Luttrell Of Arran Part 91

"I tried to comfort her, and say that your honour would never see her in any distress; but she wasn't minding me, and only went on saying something about being back again; but whether it meant at the Castle, or over in Arran, or, as I once thought, back as a child, when she used to play in the caves along the sea-sh.o.r.e, I couldn't say, but she cried bitterly, and for the whole day never tasted bit or sup. We stopped at a small house outside the town, and I told them it was a young creature that lost her mother; and the next day she looked so ill and wasted, I was getting afraid she was going to have a fever; but she said she was strong enough, and asked me to bring her on here to the gaol, for she wanted to see her grandfather.

"It was only this morning, however, I got the order from the sub-sheriff; and indeed he wouldn't have given it but that he seen her out of the window, for in all her distress, and with her clothes wet and draggled, she's as beautiful a creature as ever walked."

"Why not marry her yourself, O'Rorke? By Jove! you're head and ears in love already. I'll make you a handsome settlement, on my oath I will."

"There's two small objections, Sir. First, there's another Mrs. O'Rorke, though I'm not quite sure where at the present setting; and even if there wasn't, she wouldn't have me."

"I don't see that; and if it be only the bigamy you're afraid of, go off to Australia or America, and your first wife will never trace you."

O'Rorke shook his head, and, to strengthen his determination perhaps, he mixed himself a strong tumbler of punch.

"And where are we now?" asked Ladarelle.

O'Rorke, perhaps, did not fully understand the question, for he looked at him inquiringly.

"I ask you, where are we now? Don't you understand me?"

"We're pretty much where we were yesterday; that is, we're waiting to know what's to be done for the ould man in the gaol, and what your honour intends to do about"--he hesitated and stammered, and at last said--"about the other business."

"Well, it's the other business, as you neatly call it, Mr. O'Rorke, that interests me at present. Sir Within has written twice to Mr. Luttrell since you left the Castle. One of his letters I stopped before it reached the office, the other I suppose has come to hand."

"No fanlt of mine if it has, Sir," broke in O'Rorke, hastily, for he saw the displeasure in the other's look. "I was twice at the office at Westport, and there wasn't a line there for Mr. Luttrell. Did you read the other letter, Sir?" added he, eagerly, after a moment's silence.

"I know what's in it," muttered Ladarelle, in confusion, for he was not quite inured to the baseness he had sunk to. "And what is it, Sir?"

"Just what I expected; that besotted old fool wants to marry her.

He tells Mr. Luttrell, and tells it fairly enough, how the estate is settled, and he offers the largest settlement the entail will permit of; but he forgets to add that the same day he takes out his license to marry, we'll move for a commission of lunacy. I have been eight weeks there lately, and not idle, I promise you. I have got plenty of evidence against him. How he goes into the room she occupied at the Castle, and has all her rings and bracelets laid out on the toilet-table, and candles lighted, as if she was coming to dress for dinner, and makes her maid wait there, telling her Madame is out on horseback, or she is in the garden, she'll be in presently. One day, too, he made us wait dinner for her till eight o'clock; and when at last the real state of the case broke on him, he had to get up and go to his room, and Holmes, his man, told me that he sobbed the whole night through, like a child."

"And do you think that all them will prove him mad?" asked O'Rorke, with a jeering laugh.

"Why not? If a man cannot understand that a person who has not been under his roof for six or eight months, and is some hundred miles away, may want candles in her dressing-room, and may come down any minute to dinner in that very house----"

"Oddity--eccentricity--want of memory--nothing more! There's never a jury in England would call a man mad for all that."

"You are a great lawyer, Mr. O'Rorke, but it is right to say you differ here from the Attorney-General."

"No great harm in that same--when he's in the wrong!"

"I might possibly be rash enough to question your knowledge of law, but certainly I'll never dispute your modesty."

"My modesty is like any other part of me, and I didn't make myself; but I'll stick to this--that ould man is not mad, and n.o.body could make him out mad."

"Mr. Grenfell will not agree with you in that. He was over at the Castle the night I came away, and he saw the gardener carrying up three immense nosegays of flowers, for it was her birthday it seemed, however any one knew it, and Sir Within had ordered the band from Wrexham to play under her window at nightfall; and as Mr. Grenfell said, 'That old gent's brain seems about as soft as his heart!' Not bad, was it?--his brain as soft as his heart!"

"He's no more mad than I am, and I don't care who says the contrary."

"Perhaps you speculate on being called as a witness to his sanity?" said Ladarelle, with a sneer.

"I do not, Sir; but if I was, I'd be a mighty troublesome one to the other side."

