CHAPTER XLI.

THE MUSIC-NEST.

The hour came, and with the very stroke of the clock, lady Arctura and

Davie were in the schoolroom. A moment more, and they set out to climb

the spiral of Baliol’s tower.

But what a different lady was Arctura this afternoon! She was cheerful,

even merry--with Davie, almost jolly. Her soul had many alternating

lights and glooms, but it was seldom or never now so clouded as when

first Donal saw her. In the solitude of her chamber, where most the

simple soul should be conscious of life as a blessedness, she was yet

often haunted by ghastly shapes of fear; but there also other forms had

begun to draw nigh to her; sweetest rays of hope would ever and anon

break through the clouds, and mock the darkness from her presence.

Perhaps God might mean as thoroughly well by her as even her

imagination could wish!

Does a dull reader remark that hers was a diseased state of mind?--I

answer, The more she needed to be saved from it with the only real

deliverance from any ill! But her misery, however diseased, was

infinitely more reasonable than the healthy joy of such as trouble

themselves about nothing. Some sicknesses are better than any but the

true health.

“I never thought you were like this, Arkie!” said Davie. “You are just

as if you had come to school to Mr. Grant! You would soon know how much

happier it is to have somebody you must mind!”

“If having me, Davie,” said Donal, “doesn’t help you to be happy

without me, there will not have been much good done. What I want most

to teach you is, to leave the door always on the latch for some

one--you know whom I mean--to come in.”

“Race me up the stair, Arkie,” said Davie, when they came to the foot

of the spiral.

“Very well,” assented his cousin.

“Which side will you have--the broad or the narrow?”

“The broad.”

“Well then--one, two, three, and away we go!”

Davie mounted like a clever goat, his hand and arm on the newel, and

slipping lightly round it. Arctura’s ascent was easier but slower: she

found her garments in her way, therefore yielded the race, and waited

for Donal. Davie, thinking he heard her footsteps behind him all the

time, flew up shrieking with the sweet terror of love’s pursuit.

“What a darling the boy has grown!” said Arctura when Donal overtook

her.

“Yes,” answered Donal; “one would think such a child might run straight

into the kingdom of heaven; but I suppose he must have his temptations

and trials first: out of the storm alone comes the true peace.”

“Will peace come out of all storms?”

“I trust so. Every pain and every fear, every doubt is a cry after God.

What mother refuses to go to her child because he is only crying--not

calling her by name!”

“Oh, if I could but believe so about God! For if it be all right with

God--I mean if God be such a God as to be loved with the heart and soul

of loving, then all is well. Is it not, Mr. Grant?”

“Indeed it is!--And you are not far from the kingdom of heaven,” he was

on the point of saying, but did not--because she was in it already,

only unable yet to verify the things around her, like the man who had

but half-way received his sight.

When they reached the top, he took them past his door, and higher up

the stair to the next, opening on the bartizan. Here he said lady

Arctura must come with him first, and Davie must wait till he came back

for him. When he had them both safe on the roof, he told Davie to keep

close to his cousin or himself all the time. He showed them first his

stores of fuel--his ammunition, he said, for fighting the winter. Next

he pointed out where he stood when first he heard the music the night

before, and set down his bucket to follow it; and where he found the

bucket, blown thither by the wind, when he came back to feel for it in

the dark. Then he began to lead them, as nearly as he could, the way he

had then gone, but with some, for Arctura’s sake, desirable detours:

over one steep-sloping roof they had to cross, he found a little stair

up the middle, and down the other side.

They came to a part where he was not quite sure about the way. As he

stopped to bethink himself, they turned and looked eastward. The sea

was shining in the sun, and the flat wet country between was so bright

that they could not tell where the land ended and the sea began. But as

they gazed, a great cloud came over the sun, the sea turned cold and

gray as death--a true March sea, and the land lay low and desolate

between. The spring was gone and the winter was there. A gust of wind,

full of keen hail, drove sharp in their faces.

