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 they say in Scotland. Are you engaged out to your dinner, gentlemen, may I ask, or are ye free to take pot luck? My daughter Katie is with me, and we were thinking – or at least she was thinking – for I am little learned in such matters – of looking in at the theatre to see a small piece of Mr. Tennyson's that they call the Falcon, and which they tell me, or rather she tells me, is just most beautiful. Come now, be sociable; it was no fault of mine, my lord, that I did not pay my respects to ye when ye were up at Loch Houran. And Katie is very wishful to make your acquaintance. Captain Underwood knows of old that I am fond of a good dinner. You will come? Now that's very friendly. Katie, I've brought you an old acquaintance and a new one," he said, ushering them into a large room cloudy with the fading light.
The sudden change of destination, the novelty, the amusing associations with this name, suddenly restored Walter to a freshness of interest of which the blasé youth on his way to the noisy monotony of the club half an hour before could not have thought himself capable. A young lady rose up from a sofa at the end of the room and came forward, bending her soft brows a little to see who it was.
"Is it any one I know? for I cannot see them," in simplest tones, with the accent of Loch Houran, Miss Williamson said.
CHAPTER VII
The room was large with that air of bare and respectable shabbiness which is the right thing in a long-established private hotel – with large pieces of mahogany furniture, and an old-fashioned carpet worn, not bare exactly, but dim, the pattern half-obliterated here and there, which is far more correct and comme il faut than the glaring newness and luxury of modern caravanseries. As Mr. Williamson, like a true Englishman (a Scotsman in this particular merely exaggerates the peculiarity), loved the costly all the better for making no show of being costly, it was naturally at one of these grimly expensive places that he was in the habit of staying in London. A large window, occupying almost one entire side of the room, filled it with dim evening light, and a view of roofs and chimneys, against which Katie's little figure showed as she came forward asking, "Is it any one I know?" It was not a commanding, or even very graceful figure, though round and plump, with the softened curves of youth. When the new-comers advanced to meet her, and she saw behind her father's middle-aged form, the slimmer outlines of a young man, Katie made another step forward with an increase of interest. She had expected some contemporaries of papa's, such as he was in the habit of bringing home with him to dinner, and not a personage on her own level. Mr. Williamson, in his good-humoured cordiality, stepped forward something like a showman, with a new object which he feels will make a sensation.
"You will never guess who this is," he said, "so I will not keep ye in suspense, Katie. This is our new neighbour at Loch Houran, Lord Erradeen. Think of me meeting him just by chance on the pavey, as ye may say, of a London street, and us next door to each other, to use a vulgar expression, at home!"
"Which is the vulgar expression?" said Katie. She was very fond of her father, but yet liked people to see that she knew better. She held out her hand frankly to Walter, and though she was only a round-about, bread-and-butter little girl with nothing but money, she was far more at her ease than he was. "I am very glad to make your acquaintance, Lord Erradeen," she said. "We were just wondering whether we should meet you anywhere. We have only been a week in town."
"I don't think we should have been likely to meet," said Walter with that tone of resentment which had become natural to him, "if I had not been so fortunate as to encounter Mr. Williamson as he says, on the pavé."
Katie was not pleased by this speech. She thought that Walter was rude, and implied that the society which he frequented was too fine for the Williamsons, and she also thought that he meant a laugh at her father's phraseology, neither of which offences were at all in the young man's intention.
"Oh," Katie cried, resentful too, "papa and I go to a great many places – unless you mean Marlborough House and that sort of thing. Oh, Captain Underwood!" she added next moment in a tone of surprise. The appearance of Captain Underwood evidently suggested to her ideas not at all in accordance with that of Marlborough House.
"Yes," he said, "Miss Williamson: you scarcely expected to see me. It is not often that a man is equally intimate with two distinct branches of a family, is it? But I always was a fortunate fellow, and here I am back in your circle again."
