Donal Grant Part 61

Having given orders to send at once to Auchars for the doctor, lady Arctura hastened with Donal to the room on the stair. The earl was stretched motionless and pale on the floor. But for a slight twitching in one muscle of the face, they might have concluded him dead. They tried to get something down his throat, but without success. The men carried him up to his chamber.

He began to come to himself, and lady Arctura left him, telling Simmons to come to the library when he could, and let them know how he was.

In about an hour he came: the doctor had been, and his master was better.

"Do you know any cause for the attack?" asked her ladyship.

"I'll tell you all about it, my lady, so far as I know," answered the butler. "--I was there in that room with him--I had taken him some accounts, and was answering some questions about them, when all at once there came a curious noise in the wall. I can't think what it was--an inward rumbling it was, that seemed to go up and down the wall with a sort of groaning, then stopped a while, and came again. It sounded nothing very dreadful to me; perhaps if it had been in the middle of the night, I mightn't have liked it. His lordship started at the first sound of it, turned pale and gasped, then cried out, laid his hand on his heart, and rolled off his chair. I did what I could for him, but it wasn't like one of his ordinary attacks, and so I came to your ladyship. He's such a ticklish subject, you see, my lady! It's quite alarming to be left alone with him. It's his heart; and you know, my lady--I should be sorry to frighten you, but you know, Mr. Grant, a gentleman with that complaint may go off any moment. I must go back to him now, my lady, if you please."

Arctura turned and looked at Donal.

"We must be careful," he said.

"We must," she answered. "Just thereabout is one of the few places in the house where you hear the music."

"And thereabout the music-chimney goes down! That is settled! But why should my lord be frightened so?"

"I cannot tell. He is not like other people, you know."

"Where else is the music heard? You and your uncle seem to hear it oftener than anyone else."

"In my own room. But we will talk to-morrow. Good night."

"I will remain here the rest of the evening," said Donal, "in case Simmons might want me to help with his lordship."

It was well into the night, and he still sat reading in the library, when Mrs. Brookes came to him. She had had to get his lordship "what he ca'd a cat--something or ither, but was naething but mustard to the soles o' 's feet to draw awa' the bluid."

"He's better the noo," she said. "He's taen a doze o' ane o' thae drogues he's aye potterin' wi'--fain to learn the trade o' livin' for ever, I reckon! But that's a thing the Lord has keepit in 's ain han's.

The tree o' life was never aten o', an' never wull be noo i' this warl'; it's lang transplant.i.t. But eh, as to livin' for ever, or I wud be his lordship, I wud gie up the ghost at ance!"

"What makes you say that, mistress Brookes?" asked Donal.

"It's no ilk ane I wud answer sic a queston til," she replied; "but I'm weel a.s.sured ye hae sense an' hert eneuch baith, no to hurt a cratur'; an' I'll jist gang sae far as say to yersel', an' 'atween the twa o'

's, 'at I hae h'ard frae them 'at's awa'--them 'at weel kent, bein'

aboot the place an' trust.i.t--that whan the fit was upon him, he was fell cruel to the bonnie wife he merriet abro'd an' broucht hame wi'

him--til a cauld-hert.i.t country, puir thing, she maun hae thoucht it!"

"How could he have been cruel to her in the house of his brother? Even if he was the wretch to be guilty of it, his brother would never have connived at the ill-treatment of any woman under his roof!"

"Hoo ken ye the auld yerl sae weel?" asked Mrs. Brookes, with a sly glance.

"I ken," answered Donal, direct as was his wont, but finding somehow a little shelter in the dialect, "'at sic a dauchter could ill hae been born to ony but a man 'at--weel, 'at wad at least behave til a wuman like a man."

"Ye're i' the richt! He was the ten'erest-heart.i.t man! But he was far frae stoot, an' was a heap by himsel', nearhan' as mickle as his lordship the present yerl. An' the lady was that prood, an' that dewot.i.t to the man she ca'd her ain, that never a word o' what gaed on cam to the ears o' his brither, I daur to say, or I s' warran' ye there wud hae been a fine steer! It cam, she said--my auld auntie said--o'

some kin' o' madness they haena a name for yet. I think mysel' there's a madness o' the hert as weel 's o' the heid; an' i' that madness men tak their women for a property o' their ain, to be han'led ony gait the deevil puts intil them. Cries i' the deid o' the nicht, an' never a shaw i' the mornin' but white cheeks an' reid een, tells its ain tale.

I' the en', the puir leddy dee'd, 'at micht hae lived but for him; an'

her bairnie dee'd afore her; an' the wrangs o' bairns an' women stick lang to the wa's o' the universe! It was said she cam efter him again;--I kenna; but I hae seen an' h'ard i' this hoose what--I s' haud my tongue aboot!--Sure I am he wasna a guid man to the puir wuman!--whan it comes to that, maister Grant, it's no my leddy an' mem, but we're a' women thegither! She dee'dna i' this hoose, I un'erstan'; but i' the hoose doon i' the toon--though that's neither here nor there. I wadna won'er but the conscience micht be waukin' up intil him!

