"I am deeply, infinitely gratified; your kindness is most acceptable. My first plan is one with whose details I am but too conversant. It is to live an old bachelor!"
The ladies looked at each other, and then looked down. They did not very well see what was to be said, and they said nothing, though, by his silence, he seemed to expect a remark.
"Well," said Vyner, trying to break the awkward pause, "you at least know its resources, and what such a mode of life can offer."
"A good deal," resumed Sir Within. "A well-cultivated selfishness has very great resources, if one has only sufficient means to indulge them.
You can, what is called, live well, consult the climate that suits you, frequent the society you like, know the people that you care to know, buy the picture, the horse, the statue that takes your fancy. You can do anything, and be anything but one." "And what is that?"
"Be happy--that is denied you! I am not, of course, speculating on any supreme bliss. I leave all these divine notions to novelists and play-writers; but I speak of that moderate share of daily contentment which we in our mundane humility call happiness; this you cannot have."
"But, if I mistake not, you have given all the ingredients of it in your late description," said Georgina.
"And the Chinese cook got all the ingredients to make a plum-pudding, but he forgot to tie the bag that held them; so is it the old bachelor"s life has no completeness; it wants what the French call "l"ensemble.""
"Then why not tie the bag, Sir Within?" asked Lady Vyner, laughing.
The old diplomatist"s eyes sparkled with a wicked drollery, and his mouth curved into a half-malicious smile, when Sir Gervais quietly said, "She means, why not marry?"
"Ah, marry!" exclaimed he, throwing up his eyebrows with an air that said, "here is a totally new field before us!" and then, as quickly recovering, he said, "Yes, certainly. There is marriage! But, somehow, I always think on this subject of a remark Charles de Rochefoucauld once made me. He said he was laid up once with an attack of gout in a chateau near Nancy, without a single friend or acquaintance, and, to beguile the weary hours, he used to play chess with himself, so that at last he fancied he was very fond of the game. When he came up to Paris afterwards, he engaged a person to come every day and play with him; but to his horror he discovered that he could no longer win when he pleased, and he gave up the pursuit and never resumed it. This is, perhaps, one of the discoveries men like myself make when they marry."
"Not if they marry wisely, Sir Within," said Lady Vyner.
"I declare," broke in Georgina, hastily, "I think Sir Within is right.
Telling a person to marry wisely, is saying, "Go and win that thirty thousand pounds in the lottery.""
"At all events," said Vyner, "you"ll never do it, if you don"t take a ticket."
"But to do that," said Lady Vyner, laughingly, "one ought to dream of a lucky number, or consult a sorceress at least."
"Ah! if you would but be the sorceress, Lady Vyner," exclaimed he, with a mingled seriousness and drollery.
"And tell you, I suppose, when you ought to venture?"
"Just so."
"Am I so certain that you"d respect my divination--a prophet can"t afford to be slighted."
"I promise," said he; and rising from his seat, he extended his right.
hand in imitation of a famous incident of the period, and exclaimed, "Je jure!"
"It is then agreed," said she, quietly, but with a slight show of humour. "If it should be ever revealed to me--intimated to my inner consciousness is the phrase, I believe--that a particular person was Heaven-sent for your especial happiness, I"ll immediately go and tell you."
"And I"ll marry her."
"Her consent is, of course, not in question whatever," said Georgina; "but I think so gallant a person as Sir Within might have mentioned it."
"So I should, if Lady Vyner hadn"t said she was Heaven-sent. When the whole thing became destiny, it was only obedience was called for."
"You"re a lucky fellow," cried Vyner, "if you"re not married off before Easter. There"s nothing so dangerous as giving a commission of this kind to a woman."
"Sir Within knows he can trust me; he knows that I feel all the responsibility of my charge. It is very possible that I may be too exacting--too difficult----"
"I pray you do so," cried he, with much eagerness.
"Do you see how he wants to get off?" said Vyner; "like certain capricious ladies, he"d like to see all the wares in the shop, and buy nothing."
"I fancy it"s pretty much what he has done already," said Georgina, in a half whisper; but the butler put an end to the discussion by announcing that Mr. M"Kinlay had just arrived.
"Shall we go into the drawing-room?" said Georgina to her sister.
"If you like; but he"ll certainly come in to tea," was the answer.
"Well, it is at least a reprieve," said she, with a dreary sigh; and they retired.
As they left by one door, Mr. M"Kinlay entered the room by the other.
After a cordial greeting, Sir Gervais presented him to Sir Within, and began to question him about his journey.
"Well, Sir Gervais," said he, after a long-drawn breath, "it is no exaggeration if I say, that I have not another client in the world for whom I would undergo the same fatigues, not to say dangers."
