The castle looked more grim and ruined than ever as Walter set foot once
more upon the rough grass of the mound behind. He dismissed the smiling
Duncan with regret. As he went up to the door, which now stood open, he
thought to himself with relief that another day would finish his
probation here, and that already it was more than half over; but next
moment remembered that the end of his stay at Kinloch Houran would mean
also an end of intercourse with his new friends, which gave a different
aspect to the matter altogether. At the door of the castle old
Macalister was waiting with a look of anxiety.
"Ye'll have had no luncheon," he said, "and here's Mr. Shaw the factor
waiting to see ye."
Macalister had not the manners of Symington, and Walter already felt
that it was a curious eccentricity on the part of the old man to leave
out his title. The factor was seated waiting in the room up-stairs; he
was a middle-aged man, with grizzled, reddish locks, the prototype in a
higher class of Duncan in the boat. He got up with a cordial
friendliness which Walter began to feel characteristic, but which was
also perhaps less respectful than might have been supposed appropriate,
to meet him. He had a great deal to say of business which to Walter was
still scarcely intelligible. There were leases to renew, and there was
some question about a number of crofter families, which seemed to have
been debated with the former lord, and to have formed the subject of
much discussion.
"There is that question about the crofters at the Truach-Glas," Mr. Shaw
said.
"What crofters? or rather what are crofters? and what is the question
and where is the Truach-Glas?" Lord Erradeen said.
He pronounced it, alas! Truack, as he still called loch, lock--which
made the sensitive natives shudder. Mr. Shaw looked at him with a little
disapproval. He felt that the English lad should have been more
impressed by his new inheritance, and more anxious to acquire a mastery
of all the facts connected with it. If, instead of wandering about the
loch all the morning, he had been looking up the details of the business
and the boundaries of the estate, and studying the map! But that not
being the case, of course there was nothing to be done but to explain.
"I had thought that Mr. Milnathort would have put the needs of the
estate more clearly before you. There are several questions to be
settled. I don't know what may be your views as to a landlord's duties,
Lord Erradeen----"
"I have no views," said Walter; "I am quite impartial. You must
recollect that I have only been a landlord for a fortnight."
"But I suppose," said the factor somewhat severely, "that the heir to
such a fine property has had some kind of a little training?"
"I have had no training--not the slightest. I had no information even
that I was the heir to any property. You must consider me as entirely
ignorant, but ready to learn."
Shaw looked at him with some surprise, but severely still. "It is very
curious," he said, as if that too had been Walter's fault, "that you did
not know you were the heir. We knew very well here; but the late lord
was like most people, not very keen about his successor; and then he was
a comparatively young man when he died."
"I know nothing of my predecessor," said Walter. "What was the cause of
his death? I should like to hear something about him. Several of them
must have died young, I suppose, or I, so far off, could never have
become the heir."
The factor looked at him keenly, but with doubtful eyes. "There are
secrets in all families, my Lord Erradeen," he said.
"Are there? I thought that was rather an old-fashioned sentiment. I
don't think, except that I was not always virtuously occupied, that
there was any secret in mine."
"And I am sure there is no secret in mine," said Mr. Shaw,
energetically; "but then you see I am not, and you were not till a very
recent date, Lord Erradeen. There is a kind of something in the race
that I will not characterise. It is a kind of a melancholy turn; the
vulgar rumours ye will have heard, to which I attach no credence. It is
little worth while living in the nineteenth century," the factor said
with emphasis, "if ye are to be subject to delusions like that."
"I tell you I am quite ignorant; and, except by hints which I could not
understand, Mr. Milnathort did not give me any information. Speak
plainly, I want to know what the mystery is; why am I here in this
tumble-down old place?" Walter cried with an accent of impatience.
Shaw kept a watchful eye upon him, with the air of a man whom another is
trying to deceive.
"It is something in the blood, I'm thinking," the factor said. "They all
seem to find out there's a kind of contrariety in life, which is a thing
we all must do to be sure, but generally without any fatal effects.
After a certain age they all seem to give way to it. I hope that _you_,
my lord, being out of the direct line, will escape: the populace--if ye
can accept their nonsense--say it's a--well, something supernatural--a
kind of an influence from him they call the Warlock Lord." Shaw laughed,
but somewhat uneasily, apologetically. "I think shame to dwell upon such
absurdity," he said.
"It does sound very absurd."
"That is just it--nonsense! not worth the consideration of sensible men.
