The commonplace world has a strange look to a man who has himself come out of any great personal struggle, out of an excitement which no one knows anything about but himself. When he descends, with still the heave of strong emotion in his breast, there is a mixture of contempt and relief in the manner in which he regards the extraordinary stolidity and unimpressionableness of his fellows. He is glad that they are unaware of what has happened to himself, yet cannot help scorning them a little for their want of penetration; and it is a comfort to him to feel himself surrounded with the calm and indifference of strangers, yet he cannot help feeling that had they been of a higher nature, they must have divined the suppressed agitation with which he moves among them, his nerves all trembling with the strain through which they have passed. Thus Walter, when he landed at the village, met the looks of the country folk with a certain expectation of seeing some traces of the wondering curiosity with which they must be asking themselves what ailed Lord Erradeen? and felt himself at once baffled and disappointed and relieved to find them full of their usual friendliness and hospitality, but nothing more.
“We are real glad to see your lordship back,” Mrs. Macfarlane said at the inn, “and I hope you mean to bide, and no just run away when you are getting acquaint with the country-side.” Big John, who was looking on while his horses were being cared for, gave a tug to his hat in honour of Lord Erradeen, but scarcely withdrew his eyes from the other more interesting spectacle. And finally the minister, who was setting out upon one of his visitations, met his noble parishioner with the most cheerful good morning, without any indication of deeper insight.
“You are welcome home, Lord Erradeen,” he said as the landlady had said, “and this time I hope we’ll see more of you. Are you stepping my way? It is just a most beautiful morning for this time of the year, and I am going to one of my outlying corners; but you young gentlemen, what with your shooting, and stalking, and ploys in general, are not generally much addicted to a simple walk.”
“I am going your way; I am no great sportsman; I want to see Shaw who lives somewhere in this direction, I think.”
“I will show the way with pleasure, Lord Erradeen; but I doubt you will not find him in. He is out upon his rounds before now. He will be tackling you about Peter Thomson, and his farm. And I would be glad to say a word, too, if I might. They had been there all their lives; they never believed it possible that they would be sent away. It is very natural you should want to make the best of your property, but it was a blow; and though he was a little behind in his worldly affairs, he was always good to the poor, and an elder, and well-living person. Such a one is a loss to the country-side; but it is every man’s duty, no doubt, to himself and his posterity, to make the best he can of his estate.” This the minister said with an air of polite disapproval, yet acquiescence in a doctrine not to be gainsaid. “Political economy,” he added, with a laugh, “did not come into my curriculum, although I was at college in Adam Smith’s palmy days.”
“If you think my actions have anything to do with Adam Smith!” cried Walter. It was a peculiarity of this young man, and perhaps of others beside, to resent above all things the imputation of a prudential motive. “I know nothing about Thomson,” he added. “I was absent, and I suppose did—whatever I am supposed to have done—on the impulse of the moment, as I am too apt to do.”
“That is a pity,” said the minister, “especially when the well-being of others is concerned. You will pardon me, my lord, who am an old-fashioned person. The good of your property (if ye think this is for the good of your property) is always a motive, and some will think a sound one: but to decide what is of great consequence to other folk without thought, because you happen to be tired, or worried, or in an ill way——”
A natural flush of anger came to Walter’s face: but notwithstanding all his faults there was something generous in him. He bit his lip to restrain a hasty word which was ready to burst forth, and said, after a moment, “The reproof is just. I had no right to be so inconsiderate. Still, as you say, the advantage of the property is a motive: there are some,” he added bitterly, with a sense that he was speaking at some third person, “who think it the best in the world.”
“And so it is in the right view,” said Mr. Cameron; “that is what I always think when I read what those misguided creatures are wanting in Ireland, to do away with landlords altogether—and some even among ourselves,” he added with that sense of the superiority of “ourselves” which dwells so calmly in the Scottish bosom. The last was said regretfully, with a shake of the head.
“I dare say,” said Walter, “they have some reason in what they say.”
“Some, but not the best. They have the kind of reason that lies on the surface—in so much as to have a thing of your own is better than hiring it from another. But in that way Peter Thomson, honest man, would have been doomed without remedy before your time, Lord Erradeen. He has been getting into troubled waters for some years: he would have had to sell the farm and begone if it had been his: but with a good landlord like what I live in hopes to see—a good man in trouble would be helped over the dangerous moment. He would be backed up when he was feeble. Perhaps it was just at all times an ideal: but that was what the old relationship might be.”