“Ah, that settles the question!” said Donal. “The music-bird must wait.

We will call upon her another day.--It is funny, isn’t it, Davie, to go

a bird’s-nesting after music on the roof of a house?”

“Hark!” said Arctura; “I think I heard the music-bird!--She wants us to

find her nest! I really don’t think we ought to go back for a little

blast of wind, and a few pellets of hail! What do you think, Davie?”

“Oh, for me, I wouldn’t turn for ever so big a storm!” said Davie; “but

you know, Arkie, it’s not you or me, Arkie! Mr. Grant is the captain of

this expedition, and we must do as he bids us.”

“Oh, surely, Davie! I never meant to dispute that. Only Mr. Grant is

not a tyrant; he will let a lady say what she thinks!”

“Oh, yes, or a boy either! He likes _me_ to say what I think! He says we

can’t get at each other without. And do you know--he obeys me

sometimes!”

Arctura glanced a keen question at the boy.

“It is quite true!” said Davie, while Donal listened smiling. “Last

winter, for days together--not all day, you know: I had to obey him

most of the time! but at certain times, I was as sure of Mr. Grant

doing as I told him, as he is now of me doing as he tells me.”

“What times were those?” asked Arctura, thinking to hear of some odd

pedagogic device.

“When I was teaching him to skate!” answered Davie, in a triumph of

remembrance. “He said I knew better than he there, and so he would obey

me. You wouldn’t believe how splendidly he did it, Arkie--_out and

out_!” concluded Davie, in a tone almost of awe.

“Oh, yes, I would believe it--perfectly!” said Arctura.

Donal suddenly threw an arm round each of them, and pulled them down

sitting. The same instant a fierce blast burst upon the roof. He had

seen the squall whitening the sea, and looking nearer home saw the tops

of the trees between streaming level towards the castle. But seated they

were in no danger.

“Hark!” said Arctura again; “there it is!”

They all heard the wailing cry of the ghost-music. But while the blast

continued they dared not pursue their hunt. It kept on in fits and

gusts till the squall ceased--as suddenly almost as it had burst. The

sky cleared, and the sun shone as a March sun can. But the blundering

blasts and the swan-shot of the flying hail were all about still.

“When the storm is upon us,” remarked Donal, as they rose from their

crouching position, “it seems as if there never could be sunshine more;

but our hopelessness does not keep back the sun when his hour to shine

is come.”

“I understand!” said Arctura: “when one is miserable, misery seems the

law of being; and in the midst of it dwells some thought which nothing

can ever set right! All at once it is gone, broken up and gone, like

that hail-cloud. It just looks its own foolishness and vanishes.”

“Do you know why things so often come right?” said Donal. “--I would

say _always come right_, but that is a matter of faith, not sight.”

Arctura did not answer at once.

“I think I know what you are thinking,” she said, “but I want to hear

you answer your own question.”

“Why do things come right so often, do you think, Davie?” repeated

Donal.

“Is it,” returned Davie, “because they were made right to begin with?”

“There is much in that, Davie; but there is a better reason than that.

It is because things are alive, and the life at the heart of them, that

which keeps them going, is the great, beautiful God. So the sun for

ever returns after the clouds. A doubting man, like him who wrote the

book of Ecclesiastes, puts the evil last, and says ‘the clouds return

after the rain;’ but the Christian knows that

One has mastery

Who makes the joy the last in every song.”

“You speak like one who has suffered!” said Arctura, with a kind look

in his face.

“Who has not that lives?”

“It is how you are able to help others!”

“Am I able to help others? I am very glad to hear it. My ambition would

be to help, if I had any ambition. But if I am able, it is because I

have been helped myself, not because I have suffered.”

“Will you tell me what you mean by saying you have no ambition?”

