CHAPTER VIII.
THE STAG'S HEAD.
Alister went straight to his brother's room, his heart bursting with indignation. It was some time before Ian could get the story from him in plain consecution; every other moment he would diverge into fierce denunciations.
"Hadn't you better tell your master what has happened?" at length said Ian. "He ought to know why you curse one of your fellows so bitterly."
Alister was dumb. For a moment he looked aghast.
"Ian!" he said: "You think he wants to be told anything? I always thought you believed in his divinity!"
"Ah!" returned Ian, "but do you? How am I to imagine it, when you go on like that in his hearing? Is it so you acknowledge his presence?"
"Oh, Ian! you don't know how it tortures me to think of that interloper, the low brute, killing the big stag, the Macruadh stag-and on my land too! I feel as if I could tear him in pieces. But for him I would have killed him on the spot! It is hard if I may not let off my rage even to you!"
"Let it off to him, Alister; he will give you fairer play than your small brother; he understands you better than I."
"But I could not let it off to him that way!"
"Then that is not a good way. The justice that, even in imagination, would tear and destroy and avenge, may be justice, but it is devil's justice. Come, begin now, and tell me all quietly-as if you had read it in a book."
"Word for word, then, with all the imprecations!" returned Alister, a little cooler; and Ian was soon in possession of the story.
"Now what do you think, Ian?" said the chief, ending a recital true to the very letter, and in a measure calm, but at various points revealing, by the merest dip of the surface, the boiling of the floods beneath.
"You must send him the head, Alister," answered Ian.
"Send-what-who-I don't understand you, Ian!" returned the chief, bewildered.
"Oh, well, never mind!" said Ian. "You will think of it presently!"
And therewith he turned his face to the wall, as if he would go to sleep.
It had been a thing understood betwixt the brothers, and that from so far back in the golden haze of childhood that the beginning of it was out of sight, that, the moment one of them turned his back, not a word more was to be said, until he who thus dropped the subject, chose to resume it: to break this unspoken compact would have been to break one of the strands in the ancient bond of their most fast brotherhood. Alister therefore went at once to his room, leaving Ian loving him hard, and praying for him with his face to the wall. He went as one knowing well the storm he was about to encounter, but never before had he had such a storm to meet.
He closed the door, and sat down on the side of his bed like one stunned. He did not doubt, yet could hardly allow he believed, that Ian, his oracle, had in verity told him to send the antlers of his cabrach mor, the late live type of his ancient crest, the pride of Clanruadh, to the vile fellow of a Sasunnach who had sent out into the deep the joyous soul of the fierce, bare mountains.
There were rushings to and fro in the spirit of Alister, wild and terrible, even as those in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He never closed his eyes, but fought with himself all the night, until the morning broke. Could this thing be indeed his duty? And if not his duty, was he called to do it from mere bravado of goodness? How frightfully would not such an action be misunderstood by such a man! What could he take it for but a mean currying of favour with him! Why should he move to please such a fellow! Ian was too hard upon him! The more he yielded, the more Ian demanded! Every time it was something harder than the last! And why did he turn his face to the wall? Was he not fit to be argued with! Was he one that would not listen to reason! He had never known Ian ungenerous till now!
But all the time there lay at his door a thing calling out to be done! The thing he did not like was always the thing he had to do! he grumbled; but this thing he hated doing! It was abominable! What! send the grand head, with its horns spread wide like a half-moon, and leaning—like oaks from a precipice—send it to the man that made it a dead thing! Never! It must not be left behind! It must go to the grave with the fleet limbs! and over it should rise a monument, at sight of which every friendly highlandman would say, Feiich an cabracli mor de Clanruadli! What a mockery of fate to be exposed for ever to the vulgar Cockney gaze, the trophy of a fool, whose boast was to kill! Such a noble beast! Such a mean man! To mutilate his remains for the pride of the wretch who killed him! It was too horrible!
He thought and thought—until at last he lay powerless to think any more. But it is not always the devil that enters in when a man ceases to think. God forbid! The cessation of thought gives opportunity for setting the true soul thinking from another quarter. Suddenly Alister remembered a conversation he had had with Ian a day or two before. He had been saying to Ian that he could not understand what Jesus meant when he said, "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also;" and was dissatisfied with the way Ian had answered him. "You must explain it to yourself," Ian said. He replied, "If I could do that, I should not have to ask you." "There are many things," Ian rejoined, "—arithmetic is one—that can be understood only in the doing of them." "But how can I do a thing without understanding it?" objected Alister. "When you have an opportunity of doing this very thing," said Ian, "do it, and see what will follow!" At the time he thought Ian was refusing to come to the point, and was annoyingly indefinite and illogical; but now it struck him that here was the opportunity of which he had spoken.
"I see!" he said to himself. "It is not want of understanding that is in the way now! A thing cannot look hateful and reasonable at the same moment! This may be just the sort of thing Jesus meant! Even if I be in the right, I have a right to yield my right—and to HIM I will yield it. That was why Ian turned his face to the wall: he wanted me to discover that here was my opportunity! How but in the name of Jesus Christ could he have dared tell me to forgive Ruadh's death by sending his head to his murderer! It has to be done! I've got to do it! Here is my chance of turning the other cheek and being hurt again! What can come of it is no business of mine! To return evil is just to do a fresh evil! It MAY make the man ashamed of himself! It cannot hurt the stag; it only hurts my pride, and I owe my pride nothing! Why should not the fellow have what satisfaction he may—something to show for his shot! He shall have the head."
Thereupon rushed into his heart the joy of giving up, of deliverance from self; and pity, to leaven his contempt, awoke for Sercombe. No sooner had he yielded his pride, than he felt it possible to love the man—not for anything he was, but for what he might and must be.
"God let the man kill the stag," he said; "I will let him have the head."
Again and yet again swelled afresh the tide of wrath and unwillingness, making him feel as if he could not carry out his resolve; but all the time he knew the thing was as good as done—absolutely determined, so that nothing could turn it aside.
"To yield where one may, is the prerogative of liberty!" he said to himself. "God only can give; who would be his child must yield! Abroad in the fields of air, as Paul and the love of God make me hope, what will the wind-battling Ruadh care for his old head! Would he not say, 'Let the man have it; my hour was come, or the Some One would not have let him kill me!'?"
