The room was large with that air of bare and respectable shabbiness
which is the right thing in a long-established private hotel--with large
pieces of mahogany furniture, and an old-fashioned carpet worn, not bare
exactly, but dim, the pattern half-obliterated here and there, which is
far more correct and _comme il faut_ than the glaring newness and luxury
of modern caravanseries. As Mr. Williamson, like a true Englishman (a
Scotsman in this particular merely exaggerates the peculiarity), loved
the costly all the better for making no show of being costly, it was
naturally at one of these grimly expensive places that he was in the
habit of staying in London. A large window, occupying almost one entire
side of the room, filled it with dim evening light, and a view of roofs
and chimneys, against which Katie's little figure showed as she came
forward asking, "Is it any one I know?" It was not a commanding, or even
very graceful figure, though round and plump, with the softened curves
of youth. When the new-comers advanced to meet her, and she saw behind
her father's middle-aged form, the slimmer outlines of a young man,
Katie made another step forward with an increase of interest. She had
expected some contemporaries of papa's, such as he was in the habit of
bringing home with him to dinner, and not a personage on her own level.
Mr. Williamson, in his good-humoured cordiality, stepped forward
something like a showman, with a new object which he feels will make a
sensation.
"You will never guess who this is," he said, "so I will not keep ye in
suspense, Katie. This is our new neighbour at Loch Houran, Lord
Erradeen. Think of me meeting him just by chance on the pavey, as ye may
say, of a London street, and us next door to each other, to use a vulgar
expression, at home!"
"Which is the vulgar expression?" said Katie. She was very fond of her
father, but yet liked people to see that she knew better. She held out
her hand frankly to Walter, and though she was only a round-about,
bread-and-butter little girl with nothing but money, she was far more at
her ease than he was. "I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Lord
Erradeen," she said. "We were just wondering whether we should meet you
anywhere. We have only been a week in town."
"I don't think we should have been likely to meet," said Walter with
that tone of resentment which had become natural to him, "if I had not
been so fortunate as to encounter Mr. Williamson as he says, on the
_pavé_."
Katie was not pleased by this speech. She thought that Walter was rude,
and implied that the society which he frequented was too fine for the
Williamsons, and she also thought that he meant a laugh at her father's
phraseology, neither of which offences were at all in the young man's
intention.
"Oh," Katie cried, resentful too, "papa and I go to a great many
places--unless you mean Marlborough House and that sort of thing. Oh,
Captain Underwood!" she added next moment in a tone of surprise. The
appearance of Captain Underwood evidently suggested to her ideas not at
all in accordance with that of Marlborough House.
"Yes," he said, "Miss Williamson: you scarcely expected to see me. It is
not often that a man is equally intimate with two distinct branches of a
family, is it? But I always was a fortunate fellow, and here I am back
in your circle again."
Walter's mind was considerably preoccupied by his own circumstances, and
by the novelty of this new meeting; but yet he was quick-witted enough
to remark with some amusement the recurrence of the old situation with
which he was quite acquainted--the instinctive repugnance of the
feminine side everywhere to this companion of his, and the tolerance and
even friendliness of the men. Katie did all but turn her back upon
Underwood before his little speech was ended. She said, "Will you ring
for dinner, papa?" without making the slightest reply to it: and
indeed, after another glance from one to the other, retired to the sofa
from which she had risen, with a little air of having exhausted this new
incident, and indifference to anything that could follow, which piqued
Walter. Had she been a noble person either in fact or in appearance, of
an imposing figure and proportions even, it might have seemed less
insupportable; but that a little dumpy girl should thus lose all
interest in him, classifying him in a moment with his companion, was
beyond Lord Erradeen's patience. He felt bitterly ashamed of Underwood,
and eager even, in his anger at this presumptuous young woman's hasty
judgment, to explain how it was that he was in Underwood's company. But
as he stood biting his lip in the half-lighted room, he could not but
remember how very difficult it would be to explain it. Why was he in
Underwood's company? Because he could get admittance to none better.