“Where your work is laid out for you, there is no room for ambition:

you have got your work to do!--But give me your hand, my lady; put your

other hand on my shoulder. You stop there, Davie, and don’t move till I

come to you. Now, my lady--a little jump! That’s it! Now you are

safe!--You were not afraid, were you?”

“Not in the least. But did you come here in the dark?”

“Yes. There is this advantage in the dark: you do not see how dangerous

the way is. We take the darkness about us for the source of our

difficulties: it is a great mistake. Christian would hardly have dared

go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, had he not had the shield

of the darkness all about him.”

“Can the darkness be a shield? Is it not the evil thing?”

“Yes, the dark that is within us--the dark of distrust and

unwillingness, but not the outside dark of mere human ignorance. Where

we do not see, we are protected. Where we are most ignorant and most in

danger, is in those things that affect the life of God in us: there the

Father is every moment watching his child. If he were not constantly

pardoning and punishing our sins, what would become of us! We must

learn to trust him about our faults as much as about everything else!”

In the earnestness of his talk he had stopped, but now turned and went

on.

“There is my land-, or roof-mark rather!” he said, “--that

chimney-stack! Close by it I heard the music very near me indeed--when

all at once the darkness and the wind came together so thick that I

could do nothing more. We shall do better now in the daylight--and

three of us instead of one!”

“What a huge block of chimneys!” said Arctura.

“Is it not!” returned Donal. “It indicates the hugeness of the building

below us, of which we can see so little. Like the volcanoes of the

world, it tells us how much fire is necessary to keep our dwelling

warm.”

“I thought it was the sun that kept the earth warm,” said Davie.

“So it is, but not the sun alone. The earth is like a man: the great

glowing fire is God in the heart of the earth, and the great sun is God

in the sky, keeping it warm on the other side. Our gladness and

pleasure, our trouble when we do wrong, our love for all about us, that

is God inside us; and the beautiful things and lovable people, and all

the lessons of life in history and poetry, in the Bible, and in

whatever comes to us, is God outside of us. Every life is between two

great fires of the love of God. So long as we do not give ourselves up

heartily to him, we fear his fire will burn us. And burn us it does

when we go against its flames and not with them, refusing to burn with

the fire with which God is always burning. When we try to put it out,

or oppose it, or get away from it, then indeed it burns!”

“I think I know,” said Davie.

Arctura held her peace.

“But now,” said Donal, “I must go round and have a peep at the other

side of the chimney-stack.”

He disappeared, and Arctura and Davie stood waiting his return. They

looked each in the other’s face with the delight of consciously sharing

a great adventure. Beyond their feet lay the wide country and the great

sea; over them the sky with the sun in it going down towards the

mountains; under their feet the mighty old pile that was their home;

and under that the earth with its molten heart of fire.

But Davie’s look soon changed to one of triumph in his tutor. “Is is

not grand,” it said, “to be all day with a man like that--talking to

you and teaching you?” That at least was how Arctura interpreted it,

reading in it almost an assertion of superiority, in as much as this

man was his tutor and not hers. She replied to the look in words:--

“I am his pupil, too, Davie,” she said, “though Mr. Grant does not know

it.”

“How can that be,” answered Davie, “when you are afraid of him? I am

not a bit afraid of him!”

“How do you know I am afraid of him?” she asked.

“Oh, anybody could see that!”

She was afraid she had spoken foolishly, and Davie might repeat her

words: she did not desire to hasten further intimacy with Donal; things

were going in that direction fast enough! Her eyes, avoiding Davie’s,

kept reconnoitring the stack of chimneys.

“Aren’t you glad to have such a castle all for your own--to do what you

like with, Arkie? You know you could pull it all to pieces if you

liked!”

“Would it be less mine,” said Arctura, “if I was not at liberty to pull

it all to pieces? And would it be more mine when I had pulled it to

pieces, Davie?”

Donal was coming round the side of the stack, and heard what she said.

It pleased him, for it was not a little in his own style.

“What makes a thing your own, do you think, Davie?” she went on.