Thus argued the chief while the darkness endured—and as soon as the morning began to break, rose, took spade and pick and great knife, and went where Hector and Rob were watching the slain.
It was bitterly cold. The burn crept silent under a continuous bridge of ice. The grass-blades were crisp with frost. The ground was so hard it met iron like iron.
He sent the men to get their breakfast from Nancy: none but himself should do the last offices for Ruadh! With skilful hand he separated and laid aside the head—in sacrifice to the living God. Then the hard earth rang with mighty blows of the pickaxe. The labour was severe, and long ere the grave was deep enough, Hector and Rob had returned; but the chief would not get out of it to give them any share in the work. When he laid hold of the body, they did not offer to help him; they understood the heart of their chief. Not without a last pang that he could not lay the head beside it, he began to shovel in the frozen clods, and then at length allowed them to take a part. When the grave was full, they rolled great stones upon it, that it might not be desecrated. Then the chief went back to his room, and proceeded to prepare the head, that, as the sacrifice, so should be the gift.
"I suppose he would like glass eyes, the ruffian!" he muttered to himself, "but I will not have the mockery. I will fill the sockets and sew up the eyelids, and the face shall be as of one that sleeps."
Haying done all, and written certain directions for temporary treatment, which he tied to an ear, he laid the head aside till the evening.
All the day long, not a word concerning it passed between the brothers; but when evening came, Alister, with a blue cotton handkerchief in his hand, hiding the head as far as the roots of the huge horns, asked Ian to go for a walk. They went straight to the New House. Alister left the head at the door, with his compliments to Mr. Sercombe.
As soon as they were out of sight of the house, Ian put his arm through his brother's, but did not speak.
"I know now about turning the other cheek!" said Alister. "—Poor
Euadh!"
"Leave him to the God that made the great head and nimble feet of him," said Ian. "A God that did not care for what he had made, how should we believe in! but he who cares for the dying sparrow, may be trusted with the dead stag."
"Truly, yes," returned Alister.
"Let us sit down," said Ian, "and I will sing you a song I made last night; I could not sleep after you left me."
Without reply, Alister took a stone by the wayside, and Ian one a couple of yards from him. This was his song.
LOVE'S HISTORY.
Love, the baby,
Toddled out to pluck a flower;
One said, "No, sir;" one said, "Maybe,
At the evening hour!"
Love, the boy,
Joined the boys and girls at play;
But he left them half his joy
Ere the close of day.
Love, the youth,
Roamed the country, lightning-laden;
But he hurt himself, and, sooth,
Many a man and maiden!
Love, the man,
Sought a service all about;
But he would not take their plan,
So they cast him out.
Love, the aged,
Walking, bowed, the shadeless miles,
Bead a volume many-paged,
Full of tears and smiles.
Love, the weary,
Tottered down the shelving road:
At its foot, lo, night the starry
Meeting him from God!
"Love, the holy!"
Sang a music in her dome,
Sang it softly, sang it slowly,
"—Love is coming home!"
Ere the week was out, there stood above the dead stag a growing cairn, to this day called Carn a' cabrach mor. It took ten men with levers to roll one of the boulders at its base. Men still cast stones upon it as they pass.
The next morning came a note to the cottage, in which Sercombe thanked the Macruadh for changing his mind, and said that, although he was indeed glad to have secured such a splendid head, he would certainly have stalked another deer, had he known the chief set such store by the one in question.
It was handed to Alister as he sat at his second breakfast with his mother and Ian: even in winter he was out of the house by six o'clock, to set his men to work, and take his own share. He read to the end of the first page with curling lip; the moment he turned the leaf, he sprang from his seat with an exclamation that startled his mother.
"The hound!—I beg my good dogs' pardon, one and all!" he cried.
"—Look at this, Ian! See what comes of taking your advice!"
"My dear fellow, I gave you no advice that had the least regard to the consequence of following it! That was the one thing you had nothing to do with."
"READA," insisted Alister, as he pranced about the room. "No, don't read the letter; it's not worth, reading. Look at the paper in it."
Ian looked, and saw a cheque for ten pounds. He burst into loud laughter.
"Poor Ruadh's horns! they're hardly so long as their owner's ears!" he said.
"I told you so!" cried the chief.
"No, Alister! You never suspected such a donkey!"
"What is it all about?" asked the mother.
"The wretch who shot Ruadh," replied Alister, "—to whom I gave his head, all to please Ian,—"
"Alister!" said Ian.
The chief understood, and retracted.
"—no, not to please Ian, but to do what Ian showed me was right:—I believe it was my duty!—I hope it was!—here's the murdering fellow sends me a cheque for ten pounds!—I told you, Ian, he offered me ten pounds over the dead body!"
"I daresay the poor fellow was sorely puzzled what to do, and appealed to everybody in the house for advice!"
"You take the cheque to represent the combined wisdom of the New
House?"
"You must have puzzled them all!" persisted Ian. "How could people with no principle beyond that of keeping to a bargain, understand you otherwise! First, you perform an action such persons think degrading: you carry a fellow's bag for a shilling, and then himself for nothing! Next, in the very fury of indignation with a man for killing the finest stag in the country on your meadow, you carry him home the head with your own hands! It all comes of that unlucky divine motion of yours to do good that good may come! That shilling of Mistress Conal's is at the root of it all!"
Ian laughed again, and right heartily. The chief was too angry to enter into the humour of the thing.
"Upon my word, Ian, it is too bad of you! What ARE you laughing at? It would become you better to tell me what I am to do! Am I free to break the rascal's bones?"
"Assuredly not, after that affair with the bag!"
"Oh, damn the bag!—I beg your pardon, mother."
"Am I to believe my ears, Alister?"
"What does it matter, mother? What harm can it do the bag? I wished no evil to any creature!"
"It was the more foolish."
"I grant it, mother. But you don't know what a relief it is sometimes to swear a little!—You are quite wrong, Ian; it all comes of giving him the head!"
"You wish you had not given it him?"
"No!" growled Alister, as from a pent volcano.
