Donal Grant
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Here the writing came below the blot, and went on unbroken.
"My little one is gone and I am left lonely oh so lonely. I cannot but think that if you had loved me as you once did I should yet be clasping my little one to my bosom and you would have a daughter to comfort you after I am gone. I feel sure I cannot long survive this—ah there my hand has burst out bleeding again, but do not think I mind it, I know it was only an accident, you never meant to do it, though you teased me by refusing to say so—besides it is nothing. You might draw ever drop of blood from my body and I would not care if only you would not make my heart bleed so. Oh, it is gone all over my paper and you will think I have done it to let you see how it bleeds—but I cannot write it all over again it is too great a labour and too painful to write, so you must see it just as it is. I dare not think where my baby is, for if I should be doomed never to see her because of the love I have borne to you and consented to be as you wished if I am cast out from God because I loved you more than him I shall never see you again—for to be where I could see you would never be punishment enough for my sins."
Here the writing stopped: the bleeding of the hand had probably brought it to a close. The letter had never been folded, but lying there, had lain there. He looked if he could find a date; there was none. He held the sheet up to the light, and saw a paper mark; while close by lay another sheet with merely a date—in the same hand, as if the writer had been about to commence another in lieu of the letter spoiled.
"Strange!" thought Donal with himself; "an old withered grief looks almost as pitiful as an old withered joy!—But who is to say either is withered? Those who look upon death as an evil, yet regard it as the healer of sorrows! Is it such? No one can tell how long a grief may last unwithered! Surely till the life heals it! He is a coward who would be cured of his sorrow by mere lapse of time, by the mere forgetting of a brain that grows musty with age. It is God alone who can heal—the God of the dead and of the living! and the dead must find him, or be miserable for evermore!"
He had not a doubt that the letter he had read was in the writing of the mother of the present earl's children.
What was he to do? He had thought he was looking into matters much older—things over which the permission of lady Arctura extended; and in truth what he had discovered, or seen corroborated, was a thing she had a right to know! but whether he ought to tell her at once he did not yet see. He took up his candle, and with a feeling of helpless dismay, withdrew to his chamber. But when he reached the door of it, yielding to a sudden impulse, he turned away, and went farther up the stair, and out upon the bartizan.
It was a frosty night, and the stars were brilliant. He looked up and said,
"Oh Saviour of men, thy house is vaulted with light; thy secret places are secret from excess of light; in thee is no darkness at all; thou hast no terrible crypts and built-up places; thy light is the terror of those who love the darkness! Fill my heart with thy light; let me never hunger or thirst after anything but thy will—that I may walk in the light, and light not darkness may go forth from me."
As he turned to go in, came a faint chord from the aeolian harp.
"It sings, brooding over the very nest of evil deeds!" he thought. "The light eternal, with keen arrows of radiant victory, will yet at last rout from the souls of his creatures the demons that haunt them!
"But if there be creatures of God that have turned to demons, may not human souls themselves turn to demons? Would they then be victorious over God, too strong for him to overcome—beyond the reach of repentance?
"How would they live? By their own power? Then were they Gods!—But they did not make themselves, and could not live of themselves. If not, then they must live by God's power. How then should they be beyond his reach?
"If the demons can never be brought back, then the life of God, the all-pure, goes out to keep alive, in and for evil, that which is essentially bad; for that which is irredeemable is essentially bad."
Thus reasoned Donal with himself, and his reasoning, instead of troubling his faith, caused him to cling the more to the only One, the sole hope and saviour of the hearts of his men and women, without whom the whole universe were but a charnel house in which the ghosts of the dead went about crying, not over the life that was gone from them, but its sorrows.
