CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE HOUSEKEEPER’S ROOM.

He was not so late the next morning.

Ere he had finished his breakfast he had made up his mind that he must

beware of the earl. He was satisfied that the experiences of the past

night could not be the consequence of one glass of wine. If he asked

him again, he would go to dinner with him, but would drink nothing but

water.

School was just over when Simmons came from his lordship, to inquire

after him, and invite him to dine with him that evening. Donald

immediately consented.

This time lady Arctura was not with the earl.

After as during dinner Donal declined to drink. His lordship cast on

him a keen, searching glance, but it was only a glance, and took no

farther notice of his refusal. The conversation, however, which had not

been brilliant from the first, now sank and sank till it was not; and

after a cup of coffee, his lordship, remarking that he was not feeling

himself, begged Donal to excuse him, and proceeded to retire. Donal

rose, and with a hope that his lordship would have a good night and

feel better in the morning, left the room.

The passage outside was lighted only by a rather dim lamp, and in the

distance Donal saw what he could but distinguish as the form of a

woman, standing by the door which opened upon the great staircase. He

supposed it at first to be one of the maids; but the servants were so

few compared with the size of the castle that one was seldom to be met

on stair or in passage; and besides, the form stood as if waiting for

some one! As he drew nearer, he saw it was lady Arctura, and would have

passed with an obeisance. But ere he could lay his hand on the lock,

hers was there to prevent him. He then saw that she was agitated, and

that she had stopped him thus because her voice had at the moment

failed her. The next moment, however, she recovered it, and her

self-possession as well.

“Mr. Grant,” she said, in a low voice, “I wish to speak to you--if you

will allow me.”

“I am at your service, my lady,” answered Donal.

“But we cannot here! My uncle--”

“Shall we go into the picture-gallery?” suggested Donal; “there is

moonlight there.”

“No; that would be still nearer my uncle. His hearing is sometimes

preternaturally keen; and besides, as you know, he often walks there

after his evening meal. But--excuse me, Mr. Grant--you will understand

me presently--are you--are you quite--?”

“You mean, my lady--am I quite myself this evening!” said Donal,

wishing to help her with the embarrassing question: “--I have drunk

nothing but water to-night.”

With that she opened the door, and descended the stair, he following;

but as soon as the curve of the staircase hid the door they had left,

she stopped, and turning to him said,

“I would not have you mistake me, Mr. Grant! I should be ashamed to

speak to you if--”

“Indeed I am very sorry!” said Donal, “--though hardly so much to blame

as I fear you think me.”

“You mistake me at once! You suppose I imagine you took too much wine

last night! It would be absurd. I saw what you took! But we must not

talk here. Come.”

She turned again, and going down, led the way to the housekeeper’s room.

They found her at work with her needle.

“Mistress Brookes,” said lady Arctura, “I want to have a little talk

with Mr. Grant, and there is no fire in the library: may we sit here?”

“By all means! Sit doon, my leddy! Why, bairn! you look as cold as if

you had been on the roof! There! sit close to the fire; you’re all

trem’lin’!”

Lady Arctura obeyed like the child Mrs. Brookes called her, and sat

down in the chair she gave up to her.

“I’ve something to see efter i’ the still-room,” said the housekeeper.

“You sit here and hae yer crack. Sit doon, Mr. Grant. I’m glaid to see

you an’ my leddy come to word o’ moo’ at last. I began to think it wud

never be!”

Had Donal been in the way of looking to faces for the interpretation of

words and thoughts, he would have seen a shadow sweep over lady

Arctura’s, followed by a flush, which he would have attributed to

displeasure at this utterance of the housekeeper. But, with all his

experience of the world within, and all his unusually developed power

of entering into the feelings of others, he had never come to pry into

those feelings, or to study their phenomena for the sake of possessing

himself of them. Man was by no means an open book to him--“no, nor

woman neither,” but he would have scorned to supplement by such

investigation what a lady chose to tell him. He sat looking into the

fire, with an occasional upward glance, waiting for what was to come,

and saw neither shadow nor flush. Lady Arctura sat also gazing into the

fire, and seemed in no haste to begin.

“You are so good to Davie!” she said at length, and stopped.

“No better than I have to be,” returned Donal. “Not to be good to Davie

would be to be a wretch.”

“You know, Mr. Grant, I cannot agree with you!”

“There is no immediate necessity, my lady.”

