He overtook Alister on his way to the barley-field.
"I have been trying to find out wherein lay the falseness of the position in which you found yourself this morning," he said. "There could be nothing wrong in doing a small thing for its reward any more than a great one; where I think you went wrong was in ASSUMING your social position afterwards: you should have waited for its being accorded you. There was no occasion to be offended with the man. You ought to have seen how you must look to him, and given him time. I don't perceive why you should be so gracious to old mistress Conal, and so hard upon him. Certainly you would not speak as he did to any man, but he has been brought up differently; he is not such a gentleman as you cannot help being. In a word, you ought to have treated him as an inferior, and been more polite to him."
CHAPTER X.
THE PLOUGH-BULLS.
Partly, it may be, from such incidents at the outset of their acquaintance, there was for some time no further meeting betwixt any of the chief's family and that of the new laird. There was indeed little to draw them together except common isolation. Valentine would have been pleased to show gratitude to his helpers on that stormy night, but after his sisters' account of their call, he felt not only ashamed, which was right, but ashamed to show his shame, which was a fresh shame. The girls on their part made so much of what they counted the ridiculous elements of their "adventure," that, natural vengeance on their untruthfulness, they came themselves to see in it almost only what was ridiculous. In the same spirit Mr. Sercombe recounted his adventure with Alister, which annoyed his host, who had but little acquaintance with the boundaries of his land. From the additional servants they had hired in the vicinity, the people of the New House gathered correct information concerning the people at the cottage, but the honour in which they were held only added to the ridicule they associated with them. On the other side also there was little inclination towards a pursuit of intercourse. Mrs. Macruadh, from Nancy's account and the behaviour of the girls, divined the explanation of their visit; and, as their mother did not follow it up, took no notice of it. In the mind of Mercy, however, lurked a little thorn, with the bluntest possible sting of suspicion, every time she joined in a laugh at the people of the cottage, that she was not quite just to them.
The shooting, such as it was, went on, the sleeping and the eating, the walking and the talking. Long letters were written from the New House to female friends—letters with the flourishes if not the matter of wit, and funny tales concerning the natives, whom, because of their poor houses and unintelligibility, they represented as semi-savages. The young men went back to Oxford; and the time for the return of the family to civilization seemed drawing nigh.
It happened about this time, however, that a certain speculation in which Mr. Peregrine Palmer was very materially interested, failed utterly, depriving him of the consciousness of a good many thousands, and producing in him the feeling of a lady of moderate means when she loses her purse: he must save it off something! For though he spent freely, he placed a great value on money—as well he might, seeing it gave him all the distinction which before everything else he prized. He did not know what a poor thing it is to be distinguished among men, therefore did not like losing his thousands. Having by failure sinned against Mammon, he must do something to ease the money-conscience that ruled his conduct; and the first thing that occurred to him was, to leave his wife and daughters where they were for the winter. None of them were in the least delicate; his wife professed herself fond of a country life; it would give the girls a good opportunity for practice, drawing, and study generally, and he would find them a suitable governess! He talked the matter over with Mrs. Palmer. She did not mind much, and would not object. He would spend Christmas with them, he said, and bring down Christian, and perhaps Mr. Sercombe.
The girls did not like the idea. It was so cold in the country in winter, and the snow would be so deep! they would be starved to death! But, of course—if the governor had made up his mind to be cruel!
The thing was settled. It was only for one winter! It would be a new experience for them, and they would enjoy their next SEASON all the more! The governor had promised to send them down new furs, and a great boxful of novels! He did not apprise them that he meant to sell their horses. Their horses were his! He was an indulgent father and did not stint them, but he was not going to ask their leave! At the same time he had not the courage to tell them.
He took his wife with him as far as Inverness for a day or two, that she might lay in a good stock of everything antagonistic to cold.
When father and mother were gone from the house, the girls felt LARKY. They had no wish to do anything they would not do if their parents were at home, but they had some sense of relief in the thought that they could do whatever they liked. A more sympathetic historian might say, and I am nowise inclined to contradict him, that it was only the reaction from the pain of parting, and the instinct to make the best of their loneliness. However it was, the elder girls resolved on a walk to the village, to see what might be seen, and in particular the young woman at the shop, of whom they had heard their brother and Mr. Sercombe speak with admiration, qualified with the remark that she was so proper they could hardly get a civil word out of her. She was in fact too scrupulously polite for their taste.