Some day it maun wauk up. He'll be sorry, maybe, whan he kens himsel'

upo' the border whaur respec' o' persons is ower, an' a woman s' a guid 's a man--maybe a wheen better! The Lord 'll set a' thing richt, or han' 't ower til anither!"

CHAPTER LIV.

LADY ARCTURA'S ROOM.

The next day, when he saw lady Arctura, Donal was glad to learn that, for all the excitement of the day before, she had pa.s.sed a good night, and never dreamed at all.

"I've been thinking it all over, my lady," he said, "and it seems to me that, if your uncle heard the noise of our plummet so near, the chimney can hardly rise from the floor you searched; for that room, you know, is half-way between the ground-floor and first floor. Still, sound does travel so! We must betake ourselves to measurement, I fear.--But another thing came into my head last night which may serve to give us a sort of parallax. You said you heard the music in your own room: would you let me look about in it a little? something might suggest itself!--Is it the room I saw you in once?"

"Not that," answered Arctura, "but the bedroom beyond it. I hear it sometimes in either room, but louder in the bedroom. You can examine it when you please.--If only you could find my bad dream, and drive it out!--Will you come now?"

"It is near the earl's room: is there no danger of his hearing anything?"

"Not the least. The room is not far from his, it is true, but it is not in the same block; there are thick walls between. Besides he is too ill to be up."

She led the way, and Donal followed her up the main staircase to the second floor, and into the small, curious, ancient room, evidently one of the oldest in the castle, which she had chosen for her sitting-room.

Perhaps if she had lived less in the shadow, she might have chosen a less gloomy one: the sky was visible only through a little lane of walls and gables and battlements. But it was very charming, with its odd nooks and corners, recesses and projections. It looked an afterthought, the utilization of a s.p.a.ce accidentally defined by rejection, as if every one of its sides were the wall of a distinct building.

"I do wish, my lady," said Donal, "you would not sit so much where is so little sunlight! Outer and inner things are in their origin one; the light of the sun is the natural world-clothing of the truth, and whoever sits much in the physical dark misses a great help to understanding the things of the light. If I were your director," he went on, "I would counsel you to change this room for one with a broad, fair outlook; so that, when gloomy thoughts hid G.o.d from you, they might have his eternal contradiction in the face of his heaven and earth."

"It is but fair to tell you," replied Arctura, "that Sophia would have had me do so; but while I felt about G.o.d as she taught me, what could the fairest sunlight be to me?"

"Yes, what indeed!" returned Donal. "Do you know," he added presently, his eyes straying about the room, "I feel almost as if I were trying to understand a human creature. A house is so like a human mind, which gradually disentangles and explains itself as you go on to know it! It is no accidental resemblance, for, as an unavoidable necessity, every house must be like those that built it."

"But in a very old house," said Arctura, "so many hands of so many generations have been employed in the building, and so many fancied as well as real necessities have been at work, that it must be a conflict of many natures."

"But where the house continues in the same family, the builders have more or less transmitted their nature, as well as their house, to those who come after them."

"Do you think then," said Arctura, almost with a shudder, "that I inherit a nature like the house left me--that the house is an outside to me--fits my very self as the sh.e.l.l fits the snail?"

"The relation of outer and inner is there, but there is given with it an infinite power to modify. Everyone is born nearer to G.o.d than to any ancestor, and it rests with him to cultivate either the G.o.dness or the selfness in him, his original or his mere ancestral nature. The fight between the natural and the spiritual man is the history of the world.

The man who sets his faults inherited, makes atonement for the sins of those who went before him; he is baptized for the dead, not with water but with fire."

"That seems to me strange doctrine," said Arctura, with tremulous objection.

"If you do not like it, do not believe it. We inherit from our ancestors vices no more than virtues, but tendencies to both. Vice in my great-great-grandfather may in me be an impulse."

"How horrible!" cried Arctura.

"To say that we inherit sin from Adam, horrifies n.o.body: the source is so far back from us, that we let the stream fill our cisterns unheeded; but to say we inherit it from this or that nearer ancestor, causes the fact to a.s.sume its definite and individual reality, and make a correspondent impression."

"Then you allow that it is horrible to think oneself under the influence of the vices of certain wicked people, through whom we come where we are?"

"I would allow it, were it not that G.o.d is nearer to us than any vices, even were they our own; he is between us and those vices. But in us they are not vices--only possibilities, which become vices when they are yielded to. Then there are at the same time all sorts of counteracting and redeeming influences. It may be that wherein a certain ancestor was most wicked, his wife was especially lovely. He may have been cruel, and she tender as the hen that gathers her chickens under her wing. The main danger is perhaps, of being caught in some sudden gust of unsuspected impulse, and carried away of the one tendency before the other has time to a.s.sert and the will to rouse itself. But those who doubt themselves and try to do right may hope for warning. Such will not, I think, be allowed to go far out of the way for want of that. Self-confidence is the worst traitor."

"You comfort me a little."