Lord Kilgobbin Part 90

'There's no question of that. She says it would be ten days or a fortnight before she is equal to the journey.'

'Heaven grant it!--hem--I mean that she'll be strong enough for it by that time. At all events, if it is the same as to our fine friend, Mr. Walpole, I wish he'd have taken his leave of us in a letter.'

'It is something new, papa, to see you so inhospitable.'

'But I am not inhospitable, Kitty. Show me the good fellow that would like to pa.s.s an evening with me and think me good company, and he shall have the best saddle of mutton and the raciest bottle of claret in the house. But it's only mock-hospitality to be entertaining the man that only comes out of courtesy and just stays as long as good manners oblige him.'

'I do not know that I should undervalue politeness, especially when it takes the shape of a recognition.'

'Well, be it so,' sighed he, almost drearily. 'If the young gentleman is so warmly attached to us all that he cannot tear himself away till he has embraced us, I suppose there's no help for it. Where is Nina?'

'She was reading to Gorman when I saw her. She had just relieved d.i.c.k, who has gone out for a walk.'

'A jolly house for a visitor to come to!' cried he sarcastically.

'We are not very gay or lively, it is true, papa; but it is not unlikely that the spirit in which our guest comes here will not need much jollity.'

'I don't take it as a kindness for a man to bring me his depression and his low spirits. I've always more of my own than I know what to do with. Two sorrows never made a joy, Kitty.'

'There! they are lighting the lamps,' cried she suddenly. 'I don't think they can be more than three miles away.'

'Have you rooms ready, if there be two coming?'

'Yes, papa, Mr. Walpole will have his old quarters; and the stag-room is in readiness if there be another guest.'

'I'd like to have a house as big as the royal barracks, and every room of it occupied!' cried Kearney, with a mellow ring in his voice. 'They talk of society and pleasant company; but for real enjoyment there's nothing to compare with what a man has under his own roof! No claret ever tastes so good as the decanter he circulates himself. I was low enough half an hour ago, and now the mere thought of a couple of fellows to dine with me cheers me up and warms my heart! I'll give them the green seal, Kitty; and I don't know there's another house in the county could put a bottle of '46 claret before them.'

'So you shall, papa. I'll go to the cellar myself and fetch it.'

Kearney hastened to make the moderate toilet he called dressing for dinner, and was only finished when his old servant informed him that two gentlemen had arrived and gone up to their rooms.

'I wish it was two dozen had come,' said Kearney, as he descended to the drawing-room.

'It is Major Lockwood, papa,' cried Kate, entering and drawing him into a window-recess; 'the Major Lockwood that was here before, has come with Mr.

Walpole. I met him in the hall while I had the basket with the wine in my hand, and he was so cordial and glad to see me you cannot think.'

'He knew that green wax, Kitty. He tasted that "bin" when he was here last.'

'Perhaps so; but he certainly seemed overjoyed at something.'

'Let me see,' muttered he, 'wasn't he the big fellow with the long moustaches?'

'A tall, very good-looking man; dark as a Spaniard, and not unlike one.'

'To be sure, to be sure. I remember him well. He was a capital shot with the pistol, and he liked his wine. By the way, Nina did not take to him.'

'How do you remember that, papa?' said she archly.

If I don't mistake, she told me so, or she called him a brute, or a savage, or some one of those things a man is sure to be, when a woman discovers he will not be her slave.'

Nina entering at the moment cut short all rejoinder, and Kearney came forward to meet her with his hand out.

'Shake out your lower courses, and let me look at you,' cried he, as he walked round her admiringly. 'Upon my oath, it's more beautiful than ever you are! I can guess what a fate is reserved for those dandies from Dublin.'

'Do you like my dress, sir? Is it becoming?' asked she.

'Becoming it is; but I'm not sure whether I like it.'

'And how is that, sir?'

'I don't see how, with all that floating gauze and swelling lace, a man is to get an arm round you at all--'

'I cannot perceive the necessity, sir,' and the insolent toss of her head, more forcibly even than her words, resented such a possibility.

CHAPTER LXX

ATLEE'S RETURN

When Atlee arrived at Bruton Street, the welcome that met him was almost cordial. Lord Danesbury--not very demonstrative at any time--received him with warmth, and Lady Maude gave him her hand with a sort of significant cordiality that overwhelmed him with delight. The climax of his enjoyment was, however, reached when Lord Danesbury said to him, 'We are glad to see you at home again.'

This speech sank deep into his heart, and he never wearied of repeating it over and over to himself. When he reached his room, where his luggage had already preceded him, and found his dressing articles laid out, and all the little cares and attentions which well-trained servants understand awaiting him, he muttered, with a tremulous sort of ecstasy, 'This is a very glorious way to come home!'

The rich furniture of the room, the many appliances of luxury and ease around him, the sense of rest and quiet, so delightful after a journey, all appealed to him as he threw himself into a deep-cus.h.i.+oned chair. He cried aloud, 'Home! home! Is this indeed home? What a different thing from that mean life of privation and penury I have always been a.s.sociating with this word--from that perpetual struggle with debt--the miserable conflict that went on through every day, till not an action, not a thought, remained untinctured with money, and if a momentary pleasure crossed the path, the cost of it as certain to tarnish all the enjoyment! Such was the only home I have ever known, or indeed imagined.'

