The newspaper narrative appeared to have produced a vivid impression on
Rhoda's mind. Making allowance for natural hesitations and mistakes,
and difficulties in expressing herself correctly, she repeated with a
singularly clear recollection the substance of what she had read.
IX
The principal characters in the story were an old Irish nobleman, who
was called the Earl, and the youngest of his two sons, mysteriously
distinguished as "the wild lord."
It was said of the Earl that he had not been a good father; he had
cruelly neglected both his sons. The younger one, badly treated at
school, and left to himself in the holidays, began his adventurous
career by running away. He got employment (under an assumed name) as a
ship's boy. At the outset, he did well; learning his work, and being
liked by the Captain and the crew. But the chief mate was a brutal man,
and the young runaway's quick temper resented the disgraceful
infliction of blows. He made up his mind to try his luck on shore, and
attached himself to a company of strolling players. Being a handsome
lad, with a good figure and a fine clear voice, he did very well for a
while on the country stage. Hard times came; salaries were reduced; the
adventurer wearied of the society of actors and actresses. His next
change of life presented him in North Britain as a journalist, employed
on a Scotch newspaper. An unfortunate love affair was the means of
depriving him of this new occupation. He was recognised, soon
afterwards, serving as assistant steward in one of the passenger
steamers voyaging between Liverpool and New York. Arrived in this last
city, he obtained notoriety, of no very respectable kind, as a "medium"
claiming powers of supernatural communication with the world of
spirits. When the imposture was ultimately discovered, he had gained
money by his unworthy appeal to the meanly prosaic superstition of
modern times. A long interval had then elapsed, and nothing had been
heard of him, when a starving man was discovered by a traveller, lost
on a Western prairie. The ill-fated Irish lord had associated himself
with an Indian tribe--had committed some offence against their
laws--and had been deliberately deserted and left to die. On his
recovery, he wrote to his elder brother (who had inherited the title
and estates on the death of the old Earl) to say that he was ashamed of
the life that he had led, and eager to make amendment by accepting any
honest employment that could be offered to him. The traveller who had
saved his life, and whose opinion was to be trusted, declared that the
letter represented a sincerely penitent state of mind. There were good
qualities in the vagabond, which only wanted a little merciful
encouragement to assert themselves. The reply that he received from
England came from the lawyers employed by the new Earl. They had
arranged with their agents in New York to pay to the younger brother a
legacy of a thousand pounds, which represented all that had been left
to him by his father's will. If he wrote again his letters would not be
answered; his brother had done with him. Treated in this inhuman
manner, the wild lord became once more worthy of his name. He tried a
new life as a betting man at races and trotting-matches. Fortune
favoured him at the outset, and he considerably increased his legacy.
With the customary infatuation of men who gain money by risking the
loss of it, he presumed on his good luck. One pecuniary disaster
followed another, and left him literally penniless. He was found again,
in England, exhibiting an open boat in which he and a companion had
made one of those foolhardy voyages across the Atlantic, which have now
happily ceased to interest the public. To a friend who remonstrated
with him, he answered that he reckoned on being lost at sea, and on so
committing a suicide worthy of the desperate life that he had led. The
last accounts of him, after this, were too vague and too contradictory
to be depended on. At one time it was reported that he had returned to
the United States. Not long afterwards unaccountable paragraphs
appeared in newspapers declaring, at one and the same time, that he was
living among bad company in Paris, and that he was hiding disreputably
in an ill famed quarter of the city of Dublin, called "the Liberties."
In any case there was good reason to fear that Irish-American
desperadoes had entangled the wild lord in the network of political
conspiracy.