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Project Gutenberg's What's Mine's Mine--Volume 3, by George MacDonald
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: What's Mine's Mine--Volume 3
Author: George MacDonald
Posting Date: September 22, 2012 [EBook #5968]
Release Date: June, 2004
First Posted: October 1, 2002
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT'S MINE'S MINE--VOLUME 3 ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
WHAT'S MINE'S MINE
By George MacDonald
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
CHAPTER
I. AT A HIGH SCHOOL
II. A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY
III. HOW ALISTER TOOK IT
IV. LOVE
V. PASSION AND PATIENCE
VI. LOVE GLOOMING
VII. A GENEROUS DOWRY
VIII. MISTRESS CONAL
IX. THE MARCHES
X. MIDNIGHT
XI. SOMETHING STRANGE
XII. THE POWER OF DARKNESS
XIII. THE NEW STANCE
XIV. THE PEAT-MOSS
XV. A DARING VISIT
XVI. THE FLITTING
XVII. THE NEW VILLAGE
XVIII. A FRIENDLY OFFER
XIX. ANOTHER EXPULSION
XX. ALISTER'S PRINCESS
XXI. THE FAREWELL
WHAT'S MINE'S MINE
CHAPTER I
AT A HIGH SCHOOL.
When Mercy was able to go down to the drawing-room, she found the
evenings pass as never evenings passed before; and during the day,
although her mother and Christina came often to see her, she had
time and quiet for thinking. And think she must; for she found
herself in a region of human life so different from any she had
hitherto entered, that in no other circumstances would she have been
able to recognize even its existence. Everything said or done in it
seemed to acknowledge something understood. Life went on with a
continuous lean toward something rarely mentioned, plainly
uppermost; it embodied a tacit reference of everything to some code
so thoroughly recognized that occasion for alluding to it was
unfrequent. Its inhabitants appeared to know things which her people
did not even suspect. The air of the brothers especially was that of
men at their ease yet ready to rise--of men whose loins were girded,
alert for an expected call.
Under their influence a new idea of life, and the world, and the
relations of men and things, began to grow in the mind of Mercy.
There was a dignity, almost grandeur, about the simple life of the
cottage, and the relation of its inmates to all they came near. No
one of them seemed to live for self, but each to be thinking and
caring for the others and for the clan. She awoke to see that
manners are of the soul; that such as she had hitherto heard admired
were not to be compared with the simple, almost peasant-like dignity
and courtesy of the chief; that the natural grace, accustomed ease,
and cultivated refinement of Ian's carriage, came out in attention
and service to the lowly even more than in converse with his equals;
while his words, his gestures, his looks, every expression born of
contact, witnessed a directness and delicacy of recognition she
could never have imagined. The moment he began to speak to another,
he seemed to pass out of himself, and sit in the ears of the other
to watch his own words, lest his thoughts should take such sound or
shape as might render them unwelcome or weak. If they were not to be
pleasant words, they should yet be no more unpleasant than was
needful; they should not hurt save in the nature of that which they
bore; the truth should receive no injury by admixture of his
personality. He heard with his own soul, and was careful over the
other soul as one of like kind. So delicately would he initiate what
might be communion with another, that to a nature too dull or
selfish to understand him, he gave offence by the very graciousness
of his approach.
It was through her growing love to Alister that Mercy became able to
understand Ian, and perceived at length that her dread, almost
dislike of him at first, was owing solely to her mingled incapacity
and unworthiness. Before she left the cottage, it was spring time in
her soul; it had begun to put forth the buds of eternal life. Such
buds are not unfrequently nipped; but even if they are, if a dull,
false, commonplace frost close in, and numb the half wakened spirit
back into its wintry sleep, that sleep will ever after be haunted
with some fainting airs of the paradise those buds prophesied. In
Mercy's case they were to grow into spiritual eyes--to open and see,
through all the fogs and tumults of this phantom world, the light
and reality of the true, the spiritual world everywhere around
her--as the opened eyes of the servant of the prophet saw the
mountains of Samaria full of horses of fire and chariots of fire
around him. Every throb of true love, however mingled with the
foolish and the false, is a bourgeoning of the buds of the life
eternal--ah, how far from leaves! how much farther from flowers.
