by which the other was influenced. Nor did the knowledge in any way detract from their self-complacence or satisfaction with the match.

Lady Maude was to accompany her uncle to Ireland, and do the honours of his court, for he was a bachelor, and pleaded hard with his party on that score to be let off accepting the viceroyalty.

Lady Maude, however, had not yet arrived, and even if she had, how should she ever hear of an adventure in the Bog of Allen!

But was there to be an adventure? and, if so, what sort of adventure?

Irishmen, Walpole had heard, had all the jealousy about their women that characterises savage races, and were ready to resent what, in civilised people, no one would dream of regarding as matter for umbrage. Well, then, it was only to be more cautious--more on one's guard--besides the tact, too, which a knowledge of life should give--

'Eh, what's this? Why are you stopping here?'

This was addressed now to the driver, who had descended from his box, and was standing in advance of the horse.

'Why don't I drive on, is it?' asked he, in a voice of despair. 'Sure, there's no road.'

'And does it stop here?' cried Walpole in horror, for he now perceived that the road really came to an abrupt ending in the midst of the bog.

'Begorra, it's just what it does. Ye see, your honour,' added he, in a confidential tone, 'it's one of them tricks the English played us in the year of the famine. They got two millions of money to make roads in Ireland, but they were so afraid it would make us prosperous and richer than themselves, that they set about making roads that go nowhere.