“But I suppose one may be fair to another!” she went on, doubtingly,

“--and it is only fair to confess that he is much more manageable since

you came. Only that is no good if it does not come from the right

source.”

“Grapes do not come from thorns, my lady. We must not allow in evil a

power of good.”

She did not reply.

“He minds everything I say to him now,” she resumed. “What is it makes

him so good?--I wish I had had such a tutor!”

She stopped again: she had spoken out of the simplicity of her thought,

but the words when said looked to her as if they ought not to have been

said.

“Something is working in her!” thought Donal. “She is so different! Her

voice is different!”

“But that is not what I wanted to speak to you about, Mr. Grant,” she

re-commenced, “--though I did want you to know I was aware of the

improvement in Davie. I wished to say something about my uncle.”

Here followed another pause.

“You may have remarked,” she said at length, “that, though we live

together, and he is my guardian, and the head of the house, there is

not much communication between us.”

“I have gathered as much: I ask no questions, but I cannot tell Davie

not to talk to me!”

“Of course not.--Lord Morven is a strange man. I do not understand him,

and I do not want to judge him, or make you judge him. But I must speak

of a fact, concerning yourself, which I have no right to keep from you.”

Once more a pause followed. There was nothing now of the grand dame

about Arctura.

“Has nothing occurred to wake a doubt in you?” she said at last,

abruptly. “Have you not suspected him of--of using you in any way?”

“I have had an undefined ghost of a suspicion,” answered Donal. “Please

tell me what you know.”

“I should know nothing--although, my room being near his, I should have

been the more perplexed about some things--had he not made an

experiment upon myself a year ago.”

“Is it possible?”

“I sometimes fancy I have not been so well since. It was a great shock

to me when I came to myself:--you see I am trusting you, Mr. Grant!”

“I thank you heartily, my lady,” said Donal.

“I believe,” continued lady Arctura, gathering courage, “that my uncle

is in the habit of taking some horrible drug for the sake of its effect

on his brain. There _are_ people who do so! What it is I don’t know, and

I would rather not know. It is just as bad, surely, as taking too much

wine! I have heard himself remark to Mr. Carmichael that opium was

worse than wine, for it destroyed the moral sense more. Mind I don’t

say it is opium he takes!”

“There are other things,” said Donal, “even worse!--But surely you do

not mean he dared try anything of the sort on _you_!”

“I am sure he gave me something! For, once that I dined with him,--but

I cannot describe the effect it had upon me! I think he wanted to see

its operation on one who did not even know she had taken anything. The

influence of such things is a pleasant one, they say, at first, but I

would not go through such agonies as I had for the world!”

She ceased, evidently troubled by the harassing remembrance. Donal

hastened to speak.

“It was because of such a suspicion, my lady, that this evening I would

not even taste his wine. I am safe to-night, I trust, from the

insanity--I can call it nothing else--that possessed me the last two

nights.”

“Was it very dreadful?” asked lady Arctura.

“On the contrary, I had a sense of life and power such as I could never

of myself have imagined!”

“Oh, Mr. Grant, do take care! Do not be tempted to take it again. I

don’t know where it might not have led me if I had found it as pleasant

as it was horrible; for I am sorely tried with painful thoughts, and

feel sometimes as if I would do almost anything to get rid of them.”

“There must be a good way of getting rid of them! Think it of God’s

mercy,” said Donal, “that you cannot get rid of them the other way.”

“I do; I do!”

“The shield of his presence was over you.”

“How glad I should be to think so! But we have no right to think he

cares for us till we believe in Christ--and--and--I don’t know that I

do believe in him!”

“Wherever you learned that, it is a terrible lie,” said Donal. “Is not

Christ the same always, and is he not of one mind with God? Was it not

while we were yet sinners that he poured out his soul for us? It is a

fearful thing to say of the perfect Love, that he is not doing all he

can, with all the power of a maker over the creature he has made, to

help and deliver him!”

“I know he makes his sun to shine and his rain to fall upon the evil

and the good; but those good things are only of this world!”

“Are those the good things then that the Lord says the Father will give

to those that ask him? How can you worship a God who gives you all the

little things he does not care much about, but will not do his best for

you?”

“But are there not things he cannot do for us till we believe in

Christ?”

“Certainly there are. But what I want you to see is that he does all

that can be done. He finds it very hard to teach us, but he is never

tired of trying. Anyone who is willing to be taught of God, will by him

be taught, and thoroughly taught.”

