The Landleaguers Part 39

"I know he has."

"Very well. Then leave the room. Knowing as you do that I am living here with my own father, your interference is grossly impertinent."

"Your father is not going with you, I am afraid." She rushed at the bell and pulled it till the bell rope came down from the wire, but n.o.body answered the bell. "Can it be possible that you should not be anxious to begin your new career under respectable auspices?"

"I will not stand this. Leave the room, sir. This apartment is my own."

"Miss O'Mahony, you see my hand; with this I am ready to offer at once to place you in a position in which the world would look up to you."

"You have done so before, Mr. Moss, and your doing so again is an insult. It would not be done to any young lady unless she were on the stage, and were thought on that account to be open to any man about the theatre to say what he pleased to her."

"Any gentleman is at liberty to make any lady an offer."

"I have answered it. Now leave the room."

"I cannot do so until I have heard that you have not taken money from this reprobate."

At the moment the door opened, and the reprobate entered the room.

"Your servant told me that Mr. Moss was here, and therefore I walked up at once," said the reprobate.

"I am so much obliged to you," said Rachel. "Oh Lord Castlewell! I am so much obliged to you. He tells me in the first place that you are a reprobate."

"Never mind me," said the lord.

"I don't mind what he says of you. He declares that my character will be gone for ever because you have lent my father some money."

"So it will," said Moss, who was not afraid to stand up to his guns.

"And how if she had accepted your offer?"

"No one would have thought of it. Come, my lord, you know the difference. I am anxious only to save her."

"It is to her father I have lent the money, who explained to me the somewhat cruel treatment he had received at the hands of the police.

I think you are making an a.s.s of yourself, Mr. Moss."

"Very well, my lord; very well," said Mr. Moss. "All the world no doubt will know that you have lent the money to the Irish Landleaguer because of your political sympathy with him, and will not think for a minute that you have been attracted by our pretty young friend here.

It will not suspect that it is she who has paid for the loan!"

"Mr. Moss, you are a brute," said the lord.

"Can't he be turned out of the room?" asked Rachel.

"Well, yes; it is possible," said the lord, who slowly prepared to walk up and take some steps towards expelling Mr. Moss.

"It shall not be necessary," said Mahomet M. M. "You could not get me out, but there would be a terrible row in the house, which could not fail to be disagreeable to Miss O'Mahony. I leave her in your hands, and I do not think I could possibly leave her in worse. I have wished to make her an honest woman; what you want of her you can explain to herself." In saying this Mr. Moss walked downstairs and left the house, feeling, as he went, that he had got the better both of the lord and of the lady.

With Mr. Moss there was a double motive, neither of which was very bright, but both of which he followed with considerable energy. He had at first been attracted by her good looks, which he had desired to make his own--at the cheapest price at which they might be had in the market. If marriage were necessary, so be it, but it might be that the young lady would not be so exigeant. It was probably the expression of some such feelings in the early days of their acquaintance which had made him so odious to her. Then Frank Jones had come forward; and like any good honest girl, in a position so public, she had at once let the fact of Mr. Jones be made known, so as to protect her. But it had not protected her, and Mr. Moss had been doubly odious. Then, by degrees, he had become aware of the value of her voice, and he perceived the charms that there were in what he pictured to himself as a professional partnership as well as a marriage. Various ideas floated through his mind, down even to the creation of fresh names, grand married names, for his wife. And if she could be got to see it in the light he saw it, what a stroke of business they might do! He was aware that she expressed personal dislike to him; but he did not think much of that. He did not in the least understand the nature of such dislike as she exhibited.

He thought himself to be a very good-looking man. He was one of a profession to which she also belonged. He had no idea that he was not a gentleman but that she was a lady. He did not know that there were such things. Madame Socani told him that this young woman was already married to Mr. Jones, but had left that gentleman because he had no money. He did not believe this; but in any case he would be willing to risk it. The peril would be hers and not his. It was his object to establish the partnership, and he did not even yet see any fatal impediment to it.