He stood and gazed out over the cold sea. And as he gazed, a shivering surge of doubt, a chill wave of negation, came rolling over him. He knew that in a moment he would strike out with the energy of a strong swimmer, and rise to the top of it; but now it was tumbling him about at its evil will. He stood and gazed—with a dull sense that he was waiting for his will. Suddenly came the consciousness that he and his will were one; that he had not to wait for his will, but had to wake—to will, that is, and do, and so be. And therewith he said to himself:—
"It is neither time, nor eternity, nor human consolation, nor everlasting sleep, nor the satisfied judgment, nor attained ambition, even in love itself, that is the cure for things; it is the heart, the will, the being of the Father. While that remains, the irremediable, the irredeemable cannot be. If there arose a grief in the heart of one of his creatures not otherwise to be destroyed, he would take it into himself, there consume it in his own creative fire—himself bearing the grief, carrying the sorrow. Christ died—and would die again rather than leave one heart-ache in the realms of his love—that is, of his creation. 'Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed!'"
Over his head the sky was full of shining worlds—mansions in the Father's house, built or building.
"We are not at the end of things," he thought, "but in the beginnings and on the threshold of creation! The Father is as young as when first the stars of the morning sang—the Ancient of Days who can never grow old! He who has ever filled the dull unbelieving nations with food and gladness, has a splendour of delight for the souls that believe, ever as by their obedience they become capable of receiving it."
CHAPTER LXII.
THE CRYPT
"When are you going down again to the chapel, Mr. Grant?" said lady Arctura: she was better now, and able to work.
"I was down last night, and want to go again this evening by myself—if you don't mind, my lady," he answered. "I am sure it will be better for you not to go down till you are ready to give your orders to have everything cleared away for the light and air to enter. The damp and closeness of the place are too much for you."
"I think it was rather the want of sleep that made me ill," she answered; "but you can do just as you please."
"I thank you for your confidence, my lady," returned Donal. "I do not think you will repent it."
"I know I shall not."
Having some things to do first, it was late before Donal went down—intent on learning the former main entrance, and verifying the position of the chapel in the castle.
He betook himself to the end of the passage under the little gallery, and there examined the signs he had observed: those must be the outer ends of two of the steps of the great staircase! they came through, resting on the wall. That end of the chapel, then, adjoined the main stair. Evidently, too, a door had been built up in the process of constructing the stair. The chapel then had not been entered from that level since the building of the stair. Originally there had, most likely, been an outside stair to this door, in an open court.
After a little more examination, partial of necessity, from lack of light, he was on his way out, and already near the top of the mural stair, thinking of the fresh observations he would take outside in the morning, when behind, overtaking him from the regions he had left, came a blast of air, and blew out his candle. He shivered—not with the cold of it, though it did breathe of underground damps and doubtful growths, but from a feeling of its having been sent after him to make him go down again—for did it not indicate some opening to the outer air? He relighted his candle and descended, carefully guarding it with one hand. The cold sigh seemed to linger about him as he went—gruesome as from a closed depth, the secret bosom of the castle, into which the light never entered. But, wherever it came from last, however earthy and fearful, it came first from the open regions of life, and had but passed through a gloom that life itself must pass! Could it have been a draught down the pipe of the music-chords? No, for they would have loosed some light-winged messenger with it! He must search till he found its entrance below!
He crossed the little gallery, descended, and went again into the chapel: it lay as still as the tomb which it was no more. He seemed to miss the presence of the dead, and feel the place deserted. All round its walls, as far as he could reach or see, he searched carefully, but could perceive no sign of possible entrance for the messenger blast. It came again!—plainly through the open door under the windows. He went again into the passage outside the wall, and the moment he turned into it, the draught seemed to come from beneath, blowing upwards. He stooped to examine; his candle was again extinguished. Once more he relighted it. Searching then along the floor and the foot of the walls, he presently found, in the wall of the chapel itself, close to the ground, a narrow horizontal opening: it must pass under the floor of the chapel! All he saw was a mere slit, but the opening might be larger, and partially covered by the flooring-slab, which went all the length of the slit! He would try to raise it! That would want a crowbar! but having got so far, he would not rest till he knew more! It must be very late and the domestics all in bed; but what hour it was he could not tell, for he had left his watch in his room. It might be midnight and he burrowing like a mole about the roots of the old house, or like an evil thing in the heart of a man! No matter! he would follow up his search—after what, he did not know.
He crept up, and out of the castle by his own stair, so to the tool-house. It was locked. But lying near was a half-worn shovel: that might do! he would have a try with it! Like one in a dream of ancient ruins, creeping through mouldy and low-browed places, he went down once more into the entrails of the house.
Inserting the sharp edge of the worn shovel in the gap between the stone and that next it, he raised it more readily than he had hoped, and saw below it a small window, whose sill sloped steeply inward. How deep the place might be, and whether it would be possible to get out of it again, he must discover before entering. He took a letter from his pocket, lighted it, and threw it in. It revealed a descent of about seven feet, into what looked like a cellar. He blew his candle out, put it in his pocket, got into the window, slid down the slope, and reached his new level with ease. He then lighted his candle, and looked about him.
His eye first fell on a large flat stone in the floor, like a gravestone, but without any ornament or inscription. It was a roughly vaulted place, unpaved, its floor of damp hard-beaten earth. In the wall to the right of that through which he had entered, was another opening, low down, like the crown of an arch the rest of which was beneath the floor. As near as he could judge, it was right under the built-up door in the passage above. He crept through it, and found himself under the spiral of the great stair, in the small space at the bottom of its well. On the floor lay a dust-pan and a house-maid's-brush—and there was the tiny door at which they were shoved in, after their morning's use upon the stair! It was open—inwards; he crept through it: he was in the great hall of the house—and there was one of its windows wide open! Afraid of being by any chance discovered, he put out his light, and proceeded up the stair in the dark.
He had gone but a few steps when he heard the sound of descending feet. He stopped and listened: they turned into the half-way room. When he reached it, he heard sounds which showed that the earl was in the closet behind it. Things rushed together in his mind. He hurried up to lady Arctura's room, thence descended, for the third time that night—but no farther than the oak door, passed through it, entered the little chamber, and hastening to the farther end of it, laid his ear against the wall. Plainly enough he heard the sounds he had expected—those of the dream-walking rather than sleep-walking earl, moaning, and calling in a low voice of entreaty after some one whose name did not grow audible to the listener.
"Ah!" thought Donal, "who would find it hard to believe in roaming and haunting ghosts, that had once seen this poor man roaming his own house, and haunting that chamber! How easily I could punish him now, with a lightning blast of terror!"
It was but a thought; it did not amount to a temptation; Donal knew he had no right. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, for he alone knows how to use it.
I do not believe that mere punishment exists anywhere in the economy of the highest; I think mere punishment a human idea, not a divine one. But the consuming fire is more terrible than any punishment invented by riotous and cruel imagination. Punishment indeed it is—not mere punishment; a power of God for his creature. Love is God's being; love is his creative energy; they are one: God's punishments are for the casting out of the sin that uncreates, for the recreating of the things his love made and sin has unmade.
He heard the lean hands of the earl go slowly sweeping, at the ends of his long arms, over the wall: he had seen the thing, else he could hardly have interpreted the sounds; and he heard him muttering on and on, though much too low for his words to be distinguishable. Had they been, Donal by this time was so convinced that he had to do with an evil and dangerous man, that he would have had little scruple in listening. It is only righteousness that has a right to secrecy, and does not want it; evil has no right to secrecy, alone intensely desires it, and rages at being foiled of it; for when its deeds come to the light, even evil has righteousness enough left to be ashamed of them. But he could remain no longer; his very soul felt sick within him. He turned hastily away to leave the place. But carrying his light too much in front, and forgetting the stool, he came against it and knocked it over, not without noise. A loud cry from the other side of the wall revealed the dismay he had caused. It was followed by a stillness, and then a moaning.
He made haste to find Simmons, and send him to his master. He heard nothing afterwards of the affair.
CHAPTER LXIII.
THE CLOSET
Tender over lady Arctura, Donal would ask a question or two of the housekeeper before disclosing what further he had found. He sought her room, therefore, while Arctura and Davie, much together now, were reading in the library.
"Did you ever hear anything about that little room on the stair, mistress Brookes?" he asked.
"I canna say," she answered—but thoughtfully, "—Bide a wee: auld auntie did mention something ance aboot—bide a wee—I hae a wullin' memory—maybe I'll min' upo' 't i' the noo!—It was something aboot biggin' up an' takin' doon—something he was to do, an' something he never did!—I'm sure I canna tell! But gie me time, an' I'll min' upo' 't! Ance is aye wi' me—only I maun hae time!"
Donal waited, and said not a word.
"I min' this much," she said at length, "—that they used to be thegither i' that room. I min' too that there was something aboot buildin' up ae wa', an' pu'in' doon anither.—It's comin'—it's comin' back to me!"
She paused again awhile, and then said:
"All I can recollec', Mr. Grant, is this: that efter her death, he biggit up something no far frae that room!—what was't noo?—an' there was something aboot makin' o' the room bigger! Hoo that could be by buildin' up, I canna think! Yet I feel sure that was what he did!"
"Would you mind coming to the place?" said Donal. "To see it might help you to remember."
"I wull, sir. Come ye here aboot half efter ten, an' we s' gang thegither."
As soon as the house was quiet, they went. But Mistress Brookes could recall nothing, and Donal gazed about him to no purpose.
"What's that?" he said at last, pointing to the wall on the other side of which was the little chamber.
Two arches, in chalk, as it seemed, had attracted his gaze. Light surely was about to draw nigh through the darkness! Chaos surely was settling a little towards order!
The one arch was drawn opposite the hidden chamber; the other against the earl's closet, as it had come to be called in the house—most of the domestics thinking he there said his prayers. It looked as if there had been an intention of piercing the wall with such arches, to throw the two small rooms on the other side as recesses into the larger. But if that had been the intent, what could the building of a wall, vaguely recollected by mistress Brookes, have been for? That a wall had been built he did not doubt, for he believed he knew the wall, but why?
"What's that?" said Donal.
"What?" returned Mrs. Brookes.
"Those two arches."
The housekeeper looked at them thoughtfully for a few moments.
"I canna help fancyin'," she said slowly, "—yes, I'm sure that's the varra thing my aunt told me aboot! That's the twa places whaur he was goin' to tak the wall doon, to mak the room lairger. But I'm sure she said something aboot buildin' a wall as weel!"
"Look here," said Donal; "I will measure the distance from the door to the other side of this first arch.—Now come into the closet behind. Look here! This same measurement takes us right up to the end of the place! So you see if we were to open the other arch, it would be into something behind this wall."
"Then this may be the varra wa' he biggit?"
"I don't doubt it; but what could he have had it built for, if he was going to open the other wall? I must think it all over!—It was after his wife's death, you say?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"One might have thought he would not care about enlarging the room after she was gone!"
"But, sir, he wasna jist sic a pattren o' a guidman;" said the housekeeper. "An' what for mak this room less?"
"May it not have been for the sake of shutting out, or hiding something?" suggested Donal.
"I do remember a certain thing!—Curious!—But what then as to the openin' o' 't efter?"
"He has never done it!" said Donal significantly. "The thing takes shape to me in this way:—that he wanted to build something out of sight—to annihilate it; but in order to prevent speculation, he professed the intention of casting the one room into the other; then built the wall across, on the pretence that it was necessary for support when the other was broken through—or perhaps that two recesses with arches would look better; but when he had got the wall built, he put off opening the arches on one pretext or another, till the thing should be forgotten altogether—as you see it is already, almost entirely!—I have been at the back of that wall, and heard the earl moaning and crying on this side of it!"
"God bless me!" cried the good woman. "I'm no easy scaret, but that's fearfu' to think o'!"
"You would not care to come there with me?"
"No the nicht, sir. Come to my room again, an' I s' mak ye a cup o' coffee, an' tell ye the story—it's a' come back to me noo—the thing 'at made my aunt tell me aboot the buildin' o' this wa'. 'Deed, sir, I hae hardly a doobt the thing was jist as ye say!"
They went to her room: there was lady Arctura sitting by the fire!
"My lady!" cried the housekeeper. "I thoucht I left ye soon' asleep!"
"So I was, I daresay," answered Arctura; "but I woke again, and finding you had not come up, I thought I would go down to you. I was certain you and Mr. Grant would be somewhere together! Have you been discovering anything more?"
Mrs. Brookes gave Donal a look: he left her to tell as much or as little as she pleased.
"We hae been prowlin' aboot the hoose, but no doon yon'er, my lady. I think you an' me wad do weel to lea' that to Mr. Grant!"
