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CHAPTER LXIV. ON THE ISLAND

It was late at night when Harry landed on Arran. Dark as it was, however, his sailor’s eye could mark that the little jetty was in trim order, and that steps now led down to the water where formerly it was necessary to clamber over rugged rocks and slippery seaweed. A boatman took his carpet-bag as matter of course, too, as he stepped on shore, and trifling as was the service, it had a certain significance as to the advance of civilisation in that wild spot. More striking, again, than these was the aspect of the comfortable little inn into which he was ushered. Small and unpretending, indeed, but very clean, and not destitute of little ornaments, sketches of the scenery of the island, and specimens of ore, or curious rock, or strange fern, that were to be found there. A few books, too, were scattered about, some of them presents from former visitors, with graceful testimonies of the pleasure they had found in the trip to Arran, and how gratefully they cherished the memory of its simple people.

Harry amused himself turning over these, as he sat at the great turf fire waiting for his supper. Of those who served him there was not one he recognised. Their looks and their language bespoke them as belonging to the mainland, but they spoke of the island with pride, and told how, in the season, about July or August, as many as fifteen or twenty strangers occasionally came over to visit it.

“There was a day,” said the man, “in the late Mr. Luttrell’s time, when nobody dare come here; he’d as soon see ould Nick as a stranger; and if a boat was to put in out of bad weather, or the like, the first moment the wind would drop ever so little, down would come a message to tell them to be off.”

Harry shook his head; an unconscious protest of dissent it was, but the other, interpreting the sign as condemnation, went on:

“Ay, he was a hard man! But they tell me it wasn’t his fault; the world went wrong with him, and he turned against it.”

“He had a son, hadn’t he?” asked Harry.

“He had, Sir. I never saw him, but they tell me he was a fine boy, and when he was only ten years old, got a broken arm fighting with a seal in one of the caves on the shore; and, what’s more, he didn’t like to own it, because the seal got away from him.”

“What became of him?”

“He was lost at sea, Sir. I believe he turned pirate or slaver himself, and it was no great matter what became of him. They were all unlucky men and women. No one ever heard of a Luttrell coming to good yet.”

“That’s a hard sentence.”

“You’d not think so, Sir, if you knew them; at least, so the men tell me about here. They liked the man that was here last well enough, but they said that nothing he could do would ever prosper.”

“And who owns it now?”

“Kitty O’Hara that was – Neal O’Hara’s daughter – he that was transported long ago – she’s now the mistress of the whole island, and her name – she took it by his will – is Luttrell – Luttrell of Arran!”

“Do the people like her?”

“Why wouldn’t they like her? Isn’t she working and slaving for them all day long, nursing them at the hospital, visiting them in their cabins, teaching them in the school, getting them seed potatoes from Belmullet, and hasn’t she set up a store there on the shore, where they can buy pitch, and hemp, and sailcloth, and all kinds of cordage, for less than half what it costs at Castlebar?” “How has she money to do all this?”

“Just because she lives like the rest of us. Sorrow bit better dinner or supper she has, and it’s a red cloak she wears, like Molly Ryan, and she makes her own shoes, and purtier ones you never looked at.” “And who taught her to manage all this so cleverly?” “She taught herself ont of books; she reads all night through. Come here, now, Sir! Do you see that light there? That’s her window, and there she’ll be till, maybe, nigh five o’clock, stodyin’ hard. Molly says there’s nights she never goes to bed at all.” “That light comes from the tower.”

“So it does, Sir, however you knew it,” said the man; “but it was the favourite room of him that’s gone, and she always sits there.” “And are strangers permitted to see the Abbey?” asked Harry. “Yes, Sir. All they’ve to do is to write their names in this book and send up a message that they want to see the place, and they’d see every bit of it but the two little rooms Mr. Luttrell that was used to keep for himself.”

“And if one wished to see these also?”

“He couldn’t do it, that’s all; at least, I’d not be the man that axed her leave!”

“Take my name up there in the morning,” said Harry, as he wrote “H. Hamilton” in the book, that being a second name by which he was called after his father, though he had long ceased to use it.

