Luttrell Of Arran Part 70

"There--leave me--let me be alone!" said Luttrell, pointing to the door; and his words were spoken in a stern and imperative tone.

Grenfell waited for a few seconds, and then withdrew noiselessly, and strolled out into the open air.

"A dreary mission and a drearier spot!" said he, as he sauntered along, turning his eyes from the mountain, half hid in mist, to the lowering sea. "One would imagine that he who lived here must have little love of life, or little care how others fared in it." After walking about a mile he sat down on a rock, and began to consider what further remained for him to do. To pa.s.s an entire day in such a place was more than he could endure; and, perhaps, more than Luttrell himself would wish. Vyner's letter and its enclosures would convey all the sorrowful details of the calamity; and, doubtless, Luttrell was a man who would not expose his grief, but give free course to it in secret.

He resolved, therefore, that he would go back to the Abbey, and, with a few lines from himself, enclose these papers to Luttrell, stating that he would not leave the island, which it was his intention to have done that night, if Luttrell desired to see him again, and at the same time adding, that he possessed no other information but such as these doc.u.ments afforded. This he did, to avoid, if it could be, another interview. In a word, he wanted to finish all that he had to do as speedily as might be, and yet omit nothing that decorum required. He knew how Vyner would question and cross-question him, besides; and he desired, that as he had taken the trouble to come, he should appear to have acquitted himself creditably.

"The room is ready for your honour," said Molly, as Grenfell appeared again at the door; "and the master said that your honour would order dinner whenever you liked, and excuse himself to-day, by rayson he wasn't well."

"Thank you," said Grenfell; "I will step in and write a few words to your master, and you will bring me the answer here."

Half a dozen lines sufficed for all he had to say, and, enclosing the other doc.u.ments, he sat down to await the reply.

In less time than he expected, the door opened. Luttrell himself appeared. Wretched and careworn as he seemed before, a dozen years of suffering could scarcely have made more impress on him than that last hour: clammy sweat covered his brow and cheeks, and his white lips trembled unceasingly; but in nothing was the change greater than in his eye. All its proud defiance was gone; the fierce energy had pa.s.sed away, and its look was now one of weariness and exhaustion. He sat down in front of Grenfell, and for a minute or so did not speak. At last he said:

"You will wish to get back--to get away from this dreary place; do not remain on _my_ account. Tell Vyner I will try and go over to him. He's in Wales, isn't he?"

"No; he is in Italy."

"In Italy! I cannot go so far," said he, with a deep sigh.

"I was not willing to obtrude other sorrows in the midst of your own heavier one; but you will hear the news in a day or two, perhaps, that our poor friend Vyner has lost everything he had in the world."

"Is his daughter dead?" gasped out Luttrell, eagerly.

"No; I spoke of his fortune; his whole estate is gone."

"That is sad, very sad," sighed Luttrell; "but not the saddest! One may be poor and hope; one may be sick, almost to the last, and hope; one may be bereft of friends, and yet think that better days will come; but to be childless--to be robbed of that which was to have treasured your memory when you pa.s.sed away, and think lovingly on you years after you were dust--this is the great, the great affliction!" As he spoke, the large tears rolled down his face, and his lank cheeks trembled. "None will know this better than Vyner," said he, after a pause.

"You do him no more than justice; he thought little of his own misfortune in presence of yours."

"It was like him."

"May I read you his own words?"

"No; it is enough that I know his heart. Go back, and say I thank him.

It was thoughtful of him at such a time to remember me; few but himself could have done it!" He paused for a few seconds, and then in a stronger, fuller voice continued: "Tell him to send this sailor to me; he may live here, if he will. At all events, he shall not want, wherever he goes. Vyner will ask you how I bore this blow, Sir. I trust to you to say the strict truth, that I bore it well. Is that not so?" Grenfell bowed his head slightly. "Bore it," continued Luttrell, "as a man may, who now can defy Fortune, and say, 'See, you have laid your heaviest load on me, and I do not even stagger under it!' Remember, Sir, that you tell Vyner that. That I listened to the darkest news a man can hear, and never so much as winced. There is no fever in that hand, Sir; touch it!"

"I had rather that you would not make this effort, Mr. Luttrell. I had far rather tell my friend that your grief was taking the course that nature meant for it."

"Sir!" said Luttrell, haughtily, "it is not to-day that misfortune and I have made acquaintance. Sorrow has sat at my hearth-stone--my one companion--for many a year! I knew no other guest, and had any other come, I would not have known how to receive him! Look around you and say, is it to such a place as this a man comes if the world has gone well with him?"

"It is not yet too late----"

"Yes, it is, Sir; far too late," broke in Luttrell, impatiently. "I know my own nature better than you ever knew it. Forgive me, if I am rude.

Misery has robbed me of all--even the manners of a gentleman. It would be only a mockery to offer you such hospitality as I have here, but if, before leaving, you would eat something----"

Grenfell made some hurried excuses; he had eaten on board the boat--he was not hungry---and he was impatient to get back in time for the morning mail.

"Of course, no one could wish to tarry here," said Luttrell. "Tell Vyner I will try and write to him, if not soon, when I can. Good-by, Sir! You have been very kind to me, and I thank you."

Grenfell shook his cold hand and turned away, more moved, perhaps, than if he had witnessed a greater show of sorrow. Scarcely, however, had he closed the door after him, than a dull, heavy sound startled him. He opened the door softly, and saw that Luttrell had fallen on the ground, and with his hands over his face lay sobbing in all the bitterness of intense grief. Grenfell retired noiselessly and unseen. It was a sorrow that none should witness; and, worldling as he was, he felt it. He stopped twice on his way down to the sh.o.r.e, uncertain whether he ought not to go back, and try to comfort that desolate man. But how comfort him? How speak of hope to one who mocked all hope, and actually seemed to cling to his misery?

