Donal Grant by George MacDonald (sight word readers txt) 📖

One moment you take one side and the next the other!"

"No, no; I but love my own side too well to let any traitors into its ranks: I would have nothing to do with lies."

"They are all lies together!"

"Then I want to hear this one," said Donal.

"I daresay you have heard it before!" remarked Mr. Graeme, and began.

"It was in the earldom of a certain recklessly wicked wretch, who not only robbed his poor neighbours, and even killed them when they opposed him, but went so far as to behave as wickedly on the Sabbath as on any other day of the week. Late one Saturday night, a company were seated in the castle, playing cards, and drinking; and all the time Sunday was drawing nearer and nearer, and nobody heeding. At length one of them, seeing the hands of the clock at a quarter to twelve, made the remark that it was time to stop. He did not mention the sacred day, but all knew what he meant. The earl laughed, and said, if he was afraid of the kirk-session, he might go, and another would take his hand. But the man sat still, and said no more till the clock gave the warning. Then he spoke again, and said the day was almost out, and they ought not to go on playing into the Sabbath. And as he uttered the word, his mouth was pulled all on one side. But the earl struck his fist on the table, and swore a great oath that if any man rose he would run him through. 'What care I for the Sabbath!' he said. 'I gave you your chance to go,' he added, turning to the man who had spoken, who was dressed in black like a minister, 'and you would not take it: now you shall sit where you are.' He glared fiercely at him, and the man returned him an equally fiery stare. And now first they began to discover what, through the fumes of the whisky and the smoke of the pine-torches, they had not observed, namely, that none of them knew the man, or had ever seen him before. They looked at him, and could not turn their eyes from him, and a cold terror began to creep through their vitals. He kept his fierce scornful look fixed on the earl for a moment, and then spoke. 'And I gave you your chance,' he said, 'and you would not take it: now you shall sit still where you are, and no Sabbath shall you ever see.' The clock began to strike, and the man's mouth came straight again. But when the hammer had struck eleven times, it struck no more, and the clock stopped. 'This day twelvemonth,' said the man, 'you shall see me again; and so every year till your time is up. I hope you will enjoy your game!' The earl would have sprung to his feet, but could not stir, and the man was nowhere to be seen. He was gone, taking with him both door and windows of the room-not as Samson carried off the gates of Gaza, however, for he left not the least sign of where they had been. >From that day to this no one has been able to find the room. There the wicked earl and his companions still sit, playing with the same pack of cards, and waiting their doom. It has been said that, on that same day of the year-only, unfortunately, testimony differs as to the day-shouts of drunken laughter may be heard issuing from somewhere in the castle; but as to the direction whence they come, none can ever agree. That is the story."

"A very good one!" said Donal. "I wonder what the ground of it is! It must have had its beginning!"

"Then you don't believe it?" said Miss Graeme.

"Not quite," he replied. "But I have myself had a strange experience up there."

"What! you have seen something?" cried Miss Graeme, her eyes growing bigger.

"No; I have seen nothing," answered Donal, "-only heard something.-One night, the first I was there indeed, I heard the sound of a far-off musical instrument, faint and sweet."

The brother and sister exchanged looks. Donal went on.

"I got up and felt my way down the winding stair-I sleep at the top of Baliol's tower-but at the bottom lost myself, and had to sit down and wait for the light. Then I heard it again, but seemed no nearer to it than before. I have never heard it since, and have never mentioned the thing. I presume, however, that speaking of it to you can do no harm. You at least will not raise any fresh rumours to injure the respectability of the castle! Do you think there is any instrument in it from which such a sound might have proceeded? Lady Arctura is a musician, I am told, but surely was not likely to be at her piano 'in the dead waste and middle of the night'!"

"It is impossible to say how far a sound may travel in the stillness of the night, when there are no other sound-waves to cross and break it."

"That is all very well, Hector," said his sister; "but you know Mr. Grant is neither the first nor the second that has heard that sound!"

"One thing is pretty clear," said her brother, "it can have nothing to do with the revellers at their cards! The sound reported is very different from any attributed to them!"

