"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."
"Shall I give you an instance?"
"Please."
"Chaucer was a man of the world, a courtier, more or less a man of affairs, employed by Edward III. in foreign business of state: you cannot mistake him for an effeminate or sentimental man! He does not anywhere, so far as I remember, say that ever he cried over a flower, but he shows a delight in some flowers so delicate and deep that it must have a source profounder than that of most people's tears. When we go back I will read you what he says about the daisy; but one more general passage I think I could repeat. There are animals in it too!"
"Pray let us hear it," said Christina.
He spoke the following stanzas—not quite correctly, but supplying for the moment's need where he could not recall:—
A gardein saw I, full of blosomed bowis,
Upon a river, in a grene mede,
There as sweetnesse evermore inough is,
With floures white, blewe, yelowe, and rede,
And cold welle streames, nothing dede,
That swommen full of smale fishes light,
With finnes rede, and scales silver bright.
On every bough the birdes heard I sing,
With voice of angell, in hir armonie,
That busied hem, hir birdes forth to bring,
The little pretty conies to hir play gan hie,
And further all about I gan espie,
The dredeful roe, the buck, the hart, and hind,
Squirrels, and beastes small, of gentle kind.
Of instruments of stringes in accorde,
Heard I so play, a ravishing swetnesse,
That God, that maker is of all and Lorde,
Ne heard never better, as I gesse,
Therewith a wind, unneth it might be lesse,
Made in the leaves grene a noise soft,
Accordant to the foules song on loft.
The aire of the place so attempre was,
That never was ther grevance of hot ne cold,
There was eke every noisome spice and gras,
Ne no man may there waxe sicke ne old,
Yet was there more joy o thousand fold,
Than I can tell or ever could or might,
There is ever clere day, and never night.
He modernized them also a little in repeating them, so that his hearers missed nothing through failing to understand the words: how much they gained, it were hard to say.
"It reminds one," commented Ian, "of Dante's paradise on the top of the hill of purgatory."
"I don't know anything about Dante either," said Mercy regretfully.
"There is plenty of time!" said Ian.
"But there is so much to learn!" returned Mercy in a hopeless tone.
"That is the joy of existence!" Ian replied. "We are not bound to know; we are only bound to learn.—But to return to my task: a man may really love a flower. In another poem Chaucer tells us that such is his delight in his books that no other pleasure can take him from them—
Save certainly, when that the month of May
Is comen, and that I heare the foules sing,
And that the floures ginnen for to spring,
Farwell my booke, and my devotion!
Poor people love flowers; rich people admire them."
"But," said Mercy, "how can one love a thing that has no life?"
Ian could have told her that whatever grows must live; he could further have told her his belief that life cannot be without its measure of consciousness; but it would have led to more difficulty, and away from the end he had in view. He felt also that no imaginable degree of consciousness in it was commensurate with the love he had himself for almost any flower. His answer to Mercy's question was this:—
"The flowers come from the same heart as man himself, and are sent to be his companions and ministers. There is something divinely magical, because profoundly human in them. In some at least the human is plain; we see a face of childlike peace and confidence that appeals to our best. Our feeling for many of them doubtless owes something to childish associations; but how did they get their hold of our childhood? Why did they enter our souls at all? They are joyous, inarticulate children, come with vague messages from the father of all. If I confess that what they say to me sometimes makes me weep, how can I call my feeling for them anything but love? The eternal thing may have a thousand forms of which we know nothing yet!"
Mercy felt Ian must mean something she ought to like, if only she knew what it was; but he had not yet told her anything to help her! He had, however, neither reached his end nor lost his way; he was leading her on—gently and naturally.
"I did not mean," he resumed, "that you must of necessity begin with the flowers. I was only inquiring whether at that point you were nearer to Nature.—Tell me—were you ever alone?"
"Alone!" repeated Mercy, thinking. "—Surely everybody has been many times alone!"
"Could you tell when last you were alone?"
She thought, but could not tell.
"What I want to ask you," said Ian, "is—did you ever feel alone? Did you ever for a moment inhabit loneliness? Did it ever press itself upon you that there was nobody near—that if you called nobody would hear? You are not alone while you know that you can have a fellow creature with you the instant you choose."
"I hardly think I was ever alone in that way."
