The miseries of the night’s imprisonment were soon forgotten. Oona, elastic in youthful health, recovered in a few days, she said in a few hours, from its effects, and the keen reality of the after events dimmed in her mind the mystery of that extraordinary moment which appeared now like a dream, too wonderful to be true, too inexplicable and beyond experience to come into natural life at all. They spoke of it to each other with bated breath, but not till some time after their rescue, when the still higher excitement of their near approach to death—a thing which reveals the value and charm of life as nothing else does—had somewhat subsided in their minds. But their recollections were confused, they could not tell how; and as Walter had never been sure after they were over, whether the terrible conflicts which he had gone through were not conflicts between the better and worse parts of his own nature, without any external influence, so they asked each other now whether the mysterious chamber, the burning lamp, the strange accessories of a concealed and mysterious life, were dreams of disordered fancy, or something real and actual. They could not explain these things to each other, neither could they understand what it was that made the throwing down of the light of such vital importance. Was it common fire, acting after the ordinary laws of nature and finding ready fuel in the dry wood and antique furniture? or was it something more mystic, more momentous? They gave little explanation to questioners, not so much because they were unwilling, as because they were unable; and when they discussed it between themselves became more and more confused as the days went on. It became like a phantasmagoria, sometimes suddenly appearing in all the vivid lines of reality, sometimes fading into a pale apparition which memory could scarcely retain.
To the world in general the fact of a great fire, a thing unfortunately not very rare in the records of ancient houses, became after a while a very simple piece of history; and the wonderful escape of Lord Erradeen and Miss Forrester, and their subsequent betrothal and marriage, a pretty piece of natural romance. The tower, now preserving nothing more than a certain squareness in its mass of ruins, showed traces of two rooms that might have been, but everything was destroyed except the stones, and any remains that might have withstood the action of the fire were buried deep under the fallen walls; nor could any trace be found of concealed passages or any way of descent into the house from that unsuspected hiding-place. One thing was certain, however, that the being who had exercised so strange an influence on a year of his life never appeared to Walter more. There were moments in which he felt, with a pang of alarm, that concentration of his thoughts upon himself, that subtle direction and intensification of his mind, as if it had suddenly been driven into a dialogue with some one invisible, which had been the worst of all the sufferings he had to bear; but these, after the first terror, proved to be within the power of his own efforts to resist and shake off, and never came to any agonising crisis like that which he had formerly passed through. His marriage, which took place as soon as circumstances would permit, ended even these last contentions of the spirit. And if in the midst of his happiness he was sometimes tortured by the thought that the change of his life from the evil way to the good one had all the results of the most refined selfishness, as his adversary had suggested, and that he was amply proving the ways of righteousness to be those of pleasantness, and godliness to be great gain, that thought was too ethereal for common use, and did not stand the contact of reality. Mr. Cameron, to whom he submitted it in some moment of confidence, smiled with the patience of old age upon this overstrained self-torment.
“It is true enough,” the minister said, “that the right way is a way of pleasantness, and that all the paths of wisdom are peace. But life has not said out its last word, and ye will have to tread them one time or other with bleeding feet, or all is done—if the Lord has not given you a lot apart from that of other men. And human nature,” the old man said, not without a little recollection of some sermon, at which he smiled as he spoke, “is so perverse, that when trouble comes, you that are afraid of your happiness will be the first to cry out and upbraid the good Lord that does not make it everlasting. Wait, my young man, wait—till perhaps you have a boy at your side that will vex your heart as children only can vex those that love them—wait till death steps into your house, as step he must——”
“Stop!” cried Walter, with a wild sudden pang of that terror of which the Italian poet speaks, which makes all the earth a desert—
“Senza quella
Nova, sola, infinita,
Felicitá che il suo pensier figura.”
He never complained again of being too happy, or forgot that one time or other the path of life must be trod with bleeding feet.
“But I’ll not deny,” said the minister, “that to the like of you, my young lord, with so much in your power, there is no happier way of amusing yourself than just in being of use and service to your poor fellow-creatures that want so much and have so little. Man!” cried Mr. Cameron, “I would have given my head to be able to do at your age the half or quarter of what you can do with a scratch of your pen!—and you must mind that you are bound to do it,” he added with a smile.
