L. TWO OF A TRADE
Whether an uneasy consciousness that he might not be able to display a proper spirit of connoisseurship before that bland, soft-spoken domestic who accompanied him through the picture-gallery, and who, doubtless, had enjoyed various opportunities of imbibing critical notions on art, disposed Mr. O’Rorke--or whether he deemed that his own enjoyment of the splendour would be higher if unwitnessed, is not given to us to pronounce; but so it was, that he dismissed his guide very soon, and declared that he preferred to ramble about quite alone. The well-trained servant bowed and withdrew, and Mr. O’Rorke was left to revel at will amidst the magnificence of Dalradern.
There were art treasures there to have fixed the attention and captivated the gaze of more cultivated admirers; but these attracted less of his notice than the splendid furniture, the inlaid tables, the richly-encrusted cabinets, the gorgeously gilded “consoles,” which, as he surveyed, he appraised, till he actually lost himself in the arithmetic of his valuation. Nor was this mere unprofitable speculation; far from it. Mr. O’Rorke was a most practical individual, and the point to which his calculation led him was this: How much depletion will all this plethora admit of? What amount of money may be a fair sum to extract from a man of such boundless wealth? “I’d have let him off for a hundred pounds,” said he to himself, “as I came up the avenue, and I wouldn’t take three now, to give him a receipt in full!” In the true spirit of a brigand, he estimated that his prisoner’s ransom should be assessed by the measure of his fortune.
Wandering on from room to room, still amazed at the extent and splendour he surveyed, he opened a door, and suddenly found himself in a large room brilliantly lighted, and with a table copiously covered with fruit and wine. As he stood, astonished at the sight, a voice cried out, “Holloa, whose that? What do you want?” And though O’Rorke would willingly have retreated, he was so much embarrassed by his intrusion that he could not move.
“Who the--are you?” cried out the voice again. And now O’Rorke perceived that a young man was half sitting, half lying in the recess of a very deep chair, beside the fire, with his legs resting on another chair. “I say,” cried he, again, “what brings you here?” And as it was young Ladarelle that spoke, the reader may possibly imagine that the tone was not over conciliatory.
Retreat was now out of the question, not to say that Mr. O’Rorke had regained his self-possession, and was once more assured and collected. Advancing, therefore, till he came in front of the other, he made his apologies for the accident of his intrusion, and explained how he happened to be there.
“And where’s the letter you say you brought?” broke in Ladarelle, hurriedly.
“I gave it to Sir Within Wardle; he has it now.”
“Where did it come from? Who wrote it?”
“It came from Ireland, and from a part of Ireland that, maybe, you never heard of.”
“And the writer--who was he?”
“That’s no business of mine,” said O’Rorke; but he contrived to give the words the significance that would mean, “Nor of yours either.”
“I think I can guess without your help, my worthy friend; and I have suspected it would come to this for many a day. What relation are you to her?”
“Your honour must explain yourself better, if you want a clear answer,” replied he, in some confusion.
“Don’t fence with me, my fine fellow. I’m more than your match at that game. I see the whole thing with half an eye. She wants to come back!”
As he said the last words he sat up straight in the chair, and darted a searching, stern look at the other.
“Faix, this is all riddles to me,” said O’Rorke, folding his hands, and looking his very utmost to seem like one puzzled and confused.
“What a-------fool you are,” cried Ladarelle, passionately, “not to see that you may as well tell me now, what, before two hours are over, I shall know for nothing; out with it, what was in the letter.”
“How can I tell what’s in a sealed letter,” said O’Rorke, sulkily, for he was not very patient under this mode of interrogation.
“You know who wrote it, at all events?”
“I’ll tell you what I know!” said O’Rorke, resolutely. “That I’ll not answer any more questions, and that I’ll leave this room now.”
As he turned towards the door, Ladarelle sprang up and said, “You mistake me, my good fellow, if you think I want all this for nothing. If you knew a little more of me, you’d see I was a pleasanter fellow to deal with than my old relation yonder. What is your name?”
“My name,” said he, with a sort of dogged pride--“my name is O’Rorke.”
“Timothy O’Rorke? Ain’t I right?”
“You are indeed, however you knew it.”
“You shall soon see. I have had a letter for you in my writing-desk for many a long day. ‘Timothy O’Rorke, Vinegar Hill, Cush--something or other, Ireland.’”
“And who wrote it, Sir?” said O’Rorke, approaching him, and speaking in a low, anxious voice.
“I’ll be more frank with you than you are with me. I’ll give you the letter, O’Rorke.”
“But tell me who wrote it?”
“One who was your well wisher, and who told me I might trust you.”
There was never a more puzzling reply than this, for Mr. O’Rorke well knew that there were few who thought well of him, and fewer who trusted him.
“Sit down. Take a glass of wine. Drink this.” And as he spoke he filled a large goblet with sherry.
O’Rorke drained it, and looked happier.
“Take another,” said Ladarelle, as he filled it out, and O’Rorke complied, smacking his lips with satisfaction as he finished.
“When you have read the letter I’ll give you this evening, O’Rorke, you’ll see that we are two men who will readily understand each other. My friend Grenfell said----”
“Was it Mr. Grenfell wrote it?” broke in O’Rorke.
“It was. You remember him, then? He was afraid you might have forgotten his name.”
“That’s what I never did yet.”
“All right, then. What he said was, ‘Show O’Rorke that you mean to deal liberally with him. Let him see that you don’t want to drive a hard bargain, and he’ll stand by you like a man.’”
“When he said that, he knew me well.”
“He said that you were a fine-hearted, plucky fellow, who had not the success he deserved in life.”
“And he said true; and he might have said that others made a stepping-stone of me, and left me to my fate when they passed over me!”
The door opened at this moment, and the bland butler announced that the “Gentleman’s supper was served.”
“Come in here, Mr. O’Rorke, when you have finished, and Til give you a cigar. I want to hear more about the snipe shooting,” said Ladarelle, carelessly; and, without noticing the other’s leave-takings, he returned to his easy-chair and his musings.
“I wonder which of the two is best to deal with,” muttered O’Rorke to himself, and on this text he speculated as he ate his meal. It was a very grand moment of his existence certainly: he was served on silver, fed by a French cook, and waited on by two servants--one being the black-coated gentleman, whose duty seemed to be in anticipating Mr. O’Rorke’s desires for food or drink, and whose marvellous instincts were never mistaken. “Port, always port,” said he, holding up his glass. “It is the wine that I generally drink at home.”
“This is Fourteen, Sir; and considered very good,” said the butler, obsequiously; for humble as the guest appeared, his master’s orders were to treat him with every deference and attention.
“Fourteen or fifteen, I don’t care which,” said O’Rorke, not aware to what the date referred; “but the wine pleases me, and I’ll have another bottle of it.”
He prolonged his beatitude till midnight, and though Mr. Fisk came twice to suggest that Mr. Ladarelle would like to see him, O’Rorke’s answer was, each time, “The day for business, the evening for relaxation; them’s my sentiments, young man.”
At last a more peremptory message arrived, that Mr. Ladarelle wanted him at once, and O’Rorke, with a promptitude that astonished the messenger, arose, and cooling his brow and bathing his temples with a wet napkin, seemed in an instant to restore himself to his habitual calm.
“Where is he?” asked he.
“In his dressing-room. I’ll show you the way,” said Fisk. “I don’t think you’ll find him in a pleasant humour, though. You’ve tried his patience a bit.”
“Not so easy to get speech of you, Mr. O’Rorke,” said Ladarelle, when they were alone. “This is about the third or fourth time I have sent to say I wanted you.”
“The port, Sir, the port! It was impossible to leave it. Indeed, I don’t know how I tore myself away at last.”
“It will be your own fault if you haven’t a bin of it in your cellar at home.”
“How so?”
“I mean that as this old place and all belonging to it must one day be mine, it will be no very difficult matter to me to recompense the man who has done me a service.”
“And are you the heir, Sir?” asked O’Rorke, for the first time his voice indicating a tone of deference.
“Yes, it all comes to me; but my old relative is bent on trying my patience. What would you say his age was?”
“He’s not far off eighty.”
“He wants six or seven years of it. Indeed, until the other day he did not look seventy. He broke down all at once.”
“That’s the way they all do,” said O’Rorke, sententiously.
“Yes, but now and then they make a rally, Master O’Rorke, and that’s what I don’t fancy; do you understand me?”
In the piercing look that accompanied these words there seemed no common significance, and O’Rorke, drawing closer to the speaker, dropped his voice to a mere whisper, and said, “Do you want to get rid of him?”
“I’d be much obliged to him if he would die,” said the other, with a laugh.
“Of course--of course--that’s what I mean,” said O’Rorke, who now began to suspect he was going too fast.
“I’ll be frank with you, O’Rorke, because I want you; but, first of all, there’s the letter I had for you.” And he pitched the document across the table.
O’Rorke drew the candle towards him, and perused the paper slowly and carefully..
“Well!” said Ladarelle, when he had finished--“well! what do you say to that?”
“I say two things to it,” said O’Rorke, calmly. “The first is, what am I to do? and the second is, what am I to get for it?”
“What you are to do is this: you are to serve my interests, and help me in every way in your power.”
“Am I to break the law?” burst in O’Rorke.
“No--at least, no very serious breach.”
“Nothing against that old man up there?” And he made a strange and significant gesture, implying violence.
“No, no, nothing of the kind. You don’t think me such a fool as to risk a halter out of mere impatience. I’ll run neither you nor myself into such danger as that. When I said you were to serve me, it was in such ways as a man may help another by zeal, activity, ready-wittedness, and now and then, perhaps, throwing overboard a few scruples, and proving his friendship by straining his conscience.”
“Well, I won’t haggle about that. My conscience is a mighty polite conscience, and never drops in on me without an invitation!”
“The man I want--the very man. Grenfell told me you were,” said
Ladarelle, taking his hand, and shaking it cordially. “Now let me see if you can be as frank with me as I have been with you, O’Rorke. What was this letter that you brought here this evening? Was it from her?”
“It was.”
“From herself--by her own hand?”
“By her own hand!”
“Are you perfectly sure of that?”
“I saw her write it.”
Ladarelle took a turn up and down the room after this without speaking. At last he broke out: “And this is the high spirit and the pride they’ve been cramming me with! This is the girl they affected to say would die of hunger rather than ask forgiveness!”
“And they knew her well that said it. It’s just what she’d do!”
“How can you say that now? Here she is begging to be taken back again!”
“Who says so?”
“Was not that the meaning of the letter?”
“It was not--the devil a bit of it! I know well what was in it, though I didn’t read it. It was to ask Sir Within Wardle to send her some money to pay for the defence of her grandfather, that’s to be tried for murder next Tuesday week. It nearly broke her heart to stoop to it, but I made her do it. She called it a shame and a disgrace, and the tears ran down her face; and, by my soul, it’s not a trifle would make the same young lady cry!”
“After all, the intention is to open a way to come back here?”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I suspect, Master O’Rorke, this is rather a pleasanter place to live in than the Arran Islands.”
“So it is; there’s no doubt of that! But she is young, and thinks more about her pride than her profit--not to say that she comes of a stock that’s as haughty in their own wild way as ever a peer in the land.”
“There never was a better bait to catch that old man there than this same pride. She has just hit upon the key to move him. What did he say when he read the letter?”
“He couldn’t speak for a while, but kept wiping his eyes and trembling all over.”
“And then?”
“And then he said, ‘Stop here to-night, Mr. O’Rorke, and I’ll have your answer ready for you in the morning.’”
“And shall I tell you what it will be? It will be to implore her to come back here. She can have her own terms now; she may be My Lady.”
“Do you mean his wife?”
“I do.”
O’Rorke gave a long whistle, and stood a perfect picture of amazement and wonder.
“That was playing for a big stake! May I never! if I thought she was bowld enough for that. That she was. And how she missed it, to this hour I never knew. But whatever happened between them was, one evening, on the strand at a sea-side place abroad. That much I learned from her maid, who was in my pay; and it must have been serious, for she left the house that night, and never returned; and, what is more, never wrote one line to him till this letter that you carried here yesterday.”
So astounded was O’Rorke by what he heard, that for some minutes he scarcely followed what Ladarelle was saying.
“So that,” continued Ladarelle, “it may not be impossible that he had the hardihood to make her some such proposal.”
“Do you mean without marriage?” broke in O’Rorke, suddenly catching the clue. “Do you mean that?”
The other nodded.
“No, by all that’s holy!” cried O’Rorke. “That he never did! You might trick her, you might cheat her--and it wouldn’t be so easy to do it, either--but, take my word for it, the man that would insult her, and get off free, isn’t yet born!”
“What could she do, except go off?” said Ladarelle, scoffingly.
“That’s not the stuff they’re made of where she comes from, young man.”
And, in his eagerness, he for a moment forgot all respect and deference; nor did the other seem to resent the liberty, for he only smiled as he heard it, and then said:
“All I have been telling you now is merely to prepare you for what I want you to do, and mind, if you stand by me faithfully and well, your fortune is made. I ask no man’s help without being ready and willing to pay for it--to pay handsomely, too! Is that intelligible?”
“Quite intelligible.”
“Now, the short and long of the story is this: If this old fool were to marry that girl, he could encumber my estate--for it is mine--with a jointure, and I have no fancy to pay some twelve or fifteen hundred a year--perhaps more--to Biddy somebody, and have, besides, a lawsuit for plate, or pictures, or china, or jewels, that she claimed as matter of gift--and all this, that an old worn-out rake should end his life with an act of absurdity!”
“And he could leave her fifteen hundred a year for ever,” muttered O’Rorke, thoughtfully.
“Nothing of the kind. For her life only; and even that, I believe, we might break by law--at least, Palmer says so.”.
All this Ladarelle said hastily, for he half suspected he had made a grievous blunder in pointing out the wealth to which she would succeed as Sir Within’s widow.
“I see--I see!” muttered O’Rorke, thoughtfully; which simply meant that there was a great deal to be said for each side of the question.
“What are you thinking of?” said Ladarelle at last, losing patience at his prolonged silence.
“I’m just wondering to myself if she ever knew how near she was to being My Lady.”
“How near, or how far off, you mean!”
“No, I don’t! I just mean what I said--how near. You don’t know her as well as I do, that’s clear!” Another long pause followed these words, and each followed out his own train of thought. At length, Ladarelle, not at all satisfied, as it seemed, with his own diplomacy, said, half-impatiently: “My friend Grenfell said, if there was any one who would understand how to deal with this matter, you were the man; and it was with that view he gave me the letter you have just read.”
“Oh! there’s many a way to deal with it,” said O’Rorke, who was not insensible to the flattery. “That is to say, if she was anything else but the girl she is, there would be no trouble at all in it.”
“You want me to believe that she is something very uncommon, and that she knows the world, like a woman of fashion.”
“I know nothing about women of fashion, but I never saw man or woman yet was ‘cuter than Katty O’Hara, or Luttrell, as she calls herself now.”
“She did not play her cards here so cunningly, that’s plain,” said Ladarelle, with a sneer. “Maybe I can guess why.”
“What is your guess, then?”
“Something happened that wounded her pride! If anything did that, she’d forget herself and her advantage--ay, her very life--and she’d think of nothing but being revenged. That’s the blood that’s in her!”
“So that her pride is her weak point?”
“You have it now! That’s it. I think she’d rather have died than write that letter the other morning, and if the answer isn’t what she expects, I don’t think she’ll get over it! Without,” added he, quickly, “it would drive her to some vengeance or other, if she was to see the way to any.”
“I begin to understand her,” said Ladarelle, thoughtfully. “The devil a bit of you! And if you were to think of it for twenty years, you wouldn’t understand her! She beats me, and I don’t suspect that you do.”
This was one of those thrusts it was very hard to bear without wincing, but Ladarelle turned away, and concealed the pain he felt.
“It is evident, then, Mr. O’Rorke, that you don’t feel yourself her match?”
“I didn’t say that; but it would be no disgrace if I did say it,” was the cautious answer.
“Mr. Grenfell assured me, that with a man like yourself to aid me, I need not be afraid of any difficulty. Do you feel as if he said too much for you, or has he promised more than you like to fulfil? You see, by what I have told you, that I should be very sorry to see that girl here again, or know that she was likely to regain any part of her old influence over my relative. Now, though her present letter does not touch either of these points, it opens a correspondence; don’t you perceive that?”
“Go on,” said O’Rorke, half sulkily, for a sort of doubt was creeping over him that possibly his services ought to be retained by the other party.
“And if they once begin writing letters, and if she only be as ready with her pen as you say she is with her tongue, there’s nothing to prevent her being back here this day week, on any terms she pleases.”
“Faix, and there are worse places! May I never! if I’d wonder that she’d like to be mistress of it.”
For the second time had Ladarelle blundered in his negotiation, and he was vexed and angry as he perceived it.
“That’s not all so plain and easy, Mr. O’Rorke, as you imagine. When old men make fools of themselves, the law occasionally takes them at their word, and pronounces them insane. So long as Sir Within’s eccentricities were harmless, we bore them, but I’ll not promise our patience for serious injury.”
If O’Rorke was not convinced by this threat, he was sufficiently staggered by it to become more thoughtful, and at last he said: “And what is it you’d propose to do?”
“I’d rather put that question to you,” said Ladarelle, softly. “You have the case before you, what’s your remedy?”
“If she was any other girl, I’d say give her a couple of hundred pounds, and get her married and out of the way.”
“And why not do so here?”
“Because it would be no use; that’s the why.”
“Is she not a peasant? Are not all belonging to her people in the very humblest station; and not blessed with the best possible reputations?”
“They’re poor enough, if that’s what you mean; and they’re the very sort of men that would make mighty short work of you, if you were to harm one belonging to them.”
“I promise you faithfully I’ll not go to reside in the neighbourhood,” said Ladarelle, with a laugh.
“I’ve known them track a man to America before now.”
“Come, come, Mr. O’Rorke, your countrymen may be as like Red Indians as you please, but they have no terrors for me.”
“So much the better; but I’ve seen just as big men as yourself afraid of them.”
The quiet coolness of this speech sent a far stronger sense of fear through the other’s heart than any words of menace could have done, and it required a great effort on his part to seem collected.
“You say she cannot be bought over, O’Rorke; now, what other line is open to us?”
O’Rorke made no reply, but seemed lost in thought.
“What if she were to believe that Sir Within wouldn’t receive her letter, or read it, and sent back a cold, unfeeling answer?” Still no answer passed his lips. “If,” continued Ladarelle, “you were to return and say you had failed, what would she do then? She’d never write to him again, I suppose?”
“Never, that you may depend upon, but it wouldn’t be so easy to make her believe it.”
“That might be managed. First of all, tell me how she would take the tidings.”
“I don’t know. I could not even guess.”
“At all events, she’d not write to him again?”
“For that I’ll answer. I believe I could take my oath on it.”
“Now, then, the game is easy enough,” said Ladarelle, with a more assured tone. “You are to have Sir Within’s answer to-morrow. When you get it, set out for Wrexham, where I’ll meet you. We’ll open it and read it. If it be a simple acceptance of her note, and a mere compliance with her request, I’ll re-seal it with his crest, and you shall take it on to her; but if, as I suspect, the old man will make an effort to renew their former relations, and throw out any bait to induce her to come back here----”
“Well, what then?” asked O’Rorke, after waiting a few seconds for the other to continue.
“In that case we must lay our heads together, O’Rorke, and see what’s best to be done.”
“And the old man that’s in gaol, and that’s to be tried on the 19th, what’s to be done about him?”
“I’ll think of that.”
“He hasn’t a great chance anyway, but if there’s no defence, it’s all up with him.”
“I’ll think of that.”
“Then there’s myself,” said O’Rorke, drawing his figure up to his full height, as though the subject was one that entailed no painful modesty. “What about me?”
“I have thought of that already. Put that in your pocket, for the present”--and he pressed a note into his hand--“and when to-morrow comes you shall name your own conditions. Only stand by me to the end--mind that.”
O’Rorke opened the bank-note leisurely, and muttered the word “Twenty;” and certainly nothing in the accent showed enthusiastic gratitude.
“I can give you an order on my banker to-morrow,” said Ladarelle, hurriedly, “but I am rather low in cash here, just now; and I repeat it--your own terms, O’Rorke, your own terms.”
“I suppose so,” was the dry rejoinder.
“It’s not everybody would make you the same proposal.”
“It’s not everybody has so much need of me as you have.”
Ladarelle tried to laugh as he wished him good night, but the attempt was a poor one, and all he could say, as they parted, was:
“Wrexham--the Boar’s Head--the inn on the left hand as you enter the town. I’ll be on the look-out for you myself.”
O’Rorke nodded and withdrew.
“Vulgar scoundrel! I wish I had never spoken to him!” said Ladarelle, as soon as the door closed. “This is all Grenfell’s doing; he has just shoved me into the hands of a fellow that will only serve me till he finds a higher bidder. What a fool I have been to open myself to him; and he sees it well! And as for the ready-wittedness and expediency, I wonder where they are! Why, the rascal had not a single suggestion to offer; he kept on harping about the difficulties, and never a word did he drop as to how to meet them.”
And, with a hearty malediction on him, Ladarelle concluded his meditation, and went off to sleep.
LI. THE BOAR’S HEAD
Ladarelle stood at a window of the Boar’s Head which commanded a view of the road into the town, and waited, watch in hand, for O’Rorke’s coming. The morning passed, and noon, and it was late in the day when a wearied horse, over-driven and steaming, drew up at the door, and the long looked-for traveller alighted.
