Lord Kilgobbin Part 65

'You must read those of only one colour, then,' said he slyly; 'or perhaps it is the tone of comment you hear about you. Are your sentiments such as you daily listen to from Lord Kilgobbin and his family?'

'I don't know that they are. I suspect I'm more of a rebel than he is; but I'll ask him if you wish it.'

'On no account, I entreat you. It would compromise me seriously to hear such a discussion even in jest. Remember who I am, mademoiselle, and the office I hold.'

'Your great frankness, Mr. Walpole, makes me sometimes forget both,' said she, with well-acted humility.

'I wish it would do something more,' said he eagerly. 'I wish it would inspire a little emulation, and make you deal as openly with _me_ as I long to do with _you_.'

'It might embarra.s.s you very much, perhaps.'

'As how?' asked he, with a touch of tenderness in his voice.

For a second or two she made no answer, and then, faltering at each word, she said, 'What if some rebel leader--this man Donogan, for instance--drawn towards you b some secret magic of trustfulness, moved by I know not what need of your sympathy--for there is such a craving void now and then felt in the heart--should tell you some secret thought of his nature--something that he could utter alone to himself--would you bring yourself to use it against him? Could you turn round and say, "I have your inmost soul in my keeping. You are mine now--mine--mine?"'

'Do I understand you aright?' said he earnestly. 'Is it just possible, even possible, that you have that to confide to me which would show that you regard me as a dear friend?'

'Oh! Mr. Walpole,' burst she out pa.s.sionately, 'do not by the greater power of _your_ intellect seek the mastery over _mine_. Let the loneliness and isolation of my life here rather appeal to you to pity than suggest the thought of influencing and dominating me.'

'Would that I might. What would I not give or do to have that power that you speak of.'

'Is this true?' said she.

'It is.'

'Will you swear it?'

'Most solemnly.'

She paused for a moment, and a slight tremor shook her mouth; but whether the motion expressed a sentiment of acute pain or a movement of repressed sarcasm, it was very difficult to determine.

'What is it, then, that you would swear?' asked she calmly and even coldly.

'Swear that I have no hope so high, no ambition so great, as to win your heart.'

'Indeed! And that other heart that you have won--what is to become of it?'

'Its owner has recalled it. In fact, it was never in _my_ keeping but as a loan.'

'How strange! At least, how strange to me this sounds. I, in my ignorance, thought that people pledged their very lives in these bargains.'

'So it ought to be, and so it would be, if this world were not a web of petty interests and mean ambitions; and these, I grieve to say, will find their way into hearts that should be the home of very different sentiments.

It was of this order was that compact with my cousin--for I will speak openly to you, knowing it is her to whom you allude. We were to have been married. It was an old engagement. Our friends--that is, I believe, the way to call them--liked it. They thought it a good thing for each of us.

Indeed, making the dependants of a good family intermarry is an economy of patronage--the same plank rescues two from drowning. I believe--that is, I fear--we accepted all this in the same spirit. We were to love each other as much as we could, and our relations were to do their best for us.'

'And now it is all over?'

'All--and for ever.'

'How came this about?'

'At first by a jealousy about _you_.'

'A jealousy about _me_! You surely never dared--' and here her voice trembled with real pa.s.sion, while her eyes flashed angrily.

'No, no. I am guiltless in the matter. It was that cur Atlee made the mischief. In a moment of weak trustfulness, I sent him over to Wales to a.s.sist my uncle in his correspondence. He, of course, got to know Lady Maude Bickerstaffe--by what arts he ingratiated himself into her confidence, I cannot say. Indeed, I had trusted that the fellow's vulgarity would form an impa.s.sable barrier between them, and prevent all intimacy; but, apparently, I was wrong. He seems to have been the companion of her rides and drives, and under the pretext of doing some commissions for her in the bazaars of Constantinople, he got to correspond with her. So artful a fellow would well know what to make of such a privilege.'

'And is he your successor now?' asked she, with a look of almost undisguised insolence.

'Scarcely that,' said he, with a supercilious smile. 'I think, if you had ever seen my cousin, you would scarcely have asked the question.'

'But I have seen her. I saw her at the Odescalchi Palace at Rome. I remember the stare she was pleased to bestow on me as she swept past me.

I remember more, her words as she asked, "Is this your t.i.tian Girl I have heard so much of?"'

'And may hear more of,' muttered he, almost unconsciously.

'Yes--even that too; but not, perhaps, in the sense you mean.' Then, as if correcting herself, she went on, 'It was a bold ambition of Mr. Atlee. I must say I like the very daring of it.'

'_He_ never dared it--take my word for it.'

