Oona’s mind had been much disturbed, yet in no painful way, by the meeting with Mrs. Methven. The service which she had done to Walter’s mother, the contact with her, although almost in the dark, the sense of approach to another woman whose mind was full of anxiety and thought for him, agitated her, yet seemed to heal and soften away the pain which other encounters had given her. It gave her pleasure to think of the half-seen face, made softer by the twilight, and of the tremor of expectation and anxiety that had been in it. There was somehow in this a kind of excuse to herself for her involuntary preoccupation with all that concerned him. She had felt that there was an unspoken sympathy between her and the stranger, and that it was something more than chance which brought them together. As the boat pushed off into the loch, and she felt she had left the mother to a certain happiness in her son, her heart beat with a subdued excitement. She felt with them both, divining the soul of the mother who came to him with trembling, not approving perhaps, not fully trusting, but loving; and of the son who was at fault, who had not shown her the tenderness which her love merited in return. The sense of that union so incomplete in fact, and so close in nature, filled Oona with emotion. As the boat glided along the glittering pathway of the lake between the reflected banks, her mind was full of the two who had gone away together arm and arm into the soft darkness. How mysterious was that twilight world, the eye incapable in the dimness of perceiving which was the substance and which the shadow of those floating woods and islands! Sometimes the boat would glide into the tangled reflections of the trees, sometimes strike through what seemed a headland, a wall of rock, a long projecting promontory in this little world of water, where nothing was as it seemed. But it was not half so mysterious as life. It was but lately that this aspect of existence had struck the healthful soul of the Highland girl. Till the last year all had been open and sweet as the day about her ways and thoughts. If she had any secrets at all they had been those which even the angels guard between themselves and God, those sacred enthusiasms for the one Love that is above all: those aspirations towards the infinite which are the higher breath of gentle souls; or perhaps a visionary opening into the romance of life in its present form, which was scarcely less visionary and pure. But nothing else, nothing more worldly, nothing that her namesake, “heavenly Una with her milkwhite lamb,” need have hesitated to avow.
But since then Oona had gone far and wandered wide in a shadowy world which she shared with no one, and in which there were mystic forces beyond her fathoming, influences which caught the wanderer all unwitting, and drew her hither or thither unawares, against her will. She was no longer the princess and sovereign of life as she had been in the earlier portion of it, but rather its subject or possible victim, moved by powers which she could not understand nor resist, and which overcame her before she was aware of their existence. She thought of all this as her boat made its way, propelled by the long, strong strokes of Hamish, amid the shadows; but not angrily, not miserably as she had sometimes done, with a sadness which (if it was sadness at all) was sweet, and a secret exhilaration for which she could not account. The mother seemed somehow to step into the visionary conflict which was going on, a half-seen, unknown, but powerful champion on the side of——Was it on the side of Oona? She shrank a little from that identification, and said to herself, on the side of good. For that there was a struggle going on between good and evil, which in some mysterious way centred in Lord Erradeen, she was mysteriously aware, she could not tell how.
“Yon young lord will be the better of his mother,” Hamish was saying, his voice coming to her vaguely, running on without any thought of reply, mingled with the larger sound of the oars upon the rowlocks, the long sweep of them through the loch, the gurgle and tinkle of the water as the boat cut through. Hamish was faintly visible and even retained till it grew quite dark some trace of colour in his favourite garment. “He’ll be the better of his mother,” he said; “there will aye be a want when there’s no a leddy in the house. Weeman servants are no to lippen to. A young man when he has not a wife, he will be muckle the better for his mother.”
Oona heard the words vaguely like a chant amid all those sounds of the loch which were the music and accompaniment of her own being. She ran up the slope when they landed, and burst into the little drawing-room which was so bright after the darkness of the evening world, with a pleasure in her little adventure, and in having something to tell which is only known in the deep recesses, the unbroken quiet of rural life. Mrs. Forrester was just beginning, as she herself said, to “weary” for Oona’s return. She had put down her knitting and taken a book. Again she had put aside her book and taken the knitting. Oona was late. Oona meant the world and life to the solitary lady on the crest of the isle. The house, the little retired nest amid the trees, was full and cheerful when she was there, and though Mysie and the cook, “ben the house,” gave now and then a sign of life, yet nothing was complete until the sound of the boat drawn up on the shingle, the unshipping oars, the light firm foot on the path, followed by the heavier tread, scattering the gravel, of Hamish, gave token that all the little population were gathered within the circle of their rocks and waters. Then Mrs. Forrester brightened and turned her face towards the door with cheerful expectation: for it became a little too cold now to go down to the beach to meet the boat, even with the fur cloak upon her shoulders, which had been her wont on summer nights, and even on wintry days.
