XIII. THE PROJECT
It was on the evening of the second day after Vyner’s departure that Grenfell, never much given to anxieties about others, felt a certain uneasiness, and sauntered down the glen, wondering what might have detained him. He had not gone fully a mile, when he saw in the grey twilight a man approaching; he hailed, and was answered in his friend’s voice, “All right; it is I.”
“I was going to start the hue and cry, or whatever may represent that institution here, after you, Vyner. Where have you been all this time?”
“As to the where, my friend, it would require a very different tongue from yours and mine to say; Russian and Polish names are nothing in comparison. As to the how I have been, is easier to answer--never better; though with all due gratitude be it said, I have passed my time in rather questionable company.”
“At least they recognised the rights of hospitality?”
“Arabs themselves were never more punctilious. My host was the grandfather of our little friend the fairy queen, a man of nigh eighty, who had been tried on two capital charges, and ought, I suspect, to have been convicted on both. His friends, to the number of twenty odd, were all Whiteboys, Ribbonmen, or whatever other name includes lawbreakers of the first magnitude; and one, as handsome and frank-featured a young fellow as ever you saw, who accompanied me to the lake side this evening, had made his escape from Castlebar gaol when under sentence of death, and actually went back to the town to witness the execution of his cousins on the following Saturday, it being, as he said, the only mark of affection he was able to show them.”
“I make you my compliment, as the French say, on your company. And the women, what were they like?”
“I saw but two: an old hag that was brought down special to give an opinion upon me from external traits, and pronounce whether I had the colour of hair or eyes that indicated a tendency to bear witness against my neighbour; the other was a sickly creature, bedridden though in the prime of life, mother of little Katherine.”
“But explain how you could have prolonged your stay amongst such people. What were you doing? what were you saying?”
“Doing? The whole day we walked the mountains. They led me by paths known only to themselves over an immense mountain district, showing me all that was noteworthy, and pointing out effects of scenery and picturesque spots with a feeling and taste that amazed me. They used no cant of art, none of that tricky phraseology, it is true, which we accept as the vernacular of all landscape description; but in their wild imagery and reckless imagination they gave names to the places which showed how deeply objects of terror or beauty had appealed to them. Then at nightfall we gathered close to the turf fire and the potato ‘kish,’ a wide, open basket, which served as strainer and dish together. There we supped, talked politics, religion, law, and a little literature--at least so far as the Life of Freeny and the story of Moll Flanders enter into biographical letters.”
“How I should like to have drawn a cordon of policemen round the party and netted the whole.”
“You might like to have planned the campaign, but I’ll be sworn if you had been favoured with a look at the company you’d never have led the expedition.”
“What a traveller’s knack it is to exaggerate the war-paint of one’s Indian friends,” said Grenfell, superciliously. “But here we are with our supper waiting for us, and even Mr. ‘O’Rorke’s noble feast’ will contrast favourably with your host’s.”
The meal ended, they seated themselves on the door-sill, looking out into the still and starry night, and resumed the theme they were discussing.
“I take it that you said you were a mere tourist rambling for pleasure?” asked Grenfell.
“No, I told them I had come down to see the country, with some intentions to make a purchase. It was not so easy to explain that I was more eager to acquire a very beautiful and picturesque tract than a very remunerative one, but they believed me at last--that is, they gave credit to my sincerity at the cost of my shrewdness.” Grenfell nodded, as though he agreed with them, and Vyner went on: “We were a full house when I made my declaration--there were, I should say, six or seven-and-twenty present--and they concurred in applauding the frankness with which I spoke to them. A very old man, a venerable figure, whose high forehead and white beard would have impressed me, perhaps, more reverentially if I had not been told that he had been flogged by John Beresford, in the year ‘98, for some cruel outrage he had committed--this apart--he, however, complimented me highly on my straightforwardness, and said that if others would do like me there would be fewer disturbances about land; and the illustration he used was this: ‘If you go into a fair to buy a horse, and you see a splendid animal, strong-boned, well-ribbed, and powerful, with every promise of speed and strength;--you are as well satisfied with his price as with his perfections, but do your inquiries stop there?--not a bit of it. You know well that he may be a capital hunter and a noble roadster, but you want to learn what his temper is. All his fine qualities depend upon this, for if he be unruly and unmanageable, to what purpose is his power or his activity? It is precisely the same with a property: you may have wood and water, arable land and lay, mines and meadows, and, with all these, there may be a “temper” that renders them worthless. Landlords won’t believe this; buyers won’t listen to it. They say, “Make out my title clear and clean, and leave me to deal with it.” Men with money in the bank, and who, because they can live anywhere, are chained to nowhere, cannot understand the love of a poor labouring man to some mud-hovel or some shealing, to a brook where he has paddled in boyhood, to the mountain that he has seen from his earliest infancy. They do not, cannot, conceive why poverty should sharpen any susceptibilities--poverty, that can blunt so many--and they say, “Turn him out. I’ll find a place for him elsewhere.” But that’s a mistake; you might as well say you’d replace the child he has followed to the churchyard. The man, in the very proportion of his destitution, has bound up his heart with some half-dozen little objects that have, from time and long usage, grown to be part of him. The monotony that wearies the rich man is the luxury of the poor. To live where their fathers lived, to see an unchanged world around them, to have few contrasts of the present with the past, is their paradise------’”
“Where did you get all this?” broke in Grenfell. “From your friend of the cat-o’-nine-tails?”
“Exactly. The words of wisdom were all his own, and, unlike the fate of most wisdom, it was listened to. He showed me, in fact, that though the Law might give possession, it would not ensure me one of the rights of property: I might own, but not enjoy; I might have and hold, but neither sow nor reap; I might walk over and shoot over, but with no privilege to keep any other from doing the same, and that before I thought of preserving the game, I should take some measures about preserving myself. The man who enunciated these principles--for they were principles--declared them calmly and dispassionately, not as sentiments that conveyed anger or passion; far from it--he felt all the dignity of a sage instructing ignorance. He was a great Saquem delivering the laws of his tribe, and showing what had been their guides and directors for centuries. I did, indeed, once, only once, venture upon a mild remonstrance, that there were some things which a landlord possessed for the betterment of those under him; that he might assist them in many ways, and be the means of their advancement and prosperity; but he demurred to this, and so did his followers. Their experience, they said, did not confirm this: as a class, they had found landlords narrow-minded and selfish, very ignorant of the people, and very indifferent to them. They opined that, as an institution, landlordism had not succeeded, and half hinted that it was a Saxon innovation that was brought over in days of violence and oppression, and did not suit the conditions of the country at present.”
“And you listened to these rascals coolly propounding such doctrines?”
“Yes; and so would you have done too, had you been in my place, my dear George! A minority is never very truculent when the majority could pitch it over a cliff without the slightest risk of being called to account for it.”
“It would have pushed my patience hard, though.” “It would have been your prudence, and not your patience, that you’d have consulted.”
“Well, I’ll not quarrel with the rogues if they have disabused you as to the pleasures of Irish proprietorship; they’ve done you a good service, but, I must say, I think their case a more hopeless one, now that I see lawlessness is a system.”
“I don’t think you would if you talked with them! They were too argumentative not to be open to conviction; too logical, with all their prejudices, not to be approachable by reason. I was, all the time we were talking, so impressed with this, that I could not help imagining what a race so quick-sighted and intelligent might become when educated and instructed. Take my word for it, George, Hodge will have no chance against Paddy if he ever get book-learning.” A mocking laugh was Grenfell’s answer.
“So satisfied am I of the truth of what I say, that I’m going to give a proof of it.”
“What, going to set up a school in the wilds of Donegal!” “No. I’m going to carry away that pretty child, and educate her with Ada.”
“You’ll not do anything so foolish, I trust!” “It is all settled, the conditions arranged, the terms agreed to. I have given her grandfather ten pounds for her outfit, some few things she needed, and as much more to pay their journey over to Wales, for the old fellow, with a caution that was creditable to him, wished to see the ladies to whom his child was to be confided, and confer a little with them besides.”
“All your scheme for the property was absolute wisdom compared with this!” “How so?”
“Where everything is so absurd one cannot decide what to ridicule. Suppose you succeed--and it is what I by no means grant--what will you do with her? You’ll give her the tastes, the accomplishments, and the habits of a lady--to marry her to your gamekeeper or your gardener. You’ll turn her brain with ten years of luxury--to make the whole of her after life a dreary servitude. You’ll excite ambition, whose very least evil will be bitter disappointment; and for what? To gratify a caprice, to paint the moral of a vapid theory about Irish intelligence. No, no, Vyner, don’t make such a blunder as this, and a serious blunder too; for, amongst other pleasant contingencies, Paddy MacHackaway is sure to call you to account some fine day: why you dared to do this, or omitted to do that; and with all your respect for his reasoning qualities, he sometimes expresses his sentiments with a bludgeon.”
“The thing is done, George, if you were to rail at it for a week. It is done, and cannot be undone, even if I wished it.”
“But why not? What is easier than to send for this old rascal who has so over-blarneyed you, and compromise the matter? A couple more of those crisp ten-pounders that I must say you displayed before these creatures with an unpardonable rashness--”
“Be it so,” broke in Vyner. “But let me tell you that they saw my pocket-book full of them; they saw on the window-seat, where by chance I had left it, a purse heavy with gold, and yet these poor fellows were proof against the temptations; and it was the gaol-breaker himself who carried my knapsack on my way back, which contained, as he knew, both purse and pocket-book; so that against their honesty I’ll not listen to a word.”
“Let them have all the virtues under the sun if you will; call them all Arcadians. All I ask is that we should have no dealings with them. Send off O’Rorke; let him bring this old fellow before me, and I’ll answer for it that I settle the question at once.”
“No, no; my word is pledged, and I’ll not break it.”
“I don’t ask you to break it. What I propose is, that you should be released from a very ill-judged contract, certain to turn out ill to all it includes. Let me at least try if what I suggest is not practicable.”
“If the negotiation were to be carried on with men of your own rank and condition, Grenfell, there is not any one to whom I would with, more confidence confide it; but forgive me if I say that you’re not the man to deal with these people.”
“Why not?”
“For a number of reasons. First of all, you are strongly prejudiced against them; you are disposed to regard them as something little better than savages----”
“Pardon me, there you are wrong--as not one whit better.”
“That’s enough, then; you shall be no envoy to them from me.”
“Well, I’ll knock under; I’ll agree to your high estimate of them, intellectually and morally, only with that detractive element of poverty which makes even clever men submissive, and occasionally squeezes conscience into a compromise. You tell me they are very amenable to reason; let me see if I agree with you. You assure me that with all their seeming impulsiveness and headlong rashness they are eminently calculating and forecasting. I want to see this. Bethink you what a grand witness I shall be to the truth of your theory when I am converted. Come, consent to send for this old fellow; make any pretext you please for seeing him, so that I may have a quarter of an hour’s talk with him.”
“To what end? You could scarcely address to him the arguments you have just used to me----”
“Leave that to my discretion. I suspect, Vyner--mind, it is mere suspicion--but I suspect that your Celtic friend will be far more practical and business-like in his dealings with me than with you; that his shrewdness will show him that I am a common-place man of the world, not caring, nor indeed believing, in any great regeneration for Ireland, and that all our intercourse must take the shape of a bargain.”
“I consent,” said Vyner; “but, I own, less from choice than necessity, for time presses, and I find by a note I have just received that M’Kinlay, my man of business, has arrived at Westport, and whatever we decide on must be done at once.”
“If I’m not very much mistaken, Vyner, my negotiation will not take ten minutes, and perhaps as many pounds, so that you may order whatever it be that is to carry us hence, and I’ll guarantee to be ready.”
While Vyner hastened to give the necessary orders, Grenfell opened his writing-desk, from which he took some bank-notes and gold, and thrust them together in his pocket.
XIV. A DISCUSSION
“When that old man comes,” said Grenfell--“Malone, I think, is the name--let him come in here. I want to speak to him.”
“He’s outside now, before the door,” said O’Rorke, whose prying looks showed how eager he felt to know what might be the subject of their conversation.
“Does he hold any land in this neighbourhood?”
“He’s like the rest,” replied the other, half sullenly; “he lives where he can, and how he can.”
“What you would call a squatter?” said the Englishman, who smiled at his own sharpness in employing the word.
“What I wouldn’t call any such thing,” replied O’Rorke, firmly. “No more than I’d say it was squatting to sit down on my own hearthstone.”
“Which, perhaps, wouldn’t be your own, my good friend, if you were merely a tenant, and not a solvent one.”
“You may talk that way up in Leinster, or some of the counties that border on Leinster; but I tell you that you know mighty little of Ireland if you think that what your newspapers call the ‘Great name of England’ terrifies any one down here. Just try it. It’s about fifty miles from this to the Land’s End, and I’ll give you all that distance to find ten, no, but five men, that you’ll frighten by the threat of British law or British vengeance--which is about the same thing.”
“I’m sorry to hear it; that is to say, I should be sorry it was true.”
“Well, if you mean to deny, why don’t you prove it? What’s easier than to tell the carman we’re not going to Westport, we’re going up through Donegal to count the people that’s in love with the British rule in Ireland! You shake your head. I don’t wonder, indeed; no shame to you, that you wouldn’t like the journey. But I’ll tell you what you can do instead of it,” said he, with a firm and steady voice.
“What’s that?”
“Leave sixpence here, in my hands, and it will treat every well-wisher of England from this to the Giant’s Causeway! Isn’t that a fine investment for you?”
Grenfel’s face flashed, his brow darkened, and he tarned to hurl a stern reproof to this insolence; but he saw in the elated look of the other all the delight of one who was gradually drawing an adversary into the lists, and to a combat in which practice had given him a certain dexterity.
Determined, at all events, to foil this design, the Englishman affected indifference, looked at his watch, turned over some papers that lay on the table, and then carelessly said, “Send in Malone here.”
With the dogged air of one disappointed and baffled in his designs, O’Rorke left the room, and soon after the old man entered, stroking down his white hair as he came forward, and making his reverences with a strange mixture of servility and defiance.
“Your name is Malone?” said Grenfell.
“Peter Malone, Sir.”
“Come nearer, Malone. I have heard a good deal about you from my friend, whom you treated so hospitably up in the mountains, and he has also spoken to me of a sort of plan--I won’t call it a very wise one--that he struck out the other night, and which, it appears, you agreed to, about your granddaughter.” He paused, hoping that the peasant would speak, but the old man simply bent his two dark and piercing eyes on him, and nodded. Grenfell went on: “I have pointed out to him some, though very far from all, of the inconveniences of the scheme, and I have asked his leave to point them out to you, and from what he has told me of your good sense and clear-headedness, I suspect I shall not have undertaken my task in vain.”
“Does he mean that he wants to go back of it?” asked Malone, with a calm and resolute look.
“Listen to me patiently, and you shall hear all.” It is not necessary I should weary my reader with a sermon where the text conveys so much. The chief burden of Grenfell’s argument was what he had addressed to Vyner; and upon this he expanded freely, laying much stress on the misfortune that must accrue to any young girl raised to a temporary elevation, from which she must come down to meet a life of perhaps privation and hardship. He pictured an existence of luxury on the one hand, and of poverty on the other, and asked what right had any one to expose another to such extremes--what preparation could ease and indulgence be to a life of toil and suffering? “How were the acquirements of the one to be made applicable to the other?--how,” he asked, “is the young lady--for she will have become a young lady--to change at once to the condition of the ill-fed, ill-dressed, hard-worked country girl?”
Had the orator only glanced as he spoke at the features of the listener, he would have seen what a lamentable blunder his rhetoric had made. At the mention of the words “young lady,” the whole expression of the old man’s face altered; his half-sullen obduracy, his rugged sternness, disappeared, his eyes lighted up; his lips parted, his nostrils dilated, and his whole face beamed with a joy that was positively triumphant. “Go on, Sir!--go on!” he cried, as though he yearned for a perfect picture of what imagination had but sketched an outline.
“You cannot mean, my good man,” said Grenfell, hastily, “that you would think it any benefit to be placed where you couldn’t remain?--to stand at a height where you couldn’t balance yourself? It’s not enough that people can dress well, and talk well, and look well; they must have, besides, the means to do all these, day after day, without an effort, without as much as a care or a thought about them. Do you understand me?”
“Sure, people wasn’t born ladies and gentlemen from the beginnin’ of the world?”
“No; great families took their rise in great actions. Some by courage, some by cleverness, some by skill, and some by great industry.”
“Just so!” broke in the old man. “There was always some one to begin it, and likely enough too in a mighty small way. Dare I ax your honour a question?”
“Ask freely, my good fellow.”
“Though I suppose your honour will have to go back very far, can you tell me what was the first of your own great family?”
From the purpose-like energy of the old peasant’s manner, and the steady and penetrating look of his bright eyes, Grenfell felt certain that the man had been prompted to put this insult upon him, and in a voice broken by passion, he said:
“You’ll gain very little by insolence, old man! With my family you have nothing to do; they were in no wise connected with yours.”
“Be gorra! I knew it,” cried the peasant, slapping his thigh with his hand. “I’d have taken my oath of it. I was as sure of it as I was of my skin that you were not a born gentleman. You may be as rich as you please, and have houses, and lands, and cows, and hones, but there’s not a dhrop of the real blood in your body! I said it the first minute I looked at you, and I say it again.”
Pale and quivering with anger, Grenfell could not utter a word. The savage violence of the peasant came on him so much by surprise, that he was actually overwhelmed by it; and though he darted on the old fellow a look of fury, he turned away without speaking, and entered the house.
Vyner had just received tidings that Mr. M’Kinlay had arrived at Westport to await his instructions, and he was writing a honied line to despatch by the messenger, to say, that he would return there on the morrow, when Grenfell entered, and threw himself into a chair.
“I have met with ruffianism in most shapes, Vyner,” cried he, “but so insolent a scoundrel as that yonder never came across me before.”
“Insolent! Is it possible? What pretext could he have for insolence?”
“I know well, with your infatuation for these people, what a hopeless task it would be to persuade you that they were not miracles of good manners, as well as of loyalty and good conduct. I am quite prepared to hear that I mistook, or misunderstood--that, in short, what I fancied was insult was Irish naïveté.”
“But tell me what passed between you; what he said.”
“I will not.”
“Will you not let me judge of what you accuse him?”
“I will not; nay, more, I make it a charge upon you, as you desire our friendship to continue, that not only you never interrogate me on this matter, but that you neither question nor permit that man to be questioned upon it. Such a fellow should have as small a place in one’s memory as in one’s esteem, and I’d rather forget him.”
“Tell me, at least, what have you done in the negotiation?”
“Nothing. He opines that you have given him a pledge, to which as a gentleman you are bound, and as he sees neither peril nor inconvenience to result from converting a peasant child into a mock young lady, I suppose you have no choice, but must carry out your fine project with all the success it deserves.”
“I wish you would let me know what passed between you. If there was any intentional offence I’d certainly not overlook it.”
“I’ll tell you nothing.”
“Shall he ask your pardon?”
“‘He may; but he shall never have it.”
“You are provoking, George, I must say. You are not just to either of us; for certainly if I were convinced that you were aggrieved to the extent you suppose----”
“I tell you once again, and for the last time, I will not discuss it; and as you have promised me not to open the matter with this fellow, it may be forgotten at once.”
“You really wish this?”
“I insist upon it.”
“That is sufficient.” Vyner took out his pocket-book, and walked to the door. “Malone,” cried he; and the old man came forward bareheaded and respectful, without a shade of passion on his face. “Malone, I am not so fully assured as I felt last night when I first proposed it, that my plan for your grandchild would be a wise one; at least, reflection has shown me some difficulties about it----”
“Just tell me, Sir, do you want to draw back?” said the old man, resolutely, but respectfully.
“It would be better that you heard me out,” said Vyner, severely. “I am willing to do all that I offered----”
“That will do, Sir. I never doubted the word of a real gentleman.”
“I was going to say, that if, instead of taking your child from you, you preferred that I should settle a certain sum of money on her, to be her marriage portion----”
“No, Sir; no, Sir. What you offered or nothing. Make her a lady, as you said you would, or leave her where she is.”
“I think, my good man, you suffer your hot blood to get the better of your judgment occasionally, and it would be as well if you would give yourself some more time for reflection.”
“My blood is just as God gave it to me, neither hotter nor colder; and what I say now, I’d say to-morrow. Keep your word, or break it, whichever you plaze!”
“I can very well understand how my friend----” Vyner stopped himself in time, and, after a second’s pause, proceeded: “You hold me, then, to my bargain?”
“How can I hould you? You may hould yourself, but I can’t hould you!”
Vyner’s cheek flushed, partly with anger, partly with shame, and he said: “With this you will buy what clothes your grandchild will require at present. Do not spend more of it than you like, for these things shall be looked to by others; and this will pay the cost of your journey. I have written down the way you are to go, and also the name and place of my house. My present intention is to be at home within a fortnight; but if you arrive before that, you will be equally welcome.”
“Very well, Sir,” said the old man, as he deposited the bank-notes in a leather purse. “I may go now?”
“Yes, you may go. Remember, however, Malone, that if between this and next Thursday week, you are inclined to think that my last offer is a better one----”
“No fear of that, your honour!” broke in the old man, with a laugh. “I’m a poor man and an ignorant man, but I know what’s best for the stock I come from. It isn’t money we want. It’s the place where we can make money, and more than money;” and with a jerk of his frieze coat over his shoulder, the old fellow strode away down the valley.
XV. Mr. M’KINLAY’S MISSION
When Mr. M’Kinlay set out from the cottage in Wales, it was in no especial good humour towards Miss Courtenay. She had what is vulgarly called “snubbed him” and this is a process uncommonly painful to a well-to-do middle-aged gentleman, accustomed to a great deal of daily respect, and not a little looked up to in his peculiar sphere.