It was a bright, pleasant, frosty morning, perfectly still, with an air like wine. The harvest had vanished from the fields. The sun shone on millions of tiny dew-suns, threaded on forsaken spider-webs. A few small, white, frozen clouds flecked the sky. The purple heather was not yet gone, and not any snow had yet fallen in the valley. The burn was large, for there had been a good deal of rain, but it was not much darker than its usual brown of smoke-crystal. They tripped gaily along. If they had little spiritual, they had much innocent animal life, which no great disappointments or keen twinges of conscience had yet damped. They were hut human kittens—and not of the finest breed.
As they crossed the root of the spur, and looked down on the autumn fields to the east of it, they spied something going on which they did not understand. Stopping, and gazing more intently, they beheld what seemed a contest between man and beast, but its nature they could not yet distinguish. Gradually it grew plain that two of the cattle of the country, wild and shaggy, were rebelling against control. They were in fact two young bulls, of the small black highland breed, accustomed to gallop over the rough hills, jumping like goats, which Alister had set himself the task of breaking to the plough—by no means an easy one, or to be accomplished single-handed by any but a man of some strength, and both persistence and patience. In the summer he had lost a horse, which he could ill afford to replace: if he could make these bulls work, they would save him the price of the horse, would cost less to keep, and require less attention! He bridled them by the nose, not with rings through the gristle, but with nose-bands of iron, bluntly spiked inside, against which they could not pull hard without pain, and had made some progress, though he could by no means trust them yet: every now and then a fit of mingled wildness and stubbornness would seize them, and the contest would appear about to begin again from the beginning; but they seldom now held out very long. The nose-band of one of them had come off, Alister had him by a horn in each hand, and a fierce struggle was going on between them, while the other was pulling away from his companion as if determined to take to the hills. It was a good thing for them that share and coulter were pretty deep in the ground, to the help of their master; for had they got away, they would have killed, or at least disabled themselves. Presently, however, he had the nose-band on, and by force and persuasion together got the better of them; the staggy little furies gave in; and quickly gathering up his reins, he went back to the plough-stilts, where each hand held at once a handle and a rein. With energetic obedience the little animals began to pull—so vigorously that it took nearly all the chief's strength to hold at once his plough and his team.
It was something of a sight to the girls after a long dearth of events. Many things indeed upon which they scarce cast an eye when they came, they were now capable of regarding with a little feeble interest. Nor, although ignorant of everything agricultural, were they quite unused to animals; having horses they called their own, they would not unfrequently go to the stables to give their orders, or see that they were carried out.
They waited for some time hoping the fight would begin again, and drew a little nearer; then, as by common consent, left the road, passed the ruin, ran down the steep side of the ridge, and began to toil through the stubble towards the ploughman. A sharp straw would every now and then go through a delicate stocking, and the damp soil gathered in great lumps on their shoes, but they plodded on, laughing merrily as they went.
The Macruadh was meditating the power of the frost to break up the clods of the field, when he saw the girls close to him. He pulled in his cattle, and taking off his bonnet with one hand while the other held both reins—
"Excuse me, ladies," he said; "my animals are young, and not quite broken."
They were not a little surprised at such a reception, and were driven to conclude that the man must be the laird himself. They had heard that he cultivated his own land, but had not therefore imagined him labouring in his own person.
In spite of the blindness produced by their conventional training, vulgarly called education, they could not fail to perceive something in the man worthy of their regard. Before them, on the alert toward his cattle, but full of courtesy, stood a dark, handsome, weather-browned man, with an eagle air, not so pronounced as his brother's. His hair was long, and almost black,—in thick, soft curls over a small, well-set head. His glance had the flash that comes of victorious effort, and his free carriage was that of one whom labour has nowise subdued, whose every muscle is instinct with ready life. True even in trifles, he wore the dark beard that nature had given him; disordered by the struggle with his bulls, it imparted a certain wild look that contrasted with his speech. Christina forgot that the man was a labourer like any other, but noted that he did not manifest the least embarrassment in their presence, or any consciousness of a superfluity of favour in their approach: she did not know that neither would his hired servant, or the poorest member of his clan. It was said of a certain Sutherland clan that they were all gentlemen, and of a certain Argyll clan that they were all poets; of the Macruadhs it was said they were both. As to Mercy, the first glance of the chiefs hazel eyes, looking straight into hers with genial respect, went deeper than any look had yet penetrated.
Ladies in Alister's fields were not an everyday sight. Hardly before had his work been enlivened by such a presence; and the joy of it was in his eyes, though his behaviour was calm. Christina thought how pleasant it would be to have him for a worshipping slave—so interpenetrated with her charms that, like Una's lion, he would crouch at her feet, come and go at her pleasure, live on her smiles, and be sad when she gave him none. She would make a gentleman of him, then leave him to dream of her! It would be a pleasant and interesting task in the dullness of their winter's banishment, with the days so short and the nights so unendurably long! The man was handsome!—she would do it!—and would proceed at once to initiate the conquest of him!
The temptation to patronize not unfrequently presents an object for the patronage superior to the would-be patron; for the temptation is one to which slight persons chiefly are exposed; it affords an outlet for the vague activity of self-importance. Few have learned that one is of no value except to God and other men. Miss Palmer worshipped herself, and therefore would fain be worshipped—so dreamed of a friendship de haut en bas with the country fellow.
She put on a smile—no difficult thing, for she was a good-natured girl. It looked to Alister quite natural. It was nevertheless, like Hamlet's false friends, "sent for."
"Do you like ploughing?" she asked.
Had she known the manners of the country, she would have added "laird," or "Macruadh."
"Yes I do," Alister answered; "but I should plough all the same if I did not. It has to be done."
"But why should YOU do it?"
"Because I must," laughed the laird.
What ought she to answer? Should she condole with the man because he had to work? It did not seem prudent! She would try another tack!
"You had some trouble with your oxen! We saw it from the road, and were quite frightened. I hope you are not hurt."
"There was no danger of that," answered Alister with a smile.
"What wild creatures they are! Ain't it rather hard work for them?
They are so small!"
"They are as strong as horses," answered the laird. "I have had my work to break them! Indeed, I can hardly say I have done it yet! they would very much like to run their horns into me!"
"Then it MUST be dangerous! It shows that they were not meant to work!"
"They were meant to work if I can make them work."
"Then you approve of slavery!" said Mercy
She hardly knew what made her oppose him. As yet she had no opinions of her own, though she did catch a thought sometimes, when it happened to come within her reach. Alister smiled a curious smile.
"I should," he said, "if the right people were made slaves of. I would take shares in a company of Algerine pirates to rid the social world of certain types of the human!"
The girls looked at each other. "Sharp!" said Christina to herself.
"What sorts would you have them take?" she asked.
"Idle men in particular," answered Alister.
"Would you not have them take idle ladies as well?"
"I would see first how they behaved when the men were gone."
"You believe, then," said Mercy, "we have a right to make the lower animals work?"
"I think it is our duty," answered Alister. "At all events, if we do not, we must either kill them off by degrees, or cede them this world, and emigrate. But even that would be a bad thing for my little bulls there! It is not so many years since the last wolf was killed—here, close by! and if the dogs turned to wolves again, where would they be? The domestic animals would then have wild beasts instead of men for their masters! To have the world a habitable one, man must rule."
"Men are nothing but tyrants to them!" said Christina.
"Most are, I admit."
Ere he could prevent her, she had walked up to the near bull, and begun to pat him. He poked a sharp wicked horn sideways at her, catching her cloak on it, and grazing her arm. She started back very white. Alister gave him a terrible tug. The beast shook his head, and began to paw the earth.
"It wont do to go near him," he said. "—But you needn't be afraid; he can't touch you. That iron band round his nose has spikes in it."
"Poor fellow!" said Christina; "it is no wonder he should be out of temper! It must hurt him dreadfully!"
"It does hurt him when he pulls against it, but not when he is quiet."
"I call it cruel!"
"I do not. The fellow knows what is wanted of him—just as well as any naughty child."
"How can he when he has no reason!"
"Oh, hasn't he!"
"Animals have no reason; they have only instinct!"
"They have plenty of reason—more than many men and women. They are not so far off us as pride makes most people think! It is only those that don't know them that talk about the instinct of animals!"
"Do you know them?"
"Pretty well for a man; but they're often too much for me."
"Anyhow that poor thing does not know better."
"He knows enough; and if he did not, would you allow him to do as he pleased because he didn't know better? He wanted to put his horn into you a moment ago!"
"Still it must be hard to want very much to do a thing, and not be able to do it!" said Mercy.
"I used to feel as if I could tear my old nurse to pieces when she wouldn't let me do as I wanted!" said Christina.
