A CUP OP TEA
It was so rare an event of late for Nina to seek her cousin in her own
room, that Kate was somewhat surprised to see Nina enter with all her old
ease of manner, and flinging away her hat carelessly, say, ‘Let me have a
cup of tea, dearest, for I want to have a clear head and a calm mind for at
least the next half-hour.’
‘It is almost time to dress for dinner, especially for you, Nina, who make
a careful toilet.’
‘Perhaps I shall make less to-day, perhaps not go down to dinner at all. Do
you know, child, I have every reason for agitation, and maiden
bashfulness besides? Do you know I have had a proposal--a proposal in all
form--from--but you shall guess whom.
‘Mr. O’Shea, of course.’
‘No, not Mr. O’Shea, though I am almost prepared for such a step on his
part--nor from your brother Dick, who has been falling in and out of love
with me for the last three months or more. My present conquest is the
supremely arrogant, but now condescending, Mr. Walpole, who, for reasons of
state and exigencies of party, has been led to believe that a pretty wife,
with a certain amount of natural astuteness, might advance his interests,
and tend to his promotion in public life; and with his old instincts as a
gambler, he is actually ready to risk his fortunes on a single card, and I,
the portionless Greek girl, with about the same advantages of family as of
fortune--I am to be that queen of trumps on which he stands to win. And
now, darling, the cup of tea, the cup of tea, if you want to hear more.’
While Kate was busy arranging the cups of a little tea-service that did
duty in her dressing-room, Nina walked impatiently to and fro, talking with
rapidity all the time.
‘The man is a greater fool than I thought him, and mistakes his native
weakness of mind for originality. If you had heard the imbecile nonsense
he talked to me for political shrewdness, and when he had shown me what a
very poor creature he was, he made me the offer of himself! This was so far
honest and above-board. It was saying in so many words, “You see, I am a
bankrupt.” Now, I don’t like bankrupts, either of mind or money. Could he
not have seen that he who seeks my favour must sue in another fashion?’
‘And so you refused him?’ said Kate, as she poured out her tea.
‘Far from it--I rather listened to his suit. I was so far curious to hear
what he could plead in his behalf, that I bade him write it. Yes, dearest;
it was a maxim of that very acute man my papa, that when a person makes you
any dubious proposition in words, you oblige him to commit it to writing.
Not necessarily to be used against him afterwards, but for this reason--and
I can almost quote my papa’s phrase on the occasion--in the homage of his
self-love, a man will rarely write himself such a knave as he will dare
to own when he is talking, and in that act of weakness is the gain of the
other party to the compact.’
‘I don’t think I understand you.’
‘I’m sure you do not; and you have put no sugar in my tea, which is worse.
Do you mean to say that your clock is right, and that it is already nigh
seven? Oh dear! and I, who have not told you one-half of my news, I must
go and dress. I have a certain green silk with white roses which I mean to
wear, and with my hair in that crimson Neapolitan net, it is a toilet _à
la_ minute.’
‘You know how it becomes you,’ said Kate, half slyly.
‘Of course I do, or in this critical moment of my life I should not risk
it. It will have its own suggestive meaning too. It will recall _ce cher_
Cecil to days at Baia, or wandering along the coast at Portici. I have
known a fragment of lace, a flower, a few bars of a song, do more to link
the broken chain of memory than scores of more laboured recollections; and
then these little paths that lead you back are so simple, so free from all
premeditation. Don’t you think so, dear?’
‘I do not know, and if it were not rude, I’d say I do not care?’
‘If my cup of tea were not so good, I should be offended, and leave the
room after such a speech. But you do not know, you could not guess, the
interesting things that I could tell you,’ cried she, with an almost
breathless rapidity. ‘Just imagine that deep statesman, that profound
plotter, telling me that they actually did not wish to capture
Donogan--that they would rather that he should escape!’
‘He told you this?’
‘He did more: he showed me the secret instructions to his police
creatures--I forget how they are called--showing what they might do to
connive at his escape, and how they should--if they could--induce him to
give some written pledge to leave Ireland for ever.’
‘Oh, this is impossible!’ cried Kate.
‘I could prove it to you, if I had not just sent off the veritable bit of
writing by post. Yes, stare and look horrified if you like; it is all true.
I stole the piece of paper with the secret directions, and sent it straight
to Donogan, under cover to Archibald Casey, Esq., 9 Lower Gardner Street,
Dublin.’
‘How could you have done such a thing?’
‘Say, how could I have done otherwise. Donogan now knows whether it will
become him to sign this pact with the enemy. If he deem his life worth
having at the price, it is well that _I_ should know it.’
‘It is then of yourself you were thinking all the while.’
‘Of myself and of him. I do not say I love this man; but I do say his
conduct now shall decide if he be worth loving. There’s the bell for
dinner. You shall hear all I have to say this evening. What an interest it
gives to life, even this much of plot and peril! Short of being with the
rebel himself, Kate, and sharing his dangers, I know of nothing could have
given me such delight.’
She turned back as she left the door, and said, ‘Make Mr. Walpole take you
down to dinner to-day; I shall take Mr. O’Shea’s arm, or your brother’s.’
