CHAPTER XI.
THE FIR-GROVE
As the ladies went up the ridge, regarded in the neighbourhood as the chief's pleasure-ground where nobody went except to call upon the chief, they must, having mounted it lower down than where they descended, pass the cottage. The grove of birch, mountain-ash, and fir which surrounded it, was planted quite irregularly, and a narrow foot-path went winding through it to the door. Against one of the firs was a rough bench turned to the west, and seated upon it they saw Ian, smoking a formless mass of much defiled sea-foam, otherwise meer-schaum. He rose, uncovered, and sat down again. But Christina, who regarded it as a praiseworthy kindness to address any one beneath her, not only returned his salutation, but stopped, and said,
"Good morning! We have been learning how they plough in Scotland, but I fear we annoyed the ploughman."
"Fergus does sometimes LOOK surly," said Ian, rising again, and going to her; "he has bad rheumatism, poor fellow! And then he can't speak a word of English, and is ashamed of it!"
"The man we saw spoke English very well. Is Fergus your brother's name?"
"No; my brother's name is Alister—that is Gaelic for Alexander."
"He was ploughing with two wild little oxen, and could hardly manage them."
"Then it must have been Alister—only, excuse me, he could manage them perfectly. Alister could break a pair of buffaloes."
"He seemed rather vexed, and I thought it might be that we made the creatures troublesome.—I do not mean he was rude—only a little rough to us."
Ian smiled, and waited for more.
"He did not like to be told he was hard on the animals. I only said the poor things did not know better!"
"Ah—I see!—He understands animals so well, he doesn't like to be meddled with in his management of them. I daresay he told you that, if they didn't know better, he had to teach them better! They are troublesome little wretches.—Yes, I confess he is a little touchy about animals!"
Somehow Christina felt herself rebuked, and did not like it. He had almost told her that, if she had quarrelled with his ploughman-brother, the fault must be hers!
"But indeed, Captain Macruadh," she said—for the people called him captain, "I am not ignorant about animals! We have horses of our own, and know all about them.—Don't we, Mercy?"
"Yes," said Mercy; "they take apples and sugar from our hands."
"And you would have the chief's bulls tamed with apples and sugar!" returned Ian, laughing. "But the horses were tamed before ever you saw them! If you had taken them wild, or even when they were foals, and taught them everything, then you would know a little about them. An acquaintance is not a friendship! My brother loves animals and understands them almost like human beings; he understands them better than some human beings, for the most cunning of the animals are yet simple. He knows what they are thinking when I cannot read a word of their faces. I remember one terrible night, winters ago—there had been a blinding drift on and off during the day, and my father and mother were getting anxious about him—how he came staggering in, and fell on the floor, and a great lump in his plaid on his back began to wallow about, and forth crept his big colley! They had been to the hills to look after a few sheep, and the poor dog was exhausted, and Alister carried him home at the risk of his life."
"A valuable animal, I don't doubt," said Christina.
"He had been, but was no more what the world calls valuable. He was an old dog almost past work—but the wisest creature! Poor fellow, he never recovered that day on the hills! A week or so after, we buried him—in the hope of a blessed resurrection," added Ian, with a smile.
The girls looked at each other as much as to say, "Good heavens!" He caught the look, but said nothing, for he saw they had "no understanding."
The brothers believed most devoutly that the God who is present at the death-bed of the sparrow does not forget the sparrow when he is dead; for they had been taught that he is an unchanging God; "and," argued Ian, "what God remembers, he thinks of, and what he thinks of, IS." But Ian knew that what misses the heart falls under the feet! A man is bound to SHARE his best, not to tumble his SEED-PEARLS into the feeding-trough, to break the teeth of them that are there at meat. He had but lifted a corner to give them a glimpse of the Life eternal, and the girls thought him ridiculous! The human caterpillar that has not yet even begun to sicken with the growth of her psyche-wings, is among the poorest of the human animals!
