The day was just breaking as Kate, carrying a small bundle in her hand,
issued noiselessly from the deep porch of the hotel, and hastened to the
pier.
The steam-boat was about to start, and she was the last to reach the
deck, as the vessel moved off. It was a raw and gusty morning, and the
passengers had all sought shelter below, so that she was free to seek a
spot to herself unmolested and unobserved.
As she turned her farewell look at the sands, where she had walked on
the evening before, she could not believe that one night--one short
night--had merely filled the interval. Why, it seemed as if half a
lifetime had been crowded into the space. Within those few hours how
much had happened! A grand dream of ambition scattered to the winds--a
dream that for many a day had filled her whole thoughts, working its way
into every crevice of her mind, and so colouring all her fancies that
she had not even a caprice untinged by it! To be the mistress of that
old feudal castle--to own its vast halls and its tall towers--to gaze on
the deep-bosomed woods that stretched for miles away, and feel that
they were her own! To know that at last she had gained a station and a
position that none dared dispute; “For,” as she would say, “the world
may say its worst of that old man’s folly; they may ridicule and deride
him. Of me they can but say that I played boldly, and won the great
stake I played for.” And now, the game was over, and she had lost!
“What a reverse was this! Yesterday, surrounded with wealth, cared for,
watched, courted, my slightest wish consulted, how fair the prospect
looked! And now, alone, and more friendless than the meanest around me!
And was the fault mine? How hard to tell. Was it that I gave him too
much of my confidence, or too little? Was my mistake to let him dwell
too much on the ways and opinions of that great world that he loved so
well? Should I not have tried rather to disparage than exalt it? And
should I not have sought to inspire him with a desire for a quiet,
tranquil existence--such a life as he might have dreamed to lead in
those deep old woods around his home? To the last,” cried she, to
herself--“to the last, I never could believe that he would consent to
lose me! Perhaps he never thought it would come to this. Perhaps he
fancied that I could not face that wretchedness from which I came.
Perhaps he might have thought that I myself was not one to relinquish
so good a game, and rise from the table at the first reverse. But what a
reverse! To be so near the winning-post, and yet lose the race! And how
will he bear it? Will he sink under the blow, or will that old pride of
blood of which he boasts so much come to his aid and carry him through
it? How I wish--oh, what would I not give to see him, as he tears open
my last letter, and sees all his presents returned to him! Ah, if he
could but feel with what a pang I parted with them! If he but knew the
tears the leave-taking cost me! If he but saw me as I took off that
necklace I was never to wear again, feeling like one who was laying
down her beauty to go forth into the world without a charm, he might,
perchance, hope to win me back again. And would that be possible? My
heart says no. My heart tells me, that before I can think of a fortune
to achieve, there is an insult to avenge. He slighted me--yes, he
slighted me! There was a price too high for all my love, and he let me
see it. There was his fault--he let me see it! It was my dream for many
a year to show the humble folk from whom I came what my ambition and my
capacity could make me; and I thought of myself as the proud mistress of
Dalradern without a pang for all the misery the victory would cost me.
Now the victory has escaped me, and I go back, so far as my own efforts
are concerned, defeated! What next--ay, what next?”
As the day wore on, every incident of her ordinary life rose before her.
Nine o’clock. It was the hour the carriage came to take her to her bath.
She bethought her of all the obsequious attention of her maid, that
quiet watchfulness of cunning service, the mindful observance that
supplies a want and yet obtrudes no thought of it. The very bustle
of her arrival at the bathing-place had its own flattery. The eager
attention, the zealous anxiety of the servants, that showed how, in
her presence, all others were for the time forgotten. She knew well--is
beauty ever deficient in the knowledge?--that many came each morning
only to catch a glimpse of her. Her practised eye had taught her, even
as she passed, to note what amount of tribute each rendered to her
loveliness; and she could mark the wondering veneration here, the
almost rapturous gaze of this one, and not unfrequently the jealous
depreciation of that other.
Eleven o’clock. She was at breakfast with Sir Within, and he was asking
her for all the little events of the morning. And what were these? A
bantering narrative of her own triumphs--how well she had looked--how
tastefully she was dressed--how spitefully the women had criticised the
lovely hat she swam in, and which she gave to some poor girl as she came
out of the water--a trifle that had cost some “louis” a few days before.
It was noon--the hour the mail arrived from Brussels--and Sir Within
would come to present her with the rich bouquet of rare flowers,
despatched each morning from the capital. It was a piece of homage
he delighted to pay, and she was wont to accept it with a sort of
queen-like condescension. “What a strange life of dreamy indulgence--of
enjoyments multiplied too fast to taste--of luxuries so lavished as
almost to be a burden--and how unreal it was all!” so thought she, as
they drew near the tall chalk cliffs of the English coast, and the
deck grew crowded with those who were eagerly impatient to quit their
prison-house.