Walter's mind was considerably preoccupied by his own circumstances, and by the novelty of this new meeting; but yet he was quick-witted enough to remark with some amusement the recurrence of the old situation with which he was quite acquainted – the instinctive repugnance of the feminine side everywhere to this companion of his, and the tolerance and even friendliness of the men. Katie did all but turn her back upon Underwood before his little speech was ended. She said, "Will you ring for dinner, papa?" without making the slightest reply to it: and indeed, after another glance from one to the other, retired to the sofa from which she had risen, with a little air of having exhausted this new incident, and indifference to anything that could follow, which piqued Walter. Had she been a noble person either in fact or in appearance, of an imposing figure and proportions even, it might have seemed less insupportable; but that a little dumpy girl should thus lose all interest in him, classifying him in a moment with his companion, was beyond Lord Erradeen's patience. He felt bitterly ashamed of Underwood, and eager even, in his anger at this presumptuous young woman's hasty judgment, to explain how it was that he was in Underwood's company. But as he stood biting his lip in the half-lighted room, he could not but remember how very difficult it would be to explain it. Why was he in Underwood's company? Because he could get admittance to none better. Marlborough House! He felt himself grow red all over, with a burning shame, and anger against fate. And when he found himself seated by Katie's side at the lighted table, and subject to the questions with which it was natural to begin conversation, his embarrassment was still greater. She asked him had he been here and there. That great ball at the French Embassy that everybody was talking about – of course he had been one of the guests? And at the Duke's – Katie did not consider it necessary to particularise what duke, confident that no Christian, connected ever so distantly with Loch Houran, could have any doubt on the subject. Was the decoration of the new dining-room so magnificent as people said? Walter's blank countenance, his brief replies, the suppressed reluctance with which he said anything at all, had the strangest effect upon Katie. After a while she glanced at Captain Underwood, who was talking with much volubility to her father, and with a very small, almost imperceptible shrug of her little shoulders, turned away and addressed herself to her dinner. This from a little girl who was nobody, who was not even very pretty, who betrayed her plebeian origin in every line of her plump form and fresh little commonplace face, was more than Walter could bear.
"You must think me dreadfully ignorant of the events of society," he said, "but the fact is I have not been going out at all. It is not very long, you are aware, since I came into the property, and – there have been a great many things to do."
"I have always heard," said Katie, daintily consuming a delicate entrée, with her eyes upon her plate as if that was her sole interest, "that the Erradeen estates were all in such order that there was never anything for the heir to do."
"You speak," said Walter, "as if they changed hands every year."
"Oh, not that exactly; but I remember two; and I might have remembered others, for we have only been at Loch Houran since papa got so rich."
"What a pleasant way of remembering dates!"
"Do you think so, Lord Erradeen? Now I should think that to have been rich always, and your father before you, and never to have known any difference, would be so much more pleasant."
"There may perhaps be something to be said on both sides," said Walter; "but I am no judge – for the news of my elevation, such as it is, came to me very suddenly, too suddenly to be agreeable, without any warning."
Katie reconsidered her decision in the matter of Lord Erradeen; perhaps though he knew nobody, he might not be quite unworthy cultivation, and besides, she had finished her entrée. She said, "Didn't you know?" turning to him again her once-averted eyes.
"I had not the faintest idea; it came upon me like a thunderbolt," he said. "You perceive that you must treat me with a little indulgence in respect to dukes, &c. – even if I had any taste for society, which I haven't," he added, with a touch of bitterness in his tone.
"Oh," said Katie, looking at him much more kindly; then she bent towards him with quite unexpected familiarity, and said, lowering her voice, but in the most distinct whisper, "And where then did you pick up that odious man?"
Walter could not but laugh as he looked across the table at the unconscious object of this attack.
"I observe that ladies never like him," he said; "at home it is the same."
"Oh, I should think so," cried Katie, "everybody thought it was such a pity that Lord Erradeen took him up – and then to see him with you! Oona Forrester would be very sorry," Katie added after a pause.
"Miss Forrester!" Walter felt himself colour high with pleasure at the sound of this name, then feeling this a sort of self-betrayal, coloured yet more. "You know her?"
Katie turned round upon him with a mixture of amusement and disdain. "Know her! is there any one on the loch, or near it, that doesn't know her?" she said.
"I beg your pardon," cried Walter. "I forgot for the moment." Then he too retired within himself for so long a time that it was Katie's turn to be affronted. He devoted himself to his dinner too, but he did not eat. At last "Why should she be sorry?" he asked curtly as if there had been no pause.
