Lord Erradeen retired very quietly, as became a man defeated. Though
Katie heard his retiring steps, he hardly did so himself, as he came
down the broad softly-carpeted stair-case. There was a sound of voices
and of movement in the great dining-room, where a liveried army were
preparing the table for one of the great luncheons, under the orders of
the too discreet and understanding Sanderson--but nobody about to see
the exit of the rejected suitor, who came out into the sunshine with a
sort of dim recognition of the scenery of Katie's boudoir; but the hills
did not seem so near as they were in that large-windowed and shining
place. Failure has always a subduing effect upon the mind even when
success was scarcely desired; and Walter came out of the great house
with the sense of being cut off from possibilities that seemed very
near, almost certain, that morning. This subduing influence was the
first that occupied his mind as he came out, feeling as if he were
stealing away from the scene of what had been far from a triumph.
Perhaps he was a little ashamed of his own certainty; but at all events
he was subdued and silent, refraining almost from thought.
He had got securely out of the immediate neighbourhood, and was safe
from the risk of meeting any one belonging to it, and being questioned
where he had been, before he began to feel the softening of relief, and
a grateful sense of freedom. Then his heart recurred with a bound to the
former situation. Expedients or compromises of any kind were no more to
be thought of; the battle must be fought out on its natural ground. He
must yield to the ignominious yoke, or he must conquer. Last year he had
fled, and forced himself to forget, and lived in a fever of impulses
which he could not understand, and influences which drew him like--he
could not tell like what--mesmerism, Katie had said, and perhaps she was
right. It might be mesmerism; or it might be only the action of that
uncontrolled and capricious mind which made him do that to-day which he
loathed to-morrow. But however it was, the question had again become a
primary one, without any compromise possible. He must yield, or he must
win the battle. He put the losing first, it seemed so much the most
likely, with a dreary sense of all the impossibilities that surrounded
him. He had no standing ground upon which to meet his spiritual foe.
Refusal, what was that? It filled his life with distraction and
confusion, but made no foundation for anything better, and afforded no
hope of peace. Peace! The very word seemed a mockery to Walter. He must
never know what it was. His soul (if he had one) would not be his own;
his impulses, hitherto followed so foolishly, would be impotent for
everything but to follow the will of another. To abdicate his own
judgment altogether, to give up that power of deciding for himself which
is the inheritance of the poorest, never to be able to help a poor
neighbour, to aid a friend: to be a mere puppet in the hands of
another--was it possible that he, a man, was to give himself up, thus
bound hand and foot, to a slavery harder than that of any negro ever
born? It was this that was impossible he cried within himself.
And then there suddenly came before Walter, like a vision set before him
by the angels, a gleam of the one way of escape. When a poor wretch has
fallen into a pit, a disused quarry, perhaps, or an old coal-pit, or a
still more eerie dungeon, there shines over him, far off, yet so
authentic, a pure, clear intensity of light above, a concentrated glory
of the day, a sort of opening of heaven in his sight. This is the spot
of light, more beautiful than any star, which is all that the walls of
his prison permit him to see of the common day, which above-ground is
lavished around us in such a prodigal way that we make no account of it.
There are times when the common virtues of life, the common calm and
peacefulness, take an aspect like this to the fallen soul:--the simple
goodness which, perhaps, he has scoffed at and found tame and
unprofitable, appearing to the spirit in prison like heaven itself, so
serene and so secure. To think he himself has fallen from that, might
have possessed and dwelt in it, safe from all censure and dishonour, if
he had not been a fool! To think that all the penalties to which he has
exposed himself might never have existed at all--if he had not been a
fool! To think that now if some miracle would but raise him up to
it--And then there are moments in which even the most vicious, the most
utterly fallen, can feel as if no great miracle would be required, as if
a little help, only a little, would do it--when strength is subdued and
low, when the sense of dissatisfaction is strong, and all the impulses
of the flesh in abeyance, as happens at times. Walter's mind came
suddenly to this conviction as he walked and mused. A good life, a pure
heart, these were the things which would overcome--better, far better
than any gain, than any sop given to fate; and he felt that all his
desires went up towards these, and that there was nothing in him but
protested against the degradation of the past. He had, he said to
himself, never been satisfied, never been but disgusted with the riot
and so-called pleasure. While he indulged in them he had loathed them,
sinning contemptuously with a bitter scorn of himself and of the
indulgences which he professed to find sweet.
