Nor was Ronald Kilsyth ignorant of the world's talk and the world's expressions. Isolate himself as much as he would, be as self-contained and as solitary as an oyster, fend off confidence, shut his ears to gossip,--all he could do was to exclude pleasant things from him; the unpleasant had penetrating qualities, and invariably made their way. He knew well enough what was said in every kind of society about Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay Caird. When he dined away from the mess, he had a curiously unpleasant feeling that advantage would be taken of his absence to discuss that unfortunate ménage. When he dined at his club, he had a morbid horror lest the two men seated at the next table should begin to talk about it. The disappointment about the whole thing had been so great as to make him morbidly sensitive on the point, to ascribe to it far greater interest than it really possessed for the world in general, and to allow it to prey on his mind, and seriously to influence his health. It had been such a consummate failure! And he, as he owned to himself,--he was primarily responsible for the marriage! If Lady Muriel had not had his assistance, she would never have carried her point of getting Madeleine for Ramsay Caird; one word from him would have nipped that acquaintance in the bud, would have stopped the completion of the project, no matter how far it had advanced. And he had never said that word. Why? He comforted himself by thinking that Caird had never shown himself in his real character before his marriage; but the fact was, although Ronald would not avow it, that he had been hoodwinked by the deference so deftly paid to him both by his stepmother and her confederate, who had consulted him on all points, and cajoled him and used him as a tool in their hands. He thought over all this very bitterly now; he saw how he had been treated, and stamped and raved in impotent fury as he remembered how he had been led on step by step, and how weak and vacillating he must have appeared in a matter in which he was most deeply interested, and which, during the whole of its progress, he thought he was managing so well.
To no man in London could such a fiasco as his sister's marriage had turned out be more oppressively overwhelming, productive of more thorough disgust and annoyance than to Ronald Kilsyth. The fiasco was so glaring, that at once two points on which the young man most prided himself stood impugned. Everyone knew that dear old Kilsyth himself would not have interfered in such a matter, and that the final settlement of it, after Lady Muriel's light skirmishing had been done, must have been left to Ronald, who was the sensible one of the family. He had then, in the eyes of the world, either had so little care for his sister's future as to sanction her marriage with a very ineligible man, or so little natural perspicacity and sharpness as to be deceived by such a shallow pretender as Caird. That anyone should entertain either of these suppositions was gall and wormwood to Ronald. He whose reputation forclear-headedness and far-seeing had only been equalled by the esteem in which by all men he had been held for his strict honesty and probity and the Spartan quality of his virtue,--that he should be suspected--more than suspected, in certain quarters accused--of folly or want of proper caution where his sister was concerned, was to him inexpressibly painful. Perhaps the worst thing of all was to know that people knew that he was aware of what was said, and that he suffered under the tittle-tattle and the gossip. He tried to forget that idea, to dispel and do away with it by changing his usual habits; he went about; he was seen--for one week--oftener in society than he had been for months previously: but the morbid feeling came upon him there; he fancied that people noticed his presence, and attributed it to its right cause; that every whisper which was uttered in the room had Madeleine for its burden; that the whole company had their minds filled with him, and were thinking of him either pityingly, sarcastically, or angrily, according to their various temperaments.
He avoided Brook-street at this time as religiously as he avoided the little residence in Squab-street. He did not particularly care about meeting his father, though he thought Kilsyth would probably know nothing of what so many were talking of; and he had resolutely shunned a meeting with Lady Muriel, for Ronald in his inmost heart did his stepmother a gross injustice. He fully believed that she was perfectly cognisant of Ramsay Caird's real character; whereas, in truth, no one had been more astonished at what her protégé had proved himself than Lady Muriel--and very few more distressed. Ronald, however, thought otherwise; and being a gentleman, he carefully avoided meeting her ladyship, lest he might lose his temper and forget himself. The Kilsyth blood was hot, and even in the heir to the name there had been occasions when it was pretty nearly up to boiling-point.
