The first to see the subject of so many thoughts was not any one of
those to whom his return was of so much importance. Neither was it at
Kinloch Houran that Walter first appeared. On a cold October evening, in
one of the early frosts from which everybody augurs a severe winter, and
in the early twilight which makes people exclaim how short the days are
getting, he knocked suddenly at the door of Mr. Milnathort's house in
Edinburgh. Being dark everywhere else, it was darker still in the severe
and classic coldness of Moray Place. The great houses gathered round,
drawing, one might have thought, a closer and closer circle; the shrubs
in the enclosure shivered before the breeze. Up the hill from the Firth
came the north-east wind, cutting like a scythe. It was a night when
even a lighted window gives a certain comfort to the wayfarer; but the
Edinburgh magnates had scarcely yet returned from the country, and most
of the houses were dark, swathed in brown paper and cobwebs. But winter
or summer made but little difference to the house of Mr. Milnathort, and
there a certain light of human welcome was almost always to be found.
Lord Erradeen came quickly along the Edinburgh streets, which are grim
in the teeth of a north-easter. His frame was unstrung and his spirit
unsatisfied as of old. He had been "abroad"--that is to say, he had been
hurrying from one place to another in search of the unattainable one
which should not be dull. Most places were dull; there was nothing to do
in them. He took in at a draught the capabilities of folly that were
there, then passed on in the vain quest. Had he been wholly ignoble he
would have been more easily satisfied. But he was not satisfied. In the
worst he seemed to want something worse, as in the best he wanted
something better. He was all astray upon the world, desiring he did not
know what, only aware that nothing was sufficient for his desires.
Underwood, who was his companion, had catered vulgarly for the unhappy
young man, who used with scorn the means of distraction provided him,
and was not distracted, and upon whom disgust so soon followed novelty
that his companion was at his wits' end. And now he had come back,
obeying an impulse which he neither understood nor wished to obey. A
necessity seemed laid upon him; all in a moment it had risen up in his
mind, a sense that he must get back. It was so involuntary, so
spontaneous, that it did not even occur to him at first to resist it, or
to think of it as anything but a natural impulse.
He had not been able to rest after this strange inclination came upon
him, and it seemed to him in the heat of it that he had always had the
same desire, that all the time this was what he had wanted, to get back.
He hurried along over land and water, sometimes in the stream of summer
tourists coming home, sometimes crossing the other tide of the sick and
feeble going away--and when he touched English soil again, that he
should have hurried to Edinburgh of all places in the world, was beyond
Walter's power of explanation even to himself. He had felt a barrier
between himself and the home of his youth. His mother was separated
altogether from his new existence. She could not comprehend it, he
thought, and his heart turned from the explanations that would be
necessary. He could not go to her; and to whom could he go? The
suggestion that came into his mind was as fantastical as the whole
strange story of his recent life. He was nothing indeed but a bundle of
caprices, moved and played upon as if by the winds. And it had seemed a
sort of relief to his uncertain mind and consuming thoughts when it
occurred to him to come to Moray Place to see the invalid who had known
so much about him, while he knew nothing of her. It relieved him, as any
resolution relieves an uncertain mind. It was something between him and
that future which always failed to his expectations. When he had made up
his mind he reflected no more, but went on, and even had an uneasy nap
in the railway-carriage as he came north; nor ever asked himself why he
was coming till he went up the steps at Mr. Milnathort's door, and then
it was too late for any such question. He mounted the long stone
staircase with all the throbbings of fatigue in his brain, the sweep and
movement of a long journey. Only once before had he been in this house,
yet it seemed familiar to him as if it had been his home, and the
unchanged aspect of everything affected him as it affects men who have
been away for half a life-time--so many things happening to him, and
nothing here. This gave him a certain giddiness as he followed the same
servant up the same stairs. He was not the same. He had been unconscious
of all the peculiarities of his fate when he crossed that threshold
before. He had known the good, but not the evil; and now the very
carpets, the sound of the door rumbling into the echoes of the tall,
silent house, were the same--but he so far from being the same! Then in
a moment out of the dim night, the half-lighted stair, he came upon the
soft blaze of light in which Miss Milnathort delighted. She lay on her
sofa as if she had never stirred, her old-young face in all its soft
brightness, her small delicate hands in continual motion. She gave a
little cry at the sight of Walter, and held out those hands to him.
"You have come!" she cried. "I was looking for you;" raising herself on
her couch as much as was possible to her, as if she would have thrown
herself into his arms. When she felt the pressure of his hands, tears
sprang to her eyes. "I knew," she cried, "that you would come. I have
been looking for you, and praying for you, Lord Erradeen."
