It was late in October, when summer was gone even from the smooth
English lanes about Sloebury, and autumn, with that brave flourish of
flags and trumpets by which she conceals decay, was in full sway over
the Scotch hills and moors when Lord Erradeen was next heard of by those
interested in him. He had gone abroad at the end of the season, without
even returning to Sloebury to see his mother, and very little had been
known of him during this disappearance. Mrs. Methven, it is to be
supposed, knew something of his movements, but the replies she gave to
questions addressed to her were short and vague. She generally answered
that he was in Switzerland; but that is rather a wide word, as everybody
said, and if she was acquainted more particularly with his whereabouts
she chose to keep the information to herself. And in Scotland there was
nothing at all known about him. All kinds of business waited till he
should be there, or should answer to the appeals made him. Letters
elicited no reply, and indeed it was by no means certain that he got the
letters that were sent to him. Mrs. Methven writing to Mr. Milnathort,
avowed, though with reserve, that she was by no means sure of her son's
address, as he was travelling about; and at his club they had no
information. So that all the details of the management of the estates,
about which their proprietor required to be consulted, had accumulated,
and lay hopelessly in the Edinburgh office, sometimes arranging
themselves by mere progress of time, though this the angry lawyer,
provoked beyond measure, would not allow. The Williamsons had returned
to Loch Houran, to their magnificent modern castle of Birkenbraes, in
August, for the grouse: it being the habit of the hospitable
millionnaire to fill his vast house for those rites of autumnal
observance; but neither did they know anything of the wandering peer.
"We saw a great deal of young Erradeen in London," Mr. Williamson said;
"but at the end he just slipped through our fingers like a knotless
thread." "That seems to be his most prominent characteristic," said Lord
Innishouran, who for a time flattered himself that he had "acquired an
influence" over this unsatisfactory young man; and the other potentates
of the county shook their heads, and remarked that the Erradeens were
always strange, and that this new man must be just like the rest.
There was another too who began to be of the same opinion.
Notwithstanding the indignant manner in which Katie had darted away
after discovering the previous relations of Walter with Julia Herbert,
and hearing Underwood's malicious statement that "he must always have
some one to amuse himself with," there was yet in her mind a conviction
that something more must be heard of Lord Erradeen. He would write, she
thought, when he found that she had not waited for any explanation from
him. It was not possible that after the close intercourse that had
existed he would disappear and make no sign. And when months passed by
and nothing was heard of him, Katie was more surprised than she would
confess. He had "slipped away like a knotless thread." Nothing could be
more true than this description. From the moment when she turned away
from him in the great room at Burlington House, she had heard or seen
nothing more of Walter. Her heart was quite whole, and there was not any
personal wistfulness in her questionings; but she was piqued, and
curious, and perhaps more interested in Lord Erradeen than she had ever
been before.
In these circumstances it was very natural, almost inevitable, that she
should take Oona into her confidence. For Oona was known, on his first
appearance, to have "seen a great deal" of Lord Erradeen. This she
herself explained with some eagerness to mean that she had met him three
times--one of these times being the memorable moment of the eviction
which he had put a stop to, an incident which had naturally made a great
commotion in the country-side. But Mrs. Forrester had never felt the
slightest reluctance to talk of their intercourse with the young lord.
She had declared that she took a great interest in him, and that she
was his first friend on Loch Houran: and anticipated with cheerful
confidence the certainty of his coming back, "more like one of my own
boys than anything else," she said. The fact that the Forresters were
the first to know, and indeed the only people who had known him, did
indeed at the time of his first appearance identify them with Lord
Erradeen in a marked way. The minister and the factor, though not
match-makers, had allowed, as has been said, to steal into their minds,
that possibility which is more or less in the air when youth and maiden
meet. And there were others who had said--some, that Oona Forrester
would make a capital wife for Lord Erradeen, a young man who was a
stranger in the country; some, that it would be a good thing for Oona to
secure, before any one else knew him, the best match on the loch; and
some even, that though Mrs. Forrester looked such a simple person, she
had her wits all about her, and never neglected the interests of her
family. In the course of time, as Lord Erradeen disappeared and was not
heard of any more, this gossip drooped and died away. But it left a
general impression on the mind of the district that there was a tie of
friendship between Lord Erradeen and the ladies of the Isle. They had
something to do with him--not love, since he had never come again; but
some link of personal knowledge, interest, which nobody else had: any
information about him would naturally be carried there first; and Katie,
having elucidations to ask as well as confidences to make, lost no time
in carrying her budget to the Isle.
