AN ANGRY COLLOQUY
It was with passionate eagerness Nina set off in search of Kate. Why she should have felt herself wronged, outraged, insulted even, is not so easy to say, nor shall I attempt any analysis of the complex web of sentiments which, so to say, spread itself over her faculties. The man who had so wounded her self-love had been at her feet, he had followed her in her walks, hung over the piano as she sang—shown by a thousand signs that sort of devotion by which men intimate that their lives have but one solace, one ecstasy, one joy. By what treachery had he been moved to all this, if he really loved another? That he was simply amusing himself with the sort of flirtation she herself could take up as a mere pastime was not to be believed. That the worshipper should be insincere in his worship was too dreadful to think of. And yet it was to this very man she had once turned to avenge herself on Walpole’s treatment of her; she had even said, ‘Could you not make a quarrel with him?’ Now, no woman of foreign breeding puts such a question without the perfect consciousness that, in accepting a man’s championship, she has virtually admitted his devotion. Her own levity of character, the thoughtless indifference with which she would sport with any man’s affections, so far from inducing her to palliate such caprices, made her more severe and unforgiving. ‘How shall I punish him for this? How shall I make him remember whom it is he has insulted?’ repeated she over and over to herself as she went.
The servants passed her on the stairs with trunks and luggage of various kinds; but she was too much engrossed with her own thoughts to notice them. Suddenly the words, ‘Mr. Walpole’s room,’ caught her ear, and she asked, ‘Has any one come?’
Yes, two gentlemen had just arrived. A third was to come that night, and Miss O’Shea might be expected at any moment.
‘Where was Miss Kate?’ she inquired.
‘In her own room at the top of the house.’
Thither she hastened at once.
‘Be a dear good girl,’ cried Kate as Nina entered, ‘and help me in my many embarrassments. Here are a flood of visitors all coming unexpectedly. Major Lockwood and Mr. Walpole have come. Miss Betty will be here for dinner, and Mr. Atlee, whom we all believed to be in Asia, may arrive to-night. I shall be able to feed them; but how to lodge them with any pretension to comfort is more than I can see.’
‘I am in little humour to aid any one. I have my own troubles—worse ones, perhaps, than playing hostess to disconsolate travellers.’
‘And what are your troubles, dear Nina?’
‘I have half a mind not to tell you. You ask me with that supercilious air that seems to say, “How can a creature like you be of interest enough to any one or anything to have a difficulty?”’
‘I force no confidences,’ said the other coldly.
‘For that reason you shall have them—at least this one. What will you say when I tell you that young O’Shea has made me a declaration, a formal declaration of love?’
‘I should say that you need not speak of it as an insult or an offence.’
‘Indeed! and if so, you would say what was perfectly wrong. It was both insult and offence—yes, both. Do you know that the man mistook me for you, and called me Kate?’
‘How could this be possible?’
‘In a darkened room, with a sick man slowly rallying from a long attack of stupor; nothing of me to be seen but my hand, which he devoured with kisses—raptures, indeed, Kate, of which I had no conception till I experienced them by counterfeit!’
‘Oh! Nina, this is not fair!’
‘It is true, child. The man caught my hand and declared he would never quit it till I promised it should be his own. Nor was he content with this; but, anticipating his right to be lord and master, he bade you to beware of me! “Beware of that Greek girl!” were his words—words strengthened by what he said of my character and my temperament. I shall spare you, and I shall spare myself, his acute comments on the nature he dreaded to see in companionship with his wife. I have had good training in learning these unbiassed judgments—my early life abounded in such experiences—but this young gentleman’s cautions were candour itself.’
‘I am sincerely sorry for what has pained you.’
‘I did not say it was this boy’s foolish words had wounded me so acutely. I could bear sterner critics than he is—his very blundering misconception of me would always plead his pardon. How could he, or how could they with whom he lived and talked, and smoked and swaggered, know of me, or such as me? What could there be in the monotonous vulgarity of their tiresome lives that should teach them what we are, or what we wish to be? By what presumption did he dare to condemn all that he could not understand?’
‘You are angry, Nina; and I will not say without some cause.’
‘What ineffable generosity! You can really constrain yourself to believe that I have been insulted!’
‘I should not say insulted.’
‘You cannot be an honest judge in such a cause. Every outrage offered to me was an act of homage to yourself! If you but knew how I burned to tell him who it was whose hand he held in his, and to whose ears he had poured out his raptures! To tell him, too, how the Greek girl would have resented his presumption, had he but dared to indulge it! One of the women-servants, it would seem, was a witness to this boy’s declaration. I think it was Mary was in the room, I do not know for how long, but she announced her presence by asking some question about candles. In fact, I shall have become a servants’-hall scandal by this time.’
‘There need not be any fear of that, Nina: there are no bad tongues amongst our people.’
‘I know all that. I know we live amidst human perfectabilities—all of Irish manufacture, and warranted to be genuine.’
‘I would hope that some of your impressions of Ireland are not unfavourable?’
‘I scarcely know. I suppose you understand each other, and are tolerant about capricious moods and ways, which, to strangers, might seem to have a deeper significance. I believe you are not as hasty, or as violent, or as rash as you seem, and I am sure you are not as impulsive in your generosity, or as headlong in your affections. Not exactly that you mean to be false, but you are hypocrites to yourselves.’
‘A very flattering picture of us.’
‘I do not mean to flatter you; and it is to this end I say, you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and Greeks without their genius.—You need not curtsy so profoundly.—I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were minded to do so.’
‘Pray do not be so minded, then. Pray remember that, even when you wound me, I cannot return the thrust.’
‘I know what you mean,’ cried Nina rapidly. ‘You are veritable Arabs in your estimate of hospitality, and he who has eaten your salt is sacred.’
‘You remind me of what I had nigh forgotten, Nina—of our coming guests.’
‘Do you know why Walpole and his friend are coming?’
‘They are already come, Nina—they are out walking with papa; but what has brought them here I cannot guess, and, since I have heard your description of Ireland, I cannot imagine.’
‘Nor can I,’ said she indolently, and moved away.