Luttrell Of Arran. Lever Charles James
almost a shriek. “Declare what?”
“He means, that you’ll tell the people – ”
“Send him here to me,” broke in Luttrell, angrily. “I’m not going to discuss this with you.”
“Sure isn’t he giving her the blessed Sacrament!” said she, indignantly.
“Leave me, then – leave me in peace,” said he, as he turned away and leaned his head on the chimney-piece; and then, without raising it, added, “and tell the priest to come to me before he goes away.”
The woman had not gone many minutes, when a heavy step approached the door, and a strong knock was heard. “Come in!” cried Luttrell, and there entered a short, slightly-made man, middle-aged and active-looking, with bright black eyes, and a tall, straight forehead, to whom Luttrell motioned the only chair as he came forward.
“It’s all over, Sir. She’s in glory!” said he, reverently.
“Without pain?” asked Luttrell.
“A parting pang – no more. She was calm to the last. Indeed, her last words were to repeat what she had pressed so often upon me.”
“I know – I know!” broke in Luttrell, impatiently. “I never denied it.”
“True, Sir; but you never acknowledged it,” said the priest, hardily. “When you had the courage to make a peasant girl your wife, you ought to have had the courage to declare it also.”
“To have taken her to the Court, I hope – to have presented her to Royalty – to have paraded my shame and my folly before a world whose best kindness was that it forgot me! Look here, Sir; my wife was brought up a Catholic; I never interfered with her convictions. If I never spoke to her on the subject of her faith, it was no small concession from a man who felt on the matter as I did. I sent for you to administer to her the rights of her Church, but not to lecture me on my duties or my obligations. What I ought to do, and when, I have not to learn from a Roman Catholic priest.”
“And yet, Sir, it is a Catholic priest will force you to do it. There was no stain on your wife’s fame, and there shall be none upon her memory.”
“What is the amount of my debt to you, Father Lowrie?” asked Luttrell, calmly and even courteously.
“Nothing, Sir; not a farthing. Her father was a good friend to me and mine before ruin overtook him. It wasn’t for money I came here to-night.”
“Then you leave me your debtor, Sir, and against my will.”
“But you needn’t be, Mr. Luttrell,” said the priest, with eagerness. “She that has just gone, begged and prayed me with her last breath to look after her little boy, and to see and watch that he was not brought up in darkness.”
“I understand you. You were to bring him into your own fold. If you hope for success for such a scheme, take a likelier moment, father; this is not your time. Leave me now, I pray you. I have much to attend to.”
“May I hope to have an early opportunity to see and talk with you, Mr. Luttrell?”
“You shall hear from me, Sir, on the matter, and early,” said Luttrell. “Your own good feeling will show this is not the moment to press me.”
Abashed by the manner in which these last words were spoken, the father bowed low and withdrew.
“Well?” cried the servant-woman, as he passed out, “will he do it, your reverence?”
“Not to-day, anyhow, Molly,” said he, with a sigh.
How Luttrell sorrowed for the loss of his wife was not known. It was believed that he never passed the threshold of the door where she lay – never went to take one farewell look of her. He sat moodily in his room, going out at times to give certain orders about the funeral, which was to take place on the third day. A messenger had been despatched to his late wife’s relatives, who lived about seventy miles off, down the coast of Mayo, and to invite them to attend. Of her immediate family none remained. Her father was in banishment, the commutation of a sentence of death. Of her two brothers, one had died on the scaffold, and another had escaped to America, whither her three sisters had followed him; so that except her uncle, Peter Hogan, and his family, and a half-brother of her mother’s, a certain Joe Rafter, who kept a shop at Lahinch, there were few to follow her to the grave as mourners.
Peter had four sons and several daughters, three of them married. They were of the class of small farmers, very little above the condition of the cottier; but they were, as a family, a determined, resolute, hard-headed race, not a little dreaded in the neighbourhood where they lived, and well known to be knit together by ties that made an injury to any one of them a feud that the whole family would avenge.
For years and years Luttrell had not seen nor even heard of them. He had a vague recollection of having seen Peter Hogan at his marriage, and once or twice afterwards, but preserved no recollection of him. Nothing short of an absolute necessity – for as such he felt it – would have induced him to send for them now; but he knew well how rigid were popular prejudices, and how impossible it would have been for him to live amongst a people whose most cherished feelings he would have outraged, had he omitted the accustomed honours to the dead.
He told his servant Molly to do all that was needful on the occasion – to provide for those melancholy festivities which the lower Irish adhere to with a devotion that at once blends their religious ardour with their intensely strong imaginative power.
“There is but one thing I will not bear,” said he. “They must not come in upon me. I will see them when they come, and take leave of them when they go; but they are not to expect me to take any part in their proceedings. Into this room I will suffer none to enter.”
“And Master Harry,” said the woman, wiping her eyes with her apron – “what’s to be done with him? ‘Tis two days that he’s there, and he won’t leave the corpse.”
“It’s a child’s sorrow, and will soon wear itself out.”
“Ay, but it’s killing him!” said she, tenderly – “it’s killing him in the mean while.”
“He belongs to a tough race,” said he, with a bitter smile, “that neither sorrow nor shame ever killed. Leave the boy alone, and he’ll come to himself the sooner.”
The peasant woman felt almost sick in her horror at such a sentiment, and she moved towards the door to pass out.
“Have you thought of everything, Molly?” asked he, more mildly.
“I think so, Sir. There’s to be twenty-eight at the wake – twenty-nine, if Mr. Rafter comes; but we don’t expect him – and Father Lowrie would make thirty; but we’ve plenty for them all.”
“And when will this – this feasting – take place?”
“The night before the funeral, by coorse,” said the woman.
“And they will all leave this the next morning, Molly?”
“Indeed I suppose they will, Sir,” said she, no less offended at the doubt than at the inhospitable meanness of the question.
“So be it, then!” said he, with a sigh. “I have nothing more to say.”
“You know, Sir,” said she, with a great effort at courage, “that they’ll expect your Honour will go in for a minute or two – to drink their healths, and say a few words to them?”
He shook his head in dissent, but said nothing.
“The Hogans is as proud a stock as any in Mayo, Sir,” said she, eagerly, “and if they thought it was any disrespect to her that was gone – ”
“Hold your tongue, woman,” cried he, impatiently. “She was my wife, and I know better what becomes her memory than these ignorant peasants. Let there be no more of this;” and he closed the door after her as she went out, and turned the key in it, in token that he would not brook more disturbance.
CHAPTER II. A YACHTING PARTY
In