AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT
It was no uncommon thing for the tenants to address petitions and
complaints in writing to Kate, and it occurred to Nina as not impossible
that some one might have bethought him of entreating her intercession in
their favour. The look of the letter, and the coarse wax, and the writing,
all in a measure strengthened this impression, and it was in the most
careless of moods she broke the envelope, scarcely caring to look for the
name of the writer, whom she was convinced must be unknown to her.
She had just let her hair fall freely down on her neck and shoulders, and
was seated in a deep chair before her fire, as she opened the paper and
read, ‘Mademoiselle Kostalergi.’ This beginning, so unlikely for a peasant,
made her turn for the name, and she read, in a large full hand, the words
‘DANIEL DONOGAN.’ So complete was her surprise, that to satisfy herself
there was no trick or deception, she examined the envelope and the seal,
and reflected for some minutes over the mode in which the document had come
to her hands. Atlee’s story was a very credible one: nothing more likely
than that the boy was charged to deliver the letter at the castle, and
simply sought to spare himself so many miles of way, or it might be that
he was enjoined to give it to the first traveller he met on his road to
Kilgobbin. Nina had little doubt that if Atlee guessed or had reason to
know the writer, he would have treated the letter as a secret missive which
would give him a certain power over her.
These thoughts did not take her long, and she turned once more to the
letter. ‘Poor fellow,’ said she aloud, ‘why does he write to _me_?’ And
her own voice sent back its surmises to her; and as she thought over him
standing on the lonely road, his clasped hands before him, and his hair
wafted wildly back from his uncovered head, two heavy tears rolled slowly
down her cheeks and dropped upon her neck. ‘I am sure he loved me--I know
he loved me,’ muttered she, half aloud. ‘I have never seen in any eye the
same expression that his wore as he lay that morning in the grass. It was
not veneration, it was genuine adoration. Had I been a saint and wanted
worship, there was the very offering that I craved--a look of painful
meaning, made up of wonder and devotion, a something that said: take what
course you may, be wilful, be wayward, be even cruel, I am your slave.
You may not think me worthy of a thought, you may be so indifferent as to
forget me utterly, but my life from this hour has but one spell to charm,
one memory to sustain it. It needed not his last words to me to say that my
image would lay on his heart for ever. Poor fellow, _I_ need not have been
added to his sorrows, he has had his share of trouble without _me_!’
It was some time ere she could return to the letter, which ran thus:--
‘MADEMOISELLE KOSTALERGI,--You once rendered me a great service--not alone
at some hazard to yourself, but by doing what must have cost you sorely. It
is now _my_ turn; and if the act of repayment is not equal to the original
debt, let me ask you to believe that it taxes _my_ strength even more than
_your_ generosity once taxed your own.
‘I came here a few days since in the hope that I might see you before I
leave Ireland for ever; and while waiting for some fortunate chance, I
learned that you were betrothed and to be married to the young gentleman
who lies ill at Kilgobbin, and whose approaching trial at the assizes is
now the subject of so much discussion. I will not tell you--I have no right
to tell you--the deep misery with which these tidings filled me. It was no
use to teach my heart how vain and impossible were all my hopes with regard
to you. It was to no purpose that I could repeat over aloud to myself how
hopeless my pretensions must be. My love for you had become a religion, and
what I could deny to a hope, I could still believe. Take that hope away,
and I could not imagine how I should face my daily life, how interest
myself in its ambitions, and even care to live on.
‘These sad confessions cannot offend you, coming from one even as humble as
I am. They are all that are left me for consolation--they will soon be all
I shall have for memory. The little lamp in the lowly shrine comforts the
kneeling worshipper far more than it honours the saint; and the love I
bear you is such as this. Forgive me if I have dared these utterances. To
save him with whose fortunes your own are to be bound up became at once
my object; and as I knew with what ingenuity and craft his ruin had been
compassed, it required all my efforts to baffle his enemies. The National
press and the National party have made a great cause of this trial, and
determined that tenant-right should be vindicated in the person of this man
Gill.