All night long, as he travelled, he pondered over these things, his irritation growing ever deeper. He recalled every word she had said, and in his anger even imitated to himself the careless impertinence of her tone as she said, “And are you going yachting?” just as if such, a thought was too absurd to be entertained. “And why not, I’d like to know? Is there anything in my status or position that would make a pleasure excursion ridiculous in a man like me? I could afford it. I hope she doesn’t imply I’m too old for it. Age is an ugly subject; she’d better not cross-examine her witnesses there. And my red tapery! What a blessing it was that there were creatures to docket, and tie up, and register, and save superior souls the trouble of remembering anything! And then her last impertinence, when, after a sneer at Irish property, she said she wished I had one! I’m much mistaken, Madam,” cried he, half aloud, “if a little of that same secluded savagery that Ireland affords wouldn’t do you a world of good--if a couple of years of country life, with a bog landscape and a rainy sky, wouldn’t prove an admirable alterative to you! No fine acquaintances, none of those pleasant idlers, who like to run down for a week to the country, and bring all the gossip of town along with them, will follow you to Ireland. No fealty, no affection will cross the Channel and traverse that dreary waste of morass, dotted with mud-hovels, they call in irony the Green Isle. If anything could bring you to your senses, Madam, it would be a residence here.”
Such were Mr. M’Kinlay’s thoughts as the mail lumbered heavily along through the deeply-rutted roads, and the rain swooped down in torrents. “I should like to see her yonder,” mattered he, as they passed a dreary two-storied house that stood alone on the bleak moor they call the Curragh. “That’s the reformatory I should like to try you with!”
With such benevolent intentions as these did he arrive at Carrick’s Royal Hotel, in Westport, just as Vyner and Grenfell had reached the same spot.
“You’ve had an uncomfortable journey of it, I fear, Mr. M’Kinlay,” said Vyner, as he shook him cordially by the hand. “Nothing but wind and rain for the last three days. Come in to my room here, I want to speak to you before you meet any one. I don’t think you know Grenfell,” said he, when they were alone, “and I should like to prepare you a little for a man who, with unquestionable abilities, has a number of oddities about him, and has a most intense pleasure in contradiction. This has been especially called out by a project of mine, which, perhaps, you will not fully approve, but, at all events, will accept as a pardonable caprice.”
With this prelude he related his plan about the little girl whom he destined to make a companion for Ada. He told how he had been struck by her wonderful beauty, but far more by the signs of remarkable intelligence she displayed, and the traits of decision and firmness so rare in a creature of her age. He urged the advantage it would be to Ada, whose fault was an excess of timidity, to see one of her own age so bold and fearless. “That intrepid spirit, trained to independence, will certainly impart some of its nature to my timid and gentle girl,” said he, “and the companionship will as certainly dispel the tendency to depression which is the besetting sin of my dear child.”
“Do you mean to adopt her?” asked the lawyer.
“No, not adopt her. I mean to educate her, and bring her up with Ada, portion her when she is married, or make some provision for her if she lives single.”
“That is to say, you want some eight or ten years of her life, and are not overburdened with anxiety as to what comes of her after.”
“Grenfell himself couldn’t have judged me more unfairly, M’Kinlay. I want to deal honourably and liberally by her, and I want you to counsel me how to do so.”
“Make a settlement on her, fix upon a sum, appoint trustees, and arrange that on her coming to a certain age she shall be declared in the enjoyment of it.”
“I’m quite willing; nay, more, I’ll leave the entire matter in your hands. You shall decide on the amount--yes, I insist upon it--and shall make all the other arrangements. I don’t think there will be much more to detain us here, for I am not so eager about this property as I was some weeks ago.”
“Have you been over it?”
“Yes, and am delighted with its picturesque beauty. It is infinitely finer than I expected, and if I believed they’d let me live there for a few weeks every year, I would even build a house and furnish it.”
“And who doubts it?”
“I do; and so would you, M’Kinlay, if you talked the matter over, as I did with a committee of the whole House. We discussed the thing very coolly and impartially; we entered upon the question of landlordism in all its bearings, what it contained of good, and where it degenerated into evil; and although they failed to convince me that capital, skill, and intelligence, backed by an honest desire to do good, were only unwarrantable interferences with people who wanted none of them, they assuredly made me believe that the pleasure of possession would be dear at the price of being shot at, and that the great probability of being thrown over a precipice rather detracted from one’s enjoyment of wild scenery.”
“The fellows who talk like this are not the stuff murderers are made of, Sir Gervais. They like to frighten away purchasers, just as people get up ghost stories to deter persons from taking a house. If you like the property----”
“I repeat, I am charmed with it.”
“In that case, don’t lose it. Ireland cannot remain for ever out of the law. One day or other she must come into civilisation, and these acres, that are bought for less money than so much land in South Africa or New Zealand, will be as profitable as an estate in the West Riding.”
Vyner smiled and shook his head. “Have you not been hearing this story for more than a century back?”
“Let us hear it for a century still, and the investment will pay cent. per cent. But come, I will tell you of a plan to test this problem fairly. Make the estate the fortune you intend for this young girl, with a power of redemption on your part by payment of a certain sum--let us say half as much more as you are now to pay for it. By the time that she will have grown up to womanhood you will have had the opportunity of deciding whether you desire to become an Irish proprietor or not. At all events, she will have either a good round sum in hand, or an estate which certainly will be no perilous heritage to her, though it might be a dangerous possession to you. This, I think, meets every difficulty.”
“Grenfell would tell us that instead of overcoming one obstacle it raises two,” said Vyner, laughing.
“But why consult him on the matter?”
“Because I shall want him. I should like to make him a trustee; he’s a hard-headed man of the world, and well adapted for the office.”
“And whom will you name for the other? Has the girl any relative or connexion of a class sufficiently elevated for the duty?”
“I suspect not; they are all peasants, and of the very poorest kind. I doubt greatly if there be one amongst the number who could read and write. Stay!” cried he, suddenly. “An idea just occurs to me, and if the notion be at all practicable, it solves every difficulty at once. This child’s aunt, a peasant like the others, was married to a gentleman, an old friend and college companion of my own. Unfortunate in many ways, and, of course, lost to the world of society by this unequal match, he retired to a lonely island on the coast, where he has lived for some years in a condition and with habits scarcely above the half-savage creatures about him. He was and is still a man of considerable ability, although soured and disgusted with a world wherein he met nothing but failure. I met him last week by mere accident, having landed on the lonely rock he inhabits. I will not say he was at all pleased with the recognition, but, in short, we renewed acquaintance, and parted a little more like friends than we met. If he could be induced to accept this trust, it would accomplish all that I wish.”
“Has his wife any influence over him?”
“She is dead. She died a few days since.”
“Does he care for and interest himself about those who belonged to her?”
“I have no means of knowing; but I suspect not.”
“Then probably it would be better that you made this proposition to him without any intimation that you knew of the relationship between him and this girl; asking him to assist you in carrying out a whim--a mere caprice?”
“I have been thinking over that. I believe you are right. He might not feel indisposed to serve these people, though he might shrink from declaring them his near connexions. At the same time, I feel he may refuse us on other grounds. He rejects whatever in the remotest way would lead him back into the world he has quitted. His is a passive sort of misanthropy,--I believe, the least curable kind.”
“It would be a pity not to secure him; he is the very man, with his local knowledge and thorough acquaintance with the people, to give your experiment the fairest chance of success.”
“Well, here goes for the attempt. Let us first have our dinner, M’Kinlay, and then I’ll write your credentials. You shall go over to Arran, and use your best powers of persuasion. I’ll tell you by-and-by all that you ought to know beforehand of your adversary, for adversary you’ll find him, whatever subject you broach; but I shall call it a great victory if you succeed.”
“Where is Arran?” asked the lawyer, in some trepidation, for he only half liked his mission.
“Here it is,” said Vyner, spreading a map over the table, and pointing to some three or four insignificant dots off the coast of Donegal. “It is the most northern of these--that one.”
“And how is it to be come at?”
“We must learn all that from the people of the inn here. A fishing lugger, I take it----”
“I declare, frankly, I have no fancy for the expedition; nor is there, indeed, any reason for it. A letter will be amply sufficient to explain your object.”
“Yes, but not to urge and persuade him--not to meet the doubts and the difficulties he will suggest--not to reassure him about this, and convince him about that. He’s a clever fellow, M’Kinlay, and one who will require to examine every phase of a subject before he’ll accept it.”
“Good Heavens! what a place to go to,” cried the other, as his eyes were still intently bent upon the little spots on the map.
“The place is most interesting; some remarkable scenery, and a very curious ruin of an ancient Abbey.”
“Not in my way--not at all in my way, Sir Gervais. I’d rather see a snug chop-house than the purest specimen of pointed Gothic.”
“Well, it will be an event in your life, at any rate--an incident to recal (sp) hereafter; and more than all, it will be a service to myself personally, which I shall not easily forget.”
“If you make a point of it, I’ll certainly go. I have told you that the adventurous spirit is not my strongest characteristic. Out-of-the-way places or buildings, or out-of-the-way people, have no interest far me. They are like a language I don’t know; they may be eloquent and charming to others, to me they make no appeal; but I’ll go, as you wish it, and I’ll do my best.”
“And you’ll succeed, too, I know it. Luttrell and you will understand each other at once. He’ll be pleased with your purpose-like, straightforward manner, while he’d reject flatly any attempt to influence or cajole him. He’ll possibly oppose his habitual indolence and his life of isolation to all plans for exertion or activity, but you’ll satisfy him that we have no intention to burden him unnecessarily, and that, in all likelihood he’ll not be called upon for more than a single act of an executive nature.”
“What are these luggers like? Are they considered safe?”
“The best sea-boats in the world.”
“And the sailors?”
“None better in the kingdom. In fact, on a coast like this----”
Be stopped suddenly, just remembering in time, that by any picturesque description of an iron-bound shore or an Atlantic swell, he might effectually deter M’Kinky from all thought of the expedition. “Say nothing of what we’ve been talking over, at dinner,” said he; “and I rejoice to say, here comes the waiter to announce it.”
M’Kinlay sighed; he could have eaten with a capital appetite half an hour ago. It was all gone now. He’d have liked a stiff glass of brandy-and-Seltzer-water, nothing more.
XVI. THE OLD LEAVES
The little intercourse which Luttrell maintained with the world was with his agent, a gentleman who had long acted in that capacity for his family when such an office was profitable, and when portentous tin boxes on office shelves, with the name of Hamilton Lnttrell on them, told of title-deeds and estates.
To this gentleman Luttrell had applied to assist him to sell a quantity of antiquarian objects, the collecting of which had been the pursuit of many a solitary day, and in cataloguing which he had passed many a long night. At first, this taste had been adopted as a pastime--a something to impart an interest to a dreary and purposeless life; but when three deficient harvests had so far lessened his income that he was driven to obtain a small loan to live, he resolved to sell his collection, and applied to his agent to aid him, making one only condition--that the bargain should not be effected in Ireland, where his name was still well known, but with some English dealer, who might never have heard of the Luttrells.
Though the carefully-drawn catalogue which Luttrell forwarded comprised a variety of rare and curious objects all bearing upon and illustrating ancient Irish, history, they were, with a very few exceptions, of little intrinsic value. There were weapons of stone, spear-heads and javelin-points, massive clubs embossed with sharpened pebbles, bronze ornaments and clasps, strangely-shapen casques and shields, and swords of forma that bespoke an antiquity long antecedent to the Roman wars, with amulets of amber and silver. Some rings and a sword-hilt alone were gold; this latter carved with marvellous beauty of design and great artistic excellence.
At last, after many months of utter silence on the matter, he received the following letter:
“Kildare-street, Dublin.
“Dear Mr. Luttrell,--I am very sorry at the failure of all my attempts to dispose of your collection. Vangheest, however, in sending me back, as you wished, the catalogue yesterday, spoke of an American gentleman who appeared disposed to treat with you. As he is a perfect stranger to both of us, and the native of a distant country, I saw no reason for refusing him the permission which he asked, to view the collection, and, if allowed, confer with you personally.
“I have accordingly given him a few lines of introduction, and he will present himself to you as Mr. or Captain Herodotus M. Dodge, U. S. I do not opine you will find him the possessor of much antiquarian lore; but he is an outspoken, straightforward man, with whom a business matter can be readily transacted.
“I know how reluctant you are to be intruded upon, but I am aware--better, perhaps, than yourself--that you want money at this moment, and I trust you will pardon me for having transgressed your orders respecting visitors, and made this case an exception to your rule. If, however, you persist in your determination not to receive a stranger, a line addressed to Mr. D., at Carrick’s Hotel, will be in time, any day till the tenth, to prevent his visit.
“Should you deal with Mr. D., you need not give yourself any trouble about the details of the payment, as his reference to bankers and others here have perfectly satisfied me as to his respectability.
“Believe me, dear Mr. Luttrell,
“Faithfully yours,
“George Cane, for Cane and Carter.”
Luttrell was very angry at this letter. It was an insufferable liberty that Cane had taken. Cane should have written--should have asked his pleasure--should have inquired whether even the certainty of selling the collection was not overpaid for at the price of this unseemly intrusion. “There is no inn on the island. This man must be my guest, and with the variable weather here, who can tell for how long? He may feel, or affect to feel, interested about the place and its people, and prolong his stay for days!”
There was, however, one passage in the letter which pained him to the quick; it was very brief, but, to him, very significant. It ran thus: “But I am aware--better, perhaps, than you are--that you are in want of money.”
Now, Messrs. Cane and Carter had been for some time making advances--small, it is true--to Luttrell, and as well to intimate to him that he had overdrawn with them, as to imply that they did not desire a continuance of the practice, his correspondent threw in that parenthesis--so full of meaning as it was.
There was a time, as late as his own father’s day, when Messrs. Cane and Company would not have written such a letter. Not a few of the broad acres of the Luttrells had passed into their hands since that, however. They had not their country-houses and conservatories in those days; nor their sons in the “Guards;” nor a daughter married to a Viscount.
How is it that men will often grow more bitter over their fallen fortunes, when they contrast them with the prosperity of others who have never injured them? Cane had actually befriended Luttrell in many ways; in keeping the agency of the small remnant of property that belonged to him, he was really performing a kind office; but Luttrell could not, for all this, forgive him for being prosperous.
He sat down to write two notes, one to Mr. Cane, a very sharp reproof, for a liberty which he ought never to have presumed upon, and which nothing, in their respective conditions, could warrant or excuse. “While,” added he, “I am no less surprised at your remark, that you are even more than myself aware of my need of money. The observation either implies a sensitive sympathy for which I was not prepared, or a covert impertinence which I hesitate to accept as credible.
“I will not receive your friend Mr. Dodge, nor shall I again trouble you with the private and personal interests of
“Your faithful servant,
“John Hamilton Luttrell.”
The second note was even briefer. “Mr. Luttrell begs to inform Mr. H. M. Dodge that he cannot receive his visit at Arran, nor can he at present decide to dispose of his collection.”
“How is the wind, Hennesy?” asked he of his boatman.
“Strong from the east, Sir, and comin’ on harder.”
“Could you beat up to Westport, think you? I have two letters of importance to send.”
“We might, Sir,” said the man, doubtingly, “but its more likely we’d be blown out to sea.”
“How long is this gale likely to last?”
“It’s the season of these winds, your honour, and we’ll have, maybe, three weeks or a month of them, now.”
“In that case, you must try it. Take three men with you, and the large yawl; put some provisions and water on board; perhaps a little ballast, too.”
“That we will, Sir. She’ll take a ton more, at least, to carry sail in this weather.”
“Are you afraid to go?” asked Luttrell, and his voice was harsh, and his manner stern.
“Afraid! devil a bit afraid!” said the man, boldly, and as though the imputation had made him forget his natural respect.
“I’d not ask you to do what I’d not venture on myself.”
“We all know that well, Sir,” said the boatman, recovering his former manner. “‘Tis only that, maybe, we’ll be more time about it than your honour thinks. We’ll have to make a long stretch out beyond Spanish Bay, perhaps, near ‘the Cobbles.’”
“I don’t care how you do it, but mind that these two letters reach Westport by Monday night, on Tuesday morning at farthest. This is for the post, this for the person whose name is on it, and who will be at Carrick’s Hotel. Give it if you can into his own hands, and say that there is no answer required.”
“You bade me remind you, Sir, that the next time the boat went over to Westport, that I was to take Master Harry, and get him measured for some clothes; but of course you’d not like to send him in this weather.”
“I think not; I think there can be no doubt of that,” cried Luttrell, half angrily. “It’s not when the strong easterly gales have set in, and a heavy sea is coming up from the south’ard, that I’d tell you to take a boy----” He stopped suddenly, and turning fiercely on the sailor, said, “You think I have courage enough to send you and a boat’s crew out, and not to send my son. Speak out, and say it. Isn’t that what you mean?”
“It is not, Sir. If you towld me to take the child, I wouldn’t do it.”
“You wouldn’t do it?” cried Luttrell, passionately. “I would not, Sir, if you never gav’ me another day’s pay.” “Leave the room--leave the house, and prepare to give up your holding. I’ll want that cabin of yours this day month. Do you hear me?” “I do, Sir,” said the man, with a lip pale and quivering. “Send Sam Joyce here.” “He’s only up out of the fever since Monday, Sir.”
“Tell Maher I want him, then; and mind me, Sir,” added he, as the man was leaving the room, “no story-telling, no conspiring, for if Dan Maher refuses to obey my orders, whatever they are, he’ll follow you, and so shall every man of you, if I leave the island without a family except my own.”
“Don’t send your child out, anyways,” said the man.
“Leave the room, Sir,” said Luttrell, imperiously; and the man, cowed and crestfallen, closed the door and withdrew.
As though to carry corroboration to the sailor’s warning, a fierce blast struck the window at the moment, making the old woodwork rattle, and threatening to smash it in, while the dark sky grew darker, and seemed to blend with the leaden-coloured sea.
“I want you to go over to Westport, Maher,” said Luttrell to a hard-featured, weather-beaten man of about fifty, who now stood wet and dripping at the door.
“Very well, Sir,” was the answer.
“Take the big yawl, and any crew you please. Whenever all is ready, come up here for your orders.”
“Very well, Sir,” said the man, and retired.
“Where’s Master Harry, Molly?” cried Luttrell, advancing into the passage that led toward the kitchen.
“He’s out on the rocks, Sir, watching the sea.”
“Call him in here. I want to speak to him. What are you doing here, Sir? I told you to leave this.” This stern speech was addressed to Hennesy, who, with evident signs of sorrow on his face, stood half hid beside the door.
“I was hopin’ your honour wouldn’t torn me out after nine years’ sarvice, when I never did or said one word to displaze you.”
“Away with you--be off--I have no time to parley with fellows like you. Come in here, Harry,” and he laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and led him into his room. “I’m sending a boat over to Westport; would you like to go in her?”
“Wouldn’t I?” said the boy, as his eyes flashed wildly.
“You are in want of clothes, and you could go to Sweeney’s and get measured for a suit.”
“I do not care for the clothes; but I’d like the sail. Isn’t Tim Hennesy to go?”
“Hennesy is not to go. Maher is to command the boat.”
“I’d rather have Tim; but I don’t care.”
“Be ready, then, in half an hour.”
“I’m ready now.”
“I mean, get another coat, something warmer, for you’ll be out one night at least; and put your woollen wrapper round your throat. Molly will give it to you.”
“There’s thunder!” cried the boy; “I hope it won’t lull the wind. It’s blowing fiercely now.”
“You’re a good swimmer, ain’t you?”
“I can beat every one but Tim.”
“And what would you do if you were upset?”
“Hold on by the boat, or a spar.”
“Till you were picked up? But if none came to pick you up?”
“Hold on still, till I was near enough to swim.”
“And if you didn’t get near enough?”
“Go down, I suppose,” said the boy, with a laugh. “One can always do that!”
Luttrell nodded, and after a moment said, “Get ready now, for here’s Maher coming for orders.”
XVII. THE NOR’-WESTER
The day--a dark and stormy one--was drawing to a close as the yawl got under weigh. She was manned by a stout crew of five hardy islanders; for although Maher had selected but three to accompany him, Tim Hennesy volunteered, and, indeed, jumped on board, as the boat sheered off, without leave asked or given. Luttrell had parted with his boy in his habitual impassive way--reminded him that he was under Tom Maher’s orders, equally on shore as on board--that he trusted to hear a good account of him on his return, and then said a cold “good-by,” and turned away.
When Harry, who rarely had so long an interview with his father, left the room, he felt a sort of relief to think it was over; he had been neither punished nor scolded, even the warning that was given was very slight, and uttered in no unkindness.
“Give me a kiss, Molly, and throw an old shoe after me, for luck!” cried he, gaily, as he reached the door. “We’ve got the big yawl, and though Tom has put two reefs in the mainsail, won’t I make him shake them out when we’re well out to sea!”
“I’ll just go and tell the master this minit, then,” said she, eagerly, “and you’ll see what he’ll say to you.”
“Will you be quiet?” said he, catching hold of her apron to detain her; “wasn’t I only joking? I’m to be under Tom’s orders, and of course I’ll obey him.”
There was a waggish drollery in the way he said this that by no means reassured her, but taking his hand, she walked down to the beach beside him, telling him to be careful of himself, and do nothing rash, and to mind what Tom Maher said, and, above all, to remember he was the last of the family, and if anything was to happen to him there was an end of the name for ever.
“And don’t you think, Molly, that the world would continue to go round, even if it lost us, great as we are?”
“Ah, ye’re a young imp! that’s what ye are;” said she, wiping a tear from her eye as she spoke. “‘Tis wishin’ them well I am, the same clothes. I’d rather see you in a suit of sealskin, than sent out on such a day as this, just to be measured by a tailor.”
“You’d dress me worse than Brian O’Lynn, Molly,” said the boy, with a merry laugh. “Did you ever hear what he did for a watch?”
“Arrah! what do I care what he did.”
“Here it is, and very ingenious, too,” said he:
“Bryan O’Lynn had no watch to put on, So he scooped out a turnip to make him a one, He then put a cricket clean under the skin, ‘They’ll think it is ticking,’ says Bryan O’Lynn.”
“May I never!” began she, trying to reprove his levity; but as he stepped into the boat at the same instant, her grief overcame all else, and she burst into tears. She threw her apron over her face to hide her emotion; but she suddenly drew it down as a wild cry, half yell, half cheer, broke from the fishermen on the shore; a squall had struck the boat just as she got under weigh, and though she lay over, reeling under the shock, she righted nobly again, and stood out boldly to sea.