Strange paradox of a soul! which perceived the foulness of the ruin into
which it had sunk, and hated it, yet sank deeper and deeper all the
while. And now how willing he was to turn his back upon it all, and how
easy it seemed to rise with a leap to the higher level and be done with
everything that was past! The common goodness of the simple people about
seemed suddenly to him like a paradise in which was all that was lovely.
To live among your own, to do them good, to be loved and honoured, to
have a history pure and of good report, nothing in it to give you a
blush; to love a pure and good woman, and have her for your companion
all your life--how easy, how simple, how safe it was! And what tyrant
out of the unseen could rule a man like this, or disturb his quiet
mastery of himself and all that belonged to him? Once upon that standing
ground and who could assail you? And it seemed at that moment so easy
and so near. Everything round was wholesome, invigorating, clear with
the keen purity of nature, fresh winds blowing in his face, air the
purest and clearest, inspiring body and soul, not a lurking shade of
temptation anywhere, everything tending to goodness, nothing to evil.
"And you think these pettifogging little virtues will deliver _you_,"
said some one quietly by his side.
There were two figures walking along in the wintry sunshine instead of
one--that was all. The stone-cutter on the road who had seen Lord
Erradeen pass and given him a good morning, rubbed his eyes when next he
paused to rest and looked along the road. He saw two gentlemen where but
one had been, though it was still so early and "no a drap" had crossed
his lips. "And a pretty man!" he said to himself with mingled amazement
and admiration. As for Walter, it was with an instinctive recoil that
he heard the voice so near to him, but that not because of any
supernatural sensation, though with an annoyance and impatience
inexpressible that any one should be able to intrude on his privacy and
thus fathom his thoughts.
"This is scarcely an honourable advantage you take of your powers."
The other took no notice of this reproach. "A good man," he said, "a
good husband, a good member of society, surrounded by comfort on all
sides and the approbation of the world. I admire the character as much
as you do. Shall I tell you what this good man is? He is the best
rewarded of all the sons of men. Everything smiles upon him: he has the
best of life. Everything he does counts in his favour. And you think
that such a man can stand against a purpose like mine? But for that he
would want a stronger purpose than mine. Goodness," he continued
reflectively, "is the best policy in the world. It never fails. Craft
may fail, and skill and even wisdom, and the finest calculations; but
the good always get their reward. A prize falls occasionally to the
other qualities, but theirs is the harvest of life. To be successful you
have only to be good. It is far the safest form of self-seeking, and the
best." He had fallen into a reflective tone, and walked along with a
slight smile upon his lips, delivering with a sort of abstract authority
his monologue, while Walter, with an indescribable rage and
mortification and confusion of all his thoughts, accompanied him like a
schoolboy overpowered by an authority against which his very soul was
rebel. Then the speaker turned upon his companion with a sort of
benevolent cordiality. "Be good!" he said. "I advise it--it is the
easiest course you can pursue: you will free yourself from by far the
worst part of the evils common to humanity. Nothing is so bad as the
self-contempt under which I have seen you labouring, the shame of vice
for which you have no true instinct, only a sham appetite invented by
the contradictoriness of your own mind. Be good! it pays better than
anything else in life."
Here Walter interrupted him with an exclamation of anger irrestrainable.
"Stop!" he cried, "you have tortured me by my sins, and because I had
nothing better to fall back upon. Will you make this more odious still?"
"By no means," said the other, calmly. "You think I want you to be
miserable? You are mistaken--I don't. Seeking the advantage of my race
as I do, there is nothing I more desire than that you should have the
credit of a spotless life. I love reputation. Be good! it is the most
profitable of all courses. I repeat that whatever may fail that never
does. Your error is to think that it will free you from me. So far as
concerns me it would probably do you more injury than good; for it may
well be that I shall have to enforce measures which will revolt you and
make you unhappy. But then you will have compensations. The world will
believe that only bad advisers or mistaken views could move so good a
man to appear on occasions a hard landlord, a tyrannical master. And
then your virtue will come in with expedients to modify the secondary
effect of my plans and soften suffering. I do not desire suffering. It
will be in every way to our advantage that you should smooth down and
soften and pour balm into the wounds which in the pursuit of a higher
purpose it is necessary to make. Do not interrupt: it is the _rôle_ I
should have recommended to you, if, instead of flying out like a fool,
you had left yourself from the first in my hands."
"I think you must be the devil," Walter said.
"No; nor even of his kind: that is another mistake. I have no pleasure
in evil any more than in suffering, unless my object makes it necessary.
