Loe raamatut: «Donal Grant», lehekülg 23

CHAPTER LI.
A DREAM

One evening, as Donal was walking in the little avenue below the terraces, Davie, who was now advanced to doing a little work without his master's immediate supervision, came running to him to say that Arkie was in the schoolroom and wanted to see him.

He hastened to her.

"A word with you, please, Mr. Grant," she said.

Donal sent the boy away.

"I have debated with myself all day whether I should tell you," she began—and her voice trembled not a little; "but I think I shall not be so much afraid to go to bed if I do tell you what I dreamt last night."

Her face was very pale, and there was a quiver about her mouth: she seemed ready to burst into tears.

"Do tell me," said Donal sympathetically.

"Do you think it very silly to mind one's dreams?" she asked.

"Silly or not," answered Donal, "as regards the general run of dreams, it is plain you have had one that must be minded. What we must mind, it cannot be silly to mind."

"I am in no mood, I fear, for philosophy," she rejoined, trying to smile. "It has taken such a hold of me that I cannot get rid of it, and there is no one I could tell it to but you; any one else would laugh at me; but you never laugh at anybody!

"I went to bed as well as usual, only a little troubled about my uncle's strangeness, and soon fell asleep, to find myself presently in a most miserable place. It was like a brick-field—but a deserted brick-field. Heaps of broken and half-burnt bricks were all about. For miles and miles they stretched around me. I walked fast to get out of it. Nobody was near or in sight; there was not a sign of human habitation from horizon to horizon.

"All at once I saw before me a dreary church. It was old, tumble-down, and dirty—not in the least venerable—very ugly—a huge building without shape, like most of our churches. I shrank from the look of it: it was more horrible to me than I could account for; I feared it. But I must go in—why, I did not know, but I must: the dream itself compelled me.

"I went in. It looked as if nobody had crossed its threshold for a hundred years. The pews were mouldering away; the canopy over the pulpit had half fallen, and rested its edge on the book-board; the great galleries had in parts tumbled into the body of the church, in other parts they hung sloping from the walls. The centre of the floor had fallen in, and there was a great, descending slope of earth, soft-looking, mixed with bits of broken and decayed wood, from the pews above and the coffins below. I stood gazing down in horror unutterable. How far the gulf went I could not see. I was fascinated by its slow depth, and the thought of its possible contents—when suddenly I knew rather than perceived that something was moving in its darkness: it was something dead—something yellow-white. It came nearer; it was slowly climbing; like one dead and stiff it was labouring up the slope. I could neither cry out nor move. It was about three yards below me, when it raised its head: it was my uncle, dead, and dressed for the grave. He beckoned me—and I knew I must go; I had to go, nor once thought of resisting. My heart became like lead, but immediately I began the descent. My feet sank in the mould of the ancient dead, soft as if thousands of graveyard moles were for ever burrowing in it, as down and down I went, settling and sliding with the black plane. Then I began to see the sides and ends of coffins in the walls of the gulf; and the walls came closer and closer as I descended, until they scarcely left me room to get through. I comforted myself with the thought that those in these coffins had long been dead, and must by this time be at rest, nor was there any danger of seeing mouldy hands come out to seize me. At last I saw that my uncle had stopped, and I stood still, a few yards above him, more composed than I can understand."

"The wonder is we are so believing, yet not more terrified, in our dreams," said Donal.

"He began to heave and pull at a coffin that seemed to stop the way. Just as he got it dragged on one side, I saw on the bright silver handle of it the Morven crest. The same instant the lid rose, and my father came out of the coffin, looking alive and bright; my uncle stood beside him like a corpse beside a soul. 'What do you want with my child?' he said; and my uncle cowered before him. He took my hand and said, 'Come with me, my child.' And I went with him—oh, so gladly! My fear was gone, and so was my uncle. He led me up the way we had come down, but when we came out of the hole, instead of finding myself in the horrible church, I was in my own room. I looked round—no one was near! I was sorry my father was gone, but glad to be in my own room. Then I woke—and here was the terrible thing—not in my bed—but standing in the middle of the floor, just where my dream had left me! I cannot get rid of the thought that I really went somewhere. I have been haunted with it the whole day. It is a terror to me—for if I did, where is my help against going again!"