But Christina was not going to give in! Her one idea of the glory of life was the subjugation of men. As if moved by a sudden impulse, she went close up to him.
"Do not be angry with me," she said, almost coaxingly, but with a visible mingling of boldness and shyness, neither of them quite assumed; for, though conscious of her boldness, she was not frightened; and there was something in the eagle-face that made it easy to look shy. "I did not mean to be rude. I am sorry."
"You mistake me," he said gently. "I only wanted you to know you misjudged my brother."
"Then, if you have forgiven me, you will let me sit for a few minutes! I am SO tired with walking in the sticky earth!"
"Do, pray, sit down," responded Ian heartily, and led the way.
But she sank gracefully at the foot of the next fir, while Mercy sat down on the bench.
"Do go on with your pipe," she said, looking up as she arranged her dress; "I am quite used to smoke. Papa would smoke in church if he dared!"
"Chrissy! You KNOW he NEVER smokes in the drawing-room!" cried Mercy, scandalized.
"I have seen him—when mamma was away."
Ian began to be a little more interested in the plain one. But what must his mother think to see them sitting there together! He could not help it! if ladies chose to sit down, it was not for him to forbid them! And there WAS a glimmer of conscience in the younger!
Most men believe only what they find or imagine possible to themselves. They may be sure of this, that there are men so different from them that no judgment they pass upon them is worth a straw, simply because it does not apply to them. I assert of Ian that neither beauty nor intellect attracted him. Imagination would entice him, but the least lack of principle would arrest its influence. The simplest manifestation of a live conscience would draw him more than anything else. I do not mean the conscience that proposes questions, but the conscience that loves right and turns from wrong.
Notwithstanding the damsel's invitation, he did not resume his pipe. He was simple, but not free and easy—too sensitive to the relations of life to be familiar upon invitation with any girl. If she was not one with whom to hold real converse, it was impossible to blow dandelions with her, and talk must confine itself to the commonplace. After gentlest assays to know what was possible, the result might be that he grew courteously playful, or drew back, and confined himself to the formal.
In the conversation that followed, he soon found the younger capable of being interested, and, having seen much in many parts of the world, had plenty to tell her. Christina smiled sweetly, taking everything with over-gentle politeness, but looking as if all that interested her was, that there they were, talking about it. Provoked at last by her persistent lack of GENUINE reception, Ian was tempted to try her with something different: perhaps she might be moved to horror! Any feeling would be a FIND! He thought he would tell them an adventure he had read in a book of travels.
In Persia, alone in a fine moonlit night, the traveller had fallen asleep on his horse, but woke suddenly, roused by something frightful, he did not know what. The evil odour all about him explained, however, his bewilderment and terror. Presently he was bumped on this side, then bumped on that; first one knee, then the other, would be struck; now the calf of one leg was caught, now the calf of the other; then both would be caught at once, and he shoved nearly over his pommel. His horse was very uneasy, but could ill help himself in the midst of a moving mass of uncertain objects. The traveller for a moment imagined himself in a boat on the sea, with a huge quantity of wrecked cargo floating around him, whence came the frequent collisions he was undergoing; but he soon perceived that the vague shapes were boxes, pannierwise on the backs of mules, moving in caravan along the desert. Of not a few the lids were broken, of some gone altogether, revealing their contents—the bodies of good Mussulmans, on their way to the consecrated soil of Mecca for burial. Carelessly shambled the mules along, stumbling as they jogged over the uneven ground, their boxes tilting from side to side, sorely shaken, some of them, in frustration of dying hopes, scattering their contents over the track—for here and there a mule carried but a wreck of coffins. On and on over the rough gravelly waste, under the dead cold moon, weltered the slow stream of death!
"You may be sure," concluded Ian, "he made haste out of the ruck! But it was with difficulty he got clear, happily to windward—then for an hour sat motionless on his horse, watching through the moonlight the long dark shadow flitting toward its far-off goal. When at length he could no longer descry it, he put his horse to his speed—but not to overtake it."
