THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI
Mathew Kearney had once a sister whom he dearly loved, and whose sad fate
lay very heavily on his heart, for he was not without self-accusings on
the score of it. Matilda Kearney had been a belle of the Irish Court and a
toast at the club when Mathew was a young fellow in town; and he had been
very proud of her beauty, and tasted a full share of those attentions which
often fall to the lot of brothers of handsome girls.
Then Matty was an heiress, that is, she had twelve thousand pounds in her
own right; and Ireland was not such a California as to make a very pretty
girl with twelve thousand pounds an everyday chance. She had numerous
offers of marriage, and with the usual luck in such cases, there were
commonplace unattractive men with good means, and there were clever and
agreeable fellows without a sixpence, all alike ineligible. Matty had
that infusion of romance in her nature that few, if any, Irish girls are
free from, and which made her desire that the man of her choice should be
something out of the common. She would have liked a soldier who had won
distinction in the field. The idea of military fame was very dear to her
Irish heart, and she fancied with what pride she would hang upon the arm
of one whose gay trappings and gold embroidery emblematised the career
he followed. If not a soldier, she would have liked a great orator, some
leader in debate that men would rush down to hear, and whose glowing words
would be gathered up and repeated as though inspirations; after that a
poet, and perhaps--not a painter--a sculptor, she thought, might do.
With such aspirations as these, it is not surprising that she rejected the
offers of those comfortable fellows in Meath, or Louth, whose military
glories were militia drills, and whose eloquence was confined to the bench
of magistrates.
At three-and-twenty she was in the full blaze of her beauty; at
three-and-thirty she was still unmarried, her looks on the wane, but her
romance stronger than ever, not untinged perhaps with a little bitterness
towards that sex which had not afforded one man of merit enough to woo
and win her. Partly out of pique with a land so barren of all that could
minister to imagination, partly in anger with her brother who had been
urging her to a match she disliked, she went abroad to travel, wandered
about for a year or two, and at last found herself one winter at Naples.
There was at that time, as secretary to the Greek legation, a young fellow
whom repute called the handsomest man in Europe; he was a certain Spiridion
Kostalergi, whose title was Prince of Delos, though whether there was such
a principality, or that he was its representative, society was not fully
agreed upon. At all events, Miss Kearney met him at a Court ball, when
he wore his national costume, looking, it must be owned, so splendidly
handsome that all thought of his princely rank was forgotten in presence of
a face and figure that recalled the highest triumphs of ancient art. It was
Antinous come to life in an embroidered cap and a gold-worked jacket, and
it was Antinous with a voice like Mario, and who waltzed to perfection.
This splendid creature, a modern Alcibiades in gifts of mind and graces,
soon heard, amongst his other triumphs, how a rich and handsome Irish girl
had fallen in love with him at first sight. He had himself been struck by
her good looks and her stylish air, and learning that there could be no
doubt about her fortune, he lost no time in making his advances. Before
the end of the first week of their acquaintance he proposed. She referred
him to her brother before she could consent; and though, when Kostalergi
inquired amongst her English friends, none had ever heard of a Lord
Kilgobbin, the fact of his being Irish explained their ignorance, not to
say that Kearney’s reply, being a positive refusal of consent, so fully
satisfied the Greek that it was ‘a good thing,’ he pressed his suit with
a most passionate ardour: threatened to kill himself if she persisted in
rejecting him, and so worked upon her heart by his devotion, or on her
pride by the thought of his position, that she yielded, and within three
weeks from the day they first met, she became the Princess of Delos.
When a Greek, holding any public employ, marries money, his Government is
usually prudent enough to promote him. It is a recognition of the merit
that others have discovered, and a wise administration marches with the
inventions of the age it lives in. Kostalergi’s chief was consequently
recalled, suffered to fall back upon his previous obscurity--he had been a
commission-agent for a house in the Greek trade--and the Prince of Delos
gazetted as Minister Plenipotentiary of Greece, with the first class of
St. Salvador, in recognition of his services to the state; no one being
indiscreet enough to add that the aforesaid services were comprised
in marrying an Irishwoman with a dowry of--to quote the _Athenian
Hemera_--‘three hundred and fifty thousand drachmas.’
For a while--it was a very brief while--the romantic mind of the Irish girl
was raised to a sort of transport of enjoyment. Here was everything--more
than everything--her most glowing imagination had ever conceived. Love,
ambition, station all gratified, though, to be sure, she had quarrelled
with her brother, who had returned her last letters unopened. Mathew, she
thought, was too good-hearted to bear a long grudge: he would see her
happiness, he would hear what a devoted and good husband her dear Spiridion
had proved himself, and he would forgive her at last.
