Lord Kilgobbin Part 111

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

Joe touched d.i.c.k 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 Lx.x.xIV

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 Sat.u.r.day, 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?'

'Go on,' said he, in a faint voice.

'It is written in a great hurry, and very hard to read. It runs thus: "Dearest,--I have no time for explainings nor excuses, if I were disposed to make either, and I will confine myself to a few facts. I was married this morning to Donogan--the rebel: I know you have added the word, and I write it to show how our sentiments are united. As people are p.r.o.ne to put into the lottery the number they have dreamed of, I have taken my ticket in this greatest of all lotteries on the same wise grounds. I have been dreaming adventures ever since I was a little child, and it is but natural that I marry an adventurer."'

A deep groan from the old man made her stop; but as she saw that he was not changed in colour or feature, she went on--

'"He says he loves me very dearly, and that he will treat me well. I like to believe both, and I do believe them. He says we shall be very poor for the present, but that he means to become something or somebody later on. I do not much care for the poverty, if there is hope; and he is a man to hope with and to hope from.

'"You are, in a measure, the cause of all, since it was to tell me he would send away all the witnesses against your husband, that is to be, that I agreed to meet him, and to give me the lease which Miss O'Shea was so rash as to place in Gill's hands. This I now send you."'

'And this she has sent you, Kate?' asked Kilgobbin.

'Yes, papa, it is here, and the master of the _Swallow's_ receipt for Gill as a pa.s.senger to Quebec.'

'Read on.'

'There is little more, papa, except what I am to say to you--to forgive her.'

'I can't forgive her. It was deceit--cruel deceit.'

'It was not, papa. I could swear there was no forethought. If there had been, she would have told me. She told me everything. She never loved Walpole; she could not love him. She was marrying him with a broken heart.

It was not that she loved another, but she knew she could have loved another.'

'Don't talk such muddle to _me_,' said he angrily. 'You fancy life is to be all courting, but it isn't. It's house-rent, and butchers' bills, and apothecaries, and the pipe water--it's shoes, and schooling, and arrears of rent, and rheumatism, and flannel waistcoats, and toothache have a considerable s.p.a.ce in Paradise!' And there was a grim comicality in his utterance of the word.

'She said no more than the truth of herself,' broke in Kate. 'With all her queenly ways, she could face poverty bravely--I know it.'

'So you can--any of you, if a man's making love to you. You care little enough what you eat, and not much more what you wear, if he tells you it becomes you; but that's not the poverty that grinds and crushes. It's what comes home in sickness; it's what meets you in insolent letters, in threats of this or menaces of that. But what do you know about it, or why do I speak of it? She's married a man that could be hanged if the law caught him, and for no other reason, that I see, than because he's a felon.'

'I don't think you are fair to her, papa.'

'Of course I'm not. Is it likely that at sixty I can be as great a fool as I was at sixteen?'

'So that means that you once thought in the same way that she does?'

'I didn't say any such thing, miss,' said he angrily. 'Did you tell Miss Betty what's happened us?'

'I just broke it to her, papa, and she made me run away and read the note to you. Perhaps you'll come and speak to her?'

'I will,' said he, rising and preparing to leave the room. 'I'd rather hear I was a bankrupt this morning than that news!' And he mounted the stairs, sighing heavily as he went.

'Isn't this fine news the morning has brought us, Miss Betty!' cried he, as he entered the room with a haggard look, and hands clasped before him. 'Did you ever dream there was such disgrace in store for us?'

'This marriage, you mean,' said the old lady dryly.

'Of course I do--if you call it a marriage at all.'

'I do call it a marriage--here's Father Tierney's certificate, a copy made in his own handwriting: "Daniel Donogan, M.P., of Killamoyle and Innismul, County Kilkenny, to Virginia Kostalergi, of no place in particular, daughter of Prince Kostalergi, of the same localities, contracted in holy matrimony this morning at six o'clock, and witnessed likewise by Morris McCabe, vestry clerk--Mary Kestinogue, her mark." Do you want more than that?'

'Do I want more? Do I want a respectable wedding? Do I want a decent man--a gentleman--a man fit to maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have behaved? Is this what we thought of her?'

'It is not, Mat Kearney--you say truth. I never believed so well of her till now. I never believed before that she had anything in her head but to catch one of those English puppies, with their soft voices and their sneers about Ireland. I never saw her that she wasn't trying to flatter them, and to please them, and to sing them down, as she called it herself--the very name fit for it! And that she had the high heart to take a man not only poor, but with a rope round his neck, shows me how I wronged her. I could give her five thousand this morning to make her a dowry, and to prove how I honour her.'

'Can any one tell who he is? What do we know of him?'