Marlborough House! He felt himself grow red all over, with a burning
shame, and anger against fate. And when he found himself seated by
Katie's side at the lighted table, and subject to the questions with
which it was natural to begin conversation, his embarrassment was still
greater. She asked him had he been here and there. That great ball at
the French Embassy that everybody was talking about--of course he had
been one of the guests? And at the Duke's--Katie did not consider it
necessary to particularise what duke, confident that no Christian,
connected ever so distantly with Loch Houran, could have any doubt on
the subject. Was the decoration of the new dining-room so magnificent
as people said? Walter's blank countenance, his brief replies, the
suppressed reluctance with which he said anything at all, had the
strangest effect upon Katie. After a while she glanced at Captain
Underwood, who was talking with much volubility to her father, and with
a very small, almost imperceptible shrug of her little shoulders, turned
away and addressed herself to her dinner. This from a little girl who
was nobody, who was not even very pretty, who betrayed her plebeian
origin in every line of her plump form and fresh little commonplace
face, was more than Walter could bear.
"You must think me dreadfully ignorant of the events of society," he
said, "but the fact is I have not been going out at all. It is not very
long, you are aware, since I came into the property, and--there have
been a great many things to do."
"I have always heard," said Katie, daintily consuming a delicate
_entrée_, with her eyes upon her plate as if that was her sole interest,
"that the Erradeen estates were all in such order that there was never
anything for the heir to do."
"You speak," said Walter, "as if they changed hands every year."
"Oh, not that exactly; but I remember two; and I might have remembered
others, for we have only been at Loch Houran since papa got so rich."
"What a pleasant way of remembering dates!"
"Do you think so, Lord Erradeen? Now I should think that to have been
rich always, and your father before you, and never to have known any
difference, would be so much more pleasant."
"There may perhaps be something to be said on both sides," said Walter;
"but I am no judge--for the news of my elevation, such as it is, came to
me very suddenly, too suddenly to be agreeable, without any warning."
Katie reconsidered her decision in the matter of Lord Erradeen; perhaps
though he knew nobody, he might not be quite unworthy cultivation, and
besides, she had finished her _entrée_. She said, "Didn't you know?"
turning to him again her once-averted eyes.
"I had not the faintest idea; it came upon me like a thunderbolt," he
said. "You perceive that you must treat me with a little indulgence in
respect to dukes, &c.--even if I had any taste for society, which I
haven't," he added, with a touch of bitterness in his tone.
"Oh," said Katie, looking at him much more kindly; then she bent towards
him with quite unexpected familiarity, and said, lowering her voice, but
in the most distinct whisper, "And where then did you pick up that
odious man?"
Walter could not but laugh as he looked across the table at the
unconscious object of this attack.
"I observe that ladies never like him," he said; "at home it is the
same."
"Oh, I should think so," cried Katie, "everybody thought it was such a
pity that Lord Erradeen took him up--and then to see him with you! Oona
Forrester would be very sorry," Katie added after a pause.
"Miss Forrester!" Walter felt himself colour high with pleasure at the
sound of this name, then feeling this a sort of self-betrayal, coloured
yet more. "You know her?"
Katie turned round upon him with a mixture of amusement and disdain.
"Know her! is there any one on the loch, or near it, that doesn't know
her?" she said.
"I beg your pardon," cried Walter. "I forgot for the moment." Then he
too retired within himself for so long a time that it was Katie's turn
to be affronted. He devoted himself to his dinner too, but he did not
eat. At last "Why should she be sorry?" he asked curtly as if there had
been no pause.
"How can I tell you now while he sits there?" said Katie, lowering her
voice; "some other time perhaps--most likely you will call in the
day-time, in the morning, now that we have made your acquaintance."
"If you will permit me," Walter said.
"Oh yes, we will permit you. Papa has always wanted to know you, and so
have I since--If you are allowed to come: but perhaps you will not be
allowed to come, Lord Erradeen."
"Will not be _allowed_? What does that mean? and since when, may I ask,
have you been so kind as to want to know me? I wish I had been aware."
"Since----well, of course, since you were Lord Erradeen," said the girl,
"we did not know of you before: and people like us who have nothing but
money are always very fond of knowing a lord--everybody says so at
least. And it is true, in a way. Papa likes it very much indeed. He
likes to say my friend, the Earl of ----, or my friend, the Duke of
----. He knows a great many lords, though perhaps you would not think
it. He is very popular with fine people. They say he is not at all
vulgar considering, and never takes anything upon him. Oh, yes, I know
it all very well. I am a new person in the other way--I believe it is
far more what you call snobbish--but I can't bear the fine people. Of
course they are very nice to me; but I always remember that they think I
am not vulgar considering, and that I never pretend to be better than I
am."
