LORD CASTLEWELL IS MUCH TROUBLED.
When her father had been with her half-an-hour, and was beginning to
think that he could escape and go down to the House,--and he had a
rod in pickle for the Speaker's back, such a rod that the Speaker's
back should be sore for the rest of the session--Rachel began her
lengthened conversation with him. In the last half-hour she had made
up her mind as to what she would say. But the conversation was so
long and intricate, being necessarily carried on by means of her
tablet, that poor O'Mahony's rod was losing all its pickle. "Father,
you must go and see Lord Castlewell at once."
"I think, my dear, he understood me altogether when I saw him before,
and he seemed to agree with me. I told him I didn't mind being called
an ass, but that you were so absurd as to dislike it. In fact, I gave
him to understand that we were three asses; but I don't think he'll
say it again."
"It isn't about that at all," said the tablet.
"What else do you want?"
Then Rachel went to work and wrote her demand with what deliberation
she could assume.
"You must go and tell him that I don't want to marry him at all. He
has been very kind, and you mustn't tell him that he's an ass any
more. But it won't do. He has proposed to marry me because he has
wanted a singing girl; and I think I should have done for him,--only
I can't sing."
Then the father replied, having put himself into such a position
on the bed as to read the tablet while Rachel was filling it: "But
that'll all come right in a very short time."
"It can't, and it won't. The doctor says a year; but he knows nothing
about it, and says it's in God's hands. He means by that it's as bad
as it can be."
"But, my dear--"
"I tell you it must be so."
"But you are engaged. He would never be so base a man as to take your
word at such a moment as this. Of course he couldn't do it. If you
had had small-pox, or anything horrible like that, he would not have
been justified."
"I'm as ugly as ever I can be," said the tablet, "and as poor a
creature." Then she stopped her pencil for a moment.
"Of course he's engaged to you. Why, my dear, I'd have to cowhide him
if he said a word of the kind."
"Oh, no!" said the tablet with frantic energy.
"But you see if I wouldn't! You see if I don't! I suppose they think
a lord isn't to be cowhided in this country. I guess I'll let 'em
know the difference."
"But I don't love him," said the tablet.
"Goodness gracious me!"
"I don't. When he spoke of you in that way I began to think of it,
and I found I hated him. I do hate him like poison, and I want you to
tell him so."
"That will be very disagreeable," said the father.
"Never mind the disagreeables. You tell him so. I tell you he won't
be the worst pleased of the lot of us. He wanted a singer, and not a
Landleaguer's daughter; now he hasn't got the singer, but has got the
Landleaguer's daughter. And I'll tell you something else I want--"
"What do you want?" asked the father, when her hand for a moment
ceased to scrawl.
"I want," she said, "Frank Jones. Now you know all about it."
Then she hid her face beneath the bedclothes, and refused to write
another word.
He went on talking to her till he had forgotten the Speaker and
the rod in pickle. He besought her to think better of it; and if
not that, just at present to postpone any action in the matter. He
explained to her how very disagreeable it would be to him to have to
go to the lord with such a message as she now proposed. But she only
enhanced the vehemence of her order by shaking her head as her face
lay buried in the pillow.
"Let it wait for one fortnight," said the father.
"No!" said the girl, using her own voice for the effort.
Then the father slowly took himself off, and making his way to the
House of Commons, renewed his passion as he went, and had himself
again turned out before he had been half-an-hour in the House.
The earl was sitting alone after breakfast two or three days
subsequently, thinking in truth of his difficulty with Rachel. It
had come to be manifest to him that he must marry the girl unless
something terrible should occur to her. "She might die," he said to
himself very sadly, trying to think of cases in which singers had
died from neglected throats. And it did make him very sad. He could
not think of the perishing of that magnificent treble without great
grief; and, after his fashion, he did love her personally. He did
not know that he could ever love anyone very much better. He had
certainly thought that it would be a good thing that his father and
mother and sister should go and live in foreign lands,--in order, in
short, that they might never more be heard of to trouble him,--but he
did not even contemplate their deaths, so sweet-minded was he. But
in the first fury of his love he had thought how nice it would be to
be left with his singing girl, and no one to trouble him. Now there
came across him an idea that something was due to the Marquis of
Beaulieu,--something, that is, to his own future position; and what
could he do with a singing girl for his wife who could not sing?
He was unhappy as he thought of it all, and would ever and again, as
he meditated, be stirred up to mild anger when he remembered that he
had been told that "the truth would suffer." He had intended, at any
rate, that his singing girl should be submissive and obedient while
in his hands. But here had been an outbreak of passion! And here
was this confounded O'Mahony ready to make a fool of himself at a
moment's notice before all the world. At that moment the door was
opened and Mr. O'Mahony was shown into the room.