Though burning with impatience to learn his news, Ladarelle saw the necessity of concealing his anxiety, and, opening his writing-desk, he affected to be deeply engaged writing when, conducted by a waiter, O’Rorke appeared.
A single glance as he passed the threshold told Ladarelle that his tidings were important. Already the fellow’s swagger declared it, and in the easy confidence with which he sat down, and in the careless way he rather threw than laid his hat on the table, might be seen that he felt himself “master of the situation.”
“You are later than I expected,” said Ladarelle, carelessly.
“I didn’t leave the place till after twelve. He made me go over the gardens and the forcing-houses, and after that the stables, till at one time I thought I’d not get away till to-morrow.”
“And what do you think of it all?”
“Grand!--grand! It’s the finest place I ever saw, and well kept up, too! There’s eight men in the garden, and the head-gardener told me he might have as many more, if he wanted them.”
“The horses are overfed; they are like prize oxen.”
“They’re fat, to be sure; but it’s fine to see them standing there, with their glossy skins, and their names over them, and their tails hanging down like tassels, and no more call for them to work than if they were lords themselves.”
“I’ll make a grand clearance of all that rubbish one day. I’ll have none of those German elephants, I promise you, when I come to the property.”
“He isn’t going to make room for you yet awhile, he says,” said O’Rorke, with a grin.
“What do you mean?”
“If what he said to me this morning is to be relied on, he means to marry.”
“And haye a family, perhaps?” added Ladarelle, with a laugh.
“He said nothing about that; he talked like a man that hoped to see many years, and happy ones.”
“No one ever lived the longer for wishing it, or else we heirs-expectant would have a bad time of it. But this is not the question. What answer did he give you?”
“There it is!”
And, as he spoke, he drew from his breast-pocket a large square-shaped letter, massively sealed, and after showing the address, “Miss Luttrell,” on the cover, he replaced it in his pocket.
“Do you know what’s in it?” asked Ladarelle, sharply.
“Only that there’s money, that’s all, for he said to me, ‘Any banker will cash it.’”
Ladarelle took a couple of turns of the room without speaking; then, coming directly in front of the other, he said:
“Now, then, Mr. O’Rorke, which horse do you back? Where do you stand to win? I mean, are you going to serve Sir Within or me?”
“He is the bird in the hand, any way!” said O’Rorke, with a grin of malicious meaning.
“Well, if you think so, I have no more to say, only that as shrewd a man as you are might see that an old fellow on the verge of the grave is not likely to be as lasting a friend as a man like myself. In other words, which life would you prefer in your lease?”
O’Rorke made no answer, but seemed sunk in thought.
“I’ll put the case before you in three words. You might help this girl in her plans--you might aid her so far that she could come back here, and remain either as this old man’s wife or mistress--I don’t know that there would be much difference, in fact, as the law stands, between the two--but how long would you be a welcome visitor here after that? You speculate on being able to come, and go, and stay here just as you please; you’d like to have this place as a home you could come to whenever you pleased, and be treated not merely with respect and attention, but with cordiality. Now, I just ask you, from what you have yourself told me of this girl, is that what you would expect when she was the mistress? Is she so staunch to her own people, that she would be true to you?”
For some minutes O’Rorke made no answer, and then, leaning both arms on the table before him, he said, in a slow, measured voice, “What do you offer me yourself?”
“I said last night, and I repeat it now, make your own terms.”
O’Rorke shook his head, and was silent.
“I am willing,” resumed Ladarelle, “to make you my land-steward, give you a house and a plot of ground rent free, and pay you eighty pounds a year. I’ll make it a hundred if I see you stand well to me!”
“I’ve got some debts,” muttered O’Rorke, in a low voice.
“What do they amount to?”
“Oh, they’re heavy enough; but I could settle them for a couple of hundreds.”
“I’ll pay them, then.”
“And, after that, I’d rather go abroad. I’d like to go and settle in Australia.”
“How much money would that require?”
“I want to set up a newspaper, and I couldn’t do it under two thousand pounds.”
“That’s a big sum, Master O’Rorke.”
“The devil a much the old man at the Castle there would think of it, if it helped him to what he wanted.”
“I mean, it’s a big sum to raise at a moment, but I don’t say it would be impossible.”
“Will you give it, then? That’s the short way to put it. Will you give it?”
“First, let me ask for what am I to give it? Is it that you will stand by me in this business to the very end, doing whatever I ask you, flinching at nothing, and taking every risk equally with myself?”
“And no risk that you don’t share yourself?”
“None!”
“It is worth thinking about, anyhow,” said O’Rorke, as he arose and paced the room, with his hands deep in his pockets; “that is, if the money is paid down--down on the nail--for I won’t take a bill, mind.”
“I’m afraid, O’Rorke, your experiences in life have not taught you to be very confiding.”
“I’ll tell you what they’ve taught me; they’ve taught me that wherever there’s money in anything, a man ought not to trust his own mother.”
In a few hurried words, Ladarelle explained that till he came to his estate, all his dealings for ready money were of the most ruinous kind; that to raise two thousand would cost him eventually nearly four; and, as he phrased it, “I’d rather see the difference in the pocket of an honest fellow who stood to me, than a rascally Jew who rogued me.”
“I’ll give you a post obit on Sir Within’s estate for three thousand, and, so far as a hundred pounds goes to pay your voyage, you shall not want it.”
O’Rorke did not at first like the terms. Whenever he ventured his chances in life, things had turned out ill; all his lottery tickets were blanks, and he shook his head doubtingly, and made no reply.
“Five o’clock already! I must be going,” said Ladarelle, suddenly looking at his watch.
“That’s a fine watch!” said O’Rorke, as he gazed at the richly-embossed crest on the case.
“If having my arms on the back is no objection to you, O’Rorke, take it. I make you a present of it.”
O’Rorke peered into his face with an inquisitiveness so full of unbelief as almost to be laughable, but the expression changed to a look of delight as Ladarelle took the chain from off his neck and handed the whole to him.
“May I never!” cried O’Rorke; “if I won’t be your equal. There’s the letter!” And he drew forth Sir Within’s despatch, and placed it in his hands.
Concealing all the delight he felt at this unlooked-for success, Ladarelle retired to the window to read the letter; nor did he at once break the seal. Some scruple--there were not many left him--did still linger amidst the wreck of his nature, and he felt that what he was about to do was a step lower in baseness than he had hitherto encountered. “After all,” muttered he, “if I hesitate about this, how am I to meet what is before me?” And so he broke the seal and tore open the envelope. “The old fool! the infatuated old fool!” broke from him, in an accent of bitter scorn, as he ran over the three lines which a trembling hand had traced. “I knew it would come to this. I said so all long. Here’s an order to pay Miss Luttrell or bearer two hundred pounds!” said he, turning to O’Rorke. “We must not cash this, or we should get into a precious scrape.”
“And what’s in the letter?” asked O’Rorke, carelessly.
“Nothing beyond his readiness to be of use, and all that. He writes with difficulty, he says, and that’s not hard to believe--an infernal scrawl it is--and he promises to send a long letter by the post tomorrow. By the way, how do they get the letters at Arran?”
“They send for them once a week to the mainland; on Saturdays, if I remember aright.”
“We must arrest this correspondence then, or we shall be discovered at once. How can we obtain her letters?”
“Easy enough. I know the boy that comes for them, and he can’t read, though he can tell the number of letters that he should have. I’ll have one ready to substitute for any that should be to her address.”
“Well thought of. I see, O’Rorke, you are the man I wanted; now listen to me attentively, and hear my plan. I must return to the Castle, and pretend that I have pressing business in town. Instead of taking the London mail, however, I shall proceed to Holyhead, where you must wait for me at the inn, the Watkins’ Arms. I hope to be there tomorrow morning early, but it may be evening before I can arrive. Wait, at all events, for my coming.”
“Remember that I promised to be back in Arran, with the answer to her letter, by Saturday.”
“So you shall. It is fully as important for me that you should keep your word.”
“Does he want her back again?” said O’Rorke, not fully satisfied that he had not seen Sir Within’s note.
“No, not exactly; at least, it is evasive, and very short. It is simply to this purport: ‘I conclude you have made a mistake by leaving me, and think you might have humility enough to acknowledge it; meanwhile, I send you a cheque for two hundred. I shall write to-morrow more fully.’”
O’Rorke was thoroughly aware, by the stammering confusion of the other’s manner, that these were not the terms of the note; but it was a matter which interested him very little, and he let it pass unchallenged. His calculation--and he had given a whole night to it--was briefly this: “If I serve Sir Within, I may possibly be well and handsomely rewarded, but I shall obtain no power of pressure upon him; under no circumstances can I extort from him one shilling beyond what he may be disposed to give me. If, on the other hand, I stand by Ladarelle, his whole character is in my hands. He is too unscrupulous not to compromise himself, and though his accomplice, I shall do everything in such a way that one day, if I need it, I may appear to have been his dupe. And such a position as this can be the source of untold money.”
Nor was it a small inducement to him to think that the side he adopted was adverse to Kate. Why he disliked her he knew not--that is, he would not have been well able to say why. Perhaps he might not readily have admitted the fact, though he well knew that to see her great, and prosperous, and high placed, a winner in that great lottery of life where he had failed so egregiously, would be to him the most intense misery, and he would have done much to prevent it.
Along with these thoughts were others, speculating on Ladarelle himself, and whom he was sorely puzzled whether to regard more as knave or fool, or an equal mixture of the two. “He’ll soon see that whatever he does he mustn’t try to cheat Tim O’Rorke,” muttered he; “and when he gets that far, I’ll not trouble myself more about his education.”
LII. THE NIGHT AT SEA
The Saturday--the eventful day on which Kate was to have her answer from Sir Within--came at last. It was a dark, lowering morning, and though there was scarcely an air of wind, the sea rolled heavily in, and broke in great showers of spray over the rocks, sure sign that a storm was raging at a distance.
From an early hour she had been down to the shore to watch if any boat could be seen, but not a sail could be descried, and the fishermen told her that though the wind had a faint sound in it, there were few Westport men would like to venture out in such a sea.
“If you cannot see a boat before noon, Tim Hennesy,” said she to one of the boatmen, “you’ll have to man the yawl, for I mean to go over myself.”
“It will be a hard beat against the wind, Miss,” said the man. “It will take you an hour to get out of the bay here.”
“I suppose we shall reach Westport before morning?”
“It will be no bad job if we get in by this time to-morrow.”
She turned angrily away; she hated opposition in every shape, and even the semblance of anything like discouragement chafed and irritated her.
“No sign of your messenger?” said Luttrell, from the window of the tower, whither he had gone to have a look out over the sea.
“It is early yet, Sir. If they came out on the ebb we should not see them for at least another hour.”
He made no answer, but closed the window and withdrew.
“Get me a loaf of bread, Molly, and some hard eggs and a bottle of, milk,” said Kate, as she entered the house.
“And sure, Miss, it’s not off to the mountains you’ll be going such a day as this. It will be a down-pour of rain before evening, and you have a bad cough on you already.”
“You most lend me your cloak, too, Molly,” said she, not heeding the remonstrance, “it’s much warmer than my own.”
“Ain’t I proud that it would be on your back, the Heavens bless and protect you! But where are you going that you want a cloak?”
“Go and ask my uncle if I may speak to him.”
Molly went, and came back at once to say that Mr. Luttrell was in his room below, and she might come there when she pleased.
“I am thinking of going over to Westport, Sir,” said Kate, as she passed the threshold. “My impatience is fevering me, and I want to do something.”
“Listen to the sea, young woman; it is no day to go out, and those drifting clouds tell that it will be worse by-and-by.”
“All the better if it blows a little, it will take me off thinking of other cares.”
“I’ll not hear of it--there!”
And he waved his hand as though to dismiss her, but she never moved, but stood calm and collected where she was.
“You remember, Sir, to-day is Saturday, and very little time is now left us for preparation. By going over to the mainland, I shall meet O’Rorke, and save his journey here and back again, and the chances are, that, seeing the day rough, he’d not like to leave Westport this morning.”
“I have told you my mind, that is enough,” said he, with an impatient gesture; but she stood still, and never quitted the spot. “I don’t suppose you have heard me, Miss Luttrell,” said he, with a tone of suppressed passion.
“Yes, Sir, I have heard you, but you have not heard me. My poor old grandfather’s case is imminent; whatever measures are to be taken for his defence cannot be deferred much longer. If the plan I adopted should turn out a failure, I must think of another, and that quickly.”
“What is this old peasant to me?” broke out Luttrell, fiercely. “Is this low-lived family to persecute me to my last day? You must not leave me--you shall not--I am not to be deserted for the sake of a felon!--I’ll not hear of it!--Go! Leave me?”
She moved gently towards him, and laid her hand on the back of his chair.
“Dear uncle,” said she, in a low, soft voice, “it would grieve you sorely if aught befel this poor old man--aught, I mean, that we could have prevented. Let me go and see if I cannot be of some use to him.”
“Go?--go where?--do you mean to the gaol?”
“Yes, Sir, I mean to see him.”
“The yery thing I have forbidden! The express compact by which you came here was, no intercourse with this--this--family, and now that the contact has become a stain and a disgrace, now is the moment you take to draw closer to them.”
“I want to show I am worthy to be a Lnttrell, Sir. It was their boast that they never deserted their wounded.”
“They never linked their fortunes to felons and murderers, young woman. I will hear no more of this.”
“I hope to be back here by to-morrow night, uncle,” said she, softly, and she bent down her head over him till the long silky curls of her golden hair grazed his temple.
He brushed them rudely back, and in a stern tone said:
“To such as leave this against my consent there is no road back. Do you hear me?”
“I do,” said she, faintly.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Enough, then. Leave me now, and let me have peace.”
“Uncle--dear uncle,” she began; but he stopped her at once.
“None of this--none of this with me, young woman. You are free to make your choice: you are my adopted daughter, or, you are the grandchild of a man whose claim to be notorious will soon dispute with ours. It is an easy thing to make up your mind upon.”
“I have done so already, Sir.”
“Very well, so much the better. Leave me now. I wish to be alone.”
“Let me say good-by, Sir; let me kiss your hand, and say, for the last time, how grateful I am for all your past kindness.”
He never spoke, but continued to stare at her with an expression of wonderment and surprise.
“Would you leave me, then?--would you leave me, Kate?” muttered he, at last.
“No, Sir, if the door be not closed against me--never!”
“None but yourself can close that door against you.”
“Dear, kind uncle, only hear me. It may be, that I have failed in the scheme I planned; it may be, that some other road must be found to help this poor, forlorn, friendless old man. Let me at least see him; let me give him what comfort a few kind words can give; let him know that he has sympathy in his hour of sadness.”
“Sympathy with the felon--sympathy with the murderer! I have none. I feel shame--bitter, bitter shame, that I cannot disclaim him--disavow him! My own miserable rashness and folly brought me to this! but when I descended to their poverty, I did not descend to their crimes.”
“Well,” said she, haughtily, “I have no such excuses to shelter me. I am of them by blood, as I am in heart. I’ll not desert him.”
“May your choice be fortunate,” said he, with mockery; “but remember, young woman, that when once you pass under the lintel of the gaol, you forfeit every right to enter here again. It is but fair that you know it.”
“I know it, Sir; good-by.” She stooped to take his hand, but he drew it rudely from her, and she raised the skirt of his coat to her lips and kissed it.
“Remember, young woman, if the time comes that you shall tell of this desertion of me--this cold, unfeeling desertion--take care you tell the truth. No harping on Luttrell pride, or Luttrell sternness--no pretending that it was the man of birth could not accept companionship of misery with the plebeian; but the simple fact, than when the hour of a decided allegiance came, you stood by the criminal and abandoned the gentleman. There is the simple fact; deny it if you dare!”
“There is not one will dare to question me, Sir, and your caution is unneeded.”
“Your present conduct is no guarantee for future prudence!”
“Dear uncle--” she began; but he stopped her hastily, and said:
“It is useless to recal our relationship when you have dissolved its ties.”
“Oh, Sir, do not cast me off because I am unhappy.”
“Here is your home, Kate,” said he, coldly. “Whenever you leave it, it is of your own free will, not of mine. Go now, if you wish, but remember, you go at your peril.”
She darted a fierce look at him as he uttered the last word, as though it had pierced her like a dart, and for a moment she seemed as if her temper could no longer be kept under; but with an effort she conquered, and simply saying, “I accept the peril, Sir,” she turned and left the room.
She gave her orders to the crew of the launch to get ready at once, and sent down to the boat her little basket; and then, while Molly Ryan was absent, she packed her trunk with whatever she possessed, and prepared to leave Arran, if it might be, for ever. Her tears ran fast as she bent over her task, and they relieved her overwrought mind, for she was racked and torn by a conflict--a hard conflict--in which different hopes, and fears, and ambitions warred, and struggled for the mastery.
“Here is the hour of destitution--the long dreaded hour come at last, and it finds me less prepared to brave it than I thought for. By this time to-morrow the sun will not shine on one more friendless than myself. I used to fancy with what courage I could meet this fall, and even dare it. Where is all my bravery now?”
“‘Tis blowin’ harder, Miss Kate; and Tim Hennesy says it’s only the beginnin’ of it, and that he’s not easy at all about taking you out in such weather.”
“Tell Tim Hennesy, that if I hear any more of his fears I’ll not take him. Let them carry that trunk down, Molly; I shall be away some days, and those things there are for you.”
“Sure, ain’t you coming back, Miss?” cried the woman, whose cheeks became ashy pale with terror.
“I have told you I am going for a few days; and, Molly, till I do come, be more attentive than ever to my uncle; he may miss me, and he is not well just now, and be sure you look to him. Keep the key, too, of this room of mine, unless my uncle asks for it.”
“Oh, you’re not coming back to us--you’ll never come back!” cried the poor creature, in an agony of sorrow. And she fell at Kate’s feet and grasped her dress, as though to detain her.
“There, there, this is all childishness, Molly. You will displease me if you go on so. Was that thunder I heard?”
As she asked, a knock came to the door, and the captain of the boat’s crew, Tim Hennesy, put in his head. “If you are bent on goin’, Miss, the tide is on the turn, and there’s no time to lose.”
“You’re a hard man to ask her, Tim Hennesy,” said the woman, rising, and speaking with a fiery vehemence: “You’re a hard man, after losing your own brother at sea, to take her out in weather like this.”
Kate gave a hurried look over the room, and then, as if not trusting her control over her feelings, she went quietly out, and hastened down to the shore.
There was, indeed, no lime to be lost, and all the efforts of the sailors were barely enough to save the small boat that lay next the pier from being crushed against the rocks with each breaking wave.
“Get on board, Miss; now’s the moment!” cried one of the men. And, just as he spoke, she made a bold spring and lighted safely in the stern.
The strong arms strained to the oars, and in a few seconds they were on board the yawl. The last few turns of the capstan were needed to raise the anchor, and now the jib was set to “pay her head round,” and amidst a perfect shower of spray as the craft swung “about,” the mainsail was hoisted, and they were away.
“What’s the signal flying from the tower for?” said one of the sailors. And he pointed to a strip of dark-coloured bunting that now floated from the flagstaff.
“That’s his honour’s way of bidding us good-by,” said Hennesy. “I’ve never seen it these twelve years.”
“How can we answer it, Tim?” said Kate, eagerly.
“We’ll show him his own colours, Miss,” said the man. And, knotting the Luttrell flag on the halyard, he hoisted it in a moment. “Ay, he sees it now! Down comes his own ensign now to tell us that we’re answered!”
“Was it to say good-by, or was it to recal her?--was it a last greeting of love and affection, or was it a word of scorn?” Such were Kate’s musings as the craft heaved and worked in the strong sea, while the waves broke on the bow, and scattered great sheets of water over them.
“I wish there was a dry spot to shelter you, Miss,” said Tim, as he saw the poor girl shivering and dripping from head to foot. “But it’s worse now than farther out; the squalls are stronger here under the land.”
“Ay; but we’ll have a heavier sea outside,” said another, who would willingly have seen her change her mind even now, and return to the island.
“It’s a fine wind for America, if that was where we were going,” said a third, laughingly.
Kate smiled; she had almost said, “It matters little to me where;” but she caught herself, and was silent. Hour after hour went over, and they seemed--to her, at least--to have made no way whatever, for there rose the great mountain-peaks; the well-known cliffs of Arran frowned down dark and sullen, just as when they had left the harbour. She could count one by one the lights along the bay, and knew each cabin they belonged to; and there, high tap, shone out a lonely star from the tower of St. Finbar, bringing back of her mind the solitary watcher who sat to sorrow over her desertion! The night at last fell, but the wind increased, and so rough was the sea that she was forced to take shelter in the bottom of the boat, where they made shift to cover her with & coarse canopy of tarpaulin.
Like some dreadful dream drawn out to the length of years, the hours of that night went over. The howling storm, the thundering crash of the sea, and at times a quivering motion in the craft, as though her timbers were about to part, and more even than these, the wild voices of the men, obliged to shout that they might be heard amongst the din, made up a mass of horrors that appalled her. Sometimes the danger seemed imminent, for to the loud words and cries of the men a sudden silence would succeed, while floods of water would pour over the sides, and threaten them with instant drowning. The agony she pictured to herself of a last struggle for life was more terrible far than her fear of death; and yet, through all these, came the thought: “Might it not be better thus? Should I not have left to the few who knew me dearer, fonder memories, than my life, if I am yet to live, will bequeath?” Worn out by these anxieties, and exhausted too, she fell into a deep sleep--so deep, that all the warring noises of the storm never awoke her; nor was she conscious that a new morning had dawned, and a bright noon followed it, as the launch entered the bay of Westport, and beat up for the harbour.
