The miseries of the night's imprisonment were soon forgotten. Oona,
elastic in youthful health, recovered in a few days, she said in a few
hours, from its effects, and the keen reality of the after events dimmed
in her mind the mystery of that extraordinary moment which appeared now
like a dream, too wonderful to be true, too inexplicable and beyond
experience to come into natural life at all. They spoke of it to each
other with bated breath, but not till some time after their rescue, when
the still higher excitement of their near approach to death--a thing
which reveals the value and charm of life as nothing else does--had
somewhat subsided in their minds. But their recollections were confused,
they could not tell how; and as Walter had never been sure after they
were over, whether the terrible conflicts which he had gone through were
not conflicts between the better and worse parts of his own nature,
without any external influence, so they asked each other now whether the
mysterious chamber, the burning lamp, the strange accessories of a
concealed and mysterious life, were dreams of disordered fancy, or
something real and actual. They could not explain these things to each
other, neither could they understand what it was that made the throwing
down of the light of such vital importance. Was it common fire, acting
after the ordinary laws of nature and finding ready fuel in the dry wood
and antique furniture? or was it something more mystic, more momentous?
They gave little explanation to questioners, not so much because they
were unwilling, as because they were unable; and when they discussed it
between themselves became more and more confused as the days went on. It
became like a phantasmagoria, sometimes suddenly appearing in all the
vivid lines of reality, sometimes fading into a pale apparition which
memory could scarcely retain.
To the world in general the fact of a great fire, a thing unfortunately
not very rare in the records of ancient houses, became after a while a
very simple piece of history; and the wonderful escape of Lord Erradeen
and Miss Forrester, and their subsequent betrothal and marriage, a
pretty piece of natural romance. The tower, now preserving nothing more
than a certain squareness in its mass of ruins, showed traces of two
rooms that might have been, but everything was destroyed except the
stones, and any remains that might have withstood the action of the fire
were buried deep under the fallen walls; nor could any trace be found of
concealed passages or any way of descent into the house from that
unsuspected hiding-place. One thing was certain, however, that the being
who had exercised so strange an influence on a year of his life never
appeared to Walter more. There were moments in which he felt, with a
pang of alarm, that concentration of his thoughts upon himself, that
subtle direction and intensification of his mind, as if it had suddenly
been driven into a dialogue with some one invisible, which had been the
worst of all the sufferings he had to bear; but these, after the first
terror, proved to be within the power of his own efforts to resist and
shake off, and never came to any agonising crisis like that which he had
formerly passed through. His marriage, which took place as soon as
circumstances would permit, ended even these last contentions of the
spirit. And if in the midst of his happiness he was sometimes tortured
by the thought that the change of his life from the evil way to the good
one had all the results of the most refined selfishness, as his
adversary had suggested, and that he was amply proving the ways of
righteousness to be those of pleasantness, and godliness to be great
gain, that thought was too ethereal for common use, and did not stand
the contact of reality. Mr. Cameron, to whom he submitted it in some
moment of confidence, smiled with the patience of old age upon this
overstrained self-torment.
"It is true enough," the minister said, "that the right way is a way of
pleasantness, and that all the paths of wisdom are peace. But life has
not said out its last word, and ye will have to tread them one time or
other with bleeding feet, or all is done--if the Lord has not given you
a lot apart from that of other men. And human nature," the old man said,
not without a little recollection of some sermon, at which he smiled as
he spoke, "is so perverse, that when trouble comes, you that are afraid
of your happiness will be the first to cry out and upbraid the good Lord
that does not make it everlasting. Wait, my young man, wait--till
perhaps you have a boy at your side that will vex your heart as children
only can vex those that love them--wait till death steps into your
house, as step he must----"
"Stop!" cried Walter, with a wild sudden pang of that terror of which
the Italian poet speaks, which makes all the earth a desert--
"Senza quella
Nova, sola, infinita,
Felicitá che il suo pensier figura."
He never complained again of being too happy, or forgot that one time or
other the path of life must be trod with bleeding feet.
"But I'll not deny," said the minister, "that to the like of you, my
young lord, with so much in your power, there is no happier way of
amusing yourself than just in being of use and service to your poor
fellow-creatures that want so much and have so little. Man!" cried Mr.
Cameron, "I would have given my head to be able to do at your age the
half or quarter of what you can do with a scratch of your pen!--and you
must mind that you are bound to do it," he added with a smile.
But before this serene course of life began which Walter found too
happy, there was an interval of anxiety and pain. Mrs. Methven did not
escape, like the rest, from the consequences of the night's vigil. She
got up indeed from her faint, and received with speechless thanksgiving
her son back from the dead, as she thought, but had herself to be
carried to his room in the old castle, and there struggled for weeks in
the grips of fever, brought on, it was said, by the night's exposure.