"Then what I would have you do," continued Ian, "is—to make yourself alone in one of Nature's withdrawing-rooms, and seat yourself in one of Grannie's own chairs.—I am coming to the point at last!—Upon a day when the weather is fine, go out by yourself. Tell no one where you are going, or that you are going anywhere. Climb a hill. If you cannot get to the top of it, go high on the side of it. No book, mind! nothing to fill your thinking-place from another's! People are always saying 'I think,' when they are not thinking at all, when they are at best only passing the thoughts of others whom they do not even know.
"When you have got quite alone, when you do not even know the nearest point to anybody, sit down and be lonely. Look out on the loneliness, the wide world round you, and the great vault over you, with the lonely sun in the middle of it; fold your hands in your lap, and be still. Do not try to think anything. Do not try to call up any feeling or sentiment or sensation; just be still. By and by, it may be, you will begin to know something of Nature. I do not know you well enough to be sure about it; but if you tell me afterwards how you fared, I shall then know you a little better, and perhaps be able to tell you whether Nature will soon speak to you, or not until, as Henry Vaughan says, some veil be broken in you."
They were approaching the cottage, and little more was said. They found Mrs. Palmer prepared to go, and Mercy was not sorry: she had had enough for a while. She was troubled at the thought that perhaps she was helplessly shut out from the life inhabited by the brothers. When she lay down, her own life seemed dull and poor. These men, with all their kindness, respect, attention, and even attendance upon them, did not show them the homage which the men of their own circle paid them!
"They will never miss us!" she said to herself. "They will go on with their pantheism, or whatever it is, all the same!"
But they should not say she was one of those who talk but will not do! That scorn she could not bear!
All the time, however, the thing seemed to savour more of spell or cast of magic than philosophy: the means enjoined were suggestive of a silent incantation!
CHAPTER XIII.
GRANNY ANGRY.
It must not be supposed that all the visiting was on the part of those of the New House. The visits thence were returned by both matron and men. But somehow there was never the same freedom in the house as in the cottage. The difference did not lie in the presence of the younger girls: they were well behaved, friendly, and nowise disagreeable children. Doubtless there was something in the absence of books: it was of no use to jump up when a passage occurred; help was not at hand. But it was more the air of the place, the presence of so many common-place things, that clogged the wheels of thought. Neither, with all her knowledge of the world and all her sweetness, did Mrs. Palmer understand the essentials of hospitality half so well as the widow of the late minister-chief. All of them liked, and confessed that they liked the cottage best. Even Christina felt something lacking in their reception. She regretted that the house was not grand enough to show what they were accustomed to.
Mrs. Palmer seldom understood the talk, and although she sat looking persistently content, was always haunted with a dim feeling that her husband would not be hest pleased at so much intercourse between his rich daughters and those penniless country-fellows. But what could she do! the place where he had abandoned them was so dull, so solitary! the girls must not mope! Christina would wither up without amusement, and then good-bye to her beauty and all that depended upon it! In the purity of her motherhood, she more than liked the young men: happy mother she would think herself, were her daughters to marry such men as these! The relations between them and their mother delighted her: they were one! their hearts were together! they understood each other! She could never have such bliss with her sons! Never since she gave them birth had she had one such look from either of hers as she saw pass every now and then from these to their mother! It would be like being born again to feel herself loved in that way! For any danger to the girls, she thought with a sigh how soon in London they would forget the young highlanders. Was there no possibility of securing one of them? What chance was there of Mercy's marrying well! she was so decidedly plain! Was the idea of marrying her into an old and once powerful family like that of the Macruadh, to her husband inconceivable? Could he not restore its property as the dowry of his unprized daughter! it would be to him but a trifle!—and he could stipulate that the chief should acknowledge the baronetcy and use his title! Mercy would then be a woman of consequence, and Peregrine would have the Bible-honour of being the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in!—Such were some of the thoughts that would come and go in the brain of the mother as she sat; nor were they without a share in her readiness to allow her daughters to go out with the young men: she had an unquestioning conviction of their safety with them.
The days went by, and what to Christina had seemed imprisonment, began to look like some sort of liberty. She had scarce come nearer to sympathy with those whose society consoled her, but their talk had ceased to sound repulsive. She was infinitely more than a well-modelled waxflower, and yet hardly a growing plant. More was needed to wake her than friends awake. It is wonderful how long the sleeping may go with the waking, and not discover any difference between them. But Grannie Nature was about to interfere.
