Luttrell Of Arran Part 31

Not that Luttrell gathered much of what he narrated, for a strange confusion was in his brain, and as he gazed at the chart and tried to follow the lines, a dimness obscured his sight, and he had to turn away and wipe his eyes.

"Wud your honour like the dinner now?" whispered Molly Ryan from the door; "the strange gentleman that was sick is dyin' of hunger."

"Yes, we're quite ready," said Luttrell; and taking a key from a nail, he betook himself to a little closet which formed his cellar. A few bottles of port, and two or three of Burgundy--remnants of a stock which once had been famous--were all that survived, but he took them forth, saying, "I am unlikely to play the host again, let us make festival for the last time."

CHAPTER XX. THE SUPPER AT ARRAN

With all the ardour of an Irish menial to do honour to her master's hospitality, Molly Ryan had taken the unwonted step of laying out the dinner in the "sacristy" of the Abbey, which Luttrell had once on a time intended to have converted into a grand gallery for all his rare and curious objects, and from which he soon desisted, deterred by the cost.

It was a long, narrow, vaulted chamber, with four pointed windows in one wall, and blank niches to correspond to them in the other. If in the cold unflattering light of day it would have presented an air of cheerless gloom and dest.i.tution, not so did it look now, as a great fire of turf blazed and glowed on the ample hearth, and the light of four huge pine-torches flared red from the niches, and threw a warm and mellow glare over everything; while the board was spread with an abundance which would have been utterly wasteful, if some five-and-twenty sailors and fishermen without were not to revel at second-hand, and feed on what fell from the master's table.

Luttrell had heard nothing--knew nothing of this arrangement, and when he was told in a whisper that the dinner was ready in the sacristy, his brow darkened, and his cheek flushed with anger. "We need not have starved them with cold as well as hunger," muttered he, sternly, to the woman; but she knew better than to await his reproaches, and hastened away to the kitchen.

"To you who have seen where I live, gentlemen," said he to his guests, "it will be unnecessary to apologise for how I live; I can but say how much I regret it for _your_ sakes, custom has made it easy to myself."

With this he led the way along a little narrow pa.s.sage, and then crossing a court-yard, entered the sacristy. If M'Kinlay and the Yankee stared with amazement at the ample preparations to regale them, and the fine old hall--for such it looked--in which they were displayed, Luttrell could scarcely master his astonishment at what he saw, and nothing short of that "dignity which doth hedge" a host as well as "a king," could have prevented him from openly expressing his surprise.

Molly whispered a word in his ear, to which as hastily he said, "Certainly, of course," and just as the guests took their seats, Harry, dressed in what remained to him of his best, came forward, and stood near the table. "Sit opposite to me, Harry; the foot of the table is the fitting place for the heir of the house, is it not, Mr. M'Kinlay?"

"And is this your son, Sir; is this young gentleman the--the----"

"The boy you picked up at sea," resumed Luttrell, courteously, "and who will be proud to renew his acquaintance with you more pleasantly than it opened."

"Well, young 'um, you have got a jollier colour on your cheeks now than when we saw you bobbing behind that bit of broken jib-boom! You was blue, that's a fact, but I'm a raw Eastern if you was bluer than the lawyer!"

Poor Mr. M'Kinlay! scarcely had one shame overcome him when came the terror of another; for now, for the first time, did he recognise in the Yankee the terrible tourist of the Welsh mountains. A vague something wonld cross him as he lay in the lugger, sea-sick and miserable, that the horrid voice, and the horrid look, and the horrid gesture of his fellow-traveller, were not encountered for the first time; but he was too full of his own sorrows to waste a thought on such speculations, and it was only now, as they sat at the same board, eating of the same dish, and hob-n.o.bbing together, that the measure of his conviction became full. "He doesn't know--he cannot know me!" muttered he, "and I have only one blunder to atone for, but who could have thought it was his son!" He turned to engage Harry in conversation, to inquire into his habits, his tastes, and his amus.e.m.e.nts, but the boy, fascinated by the Yankee's discourse, could not bear to lose a word of it.

