CHAPTER LXV.
THE WALL
On the day after the last triad in the housekeeper's parlour, as Donal sat in the schoolroom with Davie—about noon it was—he became aware that for some time he had been hearing laborious blows apparently at a great distance: now that he attended, they seemed to be in the castle itself, deadened by mass, not distance. With a fear gradually becoming more definite, he sat listening for a few moments.
"Davie," he said, "run and see what is going on."
The boy came rushing back in great excitement.
"Oh, Mr. Grant, what do you think!" he cried. "I do believe my father is after the lost room! They are breaking down a wall!"
"Where?" asked Donal, half starting from his seat.
"In the little room behind the half-way room—on the stair, you know!"
Donal was silent: what might not be the consequences!
"You may go and see them at work, Davie," he said. "We shall have no more lessons this morning.—Was your papa with them?"
"No, sir—at least, I did not see him. Simmons told me he sent for the masons this morning, and set them to take the wall down. Oh, thank you, Mr. Grant! It is such fun! I do wonder what is behind it! It may be a place you know quite well, or a place you never saw before!"
Davie ran off, and Donal instantly sped to a corner where he had hidden some tools, thence to lady Arctura's deserted room, and so to the oak door. He remembered seeing another staple in the same post, a little lower down: if he could get that out, he would drive it in beside the remains of the other, so as to hold the bolt of the lock: if the earl knew the way in, as doubtless he did, he must not learn that another had found it—not yet at least! As he went down, every blow of the masons pounding at the wall, seemed in his very ears.
He peeped through the press-door: they had not yet got through the wall: no light was visible! He made haste to restore things—only a stool and a few papers—to their exact positions when first he entered. Close to him on the other side of the partition, shaking the place, the huge blows were falling like those of a ram on the wall of a besieged city, of which he was the whole garrison. He stepped into the press and drew the door after him: with his last glance behind him he saw, in the faint gleam of light that came with it, a stone fall: he must make haste: the demolition would go on much faster now; but before they had the opening large enough to pass, he would have done what he wanted! With a strong piece of iron for a lever, he drew the staple from the post, then drove it in astride of the bolt, careful to time his blows to those of the masons. That done, he ran down to the chapel, gathered what dust he could sweep up from behind the altar and laid it on its top, restored on the bed, with its own dust, a little of the outline of what had lain there, dropped the slab to its place in the floor of the passage, closed the door of the chapel with some difficulty because of its broken hinge, and ascended.
The sounds of battering had ceased, and as he passed the oak door he laid his ear to it: some one was in the place! the lid of the bureau shut with a loud bang, and he heard a lock turned. The wall could not be half down yet: the earl must have entered the moment he could get through!
Donal hastened up, and out of the dreadful place, put the slab in the opening, secured it with a strut against the opposite side of the recess, and closed the shutters and drew the curtains of the room; if the earl came up the stair in the wall, found the stone immovable, and saw no light through any chink about its edges, he would not suspect it had been displaced!
He went then to lady Arctura.
"I have a great deal to tell you," he said, "but at this moment I cannot: I am afraid of the earl finding me with you!"
"Why should you mind that?" said Arctura.
"Because I think he is suspicious about the lost room. He has had a wall taken down this morning. Please do not let him see you know anything about it. Davie thinks he is set on finding the lost room: I think he knew all about it long ago. You can ask him what he has been doing: you must have heard the masons!"
"I hope I shall not stumble into anything like a story, for if I do I must out with everything!"
In the afternoon, Davie was full of the curious little place his father had discovered behind the wall; but, if that was the lost room, he said, it was not at all worth making such a fuss about: it was nothing but a big closet, with an old desk-kind of thing in it!
In the afternoon also, the earl went to see his niece. It was the first time they met after his rude behaviour on her proposal to search for the lost room.
"What were you doing this morning, uncle?" she said. "There was such a thumping and banging somewhere in the castle! Davie said you were determined, he thought, to find the lost room."
"Nothing of the kind, my love," answered the earl. "—I do hope they will not spoil the stair carrying the stones and mortar down!"
