The manner of life of which Symington disapproved went on till Christmas was over, and the new year had begun. It was not a new kind of life, but only the old, heightened in some of its features; less tragical in its folly because the young man was now no longer dependent upon his own exertions, yet more tragical in so far that life had now great opportunities for him, and means of nobler living, had he chosen. He received business letters now and then from Mr. Milnathort and from Shaw at Loch Houran which he read with impatience or not at all. Business disgusted him. He had no desire to take the trouble of making up his mind on this or that question. He let his letters collect in a pile and left them there, while he went and practised his duets, or lighted his cigar with the pink paper of the telegram which called his attention to letters unanswered, and went out to play ecarte with Underwood. He did not care for the ecarte. He did not care for the duets. Poor Julia's devices to secure him became day by day more transparent to him, and Underwood's attempts to gain an influence. He saw through them both, yet went on day by day. The Herberts, mother and daughter, spoke of him with a secure proprietorship, and Julia, though never without that doubt which adventurers know, had almost a certainty of the coronet upon her handkerchief which she worked upon a cigar-case for him by way of making quite sure what a viscount's coronet was. It is a pretty ornament. She was rather ashamed of her old-fashioned name, but that above it made everything right. Underwood for his part shook off the doubt which had been in his mind as to whether Lord Erradeen was a pigeon to be plucked. He thought of a campaign in town carried on triumphantly by means of his noble victim. It was worth waiting for after all.
And thus Christmas passed. Christmas, that season of mirth! There was the usual number of parties, at all of which Lord Erradeen was a favoured guest, and allowed himself to be exhibited as Miss Herbert's thrall. In these assemblies she used to talk to him about Miss Williamson. "Oh yes, a lady in Scotland, whose wealth is untold; hasn't Lord Erradeen told you? It is to be a match, I understand," Julia would say with a radiant countenance. "Sugar—or cotton, I don't remember which. When one has estates in the West Highlands, that is part of the programme. One always marries—sugar. That is a much prettier way of putting it than to say one marries money." This tantalised Sloebury a little, and painfully mystified Mrs. Methven, who had never heard Miss Williamson's name; but it did not change the evident fact that Lord Erradeen must either be engaged, or on the point of being engaged—or else that he was using Julia Herbert very ill. When the new year began, and it was suddenly announced that he was going away, there was a flutter and thrill of excitement over all the town. The rector, who met Walter on his way to the railway, and who was aware of all the expectations connected with him, stared aghast at the intimation. "Going away!" he said, then put forth a tremulous smile. "Ah, I see! going on some visits, to pot a few pheasants before the season is over."
"I don't think that would tempt me," Walter said. "I am going to town, and my mother will follow shortly. It is a removal, I fear——"
"You are going from Sloebury! But then—but then——" The old clergyman gasped for breath.
"My friends think I have wasted a great deal too much time in Sloebury," Lord Erradeen said, and he waved his hand to the rector, who went home with his lower lip dropped, and his cheeks fallen in, in a consternation beyond words. His excitement was as great, though of a different kind, as on that day when he ran in from church with his surplice still on, and the most extraordinary disregard of decorum to carry the news of Walter's elevation in rank to his wife. "That fellow is going off without a word," cried Mr. Wynn. "He has been amusing himself, that's all; but you never will listen to me. The girl has been going too far, a great deal too far, her mother ought not to have allowed it. And now I shall hear nothing else wherever I go," the rector said. He was almost ready to cry, being old and a nervous man by nature. "I thought it was settled this time, and that we should have no further trouble with her," which was a contradiction of himself after the words he had begun with. Mrs. Wynn soothed him as best she could, though indeed she had been the one who had all along doubted Lord Erradeen's "intentions," and bade the rash Julia beware.
"Perhaps," she said, "they have come to an understanding, my dear. For it was quite true what he told you: he has wasted too much time in Sloebury. A young man in his position should not hang about in a place like this."
"A young man in his position—should not raise expectations that are never to come to anything," the rector said; which was a truth so undeniable that even his peace-making wife could find nothing to reply.