But before this serene course of life began which Walter found too happy, there was an interval of anxiety and pain. Mrs. Methven did not escape, like the rest, from the consequences of the night’s vigil. She got up indeed from her faint, and received with speechless thanksgiving her son back from the dead, as she thought, but had herself to be carried to his room in the old castle, and there struggled for weeks in the grips of fever, brought on, it was said, by the night’s exposure. But this she would not herself allow. She had felt it, she said, before she left her home, but concealed it, not to be hindered from obeying her son’s summons. If this was true, or invented upon the spur of the moment to prove that in no possible way was Walter to blame, it is impossible to say. But the fever ran very high, and so affected her heart, worn and tired by many assaults, that there was a time when everything was hushed and silenced in the old castle in expectation of death. By-and-by, however, that terror gave place to all the innocent joys of convalescence—soft flitting of women up and down, presents of precious flowers and fruits lighting up the gloom, afternoon meetings when everything that could please her was brought to the recovering mother, and all the loch came with inquiries, with good wishes, and kind offerings. Mrs. Forrester, who was an excellent nurse, and never lost heart, but smiled, and was sure, in the deepest depth, that all would “come right,” as she said, took the control of the sick-room, and recovered there the bloom which she had partially lost when Oona was in danger. And Oona stole into the heart of Walter’s mother, who had not for long years possessed him sufficiently to make it bitter to her that he should now put a wife before her. Some women never learn this philosophy; and perhaps Mrs. Methven might have resisted it, had not Oona, her first acquaintance on the loch, her tenderest nurse, won her heart. To have the grim old house in which the secret of the Methvens’ fate had been laid up, and in which, even to indifferent lookers-on, there had always been an atmosphere of mystery and terror, thus occupied with the most innocent and cheerful commonplaces, the little cares and simple pleasures of a long but hopeful recovery, was confusing and soothing beyond measure to all around. The old servants, who had borne for many years the presence of a secret which was not theirs, felt in this general commotion a relief which words could not express. “No,” old Symington said, “it’s not ghosts nor any such rubbitch. I never, for my part, here or elsewhere, saw onything worse than myself; but, Miss Oona, whatever it was that you did on the tap of that tower—and how you got there the Lord above knows, for there never was footing for a bird that ever I saw—it has just been blessed. ‘Ding down the nests and the craws will flee away.’ What am I meaning? Well, that is just what I canna tell. It’s a’ confusion. I know nothing. Many a fricht and many an anxious hour have I had here: but I am bound to say I never saw anything worse than mysel’.”
“All yon is just clavers,” said old Macalister, waving his hand. “If ye come to that there is naething in this life that will bide explaining. But I will not deny that there is a kind of a different feel in the air which is maybe owing to this fine weather, just wonderful for the season; or maybe to the fact of so many leddies about, which is a new thing here—no that I hold so much with women,” he added, lest Oona should be proud, “they are a great fyke and trouble, and will meddle with everything; but they’re fine for a change, and a kind of soothing for a little whilie at a time, after all we’ve gone through.”
Before the gentle régime of the sick-room was quite over, an unusual and unexpected visitor arrived one morning at Loch Houran. It was the day after that on which Mrs. Methven had been transferred to Auchnasheen, and a great festival among her attendants. She had been brought down to the drawing-room very pale and shadowy, but with a relaxation of all the sterner lines which had once been in her face, in invalid dress arranged after Mrs. Forrester’s taste rather than her own, and lending a still further softness to her appearance, not to be associated with her usual rigid garb of black and white. And her looks and tones were the most soft of all, as, the centre of everybody’s thoughts, she was led to the sofa near the fire and surrounded by that half-worship which is the right of a convalescent where love is. To this pleasant home-scene there entered suddenly, ushered in with great solemnity by Symington, the serious and somewhat stern “man of business” who had come to Sloebury not much more than a year before with the news of that wonderful inheritance so unexpected and unthought of, which had seemed to Mrs. Methven, as well as to her son, the beginning of a new life. Mr. Milnathort made kind but formal inquiries after Mrs. Methven’s health, and offered his congratulations no less formally upon her recovery.
“I need not say to you that all that has happened has been an interest to us that are connected with the family beyond anything that I can express. I have taken the liberty,” he added, turning to Walter, “to bring one to see you, Lord Erradeen, who has perhaps the best right of any one living to give ye joy. I told her that you would no doubt come to her, for she has not left her chamber, as you know, for many a year; but nothing would serve her but to come herself, frail as she is——”
“Your sister!” Walter cried.
“Just my sister. I have taken the liberty,” Mr. Milnathort repeated, “to have her carried into the library, where you will find her. She has borne the journey better than I could have hoped, but it is an experiment that makes me very anxious. You will spare her any—emotion, any shock, that you can help?”
The serious face of the lawyer was more serious than ever: his long upper lip trembled a little. He turned round to the others with anxious self-restraint.
“She is very frail,” he said, “a delicate bit creature all her life—and since her accident—”
He spoke of this, as his manner was, as if it had happened a week ago.