“There’s not a finer craft in the King’s navy,” said a very old man, who had once been a pilot. “I’d not be afeerd to go to ‘Quaybeck’ in her.”
“Come up and taste a dhrop of sperits this wet day,” whispered Molly in his ear, for his words were a balm to her aching heart.
At first from the window of his lonely room, and then, when the boat had rounded the point of land, and could be no more seen, from a little loopholed slit in the tower above him, Luttrell watched her course. Even with his naked eye he could mark the sheets of spray as they broke over the bow and flew across her, and see how the strong mast bent like a whip, although she was reduced to her very shortest sail, and was standing under a double-reefed mainsail, and a small storm-jib. Not another boat, not another sail of any kind was to be seen; and there seemed something heroically daring in that little barque, that one dark speck, as it rose and plunged, seen and lost alternately in the rolling sea.
It was only when he tried to look through the telescope, and found that his hand shook so much that he could not fix the object, that he himself knew how agitated he was. He drew his hand across his brow and found it clammy, with a profuse and cold perspiration. By this time it was so dark that he had to grope his way down the narrow stairs to his room below. He called for Molly. “Who was that you were talking to? I heard a strange roice without there.”
“Old Moriarty, the pilot, your honour; I brought him in out of the wet to dry himself.”
“Send him in here to me,” said Luttrell, who, throwing a root of oak on the fire, sat down with his back to the door, and where no light should fall upon his face.
“It’s blowing fresh, Moriarty,” said he, with an affected ease of manner, as the old man entered and stood nigh the door.
“More than fresh, your honour. It’s blowin’ hard.”
“You say that, because you haven’t been at sea these five-and-twenty years; but it’s not blowing as it blew the night I came up from Clew, no, nor the day that we rounded Tory Island.”
“Maybe not; but it’s not at its worst yet,” said the old fellow, who was ill-pleased at the sneer at his seamanship.
“I don’t know what the fellows here think of such weather, but a crew of Norway fishermen--ay, or a set of Deal boatmen--would laugh at it.”
“Listen to that now, then,” said the other, “and it’s no laughing matter;” and as he spoke a fierce gust of wind tore past, carrying the spray in great sheets, and striking against the walls and windows with a clap like thunder. “That was a squall to try any boat!”
“Not a boat like the large yawl!”
“If it didn’t throw two tons of water aboard of her, my name isn’t Moriarty.”
“Master Harry is enjoying it, I’m certain,” said Luttrell, trying to seem at ease.
“Well! It’s too much for a child,” said the old man, sorrowfully.
“What do you mean by a child? He’s no child, he’s a well-grown boy, and if he’s eyer to have a man’s heart in him, ought to begin to feel it now.”
“It was no night to send him out, anyhow; and I say it, though it was your honour did it!”
“Because you’re an old fool, and you think you can presume upon your white head and your tottering limbs. Look here; answer me this----”
A fearful thunder roll, followed by a rattling crash like small-arms, drowned his words. “It is a severe night,” said he, “and if she wasn’t a fine sea-boat, with a good crew on board her, I’d not feel so easy!”
“Good as she is, it will thry her.”
“What a faint-hearted old dog you are, and you were a pilot once.”
“I was, Sir. I took Sir George Bowyer up the Chesapeak, and Commodore Warren could tell you whether I know the Baltic Sea.”
“And you are frightened by a night like this!”
“I’m not frightened, Sir; but I’d not send a child out in it, just for----” He stopped, and tried to fall back behind the door.
“Just for what?” said Luttrell, with a calm and even gentle voice-- “just for what?”
“How do I know, your honour. I was saying more than I could tell.”
“Yes; but let me hear it. What was the reason that you supposed--why do you think I did it?”
Deceived and even lured on to frankness by the insinuating softness of his manner, the old man answered: “Well, it was just your honour’s pride, the ould Luttrell pride, that said, ‘We’ll never send a man where we won’t go ourselves,’ and it was out of that you’d risk your child’s life!”
“I accused you of being half a coward a minute ago,” said Luttrell, in a low deep voice, that vibrated with intense passion, “but I tell you, you’re a brave man, a very brave man, to dare to speak such words as these to me! Away with you; be off; and never cross this threshold again.” He banged the door loudly after the old man, and walked up and down the narrow room with impatient steps. Hour after hour he strode up and down with the restless activity of a wild animal in a cage, and as though by mere motion he could counteract the fever that was consuming him. He went to the outer door, but he did not dare to open it, such was the force of the storm; but he listened to the wild sounds of the hurricane--the thundering roar of the sea, as it mingled with the hissing crash, as the waves were broken on the rocks. Some old tree, that had resisted many a gale, seemed at last to have yielded, for the rustling crash of broken timber could be heard, and the rattling of the smaller branches as they were carried along by the swooping wind. “What a night I what a terrible night!” he muttered to himself. There was a faint light seen through the chinks of the kitchen door; he drew nigh and peeped in. It was poor Molly on her knees, before a little earthenware image of the Virgin, to whom she was offering a candle, while she poured out her heart in prayer. He looked at her, as, with hands firmly clasped before her, she rocked to and fro in the agony of her affliction, and noiselessly he stole away and entered his room.
He opened a map upon the table, and tried to trace out the course the boat might have taken. There were three distant headlands to clear before she could reach the open sea. One of these, the Turk’s Head, was a noted spot for disasters, and dreaded by fishermen even in moderately fresh, weather. He could not take his eyes from the spot; that little speck so full of fate to him. To have effaced it from the earth’s surface at that moment, he would have given all that remained to him in the world! “Oh, what a destiny!” he cried in his bitterness, “and what race! Every misfortune, every curse that has fallen upon us, of our own doing! Nothing worse, nothing so bad, have we ever met in life as our own stubborn pride, our own vindictive natures.” It required some actual emergency, some one deeply momentous’ crisis, to bring this proud and stubborn spirit down to self-accusation; but when the moment did come, when the dam was opened, the stream rushed forth like the long pent-up waters of a cataract.
All that he had ever done in life, all the fierce provocations he had given, all the insults he had uttered, his short-comings too, his reluctance to make amends when in the wrong, passed spectre-like before him, and in the misery of his deep humiliation he felt how all his struggle in life had been with himself.
That long night--and how long it was!--was spent thus. Every wild gust that shook the window-frames, every thunder-clap that seemed to make the old ruin rock, recalling him to thoughts of the wild sea on which his poor child was tossing. “Have they got well out to sea by this time, or are they beating between the Basket Rocks and the Turk’s Head?” would he ask himself over and over. “Can they and will they put back if they see the storm too much for them?” He tried to remember his parting words. Had he taunted them with reluctance to venture out? Had he reflected on their courage? He could not now recal (sp) his words, but he hoped and he prayed that he had not.
The leaden grey of morning began to break at last, and the wind seemed somewhat to abate, although the sea still rolled in such enormous waves, and the spray rose over the rocks and fell in showers over the shingle before the windows. Luttrell strained his eyes through the half-murky light, but could descry nothing like a sail seaward. He mounted the stairs of the tower, and stationing himself at the loopholed window, gazed long and earnestly at the sea. Nothing but waves--a wild, disordered stretch of rolling water--whose rocking motion almost at last made his head reel.
The old pilot, with his hat tied firmly on, was standing below, and, careless of the beating rain, was looking out to sea.
“The gale is lessening, Moriarty,” cried out Luttrell; “it has blown itself out.”
It was evident the old man had not caught the words aright, for all he said was, “She’s a fine sea-boat if she did, Sir,” and moved away.
“He thinks it doubtful--he does not believe they have weathered the storm,” said Luttrell; and he sat down with his head between his hands, stunned and almost senseless.
There is no such terrible conflict as that of a proud spirit with misfortune. He who sees nothing in his calamities but his own hard fate has the dreariest and least hopeful of all battles before him. Now, though Luttrell was ready to utter his self-accusings aloud, and charge himself audibly with the faults that had wrecked his life, yet, strange as it may seem, the spirit of true humility had never entered his heart, far less any firm resolve to repent.
With all the terrible consequences that his unbridled temper could evoke before him, he still could not but regard himself as more persecuted than erring. “I did not make myself,” cried he, impiously. “I no more implanted the passions that sway than the limbs that move me! Other men--is not the world full of them?--have been as haughty, as unyielding, and domineering as myself, and yet have had no such disasters heaped upon them--far from it. Out of their very faults has sprung, their fortune. In their pride they have but asserted that superiority that they knew they possessed.”
While he reasoned thus, his heart, truer to nature than his brain, trembled at every freshening of the storm, and sickened as the dark squalls shot across the sea.
Nor was his agony less that he had to control it, and not let those about him see what he suffered. He sat down to his breakfast at the accustomed hour, and affected to eat as usual. Indeed, he rebuked Molly for some passing carelessness, and sent her away almost choked with tears, “as if,” as she sobbed to herself--“as if she was a dog. To know whether the milk ‘took the fire’ or not! Musha! any man but himself wouldn’t know whether it was milk or salt water was afore him.”
It was his habit to pass the morning in reading. He would not appear to deviate from this custom, but sat down to his books as usual.
No sooner, however, was all still and quiet around him than he stole up to the tower, and stationed himself at the narrow window that looked over the sea.
The wind had greatly abated, and the sea also gone down, but there was still the heavy roll and the deafening crash upon the shore, that follow a storm. “The hurricane is passing westward,” muttered Luttrell; “it has done its work here!” And a bitter scorn curled his lips as he spoke. He was calling upon his pride to sustain him. It was a hollow ally in his time of trouble; for, as he gazed and gazed, his eyes would grow dim with tears, and his heavy heart would sigh, as though to bursting.
As the day wore on, and the hour came when he was habitually about, he strolled down to the beach, pretending to pick up shells, or gather sea anemones, as he was wont. The fishermen saluted him respectfully as he passed, and his heart throbbed painfully as he saw, or fancied he saw, a something of compassionate meaning in their faces. “Do they believe, can they think that it is all over, and that I am childless?” thought he. “Do they know that I am desolate?” A pang shot through him at this, that made him grasp his heart with his hand to suppress the agony.
He rallied after a minute or so, and walked on. He had just reached the summit of the little bay, when a sort of cheer or cry from those behind, startled him. He turned and saw that the fishermen were gathered in a group upon one of the rocks, all looking and pointing seaward; with seeming indolence of gait, while his anxiety was almost suffocating him, he lounged lazily towards them.
“What are the fellows looking at?” said he to the old pilot, who, with some difficulty, had just scrambled down from the rock.
“A large lugger, your honour, coming up broad.”
“And is a fishing-boat so strange a thing in these waters?”
“She’s out of the fishin’ grounds altogether, your honour; for she’s one of the Westport boats. I know her by the dip of her bowsprit.”
“And if she is, what does it signify to us?” asked Luttrell, sternly.
“Only that she’s bearin’ up for the island, your honour, and it’s not often one of them comes here.”
“The seldomer the better,” said Luttrell, gloomily. “When the fellows find there are no grog-shops here, they turn to mischief, break down our fences, lop our trees, and make free with our potatoes. I’ll have to do one of these days what I have so often threatened--warn all these fellows off, and suffer none to land here.”
Perhaps the old pilot thought that other and very different feelings might at that moment have had the sway over him, for he looked away, and shook his head mournfully.
“She has a flag at the peak,” cried one of the men from the rock.
“She has what?” asked Luttrell, impatiently.
“She has the half-black, half-white ensign, your honour.”
“Your own flag at the peak,” said the pilot.
“More of their insolence, I suppose,” said Luttrell; “because they have a hamper or a parcel on board for me, perhaps.”
“I don’t think it’s that, Sir,” said the other, moodily.
“What is it, then?” cried he, harshly.
“‘Tis, maybe, your honour, that they have some news of----” he was going to say “Master Harry,” but the ghastly paleness of Luttrell’s face appalled and stopped him.
“News of what, did you say?”
“Of the big yawl, Sir; they, maybe, saw her at sea.”
“And if they had, would that give them a right to hoist the Luttrell flag? We are low enough in the world, Heaven knows!” he cried; “but we are not come to that pass yet, when every grocer of Westport can carry our crest or our colours.” This burst of mock anger was but to cover a rush of real terror; for he was trembling from head to foot, his sight was dimmed, and his brain turning. He felt the coward, too, in his heart, and did not dare to face the old man again. So, turning abruptly away, he went back to the house.
“My fate will soon be decided now,” said he, as he tottered into his room, and sat down, burying his face in his hands.
The group of fishermen on the rock grew larger and larger, till at last above thirty were clustered on the point, all eagerly watching, and as earnestly discussing every motion of the lugger. It was soon clear that her course was guided by some one who knew the navigation well, for instead of holding on straight for the bay, where she was to cast anchor, she headed to a point far above it, thus showing that her steersman was aware of the strong shore current that had force enough to sweep her considerably out of her course. Meanwhile, they had ample time to discuss her tonnage, her build, her qualities for freight and speed, and her goodness as a sea-boat. “I wonder did she see the yawl?” said one at length, for, with a strange and scarcely accountable terror, none would approach the theme that was uppermost in every heart. The word once uttered, all burst in at once, “‘Tis with news of her she’s come! She saw her ‘put in’ to Belmullet, or to Westport, or she saw her sheltering, perhaps, under the high cliffs of the coast, ‘lying to,’ till the gale lightened.” None would say more than this.
“Hurrah!” cried one at last, with a joyful cheer, that made every heart bound, “I see Master Harry; he’s steerin’!”
“So he is!” shouted another; “he’s settin’ up on the weather gunwale, and his head bare, too. I see his hair flyin’ wild about him.”
“Go up and tell the master.”
“Faix, I’m afeerd; I never spoke to him in my life.”
“Will you, Owen Riley?”
“Sorra step I’ll go; he turned me out of the place for saying that the cobble wanted a coat of pitch, and she sank under me, after. Let ould Moriarty go.”
“So I will. ‘Tis good news I’ll have to bring him, and that never hurt the messenger.” And so saying, the old pilot hastened, as fast as his strength would permit, to the house.
The door was open, and he passed in. He sought for Molly in the kitchen, but poor Molly was away on the beach, following the course the lugger seemed to take, and hoping to be up at the point she might select to anchor at. The old man drew cautiously nigh Luttrell’s door, and tapped at it, respectfully.
“Who’s there? Come in; come in at once,” cried Luttrell, in a harsh voice. “What have you to say? Say it out.”
“‘Tis to tell your honour that Master Harry----”
“What of him? What of him?” screamed Luttrell; and he seized the old man by the shoulders, and shook him violently.
“He’s steerin the lugger, your honour, and all safe.”
A cry, and a wild burst of laughter, broke from the overburdened heart, and Luttrell threw himself across the table and sobbed aloud.
Overcome with terror at such a show of feeling in one he had deemed dead to every emotion, the old man tried to move away unseen; but just as he had closed the door behind him, Luttrell screamed out, “Come back. You saw him--you saw him yourself?”
“No, Sir; but better eyes than mine did, and they could see that he had no cap on his head.”
“And they were sure it was he?”
“There’s no mistakin’ him among a thousand!”
“If they deceived me--if this was false----” he stopped and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. “There, I see her now. She’s rounding to--she’s going to anchor. I have been poorly of late, Moriarty,” said he, in a low, subdued tone; “things fret and worry me, that I’d not let annoy me if I were stronger. Men of your stamp fancy there can never be much amiss with men of mine, because we have enough to eat and drink. What’s that noise without? Who is talking there?”
The door opened suddenly, and Harry, with flushed face and wildly disordered hair, and with clothes all wet and dripping, stood before his father. He made no motion to embrace, nor even approach him, but stood within the door respectful, but not abashed, and as if waiting for leave to advance farther.
Luttrell’s cheek trembled, and changed colour twice, but, subduing his emotion with a great effort, he said, in a tone of affected indifference, “You had rough weather--did you make Westport?”
“No, Sir; we lost the boat.”
“Lost the boat! how was that?”
“She filled; at least, she took so much water that she would not answer her helm, and then she heeled over and went down.”
“Down all at once?”
“Yes; I had barely time to cut away our ensign from the peak. I thought I’d save the Luttrell colours, and so I did.”
“Were you far from land at the time?”
“About fifteen miles; as good as fifty, for the wind was strong off shore, and such a sea!”
“And what did you do?”
“We had plenty of spars. There were oars, and stretchers, and four large planks of the flooring, all floating about, and each of us laid hold of something.”
“By my sowle you’re a brave boy!” cried the old pilot, who could restrain himself no longer.
Luttrell turned a fierce look on the old man, and pointed to the door, and the poor fisherman slunk away overwhelmed with shame.
“So we’ve lost our best boat, and all her tackle,” said Luttrell, moodily; “a heavy loss.”
“It is!” said the boy, gravely; “but the fellows that picked us up say, that they don’t know how we held on so long with an undecked boat. They were watching us for an hour before we went over.”
“Who were they?”
“Westport men; they were taking that man over here you gave us the letter for--a Yankee fellow.”
“What do you mean by a Yankee, Sir?”
“Tom Crab called him so to me, that’s all I know; but he’s a good fellow, and gave me some brandy when he pulled me on board; and I near he rubbed me till I got quite warm.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s helping them to carry that sick man up here, and I don’t think he’s so sick as they say. I’m sure it’s just fright, and no more; for every time the boat went about in stays, he’d raise his head and give a groan.”
“Of whom are you talking?”
“I don’t know his name, Sir; but they tell me he wants to see you very much. There he goes; they’ve got him in that blanket, and are bringing him here.”
“Where will I put the sick gentleman, Sir?” said Molly, coming in; “may I make a bed in the store-room?”
“Do so,” said Luttrell, briefly; “and for the other, give him the room that was your mistress’s; and do you, Harry, go out and be civil and attentive to these people. I will see them myself later on. They must put up with rough fare, but they came self-invited.”
XVIII. A SKIPPER
Luttrell had just made up his mind that he would inform the American visitor he would receive him, when Harry entered, leading the stranger by the hand. “That’s papa,” said the boy, and retired.
“I hope I see you in very good health, Sir,” said Mr. Dodge, advancing boldly, and shaking Luttrell’s hand in a hearty, vigorous manner. “You live in a pretty lonesome spot here, and as the man said to the whip-snake in the spout, ‘You ain’t easy to get at.’”
“Perhaps that was one of the reasons that led me to choose it, Sir,” said Luttrell, stiffly, “and had you got my note, you’d have seen that I never intended you should incur the inconvenience of coming to it.”
“Well, Sir, it warn’t pleasant; I’ll tell no lie, it warn’t pleasant! I’m a seafearin’ man, Sir, and I’ve been one all my life; but such a harbour to get out of, and such a port to get into, and such a craft to do it in, I never seed in all my born days.”
“You compel me to repeat my regrets, Sir. I am, indeed, sincerely sorry for your fruitless journey.”
“Well, it warn’t all time lost--we picked up that crew, and that lad of yours. He’s a fine ‘buoy,’ Sir; I know ‘buoys’ well, and I say it again, he’ll be a smart man.”
Luttrell bowed a cold and haughty acknowledgment.
“He ain’t a bit like you, not a bit; there’s no pride, no stand off about him; he’s a raal frank, straight-ahead one. I seed it before he was well aboard. It was all I could do to keep him from swimming after his cap--a darned old sealskin thing it was--but he said it was his best one, and he’d not get another in a hurry.”
“His frankness deserved all your praise, Sir, it went to the extent of exposing his father’s poverty.”
“And if it did--what o’ that? You ain’t ashamed of it, are you? Look at me, Sir; I have a matter of seventy thousand dollars in the Tennessee Bank, and a trifle more in Ohio scrip, and I own every timber in the barque Prettyman Quincey Squashy four hundred and odd tons, a clipper to sail, and a whale for freight, and I ain’t proud, nor no ways blown up to burstin’ for that!”
“I am delighted to know of your prosperity, Sir, for your sake,” said Luttrell, coldly.
“Mind,” said the other, who accepted the words in their most flattering sense, “I didn’t say it was all got with my hands in my ‘pants-’ pockets. I had a darn’d deal of smart work for it. I was up among the Injians for four years, I was over the Rocky Mountains trappin’, I was a cook aboard a South Sea whaler, and”--here he winked one eye, and gave Luttrell a good-humoured poke with his finger--“and I did a little in Ebony off the Samsoo River, you understand; unwholesome work it was, with the baracoons always flooded, and the alligators flopping through the mud, and stirring up foul air and fever. Ugh!” he cried, with a wry face, “you’d see an ugly sort of a blotch on your cheek at night, and before the same hour next evening the ground sharks would be a fitin’ over you. You haven’t got anything to drink, have you?”
“I can, unfortunately, offer you nothing but our mountain whisky; it is home-made, however, and not bad.”
While Luttrell took a bottle and some glasses from a small cupboard in the wall, Mr. Dodge employed himself in a leisurely examination of the chamber and its furniture. “May I never!” exclaimed he, “if it ain’t a droll sort of crib. Why, Stranger, I’d not live here three months without making something better to sit on, and handier to eat off, than these. Just you give me a hatchet, and a hammer, and a handful of nails, to-morrow morning early, and see if I won’t.”
“I am afraid my furniture deserves all the ill you can say of it,” said Luttrell, with a faint smile.
“That ain’t a chair--it’s not like a chair.”
“I will not defend it, certainly.”
“And yet it shows why you Britishers never can, by any possibility, be a great people--no, Sir, never.”
“I am really curious to hear that explanation.”
“Well, Sir,” said he, tossing off a fresh tumbler of undiluted whisky, “you’re a goin’ to hear it--but ‘don’t be impatient,’ as the bush squirrel said to the young mouse, ‘I’ve got your mother in my mouth, but I’ll eat you presently.’ Here’s how it is. When you was makin’ that chair, you had in your mind some old-fashioned, ramshackle, nine-cornered machine you had seen of your father’s, or your grandfather’s, and nothin’ would persuade you but to imitate that. It was wisdom of your ancestors--but we never had no ancestors. We didn’t begin the world with fifty cranks in our head about how some helpless old critter ten centuries back would ha’ tried to do this, or to mend that. There’s the difference between us, Sir; and mind my words, when we’ve got a ten-inch gun that’ll send a shot from Long Island to the Battery Point, you Britishers will be a going back to bows and arrows, and a paintin’your bodies blue, like your ancestors.”
