Lord Kilgobbin. Lever Charles James
quizzing, sir; he knows right well I have no gifts of that sort.’
‘Here’s dinner, papa. Will you give Nina your arm? Mr. Atlee, you are to take me.’
‘You’ll not agree with me, Nina, my dear,’ said the old man, as he led her along; ‘but I’m heartily glad we have not that great swell who dined with us yesterday.’
‘I do agree with you, uncle – I dislike him.’
‘Perhaps I am unjust to him; but I thought he treated us all with a sort of bland pity that I found very offensive.’
‘Yes; I thought that too. His manner seemed to say, “I am very sorry for you, but what can be done?”’
‘Is the other fellow – the wounded one – as bad?’
She pursed up her lip, slightly shrugged her shoulders, and then said, ‘There’s not a great deal to choose between them; but I think I like him better.’
‘How do you like Dick, eh?’ said he, in a whisper.
‘Oh, so much,’ said she, with one of her half-downcast looks, but which never prevented her seeing what passed in her neighbour’s face.
‘Well, don’t let him fall in love with you,’ said he, with a smile, ‘for it would be bad for you both.’
‘But why should he?’ said she, with an air of innocence.
‘Just because I don’t see how he is to escape it. What’s Master Atlee saying to you, Kitty?’
‘He’s giving me some hints about horse-breaking,’ said she quietly.
‘Is he, by George? Well, I ‘d like to see him follow you over that fallen timber in the back lawn. We’ll have you out, Master Joe, and give you a field-day to-morrow,’ said the old man.
‘I vote we do,’ cried Dick; ‘unless, better still, we could persuade Miss Betty to bring the dogs over and give us a cub-hunt.’
‘I want to see a cub-hunt,’ broke in Nina.
‘Do you mean that you ride to hounds, Cousin Nina?’ asked Dick.
‘I should think that any one who has taken the ox-fences on the Roman Campagna, as I have, might venture to face your small stone-walls here.’
‘That’s plucky, anyhow; and I hope, Joe, it will put you on your metal to show yourself worthy of your companionship. What is old Mathew looking so mysteriously about? What do you want?’
The old servant thus addressed had gone about the room with the air of one not fully decided to whom to speak, and at last he leaned over Miss Kearney’s shoulder, and whispered a few words in her ear. ‘Of course not, Mat!’ said she, and then turning to her father – ‘Mat has such an opinion of my medical skill, he wants me to see Mr. Walpole, who, it seems, has got up, and evidently increased his pain by it.’
‘Oh, but is there no doctor near us?’ asked Nina eagerly.
‘I’d go at once,’ said Kate frankly, ‘but my skill does not extend to surgery.’
‘I have some little knowledge in that way: I studied and walked the hospitals for a couple of years,’ broke out Joe. ‘Shall I go up to him?’
‘By all means,’ cried several together, and Joe rose and followed Mathew upstairs.
‘Oh, are you a medical man?’ cried Lockwood, as the other entered.
‘After a fashion, I may say I am. At least, I can tell you where my skill will come to its limit, and that is something.’
‘Look here, then – he would insist on getting up, and I fear he has displaced the position of the bones. You must be very gentle, for the pain is terrific.’
‘No; there’s no great mischief done – the fractured parts are in a proper position. It is the mere pain of disturbance. Cover it all over with the ice again, and’ – here he felt his pulse – ‘let him have some weak brandy-and-water.’
‘That’s sensible advice – I feel it. I am shivery all over,’ said Walpole.
‘I’ll go and make a brew for you,’ cried Joe, ‘and you shall have it as hot as you can drink it.’
He had scarcely left the room, when he returned with the smoking compound.
‘You’re such a jolly doctor,’ said Walpole, ‘I feel sure you’d not refuse me a cigar?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Only think! that old barbarian who was here this morning said I was to have nothing but weak tea or iced lemonade.’
Lockwood selected a mild-looking weed, and handed it to his friend, and was about to offer one to Atlee, when he said —
‘But we have taken you from your dinner – pray go back again.’
‘No, we were at dessert. I’ll stay here and have a smoke, if you will let me. Will it bore you, though?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Walpole, ‘your company will be a great boon to us; and as for myself, you have done me good already.’
‘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.’
‘I