As he spoke, Mercy's eyes grew larger and larger, never leaving his face. She had at least imagination enough for that! Christina curled her pretty lip, and looked disgusted. The one at a horrible tale was horrified, the other merely disgusted! The one showed herself capable of some reception; the other did not.
"Something might be done with that girl!" thought Ian.
"Did he see their faces?" drawled Christina.
Mercy was silent, but her eyes remained fixed on him. It was Ian's telling, more than the story, that impressed her.
"I don't think he mentions them," answered Ian. "But shall I tell you," he went on, "what seems to me the most unpleasant thing about the business?"
"Do," said Christina.
"It is that the poor ghosts should see such a disagreeable fuss made with their old clothes."
Christina smiled.
"Do you think ghosts see what goes on after they are dead?" asked Mercy.
"The ghosts are not dead," said Ian, "and I can't tell. But I am inclined to think some ghosts have to stay a while and look on."
"What would be the good of that?" returned Mercy.
"Perhaps to teach them the little good they were in, or got out of the world," he answered. "To have to stick to a thing after it is dead, is terrible, but may teach much."
"I don't understand you," said Mercy. "The world is not dead!"
"Better and better!" thought Ian with himself. "The girl CAN understand!—A thing is always dead to you when you have done with it," he answered her. "Suppose you had a ball-dress crumpled and unsightly—the roses on it withered, and the tinsel shining hideously through them—would it not be a dead dress?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Then suppose, for something you had done, or for something you would not stop being, you had to wear that ball-dress till something came about—you would be like the ghosts that cannot get away.—Suppose, when you were old and wrinkled,—"
"You are very amusing, Captain Macruadh!" said Christina, with a bell-like laugh. But Ian went on.
"Some stories tell us of ghosts with the same old wrinkled faces in which they died. The world and its uses over, they are compelled to haunt it still, seeing how things go but taking no share in them beholding the relief their death is to all, feeling they have lost their chance of beauty, and are fixed in ugliness, having wasted being itself! They are like a man in a miserable dream, in which he can do nothing, but in which he must stay, and go dreaming, dreaming on without hope of release. To be in a world and have nothing to do with it, must be awful! A little more imagination would do some people good!"
"No, please!—no more for me!" said Christina, laughing as she rose.
Mercy was silent. Though she had never really thought about anything herself, she did not doubt that certain people were in earnest about something. She knew that she ought to be good, and she knew she was not good; how to be good she did not know, for she had never set herself, to be good. She sometimes wished she were good; but there are thousands of wandering ghosts who would be good if they might without taking trouble: the kind of goodness they desire would not be worth a life to hold it.
Fear is a wholesome element in the human economy; they are merely silly who would banish it from all association with religion. True, there is no religion in fear; religion is love, and love casts out fear; but until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So long as there are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than secure.
The vague awe ready to assail every soul that has not found rest in its source, readier the more honest the soul, had for the first time laid hold of Mercy. The earnest face of the speaker had most to do with it. She had never heard anybody talk like that!
The lady of the house appeared, asking, with kind dignity, if they would not take some refreshment: to a highlander hospitality is a law where not a passion. Christina declined the offer.
"Thanks! we were only a little tired, and are quite rested now," she said. "How beautifully sheltered your house is!"
"On the side of the sea, yes," answered Mrs. Macruadh; "but not much on the east where we want it most. The trees are growing, however!"
When the sisters were out of sight of the cottage—
"Well!" remarked Christina, "he's a nice young man too, is he not? Exceedingly well bred! And what taste he has! He knows how to amuse ladies!"
Mercy did not answer.
"I never heard anything so disgusting!" pursued Christina.
"But," suggested Mercy, "you like to READ horrid stories, Chrissy! You said so only yesterday! And there was nothing in what he told us that oughtn't to be spoken about."
"What!—not those hideous coffins—and the bodies dropping out of them—all crawling, no doubt?"
"That is your own, Chrissy! You KNOW he did not go so far as that! If Colonel Webberly had told you the story, you would have called it charming—in fun, of course, I mean!"
