“Very well, Molly; leave it for me in the outer room, and I’ll take it when I am inclined.”
Molly saw that she desired to be alone, and withdrew without a word; and Kate, now free of all restraint, buried her face in the pillow and wept bitterly. Never, till the very spot was before her—till the dark shadows of the rugged rocks crossed her path, and the wild solitude of the dreary island appealed to her, by the poor appearance of the people, their savage looks, and their destitution—never till then had she fully realised to her mind all the force of the step she had taken. “What have I done! What have I done!” sobbed she, hysterically, over and over. “Why have I left all that makes life an ecstasy to come and drag out an existence of misery and gloom! Is this the fruit of all my ambition? Is this the prize for which I have left myself, without one affection or one sentiment, sacrificing all to that station I had set before me as a goal? I’ll not bear it. I’ll not endure it. Time enough to come here when my hopes are bankrupt, and my fortune shipwrecked. I have youth—and, better, I have beauty. Shall I stay here till a blight has fallen on both? Why, the very misery I came from as a child was less dreary and desolate than this! There was at least companionship there! There was sympathy, for there was fellow-suffering. But here! what is there here, but a tomb in which life is to waste out, and the creature feel himself the corpse before he dies?” She started up and looked around her, turning her eyes from one object to the other in the room. “And it is for this splendour, for all this costly magnificence, I am to surrender the love of those humble people, who, after all, loved me for myself! It was of me they thought, for me they prayed, for my success they implored the saints; and it is for this”—and she gazed contemptuously on the lowly decorations of the chamber—“I am to give them up for ever, and refuse even to see them! The proud old Sir Within never proposed so hard a bargain! He did not dare to tell me I should deny my own. To be sure,” cried she, with a scornful laugh, “I was forgetting a material part of the price. I am a Luttrell—Kate Lnttrell of Arran—and I shall be one day, perhaps, mistress of this grand ancestral seat, the Abbey of St. Finbar! Would that I could share the grandeur with them at once, and lie down there in that old aisle as dreamless as my noble kinsfolk!”
In alternate bursts of sorrow oyer the past, and scornful ridicule of the present, she passed the greater part of the night; and at last, exhausted and weary with the conflict, she leaned her head on the side of her bed, and, kneeling as she was, fell off to sleep. When she awoke, it was bright day, the sea-breeze playing softly through a honeysuckle that covered the open window, filled the room with a pleasant perfume, and cooled her heated brow. She looked out on the scarcely ruffled bay, and saw the fishing-boats standing out to sea, while on the shore all were busy launching or stowing away tackle; the very children aiding where they could, carrying down baskets, or such small gear as their strength could master. It was life, and movement, and cheerfulness too—for so the voices sounded in the thin morning air—not a tone of complaint, not one utterance that indicated discontent, and the very cheer which accompanied the sliding craft as she rushed down to the sea seemed to come from hearts that were above repining. The scene was better to her than all her self-arguings. There they were, the very class she sprang from; the men and women like her own nearest kindred; the very children recalling the days when she played barefooted on the beach, and chased the retiring waves back into the sea. They were there, toiling ever on, no hope of any day of better fortune, no thought of any other rest than the last long sleep of all, and why should she complain? That late life of luxury and splendour was not without its drawbacks. The incessant watchfulness it exacted, lest in some unguarded moment she should forget the part she was playing—and part it was—the ever-present need of that insidious flattery by which she maintained her influence over Sir Within, and, above all, the dread of her humble origin being discovered, and becoming the table-talk of the servants’-hall. These were a heavy price to pay for a life of luxurious indulgence.
“Here, at least,” cried she, “I shall be real. I am the niece and the adopted daughter of the lord of the soil; none can gainsay or deny me; a Luttrell of Arran, I can assert myself against the world; poverty is only an infliction when side by side with affluence; we are the great and the rich here! Let me only forget the past, and this life can be enjoyable enough. I used to fancy, long ago, as I walked the garden alone at Dinasllyn, that no condition of life would ever find me unprepared to meet. Here is a case to prove my theory, and now to be an Arran islander.”
As she said, she began to arrange her room, and place the different articles in it more to her own taste. Her care was to make her little chamber as comfortable as she could. She was rather an adept in this sort of achievement—at least, she thought she could impart to a room a character distinctly her own, giving it its “cachet” of homeliness, or comfort, or elegance, or simplicity, as she wished it. The noise of her preparations brought Molly to her aid, and she despatched the amazed countrywoman to bring her an armful of the purple heath that covered the mountain near, and as many wild flowers as she could find.
“To-morrow, Molly,” said she, “I will go in search of them myself, but to-day I must put things to rights here. Now, Molly,” said she, as they both were busied in filling two large jugs with the best flowers they could find, “remember that I’m an old maid.”
“Lawk, Miss, indeed you arn’t!”
“Well, never mind, I mean to be just as particular, just as severe as one; and remember, that wherever I put a table, or a chest of drawers, or even a cup with a flower in it, you must never displace it. No matter how careless I may seem, leave everything here as you find it.”
“That’s the master’s own way, Miss; his honour would go mad if I touched a book he was readin’.”
It was a very pleasant flattery that the poor woman thus unconsciously insinuated, nor could anything have been more in time, for Kate was longing to identify herself with the Luttrells, to be one of them in their ways, and their very prejudices.