“His mother, poor young man! Dear me, that is very interesting, Oona. I was not sure he had a mother. That’s good news: for I always took an interest in Lord Erradeen, like one of our own boys. Indeed, you know, Oona, I always thought him like Rob, though their complexions are different. Dear me! I am very glad you were on the spot, and able to show her a little civility. But he should have been there, oh! he should have been there, to meet her. If any of the boys were to do that to me, I would not know what to think—to leave me to the civility of any person that might be passing. Oh, fie! no, I would not know what to think.”
“I know what you would think,” said Oona, “that there must have been some mistake, that they did not know the hour of the train, or did not know which train, or that they had been too late of starting, or—something. You would be sure to find a good reason, mamma.”
“Well, that’s true, Oona; no doubt it would be something of that kind, for it is impossible that a nice lad (and Lord Erradeen was always that) would show himself neglectful of his mother. Poor lady! and she would be tired after her journey. I am very glad you were there to show her a little attention. She will perhaps think, as so many of those English do, that we’re cold and distant in the north. My dear, you can just ring for the tea: and we’ll go and call upon her to-morrow, Oona. Well, perhaps not to-morrow; but wait till she is well rested. We’ll go on Thursday, and you can just mention it about, wherever you are to-morrow, that everybody may know. It is such a fine thing: for a young man to have his mother with him (when he has not a wife), that we must give her a warm welcome, poor lady,” Mrs. Forrester said. She had no reason to call Mrs. Methven poor, but did it as a child does, with a meaning of kindness. She was in fact much pleased and excited by the news. It seemed to throw a gleam of possible comfort over the head of the loch. “The late lord had no woman about him,” she said to herself after Oona had left the room. She had quite forgotten that she was beginning to “weary.” “Did you hear, Mysie,” she went on when “the tea” appeared with all its wealth of scones, “that Lord Erradeen was expecting his mother? I am almost as glad to hear it as if one of our own boys had come home.”
“It is a real good thing for the young lord, mem,” said Mysie; “and no doubt you’ll be going to see her, being such near neighbours, and my lord such great friends with the isle.”
“I would not say very great friends, oh no,” said Mrs. Forrester, deprecatory, but with a smile of pleasure on her face. “There is little to tempt a young gentleman here. But no doubt we will call as soon as she is rested—Miss Oona and me.”
This formed the staple of their conversation all the evening, and made the little room cheerful with a sentiment of expectation.
“And what kind of a person did you find her, Oona? And do you think she will be a pleasant neighbour? And he was at the water-side to meet her, when he saw the boat? And was he kind? and did he show a right feeling?”
These questions Mrs. Forrester asked over and over again. She put herself in the place of the mother who had arrived so unexpectedly without any one to meet her.
“And you will be sure to mention it, whoever you see to-morrow,” she repeated several times, “that she may see we have all a regard for him. I know by myself that is the first thing you think of,” Mrs. Forrester added with a pleasant smile. “The boys” were everything they ought to be. There were no eccentricities, nothing out of the way, about them to make public opinion doubtful. Wherever they went, their mother, pleased, but not surprised, heard everything that was pleasant of them. She “knew by herself” that this was what Walter’s mother would want to hear.
And Oona “mentioned it” to the Ellermore Campbells, with whom she had some engagement next morning, and where she met Miss Herbert from the Lodge. Julia was already popular with her nearest neighbours, and had an attendant at her side in the shape of a friend invited by Sir Thomas as an ardent sportsman, but of whom Julia had taken the command from his first appearance. She was in high spirits, finding everything go well with her, and slightly off her balance with the opening up of new prosperity. She threw herself into the discussion with all the certainty of an old acquaintance.
“I don’t understand why you should be so pleased,” said Julia. “Are you pleased? or is it only a make-believe? Oh, no, dear Oona; I do not suppose you are so naughty as that. You never were naughty in your life—was she? Never tore her pinafore, or dirtied her frock? It is pretty of you, all you girls, to take an interest in Walter’s mother; but for my part I like young men best without their mothers,” Miss Herbert said, with a laugh, and a glance towards the attendant squire, who said to himself that here was a girl above all pretences, who knew better than to attempt to throw dust in the eyes of wise men like himself.
Some of the Ellermore girls laughed, for there is nothing that girls and boys are more afraid of than this reputation of never having dirtied their pinafores; while their mother, with the easy conviction of a woman so full of sons and daughters that she is glad, whenever she can, to shirk her responsibilities, said:
“Well, that is true enough: a young man should not be encumbered with an old woman; and if I were Mrs. Methven——”
“But thank Heaven, you are not at all like Mrs. Methven,” said Julia. “She is always after that unfortunate boy. It did............