CHAPTER XLIV.
HIGH AND LOW.
When lord Morven heard of his son"s return, he sent for Donal, received him in a friendly way, gave him to understand that, however he might fail to fall in with his views, he depended thoroughly on his honesty, and begged he would keep him informed of his son"s proceedings.
Donal replied that, while he fully acknowledged his lordship"s right to know what his son was doing, he could not take the office of a spy.
"But I will warn lord Forgue," he concluded, "that I may see it right to let his father know what he is about. I fancy, however, he understands as much already."
"Pooh! that would be only to teach him cunning," said the earl.
"I can do nothing underhand," replied Donal. "I will help no man to keep an unrighteous secret, but neither will I secretly disclose it."
Meeting him a few days after, Forgue would have pa.s.sed him without recognition, but Donal stopped him, and said--
"I believe, my lord, you have seen Eppy since your return."
"What the deuce is that to you?"
"I wish your lordship to understand that whatever comes to my knowledge concerning your proceedings in regard to her, I will report to your father if I see fit."
"The warning is unnecessary. Few informers, however, would have given me the advantage, and I thank you: so far I am indebted to you. None the less the shame of the informer remains!"
"Your lordship"s judgment of me is no more to me than that of yon rook up there."
"You doubt my honour?" said Forgue with a sneer.
"I do. I doubt you. You do not know yourself. Time will show. For G.o.d"s sake, my lord, look to yourself! You are in terrible danger."
"I would rather do wrong for love than right for fear. I scorn such threats."
"Threats, my lord!" echoed Donal. "Is it a threat to warn you that your very consciousness may become a curse to you? that to know yourself may be your h.e.l.l? that you may come to make it your first care to forget what you are? Do you know what Shakspere says of Tarquin--
Besides, his soul"s fair temple is defaced; To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, To ask the spotted princess how she fares--?"
"Oh, hang your preaching!" cried Forgue, and turned away.
"My lord," said Donal, "if you will not hear me, there are preachers you must."
"They will not be quite so long-winded then!" Forgue answered.
"You are right," said Donal; "they will not."
All Forgue"s thoughts were now occupied with the question how with least danger Eppy and he were to meet. He did not contemplate treachery. At this time of his life he could not have respected himself, little as was required for that, had he been consciously treacherous; but no man who in love yet loves himself more, is safe from becoming a traitor: potentially he is one already. Treachery to him who is guilty of it seems only natural self-preservation; the man who can do a vile thing is incapable of seeing it as it is; and that ought to make us doubtful of our judgments of ourselves, especially defensive judgments. Forgue did not suspect himself--not although he knew that his pa.s.sion had but just regained a lost energy, revived at the idea of another man having the girl! It did not shame him that he had begun to forget her, or that he had been so roused to fresh desire.
If he had stayed away six months, he would practically have forgotten her altogether. Some may think that, if he had devotion enough to surmount the vulgarities of her position and manners and ways of thought, his love could hardly be such as to yield so soon; but Eppy was not in herself vulgar. Many of even humbler education than she are far less really vulgar than some in the forefront of society. No doubt the conventionalities of a man like Forgue must have been sometimes shocked in familiar intercourse with one like Eppy; but while he was merely flirting with her, the very things that shocked would also amuse him--for I need hardly say he was not genuinely refined; and by and by the growing pa.s.sion obscured them. There is no doubt that, had she been confronted as his wife with the common people of society, he would have become aware of many things as vulgarities which were only simplicities; but in the meantime she was no more vulgar to him than a lamb or a baby is vulgar, however unfit either for a Belgravian drawing-room. Vulgar, at the same time, he would have thought and felt her, but for the love that made him do her justice. Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes. But men who, having seen, become blind again, think they have had their eyes finally opened.
For some time there was no change in Eppy"s behaviour but that she was not tearful as before. She continued diligent, never grumbled at the hardest work, and seemed desirous of making up for remissness in the past, when in truth she was trying to make up for something else in the present: she would atone for what she would not tell, by doing immediate duty with the greater devotion. But by and by she began occasionally to show, both in manner and countenance, a little of the old pertness, mingled with uneasiness. The phenomenon, however, was so intermittent and unp.r.o.nounced, as to be manifest only to eyes familiar with her looks and ways: to Donal it was clear that the relation between her and Forgue was resumed. Yet she never went out in the evening except sent by her grandmother, and then she always came home even with haste--anxious, it might have seemed, to avoid suspicion.
It was the custom with Donal and Davie to go often into the fields and woods in the fine weather--they called this their observation cla.s.s--to learn what they might of the mult.i.tudinous goings on in this or that of Nature"s workshops: there each for himself and the other exercised his individual powers of seeing and noting and putting together. Donal knew little of woodland matters, having been chiefly accustomed to meadows and bare hill-sides; yet in the woods he was the keener of the two to observe, and could the better teach that he was but a better learner.