"What was it then, uncle?"
"Simply this, my dear: my late wife, your aunt, and I, had a plan for taking that closet behind my room on the stair into the room itself. In preparation, I had a wall built across the middle of the closet, so as to divide it and make two recesses of it, and act also as a buttress to the weakened wall. Then your aunt died, and I hadn't the heart to open the recesses or do anything more in the matter. So one half of the closet was cut off, and remained inaccessible. But there had been left in it an old bureau, containing papers of some consequence, for it was heavy, and intended to occupy the same position after the arches were opened. Now, as it happens, I want one of those papers, so the wall has had to come down again."
"But, uncle, what a pity!" said Arctura. "Why did you not open the arches? The recesses would have been so pretty in that room!"
"I am sorry I did not think of asking you what you would like done about it, my child! The fact is I never thought of your taking any interest in the matter; I had naturally lost all mine. You will please to observe, however, I have only restored what I had myself disarranged—not meddled with anything belonging to the castle!"
"But now you have the masons here, why not go on, and make a little search for the lost room?" said Arctura, venturing once more.
"We might pull down the castle and be none the wiser! Bah! the building up of half the closet may have given rise to the whole story!"
"Surely, uncle, the legend is older than that!"
"It may be; you cannot be sure. Once a going, it would immediately cry back to a remote age. Prove that any one ever spoke of it before the building of that foolish wall."
"Surely some remember hearing it long before that!"
"Nothing is more treacherous than a memory confronted with a general belief," said the earl, and took his leave.
The next morning Arctura went to see the alteration. She opened the door of the little room: it was twice its former size, and two bureaus were standing against the wall! She peeped into the cupboard at the end of it, but saw nothing there.
That same morning she made up her mind that she would go no farther at present in regard to the chapel: it would be to break with her uncle!
In the evening, she acquainted Donal with her resolve, and he could not say she was wrong. There was no necessity for opposing her uncle—there might soon come one! He told her how he had entered the closet from behind, and of the noise he had made the night before, which had perhaps led to the opening of the place; but he did not tell her of what he had found on the bureau. The time might come when he must do so, but now he dared not render her relations with her uncle yet more uncomfortable; neither was it likely such a woman would consent to marry such a man as her cousin had shown himself; when that danger appeared, it would be time to interpose; for the mere succession to an empty title, he was not sure that he was bound to speak. The branch which could produce such scions, might well be itself a false graft on the true stem of the family!—if not, what was the family worth? He must at all events be sure it was his business before he moved in the matter!
CHAPTER LXVI.
PROGRESS AND CHANGE
Things went on very quietly for a time. Arctura grew better, resumed her studies, and made excellent progress. She would have worked harder, but Donal would not let her. He hated forcing—even with the good will of the plant itself. He believed in a holy, unhasting growth. God's ways want God's time.
Long after, people would sometimes say to him—
"That is very well in the abstract; but in these days of hurry a young fellow would that way be left ages behind!"
"With God," would Donal say.
"Tut, tut! the thing would never work!"
"For your ends," Donal would answer, "it certainly would never work; but your ends are not those of the universe!"
"I do not pretend they are; but they are the success of the boy."
"That is one of the ends of the universe; and your reward will be to thwart it for a season. I decline to make one in a conspiracy against the design of our creator: I would fain die loyal!"
He was of course laughed at, and not a little despised, as an extravagant enthusiast. But those who laughed found it hard to say for what he was enthusiastic. It seemed hardly for education, when he would even do what he could sometimes to keep a pupil back! He did not care to make the best of any one! The truth was, Donal's best was so many miles a-head of theirs, that it was below their horizon altogether. If there be any relation between time and the human mind, every forcing of human process, whether in spirit or intellect, is hurtful, a retarding of God's plan.
