Lord Kilgobbin Part 76

d.i.c.k Kearney had written to say that Miss Betty was so overwhelmed with affliction at young Gorman's mishap that she had taken to bed, and could not be expected to be able to travel for several days. She insisted, however, on two telegrams daily to report on the boy's case, and asked which of the great Dublin celebrities of physic should be sent down to see him.

'They're all alike to me,' said Kilgobbin; 'but if I was to choose, I think I'd say Dr. Chute.'

This was so far unlucky, since Dr. Chute had then been dead about forty years; scarcely a junior of the profession having so much as heard his name.

'We really want no one,' said Rogan. 'We are doing most favourably in every respect. If one of the young ladies would sit and read to him, but not converse, it would be a service. He made the request himself this morning, and I promised to repeat it.'

A telegram, however, announced that Sir St. Xavier Brennan would arrive the same evening, and as Sir X. was physician-in-chief to the nuns of the Bleeding Heart, there could be little doubt whose orthodoxy had chosen him.

He came at nightfall--a fat, comely-looking, somewhat unctuous gentleman, with excellent teeth and snow-white hands, symmetrical and dimpled like a woman's. He saw the patient, questioned him slightly, and divined without waiting for it what the answer should be; he was delighted with Rogan, pleased with Price, but he grew actually enthusiastic over those charming nurses, Nina and Kate.

'With such sisters of charity to tend me, I'd consent to pa.s.s my life as an invalid,' cried he.

Indeed, to listen to him, it would seem that, whether from the salubrity of the air, the peaceful quietude of the spot, the watchful kindness and attention of the surrounders, or a certain general air--an actual atmosphere of benevolence and contentment around--there was no pleasure of life could equal the delight of being laid up at Kilgobbin.

'I have a message for you from my old friend Miss O'Shea,' said he to Kate the first moment he had the opportunity of speaking with her alone. 'It is not necessary to tell you that I neither know, nor desire to know, its import. Her words were these: "Tell my G.o.dchild to forgive me if she still has any memory for some very rude words I once spoke. Tell her that I have been sorely punished for them since, and that till I know I have her pardon, I have no courage to cross her doors." This was my message, and I was to bring back your answer.'

'Tell her,' cried Kate warmly, 'I have no place in my memory but for the kindnesses she has bestowed on me, and that I ask no better boon from Fortune than to be allowed to love her, and to be worthy of her love.'

'I will repeat every word you have told me; and I am proud to be bearer of such a speech. May I presume, upon the casual confidence I have thus acquired, to add one word for myself; and it is as the doctor I would speak.'

'Speak freely. What is it?'

'It is this, then: you young ladies keep your watches in turn in the sick-room. The patient is unfit for much excitement, and as I dare not take the liberty of imposing a line of conduct on Mademoiselle Kostalergi, I have resolved to run the hazard with _you_! Let _hers_ be the task of entertaining him; let _her_ be the reader--and he loves being read to--and the talker, and the narrator of whatever goes on. To you be the part of quiet watchfulness and care, to bathe the heated brow, or the burning hand, to hold the cold cup to the parched lips, to adjust the pillow, to temper the light, and renew the air of the sick-room, but to speak seldom, if at all. Do you understand me?'

'Perfectly; and you are wise and acute in your distribution of labour: each of us has her fitting station.'

'I dared not have said this much to _her_: my doctor's instinct told me I might be frank with _you_.'

'You are safe in speaking to me,' said she calmly.

'Perhaps I ought to say that I give these suggestions without any concert with my patient. I have not only abstained from consulting, but--'

'Forgive my interrupting you, Sir X. It was quite unnecessary to tell me this.'

'You are not displeased with me, dear lady?' said he, in his softest of accents.

'No; but do not say anything which might make me so.'

The doctor bowed reverentially, crossed his white hands on his waistcoat, and looked like a saint ready for martyrdom.

Kate frankly held out her hand in token of perfect cordiality, and her honest smile suited the action well.

'Tell Miss Betty that our sick charge shall not be neglected, but that we want her here herself to help us.'

'I shall report your message word for word,' said he, as he withdrew.

As the doctor drove back to Dublin, he went over a variety of things in his thoughts. There were serious disturbances in the provinces; those ugly outrages which forerun long winter nights, and make the last days of October dreary and sad-coloured. Disorder and lawlessness were abroad; and that want of something remedial to be done which, like the thirst in fever, is fostered and fed by partial indulgence. Then he had some puzzling cases in hospital, and one or two in private practice, which hara.s.sed him; for some had reached that critical stage where a false move would be fatal, and it was far from clear which path should be taken. Then there was that matter of Miss O'Shea herself, who, if her nephew were to die, would most likely endow that hospital in connection with the Bleeding Heart, and of which he was himself the founder; and that this fate was by no means improbable, Sir X. persuaded himself, as he counted over all the different stages of peril that stood between him and convalescence. 'We have now the concussion, with reasonable prospect of meningitis; and there may come on erysipelas from the scalp wounds, and high fever, with all its dangers; next there may be a low typhoid state, with high nervous excitement; and through all these the pa.s.sing risks of the wrong food or drink, the imprudent revelations, or the mistaken stimulants. Heigh-ho!' said he at last, 'we come through storm and shipwreck, forlorn-hopes, and burning villages, and we succ.u.mb to ten drops too much of a dark-brown liquor, or the improvident rashness that reads out a note to us incautiously!