"Oh! dear," exclaimed the lord, "how do you do, Mr. O'Mahony? I hope
I see you well."
"Pretty well. But upon my word, I don't know how to tell you what
I've got to say."
"Has anything gone wrong with Rachel?"
"Not with her illness,--which, however, does not seem to improve. The
poor girl! But you'll say she's gone mad."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I really hardly know how I ought to break it. You must have learned
by this time that Rachel is a girl determined to have her own way."
"Well; well; well!"
"And, upon my word, when I think of myself, I feel that I have
nothing to do but what she bids me."
"It's more than you do for the Speaker, Mr. O'Mahony."
"Yes, it is; I admit that. But Rachel, though she is inclined to
be tyrannical, is not such a downright positive old blue-bottle
nincompoop as that white-wigged king of kings. Rachel is bad; but
even you can't say that she is bad enough to be Speaker of the House
of Commons. My belief is, that he'll come to be locked up yet."
"We have all the highest opinion of him."
"It's because you like to be sat upon. You don't want to be allowed
to say bo to a goose. I have often heard in my own country--"
"But you call yourself an Irishman, Mr. O'Mahony."
"Never did so in my life. They called me so over there when they
wanted to return me to hold my tongue in that House of Torment; but
I guess it will puzzle the best Englishman going to find out whether
I'm an American or an Irishman. They did something over there to make
me an American; but they did nothing to unmake me as an Irishman. And
there I am, member for Cavan; and it will go hard with me if I don't
break that Speaker's heart before I've done with him. What! I ain't
to say that he goes wrong when he never goes right by any chance?"
"Have you come here this morning, Mr. O'Mahony, to abuse the
Speaker?"
"By no means. It was you who threw the Speaker in my teeth."
Lord Castlewell did acknowledge to himself his own imprudence.
"I came here to tell you about my daughter, and upon my word I
shall find it more difficult than anything I may have to say to the
Speaker. I have the most profound contempt for the Speaker."
"Perhaps he returns it."
"I don't believe he does, or he wouldn't make so much of me as to
turn me out of the House. When a man finds it necessary to remove an
enemy, let the cause be what it may, he cannot be said to despise
that enemy. Now, I wouldn't give a puff of breath to turn him out of
the House. In truth, I despise him too much."
"He is to be pitied," said the lord, with a gentle touch of irony.
"I'll tell you what, Lord Castlewell--"
"Don't go on about the Speaker, Mr. O'Mahony,--pray don't."
"You always begin,--but I won't. I didn't come here to speak about
him at all. And the Chairman of Committees is positively worse. You
know there's a creature called Chairman of Committees?"
"Now, Mr. O'Mahony, I really must beg that you will fight your
political battles anywhere but here. I'm not a politician. How is
your charming daughter this morning?"
"She is anything but charming. I hardly know what to make of her,
but I find that I am always obliged to do what she tells me." There
was another allusion to the Speaker on the lord's tongue, but he
restrained himself. "She has sent me here to say that she wants the
marriage to be broken off."
"Good Heavens!"
"She does. She says that you intend to marry her because she's a
singing girl;--and now she can't sing."
"Not exactly that," said the lord.
"And she thinks she oughtn't to have accepted you at all,--that's the
truth." The lord's face became very long. "I think myself that it was
a little too hurried. I don't suppose you quite knew your own minds."
"If Miss O'Mahony repents--"
"Well, Miss O'Mahony does repent. She has got something into her head
that I can't quite explain. She thought that she'd do for a countess
very well as long as she was on the boards of a theatre. But now that
she's to be relegated to private life she begins to feel that she
ought to look after someone about her own age."
"Oh, indeed! Is this her message?"
"Well; yes. It is her message. I shouldn't in such a matter invent
it all if she hadn't sent me. I don't know, now I think of it, that
she did say anything about her own age. But yet she did," remarked
Mr. O'Mahony, calling to mind the assertion made by Rachel that she
wanted Frank Jones. Frank Jones was about her own age, whereas the
lord was as old as her father.
"Upon my word, I am much obliged to Miss O'Mahony."
"She certainly has meant to be as courteous as she knows how," said
Mr. O'Mahony.
"Perhaps on your side of the water they have different ideas of
courtesy. The young lady sends me word that now she means to retire
from the stage she finds I am too old for her."
"Not that at all," said Mr. O'Mahony. But he said it in an apologetic
tone, as though admitting the truth.