Lady Arctura's old troubles were gradually fading into the limbo of vanities. At times, however, mostly when unwell, they would come in upon her like a flood: what if, after all, God were the self-loving being theology presented—a being from whom no loving human heart could but recoil with a holy dislike! what if it was because of a nature specially evil that she could not accept the God in whom the priests and elders of her people believed! But again and again, in the midst of profoundest wretchedness from such doubt, had a sudden flush of the world's beauty—that beauty which Jesus has told us to consider and the modern pharisee to avoid, broken like gentlest mightiest sunrise through the hellish fog, and she had felt a power upon her as from the heart of a very God—a God such as she would give her life to believe in—one before whom she would cast herself in speechless adoration—not of his greatness—of that she felt little, but of his lovingkindness, the gentleness that was making her great. Then would she care utterly for God and his Christ, nothing for what men said about them: the Lord never meant his lambs to be under the tyranny of any, least of all the tyranny of his own most imperfect church! its work is to teach; where it cannot teach, it must not rule! Then would God appear to her not only true, but real—the heart of the human, to which she could cling, and so rest. The corruption of all religion comes of leaving the human, and God as the causing Human, for something imagined holier. Men who do not see the loveliness of the Truth, search till they find a lie they can call lovely. What but a human reality could the heart of man ever love! what else are we offered in Jesus but the absolutely human? That Jesus has two natures is of the most mischievous fictions of theology. The divine and the human are not two.
Suddenly, after an absence of months, reappeared lord Forgue—cheerful, manly, on the best terms with his father, and plainly willing to be on still better terms with his cousin! He had left the place a mooning youth; he came back a man of the world—easy in carriage, courteous in manners, serene in temper, abounding in what seemed the results of observation, attentive but not too attentive, jolly with Davie, distant with Donal, polite to all. Donal could hardly receive the evidence of his senses: he would have wondered more had he known every factor in the change. All about him seemed to say it should not be his fault if the follies of his youth remained unforgotten; and his airy carriage sat well upon him. None the less Donal felt there was no restoration of the charm which had at first attracted him; that was utterly vanished. He felt certain he had been going down hill, and was now, instead of negatively, consciously and positively untrue.
With gradations undefined, but not unmarked of Donal, as if the man found himself under influences of which the youth had been unaware, he began to show himself not indifferent to the attractions of his cousin. He expressed concern that her health was not what it had been; sought her in her room when she did not appear; professed an interest in knowing what books she was reading, and what were her studies with Donal; behaved like a good brother-cousin, who would not be sorry to be something more.
And now the earl, to the astonishment of the household, began to appear at table; and, apparently as a consequence of this, Donal was requested rather than invited to take his meals with the family—not altogether to his satisfaction, seeing he could not only read while he ate alone, but could get through more quickly, and have the time thus saved, for things of greater consequence. His presence made it easier for lord Forgue to act his part, and the manners he brought to the front left little to be desired. He bowed to the judgment of Arctura, and seemed to welcome that of his father, to whom he was now as respectful as moralist could desire. Yet he sometimes faced a card he did not mean to show: who that is not absolutely true can escape the mishap!—there was condescension in his politeness to Donal! and this, had there been nothing else, would have been enough to revolt Arctura. But in truth he impressed her altogether as a man of outsides; she felt that she did not see the man he was, but the nearest approach he could make to the man he would be taken for. He was gracious, dignified, responsive, kind, amusing, accurate, ready—everything but true. He would make of his outer man all but what it was meant for—a revelation of the inner. It was that notwithstanding. He was a man dressed in a man, and his dress was a revelation of much that he was, while he intended it only to show much that he was not. No man can help unveiling himself, however long he may escape even his own detection. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. Things were meant to come out, and be read, and understood, in the face of the universe. The soul of every man is as a secret book, whose content is yet written on its cover for the reading of the wise. How differently is it read by the fool, whose very understanding is a misunderstanding! He takes a man for a God when on the point of being eaten up of worms! he buys for thirty pieces of silver him whom the sepulchre cannot hold! Well for those in the world of revelation, who give their sins no quarter in this!
Forgue had been in Edinburgh a part of the time, in England another part. He had many things to tell of the people he had seen, and the sports he had shared in. He had developed and enlarged a vein of gentlemanly satire, which he kept supplied by the observation and analysis of the peculiarities, generally weaknesses, of others. These, as a matter of course, he judged merely by the poor standard of society: questioned concerning any upon the larger human scale, he could give no account of them. To Donal's eyes, the man was a shallow pool whose surface brightness concealed the muddy bottom.