'Those young ladies thought to mystify me,' said he aloud, after a long reverie. 'I was not to know which of them was in love with the sick boy. I could make nothing of the Greek, I own, for, except a half-stealthy regard for myself, she confessed to nothing, and the other was nearly as inscrutable. It was only the little warmth at last that betrayed her. I hurt her pride, and as she winced, I said, "There's the sore spot--there's mischief there!" How the people grope their way through life who have never studied physic nor learned physiology is a puzzle to _me_! With all its aid and guidance I find humanity quite hard enough to understand every day I live.'

Even in his few hours' visit--in which he remarked everything, from the dress of the man who waited at dinner, to the sherry decanter with the smashed stopper, the weak 'Gladstone' that did duty as claret, and the cotton lace which Nina sported as 'point d'Alencon,' and numberless other shifts, such as people make who like to play false money with Fortune--all these he saw, and he saw that a certain jealous rivalry existed between the two girls; but whether either of them, or both, cared for young O'Shea, he could not declare; and, strange as it may seem, his inability to determine this weighed upon him with all the sense of a defeat.

CHAPTER LVIII

IN TURKEY

Leaving the sick man to the tender care of those ladies whose division of labour we have just hinted at, we turn to other interests, and to one of our characters, who, though to all seeming neglected, has not lapsed from our memory.

Joe Atlee had been despatched on a very confidential mission by Lord Danesbury. Not only was he to repossess himself of certain papers he had never heard of, from a man he had never seen, but he was also to impress this unknown individual with the immense sense of fidelity to another who no longer had any power to reward him, and besides this, to persuade him, being a Greek, that the favour of a great amba.s.sador of England was better than roubles of gold and vases of malachite.

Modern history has shown us what a great aid to success in life is the contribution of a 'light heart,' and Joe Atlee certainly brought this element of victory along with him on his journey.

His instructions were a.s.suredly of the roughest. To impress Lord Danesbury favourably on the score of his acuteness he must not press for details, seek for explanations, and, above all, he must ask no questions. In fact, to accomplish that victory which he ambitioned for his cleverness, and on which his Excellency should say, 'Atlee saw it at once--Atlee caught the whole thing at a glance,' Joe must be satisfied with the least definite directions that ever were issued, and the most confused statement of duties and difficulties that ever puzzled a human intelligence. Indeed, as he himself summed up his instructions in his own room, they went no further than this: That there was a Greek, who, with a number of other names, was occasionally called Speridionides--a great scoundrel, and with every good reason for not being come at--who was to be found somewhere in Stamboul--probably at the bazaar at nightfall. He was to be bullied, or bribed, or wheedled, or menaced, to give up some letters which Lord Danesbury had once written to him, and to pledge himself to complete secrecy as to their contents ever after. From this Greek, whose perfect confidence Atlee was to obtain, he was to learn whether Kulbash Pasha, Lord Danesbury's sworn friend and ally, was not lapsing from his English alliance and inclining towards Russian connections. To Kulbash himself Atlee had letters accrediting him as the trusted and confidential agent of Lord Danesbury, and with the Pasha, Joe was instructed to treat with an air and bearing of unlimited trustfulness. He was also to mention that his Excellency was eager to be back at his old post as amba.s.sador, that he loved the country, the climate, his old colleagues in the Sultan's service, and all the interests and questions that made up their political life.

Last of all, Atlee was to ascertain every point on which any successor to Lord Danesbury was likely to be mistaken, and how a misconception might be ingeniously widened into a grave blunder; and by what means such incidents should be properly commented on by the local papers, and unfavourable comparisons drawn between the author of these measures and 'the great and enlightened statesman' who had so lately left them.

In a word, Atlee saw that he was to personate the character of a most unsuspecting, confiding young gentleman, who possessed a certain natural apt.i.tude for affairs of importance, and that amount of discretion such as suited him to be employed confidentially; and to perform this part he addressed himself.

The Pasha liked him so much that he invited him to be his guest while he remained at Constantinople, and soon satisfied that he was a guileless youth fresh to the world and its ways, he talked very freely before him, and affecting to discuss mere possibilities, actually sketched events and consequences which Atlee shrewdly guessed to be all within the range of casualties.

Lord Danesbury's post at Constantinople had not been filled up, except by the appointment of a Charge-d'Affaires; it being one of the approved modes of snubbing a government to accredit a person of inferior rank to its court. Lord Danesbury detested this man with a hate that only official life comprehends, the mingled rancour, jealousy, and malice suggested by a successor, being a combination only known to men who serve their country.