But Christina never liked the argumentum ad feminam.
"I would not! You know I would not!" she exclaimed. "I do believe the girl has fallen in love with the horrid man! Of the two, I declare, I like the ploughman better. I am sorry I happened to vex him; he is a good stupid sort of fellow! I can't bear this man! How horribly he fixed his eyes on you when he was talking that rubbish about the ball-dress!"
"He was anxious to make himself understood. I know he made me think I must mind what I was about!"
"Oh, nonsense! We didn't come into this wilderness to be preached to by a lay John the Baptist! He is an ill-bred fellow!"
She would not have said so much against him, had not Mercy taken his part.
Mercy rarely contradicted her sister, but even this brief passage with a real man had roused the justice in her.
"I don't agree with you, Chrissy," she said. "He seems to me VERY MUCH of a gentleman!"
She did not venture to say all she felt, not choosing to be at absolute variance, and the threatened quarrel blew over like a shower in spring.
But some sort of impression remained from the words of Ian on the mind of Mercy, for the next morning she read a chapter in the book of Genesis, and said a prayer her mother had taught her.
CHAPTER XII.
AMONG THE HILLS
When Mr. and Mrs. Palmer reached Inverness, they found they could spend a few days there, one way and another, to good purpose, for they had friends to visit as well as shopping to do. Mr. Palmer's affairs calling him to the south were not immediately pressing, and their sojourn extended itself to a full week of eight days, during which the girls were under no rule but their own. Their parents regarded them as perfectly to be trusted, nor were the girls themselves aware of any reason why they should not be so regarded.
The window of Christina's bedroom overlooked a part of the road between the New House and the old castle; and she could see from it all the ridge as far as the grove that concealed the cottage: if now they saw more of the young men their neighbours, and were led farther into the wilds, thickets, or pasturage of their acquaintance, I cannot say she had no hand in it.
She was depressed by a sense of failure; the boor, as she called him, was much too thick-skinned for any society but that of his bulls! and she had made no progress with the Valentine any more than with the Orson; he was better pleased with her ugly sister than with her beautiful self!
She would have given neither of tie men another thought, but that there was no one else with whom to do any of that huckster business called flirting, which to her had just harm enough in it to make it interesting to her. She was one of those who can imagine beauty nor enjoyment in a thing altogether right. She took it for granted that bad and beautiful were often one; that the pleasures of the world owed their delight to a touch, a wash, a tincture of the wicked in them. Such have so many crooked lines in themselves that they fancy nature laid down on lines of crookedness. They think the obliquity the beauty of the campanile, the blurring the charm of the sketch.
I tread on delicate ground—ground which, alas! many girls tread boldly, scattering much feather-bloom from the wings of poor Psyche, gathering for her hoards of unlovely memories, and sowing the seed of many a wish that they had done differently. They cannot pass over such ground and escape having their nature more or less vulgarized. I do not speak of anything counted wicked; it is only gambling with the precious and lovely things of the deepest human relation! If a girl with such an experience marry a man she loves—with what power of loving may be left such a one—will she not now and then remember something it would be joy to discover she had but dreamed? will she be able always to forget certain cabinets in her brain which "it would not do" to throw open to the husband who thinks her simple as well as innocent? Honesty and truth, God's essentials, are perhaps more lacking in ordinary intercourse between young men and women than anywhere else. Greed and selfishness are as busy there as in money-making and ambition. Thousands on both sides are constantly seeking more than their share—more also than they even intend to return value for. Thousands of girls have been made sad for life by the speeches of a man careful all the time to SAY nothing that amounted to a pledge! I do not forget that many a woman who would otherwise have been worth little, has for her sorrow found such consolation that she has become rich before God; these words hold nevertheless: "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"
On a morning two days later, Christina called Mercy, rather imperiously, to get ready at once for their usual walk. She obeyed, and they set out. Christina declared she was perishing with cold, and they walked fast. By and by they saw on the road before them the two brothers walking slow; one was reading, the other listening. When they came nearer they descried in Alister's hand a manuscript volume; Ian carried an old-fashioned fowling-piece. It was a hard frost, which was perhaps the cause of Alister's leisure so early in the day.
