It may be supposed that the dinner which was served to Lord Erradeen
after this episode was done but little justice to. The trout was
delicious, the bird cooked to perfection; but the young man, seated in
sight of the apparently vacant chair, where so lately his visitor had
been seated, could scarcely swallow a morsel. Was he there still, though
no one could see him? or had he departed only to return again when
Symington and the meal had been cleared away, and the evening was free?
There was a sickening sensation at Walter's heart as he asked himself
these questions, and indeed, throughout this portion of his life, his
experience was that the actual presence of this extraordinary person was
very much less exciting and confusing than the effect produced during
his apparent absence, when the idea that he might still be there unseen,
or might appear at any moment, seemed to disturb the mental balance in a
far more painful way. In the present case the effect was overpowering.
Walter had been talking to him almost with freedom: it was impossible,
indeed, thus to converse--even though the conversation was something of
a struggle, with a man possessed of all the ordinary faculties, and in
appearance, though more dignified and stately than most, yet in no way
unlike other men--without a gradual cessation of those mysterious
tremors with which the soul is convulsed in presence of anything that
appears supernatural. The personage who inhabited, or (for it was
impossible to think of him as inhabiting a ruin) periodically visited
Kinloch Houran had nothing in him save his stateliness of aspect which
need have separated him from ordinary men. He would have attracted
attention anywhere, but except as a person of unusual distinction, would
have startled no one; and even when the young man so cruelly subject to
his influence talked with him, it was impossible to keep up the
superstitious terror which nature feels for the inexplainable. But as
soon as he withdrew, all this instinctive feeling returned. Walter's
nerves and imagination sprang up into full play again, and got command
of his reason. By moments it seemed to him that he caught a glimpse
still of an outline in the chair, of eyes looking at him, of the smile
and the voice which expressed so full a knowledge of all his own past
history and everything that was in him. This consciousness gave to his
eyes the same scared yet searching look which he had seen in those of
Symington, took his breath from him, made his head whirl, and his heart
fail. Symington waiting behind his chair, but eagerly on the watch for
any sign, saw that his young lord was ghastly pale, and perceived the
half stealthy look which he cast around him, and especially the entire
failure of his appetite. This is a thing which no Scotch domestic can
bear.
"You are no eating, my lord," he said in a tone of gentle reproach, as
he withdrew the plate with the untasted trout. ("That many a poor
gentleman would have been glad of!" he said to himself.)
"No, I am not particularly hungry," Walter said, with a pretence at
carelessness.
"I can recommend the bird," said Symington, "if it's no just a cheeper,
for the season is advanced, it's been young and strong on the wing; and
good game is rich, fortifying both to the body and spirit. Those that
have delicate stomachs, it is just salvation to them--and for those that
are, as ye may say, in the condition of invalids in the mind----"
Symington had entirely recovered from his own nervousness. He moved
about the room with a free step, and felt himself fully restored to the
position of counsellor and adviser, with so much additional freedom as
his young master was less in a position to restrain him, and permitted
him to speak almost without interruption. Indeed Walter as he
ineffectually tried to eat was half insensible to the monologue going on
over his head.
"Ye must not neglect the body," Symington said, "especially in a place
like this where even the maist reasonable man may be whiles put to it to
keep his right senses. If ye'll observe, my lord, them that see what ye
may call visions are mostly half starvit creatures, fasting or
ill-nourished. Superstition, in my opinion, has a great deal to do with
want of meat. But your lordship is paying no attention. Just two three
mouthfuls, my lord! just as a duty to yourself and all your friends, and
to please a faithful auld servant," Symington said, with more and more
insinuating tones. There was something almost pathetic in the insistance
with which he pressed "a breast of pairtridge that would tempt a saint"
upon his young master. The humour of it struck Walter dully through the
confusion of his senses. It was all like a dream to him made up of the
laughable and the miserable; until Symington at last consented to see
that his importunities were unavailing, and after a tedious interval of
clearing away, took himself and all his paraphernalia out of the room,
and left Walter alone. It seemed to Lord Erradeen that he had not been
alone for a long time, nor had any leisure in which to collect his
faculties; and for the first few minutes after the door had closed upon
his too officious servant a sense of relief was in his mind. He drew a
long breath of ease and consolation, and throwing himself back in his
chair gave himself up to momentary peace.
But this mood did not last long. He had not been alone five minutes
before there sprang up within him something which could be called
nothing less than a personal struggle with--he could not tell what.
There is a quickening of excitement in a mental encounter, in the course
of a momentous discussion, which almost reaches the height of that
passion which is roused by bodily conflict, when the subject is
important enough, or the antagonists in deadly earnest. But to describe
how this is intensified when the discussion takes place not between two,
but in the spiritual consciousness of one, is almost too much for words
to accomplish. Lord Erradeen in the complete solitude of this room,
closed and curtained and shut out from all access of the world, suddenly
felt himself in the height of such a controversy. He saw no one, nor did
it occur to him again to look for any one. There was no need. Had his
former visitor appeared, as before, seated opposite to him in the chair
which stood so suggestively between the fire and the table, his pulses
would have calmed, and his mind become composed at once. But there was
nobody to address him in human speech, to oppose to him the changes of a
human countenance. The question was discussed within himself with such
rapidity of argument and reply, such clash of intellectual weapons, as
never occurs to the external hearing. There passed thus under review the
entire history of the struggle which had been going on from the time of
Lord Erradeen's first arrival at the home of his race. It ran after this
fashion, though with the quickness of thought far swifter than words.
"You thought you had conquered me. You thought you had escaped me."
"I did; you had no power in the glen, or on the isle."
"Fool! I have power everywhere, wherever you have been."
"To betray me into wickedness?"
"To let you go your own way. Did I tempt you to evil before ever you
heard of me?"
"Can I tell? perhaps to prepare me for bondage."
"At school, at home, abroad, in all relations? Self-lover! My object at
least is better than yours."
"I am no self-lover; rather self-hater, self-despiser."
"It is the same thing. Self before all. I offer you something better,
the good of your race."
"I have no race. I refuse!"
"You shall not refuse. You are mine, you must obey me."
"Never! I am no slave. I am my own master."
"The slave of every petty vice; the master of no impulse. Yield! I can
crush you if I please."
"Never! I am--Oona's then, who will stand by me."
"Oona's! a girl! who when she knows what you are will turn and loathe
you."
"Fiend! You fled when she gave me her hand."
"Will she touch your hand when she knows what it has clasped before?"
Then Walter felt his heart go out in a great cry. If any one had seen
him thus, he would have borne the aspect of a madman. His forehead was
knotted as with great cords, his eyes, drawn and puckered together in
their sockets, shone with a gleam of almost delirious hatred and
passion. He held back, his figure all drawn into angles, in a horrible
tension of resistance as if some one with the force of a giant was
seizing him. He thought that he shrieked out with all the force of
mortal agony. "No! If Oona turns from me and all angels--I am God's then
at the last!"
Then there seemed to him to come a pause of perfect stillness in the
heart of the battle; but not the cessation of conflict. Far worse than
the active struggle, it was with a low laugh that his antagonist seemed
to reply.
"God's! whom you neither love nor obey, nor have ever sought before."
The room in which Lord Erradeen sat was quite still all through the
evening, more silent than the night air that ruffled the water and
sighed in the trees permitted outside. The servants did not hear a
sound. Peace itself could not have inhabited a more noiseless and
restful place.