And I may say to you, that are, I hope, of a more wholesome mind, that
they are terribly given up to caprice in this family. The Truach-Glas
crofters have been up and down twenty times. The late lord made up his
mind he would let them stay, and then that they must go, and again that
he would just leave them their bits of places, and then that he would
help them to emigrate; and after all, I had the order that they were to
be turned out, bag and baggage. I could not find it in my heart to do
it. I just put off, and put off, and here he is dead; and another," said
Shaw, with a suppressed tone of satisfaction, "come to the throne. And
you're a new man and a young man, and belong to your own century, not to
the middle ages," the factor cried with a little vehemence. Then he
stopped himself, with a "I beg your pardon, my lord; I am perhaps saying
more than I ought to say."
Walter made no reply. He was not sure that he did not think the factor
was going too far, for though he knew so little of his family, he
already felt that it was something not to be subjected to discussion by
common men. These animadversions touched his pride a little; but he was
silent, too proud to make any remark. He said, after a pause--
"I don't know that I can give my opinion without a further acquaintance
with the facts. If I were to do so on so slight a knowledge, I fear you
might think that a caprice too."
The factor looked at him with a still closer scrutiny, and took the
hint. There is nothing upon which it is so necessary to understand the
permitted limit of observation as in the discussion of family
peculiarities. Though he was so little responsible for this, and even so
little acquainted with them, it was impossible that Lord Erradeen should
not associate himself with his race. Mr. Shaw got out his papers, and
entered upon the questions in which the opinion of the new proprietor
was important, without a word further about the late lord and the family
characteristics. He explained to Walter at length the position of the
crofters, with their small holdings, who in bad seasons got into arrears
with their rents, and sometimes became a burden upon the landlord, in
whom, so far north, there was some admixture of a Highland chief. The
scheme of the estate altogether was of a mixed kind. There were some
large sheep farms and extensive moors still intermingled with glens more
populated than is usual in these regions. Some of them were on lands but
recently acquired, and the crofters in particular were a burden
transmitted by purchase, which the father of the last lord had made. It
was believed that there had been some covenant in the sale by which the
rights of the poor people were secured, but this had fallen into
forgetfulness, and there was no reason in law why Lord Erradeen should
not exercise all the rights of a proprietor and clear the glen, as so
many glens had been cleared. This was the first question that the new
lord would have to decide. The humble tenants were all under notice to
leave, and indeed were subject to eviction as soon as their landlord
pleased. It was with a kind of horror that Walter listened to this
account of his new possibilities.
"Eviction!" he said; "do you mean the sort of thing that happens in
Ireland?" He held his breath in unfeigned dismay and repugnance. "I
thought there was nothing of the sort here."
"Ireland is one thing, and Scotland another," said the factor. "We are a
law-abiding people. No man will ever be shot down behind a hedge by a
Highlander: so if you should resolve to turn them out to-morrow, my
lord, ye need stand in no personal fear."
Walter put aside this somewhat contemptuous assurance with a wave of his
hand.
"I have been told of a great many things I could do," he said, "in this
last fortnight; but I never knew before that I could turn out a whole
village full of people if I chose, and make their houses desolate."
It was a new view altogether of his new powers. He could not help
returning in thought to all the prepossessions of his former
middle-class existence, where arbitrary power was unknown, and where a
mild, general beneficence towards "the poor" was the rule. He said, half
to himself, "What would my mother say?" and in the novelty of the idea,
half laughed. What a thrill it would send through the district
visitors, the managers of the soup kitchen, all the charitable people!
There suddenly came up before him a recollection of many a conversation
he had heard, and taken no note of--of consultations how to pay the rent
of a poor family here and there, how to stop a cruel landlord's mouth.
And that he should appear in the character of a cruel landlord! No doubt
it would have been easy to show that the circumstances were quite
different. But in the mean time the son of Mrs. Methven could not throw
off the traditions in which he had been brought up. He contemplated the
whole matter from a point of view altogether different even from that of
Mr. Shaw, the factor. Shaw was prepared to prove that on the whole the
poor crofters were not such bad tenants, and that sheep farms and deer
forests, though more easily dealt with, had some disadvantages too; for
there was Paterson of Inverchory that had been nearly ruined by a bad
lambing season, and had lost the half of his flock; and as for the
shootings, was there not the dreadful example before them of the moors
at Finlarig, where everything had been shot down, and the game fairly
exterminated by a set of fellows that either did not know what they were
doing, or else were making money of it, and not pleasure. The very veins
in Shaw's forehead swelled when he spoke of this.