The supper made its appearance at this moment, and little other conversation passed between them. As the man came and went, however, he continued to speak of Miss Luttrell, and all she had done for the people in terms of warmest praise, winding up all with the remark, “That no one who had not lived the life of hardship and struggle of a poor person could ever be able to know what were the wants that press hardest – what the privations that cut deepest into the nature of the poor. And that’s the reason,” he said, “that she’ll never let any one be cruel to the children, for it was as a child herself she knew sorrow!”

Long after the man had left him, Harry sat at the fire thinking over all he had heard. Nor was it, let us own, without a certain irritation that he thought of the contrast the man drew between his father and this girl – his father, the man of mind and intellect, the scholar, the orator, the man whose early career had been a blaze of success, and yet all his acquirements and all his knowledge paled beside the active energy of a mere peasant. The reflection pained him; it chafed him sorely to admit, even to his own heart, that birth and blood were not always the superiors, and he causistically suspected that much of the praise he had heard bestowed upon this girl was little other than the reflex of that selfish esteem the people felt for qualities like their own.

And out of these confused and conflicting thoughts he set to work to paint her to his mind and imagine what she most be. He pictured her a coarse, masculine, determined woman; active, courageous, and full of expedients, with some ability, but far more of self-confidence, the great quality of those who have been their own teachers. From what Mr. Cane had told him, she was one who could take a proud view of life and its duties. That very resolve to cede the property, when she heard that there was yet a Luttrell alive to inherit it, showed that there was stuff of no mean order in her nature. “And yet,” he thought, “all this could consist with vulgar looks and vulgar manners, and a coarseness of feeling that would be repugnant.” With these imaginings he went to bed, and dreamed the whole night through of this girl.

“Have you taken my message up to the Abbey?” asked he, as he sat at breakfast.

“Yes, Sir; and Miss Luttrell says you are to go where you like. She’s off to the far part of the island this morning to see a woman in fever, and won’t be back till night.”

“Then perhaps I may be able to see those two rooms you spoke of?”

The man shook his head in silence, perhaps not over-pleased at the obstinacy of the stranger to investigate what was deemed sacred.

“I want no guide,” said Harry. “I see the Abbey, and I’ll find my own way to it.”

And with these words he sauntered along, every step and every stone of the path familiar to him. As he drew nigh he saw some changes. The railing of the little garden had been repaired, and the garden itself was better tilled than of yore, and close by the wall of the Abbey, where shelter favoured, a few flowers were growing, and some attempt there seemed making to train a creeper to reach the window-sill.

Molly Ryan was out, and a strange face that Harry knew not received him at the door, leaving him, as he entered, to go where he pleased, simply saying, “There’s the way to the Abbey, and that’s where she lives!”

He turned first to the aisle of the church, paved with the tombstones of bygone Luttrells, and where now a cross in blue limestone marked his father’s grave. The inscription was, “To the Memory of the Last of the Luttrells, by one who loved him, but not merited his love.”

“Strange that she should have said so,” thought he, as he sat down upon the stone. But it was soon of the long past his mind was filled with. Of the days of his boyhood, no happy, careless, sunny youth was it, but a time of loneliness and sorrow – of long solitary rambles through the island, and a return at nightfall to a home of melancholy and gloom. He bethought him of his poor mother’s tears as they would fall hot upon his face, and the few words, stern and harsh, his father would meet him with; and yet, now in his utter desolation, what would he not give to hear that voice again whose accents were wont to terrify him? – what would he not give to see the face whose slightest sign of reproof had once overwhelmed him with shame?

How fervently, how faithfully, will the heart cling to some memory of kindness for those whose severity had once been almost a terror! What a sifting process do our affections go through where death has come, tearing away the recollections of what once had grieved and pained us, and leaving only the memory of the blessed word that healed, of the loving look that rallied us. John Luttrell had been a hard, stern, unforgiving man; it was but seldom that he suffered his heart to sway him, but there had been moments when his love overcame him, and it was of these Harry now bethought him, and it was in such guise he pictured his father now before him.

“Oh! if he were here to welcome me back – to let me feel I was not homeless in the world – what a moment of joy and happiness had this been!” How keen can sorrow make memory. There was not a little passing word of praise his father ever spoke – there was not a kindly look, not a little gesture of fondness, that did not recur to him as he sat there and wept.