"My friend Mr. M"Kinlay has been on an excursion of some peril, and much hardship," said Sir Vyner to Sir Within.
"Ah! In Canada, I presume."
"No, Sir," resumed M"Kinlay, "far worse--infinitely worse than Canada."
"You speak of Newfoundland, perhaps?"
"Excuse me, Sir, I mean Ireland, and not merely Ireland itself--though I believe a glutton in barbarism might satiate himself there--but, worse again, Sir--I have been over to visit some islands, wretched rocks without vegetation--well would it be, could I say without inhabitants--off the west coast, and in, actually in the wild Atlantic Ocean!"
"The Arran Islands," interposed Vyner, who saw that Sir Within was doubtful of the geography.
"Yes, Sir; had they called them the Barren Islands there would have been some fitness in the designation." Mr. M"Kinlay appeared the better of his very email drollery, and drank off a b.u.mper of claret, which also seemed to do him good.
"And was the estate you wished to purchase in these wild regions?" asked Sir Within.
"No; my friend"s mission to Arran was only remotely connected with the purchase. In fact, he went in search of an old friend of mine, whose a.s.sistance I needed, and whose caprice it was to retire to that desolate spot, and leave a world in which he might have made a very conspicuous figure. I am not art liberty to tell his name, though, perhaps, you might never have heard it before. M"Kinlay will, however, give us an account of his reception, and all that he saw there."
"My troubles began," said Mr. M"Kinlay, "almost immediately after we parted. You remember that on our last evening, at Westport it was, that the waiter informed me a gentleman then in the house had engaged a lugger to take him over to Innishmore, the very island I wanted to reach. I commissioned the man to arrange if he could with the gentleman to accept me as a fellow-traveller. It was settled accordingly, that we were to sail with the ebb tide at eight o"clock the next morning.
My first shock, on reaching the pier, was to see what they called the lugger. She was a half-decked tub! I say tub, for her whole length was certainly not double her breadth. She was tarred all over, her sails were patched, her ropes knotted, and for ballast, she had some blocks of granite in a bed of shingle which shifted even as she lay surging in the harbour. They--the sailors, I mean--answered my few questions so rudely, and with so much ferocity of look and demeanour, that I was actually afraid to refuse going on board, lest they should take it as offence, though I would willingly have given five guineas to be excused the expedition, and wait for a more responsible-looking craft. My fellow-traveller, too, a very rough-looking, and evidently seafaring man, settled the point, as seeing my hesitation, he said, "Well, Sir, ain"t the boat good enough for you? Why don"t you step aboard? The faces of the bystanders quickly decided me, and I went down the plank praying for my safety, and cursing the day I ever saw Ireland."
Our reader would possibly not thank us to follow Mr. M"Kinlay in his narrative, which, indeed, only contained sorrows common to many besides himself--the terrors of being shipwrecked added to the miseries of sea-sickness. He told how, through all his agonies, he overheard the discussions that overwhelmed him with terror, whether they could "carry"
this, or "take in that;" if such a thing would "hold," or such another "give way;" and lastly, whether it were better to bear away for Cork or Bantry, or stand out to open sea, and--Heaven knows where! "Terrors that will keep me," cried he, "in nightmares for the rest of my life!"
"At last--it was all that was wanting to fill the measure of my fears--I heard a sailor say, "There! she"s over at last!" Who"s over?" cried I.
""The fishing-boat that was down to leeward, Sir," answered he. "They"re au lost."
""Lucky for them," said I to myself, "if it"s over so soon. This prolonged agony is a thousand deaths." "They"re on the spars; I see them!" cried my fellow-traveller; "slack off." I forget what he said, but it was to slack off something, and run down for them. This atrocious proposal rallied me back to strength again, and I opposed it with an energy, indeed with a virulence, that actually astonished myself.
I asked by what right he took the command of the lugger, and why he presumed to peril my life--valuable to a number of people--for G.o.d knows what or whom. I vowed the most terrific consequences when we come on sh.o.r.e again, and declared I would have him indicted for a constructive manslaughter, if not worse. I grew bolder as I saw that the sailors, fully alive to our danger, were disposed to take part with me against him, when the fellow--one of the greatest desperadoes I ever met, and, as I afterwards found out, a Yankee pirate and slaver--drew a pistol from his breast and presented it at the helmsman, saying, "Down your helm, or I"ll shoot you!" and as the man obeyed, he turned to me and said, "If I hear another word out of your mouth, I"ll put an ounce ball in you, as sure as my name is"---- I think he said "Hairy." I believe I fainted; at least, I only was aware of what was going on around me as I saw them dragging on board a half-drowned boy, with a flag in his hand, who turned out to be the son of Mr. Lut----"