Captivity Part 4

There was a long silence. His eyes, faded from the bright blue-grey that used to flash with fire, were dull and almost colourless as he lay looking at the faded tapestry of the bed canopy.

"When I pray for courage, Lord, Thou givest pain--Thou givest weakness.

When I pray for strength Thou givest a great hunger and a sinking into the depths. And then in Thy loving kindness Thou givest Thy body and blood--for my comfort."

The room grew darker. The fire flickered and spurted as the salt dried out of the driftwood and burnt in blue tongues of flame. Marcella shivered, listening to the distant beat of the sea. The house was very silent, with that dead silence that falls on houses where many of the rooms are unfurnished. The stir and clamour of the beasts outside had gone forever. Outside now was only one old cow, kept to give milk for Andrew. The barren fields lay untended, for Duncan went to the fishing to bring a little handful of coins to the master he feared and loved, and Jean went softly about the kitchen in the shadows.

Suddenly Andrew spoke, and Marcella started, drawing a little nearer to him.

"Do ye mind, Marcella, when we read yon books from Edinburgh--and you used to be such an idiot, and make me so mad?"

"I mind it," she nodded, thinking painfully of those hard books.

"There was something in one of them that I seized on with a bitter scorn. It was explaining how the idea of the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ had grown up. It said how savages, when they saw one of the tribe better than themselves, would kill him and eat him to make themselves as good as he. I liked that fine, Marcella. I was bitter in those days."

"Horrible!" said Marcella with a shiver. "I like to think of the Last Supper, and the Holy Grail--mother used to read about it all to me--she used to tell me all about Parsifal and the Love Feast."

"Yes, little Rose was wiser than those books. Ye see, Marcella, it seems to me there is a time when ye're led by something inside ye to do things. Like Christ was led to preach, though perhaps he didn't quite know why. The word was taken out of his mouth--and like I was led to yon barrel. Things come out of you, right out of deep inside you. Maybe they're G.o.d, maybe they're a beast deep down." He paused, and moved impatiently. "It's hard to piece thoughts together when you're weak. Can you finish my thought for me, Marcella? It's getting muddled--down under sand and stones like Castle Lashcairn under Lashnagar."

Marcella hesitated. Then she told him Wullie's idea about the path.

"He says other things beside G.o.d walk along our lives, but in the end G.o.d's footmarks burn out all the rest."

Andrew nodded again and again.

"I suppose Christ was a pathway. I remember reading something about that. 'My humanity is the path whereby men must travel to G.o.d,' but I'm too tired to piece it all out."

"Yes. It says that in the Bible, of course. 'I am the Way--' Only I suppose there comes a time when G.o.d has got to the end of you, and then you're not a path any longer. And all that's left then is to give your body and blood and get out of the way of others."

"Yes. I can grasp that. I feel that G.o.d has walked along me and all the other footmarks have gone. Now, when I am weak, and hungering for strength, He gives His body and blood. Yes, I think I understand that--in a gla.s.s darkly. Some day I'll come to it more clearly."

That night, when he held out his hand for a cup of milk, Marcella noticed that it was swollen like his feet; the left hand was bony and flexible and still a little brown. The right hand was thick and puffed and very white. When he stretched his fingers to take the cup she saw that they were stiff and difficult to move. He shook his head and dropped his hand on to the sheet, looking at it reflectively.

"The last lap is nearly done, Marcella. This poor old heart of mine will be drowned very soon, now."

Marcella began to cry and her father looked at her as though surprised.

Suddenly he leaned over and stroked her hair. She cried all the more; it was the first tender thing she could remember his doing to her, the first caress he had ever given her.

"I wish I'd been good to ye, Marcella--I think often, now, of that poor wee broken arm, and how ye used to cower away from me! I wish I'd got a grip on myself sooner."

"Oh, if you make me love you any more, father, I'll be torn in bits,"

she cried, and sobbed, and could not be comforted. It was her only break from inarticulateness--it surprised herself and her father almost as though she had said something indecent.

When he knew, quite definitely, that he was dying and need not conserve his strength, some of the old tyranny came back to Andrew Lashcairn. But it was a kindly, rather splendid tyranny, the sort of tyranny that makes religious zealots send unbelievers to the stake, killing the body for the soul's sake. Much of the evangelism the little white-faced cousin had superimposed upon his mind that night of wild pa.s.sions had gone now, burnt up as he drew nearer to simple, beautiful, essential things.