"Are you sure," suggested Donal, "that there was not a violin shut up with them? Even if none of them could play, there has been time enough to learn. The sound I heard might have been that of a ghostly violin. Though like that of a stringed instrument, it was different from anything I had ever heard before-except perhaps certain equally inexplicable sounds occasionally heard among the hills."

They went on talking about the thing for a while, pacing up and down the garden, the sun hot above their heads, the grass cool under their feet.

"It is enough," said Miss Graeme, with a rather forced laugh, "to make one glad the castle does not go with the title."

"Why so?" asked Donal.

"Because," she answered, "were anything to happen to the boys up there, Hector would come in for the title."

"I'm not of my sister's mind!" said Mr. Graeme, laughing more genuinely. "A title with nothing to keep it up is a simple misfortune. I certainly should not take out the patent. No wise man would lay claim to a title without the means to make it respected."

"Have we come to that!" exclaimed Donal. "Must even the old titles of the country be buttressed into respectability with money? Away in quiet places, reading old history books, we peasants are accustomed to think differently. If some millionaire money-lender were to buy the old keep of Arundel castle, you would respect him just as much as the present earl!"

"I would not," said Mr. Graeme. "I confess you have the better of me.-But is there not a fallacy in your argument?" he added, thinkingly.

"I believe not. If the title is worth nothing without the money, the money must be more than the title!-If I were Lazarus," Donal went on, "and the inheritor of a title, I would use it, if only for a lesson to Dives up stairs. I scorn to think that honour should wait on the heels of wealth. You may think it is because I am and always shall be a poor man; but if I know myself it is not therefore. At the same time a title is but a trifle; and if you had given any other reason for not using it than homage to Mammon, I should have said nothing."

"For my part," said Miss Graeme, "I have no quarrel with riches except that they do not come my way. I should know how to use and not abuse them!"

Donal made no other reply than to turn a look of divinely stupid surprise and pity upon the young woman. It was of no use to say anything! Were argument absolutely triumphant, Mammon would sit just where he was before! He had marked the great indifference of the Lord to the convincing of the understanding: when men knew the thing itself, then and not before would they understand its relations and reasons!

If truth belongs to the human soul, then the soul is able to see it and know it: if it do the truth, it takes therein the first possible, and almost the last necessary step towards understanding it.

Miss Graeme caught his look, and must have perceived its expression, for her face flushed a more than rosy red, and the conversation grew crumbly.

It was a half-holiday, and he stayed to tea, and after it went over the arm-buildings with Mr. Graeme, revealing such a practical knowledge of all that was going on, that his entertainer soon saw his opinion must be worth something whether his fancies were or not.


CHAPTER XXIV.

STEPHEN KENNEDY.

The great comforts of Donal's life, next to those of the world in which his soul lived-the eternal world, whose doors are ever open to him who prays-were the society of his favourite books, the fashioning of his thoughts into sweetly ordered sounds in the lofty solitude of his chamber, and not infrequent communion with the cobbler and his wife. To these he had as yet said nothing of what went on at the castle: he had learned the lesson the cobbler himself gave him. But many a lesson of greater value did he learn from the philosopher of the lapstone. He who understands because he endeavours, is a freed man of the realm of human effort. He who has no experience of his own, to him the experience of others is a sealed book. The convictions that in Donal rose vaporous were rapidly condensed and shaped when he found his new friend thought likewise.

By degrees he made more and more of a companion of Davie, and such was the sweet relation between them that he would sometimes have him in his room even when he was writing. When it was time to lay in his winter-fuel, he said to him-

"Up here, Davie, we must have a good fire when the nights are long; the darkness will be like solid cold. Simmons tells me I may have as much coal and wood as I like: will you help me to get them up?"

Davie sprang to his feet: he was ready that very minute.

"I shall never learn my lessons if I am cold," added Donal, who could not bear a low temperature so well as when he was always in the open air.

"Do you learn lessons, Mr. Grant?"

"Yes indeed I do," replied Donal. "One great help to the understanding of things is to brood over them as a hen broods over her eggs: words are thought-eggs, and their chickens are truths; and in order to brood I sometimes learn by heart. I have set myself to learn, before the winter is over if I can, the gospel of John in the Greek."

"What a big lesson!" exclaimed Davie.

"Ah, but how rich it will make me!" said