Hearing the light steps of the girls behind them, the men turned. The laird was the first to speak. The plough and the fierce bulls not there to bewilder their judgment, the young women immediately discovered their perception in the matter of breeding to be less infallible than they had imagined it: no well bred woman could for a moment doubt the man before them a gentleman—though his carriage was more courteous and more natural than is often seen in a Mayfair drawing-room, and his English, a little old-fashioned. Ian was at once more like and more unlike other people. His manner was equally courteous, but notably stiffer: he was as much at his ease, but more reserved. To use a figure, he did not step out so far to meet them.
They walked on together.
"You are a little earlier than usual this morning, ladies!" remarked the chief.
"How do you know that, Mr. Macruadh?" rejoined Christina.
"I often see you pass—and till now always at the same hour."
"And yet we have never met before!"
"The busy and the"—he hesitated a moment—"unbusy seldom meet," said the chief.
"Why don't you say the IDLE?" suggested Christina.
"Because that would be rude."
"Why would it be rude? Most people, suppose, are more idle than busy!"
"IDLE is a word of blame; I had no right to use it."
"I should have taken you for one of those who always speak their minds!"
"I hope I do when it is required, and I have any to speak."
"You prefer judging with closed doors!"
The chief was silent: he did not understand her. Did she want him to say he did not think them idle? or, if they were, that they were quite right?
"I think it hard," resumed Christina, with a tone of injury, almost of suffering, in her voice, "that we should be friendly and open with people, and they all the time thinking of us in a way it would be rude to tell us! It is enough to make one vow never to speak to—to anybody again!"
Alister turned and looked at her. What could she mean?
"You can't think it hard," he said, "that people should not tell you what they think of you the moment they first see you!"
"They might at least tell us what they mean by calling us idle!"
"I said NOT BUSY."
"Is EVERYBODY to blame that is idle?" persisted Christina.
"Perhaps my brother will answer you that question," said Alister.
"If my brother and I tell you honestly what we thought of you when first we saw you," said Ian, "will you tell us honestly what you thought of us?"
The girls cast an involuntary glance at each other, and when their eyes met, could not keep them from looking conscious. A twitching also at the corners of Mercy's mouth showed they had been saying more than they would care to be cross-questioned upon.
"Ah, you betray yourselves, ladies!" Ian said. "It is all very well to challenge us, but you are not prepared to lead the way!"
"Girls are never allowed to lead!" said Christina. "The men are down on them the moment they dare!"
"I am not that way inclined," answered Ian. "If man or woman lead TO anything, success will justify the leader. I will propose another thing!"
"What is it?" asked Christina.
"To agree that, when we are about to part, with no probability of meeting again in this world, we shall speak out plainly what we think of each other!"
"But that will be such a time!" said Christina.
"In a world that turns quite round every twenty-four hours, it may be a very short time!"
"We shall be coming every summer, though I hope not to stay through another winter!"
"Changes come when they are least expected!"
"We cannot know," said Alister, "that we shall never meet again!"
"There the probability will be enough."
"But how can we come to a better—I mean a FAIRER opinion of each other, when we meet so seldom?" asked Mercy innocently.
"This is only the second time we have met, and already we are not quite strangers!" said Christina.
"On the other hand," said Alister, "we have been within call for more than two months, and this is our second meeting!"
"Well, who has not called?" said Christina.
The young men were silent. They did not care to discuss the question as to which mother was to blame in the matter.
They were now in the bottom of the valley, had left the road, and were going up the side of the burn, often in single file, Alister leading, and Ian bringing up the rear, for the valley was thickly strewn with lumps of gray rock, of all shapes and sizes. They seemed to have rolled down the hill on the other side of the burn, but there was no sign of their origin: the hill was covered with grass below, and with heather above. Such was the winding of the way among the stones—for path there was none—that again and again no one of them could see another. The girls felt the strangeness of it, and began to experience, without knowing it, a little of the power of solitary places.