"In God our saviour," said Donal. "—But had your uncle given you anything?"

"I wish I could think so; but I do not see how he could."

"You must change your room, and get mistress Brookes to sleep near you."

"I will."

Gladly would Donal have offered to sleep, like one of his colleys, outside her door, but Mrs. Brookes was the only one to help her.

He began at once to make observations towards determining the existence or non-existence of a hidden room, but in the quietest way, so as to attract no attention, and had soon satisfied himself concerning some parts that it could not be there. Without free scope and some one to help him, the thing was difficult. To gauge a building which had grown through centuries, to fit the varying tastes and changing needs of the generations, was in itself not easy, and he judged it all but impossible without drawing observation and rousing speculation. Great was the chaotic element in the congeries of erections and additions, brought together by various contrivances, and with daringly enforced communication. Open spaces within the walls, different heights in the stories of contiguous buildings, breaks in the continuity of floors, and various other irregularities, he found confusingly obstructive.

CHAPTER LII.
INVESTIGATION

The autumn brought terrible storms. Many fishing boats came to grief. Of some, the crews lost everything: of others, the loss of their lives delivered their crews from smaller losses. There were many bereaved in the village, and Donal went about among them, doing what he could, and getting help for them where his own ability would not reach their necessity. Lady Arctura wanted no persuasion to go with him in some of his visits; and the intercourse she thus gained with humanity in its simpler forms, of which she had not had enough for the health of her own nature, was of high service to her. Perhaps nothing helps so much to believe in the Father, as the active practical love of the brother. If he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, can ill love God whom he hath not seen, then he who loves his brother must surely find it the easier to love God! Arctura found that to visit the widow and the fatherless in their afflictions; to look on and know them as her kind; to enter into their sorrows, and share the elevating influence of grief genuine and simple, the same in every human soul, was to draw near to God. She met him in his children. For to honour, love, and be just to our neighbour, is religion; and he who does these things will soon find that he cannot live without the higher part of religion, the love of God. If that do not follow, the other will sooner or later die away, leaving the man the worse for having had it. She found her way to God easier through the crowd of her fellows; while their troubles took her off her own, set them at a little distance from her, and so put it in her power to understand them better.

One day after the fishing boats had gone out, rose a terrible storm. Some of them made for the harbour again—such as it was; others kept out to sea; Stephen Kennedy's boat came ashore bottom upward. His body was cast on the sands close to the spot where Donal dragged the net from the waves. There was sorrow afresh through the village: Kennedy was a favourite; and his mother was left childless. No son would any more come sauntering in with his long slouch in the gloamin'; and whether she would ever see him again—to know him—who could tell! For the common belief does not go much farther than paganism in yielding comfort to those whose living loves have disappeared—the fault not of Christianity, but of Christians.

The effect of the news upon Forgue I have some around for conjecturing: I believe it made him care a little less about marrying the girl, now that he knew no rival ready to take her; and feel also that he had one enemy the less, one danger the less, in the path he would like to take. Within a week after, he left the castle, and if his father knew where he went, he was the only one who did. He had been pressing him to show some appearance of interest in his cousin; Forgue had professed himself unequal to the task at present: if he might go away for a while, he said, he would doubtless find it easier when he returned.

The storms were over, the edges and hidden roots had begun to dream of spring, and Arctura had returned to her own room to sleep, when one afternoon she came to the schoolroom and told Donal she had had the terrible dream again.

"This time," she said, "I came out, in my dream, on the great stair, and went up to my room, and into bed, before I waked. But I dare not ask mistress Brookes whether she saw me—"

"You do not imagine you were out of the room?" said Donal.

"I cannot tell. I hope not. If I were to find I had been, it would drive me out of my senses! I was thinking all day about the lost room: I fancy it had something to do with that."

"We must find the room, and have done with it!" said Donal.

"Are you so sure we can?" she asked, her face brightening.

"If there be one, and you will help me, I think we can," he answered.