When Hennesy awoke her, to say that they were close in to shore, she neither could collect herself nor answer him; benumbed with cold, and wet, she could barely muster strength to arise, and sit down in the stern-sheets.
“That’s the spire of the town, Miss, under the hill there.”
“It was a wild night, Tim?” said she, inquiringly.
“I have seen as rough a sea, but I never was out in a stronger gale.”
“Mind that you tell my uncle so when you get back; and be sure to say that I bore it well.”
“Why wouldn’t I? The sorrow a word ever crossed your lips. No man ever was braver!” “That’s true,” muttered the others.
“Get me a piece of bread out of that basket, Tim; and don’t forget to tell my uncle how I ate, and ate heartily.”
LIII. THE GAOL PARLOUR
At the time of which our story treats, the old gaols of Ireland were very unlike those edifices which modern humanity has erected to be the safeguards of prisoners. They were small, confined, generally ruinous in condition, and always ill ventilated and dirty. So limited was the space, that all classification of crime was impossible, and, worse still, the untried prisoners were confined indiscriminately along with those whom the law had already sentenced, and who only awaited the hour of execution.
The extent of favour shown to those who were waiting for trial consisted in the privilege of seeing their legal advisers, or their friends, in a small cell used for such colloquies, and to which they succeeded by rotation, and for half an hour at a time. They whose means were unequal to the cost of a legal defence, or whose friends took little trouble in their behalf, were occasionally not unwilling to sell this privilege to their luckier companions, and a gill of whisky, or a few ounces of tobacco, were gladly accepted in lieu of a right that would have been profitless to claim.
As the day for trial grew nearer, the price of this privilege rose considerably. There were so many things the prisoner wanted to hear, or to tell, secrets he had kept for weeks long locked close in his breast, would now find vent; details that he had determined should go with him to the grave, he could no longer abstain from communicating. The agonies of feverish expectation, the sleepless nights--or worse, far worse, those dreamful ones--would have begun to tell upon the strongest and boldest; and spirits that a few weeks back would have seemed to defy every terror, now became fidgety and fretful, eager to hear what men said without, and how the newspapers talked of them.
While the assizes were distant, the prisoners gave themselves up, so far as their position permitted, to the habits and ways of their ordinary lives. Some brooded, some bullied, some looked steeped in a sort of stupid indifference, not caring for anything, or minding anything; others gave way to a jollity which, whether real or feigned, affected those around, and disposed them to scenes of riot and uproar. When, however, the time for trial drew nigh, all these signs merged into one pervading sentiment of intense anxiety, and nothing was said, nothing heard, but questions as to who were to be the judges--a point to which immense importance was attached--some supposed tendency to mercy or severity being ascribed to each in turn, and the characters of the Crown lawyers were discussed with a shrewdness that indicated how far less the debaters thought of the law itself than of the traits and tempers of those who were to administer it.
From the day that old Malone entered the gaol, his ascendancy was at once acknowledged. It was not merely that in the old man’s character there were those features of steadfast determination and unswerving courage which the Irish of every class place at the top of all virtues, but he was, so to say, a sort of patriarchal law-breaker; he had twice stood in the dock under charge for the greatest of crimes, and five times had he braved the risk of transportation. If ever there seemed a charmed life, it was his. And though the Crown prosecutors were wont to regard him as one whose successive escapes were a sort of reflection on their skill, the juries who tried him could not divest themselves of a sympathy for the hardy old fellow, who, never daunted by danger, no sooner issued from one scrape than he was ready to involve himself in another.
Dan Malone was not only the hero of the gaol, he was the law adviser. Around him they gathered to tell their several cases, and consult him as to their likely issue. It was not merely that he was quick in detecting where a flaw or break-down of evidence might be looked for, but he knew--and it was wonderful how well--the sort of testimony that would tell well with a jury, and the class of witness which it would be advisable to produce, or to withhold, according to the character of the judge that presided. It would have doubtless been very damaging to this ascendancy of his if it got abroad that he himself, while distributing his counsels to this man, and his warnings to that, should be unprotected and undefended, and so the brave old fellow, locking up his sorrows in his own heart, never betrayed his friendlessness. On the contrary, he scrupulously maintained his privilege to “the Parlour,” as it was called, and would, when his turn came, stalk away to the little cell, to sit down in his solitude, and think, with a swelling heart, over his comfortless fortune.
The turnkey alone knew his secret, and kept it loyally. Malone had been in his hands many times, and always conducted himself well, so that whenever the time came round for old Dan’s visit to the Parlour, Mr. Meekins would call out from the door in an audible and imposing voice, “Here’s Counsellor Fitzgibbon,” or “Serjeant Taate,” or some other equally well-known leader at the bar, “wants to speak to Dan Malone,” and poor old Dan would get up from his seat, and smoothe his hair, and adjust his neckcloth, and walk proudly away to hide his misery in the half-darkened cell, and rock himself to and fro in all the sorrow of his friendless and deserted fortune.
Terrible as the mockery was, it sustained him, for though the straw will not support the drowning man, it will feed his hope even in death, and smoothe the last agony of the heart, whose sharpest pang is desertion!
When, therefore, Mr. Meekins, instead of the usual pompons announcement, simply called out, “Dan Malone, to the Parlour,” without any intimation of a learned visitor awaiting him, the old man heard the words in amazement, and not without fear. Had his friend betrayed him? Had he divulged the little fraud, and exposed him to his fellows? Or had he--and this most probable--had he, as the real day of reckoning drew nigh, revolted at a deception which a few hours must unveil, and which, even to the heart that encouraged it, bore its own cruel punishment. “He knows that I’m only giving myself false hopes,” muttered the old fellow, as with sunken head and downcast eyes he moved slowly away.
As the door of the little cell clanked behind him, the turnkey with scrupulous tenacity bolting the small portal on the outside as rigorously as though it were the last protection of the criminal, Dan sat down on a small stool, and buried his face between his hands. Never before had his fate seemed sodark and gloomy. The little fiction he loved to main-tarn withdrawn, all the intensity of his loneliness stood before him at once. “I may as well say it at once,” muttered he, “when I go back, that Dan Malone has no friend in the wide world, not a man to speak a word for him, but must stand up in the dock and say, ‘No counsel, my lord.’” As if the bitter moment of the humiliation had arrived, the old fellow rocked to and fro in his agony, and groaned bitterly.
What was that which broke the stillness? Was it a sigh, and then a sob? Was his mind wandering? Was the misery too much for his reason? He rubbed his eyes and looked up.
“Merciful Mother! Blessed Virgin! is it yourself is come to comfort me?” cried he, as he dropped on his knees, while the tears streamed down his hard and wrinkled cheeks. “Oh, Holy Mother! Tower of Ivory! do I see you there, or is my ould eyes deceivin’ me?”
The heart-wrung prayer was addressed to a figure on which the solitary pane of a small window high up in the wall threw a ray of sunlight, so that the braided hair glowed like burnished gold, and the pale cheeks caught a slightly warm tint, less like life than like a beautiful picture.
“Don’t you know me, grandfather? Don’t you know your own dear Katey?” said she, moving slowly forward; and then, kneeling down in front of him, clasped him in her arms.
It was more than he could bear, and he heaved a heavy sigh, and rolled back against the wall.
It was long before he rallied; old age stands so near the last threshold, there is but little space to recover breath in; and when he did rally, he could not be sure that his mind was not astray, or that his sight was not deceiving him.
“Tell me something of long ago, darlin’; tell me something, that I’ll know you are my own.”
“Shall I tell you of the day I found the penny in the well, and you told me it was for good luck, and never to lose it? Do you remember, grandfather, how you bored a hole in it, and I used to wear it around my neck with a string?”
“I do, I do,” cried he, as the tears came fast and faster; “and you lost it after all; didn’t you lose it?”
“Yes; but, grandfather, I shall find others, and golden ones too.”
“Tell me more about them times, or I won’t believe you,” cried he, half peevishly.
“I’ll talk to you all the evening about them; I remember them all, dear old grandady.”
“That’s the word I wanted; that’s it, my darlin’! the light of my ould eyes!” And he fell on her neck and sobbed aloud.
In his ecstasy and delight to weave the long past into the present, he forgot to ask her how she came there, and by what fortune she had remembered him. It was the old life in the mountains that filled his whole being. The wild cliffs and solitary lakes, dear to him by the thought of her who never left him, trotting beside him as he went, or cowering at his knee as he sat over the turf fire. So immersed was he in these memories, that though she talked on he heard nothing; he would look at her, and smile, and say, “God bless her,” and then go back again to his own dreamy thoughts.
“I’m thinking we’ll have to cut the oats, green as it is, Kitty,” said he, after a long pause. “It’s late in the year now, and there’ll be no fine days.”
She could not speak, but her lips trembled, and her heart felt as if it would burst.
“There’s a lamb astray these two days,” muttered he. “I hope the eagles hasn’t got it; but I heard one screeching last night. Light the fire, anyway, darlin’, for it’s cowld here.”
With what art and patience and gentle forbearance did she labour to bring those erring faculties back, and fix them on the great reality that portended! It was long, indeed, before she succeeded. The old man loved to revel in the bygone life, wherein, with all its hardships, his fierce nature enjoyed such independence; and every now and then, after she had, as she hoped, centred his thoughts upon the approaching trial, he would break out into some wild triumph over an act of lawless daring, some insolent defiance he had hurled at the minions who were afraid to come and look for him in his mountain home.
At last she did manage to get him to speak of his present condition, and to give a narrative--it was none of the clearest--of his encounter with the sheriff’s people. He made no attempt to screen himself, nor did he even pretend that he had not been the aggressor, but he insisted, and he believed too, that he was perfectly justified in all he had done. His notion was, that he was simply defending what was his own. The scrupulous regard the Law observes towards him who is in possession, is not unfrequently translated by the impetuous intelligence of the Irish peasant into a bona fide and undeniable right. Malone reasoned in this way, and with this addition: “It’s just as good for me to die in a fair fight as be starved and ruined.”
How hard was Kate’s task, to eke out means for a defence from such materials as this! Indeed, no indictment that ever was drawn could be more condemnatory than the man’s own admissions. Still, she persisted in sifting the whole story over and over, till she had at least such a knowledge of the details as would enable her to confer with a lawyer and obtain his opinion.
“And who is to defind me, darlin’?” asked he, in the cheerful tone of a heart perfectly at ease.
“We have not fixed upon that yet. We are not quite sure,” murmured she, as her racked brain beat and throbbed with intense thinking.
“I’d like to have Mr. O’Connell, Kate,” said he, proudly. “It would warm my ould heart to hear how he’d give it to them, the scoundrels! that would turn a poor man out of his own, and send him to sleep under a ditch. There’s not his like in all Ireland to lash a landlord. It’s there he’s at home!”
“I must be going now, grandady.”
“Going, acushla! And will you leave me?”
“I most, there’s no help for it; they wouldn’t let me stay here.”
“Begorra!” cried he, wildly,--“I forgot I was in gaol! May I never! if I didn’t think I was at home again, and that we were only waiting for the boys to have our supper!”
“My poor old grandady,” said she, stooping and kissing his forehead, “I’ll come back to-morrow, and stay a long time with you. I have a great deal to say to you that I can’t think of to-day. Here’s a little basket, with something to eat, and some tobacco, too; the gaoler gave me leave to bring it in. And you’ll drink my health to-night, grandady, won’t you?”
“My darlin’--my own darlin’, that I will! And where did you come from now--was it from England?”
“No, grandady. It was a long way off, but not from England.”
“And who are you living with? Is it with that ould man in Wales?”
“No, not with him. I’ll tell you all to-morrow.”
“They tell me he’s mighty rich.”
She evidently had not heard his words, for she stood pressing her temples with both hands, and as if endeavouring to repress some severe pain.
“It’s your head’s aching you, darlin’!” said he, compassionately.
“Head and heart!” muttered she, drearily. “Good-by, my dear old grandady--good-by!” And, not able to control her emotion, she turned her face away.
“You’ll have to call out through that gratin’ before they’ll open the door,” said he, half sulkily. “You’d think we was all sentenced and condimned, the way they lock us up here! But I hear him coming now. You’ll let her in to see me to-morrow, Mr. Meekins, won’t you?” said he, in an imploring tone. “She’s my daughter’s child, and nearly the last of us now.”
“By my conscience, she’s a fine creature!” said the turnkey, as she moved past. “It’s mighty seldom the likes of her is seen in such a place as this!”
When Kate gained the street, the rain was falling heavily, and as she stood uncertain which way to turn, for the town was strange to her, O’Rorke came up.
“Haven’t you as much as an umbrella, Miss Kate,” said he, “or a cloak, in this dreadful weather?”
“I was not thinking of either. Which way do we go towards the inn?”
“I’d advise you to take shelter in a shop here, Miss; the shower is too heavy to last long.”
“I have no time for this; I want to catch the post, and I believe it leaves at six o’clock.”.
“You’ll be drowned with this rain,” muttered he. “But come along. I’ll show you the way.”
As they went, neither spoke; indeed, the noise of the plashing rain, and the sharp gusts of the sweeping wind, would have made it almost impossible to converse, and they plodded onward through the dreary and deserted streets, for even the poorest had now sought shelter. The inn was at the very end of a long straggling street, and, when they reached it, they were completely soaked through with rain.
“You have ordered a room for me here, you said?” asked Elate, as they entered.
“Yes, it’s all ready, and your dinner too, whenever you like to eat it.--This is the young lady, ma’am,” continued he, addressing the landlady, “that’s coming to stop here; she’s wet through, and I hope you’ll take care of her, that she doesn’t catch cold.”
“Will you show me my room?” asked Kate, quietly. But the landlady never moved, but stood scrutinising her with an eye the very reverse of kindly.
“She’s asking you where’s her room,” broke in O’Rorke.
“I hear her, and I think this isn’t the house for her.”
“How do you mean?--what are you saying?” cried he, angrily.
“She’ll be better and more at home at Tom M’Cafferty’s, that’s what I mean,” said she, sturdily.
“But I took a room here.”
“And you’ll not get it,” rejoined she, setting her arms akimbo; “and if you want to know why, maybe you’d hear it, and hear more than you like.”
“Come away--come away; let us find out this other place, wherever it be,” said Kate, hurriedly.
“The other place is down there, where you see the red sign,” said the landlady, half pushing her, as she spoke, into the street.
Shivering with cold, and wet through, Kate reached the little “shebeen,” or carriers’ inn, where, however, they received her with kindness and civility, the woman giving up to her her own room, and doing her very best to wait on her and assist her. As her trunk had been forgotten at the inn, however, Kate had to wait till O’Rorke fetched it, and as Mr. O’Rorke took the opportunity of the visit to enter on a very strong discussion with the landlady for her insolent refusal to admit them, it was nigh an hour before he got back again.
By this time, what with the effects of cold and wet, and what with the intense anxieties of the morning, Kate’s head began to ache violently, and frequent shiverings gave warning of the approach of fever. Her impatience, too, to be in time for the post became extreme. She wanted to write to her uncle; she was confident that, by a frank, open statement of what she had done, and said, and seen, she could deprecate his anger. The few words in which she could describe her old grandfather’s condition, would, she felt certain, move her uncle to thoughts of forgiveness. “Is he coming?--can you see him with my trunk?--why does he delay?” cried she at every instant. “No, no, don’t talk to me of change of clothes; there is something else to be thought of first. What can it be that keeps him so long? Surely it is only a few steps away. At last!--at last!” exclaimed she, as she heard O’Rorke’s voice in the passage. “There--there, do not delay me any longer. Give me that desk; I don’t want the other, it is my desk, my writing-desk, I want. Leave me now, my good woman--leave me now to myself.”
“But your shoes, Miss; let me just take off your shoes. It will kill you to sit that way, dripping and wet through.”
“I tell you I will not be dictated to!” cried she, wildly, for her face was now crimson with excitement, and her brain burning. “By what right do you come here into my room, and order me to do this or that? Do you know to whom you speak? I am a Luttrell of Arran. Ask him--that man below--if I am not speaking the truth. Is it not honour enough for your poor house that a Luttrell should stop here, but that you must command me, as if I were your servant? There--there, don’t cry; I did not mean to be unkind! Oh! if you but knew how my poor head is aching, and what a heavy, heavy load I am carrying here!” And she pressed her hand to her heart. And, with this, she fell upon her bed, and sobbed long and bitterly. At last she arose, and, assuring the hostess that after she had written a few lines she would do all that she asked her, she persuaded the kind-hearted woman to leave her, and sat down to the table to write. What she wrote, how she wrote, she knew not, but the words followed fast, and page after page lay before her as the clock struck six. “What!” cried she, opening her door, “is it too late for the post? I hear it striking six!”
“I’ll take it over myself to the office,” said O’Rorke, “and by paying a trifle more they’ll take it in.”
“Oh do! Lose no time, and I’ll bless you for it!” said she, as she gave him the letter.
“Come up here and sit with me,” said Kate to the woman of the house; and the honest creature gladly complied. “What a nice little place you have here,” said Kate, speaking with intense rapidity. “It is all so clean and so neat, and you seem so happy in it. Ain’t you very happy?”
“Indeed, Miss, I have no reason to be anything else.” “Yes; I knew it--I knew it!” broke in Kate, rapidly. “It is the striving to be something above their reach makes people unhappy. You never asked nor wished for better than this?”
“Never, Miss. Indeed, it’s better than ever I thought to be. I was the daughter of a poor labourin’ man up at Belmullet, when my husband took me.”
“What a dreary place Belmullet is! I saw it once,” said Kate, half speaking to herself.
“Ah! you don’t know how poor it is, Miss! The like of you could never know what lives the people lead in them poor places, with only the fishin’ to look to, God help them! And when it’s too rough to go to sea, as it often is for weeks long, there they are with nothing but one meal a day of wet potatoes, and nothing but water to drink.”
“And you think I know nothing about all that!” cried Kate, wildly--“nothing of the rain pouring down through the wet thatch--nothing of the turf too wet to burn, and only smouldering and smoking, till it is better to creep under the boat that lies keel uppermost on the beach, than stay in the wretched hovel--nothing of the poor mother, with fever in one corner, and the child with small-pox in the other--nothing of the two or three strong men huddled together under the lee of the house, debating whether it wouldn’t be better to go out to sea at any risk, and meet the worst that could happen, than sit down there to die of starvation?”
“In the name of the blessed Virgin, Miss, who towld you all about that?”
“Oh, that I never knew worse! Oh, that I had never left it!” burst out Kate, as, kneeling down, she buried her head in the bed, and sobbed as if her heart were breaking.
The poor woman did her very best to console and comfort her, but Kate was unconscious of all her kindness, and only continued to mutter unceasingly to herself, till at last, worn out and exhausted, she leaned her head on the other’s shoulder and fell off into a sort of disturbed sleep, broken by incessant starts.
LIV. IN CONCLAVE
When O’Rorke left Kate, it was not the direction of the post-office that he took; he went straight to the head inn of the town, on the doorsteps of which he stationed himself, anxiously watching for the arrival of another traveller. Nor had he long to wait, for as the town clock struck the half-hour, a chaise and pair galloped up to the door, and young Ladarelle cried out from the window, “The last seven miles in forty-six minutes! What do you say to that! Is dinner ready?” asked he, as he descended.
“Everything’s ready, Sir,” said O’Rorke, obsequiously, as, pushing the landlord aside, he assumed the office of showing the way up-stairs himself.
“Tell Morse to unpack some of that sherry,” said Ladarelle; and then laughingly added, “Order your own tap, Master O’Rorke, for I’m not going to throw away Dalradern wine upon you.”
O’Rorke laughed too--perhaps not as genially, but he could afford to relish such a small joke even against himself--not to say that it conveyed an assurance he was well pleased with, that Ladarelle meant him to dine along with himself.
As the dinner was served, Ladarelle talked away about everything. It was his first visit to Ireland, and, though it amused him, he said he hoped his last also. Everything was absurd, laughable, and poverty-stricken to his eyes; that is to say, Pauperism was so apparent on all sides, the whole business of life seemed to be carried on by make-shifts.
The patriot O’Rorke had need of much forbearance as he listened to the unfeeling comments and ignorant inferences of the “Saxon.” He heard him, however, without one word of disclaimer, and with a little grin on his face, that if Ladarelle had been an Irishman, and had one drop of Irish blood in his body, he would not have accepted as any evidence of pleasure or satisfaction.
“Order whatever you mean to have,” said Ladarelle, as the meal was concluded, “and don’t let us have that fellow coming into the room every moment.”
O’Rorke made his provision accordingly, and having secured a kettle, in case it should be his caprice to make punch, he bolted the door and resumed his place.
“There’s your letter!” said Ladarelle, throwing a coarse-looking scrawl, sealed with green wax, on the table; “and I’ll be shot if I understand one line of it!”
“And why not?” asked the other, angrily. “Is it the writing’s so bad?”
“No; the writing can be made out. I don’t complain of that. It’s your blessed style that floors me! Now, for instance, what does this mean? ‘Impelled by the exuberant indignation that in the Celtic heart rises to the height of the grandest sacrifices, whether on the altars------’”
O’Rorke snatched the letter from his hand, crushed it into a ball, and threw it into the fire. “You’ll not have it to laugh at another time,” cried he, sternly, and with a stare so full of defiance that Ladarelle looked at him for some seconds in amazement, without speaking.
