The Flight Of The Shadow by George MacDonald (reading e books txt) 📖

better or the worse man if it did not, uncle?" I asked.

"You must not get me into a metaphysical discussion, little one," he answered. "We have something more important on our hands. I want you to note that, when a person is happy, he may look lovable; whereas, things going as he does not like, another, and very unfinished phase of his character may appear."

"Surely everybody must know that, uncle!"

"Then you can hardly expect me to be confident that your new friend would appear as lovable if he were unhappy!"

"I have seen you, uncle, look as if nothing would ever make you smile again; but I knew you loved me all the time."

"Did you, my darling? Then you were right. I dare not require of any man that he should be as good-tempered in trouble as out of it-though he must come to that at last; but a man must be just , whatever mood he is in."

"That is what I always knew you to be, uncle! I never waited for a change in your looks, to tell you anything I wanted to tell you.-I know you, uncle!" I added, with a glow of still triumph.

"Thank you, little one!" he returned, half playfully, yet gravely. "All I want to say comes to this," he resumed after a pause, "that when a man is in love, you see only the best of him, or something better than he really is. Much good may be in a man, for God made him, and the man yet not be good, for he has done nothing, since his making, to make himself. Before you can say you know a man, you must have seen him in a few at least of his opposite moods. Therefore you cannot wonder that I should desire a fuller assurance of this young man, than your testimony, founded on an acquaintance of three or four days, can give me."

"Let me tell you, then, something that happened to-day," I answered. "When first I asked him to come with me this morning, it was a temptation to him of course, not knowing when we might see each other again; but he hadn't his own horse, and said it would be an impertinence to ride yours."

"I hope you did not come alone!"

"Oh, no. I had set out with Dick, but John came after all."

"Then his refusal to ride my horse does not come to much. It is a small thing to have good impulses, if temptation is too much for them."

"But I haven't done telling you, uncle!"

"I am hasty, little one. I beg your pardon."

"I have to tell you what made him give in to riding your horse. I confessed I was a little anxious lest Death, who had not been exercised for some days, should be too much for Dick. John said then he thought he might venture, for you had once spoken very kindly to him of the way he handled his own horse."

"Oh, that's the young fellow, is it!" cried my uncle, in a tone that could not be taken for other than one of pleasure. "That's the fellow, is it?" he repeated. "H'm!"

"I hope you liked the look of him, uncle!" I said.

"The boy is a gentleman anyhow!" he answered.-"You may think whether I was pleased!-I never saw man carry himself better horseward!" he added with a smile.

"Then you won't object to his riding Death home again?"

"Not in the least!" he replied. "The man can ride."

"And may I go with him?-that is, if you do not want me!-I wish I could stay with you!"

"Rather than ride home with him?"

"Yes, indeed, if it were to be of use to you!"

"The only way you can be of use to me, is to ride home with Mr. Day, and not see him again until I have had a little talk with him. Tyranny may be a sense of duty, you know, little one!"

"Tyranny, uncle!" I cried, as I laid my cheek to his hand, which was very cold. "You could not make me think you a tyrant!"

"I should not like you to think me one, darling! Still less would I like to deserve it, whether you thought me one or not! But I could not be a tyrant to you if I would. You may defy me when you please."

"That would be to poison my own soul!" I answered.

"You must understand," he continued, "that I have no authority over you. If you were going to marry Mr. Day to-morrow, I should have no right to interfere. I am but a make-shift father to you, not a legal guardian."

"Don't cast me off, uncle!" I cried. "You know I belong to you as much as if you were my very own father! I am sure my father will say so when we see him. He will never come between you and me."

He gave a great sigh, and his face grew so intense that I felt as if I had no right to look on it.

"It is one of the deepest hopes of my existence," he said, "to give you back to him the best of daughters. Be good, my darling, be good, even if you die of sorrow because of it."

The intensity had faded to a deep sadness, and there came a silence.

"Would you like me to go now, uncle?" I asked.

"I wish I could see Mr. Day at once," he returned, "but I am so far from strong, that I fear both weakness and injustice. Tell him I want very much to see him, and will let him know as soon as I am able."

