Part 75 (1/2)
He again kissed her forehead, and, motioning a good-by with his hand, moved slowly away.
”Perhaps I shall acquit myself better than he thinks,” said she to herself. ”Perhaps--who knows if I may not find some place or thing to interest me here? It is very grand 'savagery,' and if one wanted to test their powers of defying the world in every shape, this is the spot. What is this you have brought me to eat, Molly?”
”It's a bit of fried skate, Miss, and I'm sorry it's no better, but the potatoes is beautiful.”
”Then let me have them, and some milk. No milk--is that so?”
”There's only one cow, Miss, on the island, and she's only milked in the evening; but St. Finbar's Well is the finest water ever was tasted.”
”To your good health, then, and St. Finbar's!” said she, lifting a goblet to her lips. ”You are right, Molly; it is ice-cold and delicious!” And now, as she began her meal, she went on inquiring which of the men about the place would be most likely as a gardener, what things could be got to grow, on which side came the worst winds, and where any shelter could be found. ”Perhaps I shall have to take to fis.h.i.+ng, Molly,” said she, laughing, ”for something I must do.”
”You could make the nets, anyhow, Miss,” said Molly, in admiration of the white and graceful hands, and thinking what ought to be their most congenial labour.
”I can row a boat well, Molly,” said Kate, proudly.
”Whatever you'd do, you'd do well, G.o.d bless you!” cried the other; for in that hearty delight in beauty, so natural to the Irish peasant nature, she imagined her to be perfection, and the honest creature turned, ere she left the room, to give her a look of admiration little short of rapture.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE STRANGER AT THE WELL.
Before a couple of weeks pa.s.sed over, Kate had contrived to divide her days so regularly, to establish for herself a certain routine of little duties, that the time slipped by--as time ever will do in monotony--unfelt. The season was the autumn, and the wild hills and mountains were gorgeous in all the brilliant colour of the ever varied heaths. In the little clefts and valleys, too, where shelter favoured, foxgloves and purple mallows grew with a rare luxuriance, while on every side was met the arbutus, its crimson berries hanging in festoons over rock and crag. The sudden, unexpected sight of the sea, penetrating by many a fissure, as it were, between the mountains, gave unceasing interest to the wild landscape, and over the pathless moors that she strayed, not a living thing to be seen, was the sense of being the first wayfarer who had ever trod these wastes.
As Kate wandered whole days alone, over and over again came the doubt across her, which was it--the brilliant past, with all its splendour and luxury, or the solitary present--was the dream? Surely they could not both be real! Was the bygone a fancy built out of some gorgeous fragments of things read, heard, or imagined, or was this--this actual scene around her--a vision that was to move past, and leave her to awake to all her former splendour?
Great as the revulsion was to her former life, it was in nothing greater than in the difference between her uncle's cold, sad, distant manner, for so after the first meeting had it become, and the ever watchful anxiety, the courteous attention to her slightest wish, of Sir Within.
She never ceased canva.s.sing with herself how he had borne her desertion; whether he had sunk under it into a hopeless despondency, or called upon his pride to sustain him above any show of indignation. Reading it as the world must read it, there never was such ingrat.i.tude; but then the world could never know the provocation, nor ever know by what personal sacrifice she had avenged the slight pa.s.sed upon her. ”My story,” said she, ”can never be told; his, he may tell how it suite him.”
At moments, a sort of romantic exaltation and a sense of freedom would make her believe that she had done well to exchange the splendid bondage of the past for the untrammelled liberty of the present; and then, at other times, the terrible contrast would so overcome her, that she would sit and cry as if her heart was breaking.
”Would my 'old Gardy' pity or exult over me if he saw me now? What would he, who would not suffer me to tread on an uncarpeted step, say if he saw me alone, and poorly clad, clambering up these rugged cliffs to reach some point, where, for an instant, I may forget myself? Surely he would not triumph over my fall!
”Such a life as this is meant to expiate great crimes. Men are sent to wild and desolate islands in the ocean, to wear out days of hopeless misery, because they have warred against their fellows. But what have I done? whom have I injured? Others had friends to love and to guide them; I had none. The very worst that can be alleged against me is, that I was rash and headstrong--too p.r.o.ne to resent; and what has it cost me!
”My uncle said, indeed, this need not be my prison if I could not endure its privations. But what did that mean--what alternative did he point to? Was it that I was to go lower still, and fall back upon all the wretchedness I sprang from? That, never! The barren glory of calling myself a Luttrell may be a sorry price for forfeited luxury and splendour; but I have it, and I will hold it. I am a Luttrell now, and one day, perhaps, these dreary hills shall own me their mistress.”
In some such thoughts as these, crossed and recrossed by regrets and half-shadowed hopes, she was returning one night to the Abbey, when Molly met her. There was such evident anxiety and eagerness in the woman's face, that Kate quickly asked her:
”What is it? What has happened?”
”Nothing, Miss, nothing at all. 'Tis only a man is come. He's down at the Holy Well, and wants to speak to you.”
”Who is he? What is he?”
”I never seen him before, Miss, but he comes from beyant there”--she motioned towards the main land of Ireland--”and says that you know him well.”
”Have you told my uncle of him?”
”No, Miss, for the man said I was to tell no living soul but yourself, and to tell you quick too, for he was in a hurry, and wanted to get away with the evening's tide, and his boat was more than a mile off.”