Donal Grant Part 73

"Surely, uncle, the legend is older than that!"

"It may be; you cannot be sure. Once a going, it would immediately cry back to a remote age. Prove that any one ever spoke of it before the building of that foolish wall."

"Surely some remember hearing it long before that!"

"Nothing is more treacherous than a memory confronted with a general belief," said the earl, and took his leave.

The next morning Arctura went to see the alteration. She opened the door of the little room: it was twice its former size, and two bureaus were standing against the wall! She peeped into the cupboard at the end of it, but saw nothing there.

That same morning she made up her mind that she would go no farther at present in regard to the chapel: it would be to break with her uncle!

In the evening, she acquainted Donal with her resolve, and he could not say she was wrong. There was no necessity for opposing her uncle--there might soon come one! He told her how he had entered the closet from behind, and of the noise he had made the night before, which had perhaps led to the opening of the place; but he did not tell her of what he had found on the bureau. The time might come when he must do so, but now he dared not render her relations with her uncle yet more uncomfortable; neither was it likely such a woman would consent to marry such a man as her cousin had shown himself; when that danger appeared, it would be time to interpose; for the mere succession to an empty t.i.tle, he was not sure that he was bound to speak. The branch which could produce such scions, might well be itself a false graft on the true stem of the family!--if not, what was the family worth? He must at all events be sure it was his business before he moved in the matter!

CHAPTER LXVI.

PROGRESS AND CHANGE.

Things went on very quietly for a time. Arctura grew better, resumed her studies, and made excellent progress. She would have worked harder, but Donal would not let her. He hated forcing--even with the good will of the plant itself. He believed in a holy, unhasting growth. G.o.d's ways want G.o.d's time.

Long after, people would sometimes say to him--

"That is very well in the abstract; but in these days of hurry a young fellow would that way be left ages behind!"

"With G.o.d," would Donal say.

"Tut, tut! the thing would never work!"

"For your ends," Donal would answer, "it certainly would never work; but your ends are not those of the universe!"

"I do not pretend they are; but they are the success of the boy."

"That is one of the ends of the universe; and your reward will be to thwart it for a season. I decline to make one in a conspiracy against the design of our creator: I would fain die loyal!"

He was of course laughed at, and not a little despised, as an extravagant enthusiast. But those who laughed found it hard to say for what he was enthusiastic. It seemed hardly for education, when he would even do what he could sometimes to keep a pupil back! He did not care to make the best of any one! The truth was, Donal's best was so many miles a-head of theirs, that it was below their horizon altogether. If there be any relation between time and the human mind, every forcing of human process, whether in spirit or intellect, is hurtful, a r.e.t.a.r.ding of G.o.d's plan.

Lady Arctura's old troubles were gradually fading into the limbo of vanities. At times, however, mostly when unwell, they would come in upon her like a flood: what if, after all, G.o.d were the self-loving being theology presented--a being from whom no loving human heart could but recoil with a holy dislike! what if it was because of a nature specially evil that she could not accept the G.o.d in whom the priests and elders of her people believed! But again and again, in the midst of profoundest wretchedness from such doubt, had a sudden flush of the world's beauty--that beauty which Jesus has told us to consider and the modern pharisee to avoid, broken like gentlest mightiest sunrise through the h.e.l.lish fog, and she had felt a power upon her as from the heart of a very G.o.d--a G.o.d such as she would give her life to believe in--one before whom she would cast herself in speechless adoration--not of his greatness--of that she felt little, but of his lovingkindness, the gentleness that was making her great. Then would she care utterly for G.o.d and his Christ, nothing for what men said about them: the Lord never meant his lambs to be under the tyranny of any, least of all the tyranny of his own most imperfect church! its work is to teach; where it cannot teach, it must not rule! Then would G.o.d appear to her not only true, but real--the heart of the human, to which she could cling, and so rest. The corruption of all religion comes of leaving the human, and G.o.d as the causing Human, for something imagined holier. Men who do not see the loveliness of the Truth, search till they find a lie they can call lovely. What but a human reality could the heart of man ever love! what else are we offered in Jesus but the absolutely human? That Jesus has two natures is of the most mischievous fictions of theology.

The divine and the human are not two.