"I will help you."

"Then first we will try the shaft of the music-chimney. That it has never smoked, at least since those wires were put there, makes it something to question—though the draught across it might doubtless have prevented it from being used. It may be the chimney to the very room. But we will first try to find out whether it belongs to any room we know. I will get a weight and a cord: the wires will be a plague, but I think we can pass them. Then we shall see how far the weight goes down, and shall know on what floor it is arrested. That will be something gained: the plane of inquiry will be determined. Only there may be a turn in the chimney, preventing the weight from going to the bottom."

"When shall we set about it?" said Arctura, almost eagerly.

"At once," replied Donal.

She went to get a shawl.

Donal went to the gardener's tool-house, and found a suitable cord. There was a seven-pound weight, but that would not pass the wires! He remembered an old eight-day clock on a back stair, which was never going. He got out its heavier weight, and carried it, with the cord and the ladder, to his own stair—at the foot of which was lady Arctura—waiting for him.

There was that in being thus associated with the lovely lady; in knowing that peace had began to visit her through him, that she trusted him implicitly, looking to him for help and even protection; in knowing that nothing but wrong to her could be looked for from uncle or cousin, and that he held what might be a means of protecting her, should undue influence be brought to bear upon her—there was that in all this, I say, that stirred to its depth the devotion of Donal's nature. With the help of God he would foil her enemies, and leave her a free woman—a thing well worth a man's life! Many an angel has been sent on a smaller errand!

Such were his thoughts as he followed Arctura up the stair, she carrying the weight and the cord, he the ladder, which it was not easy to get round the screw of the stair. Arctura trembled with excitement as she ascended, grew frightened as often as she found she had outstripped him, waited till the end of the ladder came poking round, and started again before the bearer appeared.

Her dreams had disquieted her more than she had yet confessed: had she been taking a way of her own, and choosing a guide instead of receiving instruction in the way of understanding? Were these things sent for her warning, to show her into what an abyss of death her conduct was leading her?—But the moment she found herself in the open air of Donal's company, her doubts and fears vanished for the time. Such a one as he must surely know better than those others the way of the Spirit! Was he not more childlike, more straightforward, more simple, and, she could not but think, more obedient than those? Mr. Carmichael was older, and might be more experienced; but did his light shine clearer than Donal's? He might be a priest in the temple; but was there not a Samuel in the temple as well as an Eli? It the young, strong, ruddy shepherd, the defender of his flock, who was sent by God to kill the giant! He was too little to wear Saul's armour; but he could kill a man too big to wear it! Thus meditated Arctura as she climbed the stair, and her hope and courage grew.

A delicate conscience, sensitive feelings, and keen faculties, subjected to the rough rasping of coarse, self-satisfied, unspiritual natures, had almost lost their equilibrium. As to natural condition no one was sounder than she; yet even now when she had more than begun to see its falsehood, a headache would suffice to bring her afresh under the influence of the hideous system she had been taught, and wake in her all kinds of deranging doubts and consciousnesses. Subjugated so long to the untrue, she required to be for a time, until her spiritual being should be somewhat individualized, under the genial influences of one who was not afraid to believe, one who knew the master. Nor was there danger to either so long as he sought no end of his own, so long as he desired only His will, so long as he could say, "Whom is there in heaven but thee! and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee!"

By the time she reached the top she was radiantly joyous in the prospect of a quiet hour with him whose presence and words always gave her strength, who made the world look less mournful, and the will of God altogether beautiful; who taught her that the glory of the Father's love lay in the inexorability of its demands, that it is of his deep mercy that no one can get out until he has paid the uttermost farthing.

They stepped upon the roof and into the gorgeous afterglow of an autumn sunset. The whole country, like another sea, was flowing from that that well of colour, in tidal waves of an ever advancing creation. Its more etherial part, rushing on above, broke on the old roofs and chimneys and splashed its many tinted foam all over them; while through it and folded in it came a cold thin wind that told of coming death. Arctura breathed a deep breath, and her joy grew. It is wonderful how small a physical elevation, lifting us into a slightly thinner air, serves to raise the human spirits! We are like barometers, only work the other way; the higher we go, the higher goes our mercury.