The change of sentiment which led Walter away from Sloebury was accomplished almost in a moment. In a capricious and wayward mind, a touch is sometimes enough to change the entire direction of a life. He had been kept indoors by a cold, and for want of something else to do had read his letters, and even answered one or two of them. There were several from Shaw relating the course of events at Loch Houran; but these might not perhaps have moved him, had he not found inclosed in one of them a note, now somewhat out of date, from Oona. It was very short and very simple. "I found I was not authorised to do anything with the poor Frasers except to tell them you would not be hard upon them: and I took it upon me to assure old Jenny that whatever happened you would never take the coo, and Granny that she should die in peace in her own house even—which she would like, I think, for the credit of the glen—if she should live to be a hundred. I think you will not disown my agency by doing anything contrary to this. My mother sends her best regards." There was nothing more: but the words acted upon Walter's dissatisfied mind like the sudden prick of a lance. It seemed to him that he saw her again standing, with a somewhat wistful look in her eyes, watching him as his boat shot along the gleaming water—her mother with her waving handkerchief, her nodding head, her easy smile, standing by. Oona had said nothing, made no movement, had only stood and looked at him. How little she said now! and yet she was the only living creature (he said to himself in the exaggeration of a distracted mind) who had ever given him real help. She had ever given him her hand without hesitation or coquetry or thought of herself, to deliver him from his enemy—a hand that had purity, strength in its touch, that was as soft—as snow, he had said: cool, and pure, and strong. The thought of it gave him a pang which was indescribable. He rose up from where he sat among a litter of paper and books, the accumulations of an idle man, and went hurriedly to the drawing-room, where his mother sat alone by her fire—so much the more alone because he was in the next room, a world apart from her. He came in with a nervous excitement about him.
"Mother," he said, "I am going to town to-morrow."
She put down her book and looked at him. "Well, Walter?" she said.
"You think that is not of much importance; but it is, as it happens. I am going away from Sloebury. I shall never do any good here. I can't think why I have stayed—why we have stayed indeed; for it cannot have much attraction for you."
She put down the book altogether now. She was afraid to say too much or too little in this sudden, new resolution, and change of front.
"I can understand your feeling, Walter. You have stayed over Christmas out of consideration for——" She would have said "me" if she could, but that was impossible. "For the traditions of the season," she added, with a faint smile.
"That is a very charitable and kind way of putting it, mother. I have stayed because I am a fool—because I can't take the trouble to do anything but what suggests itself at the moment. Perhaps you think I don't know? Oh, I know very well, if that did any good. I am going to get the house ready, and you will join me when it is fit for you to live in."
"I, Walter?" she said, with a startled tone. Her face flushed and then grew pale. She looked at him with a curious mixture of pleasure and pain. It seemed like opening up a question which had been long settled. Death is better than the reviving flutters of life when these are but to lead to a little more suffering and a dying over again. She added, somewhat tremulously, "I think perhaps it would be better not to consider the question of removal as affecting me."
"Mother," he said, almost wildly, his eyes blazing upon her, "your reproaches are more than I can bear."
"I mean no reproach," she said, quietly. "It is simple enough. Your life should not be fettered by cares which are unnecessary. I am very well here."
"We can't go all over it again," he said. "We discussed that before. But you will say I have been as selfish, as careless as ever I was: and it is true—worse. Ah, I wonder if this was part of the penalty? Worse, in the old way. That would be a sort of a devilish punishment, just like him—if one were so silly as to believe that he had the power."
"Of whom are you speaking, Walter?" asked his mother, startled. "Punishment—who can punish you? You have done nothing to put yourself in any one's power."
He gazed at her for a moment as she looked at him with anxious eyes, investigating his face to discover, if she could, what he meant. Then he burst into an excited laugh.
"I am getting melodramatic," he said, "by dint of being wretched, I suppose."
"Walter, what is this? If there is indeed anything hanging over you, for God's sake tell me."
She got up hurriedly and went to him in sudden trouble and alarm, but the sensation of the moment did not carry him any further. He put away her hand almost impatiently. "Oh, there is nothing to tell," he said, with irritation. "You take everything au pied de la lettre. But I am going to town to-morrow, all the same."
And this he did, after a night in which he slept little and thought much. It may be thought that Oona Forrester's letter was a small instrument to effect so much, but it is not thus that influences can be reckoned. His mother had done a great deal more for him than Oona, but nothing she could have done or said could have moved him like the recollection of that small, soft hand by which he had held as if it were the anchor of salvation. It kept him from a sort of despair as he remembered it, through this turbulent night, as he lay awake in the darkness, asking himself could this be what his adversary meant? Not misfortune or downfall, which was what he had thought of, feeling himself able to defy such threats: but this self-abandonment to his natural defects, this more and more unsatisfactoriness of which he was conscious to the bottom of his heart. It did not occur to him that in the dread that came over him, and panic-stricken sense of the irresistible, he was giving the attributes of something far more than man to his maniac, or monomaniac, of Kinloch Houran. It was not the moment now to question what that being was, or how he had it in his power to affect the life and soul of another. The anguish of feeling that he was being affected, that the better part was being paralysed in him and the worse made stronger, was what occupied him now. When he got a little sleep in the midst of his tossings and troublings of mind and body, it was by the soothing recollection of Oona's refreshing, strengthening touch, the hand that had been put into his own and had given him the strength of two souls.
And so it was that next morning, when he ought to have been practising those duets at Julia Herbert's side, he was hurrying up to London as fast as steam and an express train could carry him. It was not perhaps the best place to go to for spiritual reformation, but at least it was a beginning of something new. And in the force of this impulse he went on for some time, proceeding at once to Park Lane, to push forward the preparations of the house, securing for himself a servant in the place of Symington, and establishing himself, for the interval that must elapse before the house was ready for him, in chambers. In this way he found occupation for a week or two. He made an effort to answer his letters. He suffered himself to go through certain forms of business with the London lawyers who were the correspondents of Mr. Milnathort; and so for a short time found himself in the position of having something to do, and, still more strange, of doing it with a lightness of mind and enlivenment of life which was extraordinary, and without a reflection in respect to the duets and the ecarte. They were over, these délaissements, and that was all about it.
It was not such plain sailing however after the beginning. Established in chambers which were pleasant enough, with plenty of money, with youth and health, and what was still more, as he thought, with rank and a title which had the effect of making everybody civil and more than civil to him, Lord Erradeen suddenly awoke to the fact that he was less than nobody in the midst of that busy world of London in which there are so many people who love a lord. Yes; but before you can love a lord, invite him, caress him, make his time pass agreeably, you must know him. And Walter knew nobody. The most curious, the most rueful-comic, insignificant-important of all preliminaries! The doors were open, and the entertainment ready, and the guest willing; but there was no master of the ceremonies to bring him within the portals. It had not occurred to him until he was there, nor had he thought, even had his pride permitted him to ask for them, of the need of introductions, and some helping hand to bring him within the reach of society. Society, indeed, had as yet scarcely come back to town, but yet there was a sprinkling at the club windows, men were to be seen in Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and even a few carriages with ladies in them frequented the Park. But what did that matter to him who knew nobody? He had no club. He was a stranger from the country. No house was open to him; he went about the streets without meeting a face he knew. To be sure, this must not be taken as an absolute fact, for there were people he knew, even relations, one very respectable clan of them, living at Norwood, in the highest credit and comfort, who would have received him with open arms. And he knew Mr. Wynn, the rector's nephew, a moderately successful barrister, who called upon and asked him to dinner with extreme cordiality, as did one or two other people connected with Sloebury. But in respect to the society to which he felt himself to belong, Walter was like the Peri at the gate of Paradise. He knew nobody. Had ever any young peer with means to keep up his rank, been in such a position before? It gave him a certain pleasure to think upon one other, born to far higher fortunes than himself, who had entered London like this in inconceivable solitude. Byron! a magnificent example that went far to reconcile him to his fate. Walter thought a great deal of the noble poet in these days, and studied him deeply, and took pleasure in the comparison, and consolation in the feeling that he could enter thoroughly into all those high, scornful-wistful, heroic utterances about mankind. The Byronic mood has gone out of fashion; but if you can imagine a youth richly endowed by fortune, feeling that his new honours should open every door to him, and also a little that he was fit to hold his own place with the best, yet perceiving no door move on its hinges, and forced to acknowledge with a pang of surprise and disappointment, and that sense of neglected merit which is one of the most exquisite pangs of youth, that nobody cared to make his acquaintance, or even to inquire who was Lord Erradeen! It is all very well to smile at these sentiments where there has been no temptation to entertain them. But the young peer, who knew nobody, entered completely into Byron's feelings. He pondered upon the extraordinary spectacle of that other young peer strolling haughtily, with his look like a fallen angel, up between the lordly ranks to take his hereditary seat: all the representatives of the old world staring coldly at him, and not one to be his sponsor and introduce him there. The same thing Walter felt would have to happen in his own case, if he had courage enough to follow the example of Byron; and he felt how hollow were all his honours, how mean the indifferent spectators round him, how little appreciated himself, with all the keenness of youthful passion and would-be cynicism. Unfortunately, he was not a Byron, and had no way of revenging himself upon that world.