I should like you to do well. It was I, was it not, that set before you
the miserableness of the life you have been leading? which you had never
faced before. Can you suppose that I should wish greatness to the race
and misfortune to its individual members? Certainly not. I wish you to
do well. You could have done so, and lived very creditably with the girl
whom you have just left, whom you have driven into refusing you. Take my
advice--return to her, and all will be well."
"You have a right to despise me," said Walter, quivering with passion
and self-restraint. "I did take your advice, and outraged her and
myself. But that is over, and I shall take your advice no more."
"You are a fool for your pains," he said. "Go back now and you will find
her mind changed. She has thought it over. What! you will not? I said it
in your interest, it was your best chance. You could have taken up that
good life which I recommend to you with all the more success had there
been a boundless purse to begin upon. Poor it is not so easy: but still
you can try. Your predecessor was of that kind. There was nothing in him
that was bad, poor fellow. He was an agglomeration of small virtues.
Underwood was his one vice, a fellow who played cards with him and
amused him. No one, you will find, has anything to say against him; he
was thought weak, and so he was--against me. But that did not hinder him
from being good."
"In the name of Heaven what do you call yourself, that can speak of good
and evil as if they were red and blue!" the young man cried. Passion
cannot keep always at a climax. Walter's mind ranged from high
indignation, rage, dismay, to a wonder that was almost impersonal, which
sometimes reached the intolerable point, and burst out into impatient
words. It seemed impossible to endure the calm of him, the reason of
him, as he walked along the hilly road like any other man.
"It is not amiss for a comparison," he answered with a smile. His
composure was not to be disturbed. He made no further explanations.
While he played upon the young man beside him as on an instrument, he
himself remained absolutely calm. "But these are abstractions," he
resumed, "very important to you in your individual life, not so
important to me who have larger affairs in hand. There is something
however which will have to be decided almost immediately about the
island property. I told you that small business about the cotters in the
glen was a bagatelle. On the whole, though I thought it folly at the
time, your action in the matter was serviceable. A burst of generosity
has a fine effect. It is an example of what I have been saying. It
throws dust in the eyes of the world. Now we can proceed with vigour on
a larger scale."
"If you mean to injure the poor tenants, never! and whatever you mean,
no," cried Walter, "I will not obey you. Claim your rights, if you have
any rights, publicly."
"I will not take that trouble. I will enforce them through my
descendant."
"No! you can torture me, I am aware, but something I have learned since
last year."
"You have learned," said his companion calmly, "that your theatrical
benevolence was not an unmixed good, that your _protégés_ whom you kept
to that barren glen would have been better off had they been dislodged
cruelly from their holes. The question in its larger forms is not to be
settled from that primitive point of view. I allow," he said with a
smile, "that on the whole that was well done. It leaves us much more
free for operations now. It gives a good impression--a man who in spite
of his kind heart feels compelled to carry out--"
"You are a demon," cried the young man, stung beyond endurance. "You
make even justice a matter of calculation, even the natural horror of
one's mind. A kind heart! is that like a spade, an instrument in your
hands?"
"The comparison is good again," said his companion with a laugh; "your
faculty that way is improving. But we must have no trifling about the
matter in hand. The factor from the isles is not a fool like this fellow
here, whom I tolerate because he has his uses too. The other will come
to you presently, he will lay before you--"
"I will not hear him--once for all I refuse--"
"What, to receive your own servant?" said the other. "Come, this is
carrying things too far. You must hear, and see, and consent. There is
no alternative, except--"
"Except--if it comes to that, what can you do to me?" asked Walter,
ghastly with that rending of the spirit which had once more begun within
him, and with the host of fierce suggestions that surged into his mind.
He felt as men feel when they are going mad, when the wild intolerance
of all conditions which is the root of insanity mounts higher and higher
in the brain--when there is nothing that can be endured, nothing
supportable, and the impulse to destroy and ravage, to uproot trees and
beat down mountains, to lay violent hands upon something, sweeps like a
fiery blast across the soul. Even in madness there is always a certain
self-restraint. He knew that it would be vain to seize the strong and
tranquil man who stood before him, distorting everything in heaven and
earth with his calm consistency: therefore in all the maddening rush of
impulse _that_ did not suggest itself. "What can you do to me?" How
unnecessary was the question! What he could do was sensible in every
point, in the torrent of excitement that almost blinded, almost deafened
the miserable young man. He saw his enemy's countenance as through a
mist, a serene and almost beautiful face--looking at him with a sort of
benevolent philosophical pity which quickened the flood of passion. His
own voice was stifled in his throat, he could say no more. Nor could he
hear for the ringing in his ears, what more his adversary was saying to
him--something wildly incoherent he thought, about Prospero, Prospero!