“I am afraid I am doing wrong in listening to you, Mr. Grant--and the

more that I cannot help wishing what you say might be true! But are you

not in danger--you will pardon me for saying it--of presumption?--How

can all the good people be wrong?”

“Because the greater part of their teachers have set themselves to

explain God rather than to obey and enforce his will. The gospel is

given to convince, not our understandings, but our hearts; that done,

and never till then, our understandings will be free. Our Lord said he

had many things to tell his disciples, but they were not able to hear

them. If the things be true which I have heard from Sunday to Sunday

since I came here, the Lord has brought us no salvation at all, but

only a change of shape to our miseries. They have not redeemed you,

lady Arctura, and never will. Nothing but Christ himself, your lord and

friend and brother, not all the doctrines about him, even if every one

of them were true, can save you. Poor orphan children, we cannot find

our God, and they would have us take instead a shocking caricature of

him!”

“But how should sinners know what is or is not like the true God?”

“If a man desires God, he cannot help knowing enough of him to be

capable of learning more--else how should he desire him? Made in the

image of God, his idea of him cannot be all wrong. That does not make

him fit to teach others--only fit to go on learning for himself. But in

Jesus Christ I see the very God I want. I want a father like him. He

reproaches some of those about him for not knowing him--for, if they

had known God, they would have known _him_: they were to blame for not

knowing God. No other than the God exactly like Christ can be the true

God. It is a doctrine of devils that Jesus died to save us from our

father. There is no safety, no good, no gladness, no purity, but with

the Father, his father and our father, his God and our God.”

“But God hates sin and punishes it!”

“It would be terrible if he did not. All hatred of sin is love to the

sinner. Do you think Jesus came to deliver us from the punishment of

our sins? He would not have moved a step for that. The horrible thing

is being bad, and all punishment is help to deliver us from that, nor

will punishment cease till we have ceased to be bad. God will have us

good, and Jesus works out the will of his father. Where is the refuge

of the child who fears his father? Is it in the farthest corner of the

room? Is it down in the dungeon of the castle, my lady?”

“No, no!” cried lady Arctura, “--in his father’s arms!”

“There!” said Donal, and was silent.

“I hold by Jesus!” he added after a pause, and rose as he said it, but

stood where he rose.

Lady Arctura sat motionless, divided between reverence for distorted

and false forms of truth taught her from her earliest years, and desire

after a God whose very being is the bliss of his creatures.

Some time passed in silence, and then she too rose to depart. She held

out her hand to Donal with a kind of irresolute motion, but withdrawing

it, smiled almost beseechingly, and said,

“I wish I might ask you something. I know it is a rude question, but if

you could see all, you would answer me and let the offence go.”

“I will answer you anything you choose to ask.”

“That makes it the more difficult; but I will--I cannot bear to remain

longer in doubt: did you really write that poem you gave to Kate

Graeme--compose it, I mean, your own self?”

“I made no secret of that when I gave it her,” said Donal, not

perceiving her drift.

“Then you did really write it?”

Donal looked at her in perplexity. Her face grew very red, and tears

began to come in her eyes.

“You must pardon me!” she said: “I am so ignorant! And we live in such

an out-of-the-way place that--that it seems very unlikely a real

poet--! And then I have been told there are people who have a passion

for appearing to do the thing they are not able to do, and I was

anxious to be quite sure! My mind would keep brooding over it, and

wondering, and longing to know for certain!--So I resolved at last that

I would be rid of the doubt, even at the risk of offending you. I know

I have been rude--unpardonably rude, but--”

“But,” supplemented Donal, with a most sympathetic smile, for he

understood her as his own thought, “you do not feel quite sure yet! What

_a priori_ reason do you see why I should not be able to write verses?

There is no rule as to where poetry grows: one place is as good as

another for that!”

“I hope you will forgive me! I hope I have not offended you _very_

much!”

“Nobody in such a world as this ought to be offended at being asked for

proof. If there are in it rogues that look like honest men, how is any

one, without a special gift of insight, to be always sure of the honest

man? Even the man whom a woman loves best will sometimes tear her heart

to pieces! I will give you all the proof you can desire.--And lest the

tempter should say I made up the proof itself between now and to-morrow

morning, I will fetch it at once.”

“Oh, Mr. Grant, spare me! I am not, indeed, I am not so bad as that!”

“Who can tell when or whence the doubt may wake again, or what may wake

it!”

“At least let me explain a little before you go,” she said.

“Certainly,” he answered, reseating himself, in compliance with her

example.

