Mrs. Forrester was most willing to put Hamish and the boat, or anything
else she possessed, at Lord Erradeen's service. "It is just the most
sensible thing you could do," she said. "They will be very late, and
half of them will have colds. Oona, you will just let Hamish know. But
Lord Erradeen, since you are here, will you not stay a little longer,
and get your dinner before you go? No? Well, I will not say another word
if it is not convenient. Just tell Hamish, Oona, my dear."
Walter followed her so closely when she went upon that mission that she
could not escape him. They stood together in the grey of the evening
light, upon the beach, while Hamish prepared the boat, Oona's mind in a
tumult of apprehension and resistance, with an insidious softness
behind, which she felt with despair was betraying her over again into
the folly she had surmounted. He had not the same commotion in his mind;
his thoughts were altogether bent on what was coming. She was his
confidant, his support in it, though he had not said a word to her. He
took her into account in the matter as a man takes his wife. She was a
part of it all, though it was not of her he was thinking. He spoke after
a moment in a tone full of this curious claim, which seemed to him at
the moment incontestable.
"It will never come to an end unless you stand by me," he said.
"Everything can be done if you will stand by me."
Oona, in her strange agitation, felt as if she had surprised him
thinking aloud; as if he did not address her, but merely repeated to
himself a fact which was beyond dispute. He said no more, neither did
she make any reply. And once more, as if in repetition of the former
scene, he turned round as he stepped into the heavy boat, and looked
back upon her as Hamish began to ply the oars. She stood and watched him
from the beach; there was no wave of the hand, no word of farewell. They
were both too much moved for expression of any kind; and everything was
different though the same. On the former occasion he had been escaping,
and was eager to get free, to get out of reach of an oppression he could
not bear; but now was going to his trial, to meet the tyrant, with a
certainty that escape was impossible. And for Oona there had been the
sensation of a loss unspeakable--a loss which she could neither confess
nor explain, which took the heart out of her life; whereas now there was
a re-awakening, a mysterious beginning which she could not account for
or understand. She stood on the beach till the boat had disappeared, and
even till the sound of the oars died out in the distance, in an
agitation indescribable. The first despairing sense that the influence
against which she had struggled was regaining possession of her, was for
the moment lost in an overwhelming tide of sympathy and response to the
claim he had made. He had no right to make that claim, and it was
intolerable that she should have so little power over herself as to
yield to it, and allow herself to become thus the subject of another.
Her pride, her reason, had been in arms against any such thraldom; but
for this moment Oona was again overcome. She had no power of
resistance--her very being seemed to go with him, to add itself to his,
as he disappeared across the darkling loch. Stand by him! The words went
breathing about her in the air, and in her mind, and everything in her
echoed and responded--Stand by him! Yes, to the death. This excitement
failed in a sudden chill and shiver, and sense of shame which covered
her face with blushes which no one saw, as startled by the gathering
dark, and the sound of Mysie's step hastening down to the landing-place
with a shawl for her, Oona turned again and ran swiftly up the winding
way.
The loch was like lead, with a ripple of mysterious changing lights in
the darkness, as the boat shot round under the shadow of Kinloch Houran.
All was as still as in a world of dreams, the sound of Hamish's oars in
their regular sweep alone breaking the intense stillness. Here and there
among the trees a light glimmered on the shore--a window of the
Manse--the door of the little inn standing open and betraying the ruddy
warmth within: but no sound near enough to interrupt the stillness.
Walter felt as though he parted with a certain protection when he
stepped upon the bit of mossed causeway which served as a landing pier
to the old castle, and, bidding Hamish good-night, stood alone in that
solitude and watched the boatman's red shirt, which had forced its
colour even upon the twilight, grow black as it disappeared. The
sensation in Walter's mind had little akin with that panic and horror
which had once overwhelmed him. No doubt it was excitement that filled
up his whole being, and made the pulses throb in his ears, but it was
excitement subdued; and all he was conscious of was a sort of saddened
expectation--a sense of a great event about to take place which he could
not elude or stave off--a struggle in which he might be worsted. "Let
not him that putteth on his armour boast himself like him that putteth
it off." He did not know what might happen to him. But the tremors of
his nervous system, or of his agitated soul, or of his physical
frame--he could not tell which it was--were stilled. He was intensely
serious and sad, but he was not afraid.
Symington, who had been in waiting, listening for his master's return,
opened the door and lighted him up the spiral stairs. The room was
already lighted and cheerful, the curtains drawn, the fire blazing
brightly.
"The days are creeping in," he said, "and there's a nip in the air
aneath thae hills--so I thought a fire would be acceptable." In fact the
room looked very comfortable and bright, not a place for mysteries.
