Lord Kilgobbin. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ wish to Heaven she would, if she would hold me like one.’

      ‘And the nice way she qualifies your cleverness, by calling you amusing.’

      ‘She could certainly spare that reproach to her cousin Dick,’ said he, laughing; ‘but no more of this sparring. When do you mean to take me down to the country with you? The term will be up on Tuesday.’

      ‘That will demand a little consideration now. In the fall of the year, perhaps. When the sun is less powerful the light will be more favourable to your features.’

      ‘My poor Dick, I cram you with good advice every day; but one counsel I never cease repeating, “Never try to be witty.” A dull fellow only cuts his finger with a joke; he never catches it by the handle. Hand me over that letter of your sister’s; I like the way she writes. All that about the pigs and the poultry is as good as the Farmer’s Chronicle.’

      The other made no other reply than by coolly folding up the letter and placing it in his pocket; and then, after a pause, he said —

      ‘I shall tell Miss Kearney the favourable impression her epistolary powers have produced on my very clever and accomplished chum, Mr. Atlee.’

      ‘Do so; and say, if she’d take me for a correspondent instead of you, she’d be “exchanging with a difference.” On my oath,’ said he seriously, ‘I believe a most finished education might be effected in letter-writing. I’d engage to take a clever girl through a whole course of Latin and Greek, and a fair share of mathematics and logic, in a series of letters, and her replies would be the fairest test of her acquirement.’

      ‘Shall I propose this to my sister?’

      ‘Do so, or to your cousin. I suspect Maritana would be an apter pupil.’

      ‘The bell has stopped. We shall be late in the hall,’ said Kearney, throwing on his gown hurriedly and hastening away; while Atlee, taking some proof-sheets from the chimney-piece, proceeded to correct them, a slight flicker of a smile still lingering over his dark but handsome face.

      Though such little jarring passages as those we have recorded were nothing uncommon between these two young men, they were very good friends on the whole, the very dissimilarity that provoked their squabbles saving them from any more serious rivalry. In reality, no two people could be less alike: Kearney being a slow, plodding, self-satisfied, dull man, of very ordinary faculties; while the other was an indolent, discursive, sharp-witted fellow, mastering whatever he addressed himself to with ease, but so enamoured of novelty that he rarely went beyond a smattering of anything. He carried away college honours apparently at will, and might, many thought, have won a fellowship with little effort; but his passion was for change. Whatever bore upon the rogueries of letters, the frauds of literature, had an irresistible charm for him; and he once declared that he would almost rather have been Ireland than Shakespeare; and then it was his delight to write Greek versions of a poem that might attach the mark of plagiarism to Tennyson, or show, by a Scandinavian lyric, how the laureate had been poaching from the Northmen. Now it was a mock pastoral in most ecclesiastical Latin that set the whole Church in arms; now a mock despatch of Baron Beust that actually deceived the Revue des Deux Mondes and caused quite a panic at the Tuileries. He had established such relations with foreign journals that he could at any moment command insertion for a paper, now in the Mémorial Diplomatique, now in the Golos of St. Petersburg, or the Allgemeine Zeitung; while the comment, written also by himself, would appear in the Kreuz Zeitung or the Times; and the mystification became such that the shrewdest and keenest heads were constantly misled, to which side to incline in a controversy where all the wires were pulled by one hand. Many a discussion on the authenticity of a document, or the veracity of a conversation, would take place between the two young men; Kearney not having the vaguest suspicion that the author of the point in debate was then sitting opposite to him, sometimes seeming to share the very doubts and difficulties that were then puzzling himself.

      While Atlee knew Kearney in every fold and fibre of his nature, Kearney had not the very vaguest conception of him with whom he sat every day at meals, and communed through almost every hour of his life. He treated Joe, indeed, with a sort of proud protection, thinking him a sharp, clever, idle fellow, who would never come to anything higher than a bookseller’s hack or an ‘occasional correspondent.’ He liked his ready speech, and his fun, but he would not consent to see in either evidences of anything beyond the amusing qualities of a very light intelligence. On the whole, he looked down upon him, as very properly the slow and ponderous people in life do look down upon their more volatile brethren, and vote them triflers. Long may it be so! There would be more sunstrokes in the world, if it were not that the shadows of dull men made such nice cool places for the others to walk in!

      CHAPTER V

HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE

      The life of that quaint old country-house was something very strange and odd to Nina Kostalergi. It was not merely its quiet monotony, its unbroken sameness of topics as of events, and its small economies, always appearing on the surface; but that a young girl like Kate, full of life and spirits, gay, handsome, and high-hearted – that she should go her mill-round of these tiresome daily cares, listening to the same complaints, remedying the same evils, meeting the same difficulties, and yet never seem to resent an existence so ignoble and unworthy! This was, indeed, scarcely credible.

      As for Nina herself – like one saved from shipwreck – her first sense of security was full of gratitude. It was only as this wore off that she began to see the desolation of the rock on which she had clambered. Not that her former life had been rose-tinted. It had been of all things the most harassing and wearing – a life of dreary necessitude – a perpetual struggle with debt. Except play, her father had scarcely any resource for a livelihood. He affected, indeed, to give lessons in Italian and French to young Englishmen; but he was so fastidious as to the rank and condition of his pupils, so unaccommodating as to his hours and so unpunctual, that it was evident that the whole was a mere pretence of industry, to avoid the reproach of being utterly dependent on the play-table; besides this, in his capacity as a teacher he obtained access to houses and acceptance with families where he would have found entrance impossible under other circumstances.

      He was polished and good-looking. All his habits bespoke familiarity with society; and he knew to the nicest fraction the amount of intimacy he might venture on with any one. Some did not like him – the man of a questionable position, the reduced gentleman, has terrible prejudices to combat. He must always be suspected – Heaven knows of what, but of some covert design against the religion or the pocket, or the influence of those who admit him. Some thought him dangerous because his manners were insinuating, and his address studiously directed to captivate. Others did not fancy his passion for mixing in the world, and frequenting society to which his straitened means appeared to deny him rightful access; but when he had succeeded in introducing his daughter to the world, and people began to say, ‘See how admirably M. Kostalergi has brought up that girl! how nicely mannered she is, how ladylike, how well bred, what a linguist, what a musician!’ a complete revulsion took place in public opinion, and many who had but half trusted, or less than liked him before, became now his stanchest friends and adherents. Nina had been a great success in society, and she reaped the full benefit of it. Sufficiently well born to be admitted, without any special condescension, into good houses, she was in manner and style the equal of any; and though her dress was ever of the cheapest and plainest, her fresh toilet was often commented on with praise by those who did not fully remember what added grace and elegance the wearer had lent it.

      From the wealthy nobles to whom her musical genius had strongly recommended her, numerous and sometimes costly presents were sent in acknowledgment of her charming gifts; and these, as invariably, were converted into money by her father, who, after a while, gave it to be understood that the recompense would be always more welcome in that form.

      Nina, СКАЧАТЬ