“The picture is not flattering,” said Luttrell, gravely. “And now, Sir, let us talk of something more nearly interesting to us. I am informed by my correspondent that you have seen the catalogue of my small collection, and desire to examine the objects themselves.”
“If that’s a home brew, Stranger, it does you more credit than the chair,” said Mr. Dodge, smacking his lips after his third tumbler of whisky.
“I am proud to have anything worth offering you, Sir.”
“If you’ve a barrel or two; of that spirit to dispose of, we’ll deal, Sir, that’s a fact;” and Mr. Dodge emptied the bottle into his glass.
“I’m not certain whether my resources extend so far, but if they do, the whisky is much at your service, and I will feel honoured if you accept it.”
“Now for the gimcracks--let’s see ‘em,” said Mr. Dodge, as though eager to show how promptly he could respond to a graceful or generous action.
“Some of the gimcracks are here before you,” said Luttrell, making a rather awkward attempt to smile, as he repeated the word. “This curiously misshapen attempt at a figure is, I have every reason to believe, an image of the idol ‘Crom,’ the object of worship to the Irish in the days of Paganism. You see he holds in his hand a sort of weapon like a fork.”
“It ain’t a brand, and it ain’t a fork! The Choctaws have idols that beat that critter hollow, and they stick eyes in them of a red stone that sparkles when there’s light on it. What’s this?”
“An ancient Irish spear, or javelin.”
“It’s a whale harpoon, and a rare bad one to boot; the spike ain’t well fastened, and no lead on the butt-end. Here’s a bowie-knife, ain’t it?”
“It’s the sword of an Irish chieftain, and was found in the tomb of Thady O’Shaughlen, Prince of the Kiel, and the lands of Maroon; the inscription that you see here----”
“I see nothing but scratches, made belike with an old nail or a dinner-fork--they ain’t letters.”
“This inscription signifies ‘I am.’”
“Well, I’m blessed if I believe them’s old--they’re rubbish, Stranger, jist rubbish--and as for the big dish----”
“It is a shield--a more perfect specimen is not extant. It was the battle-shield of Brian Ogh-na-Tiernach; he was killed in the great battle of Gongal-a-Murrah, which some historians have confounded with the battle of Claddahmore.”
Perfectly insensible to the sneers, or the not less offensive ridicule expressed by the American, Luttrell went on displaying object after object with all the zeal of one who gloried in his pursuit, and delighted in his success as an antiquarian. He drew forth rare scraps of manuscript, some worn and tattered fragments discoloured by age, and to all seeming undecipherable; he read out names of kings and saints, valiant chieftains, and holy martyrs, whom he mentioned with a voice tremulous with veneration; and he showed signet-rings and amulets they had worn, as a priest might have displayed the most sacred relics.
“Look here, Stranger,” said the Yankee, as he threw himself into the old chair, and stretched out his legs to the fullest extent, “there’s a museum in my native town of Halkanopolis, and I want to make ‘em a present; it’s to be somethin’ nobody ever seed the like of afore, nor ever will again. I du think this gatherin’ here is pretty nigh that ticket! And now, I say, what will you take for the whole bilin’ as it stands?”
“You have not seen one-tenth of the collection as yet!” cried Luttrell, whose zeal as an antiquarian was far greater than his eagerness as a vendor. “There’s the great book of the Three Curses.”
“We can do the swearin’ and cursin’ pretty well without a book where I come from,” said the Yankee, with a grin.
“Diarmid’s Token, as it is called. This curious gem, with its setting of pure gold, was formerly believed to be a protection against witchcraft.”
“In my country, Britisher, it’s the witches would want the amulet! We’re a pretty hard set down there, and can take care of ourselves without any help from charms. Come, now--let’s deal; what’s the whole figure, in one word?”
“You are unjust to both of us,” said Luttrell. “You neither know what I want to sell, or yourself to buy. Let me go on and show you some curious relics of a later period; they may have more interest for you, perhaps.”
“Not a hickory shaving’s difference, whether you showed me a trowel that helped to build Babel, or a snuff-box of Queen Bess. If you want to please me, talk of dollars, Stranger, hard dollars.”
Luttrell’s face flushed with a passing anger; this reducing him to the position of a tradesman, first displaying and then pricing his wares, sorely tried a temper that was never proof against much pressure. The purpose-like cold face of the American, however, showed him that the man meant no covert impertinence by his demand; but was simply desirous of finishing a bargain as speedily as might be.
“I am sorry, Sir,” said he, at length, “that you will not let me lay before you even the few objects that I prize the most; however, as you give me no choice in the matter, and as circumstances render me anxious to part with my collection, I obey you. I estimated the whole at three hundred pounds. My agent informed me that, in London, two hundred was deemed the value, and I never got a higher offer than a hundred and fifty, which I refused, but which I will now take, if offered me.”
The American took a very scrubby note-book from his pocket, and made a short calculation with a pencil.
“Well!” said he, in a drawling, dreary sort of way, “it ain’t much. I suppose you was years over it?”
“Yes,” said Luttrell, taken suddenly off his guard, “they occupied me many very sad days and nights. They were labours that lightened sorrow, and took me away from cares that were eating into my heart.”
“Ah! and how much better you’d have been, stranger, if you’d ha’ been doin’ something genuine useful, something to make yourself and others more comfortable, and not a grubbin’ after old shoe-buckles and saints’ shinbones. Well, you don’t think so! No matter; that’s our way o’ lookin’ at it. Now to business. There’s just one thing in these diggins that has tuk my fancy. It’s the only thing here that I’d give a red cent for, on my own account; but I do like it wonderful. I don’t suppose you’ll let me have it to buy, but if you’ll jist give a loan of it, we’ll say for a year or two--two years--I’ll close the deal, and give you your first price, fifteen hundred dollars.”
Luttrell’s dark face lighted up at the prospect of relief from much embarrassment, and his eyes ranged over the room to see what it possibly could be that had captivated his strange visitor’s fancy. A few gaffs, a single-barrel gun, and some fishing-taekle, were in one corner, and a pair of high sealskin boots in another, and a rough wolflike “lurcher” lay under the table--could it be any of these? It was scarcely credible, and yet the American had seen none other--he had walked straight from the landing-place to the Abbey. “What signifies what it is?” said Luttrell to himself. “It is the caprice of an unlettered fellow, who would, perhaps, care more for a tobacco-pouch than for my ‘Book of the Four Gospels.’”
“I have no doubt that I shall accept your offer, and gladly accept it” said Luttrell; “but it would gratify me if you were to say what it is that you desire to possess.”
“It’s then just as likely you’d refuse me.”
“And I mistake you much if, in such a case, you’d hold me to my bargain!”
For the first time the American’s features brightened; the dull leaden cheek coloured, and the firm-set thin lip curved into a pleasant smile as he said, “You’re right there, Britisher--you’re right there. I’d not ha’ clinched the nail, if I saw it was goin’ to fester you! Here’s how it is, then,” and he drew a long breath to give him courage--“here’s how it is--I want your ‘buoy.’”
“My what?”
“Your buoy; your son!”
“You want my son,” said Luttrell, drawing himself up, and looking with an air of haughty insolence. “Have you forgotten, Sir, which side of the Atlantic you are standing on, and that you are no longer in a land where men deal in their fellow-men? Or is it that, presuming on what poverty you have seen here, you dare to insult me with a proposal your own mean whites would have resented with a bowie-knife?”
“You’d ha’ been a rare chap on a stump, Britisher, that’s a fact!” said the Yankee, coolly. “Your words come rushin’ out like water out of a pump; but they don’t squash me, for all that. Hairy Dodge--Dan Webster always called me Hairy, the short for Herodotus--Hairy Dodge is a hard grit, and it’s not every millstone can grind him.”
“Will you do me the favour, Sir, to accept the very humble hospitality I can offer,” said Luttrell, proudly, “and let there be no more question of any business between us? I think I heard mention of a sick friend who accompanied you.”
“He ain’t a friend of mine. It was a critter I met at the inn, and who wanted to come over here to see you, and so we agreed we’d take the lugger between us.”
“He is ill, I am told.”
“Jist fright--nothing but fright! The first sea that took the boat on the quarter, he cried out ‘Lord a mercy on us!’ ‘Oh, are ye there?’ says I; ‘are ye a prayin’ for that sort o’ thing?’ and, surely, he did go at it, till he grew too sick for anything but groans. There was no use reasonin’ with him, for all he said was, ‘Put me ashore where you like, and I’ll give you five hundred pounds.’ He got up to a thousand; and once, when the peak halyards gave way, and the sail came clattering down, he raised the bid to half his whole fortune.”
“So that there is no actual malady in the case?”
“Nothin’ o’ the kind. It’s jist fright--mere fright! How you’re ever to get him off this to the mainland again, is clean beyond me. He’ll not go, that’s certain, if he can help it.”
“I must look to him, and see that, so far as our very poor accommodation serves, he wants nothing. You’ll excuse me, I trust, Sir.”
Luttrell spoke in a cold and formal tone, hoping, that his visitor, seeing no prospect of any transaction between them, would now take his leave. Mr. Dodge, however, either did not deem the battle lost, or he saw no reason to retire from the field, for he disposed himself once more in the old chair, and taking out a cigar about as long as a modern parasol, prepared to smoke.
“You haven’t any objection to this sort o’ thing?” he asked, coolly, as he lit it.
“None whatever. I’d say, Make yourself at home, Sir, if it were not that this humble house of mine is so little like a home.”
“It will look jollier in the evening, when there’s a good fire on the hearth, and a strong brew of that pleasant spirit smokin’ afore us;” and Mr. Dodge vouchsafed a strange sort of grin, which was the nearest approach he could make to a laugh, and Luttrell, stung by the notion that another was assuming to do the honours of his house, and to himself too, retired hastily without speaking.
XIX. THE LAWYER “ABROAD.”
To reach the “store-room” where Mr. M’Kinlay lay--for of course it is needless to inform our readers he was the much-terrified voyager alluded to--Luttrell was obliged to pass through the kitchen, and in so doing, beheld a scene which had never before presented itself to his eyes in that spot. Molly Ryan, feeling all the importance of the occasion, and well knowing that her master would never remember to give her any orders on the subject, had issued a general requisition for supplies all over the island, which was so quickly, and well responded to, that the place looked less like a room in a dwelling-house than a great mart for all sorts of provisions.
Great baskets of fish stood on every side--fish of the strangest and most uncouth forms, many of them, and with names as uncouth. There were varieties of ugliness among them to gratify the most ‘exacting naturalist, flat-headed, many-toothed, monsters, with bony projections all over them, and dorsal fins like hand-saws. Even the cognate creatures wore an especial wildness in that wild spot, and lobsters looked fiercer, and crabs more crabbed, while oysters, least aggressive of all floating things, had a ragged and rocky exterior that seemed to defy all attempt at penetration. Besides, there were hampers of eggs, and “creels” of potatoes, and such other garden produce as the simple cultivation permitted. While, meekly in one corner, and awaiting his fate with that air of conscious martyrdom which distinguishes the race, stood a very lean sheep, fastened by a hay-rope to the leg of a dresser.
But the object which more than others attracted Luttrell’s attention, was a pale, sallow-faced man, who sat next the fire on a low seat, all propped up by pillows, and his legs enveloped in a blanket; his wan and singular appearance being considerably heightened by the feathers of a goose having lighted on him, giving him half the look of some enormous fowl in the act of being plucked. This addition to his picturesqueness was contributed by Harry, who, engaged in plucking a goose at the opposite side of the fire, sent all the down and feathers in that direction. Harry himself, without shoes or stockings, indeed with nothing but a flannel shirt and trousers, was entertaining the stranger? and giving him, so far as he could, an insight into the life and habits of the islanders.
It is perhaps fortunate for me that it is not part of my task to record the contributions to history which Harry Luttrell afforded the stranger; they were not, possibly, divested of a little aid from that fancy which narrators are sometimes led to indulge in, and certainly Mr. M’Kinlay felt on hearing them, that terrible as were the perils of the voyage, the dangers that beset his place of refuge seemed infinitely more terrible. A few traditionary maxims were all that they knew of law, of religion they knew still less; in a word, the stranger learned that he was in the midst of a people who cared no more for British rule than they did for the sway of the Grand Llama; and in a place where, if it were very difficult to live, few things were so easy as to get rid of life.
So intensely interested was M’Kinlay in the boy’s narrative, that he never noticed Luttrell, who entered the kitchen, and made his way towards him. Luttrell himself was so preoccupied with one thought, that he hardly acknowledged the salutations of the people who made way for him to pass. The thought that engaged him was this: that the man before him was the bearer of a writ against him. That the law, which in his fastness he had so long defied or evaded, had at last tracked him home, and though he knew that, were this to be the case, nothing could be easier for him than to conceal himself in the island--there were spots there, where, had it been safe to have followed, no search could have discovered him--yet, in the passionate boldness which prompted him always to meet the coming peril half way, he now sought out this man, whatever might be his mission, to confront him.
Who can tell, besides, what an insolent pride he felt in being able to say to the emissary of the law, “Go back to those who sent you, and tell them that you saw and spoke to Luttrell of Arran, but that you did not dare to lay a hand upon him, nor utter the stupid formula of your craft, because one single word from him would have settled your doom for ever; that he did not avoid nor evade you; that he received you courteously, and, so far as he could, hospitably; but, with the proud consciousness that he was more the master of your fate than were you of his, and that the wisest thing you could do was to forget the errand you came upon, and go back as you came.” With some such thoughts as these Luttrell now came forward and stood before the stranger, and for some seconds each looked in silence at the other.
“Are you Mr. Luttrell of Arran?” asked M’Kinlay, in a low feeble tone.
“I am accustomed to believe, Sir, that a stranger usually announces his own name and quality first, when presenting himself in the house of another,” said Luttrell, slowly and gravely.
“I ask pardon; my name is Robert M’Kinlay, Sir, of Purniyal’s Inn, and 28, Regents-terrace, London, conveyancer.”
“And I am John Hamilton Luttrell of Arran. Now that we know each other, are there any matters we can treat of, or is this meeting to have merely the character of a pleasant ‘rencontre?’”
“It was business brought me here, Mr. Luttrell!” said M’Kinlay, with a groan of such intense sincerity that Luttrell almost smiled at it.
“Whenever you feel equal to treat of it, you’ll find me at your service,” said Luttrell.
“Could it be now, Mr. Luttrell--could it be now?” cried M’Kinlay, with eagerness.
“It shall be this minute, if you desire it.”
Unwrapping the blanket from around him, and disposing it not very gracefully, perhaps, over his shoulders, Mr. M’Kinlay scrambled rather than walked after Luttrell to his room.
“Ah, Sir!” cried he, as he entered, “if I had but the shadow of a suspicion of what the expedition was before me, I’d have refused flatly; ay, Sir, if I had to throw up the agency for it the day after.”
“I am truly sorry, Sir, your impressions of this place should be so unfavourable.”
Mr. M’Kinlay was too full of his disastrous experiences to listen to excuses, and he went on: “People cross the Atlantic every week and don’t suffer one-half what I did since I left Westport. I vow I think they might round the Cape with less actual danger; and when we tacked about and ran down to take up the creatures that were upset, one of our sailors--no, indeed, but two of them--declared that it was at the imminent risk of our own lives we were doing it; that if something held on, or didn’t hold on, I forget which, and that if we were to get entangled in the wreck--but I can’t describe it, only I remember that the American--the greatest savage I ever met in my life--took a pistol out of his pocket, and swore he’d shoot the man at the helm if he didn’t bear up for the wreck. He swore--I’ll never forget his awful oaths, doubly terrible at such a moment--that he saw a boy, or, as he called it, ‘a buoy,’ on a spar waving his cap to us, and he said, ‘I’ll go down to him if we upset beside him.’ Yes, Sir, it sounds incredible that a man so dead to any sentiment of humanity could exist, and who could declare that he’d imperil five lives, and his own too, just out of--what shall I call it?--a whim, a caprice, a fancy, and for what?--for some fishermen, some starving creatures whose miserable lives ought to make death a release, and a boy that possibly, until your kind cook gave him leave to sit at the kitchen fire, had no home to go to to dry himself.”
Luttrell’s face grew almost purple, and then, of a sudden, ashy pale. To suppress the passionate impulse that worked within him, made him feel sick almost to fainting, but he did suppress it, and with an immense effort of self-control said, “And the American, you say, was resolved that he’d save the boy.”
“Ah! at any cost! indeed, he had the cruelty to say to myself, ‘If the boat goes over, mind that you keep up, to windward, or to leeward, or somewhere, I don’t know where, for I was well aware that it was down I should go. ‘You can swim,’ said he, ‘I suppose?’ ‘Not a stroke,’ said I. ‘It don’t matter,’ said he, ‘you can grip on all the same.’ Yes, Sir, that was his unfeeling remark. ‘You can grip on all the same.’”
“But he declared that the boy he would save!” cried Luttrell, with a scornful toss of his head at the other’s prolixity.
“That he did; I am willing to make oath of it, let the consequences be what they may to him.”
“He never told me of that,” said Luttrell, thoughtfully.
“I should think not, Sir; it’s not very likely that a man will parade his own inhumanity, and declare how he risked five valuable lives to save a few savage creatures, who might as well be drowned at sea as die of starvation on shore.”
“You are severe, Sir. You judge us somewhat hardly. With all our barbarism, we have our uses, and, more too, we have ties and affections pretty much like our betters.” Though there was far more sadness than sarcasm in the way Luttrell said these words, Mr. M’Kinlay winced under the reproof they conveyed, and hastily blurted out his excuses.
“You cannot suppose I could have meant to include you, Sir. You couldn’t imagine that in speaking of these poor ignorant creatures, I had the slightest intention----”
“I never suspect an insult where it is possible to believe such was not intended, Sir,” said Luttrell, haughtily. “But I don’t think that we are here now to discuss the fishermen of Arran, or their claim to be deemed civilised.”
“You are right--you are quite right, Mr. Luttrell. I ask pardon for all this digression, the more since it was entirely personal; but a man’s first shipwreck takes a wonderful hold on his imagination;” and the lawyer laughed with one of those practised laughs, which, by setting others off, frequently cut short an unpleasant discussion. Luttrell was, however, impassive in his gravity; if anything, he looked more stern than before. “I have come here,” resumed M’Kinlay, “at the request of my friend and client, Sir Gervais Vyner. This letter is my introduction to you.”
Luttrell took it, read the address, turned it round, and looked at the seal, and then laid it down upon the table. He heaved a long sigh, too, but it was a sigh of relief, for he had had sore misgivings as to M’Kinlay’s visit, and visions of law and its dire consequences in various ways had been flitting before his eyes.
“I opine that the letter will explain the object of my coming here more briefly than I could.”
“Do me the favour to tell it in words, Sir,” said Luttrell, coldly; and the other bowed and began.
Our reader may not be as patient a listener as was Luttrell, nor, indeed, need he hear Mr. M’Kinlay’s account of a mission with which he is already familiar; enough, then, if we say that he was listened to for above an hour in perfect silence, not one word of remark, not a question, not even a gesture interrupted the flow of the narrative, and although at some moments the lawyer grew pathetic over peasant hardships and privations, and at others was jocose over their drolleries, Luttrell neither vouchsafed any show of sentiment or of mirth, but heard him throughout, as might the Chancellor have heard a pleading in Equity. Vyner had cautioned M’Kinlay not to divulge the name of the girl in whose behalf Luttrell was entreated to act, until he had given some pledge of his willingness to accept the trust. He knew well the proud susceptibility of the man, and how instantaneously he would reject what savoured of an advantage to those connected with him, not to speak of the additional pain he would feel in knowing that these peasants had been paraded as his near relatives, and so Vyner had said, “Keep the name of the girl in the background, and even when asked for it, do not appear aware of her being his connexion. Leave it entirely to him to avow it or not, as he pleases. Remember,” said he, as he parted with him, “you will have to treat with not only a very acute, ready-witted man, but one of the most sensitive and easily irritated temperaments in the universe.”
In fact, so profuse had Vyner been of his directions, his counsels, and his warnings, that he frightened M’Kinlay considerably, impressing him with a very wholesome fear of the man he was to deal with. “I’ll let him pick out the facts from the brief itself,” thought he, as he handed the letter. “I’ll not open the case by a speech.” This clever tactic was, however, routed at once by Luttrell, as he said, “Let me hear the statement from yourself, Sir. I will give it all my attention.”
Thus called upon, he spoke, and, apart from those little digressionary excursions into the pathetic and the humorous, he spoke well. He owned, that though Vyner’s desire to be an Irish proprietor met a certain encouragement from himself, that he looked with little favour on the other project, and less even of hope.
Indeed, of this plan, not being a father himself, he spoke less confidently. “But, after all,” said he, smiling, “they are one and the other but a rich man’s fancy. He can afford an unprofitable investment, and a somewhat costly experiment.”
In all he said, Mr. M’Kinlay took pains to show that Sir Gervais was acting under his own judgment; that he, M’Kinlay, was a cool, calm, long-headed man of the world, and only looked on these matters as a case he “was to carry,” not criticise; a question he was to consign to parchment, and not ratify by an opinion.
Perhaps, he was a little prolix in his excuses and exculpation, dwelling somewhat needlessly on the guarded prudence he had himself maintained throughout the affair, for Luttrell at last said, and rather abruptly, “Come to me now, Sir. Let me hear what part is assigned to me in these matters, for assuredly I cannot guess it.”
“My friend and client wishes you to be a trustee in this case; that you will act for the young girl on whom he purposes to make the settlement, and, in fact, consent to a sort of guardianship with respect to her.”
