Donal Grant Part 72

"We hae been prowlin' aboot the hoose, but no doon yon'er, my lady. I think you an' me wad do weel to lea' that to Mr. Grant!"

"When your ladyship is quite ready to have everything set to rights,"

said Donal, "and to have a resurrection of the chapel, then I shall be glad to go with you again. But I would rather not even talk more about it just at present."

"As you please, Mr. Grant," replied lady Arctura. "We will say nothing more till I have made up my mind. I don't want to vex my uncle, and I find the question rather a difficult one--and the more difficult that he is worse than usual.--Will you not come to bed now, mistress Brookes?"

CHAPTER LXIV.

THE GARLAND-ROOM.

All through the terrible time, the sense of help and comfort and protection in the presence of the young tutor, went on growing in the mind of Arctura. It was nothing to her--what could it be?--that he was the son of a very humble pair; that he had been a shepherd, and a cow-herd, and a farm labourer--less than nothing. She never thought of the facts of his life except sympathetically, seeking to enter into the feelings of his memorial childhood and youth; she would never have known anything of those facts but for their lovely intimacies of all sorts with Nature--nature divine, human, animal, cosmical. By sharing with her his emotional history, Donal had made its facts precious to her; through them he had gathered his best--by home and by prayer, by mother and father, by sheep and mountains and wind and sky. And now he was to her a tower of strength, a refuge, a strong city, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She trusted him the more that he never invited her trust--never put himself before her; for always before her he set Life, the perfect heart-origin of her and his yet unperfected humanity, teaching her to hunger and thirst after being righteous like G.o.d, with the a.s.surance of being filled. She had once trusted in Miss Carmichael, not with her higher being, only with her judgment, and both her judgment and her friend had misled her. Donal had taught her that obedience, not to man but to G.o.d, was the only guide to holy liberty, and so had helped her to break the bonds of those traditions which, in the shape of authoritative utterances of this or that church, lay burdens grievous to be borne upon the souls of men. For Christ, against all the churches, seemed to her to express Donal's mission. An air of peace, an atmosphere of summer twilight after the going down of the sun, seemed to her to precede him and announce his approach with a radiation felt as rest. She questioned herself nowise about him.

Falling in love was a thing unsuggested to her; if she was in what is called danger, it was of a better thing.

The next day she did not appear: mistress Brookes had persuaded her to keep her bed again for a day or two. There was nothing really the matter with her, she said herself, but she was so tired she did not care to lift her head from the pillow. She had slept well, and was troubled about nothing. She sent to beg Mr. Grant to let Davie go and read to her, and to give him something to read, good for him as well as for her.

Donal did not see Davie again till the next morning.

"Oh, Mr. Grant!" he said, "you never saw anything so pretty as Arkie is in bed! She is so white, and so sweet! and she speaks with a voice so gentle and low! She was so kind to me for going to read to her! I never saw anybody like her! She looks as if she had just said her prayers, and G.o.d had told her she should have everything she wanted."

Donal wondered a little, but hoped more. Surely she must be finding rest in the consciousness of G.o.d! But why was she so white? Was she going to die? A pang shot to his heart: if she were to go from the castle, it would be hard to stay in it, even for the sake of Davie!

Donal, no more than Arctura, imagined himself fallen in love: he had loved once, and his heart had not yet done aching--though more with the memory than the presence of pain! He was utterly satisfied with what the Father of the children had decreed, and would never love again! But he did not seek to hide from himself that the friendship of lady Arctura, and the help she sought and he gave, had added a fresh and strong interest to his life. At the first dawn of power in his heart, when he began to make songs in the fields and on the hills, he had felt that to brighten with true light the clouded lives of despondent brothers and sisters was the one thing worthest living for: it was what the Lord came into the world for; neither had his trouble made him forget it--for more than one week or so: while the pain was yet gnawing grievously, he woke to it again with self-accusation--almost self-contempt. To have helped this lovely creature, whose life had seemed lapt in an ever closer-clasping shroud of perplexity, was a thing to be glad of--not to the day of his death, but to the never-ending end of his life! was an honour conferred upon him by the Father, to last for evermore! For he had helped to open a human door for the Lord to enter! she within heard him knock, but, trying, was unable to open! To be G.o.d's helper with our fellows is the one high calling; the presence of G.o.d in the house the one high condition.

At the end of a week Arctura was better, and able to see Donal. She had had mistress Brookes's bed moved into the same room with her own, and had made the dressing-room into a sitting-room. It was sunny and pleasant--the very place, Donal thought, he would have chosen for her.

The bedroom too, which the housekeeper had persuaded her to take when she left her own, was one of the largest in the castle--the Garland-room--old-fashioned, of course, but as cheerful as stateliness would permit, with gorgeous hangings and great pictures--far from homely, but with sun in it half the day. Donal congratulated her on the change. She had been prevented from making one sooner, she said, by the dread of owing any comfort to circ.u.mstance: it might deceive her as to her real condition!

"It could not deceive G.o.d, though," answered Donal, "who fills with righteousness those who hunger after it. It is pride to refuse anything that might help us to know him; and of all things his sun-lit world speaks of the father of lights! If that makes us happier, it makes us fitter to understand him, and he can easily send what cloud may be needful to temper it. We must not make our own world, inflict our own punishments, or order our own instruction; we must simply obey the voice in our hearts, and take lovingly what he sends."

The next day she told him she had had a beautiful night, full of the loveliest dreams. One of them was, that a child came out of a gra.s.sy hillock by the wayside, called her mamma, and said she was much obliged to her for taking her off the cold stone, and making her a b.u.t.terfly; and with that the child spread out gorgeous and great wings and soared up to a white cloud, and there sat laughing merrily to her.