For the first time for a long while did she find herself unnoticed and
unattended to; none of that watchful, obsequious attention that used
to track her steps was there. Now, people hurried hither and thither,
collecting their scattered effects, and preparing to land. Not one to
care for her, who only yesterday was waited on like royalty!
“Is this your trunk, Miss?” asked a porter.
“No; this is mine,” said she, pointing to a bundle.
“Shall I carry it for you, my dear?” said a vulgar-looking and
over-dressed young fellow, who had put his glass in his eye to stare at
her.
She muttered but one word, but that it was enough seemed clear, as his
companion said, “I declare I think you deserved it!”
“It has begun already,” said she to herself, as she walked slowly along
towards the town. “The bitter conflict with the world, of which I have
only heard hitherto, I now must face. By this time he knows it; he knows
that he is desolate, and that he shall never see me more. All the misery
is not, therefore, mine; nor is mine the greater. I have youth, and can
hope; he cannot hope; he can but grieve on to the last. Well, let him go
to that world he loves so dearly, and ask it to console him. It will say
by its thousand tongues, ‘You have done well, Sir Within. Why should you
have allied yourself with a low-born peasant-girl? How could her beauty
have reconciled you to her want of refinement, her ignorance, her coarse
breeding?’ Ah, what an answer could his heart give, if he but dared to
utter it; for he could tell them I was their equal in all their vaunted
captivations! Will he have the courage to do this? Or, will he seek
comfort in the falsehood that belies me?”
In thoughts like these, ever revolving around herself and her altered
fortunes, she journeyed on, and by the third day arrived at Holyhead.
The rendezvous was given at a small inn outside the town called “The
Kid,” and directions for her reception had been already forwarded there.
Two days elapsed before her uncle’s messenger arrived--two days that
seemed to extend to as many years! How did her ever-active mind go over
in that space all her past life, from the cruel sorrows of her early
days, to the pampered existence she had led at Dalradern? She fancied
what she might have been, if she had never left her lowly station, but
grown up amongst the hardships and privations of her humble condition.
She canvassed in her mind the way in which she might have either
conformed to that life, or struggled against it. “I cannot believe,”
said she, with a saucy laugh, as she stood and looked at herself in the
glass, “that these arms were meant to carry sea-wrack, or that these
feet were fashioned to clamber shoeless up the rocks! And yet, if
destiny had fixed me there, how should I have escaped? I cannot tell,
any more than I can tell what is yet before me! And what a fascination
there is in this uncertainty! What a wondrous influence has the unknown!
How eventful does the slightest action become, when it may lead to that
which can determine a life’s fortune! Even now, how much is in my power!
I might go back, throw myself at that old man’s feet, and tell him that
it was in vain I tried it--I could not leave him. I might kneel there
till he raised me, and when he did so, I should be his wife, a titled
lady, and mistress of that grand old castle! Could I do this? No: no
more than I could go and beg the Vyners to have pity on me and take me
back; that my heart clung to the happiness I had learned to feel amongst
them; and that I would rather serve them as a menial than live away from
them. Better to die than this. And, what will this life at Arran be?
This uncle, too, I dread him; and yet, I long to see him. I want to hear
him call me by his own name, and acknowledge me as a Luttrell. Oh, if
he had but done this before--before I had travelled this weary road of
deception and falsehood! Who knows? Who knows?”
“Are you the young lady, Miss, that’s expecting an elderly gentleman?”
said the housemaid, entering hastily.
“Where from? How did he come?” cried Elate, eagerly; for her first
thought was, it might be Sir Within.
“He came by the Irish packet, Miss.”
“Yes that is quite right. If he asks for Miss Luttrell, you may say I am
ready to see him.”
In a minute or two after she had given this order, the girl again opened
the door, saying:
“Mr. Coles, Miss;” and introduced a florid, fussy-looking little man,
with a manner compounded of courtesy and command.
“You may leave the room, young woman,” said he to the maid; and then,
approaching Kate, added, “I have the honour to speak to Miss Luttrell?”
She bowed a quiet assent, and he went on:
“I’m chief managing-clerk of Cane and Co., Miss Luttrell, from whom
I received instructions to wait on you here, and accompany you to
Westport, where Mr. John Luttrell will have a boat ready for you.”
He delivered this speech with a something half-peremptory, as though he
either suspected some amount of resistance to his authority, or imagined
that his credentials might be questioned.
“Have you no letter for me, Sir?” asked she, calmly.
“There was a letter from Mr. Luttrell to Mr. George Cane, Miss Luttrell,
explaining why he was not himself able to come over and meet you.”
“Was he ill, Sir?”
“No, not exactly ill, Miss Luttrell, though he is never what one can
call well.”
“I am astonished he did not write to me,” said she, in a low, thoughtful
tone.