Though, as was well known, the Greek envoy received but a very moderate
salary from his Government, and even that not paid with a strict
punctuality, the legation was maintained with a splendour that rivalled,
if it did not surpass, those of France, England, or Russia. The Prince of
Delos led the fashion in equipage, as did the Princess in toilet; their
dinners, their balls, their fêtes attracted the curiosity of even the
highest to witness them; and to such a degree of notoriety had the Greek
hospitality attained, that Naples at last admitted that without the Palazzo
Kostalergi there would be nothing to attract strangers to the capital.
Play, so invariably excluded from the habits of an embassy, was carried on
at this legation to such an excess that the clubs were completely deserted,
and all the young men of gambling tastes flocked here each night, sure
to find lansquenet or faro, and for stakes which no public table could
possibly supply. It was not alone that this life of a gambler estranged
Kostalergi from his wife, but that the scandal of his infidelities had
reached her also, just at the time when some vague glimmering suspicions of
his utter worthlessness were breaking on her mind. The birth of a little
girl did not seem in the slightest degree to renew the ties between them;
on the contrary, the embarrassment of a baby, and the cost it must entail,
were the only considerations he would entertain, and it was a constant
question of his--uttered, too, with a tone of sarcasm that cut her to the
heart: ‘Would not her brother--the Lord Irlandais--like to have that baby?
Would she not write and ask him?’ Unpleasant stories had long been rife
about the play at the Greek legation, when a young Russian secretary, of
high family and influence, lost an immense sum under circumstances which
determined him to refuse payment. Kostalergi, who had been the chief
winner, refused everything like inquiry or examination; in fact, he made
investigation impossible, for the cards, which the Russian had declared to
be marked, the Greek gathered up slowly from the table and threw into the
fire, pressing his foot upon them in the flames, and then calmly returning
to where the other stood, he struck him across the face with his open hand,
saying, as he did it: ‘Here is another debt to repudiate, and before the
same witnesses also!’
The outrage did not admit of delay. The arrangements were made in an
instant, and within half an hour--merely time enough to send for a
surgeon--they met at the end of the garden of the legation. The Russian
fired first, and though a consummate pistol-shot, agitation at the insult
so unnerved him that he missed: his ball cut the knot of Kostalergi’s
cravat. The Greek took a calm and deliberate aim, and sent his bullet
through the other’s forehead. He fell without a word, stone dead.
Though the duel had been a fair one, and the _procès-verbal_ drawn up and
agreed on both sides showed that all had been done loyally, the friends
of the young Russian had influence to make the Greek Government not only
recall the envoy, but abolish the mission itself.
For some years the Kostalergis lived in retirement at Palermo, not knowing
nor known to any one. Their means were now so reduced that they had
barely sufficient for daily life, and though the Greek prince--as he was
called--constantly appeared on the public promenade well dressed, and in
all the pride of his handsome figure, it was currently said that his wife
was literally dying of want.
It was only after long and agonising suffering that she ventured to write
to her brother, and appeal to him for advice and assistance. But at last
she did so, and a correspondence grew up which, in a measure, restored the
affection between them. When Kostalergi discovered the source from which
his wretched wife now drew her consolation and her courage, he forbade her
to write more, and himself addressed a letter to Kearney so insulting and
offensive--charging him even with causing the discord of his home, and
showing the letter to his wife before sending it--that the poor woman, long
failing in health and broken down, sank soon after, and died so destitute,
that the very funeral was paid for by a subscription amongst her
countrymen. Kostalergi had left her some days before her death, carrying
the girl along with him, nor was his whereabouts learned for a considerable
time.
When next he emerged into the world it was at Rome, where he gave lessons
in music and modern languages, in many in which he was a proficient. His
splendid appearance, his captivating address, his thorough familiarity with
the modes of society, gave him the entrée to many houses where his talents
amply requited the hospitality he received. He possessed, amongst his other
gifts, an immense amount of plausibility, and people found it, besides,
very difficult to believe ill of that well-bred, somewhat retiring man,
who, in circumstances of the very narrowest fortunes, not only looked and
dressed like a gentleman, but actually brought up a daughter with a degree
of care and an amount of regard to her education that made him appear a
model parent.