"They cry out against the worldling, and rail at his egotism, and the rest of it," muttered he; "but the selfishness that withdraws from all contact with others, is a hundred times worse! Had that man lived in town, and had his club to stroll down to, the morning papers would have shown him that he was not more unlucky than his fellows, and that a large proportion of his acquaintances carried c.r.a.pe on their hats, whether they had sorrow in their hearts or not."

It was with a mind relieved that he reached Holyhead the next day, and set out for the Cottage. Vyner had begged him to secure certain papers and letters of his that were there; and for this purpose he turned off on his way to town to visit Dinasllyn for the last time.

"The young gentleman went away the night you left, Sir," said Rickards, without being questioned; "but he came over this morning to ask if you had returned."

"What news of the young lady who was so ill at Dalradern?"

"Out of danger, Sir. The London doctor was the saving of her life, Sir; he has ordered her to the sea-side as soon as she is fit to move, and Sir Within sent off Carter yesterday to Milford Haven, to take the handsomest house he can find there, and never think of the cost."

"Rich men can do these things, Rickards!"

"Yes, Sir. Sir Within and my master haven't to ask what's the price when an article strikes their fancy."

Grenfell looked to see if the remark was intended to explode a mine, or a mere chance shot. The stolid face of the butler rea.s.sured him in an instant, and he said, "I shall want candles in the library, and you will call me to-morrow early--say seven."

When Grenfell had covered the library table with papers and parchments innumerable, t.i.tle-deeds of centuries old, and grants from the Crown to Vyner's ancestors in different reigns, he could not restrain a pa.s.sionate invective against the man who had, out of mere levity, forfeited a n.o.ble fortune.

Contemptible as young Ladarelle was--mean, low-lived, and vulgar--the fellow's ambition to be rich, the desire to have the power that wealth confers, raised him in Grenfell's esteem above "that weak-minded enthusiast "--so he called him--who must needs beggar himself, because he had nothing to do.

He emptied drawer after drawer, burning, as Vyner had bade him, rolls of letters, parliamentary papers, and such-like, till, in tossing over heaps of rubbish, he came upon a piece of stout card-board, and on turning it about saw the sketch Vyner had made of the Irish peasant child in Donegal. Who was it so like? Surely he knew that expression, the peculiar look of the eyes, sad and thoughtful, and yet defiant? He went over in his mind one after another of those town-bred beauties he had met in the season, when, suddenly, he exclaimed, "What a fool I have been all this time. It is the girl at Dalradern, the 'ward,'"--here he laughed in derision--"the 'ward' of Sir Within Wardle. Ay, and she knew _me_, too, I could swear. All her evasive answers about Ireland show it." He turned hastily to Vyner's letter, and surmised that it was to this very point he was coming, when the news of young Luttrell's death was brought him. "What can be her position now, and how came she beneath that old man's roof? With what craft and what boldness she played her game! The girl who has head enough for that, has cleverness to know that I am not a man to be despised. She should have made me her friend at once. Who could counsel her so well, or tell her the shoals and quicksands before her? She ought to have done this, and she shall, too.

I will go over to-morrow to Dalradern; I will take her this sketch; we shall see if it will not be a bond of friendship between us."

When, true to the pledge he had made with himself, he went oyer to Dalradern the next morning, it was to discover that Sir Within and his ward had taken their departure two hours before. The servants were busily engaged in dismantling the rooms, and preparing to close the Castle against all visitors.

To his inquiries, ingenious enough, he could get no satisfactory answer as to the direction they had gone, or to what time their absence might be protracted, and Grenfell, disappointed and baffled, returned to the Cottage to pa.s.s his last evening, ere he quitted it for ever.

CHAPTER XLII. THE SANDS AT SUNSET

Towards the close of a day in the late autumn, when the declining sun was throwing a long column of golden light over the sea, a little group was gathered on the sh.o.r.e at Ostend, the last, it seemed, of all the summer visitors who had repaired there for the season. The group consisted of a young girl, whose att.i.tude, as she lay reclined in a bath-chair, bespoke extreme debility, and an old man who stood at her side, directing her attention, as his gestures indicated, to different objects in the landscape.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 365]

Two servants in livery, and a somewhat demurely-dressed maid, stood at a little distance off, in deferential attendance on the others.

Greatly changed, indeed paler and thinner, with dark circles round the eyes, and a faint hectic spot on each cheek, Kate O'Hara looked even more beautiful than ever; the extreme delicacy of every lineament, the faultless regularity of outline, were as conspicuous now, as before was that brightness which she derived from expression. If her eyes had no longer their look of haughty and defiant meaning, they seemed to have acquired a greater depth of colour and an expression of intense softness, and her lips, so ready once to curl into mockery at a moment, now appeared as if they faintly stirred with a smile, as some fancy crossed her.

She was dressed in deep mourning, which heightened still more the statue-like character of her features. What a contrast to this placid loveliness was the careworn, feverish look of the old man at her side!

Sir Within had aged by years within a few weeks, and in the anxious expression of his face, and his quick uneasy glances around him, might be read the fretful conflict of hope and fear within him.

While he continued to speak, and describe the features of the scene before them, though she smiled at times, or a.s.sented by a slight gesture of the head, her mind was wandering--far, far away--to other thoughts and other places, and her fingers played feverishly with a letter, which she opened and closed up again time after time.