“My good friend,” said he, at last, with a calm, measured voice, “it is something new to me to meet conduct like this.”
“Not a bit newer or stranger than for me to be laughed at. Bigger and stronger fellows than you never tried that game with me.”
“I certainly never suspected you would take it so ill. I thought if any one knew what a joke meant, it was an Irishman.”
“And so he does; none better. The mistake was, you thought an Englishman knew how to make one.”
“Let there be an end of this,” said Ladarelle, haughtily. “If I had kept you in your proper place, you would never have forgotten yourself!” And as he spoke, he flung his cigar into the fire, and arose and walked up and down the room.
O’Rorke hung his head for a moment, and then, in a tone of almost abject contrition, said, “I ask your pardon, Sir. It was just as you say; my head was turned by good treatment.”
If Ladarelle had been a physiognomist, he would not have liked the expression of the other’s face, the hue of utter sickness in the cheek, while the eyes flashed with a fiery energy; but he noted none of these, and merely said, as he resumed his place:
“Don’t let it happen again, that’s all. Tell me now what occurred when you got back to Westport, for the only thing I know is that you met her there the morning you arrived.”
“I’ll tell it in three words: She was on the quay, just come after a severe night at sea, when I was trying to make a bargain with a fisherman to take me over to the island. I didn’t see her till her hand was on my arm and her lips close to my ear, as she whispered:
“‘What news have you for me?”
“‘Bad news,’ says I; ‘the sorrow worse.’
“She staggered back, and sat down on the stock of an anchor that was there, and drew the tail of her cloak oyer her face, and that’s the way she remained for about a quarter of an hour.
“‘Tell it to me now, Mr. O’Rorke,’ said she; ‘and as you hope to see Glory, tell me the truth, and nothing more.’
“‘It’s little I have to tell,’ says I, sitting down beside her. ‘The ould man was out on a terrace when I gave him your letter. He took it this way, turning it all round, and then looking up at me, he says: “I know this handwriting,” says he, “and I think I know what’s inside of it, but you may tell her it’s too late.” He then muttered something about a sea-bathing place abroad that I couldn’t catch, and he went on: “She didn’t know when she was well-------“’
“‘No, no, that he never said!’ says she, bursting in--‘that he never said!’
“‘Not in them words,’ says I, ‘certainly not, but it came to the same, for he said she used to be as happy here as the days was long!’
“‘True; it was all true,’ said she to herself. ‘Go on.’
“’” Go back,” says he, “and say, that sorry as I was at first, I’m getting over it now, and it wouldn’t be better for either of us to hold any more correspondence.” And with that he gave me the letter back, sealed as it was.’”
“What made you say that?” cried Ladarelle.
“Because I knew she’d never ask for it; or if she did, I’d say, ‘I had it in my trunk at home.’ The first thing was to get her to believe me, at any cost.”
“Is that her way?” asked the other, thoughtfully.
“That’s her way. She’s not given to have suspicions, you can see that. If you talk to her straight ahead, and never break down in what you say, she’ll look at you openly, and believe it all; but if ever she sees you stop, or look confused, or if she catches you taking a sly look at her under the eyes, you’re done--done entirely! The devil a lawyer from this to Dublin would put you through such a cross-examination; and I defy the cleverest fellow that ever sat in the witness-box to baffle her. And she begins quite regular--quiet, soft, and smooth as a cat.”
“What do I care for all this? She may be as shrewd as she pleases this day fortnight, Master O’Rorke. Let us only have the balls our own, and we’ll win the game before she gets a hazard.”
This illustration from the billiard-table was not fully intelligible to O’Rorke, but he saw its drift, and he assented.
“Where was I? Oh, I remember. ‘He gave me the letter back,’ says I, ‘and told the servants to see I had my supper, and everything I wanted.
“‘He did this with his hand, as much as to say, “You may go away;” but I made as if I didn’t understand him, and I waited till the servant left the place, and then I drew near him, and said:
“‘I think,’ says I, ‘it would be better your honour read the letter, anyhow. Maybe there’s something in it that you don’t suspect.’
“‘“Who are you,” says he, “that’s teaching me manners?”’
“I didn’t say them was his words, but something that meant the same.
“‘“I know every line that’s in it. I know far better than you--ay, or than she suspects--the game she would play.”’
“She gave a little cry, as if something stung her. Andeed, I asked her, What was it hurt her? But she never answered me, but stood up straight, and, with a hand up this way, she said something to herself, as if she was making a vow or taking an oath. After that, it wasn’t much she minded one word I said, and lucky for me it was, for I was coming to the hard part of my story--about your honour; how you heard from the servants that I was in the house, and sent for me to your own room, and asked me hundreds of questions about her. Where she was, and who with, and what she wrote about, and then how angry you grew with your uncle--I called him your uncle, I don’t know why--and how you said he was an unfeeling old savage, that it was the same way he treated yourself, pampering you one day, turning you out of doors the next. ‘And at last,’ says I--‘I couldn’t keep it in any longer--I up and told him what I came about, and that your letter was asking a trifle of money to defend your grandfather for his life.’
“Sorrow matter what I said, she never listened to me. I told her you swore that her grandfather should have the first lawyer in the land, and that you’d come over yourself to the Assizes. I told her how you put twenty pounds into my hand, and said, ‘Tim’--no, not Tim--‘Mr. O’Rorke, there’s a few pounds to begin. Go back and tell Miss Kate she has a better and truer friend than the one she lost; one that never forgot the first evening he seen her, and would give his heart’s blood to save her.’
“She gave a little smile--it was almost a laugh once--and I thought she was pleased at what I was telling her. Not a bit of it. It was something about the ould man was in her mind, and something that didn’t mean any good to him either, for she said, ‘He shall rue it yet.’ And after that, though I talked for an hour, she never minded me no more than them fireirons! At last she clutched my arm in her fingers, and said, “‘Do you know that my uncle declares I am never to go back again? I came away against his will, and he swore that if I crossed the threshold to come here, I should never re-cross it again. Do you know,’ says she, ‘I have no home nor friend now in the whole world, and I don’t know what’s to become of me.’
“I tried to comfort her, and say that your honour would never see her in any distress; but she wasn’t minding me, and only went on saying something about being back again; but whether it meant at the Castle, or over in Arran, or, as I once thought, back as a child, when she used to play in the caves along the sea-shore, I couldn’t say, but she cried bitterly, and for the whole day never tasted bit or sup. We stopped at a small house outside the town, and I told them it was a young creature that lost her mother; and the next day she looked so ill and wasted, I was getting afraid she was going to have a fever; but she said she was strong enough, and asked me to bring her on here to the gaol, for she wanted to see her grandfather.
“It was only this morning, however, I got the order from the sub-sheriff; and indeed he wouldn’t have given it but that he seen her out of the window, for in all her distress, and with her clothes wet and draggled, she’s as beautiful a creature as ever walked.”
“Why not marry her yourself, O’Rorke? By Jove! you’re head and ears in love already. I’ll make you a handsome settlement, on my oath I will.”
“There’s two small objections, Sir. First, there’s another Mrs. O’Rorke, though I’m not quite sure where at the present setting; and even if there wasn’t, she wouldn’t have me.”
“I don’t see that; and if it be only the bigamy you’re afraid of, go off to Australia or America, and your first wife will never trace you.”
O’Rorke shook his head, and, to strengthen his determination perhaps, he mixed himself a strong tumbler of punch.
“And where are we now?” asked Ladarelle.
O’Rorke, perhaps, did not fully understand the question, for he looked at him inquiringly.
“I ask you, where are we now? Don’t you understand me?”
“We’re pretty much where we were yesterday; that is, we’re waiting to know what’s to be done for the ould man in the gaol, and what your honour intends to do about”--he hesitated and stammered, and at last said--“about the other business.”
“Well, it’s the other business, as you neatly call it, Mr. O’Rorke, that interests me at present. Sir Within has written twice to Mr. Luttrell since you left the Castle. One of his letters I stopped before it reached the office, the other I suppose has come to hand.”
“No fanlt of mine if it has, Sir,” broke in O’Rorke, hastily, for he saw the displeasure in the other’s look. “I was twice at the office at Westport, and there wasn’t a line there for Mr. Luttrell. Did you read the other letter, Sir?” added he, eagerly, after a moment’s silence. “I know what’s in it,” muttered Ladarelle, in confusion, for he was not quite inured to the baseness he had sunk to. “And what is it, Sir?”
“Just what I expected; that besotted old fool wants to marry her. He tells Mr. Luttrell, and tells it fairly enough, how the estate is settled, and he offers the largest settlement the entail will permit of; but he forgets to add that the same day he takes out his license to marry, we’ll move for a commission of lunacy. I have been eight weeks there lately, and not idle, I promise you. I have got plenty of evidence against him. How he goes into the room she occupied at the Castle, and has all her rings and bracelets laid out on the toilet-table, and candles lighted, as if she was coming to dress for dinner, and makes her maid wait there, telling her Madame is out on horseback, or she is in the garden, she’ll be in presently. One day, too, he made us wait dinner for her till eight o’clock; and when at last the real state of the case broke on him, he had to get up and go to his room, and Holmes, his man, told me that he sobbed the whole night through, like a child.”
“And do you think that all them will prove him mad?” asked O’Rorke, with a jeering laugh.
“Why not? If a man cannot understand that a person who has not been under his roof for six or eight months, and is some hundred miles away, may want candles in her dressing-room, and may come down any minute to dinner in that very house----”
“Oddity--eccentricity--want of memory--nothing more! There’s never a jury in England would call a man mad for all that.”
“You are a great lawyer, Mr. O’Rorke, but it is right to say you differ here from the Attorney-General.”
“No great harm in that same--when he’s in the wrong!”
“I might possibly be rash enough to question your knowledge of law, but certainly I’ll never dispute your modesty.”
“My modesty is like any other part of me, and I didn’t make myself; but I’ll stick to this--that ould man is not mad, and nobody could make him out mad.”
“Mr. Grenfell will not agree with you in that. He was over at the Castle the night I came away, and he saw the gardener carrying up three immense nosegays of flowers, for it was her birthday it seemed, however any one knew it, and Sir Within had ordered the band from Wrexham to play under her window at nightfall; and as Mr. Grenfell said, ‘That old gent’s brain seems about as soft as his heart!’ Not bad, was it?--his brain as soft as his heart!”
“He’s no more mad than I am, and I don’t care who says the contrary.”
“Perhaps you speculate on being called as a witness to his sanity?” said Ladarelle, with a sneer.
“I do not, Sir; but if I was, I’d be a mighty troublesome one to the other side.”
“What the deuce led us into this foolish discussion! As if it signified one rush to me whether he was to be thought the wisest sage or the greatest fool in Christendom. What I want, and what I am determined on, is that we are not to be dragged into Chancery, and made town talk of, because a cunning minx has turned an old rake’s head. I’d be hunted by a set of hungry rascals of creditors to-morrow if the old man were to marry. There’s not one of them wouldn’t believe that my chance of the estate was all ‘up.’”
“There’s sense in that; there is reason in what you say now,” said O’Rorke.
“And that’s not the worst of it, either,” continued Ladarelle, who, like all weak men, accepted any flattery, even at the expense of the object he sought; “but my governor would soon know how deep I am, and he’d cast me adrift. Not a pleasant prospect, Master O’Rorke, to a fellow who ought to succeed to about twelve thousand a year.”
“Could he do it by law?”
“Some say one thing, some another; but this I know, that if my creditors get a hold of me now, as the fox said, there would be very little running left in me when they’d done with me. But here’s the short and the long of it. We must not let Sir Within marry, that’s the first thing; and the second is, there would be no objection to any plan that will give him such a shock--he’s just ready for a shock--that he wouldn’t recover from. Do you see it now?”
“I see it all, only I don’t see how it’s to be done.”
“I wonder what you are here for, then?” asked the other, angrily. “I took you into my pay thinking I had a fellow with expedients at his fingers’ ends; and, except to see you make objections, and discover obstacles, I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re good for.”
“Go on, Sir, go on,” said O’Rorke, with a malicious grin.
“In one word, what do you propose?” said Ladarelle, sternly.
“Here’s what I propose, then,” said O’Rorke, pushing the glasses and decanters from him, and planting his arms on the table in a sturdy fashion--“I propose, first of all, that you’ll see Mr. Crowe, the attorney, and give him instructions to defend Malone, and get him the best bar on the circuit. She’ll insist upon that, that’s the first thing. The second is, that you come down to where she is, and tell her that when you heard of her trouble that you started off to help her and stand by her. I don’t mean to say it will be an easy thing to get her to believe it, or even after she believes it to take advantage of it, for she’s prouder than you think. Well, toss your head if you like, but you don’t know her, nor them she comes from; but if you know how to make her think that by what she’ll do she’ll spite the ould man that insulted her, if you could just persuade her that there wasn’t another way in life so sure to break his heart, I think she’d comply, and agree to marry you.”
“Upon my soul, the condescension overcomes me! You think--you actually think--she’d consent to be the wife of a man in such a position as mine!”
“Well, as I said a while ago, it wouldn’t be easy.”
“You don’t seem to know, my good friend, that you are immensely impertinent!”
“I do not,” was the reply, and he gave it calmly and slowly. At the same instant a knock came to the door, and the waiter motioned to O’Rorke that a woman wanted to speak to him outside. “I’m wanted for a few minutes, Sir, down at the place she’s stopping. The woman says she’s very ill, and wandering in her mind. I’ll be back presently.”
“Well, don’t delay too long. I’m between two minds already whether I’ll not go back and give up the whole business.”
LV. STILL CONSPIRING
“She’s worse, Sir,” whispered the woman, as she crossed the threshold of her door, and exchanged a word with her daughter. “Biddy says she’s clean out of her mind now--listen to that! The Lord have mercy on us!”
It was a wild scream rang through the house, followed by a burst of fearful laughter.
“Ask her if she’ll see me,” said O’Rorke, in a low voice.
“That’s O’Rorke’s voice!” Kate cried out from the top of the stairs. “Let him come up. I want to see him. Come up!” She leaned over the railing of the stairs as she spoke, and even O’Rorke was horror-struck at the ashy paleness of her face, and a fearful brilliancy that shone in her eyes. “It’s a very humble place, Mr. O’Rorke, I am obliged to receive you in,” said she, with a strange smile, as he entered; “but I have only just arrived here, you see I have not even changed my dress; pray sit down, if you can find a chair; all is in disorder here--and, would you believe it?”--here her manner became suddenly earnest, and her voice dropped to a whisper--“would you believe it? my maid has never come to me, never asked me if I wanted her since I came. It’s getting dark, too, and must be late.”
“Listen to me, now, Miss Kate,” said he, with a touch almost of pity in his voice, “listen to me. You’re not well, you’re tired and exhausted, so I’ll send the woman of the house to you, and get to bed, and I’ll find out a doctor to order you something.”
“Yes, I should like to see a doctor; that kind person I saw before, Sir Henry something--what was it? You will see it in the Court Guide--he attends the Queen.”
“To be sure, to be sure, we’ll have the man that attends the Queen!” said he, giving his concurrence to what he imagined to be the fancy of an erring brain.
“And if he should ask why I am here,” added she, in a whisper, “make out some sort of excuse, but don’t mention my grandfather; these fashionable physicians are such snobs, they cannot abide visiting any but great folk. Isn’t it true?”
“Yes, dear, it is true,” said he, still humouring her.
“The fact is,” said she, in a low, confiding voice, “I may confess it to you, but the fact is, I don’t well know why I am here myself! I suppose Sir Within knows--perhaps my uncle may.” And in her vague, meaningless look might now be seen how purposeless and unguided were all her speculations. “There, go now, and send my maid to me. Tell Coles, as you pass down, he may put up the horses. I’ll not ride this evening. Do you know, I feel--it is a silly fancy, I suppose--but I feel ill; not actually ill so much as odd.”
He cast one glance, not without compassion, on her, and went out. “There’s a young woman above stairs mighty like ‘in’ for a fever,” said he to the hostess. “Get a doctor to see her as soon as you can, and I’ll be back soon to hear what he says.”
While the woman of the house, with all that kindliness which attaches to her class and nation, busied herself in cares for Kate, O’Rorke hastily made his way back to the inn.
“What is it? What called you away?” asked Ladarelle, as he entered the room.
“She’s out of her mind! that’s what it is,” said O’Rorke, as he sat down, doggedly, and filled out a bumper of sherry to rally his courage. “What with anxiety, and fatigue, and fretting, she couldn’t bear up any more, and there she is, struck down by fever and raving!”
“Poor thing!” said Ladarelle; but there was no pity in the tone, not a shade of feeling in his countenance; he said the words merely that he might say something.
“Yes, indeed! Ye may well say ‘Poor thing!’” chimed in O’Rorke; “it wouldn’t be easy to find a poorer!”
“Do you suspect the thing is serious?” said Ladarelle, with a deep interest in his manner. “Do you think her life’s in danger?”
“I do.”
“Do you really?” And now, through the anxiety in which he spoke, there pierced a trait of a most triumphant satisfaction; so palpable was it, that O’Rorke laid down the glass he had half raised to his lips, and stared at the speaker. “Don’t mistake--don’t misunderstand me!” blurted out Ladarelle, in confusion. “I wish the poor girl no ill. Why should I?”
“At any rate, you think it would be a good thing for you!” said O’Rorke, sternly.
“Well, I must own I don’t think it would be a bad one; that is, I mean it would relieve me of a deal of anxiety, and save me no end of trouble.”
“Just so!” said O’Rorke, who, leaning his head on his hand, addressed his thoughts to the very serious question of how all these things would affect himself. Nor did it take him long to see that from the hour Ladarelle ceased to need him, all their ties were broken, and that the fashionable young gentleman who now sat at table with him in all familiarity would not deem him fit company for his valet.”
“This is the fifth time, Master O’Rorke, you have repeated the words, ‘Just so!’ Will you tell me what they refer to? What is it that is ‘just so?’”
“I was thinking of something!” said O’Rorke.
“And what was it? Let us have the benefit of your profound reflections.”
“Well, then, my profound reflections was telling me that if this girl was to die, your honour wouldn’t be very long about cutting my acquaintance, and that, maybe, this is the last time I’d have the pleasure of saying, ‘Will you pass me the wine?’”
“What are you drinking? This is Madeira,” said Ladarelle, as he pushed the decanter towards him, and affecting to mistake his meaning.
“No, Sir; I’m drinking port wine,” was the curt reply, for he saw the evasion, and resented it.
“As to that other matter--I mean as to ‘cutting you,’ O’Rorke--I don’t see it--don’t see it at all!”
“How do you mean, ‘you don’t see it?’”
“I mean it is not necessary.”
“Isn’t it likely?”
“No; certainly not.”
“Isn’t it possible, then?”
“Everything is possible in this world of debts and difficulties, but no gentleman ever thinks of throwing off the man that has stood to him in his hour of need. Is that enough?”
O’Rorke made no answer, and in the attitude of deep thought he assumed, and in his intense look of reflection, it was pretty plain that he did not deem the explanation all-sufficient. “Here’s how it is, Sir!” burst he out, suddenly. “If this girl dies, you won’t want me; and if you won’t want me, it’s very unlikely the pleasure of my society will make you come after me; so that I’d like to understand how it’s to be between us.”
“I must say, my worthy friend, everything I have seen of you goes very far to refute the popular notion abroad about Irish improvidence; for, a man so careful of himself under every contingency--one who looked to his own interests in all aspects and with all casualties--I never met before.”
“Well, Sir, you meet him now. He is here before you; and what do you say to him?” said O’Rorke, with a cool audacity that was actually startling.
It was very probably fortunate for both of them, so far as their present good relations were concerned, that an interruption took place to their colloquy in the shape of a sharp knock at the door. It was a person wanted to see Mr. O’Rorke.
“Mr. O’Rorke’s in request to-night,” said Ladarelle, mockingly, as the other left the room.
“Are you the friend of that young lady, Sir, that’s down at M’Cafferty’s?”
“Yes, I’m her friend,” was the dry answer.
“Then I’ve come to tell you she’s going fast into a fever--a brain fever, too.”
“That’s bad” muttered O’Rorke below his breath.
“One ought to know something about her--whence she came, and how she came. There are symptoms that ought to be traced to their causes, for she raves away about people and things the most opposite and unlike----”
“Are you able to cure her? that’s the question,” said O’Rorke.
“No doctor could ever promise that much yet.”
“I thought as much,” said O’Rorke, with an insolent toss of his head.
“I am willing to do my best,” said the doctor, not noticing the offensive gesture; “and if you want other advice, there’s Doctor Rogan of Westport can be had easy enough.”
“Send for him, then, and hold a consultation; her life is of consequence, mind that!”
“I may as well tell you that Doctor Rogan will require to know what may lead him to a history of her case, and he won’t treat her if there’s to be any mystery about it.”
O’Rorke’s eyes flashed, as if an insolent answer was on his lips, and then, as quickly controlling himself, said, “Go and have your consultation, and then come back here to me; but mind you ask for me--Mr. O’Rorke--and don’t speak to any one else than myself.”
The doctor took his leave, and O’Rorke, instead of returning to the room, slowly descended the stairs and strolled out into the street.