For the same reason he avoided all chance of running across his brother-in-law. In common with most men of strong feelings always kept in a state of repression, Ronald Kilsyth was particularly sensitive; and the idea of the publicity already accruing to this wretched business being increased by any possible tattle of open rupture between members of the family horrified him dreadfully. If he did not dare trust himself with Lady Muriel, he should certainly have to exercise a much stronger command over himself in the event of his ever meeting Ramsay Caird. Every governing principle of his life rose up within him against that young man; and on the first occasion of his hearing--accidentally, as men often hear things of the greatest import to themselves--of Mr. Caird's doings, Ronald Kilsyth had for the whole night paced his barrack-room, trying in every possible form to pick such a quarrel with Caird as might leave no real clue to its origin, and enable him to work out his revenge without compromising anyone. But he soon saw the futility of any such proceeding, which, carried out between sous-officiers, might form the basis of a French drama, but which was impossible of execution between English gentlemen, and elected absence from Squab-street, and total ignorance of Mr. Caird's mode of procedure, as his best aids to a tolerably quiet life for himself. Besides, absence from Squab-street meant absence from Madeleine; and absence from Madeleine meant a great deal to Ronald Kilsyth. He, in his self-examination found Madeleine's behaviour since her marriage the one point on which he could neither satisfy himself by a feeling of pity nor bluster himself into a fit of indignation. He knew well enough what her abstracted manner, her dulness, her sad weary preoccupied mind, her impossibility to join in the nonsensical talk floating around her,--he knew well enough what all these symptoms meant. . If he had ever doubted that his sister had a strong affection for Wilmot--and it is due to his perspicacity to say that no such doubt ever crossed his mind--he would have been certain of it now. If he had ever hoped--and he had hoped very earnestly--that any girlish predilection which his sister might have entertained for Wilmot was merely girlish and evanescent, and would pass away with her marriage, he could not more effectually have blighted any such chance than by marrying her to the man whose suit he, her brother, had himself urged her to accept Perhaps under happier circumstances that childish dream would have passed away, merged into a more happy realisation; but as it had eventuated, Ronald knew perfectly well that Madeleine could not but contrast the blank loveless present with the bright past, could not but compare the days when she now sat solitary and uncared for with those when the man for whom she had such intense veneration--for whom, as she doubtless had afterwards discovered, she had such honest, earnest love--had given up everything else to attend to her and shield her in the hour of danger. With such feelings as these at his heart, it was but little wonder that Ronald sedulously avoided being thrown in Madeleine's way.
He had always been so "odd;" his comings, and goings in Brook-street had been so uncertain; it was so utterly impossible to tell when he might or might not be expected at his father's house, that his prolonged absence caused no astonishment to any of the members of the family, nor to any one of their regular visitors. Lady Muriel, indeed, with a kind of guilty consciousness of participation in his feelings, guessed the reason why her step-son eschewed their society; but no one else. And Lady Muriel, who from her first suspicion of Ramsay Caird's conduct--suspicion not entertained, be it understood, until some time after the marriage--had looked forward with great fear and trembling to a grand éclaircissement, a searching explanation with Ronald, in which she would have to undergo an amount of cross-questioning in his hardest manner, and a judgment which would inevitably be pronounced against her, was rather glad that this whim had taken possession of Ronald, and that her dies irae was consequently indefinitely deferred. But it happened one day that Ronald, walking down to Knightsbridge barracks, came upon his father waiting to cross the road at the corner of Sloane-street, and came upon him so "plump" and so suddenly, that retreat was impossible. The young man accordingly, seeing how matters stood, advanced, and took his father by the hand.
In an instant he saw that one other, at all events, had suffered from the--well, there was no other word for it--the disgrace, the discredit, to say the least of it, which had fallen on the family during the past few months. Kilsyth seemed aged by ten years. The light had died out of his bright blue eyes, and left them glassy and colourless, with red rims and heavy dark "pads" underneath each. The bright healthy colour had faded from his cheeks, and few would have recognised the lithe and active mountaineer, the never-tiring pedestrian, and the keen shot, in the bent and shrunken form which stood half-leaning on, half-idly dallying with, its stick. He pressed his son's hand warmly, however; and something like his well-known kind old smile lighted up his face as he exclaimed--
"Ronald, I'm glad to see you, my boy! very glad! You've not been near us for ages! And not merely that--I can understand that--we're not very good company for young people now in Brook-street; there's little inducement to come there now since poor Maddy has left us. But I don't think that I was ever half so long in London without dining with you as your guest over there at the barracks. I used to like an outing with your fellows there; it brisked me up, and made me forget what an old fogie I am growing; but--but you haven't given me the chance this time, sir,--you haven't given me the chance!"
There was something in the evidently strained attempt at cheeriness with which his father said these words which contrasted so strongly with the depression under which it was impossible for him to prevent showing he was labouring, and with the marked alteration in his personal appearance, that touched Ronald deeply. His heart sank within him, and his tongue grew dry; he had to clear his throat before he replied--and even then huskily--
"It is a long time since we've met, sir; and I confess the fault is mine--entirely mine. The fact is I've been very much engaged lately--regimental duty, and--and some business in which I've been particularly interested--business which I fear you would hardly care about--and--"
"Likely enough, my dear boy!" said Kilsyth, coming to his rescue, as he floundered about in a way very unusual to him. "Likely enough! I never did care particularly for a good many of your pursuits, you know, Ronald, though I tried very hard at one time--when you were quite a lad, I recollect--to understand them and share in them. But that was not to be. I was not bright enough. I'm of the old school, and what we old fellows cared about seems to have died out with our youth, and never to have interested anybody ever since. I don't say this complainingly--not in the least--but it was deuced odd. However, I'm very glad I've met you, Ronald, for I have long wished--and lately, within the last few days more especially--to have a talk with you, a serious talk, my boy, which will take up some little time. Have you half-an-hour you can give me now? I shall be very glad if you have."