This curious and irritating discovery, after all his good resolutions, had, it need scarcely be said, the reverse of an elevating influence upon him. He sought the amusement from which his equals shut him out in other regions. Strolling about town in an aimless way, he picked up certain old acquaintances whose renewed friendship was of little advantage. There will always be black sheep everywhere, and it is no unprecedented case for a boy from a public school, or youth from the university, to come across, six or seven years after he has left these haunts of learning, stray wanderers, who in that little time have fallen to the very depth of social degradation. When such a thing happens to a young man, the result may be a noble pity and profound impression of life's unspeakable dangers, and the misery of vice; or it may be after the first shock a sense that his own peccadilloes are not worth thinking of, seeing how infinitely lower down others have fallen. Walter stood between these two. He was sincerely sorry, and anxious to succour the fallen; but at the same time he could not but feel that in his position, who never could come to that, the precautions which poor men had to take were scarcely necessary. And what could he do? A young man must have something to amuse himself and occupy his time.
It was while he was sliding into the inconceivable muddle of an indolent mind and a vacant life that Underwood came to town. The captain's motives and intentions in respect to him were of a very mixed character, and require further elucidation: but the effect of his appearance in the mean time was a rapid acceleration of the downward progress. Underwood was "up to" many things which Lord Erradeen was not "up to" as yet, and the young man did not any longer, except by intervals, despise the society of the elder one, who brought, it could not be denied, a great many fresh excitements and occupations into his life. Under Captain Underwood's instructions he became acquainted with the turf, which, as everybody knows, is enough to give a young man quite enough to do, and a good many things to think of. And now indeed the time had come when the captain began to feel his self-banishment to Sloebury, and his patience, and all his exertions, so far as Walter was concerned, fully repaid. There was no repetition of that Byronic scene in the House of Lords. Instead of proudly taking his seat alone, and showing the assembled world how little he cared for its notice, Walter discovered that he was indifferent to the world altogether, and asked himself, What is the good of it? with the philosophy of a cynic. What was the good of it, indeed? What was it but a solemn farce when you came to look into it? The House of Commons might be something, but the House of Lords was nothing; and why should a man trouble himself to become a member of it? Then as to the clubs. What was the use of struggling to get admission to White's, or Boodle's, or any other of those exalted institutions which Walter only knew by name—when at Underwood's club, where he was received with acclamation, you had the best dinner and the best wine in London, and no petty exclusiveness? Walter was not by any means the only titled person in that society. There were quantities indeed of what the captain called "bosses" on its books. Why then should Lord Erradeen take the trouble to sue and wait for admittance elsewhere with these doors so open to him? In the midst of this new influx of life, it is scarcely necessary to say that the house in Park Lane came to a standstill. It stood through all the season profitless, of use to nobody; and Walter's life went on, alas, not to be described by negations, a life without beauty or pleasure; though pleasure was all its aim.