“And the ideal is always problematical,” said Walter. He was carrying on the same controversy still, taking the other side. “Most men I think would prefer to deal with their own even if it meant selling and losing, than to be subject to another man’s will—as it appears Thomson has been to mine. That seems ridiculous indeed,” he cried, with a sudden outburst of feeling, “that a good man, as you say, should depend on the fantastic will of—such a fool as I have been.”
“My Lord Erradeen!” cried the minister in consternation. He thought the young man was going out of his wits, and began to be nervous. There was something, now he looked at him, wild in his air. “I have no doubt,” he said soothingly, “that your decision—must have seemed very reasonable. I would not, though my feelings are enlisted and though I regret, go so far as to blame it myself.”
“Why?” said Walter, turning upon him. “Because?—surely every man ought to have the courage of his opinions.”
“Not for that reason,” said the old minister, with a slight flush. “I have never been one,” he went on with a smile, “that have been much moved by the fear of man. No. It is because now they have been forced to make the move it may be better for themselves; they would have struggled on, and perhaps at the end got through, but in Canada they will soon flourish and do well.”
“Not without a struggle there either, I suppose,” said Walter, with a fanciful disposition to resent the idea that Canada was an infallible cure.
“Not without a struggle—there you are right, my lord. There was first the sore, sore tug to pull up the roots of life that were so deeply implanted here; and the long voyage, which was terrible to the father and mother. It is very likely,” he added, “that the old folk will never get over it. Transplanting does not do at their age. But then the young ones, they are sure to thrive: and the old will die all the sooner, which perhaps is not to be regretted when we get to the evening of life.”
“That is surely an inhuman doctrine,” Walter cried.
“Do ye think so, my young lord? Well! It becomes the young to think so; but for myself I have always seen a foundation of reason in the savage way of making an end of the old and helpless. It is better, far better for the survivors that they should have a horror of it, but for the aged themselves it is not so clear to me. They would be better away. An old man that has outlived all natural love and succour, and that just lives on against his will because he cannot help it, that is a sad sight.”
“But not revolting, as it is to think of the other.”
“The other does not revolt me. If my heritors, yourself the first, were to look in some fine day and bid me out to the banks of the loch and give me a heave into it—in deep clear water mind, none of your muddy, weedy bits—I stipulate for clean water,” the old minister said with a laugh at his own joke.
“If that is all that is to happen to your emigrants,” said Walter, “they surely would have been as well here.”
“If that had been possible; but you see, Lord Erradeen, though there are few things that ye cannot manage to get your way in, on your level of life, on the lower level when we cannot get what we want, we have to put up with what we can get.”
“Why should you think I can get my way? I have to put up with what I can get, as you say, like everybody else.”
“Well, yes,” said the minister, “it is a kind of universal rule; and it is just a sign of the disposition that conquers the world, that it will accept what it can get without making a moaning and a fretting over it.”
“The second best,” said Walter with a half-smile of irony: it was strange to come from a teacher so dissimilar to this experienced old man and hear the same doctrine once more repeated. Mr. Cameron nodded his head several times in sign of assent.
“What seems to our blindness often the second best; though you may be sure it is the best for us, and chosen for us by a better judge than we are. This is my way, to the right, up Glen-Dochart, and yonder is Shaw’s house, the white one among the trees. I am extremely glad to have had this conversation with you, my lord. And if I can be of use to you at any time in any question that may puzzle ye—oh, I do not stand upon my superior enlightenment, or even on my office, with the like of you that probably belong to another Church; but I am an old man and have some experience. Good day to you, Lord Erradeen.” The old minister looked back after he had left him, and waved his hand with a benevolent smile.
Lord Erradeen walked on. He waved back a kindly salutation; the meeting, the talk with a man who was his equal, his superior, his inferior, all in one, in wholesome human inconsistency, was a kind of event for him, separating him by a distinct interval, from the agitation of the night and morning, the terrible mental struggle, the philosophy that had fallen on his despair, not as healing dew, but like a baptism of fire, scorching his heart. Strange that the same reasoning should have come before him in this strange way, so accidental and without premeditation! Mr. Cameron took everything from a different point of view. The second best to him meant manly resignation, devout religious faith. To accept it “because it was chosen for us by a better guide than we,” that was a difference almost incalculable. According to the minister’s belief, “what we wanted” was a thing to be given up nobly when it was proved to be God’s will so. But this point of view was so unlike the other that it brought a smile to Walter’s lips as he went on. God’s will, what had that to do with petty schemes to enrich a family? If it should so happen that he, driven by persecution, by temptations too strong to be resisted, by the feebleness of a spirit not capable of contending with fate, yielded once more to this influence which had operated so strangely upon his race, would that be God’s will?—would it be ever possible to look upon it as &ldquo............