It was night; there were few about; and he had ample opportunity for a quiet commune with himself, and that species of “audit” in which a man strikes the balance of all that may be pro or contra in any line of action. He knew well he was on dangerous ground with Ladarelle. It needed not an intelligence sharp as his own to show that a deep mistrust existed between them, and that each only waited for an opportunity to shake himself free of the other. “If I was to go over to the old man and tell him the whole plot, I wonder how it would be?” muttered he to himself. “I wonder would he trust me? and, if he was to trust me, how would he pay me? that’s the question--how would he pay me?” The quiet tread of feet behind him made him turn at this moment. It was the waiter of the inn coming to tell him that the post had just brought two letters to the gentleman he had dined with, and he wished to see him at once.
“Shut |he door--turn the key in it,” said Ladarelle, as O’Rorke entered. “Here’s something has just come by the mail. I knew you’d blunder about those letters,” added he, angrily; “one has reached Luttrell already, and, for aught I know, another may have come to hand since this was written. There, there, what’s the use of your excuses. You promised me the thing should be done, and it was not done. It does not signify a brass farthing to me to know why. You’re very vain of your Irish craft and readiness, and yet I tell you, if I had entrusted this to my fellow Fisk, Cockney as he is, I’d not have been disappointed.”
“Very like,” said O’Rorke, sullenly; “he’s more used to dirty work than I am.”
Ladarelle had just begun to run his eyes over one of the letters when he heard these words, and the paper shook in his hand with passion, and the colour came and went in his face, but he still affected to read on, and never took his gaze from the letter. At last he said, in a shaken voice, which all his efforts could not render calm, “This is a few lines from Fisk, enclosing a letter from Luttrell for Sir Within. Fisk secured it before it reached its destination.”
To this insinuated rebuke O’Rorke made no rejoinder, and, after a pause, the other continued: “Fisk says little, but it is all to the purpose. He has reduced every day to a few lines in journal fashion, so that I know what goes on at Dalradern as if I were there myself.”
O’Rorke kept an unbroken silence, and Ladarelle went on: “The day you left the Castle, Sir Within wrote to Calvert and Mills, his solicitors, and despatched by post a mass of documents and parchments. The next day he wrote to Mr. Luttrell of Arran, posting the letter himself as he drove through Wrexham.”
“That letter was the one I stopped at Westport,” broke in O’Rorke.
“I suppose it was. Fisk writes: ‘The servants all remarked a wonderful change had come over Sir W.; he gave orders through the house as if he expected company, and seemed in such spirits as he had not been for months. Next morning very anxious for the post to come in, and greatly disappointed at not seeing some letter he expected. The late post brought a letter from Mills to say he would be down by the morning’s mail--that the matter presented no difficulty whatever, and was exactly as Sir Within represented it.’ Fisk managed to read this and re-seal it before it got to hand; that’s what I call a smart scoundrel!”
“So he is--every inch of one!” was O’Rorke’s rejoinder.
“Here he continues,” said Ladarelle: “‘Thursday--No letter, nor any tidings of Mills. Sir Within greatly agitated. Post-horses ordered for Chester, and countermanded. All sorts of contradictory commands given during the day. The upholsterers have arrived from town, but told not to take down the hangings, nor do anything till to-morrow. Mr. Grenfell called, but not admitted; a message sent after him to ask him to dinner to-morrow; he comes. Friday--Arrived at Wrexham. As the mail came in, saw Mr. Mills order horses for Dalradern; waited for the post delivery, and secured the enclosed. No time for more, as the Irish mail leaves in an hour.’
“Now for Luttrell. Let’s see his side in the correspondence,” said Ladarelle, breaking the seal; “though perhaps I know it as well as if I read it.”
“You do not,” said the other, sturdily.
“What do you mean by ‘I do not?’”
“I suspect I know what you’re thinking of; and it’s just this--that John Luttrell is out of himself with joy because that old fool’s in love with his niece.”
“He might well be what you call out of himself with joy if he thought she was to be mistress of Dalradern.”
“It’s much you know him,” said O’Rorke, with an insolent mockery in his voice and look. “A Luttrell of Arran wouldn’t think a Prince of the Blood too good for one belonging to him. Laugh away, laugh away; it’s safe to do it here, for John Luttrell’s on the island beyand.”
“You are about the most----”
“The most what? Say it out. Surely you ain’t afraid to finish your sentence, Sir?”
“I find it very hard, Mr. O’Rorke, to conduct an affair to its end in conjunction with one who never omits an occasion to say, or at least insinuate, a rudeness.”
“Devil a bit of insinuation about me. Whatever I have to say, I say it out, in the first words that come to me; and I’m generally pretty intelligible too. And now, if it’s the same thing to you, what was it you were going to call me? I was the most--something or other--what was it?”
“I’ll tell you what I am,” said Ladarelle, with a bitter grin--“about the most patient man that ever breathed.”
Neither spoke for some time, and then Ladarelle opened the letter he still held in his hand, and began to read it.
“Well,” cried he, “of all the writing I ever encountered, this is the most illegible; and not merely that, but there are words erased and words omitted, and sentences left unfinished, or finished with a dash of the pen.”
“Are you going to read it out?” asked O’Rorke; and in his voice there rang something almost like a command, for the man’s native insolence grew stronger at every new conflict, and with the impression--well or ill-founded--that the other was afraid of him.
“I’ll try what I can do,” said Ladarelle, repressing his irritation. “It is dated St. Finbar’s, 16th:
“‘Sir,--I know nothing of your letter of the 12th instant. If I ever received, I have forgotten and mislaid it. I answered yours of the 9th, and hoped I had done with this correspondence. I have seen your name in the newspapers, and have been’--have been, I suppose it is--‘accustomed’--yes, accustomed--‘to look on you as a person in high employ, and worthy of the’--here the word is left out--‘who employed him. If, however, you be, as you state, in your’--this may be a nine or seven, I suppose it is seven--‘in your seventy-fourth year, your proposal to a girl of twenty is little short of------’ Another lapse; I wish we had his word, it was evidently no compliment. ‘That is, however, more your question than mine. Such follies as these ask for no comment; they usually------ And well it is it should be so.
“‘Fortune, however, befriends you more than your own foresight. It is your good luck rescues you from this------- She has left this--gone away--deserted me, as she once deserted you, and would in all likelihood when sorry-- insolent airs of your connexions -- to resent unpardonable. Without you are as bereft as myself, you must surely have-- relations, of whom-- choice -- and certainly more suitable than one whose age and decrepitude might in pity and compassion sentiment.
“‘But she is gone! Warning is, therefore, needless. You cannot if you would this folly. She is gone--and on a bed of sickness, to which the only hope--and that speedily.
“‘If -- by such-- hurt you.’”
“Line after line had been here erased and re-written, but all illegibly; nor was it, till after long puzzling and exploring, the last words could be made out to be: “‘All further interchange of letters is a task beyond my strength. It is all said when I write, She is gone, no more to nor would I now---- A few hours more--I pray not days.
“‘Faithful servant,
“‘H. LUTTRELL.’
“It’s clear he’ll have no more correspondence,” said Ladarelle, with a half triumphant manner, as he closed the letter.
“And the other? What will the other do?”
“Do you mean Sir Within?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not easy to say. It seems plain we’re not to expect anything very sensible from him. He is determined to make a fool of himself, and it only remains to see how he is to do it.”
“And how do you think it will be?” In spite of himself, O’Rorke threw into his question that amount of eagerness that showed how much interest he felt in the-matter. Ladarelle was quick enough to see this, and turned his eyes full upon him, and thus they stood for nigh half a minute, each steadfastly staring at the other. “Well! do you see anything very wonderful in my face that you look so hard at me?” asked O’Rorke.
“I do.”
“‘And what is it, if I might make so bowld?”
“I see a man who doubts how far he’ll go on the road he was paid to travel--that’s what I see!”
“And do you know why?” rejoined O’Rorke, defiantly. “Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you! It’s because the man that was to show me the way hasn’t the courage to do it! There’s the whole of it. You brought me over here, telling me one thing, and now you’re bent on another! and to-morrow, if anything cheaper turns up, you’ll be for that. Is it likely that I’d risk myself far with a man that doesn’t know his own mind, or trust his own courage?”
“I suppose I understand my own affairs best!”
“Well! that’s what I think about mine, too.”
Ladarelle took an impatient turn or two up and down the room before he spoke, and it was easy to see that he was exerting himself to the very utmost to be calm. “If this girl’s flight from Arran has served us in one way, her illness has just done us as much harm in another--I mean, of course, if she should not die---because my venerable relation is just as much determined to marry her as ever he was. Are you attending to me?”
“To every word, Sir,” said O’Rorke, obsequiously; and, indeed, it was strangely like magnetism the effect produced upon him, when Ladarelle assumed the tone and manner of a superior.
“I want to have done with the business, then, at once,” continued Ladarelle. “Find out from the doctor--and find it out accurately--what are her chances of life. If she is likely to live, learn how soon she could be removed from this, and whither to, as Sir Within is sure to trace her to this place. As soon as possible, we must manage some sort of mock marriage, for I believe it is the only sure way of stopping this old man in his folly. Now, I leave it to you to contrive the plan for this. There’s another demand for you. See who is at the door.”
“Mr. O’Rorke is wanted at M’Cafferty’s,” said a voice outside.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Sir.”
“Well, I shall go to bed, and don’t disturb me if there be nothing important to tell me. Order breakfast for ten to-morrow, and let me see you there.”
O’Rorke bowed respectfully, and went out.
“I’d give fifty pounds to hear that you had broken your neck on the staircase!” muttered Ladarelle, as he saw the door close; “and I’d give a hundred had I never seen you!”
LVI. A HEAVY BLOW
In the grand old dining-room of Dalradern Castle, Sir Within was seated with his guest, Mr. Grenfell. The ample wood-fire on the hearth, the costly pictures on the walls, the table covered with decanters and flasks of various forms, the ample old chairs in which they lounged, suggested luxurious ease and enjoyment; and perhaps Grenfell, as he smoked his cigar, in accordance with the gracious permission of his host, did feel that it was a supreme moment of life; while certainly he, to whom all the precious appliances belonged, was ill at ease and uncomfortable, answering occasionally at random, and showing in many ways that his mind was deeply and far from pleasantly preoccupied.
Grenfell had been some days at the Castle, and liked his quarters. There were, it is true, many things he wished changed; some of them, he fancied, could be altered by a little adroit diplomacy with the butler and the housekeeper, and other heads of departments; others, of a more serious kind, he reserved to be dealt with when the time should come that he would be regarded in that house as little less than a master. He had weighed the matter carefully with himself, and determined that it was better to stand by Sir Within, old as he was, than to depend on the friendship of young Ladarelle, whose innate vulgarity would have made all companionship irksome, and whose inveterate obstinacy would have made guidance impossible.
The house had, indeed, great capabilities, and, with Sir Within’s means, might be made all that one could wish for. With the smallest imaginable addition to the household, thirty, ay, forty guests could be easily accommodated, and he, Grenfell, knew of such delightful people--such charming people--who would be in ecstasies to stop at a house where there was no mistress, where no return civilities were wanted, where each guest might be a law to himself as to his mode of life, and where the cellar was immaculate, and the cook better than at the Travellers’.
“If I could only get him out of this stupid isolation--if I could persuade him that all England is not like a Welsh county, and that this demure neighbourhood, with its antiquated prudery, has no resemblance to the charming world of seductive sinners I could bring around him, what a victory it would be!” To this end the first grand requisite was, that the old man should not marry. “If he marry,” argued Grenfell, “he will be so deplorably in love, that what between his passion and his jealousy, he’ll shut up the house, and nothing younger than the old French abbé will ever cross the threshold.”
Now Grenfell had not of late kept up any relations of intercourse with Ladarelle; indeed, in his life in town, he had avoided intimacy with one all whose associates were evidently taken from the lowest ranks of the turf, and the slang set of second-rate theatres. Grenfell could not, consequently, know what plan of campaign this promising young gentleman was following out; but when he learned that it was quite suddenly he had quitted the Castle, and that his servant, Mr. Fisk, had been left behind, he very soon established such a watch on the accomplished valet’s movements as satisfied him that he was there on duty as a spy, and that his daily visits to the post-office signified how industriously he despatched his intelligence. At first, Grenfell was disposed to make advances to Fisk, and win his confidence--a task not difficult to one whose whole life had been a series of such seductions; but he subsequently thought it might be better to hold himself quite aloof from all intercourse with the younger branch, and stand firmly by the head of the dynasty. “If Ladarelle be really gone after, this girl, to marry her, or to run off with her, it matters not which, he is playing my game. All I ask is, that Sir Within be not the bridegroom. If the shock of the disaster should not overwhelm him, there is nothing else to be dreaded.” There, indeed, lay the great peril; nor was Grenfell a man to undervalue it. In his contempt for all emotions, he naturally ascribed their strongest influences to those whose age had weakened their faculties and impaired their judgments. Love was a folly with the young; but with the old, it was the stupidest of all infatuations, and the reckless way in which an old man would resign fortune, station, and the whole world’s opinion on such an issue, was, to his thinking, the strongest possible evidence of second childhood.
“If I could make him feel the ridiculous part of the calamity, he would gain courage to brave the disaster,” thought he. And while he thus thought he smoked on in silence, neither uttering a word.
“Nine o’clock!” said Sir Within, as he counted the strokes of the timepiece. “Nine, and the post not in!”
“How easily one takes the delay of the mail when ‘the House’ is up,” said Grenfell, purposely saying what might possibly suggest some sort of dissent or opinion; but the old diplomatist had been too well schooled to fall into such indiscretion, and simply said, “It is true, we all hibernate when the autumn begins.”
Grenfell saw that his shell had not exploded, and began to talk at random about how much pleasanter it was to have one’s post of a morning--that letters should always come in with the eggs at breakfast--that people exchanged their gossip more genially then than at any other time; and, at last, arrived at what he sought to portray, the tableau of a charming party in a delightful country-house, “The best thing we have in England; and, indeed, the best thing the world has anywhere.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Sir Within, blandly. And he wiped the beautiful miniature of Marie Antoinette that adorned the lid of his snuff-box, and gazed with admiration at the lovely features.
“I fancy they know very little abroad of what we call country-house life?” half asked Grenfell.
“They have their gatherings at ‘the chateau’ in France; and in Italy they have their villégiatura------Ah, there he comes; I hear the clank of the post-bag!” He caught himself quickly, and resumed: “I rather like the villégiatura; there is not much trouble taken to entertain you, but you are free to dispose of yourself how you like. What has kept him so late, Fry?” said he, as the butler entered with the bag; “take it up to my room.”
“Oh, let us hear who has won the Cantelupe!” said Grenfell. “I have backed Grimsby’s horse, Black Ruin, at three to eight against the field.”
“Here’s the key, then,” said Sir Within, with well feigned indifference.
As Grenfell emptied the contents of the bag on the table, a square-shaped, somewhat-heavy packet fell to the floor, at Sir Within’s feet. The old man lifted it up and laid it on the table, but, on doing so, his hand trembled, and his colour changed.
“What about your race--has your horse won?” asked he, as Grenfell turned over the paper to find the sporting intelligence. “Oh, here it is--a dead heat between Black Ruin and Attila. Why, he’s Grimsby’s also. ‘Second heat, Attila walked over.’ What a sell! I see there’s a long letter about it from the correspondent; shall I read it for you?”
“By all means,” said Sir Within, not sorry to give him any occupation at the moment that might screen himself from all scrutiny.
“‘The long-expected match between Lord St. Dunstan’s well-known Carib Chief and Mr. Grimsby’s Black Ruin--for, in reality, the large field of outsiders, fourteen in number, might as well have been cantering over an American savannah--took place yesterday.’” He read on and on--the fluent common-places--about the course crowded with rank and fashion, amongst whom were noticed the usual celebrities of the turf, and was getting to the description of the scene at the weighing stand, when a dull, heavy sound startled him. He looked down, and saw that Sir Within had fallen from his chair to the floor, and lay stretched and motionless, with one arm across the fender.
Lifting him up, Grenfell carried him to a sofa. His face and forehead were crimson, and a strange sound came from the half-open lips, like a faint whistle. “This is apoplexy,” muttered Grenfell; and he turned to ring the bell and summon aid, but, as he did so, he perceived that several papers lay on the floor, and the envelope of a recently-opened packet amongst them. “Ha, here is what has done it!” muttered he to himself; and he held a square-shaped piece of coarse paper to the light and read the following, written in a bold, irregular hand:
“‘I, Paul O’Rafferty, P.P. of Drumcahill and Ardmorran, hereby certify that I have this day united in the bonds of holy matrimony, Adolphus Ladarelle, Esq., of Upper Portland-street, London, and the “Downs,” in Herefordshire, to Kate Luttrell, niece and sole heiress of John Hamilton Luttrell, Esq., of Arran; and that the ceremony was duly performed according to the rights and usages of the Holy Catholic Church, and witnessed by those whose names are attached to this document.
“‘Jane M’Cafferty, her mark X.
“‘Timothy O’Rorke, of Cush-ma-Creena.
“‘Given on this eighteenth of November, 18--.’”
Grenfell had not time to look at the other papers, for he heard a step in the corridor, and, thrusting them hastily into his pocket, he rang the bell violently, nor desisted till the door opened, and Mr. Fisk appeared.
“Call the people here--send for a doctor!” cried Grenfell. “Sir Within has been taken with a fit.”
“A fit, Sir! Indeed, how very dreadful,” said Fisk; but who, instead of hurrying off to obey the order, walked deliberately over and stared at the sick man. “He’ll not come round, Sir, take my word for it, Mr. Grenfell. It’s no use doing anything--it’s all up.”
“Go, send for a doctor at once,” said Grenfell, angrily.
“I assure you, Sir, it’s too late,” said the impassive valet, as he left the room in the same slow and measured pace he had entered.
Several servants, however, rushed now to answer the bell, which Grenfell rang unceasingly, and by them Sir Within was carried to his room, while messengers were despatched in all directions for medical aid. Once alone in his own room, and with the door locked, Grenfell re-read the document which had caused the disaster. He was not one of those men who suffer from the pangs of conscience on ordinary occasions, but he had his misgivings here that a certain piece of counsel he had once given might just as well have been withheld. If the shock should kill the old man, it would defeat all that policy to which he had been of late devoting himself. Young Ladarelle would have learned from Fisk enough about his, Grenfell’s, influence with Sir Within to shut the doors against him when he had succeeded to the estate. These were painful reflections, and made him think that very probably he had “been backing the wrong stable.”
“Is the fellow really married?” muttered he, as he sat examining the paper. “This document does not seem to me very formal. It is not like the copy of a registry, and, if the marriage were duly solemnised, why is it not stated where it took place?”
He turned to the long letter which accompanied the certificate. It was from Ladarelle, half apologetically, announcing his marriage, and stating that the intelligence could doubtless only prove gratifying to Sir Within, since the object of his choice had so long been the recipient of so many favours from Sir Within himself, and one whose gratitude had already cemented the ties of relationship which bound her to the family. It was long and common-place throughout, and bore to the keen eyes of him who read it the evidence of being written to sustain a fraud.
“There has been no marriage,” said Grenfell, as he closed the letter. “She has been duped and tricked, but how, and to what extent, I know not. If I were to send for Fisk, and tell him that I had just received this letter from his master, the fellow might accord me his confidence, and tell me everything.”
He rang the bell at once, but, when the servant answered the summons, he said that Mr. Fisk had left the Castle with post-horses half an hour before, it was supposed for town.
Ladarelle’s letter finished by saying, “We are off to Paris, where we remain, Hôtel Grammont, Rue Royale, till the 30th; thence we shall probably go south--not quite certain where.”
“No, no, there has been no marriage--not even a mock one. All these details are far too minute and circumstantial, and these messages of ‘my dear wife’ are all unreal. But what can it matter? If the old man should only rally, it is all for the best.”
A knock came to the door. It was Doctor Price. “All is going on favourably. It was shock--only shock of the nervous system--nothing paralytic,” said he; “and he is more concerned to know that his face was not bruised, nor his hands scratched, than anything else. He wishes to see you immediately.”
“Is it quite prudent to go and talk to him just yet?”
“Better than render him irritable by refusing to see him. You will, of course, use your discretion on the topic you discuss with him.”
Grenfell was soon at the sick man’s bedside, none but themselves in the room.
“We are alone, are we?” asked Sir Within, faintly.
“Quite alone.”
“Yates says there were no letters or papers to be found when he entered the room----”
“I placed them all in my pocket,” interrupted Grenfell. “There were so many people about, and that fellow of young Ladarelle’s too, that I thought it best not to leave anything at their mercy.”
“It was very kind and very thoughtful. Where are they?”
“Here. I sealed them up in their own envelope.”
The old man took the paper with a trembling hand, and placed it under his pillow. He had little doubt but that they had been read--his old experiences in diplomacy gave no credit to any sense of honour on this head--but he said not a word of this.
“Adolphus has married the girl you saw here--my ward, he used to call her,” said he, in a low whisper.
“Indeed! Is it a good match? Has she fortune?”
“Not a shilling. Neither fortune nor family.”
“Then you are not pleased with the connexion?”
Sir Within drew a long sigh, and said: “It is no affair of mine. His father will, perhaps, not like it.”
“How did it come about? Where did it take place?”
“Nothing--nothing but misery before her!” muttered the old man, unheeding his question.
“Do you think he will treat her ill?”
“A life of sorrow--of sorrow and shame!” murmured he, still lower. “Poor girl!--poor unhappy girl!”
Grenfell was silent, and the other, after a pause, went on:
“His father is sure to be displeased; he is a violent man, too, and one can’t say to what lengths temper may carry him. And all this will fall upon her!”
“Do you think so?”