Nina Kostalergi was then about seventeen, though she looked at least three
years older. She was a tall, slight, pale girl, with perfectly regular
features--so classic in the mould, and so devoid of any expression, that
she recalled the face one sees on a cameo. Her hair was of wondrous
beauty--that rich gold colour which has _reflets_ through it, as the light
falls full or faint, and of an abundance that taxed her ingenuity to dress
it. They gave her the sobriquet of the Titian Girl at Rome whenever she
appeared abroad.
In the only letter Kearney had received from his brother-in-law after his
sister’s death was an insolent demand for a sum of money, which he alleged
that Kearney was unjustly withholding, and which he now threatened to
enforce by law. ‘I am well aware,’ wrote he, ‘what measure of honour or
honesty I am to expect from a man whose very name and designation are a
deceit. But probably prudence will suggest how much better it would be
on this occasion to simulate rectitude than risk the shame of an open
exposure.’
To this gross insult Kearney never deigned any reply; and now more than two
years passed without any tidings of his disreputable relative, when there
came one morning a letter with the Roman postmark, and addressed, ‘_À
Monsieur le Vicomte de Kilgobbin, à son Château de Kilgobbin, en Irlande._’
To the honour of the officials in the Irish post-office, it was forwarded
to Kilgobbin with the words, ‘Try Mathew Kearney, Esq.,’ in the corner.
A glance at the writing showed it was not in Kostalergi’s hand, and, after
a moment or two of hesitation, Kearney opened it. He turned at once for the
writer’s name, and read the words, ‘Nina Kostalergi’--his sister’s child!
‘Poor Matty,’ was all he could say for some minutes. He remembered the
letter in which she told him of her little girl’s birth, and implored his
forgiveness for herself and his love for her baby.’ I want both, my dear
brother,’ wrote she; ‘for though the bonds we make for ourselves by our
passions--’ And the rest of the sentence was erased--she evidently thinking
she had delineated all that could give a clue to a despondent reflection.
The present letter was written in English, but in that quaint, peculiar
hand Italians often write. It began by asking forgiveness for daring to
write to him, and recalling the details of the relationship between them,
as though he could not have remembered it. ‘I am, then, in my right,’ wrote
she, ‘when I address you as my dear, dear uncle, of whom I have heard so
much, and whose name was in my prayers ere I knew why I knelt to pray.’
Then followed a piteous appeal--it was actually a cry for protection. Her
father, she said, had determined to devote her to the stage, and already
had taken steps to sell her--she said she used the word advisedly--for
so many years to the impresario of the ‘Fenice’ at Venice, her voice and
musical skill being such as to give hope of her becoming a prima donna.
She had, she said, frequently sung at private parties at Rome, but only
knew within the last few days that she had been, not a guest, but a paid
performer. Overwhelmed with the shame and indignity of this false position,
she implored her mother’s brother to compassionate her. ‘If I could not
become a governess, I could be your servant, dearest uncle,’ she wrote. ‘I
only ask a roof to shelter me, and a refuge. May I go to you? I would beg
my way on foot if I only knew that at the last your heart and your door
would be open to me, and as I fell at your feet, knew that I was saved.’
Until a few days ago, she said, she had by her some little trinkets her
mother had left her, and on which she counted as a means of escape, but her
father had discovered them and taken them from her.
‘If you answer this--and oh! let me not doubt you will--write to me to the
care of the Signori Cayani and Battistella, bankers, Rome. Do not delay,
but remember that I am friendless, and but for this chance hopeless.--Your
niece,
‘NINA KOSTALERGI.’
While Kearney gave this letter to his daughter to read, he walked up and
down the room with his head bent and his hands deep in his pockets.
‘I think I know the answer you’ll send to this, papa,’ said the girl,
looking up at him with a glow of pride and affection in her face. ‘I do not
need that you should say it.’
‘It will take fifty--no, not fifty, but five-and-thirty pounds to bring her
over here, and how is she to come all alone?’
Kate made no reply; she knew the danger sometimes of interrupting his own
solution of a difficulty.
‘She’s a big girl, I suppose, by this--fourteen or fifteen?’
‘Over nineteen, papa.’
‘So she is, I was forgetting. That scoundrel, her father, might come after
her; he’d have the right if he wished to enforce it, and what a scandal
he’d bring upon us all!’
‘But would he care to do it? Is he not more likely to be glad to be
disembarrassed of her charge?’
‘Not if he was going to sell her--not if he could convert her into money.’
‘He has never been in England; he may not know how far the law would give
him any power over her.’