The true position of affairs there was unsuspected by any one. The blank
which Oona anticipated had closed down upon her with a force even
stronger than that which she had feared. The void, altogether unknown to
any one but herself, had made her sick with shame and distress. It was
inconceivable to her that the breaking off of an intercourse so slight
(as she said to herself), the absence of an individual of whom she knew
so little, not enough even for the most idiotical love at first sight,
should have thus emptied out the interests of life, and made such a
vacancy about her. It was a thing not to be submitted to, not to be
acknowledged even, which she would have died sooner than let any one
know, which she despised herself for being capable of. But
notwithstanding all this self-indignation, repression, and shame, it was
there. Life seemed emptied out of all its interest to the struggling,
indignant, unhappy girl. Why should such a thing be? A chance encounter,
no fault of hers, or his, or any one's. A few meetings, to her
consciousness quite accidental, which she had neither wished for nor
done anything to bring about. And then some strange difficulty, danger,
she could not tell what, in which he had appealed to her for her help.
She would have refused that help to no one. It was as natural for her to
give aid and service as to breathe. But why, why should a thing so
simple have brought upon her all this that followed? She was not aware
even that she loved the man; no! she said to herself with a countenance
ablaze with shame, how could she love him? she knew nothing of him; and
yet when he had gone away the light had been drawn out of her horizon,
the heart out of her life. It was intolerable, it was cruel; and yet so
it was. Nobody knew with what a miserable monotony the old routine of
existence went on for some time after. She was so indignant, so angry,
so full of resistance, that it disturbed her temper a little: and
perhaps the irritation did her good. She went on (of course, having no
choice in the matter) with all her old occupations just as usual,
feeling herself in a sort of iron framework within which she moved
without any volition of her own. The winter months passed like one long
blank unfeatured day. But when the spring came, Oona's elastic nature
had at last got the upper hand. There began again to be a little
sweetness to her in her existence. All this long struggle, and the
slowly acquired victory, had been absolutely unsuspected by those about
her. Mysie, perhaps, spectator as servants are of the life from which
they are a little more apart than the members of a family, divined a
disturbance in the being of her young mistress who was at the same time
her child; but even she had no light as to what it was; and thus
unobserved, unknown, though with many a desperate episode and conflict
more than bloody, the little war began to be over. It left the girl with
a throbbing experience of pain such as it is extraordinary to think
could be acquired in the midst of so much peace, and at the same time
with a sort of sickening apprehension now and then of the possibility of
a renewal of the conflict. But no, she said to herself, that was not
possible. Another time she would at least be forewarned. She would put
on her armour and look to all her defences. Such a cheap and easy
conquest should never be made of her again.
She had thus regained the command of herself without in the least
forgetting what had been, when Katie came with her story to claim her
advice and sympathy. Katie came from her father's castle with what was
in reality a more splendid equipage than that which conveyed her with
swift prancing horses along the side of the loch. She came attended by a
crew of gentlemen, the best in these parts. Young Tom Campbell, of the
Ellermore family, was her bow oar. He was furthest off, as being
hopelessly ineligible, and not having, even in his own opinion, the
least right to come to speech of the heiress, for whom he had a hot
boyish passion. Scott of Inverhouran, a Campbell too by the mother's
side, and not far off the head of his clan, was stroke; and between
these two sat the son of a Glasgow trader, who could have bought them
both up, and an English baronet who had come to Birkenbraes nominally
for the grouse, really for Katie. Tom of Ellermore was the only one of
the crew who might not, as people say, have married anybody, from the
Duke's daughter downwards. Katie was accompanied by a mild, grey-haired
lady who had once been her governess, and a pretty little girl of
fifteen, not indisposed to accept a passing tribute from the least
engaged of the gentlemen. Katie deposited her companions and her crew
with Mrs. Forrester, and calling Oona aside, rushed up-stairs to that
young lady's bed-chamber, where it was evident nobody could pursue them.
"Oh, Oona, never mind _them_," she cried. "Your mother will give them
their tea and scones; but I want you--I want your advice--or at least I
want you to tell me what you think. They will do very well with Mrs.
Forrester." Then she drew her friend into the little elbow-chair in the
window, Oona's favourite seat, and threw herself down on the footstool
at her feet. "I want you to tell me--" she said, with a certain
solemnity, "what you think of Lord Erradeen."
"Of Lord Erradeen?" said Oona, faintly. She was taken so completely by
surprise that the shock almost betrayed her. Katie fixed upon her a pair
of open, penetrating brown eyes. They were both fair, but Oona was of a
golden tint, and Katie of a less distinguished light brownness. Katie,
with her little profile somewhat blurred and indistinct in the outlines,
had an air of common sense and reason, while Oona's was the higher type
of poetry and romance.