The spring drew gently on. It would be long ere summer was summer enough to show. There seemed more of the destructive in the spring itself than of the genial—cold winds, great showers, days of steady rain, sudden assaults of hail and sleet. Still it was spring, and at length, one fine day with a bright sun, snow on the hills, and clouds in the east, but no sign of any sudden change, the girls went out for a walk, and took the younger girls with them.
A little way up the valley, out of sight of the cottage, a small burn came down its own dell to join that which flowed through the chiefs farm. Its channel was wide, but except in time of rain had little water in it. About half a mile up its course it divided, or rather the channel did, for in one of its branches there was seldom any water. At the fork was a low rocky mound, with an ancient ruin of no great size-three or four fragments of thick walls, within whose plan grew a slender birch-tree. Thither went the little party, wandering up the stream: the valley was sheltered; no wind but the south could reach it; and the sun, though it could not make it very warm, as it looked only aslant on its slopes, yet lighted both sides of it. Great white clouds passed slowly across the sky, with now and then a nearer black one threatening rain, but a wind overhead was carrying them quickly athwart.
Ian had seen the ladies pass, but made no effort to overtake them, although he was bound in the same direction: he preferred sauntering along with a book of ballads. Suddenly his attention was roused by a peculiar whistle, which he knew for that of Hector of the Stags: it was one of the few sounds he could make. Three times it was hurriedly repeated, and ere the third was over, Ian had discovered Hector high on a hill on the opposite side of the burn, waving his arms, and making eager signs to him. He stopped and set himself to understand. Hector was pointing with energy, but it was impossible to determine the exact direction: all that Ian could gather was, that his presence was wanted somewhere farther on. He resumed his walk therefore at a rapid pace, whereupon Hector pointed higher. There on the eastern horizon, towards the north, almost down upon the hills, Ian saw a congeries of clouds in strangest commotion, such as he had never before seen in any home latitude—a mass of darkly variegated vapours manifesting a peculiar and appalling unrest. It seemed tormented by a gyrating storm, twisting and contorting it with unceasing change. Now the gray came writhing out, now the black came bulging through, now a dirty brown smeared the ashy white, and now the blue shone calmly out from eternal distances. At the season he could hardly think it a thunderstorm, and stood absorbed in the unusual phenomenon. But again, louder and more hurried, came the whistling, and again he saw Hector gesticulating, more wildly than before. Then he knew that someone must be in want of help or succour, and set off running as hard as he could: he saw Hector keeping him in sight, and watching to give him further direction: perhaps the ladies had got into some difficulty!
When he arrived at the opening of the valley just mentioned, Hector's gesticulations made it quite plain it was up there he must go; and as soon as he entered it, he saw that the cloudy turmoil was among the hills at its head. With that he began to suspect the danger the hunter feared, and almost the same instant heard the merry voices of the children. Running yet faster, he came in sight of them on the other side of the stream,—not a moment too soon. The valley was full of a dull roaring sound. He called to them as he ran, and the children saw and came running down toward him, followed by Mercy. She was not looking much concerned, for she thought it only the grumbling of distant thunder. But Ian saw, far up the valley, what looked like a low brown wall across it, and knew what it was.
"Mercy!" he cried, "run up the side of the hill directly; you will be drowned—swept away if you do not."
She looked incredulous, and glanced up the hill-side, but carne on as if to cross the burn and join him.
"Do as I tell you," he cried, in a tone which few would have ventured to disregard, and turning darted across the channel toward her.
Mercy did not wait his coming, but took the children, each by a hand, and went a little way up the hill that immediately bordered the stream.
"Farther! farther!" cried Ian as he ran. "Where is Christina?"
"At the ruin," she answered.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Ian, and darted off, crying, "Up the hill with you! up the hill!"
Christina was standing by the birch-tree in the ruin, looking down the burn. She had heard Ian calling, and saw him running, but suspected no danger.
"Come; come directly; for God's sake, come!" he cried. "Look up the burn!" he added, seeing her hesitate bewildered.
She turned, looked, and came running to him, down the channel, white with terror. It was too late. The charging water, whose front rank was turf, and hushes, and stones, was almost upon her. The solid matter had retarded its rush, but it was now on the point of dividing against the rocky mound, to sweep along both sides, and turn it into an island. Ian bounded to her in the middle of the channel, caught her by the arm, and hurried her back to the mound as fast as they could run: it was the highest ground immediately accessible. As they reached it, the water broke with a roar against its rocky base, rose, swelled—and in a moment the island was covered with a brown, seething, swirling flood.
"Where's Mercy and the children?" gasped Christina, as the water rose upon her.