Suddenly, after an absence of months, reappeared lord Forgue--cheerful, manly, on the best terms with his father, and plainly willing to be on still better terms with his cousin! He had left the place a mooning youth; he came back a man of the world--easy in carriage, courteous in manners, serene in temper, abounding in what seemed the results of observation, attentive but not too attentive, jolly with Davie, distant with Donal, polite to all. Donal could hardly receive the evidence of his senses: he would have wondered more had he known every factor in the change. All about him seemed to say it should not be his fault if the follies of his youth remained unforgotten; and his airy carriage sat well upon him. None the less Donal felt there was no restoration of the charm which had at first attracted him; that was utterly vanished.

He felt certain he had been going down hill, and was now, instead of negatively, consciously and positively untrue.

With gradations undefined, but not unmarked of Donal, as if the man found himself under influences of which the youth had been unaware, he began to show himself not indifferent to the attractions of his cousin.

He expressed concern that her health was not what it had been; sought her in her room when she did not appear; professed an interest in knowing what books she was reading, and what were her studies with Donal; behaved like a good brother-cousin, who would not be sorry to be something more.

And now the earl, to the astonishment of the household, began to appear at table; and, apparently as a consequence of this, Donal was requested rather than invited to take his meals with the family--not altogether to his satisfaction, seeing he could not only read while he ate alone, but could get through more quickly, and have the time thus saved, for things of greater consequence. His presence made it easier for lord Forgue to act his part, and the manners he brought to the front left little to be desired. He bowed to the judgment of Arctura, and seemed to welcome that of his father, to whom he was now as respectful as moralist could desire. Yet he sometimes faced a card he did not mean to show: who that is not absolutely true can escape the mishap!--there was condescension in his politeness to Donal! and this, had there been nothing else, would have been enough to revolt Arctura. But in truth he impressed her altogether as a man of outsides; she felt that she did not see the man he was, but the nearest approach he could make to the man he would be taken for. He was gracious, dignified, responsive, kind, amusing, accurate, ready--everything but true. He would make of his outer man all but what it was meant for--a revelation of the inner.

It was that notwithstanding. He was a man dressed in a man, and his dress was a revelation of much that he was, while he intended it only to show much that he was not. No man can help unveiling himself, however long he may escape even his own detection. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. Things were meant to come out, and be read, and understood, in the face of the universe. The soul of every man is as a secret book, whose content is yet written on its cover for the reading of the wise. How differently is it read by the fool, whose very understanding is a misunderstanding! He takes a man for a G.o.d when on the point of being eaten up of worms! he buys for thirty pieces of silver him whom the sepulchre cannot hold! Well for those in the world of revelation, who give their sins no quarter in this!

Forgue had been in Edinburgh a part of the time, in England another part. He had many things to tell of the people he had seen, and the sports he had shared in. He had developed and enlarged a vein of gentlemanly satire, which he kept supplied by the observation and a.n.a.lysis of the peculiarities, generally weaknesses, of others. These, as a matter of course, he judged merely by the poor standard of society: questioned concerning any upon the larger human scale, he could give no account of them. To Donal's eyes, the man was a shallow pool whose surface brightness concealed the muddy bottom.

CHAPTER LXVII.

THE BREAKFAST-ROOM.

Two years before, lady Arctura had been in the habit of riding a good deal, but after an accident to a favourite horse for which she blamed herself, she had scarcely ridden at all. It was quite as much, however, from the influence of Miss Carmichael upon her spirits, that she had forsaken the exercise. Partly because her uncle was neither much respected nor much liked, she had visited very little; and after mental trouble a.s.sailed her, growing under the false prescriptions of the soul-doctor she had called in, she withdrew more and more, avoiding even company she would have enjoyed, and which would before now have led her to resume it.

For a time she persisted in refusing to ride with Forgue. In vain he offered his horse, a.s.suring her that Davie's pony was quite able to carry him; she had no inclination to ride, she said. But at last one day, lest she should be guilty of unkindness, she consented, and so enjoyed the ride--felt, indeed, so much the better for it, that she did not thereafter so positively as before decline to allow her cousin to look out for a horse fit to carry her; and Forgue, taking her consent for granted, succeeded, with the help of the factor, in finding for her a beautiful creature, just of the sort to please her. Almost at sight of him she agreed to his purchase.

This put Forgue in great spirits, and much contentment with himself. He did not doubt that, gaining thus opportunity so excellent, he would quickly succeed in withdrawing her from the absurd influence which, to his dismay, he discovered his enemy had in his absence gained over her.

