"They will never miss us!" she said to herself. "They will go on with their pantheism, or whatever it is, all the same!"
But they should not say she was one of those who talk but will not do! That scorn she could not bear!
All the time, however, the thing seemed to savour more of spell or cast of magic than philosophy: the means enjoined were suggestive of a silent incantation!
CHAPTER XIII.
GRANNY ANGRY.
It must not be supposed that all the visiting was on the part of those of the New House. The visits thence were returned by both matron and men. But somehow there was never the same freedom in the house as in the cottage. The difference did not lie in the presence of the younger girls: they were well behaved, friendly, and nowise disagreeable children. Doubtless there was something in the absence of books: it was of no use to jump up when a pa.s.sage occurred; help was not at hand. But it was more the air of the place, the presence of so many common-place things, that clogged the wheels of thought.
Neither, with all her knowledge of the world and all her sweetness, did Mrs. Palmer understand the essentials of hospitality half so well as the widow of the late minister-chief. All of them liked, and confessed that they liked the cottage best. Even Christina felt something lacking in their reception. She regretted that the house was not grand enough to show what they were accustomed to.
Mrs. Palmer seldom understood the talk, and although she sat looking persistently content, was always haunted with a dim feeling that her husband would not be hest pleased at so much intercourse between his rich daughters and those penniless country-fellows. But what could she do! the place where he had abandoned them was so dull, so solitary! the girls must not mope! Christina would wither up without amus.e.m.e.nt, and then good-bye to her beauty and all that depended upon it! In the purity of her motherhood, she more than liked the young men: happy mother she would think herself, were her daughters to marry such men as these! The relations between them and their mother delighted her: they were one! their hearts were together!
they understood each other! She could never have such bliss with her sons! Never since she gave them birth had she had one such look from either of hers as she saw pa.s.s every now and then from these to their mother! It would be like being born again to feel herself loved in that way! For any danger to the girls, she thought with a sigh how soon in London they would forget the young highlanders. Was there no possibility of securing one of them? What chance was there of Mercy"s marrying well! she was so decidedly plain! Was the idea of marrying her into an old and once powerful family like that of the Macruadh, to her husband inconceivable? Could he not restore its property as the dowry of his unprized daughter! it would be to him but a trifle!--and he could stipulate that the chief should acknowledge the baronetcy and use his t.i.tle! Mercy would then be a woman of consequence, and Peregrine would have the Bible-honour of being the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in!--Such were some of the thoughts that would come and go in the brain of the mother as she sat; nor were they without a share in her readiness to allow her daughters to go out with the young men: she had an unquestioning conviction of their safety with them.
The days went by, and what to Christina had seemed imprisonment, began to look like some sort of liberty. She had scarce come nearer to sympathy with those whose society consoled her, but their talk had ceased to sound repulsive. She was infinitely more than a well-modelled waxflower, and yet hardly a growing plant. More was needed to wake her than friends awake. It is wonderful how long the sleeping may go with the waking, and not discover any difference between them. But Grannie Nature was about to interfere.
The spring drew gently on. It would be long ere summer was summer enough to show. There seemed more of the destructive in the spring itself than of the genial--cold winds, great showers, days of steady rain, sudden a.s.saults of hail and sleet. Still it was spring, and at length, one fine day with a bright sun, snow on the hills, and clouds in the east, but no sign of any sudden change, the girls went out for a walk, and took the younger girls with them.
A little way up the valley, out of sight of the cottage, a small burn came down its own dell to join that which flowed through the chiefs farm. Its channel was wide, but except in time of rain had little water in it. About half a mile up its course it divided, or rather the channel did, for in one of its branches there was seldom any water. At the fork was a low rocky mound, with an ancient ruin of no great size-three or four fragments of thick walls, within whose plan grew a slender birch-tree. Thither went the little party, wandering up the stream: the valley was sheltered; no wind but the south could reach it; and the sun, though it could not make it very warm, as it looked only aslant on its slopes, yet lighted both sides of it. Great white clouds pa.s.sed slowly across the sky, with now and then a nearer black one threatening rain, but a wind overhead was carrying them quickly athwart.