With slow steps and heavy heart he turned into the house, and sought the little room where his father usually sat during the day. There was the great old chair of bog oak, and there the massive table, and over the fireplace the great two-handed sword, and the stone-headed javelin crosswise over the ox-hide shield; all these he knew, but other objects there were new and strange to him – so strange, that he could not but wonder at them. A half-finished water-colour on an easel, done by no common hand, was at one side of the window, and in a deep chair, as though left hurriedly there, was a guitar. Music, and pen sketches, and books, were strewn about, and a solitary rose in a glass of water bore an almost painful testimony to the rareness of flowers on the spot. A basket of some sewing work – capes of frieze for her school children – stood beside the fire. It was plain to see that this peasant girl had caught up tastes and pursuits which belong to another sphere, and Harry pondered over it, and questioned himself if she were the happier for this cultivation. “Was it better for her, or worse, to be endowed with what, in imparting a resource, removes a sympathy?”

Seated on the little window-stool – the same spot where he had often sat silent for hours – he fell into a train of melancholy thought. His poor father – the broken-down, crushed man, without a companion or a friend – rose before his mind, and filled each spot he turned to, and it was with a feeling of deep self-reproach he recalled how he himself had left him – deserted him, he called it now – to live on in sorrow and die forlorn. Out of this dreamy half-stupor he was roused by the woman hurriedly telling him that her mistress was, coming up the path to the house, and entreating him to go away before she entered.

He arose at once, and, passing through the kitchen, issued forth by the back of the Abbey at the very instant that Kate crossed the door.

“Who has been here, Jane? Whose cane is this?” said she, taking up a stick, Harry had forgotten in his haste..

The woman explained it was the young gentleman to whom her mistress gave permission that morning to see the Abbey, and who had only just taken his departure.

“The whole day here!” exclaimed Kate.

“True enough, Miss. He was two hours, and more in the Abbey, and I thought he was asleep, for he was lying on the masters, grave with his face hid; but when I spoke he answered me. It was what he wished, Miss, was to be let go up in the tower and have a view from the top; but I told him your own rooms was there, and nobody ever got leave to see them.”

“I mean to go to the Murra Glen to-morrow, Molly,” said Kate, turning to her old and faithful servant, “and you may let this stranger go over the Abbey in every part; so that he be away before nightfall, the whole is at his disposal. Go-down this evening to the inn, and take his stick to him, with this, message.”

Seated at her tea, Kate was thinking over the long sea voyage that lay before her, and the new land in which she was to seek her fortune, when a wild shrill scream startled her, and, at the same instant, Molly rushed into the room, and when she had reached the middle of it, staggered back, and leaned, half fainting, against the wall.

“What’s the matter, Molly? What has happened?” cried Kate, eagerly.

“May the blessed saints protect and guard us, Miss, but I seen him as plain as I see you.”

“Whom did you see?”

“Himself that’s gone – the master! Glory to him, and peace too, if it was God’s will,” said the woman, falteringly.

“How foolish this is, Molly. I scarcely expected this from you.”

“I don’t care. I’ll swear it on the book I saw him, and heard him too. ‘Would you be so kind – ’ says he; and at that I let a screech out of me and ran in here.”

“This is too absurd,” said Kate, with some irritation in her voice. “Go and see what this man wants.”

“Not if you were to give me a hat full of goold, Miss Kate. May I never, if I’d go there again to be Queen of England.”

“I am not pleased with you, Molly,” said Kate, taking a candle in her hand and moving towards the door. The woman threw herself at her feet to prevent her, but with a haughty gesture she motioned her away, and passed out.

A man was standing in the doorway, who courteously removed his hat as she came forward, and said, “I’m sorry to have alarmed your servant, Miss Lutrell, but I had left my walking-stick here this morning, and came to get it.”

Screening the light from herself with one hand, she threw the full glare on the other’s face, and, in a voice of deep emotion, said, “I see well why she was frightened. Your name is Luttrell!”

“I must not deny it to the only one that remains of all my kin. Are you not my Cousin Kate?”

She held out her hand to him, and, in a voice quavering and broken, said, “How glad I am to see you – and to see you here under your own roof.”

“There must be two words more before that be settled, Kate,” said he, kindly, as, still holding her hand in his own, he walked back with her to her room.