“I know him well!” He mused for several minutes, and then said to himself: “I could not--I could not--not for worlds!” And then aloud: “But I could leave this--leave the Castle, and let them come here. How she loved it once! Oh, if you knew how happy she was here!” He covered his face with his hands, and lay thus a considerable time.
“And do you mean to invite them here?” asked Grenfell at last.
“You can write it for me,” said he, still pursuing his own train of thought. “You can tell him that, not being well--having some difficulty in holding a pen--I have begged of you to say that the Castle is at their disposal--that I mean to leave this--where shall I say for?--to leave this for the south of France, or Italy.”
“Are you equal to such a journey? Have you strength for it?”
“Far more than to stay here and meet her--them--meet them,” added he, almost peevishly. “I have not health nor spirits for seeing company, and of course people will call, and there will be dinners and receptions--all things I am unfit for. Say this for me, dear Mr. Grenfell, and tell Yates that I mean to go up to town to-morrow.”
Grenfell shook his head to imply dissent, but the other resumed:
“If you knew me better, Sir, you would know that my energy never failed me when I called upon it. I have been tried pretty sorely once or twice in life, and yet no disaster has found me faint-hearted!” As he spoke, a gleam of pride lighted up his features, and he looked all that he thought himself. “Will you take this key of the gem-room,” said he, after a pause; “and in the second drawer of the large ebony cabinet you will find a green morocco-case; it has my mother’s name on it, Olivia Trevor. Do me the favour to bring it to me. This was a wedding present some eighty years ago, Mr. Grenfell,” said he, as he unclasped the casket that the other placed in his hands. “It was the fashion of those days to set gems on either side, and here you have emeralds, and here are opals. Ladies were wont to turn their necklaces in the course of an entertainment; they are content with less costly changes now: they merely change their affections.” He tried to smile, but his lips trembled, and his voice all but failed him.
“It is very magnificent!” exclaimed Grenfell, who was truly surprised at the splendour of the jewels.
“The Margravine of Anhalt’s present to my mother, Sir!” As the glow of pride the recollection imparted to his face faded away, a sickly pallor succeeded, and, in a tone of broken and difficult utterance, he said: “Be kind enough to place this in an envelope, seal it with my arms, and address it, ‘Mrs. A. Ladarelle, de la part de W. W.’ That will be quite sufficient.”
“They are splendid stones!” said Grenfell, who seemed never to weary of his admiration.
“They will become her, Sir, and she will become them!” said the old man, with an immense effort to seem calm and collected. “I believe,” said he at last, with a faint smile, “I am overtaxing this poor strength of mine. Price warned me to be careful. Will you forgive me if I ask you to leave me to my own sorry company? You’ll come back in the evening, won’t you? Thanks--my best thanks!” And he smiled his most gracious smile, and made a little familiar gesture with his hand; and then as the door closed, and he felt that none saw him, he turned his face to the pillow and sobbed--sobbed convulsively.
Although Grenfell had acceded to Sir Within’s request to write the invitation to Ladarelle, he secretly determined that he would not commit himself to the step without previously ascertaining if the marriage had really taken place, because, as he said to himself, this young fellow must never get it into his head that he has deceived such a man as me. He therefore wrote a short, half jocular note, addressed to Ladarelle at his club in town, saying that he had read his letter to Sir Within, and was not one-half so much overcome by the tidings as his respected relative. “‘In fact,’ said he, ‘I have arrived at that time of life in which men believe very little of what they hear, and attach even less of importance to that little. At all events, Sir Within will not remain here; he means to go abroad at once, and Dalradern will soon be at your disposal, either to pass your honeymoon, or rejoice over your bachelor freedom in, and I offer myself as your guest under either casualty.’ The answer will show me,” muttered he, “what are to be our future relations towards each other. And now for a good sleep, as befits a man with an easy conscience.”
LVII. THE HOME OF SORROW
It was six weeks after the events in which we last saw Kate Luttrell that she was sufficiently able to rise from her sick-bed, and sit at the little window of her room. She was wan, and worn, and wasted, her eyes deep sunken, and her cheeks hollow. Beautiful was she still in all the delicate outline of her features, the finely-rounded nostril and gracefully-turned chin almost gaining by the absence of the brilliant colouring which had at one time, in a measure, absorbed all the admiration of her loveliness. Her long luxuriant hair--spared by a sort of pity by her doctor, who, in his despair of rescuing her from her fever, yielded to her raving entreaties not to cut it off--this now fell in wavy masses over her neck and shoulders, and in its golden richness rendering her pale face the semblance of marble. Each day had the doctor revealed to her some detail of what had happened during her illness: How she had been “given over,” and received the last rites of the Church; how, after this, one who called himself her brother had arrived, and insisted on seeing her; how he came with the man named O’Rorke and the priest O’Rafferty, and remained a few seconds in her room, and left, never to return again; indeed, all three of them had left the town within an hour after their visit.
She heard all this in mute amazement, nor even was she certain that her faculties yet served her aright, so strange and incomprehensible was it all. Yet she rarely asked a question, or demanded any explanation, hearing all in silence, as though hoping that with time and patience her powers of mind would enable her to surmount the difficulties that now confronted and defied her.
For days and days did she labour to remember what great event it was had first led her to this town of Lifford, the very name of which was strange to her. The same dislike to ask a question pursued her here, and she pondered and pondered over the knotty point, till at last, of a sudden, just as though the light broke instantaneously upon her, she cried out:
“I remember it all! I know it now! Has the trial come off? What tidings of my grandfather?” The poor woman to whom this was addressed imagined it was a return of her raving, and quietly brought the doctor to her side. “Are the assizes oyer?” whispered Kate in his ear.
“More than a month ago.”
“There was an old man--Malone. Is he tried?”
“The murder case?
“I was at it.”
“And the verdict?”
“The verdict was guilty, with a recommendation to mercy for his great age, and the want of premeditation in the crime.”
“Well, go on.”
“The Judge concurred, and he will not be executed.”
“He will be banished, however--banished for life,” said she, in a low, faltering voice.
“To believe himself he asks no better, he made a speech of nigh an hour in his defence, and if it had not been that at the last he attempted a sort of justification of what he had done, the Judge would not, in all probability, have charged against him; but the old fellow insisted so strongly on the point that a poor man must always look to himself and not to the law for justice, that he destroyed his case.”
“And was there not one to advise him?”
“Apparently not; and when the Chief Baron named a lawyer to defend him, the old fellow refused the aid, and said, ‘The work that’s done for nothing is worth nothing. I’ll just speak for myself.’”
“And this other man--O’Rorke, I mean--where was he?--what did he do?”
“He left this the night before the trial came on, with that young gentleman that was here.”
“Ah, he left him! Deserted him in his last need!” cried she, faintly, but with an intense agony in the tone.
“Had they been friends?” asked the doctor; but she never heard the question, and sat with her hands clasped before her, motionless and silent.
“Were you there throughout the whole trial?” asked she, at last.
“No, I was present only on the last day, and I heard his speech.”
“Tell me how he looked; was he broken or depressed?”
“The very reverse. It would have been better for him if he had looked cast down or in grief. It was too bold and too defiant he was, and this grew on him as he spoke, till, towards the end of his speech, he all but said, ‘I dare you to find me guilty!’”
“The brave old man!” muttered she below her breath.
“When the crowd in the court cheered him, I knew what would happen. No Judge in the land could have said a word for him after that.”
“The brave old man!” mattered she again.
“It seemed at one time he was going to call witnesses to character, and he had a list of them in his hand, but he suddenly changed his mind, and said, ‘No, my Lord, whatever you’re going to do with me this day, I’ll do my best to meet it, but I won’t make any one stand up here, and have the shame to say he knows a man that the mere turn of a straw might send to the gallows!’”
“Did he say that?” cried she, wildly.
“He did; and he looked at the jury all the while, as though to say, ‘Take care what you do; it’s a man’s life is on it!’”
“Did he ever mention my name? Did he ask for any one in particular, did you hear?” asked she, faintly.
“No; but before he began his speech he looked all over the court for full five minutes or more, as if in search of some one, and even motioned some people in the gallery to stand aside that he might see better, and then he drew a long breath--either disappointment or relief; it might be either.”
“‘How could they have the heart to say guilty?” said she.
“There was no other word to say. They were on their oaths, and so the Judge told them, and the whole country was looking at them.”
“And where is he now?” asked she, eagerly.
“All the prisoners for transportation have been sent on to Dublin. They’ll not leave the country before spring.”
She hid her head between her hands, and sat for a long time without speaking. At last she raised her face, and her eyes were red with weeping, and her cheeks furrowed.
“Doctor,” said she, plaintively, “have I strength enough to go to him?”
He shook his head mournfully, in token of dissent.
“Am I too ill?”
“You are too weak, my poor child; you have not strength for such a journey.”
“But I have great courage, doctor, and I can bear far more fatigue than you would think.”
He shook his head again.
“You do not know,” said she, in a low but earnest voice, “that I was reared in hardship, brought up in want, and cold, and misery. Ay, and I have never forgotten it!”
He smiled; it was half in compassion, half in disbelief.
“Do you know me?--do you know who I am?” asked she, eagerly.
“I know it all, my poor child--I know it all,” said he, sadly.
“Know it all! What does your phrase mean? How all?”
He arose, but she grasped his hand with both hers’, and held him fast.
“You shall not leave this till you have answered me!” cried she. “Is it not enough that I am sick and friendless? Why should you add the torture of doubt to such misery as mine? Tell me, I beseech you--I entreat of you, tell me what you have heard of me! I will deny nothing that is true!”
He pleaded warmly at first to be let off altogether, and then to be allowed further time--some period when she had grown to be stronger and better able to bear what he should have to tell her. Her entreaties only became more urgent, and she at last evinced such excitement, that, in terror lest a return of her brain fever might be feared, he yielded, promising that the confidence reposed in him was a trust nothing should induce him to break.
There is no need that the reader should pass through the sad ordeal of Kate’s suffering, even as a witness. No need is there that her shame, her sorrow, her misery, and, last of all, her passionate indignation, should be displayed before him; nor that he should see her as she sat there wrung with affliction, or half maddened with rage. Compressing the doctor’s story into the fewest words, it was this:
“Kate had met young Ladarelle at Dalradern Castle, where a passion had grown up between them. The young man, heir to a vast fortune, and sure of a high position, did not scruple to avail himself of what advantages his brilliant station conferred--won her affections, and seduced her with the promise of a speedy marriage. Wearied out at the unfulfillment of this pledge, she had fled from Dalradern, and sought refuge at Arran, intending to reveal all to her uncle, whose pride would inevitably have sought out her betrayer, and avenged her wrong, when she yielded to O’Rorke’s persuasion to meet her lover at Westport, where, as he assured her, every preparation for their marriage had been arranged. Thus induced, she had quitted her uncle’s house, and met Ladarelle. A mock marriage, performed by a degraded priest, had united them, and they were about to set out for the Continent, when she was struck down by brain fever. The fear of being recognised, as the town was then filling for the Assizes, determined Ladarelle and his friend to take their departure. There was deposited with the doctor a sum sufficient to defray every charge of her illness, with strict injunctions to keep all secret, and induce her, if she recovered, to proceed to Paris, where, at a given address, she would be welcomed and well received.”
This was the substance of a narrative that took long in the telling, not alone for the number of incidents it recorded, but that, as he proceeded, the unlucky doctor’s difficulties increased as some point of unusual delicacy would intervene, or some revelation would be required, which, in the presence of the principal actor in it, became a matter of no small embarrassment to relate.
“And how much of all this, Sir, do you believe?” said she, calmly, as he concluded.
He was silent, for the question impugned more than his credulity, and he hesitated what to answer.
“I ask you, Sir, how much of this story do you believe?”
“There is a colour to part of it,” said he, diffidently.
“And what part?”
“The part which refers to the marriage here.”
“What do you mean, Sir?”
“When you lay on that bed yonder, with fixed eyes, motionless, unconscious, and, as all believed, dying, a priest muttered some words over you, and placed your hand in that of this young man I spoke of. The woman of the house saw this through the keyhole of the door; she saw a ring produced, too, but it fell to the ground, and the priest laughingly said, ‘It’s just as good without the ring;’ and, after they had gone, the woman picked it up beneath the bed, and has it now. She saw them, besides, when they came down stairs, sit down at a table and draw up a paper, to which the priest ordered her to be a witness by a mark, as she cannot write; and this paper she believes to have had some reference to the scene she saw above. All this I believe, for she who told it to me is truthful and honest.”
Kate passed her hand across her forehead like one trying to clear her faculties for better reflection, and then said: “But this is no marriage!”
“Certainly not; nor could it have been had recourse to to quiet scruples of yours, since you were unconscious of all that went on.”
“And with what object, then, was it done?”
This was what he could not answer, and he sat silent and thoughtful; at last he said: “Were you not at this Castle in Wales I spoke of?”
“Yes.”
“And left it for Arran?”
“Yes,” said she again, “that’ also is true; and I left it to come and see that old man whose trial you witnessed. He was my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather! Surely I am speaking to Miss Luttrell of Arran?”
She nodded, and, after a moment, said: “That old man was my mother’s father, and I journeyed here for no other end than to see him and comfort him. Of all these schemes and plots I know nothing, nor have I the strength now to attempt to think of them. Which of ns will you believe, Sir--them or me?”
“I believe you--every word you have told me,” said he; “but can you forgive me for the tale I have just told you?”
“Enough, now, that you do not believe it. And yet what can it matter to me how I am thought of? The opinion of the world is only of moment to those who have friends, I have not one!”
He did his best to comfort and to cheer her; he said all those kind things which even the humblest of his walk know how to pour into the ear of affliction, and he urged her to go back at once to Arran--to her uncle.
The counsel came well timed, and she caught at it eagerly. “My wretchedness will plead for me if I cannot speak for myself,” said she, half aloud; and now all her thoughts were how to reach Westport, and take boat for the island. The doctor volunteered to see her so far on her journey, and they set out the same evening.
Arrived at Westport, tired and fatigued as she was, she would not stay to rest, but embarked at once. The night was a bright and pleasant one, with a light land breeze, and as she stepped into the boat, she said, “The sea has given me the feeling of health again. I begin to hope I shall live to see you and thank you for all your friendship. Good-by.” And as she spoke, the craft was away, and she saw no more.
The poor suffering frame was so overcome by fatigue, that they were already at anchor in the harbour of Arran before she awoke. When she did so, her sensations were so confused that she was almost afraid to speak or question the boatmen, lest her words should seem wild and unconnected.
“Are you coming back with us, Miss?” asked one of the men, as she stepped on shore.
“No--yea--I believe not; it may be--but I hope not,” said she, in a broken accent.
“Are we to wait for you?” repeated he.
“I cannot say. No--no--this is my home.”
“A dreary home it is, then!” said the man, turning away; and the words fell heavily on her heart, and she sat down on a stone and gazed at the wild, bleak mountain, and the little group of stunted trees amidst which the Abbey stood; and truly had he called it a dreary home.
The dawn was just breaking as she reached the door, and ere she had time to knock, Molly saw her from her window, and rushed out to meet her and welcome her home. Almost hysterical with joy and grief together, the poor creature clung to her wildly. “It’s in time you’re come, darlin’,” she cried, amidst her sobs; “he’s going fast, sleeping away like a child, but asking for you every time he wakes up, and we have to tell him that you were tired, and were gone to lie down, and then he mutters some words and goes off again.”
It needed but this sorrow, Kate thought, to fill up the measure of her misery; and she tottered into the little room and sat down without uttering a word, while the woman went on with the story of her master’s illness.
“A mere cold at first, brought on by going down to the point of rocks at daybreak to watch the boats. He thought he’d see you coming back. At last, when he was so ill that he couldn’t leave the house, he said that the man that brought him the first news you were coming, he’d give him hothouse and garden rent free for his life, and it didn’t need that same to make us long to see you! Then came the fever, and for a while he forgot everything, but he talked away about poor Master Harry, and what a differ we’ll feel when he was the master, raving, raving on, and never ceasing. After that he came back to his senses, and began to ask where you were, and why you didn’t sit with him. There he is now! Hear that; that’s your name he’s trying to say. Come to him while it’s time.”
Kate arose. She never spoke, but followed the woman through the passage, and entered the little bedroom, where a faint lamp blended its light with the breaking day.
The sick man’s eager eye saw her as she crossed the threshold, and in a vague, discordant voice he cried out, “I knew you’d come to me. Sit here--sit down here and hold my hand. Such stories as they told me!” muttered he, as he caught her hand in his grasp. “They can’t make that drink for me, Kate,” said he, in a low, winning voice.
“I’ll make it, dearest uncle. I’ll be your nurse now,” said she, stooping and kissing his forehead.
“No, no; I’ll not let you leave me again. You must sit there and speak to me. When you go away, I feel as if you had gone for weeks.”
“My dear, dear uncle!”
“Strange! how strange!” whispered he. “I knew well you were there--there, in that room yonder, asleep, but my thoughts would wander away till I came to think you had left me--deserted me! Don’t cry, darling. I felt that tear; it fell on my cheek. I do believe,” cried he, aloud, “they wished me to think I was deserted--a Luttrell of Arran dying without a friend or a kinsman to close his eyes. And the last Luttrell, too! The haughty Luttrells they called us once! Look around you, girl, at this misery, this want, this destitution! Are these the signs that show wealth and power? And it is all that is left to us! All!”
“My own dear uncle, if you but get well, and be yourself once more, it is enough of wealth for us.”
“Are we alone, Kate?” asked he, stealthily.
“No, Sir; poor Molly is here.”
“Tell her to go. I have something to say to you. Look in that top drawer for a paper tied with a string. No, not that--that is a direction for my funeral; the other--yes, you have it now--is my will. Arran will be yours, Kate. You will love it through all its barrenness, and never part with it. Promise me that.”
She muttered something through her sobs.
“Be kind to these poor people. I have never been to them as I ought, but I brought them a broken heart as well as a broken fortune. And wherever you live, come back sometimes to see these old rocks, and sit in that old chair; for, solitary as it all is, it would grieve me bitterly if I thought it were to be deserted!”
She tried to speak,, but could not.
“If those on the mainland should try to encroach--if they should come upon your fishing-grounds, girl--defend your rights. We have had these royalties for more than three hundred years. Be firm, be bold!” He muttered on for some moments, and the last words his lips uttered were, “A Luttrell of Arran!” His eyes closed as he said it, and he covered his face with his hand. Kate thought it was sleep, but it was the last sleep of all.
LVIII. SIR WITHIN ABROAD
SIR Within, accompanied by Grenfell, who was now become an “indispensable” to him, left Dalradern for the Continent. The old man neither knew nor cared what direction he should take. The consciousness that any avowal of his love for Kate would but expose him to bitter raillery and ridicule, debarred him from all the sympathy he so much needed. Such a passion at his age was exactly one of those follies that all concur to laugh at, and it is precisely in the class that this old man pertained to, these dowagers of the world of statecraft, that ridicule is most powerful. The man who deems a witty “mot” a triumph, is just as ready to accept a severe epigram as a death-wound.
One would not have believed how a few days of sorrow could have aged him. It was not alone that a stern melancholy sat on his features, but that even his erect carriage and firm step had left him, and he walked now with bent-down head feebly and uncertainly. Arrived at Paris, Grenfell endeavoured to interest him by some of the pleasures of that marvellous capital. He induced him to dine at the “Rocher,” and to drive in the Bois; he narrated all the passing gossip of the day; told him the scandals in vogue, and showed him the actors in them as they drove by on the Boulevards; but it seemed as though all the world of these vanities had closed for him, and he neither smiled nor vouchsafed a word as he listened.
Once only did he betray the slightest animation of voice or manner; it was when Grenfell pointed out to him in a carriage one of the great beauties of the time. The old man looked fixedly for an instant at her, and then, turning away his head, muttered, “She is infinitely more beautiful.”
Paris he soon discovered to be too noisy and too bustling. For Switzerland, the season was already late, and the climate was severe. Spain or Italy remained, and he was yet hesitating which to take, when Grenfell mentioned that he saw Mr. M’Kinlay’s name amongst the arrivals at the hotel, and, on inquiry, learned that he was on his way out to Italy to see Vyner, and was to leave Paris that night.
“I think I should like to see Vyner too; that is, if he would receive me,” said Sir Within, feebly. “Could you manage to catch this Mr. M’Kinlay?”
“Shall we have him to dinner to-day?”
“No; I think not. I’m not equal to it.”
“Suppose you were to try. He’s not a person to make much ceremony with. If he bores you, pretend indisposition, and leave him.”
The old man smiled--a strange, dubious sort of smile it was; perhaps it amused him to receive a lesson in social craft or address from “a Mr. George Grenfell.” At all events, Grenfell read the smile as a partial concurrence with his suggestion, and went on:
“M’Kinlay would be flattered by the invitation; and, if you should want him in any other way, he will be all the more tractable.”
“That is certainly something,” replied he, musing.
“Not to say,” added Grenfell, laughing, “that we run no great risk in being tired of him, since the mail leaves at ten, and he’ll scarcely remain after nine!”
“That is also something,” said Sir Within again.
“Here goes, then, for a note; or stay, I’ll just see if he be in the house. We shall say six o’clock dinner, and alone; these men abhor the idea of dressing, if they can help it.”