There was something in this address spoken with a little heat, which
touched Walter's sense of humour, a faculty which in his better moods
made his own position, with all its incongruities, ruefully amusing to
him. "I wonder," he said, "if I pretend to be better than I am? But then
I should require in the first place to know what I am more distinctly
than I do. Now you, on that important point, have, I presume, no doubt
or difficulty?----"
"Not the least," she said, interrupting him. "The daughter of a rich
Glasgow man who is nobody--that is what I am--everybody knows; but you,
my lord, you are a noble person of one of the oldest families, with the
best blood in your veins, with----" She had been eyeing him somewhat
antagonistically, but here she broke off, and fell a laughing. "I don't
believe you care a bit about it," she said. "Are you going with us to
the theatre to see the _Falcon_, Lord Erradeen?"
"What is the _Falcon_?" he said.
"You have not seen it nor heard of it? It is Mr. Tennyson's," said Katie
with a little awe. "How is it possible you have not heard? Don't you
know that lovely story? It is a poor gentleman who has nothing but a
falcon, and the lady he loves comes to see him. She is a widow (that
takes away the interest a little, but it is beautiful all the same) with
a sick child. When he sees her coming he has to prepare an entertainment
for her, and there is nothing but his falcon, so he sacrifices it,
though it breaks his heart. And oh, to see the terrible stage bird that
is brought in, as if that could be his grand hawk! You feel so angry,
you are forced to laugh till you cry again. That kind of story should
never be brought to the literal, do you think it should?"
"And what happens?" said Walter, young enough to be interested, though
not sufficiently well-read to know.
"Oh, you might guess. She had come to ask him for his falcon to save
her child. What could it be else? It is just the contrariety of things."
"You cannot know very much, Miss Williamson, of the contrariety of
things."
"Oh, do you think so? Why shouldn't I? I think I am precisely the person
to do so. It seems to me in my experience," she added, fixing a look
upon him which seemed to Walter's conscience to mean a great deal more
than it was possible Katie could mean, "that almost everything goes
wrong."
"That is a most melancholy view to take."
"But so is everything melancholy," said the girl. Her little simple
physiognomy, her rosy cheeks and blue eyes, the somewhat blunted profile
(for Katie had no features, as she was aware) and altogether commonplace
air of the little person who produced these wonderful sentiments amused
Walter beyond measure. He laughed perhaps more than was strictly
decorous, and drew the attention of Mr. Williamson, who, absorbed in his
talk with Underwood, had almost forgotten his more important guest.
"What is the joke?" he said. "I am glad to see you are keeping his
lordship amused, Katie, for the captain and me we have got upon other
subjects concerning the poor gentleman, your predecessor, Lord Erradeen.
Poor fellow! that was a very sad business: not that I would say there
was much to be regretted before the present bearer of the title," the
rich man added with a laugh; "but at your age you could well have
waited a little, and the late lord was a very nice fellow till he fell
into that melancholy way."
"I told you everything was melancholy," said Katie in an undertone.
"And I," said the young man in the same suppressed voice, "shall I too
fall into a melancholy way?" He laughed as he said so, but it was not a
laugh of pleasure. Could he do nothing without having this family
mystery--family absurdity--thrust into his face?
"If you want your cigar, papa--" said Katie getting up, "and you can't
live without that, any of you gentlemen--I had better go. Let laws and
learning, wit and wisdom die, so long as you have your cigars. But the
carriage is ordered at a quarter to ten, and Lord Erradeen is coming, he
says. In any case _you_ must come, papa, you know. I can't go without
you," she said, with a little imperative air. It was enough to make any
one laugh to see the grand air of superiority which this little person
took upon her, and her father greeted her exit with a loud laugh of
enjoyment and admiration.
"She is mistress and more, as we say in Scotland," he said, "and there
must be no trifling where my Katie is concerned. We will have to keep to
the minute. So you are coming with us, Lord Erradeen? What will you do,
Underwood? I'm doubting if what they call the poetical dramaw will be
much in your way."