"How can I tell you now while he sits there?" said Katie, lowering her voice; "some other time perhaps – most likely you will call in the day-time, in the morning, now that we have made your acquaintance."
"If you will permit me," Walter said.
"Oh yes, we will permit you. Papa has always wanted to know you, and so have I since – If you are allowed to come: but perhaps you will not be allowed to come, Lord Erradeen."
"Will not be allowed? What does that mean? and since when, may I ask, have you been so kind as to want to know me? I wish I had been aware."
"Since – well, of course, since you were Lord Erradeen," said the girl, "we did not know of you before: and people like us who have nothing but money are always very fond of knowing a lord – everybody says so at least. And it is true, in a way. Papa likes it very much indeed. He likes to say my friend, the Earl of – , or my friend, the Duke of – . He knows a great many lords, though perhaps you would not think it. He is very popular with fine people. They say he is not at all vulgar considering, and never takes anything upon him. Oh, yes, I know it all very well. I am a new person in the other way – I believe it is far more what you call snobbish – but I can't bear the fine people. Of course they are very nice to me; but I always remember that they think I am not vulgar considering, and that I never pretend to be better than I am."
There was something in this address spoken with a little heat, which touched Walter's sense of humour, a faculty which in his better moods made his own position, with all its incongruities, ruefully amusing to him. "I wonder," he said, "if I pretend to be better than I am? But then I should require in the first place to know what I am more distinctly than I do. Now you, on that important point, have, I presume, no doubt or difficulty? – "
"Not the least," she said, interrupting him. "The daughter of a rich Glasgow man who is nobody – that is what I am – everybody knows; but you, my lord, you are a noble person of one of the oldest families, with the best blood in your veins, with – " She had been eyeing him somewhat antagonistically, but here she broke off, and fell a laughing. "I don't believe you care a bit about it," she said. "Are you going with us to the theatre to see the Falcon, Lord Erradeen?"
"What is the Falcon?" he said.
"You have not seen it nor heard of it? It is Mr. Tennyson's," said Katie with a little awe. "How is it possible you have not heard? Don't you know that lovely story? It is a poor gentleman who has nothing but a falcon, and the lady he loves comes to see him. She is a widow (that takes away the interest a little, but it is beautiful all the same) with a sick child. When he sees her coming he has to prepare an entertainment for her, and there is nothing but his falcon, so he sacrifices it, though it breaks his heart. And oh, to see the terrible stage bird that is brought in, as if that could be his grand hawk! You feel so angry, you are forced to laugh till you cry again. That kind of story should never be brought to the literal, do you think it should?"
"And what happens?" said Walter, young enough to be interested, though not sufficiently well-read to know.
"Oh, you might guess. She had come to ask him for his falcon to save her child. What could it be else? It is just the contrariety of things."
"You cannot know very much, Miss Williamson, of the contrariety of things."
"Oh, do you think so? Why shouldn't I? I think I am precisely the person to do so. It seems to me in my experience," she added, fixing a look upon him which seemed to Walter's conscience to mean a great deal more than it was possible Katie could mean, "that almost everything goes wrong."
"That is a most melancholy view to take."
"But so is everything melancholy," said the girl. Her little simple physiognomy, her rosy cheeks and blue eyes, the somewhat blunted profile (for Katie had no features, as she was aware) and altogether commonplace air of the little person who produced these wonderful sentiments amused Walter beyond measure. He laughed perhaps more than was strictly decorous, and drew the attention of Mr. Williamson, who, absorbed in his talk with Underwood, had almost forgotten his more important guest.
"What is the joke?" he said. "I am glad to see you are keeping his lordship amused, Katie, for the captain and me we have got upon other subjects concerning the poor gentleman, your predecessor, Lord Erradeen. Poor fellow! that was a very sad business: not that I would say there was much to be regretted before the present bearer of the title," the rich man added with a laugh; "but at your age you could well have waited a little, and the late lord was a very nice fellow till he fell into that melancholy way."
"I told you everything was melancholy," said Katie in an undertone.
"And I," said the young man in the same suppressed voice, "shall I too fall into a melancholy way?" He laughed as he said so, but it was not a laugh of pleasure. Could he do nothing without having this family mystery – family absurdity – thrust into his face?