CHAPTER LXVII.
THE BREAKFAST-ROOM
Two years before, lady Arctura had been in the habit of riding a good deal, but after an accident to a favourite horse for which she blamed herself, she had scarcely ridden at all. It was quite as much, however, from the influence of Miss Carmichael upon her spirits, that she had forsaken the exercise. Partly because her uncle was neither much respected nor much liked, she had visited very little; and after mental trouble assailed her, growing under the false prescriptions of the soul-doctor she had called in, she withdrew more and more, avoiding even company she would have enjoyed, and which would before now have led her to resume it.
For a time she persisted in refusing to ride with Forgue. In vain he offered his horse, assuring her that Davie's pony was quite able to carry him; she had no inclination to ride, she said. But at last one day, lest she should be guilty of unkindness, she consented, and so enjoyed the ride—felt, indeed, so much the better for it, that she did not thereafter so positively as before decline to allow her cousin to look out for a horse fit to carry her; and Forgue, taking her consent for granted, succeeded, with the help of the factor, in finding for her a beautiful creature, just of the sort to please her. Almost at sight of him she agreed to his purchase.
This put Forgue in great spirits, and much contentment with himself. He did not doubt that, gaining thus opportunity so excellent, he would quickly succeed in withdrawing her from the absurd influence which, to his dismay, he discovered his enemy had in his absence gained over her. He ought not to have been such a fool, he said to himself, as to leave the poor child to the temptations naturally arising in such a dreary solitude! He noted with satisfaction, however, that the parson's daughter seemed to have forsaken the house. And now at last, having got rid of the folly that a while possessed him, he was prepared to do his duty by the family, and, to that end, would make unfaltering use of the fascinations experience had taught him he was, in a most exceptional degree, gifted with! He would at once take Arctura's education in his own hands, and give his full energy to it! She should speedily learn the difference between the assistance of a gentleman and that of a clotpoll!
He had in England improved in his riding as well as his manners, and knew at least how a gentleman, if not how a man, ought to behave to the beast that carried him. Also, having ridden a good deal with ladies, he was now able to give Arctura not a few hints to the improvement of her seat, her hand, her courage; nor was there any nearer road, he judged from what he knew of his cousin, to her confidence and gratitude, than showing her a better way in a thing.
But thinking that in teaching her to ride he could make her forget the man who had been teaching her to live, he was not a little mistaken in the woman he desired to captivate.
He did not yet love her even in the way he called loving, else he might have been less confident; but he found her very pleasing. Invigorated by the bright frosty air, the life of the animal under her, and the exultation of rapid motion, she seemed better in health, more merry and full of life, than he had ever seen her: he put all down to his success with her. He was incapable of suspecting how little of it was owing to him; incapable of believing how much to the fact that she now turned to the father of spirits without fear, almost without doubt; thought of him as the root of every delight of the world—at the heart of the horse she rode, in the wind that blew joy into hers as she swept through its yielding bosom; knew him as altogether loving and true, the father of Jesus Christ, as like him as like could be like—more like him than any one else in the universe could be like another—like him as only eternal son can be like eternal father.
It was no wonder that with such a well of living water in her heart she should be glad—merry even, and ready for anything her horse could do! Flying across a field in the very wildness of pleasure, her hair streaming behind her, and her pale face glowing, she would now and then take a jump Forgue declared he could not face in cold blood: he did not know how far from cold her blood was! He began to wonder he had been such a fool as neglect her for—well, never mind!—and to feel something that was like love, and was indeed admiration. But for the searing brand of his past, he might have loved her truly—as a man may, without being the most exalted of mortals; for in love we are beyond our ordinary selves; the deep thing in us peers up into the human air, and is of God—therefore cannot live long in the mephitic air of a selfish and low nature, but sinks again out of sight.
