Lord Kilgobbin Part 105

It was only then that Kearney discovered he was left alone, and that d.i.c.k had stolen away, though when or how he could not say.

'I'm glad the boy was not listening to her, for I'm downright ashamed that I bore it,' was his final reflection as he strolled out to take a walk in the plantation.

CHAPTER Lx.x.x

A NEW ARRIVAL

Though the dinner-party that day at Kilgobbin Castle was deficient in the persons of Lockwood and Walpole, the accession of Joe Atlee to the company made up in a great measure for the loss. He arrived shortly before dinner was announced, and even in the few minutes in the drawing-room, his gay and lively manner, his pleasant flow of small talk, dashed with the lightest of epigrams, and that marvellous variety he possessed, made every one delighted with him.

'I met Walpole and Lockwood at the station, and did my utmost to make them turn back with me. You may laugh, Lord Kilgobbin, but in doing the honours of another man's house, as I was at that moment, I deem myself without a rival.'

'I wish with all my heart you had succeeded; there is nothing I like as much as a well-filled table,' said Kearney.

'Not that their air and manner,' resumed Joe, 'impressed me strongly with the exuberance of their spirits; a pair of drearier dogs I have not seen for some time, and I believe I told them so.'

'Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it?' asked d.i.c.k.

'Except on the general grounds of coming away from such fascinating society. Lockwood played sulky, and scarcely vouchsafed a word, and as for Walpole, he made some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn sensibilities--so like what one reads in a French novel, that the very sound of them betrays unreality.'

'But was it, then, so very impossible to be sorry for leaving this?' asked Nina calmly.

'Certainly not for any man but Walpole.'

'And why not Walpole?'

'Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and read them so clearly; you to whom the secret anatomy of the "heart" is no mystery, and who understand how to trace the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his small nature. He might be miserable at being separated from himself--there could be no other estrangement would affect _him_.'

'This was not always your estimate of your _friend_,' said Nina, with a marked emphasis of the last word.

'Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first hour I met him. Since then, some s.p.a.ce of time has intervened, and though it has made no change in him, I hope it has dealt otherwise with me. I have at least reached the point in life where men not only have convictions but avow them.'

'Come, come; I can remember what precious good-luck you called it to make his acquaintance,' cried d.i.c.k, half angrily.

'I don't deny it. I was very nigh drowning at the time, and it was the first plank I caught hold of. I am very grateful to him for the rescue; but I owe him more grat.i.tude for the opportunity the incident gave me to see these men in their intimacy--to know, and know thoroughly, what is the range, what the stamp of those minds by which states are ruled and ma.s.ses are governed. Through Walpole I knew his master; and through the master I have come to know the slipshod intelligences which, composed of official detail, House of Commons' gossip, and _Times_' leaders, are accepted by us as statesmen. And if--' A very supercilious smile on Nina's mouth arrested him in the current of his speech, and he said, 'I know, of course, I know the question you are too polite to ask, but which quivers on your lip: "Who is the gifted creature that sees all this incompetence and insufficiency around him?" And I am quite ready to tell you. It is Joseph Atlee--Joseph Atlee, who knows that when he and others like him--for we are a strong coterie--stop the supply of ammunition, these gentlemen must cease firing.

Let the _Debats_ and the _Times_, the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and the _Sat.u.r.day_, and a few more that I need not stop to enumerate, strike work, and let us see how much of original thought you will obtain from your Cabinet sages! It is in the clash and collision of the thinkers outside of responsibility that these world-revered leaders catch the fire that lights up their policy. The _Times_ made the Crimean blunder. The _Siecle_ created the Mexican fiasco. The _Kreuz Zeitung_ gave the first impulse to the Schleswig-Holstein imbroglio; and if I mistake not, the "review" in the last _Diplomatic Chronicle_ will bear results of which he who now speaks to you will not disown the parentage.'

'The saints be praised! here's dinner,' exclaimed Kearney, 'or this fellow would talk us into a brain-fever. Kate is dining with Miss Betty again--G.o.d bless her for it,' muttered he as he gave his arm to Nina, and led the way.

'I've got you a commission as a "peeler," d.i.c.k,' said Joe, as they moved along. 'You'll have to prove that you can read and write, which is more than they would ask of you if you were going into the Cabinet; but we live in an intellectual age, and we test all the cabin-boys, and it is only the steersman we take on trust.'

Though Nina was eager to resent Atlee's impertinence on Walpole, she could not help feeling interested and amused by his sketches of his travels.