This lord who had been trapped by her beauty, by that and by her theatrical standing, was an impediment, but could be removed. He had known Lord Castlewell to be in love with a dozen singers, partly because he thought himself to be a judge of music, and partly simply because he had liked their looks. The lord had now taken a fancy to Miss O'Mahony, and had begun by lending her money. That the father should take the money instead of the daughter, was quite natural to his thinking. But he might still succeed in looking after Miss O'Mahony, and rescuing the singer from the lord. By keeping a close watch on her he must make it impossible for the lord to hold her.

Therefore, when he went away, leaving the lord and the singer together, he thought that for the present he had got the better of both.

"Why did he tell you that I was a reprobate?" said the lord, when he found himself alone with the lady.

"Well, perhaps it was because you are one, my lord," said Rachel, laughing. She would constantly remember herself, and tell herself that as long as she called him by his t.i.tle, she was protecting herself from that familiarity which would be dangerous.

"I hope you don't think so."

"Gentlemen generally are reprobates, I believe. It is not disgraceful for a gentleman to be a reprobate, but it is pleasant. The young women I daresay find it pleasant, but then it is disgraceful. I do not mean to disgrace myself, Lord Castlewell."

"I am sure you will not."

"I want you to be sure of it, quite sure. I am a singing girl; but I don't mean to be any man's mistress." He stared at her as she said this. "And I don't mean to be any man's wife, unless I downright love him. Now you may keep out of my way, if you please. I daresay you are a reprobate, my lord; but with that I have got nothing to do.

Touching this money, I suppose father has not got it yet?"

"I have sent it."

"You are to get nothing for it, but simply to have it returned, without interest, as soon as I have earned it. You have only to say the word and I will take care that father shall send it you back again."

Lord Castlewell felt that the girl was very unlike others whom he had known, and who had either rejected his offers with scorn or had accepted them with delight. This young lady did neither. She apparently accepted the proffered friendship, and simply desired him to carry his reprobate qualities elsewhere. There was a frankness about her which pleased him much, though it hardly tended to make him in love with her. One thing he did resolve on the spur of the moment, that he would never say a word to her which her father might not hear. It was quite a new sensation to him, this of simple friendship with a singer, with a singer whom he had met in the doubtful custody of Mr. Moss; but he did believe her to be a good girl,--a good girl who could speak out her mind freely; and as such he both respected and liked her. "Of course I shan't take back the money till it becomes due. You'll have to work hard for it before I get it."

"I shall be quite contented to do that, my lord." Then the interview was over and his lordship left the room.

But Lord Castlewell felt as he went home that this girl was worth more than other girls. She laughed at him for being a lord, but she could accept a favour from him, and then tell him to his face that he should do her no harm because she had accepted it. He had met some terrible rebuffs in his career, the memory of which had been unpleasant to him; and he had been greeted with many smiles, all of which had been insipid. What should he do with this girl, so as to make the best of her? The only thing that occurred to him was to marry her! And yet such a marriage would be altogether out of his line of life.

CHAPTER XXIX.

WHAT WAS DONE WITH THE FUNDS.

The 200 was not spent in a manner of which Lord Castlewell would have altogether approved. About the end of August Mr. O'Mahony was summoned back to Ireland, and was induced, at a meeting held at the Rotunda, to give certain pledges which justified the advanced Irish party in putting him forward as a new member for the County of Cavan.

The advanced Irish party had no doubt been attracted by the eloquence he had exhibited both in Galway and in London, and by the patriotic sentiments which he had displayed. He was known to be a Republican, and to look for the formation of a Republic to American aid. He had expressed most sincere scorn for everything English, and professed ideas as to Irish property generally in regard to which he was altogether ignorant of their meaning. As he was a sincerely honest man, he did think that something good for his old country would be achieved by Home Rule; though how the Home-Rulers would set to work when Home Rule should be the law of the land, he had not the remotest conception. There were many reasons, therefore, why he should be a fit member for an Irish county. But it must be admitted that he would not have been so unanimously selected had all the peculiarities of his mind been known. It might be probable that he would run riot under the lash of his leader, as others have done both before and since, when he should come to see all the wiles of that strategy which he would be called upon to support. And in such case the quarrel with him would be more internecine than with other foes, such as English members, Scotch members, Conservative Irish members, and Liberal Irish members, not sworn to follow certain leaders. A recreant one out of twenty friends would be regarded with more bitter hatred than perhaps six hundred and thirty ordinary enemies. It might be, therefore, that a time of tribulation was in store for Mr.

