The Wizard's Son. Volume 2of 3

Walter cast about in his mind for a moment before he replied. He had no mind to profane the sanctity of the Isle by betraying its gentle inmates to any stranger's curiosity. He said – "I think my nearest neighbour is a Mr. Williamson – not a distinguished name or person – who has a gorgeous great house and everything that money can buy. That means a great deal. It has all been made by sugar, or some equally laudable production."

"And Mr. Williamson – no, it is not distinguished as names go – has a daughter, Lord Erradeen?"

"I believe so, Miss Herbert."

"How solemn we are! It used to be Julia – and Walter. But never mind, when one gets into the peerage one changes all that. 'One fair daughter, and no more, whom he loved passing well!'"

"There is but one, I think; sons in an indefinite number, however, which lessens, I suppose, in a commercial point of view, the value of the lady."

"Lord Erradeen, you fill me with amazement and horror. If that is how you have been taught by your Scotch neighbours – "

"Miss Herbert, I am following the lead you have given me – trying humbly to carry out your wishes."

And then they looked at each other, and laughed. The wit was not of a high order, but perhaps that is scarcely necessary to make a duel of this kind between a young man and a young woman amusing. It was more than amusing to Julia. She was excited, her bosom panted, her eyes shone – all the more that Walter's calm was unbroken. It was provoking beyond measure to see him so tranquil, so ready to respond and follow her lead, so entirely unlikely to go any further. He was quite willing to amuse himself, she said to herself, but of feeling in the matter he had none, though there had been moments.

And it did not once occur to her that her antagonist was clever enough to have eluded her investigations, or that the smile upon his face was one of secret pleasure in the secret sanctuary whose existence he had revealed to no one – the little isle in the midst of Loch Houran and the ladies there. He went back to them while all this lively babble went on, seeing them stand and wave their hands to him, as he was carried away over the wintry water. He had come away with relief and eagerness to be gone; but how fair it all looked as he turned back out of this scenery so different from his loch, and from the side of a girl who wanted to "catch" him, Walter knew. Odious words! which it is a shame to think, much less speak, and yet which are spoken constantly, and, alas! in some cases, are true.

Notwithstanding this lively consciousness of the young lady's meaning (which in itself is always flattering and propitiates as much as it alarms), Walter accompanied Julia very willingly to the cottage. He had not thought of going there so soon. It was a kind of evidence of interest and special attraction which he had not meant to give, but that did not occur to him at the moment. The mother and daughter exerted themselves to the utmost to make his visit agreeable. They insisted that he should stay to luncheon, they sang to him and made him sing, and talked and made him talk, and burned delicate incense before him, with jibes and flouts and pretences at mockery. They had the air of laughing at him, yet flattered him all the time. He was such a prize, so well worth taking a little trouble about. The incense tickled his nostrils, though he laughed too, and believed that he saw through them all the time. There was no deception, indeed, on either side; but the man was beguiled and the woman excited. He went away with certain fumes in his brain, and she came down from the little domestic stage upon which she had been performing with a sense of exhaustion, yet success. Miss Williamson, a country beauty, or perhaps not even a beauty, with red hair and a Scotch accent, and nothing but money to recommend her! Money was much to ordinary mortals, but surely not enough to sweep away all other considerations from the mind of a young favourite of fortune. No! Julia believed in a certain generosity of mind though she was not herself sufficiently well off to indulge in it, and she could not think that money, important as it was, would carry the day.

In the mean time, it was apparent to all the world that Lord Erradeen had spent the greater part of his first day at Sloebury, at the Cottage; he had stayed to luncheon, he had promised to come back to practise those duets. A young man who has just come into his kingdom, and is therefore in circumstances to marry, and likely in all human probability to be turning his thoughts that way, cannot do such things as this with impunity. If he had not meant something why should he thus have affiché'd his interest in her daughter, Mrs. Herbert asked herself in polyglot jargon. There was no reason why he should have done so, had he not meant it. Thus Walter walked into the snare though it was so evident, though he saw it very well, and though the sportswoman herself trailed it on the ground before him and laughed and avowed her deep design. In such cases fun and frankness are more potent than deceit.

Walter continued in Sloebury for two or three weeks. He found the stagnation of every interest intolerable. He had nothing to do, and though this was a condition which he had endured with much composure for years before, it pressed upon him now with a force beyond bearing. And yet he did not go away. He betook himself to the Cottage to practise those duets almost every day; and presently he fell into the practice of visiting Captain Underwood almost every night; but not to confide in him as that personage had hoped. Underwood soon learned that a reference to Loch Houran made his companion silent at once, and that whatever had happened there the young lord meant to keep it to himself. But though Walter did not open his heart, he took advantage of the means of amusement opened to him. He suffered Captain Underwood to discourse to him about the turf; about horses, of which the young man knew nothing; about the way in which both pleasure and profit might be secured, instead of the ruin to which it is generally supposed that pursuit must lead. Underwood would have been very willing to "put" his young friend "up" to many things, and indeed did so in learned disquisitions which perhaps made less impression than he supposed upon a brain which was preoccupied by many thoughts. And they played a great deal, that deadly sort of play between two, which is for sheer excitement's sake, and is one of the most dangerous ways of gambling. Walter did not lose so much as might have been expected, partly because his interest was apt to flag, and partly that his companion had designs more serious than those of the moment, and was in no hurry to pluck his pigeon – if pigeon it was, of which he was not yet sure.