‘I have seen enough of what is intended here to be aware what mischief may
be worked by hard swearing, a violent press, and a jury not insensible to
public opinion--evils, if you like, but evils that are less of our own
growing than the curse ill-government has brought upon us. It has been
decided in certain councils--whose decrees are seldom gainsaid--that an
example shall be made of Captain Gorman O’Shea, and that no effort shall
be spared to make his case a terror and a warning to Irish landowners; how
they attempt by ancient process of law to subvert the concessions we have
wrung from our tyrants.
‘A jury to find him guilty will be sworn; and let us see the judge--in
defiance of a verdict given from the jury-box, without a moment’s
hesitation or the shadow of dissent--let us see the judge who will dare to
diminish the severity of the sentence. This is the language, these are the
very words of those who have more of the rule of Ireland in their hands
than the haughty gentlemen, honourable and right honourable, who sit at
Whitehall.
‘I have heard this opinion too often of late to doubt how much it is a
fixed determination of the party; and until now--until I came here, and
learned what interest his fate could have for me--I offered no opposition
to these reasonings. Since then I have bestirred myself actively. I have
addressed the committee here who have taken charge of the prosecution; I
have written to the editors of the chief newspapers; I have even made a
direct appeal to the leading counsel for the prosecution, and tried to
persuade them that a victory here might cost us more than a defeat, and
that the country at large, who submit with difficulty to the verdict of
absolving juries, will rise with indignation at this evidence of a jury
prepared to exercise a vindictive power, and actually make the law the
agent of reprisal. I have failed in all--utterly failed. Some reproach me
as faint-hearted and craven; some condescend to treat me as merely mistaken
and misguided; and some are bold enough to hint that, though as a military
authority I stand without rivalry, as a purely political adviser, my
counsels are open to dispute.
‘I have still a power, however, through the organisation of which I am a
chief; and by this power I have ordered Gill to appear before me, and in
obedience to my commands, he will sail this night for America. With him
will also leave the two other important witnesses in this cause; so that
the only evidence against Captain O’Shea will be some of those against whom
he has himself instituted a cross charge for assault. That the prosecution
can be carried on with such testimony need not be feared. Our press will
denounce the infamous arts by which these witnesses have been tampered
with, and justice has been defeated. The insults they may hurl at our
oppressors--for once unjustly--will furnish matter for the Opposition
journals to inveigh against our present Government, and some good may come
even of this. At all events, I shall have accomplished what I sought. I
shall have saved from a prison the man I hate most on earth, the man who,
robbing me of what never could be mine, robs me of every hope, of every
ambition, making my love as worthless as my life! Have I not repaid you?
Ask your heart which of us has done more for the other?
‘The contract on which Gill based his right as a tenant, and which would
have sustained his action, is now in my hands; and I will--if you permit
me--place it in yours. This may appear an ingenious device to secure a
meeting with you; but though I long to see you once more, were it but a
minute, I would not compass it by a fraud. If, then, you will not see me, I
shall address the packet to you through the post.
‘I have finished. I have told you what it most concerns you to know,
and what chiefly regards your happiness. I have done this as coldly and
impassively, I hope, as though I had no other part in the narrative than
that of the friend whose friendship had a blessed office. I have not told
you of the beating heart that hangs over this paper, nor will I darken one
bright moment of your fortune by the gloom of mine. If you will write me
one line--a farewell if it must be--send it to the care of Adam Cobb,
“Cross Keys,” Moate, where I shall find it up to Thursday next. If--and oh!
how shall I bless you for it--if you will consent to see me, to say one
word, to let me look on you once more, I shall go into my banishment with a
bolder heart, as men go into battle with an amulet. DANIEL DONOGAN.’