"When your ladyship is quite ready to have everything set to rights," said Donal, "and to have a resurrection of the chapel, then I shall be glad to go with you again. But I would rather not even talk more about it just at present."
"As you please, Mr. Grant," replied lady Arctura. "We will say nothing more till I have made up my mind. I don't want to vex my uncle, and I find the question rather a difficult one—and the more difficult that he is worse than usual.—Will you not come to bed now, mistress Brookes?"
CHAPTER LXIV.
THE GARLAND-ROOM
All through the terrible time, the sense of help and comfort and protection in the presence of the young tutor, went on growing in the mind of Arctura. It was nothing to her—what could it be?—that he was the son of a very humble pair; that he had been a shepherd, and a cow-herd, and a farm labourer—less than nothing. She never thought of the facts of his life except sympathetically, seeking to enter into the feelings of his memorial childhood and youth; she would never have known anything of those facts but for their lovely intimacies of all sorts with Nature—nature divine, human, animal, cosmical. By sharing with her his emotional history, Donal had made its facts precious to her; through them he had gathered his best—by home and by prayer, by mother and father, by sheep and mountains and wind and sky. And now he was to her a tower of strength, a refuge, a strong city, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She trusted him the more that he never invited her trust—never put himself before her; for always before her he set Life, the perfect heart-origin of her and his yet unperfected humanity, teaching her to hunger and thirst after being righteous like God, with the assurance of being filled. She had once trusted in Miss Carmichael, not with her higher being, only with her judgment, and both her judgment and her friend had misled her. Donal had taught her that obedience, not to man but to God, was the only guide to holy liberty, and so had helped her to break the bonds of those traditions which, in the shape of authoritative utterances of this or that church, lay burdens grievous to be borne upon the souls of men. For Christ, against all the churches, seemed to her to express Donal's mission. An air of peace, an atmosphere of summer twilight after the going down of the sun, seemed to her to precede him and announce his approach with a radiation felt as rest. She questioned herself nowise about him. Falling in love was a thing unsuggested to her; if she was in what is called danger, it was of a better thing.
The next day she did not appear: mistress Brookes had persuaded her to keep her bed again for a day or two. There was nothing really the matter with her, she said herself, but she was so tired she did not care to lift her head from the pillow. She had slept well, and was troubled about nothing. She sent to beg Mr. Grant to let Davie go and read to her, and to give him something to read, good for him as well as for her.
Donal did not see Davie again till the next morning.
"Oh, Mr. Grant!" he said, "you never saw anything so pretty as Arkie is in bed! She is so white, and so sweet! and she speaks with a voice so gentle and low! She was so kind to me for going to read to her! I never saw anybody like her! She looks as if she had just said her prayers, and God had told her she should have everything she wanted."
Donal wondered a little, but hoped more. Surely she must be finding rest in the consciousness of God! But why was she so white? Was she going to die? A pang shot to his heart: if she were to go from the castle, it would be hard to stay in it, even for the sake of Davie! Donal, no more than Arctura, imagined himself fallen in love: he had loved once, and his heart had not yet done aching—though more with the memory than the presence of pain! He was utterly satisfied with what the Father of the children had decreed, and would never love again! But he did not seek to hide from himself that the friendship of lady Arctura, and the help she sought and he gave, had added a fresh and strong interest to his life. At the first dawn of power in his heart, when he began to make songs in the fields and on the hills, he had felt that to brighten with true light the clouded lives of despondent brothers and sisters was the one thing worthest living for: it was what the Lord came into the world for; neither had his trouble made him forget it—for more than one week or so: while the pain was yet gnawing grievously, he woke to it again with self-accusation—almost self-contempt. To have helped this lovely creature, whose life had seemed lapt in an ever closer-clasping shroud of perplexity, was a thing to be glad of—not to the day of his death, but to the never-ending end of his life! was an honour conferred upon him by the Father, to last for evermore! For he had helped to open a human door for the Lord to enter! she within heard him knock, but, trying, was unable to open! To be God's helper with our fellows is the one high calling; the presence of God in the house the one high condition.