"I suppose you do whatever you please now, ladies?"
"No, indeed. We wanted to go to London, and here we are for the winter!"
"And you think it hard?"
"Yes, we do."
"And so, from sympathy, you side with my cattle?"
"Well—yes!"
"You think I have no right to keep them captive, and make them work?"
"None at all," said Christina.
"Then it is time I let them go!"
Alister made for the animals' heads.
"No, no! please don't!" cried both the girls, turning, the one white, the other red.
"Certainly not if you do not wish it!" answered Alister, staying his step. "If I did, however, you would be quite safe, for they would not come near me. They would be off up that hill as hard as they could tear, jumping everything that came in their way."
"Is it not very dull here in the winter?" asked Christina, panting a little, but trying to look as if she had known quite well he was only joking.
"I do not find it dull."
"Ah, but you are a man, and can do as you please!"
"I never could do as I pleased, and so I please as I do," answered
Alister.
"I do not quite understand you."
"When you cannot do as you like, the best thing is to like what you have to do. One's own way is not to be had in this world. There's a better, though, which is to be had!"
"I have heard a parson talk like that," said Mercy, "but never a layman!"
"My father was a parson as good as any layman. He would have laid me on my back in a moment—here as I stand!" said Alister, drawing himself to his height.
He broke suddenly into Gaelic, addressing the more troublesome of the bulls. No better pleased to stand still than to go on, he had fallen to digging at his neighbour, who retorted with the horn convenient, and presently there was a great mixing of bull and harness and cloddy earth. Turning quickly towards them, Alister dropped a rein. In a moment the plough was out of the furrow, and the bulls were straining every muscle, each to send the other into the wilds of the unseen creation. Alister sprang to their heads, and taking them by their noses forced them back into the line of the furrow. Christina, thinking they had broken loose, fled; but there was Mercy with the reins, hauling with all her might!
"Thank you, thank you!" said the laird, laughing with pleasure. "You are a friend indeed!"
"Mercy! Mercy! come away directly," cried Christina.
But Mercy did not heed her. The laird took the reins, and administering a blow each to the animals, made them stand still.
There are tender-hearted people who virtually object to the whole scheme of creation; they would neither have force used nor pain suffered; they talk as if kindness could do everything, even where it is not felt. Millions of human beings but for suffering would never develop an atom of affection. The man who would spare DUE suffering is not wise. It is folly to conclude a thing ought not to be done because it hurts. There are powers to be born, creations to be perfected, sinners to be redeemed, through the ministry of pain, that could be born, perfected, redeemed, in no other way. But Christina was neither wise nor unwise after such fashion. She was annoyed at finding the laird not easily to be brought to her feet, and Mercy already advanced to his good graces. She was not jealous of Mercy, for was she not beautiful and Mercy plain? but Mercy had by her PLUCK secured an advantage, and the handsome ploughman looked at her admiringly! Partly therefore because she was not pleased with him, partly that she thought a little outcry would be telling,—
"Oh, you wicked man!" she cried, "you are hurting the poor brutes!"
"No more than is necessary," he answered.
"You are cruel!"
"Good morning, ladies."
He just managed to take off his bonnet, for the four-legged explosions at the end of his plough were pulling madly. He slackened his reins, and away it went, like a sharp knife through a Dutch cheese.
"You've made him quite cross!" said Mercy.
"What a brute of a man!" said Christina.
She never restrained herself from teasing cat or puppy for her amusement—did not even mind hurting it a little. Those capable of distinguishing between the qualities of resembling actions are few. There are some who will regard Alister as capable of vivisection.
On one occasion when the brothers were boys, Alister having lost his temper in the pursuit of a runaway pony, fell upon it with his fists the moment he caught it. Ian put himself between, and received, without word or motion, more than one blow meant for the pony.
"Donal was only in fun!" he said, as soon as Alister's anger had spent itself. "Father would never have punished him like that!"
Alister was ashamed, and never again was guilty of such an outbreak. From that moment he began the serious endeavour to subjugate the pig, tiger, mule, or whatever animal he found in himself. There remained, however, this difference between them—that Alister punished without compunction, while Ian was sorely troubled at having to cause any suffering.
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!"
"They don't worship them!" said Mercy.
"Do they not respect the rich man because he is rich, and look down on the poor man because he is poor?" said Ian. "Though the rich be a wretch, they think him grand; though the poor man be like Jesus Christ, they pity him!"
