Donal Grant by George MacDonald (best way to read ebooks .TXT) 📕

Brookes, having prepared a heavy basket of good things for Eppy to carry home to her grandmother, and made it the heavier for the sake of punishing her with the weight of it, set out with her, saying to herself,

"The jaud wants a wheen harder wark nor I hae hauden till her han', an' doobtless it's preparin' for her!"

She was kindly received, without a word of reproach, by her grandmother; the sufferer, forgetful of, or forgiving her words of rejection in the garden, smiled when she came near his bedside; and she turned away to conceal the tears she could not repress. She loved her grand-parents, and she loved the young lord, and she could not get the two loves to dwell together peaceably in her mind-a common difficulty with our weak, easily divided, hardly united natures-frangible, friable, readily distorted! It needs no less than God himself, not only to unite us to one another, but to make a whole of the ill-fitting, roughly disjointed portions of our individual beings. Tearfully but diligently she set about her duties; and not only the heart, but the limbs and joints of her grandmother were relieved by her presence; while doubtless she herself found some refuge from anxious thought in the service she rendered. What she saw as her probable future, I cannot say; one hour her confidence in her lover's faithfulness would be complete, the next it would be dashed with huge blots of uncertainty; but her grandmother rejoiced over her as out of harm's way.


CHAPTER XXXVII.

LORD FORGUE AND LADY ARCTURA.

At the castle things fell into their old routine. Nothing had been arranged between lord Forgue and Eppy, and he seemed content that it should be so. Mrs. Brookes told him that she had gone home: he made neither remark nor inquiry, manifesting no interest.

It would be well his father should not see it necessary to push things farther! He did not want to turn out of the castle! Without means, what was he to do? The marriage could not be to-day or to-morrow! and in the meantime he could see Eppy, perhaps more easily than at the castle! He would contrive! He was sorry he had hurt the old fellow, but he could not help it! he would get in the way! Things would have been much worse if he had not got first to his father! He would wait a bit, and see what would turn up! For the tutor-fellow, he must not quarrel with him downright! No good would come of that! In the end he would have his way! and that in spite of them all!

But what he really wanted he did not know. He only knew, or imagined, that he was over head and ears in love with the girl: what was to come of it was all in the clouds. He had said he meant to marry her; but to that statement he had been driven, more than he knew, by the desire to escape the contempt of the tutor he scorned; and he rejoiced that he had at least discomfited him. He knew that if he did marry Eppy, or any one else of whom his father did not approve, he had nothing to look for but absolute poverty, for he knew no way to earn money; he was therefore unprepared to defy him immediately-whatever he might do by and by. He said to himself sometimes that he was as willing as any man to work for his wife if only he knew how; but when he said so, had he always a clear vision of Eppy as the wife in prospect? Alas, it would take years to make him able to earn even a woman's wages! It would be a fine thing for a lord to labour like a common man for the support of a child of the people for whom he had sacrificed everything; but where was the possibility? When thoughts like these grew too many for him, Forgue wished he had never seen the girl. His heart would immediately reproach him; immediately he would comfort his conscience with the reflection that to wish he had never seen her was a very different thing from wishing to act as if he had. He loafed about in her neighbourhood as much as he dared, haunted the house itself in the twilight, and at night even ventured sometimes to creep up the stair, but for some time he never even saw her: for days Eppy never went out of doors except into the garden.

Though she had not spoken of it, Arctura had had more than a suspicion that something was going on between her cousin and the pretty maid; for the little window of her sitting room partially overlooked a certain retired spot favoured of the lovers; and after Eppy left the house, Davie, though he did not associate the facts, noted that she was more cheerful than before. But there was no enlargement of intercourse between her and Forgue. They knew it was the wish of the head of the house that they should marry, but the earl had been wise enough to say nothing openly to either of them: he believed the thing would have a better chance on its own merits; and as yet they had shown no sign of drawing to each other. It might, perhaps, have been otherwise on his part had not the young lord been taken with the pretty housemaid, though at first he had thought of nothing more than a little passing flirtation, reckoning his advantage with her by the height on which he stood in his own regard; but it was from no jealousy that Arctura was relieved by the departure of Eppy. She had never seen anything attractive in her cousin, and her religious impressions would have been enough to protect her from any drawing to him: had they not poisoned in her even the virtue of common house-friendliness toward a very different man? The sense of relief she had when Eppy went, lay in being delivered from the presence of something clandestine, with which she could not interfere so far as to confess knowledge of it. It had rendered her uneasy; she had felt shy and uncomfortable. Once or twice she had been on the point of saying to Mrs. Brookes that she thought her cousin and Eppy very oddly familiar, but had failed of courage. It was no wonder therefore that she should be more cheerful.


CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ARCTURA AND SOPHIA.

About this time her friend, Miss Carmichael, returned from a rather lengthened visit. But after the atonement that had taken place between her and Donal, it was with some anxiety that lady Arctura looked forward to seeing her. She shrank from telling her what had come about through the wonderful poem, as she thought it, which had so bewitched her. She shrank too from showing her the verses: they were not of a kind, she was sure, to meet with recognition from her. She knew she would make game of them, and that not good-humouredly like Kate, who yet confessed to some beauty in them. For herself, the poem and the study of its growth had ministered so much nourishment to certain healthy poetic seeds lying hard and dry in her bosom, that they had begun to sprout, indeed to shoot rapidly up. Donal's poem could not fail therefore to be to her thenceforward something sacred. A related result also was that it had made her aware of something very defective in her friend's constitution: she did not know whether in her constitution mental, moral, or spiritual: probably it was in all three. Doubtless, thought Arctura, she knew most things better than she, and certainly had a great deal more common sense; but, on the other hand, was she not satisfied with far less than she could be satisfied with? To believe as her friend believed would not save her from insanity! She must be made on a smaller scale of necessities than herself! How was she able to love the God she said she believed in? God should at least be as beautiful as his creature could imagine him! But Miss Carmichael would say her poor earthly imagination was not to occupy itself with such a high subject! Oh, why would not God tell her something about himself-something direct-straight from himself? Why should she only hear of him at second hand-always and always?

Alas, poor girl! second hand? Five hundredth hand rather? And she might have been all the time communing with the very God himself, manifest in his own shape, which is ours also!-all the time learning that her imagination could never-not to say originate, but, when presented, receive into it the unspeakable excess of his loveliness, of his absolute devotion and tenderness to the creatures, the children of his father!

In the absence of Miss Carmichael she had thought with less oppression of many things that in her presence appeared ghastly-hopeless; now in the prospect of her reappearance she began to feel wicked in daring a thought of her own concerning the God that was nearer to her than her thoughts! Such an unhealthy mastery had she gained over her! What if they met Donal, and she saw her smile to him as she always did now! One thing she was determined upon-and herein lay the pledge of her coming freedom!-that she would not behave to him in the least otherwise than her wont. If she would be worthy, she must be straightforward!

Donal and she had never had any further talk, much as she would have liked it, upon things poetic. As a matter of supposed duty-where she had got the idea I do not know-certainly not from Miss Carmichael, seeing she approved of little poetry but that of Young, Cowper, Pollok, and James Montgomery-she had been reading the Paradise Lost, and wished much to speak of it to Donal, but had not the courage.

When Miss Carmichael came, she at once perceived a difference in her, and it set her thinking. She was not one to do or say anything without thinking over it first. She had such a thorough confidence in her judgment, and such a pleasure in exercising it, that she almost always rejected an impulse. Judgment was on the throne; feeling under the footstool. There was something in Arctura's carriage which reminded her of the only time when she had stood upon her rank with her. This was once she made a remark disparaging a favourite dog: for the animals Arctura could brave even her spiritual nightmare: they were not under the wrath and curse like men and women, therefore might be defended! She had on that occasion shown so much offence that Miss Carmichael saw, if she was to keep her influence over her, she must avoid rousing the phantom of rank in defence of prejudice. She was now therefore careful-said next to nothing, but watched her keenly, and not the less slyly that she looked her straight in the face. There is an effort to see into the soul of others that is essentially treacherous; wherever, friendship being the ostensible bond, inquiry outruns regard, it is treachery-an endeavour to grasp more than the friend would knowingly give.

They went for a little walk in the grounds; as they returned they met Donal going out with Davie. Arctura and Donal passed with a bow and a friendly smile; Davie stopped and spoke to the ladies, then bounded after his friend.

"Have you attended the scripture-lesson regularly?" asked Miss Carmichael.

"Yes; I have been absent only once, I think, since you left," replied Arctura.

"Good, my dear! You have not been leaving your lamb to the wolf!"

"I begin to doubt if he