After walking thus for some distance, they found their leader halted.
"Here we have to cross the burn," he said, "and go a long way up the other side."
"You want to be rid of us!" said Christina.
"By no means," replied Alister. "We are delighted to have you with us. But we must not let you get tired before turning to go back."
"If you really do not mind, we should like to go a good deal farther. I want to see round the turn there, where another hill comes from behind and closes up the view. We haven't anybody to go with us, and have seen nothing of the country. The men won't take us shooting; and mamma is always so afraid we lose ourselves, or fall down a few precipices, or get into a bog, or be eaten by wild beasts!"
"If this frost last, we shall have time to show you something of the country. I see you can walk!"
"We can walk well enough, and should so like to get to the top of a mountain!"
"For the crossing then!" said Alister, and turning to the burn, jumped and re-jumped it, as if to let them see how to do it.
The bed of the stream was at the spot narrowed by two rocks, so that, though there was little of it, the water went through with a roar, and a force to take a man off his legs. It was too wide for the ladies, and they stood eyeing it with dismay, fearing an end to their walk and the pleasant companionship.
"Do not be frightened, ladies," said Alister: "it is not too wide for you."
"You have the advantage of us in your dress!" said Christina.
"I will get you over quite safe," returned the chief.
Christina looked as if she could not trust herself to him.
"I will try," said Mercy.
"Jump high," answered Alister, as he sprang again to the other side, and held out his hand across the chasm.
"I can neither jump high nor far!" said Mercy.
"Don't be in a hurry. I will take you—no, not by the hand; that might slip—but by the wrist. Do not think how far you can jump; all you have to do is to jump. Only jump as high as you can."
Mercy could not help feeling frightened—the water rushed so fast and loud below.
"Are you sure you can get me over?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Then I will jump."
She sprang, and Alister, with a strong pull on her arm, landed her easily.
"It is your turn now," he said, addressing Christina.
She was rather white, but tried to laugh.
"I—I—I don't think I can!" she said.
"It is really nothing," persuaded the chief.
"I am sorry to be a coward, but I fear I was born one."
"Some feelings nobody can help," said Ian, "but nobody need give way to them. One of the bravest men I ever knew would always start aside if the meanest little cur in the street came barking at him; and yet on one occasion, when the people were running in all directions, he took a mad dog by the throat, and held him. Come, Alister! you take her by one arm and I will take her by the other."
The chief sprang to her side, and the moment she felt the grasp of the two men, she had the needful courage. The three jumped together, and all were presently walking merrily along the other bank, over the same kind of ground, in single file—Ian bringing up the rear.
The ladies were startled by a gun going off close behind them.
"I beg your pardon," said Ian, "but I could not let the rascal go."
"What have you killed?" his brother asked.
"Only one of my own family—a red-haired fellow!" answered Ian, who had left the path, and was going up the hill.
The girls looked, but saw nothing, and following him a few yards, came to him behind a stone.
"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Christina, with horror in her tone, "it's a fox!—Is it possible you have shot a fox?"
The men laughed.
"And why not?" asked Alister, as if he had no idea what she could mean. "Is the fox a sacred animal in the south?"
"It's worse than poaching!" she cried.
"Hardly!" returned Alister. "No doubt you may get a good deal of fun out of Reynard, but you can't make game of him! Why—you look as if you had lost a friend! I admire his intellect, but we can't afford to feed it on chickens and lambs."
"But to SHOOT him!"
"Why not? We do not respect him here. He is a rascal, to be sure, but then he has no money, and consequently no friends!"
"He has many friends! What WOULD Christian or Mr. Sercombe say to shooting, actually shooting a fox!"
"You treat him as if he were red gold!" said the chief. "We build temples neither to Reynard nor Mammon here. We leave the men of the south to worship them!"