"Thank you, uncle! He will be so glad! Of course he can't feel as I do, but he does feel that to do anything you did not like, would be just horrid."

"And you will not see him again, little one, after he has taken you home, till I have had some talk with him?"

"Of course I will not, uncle."

I bade him good-bye, had a few moments' conference with Martha, and found John at the place appointed.


CHAPTER XVIII.


JOHN SEES SOMETHING.

As we rode, I told him everything. It did not seem in the least strange that I should be so close to one of whom a few days before I had never heard; it seemed as if all my life I had been waiting for him, and now he was come, and everything was only as it should be! We were very quiet in our gladness. Some slight anxiety about my uncle's decision, and the certain foreboding of trouble on the part of his mother, stilled us both, sending the delight of having found each other a little deeper and out of the way of the practical and reasoning.

We did not urge our horses to their speed, but I felt that, for my uncle's sake, I must not prolong the journey, forcing the last farthing of bliss from his generosity, while yet he was uncertain of his duty. The moon was rising just as we reached my home, and I was glad: John would have to walk miles to reach his, for he absolutely refused to take Death on, saying he did not know what might happen to him. As we stopped at the gate I bethought myself that neither of us had eaten since we left in the afternoon. I dismounted, and leaving him with the horses, got what I could find for him, and then roused Dick, who was asleep. John confessed that, now I had made him think of it, he was hungry enough to eat anything less than an ox. We parted merrily, but when next we met, each confessed it had not been without a presentiment of impending danger. For my part, notwithstanding the position I had presumed to take with John when first he spoke of his mother, I was now as distrustful as he, and more afraid of her.

Much the nearest way between the two houses lay across the heath. John walked along, eating the supper I had given him, and now and then casting a glance round the horizon. He had got about half-way, when, looking up, he thought he saw, dim in the ghosty light of the moon, a speck upon the track before him. He said to himself it could hardly be any one on the moor at such a time of the night, and went on with his supper. Looking up again after an interval, he saw that the object was much larger, but hardly less vague, because of a light fog which had in the meantime risen. By and by, however, as they drew nearer to each other, a strange thrill of recognition went through him: on the way before him, which was little better than a footpath, and slowly approaching, came what certainly could be neither the horse that had carried him that day, nor his double, but what was so like him in colour, size, and bone, while so unlike him in muscle and bearing, that he might have been he, worn but for his skin to a skeleton. Straight down upon John he came, spectral through the fog, as if he were asleep, and saw nothing in his way. John stepped aside to let him pass, and then first looked in the face of his rider: with a shock of fear that struck him in the middle of the body, making him gasp and choke, he saw before him-so plainly that, but for the impossibility, he could have sworn to him in any court of justice-the man whom he knew to be at that moment confined to his bed, twenty miles away, with a broken arm. Sole other human being within sight or sound in that still moonlight, on that desolate moor, the horseman never lifted his head, never raised his eyes to look at him. John stood stunned. He hardly doubted he saw an apparition. When at length he roused himself, and looked in the direction in which it went, it had all but vanished in the thickening white mist.

He found the rest of his way home almost mechanically, and went straight to bed, but for a long time could not sleep.

For what might not the apparition portend? Mr. Whichcote lay hurt by a fall from his horse, and he had met his very image on the back of just such a horse, only turned to a skeleton! Was he bearing him away to the tomb?

Then he remembered that the horse's name was Death.


CHAPTER XIX.


JOHN IS TAKEN ILL.

In the middle of the night he woke with a start, ill enough to feel that he was going to be worse. His head throbbed; the room seemed turning round with him, and when it settled, he saw strange shapes in it. A few rays of the sinking moon had got in between the curtains of one of the windows, and had waked up everything! The furniture looked odd-unpleasantly odd. Something unnatural, or at least unearthly, must be near him! The room was an old-fashioned one, in thorough keeping with the age of the house-the very haunt for a ghost, but he had heard of no ghost in that room! He got up to get himself some water, and drew the curtains aside. He could have been in no thraldom to an apprehensive imagination; for what man, with a brooding terror couched in him,