The Miraculous Revenge | Page 6

me, I have grown so accustomed to it that if the county
Wicklow were to waltz off with me to Middlesex, I should be quite
impatient of any expression of surprise from my friends in London.
"Is not the above a businesslike statement? Away, then, with this stale
miracle. If you would see for yourself a miracle which can never pall, a
vision of youth and health to be crowned with garlands for ever, come
down and see Kate Hickey, whom you suppose to be a little girl.
Illusion, my lord cardinal, illusion! She is seventeen, with a bloom and
a brogue that would lay your asceticism in ashes at a flash. To her I am
an object of wonder, a strange man bred in wicked cities. She is courted
by six feet of farming material, chopped off a spare length of coarse
humanity by the Almighty, and flung into Wicklow to plough the fields.
His name is Phil Langan; and he hates me. I have to consort with him
for the sake of Father Tom, whom I entertain vastly by stories of your
wild oats sown at Salamanca. I exhausted my authentic anecdotes the
first day; and now I invent gallant escapades with Spanish donnas, in

which you figure as a youth of unstable morals. This delights Father
Tom infinitely. I feel that I have done you a service by thus casting on
the cold sacerdotal abstraction which formerly represented you in
Kate's imagination a ray of vivifying passion.
"What a country this is! A Hesperidean garden: such skies! Adieu,
uncle.
"Zeno Legge."
* * * * *
Behold me, at Four Mile Water, in love. I had been in love frequently;
but not oftener than once a year had I encountered a woman who
affected me so seriously as Kate Hickey. She was so shrewd, and yet so
flippant! When I spoke of art she yawned. When I deplored the
sordidness of the world she laughed, and called me "poor fellow!"
When I told her what a treasure of beauty and freshness she had she
ridiculed me. When I reproached her with her brutality she became
angry, and sneered at me for being what she called a fine gentleman.
One sunny afternoon we were standing at the gate of her uncle's house,
she looking down the dusty road for the detestable Langan, I watching
the spotless azure sky, when she said:
"How soon are you going back to London?"
"I am not going back to London. Miss Hickey. I am not yet tired of
Four Mile Water."
"I am sure that Four Mile Water ought to be proud of your
approbation."
"You disapprove of my liking it, then? Or is it that you grudge me the
happiness I have found here? I think Irish ladies grudge a man a
moment's peace."
"I wonder you have ever prevailed on yourself to associate with Irish
ladies, since they are so far beneath you."

"Did I say they were beneath me, Miss Hickey? I feel that I have made
a deep impression on you."
"Indeed! Yes, you're quite right. I assure you I can't sleep at night for
thinking of you, Mr. Legge. It's the best a Christian can do, seeing you
think so mightly little of yourself."
"You are triply wrong, Miss Hickey: wrong to be sarcastic with me,
wrong to discourage the candor with which you think of me sometimes,
and wrong to discourage the candor with which I always avow that I
think constantly of myself."
"Then you had better not speak to me, since I have no manners."
"Again! Did I say you had no manners? The warmest expressions of
regard from my mouth seem to reach your ears transformed into insults.
Were I to repeat the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, you would retort as
though I had been reproaching you. This is because you hate me. You
never misunderstand Langan, whom you love."
"I don't know what London manners are, Mr. Legge; but in Ireland
gentlemen are expected to mind their own business. How dare you say I
love Mr. Langan?"
"Then you do not love him?"
"It is nothing to you whether I love him or not."
"Nothing to me that you hate me and love another?"
"I didn't say I hated you. You're not so very clever yourself at
understanding what people say, though you make such a fuss because
they don't understand you." Here, as she glanced down the road she
suddenly looked glad.
"Aha!" I said.
"What do you mean by 'Aha!'"

"No matter. I will now show you what a man's sympathy is. As you
perceived just then, Langan--who is too tall for his age, by-the-by--is
coming to pay you a visit. Well, instead of staying with you, as a
jealous woman would,