Lord Kilgobbin Part 55

'So you shall, when you feed your beast and take something yourself. Poor old Kattoo isn't used to this sort of cross-country work, and she's panting there badly enough. That mare is twenty-one years of age.'

'She's fresh on her legs--not a curb nor a spavin, nor even a wind-gall about her,' said the young man.

'And the reward for it all is to be ridden like a steeplechaser!' sighed old Kearney. 'Isn't that the world over? Break down early, and you are a good-for-nothing. Carry on your spirit, and your pluck, and your endurance to a green old age, and maybe they won't take it out of you!--always contrasting you, however, with yourself long ago, and telling the bystanders what a rare beast you were in your good days. Do you think they had dared to pa.s.s this insult upon _me_ when I was five-and-twenty or thirty? Do you think there's a man in the county would have come on this errand to search Kilgobbin when I was a young man, Mr. O'Shea?'

'I think you can afford to treat it with the contempt you have determined to show it.'

'That's all very fine now,' said Kearney; 'but there was a time I'd rather have chucked the chief constable out of the window and sent the sergeant after him.'

'I don't know whether that would have been better,' said Gorman, with a faint smile.

'Neither do I; but I know that I myself would have felt better and easier in my mind after it. I'd have eaten my breakfast with a good appet.i.te, and gone about my day's work, whatever it was, with a free heart and fearless in my conscience! Ay, ay,' muttered he to himself, 'poor old Ireland isn't what it used to be!'

'I'm very sorry, sir, but though I'd like immensely to go back with you, don't you think I ought to return home?'

'I don't think anything of the sort. Your aunt and I had a tiff the last time we met, and that was some months ago. We're both of us old and cross-grained enough to keep up the grudge for the rest of our lives. Let us, then, make the most of the accident that has led you here, and when you go home, you shall be the bearer of the most submissive message I can invent to my old friend, and there shall be no terms too humble for me to ask her pardon.'

'That's enough, sir. I'll breakfast here.'

'Of course you'll say nothing of what brought you over here. But I ought to warn you not to drop anything carelessly about politics in the county generally, for we have a young relative and a private secretary of the Lord-Lieutenant's visiting us, and it's as well to be cautious before him.'

The old man mentioned this circ.u.mstance in the cursory tone of an ordinary remark, but he could not conceal the pride he felt in the rank and condition of his guest. As for Gorman, perhaps it was his foreign breeding, perhaps his ignorance of all home matters generally, but he simply a.s.sented to the force of the caution, and paid no other attention to the incident.

'His name is Walpole, and he is related to half the peerage,' said the old man, with some irritation of manner.

A mere nod acknowledged the information, and he went on--

'This was the young fellow who was with Kitty on the night they attacked the castle, and he got both bones of his forearm smashed with a shot.'

'An ugly wound,' was the only rejoinder.

'So it was, and for a while they thought he'd lose the arm. Kitty says he behaved beautifully, cool and steady all through.'

Another nod, but this time Gorman's lips were firmly compressed.

'There's no denying it,' said the old man, with a touch of sadness in his voice--'there's no denying it, the English have courage; though,' added he afterwards, 'it's in a cold, sluggish way of their own, which we don't like here. There he is, now, that young fellow that has just parted from the two girls. The tall one is my niece--I must present you to her.'

CHAPTER XL

OLD MEMORIES

Though both Kate Kearney and young O'Shea had greatly outgrown each other's recollection, there were still traits of feature remaining, and certain tones of voice, by which they were carried back to old times and old a.s.sociations.

Amongst the strange situations in life, there are few stranger, or, in certain respects, more painful, than the meeting after long absence of those who, when they had parted years before, were on terms of closest intimacy, and who now see each other changed by time, with altered habits and manners, and impressed in a variety of ways with influences and a.s.sociations which impart their own stamp on character.

It is very difficult at such moments to remember how far we ourselves have changed in the interval, and how much of what we regard as altered in another may not simply be the new standpoint from which we are looking, and thus our friend may be graver, or sadder, or more thoughtful, or, as it may happen, seem less reflective and less considerative than we have thought him, all because the world has been meantime dealing with ourselves in such wise that qualities we once cared for have lost much of their value, and others that we had deemed of slight account have grown into importance with us.

Most of us know the painful disappointment of revisiting scenes which had impressed us strongly in early life: how the mountain we regarded with a wondering admiration had become a mere hill, and the romantic tarn a pool of sluggish water; and some of this same awakening pursues us in our renewal of old intimacies, and we find ourselves continually warring with our recollections.

Besides this, there is another source of uneasiness that presses unceasingly. It is in imputing every change we discover, or think we discover in our friend, to some unknown influences that have a.s.serted their power over him in our absence, and thus when we find that our arguments have lost their old force, and our persuasions can be stoutly resisted, we begin to think that some other must have usurped our place, and that there is treason in the heart we had deemed to be loyally our own.

How far Kate and Gorman suffered under these irritations, I do not stop to inquire, but certain it is, that all their renewed intercourse was little other than snappish reminders of unfavourable change in each, and a.s.surances more frank than flattering that they had not improved in the interval.

'How well I know every tree and alley of this old garden!' said he, as they strolled along one of the walks in advance of the others. 'Nothing is changed here but the people.'

'And do you think we are?' asked she quietly.

'I should think I do! Not so much for your father, perhaps. I suppose men of his time of life change little, if at all; but you are as ceremonious as if I had been introduced to you this morning.'

'You addressed me so deferentially as Miss Kearney, and with such an a.s.suring little intimation that you were not either very certain of _that_, that I should have been very courageous indeed to remind you that I once was Kate.'

'No, not Kate--Kitty,' rejoined he quickly.

'Oh yes, perhaps, when you were young, but we grew out of that.'

'Did we? And when?'

'When we gave up climbing cherry-trees, and ceased to pull each other's hair when we were angry.'

'Oh dear!' said he drearily, as his head sank heavily.

'You seem to sigh over those blissful times, Mr. O'Shea,' said she, 'as if they were terribly to be regretted.'

'So they are. So I feel them.'

'I never knew before that quarrelling left such pleasant a.s.sociations.'

'My memory is good enough to remember times when we were not quarrelling--when I used to think you were nearer an angel than a human creature--ay, when I have had the boldness to tell you so.'

'You don't mean _that_?'

'I do mean it, and I should like to know why I should not mean it?'

'For a great many reasons--one amongst the number, that it would have been highly indiscreet to turn a poor child's head with a stupid flattery.'

'But were you a child? If I'm right, you were not very far from fifteen at the time I speak of.'

'How shocking that you should remember a young lady's age!'

'That is not the point at all,' said he, as though she had been endeavouring to introduce another issue.

'And what is the point, pray?' asked she haughtily.

'Well, it is this--how many have uttered what you call stupid flatteries since that time, and how have they been taken.'