Luttrell gave a smile--it was a smile of much meaning, and full of inexpressible sadness. “What a strange choice to have made,” said he, mournfully. “When a captain loses a frigate, the Admiralty are usually slow to give him another; at all events, they don’t pass over scores of able and fortunate officers to fix upon this one unlucky fellow, to entrust him with a new ship. Now this is precisely what your friend would do. With a large and wide acquaintance, surrounded with friends, as few men are, esteemed and loved by many, he goes out of his way to seek for one whose very name carries disaster with it. If, instead of conferring a benefit upon this poor child, he owed her a deep grudge, then, and then only, I could understand his choice of me! Do you know, Sir,” and here his voice became loud and full and ringing--“do you know, Sir, it would be difficult to find a man who has accumulated more failures on his head than he who now stands before you, and these not from what we usually call fate, or bad luck, or misfortune, but simply and purely from an intractable temper, a nature that refused to be taught by its own hard experiences, and a certain stubborn spirit that ever took more pleasure in breasting the flood, than others took in swimming with the full tide of fortune. It takes very little knowledge of life to teach a man one lesson--which is, to avoid such men as me! They whose qualities ensure failure are truly ‘unlucky! Tell Sir Gervais Vyner it is not out of apathy or indolence that I refuse him, it is simply because, when he makes me the partner of his enterprise, it ensures disaster for it.”
Mr. M’Kinlay replied to this passionate outburst as lamely as men usually do to such like appeals; that is, he strung platitudes and common-places together, which, happily for him, the other never deigned to pay the slightest attention to.
One only observation did reach Luttrell’s ears. It was a remark to which the speaker imparted little force; for when he made it, he had come to the end of his persuasive resources, and was in the position of those gunners who, when their ammunition is expended, charge the piece with the nearest rubbish they can lay hands upon. The remark was to this purpose: that, simple as the act seems, the choice of a trustee is one of the most puzzling things in the world, and nothing is often more embarrassing than being refused by one upon whom, without ever directly asking, we have confidently counted for that office.
Luttrell started; he suddenly bethought him of Harry. What would be more forlorn or friendless in the world than that poor boy’s lot, if he were left fatherless? Except Vyner, was there one he could ask to befriend him? Indeed, whenever the contingency crossed his mind, and the thought of death presented itself full before him, he at once reverted to the hope that Vyner would not refuse this his last request. If, however, by declining what was now asked of him any coldness or estrangement ensued, he could not, of course, make this demand. “I shall have forfeited all my claim upon him,” said he to himself, “if I deny him this small service, and perhaps he will not understand, and, at all events, not give any weight to the scruples I have detailed. He may say these are but the gloomy fancies of a solitary, cheerless life.”--“Yes,” said he, on the closing a discussion with himself and now speaking the result aloud--“Yes. It shall be a bargain between us. Let Vyner be the guardian of my boy, and I will accept this charge; and, to show what confidence I place in his generosity, I shall accede at once; and when you get back to England, you will tell him the compact I have made with him.”
“I do not feel myself in a position, Mr. Luttrell, to make a formal pledge on the part of Sir Gervais Vyner,” began M’Kinlay----
“I shall not ask you, Sir,” broke in Luttrell, proudly; “we have been friends some five-and-twenty years, without any assistance from lawyers, and it is possible we may continue the attachment without their aid. Tell me now of this trust, for I am ashamed to say how little attention I have given the subject hitherto.”
It was a pleasure to Mr. M’Kinlay to leave diplomacy, and get back again into those pleasant pasturages where duties are “recited,” and obligations laid down, with all the rules of action stated, and with the rigid cautions impressed, due stress being stamped at every step on separate responsibility, and reiterated warning given, how “each acted for himself, and not one for the other,” till Luttrell’s less practised brain actually whirled with the repetitions and reiterations; nor was he more comforted by learning that on certain difficulties, not at all improbable, arising, he would have to recur to the law courts for guidance--a gloomy prospect which all Mr. M’Kinlay’s fluent readiness could not dispel, as he said, “A mere matter of form, I assure you, and only requiring a short bill in Equity, and a hearing before the Master.”
“There, there, that will do,” cried he, at last; “don’t terrify me any more. A surgeon never made his operation less painful by describing every step of it beforehand to the patient; but, Sir, I accede; and now forgive me if I leave you for one moment; I have a word to say to your fellow-traveller, whom I see out yonder.”
The American was seated on a rock, smoking, and Harry beside him, when Luttrell drew nigh.
“Come here, Harry,” cried he to the boy; “I want to speak to you.”
“Oh, papa,” said the boy, as he came up, “if you only heard all the pleasant stories he has! There’s nowhere he hasn’t been. In countries where the trees are covered with fruit, and monkeys and peacocks all over them; in lands where there are mines of gold, and silver, and diamonds, all for the taking; in seas, too, where you look down and see great reefs that look like rocks, but are really precious stones. And now he was telling me of a beautiful island, far, far away, so rich in flowers and spices, that you can know for more than a hundred miles off when you are coming to it.”
“Has he asked you to go away with him, Harry?”
“No, papa.”
“But you would like to do so? Speak out, boy; tell me frankly. Do you wish it?”
“Would he take me, papa?” asked he, timidly.
“Yes.”
“And would you let me?” and he spoke with even a fainter voice, and greater anxiety in his look.
“First answer me my question, Harry. Do you wish to go?”
“Yes, papa, greatly.”
Luttrell turned away his head and drew his hand across his eyes, and for several minutes did not look round again. When he did, it was to see the boy standing calm, firm, and erect before him. Not a trace of emotion on his features, as his eyes confronted his own.
“I suppose you are right,” said Luttrell, half speaking to himself. “I suppose you are right. It is very dreary here!”
“And there are no wild beasts to hunt, nor red men to fight, nor beautiful birds to catch, papa; nor any gold----”
“No, boy! There is not any gold, assuredly. But, remember, Harry, how many there are here who never saw gold, never heard of it; brave fellows, too, who are not afraid to scale the straightest cliff, nor venture out on the stormiest sea.”
“And for what, papa? For a curlew’s nest, or a hamper of fish; and he, yonder, tells me, that one good voyage of his barque would buy out all the islands here for ever.”
“So, then, you have eaten of the apple already,” cried he, with a bitter laugh. “Well, as he has tempted, he may take you. Send him to me.”
The boy almost flew in his speed back, and gulping out a word or two, pointed to his father.
“Are you of the same mind, now, that you were an hour or two back? Do you wish to have that boy of mine on board your ship?” asked Luttrell.
“I’ll give you a thousand dollars for him down, Sir, and you shall keep the gimcracks.”
“You may take him. There must be no money-dealings between us now, Sir--I will sell you nothing. Come into the house with me; a very, few minutes will be sufficient.”
As they walked side by side towards the house, the American, with a quaint brevity, told all that Luttrell could have desired to know of him. He and his craft, the Quincey Squash, were well known at Liverpool and London, he was sole owner, and traded in everything, from “lumber” to Leghorn bonnets; he went everywhere, and ventured in everything; in fact, he liked an “assorted cargo of notions” better than a single freight. “I won’t say he’ll come back a rich man to you, Sir, in five years, but you may call me a Creole if he don’t know a bit of life. Just look here,” said he, as he opened a pocket-map and spread it over the table, “there’s ten years of my life marked out on that chart; these lines--some of ‘em pretty long ones--is my voyages.” Captain--for we must now give him his accustomed title--Captain Dodge spoke fluently, and vaingloriously, too, of all he had travelled, and all he had seen; of how he had traded for ivory on the Gold Coast, and for furs up at Hudson’s Bay; how he had panted in the tropics, and shivered at Behring’s Straits. If a little proud of his successes against Malays and Moors, it was not quite certain that he “had not done” a little mild buccaneering occasionally, when “freights were low and trade was heavy.” Not that Luttrell gathered much of what he narrated, for a strange confusion was in his brain, and as he gazed at the chart and tried to follow the lines, a dimness obscured his sight, and he had to turn away and wipe his eyes.
“Wud your honour like the dinner now?” whispered Molly Ryan from the door; “the strange gentleman that was sick is dyin’ of hunger.”
“Yes, we’re quite ready,” said Luttrell; and taking a key from a nail, he betook himself to a little closet which formed his cellar. A few bottles of port, and two or three of Burgundy--remnants of a stock which once had been famous--were all that survived, but he took them forth, saying, “I am unlikely to play the host again, let us make festival for the last time.”
XX. THE SUPPER AT ARRAN
With all the ardour of an Irish menial to do honour to her master’s hospitality, Molly Ryan had taken the unwonted step of laying out the dinner in the “sacristy” of the Abbey, which Luttrell had once on a time intended to have converted into a grand gallery for all his rare and curious objects, and from which he soon desisted, deterred by the cost.
It was a long, narrow, vaulted chamber, with four pointed windows in one wall, and blank niches to correspond to them in the other. If in the cold unflattering light of day it would have presented an air of cheerless gloom and destitution, not so did it look now, as a great fire of turf blazed and glowed on the ample hearth, and the light of four huge pine-torches flared red from the niches, and threw a warm and mellow glare over everything; while the board was spread with an abundance which would have been utterly wasteful, if some five-and-twenty sailors and fishermen without were not to revel at second-hand, and feed on what fell from the master’s table.
Luttrell had heard nothing--knew nothing of this arrangement, and when he was told in a whisper that the dinner was ready in the sacristy, his brow darkened, and his cheek flushed with anger. “We need not have starved them with cold as well as hunger,” muttered he, sternly, to the woman; but she knew better than to await his reproaches, and hastened away to the kitchen.
“To you who have seen where I live, gentlemen,” said he to his guests, “it will be unnecessary to apologise for how I live; I can but say how much I regret it for your sakes, custom has made it easy to myself.” With this he led the way along a little narrow passage, and then crossing a court-yard, entered the sacristy. If M’Kinlay and the Yankee stared with amazement at the ample preparations to regale them, and the fine old hall--for such it looked--in which they were displayed, Luttrell could scarcely master his astonishment at what he saw, and nothing short of that “dignity which doth hedge” a host as well as “a king,” could have prevented him from openly expressing his surprise. Molly whispered a word in his ear, to which as hastily he said, “Certainly, of course,” and just as the guests took their seats, Harry, dressed in what remained to him of his best, came forward, and stood near the table. “Sit opposite to me, Harry; the foot of the table is the fitting place for the heir of the house, is it not, Mr. M’Kinlay?”
“And is this your son, Sir; is this young gentleman the--the----”
“The boy you picked up at sea,” resumed Luttrell, courteously, “and who will be proud to renew his acquaintance with you more pleasantly than it opened.”
“Well, young ‘um, you have got a jollier colour on your cheeks now than when we saw you bobbing behind that bit of broken jib-boom! You was blue, that’s a fact, but I’m a raw Eastern if you was bluer than the lawyer!”
Poor Mr. M’Kinlay! scarcely had one shame overcome him when came the terror of another; for now, for the first time, did he recognise in the Yankee the terrible tourist of the Welsh mountains. A vague something wonld cross him as he lay in the lugger, sea-sick and miserable, that the horrid voice, and the horrid look, and the horrid gesture of his fellow-traveller, were not encountered for the first time; but he was too full of his own sorrows to waste a thought on such speculations, and it was only now, as they sat at the same board, eating of the same dish, and hob-nobbing together, that the measure of his conviction became full. “He doesn’t know--he cannot know me!” muttered he, “and I have only one blunder to atone for, but who could have thought it was his son!” He turned to engage Harry in conversation, to inquire into his habits, his tastes, and his amusements, but the boy, fascinated by the Yankee’s discourse, could not bear to lose a word of it. Dodge--“Gen’ral” he called himself, as he spoke of those days--Gen’ral Dodge had served in many of the wars of the South American Republic; he had been with Bolivar, and against him; he had made and lost his fortune three successive times, had taken part in a buccaneer expedition to Mexico, was imprisoned and condemned to death, and saved by an earthquake that left the gaol and one quarter of Santa Fé in ruins. As to his shipwrecks and adventures with pirates, his hunting exploits, his raids either with Indians or against them, they were legion; and certainly, to these narratives he imparted a “gusto” and an expression which gave them a marvellous power, occasionally corroborated as they were by material evidence, as when he showed where he had lost the thumb and two fingers of his left hand, the terrible cicatrix in the back of his head from an Indian’s attempt to scalp him, and the mark of a bullet which had traversed his body from the neck to the opposite collar-bone. There was no disbelieving a man whose every joint and limb could come into court as his witnesses, not to say that he was one of those men whom few love to contradict. If he were, at some times, rather boastful on the score of his courage and daring, he was, at others, equally frank as to his short-comings in honesty, and he told with an astonishing frankness of some acts which, had they not been committed in unsettled and semi-civilised lands, would worthily have been requited by the galleys.
“Well, Old Ramskin!” said he, addressing M’Kinlay; for while he talked he drank freely, and was already in his third bottle of Burgundy, warmed up with occasional “flashes” of brandy--“well, Old Ramskin, I guess you’d rather be perched on a tall stool in your counting-house than up on a rock, watching for an Indian scout party; but, mark me, it’s all prejudice, and for my part I’d rather put a ball in a red-skin than I’d torture a white man with law and parchments.” He here diversified his personal recollections by some anecdotes of lawyers, and of the esteem in which their fellow-citizens hold them “Far West,” the whole winding up with a declaration that such creatures “warn’t in natur,” and only grew out of a rank, rotten, and stagnant condition of society, which, when only stirred by any healthy breeze of public opinion, either “left ‘em or Lynched ‘em.” He turned round for the approval of his host to this sentiment, and now saw, for the first time, that he had quitted the table.
“If you had not been so energetic in your censures of my profession, Sir;” said M’Kinlay, “you might have heard Mr. Luttrell asking us to excuse his absence for a few minutes while he spoke to his son.”
Perhaps the American felt this rebuke as a sharp one, for he sat in silence for some minutes, when he said, “Am I to have the pleasure of your company to-night when I weigh anchor?”
“Yes; I intend to leave when you do.”
“Your business is done, then?”
“It is.”
“And mine, too,” said the American; and each looked at the other, to see who first would divulge his secret.
“I have made arrangements for the guardianship of his son, whom, by the way, I never suspected to be the boy we picked up at sea,” said M’Kinlay, thus endeavouring, by a half-confidence, to obtain the whole of the American’s.
“He’ll not want such guardianship, I promise you, when he lives a few years with me.”
“With you! What do you mean?”
“Just what I say, stranger; that he’s coming aboard the Squash, bound now for the Isthmus; and, I repeat it, five years with Hairy Dodge will turn him out a long sight cuter than if he passed his ‘prenticeship even with yourself.”
“It is a strange notion of Mr. Luttrel’s--a very strange notion.”
The American raised himself up in his seat, and looked as if he were about to resent the speech, but he repressed the temptation, and merely said, “We’re going to have lighter weather than we came over in, and a fine bright night besides.”
“I hope so, with all my heart,” said the other; and now each sat and sipped his wine in silence.
Leaving them thus, let us turn one moment to Luttrell, as he stood at the window of his room, with his boy beside him. There was neither lamp nor candle, but a strong moonlight streamed into the chamber, and their shadows were distinctly marked upon the floor.
“Why is Molly crying so bitterly, papa? Sure I’m not going away for ever!” said Harry.
“I hope not--I think not; but when people part some are always faint-hearted about the chances of meeting again.”
“But you are not, papa?”
Luttrell did not answer for a few seconds. “Are you quite sure, Harry, that this life is what you like? I mean,” said he, correcting himself quickly--“I mean, would you not rather live here till you were a man, and make Arran your home, as it is mine now?”
“No, papa. I’d like to see the countries that the Captain told of, and see some of the things he did, and then come back very rich, and build a fine castle here, and a great pier out in the sea, and have the finest cutter that ever sailed.”
“But, before all this can come to pass, bethink you what a hard life is before you--what days of storm and nights of weariness. You may be hardly used, and have none to pity you--be ill, and not have one to speak kindly to you. Are you ready for all this, Harry?”
“I suppose I must bear it if I want to be a man;” and he drew himself up proudly as he spoke.
“You’ll have to remember, too, Sir, that you are a gentleman,” said Luttrell, almost sternly; “that there are scores of mean and shabby things the fellows around may-do, a Luttrell must not stoop to. Keep your word when you once pledge it; insult no man willingly; fight him who insults you; and never, if it be your fortune to command others, never say ‘Go,’ in a moment of danger, but ‘Come.’”
“I’ll not forget that,” said the boy, seriously.
“Keep this purse, Harry. It was one your mother knitted, many years ago. The few guineas that are in it spend when and how you like; only remember that when gone they cannot easily be replaced by me. And now give me a kiss, for they must see us part easily.”
The boy sprang into his arms, and held him fast in his embrace, while he kissed him over and over; and Luttrell parted the hair upon his forehead, kissing him tenderly there, as he muttered a few words beneath his breath.
“There, go back to them, Harry, and tell them I will join them presently.”
As Harry left the room, Luttrell lighted his lamp, and sat down at his table to write. It was to Vyner he addressed himself, and intended to be as brief as might be--very little, indeed, more than the intimation that he had accepted the trust proposed to him, and begged in turn Vyner would do as much by him, and consent to be the guardian of his boy, should he be left fatherless.
“I ask this with all the more confidence,” wrote he, “that your kind interest in poor Harry is so fresh in my mind, and all your generous offers to befriend him are the only cheering thoughts that occur to me in this, one of the gloomiest moments of my life.
“An American trading captain, led hither by an accident, has captivated the boy’s imagination by stories of travel and adventure, and I have consented to let Harry go with him. To remain here and live as I have done was open to him; he could have succeeded me in this wild spot without the bitterness of feeling the fall that led to it; but, in the restless spirit of our race, he might some day or other have emerged, and I dreaded to imagine what a semi-savage Luttrell would be; strong of limb, vigorous, daring, and ignorant, with pride of blood and poverty to stimulate him. What is there he might not have done in a fancied retribution against a world that had crushed his race and ruined his family--for such were the lessons he has been learning from his cradle. the only teachings he has ever had!
“The hardships of life at sea will be better training than these. The boy is very like me. I would sorrow over it, Vyner, if I did not count on that resemblance for your love to him. In one respect, however, we are not like. Harry can forgive an injury. Who knows, however, what he might become were he to grow up in daily contact with me; for I dreaded to mark how each year seemed to develop the Luttrell more and more in his nature. Now, pride of birth with prosperity may lead to intolerance and oppression, but leash it with poverty and it will conduce to violence, perhaps to crime.
“Before the mast he will see things differently. Night-watches and hard junk are stern teachers. To rescue him from my influence, to save him from me, I send him away, and leave myself childless. I can scarcely expect that you will be able to follow me in these reasonings. How could you, happy as you are in every accident of your life, blessed in everything that gives value to existence? I feel I shall never see him again; but I feel, too, just as confidently, that at some day or other--distant it may be--you and he will meet and talk of me, speaking in love and affection, forgiving much, pitying all.
“Say nothing of this guardianship to your wife, lest it should lead her to speak of me; or, at all events, wait till I am gone. Talk of me then they may, for there is no voice so eloquent to defend as the wind that sighs through the long grass over our graves!
“I have made a will, not very formally, perhaps, but there is none likely to contest it. What a grand immunity there is in beggary! and Cane and Co. will, I apprehend, if called upon, vouch for me in that character. There are several lawsuits which have dragged on their slow course for two generations of us. I believe I myself continued the contests rather as obligations of honour than aught else. Harry was not trained with such principles, however, and I shall leave to your discretion whether our claims be abandoned or maintained.
“Last, but far from least of all, the family to which Harry’s mother belonged contains many very bold, restless, and I might say dangerous, men. One of the reasons of my retirement to this lonely spot was the security I possessed in the midst of my own wild islanders against demands not always urged with moderation. They are not likely to forget the near relationship to my boy, if they can make it a source of profit; or, failing that, to convert it to a matter of menace. On every account, therefore, I entreat that he may not come back here, or, if so, but passingly.
“I hope he will never sell these islands; they would be a sorry commodity in the market, and they are the oldest possessions of our name in this kingdom. When Henry the Second sent John de Luttrell as Envoy to Rome but where am I straying to? The shouts that ring without tell me that all is ready for their departure, and in a few moments more I shall be alone in the world. Think of me sometimes, dear friend, even if the thought come in your happy hours to dash its joys with sadness; but do not speak of, last of all, do not write to,
“Yours, while he lives,
“John Hamilton Luttrell.
“I am half ashamed to add one other request; but if my cheeks grow red as I write, my heart will be the calmer when it is written. Be a friend to my boy in all ways that your kindness, your sympathy, your counsel can dictate. Guide, direct, encourage, or, if need be, reprove him; but never, whatever you do, aid him with your purse. It is on this condition alone I commit him to you. Remember!”
“They are growing impatient, papa,” said the boy, entering the room half timidly. “It is nigh flood, and we shall want all the ebb to take us round the Caskets.”
“And are you so impatient to be off, Harry?” said he, in a low soft voice; “do you wish to leave me, Harry?”
“Not if you would have me stay, papa; but I thought, I used to think at least--that----”
“That we made but little companionship together, you would say,” said Luttrell, mildly; “that we lived too much apart. Well, it is true,” said he, with a deep sigh, “quite true.” He paused for a moment, and then, with a sort of effort, and in a changed voice, continued: “If I should be no more here when you come back, Harry, do not let this old place fall to ruin. It has sheltered me during many a year of sorrow, and sorrow has a very attaching quality!”
“Papa, I will not go. I will not leave you!” said the boy, falling on his neck, and kissing him over and over.
“You must be manly, Sir,” said Luttrell, rising and disengaging himself from the boy’s embrace. “When men promise, they are bound to keep their word.”
The tone, the look, the gesture, fully as much as the stern words themselves, recalled Harry to himself, and he drew his hand roughly across his eyes, and stepping back, stationed himself, as he was wont, to hear his father’s commands.
“I have written to Sir Gervais Vyner the letter you see here, asking him to be your guardian in case I should die before your return. I have reason to hope he will not refuse me. If he accept, you will obey him in all things. You would obey me, at all events. Whenever you return to England, seek him out, and learn to know him as the last friend I had left me.”
“I will, Sir.”
The calm and resolute tone of the boy seemed for an instant almost to overcome the father, who stood and stared steadfastly at him.
“I have told Sir Gervais,” he continued, “that he will find you honourable, truthful, and brave; see that my words be borne out. And I have besought him to give you all that his friendship can bestow; but on no account--mind this, boy--on no account assist you with money. You hear me, Harry?”
“I do, Sir. I will not forget your words.”
“If you should have any immediate call for money, I have told your Captain I will repay him for what he will advance you; be thrifty, for I have but little to live on, as you will discover one of these days when it is all your own.”