"I would like to have had the ducking of him," he cried; "a man with a
grand name and the soul of a henwife, that swept out the place as if he
had done it with a broom, and all for the London market; grant me
patience! You will say," added Shaw, "that the thing to do at Inverchory
is to get a man with more capital now that John Paterson's tack is done;
and that there's few sportsmen like Sir John. That's all very true; but
it just shows there are risks to be run in all ways, and the poor folk
at Truach-Glas would never lead you into losses like that."
Walter, however, did not pay much attention even to this view. His mind
had not room at the moment for Paterson of Inverchory, who was behind
with the rent, or Sir John, who had devastated the moors. He did not get
beyond the primitive natural horror of what seemed to him an outrage of
all natural laws and kindness. He had not been a landowner long enough
to feel the sacred right of property. He turn the cottagers out of their
poor little homes for the sake of a few pounds more or less of which he
stood in no need? The very arguments against taking this step made him
angry. Could anybody suppose he could do it? he, Walter Methven! As for
the Erradeen business, and all this new affair altogether--good heavens,
if anybody thought he would purchase it by that! In short, the young
man, who was not born a grand seigneur, boiled up in righteous wrath,
and felt it high scorn and shame that it could be supposed of him that
he was capable, being rich, of oppressing the poor--which was the way
in which he put it, in his limited middle-class conditions of thought.
Mr. Shaw was half-gratified, half-annoyed by the interview. He said to
the minister with whom he stopped to dine, and who was naturally much
interested about the new young man, that assuredly the young fellow had
a great deal of good in him, but he was a trifle narrow in his way of
looking at a question, "which is probably just his English breeding,"
the factor said. "I would have put the Crofter question before him in
all its bearings; but he was just out of himself at the idea of
eviction--like what happened in Ireland, he said. I could not get him to
go into the philosophy of it. He just would not hear a word. Nothing of
the kind had ever come his way before, one could see, and he was just
horrified at the thought."
"I don't call that leemited, I call it Christian," the minister said,
"and I am not surprised he should have a horror of it. I will go and see
him in the morning, if you think it will be well taken, for I'm with him
in that, heart and soul."
"Yes, yes, that's all in your way," said Mr. Shaw; "but I am surprised
at it in a young man. There is a kind of innocence about it. But I would
not wonder after a little if he should change his mind, as others have
done."
"Do you form any theory in your own thoughts, Shaw," said the minister,
"as to what it is that makes them so apt to change?"
"Not I," cried the factor, with a shrug of his shoulders; and then he
added hurriedly, "you've given me a capital dinner, and that whisky is
just excellent: but I think I must be going my ways, for already it's
later than I thought."
Mr. Cameron, who was minister of the parish, was, like Walter, a
stranger to the district and its ways. He was a great antiquary and full
of curiosity about all the relics of the past, and he had an enlightened
interest in its superstitions too. But Shaw was a Loch Houran man. He
had a reverence for the traditions which of course he vowed he did not
believe, and though he was very ready to make this statement in his own
person he did not like to hear outsiders, as he called the rest of the
world, discussing them disrespectfully. So he desired his dog-cart to be
"brought round," and drove home in the clear, cold night, warm at his
heart, good man, because of the good news for the Crofters, but a little
dissatisfied in his mind that the new lord should be doing this simply
as a matter of sentiment, and not from a reasonable view of the
situation. "Provided even that he keeps of that mind," the factor said
to himself.
Walter subsided out of his just indignation when the business part of
the interview ended, and he came out to the open air to see Mr. Shaw
away.
"This must all be put in order," he said, as he accompanied his visitor
to the boat.
Shaw looked at him with a little curiosity mingled with a slight air of
alarm.
"Auchnasheen being so near," he said, "which is a very comfortable
place, there has never been much notice taken of the old castle."
"But I mean to take a great deal of notice of it," the young man said
with a laugh. "I shall have some of the antiquaries down and clear out
all the old places."
His laugh seemed to himself to rouse the echoes, but it called forth no
responsive sound from his companion, and he caught a glimpse of old
Macalister in the distance shaking his old head. This amused yet
slightly irritated Walter, in the sense of power which alternated with a
sense of novelty and unreality in his mind.
"So you object to that?" he said to the old man. "You don't like your
privileges invaded?"
