“I own to you I was proud to think of the high-hearted girl, bred up in poverty, and tried by the terrible test of ‘adoption’ to forget her humble origin. It was very fine and very noble of her, and only that I fear if I were to see her the illusion might be destroyed, and some coarse-featured, vulgar creature rout for ever the pleasant image my mind has formed, I’d certainly make her a visit. Cane presses me much to do so, but I will not. I shall go over to the island to see the last resting-place of my poor father, and then leave it for ever. I have made Cane give me his word of honour not to divulge my secret, nor even admit that he has more than seen me, and I intend to-morrow to set but for Arran.
“I asked Cane, when I was leaving him, what she was like, and he laughingly answered, ‘Can’t you imagine it?’ And so I see I was right. They were a wild, fierce, proud set, all these of my mother’s family, with plenty of traditions amongst them of heavy retributions exacted for wrongs, and they were a strong, well-grown, and well-featured race, but, after all, not the stuff of which ladies and gentlemen are made in my country at least. You have told me a different story as regards yours.
“You shall hear from me from the island if I remain there longer than a day, but, if my present mood endure, that event is very unlikely.”
CHAPTER LXIV. ON THE ISLAND
It was late at night when Harry landed on Arran. Dark as it was, however, his sailor’s eye could mark that the little jetty was in trim order, and that steps now led down to the water where formerly it was necessary to clamber over rugged rocks and slippery seaweed. A boatman took his carpet-bag as matter of course, too, as he stepped on shore, and trifling as was the service, it had a certain significance as to the advance of civilisation in that wild spot. More striking, again, than these was the aspect of the comfortable little inn into which he was ushered. Small and unpretending, indeed, but very clean, and not destitute of little ornaments, sketches of the scenery of the island, and specimens of ore, or curious rock, or strange fern, that were to be found there. A few books, too, were scattered about, some of them presents from former visitors, with graceful testimonies of the pleasure they had found in the trip to Arran, and how gratefully they cherished the memory of its simple people.
Harry amused himself turning over these, as he sat at the great turf fire waiting for his supper. Of those who served him there was not one he recognised. Their looks and their language bespoke them as belonging to the mainland, but they spoke of the island with pride, and told how, in the season, about July or August, as many as fifteen or twenty strangers occasionally came over to visit it.
“There was a day,” said the man, “in the late Mr. Luttrell’s time, when nobody dare come here; he’d as soon see ould Nick as a stranger; and if a boat was to put in out of bad weather, or the like, the first moment the wind would drop ever so little, down would come a message to tell them to be off.”
Harry shook his head; an unconscious protest of dissent it was, but the other, interpreting the sign as condemnation, went on:
“Ay, he was a hard man! But they tell me it wasn’t his fault; the world went wrong with him, and he turned against it.”