“He is not much given to writing, Miss Luttrell, at any time, and of
late we have rarely heard from him beyond a line or two. Indeed, with
respect to my present journey, all he says is, ‘Send some one in your
confidence over to Holyhead by the first packet to inquire for Miss
Luttrell, or Miss O’Hara--she may be known by either name--and conduct
her to Elridge’s Hotel, Westport. The young lady is to be treated with
all consideration.’ These are his words, Miss, and I hope to follow
them.”
“It is very kind,” said she slowly, and half to herself.
“It’s a Frenchified sort of phrase, ‘all consideration,’ but I take its
meaning to be, with every deference to your wishes--how you would like
to travel, and where to stop. Mr. George, however, told me to add, ‘If
Miss Luttrell desires to make any purchases, or requires anything in
town, she is to have full liberty to obtain it.’ He did not mention
to what amount, but of course he intended the exercise of a certain
discretion.”
“I want nothing, Sir.”
“That is what Mrs. Coles remarked to me: If the young lady only saw the
place she was going to, she’d not think of shopping.”
Kate made no answer.
“Not but, as Mrs. Coles observed, some good substantial winter
clothing--that capital stuff they make now for Lower Canada--would be an
excellent thing to take. You are aware, Miss, it is a perpetual winter
there?”
A short nod, that might mean anything, was all her reply.
“And above all, Miss Luttrell,” continued he, unabashed by her cold
manner--“above all, a few books! Mr. L., from what I hear, has none
that would suit a young lady’s reading. His studies, it seems, are of an
antiquarian order; some say--of course people _will_ say so--he dips
a little into magic and the black art.” Perhaps, after all, it was the
study most appropriate to the place.
“I suppose it is a lonesome spot?” said she, with a faint sigh, and not
well heeding what she said.
“Desolate is the name for it--desolate and deserted! I only know it by
the map; but, I declare to you, I’d not pass a week on it to own the fee
simple.”
“And yet I am going there of my own free will, Sir,” said she, with a
strangely meaning smile.
“That’s exactly what puzzles Mrs. C. and myself,” said he, bluntly;
“and, indeed, my wife went so far as to say, ‘Has the dear young
creature nobody to tell her what the place is like? Has she no friend to
warn her against the life she is going to?’”
“Tell her from me, Sir, that I know it all. I saw it when I was a child,
and my memory is a tenacious one. And tell her, too, that bleak and
dreary as it is, I look forward to it with a longing desire, as an
escape from a world of which, even the very little I have seen, has not
enamoured me. And now, Sir, enough of me and my fortunes, let us talk
of the road. Whenever you are sufficiently rested to begin your journey,
you will find me ready.”
“You’ll stop probably a day in Dublin?”
“Not an hour, Sir, if I can get on. Can we leave this to-night?”
“Yes; I have ordered the carriages to take us to the pier at nine, and a
cart for your luggage.”
“My luggage is there, Sir,” said she, pointing to the bundle, and
smiling at the astonishment his face betrayed; “and when you tell your
wife that, Sir, she will, perhaps, see I am better fitted for Arran than
she suspected.”
Albeit the daily life of Mr. Coles gave little scope to the faculty, he
was by nature of an inquiring disposition, not to add that he well knew
to what a rigid cross-examination he would be subjected on his return to
his wife, not merely as to the look, manner, and mien of the young lady,
but as to what account she gave of herself, where she came from, and,
more important still, why she came.
It was his fancy, too, to imagine that he was especially adroit in
extracting confidences; a belief, be it observed, very generally held
by people whose palpable and pushing curiosity invariably revolts a
stranger, and disposes him to extreme reserve.
As they walked the deck of the steamer together, then, with a calm
sea and a stilly night, he deemed the moment favourable to open his
investigations.
“Ah, yes!” said he, as though addressing some interlocutor within his
own bosom--“ah, yes! she will indeed feel it a terrible contrast. None
of the pleasures, none of the habits of her former life; none of the
joys of the family, and none of the endearments of a home!”
“Of whom were you speaking, Sir?” asked she, with a faint smile.
“Dear me I dear me I what a man I am! That’s a habit my wife has been
trying to break me of these fifteen years, Miss Luttrell; as she says:
‘Coles, take care that you never commit a murder, or you’re sure to tell
it to the first person you meet.’ And so is it when anything occurs to
engage my deepest interest--my strongest sympathy; it’s no use; do what
I will, out it will come in spite of me.”
“And I, Sir,” said she, with a slow and measured utterance, “am exactly
the reverse. I no more think of speaking my thoughts aloud, than I
should dream of imparting my family secrets, if I had any, to the first
stranger whose impertinent curiosity might dispose him to penetrate
them.”
“Indeed!” cried he, reddening with shame.
“Quite true, I assure you, Sir; and now I will wish you a goodnight, for
it grows chilly here.”