As the Feast of All Souls, the time when ghosts thronged on Lashnagar, drew near he brooded in silence for hours. Through one of his choking attacks he lay pa.s.sive, scarcely fighting for breath; only once did he turn supplicating eyes on Aunt Janet, mutely demanding the drug that soothed. And when he was able to speak again, he told them what he had been thinking.

"I want to tell people," he said, speaking very rapidly. "The mantle of prophecy has fallen upon me."

"Ye've tauld us, Andrew--and that's enough," said Aunt Janet, who had no patience with his frequent swift rushes towards a climax.

"I'm going to tell the others. I'm going to testify to the power of His might," he said just as grimly, gripping his stiff, cold hands together.

"Yell be getting upset, Andrew, an' then we'll be having a time with ye," said Aunt Janet.

"I'll not be getting upset. I'll just be dying," he said gravely, and, calling Marcella, sent her to the village, summoning all the people to come up to the farm on All Souls' Night at seven o'clock.

"I must tell them, Marcella," he said pa.s.sionately, pleading for her understanding which she could not give, for she could not understand in the least. "I have never done anything for anyone. I must do something."

"I'm afraid you'll be worse for it, father," she said, hesitant. "And so is Aunt Janet--poor Aunt Janet. She's so anxious about you, and she's so tired, you know."

He shook that thought off impatiently.

"I'll be master in my own house," he cried, with some little return to the old Andrew. "I know it will make me worse! I know I'm dying! There, I ought not to frighten you, Marcella! I've frightened you enough in my life. But surely when I've lived for myself I can die for others."

And she knew that it was no use talking to him. Indeed, she would not have dared to cross his will. In the night he prayed about it.

"Lord, I must tell these others how I set beasts in Thy way when Thou wouldn't have made my life Thy path. I must tell them how I never knew liberty till Thou hadst made me Thy slave, how I never knew lightness till I carried Thy cross, how I was hungering and thirsting until I was fed with Thy Body and Blood--"

He broke off and talked to Marcella, words that seemed eerie and terrible to her.

"To-morrow, Marcella, is the day when the ruin came on Lashnagar.

To-morrow I shall die--"

"Oh, father!" she cried helplessly.

"I was once His enemy, Marcella. I must let them see me at His feet now, kissing His hand--His man--the King's man--"

He brooded for an hour, gasping for breath. Marcella felt worn out mentally and physically. Her eyes ached for want of sleep, she felt the oppression and burden of the atmosphere that seemed full of ghosts and fears, and to add to her misery she was having her first taste of pain in a crazing attack of neuralgia. Anniversaries, to a mind stored with legend and superst.i.tion, have immense signification. She felt that her father's prediction of his death on All Souls' Day was quite reasonable.

But none the less fear was penetrating through her mists of weariness and fatalism, hand in hand with overwhelming pity.

"I shall die to-morrow, Marcella. He gave His body and blood. In the end that is all one can do."

In the afternoon she went to bed, worn out. Jean had made some sort of burning plaster with brown paper and something that smelt pleasantly aromatic. It eased the pain of her face and sent her to sleep. Her father had told her calmly that he was going to be dressed and meet the villagers downstairs. He seemed almost himself as he ordered her to take his old worn clothes from the press and lay them on a chair by his bed.

She did not expostulate; no one thought of expostulating with Andrew Lashcairn.

It was dark when she wakened and dressed hurriedly. Running down to the kitchen to tell Jean the pleasant effects of her plaster she found it was half-past six.

"Andrew Lashcairn's doon," said Jean, looking scared.

"Who helped him?" asked Marcella, lifting the lid of the teapot that stood on the hearth. She poured into it some water from the singing kettle, and after a minute poured a cup of weak tea, which she drank thirstily.

"He wasna helpit--not with han's. The mistress was frettin', wonderin'

what she'd be tellin' him aboot the furniture i' th' book-room. An' he juist cam' in, luikit roond, and laught. I lighted a fire i' there for him, for it's cauld. But he went off doon the pa.s.sage, gruppin' his stick."

"Is he lying down? Oh dear, I wish I hadn't slept so long! It would have been better for him if I'd been there with him."

"No, he isna to his bed. He's gone through the green baize door. An'

it's a' that dusty! I havena bin in tae clean sin' the day he tuik tae his bed. Always the mistress has said I maun leav' it. An' noo the master's gaun in."