“Besides this,” resumed Bodge, with the same decision of tone, “your father might say, if he pleased, ‘You shan’t help Harry Luttrell,’ but he never could say, ‘You mustn’t help Herodotus Dodge.’ No, Sir!”
“At all events,” said Harry, “you’ll let me try my own plan first. If that fail, there will be time enough to consider the other. I’ll start to-night for Liverpool. After I have seen your friends there, I’ll go over and consult my lawyers in Dublin; and I mean to run across and see Arran—the old rock—once more. It shall be my last look at it.”
“It ain’t a beauty, that’s a fact,” said Dodge, who saw nothing of the agitation in the other’s voice or manner. “Give me an hour or two, and I’ll write the letters for you, and I’ll tell Smales that if you want any money——”
“I shall not want it.”
“Then you’ll be unlike any other man that ever wore shoes, Sir, that’s all!” And Dodge stuffed a formidable piece of tobacco into his mouth, as though to arrest his eloquence and stop the current of his displeasure, while Harry waved him a good-by, and went out.
The same evening he started for Liverpool. The skipper’s friends were most cordial and hospitable to him. They had had long dealings with Dodge, and found him ever honourable and trustworthy, and Harry heard with sincere pleasure the praises of his friend. It was evident, too, that they were taken with young Luttrell, for they brought him about amongst their friends, introducing him everywhere, and extending to him every hospitality of their hospitable city. If Harry was very grateful for all this kindness, his mind continually reverted to the society he had so lately mixed in, and whose charm he appreciated, new as he was to life and the world, with an intense zest—the polished urbanity of Sir Gervais; the thoughtful good nature of Lady Vyner; the gentle gracefulness of Ada; even Miss Courtenay—no favourite of his, nor he of hens—yet even she possessed a winning elegance of manner that was very captivating.
Very unlike all these were the attentions that now surrounded him, and many were the unfavourable comparisons he drew between his present friends and their predecessors. Not that he was in love with Ada; he had asked himself the question more than once, and always had he given the same answer: “If I had been a man of rank and fortune, I’d have deemed my lot perfect to have had such a sister.” And really it was sister-like she had been to him; so candid, so frank, so full of those little cares that other “love” shrinks from, and dares not deal in. She had pressed him eagerly, too, to accept assistance from her father—a step she never could have taken had love been there—and he had refused on grounds which showed he could speak with a frankness love cannot speak.
“I take it,” muttered he to himself one day, after long reflection—“I take it that my Luttrell blood moves too slowly for passionate affection, and that the energy of my nature must seek its exercise in hatred, not love; and if this be so, what a life is before me!”
At last the ship-builders discovered the craft that Dodge was in search of. She was a slaver recently captured off Bahia, and ordered to be sold by the Admiralty. A few lines from Harry described her with all the enthusiasm that her beauty and fine lines could merit, and he smiled to himself as he read over the expressions of admiration, which no loveliness in human form could have wrung from him.
He sailed for Ireland on the night he wrote, but carried his letter with him, to relate what he might have to say of his meeting with his lawyer. A little event that occurred at his landing was also mentioned: