Luttrell Of Arran Part 114

"If I be right," said he, "and I'd go the length of a wager that I am, the packet you saw on the breakfast-table contains one of the most costly ornaments a woman ever wore. It was a royal present on the wedding-day of Sir Within Wardles mother, and sent by him to fulfil the same office to Miss Luttrell on becoming Mrs. Ladarelle."

"You know this!" said she, in a slow, collected tone.

"I know it because he sent me to his gem-room at Dalradern to fetch it. He opened the casket in my presence, he showed me the jewels, he explained to me the peculiar setting. Emeralds on one side, opals on the other, so as to present two distinct suites of ornaments. I remember his words, and how his lips trembled as he said, 'Ladies in these times were wont to turn their necklaces, now they only change their affections!'

You'd scarcely believe it, Miss Conrtenay, but it is fact, positive fact, the poor old man had been in love with her."

"I certainly cannot stretch my credulity to that extent, Mr. Grenfell,"

said she, with a shade of vexation in her voice, "though I could readily believe how an artful, unprincipled girl, with a field all her own, could manage to ensnare a most gentle, confiding nature into a degree of interest for her, that she would speedily a.s.sume to be a more tender feeling. And was the casket sent to _her_, Mr. Grenfell?" asked she, in a suddenly altered tone.

"Yes, I enclosed it, with an inscription dictated by Sir Within himself."

"And she sends it back to him?" said she, pondering oyer each word as though it were charged with a deep significance.

"It would seem so."

"I think you guess why. I am certain, if I have not taken a very wrong measure of Mr. Grenfell's acuteness, that he reads this riddle pretty much as I do myself."

"It is by no means improbable," said Grenfell, who quickly saw the line her suspicions had taken. "I think it very likely the same interpretation has occurred to each of us."

"Give me yours," said she, eagerly.

"My reading is this," replied he: "she has returned his present on the ground that, not being Mrs. Ladarelle, she has no claim to it. The rest.i.tution serving to show at the same moment a punctilious sense of honour, and, what she is fully as eager to establish, the fact that, being still unmarried, there is nothing to prevent Sir Within himself from a renewal of his former pretensions."

"How well you know her! How thoroughly you appreciate her wily, subtle nature!" cried she, in warm admiration.

"Not that the game will succeed," added he; "the poor old man is now beyond such captations as once enthralled him."

"How so? What do you mean?" asked she, sharply.

"I mean simply what we all see. He is rapidly sinking into second childhood."

"I declare, Mr. Grenfell, you astonish me!" said she, with an almost impetuous force of manner. "At one moment you display a most remarkable acuteness in reading motives and deciphering intentions, and now you make an observation actually worthy of Mr. M'Kinlay."

"And so you do not agree with me?" asked he.

"Agree with you! certainly not. Sir Within Wardle is an old friend of ours. Certain peculiarities of manner he has. In a great measure they have been impressed upon him by the circ.u.mstances of his station. An amba.s.sador, a great man himself, is constantly in the presence of a sovereign, who is still greater. The conflict of dignity with the respect due to royalty makes up a very intricate code of conduct and manner of which the possessor cannot always disembarra.s.s himself, even in the society of his equals. Something of this you may have remarked in Sir Within's manner; nothing beyond it, I am confident!"

"I only hope, my dear Miss Courtenay, that, if the day should come when my own faculties begin to fail me, I may be fortunate enough to secure you for my defender."

"The way to ensure my advocacy will certainly not be by attacking an old and dear friend!" said she, with deep resentment in tone; and she turned abruptly and entered the house.

Mr. Grenfell looked after her for a moment in some astonishment. He was evidently unprepared for this sudden outburst of pa.s.sion, but he quickly recovered himself, and, after a brief pause, resumed his walk, muttering below his breath as he went: "So, then, _this_ is the game! What a stupid fool I have been not to have seen it before! All happening under my very eyes, too! I must say, she has done it cleverly--very cleverly."

And with his cordial appreciation of female skill, he lit his cigar, and, seating himself on the sea-wall, smoked and ruminated during the morning. There were many aspects of the question that struck him, and he turned from the present to the future with all that ready-wittedness that had so longed favoured him in life.

He heard the bell ring for luncheon, but he never stirred; he was not hungry, neither particularly anxious to meet Miss Courtenay again. He preferred to have some few words with her alone ere they met in society.

He thought he had tact enough to intimate that he saw her project, and was quite ready to abet it without anything which could offend her dignity. This done, they would be sworn friends ever after. As he sat thus thinking, he heard a quiet step approaching. It was doubtless a servant sent to tell him that luncheon was served, and while doubting what reply to make, he heard M'Kinlay call out, "I have found you at last! I have been all over the house in search of you."

"What is the matter? What has happened? Why are you so flurried---eh?"

"I am not flurried. I am perfectly calm, perfectly collected--at least, as collected as a man can hope to be who has had to listen for half an hour to such revelations as I have had made me; but it is all over now, and I am thankful it is. All over and finished!"

"What is over? What is finished?"

"Everything, Sir--everything! I leave this within an hour--earlier if I can. I have sent two messengers for the horses, and I'd leave on foot--ay, Sir, on foot--rather than pa.s.s another day under this roof!"

"Will you have the extreme kindness to tell me why you are going off in this fashion?"