Thus the young man held himself up to the disapproval of the town, which, indeed, was ready to forgive a great deal to a peer, but "did not like," as all authorities said, "the way he was going on." He was behaving shamefully to Julia Herbert, unless he meant to marry her, which she and her mother evidently believed to the derision of all spectators; and to mix himself up so completely with Underwood, and abandon the society of his own contemporaries, were things which it was very difficult to forgive. He did not hunt as he had intended, which would have been an amusement suited to his position, partly because there was a good deal of frost, and partly because it was not an exercise familiar to Walter, who had never had the means of keeping horses. And the football club belonged to the previous ages, with which he now felt so little connection. Therefore, it happened after a time, notwithstanding the charm of his rank, that Sloebury felt itself in the painful position of disapproving of Lord Erradeen. Strange to say, he was very little different from Walter Methven, who was a young fellow who had wasted his time and chances – a kind of good-for-nothing. It was something of an insult to the community in which he lived, that he should be "caught" by the most undisguised flirt, and should have fallen under the influence of the person most like a common adventurer of any in Sloebury. He owed it at least to those who had contemplated his elevation with such a rush of friendly feeling that he should be more difficult to inveigle. Had he still been plain Walter Methven, he could not have been more easily led away.

The house in which Walter was the first interest, and which had risen to such high hopes in his elevation, was held in the strangest state of suspense by this relapse into his old ways. The only element of agreeable novelty in it was the presence of Symington, who had taken possession of the house at once, with the most perfect composure and satisfaction to himself. He was the most irreproachable and orderly retainer ever brought into a house by a young man returning home. He gave no trouble, the maids said; he was not proud, but quite willing to take his meals in the kitchen, and did not stand upon his dignity. Presently, however, it appeared that he had got everything in his hands. He took the control of the dinner table, made suggestions to the cook, and even to Mrs. Methven herself when she ordered dinner, and became by imperceptible degrees the chief authority in the house. In this capacity he looked with puzzled and disapproving eyes at his young lord. His first inquiries as to where the horses were kept, and where he was to find his master's hunting things, being answered impatiently, with an intimation that Walter possessed neither the one nor the other, Symington took a high tone.

"You will, no doubt, take steps, my lord, to supply yourself. I hear it's a fine hunting country: and for a young gentleman like you with nothing to do – "

"Don't you think I can manage my own affairs best?" the young man said.

"It's very likely ye think so, my lord," with great gravity, Symington said. He was laying the table for luncheon, and spoke sometimes with his back to Walter as he went and came.

"I suppose you are of a different opinion?" Walter said, with a laugh.

"Not always – not always, my lord. I've seen things in you that were very creditable – and sense too – and sense too!" said Symington, waving his hand. "I'm just thinking if I were a young gentleman in your lordship's place, I would get more enjoyment out of my life. But we never know," he added piously, "what we might be capable of, if we were exposed to another's temptations and put in another's place."

"Let me hear," said Walter, with some amusement, "what you would do if you were in my place."

"It's what I have often asked mysel'," said Symington, turning round, and polishing with the napkin in his hand an old-fashioned silver salt cellar. "Supposing ye were rich and great that are at present nobody in particular, what would ye do? It's an awful difficult question. It's far more easy to find fault. We can all do that. Your lordship might say to me, 'That silver is no what it ought to be.' And I would probably answer, 'It's been in a woman's hands up till now,' which he had never taken into consideration. And I may misjudge your lordship in the same way."

"Do you mean to say that I too have been in a woman's hands? But that is uncivil, Symington, to my mother."

"I would on no hand be unceevil to my lady; and it was not that I was meaning. To my thinking, my lord, you just dinna get enough out of your life. There is a heap of satisfaction to be got out of the life of a lord, when he has plenty of money, and five-and-twenty years of age like you. It is true your lordship is courting, which accounts for many things."

"What do you mean by courting? Come, we have had enough of this," Lord Erradeen said.

"I did not expect, my lord, that you would bide it long, though you were very good-natured to begin with. Courting is just a very well kent amusement, and no ill in it. But I will not intrude my remarks on your lordship. There is one thing though, just one thing," Symington said, re-arranging the table with formal care. "You'll no be going north again, my lord, as well as I can reckon, for nigh upon another year?"

"What have you to do with my going north?" Walter cried impatiently.

"Your lordship forgets that I will have to go with ye, which gives me a hantle to do with it," said Symington imperturbably; "but that will no be at least till it's time for the grouse? It will always be my duty: – and my pleasure, and my pleasure!" he added with a wave of his hand, "to follow your lordship to the place ye ken of, and do my best for you: but in the mean time I'm thinking this place suits me real well, and I will just bide here."

"Bide here, you old Solomon!" Walter cried, between laughter and wrath; "how do you know that you are to bide anywhere, or that I mean you to stay with me at all?"

Symington waved his hand dismissing this question with the contempt it merited. "I am just a person much attached to the family," he said, "and ye would not find it comfortable, my lord, up yonder, without me. But in the mean time ye will get a younger lad with my advice. And I'll just bide where I am with my lady, your mother, who is a lady of great judgment. I am getting an auld man; and your lordship is a young one; and if you are over-quiet at present, which is my opinion, it is no to be expected or desired that the like of that can last. Ye will aye find me here, my lord, when you want me. It will suit me far better at my years than running to and fro upon the earth at the tail of a young lad. But as long as I can draw one foot after another, I will go with your lordship up yonder, and never fail ye," Symington said.

CHAPTER VI

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.