Walter hurried away to the library, in which he found Miss Milnathort carefully arranged upon a sofa, wrapped up in white furs instead of her usual garments, a close white hood surrounding the delicate brightness of her face. She held out her hands to him at first without a word; and when she could speak, said, with a tremble in her voice:
“I have come to see the end of it. I have come to see—her and you.”
“I should have come to you,” cried Walter, “I did not forget—but for my mother’s illness——”
“Yes?” she said with a grateful look. “You thought upon me? Oh, but my heart has been with her and you! Oh, the terrible time it was! the first news in the papers, the fear that you were buried there under the ruins, you—and she; and then to wait a night and a day.”
“I should have sent you word at once—I might have known; but I did not think of the papers.”
“No, how should you? you were too busy with your own life. Oh, the thoughts of that night. I just lay and watched for you from the darkening to the dawning. No, scarcely what you could call praying—just waiting upon the Lord. I bade Him mind upon Walter and me—that had lost the battle. And I thought I saw you, you and your Oona. Was not I wise when I said it was a well-omened name?” She paused a little, weeping and smiling. “I could not tell you all the thoughts that went through my mind. I thought if it was even so, there might have been a worse fate. To break the spell and defeat the enemy even at the cost of your two bonnie lives—I thought it would not be an ill fate, the two of you together. Did I not say it? Two that made up one, the perfect man. That is God’s ordinance, my dear? that is His ordinance. Two—not just for pleasure, or for each other, but for Him and everything that is good. You believed me when I said that. Oh, you believed me! and so it was not in vain that I was—killed yon time long ago——” Her voice was broken with sobs. She leant upon Walter’s shoulder who had knelt down beside her, and wept there like a child—taking comfort like a child. “Generally,” she began after a moment, “there is little account made, little, little account, of them that have gone before, that have been beaten, Walter. I can call you nothing but Walter to-day. And Oona, though she has won the battle, she is just me, but better. We lost. We had the same heart; but the time had not come for the victory. And now you, my young lord, you, young Erradeen, like him, you have won, Oona and you. We were beaten; but yet I have a share in it. How can you tell, a young man like you, how those that have been defeated, lift their hearts and give God thanks?” She made a pause and said, after a moment, “I must see Oona, too.” But when he was about to rise and leave her in order to bring Oona, she stopped him once more. “You must tell me first,” she said, speaking very low, “what is become of him? Did he let himself be borne away to the clouds in yon flames? I know, I know, it’s all done; but did you see him? Did he speak a word at the end?”
“Miss Milnathort,” said Walter, holding her hands, “there is nothing but confusion in my mind. Was it all a dream and a delusion from beginning to end?”
She laughed a strange little laugh of emotion.
“Look at me then,” she said, “for what have I suffered these thirty years? And you—was it all for nothing that you were so soon beaten and ready to fall? Have you not seen him? Did he go without a word?”
Walter looked back upon all the anguish through which he had passed, and it seemed to him but a dream. One great event, and then weeks of calm had intervened since the day when driven to the side of the loch in madness and misery, he had found Oona and taken refuge in her boat, and thrown himself on her mercy; and since the night when once more driven distracted by diabolical suggestions, he had stepped out into the darkness, meaning to lose himself somehow in the gloom and be no more heard of—yet was saved again by the little light in her window, the watch-light that love kept burning. These recollections and many more swept through his mind, and the pain and misery more remote upon which this old woman’s childlike countenance had shone. He could not take hold of them as they rose before him in the darkness, cast far away into a shadowy background by the brightness and reality of the present. A strange giddiness came over his brain. He could not tell which was real, the anguish that was over, or the peace that had come, or whether life itself—flying in clouds behind him, before him hid under the wide-spreading sunshine—was anything but a dream. He recovered himself with an effort, grasping hold of the latest recollection to satisfy his questioner.
“This I know,” he cried, “that when we were flying from the tower, with flames and destruction behind us, the only words I heard from her were a prayer for pardon—‘forgive him,’ that was all I heard. And then the rush of the air in our faces, and roar that was like the end of all things. We neither heard nor saw more.”
“Pardon!” said Miss Milnathort, drying her eyes with a trembling hand, “that is what I have said too, many a weary hour in the watches of the night. What pleasure can a spirit like yon find in the torture of his own flesh and blood? The Lord forgive him if there is yet a place of repentance! But well I know what you mean that it is just like a vision when one awaketh. That is what all our troubles will be when the end comes: just a dream! and good brought out of evil and pardon given to many, many a one that men are just willing to give over and curse instead of blessing. Now go and bring your Oona, my bonnie lad! I am thinking she is just me, and you are Walter, and we have all won the day together,” said the invalid clasping her thin hands, and with eyes that shone through their tears, “all won together! though we were beaten twenty years ago.”
The End