"What the deuce led us into this foolish discussion! As if it signified one rush to me whether he was to be thought the wisest sage or the greatest fool in Christendom. What _I_ want, and what I am determined on, is that we are not to be dragged into Chancery, and made town talk of, because a cunning minx has turned an old rake's head. I'd be hunted by a set of hungry rascals of creditors to-morrow if the old man were to marry. There's not one of them wouldn't believe that my chance of the estate was all 'up.'"

"There's sense in _that_; there is reason in what you say now," said O'Rorke.

"And that's not the worst of it, either," continued Ladarelle, who, like all weak men, accepted any flattery, even at the expense of the object he sought; "but my governor would soon know how deep I am, and he'd cast me adrift. Not a pleasant prospect, Master O'Rorke, to a fellow who ought to succeed to about twelve thousand a year."

"Could he do it by law?"

"Some say one thing, some another; but this I know, that if my creditors get a hold of me now, as the fox said, there would be very little running left in me when they'd done with me. But here's the short and the long of it. We must not let Sir Within marry, that's the first thing; and the second is, there would be no objection to any plan that will give him such a shock--he's just ready for a shock--that he wouldn't recover from. Do you see it now?"

"I see it all, only I don't see how it's to be done."

"I wonder what you are here for, then?" asked the other, angrily. "I took you into my pay thinking I had a fellow with expedients at his fingers' ends; and, except to see you make objections, and discover obstacles, I'll be hanged if I know what you're good for."

"Go on, Sir, go on," said O'Rorke, with a malicious grin.

"In one word, what do you propose?" said Ladarelle, sternly.

"Here's what I propose, then," said O'Rorke, pus.h.i.+ng the gla.s.ses and decanters from him, and planting his arms on the table in a st.u.r.dy fas.h.i.+on--"I propose, first of all, that you'll see Mr. Crowe, the attorney, and give him instructions to defend Malone, and get him the best bar on the circuit. She'll insist upon that, that's the first thing. The second is, that you come down to where she is, and tell her that when you heard of her trouble that you started off to help her and stand by her. I don't mean to say it will be an easy thing to get her to believe it, or even after she believes it to take advantage of it, for she's prouder than you think. Well, toss your head if you like, but you don't know her, nor them she comes from; but if you know how to make her think that by what she'll do she'll spite the ould man that insulted her, if you could just persuade her that there wasn't another way in life so sure to break his heart, I think she'd comply, and agree to marry you."

"Upon my soul, the condescension overcomes me! You think--you actually think--she'd consent to be the wife of a man in such a position as mine!"

"Well, as I said a while ago, it wouldn't be easy."

"You don't seem to know, my good friend, that you are immensely impertinent!"

"I do not," was the reply, and he gave it calmly and slowly. At the same instant a knock came to the door, and the waiter motioned to O'Rorke that a woman wanted to speak to him outside. "I'm wanted for a few minutes, Sir, down at the place she's stopping. The woman says she's very ill, and wandering in her mind. I'll be back presently."

"Well, don't delay too long. I'm between two minds already whether I'll not go back and give up the whole business."

CHAPTER LV. STILL CONSPIRING

"She's worse, Sir," whispered the woman, as she crossed the threshold of her door, and exchanged a word with her daughter. "Biddy says she's clean out of her mind now--listen to that! The Lord have mercy on us!"

It was a wild scream rang through the house, followed by a burst of fearful laughter.

"Ask her if she'll see me," said O'Rorke, in a low voice.

"That's O'Rorke's voice!" Kate cried out from the top of the stairs.

"Let him come up. I want to see him. Come up!" She leaned over the railing of the stairs as she spoke, and even O'Rorke was horror-struck at the ashy paleness of her face, and a fearful brilliancy that shone in her eyes. "It's a very humble place, Mr. O'Rorke, I am obliged to receive you in," said she, with a strange smile, as he entered; "but I have only just arrived here, you see I have not even changed my dress; pray sit down, if you can find a chair; all is in disorder here--and, would you believe it?"--here her manner became suddenly earnest, and her voice dropped to a whisper--"would you believe it? my maid has never come to me, never asked me if I wanted her since I came. It's getting dark, too, and must be late."

"Listen to me, now, Miss Kate," said he, with a touch almost of pity in his voice, "listen to me. You're not well, you're tired and exhausted, so I'll send the woman of the house to you, and get to bed, and I'll find out a doctor to order you something."

"Yes, I should like to see a doctor; that kind person I saw before, Sir Henry something--what was it? You will see it in the Court Guide--he attends the Queen."

"To be sure, to be sure, we'll have the man that attends the Queen!"

said he, giving his concurrence to what he imagined to be the fancy of an erring brain.