"And shouldn't the poor be pitied?" said Christina.
"Not except they need pity."
"Is it not pitiable to be poor?"
"By no means. It is pitiable to be wretched—and that, I venture to suspect, the rich are oftener than the poor.—But as to master Reynard there—instead of shooting him, what would you have had us do with him?"
"Hunt him, to be sure."
"Would he like that better?"
"What he would like is not the question. The sport is the thing."
"That will show you why he is not sacred here: we do not hunt him. It would be impossible to hunt this country; you could not ride the ground. Besides, there are such multitudes of holes, the hounds would scarcely have a chance. No; the only dog to send after the fellow is a leaden one."
"There's another!" exclaimed the chief; "—there, sneaking away!—and your gun not loaded, Ian!"
"I am so glad!" said Christina. "He at least will escape you!"
"And some poor lamb in the spring won't escape him!" returned
Alister.
"Lambs are meant to be eaten!" said Christina.
"Yes; but a lamb might think it hard to feed such a creature!"
"If the fox is of no good in the world," said Mercy, "why was he made?"
"He can't be of no good," answered the chief. "What if some things are, just that we may get rid of them?"
"COULD they be made just to be got rid of?"
"I said—that WE might get rid of them: there is all the difference in that. The very first thing men had to do in the world was to fight beasts."
"I think I see what you mean," said Mercy: "if there had been no wild beasts to fight with, men would never have grown able for much!"
"That is it," said Alister. "They were awful beasts! and they had poor weapons to fight them with—neither guns nor knives!"
"And who knows," suggested Ian, "what good it may be to the fox himself to make the best of a greedy life?"
"But what is the good to us of talking about such things?" said
Christina. "They're not interesting!"
The remark silenced the brothers: where indeed could be use without interest?
But Mercy, though she could hardly have said she found the conversation VERY interesting, felt there was something in the men that cared to talk about such things, that must be interesting if she could only get at it. They were not like any other men she had met!
Christina's whole interest in men was the admiration she looked for and was sure of receiving from them; Mercy had hitherto found their company stupid.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LAKE.
Silence lasted until they reached the shoulder of the hill that closed the view up the valley. As they rounded it, the sun went behind a cloud, and a chill wind, as if from a land where dwelt no life, met them. The hills stood back, and they were on the shore of a small lake, out of which ran the burn. They were very desolate-looking hills, with little heather, and that bloomless, to hide their hard gray bones. Their heads were mostly white with frost and snow; their shapes had little beauty; they looked worn and hopeless, ugly and sad—and so cold! The water below was slaty gray, in response to the gray sky above: there seemed no life in either. The hearts of the girls sank within them, and all at once they felt tired. In the air was just one sign of life: high above the lake wheeled a large fish-hawk.
"Look!" said Alister pointing; "there is the osprey that lives here with his wife! He is just going to catch a fish!"
He had hardly spoken when the bird, with headlong descent, shot into the water, making it foam up all about. He reappeared with a fish in his claws, and flew off to find his mate.
"Do you know the very bird?" asked Mercy.
"I know him well. He and his wife have built on that conical rock you see there in the middle of the water many years."
"Why have you never shot him? He would look well stuffed!" said
Christina.
She little knew the effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint. But it was a moment or two ere he had himself in hand.
"Do you not think he looks much better going about God's business?" he said.
"Perhaps; but he is not yours; you have not got him!"
"Why should I have him? He seems, indeed, the more mine the higher he goes. A dead stuffed thing—how could that be mine at all? Alive, he seems to soar in the very heaven of my soul!"
"You showed the fox no such pity!" remarked Mercy.
"I never killed a fox to HAVE him!" answered Alister. "The osprey does no harm. He eats only fish, and they are very plentiful; he never kills birds or hares, or any creature on the land. I do not see how any one could wish to kill the bird, except from mere love of destruction! Why should I make a life less in the world?"
"There would be more lives of fish—would there not?" said Mercy. "I don't want you to shoot the poor bird; I only want to hear your argument!"
The chief could not immediately reply, Ian came to his rescue.
"There are qualities in life," he said. "One cannot think the fish-life so fine, so full of delight as the bird-life!"
"No. But," said Mercy, "have the fishes not as good a right to their life as the birds?"
"Both have the right given them by the maker of them. The osprey was made to eat the fish, and the fish, I hope, get some good of being eaten by the osprey."