The address of Archibald Casey, which Nina had used on this occasion, was
that of a well-known solicitor in Dublin, whose Conservative opinions
placed him above all suspicion or distrust. One of his clients, however--a
certain Mr. Maher--had been permitted to have letters occasionally
addressed to him to Casey’s care; and Maher, being an old college friend of
Donogan’s, afforded him this mode of receiving letters in times of unusual
urgency or danger. Maher shared very slightly in Donogan’s opinions. He
thought the men of the National party not only dangerous in themselves,
but that they afforded a reason for many of the repressive laws which
Englishmen passed with reference to Ireland. A friendship of early life,
when both these young men were college students, had overcome such
scruples, and Donogan had been permitted to have many letters marked
simply with a D., which were sent under cover to Maher. This facility had,
however, been granted so far back as ‘47, and had not been renewed in the
interval, during which time the Archibald Casey of that period had died,
and been succeeded by a son with the same name as his father.
When Nina, on looking over Donogan’s note-book, came upon this address, she
saw also some almost illegible words, which implied that it was only to be
employed as the last resort, or had been so used--a phrase she could not
exactly determine what it meant. The present occasion--so emergent in every
way--appeared to warrant both haste and security; and so, under cover to S.
Maher, she wrote to Donogan in these words:--
‘I send you the words, in the original handwriting, of the instructions
with regard to you. You will do what your honour and your conscience
dictate. Do not write to me; the public papers will inform me what your
decision has been, and I shall be satisfied, however it incline. I rely
upon you to burn the inclosure.’
A suit-at-law, in which Casey acted as Maher’s attorney at this period,
required that the letters addressed to his house for Maher should be opened
and read; and though the letter D. on the outside might have suggested a
caution, Casey either overlooked or misunderstood it, and broke the seal.
Not knowing what to think of this document, which was without signature,
and had no clue to the writer except the postmark of Kilgobbin, Casey
hastened to lay the letter as it stood before the barrister who conducted
Maher’s cause, and to ask his advice. The Right Hon. Paul Hartigan was an
ex-Attorney-General of the Tory party--a zealous, active, but somewhat
rash member of his party; still in the House, a member for Mallow, and far
more eager for the return of his friends to power than the great man who
dictated the tactics of the Opposition, and who with more of responsibility
could calculate the chances of success.
Paul Hartigan’s estimate of the Whigs was such that it would have in nowise
astonished him to discover that Mr. Gladstone was in close correspondence
with O’Donovan Rossa, or that Chichester Fortescue had been sworn in as a
head-centre. That the whole Cabinet were secretly Papists, and held weekly
confession at the feet of Dr. Manning, he was prepared to prove. He did
not vouch for Mr. Lowe; but he could produce the form of scapular worn by
Mr. Gladstone, and had a facsimile of the scourge by which Mr. Cardwell
diurnally chastened his natural instincts.
If, then, he expressed but small astonishment at this ‘traffic of the
Government with rebellion,’ for so he called it--he lost no time in
endeavouring to trace the writer of the letter, and ascertaining, so far as
he might, the authenticity of the inclosure.
‘It’s all true, Casey,’ said he, a few days after his receipt of the
papers. ‘The instructions are written by Cecil Walpole, the private
secretary of Lord Danesbury. I have obtained several specimens of his
writing. There is no attempt at disguise or concealment in this. I have
learned, too, that the police-constable Dargan is one of their most trusted
agents; and the only thing now to find out is, who is the writer of the
letter, for up to this all we know is, the hand is a woman’s.’
Now it chanced that when Mr. Hartigan--who had taken great pains and
bestowed much time to learn the story of the night attack on Kilgobbin, and
wished to make the presence of Mr. Walpole on the scene the ground of a
question in Parliament--had consulted the leader of the Opposition on the
subject, he had met not only a distinct refusal of aid, but something very
like a reproof for his ill-advised zeal. The Honourable Paul, not for the
first time disposed to distrust the political loyalty that differed with
his own ideas, now declared openly that he would not confide this great
disclosure to the lukewarm advocacy of Mr. Disraeli; he would himself lay
it before the House, and stand or fall by the result.
If the men who ‘stand or fall’ by any measure were counted, it is to be
feared that they usually would be found not only in the category of the
latter, but that they very rarely rise again, so very few are the matters
which can be determined without some compromise, and so rare are the
political questions which comprehend a distinct principle.
What warmed the Hartigan ardour, and, indeed, chafed it to a white heat on
this occasion, was to see by the public papers that Daniel Donogan had been
fixed on by the men of King’s County as the popular candidate, and a public
meeting held at Kilbeggan to declare that the man who should oppose him
at the hustings should be pronounced the enemy of Ireland. To show that
while this man was advertised in the _Hue and Cry_, with an immense reward
for his apprehension, he was in secret protected by the Government, who
actually condescended to treat with him; what an occasion would this
afford for an attack that would revive the memories of Grattan’s scorn and
Curran’s sarcasm, and declare to the senate of England that the men who led
them were unworthy guardians of the national honour!