"You will break my ears, Alister!" cried the mother, unable to keep from laughing at the wrath in which he went straining through the room.
"Think of it," insisted Ian: "a man like could not think otherwise without a revolution of his whole being to which the change of the leopard's spots would be nothing.—What you meant, after all, was not cordiality; it was only generosity; to which his response, his countercheck friendly, was an order for ten pounds!—All is right between you!"
"Now, really, Ian, you must not go on teasing your elder brother so!" said the mother.
Alister laughed, and ceased fuming. "But I must answer the brute!" he said. "What am I to say to him?"
"That you are much obliged," replied Ian, "and will have the cheque framed and hung in the hall."
"Come, come! no more of that!"
"Well, then, let me answer the letter."
"That is just what I wanted!"
Ian sat down at his mother's table, and this is what he wrote.
"Dear sir,—My brother desires me to return the cheque which you unhappily thought it right to send him. Humanity is subject to mistake, but I am sorry for the individual who could so misunderstand his courtesy. I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant, Ian Macruadh."
As Ian guessed, the matter had been openly discussed at the New House; and the money was sent with the approval of all except the two young ladies. They had seen the young men in circumstances more favourable to the understanding of them by ordinary people.
"Why didn't the chief write himself?" said Christian.
"Oh," replied Sercombe, "his little brother had been to school, and could write better!"
Christina and Mercy exchanged glances.
"I will tell you," Mercy said, "why Mr. lau answered the note: the chief had done with you!"
"Or," suggested Christina, "the chief was in such a rage that he would write nothing but a challenge."
"I wish to goodness he had! It would have given me the chance of giving the clodhopper a lesson."
"For sending you the finest stag's head and horns in the country!" remarked Mercy.
"I shot the stag! Perhaps you don't believe I shot him!"
"Indeed I do! No one else would have done it. The chief would have died sooner!"
"I'm sick of your chief!" said Christian. "A pretty chief without a penny to bless himself! A chief, and glad of the job of carrying a carpet-bag! You'll be calling him MY LORD, next!"
"He may at least write BARONET after his name when he pleases," returned Mercy.
"Why don't he then? A likely story!"
"Because," answered Christina, "both his father and himself were ashamed of how the first baronet got his title. It had to do with the sale of a part of the property, and they counted the land the clan's as well as the chief's. They regarded it as an act of treachery to put the clan in the power of a stranger, and the chief looks on the title as a brand of shame."
"I don't question the treachery," said Christian. "A highlander is treacherous."
Christina had asked a friend in Glasgow to find out for her anything known among the lawyers concerning the Macruadhs, and what she had just recounted was a part of the information she had thereby received.
Thenceforward silence covered the whole transaction. Sercombe neither returned the head, sent an apology, nor recognized the gift. That he had shot the stag was enough!
But these things wrought shaping the idea of the brothers in the minds of the sisters, and they were beginning to feel a strange confidence in them, such as they had never had in men before. A curious little halo began to shimmer about the heads of the young men in the picture-gallery of the girls' fancy. Not the less, however, did they regard them as enthusiasts, unfitted to this world, incapable of self-protection, too good to live—in a word, unpractical! Because a man would live according to the laws of his being as well as of his body, obeying simple, imperative, essential human necessity, his fellows forsooth call him UNPRACTICAL! Of the idiotic delusions of the children of this world, that of being practical is one of the most ludicrous.
Here is a translation, made by Ian, of one of Alister's Gaelic songs.
THE SUN'S DAUGHTER.
A bright drop of water
In the gold tire
Of a sun's daughter
Was laughing to her sire;
And from all the flowers about,
That never toiled or spun,
The soul of each looked out,
Clear laughing to the sun.
I saw them unfolding
Their hearts every one!
Every soul holding
Within it the sun!
But all the sun-mirrors
Vanished anon;
And their flowers, mere starers,
Grew dry in the sun.
"My soul is but water,
Shining and gone!
She is but the daughter,"
I said, "of the sun!"
My soul sat her down
In a deep-shaded gloom;
Her glory was flown,
Her earth was a tomb,
Till night came and caught her,
And then out she shone;
And I knew her no daughter
Of that shining sun—
Till night came down and taught her
Of a glory yet unknown;
And I knew my soul the daughter
Of a sun behind the sun.
Back, back to him that wrought her
My soul shall haste and run;
Straight back to him, his daughter,
To the sun behind the sun.
CHAPTER IX.
ANNIE OF THE SHOP.
At the dance in the chief's barn, Sercombe had paired with Annie of the shop oftener than with any other of the girls. That she should please him at all, was something in his favour, for she was a simple, modest girl, with the nicest feeling of the laws of intercourse, the keenest perception both of what is in itself right, and what is becoming in the commonest relation. She understood by a fine moral instinct what respect was due to her, and what respect she ought to show, and was therefore in the truest sense well-bred. There are women whom no change of circumstances would cause to alter even their manners a hair's-breadth: such are God's ladies; there are others in whom any outward change will reveal the vulgarity of a nature more conscious of claim than of obligation.
I need not say that Sercomhe, though a man of what is called education, was but conventionally a gentleman. If in doubt whether a man be a gentleman or not, hear him speak to a woman he regards as his inferior: his very tone will probably betray him. A true gentleman, that is a true man, will be the more carefully respectful. Sercombe was one of those who regard themselves as respectable because they are prudent; whether they are human, and their brother and sister's keeper, they have never asked themselves.
To some minds neither innocent nor simple, there is yet something attractive in innocence and simplicity. Perhaps it gives them a pleasing sense of their superiority—a background against which to rejoice in their liberty, while their pleasure in it helps to obscure the gulf between what the man would fain hold himself to be, and what in reality he is. There is no spectre so terrible as the unsuspected spectre of a man's own self; it is noisome enough to the man who is ever trying to better it: what must it appear to the man who sees it for the first time! Sercombe's self was ugly, and he did not know it; he thought himself an exceptionally fine fellow. No one knows what a poor creature he is but the man who makes it his business to be true. The only mistake worse than thinking well of himself, is for a man to think God takes no interest in him.
One evening, sorely in lack of amusement, Sercombe wandered out into a star-lit night, and along the road to the village. There he went into the general shop, where sat Annie behind the counter. Now the first attention he almost always paid a woman, that is when he cared and dared, was a compliment—the fungus of an empty head or a false heart; but with Annie he took no such initiative liberty, and she, accustomed to respectful familiarity from the chief and his brother, showed no repugnance to his friendly approach.
"Upon my word, Miss Annie," said Sercombe, venturing at length a little, "you were the best dancer on the floor that night!"
"Oh, Mr. Sercombe! how can you say so—with such dancers as the young ladies of your party!" returned Annie.
"They dance well," he returned, "but not so well as you."
"It all depends on the dance—whether you are used to it or not."
"No, by Jove! If you had a lesson or two such as they have been having all their lives, you would dance out of their sight in the twinkling of an eye. If I had you for a partner every night for a month, you would dance better than any woman I have ever seen—off the stage—any lady, that is."
The grosser the flattery, the surer with a country girl, he thought. But there was that in his tone, besides the freedom of sounding her praises in her own ears, which was unpleasing to Annie's ladyhood, and she held her peace.
"Come out and have a turn," he said thereupon. "It is lovely star-light. Have you had a walk to-day?"
"No, I have not," answered Annie, casting how to get rid of him.
"You wrong your beauty by keeping to the house."
"My beauty," said Annie, flushing, "may look after itself; I have nothing to do with it—neither, excuse me, sir, have you."
"Why, who has a right to be offended with the truth! A man can't help seeing your face is as sweet as your voice, and your figure, as revealed by your dancing, a match for the two!"
"I will call my mother," said Annie, and left the shop.
Sercombe did not believe she would, and waited. He took her departure for a mere coquetry. But when a rather grim, handsome old woman appeared, asking him—it took the most of her English—"What would you be wanting, sir?" as if he had just come into the shop, he found himself awkwardly situated. He answered, with more than his usual politeness, that, having had the pleasure of dancing with her daughter at the chief's hall, he had taken the liberty of looking in to inquire after her health; whereupon, perplexed, the old woman in her turn called Annie, who came at once, but kept close to her mother. Sercombe began to tell them about a tour he had made in Canada, for he had heard they had friends there; but the mother did not understand him, and Annie more and more disliked him. He soon saw that at least he had better say nothing more about a walk, and took himself off, not a little piqued at repulse from a peasant-girl in the most miserable shop he had ever entered.
Two days after, he went again—this time to buy tobacco. Annie was short with him, but he went yet again and yet sooner: these primitive people objected to strangers, he said; accustomed to him she would be friendly! he would not rest until he had gained some footing of favour with her! Annie grew heartily offended with the man. She also feared what might be said if he kept coming to the shop—where Mistress Conal had seen him more than once, and looked poison at him. For her own sake, for the sake of Lachlan, and for the sake of the chief, she resolved to make the young father of the ancient clan acquainted with her trouble. It was on the day after his rejection of the ten-pound note that she found her opportunity, for the chief came to see her.
"Was he rude to you, Annie?" he asked.
"No, sir—too polite, I think: he must have seen I did not want his company.—I shall feel happier now you know."
"I will see to it," said the chief.
"I hope it will not put you to any trouble, sir!"
"What am I here for, Annie! Are you not my clanswoman! Is not
Lachlan my foster-brother!—He will trouble you no more, I think."
As Alister walked home, he met Sercombe, and after a greeting not very cordial on either side, said thus:
"I should be obliged to you, Mr. Sercombe, if you would send for anything you want, instead of going to the shop yourself. Annie Macruadh is not the sort of girl you may have found in such a position, and you would not wish to make her uncomfortable!"
Sercombe was, ashamed, I think; for the refuge of the fool when dissatisfied with himself, is offence with his neighbour, and Sercombe was angry.
"Are you her father—or her lover?" he said.
"She has a right to my protection—and claims it," rejoined Alister quietly.
"Protection! Oh!—What the devil would you protect her from?"
"From you, Mr. Sercombe."
"Protect her, then."
"I will. Force yourself on that young woman's notice again, and you will have to do with me."
They parted. Alister went home. Sercombe went straight to the shop.
He was doing what he could to recommend himself to Christina; but whether from something antagonistic between them, or from unwillingness on her part to yield her position of advantage and so her liberty, she had not given him the encouragement he thought he deserved. He believed himself in love with her, and had told her so; but the truest love such a man can feel, is a poor thing. He admired, and desired, and thought he loved her beauty, and that he called being in love with HER! He did not think much about her money, but had she then been brought to poverty, he would at least have hesitated about marrying her.
In the family he was regarded as her affianced, although she did not treat him as such, but merely went on bewitching him, pleased that at least he was a man of the world.
While one is yet only IN LOVE, the real person, the love-capable, lies covered with the rose-leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person of whom is the dream. A thousand fancies fly out, approach, and cross, but never meet; the man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other. The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity—of essential capacity, therefore, of loving and being loved; at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, but their contacts are the merest brushings as of insect-antennae; the real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose-leaves. Happy is the rare fate of the true—to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being. They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other—a love as essential to reality, to truth, to religion, as the love of the very God. Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitnesses of temperament be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one.
Sercombe saw no reason why a gentleman should not amuse himself with any young woman he pleased. What was the chief to him! He was not his chief! If he was a big man in the eyes of his little clan, he was nothing much in the eyes of Hilary Sercombe.
CHAPTER X
THE ENCOUNTER.
Annie came again to her chief, with the complaint that Mr. Sercombe persisted in his attentions. Alister went to see her home. They had not gone far when Sercombe overtook them, and passed. The chief told Annie to go on, and called after him,
"I must have a word or two with you, Mr. Sercombe!"
He turned and came up with long steps, his hands in his coat-pockets.
"I warned you to leave that girl alone!" said the chief.
"And I warn you now," rejoined Sercombe, "to leave me alone!"
"I am bound to take care of her."
"And I of myself."
"Not at her expense!"
"At yours then!" answered Sercombe, provoking an encounter, to which he was the more inclined that he saw Ian coming slowly up the ridge.
"It was your deliberate intention then to forget the caution I gave you?" said the chief, restraining his anger.
"I make a point of forgetting what I do not think worth remembering."
"I forget nothing!"
"I congratulate you."
"And I mean to assist your memory, Mr. Sercombe."
"Mr. Macruadh!" returned Sercombe, "if you expect me not to open my lips to any hussy in the glen without your leave,—"
His speech was cut short by a box on the ear from the open hand of the chief. He would not use his fist without warning, but such a word applied to any honest woman of his clan demanded instant recognition.
Sercomhe fell back a step, white with rage, then darting forward, struck straight at the front of his adversary. Alister avoided the blow, but soon found himself a mere child at such play with the Englishman. He had not again touched Sercombe, and was himself bleeding fast, when Ian came up running.
"Damn you! come on!" cried Sercombe when he saw him; "I can do the precious pair of you!"
"Stop!" cried Ian, laying hold of his brother from behind, pinning his arms to his sides, wheeling him round, and taking his place. "Give over, Alister," he went on. "You can't do it, and I won't see you punished when it is he that deserves it. Go and sit there, and look on."
"YOU can't do it, Ian!" returned Alister. "It is my business. One blow in will serve. He jumps about like a goat that I can't hit him!"
"You are blind with blood!" said Ian, in a tone that gave Sercombe expectation of too easy a victory. "Sit down there, I tell you!"
"Mind, I don't give in!" said Alister, but turning went to the bank at the roadside. "If he speak once again to Annie, I swear I will make him repent it!"
Sercombe laughed insultingly.
"Mr. Sercombe," said Ian, "had we not better put off our bout till to-morrow? You have fought already!"
"Damn you for a coward, come on!"
"Would you not like to take your breath for a moment?"
"I have all I am likely to need."
"It is only fair," persisted Ian, "to warn you that you will not find my knowledge on the level of my brother's!"
"Shut up," said Sercombe savagely, "and come on."
For a few rounds Ian seemed to Alister to be giving Sercombe time to recover his wind; to Sercombe he seemed to be saving his own. He stood to defend, and did not attempt to put in a blow.
"Mr. Sercombe," he said at length, "you cannot serve me as you did my brother."
"I see that well enough. Come on!"
"Will you give your word to leave Annie of the shop alone?"
Sercombe answered with a scornful imprecation.
"I warn you again, I am no novice in this business!" said Ian.
Sercombe struck out, but did not reach his antagonist.
The fight lasted but a moment longer. As his adversary drew back from a failed blow, Alister saw Ian's eyes flash, and his left arm shoot out, as it seemed, to twice its length. Sercombe neither reeled nor staggered but fell supine, and lay motionless. The brothers were by his side in a moment.
"I struck too hard!" said Ian.
"Who can think about that in a fight!" returned Alister.
"I could have helped it well enough, and a better man would. Something shot through me—I hope it wasn't hatred; I am sure it was anger—and the man went down! What if the devil struck the blow!"
"Nonsense, Ian!" said Alister, as they raised Sercombe to carry him to the cottage. "It was pure indignation, and nothing to blame in it!"
"I wish I could be sure of that!"
They had not gone far before he began to come to himself.
"What are you about?" he said feebly but angrily. "Set me down."
They did so. He staggered to the road-side, and leaned against the bank.
"What's been the row?" he asked. "Oh, I remember!—Well, you've had the best of it!"
He held out his hand in a vague sort of way, and the gesture invaded their soft hearts. Each took the hand.
"I was all right about the girl though," said Sercombe. "I didn't mean her any harm."
"I don't think you did," answered Alister; "and I am sure you could have done her none; but the girl did not like it."
"There is not a girl of the clan, or in the neighbourhood, for whom my brother would not have done the same." said Ian.
"You're a brace of woodcocks!" cried Sercombe. "It's well you're not out in the world. You would be in hot water from morning to night! I can't think how the devil you get on at all!"
"Get on! Where?" asked Ian with a smile.
"Come now! You ain't such fools as you want to look! A man must make a place for himself somehow in the world!"
He rose, and they walked in the direction of the cottage.
"There is a better thing than that," said Ian!
"What?"
"To get clean out of it."
"What! cut your throats?"
"I meant that to get out of the world clean was better than to get on in it."
"I don't understand you. I don't choose to think the man that thrashed me a downright idiot!" growled Sercombe.
"What you call getting on," rejoined Ian, "we count not worth a thought. Look at our clan! it is a type of the world itself. Everything is passing away. We believe in the kingdom of heaven."
"Come, come! fellows like you must know well enough that's all bosh!
Nobody nowadays—nobody with any brains—believes such rot!"
"We believe in Jesus Christ," said Ian, "and are determined to do what he will have us do, and take our orders from nobody else."
"I don't understand you!"
"I know you don't. You cannot until you set about changing your whole way of life."
"Oh, be damned! what an idea! a sneaking, impossible idea!"
"As to its being an impossible idea, we hold it, and live by it. How absurd it must seem to you, I know perfectly. But we don't live in your world, and you do not even see the lights of ours."
"'There is a world beyond the stars'!—Well, there may be; I know nothing about it; I only know there is one on this side of them,—a very decent sort of world too! I mean to make the best of it."
"And have not begun yet!"
"Indeed I have! I deny myself nothing. I live as I was made to live."
"If you were not made to obey your conscience or despise yourself, you are differently made from us, and no communication is possible between us. We must wait until what differences a man from a beast make its appearance in you."
"You are polite!"
"You have spoken of us as you think; now we speak of you as we think. Taking your representation of yourself, you are in the condition of the lower animals, for you claim inclination as the law of your life."
"My beast is better than your man!"
"You mean you get more of the good of life!"
"Right! I do."
The brothers exchanged a look and smile.
"But suppose," resumed Ian, "the man we have found in us should one day wake up in you! Suppose he should say, 'Why did you make a beast of me?'! It will not be easy for you to answer him!"
"That's all moonshine! Things are as you take them."
"So said Lady Macbeth till she took to walking in her sleep, and couldn't get rid of the smell of the blood!"
Sercombe said no more. He was silent with disgust at the nonsense of it all.
They reached the door of the cottage. Alister invited him to walk in. He drew back, and would have excused himself.
"You had better lie down a while," said Alister.
"You shall come to my room," said Ian. "We shall meet nobody."
Sercombe yielded, for he felt queer. He threw himself on Ian's bed, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.
When he woke, he had a cup of tea, and went away little the worse.
The laird could not show himself for several days.
After this Annie had no further molestation. But indeed the young men's time was almost up—which was quite as well, for Annie of the shop, after turning a corner of the road, had climbed the hill-side, and seen all that passed. The young ladies, hearing contradictory statements, called upon Annie to learn the truth, and the intercourse with her that followed was not without influence on them. Through Annie they saw further into the character of the brothers, who, if they advocated things too fine for the world the girls had hitherto known, DID things also of which it would by no means have approved. They valued that world and its judgment not a straw!
CHAPTER XI.
A LESSON.
All the gentlemen at the New House left it together, and its ladies were once more abandoned to the society of Nature, who said little to any of them. For, though she recognized her grandchildren, and did what she could for them, it was now time they should make some move towards acquaintance with her. A point comes when she must stand upon her dignity, for it is great. If you would hear her wonderful tales, or see her marvellous treasures, you must not trifle with her; you must not talk as if you could rummage her drawers and cabinets as you pleased. You must believe in her; you must reverence her; else, although she is everywhere about the house, you may not meet her from the beginning of one year to the end of another.
To allude to any aspect of nature in the presence of the girls was to threaten to bore them; and I heartily confess to being bored myself with common talk about scenery; but these ladies appeared unaware of the least expression on the face of their grand-mother. Doubtless they received some good from the aspect of things—that they could not help; there Grannie's hidden, and therefore irresistible power was in operation; but the moment they had their thoughts directed to the world around them, they began to gape inwardly. Even the trumpet and shawm of her winds, the stately march of her clouds, and the torrent-rush of her waters, were to them poor facts, no vaguest embodiment of truths eternal. It was small wonder then that verse of any worth should be to them but sounding brass and clanging cymbals. What they called society, its ways and judgments, its decrees and condemnations, its fashions and pomps and shows, false, unjust, ugly, was nearly all they cared for. The truth of things, without care for which man or woman is the merest puppet, had hitherto been nothing to them. To talk of Nature was sentimental. To talk of God was both irreverent and ill-bred. Wordsworth was an old woman; St. Paul an evangelical churchman. They saw no feature of any truth, but, like all unthinkers, wrapped the words of it in their own foolishness, and then sneered at them. They were too much of ladies, however, to do it disagreeably; they only smiled at the foolish neighbour who believed things they were too sensible to believe. It must, however, be said for them, that they had not yet refused anything worth believing—as presented to them. They had not yet actually looked upon any truth and refused it. They were indeed not yet true enough in themselves to suspect the presence of either a truth or a falsehood.
A thaw came, and the ways were bad, and they found the time hang yet heavier on their unaided hands. An intercourse by degrees established itself between Mrs. Macruadh and the well-meaning, handsome, smiling Mrs. Palmer, and rendered it natural for the girls to go rather frequently to the cottage. They made themselves agreeable to the mother, and subject to the law of her presence showed to better advantage.
With their love of literature, it was natural also that the young men should at such times not only talk about books, but occasionally read for their entertainment from some favourite one; so that now, for the first time in their lives, the young ladies were brought under direct teaching of a worthy sort—they had had but a mockery of it at school and church—and a little light began to soak through their unseeking eyes. Among many others, however, less manifest, one obstruction to their progress lay in the fact that Christina, whose perceptions in some directions was quick enough, would always make a dart at the comical side of anything that could be comically turned, so disturbing upon occasion the whole spiritual atmosphere about some delicate epiphany: this to both Alister and Ian was unbearable. She offended chiefly in respect of Wordsworth—who had not humour enough always to perceive what seriously meant expression might suggest a ludicrous idea.
One time, reading from the Excursion, Ian came to the verse—not to be found, I think, in later editions—
"Perhaps it is not he but some one else":—
"Awful idea!" exclaimed Christina, with sepulchral tone; "—'some one else!' Think of it! It makes me shudder! Who might it not have been!"
Ian closed the book, and persistently refused to read more that day.
Another time he was reading, in illustration of something, Wordsworth's poem, "To a Skylark," the earlier of the two with that title: when he came to the unfortunate line,—
"Happy, happy liver!"—
"Oh, I am glad to know that!" cried Christina. "I always thought the poor lark must have a bad digestion—he was up so early!"
Ian refused to finish the poem, although Mercy begged hard.
The next time they came, he proposed to "read something in Miss Palmer's style," and taking up a volume of Hood, and avoiding both his serious and the best of his comic poems, turned to two or three of the worst he could find. After these he read a vulgar rime about an execution, pretending to be largely amused, making flat jokes of his own, and sometimes explaining elaborately where was no occasion.
"Ian!" said his mother at length; "have you bid farewell to your senses?"
"No, mother," he answered; "what I am doing is the merest consequence of the way you brought us up."
"I don't understand that!" she returned.
"You always taught us to do the best we could for our visitors. So when I fail to interest them, I try to amuse them."
"But you need not make a fool of yourself!"
"It is better to make a fool of myself, than let Miss Palmer make a fool of—a great man!"
"Mr. Ian," said Christina, "it is not of yourself but of me you have been making a fool.—I deserved it!" she added, and burst into tears.
"Miss Palmer," said Ian, "I will drop my foolishness, if you will drop your fun."
"I will," answered Christina.
And Ian read them the poem beginning—
"Three years she grew in sun and shower."
Scoffing at what is beautiful, is not necessarily a sign of evil; it may only indicate stupidity or undevelopment: the beauty is not perceived. But blame is often present in prolonged undevelopment. Surely no one habitually obeying his conscience would long be left without a visit from some shape of the beautiful!
CHAPTER XII.
NATURE.
The girls had every liberty; their mother seldom interfered. Herself true to her own dim horn-lantern, she had confidence in the discretion of her daughters, and looked for no more than discretion. Hence an amount of intercourse was possible between them and the young men, which must have speedily grown to a genuine intimacy had they inhabited even a neighbouring sphere of conscious life.
