Something of the same perversity which had turned all his good resolutions to nothing on the night of his arrival, affected Walter when he went out next morning into Sloebury. The place had narrowed and grown small in every way. There was no horizon, only lines of brick houses; no space, only the breadth of a street; no air to breathe for a man who had come from the wide solitude of the hills, and the keen freshness of the Highland breezes. Everything here was paltry, and monotonous, and small; the people who met him—and he met everybody, and there was not a man who could claim the slightest acquaintance with him, or a woman who had seen him once in her neighbour’s drawing-room who did not now claim acquaintance with Lord Erradeen—seemed to have dwindled along with the scene. They had never been distinguished by intelligence or originality, but he had not been aware how paltry they were before. Had he seen Jeremy’s new turn-out? all the men inquired of him. He had already heard of it from Miss Merivale, who had given him a sketch of the history of the town, and what had happened during his absence, at breakfast. It was a high phaeton, “which I suppose must be the fashion,” Miss Merivale said. “You should really see it,” cried all the young men, with details about the harness and the high-stepping mare which were endless. What did Lord Erradeen care for young Jeremy’s phaeton or the high-stepping mare? but it was the only topic at Sloebury—that, and a report which Miss Merivale had also furnished him with about Julia Herbert. “Your old flame: no doubt it was to console herself in your absence,” said Cousin Sophy. This was disagreeable too. Walter did not care to hear that the girl who had distinguished himself and been distinguished by him should make herself remarkable in a flirtation with another man. He did not want her indeed, but he objected to the transfer of her affections. And everything around looked so barren, stale, flat, and unprofitable. Perhaps it was the quickening of life which his recent experiences, painful though they had been, had brought him, which made him feel how dead-alive everything was. At Loch Houran his mind had gone back to the safe and peaceable commonplace of his native town with something like an enthusiasm of preference for its calm common sense, and superiority to the fever and excitements of that life upon the edge of the supernatural. Now it seemed to him that superstition itself, not to speak of the heats and chills of human passion, were higher things than this cynic-steadiness, this limit of matter-of-fact. What would Sloebury think of those things that had been so real to him, that had rent his very being asunder? He could imagine the inextinguishable laughter with which his story would be greeted, and blushed at the possibility of betraying himself. A seer of ghosts and visions, a victim of mesmerism! He would become in a moment the scorn, as he was at present, the envy, of the town. Not a soul of them would understand. His experiences must be buried in his own bosom, and no one here must ever know that he had got beyond that surface of life to which all their knowledge was confined. When he met Underwood indeed this determination wavered a little: but then Underwood looked at him with an eagerness of inspection which was still more offensive. What did the fellow mean? Did he think it likely that he, a stranger, a person whom the better people disapproved, should be chosen as the confidant of Lord Erradeen?
“You have come back very soon,” the captain said; as indeed did everybody whom he met.
“No—not sooner than I intended,” said Walter, coldly. “It was business merely that took me there at all.”
Underwood examined his face with a curiosity that had knowledge in it. “I know that country so well,” he said. “I should like to know what you think of it. Of course you were at Auchnasheen? I have been weeks there, with the late lord—and at the old castle too,” he added, with a keen look.
“You were interested in the architecture, I suppose.”
Underwood said nothing for a moment. Then suddenly—“I wish you’d come and talk to me about it!” he cried. “Any time that you will come I’ll shut out everybody else. I’ll keep myself free—”
“My dear fellow,” Walter said in a supercilious tone, “why should I make Sloebury pay the penalty, and banish your friends from you for my selfish advantage?” To remember the time when this man had taken notice of him and been his superior, gave him a sense of impatient indignation. “Besides, I don’t know that there is anything to say.”
“Oh, as you please,” said Underwood; but when they passed each other, he turned back and laid a hand on Walter’s sleeve. “I keep early hours now,” he said. “After ten I am always free.”
Lord Erradeen walked away, half-angry, half-amused, by the man’s presumption, who, after all, was a nobody; but yet, he made a secret note in his mind, almost outside of his consciousness. After ten—It might, in the dreadful blank of those hours after ten at Sloebury (or even before ten for that matter), be a resource.
He had not gone very much further when he fell into another lion’s mouth. But how wrong, how cruel, to apply such a phrase to the red and smiling mouth, fresh as the cherries in the song, of Miss Julia Herbert, on her way from the rectory where she paid her old aunt a daily visit, to the cottage in which she was her mother’s stay and solace! She had been flirting a great deal in Walter’s absence, no one could deny. A young Wynn, a relation on the other side of the house, had been staying there, on leave from his regiment, and on such an occasion what else was there to do? But young Wynn was gone, and his circumstances were not such as to have stood in competition for one moment with Lord Erradeen. As soon as she saw him, Julia began to smile and wave her hand. If there was a little sense of guilt in her, so much the more reason for even an excess of friendliness now. And perhaps there was in Walter a certain desire to let the little world about, which had insisted upon her little infidelities, perceive that she was as much under his influence as ever, as soon as he chose to appear. This was not the way in which the world regarded the matter, if Walter had known. Instead of looking at him as the conquering hero, who had but to show himself, the spectators said pityingly that Julia Herbert had got hold of poor Lord Erradeen again.
“Oh, Walter!” she cried; then changed her tone with a very pretty blush, and said, “I ought to have said Lord Erradeen; but it was the surprise. And so you have come home?”
“I have come back,” he said, with a little emphasis.