“To be able to do with it what you like,” replied Davie.

“Whether that be good or bad?”

“Yes, I think so,” answered Davie, doubtfully.

“Then I think you are quite wrong,” she rejoined. “The moment you begin

to use a thing wrong, that moment you make it less yours. I can’t quite

explain it, but that is how it looks to me.”

She ceased, and after a moment Donal took up the question.

“Lady Arctura is quite right, Davie,” he said. “The nature, that is the

good of a thing, is that only by which it can be possessed. Any other

possession is like slave-owning; it is not a righteous having. The right

and the power to use it to its true purpose, _and the using it so_, are

the conditions that make a thing ours. To have the right and the power,

and not use it so, would be to make the thing less ours than

anybody’s.--Suppose you had a very beautiful picture, but from some

defect in your sight you could never see that picture as it really was,

while a servant in your house not only saw it as it was meant to be

seen, but had such delight in gazing on it, that even in his dreams it

came to him, and made him think of things he would not have thought of

but for it:--which of you, you or the servant in your house, would have

the more real possession of that picture? You could sell it away from

yourself, and never know anything about it more; but you could not by

all the power of a tyrant take it from your servant.”

“Ah, now I understand!” said Davie, with a look at lady Arctura which

seemed to say, “You see how Mr. Grant can make me understand!”

“I wonder,” said lady Arctura, “what that curious opening in the side

of the chimney-stack means! It can’t be for smoke to come out at!”

“No,” said Donal; “there is not a mark of smoke about it. If it had

been meant for that, it would hardly have been put half-way from the

top! I can’t make it out! A hole like that in any chimney must surely

interfere with the draught! I must get a ladder!”

“Let me climb on your shoulders, Mr. Grant,” said Davie.

“Come then; up you go!” said Donal.

And up went Davie, and peeped into the horizontal slit.

“It looks very like a chimney,” he said, turning his head and thrusting

it in sideways. “It goes right down to somewhere,” he added, bringing

his head out again, “but there is something across it a little way

down--to prevent the jackdaws from tumbling in, I suppose.”

“What is it?” asked Donal.

“Something like a grating,” answered Davie; “--no, not a grating

exactly; it is what you might call a grating, but it seems made of

wires. I don’t think it would keep a strong bird out if he wanted to

get in.”

“Aha!” said Donal to himself; “what if those wires be tuned! Did you

ever see an aeolian harp, my lady?” he asked: “I never did.”

“Yes,” answered lady Arctura, “--once, when I was a little girl. And

now you suggest it, I think the sounds we hear are not unlike those of

an aeolian harp! The strings are all the same length, if I remember.

But I do not understand the principle. They seem all to play together,

and make the strangest, wildest harmonies, when the wind blows across

them in a particular way.”

“I fancy then we have found the nest of our music-bird!” said Donal.

“The wires Davie speaks of may be the strings of an aeolian harp! I

wonder if there could be a draught across them! I must get up and see!

I must go and get a ladder!”

“But how _could_ there be an aeolian harp up here?” said Arctura.

“It will be time enough to answer that question,” replied Donal, “when

it changes to, ‘How did an aeolian harp get up here?’ Something is here

that wants accounting for: it _may_ be an aeolian harp!”

“But in a chimney! The soot would spoil the strings!”

“Then perhaps it is not a chimney: is there any sign of soot about,

Davie?”

“No, sir; there is nothing but clean stone and lime.”

“You see, my lady! We do not even know that it is a chimney!”

“What else can it be, standing with the rest?”

“It may have been built for one; but if it had ever been used for one,

the marks of smoke would remain, had it been disused ever so long. But

to-morrow I will bring up a ladder.”

“Could you not do it now?” said Arctura, almost coaxingly. “I should so

like to have the thing settled!”

“As you please, my lady! I will go at once. There is one leaning

against the garden-wall, not far from the bottom of the tower.”