"Do you think I am Prospero to send you aches and stitches?" The words
seemed to circle about him in the air, half mockery, half folly. What
had that to do with it? He walked along mechanically, rapt in an
atmosphere of his own, beating the air like a drowning man.
How long this horror lasted he could never tell. While still those
incomprehensible syllables were wavering about him, another voice
suddenly made itself heard, a touch came upon his arm. He gave a
violent start, recoiling from the touch, not knowing what it was. By
degrees, however, as the giddiness went off, he began to see again, to
perceive slowly coming into sight those mountains that had formed the
background in Katie's room, and to hear the soft wash of the waters upon
the beach. He found himself standing close to the loch, far below the
road upon which he had been walking. Had he rushed down to throw himself
into the water, and thus end the terrible conflict? He could never tell.
Or whether it was some angel that had arrested the terrible impulse.
When the mist dispersed from his eyes he saw this angel in a red shirt
standing close to him, looking at him with eyes that peered out beneath
the contraction of a pair of shaggy sandy eyebrows, from an honest
freckled face. "My lord! you'll maybe no have seen Miss Oona?" Hamish
said. And Walter heard himself burst into a wild laugh that seemed to
fill the whole silent world with echoes. He caught hold of the boatman's
arm with a grasp that made even Hamish shrink. "Who sent you here?" he
cried; "who sent you here? Do you come from God?" He did not know what
he said.
"My lord! you mustna take that name in vain. I'm thinking the Almighty
has a hand in maist things, and maybe it was just straight from Him I've
come, though I had no suspicion o' that," Hamish said. He thought for
the first moment it was a madman with whom he had to do. Walter had
appeared with a rush down the steep bank, falling like some one out of
the skies, scattering the pebbles on the beach, and Hamish had employed
Oona's name in the stress of the moment as something to conjure with. He
was deeply alarmed still as he felt the quiver in the young man's frame,
which communicated itself to Hamish's sturdy arm. Madness frightens the
most stout-hearted. Hamish was brave enough, as brave as a Highlander
need be, but he was half alarmed for himself, and much more for Oona,
who might appear at any moment. "I'll just be waiting about and nothing
particular to do," he said in a soothing tone; "if ye'll get into the
boat, my lord, I'll just put your lordship hame. Na, it's nae trouble,
nae trouble." Hamish did not like the situation; but he would rather
have rowed twenty maniacs than put Oona within reach of any risk. He
took Lord Erradeen by the elbow and directed him towards the boat,
repeating the kindly invitation of his country--"Come away, just come
away; I've naething particular to do, and it will just be a pleasure."
"Hamish," said Walter, "you think I am out of my mind: but you are
mistaken, my good fellow. _I_ think you have saved my life, and I will
not forget it. What was that you said about Miss Oona?"
Hamish looked earnestly into the young man's face.
"My lord," he began with hesitation, "you see--if a young gentleman is a
thocht out of the way, and just maybe excited about something and no
altogether his ain man--what's that to the like of me? Never a hair o'
hairm would that do to Hamish. But when it's a leddy, and young and real
tender-hearted! We maun aye think o' them, my lord, and spare them--the
weemen. No, it's what we dinna do--they have the warst in a general way
to bear. But atween you and me, my lord, that though you're far my
shuperior, are just man and man----"
"It is you that are my superior, Hamish," said Lord Erradeen; "but look
at me now and say if you think I am mad. You have saved me. I am fit to
speak to her now. Do you think I would harm her? Not for anything in the
world."
"No if you were--yoursel'--Lord Erradeen."
"But I am--myself. And the moment has come when I must know. Take my
hand, Hamish; look at me. Do you think I am not to be trusted with
Oona?"
"My lord, to make Hamish your judge, what's that but daft too? And what
right have ye to call my young leddy by her name? You're no a drap's
blood to them, nor even a great friend."
Oona's faithful guardian stood lowering his brows upon the young lord
with a mingled sense of the superiority of his office, and of
disapproval, almost contemptuous, of the madman who had given it to him.
That he should make Hamish the judge was mad indeed. And yet Hamish was
the judge, standing on his right to defend his mistress. They stood
looking at each other, the boatman holding his shaggy head high,
reading the other's face with the keenest scrutiny. But just then there
came a soft sound into the air, a call from the bank, clear, with that
tone, not loud but penetrating, which mountaineers use everywhere.
"Are you there, Hamish?" Oona cried.