At Sloebury the commotion made by his departure had been great. At the Cottage there had been a moment of blank consternation and silence, even from ill words. Then Mrs. Herbert's energies awoke, and her vivacity of speech. Fire blazed from this lady's eyes, and bitterness flowed from her tongue. She fell upon Julia (who, indeed, might have been supposed the greatest sufferer) with violent reproaches, bidding her (as was natural) remember that she had always been against it: a reproach in which there was really some truth. Julia, too, had a moment of prostration in which she could hold no head at all against the sudden disappointment and overthrow, and still more overwhelming realisation of what everybody would say. She retired to her room for a day, and drew down the blinds and had a headache in all the forms. During that period, no doubt, the girl went through sundry anguishes, both of shame and failure, such as the innocent who make no scheming are free from; while her mother carried fire and flame to the Rectory, and even betrayed to various friends her burning sense of wrong, and that Julia had been shamefully used. But when Julia emerged out of the shelter of that headache she put down all such demonstrations. She showed to Sloebury, all on the watch to see "how she took it," a front as dauntless and eyes as bright as ever. In a campaign the true soldier is prepared for anything that can happen, and knows how to take the evil with the good. Had she weakly allowed herself to love Walter the result might have been less satisfactory; but she had been far too wise to run such a risk. Afterwards, when rumours of the sort of life he was leading reached Sloebury, she confided to her mother, in the depths of their domestic privacy, that it was just as well he was going a little wrong.
"Oh, a little wrong!" cried Mrs. Herbert vindictively. "If all we hear is true it is much more than a little. He is just going to the bad as fast as his legs can carry him—with that Captain Underwood to help him on; and he richly deserves it, considering how he has behaved to you."
"Oh, wait a little, mamma," Julia said. "I know him better than any one. He will come round again, and then he will be ready to hang himself. And the prodigal will come home, and then——Or, perhaps Tom Herbert will ask me up to town for the end of the season, after all the best is over, as he is sometimes kind enough to do. And I shall carry a little roast veal, just a sort of specimen of the fatted calf, with me to town." Thus the young lady kept up her heart and bided her time.
Mrs. Methven bore the remarks of Sloebury and answered all its questions with a heavier heart. She could not take any consolation in Walter's wrong-doing, neither could she have the relief of allowing that he was to blame. She accounted for the rearrangement of everything, which she had to consent to after taking many measures for removal, by saying that she had changed her mind. "We found the house could not be ready before the end of the season," she said heroically, "and what should I do in London in the height of the summer with nobody there?" She bore a fine front to the world but in reality the poor lady's heart had sunk within her. Oddly enough, Julia, the wronged, who at heart was full of good nature, was almost her only comforter. Julia treated Lord Erradeen's absence as the most natural thing in the world.
"I know what took him away in such a hurry," she said. "It was Miss Williamson. Oh, don't you know about Miss Williamson? his next neighbour at that Lock—something or other, a girl made of money—no, sugar. The next thing we shall hear is that you have a daughter-in-law with red hair. What a good thing that red hair is so fashionable! She is so rich, he was quite ashamed to mention it; that is why he never told you; but Walter," she cried, with a laugh, "had no secrets from me."
Mrs. Methven, in dire lack of anything to cling to, caught at Miss Williamson as at a rock of salvation. If he had fallen in love, did not that account for everything? She could only pray God that it might be true.
Symington had been bringing in the tea while Miss Herbert discoursed. When he came back to remove the tea things after she was gone, he "took it upon him," as he said, "to put in his word." "If you will excuse me, my lady," he said (a title which in a sort of poetical justice and amendment of fate Symington considered due to my lord's mother), "my lord could not do better than give his attention to Miss Williamson, who is just the greatest fortune in all the country-side. But, even if it's not that, there is nothing to be out of heart about. If he's taking a bite out of the apples of Gomorrah, he'll very soon find the cinders cranshing in his mouth. But whatever he is after, when it comes to be the time to go up yonder there will be an end to all that."
"My good Symington," said Mrs. Methven, "do you think it is necessary to excuse my son to me? It would be strange if I did not understand him better than any one." But notwithstanding this noble stand for Walter, she got a little consolation both from the thought of Miss Williamson, and of that mysterious going up yonder, which must be a crisis in his life.