Walter sat down between the cheerful fire and the table with its lights.
There is often at the very crisis of fate a relaxation of the strain
upon the mind--a sudden sense as of peril over, and relief. Thus the
dying will often have a glimmer in the socket, a sense of betterness and
hope before the last moment. In the same way a sensation of relief came
on Walter at the height of his expectation. His mind was stilled. A
feeling without any justification, yet grateful and consoling, came over
him, as if the trial were over, or at least postponed--as if something
had intervened for his deliverance. He sat and warmed himself in this
genial glow, feeling his pulses calmed and his mind soothed--he could
not tell how. How long or how short the interval of consolation was, if
a few minutes only, or an hour, or half a life-time, he could not tell.
He was roused from it by the sound of steps in the corridor outside. It
was a passage which ended in nothing--in the gloom of the ruinous
portion of the house--and consequently it was not usual to hear any
sound in it, the servants invariably approaching Lord Erradeen's rooms
by the stair. On this occasion, however, Walter, suddenly roused, heard
some one coming from a distance, with steps which echoed into the
vacancy as of an empty place, but gradually drawing nearer, sounding, in
ordinary measure, a man's footstep, firm and strong, but not heavy, upon
the corridor outside. Then the door was opened with the usual click of
the lock and heavy creak with which it swung upon its hinges. He rose
up, scarcely knowing what he did.
"You examined everything last night to find a secret passage," said the
new-comer with a humorous look, "which indeed might very well have
existed in a house of this date. There was actually such a passage once
existing, and connected with a secret room which I have found useful in
its time. But that was in another part of the house, and the age of
concealments and mysteries--of that kind--is past. Won't you sit down?"
he added, pleasantly. "You see I put myself at my ease at once."
Walter's heart had given such a bound that the sensation made him giddy
and faint. He stood gazing at the stranger, only half comprehending what
was happening. All that happened was natural and simple in the extreme.
The visitor walked round the table to the other side of the fire, and
moving the large chair which stood there into a position corresponding
to Walter's, seated himself in the most leisurely and easy way. "Sit
down," he repeated after a moment, more peremptorily, and with almost a
tone of impatience. "We have much to talk over. Let us do it
comfortably, at least."
"I can have nothing to talk over," said Walter, feeling that he spoke
with difficulty, yet getting calm by dint of speaking, "with an
undesired and unknown visitor."
The other smiled. "If you will think of it you will find that I am far
from unknown," he said. "No one can have a larger body of evidence in
favour of his reality. What did that poor little woman in Edinburgh say
to you?"
"I wonder," cried Walter, unconscious of the inconsistency, "that you
can permit yourself to mention her name."
"Poor little thing," he replied, "I am sincerely sorry for her. Had I
foreseen what was going to happen I should have guarded against it. You
may tell her so. Everything that is subject to human conditions is
inconsistent and irregular. But on the whole, taking life altogether,
there is not so much to be regretted. Probably she is happier _there_
than had she embarked, as she was about to do, in a struggle with me.
Those who contend with me have not an easy career before them."
"Yet one day it will have to be done," Walter said.
"Yes. You consent then that I am not unknown, however undesired," the
stranger said, with a smile. He was so entirely at his ease, at his
leisure, as if he had hours before him, that Walter, gazing in an
impatience beyond words, felt the hopelessness of any effort to hurry
through the interview, and dropped into his seat with a sigh of
reluctance and despair.
"Who are you?" he cried; "and why, in the name of God, do you thus
torment and afflict a whole race?"
"The statement is scarcely correct. I was a Highland youth of no
pretension once, and you are supposed to be Lord Erradeen, not only a
Scotch lord, but an English peer. That is what my tormenting and
afflicting have come to, with many solid acres and precious things
besides. Very few families of our antiquity have even survived these
centuries. Not one has grown and increased to the point at which we
stand. I see a great addition within our reach now."
"And what good has it all done?" Walter said. "They say that my
predecessor was a miserable man, and I know that I--since this
elevation, as you think it--have been----"
"Good for nothing. I allow it fully. What were you before? Equally good
for nothing; consuming your mother's means, opposing her wishes,
faithful to no one. My friend, a man who sets himself against me must be
something different from that."
To this Walter made no reply. He could not be called penitent for the
folly of his life; but he was aware of it. And he did not attempt to
defend himself. He was entirely silenced for the moment: and the other
resumed.
"I have always felt it to be probable that some one capable of
resistance might arise in time. In the mean time all that has happened
has been gain, and my work has been fully successful. It would rather
please me to meet one in the course of the ages who was fit to be my
conqueror, being my son. It is a contingency which I have always taken
into consideration. But it is not likely to be you," he said, with a
slight laugh. "I shall know my victor when he comes."
