‘What would you say, Major Lockwood, to taking my place below-stairs? They are just sitting over their wine—some very pleasant claret—and the young ladies, I perceive, here, give half an hour of their company before they leave the dining-room.’
‘Here goes, then,’ said Lockwood. ‘Now that you remind me of it, I do want a glass of wine.’
Lockwood found the party below-stairs eagerly discussing Joe Atlee’s medical qualifications, and doubting whether, if it was a knowledge of civil engineering or marine gunnery had been required, he would not have been equally ready to offer himself for the emergency.
‘I’ll lay my life on it, if the real doctor arrives, Joe will take the lead in the consultation,’ cried Dick: ‘he is the most unabashable villain in Europe.’
‘Well, he has put Cecil all right,’ said Lockwood: ‘he has settled the arm most comfortably on the pillow, the pain is decreasing every moment, and by his pleasant and jolly talk he is making Walpole even forget it at times.’
This was exactly what Atlee was doing. Watching carefully the sick man’s face, he plied him with just that amount of amusement that he could bear without fatigue. He told him the absurd versions that had got abroad of the incident in the press; and cautiously feeling his way, went on to tell how Dick Kearney had started from town full of the most fiery intentions towards that visitor whom the newspapers called a ‘noted profligate’ of London celebrity. ‘If you had not been shot before, we were to have managed it for you now,’ said he.
‘Surely these fellows who wrote this had never heard of me.’
‘Of course they had not, further than you were on the Viceroy’s staff; but is not that ample warranty for profligacy? Besides, the real intention was not to assail you, but the people here who admitted you.’ Thus talking, he led Walpole to own that he had no acquaintanceship with the Kearneys, that a mere passing curiosity to see the interesting house had provoked his request, to which the answer, coming from an old friend, led to his visit. Through this channel Atlee drew him on to the subject of the Greek girl and her parentage. As Walpole sketched the society of Rome, Atlee, who had cultivated the gift of listening fully as much as that of talking, knew where to seem interested by the views of life thrown out, and where to show a racy enjoyment of the little humoristic bits of description which the other was rather proud of his skill in deploying; and as Atlee always appeared so conversant with the family history of the people they were discussing, Walpole spoke with unbounded freedom and openness.
‘You must have been astonished to meet the “Titian Girl” in Ireland?’ said Joe at last, for he had caught up the epithet dropped accidentally in the other’s narrative, and kept it for use.
‘Was I not! but if my memory had been clearer, I should have remembered she had Irish connections. I had heard of Lord Kilgobbin on the other side of the Alps.’