“If you do not mind the trouble!”

“I will come and help,” said Davie.

“You mustn’t leave lady Arctura. I am not sure if I can get it up the

stair; I am afraid it is too long. If I cannot, we will haul it up as

we did the coal.”

He went, and the cousins sat down to wait his return. It was a cold

evening, but Arctura was well wrapt up, and Davie was hardy. They sat

at the foot of the chimney-stack, and began to talk.

“It is such a long time since you told me anything, Arkie!” said the

boy.

“You do not need me now to tell you anything: you have Mr. Grant! You

like him much better than ever you did me!”

“You see,” said Davie, thoughtfully, and making no defence against her

half-reproach, “he began by making me afraid of him--not that he meant

to do it, I think! he only meant that I _should_ do what he told me: I

was never afraid of you, Arkie!”

“I was much crosser to you than Mr. Grant, I am sure!”

“Mr. Grant is never cross to me; and if ever you were, I’ve forgotten

it, Arkie. I only remember that I was not good to you. I am sorry for

it now when I lie awake in bed; but I say to myself you forgive me, and

go to sleep.”

“What makes you think I forgive you, Davie?”

“Because I love you.”

This was not very logical, and set Arctura thinking. She did not

forgive the boy because he loved her; but the boy’s love to her might

make him sure she forgave him! Love is its own justification, and sees

itself in all its objects: forgiveness is an essential belonging of

love, and must be seen where love is seen.

“Are you fond of my brother?” asked Davie, after a pause.

“Why do you ask me?”

“Because they say you and he are going to be married some day, yet you

don’t seem to care much to be together.”

“It is all nonsense!” replied Arctura, reddening. “I wish people would

not talk foolishness!”

“Well, I do think he’s not so fond of you as of Eppy!”

“Hush! hush! you must not speak of such thing.”

“I saw him once kiss Eppy, and I never saw him kiss you!”

“No, indeed!”

“Is it right of Forgue, if he’s going to marry you, to kiss

Eppy?--That’s what I want to know!”

“He is not going to marry me.”

“He would, if you told him you wished it. Papa wishes it.”

“How do you know that?”

“From many things. Once I heard him say, ‘Afterwards, when the house is

our own,’ and I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘When Forgue

marries Arctura, then the castle will be Forgue’s. That is how it ought

to be, you know! Property and title ought never to be parted.’”

The hot blood rose to Arctura’s temples: was she a mere wrappage to her

property--the paper of the parcel! But she called to mind how strange

her uncle was: but for that, could he have been so imprudent as to talk

in such a way to a boy whose simplicity rendered the confidence

dangerous?

“You would not like having to give away your castle--would you, Arkie?”

he went on.

“Not to any one I did not love.”

“If I were you, I would not marry, but keep my castle to myself. I

don’t see why Forgue should have your castle!”

“You think I should make my castle my husband?”

“He would be a good big husband anyhow, and a strong--one to defend you

from your enemies, and not talk to you when you wanted to be quiet.”

“That is all true; but one might get weary of a stupid husband, however

big and strong he was.”

“There’s another thing, though!--he wouldn’t be a cruel husband! I’ve

heard papa often speak about some cruel husband! I fancied sometimes he

meant himself; but that could not be, you know.”

Arctura made no reply. All but vanished memories of things she had

heard, hints and signs here and there that all was not right between

her uncle and aunt, vaguely returned: could it be that he now repented

of harshness to his wife, that the thought of it was preying upon him,

that it drove him to his drugs for forgetfulness?--But in the presence

of the boy she could not go on thinking in such a direction about his

father. She felt relieved by the return of Donal.

He had found it rather difficult to get the ladder round the sharp

curves of the stair; but at last they saw him with it on his shoulder

coming over a distant roof.

“Now we shall see!” he said, as he leaned it up against the chimney,

and stood panting.

“You have tired yourself!” said lady Arctura.