An insolent laugh was her first reply. 'How little you men know of each other, and how less than little you know of us! You sneer at the people who are moved by sudden impulse, but you forget it is the squall upsets the boat.'

'I believe I can follow what you mean. You would imply that my cousin's breach with _me_ might have impelled her to listen to Atlee?'

'Not so much that as, by establis.h.i.+ng himself as her confidant, he got the key of her heart, and let himself in as he pleased.'

'I suspect he found little to interest him there.'

'The insufferable insolence of that speech! Can you men never be brought to see that we are not all alike to each of you; that our natures have their separate watchwords, and that the soul which would vibrate with tenderness to this, is to that a dead and senseless thing, with no trace or touch of feeling about it?'

'I only believe this in part.'

'Believe it wholly, then, or own that you know nothing of love--no more than do those countless thousands who go through life and never taste its real ecstasy, nor its real sorrow; who accept convenience, or caprice, or flattered vanity as its counterfeit, and live out the delusion in lives of discontent. You have done wrong to break with your cousin. It is clear to me you suited each other.'

'This is sarcasm.'

'If it is, I am sorry for it. I meant it for sincerity. In _your_ career, ambition is everything. The woman that could aid you on your road would be the real helpmate. She who would simply cross your path by her sympathies, or her affections, would be a mere embarra.s.sment. Take the very case before us. Would not Lady Maude point out to you how, by the capture of this rebel, you might so aid your friends as to establish a claim for recompense? Would she not impress you with the necessity of showing how your activity redounded to the credit of your party? She would neither interpose with ill-timed appeals to your pity or a misplaced sympathy.

_She_ would help the politician, while another might hamper the man.'

'All that might be true, if the game of political life were played as it seems to be on the surface, and my cousin was exactly the sort of woman to use ordinary faculties with ability and acuteness; but there are scores of things in which her interference would have been hurtful, and her secrecy dubious. I will give you an instance, and it will serve to show my implicit confidence in yourself. Now with respect to this man, Donogan, there is nothing we wish less than to take him. To capture means to try--to try means to hang him--and how much better, or safer, or stronger are we when it is done? These fellows, right or wrong, represent opinions that are never controverted by the scaffold, and every man who dies for his convictions leaves a thousand disciples who never believed in him before.

It is only because he braves us that we pursue him, and in the face of our opponents and Parliament we cannot do less. So that while we are offering large rewards for his apprehension, we would willingly give double the sum to know he had escaped. Talk of the supremacy of the Law--the more you a.s.sert that here, the more ungovernable is this country by a Party. An active Attorney-General is another word for three more regiments in Ireland.'

'I follow you with some difficulty; but I see that you would like this man to get away, and how is that to be done?'

'Easily enough, when once he knows that it will be safe for him to go north. He naturally fears the Orangemen of the northern counties. They will, however, do nothing without the police, and the police have got their orders throughout Antrim and Derry. Here--on this strip of paper--here are the secret instructions:--"To George Dargan, Chief Constable, Letterkenny District. Private and confidential.--It is, for many reasons, expedient that the convict Donogan, on a proper understanding that he will not return to Ireland, should be suffered to escape. If you are, therefore, in a position to extort a pledge from him to this extent--and it should be explicit and beyond all cavil--you will, taking due care not to compromise your authority in your office, aid him to leave the country, even to the extent of moneyed a.s.sistance." To this are appended directions how he is to proceed to carry out these instructions: what he may, and what he may not do, with whom he may seek for co-operation, and where he is to maintain a guarded and careful secrecy. Now, in telling you all this, Mademoiselle Kostalergi, I have given you the strongest a.s.surance in my power of the unlimited trust I have in you. I see how the questions that agitate this country interest you. I read the eagerness with which you watch them, but I want you to see more. I want you to see that the men who purpose to themselves the great task of extricating Ireland from her difficulties must be politicians in the highest sense of the word, and that you should see in us statesmen of an order that can weigh human pa.s.sions and human emotions--and see that hope and fear, and terror and grat.i.tude, sway the hearts of men who, to less observant eyes, seem to have no place in their natures but for rebellion. That this mode of governing Ireland is the one charm to the Celtic heart, all the Tory rule of the last fifty years, with its hangings and banishments and other terrible blunders, will soon convince you. The Priest alone has felt the pulse of this people, and we are the only Ministers of England who have taken the Priest into our confidence. I own to you I claim some credit for myself in this discovery.

It was in long reflecting over the ills of Ireland that I came to see that where the malady has so much in its nature that is sensational and emotional, so must the remedy be sensational too. The Tories were ever bent on extirpating--_we_ devote ourselves to "healing measures." Do you follow me?'

'I do,' said she thoughtfully.