CHAPTER XXVI
DICK KEARNEY’S CHAMBERS
When Dick Kearney quitted Kilgobbin Castle for Dublin, he was very far from having any projects in his head, excepting to show his cousin Nina that he could live without her.
‘I believe,’ muttered he to himself, ‘she counts upon me as another “victim.” These coquettish damsels have a theory that the “whole drama of life” is the game of their fascinations and the consequences that come of them, and that we men make it our highest ambition to win them, and subordinate all we do in life to their favour. I should like to show her that one man at least refuses to yield this allegiance, and that whatever her blandishments do with others, with him they are powerless.’
These thoughts were his travelling-companions for nigh fifty miles of travel, and, like most travelling-companions, grew to be tiresome enough towards the end of the journey.
When he arrived in Dublin, he was in no hurry to repair to his quarters in Trinity; they were not particularly cheery in the best of times, and now it was long vacation, with few men in town, and everything sad and spiritless; besides this, he was in no mood to meet Atlee, whose free-and-easy jocularity he knew he would not endure, even with his ordinary patience. Joe had never condescended to write one line since he had left Kilgobbin, and Dick, who felt that in presenting him to his family he had done him immense honour, was proportionately indignant at this show of indifference. But, by the same easy formula with which he could account for anything in Nina’s conduct by her ‘coquetry,’ he was able to explain every deviation from decorum of Joe Atlee’s by his ‘snobbery.’ And it is astonishing how comfortable the thought made him, that this man, in all his smartness and ready wit, in his prompt power to acquire, and his still greater quickness to apply knowledge, was after all a most consummate snob.
He had no taste for a dinner at commons, so he ate his mutton-chop at a tavern, and went to the play. Ineffably bored, he sauntered along the almost deserted streets of the city, and just as midnight was striking, he turned under the arched portal of the college. Secretly hoping that Atlee might be absent, he inserted the key and entered his quarters.
The grim old coal-bunker in the passage, the silent corridor, and the dreary room at the end of it, never looked more dismal than as he surveyed them now by the light of a little wax-match he had lighted to guide his way. There stood the massive old table in the middle, with its litter of books and papers—memories of many a headache; and there was the paper of coarse Cavendish, against which he had so often protested, as well as a pewter-pot—a new infraction against propriety since he had been away. Worse, however, than all assaults on decency, were a pair of coarse highlows, which had been placed within the fender, and had evidently enjoyed the fire so long as it lingered in the grate.
‘So like the fellow! so like him!’ was all that Dick could mutter, and he turned away in disgust.
As Atlee never went to bed till daybreak, it was quite clear that he was from home, and as the college gates could not reopen till morning, Dick was not sorry to feel that he was safe from all intrusion for some hours. With this consolation, he betook him to his bedroom, and proceeded to undress. Scarcely, however, had he thrown off his coat than a heavy, long-drawn respiration startled him. He stopped and listened: it came again, and from the bed. He drew nigh, and there, to his amazement, on his own pillow, lay the massive head of a coarse-looking, vulgar man of about thirty, with a silk handkerchief fastened over it as nightcap. A brawny arm lay outside the bedclothes, with an enormous hand of very questionable cleanness, though one of the fingers wore a heavy gold ring.