If, in speaking of Greece, he only gave the substance of the article he had written for the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, as the paper was yet unpublished all the remarks were novel, and the anecdotes fresh and sparkling. The tone of light banter and raillery in which he described public life in Greece and Greek statesmen, might have lost some of its authority had any one remembered to count the hours the speaker had spent in Athens; and Nina was certainly indignant at the hazardous effrontery of the criticisms. It was not, then, without intention that she arose to retire while Atlee was relating an interesting story of brigandage, and he--determined to repay the impertinence in kind--continued to recount his history as he arose to open the door for her to pa.s.s out. Her insolent look as she swept by was met by a smile of admiration on his part that actually made her cheek tingle with anger.

Old Kearney dozed off gently, under the influence of names of places and persons that did not interest him, and the two young men drew their chairs to the fire, and grew confidential at once.

'I think you have sent my cousin away in bad humour,' said d.i.c.k.

'I see it,' said Joe, as he slowly puffed his cigar. 'That young lady's head has been so cruelly turned by flattery of late, that the man who does not swing incense before her affronts her.'

'Yes; but you went out of your way to provoke her. It is true she knows little of Greece or Greeks, but it offends her to hear them slighted or ridiculed; and you took pains to do both.'

'Contemptible little country! with a mock-army, a mock-treasury, and a mock-chamber. The only thing real is the debt and the brigandage.'

'But why tell her so? You actually seemed bent on irritating her.'

'Quite true--so I was. My dear d.i.c.k, you have some lessons to learn in life, and one of them is that, just as it is bad heraldry to put colour on colour, it is an egregious blunder to follow flattery by flattery. The woman who has been spoiled by over-admiration must be approached with something else as unlike it as may be--pique--annoy--irritate--outrage, but take care that you interest her Let her only come to feel what a very tiresome thing mere adulation is, and she will one day value your two or three civil speeches as gems of priceless worth. It is exactly because I deeply desire to gain her affections, I have begun in this way.'

'You have come too late.'

'How do you mean too late--she is not engaged?'

'She is engaged--she is to be married to Walpole.'

'To Walpole!'

'Yes; he came over a few days ago to ask her. There is some question now--I don't well understand it--about some family consent, or an invitation--something, I believe, that Nina insists on, to show the world how his family welcome her amongst them; and it is for this he has gone to London, but to be back in eight or nine days, the wedding to take place towards the end of the month.'

'Is he very much in love?'

'I should say he is.'

'And she? Of course she could not possibly care for a fellow like Walpole?'

'I don't see why not. He is very much the stamp of man girls admire.'

'Not girls like Nina; not girls who aspire to a position in life, and who know that the little talents of the salon no more make a man of the world than the tricks of the circus will make a foxhunter. These ambitious women--she is one of them--will marry a hopeless idiot if he can bring wealth and rank and a great name; but they will not take a brainless creature who has to work his way up in the world. If she has accepted Walpole, there is pique in it, or ennui, or that uneasy desire of change that girls suffer from like a malady.'

'I cannot tell you why, but I know she has accepted him.'

'Women are not insensible to the value of second thoughts.'

'You mean she might throw him over--might jilt him?'

'I'll not employ the ugly word that makes the wrong it is only meant to indicate; but there are few of our resolves in life to which we might not move amendment, and the changed opinion a woman forms of a man before marriage would become a grievous injury if it happened after.'

'But must she of necessity change?'

'If she marry Walpole, I should say certainly. If a girl has fair abilities and a strong temper--and Nina has a good share of each--she will endure faults, actual vices, in a man, but she'll not stand littleness. Walpole has nothing else; and so I hope to prove to her to-morrow and the day after--in fact, during those eight or ten days you tell me he will be absent.'

'Will she let you? Will she listen to you?'

'Not at first--at least, not willingly, or very easily; but I will show her, by numerous little ill.u.s.trations and even fables, where these small people not only spoil their fortunes in life, but spoil life itself; and what an irreparable blunder it is to link companionship with one of them. I will sometimes make her laugh, and I may have to make her cry--it will not be easy, but I shall do it--I shall certainly make her thoughtful; and if you can do this day by day, so that a woman will recur to the same theme pretty much in the same spirit, you must be a sorry steersman, Master d.i.c.k, but you will know how to guide these thoughts and trace the channel they shall follow.'

'And supposing, which I do not believe, that you could get her to break with Walpole, what could _you_ offer her?'