“My dear Sir,” broke in Mr. M’Kinlay, as he bustled into the room, all coated and muffled for the journey. “Will you pardon me if I say we shall lose the tide if we delay. This young gentleman’s luggage is all onboard, and if there be no very urgent reason for deferring our departure, I should take it as a favour to say good-by.”
“There is nothing unreasonable in your haste, Sir,” said Luttrell, with a faint smile. “This is a place where few would care to dally. I have been saying a few words to my son, before he leaves me. This is the cause of your delay.”
“My dear Sir, I offer a thousand apologies, and beg to retire at once.”
“They are all said, Sir. Harry and I have nothing more of any consequence to talk over. If Sir Gervais had not been here himself, Mr. M’Kinlay, I’d have asked you to paint us somewhat less savage than we are. Oh, here comes the Captain.”
“I say, youngster,” cried Dodge, entering, “if you ain’t bent on kissin’ the ugliest population I ever saw since I left the Feejees, just step out by the back of the house, and make the best of your way down to the shore. Good day, Sir. You shall have news of us. Let me see; it will be a matter of six months, or so. But I’ll have a sharp look out after the ‘buoy,’ and he’ll do well, you’ll see. Don’t you be surprised if you see him a comin’ in some fine morning with a green monkey or a far-caped baboon. Cheer up, Sir! Don’t let the buoy see you down-hearted,” whispered he. “Come along, Harry! Be lively, my lad; out of that window, and let me find you aboard when I get down.”
“Be kind to him!” muttered Luttrell, as he drew his hand hastily across his eyes.
“Lord love ye! I’m the kindest critter that ever breathed. The whole time I was with the Choctaws, I never scalped an enemy. I couldn’t bear it; and whenever I cut a fellow’s head off, I turned him right round, so that I shouldn’t see his face. Soft-hearted, warn’t it? But that’s my natur’. There, I hear them heaving short; so good-by, for the last time.”
“Harry, Harry----one word----”
“He’s gone, poor fellow; don’t break down his courage. Good-by. Don’t call him back.”
“Be it so,” said Luttrell, as he sunk down into his chair, and covered his face with his hands. For a while all was still; then suddenly a wild cheer, a cry, in which the wail of sorrow was blended with the swell of the deep voices crying out; and Luttrell arose, and flung open his window. The lugger was under weigh. The dark shadow of her full canvas moved slowly along, growing fainter and fainter, at least to eyes that were now dimmed with tears; and when he turned away to wipe them, she was gone.
XXI. A WELCOME HOME
To welcome Sir Gervais Vyner home, the ladies had invited Sir Within Wardle to dinner--one of those privileged little family meetings, to be of which one must be an honoured guest--and so, indeed, did the old Baronet with his fine tact understand it; for he was very skilful in comprehending all those situations which make the so-to-say diplomacy of daily life.
He knew that he was admitted to that very pleasant brevet rank, the friend of the family, before whom everything can be said and talked over; and he showed by innumerable little traits how he valued his promotion, and, with a subtlety all his own, talked of himself and his own affairs with an easy confidence that seemed to say, “Here we are, all in secret committee; we may speak as freely as we like.”
The dinner was a very pleasant one. Vyner gave an amusing account of his Irish experiences, spoke of everything and every one but Luttrell, for his was a name that was never mentioned amongst them. Indeed, in the wrong the Courtenays had done him, was the seal that closed their lips; for, while we can talk, and talk fluently, of those who have injured us, of such as we have ourselves injured, we are dumb.
Sir Within saw, with the old craft of his trade, that there was a reserve; he smelt it like a secret treaty, but it did not touch him, and he was indifferent about it. He joined with the ladies warmly in their depreciation of Ireland as a residence, and laughingly concurred in their insistance that they were never to be asked to go there.
As to the project of adopting the little peasant-girl, they made it the subject of much pleasant banter; for, of course, Vyner was totally unable to reply to one-tenth of the questions which the matter suggested.
“We will suppose she is very pretty: and, what is still harder to believe, we will suppose that she’ll grow up prettier, what is to come of it; what do you intend her to be?” said Georgina.
“Yes,” said Sir Within, “let us look a little to what Italians call e poi?”
“When well brought up, and well educated, she might surely be a governess,” said Lady Vyner, coming to her husband’s rescue.
“And was it worth while to withdraw her from the drudgery she knew, to enter upon a slavery that she never heard of?” asked Georgina.
“To tell truth,” said Vyner, “I must confess I was thinking more of the benefit to Ada, the advantage she would have in a joyous, high-spirited creature of her own age, that might make her hours of Lessons more full of emulation, and her play hours pleasanter.”
Sir Within bowed a courteous assent to a speech principally addressed to himself.
“And,” continued Sir Gervais, bolder for this encouragement, “and, as to forecasting what is to happen to any of us, even if we be alive, some ten or twelve years hence, I really own I don’t think it is called. for.”
“I’m not sure of that,” said Sir Within. “I have made up my mind to live about five-and-thirty years more, and even speculated on the how I am to live it.”
“Do let us hear your plan,” said Georgina, with a slight flush of eagerness in her face.
“I have two,” said he; “and as there is not a little to be said for each, I hesitate between them.”
“We cannot pretend to be of any use in counselling you, unfortunately,” said Lady Vyner; “but if there be anything which what you slightingly call ‘woman’s wit’ can add to your own reasonings, we offer it freely.”
“I am deeply, infinitely gratified; your kindness is most acceptable. My first plan is one with whose details I am but too conversant. It is to live an old bachelor!”
The ladies looked at each other, and then looked down. They did not very well see what was to be said, and they said nothing, though, by his silence, he seemed to expect a remark.
“Well,” said Vyner, trying to break the awkward pause, “you at least know its resources, and what such a mode of life can offer.”
“A good deal,” resumed Sir Within. “A well-cultivated selfishness has very great resources, if one has only sufficient means to indulge them. You can, what is called, live well, consult the climate that suits you, frequent the society you like, know the people that you care to know, buy the picture, the horse, the statue that takes your fancy. You can do anything, and be anything but one.” “And what is that?”
“Be happy--that is denied you! I am not, of course, speculating on any supreme bliss. I leave all these divine notions to novelists and play-writers; but I speak of that moderate share of daily contentment which we in our mundane humility call happiness; this you cannot have.”
“But, if I mistake not, you have given all the ingredients of it in your late description,” said Georgina.
“And the Chinese cook got all the ingredients to make a plum-pudding, but he forgot to tie the bag that held them; so is it the old bachelor’s life has no completeness; it wants what the French call ‘l’ensemble.’”
“Then why not tie the bag, Sir Within?” asked Lady Vyner, laughing.
The old diplomatist’s eyes sparkled with a wicked drollery, and his mouth curved into a half-malicious smile, when Sir Gervais quietly said, “She means, why not marry?”
“Ah, marry!” exclaimed he, throwing up his eyebrows with an air that said, “here is a totally new field before us!” and then, as quickly recovering, he said, “Yes, certainly. There is marriage! But, somehow, I always think on this subject of a remark Charles de Rochefoucauld once made me. He said he was laid up once with an attack of gout in a château near Nancy, without a single friend or acquaintance, and, to beguile the weary hours, he used to play chess with himself, so that at last he fancied he was very fond of the game. When he came up to Paris afterwards, he engaged a person to come every day and play with him; but to his horror he discovered that he could no longer win when he pleased, and he gave up the pursuit and never resumed it. This is, perhaps, one of the discoveries men like myself make when they marry.”
“Not if they marry wisely, Sir Within,” said Lady Vyner.
“I declare,” broke in Georgina, hastily, “I think Sir Within is right. Telling a person to marry wisely, is saying, ‘Go and win that thirty thousand pounds in the lottery.’”
“At all events,” said Vyner, “you’ll never do it, if you don’t take a ticket.”
“But to do that,” said Lady Vyner, laughingly, “one ought to dream of a lucky number, or consult a sorceress at least.”
“Ah! if you would but be the sorceress, Lady Vyner,” exclaimed he, with a mingled seriousness and drollery.
“And tell you, I suppose, when you ought to venture?”
“Just so.”
“Am I so certain that you’d respect my divination--a prophet can’t afford to be slighted.”
“I promise,” said he; and rising from his seat, he extended his right. hand in imitation of a famous incident of the period, and exclaimed, “Je jure!”
“It is then agreed,” said she, quietly, but with a slight show of humour. “If it should be ever revealed to me--intimated to my inner consciousness is the phrase, I believe--that a particular person was Heaven-sent for your especial happiness, I’ll immediately go and tell you.”
“And I’ll marry her.”
“Her consent is, of course, not in question whatever,” said Georgina; “but I think so gallant a person as Sir Within might have mentioned it.”
“So I should, if Lady Vyner hadn’t said she was Heaven-sent. When the whole thing became destiny, it was only obedience was called for.”
“You’re a lucky fellow,” cried Vyner, “if you’re not married off before Easter. There’s nothing so dangerous as giving a commission of this kind to a woman.”
“Sir Within knows he can trust me; he knows that I feel all the responsibility of my charge. It is very possible that I may be too exacting--too difficult----”
“I pray you do so,” cried he, with much eagerness.
“Do you see how he wants to get off?” said Vyner; “like certain capricious ladies, he’d like to see all the wares in the shop, and buy nothing.”
“I fancy it’s pretty much what he has done already,” said Georgina, in a half whisper; but the butler put an end to the discussion by announcing that Mr. M’Kinlay had just arrived.
“Shall we go into the drawing-room?” said Georgina to her sister.
“If you like; but he’ll certainly come in to tea,” was the answer.
“Well, it is at least a reprieve,” said she, with a dreary sigh; and they retired.
As they left by one door, Mr. M’Kinlay entered the room by the other. After a cordial greeting, Sir Gervais presented him to Sir Within, and began to question him about his journey.
“Well, Sir Gervais,” said he, after a long-drawn breath, “it is no exaggeration if I say, that I have not another client in the world for whom I would undergo the same fatigues, not to say dangers.”
“My friend Mr. M’Kinlay has been on an excursion of some peril, and much hardship,” said Sir Vyner to Sir Within.
“Ah! In Canada, I presume.”
“No, Sir,” resumed M’Kinlay, “far worse--infinitely worse than Canada.”
“You speak of Newfoundland, perhaps?”
“Excuse me, Sir, I mean Ireland, and not merely Ireland itself--though I believe a glutton in barbarism might satiate himself there--but, worse again, Sir--I have been over to visit some islands, wretched rocks without vegetation--well would it be, could I say without inhabitants--off the west coast, and in, actually in the wild Atlantic Ocean!”
“The Arran Islands,” interposed Vyner, who saw that Sir Within was doubtful of the geography.
“Yes, Sir; had they called them the Barren Islands there would have been some fitness in the designation.” Mr. M’Kinlay appeared the better of his very email drollery, and drank off a bumper of claret, which also seemed to do him good.
“And was the estate you wished to purchase in these wild regions?” asked Sir Within.
“No; my friend’s mission to Arran was only remotely connected with the purchase. In fact, he went in search of an old friend of mine, whose assistance I needed, and whose caprice it was to retire to that desolate spot, and leave a world in which he might have made a very conspicuous figure. I am not art liberty to tell his name, though, perhaps, you might never have heard it before. M’Kinlay will, however, give us an account of his reception, and all that he saw there.”
“My troubles began,” said Mr. M’Kinlay, “almost immediately after we parted. You remember that on our last evening, at Westport it was, that the waiter informed me a gentleman then in the house had engaged a lugger to take him over to Innishmore, the very island I wanted to reach. I commissioned the man to arrange if he could with the gentleman to accept me as a fellow-traveller. It was settled accordingly, that we were to sail with the ebb tide at eight o’clock the next morning. My first shock, on reaching the pier, was to see what they called the lugger. She was a half-decked tub! I say tub, for her whole length was certainly not double her breadth. She was tarred all over, her sails were patched, her ropes knotted, and for ballast, she had some blocks of granite in a bed of shingle which shifted even as she lay surging in the harbour. They--the sailors, I mean--answered my few questions so rudely, and with so much ferocity of look and demeanour, that I was actually afraid to refuse going on board, lest they should take it as offence, though I would willingly have given five guineas to be excused the expedition, and wait for a more responsible-looking craft. My fellow-traveller, too, a very rough-looking, and evidently seafaring man, settled the point, as seeing my hesitation, he said, ‘Well, Sir, ain’t the boat good enough for you? Why don’t you step aboard? The faces of the bystanders quickly decided me, and I went down the plank praying for my safety, and cursing the day I ever saw Ireland.”
Our reader would possibly not thank us to follow Mr. M’Kinlay in his narrative, which, indeed, only contained sorrows common to many besides himself--the terrors of being shipwrecked added to the miseries of sea-sickness. He told how, through all his agonies, he overheard the discussions that overwhelmed him with terror, whether they could “carry” this, or “take in that;” if such a thing would “hold,” or such another “give way;” and lastly, whether it were better to bear away for Cork or Bantry, or stand out to open sea, and--Heaven knows where! “Terrors that will keep me,” cried he, “in nightmares for the rest of my life!”
“At last--it was all that was wanting to fill the measure of my fears--I heard a sailor say, ‘There! she’s over at last!’ Who’s over?’ cried I.
“‘The fishing-boat that was down to leeward, Sir,’ answered he. ‘They’re au lost.’
“‘Lucky for them,’ said I to myself, ‘if it’s over so soon. This prolonged agony is a thousand deaths.’ ‘They’re on the spars; I see them!’ cried my fellow-traveller; ‘slack off.’ I forget what he said, but it was to slack off something, and run down for them. This atrocious proposal rallied me back to strength again, and I opposed it with an energy, indeed with a virulence, that actually astonished myself. I asked by what right he took the command of the lugger, and why he presumed to peril my life--valuable to a number of people--for God knows what or whom. I vowed the most terrific consequences when we come on shore again, and declared I would have him indicted for a constructive manslaughter, if not worse. I grew bolder as I saw that the sailors, fully alive to our danger, were disposed to take part with me against him, when the fellow--one of the greatest desperadoes I ever met, and, as I afterwards found out, a Yankee pirate and slaver--drew a pistol from his breast and presented it at the helmsman, saying, ‘Down your helm, or I’ll shoot you!’ and as the man obeyed, he turned to me and said, ‘If I hear another word out of your mouth, I’ll put an ounce ball in you, as sure as my name is’---- I think he said ‘Hairy.’ I believe I fainted; at least, I only was aware of what was going on around me as I saw them dragging on board a half-drowned boy, with a flag in his hand, who turned out to be the son of Mr. Lut----”
“There, there, M’Kinlay,” burst in Vyner, “all this agitates you far too much--don’t go on, I’ll not permit you. To-morrow, after a good sleep, and a hearty breakfast, I’ll make you finish your story; but positively I’ll not listen to another word, now.” The hastily thrown glance of displeasure showed the lawyer that this was a command, and he hung his head and muttered out an awkward concurrence. “Won’t you take more wine, Sir Within?”
“No more, thank you. Your capital Bordeaux has made me already exceed my usual quantity.”
“Let us ask the ladies, then, for a cup of tea,” said Vyner, as he opened the door; and, as M’Kinlay passed out, he whispered, “I just caught you in time!”
The ladies received Mr. M’Kinlay with that sort of cool politeness which is cruel enough when extended to the person one sees every day, but has a touch of sarcasm in it when accorded to him who has just come off a long journey.
Now, in the larger gatherings of the world, social preferences are scarcely felt, but they can be very painful things in the small, close circle of a family party.
“You have been to Ireland, Mr. M’Kinlay--I hope you were pleased with your tour? Won’t you have some tea?” said Lady Vyner, with the same amount of interest in each question.
“Mr. M’Kinlay must have proved a most amusing guest,” said Georgina, in a low voice, to Sir Within, “or we should have seen you in the drawing-room somewhat earlier.”
“I felt it an age,” said he, with a little bow and a smile, intended to be of intense captivation.
“But still you remained,” said she, with a sort of pique.
“Ma foi! What was to be done? The excellent man got into a story of his adventures, a narrative of a shipwreck which had not--as I was cruel enough to regret--befallen him, and which, I verily believe, might have lasted all night, if, by some lucky chance, he had not approached so near a topic of some delicacy, or reserve, that your brother-in-law closed ‘the séance,’ and stopped him; and to this accident I owe my freedom.”
“I wonder what it could have been!”
“I cannot give you the faintest clue to it. Indeed, I can’t fashion to my imagination what are called family secrets--very possibly because I never had a family.”
Though Georgina maintained the conversation for some time longer, keeping up that little game of meaningless remark and reply which suffices for tea-table talk, her whole mind was bent upon what could possibly be the mystery he alluded to. Taking the opportunity of a moment when Sir Within was addressing a remark to Lady Vyner, she moved half carelessly away towards the fireplace, where Mr. M’Kinlay sipped his tea in solitude, Sir Gervais being deep in the columns of an evening paper.
“I suppose you are very tired, Mr. M’Kinlay?” said she; and simple as were the words, they were uttered with one of those charming smiles, that sweet captivation of look and intonation, which are the spells by which fine ladies work their miracles on lesser mortals; and, as she spoke, she seated herself on a sofa, gracefully drawing aside the folds of her ample dress, to convey the intimation that there was still place for another.
While Mr. M’Kinlay looked rather longingly at the vacant place, wondering whether he might dare to take it, a second gesture, making the seat beside her still more conspicuous, encouraged him, and he sat down, pretty much with the mixed elation and astonishment he might have felt had the Lord Chancellor invited him to a place beside him on the woolsack.
“I am so sorry not to have heard your account--the most interesting account, my brother tells me--of your late journey,” began she; “and really, though the recital must bring back very acute pain, I am selfish enough to ask you to brave it.”
“I am more than repaid for all, Miss Courtenay, in the kind interest you vouchsafe to bestow on me.”
After which she smiled graciously, and seemed a little--a very little--flurried, as though the speech savoured of gallantry, and then, with a regained serenity, she went on, “You narrowly escaped shipwreck, I think?”
“So narrowly, that I believe every varying emotion that can herald in the sad catastrophe passed through me, and I felt every pang, except the last of all.”
“How dreadful! Where did it happen?”
“Off the west coast of Ireland, Miss Courtenay. Off what mariners declare to be the most perilous lee-shore in Europe, if not in the world; and in an open boat too, at least but half decked, and on a day of such storm that, except ourselves and the unlucky yawl that was lost, not another sail was to be seen.”
“And were the crew lost?”
“No; it was in saving them, as they chung to the floating spars, that we were so near perishing ourselves.”
“But you did save them?”
“Every one. It was a daring act; so daring that, landsman as I was, I deemed it almost foolhardy. Indeed, our crew at first resisted, and wouldn’t do it.”
“It was nobly done, be assured, Mr. M’Kinlay; these are occasions well bought at all their cost of danger. Not only is a man higher for them in his own esteem, but that to all who know him, who respect, who----” She hesitated, and, in a flurried sort of way, suddenly said, “And where did you land them?”
“We landed them on the island,” said he, with an almost triumphant air--“we brought them back to their own homes--dreary enough in all conscience; but they never knew better.”
“How is the place called?”
“Innishmore, the most northern of the Arran Islands,” said he, in a whisper, and looking uneasily over at Sir Gerrais, to see that he was not overheard.
“Is the place interesting, or picturesque, or are there any objects of interest?” said she, carelessly, and to let him recover his former composure.
“None whatever,” continued he, in the same cautious voice; “mere barbarism, and such poverty as I never witnessed before. In the house where we were received--the only thing worthy the name of a house in the place--the few articles of furniture were made of the remnants thrown on shore from shipwrecks; and we had on the dinner-table earthenware pipkins, tin cups, glasses, and wooden measures indiscriminately. While, as if to heighten the incongruity, a flagon of silver, which had once been gilt too, figured in the midst, and displayed a very strange crest--a heart rent in two, with the motto, La Zutte réelle, a heraldic version of the name.”
“Luttrell,” whispered she, still lower. “What is his christian name?”
“John Hamilton. But, my dear Miss Courtenay, where have you been leading me all this time? These are all secrets; at least, Sir Gervais enjoined me especially not to speak of where I had been, nor with whom. I am aware it was out of respect for the feelings of this unfortunate man, who, however little trace there remained of it, has once been a gentleman and a man of some fortune.”
“If you never tell my brother that you have revealed this to me, I promise you I’ll not speak of it,” said she; and, with all her effort to appear calm, her agitation nearly overcame her.
“You may depend upon me, Miss Courtenay.”
“Nor to my sister,” muttered she, still dwelling on her own thoughts.
“Certainly not. It was a great indiscretion--that is, it would have been a great indiscretion to have mentioned this to any one less--less----”
While he was searching his brain for an epithet, she arose and walked to a window, and Mr. M’Kinlay, rather shocked at his own impetuous frankness, sat thinking over all that he had said.
“Come, Sir Within,” cried Vyner, “here’s my friend M’Kinlay, a capital whist player. What say you to a rubber? and Georgina, will you join us?”
“Not to-night, Gervais. Laura will take my place.”
Lady Vyner acceded good naturedly, with many excuses for all her ignorance of the game, and while Sir Within and Vyner held a little amicable contest for her as a partner, Georgina drew again nigh to where M’Kinlay was standing.
“Did he look very old and broken? asked she, in a low but shaken voice.
“Terribly broken.”
“What age would you guess him to be?”
“Fifty-four, or five; perhaps older.”
“Absurd!” cried she, peevishly; “he’s not forty.”
“I spoke of what he seemed to be; his hair is perfectly white, he stoops considerably, and looks, in fact, the remains of a shattered, broken man, who never at any time was a strong one.”
An insolent curl moved her mouth, but she bit her lips, and with an effort said, “Did you see his wife?”
“He is a widower; except the little boy that we rescued from the wreck, he has none belonging to him.”
“Come along, M’Kinlay, we are waiting for you,” cried Sir Gervais; and the lawyer moved away, while Georgina, with a motion of her finger to her lips, to enjoin secresy, turned and left the room.
XXII. SOME WORDS AT PARTING
It was as the Vyners sat at breakfast the following morning, that the servant announced the arrival of an old countryman and a little girl, who had just come by the stage.