Every afternoon Davie read to her, and thence Donal gained a duty--that of finding suitable pabulum for the two. He was not widely read in light literature, and it made necessary not a little exploration in the region of it.

CHAPTER LXV.

THE WALL.

On the day after the last triad in the housekeeper's parlour, as Donal sat in the schoolroom with Davie--about noon it was--he became aware that for some time he had been hearing laborious blows apparently at a great distance: now that he attended, they seemed to be in the castle itself, deadened by ma.s.s, not distance. With a fear gradually becoming more definite, he sat listening for a few moments.

"Davie," he said, "run and see what is going on."

The boy came rushing back in great excitement.

"Oh, Mr. Grant, what do you think!" he cried. "I do believe my father is after the lost room! They are breaking down a wall!"

"Where?" asked Donal, half starting from his seat.

"In the little room behind the half-way room--on the stair, you know!"

Donal was silent: what might not be the consequences!

"You may go and see them at work, Davie," he said. "We shall have no more lessons this morning.--Was your papa with them?"

"No, sir--at least, I did not see him. Simmons told me he sent for the masons this morning, and set them to take the wall down. Oh, thank you, Mr. Grant! It is such fun! I do wonder what is behind it! It may be a place you know quite well, or a place you never saw before!"

Davie ran off, and Donal instantly sped to a corner where he had hidden some tools, thence to lady Arctura's deserted room, and so to the oak door. He remembered seeing another staple in the same post, a little lower down: if he could get that out, he would drive it in beside the remains of the other, so as to hold the bolt of the lock: if the earl knew the way in, as doubtless he did, he must not learn that another had found it--not yet at least! As he went down, every blow of the masons pounding at the wall, seemed in his very ears.

He peeped through the press-door: they had not yet got through the wall: no light was visible! He made haste to restore things--only a stool and a few papers--to their exact positions when first he entered.

Close to him on the other side of the part.i.tion, shaking the place, the huge blows were falling like those of a ram on the wall of a besieged city, of which he was the whole garrison. He stepped into the press and drew the door after him: with his last glance behind him he saw, in the faint gleam of light that came with it, a stone fall: he must make haste: the demolition would go on much faster now; but before they had the opening large enough to pa.s.s, he would have done what he wanted!

With a strong piece of iron for a lever, he drew the staple from the post, then drove it in astride of the bolt, careful to time his blows to those of the masons. That done, he ran down to the chapel, gathered what dust he could sweep up from behind the altar and laid it on its top, restored on the bed, with its own dust, a little of the outline of what had lain there, dropped the slab to its place in the floor of the pa.s.sage, closed the door of the chapel with some difficulty because of its broken hinge, and ascended.

The sounds of battering had ceased, and as he pa.s.sed the oak door he laid his ear to it: some one was in the place! the lid of the bureau shut with a loud bang, and he heard a lock turned. The wall could not be half down yet: the earl must have entered the moment he could get through!

Donal hastened up, and out of the dreadful place, put the slab in the opening, secured it with a strut against the opposite side of the recess, and closed the shutters and drew the curtains of the room; if the earl came up the stair in the wall, found the stone immovable, and saw no light through any c.h.i.n.k about its edges, he would not suspect it had been displaced!

He went then to lady Arctura.

"I have a great deal to tell you," he said, "but at this moment I cannot: I am afraid of the earl finding me with you!"

"Why should you mind that?" said Arctura.

"Because I think he is suspicious about the lost room. He has had a wall taken down this morning. Please do not let him see you know anything about it. Davie thinks he is set on finding the lost room: I think he knew all about it long ago. You can ask him what he has been doing: you must have heard the masons!"

"I hope I shall not stumble into anything like a story, for if I do I must out with everything!"

In the afternoon, Davie was full of the curious little place his father had discovered behind the wall; but, if that was the lost room, he said, it was not at all worth making such a fuss about: it was nothing but a big closet, with an old desk-kind of thing in it!

In the afternoon also, the earl went to see his niece. It was the first time they met after his rude behaviour on her proposal to search for the lost room.

"What were you doing this morning, uncle?" she said. "There was such a thumping and banging somewhere in the castle! Davie said you were determined, he thought, to find the lost room."

"Nothing of the kind, my love," answered the earl. "--I do hope they will not spoil the stair carrying the stones and mortar down!"

"What was it then, uncle?"

"Simply this, my dear: my late wife, your aunt, and I, had a plan for taking that closet behind my room on the stair into the room itself. In preparation, I had a wall built across the middle of the closet, so as to divide it and make two recesses of it, and act also as a b.u.t.tress to the weakened wall. Then your aunt died, and I hadn't the heart to open the recesses or do anything more in the matter. So one half of the closet was cut off, and remained inaccessible. But there had been left in it an old bureau, containing papers of some consequence, for it was heavy, and intended to occupy the same position after the arches were opened. Now, as it happens, I want one of those papers, so the wall has had to come down again."

"But, uncle, what a pity!" said Arctura. "Why did you not open the arches? The recesses would have been so pretty in that room!"

"I am sorry I did not think of asking you what you would like done about it, my child! The fact is I never thought of your taking any interest in the matter; I had naturally lost all mine. You will please to observe, however, I have only restored what I had myself disarranged--not meddled with anything belonging to the castle!"

"But now you have the masons here, why not go on, and make a little search for the lost room?" said Arctura, venturing once more.

"We might pull down the castle and be none the wiser! Bah! the building up of half the closet may have given rise to the whole story!"