"It's no that," said Macalister; "but ye'll never do it. I've a lang,
lang acquaintance with the place, and I've witnessed many a revolution,
if I may say sae. One was to pull down the auld wa's altogether; another
was to clean it a' out like you. But it's never been done. And it'll
never be done. I'm just as sure o' that as your young lordship is that
you have a' the power in your hands."
Walter turned away with a little disdain in his laugh. It was not worth
while arguing out the matter with Macalister. Who should prevent him
from doing what he liked with his old house? He could not but reflect
upon the curious contradictions with which he was beset. He was supposed
to be quite capable of turning out a whole village out of their homes,
and making them homeless and destitute; but he was not supposed capable
of clearing out the blocked-up passage and rooms of an old ruin! He
smiled with a kind of scornful indignation as he went up to his
sitting-room. By this time the afternoon had lost all light and colour.
It was not dark, but neither was it day. A greyness had come into the
atmosphere; the shadows were black, and had lost all transparency. The
two windows made two bars of a more distinct greyness in the room, with
a deep line of shade in the centre between, which was coloured, but
scarcely lighted up, by the fire. He could not but think with a sense of
relief that the three days which were all he believed that were
necessary for his stay at Kinloch Houran were half over at least.
Another night and then he would be free to go. He did not mean to go any
further than to Auchnasheen, which was exactly opposite to the island;
and then, with a smile creeping about the corners of his mouth, he said
to himself, that he could very well amuse himself for a few days, what
with the shooting and what with----
And it would be comfortable to get out of this place, where the air, he
could not tell why, seemed always insufficient. The wainscot, the dark
hangings, the heavy old walls, seemed to absorb the atmosphere. He threw
up the window to get a little air, but somehow the projecting masonry
of the old walls outside seemed to intercept it. He felt an oppression
in his breast, a desire to draw long breaths, to get more air into his
lungs. It was the same sensation which he had felt last night, and he
did not contemplate with any pleasure the idea of another long evening
alone in so strange an atmosphere. However, he must make the best of it.
He went to the bookshelf and got down again his _Trois Mousquetaires_.
When the candles were lighted, he would write a dutiful long letter to
his mother, and tell her all that had been going on about him,
especially that barbarous suggestion about the cottagers.
"Fancy me in the character of a rapacious landlord, turning a whole
community out of doors!" he said to himself, concocting the imaginary
letter, and laughed aloud with a thrill of indignation.
Next moment he started violently, and turned round with a wild rush of
blood to his head, and that sort of rallying and huddling together of
all the forces of his mind which one feels in a sudden catastrophe. It
was, however, no loud alarm that had sounded. It was the clear and
distinct vibration of a voice close to him, replying calmly to his
thought.
"Is there anything special in you to disqualify you for doing a
disagreeable duty?" some one said.
Walter had started back at the first sound, his heart giving a bound in
him of surprise--perhaps of terror. He had meant to take that great
chair by the fire as soon as he had taken his book from the shelf, so
that it must (he said to himself in instantaneous self-argument) have
been vacant then. It was not vacant now. A gentleman sat there, with his
face half turned towards the light looking towards the young man; his
attitude was perfectly easy, his voice a well-bred and cultivated voice.
There seemed neither hurry nor excitement about him. He had not the air
of a person newly entered, but rather of one who had been seated there
for some time at his leisure, observing what was going on. He lifted his
hand with a sort of deprecating yet commanding gesture.
"There is no occasion," he said, in his measured voice, "for alarm. I
have no intention of harming you, or any one. Indeed I am not aware that
I have any power of harm."
Never in his life before had Walter's soul been swept by such violent
sensations. He had an impulse of flight and of deadly overwhelming
terror, and then of sickening shame at his own panic. Why should he be
afraid? He felt dimly that this moment was the crisis of his life, and
that if he fled or retreated he was lost. He stood his ground, grasping
the back of a chair to support himself.
"Who are you?" he said.
"That is a searching question," said the stranger, with a smile. "We
will come to it by and by. I should like to know in the first place what
there is in you which makes it impossible to act with justice in certain
circumstances?"
The air of absolute and calm superiority with which he put this question
was beyond description.
Walter felt like a criminal at the bar.