He was not at his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would please, he may well be afraid of her. He makes liberal allowance for himself, but is not sure she will! And before Forgue lay a social gulf which he could pass only on the narrow plank of her favour! The more he was with her, the more he admired her, the more he desired to marry her; the more satisfied he grew with his own improvement, the more determined he became that for no poor, unjust scruples would he forgo his happiness. There was but one trifle to be kept from the world; it might know everything else about him! and once in possession of the property, who would dispute the title? Then again he was not certain that his father had not merely invented a threat! Surely if the fact were such, he would, even in rage diabolic, have kept it to himself!
Impetuous, and accustomed to what he counted success, he soon began to make plainer advance toward the end on which his self-love and cupidity at least were set. But, knowing in a vague manner how he had carried himself before he went, Arctura, uninfluenced by the ways of the world, her judgment unwarped, her perception undimmed, her instincts nice, her personal delicacy exacting, had never imagined he could approach her on any ground but that of cousinship and a childhood of shared sports. She had seen that Donal was far from pleased with him, and believed Forgue knew that she knew he had been behaving badly. Her behaviour to him was indeed largely based on the fact that he was in disgrace: she was sorry for him.
By and by, however, she perceived that she had been allowing too much freedom where she was not prepared to allow more, and so one day declined to go with him. They had not had a ride for a fortnight, the weather having been unfavourable; and now when a morning broke into the season like a smile from an estranged friend, she would not go! He was annoyed—then alarmed, fearing adverse influence. They were alone in the breakfast-room.
"Why will you not, Arctura?" he asked reproachfully: "do you not feel well?"
"I am quite well," she answered.
"It is such a lovely day!" he pleaded.
"I am not in the mood. There are other things in the world besides riding, and I have been wasting my time—riding too much. I have learnt next to nothing since Larkie came."
"Oh, bother! what have you to do with learning! Health is the first thing."
"I don't think so—and learning is good for the health. Besides, I would not be a mere animal for perfect health!"
"Let me help you then with your studies."
"Thank you," she answered, laughing a little, "but I have a good master already! We, that is Davie and I, are reading Greek and mathematics with Mr. Grant."
Forgue's face flushed.
"I ought to know as much of both as he does!" he said.
"Ought perhaps! But you know you do not."
"I know enough to be your tutor."
"Yes, but I know enough not to be your pupil!"
"What do you mean?"
"That you can't teach."
"How do you know that?"
"Because you do not love either Greek or mathematics, and no one who does not love can teach." "That is nonsense! If I don't love Greek enough to teach it, I love you enough to teach you," said Forgue.
"You are my riding-master," said Arctura; "Mr. Grant is my master in Greek."
Forgue strangled an imprecation on Mr. Grant, and tried to laugh, but there was not a laugh inside him.
"Then you won't ride to-day?" he said.
"I think not," replied Arctura.
She ought to have said she would not. It is a pity to let doubt alight on decision. Her reply re-opened the whole question.
"I cannot see what should induce you to allow that fellow the honour of reading with you!" said Forgue. "He's a long-winded, pedantic, ill-bred lout!"
"Mr. Grant is my friend!" said Arctura, and raising her head looked him in the eyes.
"Take my word for it, you are mistaken in him," he said.
"I neither value nor ask your opinion of him," returned Arctura. "I merely acquaint you with the fact that he is my friend."
"Here's the devil and all to pay!" thought Forgue.
"I beg your pardon," he said: "you do not know him as I do!"
"Not?—and with so much better opportunity of judging!"
"He has never played the dominie with you!" said Forgue foolishly.
"Indeed he has!"
"He has! Confound his insolence! How?"
"He won't let me study as I want.—How has he interfered with you?"
"We won't quarrel about him," rejoined Forgue, attempting a tone of gaiety, but instantly growing serious. "We who ought to be so much to each other—"
Something told him he had already gone too far.
"I do not know what you mean—or rather, I am not willing to think I know what you mean," said Arctura. "After what took place—"
In her turn she ceased: he had said nothing!
"Jealous!" concluded Forgue; "—a good sign!"
"I see he has been talking against me!" he said.
"If you mean Mr. Grant, you mistake. He never, so far as I remember, once mentioned you to me."