Thus winter ran into summer, and the busy months of the season went over the head of young Lord Erradeen. It was a very different season from that which he had anticipated. It contained no Byronic episode at all. The House of Lords never saw its new member, neither did any of those gay haunts of the fashionable world of which he had once dreamed. He went to no balls, or crowded dazzling receptions, or heavy dinners. He did not even present himself at a levée. He had indeed fallen out of his rank altogether, that rank which had startled him so, with a kind of awe in the unexpected possession. His only club was that one of indifferent reputation to which Underwood had introduced him, and his society, the indifferent company which collected there. He began to be tolerably acquainted with race-courses, great and small, and improved his play both at billiards and whist, so that his guide, philosopher, and friend declared himself ready on all occasions to take odds on Erradeen. He spent a great deal of his time in these occupations, and lost a great deal of his money. They were almost the only things that gave him a semblance of an occupation in life. He was due at the club at certain hours to pursue this trade, which, like any other trade, was a support to his mind, and helped to make the time pass. At five-and-twenty one has so much time on hand, that to spend it is a pleasure, like spending money, flinging it to the right hand and the left, getting rid of it: though there is so much to be got out of it that has grown impossible to the old fogeys, no old fogey is ever so glad to throw it away.
And thus the days went on. They were full of noise and commotion, and yet, as a matter of fact, they were dullish as they dropped one after another. And sometimes as he came back to his rooms in the blue of the morning, and found as the early sun got up, that sleep was impossible, or on such a moment as a Sunday morning, when there was little or nothing "to do," Walter's thoughts were not of an agreeable kind. Sometimes he would wake from a doze with the beautiful light streaming in at his windows, and the brown London sparrows beginning to twitter, and would jump up in such a restlessness and fierce impatience with himself and everything about him as he could neither repress nor endure. At such moments his life seemed to him intolerable, an insult to reason, a shame to the nature that was made for better things. What was the good of going on with it day after day? The laughter and the noise, who was it that called them the crackling of thorns—a hasty momentary blaze that neither warmed nor lighted? And sometimes, even in the midst of his gaiety, there would suddenly come into his mind a question—Was this what was to happen to him if he resisted the will of the dweller on Loch Houran? Psha! he would say to himself, what was happening to him? Nothing but his own will and pleasure, the life that most young fellows of his age who were well enough off to indulge in it possessed—the life he would have liked before he became Lord Erradeen: which was true; and yet it did not always suffice him for an answer. At such times curious gleams of instinct, sudden perceptions as by some light fitfully entering, which made an instantaneous revelation too rapid almost for any profit, and then disappeared again—would glance across Walter's soul.
On a fine evening in June he was walking with Underwood to the club to dine. The streets were cool with the approach of night, the sky all flushed with rose red and every possible modification of heavenly blue, the trees in the squares fluttering out their leaves in the coolness of the evening, and shaking off the dust of day, a sense of possible dew going to fall even in London streets, a softening of sounds in the air. He was going to nothing better than cards, or perhaps, for a caprice, to the theatre, where he had seen the same insane burlesque a dozen times before, no very lively prospect: and was cogitating in his mind whether he should not run off to the Continent, as several men were talking of doing, and so escape from Underwood and the club, and all the rest of the hackneyed round: which he would have done a dozen times over but for the trouble of it, and his sense of the bore it would be to find something to amuse him under such novel circumstances. As they went along, Underwood talking of those experiences which were very fine to the boys in Sloebury, but quite flat to Walter now—there suddenly appeared to him, standing on the steps of a private hotel, in a light overcoat like a man going to dinner, a middle-aged, rustic-looking individual, with a ruddy, good-humoured countenance, and that air of prosperity and well-being which belongs to the man of money. "I think I have seen that man somewhere before," said Walter. Underwood looked up, and the eyes of all three met for a moment in mutual recognition. "Hallo, Captain Underwood!" the stranger said. Underwood was startled by the salutation; but he stopped, willingly or unwillingly, stopping Walter also, whose arm was in his. "Mr. Williamson! You are an unexpected sight in London," he said.
"No, no, not at all," said the good-humoured man, "I am very often in London. I am just going in to my dinner. I wonder if I might make bold, being a countryman and straight from Loch Houran, to say, though we have never met before, that I am sure this is Lord Erradeen?"
Walter replied with a curious sense of amusement and almost pleasure. Mr. Williamson, the father of the fabulous heiress who had been invented between Julia Herbert and himself!
"I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Lord Erradeen; you know our lands march, as