Ian had seen the ladies pa.s.s, but made no effort to overtake them, although he was bound in the same direction: he preferred sauntering along with a book of ballads. Suddenly his attention was roused by a peculiar whistle, which he knew for that of Hector of the Stags: it was one of the few sounds he could make. Three times it was hurriedly repeated, and ere the third was over, Ian had discovered Hector high on a hill on the opposite side of the burn, waving his arms, and making eager signs to him. He stopped and set himself to understand. Hector was pointing with energy, but it was impossible to determine the exact direction: all that Ian could gather was, that his presence was wanted somewhere farther on. He resumed his walk therefore at a rapid pace, whereupon Hector pointed higher.
There on the eastern horizon, towards the north, almost down upon the hills, Ian saw a congeries of clouds in strangest commotion, such as he had never before seen in any home lat.i.tude--a ma.s.s of darkly variegated vapours manifesting a peculiar and appalling unrest. It seemed tormented by a gyrating storm, twisting and contorting it with unceasing change. Now the gray came writhing out, now the black came bulging through, now a dirty brown smeared the ashy white, and now the blue shone calmly out from eternal distances. At the season he could hardly think it a thunderstorm, and stood absorbed in the unusual phenomenon. But again, louder and more hurried, came the whistling, and again he saw Hector gesticulating, more wildly than before. Then he knew that someone must be in want of help or succour, and set off running as hard as he could: he saw Hector keeping him in sight, and watching to give him further direction: perhaps the ladies had got into some difficulty!
When he arrived at the opening of the valley just mentioned, Hector"s gesticulations made it quite plain it was up there he must go; and as soon as he entered it, he saw that the cloudy turmoil was among the hills at its head. With that he began to suspect the danger the hunter feared, and almost the same instant heard the merry voices of the children. Running yet faster, he came in sight of them on the other side of the stream,--not a moment too soon. The valley was full of a dull roaring sound. He called to them as he ran, and the children saw and came running down toward him, followed by Mercy. She was not looking much concerned, for she thought it only the grumbling of distant thunder. But Ian saw, far up the valley, what looked like a low brown wall across it, and knew what it was.
"Mercy!" he cried, "run up the side of the hill directly; you will be drowned--swept away if you do not."
She looked incredulous, and glanced up the hill-side, but carne on as if to cross the burn and join him.
"Do as I tell you," he cried, in a tone which few would have ventured to disregard, and turning darted across the channel toward her.
Mercy did not wait his coming, but took the children, each by a hand, and went a little way up the hill that immediately bordered the stream.
"Farther! farther!" cried Ian as he ran. "Where is Christina?"
"At the ruin," she answered.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Ian, and darted off, crying, "Up the hill with you! up the hill!"
Christina was standing by the birch-tree in the ruin, looking down the burn. She had heard Ian calling, and saw him running, but suspected no danger.
"Come; come directly; for G.o.d"s sake, come!" he cried. "Look up the burn!" he added, seeing her hesitate bewildered.
She turned, looked, and came running to him, down the channel, white with terror. It was too late. The charging water, whose front rank was turf, and hushes, and stones, was almost upon her. The solid matter had r.e.t.a.r.ded its rush, but it was now on the point of dividing against the rocky mound, to sweep along both sides, and turn it into an island. Ian bounded to her in the middle of the channel, caught her by the arm, and hurried her back to the mound as fast as they could run: it was the highest ground immediately accessible. As they reached it, the water broke with a roar against its rocky base, rose, swelled--and in a moment the island was covered with a brown, seething, swirling flood.
"Where"s Mercy and the children?" gasped Christina, as the water rose upon her.
"Safe, safe!" answered Ian. "We must get to the ruin!"
The water was halfway up his leg, and rising fast. Their danger was but beginning. Would the old walls, in greater part built without mortar, stand the rush? If a tree should strike them, they hardly would! If the flood came from a waterspout, it would soon be over--only how high it might first rise, who could tell! Such were his thoughts as they struggled to the ruin, and stood up at the end of a wall parallel with the current.
The water was up to Christina"s waist, and very cold. Here out of the rush, however, she recovered her breath in a measure, and showed not a little courage. Ian stood between her and the wall, and held her fast. The torrent came round the end of the wall from both sides, but the encounter and eddy of the two currents rather pushed them up against it. Without it they could not have stood.