‘Shall I show this to Kate?’ was the first thought of Nina as she laid the
letter down. ‘Is it a breach of confidence to let another than myself read
these lines? Assuredly they were meant for my eyes alone. Poor fellow!’
said she, once more aloud. ‘It was very noble in him to do this for one he
could not but regard as a rival.’ And then she asked herself how far it
might consist with honour to derive benefit from his mistake--since mistake
it was--in believing O’Shea was her lover, and to be her future husband.
‘There can be little doubt Donogan would never have made the sacrifice had
he known that I am about to marry Walpole.’ From this she rambled on to
speculate on how far might Donogan’s conduct compromise or endanger him
with his own party, and if--which she thought well probable--there was a
distinct peril in what he was doing, whether he would have incurred that
peril if he really knew the truth, and that it was not herself he was
serving.
The more she canvassed these doubts, the more she found the difficulty of
resolving them, nor indeed was there any other way than one--distinctly to
ask Donogan if he would persist in his kind intentions when he knew that
the benefit was to revert to her cousin and not to herself. So far as the
evidence of Gill at the trial was concerned, the man’s withdrawal was
already accomplished, but would Donogan be as ready to restore the lease,
and would he, in fact, be as ready to confront the danger of all this
interference, as at first? She could scarcely satisfy her mind how she
would wish him to act in the contingency! She was sincerely fond of Kate,
she knew all the traits of honesty and truth in that simple character, and
she valued the very qualities of straightforwardness and direct purpose
in which she knew she was herself deficient. She would have liked well to
secure that dear girl’s happiness, and it would have been an exquisite
delight to her to feel that she had been an aid to her welfare; and yet,
with all this, there was a subtle jealousy that tortured her in thinking,
‘What will this man have done to prove his love for _me_? Where am I, and
what are my interests in all this?’ There was a poison in this doubt that
actually extended to a state of fever. ‘I must see him,’ she said at last,
speaking aloud to herself. ‘I must let him know the truth. If what he
proposes shall lead him to break with his party or his friends, it is well
he should see for what and for whom he is doing it.’
And then she persuaded herself she would like to hear Donogan talk, as once
before she had heard him talk, of his hopes and his ambitions. There was
something in the high-sounding inspirations of the man, a lofty heroism in
all he said, that struck a chord in her Greek nature. The cause that was
so intensely associated with danger that life was always on the issue,
was exactly the thing to excite her heart, and, like the trumpet-blast to
the charger, she felt stirred to her inmost soul by whatever appealed to
reckless daring and peril. ‘He shall tell me what he intends to do--his
plans, his projects, and his troubles. He shall tell me of his hopes, what
he desires in the future, and where he himself will stand when his efforts
have succeeded; and oh!’ thought she, ‘are not the wild extravagances of
these men better a thousand times than the well-turned nothings of the fine
gentlemen who surround us? Are not their very risks and vicissitudes more
manly teachings than the small casualties of the polished world? If life
were all “salon,” taste perhaps might decide against them; but it is not
all “salon,” or, if it were, it would be a poorer thing even than I think
it!’ She turned to her desk as she said this, and wrote:--
‘DEAR MR. DONOGAN,--I wish to thank you in person for the great kindness
you have shown me, though there is some mistake on your part in the matter.
I cannot suppose you are able to come here openly, but if you will be in
the garden on Saturday evening at 9 o’clock, I shall be there to meet you.
I am, very truly yours,
‘NINA KOSTALERGI.’
‘Very imprudent--scarcely delicate--perhaps, all this, and for a girl who
is to be married to another man in some three weeks hence, but I will
tell Cecil Walpole all when he returns, and if he desires to be off his
engagement, he shall have the liberty. I have one-half at least of the
Bayard Legend, and if I cannot say I am “without reproach,” I am certainly
without fear.’
The letter-bag lay in the hall, and Nina went down at once and deposited
her letter in it; this done, she lay down on her bed, not to sleep, but to
think over Donogan and his letter till daybreak.