Luttrell Of Arran

“You did not speak of me – you did not mention my name, I hope?” broke she in, in an imperious tone.

“You could not suppose me guilty of such imprudence, Miss Courtenay!” said he, in an offended manner.

“No matter what I suppose, Sir. I want you to tell me that my name was not uttered during your interview.”

“Not by me– certainly not by me!” said he, timidly.

“Was it by him, Sir? Answer me that!”

“Well, I rather think that he did say that I had been deputed by you to convey the message to him.”

“What insolence! And how did you reply?”

“I observed that I was not there exactly for the purpose of a cross-examination; that in my capacity as a friendly adviser, I declined all interrogation.”

“Fiddle faddle, Sir. It would have been far more to the purpose to have said, ‘Miss Courtenay has nothing whatever to do with this communication.’ I really feel ashamed to think I should play the prompter to a professor in subtleties; but I still think that your ingenuity might have hit upon a reason for his going, without any reference to us, or to our wishes. Did it never occur to you, for instance, that the arrival of Sir Within Wardle might offer a convenient plea?”

“Indeed! I might have mentioned that,” said he, in some confusion. “The house does not admit of much accommodation for strangers, and an additional room would be of consequence just now.”

“I think, Sir,” said she, haughtily, “you might have put the matter in a better light than by making it a domestic question. This young man might have been brought to see that the gentleman who was so ungratefully treated – I might say, so shamefully treated – by his near relative, could not be the pleasantest person for him to meet in a narrow family circle.”

“I might. It is quite true, I might have insinuated that consideration,” said he, with a crestfallen air and look.

“I suppose you did your best, Sir!” said she, with a sigh; and he felt all the sarcastic significance of its compassion. “Indeed, I am certain you did, and I thank you.” With these words, not conveyed in any excess of warmth or gratitude, she moved away, and M’Kinlay stood a picture of doubt, confusion, and dismay, muttering to himself some unintelligible words, whose import was, however, the hope of that day coming when these and many similar small scores might be all wiped out together.

CHAPTER LXIII. WITH LAWYERS

“What! that you, Harry? How comes it you have left all the fine folk so soon?” cried Captain Dodge, as he suddenly awoke and saw young Luttrell at his bedside. “Why, lad, I didn’t expect to see you back here these ten days to come. Warn’t they polite and civil to you?”

“That they were. They could not haye treated me better if I had been their own son.”

“How comes it, then, that you slipped your moorings?”

“Well, I can’t well say. There were new guests just arriving, and people I never saw, and so, with one thing or other, I thought I’d just move off; and – and – here I am.”

It was not difficult to see that this very lame excuse covered some other motive, and the old skipper was not the man to be put off by a flimsy pretext; but, rough sailor and buccaneer as he was, he could respect the feelings that he thought might be matter of secret meaning, and merely said: “I’m glad to see you back, at all events. I have no one to speak to in this place, and, as I lie here, I get so impatient, that I forget my smashed thigh-bone, and want to be up and about again.”

“So you will, very soon, I hope.”

“Not so soon, lad!” said he, sorrowfully. “It’s a big spar to splice, the surgeon says, and will take three months; though how I’m to lie here three months is more than I can tell.”

“I’ll do my best to make it endurable for you. I’ll get books – they’ve plenty of books here – and maps, and drawings; and I saw a draftboard this morning, and you’ll see the time won’t hang so heavily as you feared.”

“That ain’t it at all, Harry. You’ve got to go to Liverpool to Towers and Smales – them’s the fellows know me well. Smales sailed with me as a youngster, and you’ll hand them a letter I’ll write, and they’ll look about for the sort of craft we’re wanting – something bark-rigged, or a three-masted schooner. I was dreaming of one last night – such a clipper on a wind! The French are blockading Vera Cruz just now, and if we could slip past them and get in, one trip would set us all right again.”

“I think I should like that well!” cried the youth. “Like it! Why. wouldn’t you like it? There ain’t nothing to compare with blockade running in this life: stealing carefully up till you see the moment to make a dash – watching your wind, and then with every inch of canvas you can spread, go at it till the knee timbers crack again, and the planks work and writhe like the twigs of a wicker basket, and all the ships of war flying this signal and that to each other, till at last comes a gun across your bows, and you run up a flag of some sort – English belike, for the French never suspect John Bull of having a clipper. Then comes the order to round to, and you pretend to mind it; and just as they man their boat, dead at them you go, swamp every man of them, and hold on, while they fire away, at the risk of hulling each other, and never take more notice of them than one discharge from your pivot-gun, just by way of returning their salute. That’s what I call sport, boy; and I only wish I was at it this fine morning.”

“And what happens if you’re taken?”

“That depends on whether you showed fight or not; if you fired a shotted gun, they hang you.”