"Yes; you know him better than any one about here. But first, I will
tell you the circumstances. We saw a great deal of him in London. He
went everywhere with us, and met us everywhere----"
"Then, Katie," cried Oona, with a little burst of natural impatience;
"you must know him a great deal better than I."
Said Kate calmly--"I am a quite different person from you, and I saw him
only in society. Just hear me out, and you will know what I mean. People
thought he was coming after me. I thought so myself more or less: but he
never said a word. And the last night we met another girl, who took hold
of him as some girls do--you know? Oh, not taking his arm with her hand,
as you or I should do, or looking at him with her eyes; but just with a
fling, with the whole of her, as those girls do. I was disgusted, and I
sent him away. I don't think yet that he wished it, or cared. But of
course he was obliged to go. And then Captain--I mean one that knew
him--told me--oh, yes, that he was like that; he must always have some
one to amuse himself with. I would not see him after: I just came away.
Now what does it mean? Is he a thing of that sort, that is not worth
thinking about; or is he--?--oh, no, I am not asking for your advice: I
ask you what you think."
Oona was not able to quench the agitation that rose up in her heart. It
was like a sea suddenly roused by an unforeseen storm.
"I wish," she said, "you would not ask me such questions. I think
nothing at all. I--never saw him--in that light."
"What do you think?" said Katie, without changing her tone. She did not
look in her friend's face to make any discovery, but trifled with the
bangles upon her arm, and left Oona free. As a matter of fact, she was
quite unsuspicious of her companion's agitation; for the question,
though very important, was not agitating to herself. She was desirous of
having an unbiassed opinion, but even if that were unfavourable, it
would not, she was aware, be at all likely to break her heart.
Oona on her side was used to having her advice asked. In the interval
she schooled herself to a consideration of the question.
"I will tell you, Katie, how I have seen him," she said, "here with my
mother, and among the poor cotters in the Truach Glas. How could I tell
from that how he would behave to a girl? He was very pretty, with my
mother. I liked him for it. He listened to her and did what she told
him, and never put on an air, or looked wearied, as gentlemen will
sometimes do. Then he was very kind to the cotters, as I have told you.
To see them turned out made him wild with indignation. You may judge by
that the kind of man he was. It was not like doing them a favour; it was
mending a miserable wrong."
"I have heard all this before," said Katie, with a slight impatience,
"but what has that to do with it? You are telling me facts, when I want
your opinion. The one has nothing to do with the other. I can put this
and that together myself. But what I want is an opinion. What do you
_think_? Don't put me off any longer, but tell me that," Katie cried.
"What do you want my opinion about?" asked the other, with also, in her
turn, some impatience in her voice.
Then Katie ceased playing with her bangles, and looked up. She had never
before met with such an unsatisfactory response from Oona. She said with
a directness which denoted a natural and hereditary turn for the
practical--"Whether he will come; and if he comes, what it will be for?"
"He will certainly come," said Oona, "because he must. You that have
lived on the loch so long--you know what the lords of Erradeen have to
do."
"And do you mean to say," cried Katie, with indignation, "that an old
silly story will bring him--and not me? If that is your opinion, Oona!
Do you know that he is a man like ourselves? Lord Innishouran thinks
very well of him. He thinks there is something in him. For my part, I
have never seen that he was clever; but I should think he had some
sense. And how could a man who has any sense allow himself to be led
into that?" She jumped up from her seat at Oona's feet in her
indignation. "Perhaps you believe in the Warlock lord?" she said, with
fine scorn. "Perhaps _he_ believes in him? If Lord Erradeen should speak
of that to me, I would laugh in his face. With some people it might be
excusable, but with a man who is of his century!--The last one was a
fool--everybody says so: and had his head full of rubbish, when he was
not going wrong. By the by!" Katie cried--then stopped, as if struck by
a new thought which had not occurred to her before.
"What is it?" said Oona, who had been listening with mingled resignation
and impatience.
"When we took Lord Erradeen up he was with that Captain Underwood, who
used to be with the old lord. I told him you would be sorry to see it.
Now that I remember, he never asked me the reason why; but Captain
Underwood disappeared. That looks as if he had given great importance to
what I said to him. Perhaps after all, Oona, it is you of whom he was
thinking. That, however, would not justify him in coming after me. I am
very fond of you, but I should not care to be talked about all over
London because a gentleman was in love with _you_!"
Oona had coloured high, and then grown pale. "You will see, if you think
of it, that you must not use such words about me," she said, with an
effort to be perfectly calm. "There is no gentleman in love--as you
say--with me. I have never put it in any one's power to speak so." As
she spoke it was not only once but a dozen times that her countenance
changed. With a complexion as clear as the early roses, and blood that
ebbs and flows in her veins at every touch of feeling, how can a girl
preserve such secrets from the keen perceptions of another? Katie kept
an eye upon her, watching from under her downcast eyelids. She had the
keenest powers of vision, and even could understand, when thus excited,
characters of a higher tone than her own. She did not all at once say
anything, but paused to take in this new idea and reconcile it with the
other ideas that had been in her mind before.
