"Get on! Where?" asked Ian with a smile.
"Come now! You ain"t such fools as you want to look! A man must make a place for himself somehow in the world!"
He rose, and they walked in the direction of the cottage.
"There is a better thing than that," said Ian!
"What?"
"To get clean out of it."
"What! cut your throats?"
"I meant that to get out of the world clean was better than to get on in it."
"I don"t understand you. I don"t choose to think the man that thrashed me a downright idiot!" growled Sercombe.
"What you call getting on," rejoined Ian, "we count not worth a thought. Look at our clan! it is a type of the world itself.
Everything is pa.s.sing away. We believe in the kingdom of heaven."
"Come, come! fellows like you must know well enough that"s all bosh!
n.o.body nowadays--n.o.body with any brains--believes such rot!"
"We believe in Jesus Christ," said Ian, "and are determined to do what he will have us do, and take our orders from n.o.body else."
"I don"t understand you!"
"I know you don"t. You cannot until you set about changing your whole way of life."
"Oh, be d.a.m.ned! what an idea! a sneaking, impossible idea!"
"As to its being an impossible idea, we hold it, and live by it. How absurd it must seem to you, I know perfectly. But we don"t live in your world, and you do not even see the lights of ours."
""There is a world beyond the stars"!--Well, there may be; I know nothing about it; I only know there is one on this side of them,--a very decent sort of world too! I mean to make the best of it."
"And have not begun yet!"
"Indeed I have! I deny myself nothing. I live as I was made to live."
"If you were not made to obey your conscience or despise yourself, you are differently made from us, and no communication is possible between us. We must wait until what differences a man from a beast make its appearance in you."
"You are polite!"
"You have spoken of us as you think; now we speak of you as we think. Taking your representation of yourself, you are in the condition of the lower animals, for you claim inclination as the law of your life."
"My beast is better than your man!"
"You mean you get more of the good of life!"
"Right! I do."
The brothers exchanged a look and smile.
"But suppose," resumed Ian, "the man we have found in us should one day wake up in you! Suppose he should say, "Why did you make a beast of me?"! It will not be easy for you to answer him!"
"That"s all moonshine! Things are as you take them."
"So said Lady Macbeth till she took to walking in her sleep, and couldn"t get rid of the smell of the blood!"
Sercombe said no more. He was silent with disgust at the nonsense of it all.
They reached the door of the cottage. Alister invited him to walk in. He drew back, and would have excused himself.
"You had better lie down a while," said Alister.
"You shall come to my room," said Ian. "We shall meet n.o.body."
Sercombe yielded, for he felt queer. He threw himself on Ian"s bed, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.
When he woke, he had a cup of tea, and went away little the worse.
The laird could not show himself for several days.
After this Annie had no further molestation. But indeed the young men"s time was almost up--which was quite as well, for Annie of the shop, after turning a corner of the road, had climbed the hill-side, and seen all that pa.s.sed. The young ladies, hearing contradictory statements, called upon Annie to learn the truth, and the intercourse with her that followed was not without influence on them. Through Annie they saw further into the character of the brothers, who, if they advocated things too fine for the world the girls had hitherto known, DID things also of which it would by no means have approved. They valued that world and its judgment not a straw!
CHAPTER XI.
A LESSON.
All the gentlemen at the New House left it together, and its ladies were once more abandoned to the society of Nature, who said little to any of them. For, though she recognized her grandchildren, and did what she could for them, it was now time they should make some move towards acquaintance with her. A point comes when she must stand upon her dignity, for it is great. If you would hear her wonderful tales, or see her marvellous treasures, you must not trifle with her; you must not talk as if you could rummage her drawers and cabinets as you pleased. You must believe in her; you must reverence her; else, although she is everywhere about the house, you may not meet her from the beginning of one year to the end of another.
To allude to any aspect of nature in the presence of the girls was to threaten to bore them; and I heartily confess to being bored myself with common talk about scenery; but these ladies appeared unaware of the least expression on the face of their grand-mother.
Doubtless they received some good from the aspect of things--that they could not help; there Grannie"s hidden, and therefore irresistible power was in operation; but the moment they had their thoughts directed to the world around them, they began to gape inwardly. Even the trumpet and shawm of her winds, the stately march of her clouds, and the torrent-rush of her waters, were to them poor facts, no vaguest embodiment of truths eternal. It was small wonder then that verse of any worth should be to them but sounding bra.s.s and clanging cymbals. What they called society, its ways and judgments, its decrees and condemnations, its fashions and pomps and shows, false, unjust, ugly, was nearly all they cared for. The truth of things, without care for which man or woman is the merest puppet, had hitherto been nothing to them. To talk of Nature was sentimental. To talk of G.o.d was both irreverent and ill-bred.
Wordsworth was an old woman; St. Paul an evangelical churchman. They saw no feature of any truth, but, like all unthinkers, wrapped the words of it in their own foolishness, and then sneered at them. They were too much of ladies, however, to do it disagreeably; they only smiled at the foolish neighbour who believed things they were too sensible to believe. It must, however, be said for them, that they had not yet refused anything worth believing--as presented to them.
They had not yet actually looked upon any truth and refused it. They were indeed not yet true enough in themselves to suspect the presence of either a truth or a falsehood.
A thaw came, and the ways were bad, and they found the time hang yet heavier on their unaided hands. An intercourse by degrees established itself between Mrs. Macruadh and the well-meaning, handsome, smiling Mrs. Palmer, and rendered it natural for the girls to go rather frequently to the cottage. They made themselves agreeable to the mother, and subject to the law of her presence showed to better advantage.
With their love of literature, it was natural also that the young men should at such times not only talk about books, but occasionally read for their entertainment from some favourite one; so that now, for the first time in their lives, the young ladies were brought under direct teaching of a worthy sort--they had had but a mockery of it at school and church--and a little light began to soak through their unseeking eyes. Among many others, however, less manifest, one obstruction to their progress lay in the fact that Christina, whose perceptions in some directions was quick enough, would always make a dart at the comical side of anything that could be comically turned, so disturbing upon occasion the whole spiritual atmosphere about some delicate epiphany: this to both Alister and Ian was unbearable. She offended chiefly in respect of Wordsworth--who had not humour enough always to perceive what seriously meant expression might suggest a ludicrous idea.
One time, reading from the Excursion, Ian came to the verse--not to be found, I think, in later editions--
"Perhaps it is not he but some one else":--
"Awful idea!" exclaimed Christina, with sepulchral tone; "--"some one else!" Think of it! It makes me shudder! Who might it not have been!"