Ian was high above her, so high that she shrank from him; there
seemed a whole heaven of height between them. It would fill her with
a kind of despair to see him at times sit lost in thought: he was
where she could never follow him! He was in a world which, to her
childish thought, seemed not the world of humanity; and she would
turn, with a sense of both seeking and finding, to the chief. She
imagined he felt as she did, saw between his brother and him a gulf
he could not cross. She did not perceive this difference, that
Alister knew the gulf had to be crossed. At such a time, too, she
had seen his mother regarding him with a similar expression of loss,
but with a mingling of anxiety that was hers only. It was sweet to
Mercy to see in the eyes of Alister, and in his whole bearing toward
his younger brother, that he was a learner like herself, that they
were scholars together in Ian's school.
A hunger after something beyond her, a something she could not have
described, awoke in her. She needed a salvation of some kind, toward
which she must grow! She needed a change which she could not
understand until it came--a change the greatest in the universe, but
which, man being created with the absolute necessity for it, can be
no violent transformation, can be only a grand process in the divine
idea of development.
She began to feel a mystery in the world, and in all the looks of
it--a mystery because a meaning. She saw a jubilance in every
sunrise, a sober sadness in every sunset; heard a whispering of
strange secrets in the wind of the twilight; perceived a
consciousness of unknown bliss in the song of the lark;--and was
aware of a something beyond it all, now and then filling her with
wonder, and compelling her to ask, "What does it, what can it mean?"
Not once did she suspect that Nature had indeed begun to deal with
her; not once suspect, although from childhood accustomed to hear
the name of Love taken in vain, that love had anything to do with
these inexplicable experiences.
Let no one, however, imagine he explains such experiences by
suggesting that she was in love! That were but to mention another
mystery as having introduced the former. For who in heaven or on
earth has fathomed the marvel betwixt the man and the woman? Least
of all the man or the woman who has not learned to regard it with
reverence. There is more in this love to uplift us, more to condemn
the lie in us, than in any other inborn drift of our being, except
the heavenly tide Godward. From it flow all the other redeeming
relations of life. It is the hold God has of us with his right hand,
while death is the hold he has of us with his left. Love and death
are the two marvels, yea the two terrors--but the one goal of our
history.
It was love, in part, that now awoke in Mercy a hunger and thirst
after heavenly things. This is a direction of its power little
heeded by its historians; its earthly side occupies almost all their
care. Because lovers are not worthy of even its earthly aspect, it
palls upon them, and they grow weary, not of love, but of their lack
of it. The want of the heavenly in it has caused it to perish: it
had no salt. From those that have not is taken away that which they
have. Love without religion is the plucked rose. Religion without
love--there is no such thing. Religion is the bush that bears all
the roses; for religion is the natural condition of man in relation
to the eternal facts, that is the truths, of his own being. To live
is to love; there is no life but love. What shape the love puts on,
depends on the persons between whom is the relation. The poorest
love with religion, is better, because truer, therefore more
lasting, more genuine, more endowed with the possibility of
persistence--that is, of infinite development, than the most
passionate devotion between man and woman without it.
Thus together in their relation to Ian, it was natural that Mercy
and the chief should draw yet more to each other. Mercy regarded
Alister as a big brother in the same class with herself, but able to
help her. Quickly they grew intimate. In the simplicity of his large
nature, the chief talked with Mercy as openly as a boy, laying a
heart bare to her such that, if the world had many like it, the
kingdom of heaven would be more than at hand. He talked as to an old
friend in perfect understanding with him, from whom he had nothing
to gain or to fear. There was never a compliment on the part of the
man, and never a coquetry on the part of the girl--a dull idea to
such as without compliment or coquetry could hold no intercourse,
having no other available means. Mercy had never like her sister
cultivated the woman's part in the low game; and her truth required
but the slightest stimulus to make her incapable of it. With such a
man as Alister she could use only a simplicity like his; not thus to
meet him would have been to decline the honouring friendship. Dark
and plain, though with an interesting face and fine eyes, she had
received no such compliments as had been showered upon her sister;
it was an unspoiled girl, with a heart alive though not yet quite
awake, that was brought under such good influences. What better
influences for her, for any woman, than those of unselfish men? what
influences so good for any man as those of unselfish women? Every
man that hears and learns of a worthy neighbour, comes to the
Father; every man that hath heard and learned of the Father comes to
the Lord; every man that comes to the Lord, he leads back to the
Father. To hear Ian speak one word about Jesus Christ, was for a
true man to be thenceforth truer. To him the Lord was not a
theological personage, but a man present in the world, who had to be
understood and obeyed by the will and heart and soul, by the
imagination and conscience of every other man. If what Ian said was
true, this life was a serious affair, and to be lived in downright
earnest! If God would have his creatures mind him, she must look to
it! She pondered what she heard. But she went always to Alister to
have Ian explained; and to hear him talk of Ian, revealed Alister to
her.
When Mercy left the cottage, she felt as if she were leaving home to
pay a visit. The rich house was dull and uninteresting. She found
that she had immediately to put in practice one of the lessons she
had learned--that the service of God is the service of those among
whom he has sent us. She tried therefore to be cheerful, and even to
forestall her mother's wishes. But life was harder than hitherto--so
much more was required of her.
The chief was falling thoroughly in love with Mercy, but it was some
time before he knew it. With a heart full of tenderness toward
everything human, he knew little of love special, and was gradually
sliding into it without being aware of it. How little are we our
own! Existence is decreed us; love and suffering are appointed us.
We may resist, we may modify; but we cannot help loving, and we
cannot help dying. We need God to keep us from hating. Great in
goodness, yea absolutely good, God must be, to have a right to make
us--to compel our existence, and decree its laws! Without his choice
the chief was falling in love. The woman was sent him; his heart
opened and took her in. Relation with her family was not desirable,
but there she was! Ian saw, but said nothing. His mother saw it too.
"Nothing good will come of it!" she said, with a strong feeling of
unfitness in the thing.
"Everything will come of it, mother, that God would have come of
it," answered Ian. "She is an honest, good girl, and whatever comes
of it must be good, whether pleasant or not."
The mother was silent. She believed in God, but not so thoroughly as
to abjure the exercise of a subsidiary providence of her own. The
more people trust in God, the less will they trust their own
judgments, or interfere with the ordering of events. The man or
woman who opposes the heart's desire of another, except in aid of
righteousness, is a servant of Satan. Nor will it avail anything to
call that righteousness which is of Self or of Mammon.
"There is no action in fretting," Ian would say, "and not much in
the pondering of consequences. True action is the doing of duty,
come of it heartache, defeat, or success."
"You are a fatalist, Ian!" said his mother one day.
"Mother, I am; the will of God is my fate!" answered Ian. "He shall
do with me what he pleases; and I will help him!"
She took him in her arms and kissed him. She hoped God would not be
strict with him, for might not the very grandeur of his character be
rooted in rebellion? Might not some figs grow on some thistles?
At length came the paternal summons for the Palmers to go to London.
For a month the families had been meeting all but every day. The
chief had begun to look deep into the eyes of the girl, as if
searching there for some secret joy; and the girl, though she
drooped her long lashes, did not turn her head away. And now
separation, like death, gave her courage, and when they parted,
Mercy not only sustained Alister's look, but gave him such a look in
return that he felt no need, no impulse to say anything. Their souls
were satisfied, for they knew they belonged to each other.
CHAPTER II
A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY.
So entirely were the chief and his family out of the world, that
they had not yet a notion of the worldly relations of Mr. Peregrine
Palmer. But the mother thought it high time to make inquiry as to
his position and connections. She had an old friend in London, the
wife of a certain vice-chancellor, with whom she held an occasional
correspondence, and to her she wrote, asking if she knew anything of
the family.
Mrs. Macruadh was nowise free from the worldliness that has regard
to the world's regard. She would not have been satisfied that a
daughter in law of hers should come of people distinguished for
goodness and greatness of soul, if they were, for instance,
tradespeople. She would doubtless have preferred the daughter of an
honest man, whatever his position, to the daughter of a scoundrel,
even if he chanced to be a duke; but she would not have been content
with the most distinguished goodness by itself. Walking after Jesus,
she would have drawn to the side of Joanna rather than Martha or
Mary; and I fear she would have condescended--just a little--to Mary
Magdalen: repentance, however perfect, is far from enough to satisfy
the worldly squeamishness of not a few high-principled people who do
not know what repentance means.
Mrs. Macruadh was anxious to know that the girl was respectable, and
so far worthy of her son. The idea of such an inquiry would have
filled Mercy's parents with scornful merriment, as a thing ludicrous
indeed. People in THEIR position, who could do this and that, whose
name stood so high for this and that, who knew themselves well bred,
who had one relation an admiral, another a general, and a
marriage-connection with some of the oldest families in the
country--that one little better than a yeoman, a man who held the
plough with his own big hands, should enquire into THEIR social
standing! Was not Mr. Peregrine Palmer prepared to buy him up the
moment he required to sell! Was he not rich enough to purchase an
earl's daughter for his son, and an earl himself for his beautiful
Christina! The thing would have seemed too preposterous.