Lord Castlewell, as he sat there for a few moments, acknowledged to
himself that Rachel possessed certain traits of character which had
something fine about them, from whatever side of the water she had
come. He was a reasonable man, and he considered that there was a
way made for him to escape from this trouble which was not to have
been expected. Had Rachel been an English girl, or an Italian, or a
Norwegian, he would hardly have been let off so easily. As he was
an earl, and about to be a marquis, and as he was a rich man, such
suitors are not generally given up in a hurry. This young lady had
sent word to him that she had lost her voice permanently and was
therefore obliged to surrender that high title, that noble name, and
those golden hopes which had glistened before her eyes. No doubt he
had offered to marry her because of her singing;--that is, he would
not have so offered had she not have been a singer. But he could not
have departed from his engagement simply because she had become dumb.
He quite understood that Mr. O'Mahony would have been there with
his cowhide, and though he was by no means a coward be did not wish
to encounter the American Member of the House of Commons in all
his rage. In fact, he had been governed in his previous ideas by a
feeling of propriety; but propriety certainly did not demand him to
marry a young lady who had sent to tell him that he was too old. And
this irate member of the House of Commons had come to bring him the
message!
"What am I expected to suggest now?" said Lord Castlewell, after
awhile.
"Just your affectionate blessing, and you're very sorry," said Mr.
O'Mahony, with a shrug. "That's the kind of thing, I should say."
He couldn't send her his affectionate blessing, and he couldn't
say he was very sorry. Had the young lady been about to marry his
son,--had there been such a son,--he could have blessed her; and he
felt that his own personal dignity did not admit of an expression of
sorrow.
Was he to let the young lady off altogether? There was something
nearly akin,--very nearly akin,--to true love in his bosom as he
thought of this. The girl was ill, and no doubt weak, and had been
made miserable by the loss of her voice. The doctor had told him that
her voice, for all singing purposes, had probably gone for ever. But
her beauty remained;--had not so faded, at least, as to have given
any token of permanent decay. And that peculiarly bright eye was
there; and the wit of the words which had captivated him. The very
smallness of her stature, with its perfect symmetry, had also gone
far to enrapture him.
No doubt, he was forty. He did not openly pretend even to be less.
And where was the young lady, singer or no singer, who if disengaged,
would reject the heir to a marquisate because he was forty? And
he did not believe that Rachel had sent him any message in which
allusion was made to his age. That had been added by the stupid
father, who was, without doubt, the biggest fool that either America
or Ireland had ever produced. Now that the matter had been brought
before him in such bald terms, he was by no means sure that he was
desirous of accepting the girl's offer to release him. And the father
evidently had no desire to catch him. He must acknowledge that Mr.
O'Mahony was an honest fool.
"It's very hard to know what I'm to say." Here Mr. O'Mahony shook his
head. "I think that, perhaps, I had better come and call upon her."
"You mustn't speak a word! And, if you're to be considered as no
longer engaged, perhaps there might be--you know--something--well,
something of delicacy in the matter!"
Mr. O'Mahony felt at the moment that he ought to protect the
interests of Frank Jones.
"I understand. At any rate I am not disposed to send her my blessing
at present as a final step. An engagement to be married is a very
serious step in life."
But her father remembered that she had told him that she wanted Frank
Jones. Should he tell the lord the exact truth, and explain all about
Frank Jones? It would be the honest thing to do. And yet he felt that
his girl should have another chance. This lord was not much to his
taste; but still, for a lord, he had his good points.
"I think we had better leave it for the present," said the lord. "I
feel that in the midst of all your eloquence I do not quite catch
Miss O'Mahony's meaning."
O'Mahony felt that this lord was as bad a lord as any of them. He
would like to force the lord to meet him at some debating club where
there was no wretched Speaker and there force him to give an answer
on any of the burning questions which now excited the two countries.
"Very well. I will explain to Rachel as soon as I can that the matter
is still left in abeyance. Of course we feel the honour done us by
your lordship in not desiring to accept at once her decision. Her
condition is no doubt sad. But I suppose she may expect to hear once
more from yourself in a short time."
So Mr. O'Mahony took his leave, and as he went to Cecil Street
endeavoured in his own mind to investigate the character of Lord
Castlewell. That he was a fool there could be no doubt, a fool with
whom he would not be forced to live in the constant intercourse of
married life for any money that could be offered to him. He was a man
who, without singing himself, cared for nothing but the second-hand
life of a theatre. But then he, Mr. O'Mahony, was not a young woman,
and was not expected to marry Lord Castlewell. But he had told
himself over and over again that Lord Castlewell had been "caught."
He was a great lord rolling in money, and Rachel had "caught" him.
He had not quite approved of Rachel's conduct, but the lord had been
fair game for a woman. What the deuce was he to think now of the lord
who would not be let off?
"I wonder whether it can be love for her," said he to himself; "such
love as I used to feel."
Then he sighed heavily as he went home.