O'Mahony, but he did not consider these matters very deeply when the cheers rang loud in the hall of the Rotunda; nor did he then reflect that he was about to spend in an injudicious manner the money which must be earned by Rachel's future work.

When Rachel had completed her engagement with Mr. Moss, it had been intended that they should go down to Ambleside and there spend Lord Castlewell's money in the humble innocent enjoyment of nature. There had at that moment been nothing decided as to the County of Cavan. A pork-butcher possessed of some small means and unlimited impudence had put himself forward. But The Twenty had managed to put him through his facings, and had found him to be very ignorant in his use of the Queen's English. Now of late there had come up a notion that the small party required to make up for the thinness of their members by the strength of their eloquence. Practice makes perfect, and it is not to be wondered at therefore if a large proportion of The Twenty had become fluent. But more were wanted, and of our friend O'Mahony's fluency there could be no doubt. Therefore he was sent for, and on the very day of his arrival he proved to the patriotic spirits of Dublin that he was the man for Cavan. Three days afterwards he went down, and Cavan obediently accepted its man. With her father went Rachel, and was carried through the towns of Virginia, Bailyborough, and Ballyjamesduff, in great triumph on a one-horse car.

This occurred about the end of August, and Lord Castlewell's 200 was very soon spent. She had not thought much about it, but had been quite willing to be the daughter of a Member of Parliament, if a const.i.tuency could be found willing to select her father. She did not think much of the duties of Parliament, if they came within the reach of her father's ability. She did not in truth think that he could under any circ.u.mstances do half a day's work. She had known what it was to practise, and, having determined to succeed, she had worked as only a singer can work who determines that she will succeed. Hour after hour she had gone on before the looking-gla.s.s, and even Mr.

Moss had expressed his approval. But during the years that she had been so at work, she had never seen her father do anything. She knew that he talked what she called patriotic buncombe. It might be that he would become a very fitting Member of Parliament, but Rachel had her doubt. She could see, however, that the 200 quickly vanished during their triumphant journeyings on the one-horse car. Everybody in County Cavan seemed to know that there was 200 and no more to be spent by the new member. There he was, however, Member of Parliament for the County of Cavan, and his breast was filled with new aspirations. Enmity, the bitterest enmity to everything English, was the one lesson taught him. But he himself had other feelings.

What if he could talk over that Speaker, and that Prime Minister, that Government generally, and all the House of Commons, and all the House of Lords! Why should not England go her way and Ireland hers,--England have her monarchy and Ireland her republic, but still with some kind of union between them, as to the nature of which Mr.

O'Mahony had no fixed idea in his brain whatsoever. But he knew that he could talk, and he knew also that he must now talk on an arena for admission to which the public would not pay twenty-five cents or more. His breast was much disturbed by the consideration that for all the work which he proposed to do no wages were to be forthcoming.

But while Mr. O'Mahony was being elected Member of Parliament for County Cavan, things were going on very sadly in County Galway.

Wednesday, the 31st of August, had been the day fixed for the trial of Pat Carroll; and the month of August was quickly wearing itself away. But during the month of August Captain Clayton found occasion more than once to come into the neighbourhood of Headford. And though Mr. Jones was of an opinion that his presence there was adequately accounted for by the details of the coming trial, the two girls evidently thought that some other cause might be added to that which Pat Carroll had produced.

It must be explained that at this period Frank Jones was absent from Morony Castle, looking out for emergency men who could be brought down to the neighbourhood of Headford, in sufficient number to save the crop on Mr. Jones's farm. And with him was Tom Daly, who had some scheme in his own head with reference to his horses and his hounds.