Warlock o' Glenwarlock: A Homely Romance
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"How well we have got on without it!" returned his father.
"But what could have made grandfather close it up?"
"There was, I believe, some foolish ghost-story connected with it—perhaps the same old Grannie told you."
"I wonder grandmamma never spoke of it!"
"My impression is she never cared to refer to it."
"I daresay she believed it."
"Weel, I daursay! I wadna won'er!"
"What for did ye ca' 't foolish, father?"
"Jist for thouchtlessness, I doobt, But wha could hae imagined to kep a ghaist by paperin' ower a door, whan, gien there be ony trowth i' sic tales, the ghaist gangs throu a stane wa' jist as easy's open air! But surely o' a' fules a ghaist maun be the warst 'a things on aboot a place!"
"Maybe it's to haud away frae a waur. The queer thing, father, to me wad be 'at the ghist, frae bein' a fule a' his life, sud grow a wise man the minute he was deid! Michtna it be a pairt o' his punishment to be garred see hoo things gang on efter he's deid! What could be sairer, for instance, upon a miser, nor to see his heir gang to the deevil by scatterin' what he gaed to the deevil by gatherin'?"
"'Deed ye're richt eneuch, there, my son!" answered the old man. Then after a pause he resumed. "It's aye siller or banes 'at fesses them back. I can weel un'erstan' a great reluctance to tak their last leave o' the siller, but for the banes—eh, but I'll be unoo pleased to be rid o' mine!"
"But whaur banes are concernt, hasna there aye been fause play?" suggested Cosmo.
"Wad it be revenge, than, think ye?"
"It micht be: maist o' the stories o' that kin' en' wi' bringin' the murderer an' justice acquant. But the human bein' seems in a' ages to hae a grit dislike to the thoucht o' his banes bein' left lyin' aboot. I hae h'ard gran'mamma say the dirtiest servan' was aye clean twa days o' her time—the day she cam an' the day she gaed."
"Ye hae thoucht mair aboot it nor me, laddie! But what ye say wadna haud wi' the Parsees, 'at lay oot their deid to be devoored by the birds o' the air."
"They swipe up their banes at the last. An', though the livin' expose the deid, the deid mayna like it."
"I daursay. Ony gait it maun be a fine thing to lea' as little dirt as possible ahin' ye, an' tak nane wi' ye. I wad frain gang clean an' lea' clean!"
"Gien onybody gang clean an' lea' clean, father, ye wull."
"I luik to the Lord, my son.—But noo, whan a body thinks o' 't," he went on after a pause, "there wad seem something curious i' thae tales concernin' the auld captain! Sometime we'll tak Grizzie intil oor coonsel, an' see hoo mony we can gaither, an' what we can mak o' them whan we lay them a' thegither. Gien the Lord hae't in his min' to keep 's i' this place, yon passage may turn oot a great convanience."
"Ye dinna think it wad be worth while openin' 't up direc'ly?"
"I wad bide for warmer weather. I think the room's jist some caller now by rizzon o' 't."
"I'll close't up at ance," said Cosmo.
In a few minutes he had screwed a box-lid over the hole in the partition, and shut the door of the closet.
"Noo," he said, "I'll gang an' set up the door on the ither side."
Before he went however, he told his father what he had been thinking of, saying, if he approved and was well enough, he should like to go the next day.
"It's no an ill idea," said the laird; "but we'll see what the morn may be like."
When Cosmo entered the great bedroom of the house from the other side, he stood for a moment staring at the open passage and prostrate door as if he saw them for the first time, then proceeded to examine the hinges. They were broken; the half of each remained fast to the door-post, the other half to the door. New hinges were necessary; in the meantime he must prop it up. This he did; and before he left the room, as it was much in want of fresh air, he opened all the windows.
His father continuing better through that day, he went to bed early that he might start at sunrise.
CHAPTER LIV.
A GREATER DISCOVERY
In the middle of the night he was wakened by a loud noise. Its nature he had been too sound asleep to recognize; he only knew it had waked him. He sprang out of bed, was glad to find his father undisturbed, and stood for a few moments wondering. All at once he remembered that he had left the windows of the best bedroom open; the wind had risen, and was now blowing what sailors would call a gale: probably something had been blown down! He would go and see. Taking a scrap of candle, all he had, he crept down the stair and out to the great door.