He ought not to have been such a fool, he said to himself, as to leave the poor child to the temptations naturally arising in such a dreary solitude! He noted with satisfaction, however, that the parson's daughter seemed to have forsaken the house. And now at last, having got rid of the folly that a while possessed him, he was prepared to do his duty by the family, and, to that end, would make unfaltering use of the fascinations experience had taught him he was, in a most exceptional degree, gifted with! He would at once take Arctura's education in his own hands, and give his full energy to it! She should speedily learn the difference between the a.s.sistance of a gentleman and that of a clotpoll!

He had in England improved in his riding as well as his manners, and knew at least how a gentleman, if not how a man, ought to behave to the beast that carried him. Also, having ridden a good deal with ladies, he was now able to give Arctura not a few hints to the improvement of her seat, her hand, her courage; nor was there any nearer road, he judged from what he knew of his cousin, to her confidence and grat.i.tude, than showing her a better way in a thing.

But thinking that in teaching her to ride he could make her forget the man who had been teaching her to live, he was not a little mistaken in the woman he desired to captivate.

He did not yet love her even in the way he called loving, else he might have been less confident; but he found her very pleasing. Invigorated by the bright frosty air, the life of the animal under her, and the exultation of rapid motion, she seemed better in health, more merry and full of life, than he had ever seen her: he put all down to his success with her. He was incapable of suspecting how little of it was owing to him; incapable of believing how much to the fact that she now turned to the father of spirits without fear, almost without doubt; thought of him as the root of every delight of the world--at the heart of the horse she rode, in the wind that blew joy into hers as she swept through its yielding bosom; knew him as altogether loving and true, the father of Jesus Christ, as like him as like could be like--more like him than any one else in the universe could be like another--like him as only eternal son can be like eternal father.

It was no wonder that with such a well of living water in her heart she should be glad--merry even, and ready for anything her horse could do!

Flying across a field in the very wildness of pleasure, her hair streaming behind her, and her pale face glowing, she would now and then take a jump Forgue declared he could not face in cold blood: he did not know how far from cold her blood was! He began to wonder he had been such a fool as neglect her for--well, never mind!--and to feel something that was like love, and was indeed admiration. But for the searing brand of his past, he might have loved her truly--as a man may, without being the most exalted of mortals; for in love we are beyond our ordinary selves; the deep thing in us peers up into the human air, and is of G.o.d--therefore cannot live long in the mephitic air of a selfish and low nature, but sinks again out of sight.

He was not at his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would please, he may well be afraid of her. He makes liberal allowance for himself, but is not sure she will! And before Forgue lay a social gulf which he could pa.s.s only on the narrow plank of her favour! The more he was with her, the more he admired her, the more he desired to marry her; the more satisfied he grew with his own improvement, the more determined he became that for no poor, unjust scruples would he forgo his happiness. There was but one trifle to be kept from the world; it might know everything else about him! and once in possession of the property, who would dispute the t.i.tle? Then again he was not certain that his father had not merely invented a threat! Surely if the fact were such, he would, even in rage diabolic, have kept it to himself!

Impetuous, and accustomed to what he counted success, he soon began to make plainer advance toward the end on which his self-love and cupidity at least were set. But, knowing in a vague manner how he had carried himself before he went, Arctura, uninfluenced by the ways of the world, her judgment unwarped, her perception undimmed, her instincts nice, her personal delicacy exacting, had never imagined he could approach her on any ground but that of cousinship and a childhood of shared sports. She had seen that Donal was far from pleased with him, and believed Forgue knew that she knew he had been behaving badly. Her behaviour to him was indeed largely based on the fact that he was in disgrace: she was sorry for him.

By and by, however, she perceived that she had been allowing too much freedom where she was not prepared to allow more, and so one day declined to go with him. They had not had a ride for a fortnight, the weather having been unfavourable; and now when a morning broke into the season like a smile from an estranged friend, she would not go! He was annoyed--then alarmed, fearing adverse influence. They were alone in the breakfast-room.

"Why will you not, Arctura?" he asked reproachfully: "do you not feel well?"

"I am quite well," she answered.

"It is such a lovely day!" he pleaded.

"I am not in the mood. There are other things in the world besides riding, and I have been wasting my time--riding too much. I have learnt next to nothing since Larkie came."

"Oh, bother! what have you to do with learning! Health is the first thing."

"I don't think so--and learning is good for the health. Besides, I would not be a mere animal for perfect health!"

"Let me help you then with your studies."

"Thank you," she answered, laughing a little, "but I have a good master already! We, that is Davie and I, are reading Greek and mathematics with Mr. Grant."

Forgue's face flushed.