"No," answered Smeaton, laughing, "nor now at all connected with royalty. My friend is a merchant, but one," he added, gaily, "who does not traffic in any contraband commodities--not even in the delicate lace of treason. I have assured your lordship that this has nothing to do with any matters of state or policy whatever. I have to thank you for many acts of kindness to-night. I must beg you to add one more--to believe me."
"I do, I do," exclaimed the Earl, warmly. "One, accustomed to deal largely with men, judges them fully as much by the countenance as by the words. I remember well when your father and I were studying together, in deep seclusion, with a good minister in Ayrshire, and were told to read the historian Thucydides, we could make nothing of him, though we knew a little of Greek, till your father got from Edinburgh a copy of the work with copious notes in Latin at the bottom of the page. In a moment it became all clear, and we found how often we had been mistaken in our supposed interpretations. Thus one foreign language served to elucidate another; and I have often since had occasion to think that the expressions of a man's face are the notes which the grand commentator, Nature, has given us for the right understanding of his words. I do believe you, sincerely, and think I can insure that you shall not be molested during the three months you propose to stay, provided you pledge yourself to avoid all meddling with the politics of the country."
"I thank your lordship heartily," replied Smeaton, "and fully accept the terms." Then, changing the subject suddenly, he added, "I was not aware that your lordship had studied with my father. He, being a second son, was intended, at first, to be educated for the bar."
"I also was a second son," said Lord Stair, in a low voice, with the expression of his face changing to a look of the deepest melancholy, "I was a second son, but not then, not then. This fatal hand had by that time done the deed."
The surprise which Smeaton felt at the sudden change in manner, tone, and look, and at the strange words of Lord Stair, could not be prevented from appearing on his countenance, and the Earl, whose eyes were fixed upon him, said, "You do not know the story. It is a sad one, but I often force myself to tell it, and there is something strange in your coming here to-night. The moment before you entered, I had the letter now before me in my hand--the letter of recall out of a long and unjust banishment from the bosom of my family. To your father's kindness and support during those long dark years, I owe much, and I may as well tell you how it all happened."
Smeaton replied in a few common-place words of interest, for there are times when nothing is appropriate but a common-place. The Earl heard him not, however, but kept gazing into vacancy, with a contracted brow and somewhat haggard eye.
"I have it all before me even now," he said, at length, in a low and tremulous tone, "that dark and horrible scene, and its terrible consequences. There are some things which brand themselves upon the mind even of childhood with marks never to be effaced; and, though long years and busy scenes, passions, desires, hopes, joys, acts, feelings, have thronged so thickly into the intervening space that one would think they raised up a cloud between the present and the past which no eye could penetrate--yet there it is, that one terrible hour, as vivid and distinct as when it burst upon me like a blaze of lightning. This hand, young man, took my elder brother's life--not willingly, mark me--not with forethought, nor under the rash impulse of any sudden passion. We were boys together, and loved each other well. I envied him not his elder birth, God knows; I hardly even knew or felt its advantages. It was all in sport; I knew not that the gun was charged. He had presented it at me himself the moment before. God only knows how it was that I was not the victim, and that he was not left to mourn me. Think then of my horror when the musquetoon went off, and my brother fell at my feet a bleeding corpse! That was the first sickening taste of the bitterness with which my cup was to be filled; but, when, instead of comfort in my agony, and support under the dreadful weight cast upon me, I found the awful misfortune imputed to me as a crime, when, in spite of its being shown and proved, by those who witnessed it, that all were accidental, and my horror and grief was apparent to all eyes, I was cast out from the bosom of my family like an exile, banished to a distance, and treated like a criminal who has only escaped condign punishment by some quirk of law, and who lives with the shame and the reproach and the stigma clinging to him for ever--to describe my sensations then, is impossible. At first, it was all a chaos of sorrow; but gradually the sense of injustice raised up a spirit of resistance, hard, dogged, malevolent, but still serviceable, for it enabled me to bear up. And then, for my blessing and my safety, I found two friends, who gave a better direction to my thoughts--who raised up hope again in my bosom, and softened even the memory of the past. The first was the minister under whose tuition I was placed; a wise and good man, who moved, in his humble sphere, untainted by the vices or the follies of the day. The other was your noble father; a lad some years older than myself, who was pursuing his studies under the same tutor. Oh, how sweetly those days come back on memory, when first my heart opened to his kindness, and when, loaded with anguish, such as is rarely known but in manhood, I told him all my thoughts, and wept upon his bosom like a child! How sweetly, too, come back his counsels and exhortations! how gently, how kindly he soothed my angry feelings! how wisely he taught me to rely on higher and nobler principles for support under my affliction than the mere stern sense of being wronged! how he soothed my irritation, and won me away from my sorrows! My young friend, it is not to be forgotten, and if there was bitterness in the cup pressed hard to my boyish lips, there was sweetness to be remembered too. 'Tis well nigh thirty years ago. I think--perhaps more, for your father married very early--and I have never seen him since; but I forget not one lineament of his face, one tone of his voice, one expression of his countenance, and you are very like him."
As he spoke, the Earl extended his hand to Smeaton, and then added,
"You now can see the causes of the interest I take in your fate. That interest will never diminish, and will always be active in your favour, whenever my duty to the land of my birth and the sovereign whom I serve will give it scope. I am obliged to make this reservation; for it is a rule that I have always acted upon, to suffer no personal feeling whatever to interfere with my actions as a public man. But I trust to your own good sense, to your own good feeling, to preserve you from any position in which your interests would be opposed to my duties."
Smeaton replied not to the Earl's last words, but inquired, in a tone of real feeling,