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!