But this she would not herself allow. She had felt it, she said, before
she left her home, but concealed it, not to be hindered from obeying her
son's summons. If this was true, or invented upon the spur of the moment
to prove that in no possible way was Walter to blame, it is impossible
to say. But the fever ran very high, and so affected her heart, worn and
tired by many assaults, that there was a time when everything was hushed
and silenced in the old castle in expectation of death. By-and-by,
however, that terror gave place to all the innocent joys of
convalescence--soft flitting of women up and down, presents of precious
flowers and fruits lighting up the gloom, afternoon meetings when
everything that could please her was brought to the recovering mother,
and all the loch came with inquiries, with good wishes, and kind
offerings. Mrs. Forrester, who was an excellent nurse, and never lost
heart, but smiled, and was sure, in the deepest depth, that all would
"come right," as she said, took the control of the sick-room, and
recovered there the bloom which she had partially lost when Oona was in
danger. And Oona stole into the heart of Walter's mother, who had not
for long years possessed him sufficiently to make it bitter to her that
he should now put a wife before her. Some women never learn this
philosophy; and perhaps Mrs. Methven might have resisted it, had not
Oona, her first acquaintance on the loch, her tenderest nurse, won her
heart. To have the grim old house in which the secret of the Methvens'
fate had been laid up, and in which, even to indifferent lookers-on,
there had always been an atmosphere of mystery and terror, thus occupied
with the most innocent and cheerful commonplaces, the little cares and
simple pleasures of a long but hopeful recovery, was confusing and
soothing beyond measure to all around. The old servants, who had borne
for many years the presence of a secret which was not theirs, felt in
this general commotion a relief which words could not express. "No," old
Symington said, "it's not ghosts nor any such rubbitch. I never, for my
part, here or elsewhere, saw onything worse than myself; but, Miss Oona,
whatever it was that you did on the tap of that tower--and how you got
there the Lord above knows, for there never was footing for a bird that
ever I saw--it has just been blessed. 'Ding down the nests and the craws
will flee away.' What am I meaning? Well, that is just what I canna
tell. It's a' confusion. I know nothing. Many a fricht and many an
anxious hour have I had here: but I am bound to say I never saw anything
worse than mysel'."
"All yon is just clavers," said old Macalister, waving his hand. "If ye
come to that there is naething in this life that will bide explaining.
But I will not deny that there is a kind of a different feel in the air
which is maybe owing to this fine weather, just wonderful for the
season; or maybe to the fact of so many leddies about, which is a new
thing here--no that I hold so much with women," he added, lest Oona
should be proud, "they are a great fyke and trouble, and will meddle
with everything; but they're fine for a change, and a kind of soothing
for a little whilie at a time, after all we've gone through."
Before the gentle _régime_ of the sick-room was quite over, an unusual
and unexpected visitor arrived one morning at Loch Houran. It was the
day after that on which Mrs. Methven had been transferred to
Auchnasheen, and a great festival among her attendants. She had been
brought down to the drawing-room very pale and shadowy, but with a
relaxation of all the sterner lines which had once been in her face, in
invalid dress arranged after Mrs. Forrester's taste rather than her own,
and lending a still further softness to her appearance, not to be
associated with her usual rigid garb of black and white. And her looks
and tones were the most soft of all, as, the centre of everybody's
thoughts, she was led to the sofa near the fire and surrounded by that
half-worship which is the right of a convalescent where love is. To this
pleasant home-scene there entered suddenly, ushered in with great
solemnity by Symington, the serious and somewhat stern "man of business"
who had come to Sloebury not much more than a year before with the news
of that wonderful inheritance so unexpected and unthought of, which had
seemed to Mrs. Methven, as well as to her son, the beginning of a new
life. Mr. Milnathort made kind but formal inquiries after Mrs. Methven's
health, and offered his congratulations no less formally upon her
recovery.
"I need not say to you that all that has happened has been an interest
to us that are connected with the family beyond anything that I can
express. I have taken the liberty," he added, turning to Walter, "to
bring one to see you, Lord Erradeen, who has perhaps the best right of
any one living to give ye joy. I told her that you would no doubt come
to her, for she has not left her chamber, as you know, for many a year;
but nothing would serve her but to come herself, frail as she is----"
"Your sister!" Walter cried.
"Just my sister. I have taken the liberty," Mr. Milnathort repeated, "to
have her carried into the library, where you will find her. She has
borne the journey better than I could have hoped, but it is an
experiment that makes me very anxious. You will spare her any--emotion,
any shock, that you can help?"
The serious face of the lawyer was more serious than ever: his long
upper lip trembled a little. He turned round to the others with anxious
self-restraint.
"She is very frail," he said, "a delicate bit creature all her life--and
since her accident--"
He spoke of this, as his manner was, as if it had happened a week ago.