"This is very funny," said Katie, after an interval. "I never thought
anything dramatical was going to happen to me: but I suppose, as they
say in books, that your life is always a great deal more near that sort
of thing than you suppose."
"What sort of thing?" said Oona, who felt that she had betrayed herself,
yet was more determined than ever not to betray herself or to yield a
single step to the curiosity of the world as embodied in this inquiring
spirit. She added, with a little flush of courage, "When you, a great
heiress, come in the way of a young lord, there is a sort of royal
character about it. You will--marry for the sake of the world as well as
for your own sake; and all the preliminaries, the doubts, and the
difficulties, and the obstacles that come in the way, of course they are
all like a romance. This interruption will be the most delightful
episode. The course of true love never did run----"
"Oh stop!" cried Katie, "that's all so commonplace. It is far more
exciting and original, Oona, that we should be rivals, you and I."
"You are making a great mistake," said Oona, rising with the most
stately gravity. "I am no one's rival. I would not be even if----. But
in this case it is absurd. I scarcely know Lord Erradeen, as I have
told you. Let us dismiss him from the conversation," she added, with a
movement of her hands as if putting something away. It had been
impossible, however, even to say so much without the sudden flush which
said more to the eyes of Katie, not herself addicted to blushing, than
any words could do to her ears.
"It is very interesting," she said. "We may dismiss him from the
conversation, but we can't dismiss him from life, you know. And if he is
sure to come to Kinloch Houran, as you say, not for me, nor for you, but
for that old nonsense, why then he will be----And we shall be forced to
consider the question. For my part, I find it far more interesting than
I ever thought it would be. You are proud, and take it in King Cambyses'
vein. But I'm not proud," said Katie, "I am a student of human nature.
It will take a great deal of thinking over, and it's very interesting. I
am fond of you, Oona, and you are prettier and better than I am; but I
don't quite think at this moment that I will give in even to you,
till----"
"If you insist on making a joke, I cannot help it," said Oona, still
stately, "but I warn you, Katie, that you will offend me."
"Oh, offend you! Why should I offend you?" cried Katie, putting her arm
within that of the princess. "It is no joke, it is a problem. When I
came to ask for your opinion I never thought it would be half so
interesting. If he has good taste, of course I know whom he will
choose."
"Katie!" cried Oona, with a violent blush, "if you think that I would
submit to be a candidate--a competitor--for any man to choose----"
"How can you help it?" said Katie, calmly. "It appears it's nature. We
have a great deal to put up with, being women, but we can't help
ourselves. Of course the process will go on in his own mind. He will not
be so brutal as to let us see that he is weighing and considering. And
we can have our revenge after, if we like: we can always refuse. Come,
Oona, I am quite satisfied. You and me, that are very fond of each
other, we are rivals. We will not say a word about it, but we'll just go
on and see what will happen. And I promise you I shall be as fond of you
as ever, whatever happens. Men would say that was impossible--just as
they say, the idiots, that women are never true friends. _That_ is mere
folly; but this is a problem, and it will be very interesting to work it
out. I wonder if those boys have eaten all the scones," Katie said, with
the greatest simplicity, as she led Oona down-stairs. She was so
perfectly at her ease, taking the command of her more agitated
companion, and so much pleased with her problem, that Oona's proud
excitement of self-defence melted away in the humour of the situation.
She threw herself into the gaiety of the merry young party down-stairs,
among whom Mrs. Forrester was in her element, dispensing tea and the
most liberal supply of scones, which Mysie, with equal satisfaction,
kept bringing in in ever fresh supplies, folded in the whitest of
napkins. Katie immediately claimed her share of these dainties,
intimating at once, with the decision of a connoisseur, the kind she
preferred: but when supplied remained a little serious, paying no
attention to "the boys," as she, somewhat contemptuously, entitled her
attendants, and thinking over her problem. But Oona, in her excitement
and self-consciousness, ran over with mirth and spirits. She talked and
laughed with nervous gaiety, so that Hamish heard the sound of the fun
down upon the beach where he watched over the boats, lest a passing
shower should come up and wet the cushions of the magnificent vessel
from Birkenbraes, which he admired and despised. "Those Glasgow
persons," said Hamish, "not to be disrespectful, they will just be made
of money; but Miss Oona she'll be as well content with no cushions at
all. And if they'll be making her laugh that's a good thing," Hamish
said.