“There, Molly – there’s your young master; perhaps you’ll be less frightened now that you see him at my side.”

While the poor woman gave way to a transport of joy and tears, Harry continued to gaze at Kate with an intense eagerness. “Tell me one thing, Cousin Kate,” said he, in a whisper; “answer me truly: Were you on board of a convict-ship in Kingstown harbour on Tuesday last, as she was getting under weigh?”

She nodded assent

“Then it was I who lifted you into the boat, and asked your leave to see you safely on shore.”

“I’m ashamed to seem ungrateful, but I have no memory of your kindness. I had too much sorrow on my heart that morning.”

“Oh, if you knew how I longed to meet you again – how I walked and walked incessantly to try and come up with you, never dreaming of such happiness as this – that, when we met, I could claim you as my own dear cousin!”

“And was it right, Cousin Harry, for you to come here in disguise and visit the Abbey like a stranger? Was that an evidence of the affection you speak of?”

“You forget, Kate, I didn’t know whom I was to meet. If I had known that you were the girl whom I carried down the ladder to the boat, I’d have gone to the world’s end to see you again. How came you to be there?”

“You shall hear it all when you have time and patience. We each have much to tell, and you shall begin, but not to-night, Harry; let us be satisfied to make acquaintance now. Why do you stare at me?”

“Because you are so beautiful – because I never saw any one so beautiful before.”

“A very frank compliment, and I suppose too frank to be construed into what is called flattery.”

“To think of you living here! —you, in such a place as this! Why, it is downright monstrous.”

“Cousin Harry,” said she, gravely, “if you are to-do nothing but make me compliments, our intimacy will have but a sorry chance to make any progress. I have no doubt I’m pretty, but remember, that in this place here there are scores of things you’ll be struck by, simply because they come upon you unexpectedly. Look at my little tea equipage, for instance; could you have dreamed of anything so tasteful on the Island of Arran?”

The playful raillery of this speech could not turn his thoughts from herself. Nor was it alone her beauty that amazed him, but her exquisite grace of manner, the sweet-toned voice, low and gentle, her every movement and gesture, and then her bearing towards himself, so nicely balanced between the reserve of a maidenly bashfulness and the freedom of a near relative.

“We will have our tea together, Harry,” said she, “and you shall tell me all your adventures. You could not readily find a listener more eager for all that is strange, or wild, or exciting. Let me hear of the scenes you have gone through, and I’ll be able to make some guess of what manner of man my cousin is.”

“My rough life is little more than a long catalogue of common-place hardships – hardships that sailors come at last to look at as the ordinary events of existence, but which certainly tend to make us somewhat careless about life, but very ready to enjoy it. Where am I to begin?”

“At the beginning, of course. I want to see you as a boy before I hear of you as a man.”

With a manly frankness, and a modesty totally devoid of any affectation, he told the story of his sea life; the strange lands and people he had seen; the wild spots he had visited; the hopes of fortune at one time full and radiant, at another dashed and destroyed by disaster; dreams of wealth and affluence rudely dispelled by mischances; and, last of all – the crowning calamity – the attack made by the Riffs, and his captivity amongst the Moors.

“Was home very often in your thoughts through these reverses?” asked she, gravely.

“Seldom out of my thoughts, Kate. It had not been, as you may know, a very cheerful or a happy home. It was a lonely, gloomy life I led here, but I believe sorrows can attach just as well as joys, and I longed to see the old rock again, and I used to fancy how much more companionable I could be to my poor father now that I had grown up and had learnt something of the world and its ways. All my misfortunes were nothing compared to the sorrowful tidings that met me as I landed at Genoa, and learned I was alone in the world, without even one to care for me.”

“You went at once to Sir Gervais Vyner’s. Tell me about them.” “You know them better than I do, Kate,” said he, smiling. “Ada told me of all her love for you – it was the theme she never tired of – your beauty, your wit, your gracefulness, your talent at everything – till I grew half angry. She would talk of nothing else.”

“And Ada herself – what is she like? She was, as a child, almost perfectly beautiful.”

“She is very handsome. Her features are all regular, and her smile is very sweet, and her manner very gentle, and her voice singularly silvery and musical.”