"Excuse me, Captain Macruadh, but that seems to me simple nonsense!" said Christina.
"I hope it is true."
"I don't know about being true, but it must be nonsense."
"It must seem so to most people."
"Then why do you say it?"
"Because I hope it is true."
"Why should you wish nonsense to be true?"
"What is true cannot be nonsense. It looks nonsense only to those that take no interest in the matter. Would it be nonsense to the fishes?"
"It does seem hard," said Mercy, "that the poor harmless things should be gobbled up by a creature pouncing down upon them from another element!"
"As the poor are gobbled up everywhere by the rich!"
"I don't believe that. The rich are very kind to the poor."
"I beg your pardon," said Ian, "but if you know no more about the rich than you do about the fish, I can hardly take your testimony. The fish are the most carnivorous creatures in the world."
"Do they eat each other?"
"Hardly that. Only the cats of Kilkenny can do that."
"I used a common phrase!"
"You did, and I am rude: the phrase must bear the blame for both of us. But the fish are even cannibals—eating the young of their own species! They are the most destructive of creatures to other lives."
"I suppose," said Mercy, "to make one kind of creature live on another kind, is the way to get the greatest good for the greatest number!"
"That doctrine, which seems to content most people, appears to me a poverty-stricken and selfish one. I can admit nothing but the greatest good to every individual creature."
"Don't you think we had better be going, Mercy? It has got quite cold; I am afraid it will rain," said Christina, drawing her cloak round her with a little shiver.
"I am ready," answered Mercy.
The brothers looked at each other. They had come out to spend the day together, but they could not leave the ladies to go home alone; having brought them across the burn, they were bound to see them over it again! An imperceptible sign passed between them, and Alister turned to the girls.
"Come then," he said, "we will go back!"
"But you were not going home yet!" said Mercy.
"Would you have us leave you in this wild place?"
"We shall find our way well enough. The burn will guide us."
"Yes; but it will not jump over you; it will leave you to jump over it!"
"I forgot the burn!" said Christina.
"Which way were you going?" asked Mercy, looking all around for road or pathway over the encircling upheaved wildernesses.
"This way," answered Ian. "Good-bye."
"Then you are not coming?"
"No. My brother will take care of you."
He went straight as an arrow up the hill. They stood and watched him go. At what seemed the top, he turned and waved his cap, then vanished.
Christina felt disappointed. She did not much care for either of the very peculiar young men, but any company was better than none; a man was better than a woman; and two men were better than one! If these were not equal to admiring her as she deserved, what more remunerative labour than teaching them to do so?
The thing that chiefly disappointed her in them was, that they had so little small talk. It was so stupid to be always speaking sense! always polite! always courteous!—"Two sir Charles Grandisons," she said, "are two too many!" And indeed the History of Sir Charles Grandison had its place in the small library free to them from childhood; but Christina knew nothing of him except by hearsay.
The young men had been brought up in a solemn school—had learned to take life as a serious and lovely and imperative thing. Not the less, upon occasions of merry-making, would they frolic like young colts even yet, and that without the least reaction or sense of folly afterwards. At the same time, although Ian had in the village from childhood the character, especially in the workshops of the carpenter, weaver, and shoemaker, of being 'full of humour, he was in himself always rather sad, being perplexed with many things: his humour was but the foam of his troubled sea.
Christina was annoyed besides that Mercy seemed not indifferent to the opinion of the men. It was from pure inexperience of the man-world, she said to herself, that the silly child could see anything interesting in them! GENTLEMEN she must allow them—but of such an old-fashioned type as to be gentlemen but by courtesy—not gentlemen in the world's count! She was of the world; they of the north of Scotland! All day Mercy had been on their side and against her! It might be from sheer perversity, but she had never been like that before! She must take care she did not make a fool of herself! It might end in some unhappiness to the young goose! Assuredly neither her father nor mother would countenance the thing! She must throw herself into the breach! But which of them was she taking a fancy to?
She was not so anxious about her sister, however, as piqued that she had not herself gathered one expression of homage, surprised one look of admiration, seen one sign of incipient worship in either. Of the two she liked better the ploughman! The other was more a man of the world—but he was not of her world! With him she was a stranger in a very strange land!
Christina's world was a very small one, and in its temple stood her own image. Ian belonged to the universe. He was a gentleman of the high court. Wherever he might go throughout God's worlds, he would be at home. How could there be much attraction between Christina and him?