To which Underwood replied with some embarrassment that it certainly was
not at all in his way. He liked Nelly Somebody in a burlesque, and he
was always fond of a good ballet, but as for Shakespeare and that sort
of thing, he owned it was above him. Good Mr. Williamson disapproved of
ballets, utterly, and administered a rebuke on the spot.
"I hope you are not leading Lord Erradeen into the like of that. It is
very bad for a young man to lose respect for women, and how you can keep
any after those exhibitions is beyond me. Well, I will not say I take a
great interest, like Katie, in poetry and all that. I like a good laugh.
So long as it is funny I am like a bairn, I delight in a play: but I am
not so sure that I can give my mind to it when it's serious. Lord! we've
enough of seriousness in real life. And as for your bare-faced
love-making before thousands of people, I just can't endure it. You will
think me a prejudiced old fogey, Lord Erradeen. It makes me blush," said
the elderly critic, going off into a laugh; but blush he did, through
all the honest red upon his natural cheeks, notwithstanding his laugh,
and his claret, and his cigar. Was he a world behind his younger
companion who glanced at him with a sensation of mingled shame,
contempt, and respect, or was he a world above him? Walter was so
confused in the new atmosphere he had suddenly begun to breathe, that he
could not tell. But it was altogether new at all events, and novelty is
something in the monotony of life.
"I'll see you at the club after," said Underwood, as they loitered
waiting for Miss Williamson at the hotel door. But Walter made no
reply.
Now Lord Erradeen, though he had been perverse all his life, and had
chosen the evil and rejected the good in many incomprehensible ways, was
not--or this history would never have been written--without that finer
fibre in him which responds to everything that is true and noble. How
strange this jumble is in that confusion of good and evil which we call
the mind of man! How often may we see the record of a generous action
bring tears to the eyes of one whose acts are all selfish, and whose
heart is callous to sufferings of which he is the cause: and hear him
with noble fervour applaud the self-sacrifice of the man, who in that
language by which it is the pleasure of the nineteenth century to make
heroism just half-ridiculous, and to save itself from the highflown,
"never funked and never lied; I guess he didn't know how:" and how he
will be touched to the heart by the purity of a romantic love, he who
for himself feeds on the garbage--and all this without any conscious
insincerity, the best part of him more true and real all the time than
the worst! Walter, to whom his own domestic surroundings had been so
irksome, felt a certain wholesome novelty of pleasure when he set out
between the father and daughter to see what Mr. Williamson called the
"poetical dramaw," a thing hitherto much out of the young man's way. He
had been of late in all kinds of unsavoury places, and had done his best
to debase his imagination with the burlesques; but yet he had not been
able to obliterate his own capacity for better things. And when he stood
looking over the head of Katie Williamson, and saw the lady of the
poet's tale come into the poor house of her chivalrous lover, the shock
with which the better nature in him came uppermost, gave him a pang in
the pleasure and the wonder of it. This was not the sort of heroine to
whom he had accustomed himself: but the old Italian romancer, the noble
English poet, and the fine passion and high perception of the actors,
who could understand and interpret both, were not in vain for our
prodigal. When that lady paused in the humble doorway clothed in high
reverence and poetry, not to speak of the modest splendour of her mature
beauty and noble Venetian dress, he felt himself blush, like good Mr.
Williamson, to remember all the less lovely images he had seen. He could
not applaud; it would have been a profanation. He was still pure enough
in the midst of uncleanness, and high enough though familiar with
baseness, to be transported for the moment out of himself.
The other two formed a somewhat comical counterbalance to Walter's
emotion; not that they were by any means unfeeling spectators. Mr.
