Luttrell Of Arran. Lever Charles James
for they’re always well disposed to me,’ says he.
“‘If it’s eatin’, or spendin’ money, or goin’ in debt, or cursin’ or swearin’, or being fond of fightin’ – ‘’
“‘It is not,’ says he; ‘them is all natural. It’s your pride,’ says he – ‘your upsettin’ family pride, that won’t let you do this, or say that. There’s what’s destroyin’ you.’
“‘It’s pretty well out of me now,’ says Luttrell, with a sigh. “‘It is not,’ says the other. ‘If you had a good dinner of beef, and a tumbler of strong punch in you, you’d be as impudent this minute as ever you were.’
“‘Maybe you’re right,’ says Luttrell.
“‘I know I am, Mr. Luttrell. You’re not the first of your family I was intimate with. You’re an ould stock, and I know ye well.’ “‘And how are we to be cured?’ says Luttrell. “‘Easy enough,’ says he. ‘When three generations of ye marry peasants, it will take the pride out of your bones, and you’ll behave like other people.’
“‘We couldn’t do it,’ says Luttrell. “‘Try,’ says the other. “‘Impossible!’
“‘So you’d say about livin’ on potatoes, and drinkin’ well water.’ “‘That’s true,’ says Luttrell.
“‘So you’d say about ragged clothes and no shoes to your feet.’” Luttrell nodded.
“‘So you’d say about settin’ in a cave and talking over family matters to – to a stranger,’ says he, with a laugh.
“‘I believe there’s something in it,’ said Luttrell; ‘but sure some of us might like to turn bachelors.’
“‘Let them, and welcome,’ says he. ‘I don’t want them to do it one after the other. I’m in no hurry. Take a hundred years – take two, if you like, for it.’
“‘Done,’ says Lnttrell. ‘When a man shows a fair spirit, I’ll always meet him in the same. Give me your hand; it’s a bargain.’
“‘I hurt my thumb,’ says he; ‘but take my tail, ‘twill do all the same.’ And though Mr. Luttrell didn’t like it, he shook it stoutly, and only let it go when it began to burn his fingers. And from that day he was rich, even till he died; but after his death nobody ever knew where to find the gold, nor ever will till the devil tells them.”
“And did his family keep the bargain; did they marry the peasants?” asked Grenfell.
“Two of them. One before, John Lnttrell of Arran; and another must do it, and soon too, for they say the two hundred years is near out now.”
“And is it said that the remedy succeeded?” asked Vyner; “are the Luttrells cured of their family pride?”
“They can’t be till the third marriage takes place; indeed, my grandfather says they’ll be worse than ever just before they’re cured; ‘for,’ says he, ‘every one that makes a bargain with the devil thinks he has the best of it.’”
“And that, I suspect, is a mistake, Katherine,” said Vyner.
She threw down her eyes, and seemed lost in thought, making no reply whatever to his remark.
“I’d have had no dealings with him at all,” said Vyner.
“You are rich, and you don’t need him,” said she, almost fiercely, as though his words had conveyed a sneer.
“That’s just it, Kitty,” said Grenfell; “or if he did want him it would be for something different from money.”
She gave a saucy toss of her head, as though to show she agreed with him, and turned to the table where Vyner was at work with his chalks.
“That’s me,” said she, gravely.
“I like your own face better,” said Vyner.
“So would that little fellow with the pipe that you were telling us of,” said Grenfell.
“Let him say so,” said she, with a ringing laugh; and she bounded from the spot, and skipping from crag to crag flew down the rock, and hurried down the little path at speed.
“There’s a man coming up the road; don’t you see him waving his hat?”
“It’s an old man,” said Vyner, as he looked through his telescope. “I snppose her grandfather.”
CHAPTER XII. THE WALK IN THE MOUNTAINS
When Vyner went to sleep that night, it was to dream of all that the last few days had presented before him. The wild and rocky Arran, with its ruined Abbey and its lonely occupant; the bright-eyed but over-thoughtful-looking boy, with all the freshness of childhood and all the contemplative temperament of a man; then the iron-bound shore and the semi-savage natives; and last of all the mountain region where he then was, with that fairy figure more deeply impressed than he had drawn her, and whom he now fancied to be tripping lightly before him up the rocky sides of Strathmore.
As he opened his eyes, the view that met them startled him. It was one of those vast stretches of landscape which painters cannot convey. They are too wide, too boundless for picture. The plain which lay outstretched before him, rising and falling like a vast prairie, was unmarked by habitation – not a hovel, not a hut to be seen. Vast groups of rocks stood out here and there abruptly, grotesque and strange in outline, as though giants had been petrified in the act of some great conflict, the stunted trees that crowned the summits serving as feathers on the helmets. A great amphitheatre of mountain girded the plain, save at one spot, the Gap of Glenvallah, through which, as his map told him, his road on that morning lay.
His object was to see with his own eyes the so much vaunted scenery of this region, to visit the lonely spot, and talk himself with its wild natives; he doubted, indeed, if both the solemnity and the savagery had not been exaggerated. To acquire the property was, after all, only one of those caprices which rich men can afford themselves. They can buy some rare and costly relic – some curious manuscript, some singular specimen of a contested species, a shell, a stone, a fragment of sculptured marble – to show which once or twice to some critical eye is all its value; why not then possess in nature what, had it been reduced to art, and signed Poussin or Salvator, would have been priceless? It was thus he reasoned: “If this place be but what they have described it, I shall own a landscape that all the galleries of Europe cannot rival. A landscape, too, whose varying effects of sun and shadow, of daybreak and twilight, shall be endless. The greatest of all painters, the sun, shall throw over the scene his own lights, and the storm shall wash the canvas and bring out afresh all the most lovely tints of colour.”
Grenfell had promised him overnight to be up and stirring by an early hour, but when called he refused to rise; he had his lazy fit on him, he said; he might have called it rather a malady than a paroxysm, for it was chronic. He declared that the view from the rock before the door fully satisfied him; he was no glutton about scenery; a little did for him, and here was a feast. “Besides,” said he, “I have been reading those atrocious magazines all night, and I mean to devote my day to some rebel colloquies with my host.”
Perhaps, after all, Vyner was scarcely sorry to set out alone; Gren-fell’s companionship was of so essentially worldly a character, his qualities were best exercised when they discussed the men, the things, and the topics of his day: such a man saw in the wild sublimity of a mountain scene little else than its desolation, and Vyner bethought him how often this town-bred gentleman had jarred upon him in moments of peaceful reverie and errant fancy.
O’Rorke served his breakfast in silence; either he was not in communicative mood, or he mistrusted his guest. He answered with brevity the few questions about the road, only adding, “that it was a pity the gentleman had not mentioned before where he was going, for there was an old man and his granddaughter had just set out on that very road.”
“The child I saw here yesterday?”
“The same.”
“Have they