Luttrell Of Arran
When O’Rorke reached the end of the terrace, he turned a cautious, furtive look towards the old man, who still sat with the unopened letter in his hand, and did not move. At last he broke the seal, but such seemed the agitation of his feelings that he could scarcely read it, for he twice laid it on the table and hid his face between his hands. Suddenly he looked up and beckoned O’Rorke towards him, and said:
“Tell me, my good man, do you know the contents of this letter?”
“I know what it’s about, Sir.”
“Were you with her when she wrote it?”
“I was.”
“Was it of her own will – at the suggestion of her own thoughts? I mean, did she write this willingly, and without a struggle?”
“That she didn’t! She wrote it just because that without it her old grandfather wouldn’t have even a chance for his life! She wrote it, crying bitterly all the time, and sobbing as if her heart was breaking.”
The old man turned away his head, but with his hand motioned to the other to cease speaking. Either O’Rorke, however, did not understand the gesture, or he unheeded it. He went on:
“‘I’d rather,’ says she, ‘see my right hand cut off, than see it write these lines,’ says she.”
“There! there!” burst in Sir Within, “that will do – that is enough – say no more of this!”
But O’Rorke, intent on finding out what had been the relations between them, and why they had been severed, in spite of all admonition, continued:
“‘Sure, Miss Kate,” says I, “it is not one that was once so kind and so generous to you will see you in trouble for a trifle like this, for of course it would be a trifle to your honour!’”
“And yet she felt it a humiliation to ask me,” said he, despondingly.
“She did, indeed! ‘For,’ says she, ‘he may refuse me.’”
“No, no; she never thought that; she knew me better than to believe it.”
“Well, indeed, Sir, it was what I thought myself, and I said in my own mind, ‘It’s more ashamed she is than afeard.’”
“Ashamed of what?” cried Sir Within, passionately. “What has shame to do with it?”
The subtle peasant saw through what a channel the misconception came, and, still bent on tracing out the mysterious tie between them, said:
“After all, Sir, for a young lady, and a handsome one too, to ask a great favour of a gentleman not belonging to her, kith or kin, is a thing that bad tongues would make the worst of if they got hold of it.”
Sir Within’s sallow cheek flushed up, and in a broken voice he said:
“Bad tongues are only tyrants to those who cannot brave them. Miss Kate Luttrell is not of their number. You shall soon see if these same bad tongues have any terrors for me.”
“I’m a poor man, but I wasn’t so always,” said O’Rorke, “and I know well that it was slander and lying crushed me.”
The diversion was intended to have awakened some curiosity as to his former condition, but Sir Within was perfectly indifferent on the subject. All the interest the messenger had in his eyes came from the fact that he came from her, that he had seen her, and was near her when she wrote.
“This island – I only know it by the map,” said Sir Within, trying to talk in an easy, unconcerned strain – “it is very poor, I believe?”
“You might say wretched, and be nearer the mark.” “Is it celebrated for sport? Is the shooting or the fishing the great attraction?”
“There’s no shooting, nor any fishing but the deep sea fishery; and more men are lost in that than there are fortunes made of it.”
“And what could have induced Mr. Luttrell to take up his abode in such a spot?”
“The same thing that sends men off to America, and Australia, and New Zealand; the same thing that makes a man eat black bread when he can’t get white; the same thing that – But what’s the use of telling you about the symptoms, when you never so much as heard of the disease?”
“Miss Luttrell’s life must be a very lonely one,” said Sir “Within, with every effort to talk in a tone of unconcern.
“‘Tis the wonder of wonders how she bears it. I asked the woman that lives with them how she passed her time and what she did, and she said, ‘She takes up everything for a week or ten days, and goes at it as if her life depended on it.’ One time it was gathering plants, and sprigs of heath, and moss, and the like – even seaweed she’d bring home – going after them up crags and cliffs that a goat couldn’t climb. Then she’d give up that and take to gardening, and work all day long; then it was making fishing-nets; then it was keeping a school, and teaching the fishermen’s children; she even tried to teach them to sing, till a sudden thought struck her that they ought to have a lifeboat on the island, and she sat to writing to all the people that she could think of to send a plan of one, meaning, I suppose” – here he grinned – “to make it herself afterwards.”
Sir Within listened eagerly to’ all this, and then asked:
“And her uncle – does he aid her in these projects?”
“He! It’s little he troubles himself about her! Why, it’s often three days that they don’t even meet! They never take their meals together. It’s a wonder of kindness from him the day that he’ll tap the window of her room with his knuckles and say ‘Good morning,’ and when she’d get up to open the window to answer him, he’d be gone!”
“How desolate – how dreary!” muttered the old man. “Does this wearisome life prey upon her? Is she altered in appearance – thinner or paler?”
“I’ll tell you how she looks, and there’s not a man in Ireland understands a woman’s face better than him before you, and here’s what it means in three words. It means scorn for a world that could let the like of her wither and waste on that lonely rock, for it’s not alone beauty she has, but she has grace and elegance, and a way of charming about her that’s more than beauty, and there’s a something in her voice – what it is I don’t know, but it goes on thrilling into you after she has done speaking, till you just feel that a spell was working in you, and making you a slave.”
“And you have felt this?” said the old man, as though involuntarily demanding an avowal that would have set the seal of confirmation on her magic.
And the cunning Celt felt all the force of the sarcasm, while it did not suit his purpose to confess it. And yet it needed great self-control to suppress his rising anger, and keep him from declaring that in a matter of sentiment, or on a question of female captivation, he, Tim O’Rorke, Patriot, Martyr, and Paddy as he was, yielded to no man.
“Would you kindly ring that bell beside you, Mr. – Mr. – ”
“O’Rorke, Sir.”
“Mr. O’Rorke, I am diffident about my pronunciation of Irish names,” added the old diplomatist, cautiously veiling the sin of his forgetfulness. A servant speedily appeared, and Sir Within ordered him to take every care for “this gentleman’s accommodation.” “I shall be able to prepare my reply to this letter to-night, Mr. O’Rorke, and you will be free to leave this at any hour that may suit you in the morning.”
O’Rorke retired from the presence, well satisfied with himself, and with the way he had acquitted himself.
“Would you like to have the papers, Sir, or would you prefer seeing the gallery, while supper is getting ready?” asked the obsequious servant.
“I’ll take a look at your pictures. I have a few myself,” said Mr. O’Rorke; which was perfectly true, though they were not in the first taste as objects of art, being certain coloured prints of Hempenstall, the walking gallows, the capture of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and a few similar subjects from the year ‘98, in which, certes, the countenances bestowed on the Royalists essentially distinguished them in the most crowded mêlées from all honest patriots.
Leaving Mr. O’Rorke, then, to examine at his leisure Sir Within’s varied treasures, we make no excuse to our reader for not recording the criticism he passed upon them.
CHAPTER 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!”