"Perhaps," said Walter, moved too, he could scarcely tell why, "that is
how I have come."
"Oh, but I am glad, glad to see you," the poor lady said. "You never
came back last year; but I will not reproach you--I am too glad to have
you here. And where have you been, and what have you been doing? To see
you is like a child coming home."
"I have been in many different places, and uneasy in all," said Walter;
"and as for what I have been doing, it has not been much good: wandering
about the face of the earth, seeking I don't know what; not knowing, I
think, even what I want."
She held out her hand to him again: her eyes were full of pity and
tenderness.
"Oh how I wanted you to come back that I might have spoken freely to
you. I will tell you what you want, Lord Erradeen."
"Stop a little," he said, "I don't wish to plunge into that. Let us wait
a little. I think I am pleased to come back, though I hate it. I am
pleased always more or less to do what I did not do yesterday."
"That is because your mind is out of order, which is very natural," she
said. "How should it be in order with so much to think of? You will have
been travelling night and day?"
"Rather quickly; but that matters nothing; it is easy enough travelling.
I am not so effeminate as to mind being tired; though as a matter of
fact I am not tired," he said. "So far as that goes, I could go on
night and day."
She looked at him with that mingling of pleasure and pain with which a
mother listens to the confidences of her child.
"Have you been home to see your mother?" she asked.
Walter shook his head.
"I have had no thought but how to get to Scotland the quickest way. I
have felt as if something were dragging me. What is it? All this year I
have been struggling with something. I have sometimes thought if I had
come back here you could have helped me."
"I would--I would! if I could," she cried.
"It is not a thing that can be endured," said Walter; "it must come to
an end. I don't know how or by what means; but one thing is certain, I
will not go on bearing it. I will rather make an end of myself."
She put a hand quickly upon his arm.
"Oh do not say that; there is much, much that must be done before you
can despair: and _that_ is the thought of despair. Some have done it,
but you must not. No--not you--not you."
"What must I do then?"
She caressed his arm with her thin, little, half-transparent hand, and
looked at him wistfully with her small face, half child, half old woman,
suffused and tremulous.
"Oh!" she said, "my bonnie lad! you must be good--you must be good first
of all."
Walter laughed; he drew himself back a little out of her reach.
"I am not good," he said. "I have never been good. Often enough I have
been disgusted with myself, and miserable by moments. But if that is the
first thing, I do not know how to attain to it, for I am not good."
She looked at him without any change in her face while he made this
confession. It did not seem to make much impression upon her.
"I can tell you," she said, "how to overcome the devil and all his ways;
but it costs trouble, Lord Erradeen. Without that you will always be as
you are, full of troubles and struggles: but you should thank your God
that you cannot be content with ill-doing like those that are the
children of perdition. To be content with it--that is the worst of all."
"Well, then I am in a hopeful way, it appears," said Walter with a sort
of laugh, "for I am certainly far enough from being content." After a
minute's pause he added--"I said we should not plunge into this subject
at once; tell me about yourself. Are you well? Are you better?"
"I am well enough," she said, "but never will I be better. I have known
that for many years--almost from the moment when, to get away from
_him_, I fell off yon old walls, and became what you see."
"To get away from--whom?" He glanced round him as she spoke with a look
which was half alarmed and half defiant. "I know," he said, in a low
voice, "what delusions are about."
"From Him. What he is, or who he is, I know no more than you. I have
thought like you that it was my own delusion. I have wondered from year
to year if maybe I had deceived myself. But the upshot of all is what I
tell you. I am lying here these thirty years and more, because, being
very young, I had no command of myself, but was frightened and flew from
Him."
"It is against all possibility, all good sense, against everything one
believes. I will not believe it," cried Walter; "you were young as you
say, and frightened. And I was--a fool--unprepared, not knowing what to
think."
Miss Milnathort shook her head. She made no further reply; and there was
a little interval of silence which Walter made no attempt to break. What
could he say? It was impossible: and yet he had no real scepticism to
oppose to this strange story. In words, in mind, he could not allow that
either he or she were more than deceived; but in himself he had no doubt
on the subject. His intelligence was easily convinced, indeed, that to
attribute the events that happened to him to supernatural influence was
in contradiction to everything he had ever been taught, and that it was
superstition alone which could invest the mysterious inhabitant of
Kinloch Houran with power to act upon his mind across great seas and
continents, or to set any occult forces to work for that purpose.
