Luttrell had heard nothing—knew nothing of this arrangement, and when he was told in a whisper that the dinner was ready in the sacristy, his brow darkened, and his cheek flushed with anger. “We need not have starved them with cold as well as hunger,” muttered he, sternly, to the woman; but she knew better than to await his reproaches, and hastened away to the kitchen.
“To you who have seen where I live, gentlemen,” said he to his guests, “it will be unnecessary to apologise for how I live; I can but say how much I regret it for your sakes, custom has made it easy to myself.” With this he led the way along a little narrow passage, and then crossing a court-yard, entered the sacristy. If M’Kinlay and the Yankee stared with amazement at the ample preparations to regale them, and the fine old hall—for such it looked—in which they were displayed, Luttrell could scarcely master his astonishment at what he saw, and nothing short of that “dignity which doth hedge” a host as well as “a king,” could have prevented him from openly expressing his surprise. Molly whispered a word in his ear, to which as hastily he said, “Certainly, of course,” and just as the guests took their seats, Harry, dressed in what remained to him of his best, came forward, and stood near the table. “Sit opposite to me, Harry; the foot of the table is the fitting place for the heir of the house, is it not, Mr. M’Kinlay?”
“And is this your son, Sir; is this young gentleman the—the——”
“The boy you picked up at sea,” resumed Luttrell, courteously, “and who will be proud to renew his acquaintance with you more pleasantly than it opened.”
“Well, young ‘um, you have got a jollier colour on your cheeks now than when we saw you bobbing behind that bit of broken jib-boom! You was blue, that’s a fact, but I’m a raw Eastern if you was bluer than the lawyer!”
Poor Mr. M’Kinlay! scarcely had one shame overcome him when came the terror of another; for now, for the first time, did he recognise in the Yankee the terrible tourist of the Welsh mountains. A vague something wonld cross him as he lay in the lugger, sea-sick and miserable, that the horrid voice, and the horrid look, and the horrid gesture of his fellow-traveller, were not encountered for the first time; but he was too full of his own sorrows to waste a thought on such speculations, and it was only now, as they sat at the same board, eating of the same dish, and hob-nobbing together, that the measure of his conviction became full. “He doesn’t know—he cannot know me!” muttered he, “and I have only one blunder to atone for, but who could have thought it was his son!” He turned to engage Harry in conversation, to inquire into his habits, his tastes, and his amusements, but the boy, fascinated by the Yankee’s discourse, could not bear to lose a word of it. Dodge—“Gen’ral” he called himself, as he spoke of those days—Gen’ral Dodge had served in many of the wars of the South American Republic; he had been with Bolivar, and against him; he had made and lost his fortune three successive times, had taken part in a buccaneer expedition to Mexico, was imprisoned and condemned to death, and saved by an earthquake that left the gaol and one quarter of Santa Fé in ruins. As to his shipwrecks and adventures with pirates, his hunting exploits, his raids either with Indians or against them, they were legion; and certainly, to these narratives he imparted a “gusto” and an expression which gave them a marvellous power, occasionally corroborated as they were by material evidence, as when he showed where he had lost the thumb and two fingers of his left hand, the terrible cicatrix in the back of his head from an Indian’s attempt to scalp him, and the mark of a bullet which had traversed his body from the neck to the opposite collar-bone. There was no disbelieving a man whose every joint and limb could come into court as his witnesses, not to say that he was one of those men whom few love to contradict. If he were, at some times, rather boastful on the score of his courage and daring, he was, at others, equally frank as to his short-comings in honesty, and he told with an astonishing frankness of some acts which, had they not been committed in unsettled and semi-civilised lands, would worthily have been requited by the galleys.
“Well, Old Ramskin!” said he, addressing M’Kinlay; for while he talked he drank freely, and was already in his third bottle of Burgundy, warmed up with occasional “flashes” of brandy—“well, Old Ramskin, I guess you’d rather be perched on a tall stool in your counting-house than up on a rock, watching for an Indian scout party; but, mark me, it’s all prejudice, and for my part I’d rather put a ball in a red-skin than I’d torture a white man with law and parchments.” He here diversified his personal recollections by some anecdotes of lawyers, and of the esteem in which their fellow-citizens hold them “Far West,” the whole winding up with a declaration that such creatures “warn’t in natur,” and only grew out of a rank, rotten, and stagnant condition of society, which, when only stirred by any healthy breeze of public opinion, either “left ‘em or Lynched ‘em.” He turned round for the approval of his host to this sentiment, and now saw, for the first time, that he had quitted the table.
“If you had not been so energetic in your censures of my profession, Sir;” said M’Kinlay, “you might have heard Mr. Luttrell asking us to excuse his absence for a few minutes while he spoke to his son.”
Perhaps the American felt this rebuke as a sharp one, for he sat in silence for some minutes, when he said, “Am I to have the pleasure of your company to-night when I weigh anchor?”
“Yes; I intend to leave when you do.”