“Oh! may I go, papa, may I go and see her?” cried Ada, eagerly; but Sir Gervais had stooped across to whisper something to his wife, and the governess, deeming the moment favourable to exert her authority, moved away at once with her charge.
“The peasant child that we told you of, Sir Within,” said Lady Vyner, “has arrived, and it is a rare piece of fortune you are here, for we shall steal a travelling opinion out of you.”
“In what way may I hope to be of use?”
“In telling us what you think of her. I mean, of her temper, character, disposition; in short, how you, with that great tact you possess in reading people, interpret her.”
“You flatter me much, Lady Vyner; but any skill I may possess in these respects is rather applicable to people in our own rank of life, where conventionalities have a great share; now in hiding, now in disclosing traits of character. As to the simple child of nature, I suspect I shall find myself all at fault.”
“But you are a phrenologist, too?” said Sir Gervais.
“A believer, certainly, but no accomplished professor of the science.”
“I declare it is very nervous work to be in company with a magician, who reads one like an open volume,” said Georgina. “What do you say, Mr. M’Kinlay, if we take a walk in the garden, while these learned chemists perform their analyses?”
Mr. M’Kinlay’s eyes sparkled with delight, though he had to stammer out his excuses: He was going to start off for town; he must meet the “up mail” somewhere, and his conveyance was already waiting at the gate.
“Then I’ll stroll down the avenue with you,” said she, rising. “I’ll go for my bonnet.”
“Let me have the draft as early as you can, M’Kinlay,” whispered Sir Gervais, as he drew the lawyer into a window-recess. “I don’t think Luttrell will like acting with Grenfell, and I would ask my friend, Sir Within here, to be the other trustee.”
“No; he certainly did not seem to like Grenfell, though he owned he did not know him.”
“Then, as to his own boy, I’ll write to him myself; it will be more friendly. Of course, all these matters are between ourselves.”
“Of course.”
“I mean strictly so; because Lady Vyner’s family and the Luttrells have had some differences, years and years ago. Too long a story to tell you now, and scarcely worth telling at any time; however, it was one of those unfinished games--you understand--where each party accuses the other of unfair play, and there are no quarrels less reparable. I say this much simply to show you the need of all your caution, and how the name ‘Luttrell,’ must never escape you.”
Mr. M’Kinlay would like, to have declared at once that the imprudence had been committed, and that the warning had come too late; but it required more time than he then had at his disposal to show by what a mere slip it had occurred, and at the same time how innocuously the tidings had fallen. Lastly, there was his pride as a business man in the way--the same sort of infallibility which makes Popes and Bank cashiers a little less and more than all humanity--so he simply bowed and smiled, and muttered a something that implied a perfect acquiescence. And now he took his leave, Lady Vyner graciously hoping soon to see him again; and Sir Within, with a courtesy that had often delighted Arch-Duchesses, declaring the infinite pleasure it would afford him to see him at Dalradern, with which successes triumphant, he shook Vyner’s hand, and hastened out to meet Miss Courtenay.
It is a very strange thing to mark how certain men, trained and inured to emergencies of no mean order--the lawyer and the doctor, for instance--who can await with unshaken courage the moment in which duty will summon them to efforts on whose issue another’s life is hanging,--I say, it is a strange thing to mark how such men are unnerved and flurried by that small by-play of society which fine ladies go through without a sensation or an emotion. The little commonplace, attentions, the weak flatteries, the small coquetteries that are the every-day incidents of such a sphere, strike them as all full of a direct application, a peculiar significance, when addressed to themselves; and thus was it Mr. M’Kinlay issued forth, imbued with a strong conviction that he had just taken leave of a charming family, endowed with many graceful gifts, amongst which conspicuously shone the discernment they showed in understanding himself.
“I see it,” muttered he below his breath--“I see it before me. There will come a day when I shall cross this threshold on still safer grounds. When Sir Gervais will be Vyner, and even----”
“I trust I have not kept you waiting?” said the very sweetest of voices, as Miss Courtenay, drawing her shawl around her, came forward. “I sincerely hope I have not perilled your journey; but I went to fetch you a rose. Here it is. Is it not pretty? They are the true Japanese roses, but they have no odour.”
Mr. M’Kinlay was in ecstasy; he declared that the flower was perfection; there never was such grace of outline, such delicacy of colouring, such elegance of form; and he protested that there was a faint, a very faint, but delicious perfume also.
Georgina laughed, one of those sweet-ringing little laughs beauties practise--just as great pianists do those seemingly hap-hazard chords they throw off, as in careless mood they find themselves before a piano--and they now walked along, side by side, towards the gate.
“You don’t know in what a position of difficulty my indiscretion of yesterday evening has placed me, Miss Courtenay,” said he. “Here has been Sir Gervais enjoining me to the strictest secresy.”
“You may trust me to the fullest extent; and tell me, what was your business with Lutrell?”
“You shall know all. Indeed, I have no desire to keep secrets from you.” It was somewhat of a hazardous speech, particularly in the way it was uttered; but she received it with a very sweet smile, and he went on: “My journey had for its object to see this Mr. Luttrell, and induce him to accept a trusteeship to a deed.”
“For this child?”
“Yes; the same.”
“But she is his daughter, is she not?”
“No; he had but one child, the boy I spoke of.”
“Who told you so? Luttrell himself, perhaps, or some of his people. At all events, do you believe it?”
He was a good deal startled by the sharp, quick, peremptory tone she now spoke in, so like her wonted manner, but so widely unlike her late mood of captivating softness, and for a second or two he did not answer.
“Tell me frankly, do you believe it?” cried she.
“I see no reason to disbelieve it,” was his reply.
“Is the boy older than this girl?” asked she, quickly.
“I should say so. Yes, certainly. I think so, at least.”
“And I am almost as certain he is not,” said she, in the same determined tone. “Now for another point. My brother Vyner is about to make a settlement on this girl; is it not so?”
“Yes; I have instructions to prepare a deed.”
“And do you believe--is it a thing that your experience warrants you to believe--that he contemplates this for the child of Heaven knows whom, found Heaven knows where? Tell me that!”
“It is strange, no doubt, and it surprised me greatly, and at first I couldn’t credit it.”
“Nor you don’t now! No, no, Mr. M’Kinlay, ‘don’t be a churl of your confidence. This girl is a Luttrell; confess it?”
“On my honour, I believe she is not.”
“Then I take it they are cleverer folk than I thought them, for they seem to have deceived you.”
“We shall not do it, Sir, in the time,” cried the postilion from his saddle, “unless we start at once.”
“Yes, yes, I am coming. If you would write to me, Miss Courtenay, any of your doubts--if you would allow me to write to you.”
“What for, Sir? I have no doubts. I don’t certainly see how all this came about; nor--not having Mr. Grenfell’s acquaintance, who was with my brother--am I likely to find out; but I know quite as much as I care to know.”
“You suspect--I see what you suspect,” said Mr. M’Kinlay, hoping by one clever dash to achieve the full measure of her confidence.
“What is it I suspect?” asked she, with an air of innocent curiosity.
“You suspect,” said he, slowly, while he looked intently into her eyes at the time--“you suspect that Sir Gervais means by adopting this child to make some sort of a reparation to Luttrell.”
“A what, Sir?” said she, opening her eyes to almost twice the usual size, while her nostrils dilated with passion. “What did you dare to mean by that word?”
“My dear Miss Courtenay, I am miserable, the most wretched of men, if I have offended you.”
“There’s eleven now striking, Sir, and we may as well send the horses back,” cried the postilion, sulkily.
“There, Sir, you hear what he says; pray don’t be late on my account. Good-by. I hope you’ll have no more disasters. Good-by.”
For a moment he thought to hasten after her, and try to make his peace; but great interests called him back to town, and, besides, he might in his confusion only make bad worse. It was a matter of much thought, and so, with a deep sigh, he stepped into the chaise and drove away, with a far heavier heart than he had carried from the porch of the cottage.
“I must have called a wrong witness,” muttered he, “there’s no doubt of it; she belonged to ‘the other side.’”
XXIII. MALONE IN GOOD COMPANY
When Georgina returned to the drawing-room, she found her sister seated on a sofa, with Sir Within beside her, and in front of them stood a girl, whose appearance certainly answered ill to the high-flown descriptions Sir Gervais had given them of her beauty.
With the evident intention of making a favourable first impression, her grandfather had dressed her up in some faded relics of Mrs. Luttrel’s wardrobe: a blue silk dress, flounced and trimmed, reaching to her feet, while a bonnet of some extinct shape shadowed her face and concealed her hair, and a pair of satin boots, so large that they curved up, Turkish fashion, towards the toes, gave her the look rather of some wandering circus performer, than of a peasant child.
“Je la trouve affreusement laide!” said Lady Vyner, as her sister came forward and examined herewith a quiet and steady stare through her eye-glass.
“She is certainly nothing like the sketch he made, and still less like the description he gave of her,” said Georgina, in French. “What do you say, Sir Within?”
“There is something--not exactly beauty--about her,” said he, in the same language, “but something that, cultivated and developed, might possibly be attractive. Her eyes have a strange colour in them: they are grey, but they are of that grey that gets a tinge of amethyst when excited.”
While they thus spoke, the girl had turned from one to the other, listening attentively, and as eagerly watching the expressions of the listeners’ faces, to gather what she might of their meaning.
“Your name is Kitty--Kitty O’Hara, I think?” said Lady Vyner. “A very good name, too, is O’Hara!”
“Yes, my Lady. There is an O’Hara lives at Craig-na-Manna, in his own castle.”
“Are you related to him?” asked Georgina, gravely.
“No, my Lady.”
“Distantly, perhaps, you might be?”
“Perhaps we might; at all events, he never said so!”
“And you think, probably, it was more for him to own the relationship than for you to claim it?”
The girl was silent, and looked thoughtful; and Lady Vyner said, “I don’t think she understood you, Georgy?”
“Yes I did, my Lady; but I didn’t know what to say.”
“At all events,” said Georgina, “you don’t call each other cousins.”
The child nodded.
“And yet, Kitty, if I don’t mistake greatly, you’d like well enough to have some grand relations--fine, rich people living in their own great castle?”
“Yes, I’d like that!” said the girl. And her cheek glowed, while her eyes deepened into the colour the old Baronet described.
“And if we were to be to you as these same cousins, Batty,” said Lady Vyner, good naturedly, “do you think you could love us, and be happy with us?”
The girl turned her head and surveyed the room with a quiet leisurely look, and, though it was full of objects new and strange, she did not let her gaze dwell too long on any one in particular; and, in a quiet, steady tone, said, “I’d like to live here!”
“Yes; but you have only answered half of her Ladyship’s question,” said Sir Within. “She asked, ‘Could you love her?’”
The girl turned her eyes full on Georgina, and, after a steady stare, she looked in Lady Vyner’s face, and said, “I could love you!” The emphasis plainly indicating what she meant.
“I think there can be very little mistake there,” said Georgina, in French. “I, at least, have not captivated her at first sight.”
“Ma foi, she is more savage than I thought her,” said Sir Within, in the same language.
“No,” said she, quickly catching, at the sound of the word, “I am not a savage!” And there was a fierce energy in the way she spoke actually startling.
“My dear child,” said he, gently, “I did not call you so.”
“And if he had,” interposed Miss Courtenay, “gentlemen are not accustomed to be rebuked by such as you!”
The girl’s face grew scarlet; she clenched her hands together, and the joints cracked as the fingers strained and twisted in her grasp.
“You have much to learn, Kitty,” said Lady Vyner; “but if you are a good child, gentle and obedient, we will try and teach you.”
The child curtseyed her thanks.
“Take off that odious bonnet, Georgy, and let us see her better.”
The girl stared with amazement at hearing her head-dress so criticised, and followed it with her eyes wistfully.
“Yes; she is much better now.”
“What splendid hair!” said Sir Within, in French.
“You have got pretty hair, he says,” said Georgina.
“This is prettier,” said the child, as she lifted the amber beads of her necklace and displayed them proudly.
“They are very pretty too, and real amber.”
“Amber and gold,” said the girl, proudly.
“Now she looks like the picture of her,” said Lady Vyner, in French; “she positively is pretty. The horrid dress disfigured her altogether.”
Sir Gervais entered the room hastily at this moment, and whispered a few words in his wife’s ear, concluding aloud: “Let her go to Ada; she is in the garden. You can go this way, Kitty,” said he, opening one of the French windows; “cross over the grass to that little wooden gate yonder, and the path will bring you to the garden. You’ll find a young lady there, who would like to know you.”
“May I have my bonnet?” asked she, wistfully.
“No; go without it. You’ll be freer!”
“I must ask you to let me show you this old man. He has submitted me to a cross-examination so sharp and searching for the last half-hour, that I really want a little rest.”
Whatever absurdity the pretension of dress had thrown around the girl, nothing of the same kind was observable in the appearance of the old man, who, in his long coat of bluish grey frieze, and with his snow-white hair falling on his shoulders, stood before them. His air, too, was thoroughly respectful; but neither abashed by the presence in which he found himself, nor, stranger still for an Irish peasant, at all excited to any show, of curiosity by the rich objects about.
“Well, Malone,” said Vyner, with the frank familiar tone that so well became him, “I believe we have now gone over everything that we have to say to each other, and, at all events, as you will stop here today----”
“No, your honour; with your honour’s leave, I’ll go off now. It’s best for the child, and, indeed, for myself!” And a heavy sigh followed the last word.
“You are afraid, then, she will fret after you,” said Georgina, fixing a full and steady gaze on the old man’s face.
“She might, my Lady,” said he, calmly.
“Nothing more natural; who would blame her?” broke in Lady Vyner. “But might it not be as well for you to wait and see how she likes her new life here?”
“She is sure to like it, my Lady.”
“I suspect she is!” said Georgina, quickly. And the old man turned and looked at her with a keen, sharp glance; it almost seemed to ask, “How do you know this?”
Vyner broke the somewhat awkward pause that ensued, by saying, “As I shall be your landlord, Malone, in a few days, you will have many opportunities of communicating with me, and I am sure, until your granddaughter can write with her own hand, either of these ladies will be kind enough to send you news of her.”
The old man made a gesture of gratitude, and stood still without speaking. At length he sighed deeply, and seemed engaged in some process of recollection, for he counted over to himself something, marking each event on his fingers.
“I do think, Malone,” said Vyner, with much kindness of voice and manner, “it would be well to remain here to-day at least. You yourself will go back more satisfied as you see in what sort of place and with what people you have left your child.”
“No, thank your honour; I’ll go this morning. It is best. There’s only one thing more I have to say, but to be sure it’s the great one of all.”
“Then it is a matter of money,” said Georgina, in a low tone; but low as it was the old fellow, who often affected deafness, caught it at once, and with a look of great resentment fixed his eyes on her.
“I half suspect,” said Vyner, “we have not forgotten anything. I have told you how she will be treated and looked on, how educated and cared for.”
“And how dressed,” added Lady Vyner.
“I have, so far as I know, too, provided for the contingency of her wishing to return home again, or for such a wish on the part of her friends; and I have satisfied you that her opinions in matters of religion shall be respected, and that she shall have, whenever it is possible, the advantage of conferring with a priest of her own Church. Now, do you remember anything else we ought to take into account?”
“Yes, your honour,” said the old man, resolutely. “I want to know, if it was to happen, from any rayson, that your honour or the ladies wished to send her back again, after she was, maybe, two years or three years here, when she was accustomed to be treated like a lady, and felt like one--I want to know where she’s to go, or who to?”
“There is much good sense in that question,” said Sir Within, in French; and he now arose to look closer at the old countryman.
“I think, Malone, we have already provided for that.”
“No, your honour. You said how it would be if Kitty wanted to go back herself, or if I sent for her; and how, too, it would be if, when she was grown up and fit to be married, that she ought to have consent from your honour, or the guardians that your honour wud give her in charge to. But now I want to know how it would be if, after the child was used to fine ways of livin’, she was to be sent away--without any fault of hers, maybe, but just because--no matter for what rayson”--here his eyes glanced rapidly at Georgina--“I’d like to ax, what’s to become of her then?”
“I scarcely think we can go so far as to provide for every casualty in life; but it will perhaps satisfy you to know that she’ll have two guardians to watch over her interests. One of them is this gentleman here.”
“And who’s the other?” asked Malone, curiously.
“The other? The other is not yet formally declared, but you will be fully satisfied with him, that much I guarantee.”
Malone did not give much attention to this speech, his whole interest seeming now to concentrate in the person of him who was to be the girl’s guardian.
“Is your honour married?” asked he at length of Sir Within.
“I have not that happiness,” said the old diplomatist, with a grace of manner that he might have displayed to a sovereign.
“There it is again,” sighed Malone; “she’ll have nowhere to go to if she’s turned out. Has his honour a house near this?”
“Yes. I shall be happy to show it to you,” said Sir Within, politely.
“I declare, Malone, if I’m ever in want of a guardian, I’ll look you up. I never heard of your equal in foresight,” said Georgina, laughing.
“Wouldn’t I need to be, my Lady? Who has the child to look to barrin’ myself? And maybe, then, she wouldn’t have even me. I’m seventy-eight last April; and his honour there isn’t very young either.”
“Trop vrai, ma foi,” said Sir Within, trying to laugh gaily, but reddening to his forehead as he turned away.
“You must have more patience than I, Gervais, to prolong this discussion,” said Georgina, angrily. “I vow I’d anticipate the old man’s objection, and pack them off both together this very morning.”
Every syllable of this was overheard by Malone, though he affected not to hear it, and stood a perfect picture of immobility.
Sir Gervais, who up to this was rather amused by the casuistical turn of the peasant’s mind, now seemed rather to lose temper, and said, “Such an arrangement as we contemplated, Malone, requires a little exercise of good faith on both sides; if you believe that you cannot extend that trust in us so far as we expect from you, I really think the best and easiest way would be to do as this young lady says--end our contract at once.”
Not in the least startled by the peremptory tone which Vyner had now for the first time used towards him, the old man folded his hands with an air of resignation, and stood without uttering a word.
“Did you hear what Sir Gerrais said to you?” asked Georgina, after a pause of some seconds. “Yes, my Lady.”
“And what answer have you to make?” asked she again, more imperatively.
“‘Tis your Ladyship is right,” began Malone, in a voice greatly subdued, and with almost a slight whining intonation through it; “‘tis your Ladyship is right. His honour is too good and too patient with me. But what am I but a poor ignorant labourin’ man, that never had any edication nor larnin’ at all? And if I be thinkin’ of more than I ought, it’s because I know no better.”
“Well, what will you do?” said Vyner, hastily, for there was a servility in the man’s manner that revolted him, and he was impatient to conclude.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if your honour lets me,” said Malone, resolutely, “I’ll go and speak to Kitty. She’s cute enough, young as she is, and whatever she says I’ll abide by.”
“Do so; take your own way altogether, my good man; and be assured that whichever decision you come to will not in any degree affect our future dealings together.”
“That is, your honour won’t turn me out of my houldin’.”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“He never suspected you would,” said Georgina, but in a very cautious whisper, which this time escaped Malone.
“I’ll not be ten minutes, your honour,” said he, as he moved towards the door.
“Take as much time as you please.”
“He’ll not part with her, I see that,” said Lady Vyner, as the man withdrew.
Georgina gave a saucy laugh, and said, “He never so much as dreamed of taking her away; his whole mind was bent upon a hard bargain; and now that he has got the best terms he could, he’ll close the contract.”
“You don’t believe too implicitly in humanity,” said Sir Within, smiling.
“I believe in men only when they are gentlemen,” said she; and there was a very gracious glance as she spoke, which totally effaced all unpleasant memory of the past.
XXIV. A QUIET TALK IN A GARDEN
Much as the magnificence and comfort in-doors had astonished Malone, he was far more captivated by the beauty of the garden. Here were a vast variety of objects which he could thoroughly appreciate. The luxuriant vegetation, the fruit-trees bending under their fruit, the proffusion of rare and rich flowers, the trim order of the whole, that neatness which the inexperienced eye has seldom beheld, nor can, even when seeing, credit, struck him at every step; and then there were plants utterly new and strange to him--pines and pomegranates, and enormous gourds, streaked and variegated in gorgeous colours, and over and through all a certain pervading odour that distilled a sense of drowsy enjoyment very captivating. Never, perhaps, in his whole life, had he so fully brought home to him the glorious prerogative of wealth, that marvellous power that culls from life, one by one, every attribute that is pleasure-giving, and surrounds daily existence with whatever can charm or beguile.
When he heard from the gardener that Sir Gervais seldom or never came there, he almost started, and some vague and shadowy doubt shot across his mind that rich men might not be so triumphantly blessed as he had just believed them.
“Sure,” he muttered, “if he doesn’t see this he can’t enjoy it, and if he sees it so often that he doesn’t mind, it’s the same thing. I wondher, now, would that be possible, and would there ever come a time to myself when I wouldn’t think this was Paradise.”
He was musing in this wise, when a merry burst of childish laughter startled him, and at the same instant a little girl bounded over a melon-frame and ran towards him. He drew aside, and took off his hat with respectful deference, when suddenly the child stopped, and burst into a ringing laugh, as she said, “Why, grandfather, don’t you know me?”
Nor even then did he know her, such a marvellous change had been wrought in her by one of Ada’s dresses, and a blue ribbon that fastened her hair behind, and fell floating down her back with the rich golden tresses.
“Sure it isn’t Kitty?” cried he, shading his eyes with his hand.
“And why wouldn’t it be Kitty?” replied she, tartly, and piqued that her own attractions were not above all adventitious aid. “Is it a white frock makes me so grand that ye wouldn’t know me again?”
“May I never,” cried he, “but I thought you was a young lady.”
“Well, and what’s the differ, I wonder? If I look like one, couldn’t I be one?”
“Ay, and do it well, too!” said he, while his eyes glistened with a look of triumph. “Come here, Kitty, darlin’,” said he, taking her hand, and leading her along at his side, “I want to spake a word to you. Now, Kitty, though you’re only a child, as one may say, you’ve more wit in your head nor many a grown woman, and if you hadn’t, it’s the heavy heart I’d have this day leavin’ you among strangers.”
“Don’t fret about that, grandfather; it’s an elegant fine place to be in. Wait till I show you the dairy, that’s grander inside than ever I seen a house in Ireland; and if you saw the cowhouse, the beasts has straps with buckles round their necks, and boords under their feet, just like Christians, only betther.”