Superstition beyond all excuse; and yet he was as thoroughly convinced
of it in the depths of his being as he was defiant on the surface. There
was perfect silence in the room where these two sat together with a
sense of fellowship and sympathy. As for Lord Erradeen, he had no
inclination to say anything more. It was impossible, incredible,
contrary to everything he believed: and yet it was true: and he did not
feel the contradiction to be anything extraordinary, anything to be
protested against, in this curious calm of exhaustion in which he was.
While he sat thus quite silent Miss Milnathort began to speak.
"Thirty years ago," she said, "there was a young Lord Erradeen that was
something like yourself. He was a distant cousin once, that never
thought to come to the title. He was betrothed when he was poor to a
young girl of his own condition in life. When he became Lord Erradeen he
was bidden to give her up and he refused. Oh, if he had lived he would
have broken the spell! He would not give up his love. I will not say
that he was not terribly beaten down and broken with what he heard and
saw, and what he had to bear; but he never said a word to me of what was
the chief cause. When the summons came he got us all to go to see the
old castle, and perhaps, with a little bravado, to prove that he would
never, never yield. How it was that I was left alone I can never
remember, for my head was battered and stupid, and it was long, long,
before I got the command of my senses again. It was most likely when
Walter (he was Walter too; it is the great Methven name) was attending
to the others, my brother and my mother, who was living then. I was a
romantic bit girlie, and fond of beautiful views and all such things.
When I was standing upon the old wall, there suddenly came forward to
speak to me a grand gentleman. I thought I had never seen such a one
before. You have seen him and you know; often and often have I thought I
have seen him since. And it may be that I have," she said, pausing
suddenly. It was perhaps the interruption in the soft flowing of her
voice that startled Walter. He made a sudden movement in his chair, and
looked round him as if he too felt another spectator standing by.
"I am not frightened now," said the invalid with her calm little voice,
"lying here so long putting things together I am frightened no more.
Sometimes I am sorry for him, and think that it is not all ill that is
in that burdened spirit. I have taken it upon me even," she said,
folding her little, worn hands, "to say a word about him now and then
when I say my prayers. I never thought at that time that he was anything
more than the grandest gentleman I ever saw. He began to speak to me
about my engagement, and if I thought of the harm I was doing Walter,
and that it was his duty to think of the family above all. It was like
death to hear it, but I had a great deal of spirit in those days, and I
argued with him. I said it was better for the family that he should
marry me, than marry nobody--and that I had no right to take my troth
from him. Then he began to argue too. He said that to sacrifice was
always best, that I could not love him, if I would not give up
everything for him. It might have been Scripture. What could I answer to
that? I was just dazed by it, and stood and looked in his face: he
looked like a prophet of God, and he said I should give up my love, if I
knew what true love was. I have little doubt I would have done it, after
that; but just then my Walter's voice sounded up from where he was
calling out to me. 'Where are you, where are you? nothing can be done
without you,' he cried. Oh, how well I remember the sound of his voice
filling all the air! I turned round and I said, 'No, no, how can I break
his heart':--when there came an awful change upon the face you know. His
eyes flared like a great light, he made a step forward as if he would
have seized me with his hands. And then terror took hold upon me, a kind
of horrible panic. They say I must have started back. I mind nothing
more for months and months," the soft little voice said.
The young man listened to this strange tragedy with an absorbed and
wondering interest; and the sufferer lay smiling at him in a kind of
half childlike, half angelic calm. One would have said she had grown no
older since that day; and yet had lived for long ages with her little
crushed frame and heart. He was overawed by the simplicity of the tale.
He said after a pause, "And Walter--? how did it end?"
For a moment she did not say anything, but lay smiling, not looking at
him. At last she answered softly with a great gravity coming over her
face--"Lord Erradeen, after some years and many struggles, married the
heiress of the Glen Oriel family, and brought a great deal of property
to the house. He was to me like an angel from heaven. And his heart was
broken. But how could I help him, lying crushed and broken here? What he
did was well. It was not the best he could have done; because you see he
could not give his heart's love again, and that is essential: but he did
no harm. There was just an ending of it for one generation when I fell
over yon wall. And his son died young, without ever coming to the age to
bear the brunt, and the late lord, poor man, was just confused from the
commencement, and never came to any good."
"What is the best he could have done?"