They stood for a moment in deep enjoyment, then simultaneously turned to each other.

"My lady," said Donal, "with such a sky as that out there, it hardly seems as if there could be such a thing as our search to-night! Hollow places, hidden away for evil cause, do not go with it at all! There is the story of gracious invention and glorious gift; here the story of greedy gathering and self-seeking, which all concealment involves!"

"But there may be nothing, you know, Mr. Grant!" said Arctura, troubled for the house.

"There may be nothing. But if there is such a room, you may be sure it has some relation with terrible wrong—what, we may never find out, or even the traces of it."

"I shall not be afraid," she said, as if speaking with herself. "It is the terrible dreaming that makes me weak. In the morning I tremble as if I had been in the hands of some evil power."

Donal turned his eyes upon her. How thin she looked in the last of the sunlight! A pang went through him at the thought that one day he might be alone with Davie in the huge castle, untended by the consciousness that a living light and loveliness flitted somewhere about its gloomy and ungenial walls. But he would not think the thought! How that dismal Miss Carmichael must have worried her! When the very hope of the creature in his creator is attacked in the name of religion; when his longing after a living God is met with the offer of a paltry escape from hell, how is the creature to live! It is God we want, not heaven; his righteousness, not an imputed one, for our own possession; remission, not letting off; love, not endurance for the sake of another, even if that other be the one loveliest of all.

They turned from the sunset and made their way to the chimney-stack. There once more Donal set up his ladder. He tied the clock-weight to the end of his cord, dropped it in, and with a little management got it through the wires. It went down and down, gently lowered, till the cord was all out, and still it would go.

"Do run and get some more," said Arctura.

"You do not mind being left alone?"

"No—if you will not be long."

"I will run," he said—and run he did, for she had scarcely begun to feel the loneliness when he returned panting.

He took the end she had been holding, tied on the fresh cord he had brought, and again lowered away. As he was beginning to fear that after all he had not brought enough, the weight stopped, resting, and drew no more.

"If only we had eyes in that weight," said Arctura, "like the snails at the end of their horns!"

"We might have greased the bottom of the weight," said Donal, "as they do the lead when they want to know what kind of bottom there is to the sea: it might have brought up ashes. If it will not go any farther, I will mark the string at the mouth, and draw it up."

He moved the weight up and down a little; it rested still, and he drew it up.

"Now we must mark off it the height of the chimney above the parapet wall," he said; "and then I will lower the weight towards the court below, until this last knot comes to the wall: the weight will then show us on the outside how far down the house it went inside.—Ah, I thought so!" he went on, looking over after the weight; "—only to the first floor, or thereabouts!—No, I think it is lower!—But anyhow, my lady, as you can see, the place with which the chimney, if chimney it be, communicates, must be somewhere about the middle of the house, and perhaps is on the first floor; we can't judge very well looking down from here, and against a spot where are no windows. Can you imagine what place it might be?"

"I cannot," answered Arctura; "but I could go into every room on that floor without anyone seeing me."

"Then I will let the weight down the chimney again, and leave it for you to see, if you can, below. If you find it, we must do something else."

It was done, and they descended together. Donal went back to the schoolroom, not expecting to see her again till the next day. But in half an hour she came to him, saying she had been into every room on that floor, both where she thought it might be, and where she knew it could not be, and had not seen the weight.

"The probability then is," replied Donal, "that thereabout somewhere—there, or farther down in that neighbourhood—lies the secret; but we cannot be sure, for the weight may not have reached the bottom of the shaft. Let us think what we shall do next.

He placed a chair for her by the fire. They had the room to themselves.

CHAPTER LIII.
MISTRESS BROOKES UPON THE EARL

They were hardly seated when Simmons appeared, saying he had been looking everywhere for her ladyship, for his lordship was taken as he had never seen him before: he had fainted right out in the half-way room, and he could not get him to.

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 transplantit. 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 assured 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' trustit—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-hertit 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-heartit 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 dewotit 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!"