Sir Within merely raised his eyebrows, half pitifully, that there were such people; and Grenfell hastened away on his mission. He was back in a moment. “Just caught him getting into a cab; he’ll be delighted--he was delighted when I gave him your message. He goes off to-night, as the waiter said, and apparently full of important news. Vyner, it would seem, has come all right. All he told me was: ‘Sir Gervais will be on his legs again;’ but we’ll have it all after dinner.”
Sir Within heard the tidings with far less interest than Grenfell looked for. He smiled benignly, indeed; he muttered something about being “charmed to hear it;” and then heaved a heavy sigh and sat down with his back to the light. How heartless and unfeeling did it seem to him to have so much compassion for loss of mere fortune, and not one word of sympathy for a broken and bereaved heart! What a world it was! What a world of perverted feeling and misapplied generosity!
Grenfell said something about the epicurism of the lawyer class, and went off to give special directions about the dinner; and the old man dozed, and woke, and wandered on in thought over the past, and dozed again, till his servant came to apprise him it was time to dress.
It was the first time he was to encounter the presence of a stranger after some months of seclusion, and he shrank from the effort, and would have retreated altogether if he could only have found a pretext. Conventionalities are, however, the tyrants of such men as himself, and the bare idea of anything unseemly in politeness was unendurable. He suffered his valet, therefore, to restore him to something of his former appearance. His eyebrows were newly tinted and well arched; his furrowed cheeks were skilfully smoothed over and suffused with a soft, permanent blush; and his whiskers were ingeniously brought into keeping with the vigorous darkness of his raven wig, imparting to him altogether a sort of surcharged vitality, that, to an acute observer, might have imparted a sense little short of horror. The very brilliants of his rings caught a twinkling lustre from his tremulous hands, as though to impress the beholder with the contrast between splendour and decay.
Nor was his manner less unreal than his appearance. With his darkened eyebrows and his diamond studs he had put on his old tone of soft insinuation, and all that was natural in the Man was merged in the crafty devices of the Minister. No wonder was it M’Kinlay was charmed with a tone and address that had done service in Courts. Sir Within thus “warmed to his work,” and actually at last began to feel pleasure in the success he achieved; and even Grenfell, long trained to the habits of the world, was astonished at conversational resources for which he had never given him credit.
Thus happily did the dinner proceed; and when the servants retired, M’Kinlay had arrived at that point of beatitude in which he regarded the company as something superlatively high, and himself fully worthy of it.
“You are on your way to my old friend Vyner, I think?” said Sir Within, with a heartiness that ignored all estrangement between them.
“Yes, Sir; on a pleasanter mission, I rejoice to say, than when I last travelled the same road.”
“He is all right again, I hear,” said Grenfell, who meant, by an abrupt declaration, to disarm all the conventional reserve of the lawyer.
“Well, that would be saying too much, perhaps--too much; but I hope, Mr. Grenfell, he is on the way to it.”
“With M’Kinlay for his pilot, he’ll make the harbour, I have no doubt whatever,” said Sir Within, smiling graciously.
“I shall certainly do my best, Sir,” said the other, bowing. “Not alone because it is my duty, but that Sir Gervais has been good enough to regard me, for many years back, in the light of his friend as well as his lawyer.”
“Of that I am well aware,” said Sir Within, lifting his glass and appearing to be quietly pledging Mr. M’Kinlay to himself as a toast.
“Has the scoundrel who ran away with his securities been caught?” asked Grenfell, impatiently.
“No, Sir; he is beyond being caught--he is dead.” After a pause, which Sir Within and Grenfell saw all the importance of not breaking but leaving to M’Kinlay the task of continuing his narrative, that gentleman went on: “It is quite a romance--positively a romance in real life. I’m afraid,” said he, looking at his watch, “I shall not have time to tell you the story in all its details. I must start by the ten-twenty train for Lyons.”
“We are only a few minutes after eight now,” said Grenfell. “Let us hear the story.”
“Even in outline,” chimed in Sir Within, blandly. “Pray help yourself to the wine--it is beside you.”
“I can give you but a sketch--a mere sketch, Sir. It would seem, Sir, that ever since the French conquest of Algeria, a French company has been engaged in the supply of munitions of war to the Arabs, and to this end had established agents at Tripoli, Tunis, and Morocco, who were thus enabled to transport these supplies into the interior of Africa. The director of this company was La Harpe, the Parisian banker, with whom Sir Gervais became acquainted through Mr. Gennet, himself the owner of many shares in the undertaking.”
Grenfell sighed drearily at the long-windedness which he saw awaited them; but Sir Within looked intensely interested, and M’Kinlay went on, and, with a prolixity that I have no desire to imitate, entered upon the nature of this company, its operations, and its gains. With a painstaking minuteness he described the false trade-marks used to prevent discovery, and how the weapons, which were forged in France, bore the stamp of Sheffield or Birmingham.
“Giving ‘La perfide Albion’ all the credit of the treachery,” said Sir Within, smiling.
“Precisely, Sir,” said M’Kinlay, delighted at the attention so graciously vouchsafed him. “I see you understand it all. Indeed, I may remark here, that a very sharp interchange of notes took place between the two Governments on the subject, the French alleging, and with apparent reason----”
“Get on, in Heaven’s name, to what concerns Vyner,” cried Grenfell, “or it only wants a quarter to nine, otherwise you’ll have to leave us without the catastrophe.”
“I obey, Sir,” said M’Kinlay, with a certain irritation of voice at the same time. “I must observe, you will find it very difficult to fill up for yourselves the gaps you insist on my passing over. Mr. Gennet, then, for it is of him you wish me to speak, very soon perceiving that Sir Gervais Vyner was not a man to be drawn into such an illicit traffic, assumed to have obtained from the Bey of Tunis and others most valuable concessions to mines of various kinds, and by specimens of ore, reports of scientific mineralogists, and such-like, imposed on him so far as to induce him to enter largely into the speculation, not at all aware that every shilling he advanced was directed to the great enterprise of La Harpe and Company. It was not a very difficult task for an accomplished swindler like Gennet to show that the mines, which had no existence, had proved a failure. Indeed, the disastrous issue of the enterprise was so plausibly described, and the affairs were wound up with such apparent fairness, that it was no wonder if poor Sir Gervais actually pitied Gennet, and went so far as to beg he might not be molested. I assure you, Sir, I have a letter in my desk that says----”
“Nine o’clock!” solemnly ejaculated Grenfell, as the hour rang out from a neighbouring steeple.
“I hear it, Sir, and regret much that my time should be so limited; but to resume. So soon as Gennet had established the fact of the mock bankruptcy, he fled from Europe, and it was believed took refuge in America, where he had lived many years as partner in a mercantile house--the firm of Reay, Pate, and Brothers, Forty-sixth-street, New York, large shipowners, and importers on their own account. I feel I am prolix, Mr. Grenfell, even without the admonition of that painful sigh. But really, gentlemen, I am merely selecting the salient points of a very complicated incident, and not entering upon any but the strictly essential details.”
Sir Within assured him he felt an unbounded confidence in his discretion, and he resumed:
“There chanced to be in the employ of that firm a merchant captain named Dodge, a man of remarkable energy of character and great daring; and here I may mention, as a curious circumstance, that I once happened by a singular coincidence to meet with this man, and be his fellow-traveller, under no common circumstances.”
“I believe I can recal them,” said Sir Within. “I was the guest of my friend Sir Gervais on the night you told a very remarkable story, in which this man’s name occurred. The name was a strange one, and it held a place in my memory. If I mistake not, you crossed over to the Arran Islands in his company?”
“I am much flattered to find, Sir Within, that you remember the incident, though I see how trying it proves to Mr. Grenfell’s patience.”
“Not in the least, if you will only consent to start by the morning’s train instead of to-night’s. Do that, and you will find you never had a more patient nor more interested listener.”
“Perfectly impossible, Sir. I have timed the whole journey by Bradshaw; and to catch the mail-boat--the Queen Hortense--at Marseilles, on Saturday, I must arrive by the early train, and there is the half-hour now chiming. I trust Sir Within Wardle will forgive my abrupt leave-taking. One more glass of this excellent claret, and I am off.”
“Pray give my very kindest regards to Sir Gervais, and my most respectful homage to the ladies. Though I am not permitted to learn how the good fortune came, let me, I beg, be associated with every congratulation the event inspires.” And with this Frenchified expression of his satisfaction, the old diplomatist drew himself up like one who felt that he stood once more on his native heath.
So wrapt up was he, indeed, in this revival of an old part he had so long played with success, that he never noticed how Grenfell had left the room along with M’Kinlay, and he sat gazing at the fire and thinking over bygones. Nor was he aware how time flitted past, when Grenfell returned and took his place opposite him.
“I was determined to have all I could get out of him,” said Grenfell. “I jumped into the cab with him, and went to the railroad station. What between his dreary tiresomeness and the street noises as we rattled along, I gained very little; but this much I have learned: That the man Gennet, who had once, as the lawyers call it, ‘compassed’ the life of Dodge, by sending him to sea in a rotten vessel, immensely insured, and predestined to shipwreck, was recognised by this same skipper in the street at Tripoli. Dodge, it seems, had just been landed with one other survivor of his crew, having blown up his vessel to prevent its falling into the hands of some Riff pirates, and after unheard-of peril and sufferings was picked up at sea with his companion, both badly wounded by the explosion, though they had thrown themselves into the sea before the vessel blew up. All I could do would not hurry M’Kinlay over this part of the story, which I believe he imagined he told effectively, and I had only got him to Tripoli as we drove into the yard of the station. While higgling with the cabman and the porters, he stammered out something about Dodge standing at his Consul’s door as Gennet rode past with a large suite of Arab followers; that the skipper sprang upon him like a tiger and tore him from his horse. A dreadful struggle must have ensued, for Gennet died of his wounds that night, and Dodge was nearly cut to pieces by the guard, his life being saved by the desperate bravery of his friend, who was at last rescued by the members of the Consulate. The bell rang as we arrived at this critical moment, but I followed him to his compartment, and, at the risk of being carried off, sat down beside him. The miserable proser wanted to involve me in an account of the criminal law of Tripoli when any one holding office under the Bey should have been the victim of attack, but I swore I knew it perfectly, and asked what about Gennet? He then began to narrate how the French Consul, having intervened to defend the interests of his countryman, discovered the whole plot against France, found all the details of the purchase of war materials, bills of lading, and such-like: and, besides these, masses of Vyner’s acceptances, which had never been negotiated. Another--the last--bell now rang out, and as I sprang from my seat he leaned out of the window, and said: ‘Dodge, it is thought, will recover; his friend is now with Sir Gervais, at Chiavari, and turns out to be Luttrell, the young fellow whom we picked up----’ When, where, or how, I cannot say, for the train now moved on, and the tiresome old dog was carried off at a very different pace from that of his narrative.”
Sir Within listened with all the semblance of interest and attention. Once or twice he interjected an “Ah!” or, “How strange!” But it is only truthful to own that he paid very little real attention to the story, and could not well have said at the end whether Dodge was not the villain of the piece, and young Luttrell his guilty accomplice.
Very grateful was he, however, when it ended, and when Grenfell said, “I suppose Vyner has had enough of speculation now to last his lifetime.”
“I trust so sincerely,” said Sir Within, with a smile.
“It is such rank folly for a man to adventure into a career of which he knows nothing, and take up as his associates a set of men totally unlike any he has ever lived with.”
“I perfectly agree with you,” said the other, with an urbane bow. “You have admirably expressed the sentiment I experience at this moment; and even with my brief opportunity of arriving at a judgment, I am free to confess that I thought this gentleman who has just left us, Mr. M’Kinlay, I think he is called--a very dangerous man--a most dangerous man.”
Grenfell looked at him, and fortunate was it that Sir Within did not note that look, so full was it of pitiless contempt; and then rising, he said, “It is later than I thought. You said something about Versailles for to-morrow, didn’t you?”
“I have not heard whether his Majesty will receive me.”
Grenfell started, and stared at him. Had it come to this already? Was the mind gone and the intellect shattered?
“You spoke of a day in the country somewhere,” reiterated Grenfell “St. Germains, or Versailles.”
“Very true. I am most grateful for your reminder. It will be charming. I am quite in the humour for a few pleasant people, and I hope the weather will favour us.”
“Good-night,” said Grenfell abruptly, and left the room.
LIX. MR. GRENFELL’S ROOM
Mr. Grenfell sat in an easy-chair, wrapped in a most comfortable dressing-gown, and his feet encased in the softest of slippers, before a cheery wood fire, smoking. His reflections were not depressing. The scene from which he had just come satisfied him as to a fact--which men like Grenfell have a sort of greedy appetite to be daily assured of--that “Money is not everything in this world.” Simple as the proposition seems, it takes a long and varied knowledge of life to bring home that conviction forcibly and effectually. Men are much more prone to utter it than to believe it, and more ready to believe it than to act upon it.
Now, though Grenfell was ready to admit that “Money was not everything,” he coupled it with what he believed to be just as true--that it was a man’s own fault that made it so. He instanced to his mind the old man he had just quitted, and who, except in the quality of years, was surrounded with everything one could desire--name, fortune, station, more than average abilities, and good health--and yet he must needs fall in love! By what fatality was it that a man always chose the worst road? What malevolent ingenuity ever selected the precise path that led to ruin? Were there no other vices he could have taken to? Wine, gambling, gluttony, would have spared his intellect for a year or two certainly. The brains of old people stand common wear and tear pretty well; it is only when the affections come to bear upon the mind that the system gives way. That a man should assume old age gracefully and becomingly, the heart ought to decay and grow callous, just as naturally as hair whitens and teeth fail. Nature never contemplated such a compact as that the blood at seventy should circulate as at thirty, and that the case-hardened, world-worn man should have a revival of Hope, Trustfulness, and Self-delusion. It was thus Grenfell regarded the question, and the view was not the less pleasing that he felt how safely he stood as regards all those seductions which fool other men and render their lives ridiculous. At all events, the world should not laugh at him. This is a philosophy that suffices for a large number of people in life; and simple as the first element of it may seem, it involves more hard-heartedness, more cruel indifference to others, and a more practical selfishness, than any other code I know of.
If he was well pleased that Vyner should “come all right again,” it was because he liked a rich friend far better than a poor one; but there mingled with his satisfaction a regret that he had not made overtures to the Vyners--the “women,” he called them--in their hour of dark fortune, and established with them a position he could continue to maintain in their prosperity. “Yes,” thought he, “I ought to have been taught by those people who always courted the Bourbons in their exile, and speculated on their restoration.” But the restoration of the Vyner dynasty was a thing he had never dreamed of. Had he only had the very faintest clue to it, what a game he might have played! What generous proffers he might have made, how ready he might have been with his aid! It is only just to him to own that he very rarely was wanting in such prescience; he studied life pretty much as a physician studies disease, and argued from the presence of one symptom what was to follow it.
His present speculations took this form. Vyner will at once return to England, and go back to “the House;” he’ll want occupation, and he’ll want, besides, to reinstate himself with the world. With his position and his abilities--fair abilities they were--he may aspire to office, and Grenfell liked official people. They were a sort of priesthood, who could slip a friend into the sanctuary occasionally, not to add, that all privileged classes have an immense attraction for the man whose birth has debarred him from their intimacy. Now, he could not present himself more auspiciously to the Vyners than in the company of Sir Within Wardle, who was most eager to renew all his former relations with them. Nor was it quite impossible but that Grenfell might seem to be the agency by which the reconciliation was brought about. A clever stroke of policy that, and one which would doubtless go far to render him acceptable to the “women.”
If we must invade the secresy of a very secret nature, we must confess that Mr. Grenfell, in his gloomier hours, in his dark days at home, when dyspeptic and depressed, speculated on the possible event that he might at last be driven to marry. He thought of it the way men think of the precautions instilled by a certain time of life, the necessity of more care in diet, more regular hours, and such-like.
There would come a time, he suspected, when country-houses would be less eager for him, and the young fellows who now courted and surrounded him, would have themselves slipped into “mediævalty,” and need him no more. It was sad enough to think of, but he saw it, he knew it. Nothing, then, remained but a wife.
It was all-essential--indeed indispensable--that she should be a person of family and connexions; one, in fact, that might be able to keep open the door of society--even half ajar--but still enough to let him slip in and mingle with those inside. Vyner’s sister-in-law was pretty much what he wanted. She was no longer young, and consequently her market-value placed her nearer to his hopes; and although Sir Gervais had never yet made him known to Lady Vyner or Georgina, things were constantly done abroad that could not have occurred at home. Men were dear friends on the Tiber who would not have been known to each other on the Thames. The result of all his meditations was, that he must persuade Sir Within to cross the Alps, and then, by some lucky chance or other, come unexpectedly upon the Vyners. Fortune should take care of the rest.
Arrived at this conclusion, and his third cigar all but smoked out, he was thinking of bed, when a tap came to his door. Before he had well time to say “Come in,” the door opened, and young Ladarelle’s valet, Mr. Fisk, stood before him.
“I hope you’ll forgive me, Sir,” said he, submissively, “for obtruding upon you at such an hour, but I have been all over Paris, and only found out where you were this minute. I was at the station this evening when you drove up there, but I lost you in the crowd, and never could find you again.”
“All which zeal implies that you had some business with me,” said Grenfell, slowly.
“Yes, Sir, certainly. It is what I mean, Sir,” said he, wiping his forehead, and betraying by his manner a considerable amount of agitation.
“Now, then, what is it?”
“It is my master, Sir, Mr. Adolphus Ladarelle, has got into trouble--very serious trouble, I’m afraid, too--and if you can’t help him through it, there’s nobody can, I’m sure.”
“A duel?”
“No, Sir, he don’t fight.”
“Debt?”
“Not exactly debt, Sir, but he has been arrested within the last few hours.”
“Out with it. What’s the story?”
“You have heard about that Irish business, I suppose, Sir--that story of the young girl he pretended to have married to prevent Sir Within making her my Lady----”
“I know it all; go on.”
“Well, Sir, the worst of all that affair was, that it brought my master into close intimacy with a very dangerous fellow called O’Rorke, and though Mr. Ladarelle paid him--and paid him handsomely, too--for all he had done, and took his passage out to Melbourne, the fellow wouldn’t go. No, Sir, he swore he’d see Paris, and enjoy a little of Paris life, before he’d sail. I was for getting him aboard when he was half drunk, and shipping him off before he was aware of it; but my master was afraid of him, and declared that he was quite capable of coming back from the farthest end of the world to ‘serve him out’ for anything like ‘a cross.’”
“Go on--come to the arrest--what was it for?” broke in Grenfell, impatiently.
“Cheating at cards, Sir,” plumped out the other, half vexed at being deemed prosy. “That’s the charge, Sir; false cards and cogged dice, and the police have them in their hands this minute. It was all this fellow’s doing, Sir; it was he persuaded Mr. Dolly to set up the rooms, and the tables, and here’s what it’s come to!” “And there was false play?”
“So they say, Sir. One of the ladies that was taken up is well known to the police; she is an Italian Marchioness--at least they call her so--and the story goes ‘well protected,’ as they say here.”
“I don’t see that there’s anything to be done in the matter, Fisk; the law will deal with them, and pretty sharply, too, and none can interfere with it. Are you compromised yourself?”
“No, Sir, not in the least. I was back and forward to Town once or twice a week getting bills discounted and the like, but I never went near the rooms. I took good care of that.”
“Such being the case, I suspect your affection for your master will not prove fatal to you--eh?”
“Perhaps not, Sir; a strong constitution and reg’lar habit may help me over it, but there’s another point I ain’t so easy about. Mr. Dolly has got a matter of nigh four hundred pounds of mine. I lent it at twenty-five per cent, to him last year, and I begin to fear the security is not what it ought to be.”
“There’s something in that, certainly,” said Grenfell, slowly. “Yes, Sir, there’s a great deal in it, because they say here, if Mr. Dolly should be sent to the galleys ever so short a time, he loses civil rights, and when he loses them, he needn’t pay no debts to any one.”
“Blessed invention those galleys must be, if they could give the immunity you mention!” said Grenfell, laughing; “but I opine your law is not quite accurate--at any rate, Fisk, there’s nothing to be done for him. If he stood alone in the case, it is just possible there would be a chance of helping him, but here he must accept the lot of his associates. By the way, what did he mean by that mock marriage? What was the object of it?” This query of Grenfell’s was thrown out in a sort of random carelessness, its real object being to see if Mr. Fisk was on “the square” with him.
“Don’t you know, Sir, that he wanted to prevent the old gent at Dalradern from marrying her? One of the great lawyers thinks that the estate doesn’t go to the Ladarelles at all if Sir Within had an heir, and though it’s not very likely, Sir, it might be possible. Master Dolly, at all events, was mortally afraid of it, and he always said that the mere chance cost him from fifteen to twenty per cent, in his dealings with money-lenders.”
“Are you known to Sir Within, Fisk? Has he seen you at the Castle?”
“Not to know me, Sir; he never notices any of us at all. Yates, his man, knows me.”
“Yates is not with him. He has got a French valet who lived with him some years ago, and so I was thinking, perhaps, the best way to serve you would be to take you myself. What do you say to it?”
“I’m ever grateful, Sir, to you. I couldn’t wish for anything better.”
“It will be pleasanter than ‘Clichy,’ at all events, Fisk, and there’s no doubt the police here will look out for you when they discover you were in Mr. Ladarelle’s service.”
“And am I safe here, Sir?”
“You’ll be safe, because we leave here to-morrow. So come over here after breakfast, and we’ll settle everything. By the way, I’d not go near Mr. Ladarelle if I were you; you can’t be of use to him, and it’s as well to take care of yourself.”