"Who are you?" he repeated hoarsely. He stood with a curious sense of
being supported only by the grasp which he had taken of the back of the
chair, feeling himself a mere bundle of impulses and sensations, hardly
able to keep himself from flight, hardly able to keep from falling down
at the feet of this intruder, but holding to a sort of self-restraint by
his grasp upon the chair. Naturally, however, his nerves steadied as the
moments passed. The first extreme shock of surprise wore away. There was
nothing to alarm the most timid in the countenance upon which he gazed.
It was that of a handsome man who had scarcely turned middle age, with
grey but not white hair very thin on the forehead and temples, a high
delicate aquiline nose, and colourless complexion. His mouth closed
somewhat sternly, but had a faint melting of a smile about it, by
movements which were ingratiating and almost sweet. The chief thing
remarkable about the stranger, however, besides the extraordinary
suddenness of his appearance, was the perfect composure with which he
sat, like a man who not only was the most important person wherever he
went, but also complete master of the present scene. It was the young
man who was the intruder, not he.
"I will tell you presently who I am," he said. "In the mean time
explain to me why you should be horrified at a step which better men
than yourself take every day. Sit down." The stranger allowed himself to
smile with distinct intention, and then said in a tone of which it is
impossible to describe the refined mockery, "You are afraid?"
Walter came to himself with another sensible shock: his pride, his
natural spirit, a certain impulse of self-defence which never forsakes a
man, came to his aid. He was inclined to say "No," with natural denial
of a contemptuous accusation; but rallying more and more every moment,
answered with something like defiance, "Yes--or rather I am not afraid.
I am startled. I want to know how you come here, and who you are who
question me--in my own house."
"You are very sure that it is your own house? You mean to have it
restored and made into a piece of sham antiquity--if nothing prevents?"
"What can prevent? if I say it is to be done," cried the young man. His
blood seemed to curdle in his veins when he heard the low laugh with
which alone the stranger replied. "May I ask you--to withdraw or to tell
me who you are?" he said. His voice trembled in spite of himself. The
words left his lips quite sturdily, but quivered when they got into the
air, or so in the fantastic hurry of his mind he thought.
"If I refuse, what then?" the stranger said.
These two individuals confronted each other, defying each other, one
angry and nervous, the other perfectly calm. In such circumstances only
one result is sure: that he who retains his self-possession will have
the mastery. Walter felt himself completely baffled. He could not turn
out with violence a dignified and serious visitor, who assumed indeed an
intolerable superiority, and had come in without asking leave, but yet
was evidently a person of importance--if nothing more. He stared at him
for a moment, gradually becoming familiarized with the circumstances.
"You are master of the situation," he said, with a hard-drawn breath. "I
suppose I can do nothing but submit. But if politeness on my part
requires this of me, it requires on yours some information. Your name,
your object?"
They looked at each other once more for a moment.
"When you put it in that way, I have nothing to say," said the stranger,
with great courtesy; "but to acknowledge your right to require--"
At that moment the door opened hurriedly, and Symington came in.
"Your lordship will be wanting something?" he said. "I heard your voice.
Was it to light the lights? or would it be for tea, or----"
He gave a sort of scared glance round the room, and clung to the handle
of the door, but his eyes did not seem to distinguish the new-comer in
the failing twilight.
"I did not call; but you may light the candles," Walter said, feeling
his own excitement, which had been subsiding, spring up again, in his
curiosity to see what Symington's sensations would be.
The old man came in reluctantly. He muttered something uneasily in his
throat. "I would have brought a light if I had known. You might have
cried down the stairs. It's just out of all order to light the lights
this gate," he muttered. But he did not disobey. He went round the room
lighting one after another of the twinkling candles in the sconces. Now
and then he gave a scared and tremulous look about him; but he took no
further notice. The stranger sat quite composedly, looking on with a
smile while this process was gone through. Then Symington came up to the
table in front of which Walter still stood.
"Take a seat, my lord, take a seat," he said. "It's no canny to see you
standing just glowering frae ye, as we say in the country. You look just
as if you were seeing something. And take you your French fallow that
you were reading last night. It's better when you're by yourself in an
auld house like this, that has an ill-name, always to do something to
occupy your thoughts."
Walter looked at the stranger, who made a little gesture of intelligence
with a nod and smile; and old Symington followed the look, still with
that scared expression on his face.
"Your lordship looks for all the world as if you were staring at
something in that big chair; you must be careful to take no fancies in
your head," the old servant said. He gave a little nervous laugh, and
retreated somewhat quickly towards the door. "And talk no more to
yourself; it's an ill habit," he added, with one more troubled glance
round him as he closed the door.