Dodge--"Gen'ral" he called himself, as he spoke of those days--Gen'ral Dodge had served in many of the wars of the South American Republic; he had been with Bolivar, and against him; he had made and lost his fortune three successive times, had taken part in a buccaneer expedition to Mexico, was imprisoned and condemned to death, and saved by an earthquake that left the gaol and one quarter of Santa Fe in ruins. As to his shipwrecks and adventures with pirates, his hunting exploits, his raids either with Indians or against them, they were legion; and certainly, to these narratives he imparted a "gusto" and an expression which gave them a marvellous power, occasionally corroborated as they were by material evidence, as when he showed where he had lost the thumb and two fingers of his left hand, the terrible cicatrix in the back of his head from an Indian's attempt to scalp him, and the mark of a bullet which had traversed his body from the neck to the opposite collar-bone.

There was no disbelieving a man whose every joint and limb could come into court as his witnesses, not to say that he was one of those men whom few love to contradict. If he were, at some times, rather boastful on the score of his courage and daring, he was, at others, equally frank as to his short-comings in honesty, and he told with an astonishing frankness of some acts which, had they not been committed in unsettled and semi-civilised lands, would worthily have been requited by the galleys.

"Well, Old Ramskin!" said he, addressing M'Kinlay; for while he talked he drank freely, and was already in his third bottle of Burgundy, warmed up with occasional "flashes" of brandy--"well, Old Ramskin, I guess you'd rather be perched on a tall stool in your counting-house than up on a rock, watching for an Indian scout party; but, mark me, it's all prejudice, and for my part I'd rather put a ball in a red-skin than I'd torture a white man with law and parchments." He here diversified his personal recollections by some anecdotes of lawyers, and of the esteem in which their fellow-citizens hold them "Far West," the whole winding up with a declaration that such creatures "warn't in natur," and only grew out of a rank, rotten, and stagnant condition of society, which, when only stirred by any healthy breeze of public opinion, either "left 'em or Lynched 'em." He turned round for the approval of his host to this sentiment, and now saw, for the first time, that he had quitted the table.

"If you had not been so energetic in your censures of my profession, Sir;" said M'Kinlay, "you might have heard Mr. Luttrell asking us to excuse his absence for a few minutes while he spoke to his son."

Perhaps the American felt this rebuke as a sharp one, for he sat in silence for some minutes, when he said, "Am I to have the pleasure of your company to-night when I weigh anchor?"

"Yes; I intend to leave when you do."

"Your business is done, then?"

"It is."

"And mine, too," said the American; and each looked at the other, to see who first would divulge his secret.

"I have made arrangements for the guardianship of his son, whom, by the way, I never suspected to be the boy we picked up at sea," said M'Kinlay, thus endeavouring, by a half-confidence, to obtain the whole of the American's.

"He'll not want such guardianship, I promise you, when he lives a few years with me."

"With you! What do you mean?"

"Just what I say, stranger; that he's coming aboard the _Squash_, bound now for the Isthmus; and, I repeat it, five years with Hairy Dodge will turn him out a long sight cuter than if he pa.s.sed his 'prenticeship even with yourself."

"It is a strange notion of Mr. Luttrel's--a very strange notion."

The American raised himself up in his seat, and looked as if he were about to resent the speech, but he repressed the temptation, and merely said, "We're going to have lighter weather than we came over in, and a fine bright night besides."

"I hope so, with all my heart," said the other; and now each sat and sipped his wine in silence.

Leaving them thus, let us turn one moment to Luttrell, as he stood at the window of his room, with his boy beside him. There was neither lamp nor candle, but a strong moonlight streamed into the chamber, and their shadows were distinctly marked upon the floor.

"Why is Molly crying so bitterly, papa? Sure I'm not going away for ever!" said Harry.

"I hope not--I think not; but when people part some are always faint-hearted about the chances of meeting again."

"But you are not, papa?"

Luttrell did not answer for a few seconds. "Are you quite sure, Harry, that this life is what you like? I mean," said he, correcting himself quickly--"I mean, would you not rather live here till you were a man, and make Arran your home, as it is mine now?"