'Find out what Brumsey is doing; he is said to be doing wrong. He knows nothing of Turkey. Learn his blunders, and let me know them.'

This was the easiest of all Atlee's missions, for Brumsey was the weakest and most transparent of all imbecile Whigs. A junior diplomatist of small faculties and great ambitions, he wanted to do something, not being clear as to what, which should startle his chiefs, and make 'the Office' exclaim: 'See what Sam Brumsey has been doing! Hasn't Brumsey hit the nail on the head! Brumsey's last despatch is the finest state-paper since the days of Canning!' Now no one knew the short range of this man's intellectual tether better than Lord Danesbury--since Brumsey had been his own private secretary once, and the two men hated each other as only a haughty superior and a craven dependant know how to hate.

The old amba.s.sador was right. Russian craft had dug many a pitfall for the English diplomatist, and Brumsey had fallen into every one of them. Acting on secret information--all ingeniously prepared to entrap him--Brumsey had discovered a secret demand made by Russia to enable one of the imperial family to make the tour of the Black Sea with a ship-of-war. Though it might be matter of controversy whether Turkey herself could, without the a.s.sent of the other Powers to the Treaty of Paris, give her permission, Brumsey was too elated by his discovery to hesitate about this, but at once communicated to the Grand-Vizier a formal declaration of the displeasure with which England would witness such an infraction of a solemn engagement.

As no such project had ever been entertained, no such demand ever made, Kulbash Pasha not only laughed heartily at the mock-thunder of the Englishman, but at the energy with which a small official always opens fire, and in the jocularity of his Turkish nature--for they are jocular, these children of the Koran--he told the whole incident to Atlee.

'Your old master, Mr. Atlee,' said he, 'would scarcely have read us so sharp a lesson as that; but,' he added, 'we always hear stronger language from the man who couldn't station a gunboat at Pera than from the amba.s.sador who could call up the Mediterranean squadron from Malta.'

If Atlee's first letter to Lord Danesbury admitted of a certain disappointment as regarded Speridionides, it made ample compensation by the keen sketch it conveyed of how matters stood at the Porte, the uncertain fate of Kulbash Pasha's policy, and the scarcely credible blunder of Brumsey.

To tell the English amba.s.sador how much he was regretted and how much needed, how the partisans of England felt themselves deserted and abandoned by his withdrawal, and how gravely the best interests of Turkey itself were compromised for want of that statesmanlike intelligence that had up to this guided the counsels of the Divan: all these formed only a part of Atlee's task, for he wrote letters and leaders, in this sense, to all the great journals of London, Paris, and Vienna; so that when the _Times_ and the _Post_ asked the English people whether they were satisfied that the benefit of the Crimean War should be frittered away by an incompetent youth in the position of a man of high ability, the _Debats_ commented on the want of support France suffered at the Porte by the inferior agency of England, and the _Neue Presse_ of Vienna more openly declared that if England had determined to annex Turkey and govern it as a crown colony, it would have been at least courtesy to have informed her co-signatories of the fact.

At the same time, an Irish paper in the National interest quietly desired to be informed how was it that the man who made such a mull of Ireland could be so much needed in Turkey, aided by a well-known fellow-citizen, more celebrated for smashing lamps and wringing off knockers than for administering the rights of a colony; and by which of his services, ballad-writing or beating the police, he had gained the favour of the present Cabinet. 'In fact,' concluded the writer, 'if we hear more of this appointment, we promise our readers some biographical memoirs of the respected individual, which may serve to show the rising youth of Ireland by what gifts success in life is most surely achieved, as well as what peculiar accomplishments find most merit with the grave-minded men who rule us.'

A Cork paper announced on the same day, amongst the promotions, that Joseph Atlee had been made C.B., and mildly inquired if the honour were bestowed for that paper on Ireland in the last _Quarterly_, and dryly wound up by saying, 'We are not selfish, whatever people may say of us. Our friends on the Bosporus shall have the n.o.ble lord cheap! Let his Excellency only a.s.sure us that he will return with his whole staff, and not leave us Mr.

Cecil Walpole, or any other like incapacity, behind him, as a director of the Poor-Law Board, or inspector-general of gaols, or deputy-a.s.sistant-secretary anywhere, and we a.s.sent freely to the change that sends this man to the East and leaves us here to flounder on with such aids to our mistakes as a Liberal Government can safely afford to spare us.'

A paragraph in another part of the same paper, which asked if the Joseph Atlee who, it was rumoured, was to go out as Governor to Labuan, could be this man, had, it is needless to say, been written by himself.

The _Levant Herald_ contented itself with an authorised contradiction to the report that Sir Joseph Atlee--the Sir was an ingenious blunder--had conformed to Islamism, and was in treaty for the palace of Tashkir Bey at Therapia.