She turned to him with a little eagerness. "I have no instruction," she
said, "I have only the sense that comes with much thinking and putting
things together, if it is sense. I have lain here and thought it over
for years and years, both in the night when everybody was sleeping, and
in the day when they were all thinking of their own concerns. I think
one man alone will never overcome that man we know. He is too much for
you. If I have gleaned a little in my weakness, think what he must have
found out in all these years. But I think if there were two, that were
but one--two that had their hearts set upon what was good only, and
would not listen to the evil part--I think before them he would lose
his strength: he could do no more. But oh, how hard to be like that and
to find the other? I am afraid you are far, far from it, Lord Erradeen."
"Call me Walter--like my predecessor," he said.
"You are not like him. He was never soiled with the world. His mind was
turned to everything that was good. And me, though I was but a small
thing, I had it in me to stand by him. Two souls that are one! I am
thinking--and I have had a long, long time to think in--that this is
what is wanted to free the race from that bondage."
"Do you mean--that there has never been such a pair to do what you say?"
"Perhaps it is that there never has been a cripple creature like me,"
she said with a smile, "to find it out. And at the best it is just a
guess of mine. I have thought of everything else, but I can find nothing
that will do. If you will think, however," said Miss Milnathort, "you
will find it no such a light thing. Two of one mind--and that one mind
set intent upon good, not evil. They will have to know. They will have
to understand. The woman might miss it for want of knowing. She would
have to be instructed in the whole mystery, and set her mind to it as
well as the man. Do you think that is too easy? No, oh, no, it is not so
very easy, Lord Erradeen."
"It would be impossible to me," said Walter with keen emotion, "my mind
is not intent upon good. What I am intent on is--I don't know that there
is anything I am intent on: except to pass the time and have my own
way."
Miss Milnathort looked at him with the seriousness which changed the
character of her face. "He that says that," she said, "is near mending
it, Lord Erradeen."
"Do you think so?" he cried with a harsh little laugh, "then I have
something to teach you still, ignorant as I am. To know you are wrong,
alas! is not the same as being on the way to mend it. I have known that
of myself for years, but I have never changed. If I have to decide a
hundred times I will do just the same, take what I like best."
She looked at him wonderingly, folding her hands.
"I think you must be doing yourself injustice," she said.
"It is you that do human nature more than justice," said Walter; "you
judge by what you know, by yourself; you prefer what is good; but
I--don't do so. It is true: to know what is good does not make one like
it, as you think. It is not a mistake of judgment, it is a mistake of
the heart."
"Oh, my dear," said the poor lady, "you must be wronging yourself; your
heart is tender and good, your eyes filled when I was telling you my
story. I have seen that when there was any talk of fine and generous
things your eyes have filled and your countenance changed. You have
forgotten by times, and turned away from the right way; but you will not
tell me that, looking it in the face, you prefer what is wrong. Oh no,
Lord Erradeen, no, no."
"Perhaps," he said, "I never look anything in the face; that may be the
reason or part of the reason; but the fact is that I do not prefer good
because it is good. Oh no, I cannot deceive you. To be fully convinced
that one is wrong is very little argument against one's habits, and the
life that one likes. It does not seem worth while to test small matters
by such a big standard, and, indeed one does not test them at all, but
does--what happens to come in one's way at the moment."
A shade of trouble came over the soft little face. She looked up
wondering and disturbed at the young man who sat smiling upon her, with
a smile that was half scorn, half sympathy. The scorn, perhaps, was for
himself; he made no pretence to himself of meaning better, or wishing to
do better than his performance. And Miss Milnathort's distress was
great.
"I thought," she said, faltering, "that the truth had but to be seen,
how good it is, and every heart would own it. Oh, my young lord, you
have no call to be like one of the careless that never think at all. You
are forced to think: and when you see that your weirdless way leads to
nothing but subjection and bondage, and that the good is your salvation,
as well for this world as the world to come----"
"Does not every man know that?" cried Walter. "Is it not instinctive in
us to know that if we behave badly, the consequences will be bad one
way or another? There is scarcely a fool in the world that does not know
that--but what difference does it make? You must find some stronger
argument. That is your innocence," he said, smiling at her.
At that moment the young man, with his experiences which were of a
nature so different from hers, felt himself far more mature and learned
in human nature than she; and she, who knew at once so much and so
little, was abashed by this strange lesson. She looked at him with a
deprecating anxious look, not knowing what to say.
"If the victory is to be by means of two whose heart is set on good, it
will never be," said Walter with a sigh, "in my time. I will struggle
and yield, and yield and struggle again, like those that have gone
before me, and then, like them, pass away, and leave it to somebody else
who will be hunted out from the corners of the earth as I was. And so,
for all I can tell, it will go on for ever."
Here he made a pause, and another tide of feeling stole over him. "If I
were a better man," he said with a changed look, "I think I know
where--the other--might be found."