The answer of the vice-chancellor's lady burst, nevertheless, like a
bombshell in the cottage. It was to this effect:--The Palmers were
known, if not just in the best, yet in very good society; the sons
bore sign of a defective pedigree, but the one daughter out was,
thanks to her mother, fit to go anywhere. For her own part, wrote
the London correspondent, she could not help smelling the grains: in
Scotland a distiller, Mr. Peregrine Palmer had taken to brewing in
England--was one of the firm Pulp and Palmer, owning half the
public-houses in London, therefore high in the regard of the English
nobility, if not actually within their circle.--Thus far the
satirical lady of the vice-chancellor.
Horror fell upon the soul of the mother. The distiller was to her as
the publican to the ancient Jew. No dealing in rags and marine
stores, no scraping of a fortune by pettifogging, chicane, and
cheating, was to her half so abominable as the trade of a brewer.
Worse yet was a brewer owning public-houses, gathering riches in
half-pence wet with beer and smelling of gin. The brewer was to her
a moral pariah; only a distiller was worse. As she read, the letter
dropped from her hands, and she threw them up in unconscious appeal
to heaven. She saw a vision of bloated men and white-faced women,
drawing with trembling hands from torn pockets the money that had
bought the wide acres of the Clanruadh. To think of the Macruadh
marrying the daughter of such a man! In society few questions indeed
were asked; everywhere money was counted a blessed thing, almost
however made; none the less the damnable fact remained, that certain
moneys were made, not in furthering the well-being of men and women,
but in furthering their sin and degradation. The mother of the chief
saw that, let the world wink itself to blindness, let it hide the
roots of the money-plant in layer upon layer of social ascent, the
flower for which an earl will give his daughter, has for the soil it
grows in, not the dead, but the diseased and dying, of loathsome
bodies and souls of God's men and women and children, which the
grower of it has helped to make such as they are.
She was hot, she was cold; she started up and paced hurriedly about
the room. Her son the son in law of a distiller! the husband of his
daughter! The idea was itself abhorrence and contempt! Was he not
one of the devil's fishers, fishing the sea of the world for the
souls of men and women to fill his infernal ponds withal! His money
was the fungous growth of the devil's cellars. How would the brewer
or the distiller, she said, appear at the last judgment! How would
her son hold up his head, if he cast in his lot with theirs! But
that he would never do! Why should she be so perturbed! in this
matter at least there could be no difference between them! Her noble
Alister would be as much shocked as herself at the news! Could the
woman be a lady, grown on such a hot-bed! Yet, alas! love could tempt
far--could subdue the impossible!
She could not rest; she must find one of them! Not a moment longer
could she remain alone with the terrible disclosure. If Alister was
in love with the girl, he must get out of it at once! Never again
would she enter the Palmers' gate, never again set foot on their
land! The thought of it was unthinkable! She would meet them as if
she did not see them! But they should know her reason--and know her
inexorable!
She went to the edge of the ridge, and saw Ian sitting with his book
on the other side of the burn. She called him to her, and handed him
the letter. He took it, read it through, and gave it her back.
"Ian!" she exclaimed, "have you nothing to say to that?"
"I beg your pardon, mother," he answered: "I must think about it.
Why should it trouble you so! It is painfully annoying, but we have
come under no obligation to them!"
"No; but Alister!"
"You cannot doubt Alister will do what is right!"
"He will do what he thinks right!"
"Is not that enough, mother?"
"No," she answered angrily; "he must do the thing that is right."
"Whether he knows it or not? Could he do the thing he thought
wrong?"
She was silent.
"Mother dear," resumed Ian, "the only Way to get at what IS right is
to do what seems right. Even if we mistake there is no other way!"
"You would do evil that good may come! Oh, Ian!"
"No, mother; evil that is not seen to be evil by one willing and
trying to do right, is not counted evil to him. It is evil only to
the person who either knows it to be evil, or does not care whether
it be or not."
"That is dangerous doctrine!"
"I will go farther, mother, and say, that for Alister to do what you
thought right, if he did not think it right himself--even if you
were right and he wrong--would be for him to do wrong, and blind
himself to the truth."
"A man may be to blame that he is not able to see the truth," said
the mother.
"That is very true, but hardly such a man as Alister, who would
sooner die than do the thing he believed wrong. But why should you
take it for granted that Alister will think differently from you?"
"We don't always think alike."
"In matters of right and wrong, I never knew him or me think
differently from you, mother!"