“I was just thinking that same, Sir; not to say that if that fellow O’Rorke saw me, it’s just as likely he’d say I was one of the gang.”
“Quite so. Be here about twelve or one, not later.”
“What do you think about my money, Sir--the loan to Mr. Dolly, I mean?”
“It’s not a choice investment, Fisk--at least, there are securities I would certainly prefer to it.”
“Three years’ wages and perquisites, Sir!” cried he, mournfully.
“Well, your master will probably have five years to ruminate over the wrong he has done you.”
“At the galleys? Do you really mean the galleys, Sir?”
“I really mean at the galleys, Fisk; and if he be not a more amusing companion there than I have found him in ordinary life, I can only say I do not envy the man he will be chained to.”
Mr. Fisk grinned a very hearty concurrence with the sentiment, and took a respectful leave, and withdrew.
LX. MR. M’KINLAY IN THE TOILS
Mr. M’KINLAY was too acute an observer not to see that his arrival at the Boschetto was matter of general satisfaction, and his welcome peculiarly cordial. The Vyners had just escaped from a heavy calamity, and were profuse of grateful emotions to all who had assisted them in their troubles.
Now, M’Kinlay had not been extravagant in his offices of friendship, but, with a sort of professional instinct, he had always contemplated the possibility of a restoration, and had never betrayed by his manner any falling off from his old terms of loyalty and devotion.
The Vyners, however, had their acute attack of gratitude, and they felt very warmly towards him, and even went so far as to designate by the word “delicacy” the cold reserve which he had once or twice manifested. Vyner gave him up his own room, and the little study adjoining it, and Georgina--the haughty Georgina--vouchsafed to look over its internal economies, and see that it was perfect in all its comforts. She went further; she actually avowed to him the part she had taken in his reception, and coquettishly engaged him to remember how much of his accommodation had depended on her foresight.
Mr. M’Kinlay was delighted; he had not been without certain misgivings, as he journeyed along over the Alps, that he might have shown himself a stronger, stauncher friend to Vyner in his hour of adversity. He had his doubts as to whether he had not been betrayed once or twice into a tone of rebuke or censure, and he knew he had assumed a manner of more freedom than consorted with their former relations. Would these lapses he remembered against him now? Should he find them all colder, stiffer, haughtier than ever?
What a relief to him was the gracious, the more than gracious, reception he met with! How pleasant to be thanked most enthusiastically for the long journey he had come, with the consciousness he was to be paid for it as handsomely afterwards! How lightly he took his fatigues, how cheerily he talked of everything, slyly insinuating now and then that if they would look back to his letters, they would see that he always pointed to this issue to the case, and for his part never felt that the matter was so serious as they deemed it. “Not that I ever permitted myself to hold out hopes which might prove delusive,” added he, “for I belong to a profession whose first maxim is, ‘Nothing is certain.’”
Nor was it merely kind or complimentary they were; they were confidential. Vyner would sit down at the fire with him, and tell all the little family secrets that are usually reserved for the members themselves; and Georgina would join him in the garden, to explain how she long foresaw the infatuation of her brother-in-law, but was powerless to arrest it; and even Lady Vyner--the cold and distant Lady Vyner--informed him, in the strictest secresy, that her dear mother had latterly taken a fondness for Malaga, and actually drank two full glasses of it every day more than the doctor permitted. What may not the man do in the household who is thus accepted and trusted? So, certainly, thought Mr. M’Kinlay, and as he strolled in the garden, apparently deep in thought over the Vyner complications, his real cares were, How was he himself to derive the fullest advantage of “the situation”?
“It is while towing the wreck into harbour the best bargain can be made for salvage,” muttered M’Kinlay. “I must employ the present moments well, since, once reinstated in their old prosperity, the old pride is sure to return.” He hesitated long what course to take. Prudence suggested the slow, cautious, patient approach; but then Miss Courtenay was one of those capricious natures whose sudden turns disconcert all regular siege. And, on the other hand, if he were to attempt a “surprise,” and failed, he should never recover it. He had ascertained that her fortune was safe; he had also learned that Mrs. Courtenay had made a will in her favour, though to what precise amount he could not tell; and he fancied--nor was it mere fancy--that she inclined far more to his society than heretofore, and seemed to encourage him to a greater frankness than he had yet dared to employ in his intercourse with her.
Partly because of the arduous task of investigating Vyner’s accounts, and partly that he was a man who required abundant time and quiet before he could make up his mind on any difficulty, he breakfasted alone in his own room, and rarely mixed with the family before dinner-hour. He knew well how all this seeming industry redounded to his credit; the little entreaties to him to take some fresh air, to take a walk or a drive, were all so many assurances of friendly interest in his behalf; and when Vyner would say, “Have a care, M’Kinlay; remember what’s to become of us if you knock up,” Lady Vyner’s glance of gratitude, and Miss Courtenay’s air of half confusion, were an incense that positively intoxicated him with ecstasy.
A short stroll in the garden he at last permitted himself to take, and of this brief period of relaxation he made a little daily history--one of those small jokes great men weave out of some little personal detail, which they have a conscious sense, perhaps, history will yet deal with more pompously.
“Five times from the orangery to the far summer-house to-day! There’s dissipation for you,” would he say, as he entered the drawing-room before dinner. “Really I feel like a pedestrian training for a race.” And how pleasantly would they laugh at his drollery, as we all do laugh every day at some stupid attempt at fun by those whose services we stand in need of, flattering ourselves the while that our sycophancy is but politeness.
Vyner was absent one day, and Mr. M’Kinlay took the head of the table, and did the honours with somewhat more pretension than the position required, alluding jocularly to his high estate and its onerous responsibilities, but the ladies liked his pleasantry, and treasured up little details of it to tell Sir Gervais on his return.
When they left him to his coffee and his cigar on the terrace, his feeling was little less than triumphant. “Yes,” thought he, “I have won the race; I may claim the cup when I please.” While he thus revelled, he saw, or fancied he saw, the flutter of a muslin dress in the garden beneath. Was it Georgina? Could it be that she had gone there designedly to draw him on to a declaration? If Mr. M’Kinlay appear to my fair readers less gallant than he might be, let them bear in mind that his years were not those which dispose to romance, and that he was only a “solicitor” by profession.
“Now or never, then,” said he, finishing a second liqueur-glass of brandy, and descending the steps into the garden.
Though within a few days of Christmas, the evening was mild and even genial, for Chiavari is one of those sheltered nooks where the oranges live out of doors through the winter, and enjoy a climate like that of Naples. It was some time before he could detect her he was in search of, and at last came suddenly to where she was gathering some fresh violets for a bouquet.
“What a climate--what a heavenly climate this is, Miss Courtenay!” said he, in a tone purposely softened and subdued for the occasion; and she started and exclaimed:
“Oh! how you frightened me, my dear Mr. M’Kinlay. I never heard you coming. I am in search of violets; come and help me, but only take the deep blue ones.”
Now, if Mr. M’Kinlay had been perfectly sure--which he was not--that her eyes were blue, he would have adventured on a pretty compliment, but, as a lawyer, he knew the consequences of “misdescription,” and he contented himself with expressing all the happiness he felt at being associated with her in any pursuit.
“Has my sister told you what Gervais has gone about?” asked she, still stooping to cull the flowers.
“Not a word of it.”
“Then I will, though certainly you scarcely deserve such a proof of my confidence, seeing how very guarded you are as to your own secrets.”
“I, my dear Miss Courtenay? I guarded! and towards you! I pray you tell me what you allude to.”
“By-and-by, perhaps; for the present, I want to speak of our own mysteries. Know, then, that my brother has gone to Genoa to bring back with him the young gentleman through whose means much of our late discovery has been made, and who turns out to be Mr. Luttrell. He was here for a couple of days already, but so overwhelmed by the news of his father’s death, that we scarcely saw anything of him. He then left us to go back and nurse his wounded friend the captain, who insists, it seems, on being treated in the public hospital.”
“Luttrell--Luttrell! You mean one of that family who lived on the rock off the Irish coast?”
“His son.”
“The boy I remember having rescued at the peril of my own life! I wonder will his memory recal it? And why is Sir Gervais----”
He stopped; he was about to ask what interest could attach to any one so devoid of fortune, friends, or station, and she saw the meaning of his question, and said, though not without a certain confusion:
“My brother-in-law and this young man’s father were once on a time very intimate; he used to be a great deal with us--I am speaking of very long ago--and then we lost sight of him. A remote residence and an imprudent marriage estranged him from us, and the merest accident led my brother to where he lived--the barren island you spoke of--and renewed in some sort their old friendship--in so far, at least, that Gervais promised to be the guardian of his friend’s son----”
“I remember it all; I took a part in the arrangement.”
“But it turns out there is nothing to take charge of. In a letter that my brother got from Mr. Grenfell some time since, we find that Mr. Luttrell has left everything he possessed to a certain niece or daughter. Which was she, Mr. M’Kinlay?”
“Niece, I always understood.”
“Which did you always believe?” said she, looking at him with a steady, unflinching stare.
“Niece, certainly.”
“Indeed?”
“On my word of honour.”
“And all this wonderful story about her beauty and captivation, and the running away and the secret marriage, how much of that does Mr. M’Kinlay believe?”
“I don’t know one word of what you allude to.”
“Oh, Mr. M’Kinlay, this is more than lawyer-like reserve!”
“I will swear it, if you desire.”
“But surely you’ll not say that you did not dine with Sir Within Wardle at the Hôtel Windsor, as you came through Paris?”
“I have not the slightest intention to deny it.”
“And is it possible, Mr. M’Kinlay, that nothing of what I have just mentioned was dropped during the dinner? No allusion to the beautiful Miss Luttrell, or Mrs. Ladarelle? Mr. Grenfell is in doubt which to call her.”
“Not a syllable; her name was never-uttered.”
“And what did you talk of, in Heaven’s name!” cried she, impatiently. “Was it town gossip and scandal?”
For a moment Mr. M’Kinlay was almost scared by her impetuosity, but he rallied, and assured her that Sir Within spoke with the warmest interest of Sir Gervais, and alluded in the most cordial way to their old relations of friendship, and with what pleasure he would renew them. “He charged me with innumerable kind messages, and almost his last word was a hope that he should be fortunate enough to meet you again.”
“And through all this no mention of the ‘beauty’--I mean, of Miss Luttrell?”
“Not a word.”
“How strange--how incomprehensible!” said she, pausing, and seeming to reflect.
“Remember, my dear Miss Courtenay, it was a very hurried meeting altogether. We dined at half-past six, and at ten I was on the railroad.”
“Did Sir Within strike you as looking so very ill--so much cut upas Mr. Grenfell phrases it?”
“I thought him looking remarkably well; for a man of his age, wonderfully well. He must be--let me see--he must be--not very far from eighty.1’
“Not within ten years of it, Sir, I’m confident,” broke she in, almost fiercely. “There is no error more common than to overrate the age of distinguished men. The public infers that familiarity with their name implies long acquaintance, and it is a most absurd mistake.”
Now, Mr. M’Kinlay thoroughly understood that he was typified under that same public, who only knew great men by report, and misrepresented them through ignorance. He was, however, so strong in “his brief,” that he would not submit to be put down; he had taken pains to look over a record of Sir Within’s services, and had seen that he was attached to the Russian embassy fifty-two years ago.
“What do you say to that, Miss Courtenay? Fifty-two years ago.”
“I say, Sir, that I don’t care for arithmetic, and never settle any question by a reference to mere figures. When I last saw Sir Within he was in the prime of life, and if great social talents and agreeability were to be any test, one of the youngest persons of the company.”
“Oh, I’m the first to extol his conversational powers. He is a perfect mine of good stories.”
“I detest good stories. I like conversation, I like reply, rejoinder, even amplification at times; anecdote is almost always a mistake.”
Mr. M’Kinlay was aghast. How disagreeable he must have made himself, to render her so sharp and so incisive all at once.
“I can say all this to you,” said she, with a sweet tone, “for it is a fault you never commit. And so, you remark, that Sir Within showed no remarkable gloom or depression--nothing, in fact, that argued he had met with any great shock?”
“My impression was, that I sow him in high spirits and in the best possible health.”
“I thought so!” cried she, almost triumphantly. “I declare I thought so!” But why she thought so, or what she thought, or how it could be matter of such pleasure, she did not go on to explain. After a moment, she resumed: “And was there nothing said about why he had left Dalradern, and what induced him to come abroad?”
“Nothing--positively nothing.”
“Well,” said she, with a haughty toss of her head, “it is very possible that the whole subject occupies a much larger space in Mr. Grenfell’s letter than in Sir Within’s mind; and, for my own part, I only inquired about the matter as it was once the cause of a certain coldness, a half estrangement between Dalradern and ourselves, and which, as my brother takes much pleasure in Sir Within’s society, I rejoice to perceive exists no longer.”
All this was a perfect riddle to Mr. M’Kinlay, who had nothing for it but to utter a wise sentiment on the happiness of reconciliation. Even this was unfortunate, for she tartly told him that “there could be no reconciliation where there was no quarrel;” and then dryly added, “Is it not cold out here?”
“I protest I think it delightful,” said he.
“Well, then, it is damp, or it’s something or other,” said she, carelessly, and turned towards the house.
M’Kinlay followed her; gloomy enough was he. Here was the opportunity he had so long wished for, and what had he made of it? It had opened, too, favourably; their first meeting was cordial; had he said anything that might have offended her? or had he--this was his last thought as they reached the porch--had he not said what she expected he ought to have said? That supposition would at once explain her chagrin and irritation.
“Miss Georgina,” said he, with a sort of reckless daring, “I have an entreaty to make of you--I ask a favour at your hands.”
“It is granted, Mr. M’Kinlay,” said she, smiling. “I guess it already.”
“You guess it already, and you grant it!” cried he, in ecstasy.
“Yes,” said she, still graciously, as she threw off her shawl. “You are impatient for your tea, and you shall have it at once.”
And with that she moved hurriedly forward, and left him overwhelmed with shame and anger.
LXI. MR. M’KINLAY’S “INSTRUCTIONS.”
The party at the Villa were seated at breakfast the following morning, when Vyner arrived with his young guest--a fine, manly-looking, determined fellow, whose frank bearing and unaffected demeanour interested the ladies strongly in his favour at once; nor did the tone of sorrow and sadness in his manner detract from the good impression he produced. The tidings of his father’s death had met him as he landed at Genoa, and overwhelmed him with affliction--such utter friendlessness was his--so bereft was he of all that meant kindred or relationship. His captain was, indeed, now all that remained to him, and he had nursed and tended him in his long illness with untiring devotion, insomuch, indeed, that it was with difficulty Vyner could persuade him to come down to the Boschetto for a few days, to rally his strength and spirits by change of air and scene.
Sir Gervais had very early observed that the young sailor possessed the characteristic reserve of his family, and avoided, whenever possible, all reference to himself. Strange and eventful as his last few years had been, he never referred to them, or did so in that careless, passing way that showed he would not willingly make them matter to dwell upon; and yet, with all this, there was an openness when questioned, a frank readiness to answer whatever was asked, that plainly proved his reserve was mere shyness--the modest dislike to make himself or his story foreground objects.
Lady Vyner, not usually attracted by new acquaintances, liked him much, and saw him, without any motherly misgivings, constantly in Ada’s society. They walked together over the olive hills and along the sea-shore every morning. Once or twice, too, they had taken out Vyner’s little sail-boat, and made excursions to Sestri or to Recco; and in the grave, respectful, almost distant manner of Harry Luttrell, there seemed that sort of security which the mammas of handsome heiresses deem sufficient. Ada, too, frankness and honesty itself, spoke of him to her mother as a sister might have spoken of a dear brother. If he had been more confidential with her than with the others--and his confessions were even marked with a sort of strange deference, as though made to one who could not well realise to her mind the humble fortunes of a mere adventurer like himself--there was also a kind of rugged pride in the way he presented himself even in his character of a sailor--one who had not the slightest pretension to rank or condition whatever--that showed how he regarded the gulf between them.
It was strange, inexplicably strange, what distance separated him from Miss Courtenay. Neither would, perhaps neither could, make any advances to the other. “She is so unlike your mother, Ada,” blurted he out one day, ere he knew what he had said. “He is painfully like his father,” was Georgina’s comment on himself.
“You have had a long visit from young Luttrell, Mr. M’Kinlay,” said she, on the day after his arrival, when they had been closeted together for nigh two hours.
“Yes, Sir Gervais begged me to explain to him some of the circumstances which led his father to will away the Arran property, and to inform him that the present owner was his cousin. I suspect Sir Gervais shrank from the unpleasant task of entering upon the low connexions of the family, and which, of course, gave me no manner of inconvenience. I told him who she was, and he remembered her at once. I was going on to speak of her having been adopted by your brother, and the other incidents of her childhood, but he stopped me by saying, ‘Would it be possible to make any barter of the Roscommon property, which goes to the heir-at-law, and who is now myself, for the Arran estate, for I hold much to it?’ I explained to him that his being alive broke the will, and that Arran was as much his as the rest of the estate. But he would not hear of this, and kept on repeating, ‘My father gave it, and without she is disposed to part with it for a liberal equivalent, I’ll not disturb the possession.’”
“The Luttrells were all so,” said she; “half worldly, half romantic, and one never knew which side was uppermost.”
“He means to go over to Arran; he wants to see the place where his father is buried. The pride of race is very strong in him, and the mere utterance of the word Luttrell brings it up in full force.”
“What a pity she’s married!” said she, insolently, but in so faint a voice he could not catch the words, and asked her to repeat them. “I was only talking to myself, Mr. M’Kinlay,” said she.
“I pressed him,” continued the other, “to give me some instructions, for I can’t suppose he intends to let his fortune slip out of his hands altogether. I told him that it was as much as to impugn his legitimacy; and he gave me a look that frightened me, and, for a moment, I wished myself anywhere else than in the room with him. ‘He must be something younger, and bolder, and braver than you, Sir, that will ever dare to utter such a doubt as that,’ said he; and he was almost purple with passion as he spoke.”
“They are all violent; at least, they were!” said she, with a sneering smile. “I hope you encouraged the notion of going to Arran. I should be so glad if he were to do it at once.”
“Indeed?”
“Can you doubt it, Mr. M’Kinlay? Is it a person so acute and observant as yourself need be told that my niece, Ada, should not be thrown into constant companionship with a young fellow whose very adventures impart a sort of interest to him?”
“But a sailor, Miss Courtenay!--a mere sailor!”
“Very well, Sir; and a mere sailor, to a very young girl who has seen nothing of life, would possibly be fully as attractive as a Member of Parliament. The faculty to find out what is suitable to us, Mr. M’Kinlay, does not usually occur in very early life.”
There was a marked emphasis in the word “suitable” that made the old lawyer’s heart throb fast and full. Was this thrown out for encouragement--was it to inspire hope, or suggest warning? What would he not have given to be certain which of the two it meant.
“Ah, Miss Courtenay,” said he, with a most imploring look, “if I only could assure myself that in the words you have just spoken there lay one spark of hope--I mean, if I could but believe that this would be the proper moment----”
“My dear Mr. M’Kinlay, let me stop you. There are many things to be done before I can let you even finish your sentence; and mind me, Sir, this, ‘without prejudice,’ as you lawyers say, to my own exercise of judgment afterwards; and the first of these is to send this young man away. I own to you, frankly, he is no favourite of mine. I call ruggedness what they call frankness; and his pride of name and birth are, when unattached to either fortune or position, simply insufferable. Get rid of him; send him to Arran, if he won’t go to Japan. You can do it without inhospitality, or even awkwardness. You can hint to him that people rarely remain beyond two or three days on a visit; that his intimacy with Ada gives pain, uneasiness, to her family; that, in short, he ought to go. I know,” added she, with a bewitching smile, “how little there is for me to instruct Mr. M’Kinlay on a point where tact and delicacy are the weapons to be employed. I feel all the presumption of such a pretence, and therefore I merely say, induce him to go his way, and let him do it in such guise that my brother may not suspect our interference.”
“There is nothing I would not do, Miss Courtenay, with the mere possibility that you would deem it a service. All I ask is the assurance----”
“Must I stop you again?” said she, with a sweet smile. “Must I remind you that he who stipulates for his reward, risks in some sort his character for generosity, and, worse still, implies a distrust of the one he serves?”
“I am your slave, Miss Courtenay--your humble slave!” said he, bowing with a deep humility.
“It is what I intend you should be,” muttered she to herself; and then added aloud: “Lose no time about this; my brother mentions that he accidentally met Sir Within Wardle in the doorway of the hotel at Genoa; that they embraced most cordially, and parted with Sir Within’s promise to come over and pass some days here, and I believe he may be expected to-morrow; and of course it would be more convenient to have this young man’s room, all the more that Mr. Grenfell also is expected.”
“I’ll set about my negotiation at once.”
“Don’t call it negotiation, my dear Mr. M’Kinlay. It must be far more effectual and more peremptory. To present this sailor lad as an acquaintance to Sir Within would be monstrous. The pleasure of his visit will depend on his coming actually amongst all his old friends.”
Ah, Mr. M’Kinlay, how your heart swelled proudly at that flattery! How exquisite it was to feel you were a member of an order to which, in your proudest day-dreams, you had not aspired!
“There, now, you have your instructions. You’ll find me here about four o’clock to report progress, or rather, as I trust, to announce success.”
“I have an excellent opportunity,” cried M’Kinlay, as she moved away. “He has asked me to go out fishing with him in the boat today. It will be just the time to fall into confidential discourse. At four expect me.”