The chief danger to Christina, however, was from the cold. With the water so high on her body, and flowing so fast, she could not long resist it! Ian, therefore, took her round the knees, and lifted her almost out of the water.
"Put your arms up," he said, "and lay hold of the wall. Don"t mind blinding me; my eyes are of little use at present. There--put your feet in my hands. Don"t be frightened; I can hold you."
"I can"t help being frightened!" she panted.
"We are in G.o.d"s arms," returned Ian. "He is holding us."
"Are you sure we shall not be drowned?" she asked.
"No; but I am sure the water cannot take us out of G.o.d"s arms."
This was not much comfort to Christina. She did not know anything about G.o.d--did not believe in him any more than most people. She knew G.o.d"s arms only as the arms of Ian--and THEY comforted her, for she FELT them!
How many of us actually believe in any support we do not immediately feel? in any arms we do not see? But every help I from G.o.d; Ian"s help was G.o.d"s help; and though to believe in Ian was not to believe in G.o.d, it was a step on the road toward believing in G.o.d. He that believeth not in the good man whom he hath seen, how shall he believe in the G.o.d whom he hath not seen?
She began to feel a little better; the ghastly choking at her heart was almost gone.
"I shall break your arms!" she said.
"You are not very heavy," he answered; "and though I am not so strong as Alister, I am stronger than most men. With the help of the wall I can hold you a long time."
How was it that, now first in danger, self came less to the front with her than usual? It was that now first she was face to face with reality. Until this moment her life had been an affair of unrealities. Her selfishness had thinned, as it were vaporized, every reality that approached her. Solidity is not enough to teach some natures reality; they must hurt themselves against the solid ere they realize its solidity. Small reality, small positivity of existence has water to a dreaming soul, half consciously gazing through half shut eyes at the soft river floating away in the moonlight: Christina was shivering in its grasp on her person, its omnipresence to her skin; its cold made her gasp and choke; the push and tug of it threatened to sweep her away like a whelmed log! It is when we are most aware of the FACt.i.tUDE of things, that we are most aware of our need of G.o.d, and most able to trust in him; when most aware of their presence, the soul finds it easiest to withdraw from them, and seek its safety with the maker of it and them. The recognition of inexorable reality in any shape, or kind, or way, tends to rouse the soul to the yet more real, to its relations with higher and deeper existence. It is not the hysterical alone for whom the great dash of cold water is good. All who dream life instead of living it, require some similar shock. Of the kind is every disappointment, every reverse, every tragedy of life. The true in even the lowest kind, is of the truth, and to be compelled to feel even that, is to be driven a trifle nearer to the truth of being, of creation, of G.o.d. Hence this sharp contact with Nature tended to make Christina less selfish: it made her forget herself so far as to care for her helper as well as herself.
It must be remembered, however, that her selfishness was not the cultivated and ingrained selfishness of a long life, but that of an uneducated, that is undeveloped nature. Her being had not degenerated by sinning against light known as light; it had not been consciously enlightened at all; it had scarcely as yet begun to grow. It was not lying dead, only unawaked. I would not be understood to imply that she was nowise to blame--but that she was by no means so much to blame as one who has but suspected the presence of a truth, and from selfishness or self-admiration has turned from it. She was to blame wherever she had not done as her conscience had feebly told her; and she had not made progress just because she had neglected the little things concerning which she had promptings. There are many who do not enter the kingdom of heaven just because they will not believe the tiny key that is handed them, fit to open its hospitable gate.
"Oh, Mr. Ian, if you should be drowned for my sake!" she faltered with white lips. "You should not have come to me!"
"I would not wish a better death," said Ian.
"How can you talk so coolly about it!" she cried.
"Well," he returned, "what better way of going out of the world is there than by the door of help? No man cares much about what the idiots of the world call life! What is it whether we live in this room or another? The same who sent us here, sends for us out of here!"
"Most men care very much! You are wrong there!"
"I don"t call those who do, men! They are only children! I know many men who would no more cleave to this life than a b.u.t.terfly would fold his wings and creep into his deserted chrysalis-case. I do care to live--tremendously, but I don"t mind where. He who made this room so well worth living in, may surely be trusted with the next!"
"I can"t quite follow you," stammered Christina. "I am sorry.
Perhaps it is the cold. I can"t feel my hands, I am so cold."