"No, papa. I'd like to see the countries that the Captain told of, and see some of the things he did, and then come back very rich, and build a fine castle here, and a great pier out in the sea, and have the finest cutter that ever sailed."

"But, before all this can come to pa.s.s, bethink you what a hard life is before you--what days of storm and nights of weariness. You may be hardly used, and have none to pity you--be ill, and not have one to speak kindly to you. Are you ready for all this, Harry?"

"I suppose I must bear it if I want to be a man;" and he drew himself up proudly as he spoke.

"You'll have to remember, too, Sir, that you are a gentleman," said Luttrell, almost sternly; "that there are scores of mean and shabby things the fellows around may-do, a Luttrell must not stoop to. Keep your word when you once pledge it; insult no man willingly; fight him who insults you; and never, if it be your fortune to command others, never say 'Go,' in a moment of danger, but 'Come.'"

"I'll not forget that," said the boy, seriously.

"Keep this purse, Harry. It was one your mother knitted, many years ago. The few guineas that are in it spend when and how you like; only remember that when gone they cannot easily be replaced by me. And now give me a kiss, for they must see us part easily."

The boy sprang into his arms, and held him fast in his embrace, while he kissed him over and over; and Luttrell parted the hair upon his forehead, kissing him tenderly there, as he muttered a few words beneath his breath.

"There, go back to them, Harry, and tell them I will join them presently."

As Harry left the room, Luttrell lighted his lamp, and sat down at his table to write. It was to Vyner he addressed himself, and intended to be as brief as might be--very little, indeed, more than the intimation that he had accepted the trust proposed to him, and begged in turn Vyner would do as much by him, and consent to be the guardian of his boy, should he be left fatherless.

"I ask this with all the more confidence," wrote he, "that your kind interest in poor Harry is so fresh in my mind, and all your generous offers to befriend him are the only cheering thoughts that occur to me in this, one of the gloomiest moments of my life.

"An American trading captain, led hither by an accident, has captivated the boy's imagination by stories of travel and adventure, and I have consented to let Harry go with him. To remain here and live as I have done was open to him; he could have succeeded me in this wild spot without the bitterness of feeling the fall that led to it; but, in the restless spirit of our race, he might some day or other have emerged, and I dreaded to imagine what a semi-savage Luttrell would be; strong of limb, vigorous, daring, and ignorant, with pride of blood and poverty to stimulate him. What is there he might not have done in a fancied retribution against a world that had crushed his race and ruined his family--for such were the lessons he has been learning from his cradle.

the only teachings he has ever had!

"The hardships of life at sea will be better training than these. The boy is very like me. I would sorrow over it, Vyner, if I did not count on that resemblance for your love to him. In one respect, however, we are not like. Harry _can_ forgive an injury. Who knows, however, what he might become were he to grow up in daily contact with me; for I dreaded to mark how each year seemed to develop the Luttrell more and more in his nature. Now, pride of birth with prosperity may lead to intolerance and oppression, but leash it with poverty and it will conduce to violence, perhaps to crime.

"Before the mast he will see things differently. Night-watches and hard junk are stern teachers. To rescue him from my influence, to save him from me, I send him away, and leave myself childless. I can scarcely expect that you will be able to follow me in these reasonings. How could you, happy as you are in every accident of your life, blessed in everything that gives value to existence? I feel I shall never see him again; but I feel, too, just as confidently, that at some day or other--distant it may be--you and he will meet and talk of me, speaking in love and affection, forgiving much, pitying all.

"Say nothing of this guardianship to your wife, lest it should lead her to speak of me; or, at all events, wait till I am gone. Talk of me then they may, for there is no voice so eloquent to defend as the wind that sighs through the long gra.s.s over our graves!

"I have made a will, not very formally, perhaps, but there is none likely to contest it. What a grand immunity there is in beggary! and Cane and Co. will, I apprehend, if called upon, vouch for me in that character. There are several lawsuits which have dragged on their slow course for two generations of us. I believe I myself continued the contests rather as obligations of honour than aught else. Harry was not trained with such principles, however, and I shall leave to your discretion whether our claims be abandoned or maintained.