It is said that the men who have emerged from very humble conditions in life, and occupy places of eminence or promise, are less overjoyed at this change of fortune than impressed with a kind of resentment towards the destiny that once had subjected them to privation. Their feeling is not so much joy at the present as discontent with the past.

'Why was I not born to all this?' cried Atlee indignantly. 'What is there in me, or in my nature, that this should be a usurpation? Why was I not schooled at Eton, and trained at Oxford? Why was I not bred up amongst the men whose compet.i.tor I shall soon find myself? Why have I not their ways, their instincts, their watchwords, their pastimes, and even their prejudices, as parts of my very nature? Why am I to learn these late in life, as a man learns a new language, and never fully catches the sounds or the niceties? Is there any compet.i.tors.h.i.+p I should flinch from, any rivalry I should fear, if I had but started fair in the race?'

This sense of having been hardly treated by Fortune at the outset, marred much of his present enjoyment, accompanied as it was by a misgiving that, do what he might, that early inferiority would cling to him, like some rag of a garment that he must wear over all his 'braverie,' proclaiming as it did to the world, 'This is from what I sprung originally.'

It was not by any exercise of vanity that Atlee knew he talked better, knew more, was wittier and more ready-witted than the majority of men of his age and standing. The consciousness that he could do scores of things _they_ could not do was not enough, tarnished as it was by a misgiving that, by some secret mystery of breeding, some freemasonry of fas.h.i.+on, he was not one of them, and that this awkward fact was suspended over him for life, to arrest his course in the hour of success, and balk him at the very moment of victory.

'Till a man's adoption amongst them is ratified by a marriage, he is not safe,' muttered he. 'Till the fate and future of one of their own is embarked in the same boat with himself, they'll not grieve over his s.h.i.+pwreck.'

Could he but call Lady Maude his wife! Was this possible? There were cla.s.ses in which affections went for much, where there was such a thing as engaging these same affections, and actually pledging all hope of happiness in life on the faith of such engagements. These, it is true, were the sentiments that prevailed in humbler walks of life, amongst those lowly-born people whose births and marriages were not chronicled in gilt-bound volumes. The Lady Maudes of the world, whatever imprudences they might permit themselves, certainly never 'fell in love.' Condition and place in the world were far too serious things to be made the sport of sentiment. Love was a very proper thing in three-volume novels, and Mr.

Mudie drove a roaring trade in it; but in the well-bred world, immersed in all its engagements, triple-deep in its projects and promises for pleasure, where was the time, where the opportunity, for this pleasant fooling?

That luxurious selfishness in which people delight to plan a future life, and agree to think that they have in themselves what can confront narrow fortune and difficulty--these had no place in the lives of persons of fas.h.i.+on! In that coquetry of admiration and flattery which in the language of slang is called spooning, young persons occasionally got so far acquainted that they agreed to be married, pretty much as they agreed to waltz or to polka together; but it was always with the distinct understanding that they were doing what mammas would approve of, and family solicitors of good conscience could ratify. No tyrannical sentimentality, no uncontrollable gush of sympathy, no irresistible convictions about all future happiness being dependent on one issue, overbore these natures, and made them insensible to t.i.tle, and rank, and station, and settlements.

In one word, Atlee, after due consideration, satisfied his mind that, though a man might gain the affections of the doctor's daughter or the squire's niece, and so establish him as an element of her happiness that friends would overlook all differences of fortune, and try to make some sort of compromise with Fate, all these were unsuited to the sphere in which Lady Maude moved. It was, indeed, a realm where this coinage did not circulate. To enable him to address her with any prospect of success, he should be able to show--ay, and to show argumentatively--that she was, in listening to him, about to do something eminently prudent and worldly-wise.

She must, in short, be in a position to show her friends and 'society' that she had not committed herself to anything wilful or foolish--had not been misled by a sentiment or betrayed by a sympathy; and that the well-bred questioner who inquired, 'Why did she marry Atlee?' should be met by an answer satisfactory and convincing.

In the various ways he canva.s.sed the question and revolved it with himself, there was one consideration which, if I were at all concerned for his character for gallantry, I should be reluctant to reveal; but as I feel little interest on this score, I am free to own was this. He remembered that as Lady Maude was no longer in her first youth, there was reason to suppose she might listen to addresses now which, some years ago, would have met scant favour in her eyes.

In the matrimonial Lloyd's, if there were such a body, she would not have figured A No. 1; and the risks of entering the conjugal state have probably called for an extra premium. Atlee attached great importance to this fact; but it was not the less a matter which demanded the greatest delicacy of treatment. He must know it, and he must not know it. He must see that she had been the belle of many seasons, and he must pretend to regard her as fresh to the ways of life, and new to society. He trusted a good deal to his tact to do this, for while insinuating to her the possible future of such a man as himself--the high place, and the great rewards which, in all likelihood, awaited him--there would come an opportune moment to suggest, that to any one less gifted, less conversant with knowledge of life than herself, such reasonings could not be addressed.