“Miss Graeme told me that you had never seen a garden like theirs

before!”

“I never did. There are none such, I fancy, in our part of the country.”

“Nor in our neighbourhood either.”

“Then what is surprising in it?”

“Nothing in that. But is there not something in your being able to write

a poem like that about a garden such as you had never seen? One would

say you must have been familiar with it from childhood to be able so to

enter into the spirit of the place!”

“Perhaps if I had been familiar with it from childhood, that might have

disabled me from feeling the spirit of it, for then might it not have

looked to me as it looked to those in whose time such gardens were the

fashion? Two things are necessary--first, that there should be a spirit

in a place, and next that the place should be seen by one whose spirit

is capable of giving house-room to its spirit.--By the way, does the

ghost-lady feel the place all right?”

“I am not sure that I know what you mean; but I felt the grass with her

feet as I read, and the wind lifting my hair. I seemed to know exactly

how she felt!”

“Now tell me, were you ever a ghost?”

“No,” she answered, looking in his face like a child--without even a

smile.

“Did you ever see a ghost?”

“No, never.”

“Then how should you know how a ghost would feel?”

“I see! I cannot answer you.”

Donal rose.

“I am indeed ashamed!” said lady Arctura.

“Ashamed of giving me the chance of proving myself a true man?”

“That, at least, is no longer necessary!”

“But I want my revenge. As a punishment for doubting one whom you had

so little ground for believing, you shall be compelled to see the

proof--that is, if you will do me the favour to wait here till I come

back. I shall not be long, though it is some distance to the top of

Baliol’s tower.”

“Davie told me your room was there: do you not find it cold? It must be

very lonely! I wonder why mistress Brookes put you there!”

Donal assured her he could not have had a place more to his mind, and

before she could well think he had reached the foot of his stair, was

back with a roll of papers, which he laid on the table.

“There!” he said, opening it out; “if you will take the trouble to go

over these, you may read the growth of the poem. Here first you see it

blocked out rather roughly, and much blotted with erasures and

substitutions. Here next you see the result copied--clean to begin

with, but afterwards scored and scored. You see the words I chose

instead of the first, and afterwards in their turn rejected, until in

the proofs I reached those which I have as yet let stand. I do not

fancy Miss Graeme has any doubt the verses are mine, for it was plain

she thought them rubbish. From your pains to know who wrote them, I

believe you do not think so badly of them!”

She thought he was satirical, and gave a slight sigh as of pain. It

went to his heart.

“I did not mean the smallest reflection, my lady, on your desire for

satisfaction,” he said; “rather, indeed, it flatters me. But is it not

strange the heart should be less ready to believe what seems worth

believing? Something must be true: why not the worthy--oftener at least

than the unworthy? Why should it be easier to believe hard things of

God, for instance, than lovely things?--or that one man copied from

another, than that he should have made the thing himself? Some would

yet say I contrived all this semblance of composition in order to lay

the surer claim to that to which I had none--nor would take the trouble

to follow the thing through its development! But it will be easy for

you, my lady, and no bad exercise in logic and analysis, to determine

whether the genuine growth of the poem be before you in these papers or

not.”

“I shall find it most interesting,” said lady Arctura: “so much I can

tell already! I never saw anything of the kind before, and had no idea

how poetry was made. Does it always take so much labour?”

“Some verses take much more; some none at all. The labour is in getting

the husks of expression cleared off, so that the thought may show

itself plainly.”

At this point Mrs. Brookes, thinking probably the young people had had

long enough conference, entered, and after a little talk with her, lady

Arctura kissed her and bade her good night. Donal retired to his aerial

chamber, wondering whether the lady of the house had indeed changed as

much as she seemed to have changed.

From that time, whether it was that lady Arctura had previously avoided

meeting him and now did not, or from other causes, Donal and she met

much oftener as they went about the place, nor did they ever pass

without a mutual smile and greeting.

The next day but one, she brought him his papers to the schoolroom. She

had read every erasure and correction, she told him, and could no

longer have had a doubt that the writer of the papers was the maker of

the verses, even had she not previously learned thorough confidence in

the man himself.

“They would possibly fail to convince a jury though!” he said, as he

rose and went to throw them in the fire.

Divining his intent, Arctura darted after him, and caught them just in

time.

“Let me keep them,” she pleaded, “--for my humiliation!”

“Do with them what you like, my lady,” said Donal. “They are of no

value to me--except that you care for them.”