"I know better!"
"You are rude. He never spoke of it; but I have seen enough with my own eyes—"
"If you mean that silly fancy—why, Arctura!—you know it was but a boyish folly!"
"And since then you have grown a man!—How many months has it taken?"
"I assure you, on the word of a gentleman, there is nothing in it now. It is all over, and I am heartily ashamed of it."
A pause of a few seconds followed: it seemed as many minutes, and unbearable.
"You will come out with me?" said Forgue: she might be relenting, though she did not look like it!
"No," she said; "I will not."
"Well," he returned, with simulated coolness, "this is rather cavalier treatment, I must say!—To throw a man over who has loved you so long—and for the sake of a lesson in Greek!"
"How long, pray, have you loved me?" said Arctura, growing angry. "I was willing to be friendly with you, so much so that I am sorry it is no longer possible!"
"You punish me pretty sharply, my lady, for a trifle of which I told you I was ashamed!" said Forgue, biting his lip. "It was the merest—"
"I do not wish to hear anything about it!" said Arctura sternly. Then, afraid she had been unkind, she added in altered tone: "You had better go and have a gallop. You may have Larkie if you like."
He turned and left the room. She only meant to pique him, he said to himself. She had been cherishing her displeasure, and now she had had her revenge would feel better and be sorry next! It was a very good morning's work after all! It was absurd to think she preferred a Greek lesson from a clown to a ride with lord Forgue! Was not she too a Graeme!
Partly to make reconciliation the easier, partly because the horse was superior to his own, he would ride Larkie!
But his reasoning was not so satisfactory to him as to put him in a good temper, and poor Larkie had to suffer for his ill-humour. His least movement that displeased him put him in a rage, and he rode him so foolishly as well as tyrannically that he brought him home quite lame, thus putting an end for a time to all hope of riding again with Arctura.
Instead of going and telling her what he had done, he sent for the farrier, and gave orders that the mishap should not be mentioned.
A week passed, and then another; and as he could say nothing about riding, he was in a measure self-banished from Arctura's company. A furious jealousy began to master him. He scorned to give place to it because of the insult to himself if he allowed a true ground for it. But it gradually gained power. This country bumpkin, this cow-herd, this man of spelling-books and grammars, to come between his cousin and him! Of course he was not so silly as imagine for a moment she cared for him!—that she would disgrace herself by falling in love with a fellow just loosed from the plough-tail! She was a Graeme, and could never be a traitor to her blood! If only he had not been such an infernal fool! A vulgar little thing without an idea in her head! So unpleasant—so disgusting at last with her love-making! Nothing pleased her but hugging and kissing!—That was how he spoke to himself of the girl he had been in love with!
Damn that schoolmaster! She would never fall in love with him, but he might prevent her from falling in love with another! No attractions could make way against certain prepossessions! The girl had a fancy for being a saint, and the lout burned incense to her! So much he gathered from Davie. His father must get rid of the fellow! If he thought he was doing so well with Davie, why not send the two away together till things were settled?
But the earl thought it would be better to win Donal. He counselled him that every Grant was lord Seafield's cousin, and every highlander an implacable enemy where his pride was hurt. His lordship did not reflect that, if what he said were true of Donal, he must have left the castle long ago. There was but one thing would have made it impossible for Donal to remain—interference, namely, between him and his pupil.
Forgue did not argue with his father. He had given that up. At the same time, if he had told all that had passed between him and Donal, the earl would have confessed he had advised an impossibility.
Forgue took a step in a very different direction: he began to draw to himself the good graces of Miss Carmichael: he did not know how little she could serve him. Without being consciously insincere, she flattered him, and speedily gained his confidence. Well descended on the mother-side, she had grown up fit, her father said, to adorn any society: with a keen appreciation of the claims and dignities of the aristocracy, she was well able to flatter the prejudices she honoured and shared in. Careful not to say a word against his cousin, she made him feel more and more that his chief danger lay in the influence of Donal. She fanned thus his hatred of the man who first came between him and his wrath; next, between him and his "love;" and last, between him and his fortunes.