"Why should it not be I? If it be enough to hate this tyrannical
influence, this cruel despotism----"
"As you have hated every influence and every rule all your life," said
the other with a smile. "That is not the sort of man that does anything.
Do you think it is agreeable to me to be the progenitor of a race of
nobodies? I compensate myself by making them great against their
will--the puppets! I allow you to wear my honours out of consideration
to the prejudices of society: but they are all mine."
"It was not you, however, who got them," said Walter. "Can a grandfather
inherit what was given to his descendants?"
"Come," said the stranger, "you are showing a little spirit--I like that
better. Let us talk now of the immediate business in hand. You have
something in your power which I did not foresee when I talked to you
last. Then there were few opportunities of doing anything--nothing in
your range that I had observed, but to clear off incumbrances, which, by
the way, you refused to do. Now a trifling exertion on your part----"
"You mean the sacrifice of my life."
The stranger laughed--this time with a sense of the ludicrous which made
his laugh ring through the room with the fullest enjoyment. "The
sacrifice of a life, which has been made happy by ---- and by ---- and
by ----. How many names would you like me to produce? You have perhaps a
less opinion of women than I have. Which of them, if they knew all about
it, as I do, would pick up that life and unite their own to it? But
happily they don't know. She thinks perhaps--that girl on the isle--that
I mean her harm. I mean her no harm--why should I harm her? I harm no
one who does not step into my way."
"Man!" cried Walter--"if you are a man--would you hurt her for
succouring me? Would you treat her as you treated----"
"That was an accident," he said quickly. "I have told you already I
would have guarded against it had I divined----But your limited life is
the very empire of accident; and those who come across my path must take
the consequences. It is their own fault if they put themselves in the
way of danger. Let us return to the subject in hand. The woman whom you
must marry----"
The words suddenly seemed to close on the air, leaving no sort of echo
or thrill in it; and Walter, looking round, saw Symington come in with
the scared look he remembered to have seen in the old man's countenance
before, though without any sign in him of seeing the stranger. He asked
in a hesitating manner, "Did ye ring, my lord? You'll be wanting your
dinner. It is just ready to come up."
Walter was about to send the old servant hastily away; but a slight
sign from his visitor restrained him. He said nothing, but watched, with
feelings indescribable, the proceedings of the old man, who began to lay
the table, moving to and fro, smoothing the damask cloth, folding the
napkin, arranging the silver. Symington did everything as usual: but
there was a tremor in him, unlike his ordinary composure. Sometimes he
threw an alarmed and tremulous look round the room, as if something
terrifying might lurk in any corner; but while doing so brushed past the
very person of that strange visitor in the chair without a sign that he
knew any one to be there. This mixture of suppressed panic and
inconceivable unconsciousness gave Walter a suffocating sensation which
he could not master. He cried out suddenly, in a loud and sharp tone
which was beyond his own control, "Symington! Is it possible you don't
see----"
Symington let the forks and spoons he was holding drop out of his hands.
He cried out, quavering, "Lord, have a care of us!" Then he stopped
trembling to gather up the things he had dropped, which was a great
trouble, so nervous and tremulous was he. He collected them all at the
very foot of the man who sat smiling in the great chair.
"You gave me a terrible fright, my lord," the old man said, raising
himself with a broken laugh: "that was what you meant, no doubt. All
this water about and damp makes a man nervish. See! what should I see? I
am no one of those," Symington added, with a great attempt at precision
and a watery smile, "that see visions and that dream dreams."
"Why should you disturb the man's mind for nothing," said the visitor in
that penetrating voice which Walter felt to go through him, penetrating
every sense. He had grown reckless in the strange horror of the
circumstances.
"Don't you hear that?" he cried sharply, catching Symington by the arm.
The old man gave a cry, his eyes flickered and moved as if they would
have leapt from their sockets. He shook so that Walter's grasp alone
seemed to keep him from falling. But he remained quite unconscious of
any special object of alarm.
"Me! I hear naething," he cried. "There is nothing to hear. You have
listened to all those old stories till ye are just out of yourself. But
no me," Symington said with a quavering voice, but a forced smile. "No
me! I am not superstitious. You will no succeed, my lord, in making a
fool of me. Let me go. The trout is done by this time, and I must bring
up my dinner," he cried with feverish impatience, shaking himself free.
Walter turned round half-dazed to say he knew not what to the occupant
of that chair. But when he looked towards it there was no one there: nor
in the room, nor anywhere near was the slightest trace of his visitor to
be found.