“Where’s the harm, my lady? A man must get tired a few times before he

lies down!” rejoined Donald lightly.

Said Davie,

“Must a woman, Mr. Grant, marry a man she does not love?”

“No, certainly, Davie.”

“Mr. Grant,” said Arctura, in dread of what Davie might say next, “what

do you take to be the duty of one inheriting a property? Ought a woman

to get rid of it, or attend to it herself?”

Donal thought a little.

“We must first settle the main duty of property,” he said; “and that I

am hardly prepared to do.”

“Is there not a duty owing to your family?”

“There are a thousand duties owing to your family.”

“I don’t mean those you are living with merely, but those also who

transmitted the property to you. This property belongs to my family

rather than to me, and if I had had a brother it would have gone to him:

should I not do better for the family by giving it up to the next heir?

I am not disinterested in starting the question; possession and power

are of no great importance in my eyes; they are hindrances to me.”

“It seems to me,” said Donal, “that the fact that you would not have

succeeded had there been a son, points to the fact of a disposer of

events: you were sent into the world to take the property. If so, God

expects you to perform the duties of it; they are not to be got rid of

by throwing the thing aside, or giving them to another to do for you.

If your family and not God were the real giver of the property, the

question you put might arise; but I should hardly take interest enough

in it to be capable of discussing it. I understand my duty to my sheep

or cattle, to my master, to my father or mother, to my brother or

sister, to my pupil Davie here; I owe my ancestors love and honour, and

the keeping of their name unspotted, though that duty is forestalled by

a higher; but as to the property they leave behind them, over which

they have no more power, and which now I trust they never think about,

I do not see what obligation I can be under to them with regard to it,

other than is comprised in the duties of the property itself.”

“But a family is not merely those that are gone before; there are those

that will come after!”

“The best thing for those to come after, is to receive the property

with its duties performed, with the light of righteousness radiating

from it.”

“But what then do you call the duties of property?”

“In what does the property consist?”

“In land, to begin with.”

“If the land were of no value, would the possession of it involve

duties?”

“I suppose not.”

“In what does the value of the land consist?”

Lady Arctura did not attempt an answer to the question, and Donal,

after a little pause, resumed.

“If you valued things as the world values them, I should not care to

put the question; but I fear you may have some lingering notion that,

though God’s way is the true way, the world’s way must not be

disregarded. One thing, however, is certain--that nothing that is

against God’s way can be true. The value of property consists only in

its being means, ground, or material to work his will withal. There is

no success in the universe but in his will being done.”

Arctura was silent. She had inherited prejudices which, while she hated

selfishness, were yet thoroughly selfish. Such are of the evils in us

hardest to get rid of. They are even cherished for a lifetime by some

of the otherwise loveliest of souls. Knowing that herein much thought

would be necessary for her, and that she would think, Donal went no

farther: a house must have its foundation settled before it is built

upon; argument where the grounds of it are at all in dispute is worse

than useless.

He turned to his ladder, set it right, mounted, and peered into the

opening. At the length of his arm he could reach the wires Davie had

described: they were taut, and free of rust--were therefore not iron or

steel. He saw also that a little down the shaft a faint light came in

from the opposite side: there was another opening somewhere! Next he

saw that each following string--for strings he already counted

them--was placed a little lower than that before it, so that their

succession was inclined to the other side of the shaft--apparently in a

plane between the two openings, that a draught might pass along their

plane: this must surely be the instrument whence the music flowed! He

descended.

“Do you know, my lady,” he asked Arctura, “how the aeolian harp is

placed for the wind to wake it?”

“The only one I have seen,” she answered, “was made to fit into a

window; the lower sash was opened just wide enough to let it in, so

that the wind entering must pass across the strings.”

Then Donal was all but certain.

“Of course,” he said, after describing what he had seen, “we cannot be

absolutely sure without having been here with the music, and having

experimented by covering and uncovering the opening; and for that we

must wait a south-easterly wind.”