Williamson's interest in the story was unfeigned. As Mrs. Kendal poured
forth that heartrending plea of a mother for her child, the good man
accompanied her words by strange muffled sounds which were quite beyond
his control; and which called forth looks of alarm from Katie, who was
his natural guardian, and who herself maintained a dignified propriety
as having witnessed this moving scene before. But the running commentary
_sotto voce_, which he kept up throughout, might have furnished an
amusing secondary comedy to any impartial bystander. "Bless us all!"
said Mr. Williamson, "two useless servants doing nothing, and not a
morsel in the house! How do ye make that out!" "Lordsake! has he killed
the hawk? but that's just manslaughter: and a tough morsel I would say,
for the lady, when all's done." "What is it she's wanting--just the
falcon he's killed for her. Tchick! Tchick! Now I call that an awful
pity, Katie. Poor lady! and poor fellow! and he has to refuse her! Well,
he should not have been so hasty. After all she did not eat a morsel of
it; and what ailed that silly old woman there to toss up a bit omelette
or something, to save the bird--and they're so clever at omelettes
abroad," the good man said, with true regret. "Oh, papa, how material
you are! Don't you know it's always like that in life?" cried Katie. "I
know nothing of the kind," said her father, indignantly. "What is the
use of being a poet, as you call it, if ye cannot find some other way
and not break their hearts? Poor lad! Now that's a thing I can't
understand--a woman like that come pleading to you, and you have to
refuse her!" Katie looked round upon her father with her little air of
oracle. "Don't you see, papa, that's the story! It's to wring our hearts
he wrote it." Mr. Williamson paid no attention to this. He went on
softly with his "Tchick! tchick!" and when all was over dried his eyes
furtively and got up with haste, almost impatience, drawing a long
breath. "It's just all nonsense," he said. "I'll not be brought here
again to be made unhappy. So she's to get _him_ instead of the
bird--but, bless me! what good will that do her? _that_ will never save
her bairn."
"It will satisfy the public, more or less," said a voice behind.
Walter had been aware that some one else had come into the box, who
stood smiling, listening to the conversation, and now bent forward to
applaud as if aware that his applause meant something. Katie turned half
round, with a little nod and smile.
"Did you hear papa?" she said. "Oh, tell Mr. Tennyson! he is quite
unhappy about it. Are you unhappy too, Lord Erradeen? for you don't
applaud, or say a word."
"Applaud!" Walter said. "I feel that it would be taking a liberty.
Applaud what? That beautiful lady who is so much above me, or the great
poet who is above all? I should like to go away and draw breath, and let
myself down----"
"Toots!" said Mr. Williamson, "it is just all nonsense. He should not
have been so hasty. And now I would just like to know," he added, with
an air of defiance, "what happened to that bairn: to want a falcon and
get a stepfather! that was an ill way to cure him. Hoots! it's all
nonsense. Put on your cloak, Katie, and let us get away."
"But I like you, Lord Erradeen, for what you say," cried Katie. "It was
too beautiful to applaud. Oh, tell Mrs. Kendal! She looked like a
picture. I should like to make her a curtsey, not clap my hands as you
do."
"You will bid me tell Boccaccio next?" said the new-comer. "These are
fine sentiments; but the actors would find it somewhat chilly if they
had no applause. They would think nobody cared."
"Lord Innishouran," said Katie, "papa has forgotten his manners. He
ought to have introduced to you Lord Erradeen."
Walter was as much startled as if he had been the veriest cockney whose
bosom has ever been fluttered by introduction to a lord. He looked at
the first man of his rank (barring those damaged ones at Underwoods
club) whom he had met, with the strangest sensation. Lord Innishouran
was the son of the Duke--the great potentate of those northern regions.
He was a man who might make Walter's career very easy to him, or, alas!
rather might have made it, had he known him on his first coming to
London. The sense of all that might be involved in knowing him, made the
young man giddy as he stood opposite to his new acquaintance. Lord
Innishouran was not of Walter's age. The duke was the patriarch of the
Highlands, and lived like a man who never meant to die. This gentleman,
who at forty-five was still only his father's heir, had taken to the
arts by way of making an independent position for himself. He was a
_dilettante_ in the best sense of the word, delighting in everything
that was beautiful. Walter's enthusiasm had been the best possible
introduction for him; and what a change there seemed in the young man's
world and all his prospects as he walked home after taking leave of the
Williamsons with Innishouran's, not Underwood's, arm within his own!
"I cannot understand how it is that we have not met before. It would
have been my part to seek you out if I had known you were in town," his
new friend said. "I hope now you will let me introduce you to my wife.
The duke has left town--he never stays a moment longer than he can help.