Almost unknown to herself, however, a change for the better had begun in Mercy. She had not yet laid hold of, had not yet perceived any truth; but she had some sense of the blank where truth ought to be. It was not a sense that truth was lacking; it was only a sense that something was not in her which was in those men. A nature such as hers, one that had not yet sinned against the truth, was not one long to frequent such a warm atmosphere of live truth, without approach to the hour when it must chip its shell, open its eyes, and acknowledge a world of duty around it.
One lovely star-lit night of keen frost, the two mothers were sitting by a red peat-fire in the little drawing-room of the cottage, and Ian was talking to the girls over some sketches he had made in the north, when the chief came in, bringing with him an air of sharp exhilaration, and proposed a walk.
"Come and have a taste of star-light!" he said.
The girls rose at once, and were ready in a minute.
The chief was walking between the two ladies, and Ian was a few steps in front, his head bent as in thought. Suddenly, Mercy saw him spread out his arms toward the starry vault, with his face to its serrated edge of mountain-tops. The feeling, almost the sense of another presence awoke in her, and as quickly vanished. The thought, IS HE A PANTHEIST? took its place. Had she not surprised him in an act of worship? In that wide outspreading of the lifted arms, was he not worshipping the whole, the Pan? Sky and stars and mountains and sea were his God! She walked aghast, forgetful of a hundred things she had heard him say that might have settled the point. She had, during the last day or two, been reading an article in which PANTHEISM was once and again referred to with more horror than definiteness. Recovering herself a little, she ventured approach to the subject.
"Macruadh," she said, "Mr. Ian and you often say things about NATURE that I cannot understand: I wish you would tell me what you mean by it."
"By what?" asked Alister.
"By NATURE" answered Mercy. "I heard Mr. Ian say, for instance, the other night, that he did not like Nature to take liberties with him; you said she might take what liberties with you she pleased; and then you went on talking so that I could not understand a word either of you said!"
While she spoke, Ian had turned and rejoined them, and they were now walking in a line, Mercy between the two men, and Christina on Ian's right. The brothers looked at each other: it would be hard to make her understand just that example! Something more rudimentary must prepare the way! Silence fell for a moment, and then Ian said—
"We mean by nature every visitation of the outside world through our senses."
"More plainly, please Mr. Ian! You cannot imagine how stupid I feel when you are talking your thinks, as once I heard a child call them."
"I mean by nature, then, all that you see and hear and smell and taste and feel of the things round about you."
"If that be all you mean, why should you make it seem so difficult?"
"But that is not all. We mean the things themselves only for the sake of what they say to us. As our sense of smell brings us news of fields far off, so those fields, or even the smell only that comes from them, tell us of things, meanings, thoughts, intentions beyond them, and embodied in them."
"And that is why you speak of Nature as a person?" asked Mercy.
"Whatever influences us must be a person. But God is the only real person, being in himself, and without help from anybody; and so we talk even of the world which is but his living garment, as if that were a person; and we call it SHE as if it were a woman, because so many of God's loveliest influences come to us through her. She always seems to me a beautiful old grandmother."
"But there now! when you talk of her influences, and the liberties she takes, I do not know what you mean. She seems to do and be something to you which certainly she does not and is not to me. I cannot tell what to make of it. I feel just as when our music-master was talking away about thorough bass: I could not get hold, head or tail, of what the man was after, and we all agreed there was no sense in it. Now I begin to suspect there must have been too much!"
"There is no fear of her!" said Ian to himself.
"My heart told me the truth about her!" thought Alister jubilant.
"Now we shall have talk!"
"I think I can let you see into it, Miss Mercy," said Ian. "Imagine for a moment how it would be if, instead of having a roof like 'this most excellent canopy the air, this brave o'erhanging, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire,'—"
"Are you making the words, or saying them out of a book?" interrupted Mercy.
"Ah! you don't know Hamlet? How rich I should feel myself if I had the first reading of it before me like you!—But imagine how different it would have been if, instead of such a roof, we had only clouds, hanging always down, like the flies in a theatre, within a yard or two of our heads!"
Mercy was silent for a moment, then said,
"It would be horribly wearisome."
"It would indeed be wearisome! But how do you think it would affect your nature, your being?"
Mercy held the peace which is the ignorant man's wisdom.
"We should have known nothing of astronomy," said Christina.
"True; and the worst would have been, that the soul would have had no astronomy—no notion of heavenly things."
"There you leave me out again!" said Mercy.
"I mean," said Ian, "that it would have had no sense of outstretching, endless space, no feeling of heights above, and depths beneath. The idea of space would not have come awake in it."
"I understand!" said Christina. "But I do not see that we should have been much the worse off. Why should we have the idea of more than we want? So long as we have room, I do not see what space matters to us!"
"Ah, but when the soul wakes up, it needs all space for room! A limit of thousands of worlds will not content it. Mere elbow-room will not do when the soul wakes up!"
"Then my soul is not waked up yet!" rejoined Christina with a laugh.
Ian did not reply, and Christina felt that he accepted the proposition, absurd as it seemed to herself.
"But there is far more than that," he resumed. "What notion could you have had of majesty, if the heavens seemed scarce higher than the earth? what feeling of the grandeur of him we call God, of his illimitation in goodness? For space is the body to the idea of liberty. Liberty is—God and the souls that love; these are the limitless room, the space, in which thoughts, the souls of things, have their being. If there were no holy mind, then no freedom, no spiritual space, therefore no thoughts; just as, if there were no space, there could be no things."
Ian saw that not even Alister was following him, and changed his key.
"Look up," he said, "and tell me what you see.—What is the shape over us?"
"It is a vault," replied Christina.
"A dome—is it not?" said Mercy.
"Yes; a vault or a dome, recognizable at the moment mainly by its shining points. This dome we understand to be the complement or completing part of a correspondent dome on the other side of the world. It follows that we are in the heart of a hollow sphere of loveliest blue, spangled with light. Now the sphere is the one perfect geometrical form. Over and round us then we have the one perfect shape. I do not say it is put there for the purpose of representing God; I say it is there of necessity, because of its nature, and its nature is its relation to God. It is of God's thinking; and that half-sphere above men's heads, with influence endlessly beyond the reach of their consciousness, is the beginning of all revelation of him to men. They must begin with that. It is the simplest as well as most external likeness of him, while its relation to him goes so deep that it represents things in his very nature that nothing else could."