“I see it all. Forgive me that I should be so silly—back, of course; that means a few days, that means you have come for your boxes, or to see your mother, or to know her wishes respecting the new furniture of the banqueting hall. Shall it be medi?val or renaissance? If you ask my advice——”
“I do; of course, I do. It is for that chiefly I am here.”
“That is what I thought. Renaissance, then. There, you have my opinion—with plenty of cupids and good, fat garlands——”
She laughed, and Walter laughed too, though he was not very much amused. But, of course, he could not speak to a lady as he had spoken to Underwood.
“Come now, tell me about it,” the young lady said. “You cannot refuse such a little bit of novelty to one who never sees anything new except a novel: and there is so little novelty in them! About what? Oh, about Scotland, and the scenery, and the old castle: and who you met, and what you did. Mayn’t I show a little curiosity—in one whom,” she added with that exaggeration of sentiment which leaves room for a laugh, “I have known all my life?”
“That, I hope, is not all the claim I have on your interest,” said Walter in the same tone.
“Oh, no, not half. There have been moments!—And then the romance of you, Lord Erradeen! It is delightful to touch upon the borders of romance. And your rank! I feel a great many inches higher, and ever so much elevated in my own estimation, by being privileged to walk by your lordship’s side. When are you going to take your seat and help to rule your country? They say the House of Commons is to be preferred for that. But there is nothing so delightful as a peer.”
“How lucky for me that you should think so. I may walk with you, then, to the——”
“Corner,” said Julia, “not too far; oh, certainly, not too far: or we shall have all the old ladies, male and female, making comments.”
“I don’t care for the old ladies—or their comments,” said Walter: the fun was languid, perhaps, but yet it afforded a little occupation when one had nothing else to do.
“You? Oh, of course not, as you will escape presently, and know all my wiles by heart already, it cannot make much difference to you. It is I who have to be considered, if you please, my lord. They will say there is that Julia Herbert at her old tricks, trying to take in poor Lord Erradeen—a poor, innocent young man in the snares of that designing baggage! They will probably add that the police should put a stop to it,” Miss Herbert said.
“The deluded old ladies! Without knowing that it is exactly the other way——”
“Now that is the prettiest speech you ever made,” said Julia. “I never heard you say anything so nice before. You must have been in very good society since you went away. Tell me, who was it?” she asked with her most insinuating look.
They were old practitioners both. They understood each other: they had flirted since they had been in long clothes, and no harm had ever come of it. This is, no doubt, what Miss Herbert would have said had any feminine critic interposed; but there was something more serious, as the feminine critic would have divined, at once, in Julia’s eye. She meant more, not less, than she said; and she was anxious to know, having her eyes upon all contingencies like a wise general, what rivals might have come in the way.
“I have met scarcely any one,” said Walter. “You cannot conceive what a lonely place it is. Oh, of course there are people about. I was promised a great many visitors had I stayed. On the other hand, even in winter, it is wonderfully beautiful. Coming back to this perfectly flat country, one discovers for the first time how beautiful it is.”
“Yes,” said Julia, indifferently; the beauty of the country did not excite her. “I have seen a photograph of your old castle. You can only get to it by water, Captain Underwood says. Oh, he has been a great authority on the subject since you went away. One of your castles is on Loch Houran; but the others——”
“If you like to call them castles,” said Walter, gently flattered by these queries, “there are two of them on Loch Houran. One I call a ruin, and the other a shooting-box——”
“Oh, you lucky, lucky person; and a house in town, and another grand place in Scotland! Aren’t you frightened to trust yourself among poor people who have nothing! Don’t you feel alarmed lest we should rush at you and tear you to pieces, and divide your spoils? I am very romantic. I should have the old castle,” she said with a side glance of provocation and invitation.
Her watchful eyes perceived a change in his countenance as she spoke. There were limits, it was evident, to the topics her flying hand might touch. She went on cleverly without a pause—
“You wonder what I should do with it? Restore it, Lord Erradeen. Build the walls up again, and make everything as it used to be. I should enjoy that—and then the furnishing, how delightful! Don’t you know that the aim and object of every rational being now is to make a little Victorian house look like a big Queen Anne one? or if not that, an Eastern harem with quantities of draperies, and mats and cushions. How much more delightful to have the real thing to work upon!”
“But my house is not a Queen Anne house, or an Oriental——”
“You don’t like to say the word, you good, delicate-minded young man! Of course not; but a castle like the Mysteries of Udolpho. At all events you must ask mamma and me to pay you a visit, and I shall take my lute like Emily in that beautiful story, and a small but well-chosen collection of books; and then whatever happens—suppose even that you shut my lover up in one of your dungeons——”
“Which I should certainly do; nay, hang him on the gallows-hill.”
“No, no,” she said, “not hang him; let him have the death of a gentleman. Here we are at the corner. Oh, you are going my way? Well, perhaps that makes a difference. You meant to pay your respects to mamma? I don’t think that I can in that case, Lord Erradeen, interfere with the liberty of the subject; for you have certainly a right, if you wish it, to call on mamma.”
“Certainly I have a right. I am prepared to obey you in every other respect; but Mrs. Herbert has always been very kind to me, and it is one of my objects——”
“How much improved you are!” cried Julia. “How nice you are! How grateful and condescending! Tell me whom you have been consorting with while you have been away. The Scotch have good manners, I have always heard. Who is your nearest neighbour in your old castle, Lord Erradeen?”
Walter cast about in his mind for a moment before he replied. He had no mind to profane the sanct............