Next morning Lord Innishouran fulfilled his promise of calling, and made his appearance almost before Walter, following the disorderly usages of the society into which he had fallen, was ready to receive him. The middle-aged eldest son was a man of exact virtue, rising early, keeping punctual hours, and in every way conducting himself as became one whose position made him an example to the rest of the world. And he was one who had a deep sense of the duties of his position. It seemed to him that this young man was in a bad way. “He is at a crisis, evidently at a crisis,” he had said to his wife, “and a good influence may be everything for him.” “He should marry Katie Williamson,” said Lady Innishouran. “The Erradeens may be odd, as you say, but they always manage to do well for themselves.” “Not always, not always, my dear; the property seems to grow, but the men come to little,” Innishouran said, shaking his head; and he left his house with the full intention of becoming a “good influence” to Walter. He proposed at once to put him up at the most irreproachable and distinguished of clubs, and asked him to dinner on the spot. “I am afraid there is nobody of consequence left whom I can ask to meet you,” he said; “but in any case Lady Innishouran is anxious to make your acquaintance.”
The Innishourans belonged to the ranks of those very great people for whom the season ends much earlier than for others. The duke had gone home early in June, and his son held that in the end of that month there was nobody of consequence left, except, he said to himself, cabinet ministers, who were perhaps something too much for a young Highland lord.
“And you must take your seat,” he said, “that is a matter of duty. If we had met earlier the duke would of course have been one of your supporters. I am sure my father will regret it very much. But, however, it can’t be helped, and I, you know, don’t occupy the necessary position; but there will be no difficulty in that respect.”
This was very different from Walter’s fine misanthropic Byronic idea of solitary grandeur, and defiance of the staring ranks of superannuated peers. “I am no politician,” he said awkwardly. “I had scarcely thought it was worth the while.” “It is always worth while to assume the privileges of your position,” Lord Innishouran said. Walter was taken possession of altogether by this good influence. And forthwith his path lay in a course of golden days. It was characteristic of Walter that it gave him no trouble to break his old ties, perhaps because of the fact that he had not, so to speak, made them by any exercise of his will, but simply drifted into them by the exertions of those who meant to benefit by his weakness. He did not, perhaps, put this into words, but yet felt it with a sort of interior conviction which was deeper than all those superficial shades of sentiment which bind some men to the companions of the day, even when they care little for them. Perhaps it was selfishness, perhaps strength—it is difficult sometimes to discriminate.
Thus Captain Underwood, after his interrupted, but latterly almost unbroken, sway over the young man’s time and habits, found himself suddenly left in the lurch, and quite powerless over his pupil. The captain tried in the first place the easy tone of use and wont.
“Come, Erradeen,” he said, “we shall be late. You forget the engagement you made with So-and-so, and So-and-so—”
“I think it was you who made the engagement,” Walter said. “I am not going to keep it anyhow. I am going with Innishouran to——”
“With Lord Innishouran!” the other cried, overawed. “So then,” he said, with such a sneer as is often effectual with the young and generous, “now that you have got in with the big-wigs you mean to throw your old friends over.”
“I don’t know much about old friends,” Walter said. “I don’t call the fellows at your club old friends.”
And then Captain Underwood made one of those mistakes which persons of inferior breeding are so apt to make. “You were glad enough to have them when you had nobody else to take any notice of you,” he said. This was after two or three attempts to recover his old standing, and when he began to feel a certain exasperation. Walter, though he was irritable by nature, had so much the best of the argument at this moment that he kept his temper.
“I don’t think,” he said, “that I ever was very glad. I allowed myself to be drawn into it faute de mieux.”
“And now I suppose you think you can throw me off too, like an old glove, in your infernal Scotch, cold-blooded way!” cried the captain.
“Am I Scotch?” said Lord Erradeen.
It was not much wonder, perhaps, if Underwood lost his temper. But another time he took matters more wisely. He would not give up in a fit of temper the hold he thought he had obtained upon the young man. He was very unwilling, as may be supposed, to resign his protégé and victim, and made spasmodic attempts to regain his “influence.” At all times this “influence” had been held precariously, and had it been a virtuous one like that of Lord Innishouran, Walter’s mentor and guide might have called forth the sympathy of the spectator; for he had many things to bear from the young man’s quick temper, and the constantly recurring dissatisfaction with himself and all things around which made him so difficult to deal with. Underwood, however, after his first disappointment, did not despair. The changeable young fellow, upon whom no one could calculate, whose mind was so uncertain, who would shoot off at a tangent in the most unexpected way, might as suddenly, as he had abandoned, turn to him again.
Miss Williamson received her new acquaintance very graciously when he went to see her next day. She met him with all the ease of an old acquaintance.
“Papa has been so busy,” she said, “putting John into the business, that we have only got here at the very end of the season. Yes, it is a nuisance; but think how many people there are much better than I, that never come at all. Oona Forrester for instance. You think perhaps she is too good even to wish to come? Not at all; there never was a girl so good as that. Besides, I don’t think it would be good. A girl ought to see the world as much as a boy. When you don’t know the world, it makes you uninteresting—afterwards; you don’t know how to talk to people. Not Oona, you know. I don’t think there is any want of interest about her; but most people. Well, did you like Lord Innishouran? He is very kind, and fond of exerting a good influence. I felt that he was the very person for you.”
“You think then that I stand in need of a good influence?” Walter said.