"You bewilder me," said Mercy. "I cannot follow you. I am not fit for such high things!"
"I will go on; you will soon begin to see what I mean: I know what you are fit for better than you do yourself, Miss Mercy.—Think then how it would be if this blue sky were plainly a solid. Men of old believed it a succession of hollow spheres, one outside the other; it is hardly a wonder they should have had little gods. No matter how high the vault of the inclosing sphere; limited at all it could not declare the glory of God, it could only show his handiwork. In our day it is a sphere only to the eyes; it is a foreshortening of infinitude that it may enter our sight; there is no imagining of a limit to it; it is a sphere only in this, that in no one direction can we come nearer to its circumference than in another. This infinitive sphere, I say then, or, if you like it better, this spheric infinitude, is the only figure, image, emblem, symbol, fit to begin us to know God; it is an idea incomprehensible; we can only believe in it. In like manner God cannot by searching be found out, cannot be grasped by any mind, yet is ever before us, the one we can best know, the one we must know, the one we cannot help knowing; for his end in giving us being is that his humblest creature should at length possess himself, and be possessed by him."
"I think I begin," said Mercy—and said no more.
"If it were not for the outside world," resumed Ian, "we should have no inside world to understand things by. Least of all could we understand God without these millions of sights and sounds and scents and motions, weaving their endless harmonies. They come out from his heart to let us know a little of what is in it!"
Alister had been listening hard. He could not originate such things, but he could understand them; and his delight in them proved them his own, although his brother had sunk the shaft that laid open their lode.
"I never heard you put a thing better, Ian!" he said.
"You gentlemen," said Mercy, "seem to have a place to think in that I don't know how to get into! Could you not open your church-door a little wider to let me in? There must be room for more than two!"
She was looking up at Alister, not so much afraid of him; Ian was to her hardly of this world. In her eyes Alister saw something that seemed to reflect the starlight; but it might have been a luminous haze about the waking stars of her soul!
"My brother has always been janitor to me," replied Alister; "I do not know how to open any door. But here no door needs to be opened; you have just to step straight into the temple of nature, among all the good people worshipping."
"There! that is what I was afraid of!" cried Mercy: "you are pantheists!"
"Bless my soul, Mercy!" exclaimed Christina; "what do you mean?"
"Yes," answered Ian. "If to believe that not a lily can grow, not a sparrow fall to the ground without our Father, be pantheism, Alister and I are pantheists. If by pantheism you mean anything that would not fit with that, we are not pantheists."
"Why should we trouble about religion more than is required of us!" interposed Christina.
"Why indeed?" returned Ian. "But then how much is required?"
"You require far more than my father, and he is good enough for me!"
"The Master says we are to love God with all our hearts and souls and strength and mind."
"That was in the old law, Ian," said Alister.
"You are right. Jesus only justified it—and did it."
"How then can you worship in the temple of Nature?" said Mercy.
"Just as he did. It is Nature's temple, mind, for the worship of
God, not of herself!"
"But how am I to get into it? That is what I want to know."
"The innermost places of the temple are open only to such as already worship in a greater temple; but it has courts into which any honest soul may enter."
"You wouldn't set me to study Wordsworth?"
"By no means."
"I am glad of that—though there must be more in him than I see, or you couldn't care for him so much!"
"Some of Nature's lessons you must learn before you can understand them."
"Can you call it learning a lesson if you do not understand it?"
"Yes—to a certain extent. Did you learn at school to work the rule of three?"
"Yes; and I was rather fond of it."
"Did you understand it?"
"I could work sums in it."
"Did you see how it was that setting the terms down so, and working out the rule, must give you a true answer. Did you perceive that it was safe to buy or sell, to build a house, or lay out a garden, by the rule of three?"
"I did not. I do not yet."
"Then one may so far learn a lesson without understanding it! All do, more or less, in Dame Nature's school. Not a few lessons must be so learned in order to be better learned. Without being so learned first, it is not possible to understand them; the scholar has not facts enough about the things to understand them. Keats's youthful delight in Nature was more intense even than Wordsworth's, but he was only beginning to understand her when he died. Shelley was much nearer understanding her than Keats, but he was drowned before he did understand her. Wordsworth was far before either of them. At the same time, presumptuous as it may appear, I believe there are regions to be traversed, beyond any point to which Wordsworth leads us."
"But how am I to begin? Do tell me. Nothing you say helps me in the least."
"I have all the time been leading you toward the door at which you want to go in. It is not likely, however, that it will open to you at once. I doubt if it will open to you at all except through sorrow."
"You are a most encouraging master!" said Christina, with a light laugh.
"It was Wordsworth's bitter disappointment in the outcome of the French revolution," continued Ian, "that opened the door to him. Yet he had gone through the outer courts of the temple with more understanding than any who immediately preceded him.—Will you let me ask you a question?"
"You frighten me!" said Mercy.
"I am sorry for that. We will talk of something else."
"I am not afraid of what you may ask me; I am frightened at what you tell me. I fear to go on if I must meet Sorrow on the way!"
"You make one think of some terrible secret society!" said
Christina.
"Tell me then, Miss Mercy, is there anything you love very much? I don't say any PERSON, but any THING."
"I love some animals."
"An animal is not a thing. It is possible to love animals and not the nature of which we are speaking. You might love a dog dearly, and never care to see the sun rise!—Tell me, did any flower ever make you cry?
"No," answered Mercy, with a puzzled laugh; "how could it?"
"Did any flower ever make you a moment later in going to bed, or a moment earlier in getting out of it?"
"No, certainly!"
"In that direction, then, I am foiled!"
"You would not really have me cry over a flower, Mr. Ian? Did ever a flower make you cry yourself? Of course not! it is only silly women that cry for nothing!"
"I would rather not bring myself in at present," answered Ian smiling. "Do you know how Chaucer felt about flowers?"
"I never read a word of Chaucer."