CHAPTER LXVI. A CHRISTMAS AT ARRAN
For two entire days Harry Luttrell wandered over the island alone and miserable, partly resolved never to see Kate again, yet he had not resolution to leave the spot. She sent frequent messages and notes to him, entreating he would come up to the Abbey, but he gave mere verbal replies, and never went.
“Here’s Miss Kate at the door, Sir, asking if you’re in the house,” said the woman of the inn; “what am I to tell her?”
Harry arose, and went out.
“Come and have a walk with me, Harry,” said she, holding out her hand cordially towards him. “This is Christmas-day—not a morning to remember one’s grudges. Come along; I have many things to say to you.”
He drew her arm silently within his own, and walked on. After a few half-jesting reproaches for his avoidance of her, she became more serious in manner, and went on to talk of Arran and its future. She told of what she had done, and what she meant to do, not claiming as her own many of the projects, but honestly saying that the first suggestions of them she had found amongst his father’s papers.
“It is of these same papers,” said she, more earnestly, “I desire to speak. I want you to read them, and to read them carefully, Harry. You will see that the struggle of a proud man against an unequal marriage marred the whole success of a life; you will see that it was this ‘low-lived herd’—the hard words are his own—that had stamped ruin upon him. The disappointment he had met with might have driven him for a while from the world, but, after a year or two, he would have gone back to it more eager for success, more determined to assert himself, than ever. It was the bane of a low connexion poisoned all hope of recovery. How could he free, himself from the claims of this lawless brood? His journals are filled with this complaint. It is evident, too, from the letters of his friends, how he must have betrayed his misery to them, proud and reserved as he was. There are constant allusions through them to his stern refusal of all invitations, and to his haughty rejection of all their friendly devices to draw him back amongst them. It was in some moment of rash vengeance for an injury real or supposed,” said she, “that he plunged into this marriage, and it completed his ruin. If there was a lesson he desired to teach his son, it was this one; if there was a point which he regarded as the very pivot of a man’s fortune, it was the belongings which surround and cling to him, for better or for worse, on his journey through life. I will show you not one, but fifty-ay, twice fifty—passages in his diary that mark the deep sense he had of this misfortune. When the terrible tidings reached him that you were lost, he ceased to make entries regularly in his journal, but on your birthday recurring, there is this one: ‘Would have been twenty-two today. Who knows which for the best? No need of my warnings now; no need to say, Do not as I have done!’ Are you listening to me, Harry?” asked she, at length, as he never by a word or sign seemed to acknowledge what she was saying.
“Yes, I hear you,” said he, in a low voice.
“And you see why, my dear Harry, I tell you of these things. They are more than warnings; they are the last wishes, the dying behests, of a loving father; and he loved you, Harry—he loved you dearly. Now listen to me attentively, and mind well what I say. If these be all warnings to you, what are they to me? Do you imagine it is only the well-born and the noble who have pride? Do you fancy that we poor creatures of the soil do not resent in our hearts the haughty contempt by which you separate your lot from ours? Do you believe it is in human nature to concede a superiority which is to extend not to mere modes of life and enjoyments, to power, and place, and influence, but to feelings, to sentiments, to affections? In one word, are you to have the whole monopoly of pride, and only leave to us so much as the honour of ‘pertaining’ to you? Or is it to be enough for us to know that we have dragged down the man who tried to raise us? Reflect a little over this, dear cousin, and you will see that, painful as it is to stoop, it is worse—ten thousand times worse—to be stooped to! Leave me, then, to my own road in life—leave me, and forget me, and if you want to remember me, let it be in some connexion with these poor people, whom I have loved so well, and whose love will follow me; and above all, Harry, don’t shake my self-confidence as to the future. It is my only capital; if I lose it, I am penniless. Are you listening to me?”