One day, as they were walking together under the thin shade of a fir-thicket, Davie said, with a sudden change of subject--
"I wonder if we shall meet Forgue to-day! he gets up early now, and goes out. It is neither to fish nor shoot, for he doesn"t take his rod or gun; he must be watching or looking for something!--Shouldn"t you say so, Mr. Grant?"
This set Donal thinking. Eppy was never out at night, or only for a few minutes; and Forgue went out early in the morning! But if Eppy would meet him, how could he or anyone help it?
CHAPTER XLV.
A LAST ENCOUNTER.
Now for a while, Donal seldom saw lady Arctura, and when he did, received from her no encouragement to address her. The troubled look had reappeared on her face. In her smile, as they pa.s.sed in hall or corridor, glimmered an expression almost pathetic--something like an appeal, as if she stood in sore need of his help, but dared not ask for it. She was again much in the company of Miss Carmichael, and Donal had good cause to fear that the pharisaism of her would-be directress was coming down upon her spirit, not like rain on the mown gra.s.s, but like frost on the spring flowers. The impossibility of piercing the Christian pharisee holding the traditions of the elders, in any vital part--so pachydermatous is he to any spiritual argument--is a sore trial to the old Adam still unslain in lovers of the truth. At the same time nothing gives patience better opportunity for her perfect work.
And it is well they cannot be reached by argument and so persuaded; they would but enter the circles of the faithful to work fresh schisms and breed fresh imposthumes.
But Donal had begun to think that he had been too forbearing towards the hideous doctrines advocated by Miss Carmichael. It is one thing where evil doctrines are quietly held, and the truth a.s.sociated with them a.s.similated by good people doing their best with what has been taught them, and quite another thing where they are forced upon some shrinking nature, weak to resist through the very reverence which is its excellence. The finer nature, from inability to think another of less pure intent than itself, is often at a great disadvantage in the hands of the coa.r.s.er. He made up his mind that, risk as it was to enter into disputations with a worshipper of the letter, inasmuch as for argument the letter is immeasurably more available than the spirit--for while the spirit lies in the letter unperceived, it has no force, and the letter-worshipper is incapable of seeing that G.o.d could not possibly mean what he makes of it--notwithstanding the risk, he resolved to hold himself ready, and if anything was given him, to cry it out and not spare. Nor had he long resolved ere the opportunity came.
It had come to be known that Donal frequented the old avenue, and it was with intent, in the pride of her acquaintance with scripture, and her power to use it, that Miss Carmichael one afternoon led her unwilling, rather recusant, and very unhappy disciple thither: she sought an encounter with him: his insolence towards the old-established faith must be confounded, his obnoxious influence on Arctura frustrated! It was a bright autumnal day. The trees were sorely bereaved, but some foliage yet hung in thin yellow clouds upon their patient boughs. There was plenty of what Davie called scushlin, that is the noise of walking with scarce lifted feet amongst the thick-lying withered leaves. But less foliage means more sunlight.
Donal was sauntering along, his book in his hand, now and then reading a little, now and then looking up to the half-bared branches, now and then, like Davie, sweeping a cloud of the fallen mult.i.tude before him.
He was in this childish act when, looking up, he saw the two ladies approaching; he did not see the peculiar glance Miss Carmichael threw her companion: "Behold your prophet!" it said. He would have pa.s.sed with lifted bonnet, but Miss Carmichael stopped, smiling: her smile was bright because it showed her good teeth, but was not pleasant because it showed nothing else.
"Glorying over the fallen, Mr. Grant?" she said.
Donal in his turn smiled.
"That is not Mr. Grant"s way," said Arctura, "--so far at least as I have known him!"
"How careless the trees are of their poor children!" said Miss Carmichael, affecting sympathy for the leaves.
"Pardon me," said Donal, "if I grudge them your pity: there is nothing more of children in those leaves than there is in the hair that falls on the barber"s floor."
"It is not very gracious to pull a lady up so sharply!" returned Miss Carmichael, still smiling: "I spoke poetically."
"There is no poetry in what is not true," rejoined Donal. "Those are not the children of the tree."
"Of course," said Miss Carmichael, a little surprised to find their foils crossed already, "a tree has no children! but--"
"A tree no children!" exclaimed Donal. "What then are all those beech-nuts under the leaves? Are they not the children of the tree?"
"Yes; and lost like the leaves!" sighed Miss Carmichael.
"Why do you say they are lost? They must fulfil the end for which they were made, and if so, they cannot be lost."
"For what end were they made?"
"I do not know. If they all grew up, they would be a good deal in the way."