“So that you fell in love with her?” “No,” said he, shaking his head – “no, I did not.” “Yes, yes, you did! That list of her perfections was given too readily not to have been conned over.”

“I tell you again, I felt no love for her. We were whole days together, and lived as a brother and a sister might, talking of whatever interested us most, but one word of love never passed between us.” “A look, then?”

“Not even that. Just think one moment, Kate. Who is she, and who am I?”

“What would that signify if your hearts caught fire? Do you think the affections ask leave of title-deeds?”

“Mine certainly did not. They had no need to do so. I was as frank with Ada as with you.” Scarcely was the last word out, than a deep crimson flash covered his cheek, and he felt overwhelmed with confusion, for he had said what, if true in one sense, might possibly convey a very different meaning in another. “I mean,” added he, stammeringly, “I told her all I have told you about my sea life.”

“You are a puzzle to me, Harry,” said she, after a pause. “You can enumerate a number of qualities with enthusiasm, and still declare that they had no influence over you. Is this the sailor temperament?”

“I suspect not,” said he, smiling. “I rather opine we salt-water folk are too free of our hearts.”

“But why were you not in love with her?” cried she, as she arose impatiently, and walked up and down the room. “You come off a life of hardships and perils into what, of all things, is the most entrancing – the dairy life of people bred up to all the courtesies and charms that embellish existence – and you find there a very beautiful girl, well disposed to accept your intimacy and your friendship – how can you stop at friendship? I want to hear that.”

“I never knew there was any difficulty in the task till now that you have told me of it,” said he, smiling.

She opened a little drawer in a cabinet as she stood with her back towards him, and drew on her finger a ring – a certain plain gold ring – which recalled a time of bygone sorrow and suffering, and then, coming close to him, laid her hand upon his arm, so that he could but notice the ring, and said:

“I ought to have remembered you were a Luttrell, Harry – the proud race who never minded what might bechance their heads, though they took precious care of their hearts!”

“What does that mean?” said he, pointing to the ring; and a paleness like death spread over his face.

“What does such an emblem always mean?” said she, calmly. “It is not that you are married, Kate?

“Surely you have heard the story. Mr. M’Kinlay could not have been a week at the Vyners’ without telling it.”

“I have heard nothing, I know nothing. Tell me at once, are you a wife? – have you a husband living?”

“You must be patient, Harry, if you want a somewhat long history.”

“I want no more than what I asked you. Are you a married woman? Answer me that.”

“Be calm, and be quiet and listen to me,” said she, sitting down at his side. “You can answer your own question when I shall have finished.”

“Why not tell me in one word? A Yes or a No cannot cost you so much, though one of them may cost me heavily.”

“What if I could not so answer you? What if no such answer were possible? Will you hear me now?”

“Say on,” muttered he, burying his face between his hands – “say on!”

“I have a long story to tell you, Harry, and I will tell it all; first, because you shall give me your counsel; and secondly, because, if you should hear others speak of me, you will know where is the truth. You will believe me? Is it not so?”

“That I will. Go on.”

“It would be well if I could speak of myself as one simply unlucky,” said she, in a tone of deep melancholy, “but this may not be! I have gone through heavy trials, but there was not one of them, perhaps, not self-incurred.”

“Oh, Kate, if you would not break my heart with anxiety, tell me at once this ring means nothing – tell me you are free.”

“Be patient, Harry, and hear me. Trust me, I have no wish to linger over a narrative which has so little to be proud of. It is a story of defeat – defeat and humiliation from beginning to end.”

She began, and it was already daybreak ere she came to the end. Tracking the events of her life from her first days at the Vyners’, she related an inner history of her own longings, and ambitions, and fears, and sufferings, as a child ripening into the character of womanhood, and making her, in spite of herself a plotter and a contriver. The whole fabric of her station was so frail, so unreal, it seemed to demand incessant effort to support and sustain it. At Dalradern, where she ruled as mistress, an accident, a word might depose her. She abhorred the “equivoque” of her life, but could not overcome it. She owned frankly that she had brought herself to believe that the prise of wealth was worth every sacrifice; that heart, and affection, and feeling were all cheap in comparison with boundless affluence.

