Lord Kilgobbin. Lever Charles James

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ needn’t dress like a duchess” – poor Kitty’s very like a duchess; “and, above all, persuade your lazy, idle, and very self-sufficient son to take to some respectable line of life to gain his living. I wouldn’t say that he mightn’t be an apothecary; but if he liked law better than physic, I might be able to do something for him in my own office.”’

      ‘Have you done, sir?’ said Dick hastily, as his father wiped his spectacles, and seemed to prepare for another heat.

      ‘He goes on to say that he always requires one hundred and fifty guineas fee with a young man; “but we are old friends, Mathew Kearney,” says he, “and we’ll make it pounds.”’

      ‘To fit me to be an attorney!’ said Dick, articulating each word with a slow and almost savage determination.

      ‘‘Faith! it would have been well for us if one of the family had been an attorney before now. We’d never have gone into that action about the mill-race, nor had to pay those heavy damages for levelling Moore’s barn. A little law would have saved us from evicting those blackguards at Mullenalick, or kicking Mr. Hall’s bailiff before witnesses.’

      To arrest his father’s recollection of the various occasions on which his illegality had betrayed him into loss and damage, Dick blurted out, ‘I’d rather break stones on the road than I’d be an attorney.’

      ‘Well, you’ll not have to go far for employment, for they are just laying down new metal this moment; and you needn’t lose time over it,’ said Kearney, with a wave of his hand, to show that the audience was over and the conference ended.

      ‘There’s just one favour I would ask, sir,’ said Dick, with his hand on the lock.

      ‘You want a hammer, I suppose,’ said his father, with a grin – ‘isn’t that it?’

      With something that, had it been uttered aloud, sounded very like a bitter malediction, Dick rushed from the room, slamming the door violently after him as he went.

      ‘That’s the temper that helps a man to get on in life,’ said the old man, as he turned once more to his accounts, and set to work to see where he had blundered in his figures.

      CHAPTER XVII

DICK’S REVERIE

      When Dick Kearney left his father, he walked from the house, and not knowing or much caring in what direction he went, turned into the garden.

      It was a wild, neglected sort of spot, with fruit-trees of great size, long past bearing, and close underwood in places that barred the passage. Here and there little patches of cultivation appeared, sometimes flowering plants, but oftener vegetables. One long alley, with tall hedges of box, had been preserved, and led to a little mound planted with laurels and arbutus, and known as ‘Laurel Hill’; here a little rustic summer-house had once stood, and still, though now in ruins, showed where, in former days, people came to taste the fresh breeze above the tree-tops, and enjoy the wide range of a view that stretched to the Slieve-Bloom Mountains, nearly thirty miles away.

      Young Kearney reached this spot, and sat down to gaze upon a scene every detail of which was well known to him, but of which he was utterly unconscious as he looked. ‘I am turned out to starve,’ cried he aloud, as though there was a sense of relief in thus proclaiming his sorrow to the winds. ‘I am told to go and work upon the roads, to live by my daily labour. Treated like a gentleman until I am bound to that condition by every tie of feeling and kindred, and then bade to know myself as an outcast. I have not even Joe Atlee’s resource – I have not imbibed the instincts of the lower orders, so as to be able to give them back to them in fiction or in song. I cannot either idealise rebellion or make treason tuneful.

      ‘It is not yet a week since that same Atlee envied me my station as the son and heir to this place, and owned to me that there was that in the sense of name and lineage that more than balanced personal success, and here I am now, a beggar! I can enlist, however, blessings on the noble career that ignores character and defies capacity. I don’t know that I’ll bring much loyalty to Her Majesty’s cause, but I’ll lend her the aid of as broad shoulders and tough sinews as my neighbours.’ And here his voice grew louder and harsher, and with a ring of defiance in it. ‘And no cutting off the entail, my Lord Kilgobbin! no escape from that cruel necessity of an heir! I may carry my musket in the ranks, but I’ll not surrender my birthright!’

      The thought that he had at length determined on the path he should follow aroused his courage and made his heart lighter; and then there was that in the manner he was vindicating his station and his claim that seemed to savour of heroism. He began to fancy his comrades regarding him with a certain deference, and treating him with a respect that recognised his condition. ‘I know the shame my father will feel when he sees to what he has driven me. What an offence to his love of rank and station to behold his son in the coarse uniform of a private! An only son and heir, too! I can picture to myself his shock as he reads the letter in which I shall say good-bye, and then turn to tell my sister that her brother is a common soldier, and in this way lost to her for ever!

      ‘And what is it all about? What terrible things have I done? What entanglements have I contracted? Where have I forged? Whose name have I stolen? whose daughter seduced? What is laid to my charge, beyond that I have lived like a gentleman, and striven to eat and drink and dress like one? And I’ll wager my life that for one who will blame him, there will be ten – no, not ten, fifty – to condemn me. I had a kind, trustful, affectionate father, restricting himself in scores of ways to give me my education among the highest class of my contemporaries. I was largely supplied with means, indulged in every way, and if I turned my steps towards home, welcomed with love and affection.’

      ‘And fearfully spoiled by all the petting he met with,’ said a soft voice leaning over his shoulder, while a pair of very liquid grey eyes gazed into his own.

      ‘What, Nina! – Mademoiselle Nina, I mean,’ said he, ‘have you been long there?’

      ‘Long enough to hear you make a very pitiful lamentation over a condition that I, in my ignorance, used to believe was only a little short of Paradise.’

      ‘You fancied that, did you?’

      ‘Yes, I did so fancy it.’

      ‘Might I be bold enough to ask from what circumstance, though? I entreat you to tell me, what belongings of mine, what resources of luxury or pleasure, what incident of my daily life, suggested this impression of yours?’

      ‘Perhaps, as a matter of strict reasoning, I have little to show for my conviction, but if you ask me why I thought as I did, it was simply from contrasting your condition with my own, and seeing that in everything where my lot has gloom and darkness, if not worse, yours, my ungrateful cousin, was all sunshine.’

      ‘Let us see a little of this sunshine, Cousin Nina. Sit down here beside me, and show me, I pray, some of those bright tints that I am longing to gaze on.’

      ‘There’s not room for both of us on that bench.’

      ‘Ample room; we shall sit the closer.’

      ‘No, Cousin Dick; give me your arm and we’ll take a stroll together.’

      ‘Which way shall it be?’

      ‘You shall choose, cousin.’

      ‘If I have the choice, then, I’ll carry you off, Nina, for I’m thinking of bidding good-bye to the old house and all within it.’

      ‘I don’t think I’ll consent that far,’ said she, smiling. СКАЧАТЬ