Luttrell shook his head, and muttered, “A dog’s death; I don’t like that.”

“That’s prejudice, Sir; nothing more. Every death a man meets bravely is a fine death! I’d just as lieve be hanged as flayed alive by the Choctaws!”

“Perhaps so would!”

“Well, there’s what you’ve got to do. Towers and Smales, shipbuilders! – they’re the men to find what we want, and they know a clipper well; they’ve built more slavers than any house in the trade.”

Harry made a wry face; the skipper saw it, and said: “There’s more prejudice; but when you’ve been at sea as long as I have, you’ll think less about the cargo than what you get per ton for the freight.”

“I’d not turn slaver, anyhow; that much I can tell you,” said he, stoutly.

“I’d not do it myself, Sir, except when business was alack and freights low. It ain’t cheering, noways; and there’s a certain risk in it besides. Towers and Smales – Towers and Smales!” muttered he over to himself three or four times. “They’d not be the men they are to-day, I can tell you, if they never traded in ebony ware! Had you any talk with your grand friend, Sir Gervais, about that loan he offered me?” asked he, after a pause.

“Not a word. I came away hurriedly. I had no good opportunity to speak about it.”

“He said, ‘Two thousand, and pay when I like;’ not hard terms certainly.”

“And yet I’d rather you’d not accept them,” said Harry, slowly.

“Not take money without interest charged or security asked? What do you mean?”

“I mean, I rather you’d wait till I’ve seen those lawyers that managed my father’s affairs, and see whether they can’t sell that trifle of property that comes to me.”

“Why, didn’t you tell me your father willed it away to some peasant girl?”

“Yes, the island, for the entail had been broken by my grandfather, but the small estate in Roscommon goes to the next of kin, and that happens to be myself. It must be very little worth, but it may help us at least to get a ship, and we’ll soon do the rest ourselves.”

“That will we, Harry. This is the fourth time in my life I’ve had to begin all over again, and I’m as fresh for it as on the first day.”

They went on now to talk of the future and all their plans like men who felt the struggle with life a fair stand up fight, that none with a stout heart ought ever to think of declining. The skipper had not only been in every corner of the globe, but had brought back from each spot some memories of gain, or pleasure, or peril – sensations pretty much alike to his appreciation – and whether he commanded a whale-boat at Behring’s Straits, or took in his ship store of cocoa-nuts and yams at the Spice Islands, adventure ever tracked his steps. Dashed with the love of danger was the love of gain, and in his narrative one never could say whether there prevailed more the spirit of enterprise or the temper of the trader.

“We’ll want that loan from Vyner yet, I see, Harry,” said he, at the end of a long calculation of necessary outgoings; “and I see no reason against taking it.”

“I do, though,” said the other, gravely.

“Mayhap some sentimental reason that I’d not give a red cent for, boy. What is it?”

“I’ll not trouble you with the sentimental reasons,” said Luttrell, smiling, “though perhaps I’m not without some of them. What I’ll give you will suffice. While I was one morning with Sir Gervais, going over all about my father and his affairs, of which he knew far more than I did, he opened his writing-desk, and took out a great mass of letters. ‘These,’ said he, ‘are in your father’s hand; read them, and you’ll be better acquainted with him than you have yet been.’ They were on all manner of themes – of society, field sports, books, and much about politics – and interested me vastly, till at last I came upon one which certainly Sir Gervais would not have suffered me to see had he been aware it was amongst them. It was the last letter my father had ever written to him, and was almost entirely about myself. He spoke of the semi-barbarism I had been reared in, and the humble prospects before me, and he told about my disposition, and my faults of temper – the old family faults, he called them – that made us all ‘intractable to our friends, and intolerable to all who were not friends.’ At the end he asked Vyner to become my guardian, and he added these words: ‘Be a friend to my boy in all ways that your kindness, your sympathy, your counsel can dictate. Guide, direct, encourage, or, if need be, reprove him, but never, whatever you do, aid him with your purse. It is on this condition I commit him to you. Remember.’”

“Well, I’d be noways obliged to my father if he had made any such condition about me. I’ve never been much the better for all the good advice I’ve got, but I’ve found the man that lent me a thousand dollars uncommon useful.”

“I am telling you of what my father wished and asked for,” said Harry, proudly, “not of anything else.”

“And that’s just what I’m objectin’ to, youngster. It was his pride to take no help, and it brought him to live and die on a barren rock in the ocean; but I don’t intend to do that, nor to let you do it. We’ve got to say to the world, ‘Sheer off there, I’m a comin’, and I mean comin’ when I say it. There’s maybe room enough for us all, but I’ll be smashed and chawed up but I’ll have room for me!”

Whether it was the fierce energy with which he spoke this, or the fact that in a few rough words he had embodied his whole theory of life, but certainly Harry looked at him with a sort of wonder blended with amusement.