There is in the winter season, when the stream of tourists is cut off, a
sort of family and friendly character about the Highland railways. The
travellers in most cases know each other by sight, if no more; and
consult over a new-comer with the curiosity of a homely community, amid
which a new figure passing in the street excites sentiments of wonder
and interest as a novelty. "Who do you suppose that will be at this time
of the year?" they say; and the little country stations are full of
greetings, and everybody is welcomed who comes, and attended by kindly
farewells who goes away. There was no doubt this time as to who Lord
Erradeen was as he approached the termination of his journey; and when
he had reached the neighbourhood of the loch, a bustle of guards and
porters--that is to say, of the one guard belonging to the train, and
the one porter belonging to the station, familiarly known by name to all
the passengers--ushered up to the carriage in which he was seated the
beaming presence of Mr. Williamson.
"So here ye are," said the millionnaire. "Lord Erradeen! I told Tammas
he must be making a mistake."
"Na, na, I was making no mistake," said Tammas, in a parenthesis.
"And what have ye been making of yourself all this time?" Mr. Williamson
went on. "We have often talked of ye, and wondered if we would see ye
again. That was a very sudden parting that we took in London; but Katie
is just a wilful monkey, and does what she pleases; but she will be well
pleased, and so will I, to see you at Birkenbraes." And the good man
took his place beside the new-comer, and talked to him with the greatest
cordiality during the rest of the journey.
Thus Walter was received on his second arrival with the friendly
familiarity natural to the country-side. There seemed to him something
significant even in the change of association with which his visit
began. He had to promise to present himself at once at Birkenbraes, and
the very promise seemed to revive the feelings and purposes which had
been growing in his mind during that interval of social success in
London which, on the whole, had been the most comfortable period of his
life since he came to his fortune. His mind was occupied by this as he
was rowed once more round the half-ruined pile of Kinloch Houran to his
renewed trial. The afternoon was bright and clear, one of those
brilliant October days that add a glory of colour to the departing
summer; the water reflected every tint of the ruddy woods, thrown up and
intensified everywhere by the dark background of the firs. He thought
of the encounter before him with a fierce repugnance and indignation,
rebellious but impotent; but there were no longer in it those elements
of apprehension and mystery which had occupied all his being when he
came here for the first time. It had acquired all the reality of an
event not to be escaped from, not to be eluded; in itself something
almost worse than death, and involving consequences more terrible than
death--from which some way of escape must be found if heaven or earth
contained any way of salvation. He had banished it from his mind as long
as it was possible, and had wasted in endeavouring to forget it the time
which he might have occupied in searching for the means of overcoming
his enemy: and now the crisis was again near, and he knew scarcely more
than at first what he was to do.
Walter had listened to Miss Milnathort's suggestion with a momentary
elevation of mind and hope; but what was he, a "miserable duffer" as he
had truly called himself, to make such an effort? A heart set on good
and not evil: he laughed to himself with contemptuous bitterness, when
he thought how far this description was from anything he knew of
himself. Thus it was from the outset impossible that the redemption of
his race could be carried out by him. The only alternative then was to
yield. Was it the only alternative? To conduct his own affairs only as
the tool and instrument of another, to sacrifice affection, justice,
pity, every generous feeling, to the aggrandisement of his
family--Walter's heart rose up within him in violent refusal and
defiance. And then he thought of Katie Williamson. The storms in his
bosom had been quieted from the moment when he had come into contact
with her. The evil circumstances around him had changed; even now a lull
came over his mind at the thought of her. It was not the highest or the
best course of action. At the utmost it would only be to leave once more
to those who should come after him the solution of the problem; but what
had he to do with those that came after him, he asked himself bitterly?
In all probability it would be a stranger, a distant cousin, some one
unknown to him as he had been to his predecessor; and in the mean time
he would have peace. As he thought of it, it seemed to him that there
was something significant even in that meeting with Mr. Williamson. When
he came to the loch for the first time, with high hopes and purposes in
his mind, meaning to leave all the frivolities of life behind him and
address himself nobly to the duties of his new and noble position, it
was Oona Forrester whom he had encountered on the threshold of fate. All
the circumstances of his intercourse with her flashed through his mind;
the strange scene on the isle in which her touch, her presence, her
moral support, had saved him from he knew not what, from a final
encounter in which, alone, he must have been overthrown. Had he not been
a coward then and fled, had he remained and, with that soft strong hand
in his, defied all that the powers of darkness could do, how different
might have been his position now! But he had not chosen that better
part. He had escaped and postponed the struggle. He had allowed all
better thoughts and purposes to slip from him into the chaos of a
disordered life. And now that he was forced back again to encounter once
more this tyranny from which he had fled, it was no longer Oona that met
him. Who was he, to expect that Oona would meet him, that the angels
would come again to his succour? He could not now make that sudden
unhesitating appeal to her which he had made in his first need, and to
which she had so bravely replied. Everything was different; he had
forfeited the position on which he could confront his tyrant. But a
compromise was very possible, and it seemed to him that peace, and a
staving off of trouble, were in Katie Williamson's hand.
It is needless to enter into all the sensations and thoughts with which
the young man took possession again of the rooms in which he had spent
the most extraordinary crisis of his life. It was still daylight when he
reached Kinloch Houran, and the first thing he did was to make a
stealthy and cautious examination of his sitting-room, looking into
every crevice in an accidental sort of way, concealing even from himself
the scrutiny in which he was engaged. Could he have found any trace of
the sliding panel or secret entrance so dear to romance, it would have
consoled him; but one side of the room was the outer wall, another was
the modern partition which separated it from his bed-room, and of the
others one was filled up with the bookshelves which he had been
examining when his visitor entered on the previous occasion, while the
fourth was the wall of the corridor which led into the ruinous part of
the castle, and had not a possibility of any opening in it.
He made these researches by intervals, pretending other motives to
himself, but with the strangest sense that he was making himself
ridiculous, and exposing himself to contemptuous laughter, though so far
as his senses were cognisant there was nobody there either to see or to
laugh. The night, however, passed with perfect tranquillity, and in the
morning he set out early on his way to Birkenbraes. If it was there that
the question was to be solved, it was better that it should be done
without delay.