Instead of complying with this reasonable request, Mr. M'Kinlay burst out into a pa.s.sionate torrent, in which the words "Dupe!" "Fool!" and "Cajoled!" were alone very audible, but his indignation subsided after a while sufficiently to enable him to state that he had been sent for by Sir Within, after breakfast, to confer with him on the subject of that codicil he had spoken of on the previous day.

"He was more eager than ever about it, Sir," said he. "The girl had written him some very touching lines of adieu, and I found him in tears as I came to his bedside. I must own, too, that he talked more sensibly and more collectedly than before, and said, in a tone of much meaning, 'When a man is so old and so friendless as I am, he ought to be thankful to do all the good he can, and not speculate on any returns either in feeling or affection _I_ I left him, Sir, to make a brief draft of what he had been intimating to me. It would take me, I told him, about a couple of hours, but I hoped I could complete it in that time. Punctual to a minute, I was at his door at one o'clock; but guess my surprise when Miss Courtenay's voice said, 'Come in!' Sir Within was in his dressing-gown, seated at the fire, the table before him covered with gems and trinkets, with which he appeared to be intently occupied. 'Sit down, M'Kinlay,' said he, courteously. 'I want you to choose something here--something that Mrs. M'Kinlay would honour me by accepting.' She whispered a word or two hastily in his ear, and he corrected himself at once, saying, 'I ask pardon! I meant your respected mother. I remember you are a widower.' To withdraw his mind from this painful wandering, I opened my roll of papers and mentioned their contents. Again she whispered him something, but he was evidently unable to follow her meaning; for he stared blankly at her, then at me, and said, 'Yes, certainly, I acquiesce in everything.' 'It will be better, perhaps, to defer these little matters, Miss Courtenay,' Said I, 'to some moment when Sir Within may feel more equal to the fatigue of business.' She stooped down and said something to him, and suddenly his eyes sparkled, his cheek flushed, and, laying his hand-with emphasis on the table, he said, 'I have no need of Law or Lawyers, Sir! This lady, in doing me the honour to accord me her hand, has made her gift to me more precious by a boundless act of confidence; she will accept of no settlements.' 'Great Heavens! Miss Courtenay,' whispered I, 'is he not wandering in his mind? Surely this is raving!' 'I think, Sir, you will find that the only person present whose faculties are at fault is Mr. M'Kinlay. Certainly I claim exemption both for Sir Within Wardle and myself.' It was all true, Sir--true as I stand here! She is to be his wife. As to her generosity about the settlements, I understood it at once. She had got the whole detail of the property from me only yesterday, and knew that provision was made--a splendid provision, too--for whomsoever he might marry. So much for the trustfulness!"

"But what does it signify to _you_, M'Kinlay? You are not a Lord Chancellor, with a function to look after deranged old men and fatherless young ladies, and I don't suppose the loss of a settlement to draw will be a heart-break to you."

"No, Sir; but, lawyer as I am, there are depths of perfidy I'm not prepared for."

"Come in and wish them joy, M'Kinlay. Take my word for it, it might have been worse. Old Sir Within's misfortune might have befallen you or myself!"

CHAPTER LXIX. THE END

"You see, Sir, she is obstinate," said Mr. Cane to Harry Luttrell, as they sat closeted together in his private office. "She is determined to make over the Arran estate to you, and equally determined to sail for Australia on the 8th of next month."

"I can be obstinate too," said Harry, with a bent brow and a dark frown--"I can be obstinate too, as you will see, perhaps, in a day or two."

"After all, Sir, one must really respect her scruples. It is clear enough, if your father had not believed in your death, he never would have made the will in her favour."

"It is not of that I am thinking," said Luttrell, with a tone of half irritation; and then, seeing by the blank look of astonishment in the other's face that some explanation was necessary, he added, "It was about this foolish journey, this voyage, my thoughts were busy. Is there no way to put her off it?"

"I am afraid not. All I have said--all my wife has said--has gone for nothing. Some notion in her head about the grat.i.tude she owes this old man overbears every other consideration, and she goes on repeating, 'I am the only living thing he trusts in. I must not let him die in disbelief of all humanity.'" Harry made a gesture of impatient meaning, but said nothing, and Cane went on: "I don't believe it is possible to say more than my wife has said on the subject, but all in vain; and indeed, at last, Miss Luttrell closed the discussion by saying: 'I know you'd like that we should part good friends; well, then, let us not discuss this any more. You may shake the courage I shall need to carry me through my project, but you'll not change my determination to attempt it.' These were her last words here."

"They were all the same!" muttered Harry, impatiently, as he walked up and down the room. "All the same!"

"It was what she hinted, Sir?"

"How do you mean--in what way did she hint it?"

"She said one morning--she was unusually excited that day--something about the wilfulness of peasant natures, that all the gilding good fortune could lay on them never succeeded in hiding the base metal beneath; and at last, as if carried away by pa.s.sion, and unable to control herself, she exclaimed, 'I'll do it, if it was only to let me feel real for once! I'm sick of shams!--a sham position, a sham name, and a sham fortune!'"

"I offered her the share of mine, and she refused me," said Luttrell, with a bitterness that revealed his feeling.

"You offered to make her your wife, Sir!" cried Cane, in astonishment.

"What so surprises you in that?" said Harry, hastily. "Except it be,"

added he, after a moment, "my presumption in aspiring to one so far superior to me."

"I wish you would speak to Mrs. Cane, Mr. Luttrell. I really am very anxious you would speak to her."