Miss Milnathort's soft, aged, childish countenance cleared, the wistful
look vanished from her eyes, her smile came back. She raised herself up
among her pillows as if she would have sat upright.
"Oh, my young lord! and does she love you like that?" she cried.
Walter felt the blood rush to his face; he put up his hands as if to
stop the injurious thought. "Love me!" he said.
To do him justice, the idea was altogether new to him. He had thought of
Oona often, and wondered what was the meaning of that softness in her
eyes as she looked after him; but his thoughts had never ventured so far
as this. He grew red, and then he grew pale.
"It is a profanity," he said. "How could she think of me at all? I was a
stranger, and she was sorry for me. She gave me her hand, and strength
came out of it. But if such a woman as that--stood by a true man--Pah! I
am not a true man; I am a wretched duffer, and good for nothing. And
Oona thinks as much of me, as little of me as--as little as--she thinks
of any pitiful, unworthy thing."
He got up from his chair as he spoke, and began to pace about the room
in an agitation which made his blood swell in his veins. He was already
in so excitable a state that this new touch seemed to spread a sort of
conflagration everywhere; his imagination, his heart, all the wishes and
hopes--that "indistinguishable throng" that lie dormant so often,
waiting a chance touch to bring them to life--all blazed into
consciousness in a moment. He who had flirted to desperation with Julia
Herbert, who had been on the point of asking Katie Williamson to marry
him, was it possible all the time that Oona, and she only, had been the
one woman in the world for him? He remembered how she had come before
his thoughts at those moments when he had almost abandoned himself to
the current which was carrying his heedless steps away. When he had
thought of her standing upon the bank on her isle, looking after him
with indefinable mystery and wistful softness in her eyes, all the other
objects of his various pursuits had filled him with disgust. He said to
himself, in the excitement of the moment, that it was this which had
again and again stopped him and made his pleasures, his follies,
revolting to him. This was the origin of his restlessness, his sometimes
savage temper, his fierce impatience with himself and everybody around
him. In fact, this was far from the reality of the case; but in a flood
of new sensation that poured over him, it bore a flattering resemblance
to truth, which dignified the caprice of his existence, and made him
feel himself better than he had thought. If love had, indeed, done all
this for him, struggling against every vulgar influence, must it not,
then, be capable of much more--indeed, of all?
Meanwhile Miss Milnathort lay back upon her pillows, excited, yet
pleased and soothed, and believing too that here was all she had wished
for, the true love and the helping woman who might yet save Erradeen.
"Oona!" she said to herself, "it's a well-omened name."
This strange scene of sentiment, rising into passion, was changed by the
sudden entry of Mr. Milnathort, whose brow was by no means so cloudless
or his heart so soft as his sister's. He came in, severe in the
consciousness of business neglected, and all the affairs of life
arrested by the boyish folly, idleness, and perhaps vice of this young
man, with endless arrears of censure to bestow upon him, and of demands
to place before him.
"I am glad to see you, my Lord Erradeen," he said briefly. "I have
bidden them put forward the dinner, that we may have a long evening; and
your things are in your room, and your man waiting. Alison, you forget
when you keep Lord Erradeen talking, that he has come off a journey and
must be tired."
Walter had not intended to spend the night in Moray Place, and indeed
had given orders to his servant to take rooms in one of the hotels, and
convey his luggage thither; but he forgot all this now, and took his way
instinctively up another flight of those tall stairs to the room which
he had occupied before. It brought him to himself, however, with the
most curious shock of surprise and consternation, when he recognised not
the servant whom he had brought with him, but old Symington, as precise
and serious as ever, and looking as if there had been no break in his
punctilious service. He was arranging his master's clothes just as he
had done on the winter evening when Lord Erradeen had first been taken
possession of by this zealous retainer of the family. Walter was so
startled, bewildered, and almost overawed by this sudden apparition,
that he said with a gasp--
"You here, Symington!" and made no further objection to his presence.
"It is just me, my lord," Symington said. "I was waiting at the station,
though your lordship might not observe me. I just went with your lad to
the hotel, and put him in good hands."
"And may I ask why you did that without consulting me; and what you are
doing here?" Walter cried, with a gleam of rising spirit.
Symington looked at him with a sort of respectful contempt.
"And does your lordship think," he said, "that it would be befitting to
take a young lad, ignorant of the family, _up yonder_?" With a slight
pause of indignant yet gentle reproach, after these words, he
added--"Will your lordship wear a white tie or a black?" with all the
gravity that became the question.