‘Don’t trust that, Kate; a blackguard always can find out how much is in
his favour everywhere. If he doesn’t know it now, he’d know it the day
after he landed.’ He paused an instant, and then said: ‘There will be the
devil to pay with old Peter Gill, for he’ll want all the cash I can scrape
together for Loughrea fair. He counts on having eighty sheep down there at
the long crofts, and a cow or two besides. That’s money’s worth, girl!’
Another silence followed, after which he said, ‘And I think worse of the
Greek scoundrel than all the cost.’
‘Somehow, I have no fear that he’ll come here?’
‘You’ll have to talk over Peter, Kitty’--he always said Kitty when he meant
to coax her. ‘He’ll mind you, and at all events, you don’t care about his
grumbling. Tell him it’s a sudden call on me for railroad shares, or’--and
here he winked knowingly--‘say, it’s going to Rome the money is, and for
the Pope!’
‘That’s an excellent thought, papa,’ said she, laughing; ‘I’ll certainly
tell him the money is going to Rome, and you’ll write soon--you see with
what anxiety she expects your answer.’
‘I’ll write to-night when the house is quiet, and there’s no racket
nor disturbance about me.’ Now though Kearney said this with a perfect
conviction of its truth and reasonableness, it would have been very
difficult for any one to say in what that racket he spoke of consisted, or
wherein the quietude of even midnight was greater than that which prevailed
there at noonday. Never, perhaps, were lives more completely still or
monotonous than theirs. People who derive no interests from the outer
world, who know nothing of what goes on in life, gradually subside into a
condition in which reflection takes the place of conversation, and lose all
zest and all necessity for that small talk which serves, like the changes
of a game, to while away time, and by the aid of which, if we do no more,
we often delude the cares and worries of existence.
A kind good-morning when they met, and a few words during the day--some
mention of this or that event of the farm or the labourers, and rare enough
too--some little incident that happened amongst the tenants, made all the
materials of their intercourse, and filled up lives which either would very
freely have owned were far from unhappy.
Dick, indeed, when he came home and was weather-bound for a day, did lament
his sad destiny, and mutter half-intelligible nonsense of what he would
not rather do than descend to such a melancholy existence; but in all
his complainings he never made Kate discontented with her lot, or desire
anything beyond it.
‘It’s all very well,’ he would say, ‘till you know something better.’
‘But I want no better.’
‘Do you mean you’d like to go through life in this fashion?’
‘I can’t pretend to say what I may feel as I grow older; but if I could be
sure to be as I am now, I could ask nothing better.’
‘I must say, it’s a very inglorious life?’ said he, with a sneer.
‘So it is, but how many, may I ask, are there who lead glorious lives? Is
there any glory in dining out, in dancing, visiting, and picnicking? Where
is the great glory of the billiard-table, or the croquet-lawn? No, no, my
dear Dick, the only glory that falls to the share of such humble folks as
we are, is to have something to do, and to do it.’
Such were the sort of passages which would now and then occur between them,
little contests, be it said, in which she usually came off the conqueror.
If she were to have a wish gratified, it would have been a few more
books--something besides those odd volumes of Scott’s novels, _Zeluco_ by
Doctor Moore, and _Florence McCarthy_, which comprised her whole library,
and which she read over and over unceasingly. She was now in her usual
place--a deep window-seat--intently occupied with Amy Robsart’s sorrows,
when her father came to read what he had written in answer to Nina. If it
was very brief it was very affectionate. It told her in a few words that
she had no need to recall the ties of their relationship; that his heart
never ceased to remind him of them; that his home was a very dull one, but
that her cousin Kate would try and make it a happy one to her; entreated
her to confer with the banker, to whom he remitted forty pounds, in what
way she could make the journey, since he was too broken in health himself
to go and fetch her. ‘It is a bold step I am counselling you to take. It is
no light thing to quit a father’s home, and I have my misgivings how far I
am a wise adviser in recommending it. There is, however, a present peril,
and I must try, if I can, to save you from it. Perhaps, in my old-world
notions, I attach to the thought of the stage ideas that you would
only smile at; but none of our race, so far as I know, fell to that
condition--nor must you while I have a roof to shelter you. If you would
write and say about what time I might expect you, I will try to meet you
on your landing in England at Dover. Kate sends you her warmest love, and
longs to see you.’
This was the whole of it. But a brief line to the bankers said that any
expense they judged needful to her safe convoy across Europe would be
gratefully repaid by him.
‘Is it all right, dear? Have I forgotten anything?’ asked he, as Kate read
it over.
‘It’s everything, papa--everything. And I _do_ long to see her.’
‘I hope she’s like Matty--if she’s only like her poor mother, it will make
my heart young again to look at her.’