“A long sight betther nor Christians!” muttered he, half savagely. Then recovering, he went on: “You see, here’s how it is. ‘Twas out of a ‘conceit’--a sort of fancy--they took you, and out of the same, my honey, they may leave you some fine mornin’ when you’ve got ways that would be hard to give up, and used to twenty things you couldn’t do without; and I was tellin’ them that, and askin’ how it would be if that day was to come?”
“Ah,” cried she, with an impatient toss of her head, “I wish you hadn’t put such thoughts into their heads at all. Sure, ain’t I here now? Haven’t they tuk me away from my home, and where would I go if they turned me out? You want to make it asy for them, grandfather, isn’t that it?”
“Faix, I believe you’re right, Kitty.”
“Sure, I know I am. And why would they send me away if I didn’t displase them, and you’ll see that I’ll not do that.”
“Are you sure and certain of that?”
“As sure as I’m here. Don’t fret about it, grandfather.”
“Ay, but darlin’, what will plase one wouldn’t, may be, be plasin’ to another; there’s the mistress and her sister--and they’re not a bit like each other--and there’s the master and that ould man with the goold chain round his neck--he’s your guardian.”
“Oh, is he?” cried she; “see what he gave me--he took it off his watch-chain. He said, ‘There’s a little sweetheart for you.’” And she drew from her bosom her handkerchief, in which she had carefully rolled up a small figure of a man in armour, of fine gold and delicate workmanship. “And the little girl here--Ada, they call her--tells me that he is far richer than her papa, and has a house ten times grander.”
“That’s lucky, anyhow,” said the old man, musing. “Well, honey, when I found that I couldn’t do any better, I said I’d go and talk to yourself, and see whether you were set upon stayin’ with all your heart, or if you’d like to go back again.”
“Is it back to Derryvaragh?”
“Yes; where else?”
“Catch me at it, Peter Malone, that’s all! Catch me goin’ to eat potatoes and lie on straw, work in the fields and go barefoot, when I can be a lady, and have everything I can think of.”
“I wonder will ye ever larn it?”
“Larn what?”
“To be a lady--I mane a raal lady--that nobody, no matter how cute they were, could find you out.”
“Give me two years, Peter Malone, just two years--maybe not so much, but I’d like to be sure--and if I don’t, I’ll promise you to go back to. Derryvaragh, and never lave it again.”
“Faix, I think you’d win!”
“Sure, I know it.”
And there was a fierce energy in her look that said far more than her words.
“Oh, Kitty, darlin’, I wondher will I live to see it?”
Apparently, this consummation was not which held chief sway over her mind, for she was now busy making a wreath of flowers for her head.
“Won’t the gardener be angry, darlin’, at your pluckin’ the roses and the big pinks?”
“Let him, if he dare. Miss Ada told him a while ago that I was to go everywhere, and take anything just like herself; and I can eat the fruit, the apples, and the pears, and the grapes that you see there, but I wouldn’t because Ada didn’t,” said she, gravely.
“You’ll do, Kitty--you’ll do,” said the old man; and his eyes swam with tears of affection and joy.
“You begin to think so now, grandfather,” said she, archly.
“And so I may go in now and tell them that you’ll stay.”
“You may go in, Peter Malone, and tell them that I won’t go, and that’s better.”
The old man stepped back, and, turning her round full in front of him, stood in wondering admiration of her for some seconds.
“Well?” said she, pertly, as if interrogating his opinion of her--“well?”
But his emotion was too strong for words, and the heavy tears coursed after each other down his wrinkled cheeks.
“It’s harder for me to leave you, Kitty, darlin’, than I thought it would be, and I know, too, I’ll feel it worse when I go back.”
“No you won’t, grandfather,” said she, caressingly. “You’ll be thinking of me and the fine life I’m leadin’ here, and the fine times that’s before me.”
“Do you think so, honey?” asked he, in a half-sobbing tone--“do you think so?”
“I know it, grandfather--I know it, so don’t cry any more; and, whenever your heart is low, just think of what’s coming. That’s what I do. I always begin to think of what’s coming!”
“And when that time comes, Kitty ‘Alannah,’ will you ever renumber yer ould grandfather, who won’t be to ‘the fore’ to see it?”
“And why won’t he be?”
“Because, darlin’, I’m nigh eighty years of age, and I can’t expect to see above a year or two, at farthest. Come here, and give me a kiss, ma Cushleen! and cut off a bit of your hair for me to have as a keepsake, and put next my heart in my coffin.”
“No, grandfather; take this, it will do as well”--and she handed him the little golden trinket--“for I can’t cut my hair, after hearin’ the gentlemen sayin’ how beautiful it is!”
The old man, however, motioned away the gift with one hand, while he drew the other across his eyes.
“Is there anything you think of now, Kitty,” said he, with an effort to appear calm, “for I must be goin’?”
“Give my love to them all beyant,” said she, gravely, “and say if there’s a thing I could do for them, I’ll do it, but don’t let them be comin’ after me!”
A sickly paleness spread over the old man’s face, and his lips trembled as he muttered, “No fear of that! They’ll not trouble you! Good-by!” And he stooped and kissed her.
When he had walked a few paces away, he turned, and, with hands fervently clasped above his head, uttered a blessing in Irish.
“God speed you, grandfather, and send you safe home!” cried she. And, skipping over a flower-bed, was lost to his view, though he could hear her happy voice as she went away singing.
“The devil a doubt of it,” muttered the old man, “them’s the ones that bate the world; and, if she doesn’t come in first in the race, by my soule, it isn’t the weight of her heart will keep her back!”
“Well, Malone!” cried Sir Gervais, as they met at the garden-gate, “have you been able to make up your mind?”
“Yes, your honour; Kitty says she’ll stay.” Sir Gervais paused for a moment, then said:
“Because we have been talking the matter over amongst ourselves, Malone, and we have thought that, as possibly your expectations might be greater than were likely to be realised, our best way might be to make you some compensation for all the trouble we have given you, and part the same good friends that we met. I therefore came to say, that if you like your present holding, that little farm----”
“No, your honour, no,” broke he in, eagerly; “her heart’s in the place now, and it would be as much as her life’s worth to tear her away from it.”
“If that be so, there’s no more to be said; but remember, that we gave you a choice, and you took it.”
“What does he mean to do?” asked Georgina, as she now came up the path.
“To leave her here,” answered Vyner.
“Of course. I never had a doubt of it. My good man, I’m much mistaken if your granddaughter and I will not understand each other very quickly. What do you think?”
“It is little trouble it will give your Ladyship to know all that’s inside a poor ignorant little child like that!” said he, with an intense servility of manner. “But her heart is true, and her conscience clean, and I’m lavin’ you as good a child as ever broke bread this day!”
“So that if the tree doesn’t bear the fruit it ought, the blame will lie with the gardener; isn’t that what you mean?” asked she, keenly.
“God help me! I’m only a poor man, and your Ladyship is too hard on me,” said he, uncovering his snow-white head, and bowing deeply and humbly.
“After all,” whispered she in Vyner’s ear, “there has really been nothing determined about the matter in dispute. None of us know what is to be done, if the contingency he spoke of should arise.”
They walked away, arm in arm, in close conference together, but when they returned, after a half-hour or so, to the place, Malone was gone. The porter said he had come to the lodge for his bundle, wished him a good-by, and departed.
XXV. THE TWO PUPILS
Days went over, and the time arrived for the Vyners to leave their Welsh cottage and take up their abode for the winter in their more commodious old family house, when a letter came from Rome stating that Lady Vyner’s mother, Mrs. Courtenay, was very ill there, and begging to see her daughters as soon as might be.
After considerable debate, it was resolved that the children should be left behind with the governess, Sir Within pledging himself to watch over them most attentively, and send constant reports of Ada to her family. Mademoiselle Heinzleman had already spoken very favourably of Kitty, or Kate, as she was henceforth to be called; not only of her disposition and temper, but of her capacity and her intense desire to learn, and the Vyners now deemed her presence a most fortunate event. Nor were they so far wrong. Ada was in every quality of gentleness and obedience all that the most anxious love could ask: she had the traits--very distinctive traits are they, too--of those who have been from earliest infancy only conversant with one school of manners, and that the best. All the examples she had seen were such as teach habits of deference, the wish to oblige, the readiness to postpone self-interest, and a general disposition to please without obtrusiveness--ways which spread a very enjoyable atmosphere over daily life, and gild the current of existence to those with whom the stream runs smoothly.
She was a very pretty child too. She had eyes of deep blue, which seemed deeper for their long black lashes; her hair was of that rich auburn which sets off a fair skin to greatest advantage; her profile was almost faultless in regularity, and so would have been her full face if an over-shortness of the upper lip had not marred the effect by giving a habit of slightly separating the lips when silent, and thus imparting a look of weakness to her features which the well-formed brow and forehead contradicted.
She was clever, but more timid than clever, and with such a distrust of her ability as to make her abashed at the slightest demand upon it. This timidity had been deepened by solitude--she being an only child--into something like melancholy, and her temperament when Kate O’Hara first came was certainly sad-coloured.
It was like the working of a charm, the change which now came over her whole nature. Not merely that emulation had taken the place of indolence, and zeal usurped the post of apathy, but she became active, lively, and energetic. The occupations which had used to weary became interesting, and instead of the lassitude that had weighed her down she seemed to feel a zest and enjoyment in the mere fact of existence. And it is probably the very nearest approach to happiness of which our life here below is capable, when the sunshine of the outer world is felt within our own hearts, and we are glad with the gladness of all around us.
Mademoiselle Heinzleman’s great test of all goodness was assiduity. In her appreciation all the cardinal virtues resolved themselves into industry, and she was inclined to believe that heaven itself might be achieved by early rising and hard work. If she was greatly gratified, then, at the change produced in her pupil, she was proportionately grateful to the cause of it. But Kate had other qualities which soon attracted the governess and drew her towards her. She possessed that intense thirst for knowledge, so marked a trait in the Irish peasant-nature. She had that sense of power so associated with acquirement as the strongest feature in her character, and in this way she had not--at least she seemed not to have--a predilection for this study or for that; all was new, fascinating, and engaging.
It was as with Aladdin in the mine, all were gems, and she gathered without thinking of their value; so did she pursue with the same eagerness whatever was to be learned. What will not industry, with even moderate capacity, achieve? But hers were faculties of a high order; she had a rapid perception, considerable reasoning power, and a good memory; but above all was the ability she possessed of concentrating her whole thoughts upon the matter before her.
She delighted, too, in praise; not the common eulogy that she had learned this or that well, but such praise as pointed to some future eminence as the price of all this labour; and when her governess told her of a time when she would be so glad to possess this acquirement, or to have mastered that difficulty, she would draw herself up, and with head erect and flashing eye, look a perfect picture of gratified pride.
It would have been difficult for a teacher not to feel pride in such a pupil. It was such a reflected triumph to see how rapidly she could master every task, how easily she met every difficulty; and so it was that the governess, in her report, though laying all due stress on Ada’s charming traits of disposition and temper, speaking actually with affection of her guileless, gentle nature, grew almost rapturous when she spoke of Kate’s capacity and progress. She went into the theme with ardour, and was carried away by it much more than she knew or imagined. It was a sort of defence of herself she was making, all unconsciously--a defence of her system, which, as applied to Ada, had not been always a success. This correspondence was invariably carried on with Miss Courtenay, who, for some time, contented herself with merely dwelling on what related to her niece, and only passingly, if at all, spoke of Kate.
At last, pushed, as it were, by Mademoiselle Heinzleman’s insistance, and vexed at a pertinacity which no silence could repress, she wrote a letter, so full of reprimand that the governess was actually overwhelmed as she read it.
“I have your four last letters before me,” wrote she, “and it would be difficult for a stranger on reading them to declare which of the two pupils under your care was your especial charge, and which a merely adventitious element. Not so if the question were to be, Which of the two engrossed all your interest and engaged all your sympathy? We read, it is true, of dear Ada’s temper, her kindness, her generosity, and her gentleness--traits which we all recognise, and many of which, we surmise, must have been sorely tried, but of which you can speak with a most fitting and scholastic moderation. Far otherwise, however, does your pen run on when Kate O’Hara is the theme. You are not, perhaps, aware that you are actually eloquent on thia subject. You never weary of telling us of her marvellous progress; how she already begins to speak French; how she imitates those mysterious pothooks your countrymen persist in using as writing; how she plays her scales, and what a talent she has for drawing. Do you forget the while that these are very secondary matters of interest to us all here? Do you forget that in her companionship with my niece our whole object was the spring which might be derived from her healthy peasant-nature and light-heartedness? To convert this child into a miracle of accomplishment could serve no purpose of ours, and assuredly would conduce to no advantage of her own. On this latter point you have only to ask yourself, What will become of all these attainments when she goes back--as she will go back--to her life of poverty and privation? Will her piano make her better company for the pig? Will her French reconcile her to the miseries of a mud cabin?
“She is the child of a poor cottier, a creature so humble that even here in this benighted State we have nothing his equal in indigence; and she will one day or other have to go back to the condition that my brother, with I fear a very mistaken kindness, took her from. You will see, therefore, how misjudging is the interest you are now bestowing. It is, however, the injustice to my niece which more nearly concerns me; and with this object I inform you that if I am not satisfied as to the total change in your system, I shall certainly be prepared to recommend to my brother one of two courses: a change in Ada’s governess, or the dismissal of Ada’s companion. It is but fair to you to say I prefer the latter.
“Remember, my dear Mademoiselle Heinzleman, this is a purely confidential communication. I have not confided to my sister either my fears or my hopes. The experiment was one I did not augur well from. It has turned out even worse than I expected. Indeed, if Ada was not the very best and sweetest of natures, she could not but resent the unfair preference shown to one so inferior to her in all but those traits which win favour from a schoolmistress. My mother’s health precludes all hope of our soon returning to England; indeed, we have even thought of sending for Ada to come here, and it is the dread of this climate, so pernicious to young people, offers the chief obstacle to the plan. Meanwhile, I feel forced to write what I have done, and to lay before you in all sincerity my complaint and its remedy.
“Evening.
“I have re-read your letter, and it seems to me that you might very judiciously remark yourself to Sir Gervais on the inexpediency of any continuance of Kate O’Hara’s presence. Her genius, soaring as it does above poor Ada’s, makes all emulation impossible. The pilot balloon, that is so soon out of sight, can offer no guidance--don’t forget that! Suppose you said to my brother that there was no longer any necessity to continue the stimulus of emulation--that it might become a rivalry--perhaps worse. Say something--anything of this kind--only send her home again, not forgetting the while that you can do now without injury what, later on, will cost a cruelty.
“I can feel for the pain a teacher may experience in parting with a prize pupil, whose proficiency might one day become a triumph; but remember, my dear Mademoiselle, that poor, dear, simple Ada, to whom genius is denied, is, or ought to be, your first care here, and that the gifted peasant-girl might turn out to have other qualities of a firework besides the brilliancy.
“I will, so fer as in me lies, relieve you from some of the embarrassments that the course I advise might provoke. I will request my brother to desire Mr. M’Kinlay to run down and pay you a few hours’ visit, and you can easily explain the situation to him, and suggest what I here point out as the remedy.
“Of course, it is needless to repeat this letter is strictly and essentially confidential, and not to be imparted to any one.
“I might have counselled you to have taken the advice of Sir Within Wardle, of whose kindness and attention we are most sensible, if you had not told me of the extraordinary ‘influence’--it is your own word, Mademoiselle, or I should not even have ventured to use it in such connexion--‘the influence’ this young girl exercises over Sir Within. As the observation so completely passes my power of comprehension, for I really--and I hope without needless stupidity--cannot understand how a girl of her class, bringing up, and age--age, above all--could exert what you designate as ‘influence’--I must beg you will be more explicit in your next.
“You are perfectly right in refusing all presents for either of the girls, and I should have thought Sir Within had more tact than to proffer them. I am also very much against you going to Dalradern Castle for Christmas, though Sir Gervais, up to this, does not agree with me. If this girl should not be sent away before the new year, I think you might advantageously remark to my brother that the visit would be a great interruption to all study, and a serious breach of that home discipline it has been your object to impose. And now, my dear Mademoiselle, accept all I have here said not only in your confidence, but in your friendship, and even where I appear to you nervously alive to small perils, give me credit for having thought and reflected much over them before I inflicted on you this long letter.
“Discourage your prodigy, check her influence, and believe me, very sincerely your friend,
“Georgina Courtenay.
“P.S.--What can Sir W. mean by passing his winter in the Welsh mountains, after giving orders to have his villa near Genoa prepared for his reception? Find out this, particularly if there be a secret in it.”
Mademoiselle Heinzleman received this letter as she was taking her half-hour’s walk in the garden after breakfast--one of the very few recreations she indulged in--while her pupils prepared their books and papers for the day.
Anything like remonstrance was so totally new to her, that she read the letter with a mingled amazement and anger, and, though she read and re-read, in the hope of finding her first impression was an exaggerated one, the truth was that each perusal only deepened the impression, and made the pain more intense.
It was not that her German pride only was wounded, but her dignity as a teacher--just as national an instinct as the pride of birth--and she muttered very mysterious gutturals to herself, as she went, about resigning her trust and retiring. This was, perhaps, too rash a step; at least, it required time to think of. Two hundred a year, and a position surrounded with many advantages! The other alternative was easier to send away Kate. A pity, perhaps, but, after all, as Miss Courtenay said, possibly a mercy. Who could tell? Mr. M’Kinlay might help her by his counsel. She liked him, and thought well of him. Kate, that was making such progress--that could already make out some of Schiller’s ballads! What a pity it was! And to think of her touch on the piano, so firm and yet so delicate! How tenderly she let the notes drop in one of those simple melodies from Spohr she was learning! Ach Gott! and what taste in drawing!
Again she opened the letter, and at the last page muttered to herself: “I don’t remember that I said ‘influence.’ I’m almost sure I said that she interested Sir Within. I know I meant to say that she pleased him; that he was delighted to hear her sing her little Lied, dance her Tarantella, or her wild Irish jig, or listen to some of those strange legends, which she tells with a blended seriousness and drollery that is quite captivating. At all events, if I said ‘influence,’ I can correct the word, and say that Sir Within comes over to see us two or three times a week, and it is plain enough that it is little Kate’s gaiety attracts him. What sorrow to the dear children if they are not to pass their Christmas at the Castle!”
A light, elastic step on the gravel startled her. It was Kate who was coming; not the Kate we once saw in the old ruins of St. Finbar, but a young lady, with an air calm and collected, with some conscious sense of power, her head high, her look assured, her step firm even in its lightness.
“Sir Within is in the drawing-room, Mademoiselle,” said she, with a slight curtsey, as she stood before her. “He says that this is St. Gudule’s day, and a holiday everywhere, and he hopes you will be kind enough to take us over to the Castle for dinner.”
“Nein! No,” said she, peremptorily. “‘Wir haben keine solche Heilige,’ I mean,” said she, correcting the harsh speech. “These saints are not in our calendar. I will speak to him myself. You may stay in the garden for a quarter of an hour. I will send Ada to you.”
While the young girl fell back, abashed at the refusal, and even more by the manner with which it was done, the governess smoothed her brow as well as she might to meet the distinguished visitor, but in so doing, as she drew her handkerchief from her pocket, she dropped the letter she had been reading on the walk.
“I wonder why she is so cross with me?” said Kate, as she looked after her; “if there’s a secret in it, I must learn it.”
While Kate O’Hara sauntered carelessly along her foot struck the letter, and it fell open. She stooped and picked it up, and was at once struck by the peculiar odour of jasmine on the paper, which was a favourite with Miss Courtenay. She turned to the address, “Mademoiselle de Heinzleman”--the de, too, was a courtesy Miss Courtenay affected--and so Kate stood still contemplating the document, and weighing it in her hand, as she muttered, “It does really feel heavy enough to be mischievous.” Her training had taught her to respect as inviolable the letter of another; she had over and over marked the deference paid to a seal, and seen even Ada’s letters from her playfellows handed to her unbroken, and she knew that to transgress in such a matter ranked in morals with a falsehood. She had no thought, then, of any dereliction, when in placing the fallen pages together within the envelope, her eye caught the words “Kitty O’Hara,” and lower down, “child of a poor cottier.” The temptation, stimulated by a passion fell as strong as curiosity, mastered her, and carrying away the letter into a secluded alley, she read it from end to end. There was much to gratify her vanity in it; there was the admission--and from no favouring witness either--that she had capacity of a high order, and a zeal to master whatever she desired to learn. But far above the pleasure these words afforded was the last paragraph, that which spoke of her “influence” over Sir Within Wardle. “Could this really be true? Had the little attentions he showed her a deeper significance? Did he really interest himself for her? Was it her lonely, friendless condition touched him? Was it that the same feeling, so harshly expressed by Miss Courtenay, the revulsion that yet awaited her, that moved him?” There was an ecstasy in the thought that filled her whole heart with joy. Sir Within was very rich--a great personage, too. The Vyners themselves spoke of him always with a certain deference. What a triumph if she had won him over to befriend her!
These thoughts flew quickly through her mind, and as quickly she bethought her of the letter, and what was now to be done with it. She would have liked much to keep it, to have it by her to read and re-read, and study, and weigh. This was of course impossible. To take it to Mademoiselle would be to incur the risk of her suspecting she had read it. In an instant, she determined to lay it back again where she had found it, on the walk, and let chance determine what became of it. Her resolution was scarcely carried out, when she heard Mademoiselle Heinzleman’s voice calling her.
“I have dropped a letter, Kate. I have mislaid it, or it has fallen out of my pocket. Come and help me to look for it,” said she, in deep confusion.
“Is this it, Mademoiselle?” said Kitty, artlessly, as she picked it up from the gravel.
“How lucky--how very fortunate!” exclaimed she, eagerly, as she clutched it. “There, you may have your holiday to-day, Kate. Go and tell Ada I shall not ask her to learn those verses; or wait”--she suddenly remembered that Sir Within was still in the drawing-room--“wait here, and I’ll tell her myself.”
Kate bowed, and smiled her thanks, and, once again alone, sat down to ruminate an her fortune.