“You may imagine what I felt,” said she, “when, after all I had done to lower myself in my own esteem – crushed within me every sentiment of womanly affection – when, after all this, I came to learn that my sacrifice had been for nothing – that there was a sentiment this old man cared for more than he cared for me – that there was a judgment he regarded more anxiously than all I could say – the opinion of the world; and it actually needed the crushing sorrow of desertion to convince him that it was better to brave the world than to leave it for ever. Till it became a question of his life he would not yield. The same lesson that brought him so low served to elevate me. I was then here – here in Arran – holding no feigned position. I was surrounded with no luxuries, but there were no delusions. Your father gave me his own proud name, and the people gave me the respect that was due to it. I was real at last. Oh, Harry, I cannot tell you all that means! I have no words to convey to you the sense of calm happiness I felt at being what none could gainsay – none question. It was like health after the flush and madness of fever. This wild spot seemed to my eyes a Paradise! Day by day duties grew on me, and I learned to meet them. All the splendid past, the great life of wealth and its appliances, was beginning to fade away from my mind, or only to be remembered as a bright and gorgeous dream, when I was suddenly turned from my little daily routine by an unhappy disaster. It came in this wise.” She then went on to tell of her grandfather’s imprisonment and trial, and the steps by which she was led to ask Sir Within’s assistance in his behalf. On one side, she had to befriend this poor old man, deserted and forlorn, and, on the other, she had to bethink her of her uncle, whose horror at the thought of a public exposure in court was more than he had strength to endure. If she dwelt but passingly on the description, her shaken voice and trembling lip told too well what the sacrifice had cost her. “The messenger to whom I entrusted my letter, and whom I believed interested almost equally with myself in its success, brought me back for answer that my letter would not be even opened, that Sir Within refused to renew any relations with me whatever – in a word, that we had separated for ever and in everything. I cannot tell now what project was in my head, or how I had proposed to myself to befriend my grandfather; some thought, I know, passed through my head about making a statement of his case, so far as I could pick it up from himself and going personally with this to one of the leading lawyers on the circuit, and imploring his aid. I always had immense confidence in myself or in whatever I could do by a personal effort. If I have learned to think more meanly of my own powers, the lesson has been rudely taught me. What between the mental strain from this attempt, anxiety, privation, and exposure to bad weather, I fell ill, and my malady turned to brain fever. It was during this time that this man O’Rorke, of whom I have told you, returned, bringing with him Mr. Ladarelle, a young relative of Sir Within’s. On the pretext of giving me the rites of my Church, a priest was admitted to see me, and some mockery of a marriage ceremony was gone through by this clergyman, who, I am told, united me, unconscious, and to all seeming dying, to this same young gentleman. These details I learned later, for long, long before I had recovered sufficient strength or sense to understand what was said to me, my bridegroom had gone off and left the country.”

“And with what object was this marriage ceremony performed?” asked Luttrell.

“I have discovered that at last. I have found it out through certain letters which came into my hands in looking over your father’s papers. You shall see them yourself to-morrow. Enough now, that I say that Sir Within had never rejected my prayer for help; on the contrary, he had most nobly and liberally responded to it. He wrote besides to your father a formal proposal to make me his wife. To prevent the possibility of such an event, Ladarelle planned the whole scheme I have detailed, and when your father wrote to Sir Within that I had left Arran – ‘deserted him,’ he called it – and Ladarelle forwarded a pretended certificate of our marriage, no further proof seemed wanting that I was one utterly unworthy of all interest or regard. I came here in time – not to receive my dear uncle’s forgiveness, for he had long ceased to accuse me – his last thoughts of me were kind and loving ones. Since then,” said she, “my life has had but one severe trial – my leave-taking with my poor old grandfather; but for this it has been like a strange dream, so much of active employment and duty blending with memories of a kind utterly unlike everything about me, that I am ever asking myself, ‘Is it the present or the past is the unreal?’”

“The marriage is, however, a mockery, Kate,” said Luttrell; and, taking her hand, he drew off the ring and threw it into the fire. “You are sure it gives him no claim – no power over me?” asked she.

“Claim! – power! None. I’m no lawyer, but I could almost swear that his act would subject him to severe punishment; at all events, you have a cousin, Kate, who will not see you insulted. I’ll find out this fellow, if I search ten years for him.”