As he approached that of the room he sought, the faint horror he felt of it when a boy suddenly returned upon him as fresh as ever, and for a moment he hesitated, almost doubting whether he were not dreaming: was he actually there in the middle of the night? But, with an effort he dismissed the folly, was himself again, entering the room, if not with indifference yet with composure. There was just light enough to see the curtains of the terrible bed waving wide in the stream of wind that followed the opening of the door. He shut the windows, lighted his candle, and then saw the door he had set up so carefully flat on the floor: the chair he had put against it for a buttress, he thought, had not proved high enough, and it had fallen down over the top of it. He placed his candle beside it, and proceeded once more to raise it. But, casting his eyes up to mark the direction, he caught a sight which made him lay it down again and rise without it. The candle on the floor shone halfway into the passage, lighting up a part of one wall of it, and showing plainly the rough gray stones of which it was built. Something in the shapes and arrangement of the stones drew and fixed Cosmo's attention. He took the candle, examined the wall, came from the passage with his eyes shining, and his lips firmly closed, left the room, and went up a story higher to that over it, still called his. There he took from his old secretary the unintelligible drawing hid in the handle of the bamboo, and with beating heart unfolded it. Certainly its lines did, more or less, correspond with the shapes of those stones! He must bring them face to face!
Down the stair he went again. It was the dead of the night, but every remnant of childhood's awe was gone in the excitement of the hoped discovery. He stood once more in the passage, the candle in one hand, the paper in the other, and his eyes going and coming steadily between it and the wall, as if reading the rough stones by some hieroglyphic key. The lines on the paper and the joints of the stones corresponded with almost absolute accuracy.
But another thing had caught his eye—a thing yet more promising, though he delayed examining it until fully satisfied of the correspondence he sought to establish: on one of the stones, one remarkable neither by position nor shape, he spied what seemed the rude drawing of a horse, but as it was higher than his head, and the candle cast up shadows from the rough surfaces, he could not see it well. Now he got a chair, and, standing on it, saw that it was plainly enough a horse, like one a child might have made who, with a gift for drawing, had had no instruction. It was scratched on the stone. Beneath it, legible enough to one who knew them so well, were the lines—
catch your Nag, & pull his Tail in his hind Hele caw a Nail rug his Lugs frae ane anither stand up, & ca' the King yer Brither
How these directions were to be followed with such a horse astheoneon the flat before him would be scanned! Probably the wall must be broken into at that spot. In the meantime he would set up the door again, and go to bed.
For he was alarmed at the turmoil the sight of these signs caused in him. He dreaded POSSESSION by any spirit but the one. Whatever he did now he must do calmly. Therefore to bed he went. But before he gave himself up to sleep, he prayed God to watch him, lest the commotion in his heart and the giddiness of hope should make something rise that would come between him and the light eternal. The man in whom any earthly hope dims the heavenly presence and weakens the mastery of himself, is on the by-way through the meadow to the castle of Giant Despair.
In the morning he rose early, and went to see what might be attempted for the removing of the stone. He found it, as he had feared, so close-jointed with its neighbours that none of his tools would serve. He went to Grizzie and got from her a thin old knife; but the mortar had got so hard since those noises the servants used to hear in the old captain's room, that he could not make much impression upon it, and the job was likely to be a long one. He said to himself it might be the breaking through of the wall of his father's prison and his own, and wrought eagerly.
As soon as his father had had his breakfast, he told him what he had discovered during the dark hours. The laird listened with the light of a smile, not the smile itself, upon his face, and made no answer; but Cosmo could see by the all but imperceptible motion of his lips that he was praying.
"I wish I were able to help you," he said at length.
"There is na room for mair nor ane at a time, father," answered Cosmo; "an' I houp to get the stane oot afore I'm tired. You can be Moses praying, while I am Joshua fighting."
"An' prayin' again' waur enemies nor ever Joshua warstled wi'," returned his father; "for whan I think o' the rebound o' the spirit, even in this my auld age, that cudna but follow the mere liftin' o' the weicht o' debt, I feel as gien my sowl wad be tum'led aboot like a bledder, an' its auld wings tak to lang slow flaggin' strokes i' the ower thin aether o' joy. The great God protec' 's frae his ain gifts! Wi'oot him they're ten times waur nor ony wiles o' the deevil's ain. But I'll pray, Cosmo; I'll pray."
The real might of temptation is in the lower and seemingly nearer loveliness as against the higher and seemingly farther.
Cosmo went back to his work. But he got tired of the old knife—it was not tool enough, and had to fashion on the grindstone a screw-driver to a special implement. With that he got on better.
The stone,—whether by the old captain's own' hands, his ghost best knew—was both well fitted and fixed, but after Cosmo had worked at it for about three hours his tool suddenly went through. It was then easy to knock away from the edge gained, and on the first attempt to prize it out, it yielded so far that he got a hold with his fingers, and the rest was soon done. It disclosed a cavity in the wall, but the light was not enough to let him see into it, and he went to get a candle.
Now Grizzie had a curious dislike to any admission of the poverty of the house even to those most interested, and having but one small candle-end left, was unwilling both to yield it, and to confess it her last.
"Them 'at burns daylicht, sune they'll hae nae licht!" she said. "What wad ye want wi' a can'le? I'll haud a fir-can'le to ye, gien ye like."
"Grizzie," repeated Cosmo, "I want a can'le."
She went grumbling, and brought him the miserable end.
"Hoot, Grizzie!" he expostulated, "dinna be sae near. Ye wadna, gien ye kenned what I was aboot."
"Eh! what are ye aboot, sir?"
"I'm no gaein' to tell ye yet. Ye maun hae patience, an' I maun hae a can'le."
"Ye maun tak what's offert ye."
"Grizzie, I'm in earnest."
"'Deed an' sae am I! Ye s' hae nae mair nor that—no gien it was to scrape the girnel—an' that's dune lang syne, an' twise ower!"
"Grizzie, I'm feart ye'll anger me."
"Ye s' get nae mair!"
Cosmo burst out laughing.
"Grizzie," he said, "I dinna believe ye nae an' inch mair can'le i' the hoose!"
"It needs na a Warlock to tell that! Gien I had it, what for sud na ye hae't 'at has the best richt?"
Cosmo took his candle, and was as sparing of it as Grizzie herself could have wished.
CHAPTER LV.
A GREAT DISCOVERY
The instant the rays of the candle-end were thrown into the cavity, he saw what, expectant as he was, made him utter a cry. He seemed to be looking through a small window into a toy-stable—a large one for a toy. Immediately before him was a stall, in which stood ahorse, with his tail towards the window. He put in his hand and felt it over. For a toy it would have been of the largest size below a rocking horse. It was covered with a hairy skin. So far all was satisfactory, but alas! more stones must be removed ere it could be taken from its prison stall, where, like the horses of Charlemagne, it had been buried so many years. He extinguished the precious candle-end, and set to work once more with a will and what light the day afforded. Nor was the task much easier than before. Every one of the stones was partly imbedded in the solid of the wall, projecting but a portion of its bulk over the hollow of the stable. The old captain must indeed have worked hard! for assuredly he was not the man to call for help where he desired secrecy—though doubtless it was his sudden death, and the nature of it, which prevented him from making disclosure concerning the matter before he left the world: the rime, the drawing, the scratches on the stone, all indicated the intention. Cosmo took pleasure in thinking that, if indeed his ghost did "walk," as Grannie and others had affirmed, it must be more from desire to reveal where his money was hid, than from any gloating over the imagined possession of it.
But it was now dinner-time, and he must rest, for he was tired as well as hungry—and no wonder, the work having been so awkward as well as continuous! He locked the door of the room, went first to tell his father what he had further found, and then made haste over his meal, for the night was coming, and there were no candles. Persistently he laboured; "the toil-drops fell from his brow like rain;" and at last he laid hold of the patient animal by the hind legs, with purpose to draw it gently from the stall. A little way it came, then no farther, and he had to light the candle. Peeping into the stall he perceived a chain stretching from its head to where the manger might be. This he dared not try to break, lest he might injure the mechanism he hoped to find in it. But clearly the horse could not have been so fastened as the stall then stood. The stall must have been completed after the horse was thus secured. More than ever he now needed a candle—and indeed one held for him; but he was not prepared either to take Grizzie into his confidence, or to hurt her by perferring Agnes. He therefore examined the two stones forming the sides of the stall, and led by the appearance of one of them, proceeded to attempt its removal almost in the dark, compelled indeed now and then to feel for the proper spot where to set his tool before he struck it. For some time he seemed to make, little or no progress; but who would be discouraged with the end in sight!
The stone at length moved, and in a minute he had it out. For the last time he lighted his candle, and there was just enough of it left to show him how the chain was fastened. With a pair of pincers he detached it from the wall—and I may mention that his life after he wore it at his watch.
And now he had the horse in his arms and would have borne it straight to his father, in whose presence it must be searched, but that, unwilling to carry it through the kitchen, he must first go to the other end of the passage and open that way.
The laird was seated by the fire when Cosmo went through, and returning with the horse, placed it on a chair beside him. They looked it all over, wondering whether the old captain could have made it himself, and Cosmo thought his father prolonged the inquiry from a wish to still his son's impatience. But at length he said,
"Noo, Cosmo, i' the name o' God, the giver o' ilka guid an' perfec' gift, see gien ye can win at the entrails o' the animal. It cannabe fu' o' men like the Trojan horse, or they maun be enchantit sma', like the deevils whan they war ower mony for the cooncil ha'; but what's intil 't may carry a heap waur danger to you an' me nor ony nummer o' airmit men!"
"Ye min' the rime, father?" asked Cosmo.
"No sae weel as the twenty-third psalm," replied the laird with a smile.
"Weel, the first line o' 't is,'Catch yer naig, an' pu' his tail.' Wi' muckle diffeeclety we hae catcht him, an' noo for the tail o' 'im!—There! that's dune!—though there's no muckle to shaw for 't. The neist direction is—'In his hin' heel caw a nail:' we s' turn up a' his fower feet thegither,'cause they're cooperant; an' noo lat 's see the proper spot whaur to caw the said nail!"
The horse's shoes were large, and the hole where a nail was missing had not to be sought. Cosmo took a fine bradawl, and pushed it gently into the hoof. A loud, whirring noise followed, but with no visible result.
"The next direction," said Cosmo, "is—'Rug his lugs frae ane anither.' Noo, father, God be wi' 's! an' gien it please him we be dis-ap'intit, may he gie 's grace to beir 't as he wad hae 's beir 't.'
"I pray the same," said the laird.
Cosmo pulled the two ears of the animal in opposite directions. The back began to open, slowly, as if through the long years the cleft had begun to grow together. He sprang from his seat. The laird looked after him with a gentle surprise. But it was not to rush from the room, nor yet to perform a frantic dance with the horse for a partner.
One of the windows looked westward into the court, and at this season of the year, the setting sun looked in at that window. He was looking in now; his rays made a glowing pool of light in the middle of the ancient carpet. Beside this pool Cosmo dropped on the floor like a child with his toy, and pulled lustily at its ears. All at once into the pool of light began to tumble a cataract as of shattered rainbows, only brighter, flashing all the colours visible to human eye. It ceased. Cosmo turned the horse upside down, and a few stray drops followed. He shook it, and tapped it, like Grizzie when she emptied the basin of meal into the porridge-pot, then flung it from him. But the cataract had not vanished. There it lay heaped and spread, a storm of conflicting yet harmonious hues, with a foamy spray of spiky flashes, and spots that ate into the eyes with their fierce colour. In every direction shot the rays from it, blinding; for it was a mound of stones of all the shapes into which diamonds are fashioned. It makes my heart beat but to imagine the glorious show of deep-hued burning, flashing, stinging light! The heaviest of its hues was borne light as those of a foam-bubble on the strength of its triumphing radiance. There pulsed the mystic glowing red, heart and lord of colour; there the jubilant yellow, light-glorified to ethereal gold; there the loveliest blue, the truth unfathomable, profounder yet than the human red; there the green, that haunts the brain with Nature's soundless secrets! all together striving, yet atoning, fighting and fleeing and following, parting and blending, with illimitable play of infinite force and endlessly delicate gradation. Scattered here and there were a few of all the coloured gems—sapphires, emeralds, and rubies; but they were scarce of note in the mass of ever new-born, ever dying colour that gushed from the fountains of the light-dividing diamonds.
Cosmo rose, left the glory where it lay, and returning to his father, sat down beside him. For a few moments they regarded in silence the shining mound, where, like an altar of sacrifice, it smoked with light and colour. The eyes of the old man as he looked seemed at once to sparkle with pleasure, and quail with some kind of fear. He turned to Cosmo and said,
"Cosmo, are they what they luik?"
"What luik they, father?" asked Cosmo.
"Bonny bits o' glaiss they luik," answered the old man. "But," he went on, "I canna but believe them something better, they come til's in sic a time o' sair need. But, be they this or be they that, the Lord's wull be done—noo an' for ever, be it, I say, what it like!"
"I wuss it, father!" rejoined Cosmo. "But I ken something aboot sic-like things, frae bein' sae muckle in Mr. Burns's shop, an' hauding a heap o' conference wi' im about them; an' I tell ye, sir, they're maistly a' di'mon's; an' the nummer o' thoosan' poun' they maun be worth gien they be worth a saxpence, I daurna guess!"
"They'll be eneuch to pey oor debts ony gait, ye think, Cosmo?"
"Ay, that wull they—an' mony a hun'er times ower. They're maistly a guid size, an' no a feow o' them lairge."
"Cosmo, we're ower lang ohn thankit. Come here, my son; gang down upo' yer knees, an lat's say to the Lord what we're thinkin'."
Cosmo obeyed, and knelt at his father's knee, and his father laid his hand upon his head that so they might pray more in one.
"Lord," he said, "though naething a man can tak in his han's can ever be his ain, no bein' o' his nature, that is, made i' thy image, yet, O Lord, the thing 'at's thine, made by thee efter thy holy wull an' pleesur, man may touch an' no be defiled. Yea, he may tak pleesur baith in itsel' an' in its use, sae lang as he han'les 't i' the how o' thy han', no grippin' at it an' ca'in' 't his ain, an' lik a rouch bairn seekin' to snap it awa' 'at he may hae his fule wull o' 't. O God, they're bonny stanes an' fu' o' licht: forbid 'at their licht sud breed darkness i' the hert o' Cosmo an' me. O God, raither nor we sud du or feel ae thing i' consequence o' this they gift, that thoo wadna hae us do or feel, we wad hae thee tak again the gift; an' gien i' thy mercy, for it's a' mercy wi' thee, it sud turn oot, efter a','at they're no stanes o' thy makin', but coonterfeit o' glaiss, the produc' o' airt an' man's device, we'll lay them a' thegither, an' keep them safe, an' luik upon them as a token o' what thoo wad hae dune for 's gien it hadna been 'at we warna yet to be trustit wi' sae muckle, an' that for the safety an' clean-throuness o' oor sowls. O God, latna the sunshiny Mammon creep intil my Cosmo's hert an' mak a' mirk; latna the licht that is in him turn to darkness. God hae mercy on his wee bairns, an' no lat the play ocks he gies them tak their e'en aff o' the giein' han'! May the licht noo streamin' frae the hert o' the bonny stanes be the bodily presence o' thy speerit, as ance was the doo 'at descendit upo' the maister, an' the buss 'at burned wi' fire an' wasna consumed. Thoo art the father o' lichts, an' a' licht is thine. Garoor herts burn like them—a' licht an' nae reek! An' gien ony o' them cam in at a wrang door, may they a' gang oot at a richt ane. Thy wull be dune, which is the purifyin' fire o' a' thing, an' a' sowl! Amen."
He ceased, and was silent, praying still. Nor did Cosmo yet rise from his knees: the joy, and yet more the relief at his heart filled him afresh with fear, lest, no longer spurred by the same sense of need, he should the less run after him from whom help had come so plentifully. Alas! how is it with our hearts that in trouble they cry, and in joy forget! that we think it hard of God not to hear, and when he has answered abundantly, turn away as if we wanted him no more!
When Cosmo rose from his knees, he looked his father in the face with wet eyes.
"Oh, father!" he said, "how the fear and oppression of ages are gone like a cloud swallowed up of space. Oh, father! are not all human ills doomed thus to vanish at last in the eternal fire of the love-burning God?—An' noo, father, what 'll we du neist?" resumed Cosmo after a pause, turning his eyes again on the heap of jewels. The sunrays had now left them, and they lay cold and almost colourless, though bright still: even in the dark some of them would shine! "It pleases me, father," he went on, "to see nane o' them set. It pruvs naething, but maks 't jist a wheen mair likly he got them first han' like. Eh, the queer things! sae hard, an' yet 'maist bodiless! naething but skinfu's o' licht!"
"Hooever they war gotten," rejoined the laird, there can be no question but the only w'y o' cleansin' them is to put them to the best use we possibly can."
"An' what wad ye ca' the best use, father?"
"Whatever maks o' a man a neebour. A true life efter God's notion is the sairest bash to Sawtan. To gie yer siller to ither fowk to spread is to jink the wark laid oot for ye. I' the meantime hadna ye better beery yer deid again? They maun lie i' the dark, like human sowls, till they're broucht to du the deeds o' licht."
"Dinna ye think," said Cosmo, "I micht set oot the morn efter a', though on a different eeran', an' gang straucht to Mr. Burns? He'll sune put's i' the w'y to turn them til accoont. They're o' sma' avail as they lie there."