“Yes, after Captain Underwood,” said Katie calmly. “I think it was very lucky that you met papa, and that Lord Innishouran was at the theatre and came into our box. Perhaps you will look back to it and think—if you had not happened to come here, what people call accidentally, as you passed——”
“I might go a step further,” said Walter, “and say if I had not happened to be with Captain Underwood, who knew your father, I should never have known what good fortune was standing upon these steps, and never have made the acquaintance of Miss Williamson.”
“You are making fun of me,” said Katie. “I do not mind in the very least. But still it is just as well, perhaps, that you made the acquaintance of Miss Williamson. What were you going to do with yourself? Nothing so good I am sure as seeing the Falcon, and making friends with Lord Innishouran, who can be of a great deal of use to you. We cannot do much for you, of course. All sorts of people ask us, but still you know we are not of your class. We are only not vulgar, because—I told you last night.”
Walter laughed with guilty amusement, remembering how Lord Innishouran had justified Katie’s estimate of the world’s opinion.
“I do not understand,” he said, “how any one can think of you and vulgarity in the same day.”
“Well,” said Katie, calmly, “that is my own opinion. But still between me and Oona Forrester there is a great difference. I don’t deceive myself about that. And why is it? I am—oh, some hundred times more rich. I can do almost whatever I like; that is to say, I can turn papa, as people say, round my little finger (that is rather vulgar, by the way). I come up here, I go abroad, I meet all kinds of interesting people: and yet I am not like Oona when all is said. Now how is that? It does not seem quite fair.”
She looked at him with an honest pair of blue eyes out of a prepossessing, sensible little face, as she asked this question with all the gravity of a philosophical investigator. Notwithstanding a little figure which threatened in after life to be dumpy, and a profile of which the lines were by no means distinctly drawn, Katie Williamson at twenty had enough of the beauté du diable to make her rather an attractive little person. But as Walter looked at her, he too seemed to see a vision of the other with whom she compared herself. He always thought of Oona as she had stood watching his boat pushed off; his mind at the time had been too hurried and eager to remark her look; but that deeper faculty which garners up a face, a look, an act, which we do not seem to notice at the moment, and makes them afterwards more real and present to us than things that are under our eyes, had taken a picture of Oona as she stood in that profoundest deep of emotion, the most poignant moment of her life, with something of the wondering pang in her eyes which was in her heart. How many times since then had he seen her, though he had not seen her at the time! Looking at her in his mind’s eye, he forgot altogether the question Katie was putting to him, and the necessity of protesting politely that she did herself wrong. Indeed he was not roused to this till Katie herself, after pausing for reply, said with a little sharpness, “You don’t make me any answer, Lord Erradeen: you ought to tell me I have no reason to be so humble-minded, but that I am as good as Oona. That is what any polite person would say.”
Thus challenged, Walter started with a certain sheepishness, and hastened to inform her, stammering, that comparisons were odious, but that there was nobody who might not be flattered, who ought not to be pleased, who, in short, would not be happy to think themselves on the same level——
Katie broke through his embarrassed explanations with a laugh. “You quite agree with me,” she said, “and that is what I like you for. I am not a girl who wants compliments. I am an inquirer. And things are so funny in this world: everything about ourselves is so droll—”
“What is that you are saying about being droll, Katie?” said Mr. Williamson, coming in. “You do say very daft-like things, my dear, if that is what you mean. And how are you this morning, my Lord Erradeen? none the worse of that Falcon? Bless me, that falcon—that just set your teeth on edge the very sight of it. I am glad it was not served up to me. But you will stay to your lunch? We are just going to lunch, Katie and I; and we are both very fond of company. Now just stay. I will take it very kind if you have nothing better to do; and afterwards we’ll stroll together to the Caledonian Club, which you ought to be a member of, Lord Erradeen, for auld Scotland’s sake. I will put you up if that is agreeable to you. Come, Katie, show Lord Erradeen the way. I have been knocking about all the morning, and I am bound to say I’m very ready for my lunch.”
And in this way affairs went on. Unaccustomed as he was to consider what any change of direction might lead to, it suited Walter very well to have a place where he was always welcome within his reach, and to be urged to stay to lunch, to go to the opera and the theatre, to be the audience for Katie’s philosophies, which amused him. The atmosphere was new, and if not, perhaps, exciting, was fresh and full of variety. He had never in his life encountered anything like the easy wealthiness and homeliness, the power to do whatever they pleased, yet extreme simplicity in doing it, which characterised both father and daughter. And there was so much movement and energy about them that he was kept amused. Katie’s perfectly just impression of the opinion of the world had no embittering effect upon that little philosopher, whose consciousness of well-being, and of the many ways in which she was better off than her neighbours, gave her a composure and good humour which were delightful. By-and-by, though Walter himself was not aware of this, he began to receive invitations to entertainments at which the Williamsons were to be present, with that understanding on the part of society which is so instinctive, and which, though sometimes without foundation, rarely fails to realise its purpose. He was not indeed at all dependent upon them for his society. Lord Innishouran had opened the way, which once open, is so very easy for a young peer, whose antecedents, even if doubtful, have never compelled general disapproval. He who had known nobody, became in a month’s time capable of understanding all the allusions, and entering into that curious society-talk which the most brilliant intellects out of it are confused by, and the most shallow within gain a certain appearance of intelligence from. After a little awkwardness at the beginning, easily explained by the benevolent theory that he had only just come to town, and knew nobody, he had speedily picked up the threads of the new existence, and got himself into its routine. To a new mind there is so much that is attractive in it—a specious air of knowing, of living, of greater experience, and more universal interests is diffused over it. And how indeed should it be possible not to know more i............