And everything is coming to an end. Still I am most happy to have made
your acquaintance. You knew the Williamsons, I suppose, before? They are
excellent people--not the least vulgarity about them, because there's no
pretension. And Katie is a clever girl, not without ambition. She is
quite an heiress, I suppose you know----"
"I don't know--any one, or anything," Walter said.
"Come, that is going too far," said the other, with a laugh. "I presume
you don't care for society. That is a young man's notion; but society is
not so bad a thing. It never answers to withdraw from it altogether.
Yes, Katie is an heiress. She is to have all the Loch Houran property, I
believe, besides a good deal of money."
"I thought," said Walter, "there were several sons."
"One--one only; and he has the business, with the addition also of a
good deal of money. Money is a wonderful quality--it stands instead of
a great many other things to our friends there. I am fond of intellect
myself, but it must be allowed that the most cultivated mind would not
do for any man what his money does at once for that good neighbour of
ours--who is a most excellent fellow all the same."
"I have met him for the first time to-day," said Walter, "in the most
accidental way."
"Ah! I thought you had known them; but it is true what I say. I look
upon money with a certain awe. It is inscrutable. The most perfect of
artists--you and I when we most look up to them, do also just a little
look down upon them! No, perhaps that is too strong. At all events, they
are there on sufferance. They are not of us, and they know it. Whether
they care for us too much, or whether they don't care at all, there is
still that uneasy consciousness. But with this good-natured
millionnaire, nothing of the sort. He has no such feeling."
"Perhaps because his feelings are not so keen. Miss Williamson has just
been telling me what you say--that her family are considered not vulgar
because they never pretend to be better than they are."
"Ah!" cried Lord Innishouran, startled, "did Katie divine that? She is
cleverer than I thought--and a very fine fortune, and an ambitious
little person. I hope her money will go to consolidate some property at
home, and not fall into a stranger's hands. I am all for the Highlands,
you see, Erradeen."
"And I know so little about them," said Walter.
But nevertheless he knew very well what was meant, and there was a
curious sensation in his mind which he could not describe to himself, as
if some perturbation, whether outside or in he could not tell which, was
calmed. He had a great deal of talk with his new friend as they threaded
the noisy little circles of the streets, among the shouting link-boys
and crowds of carriages, then reached the calm and darkness of the
thoroughfares beyond. Lord Innishouran talked well, and his talk was of
a kind so different from that of Underwood's noisy coterie, that the
charm of the unusual, added to so many other novel sensations, made a
great impression upon Walter's mind, always sensitive and open to a new
influence. He felt a hot flush of shame come over him when walking thus
through the purity of the night, and in the society of a man who talked
about great names and things, he remembered the noise of the club, the
heated air full of smoke and inanities, the jargon of the race-course
and the stables. These things filled him with disgust, for the moment at
least, just as the duets had given him a sense of disgust and impatience
at Sloebury. His new friend only left him at the door of his rooms,
which happened to lie in Lord Innishouran's way, and bade him good
night, promising to call on him in the morning. Walter had not been in
his rooms so early for many a day. He hesitated whether or not to go out
again, for he had not any pleasure in his own society; but pride came
to the rescue, and he blushed at the thought of darting out like a
truant schoolboy, as soon as the better influence was withdrawn. Pride
prevented him from thus running away from himself. He took a book out of
the shelves, which he had not done for so long. But soon the book
dropped aside, and he began to review the strange circumstances of the
evening. In a moment, as it seemed, his horizon had changed. Hitherto,
except in so far as money was concerned, he had derived no advantage
from his new rank. Now everything seemed opening before him. He could
not be unmoved in this moment of transition. Perhaps the life which was
called fast had never contained any real temptation to Walter. It had
come in and invaded the indolence of his mind and filled the vacant
house of his soul, swept and garnished but unoccupied, according to the
powerful simile of Scripture; but there was no tug at his senses now
urging him to go back to it. And then he thought, with a certain
elation, of Lord Innishouran, and pleasurably of the Williamsons. Katie,
was that her name? He could not but laugh to himself at the sudden
realisation of the visionary Miss Williamson after all that had been
said. What would Julia Herbert say? But Julia Herbert had become dim to
Lord Erradeen as if she had been a dozen years away.