Walter hurried away to the library, in which he found Miss Milnathort
carefully arranged upon a sofa, wrapped up in white furs instead of her
usual garments, a close white hood surrounding the delicate brightness
of her face. She held out her hands to him at first without a word; and
when she could speak, said, with a tremble in her voice:
"I have come to see the end of it. I have come to see--her and you."
"I should have come to you," cried Walter, "I did not forget--but for my
mother's illness----"
"Yes?" she said with a grateful look. "You thought upon me? Oh, but my
heart has been with her and you! Oh, the terrible time it was! the first
news in the papers, the fear that you were buried there under the ruins,
you--and she; and then to wait a night and a day."
"I should have sent you word at once--I might have known; but I did not
think of the papers."
"No, how should you? you were too busy with your own life. Oh, the
thoughts of that night. I just lay and watched for you from the
darkening to the dawning. No, scarcely what you could call praying--just
waiting upon the Lord. I bade Him mind upon Walter and me--that had lost
the battle. And I thought I saw you, you and your Oona. Was not I wise
when I said it was a well-omened name?" She paused a little, weeping and
smiling. "I could not tell you all the thoughts that went through my
mind. I thought if it was even so, there might have been a worse fate.
To break the spell and defeat the enemy even at the cost of your two
bonnie lives--I thought it would not be an ill fate, the two of you
together. Did I not say it? Two that made up one, the perfect man. That
is God's ordinance, my dear? that is His ordinance. Two--not just for
pleasure, or for each other, but for Him and everything that is good.
You believed me when I said that. Oh, you believed me! and so it was not
in vain that I was--killed yon time long ago----" Her voice was broken
with sobs. She leant upon Walter's shoulder who had knelt down beside
her, and wept there like a child--taking comfort like a child.
"Generally," she began after a moment, "there is little account made,
little, little account, of them that have gone before, that have been
beaten, Walter. I can call you nothing but Walter to-day. And Oona,
though she has won the battle, she is just me, but better. We lost. We
had the same heart; but the time had not come for the victory. And now
you, my young lord, you, young Erradeen, like him, you have won, Oona
and you. We were beaten; but yet I have a share in it. How can you tell,
a young man like you, how those that have been defeated, lift their
hearts and give God thanks?" She made a pause and said, after a moment,
"I must see Oona, too." But when he was about to rise and leave her in
order to bring Oona, she stopped him once more. "You must tell me
first," she said, speaking very low, "what is become of _him_? Did he
let himself be borne away to the clouds in yon flames? I know, I know,
it's all done; but did you see him? Did he speak a word at the end?"
"Miss Milnathort," said Walter, holding her hands, "there is nothing but
confusion in my mind. Was it all a dream and a delusion from beginning
to end?"
She laughed a strange little laugh of emotion.
"Look at me then," she said, "for what have I suffered these thirty
years? And you--was it all for nothing that you were so soon beaten and
ready to fall? Have you not seen him? Did he go without a word?"
Walter looked back upon all the anguish through which he had passed, and
it seemed to him but a dream. One great event, and then weeks of calm
had intervened since the day when driven to the side of the loch in
madness and misery, he had found Oona and taken refuge in her boat, and
thrown himself on her mercy; and since the night when once more driven
distracted by diabolical suggestions, he had stepped out into the
darkness, meaning to lose himself somehow in the gloom and be no more
heard of--yet was saved again by the little light in her window, the
watch-light that love kept burning. These recollections and many more
swept through his mind, and the pain and misery more remote upon which
this old woman's childlike countenance had shone. He could not take
hold of them as they rose before him in the darkness, cast far away into
a shadowy background by the brightness and reality of the present. A
strange giddiness came over his brain. He could not tell which was real,
the anguish that was over, or the peace that had come, or whether life
itself--flying in clouds behind him, before him hid under the
wide-spreading sunshine--was anything but a dream. He recovered himself
with an effort, grasping hold of the latest recollection to satisfy his
questioner.
"This I know," he cried, "that when we were flying from the tower, with
flames and destruction behind us, the only words I heard from her were a
prayer for pardon--'forgive him,' that was all I heard. And then the
rush of the air in our faces, and roar that was like the end of all
things. We neither heard nor saw more."
"Pardon!" said Miss Milnathort, drying her eyes with a trembling hand,
"that is what I have said too, many a weary hour in the watches of the
night. What pleasure can a spirit like yon find in the torture of his
own flesh and blood? The Lord forgive him if there is yet a place of
repentance! But well I know what you mean that it is just like a vision
when one awaketh. That is what all our troubles will be when the end
comes: just a dream! and good brought out of evil and pardon given to
many, many a one that men are just willing to give over and curse
instead of blessing. Now go and bring your Oona, my bonnie lad! I am
thinking she is just me, and you are Walter, and we have all won the day
together," said the invalid clasping her thin hands, and with eyes that
shone through their tears, "all won together! though we were beaten
twenty years ago."
THE END.
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.]