"He is very fond of the girl!"
"And justly. I never saw one more in earnest, or more anxious to
learn."
"She might well be teachable to such teachers!"
"I don't see that she has ever sought to commend herself to either
of us, mother. I believe her heart just opened to the realities she
had never had shown her before. Come what may, she will never forget
the things we have talked about."
"Nothing would make me trust her!"
"Why?"
"She comes of an' abominable breed."
"Is it your part, mother, to make her suffer for the sins of her
fathers?"
"I make her suffer!"
"Certainly, mother--by changing your mind toward her, and suspecting
her, the moment you learn cause to condemn her father."
"The sins of the fathers are visited on the children!--You will not
dispute that?'
"I will grant more--that the sins of the fathers are often
reproduced in the children. But it is nowhere said, 'Thou shalt
visit the sins of the fathers on the children.' God puts no
vengeance into our hands. I fear you are in danger of being unjust
to the girl, mother!--but then you do not know her so well as we
do!"
"Of course not! Every boy understands a woman better than his
mother!"
"The thing is exceedingly annoying, mother! Let us go and find
Alister at once!"
"He will take it like a man of sense, I trust!"
"He will. It will trouble him terribly, but he will do as he ought.
Give him time and I don't believe there is a man in the world to
whom the right comes out clearer than to Alister."
The mother answered only with a sigh.
"Many a man," remarked Ian, "has been saved through what men call an
unfortunate love affair!"
"Many a man has been lost by having his own way in one!" rejoined
the mother.
"As to LOST, I would not make up my mind about that for a few
centuries or so!" returned Ian. "A man may be allowed his own way
for the discipline to result from it."
"I trust, Ian, you will not encourage him in any folly!"
"I shall have nothing to do but encourage him in his first resolve,
mother!"
CHAPTER III
HOW ALISTER TOOK IT.
They could not find Alister, who had gone to the smithy. It was
tea-time before he came home. As soon as he entered, his mother
handed him the letter.
He read it without a word, laid it on the table beside his plate,
and began to drink his tea, his eyes gleaming with a strange light,
lan kept silence also. Mrs. Macruadh cast a quick glance, now at the
one, now at the other. She was in great anxiety, and could scarce
restrain herself. She knew her boys full of inbred dignity and
strong conscience, but was nevertheless doubtful how they would act.
They could not feel as she felt, else would the hot blood of their
race have at once boiled over! Had she searched herself she might
have discovered a latent dread that they might be nearer the right
than she. Painfully she watched them, half conscious of a traitor in
her bosom, judging the world's judgment and not God's. Her sons
seemed on the point of concluding as she would not have them
conclude: they would side with the young woman against their mother!
The reward of parents who have tried to be good, may be to learn,
with a joyous humility from their children. Mrs. Macruadh was
capable of learning more, and was now going to have a lesson.
When Alister pushed back his chair and rose, she could refrain no
longer. She could not let him go in silence. She must understand
something of what was passing in his mind!
"What do you think of THAT, Alister?" she said.
He turned to her with a faint smile, and answered,
"I am glad to know it, mother."
"That is good. I was afraid it would hurt you!"
"Seeing the thing is so, I am glad to be made aware of it. The
information itself you cannot expect me to be pleased with!"
"No, indeed, my son! I am very sorry for you. After being so taken
with the young woman,--"
Alister looked straight in his mother's face.
"You do not imagine, mother," he said, "it will make any difference
as to Mercy?"
"Not make any difference!" echoed Mrs. Macruadh. "What is it
possible you can mean, Alister?"
The anger that glowed in her dark eyes made her look yet handsomer,
proving itself not a mean, though it might be a misplaced anger.
"Is she different, mother, from what she was before you had the
letter?"
"You did not then know what she was!"
"Just as well as I do now. I have no reason to think she is not what
I thought her."
"You thought her the daughter of a gentleman!"
"Hardly. I thought her a lady, and such I think her still."
"Then you mean to go on with it?"
"Mother dear," said Alister, taking her by the hand, "give me a
little time. Not that I am in any doubt--but the news has been such
a blow to me that--"
"It must have been!" said the mother.
"--that I am afraid of answering you out of the soreness of my
pride, and Ian says the Truth is never angry."
"I am quite willing you should do nothing in a hurry," said the
mother.
She did not understand that he feared lest, in his indignation for
Mercy, he should answer his mother as her son ought not.
"I will take time," he replied. "And here is Ian to help me!"
"Ah! if only your father were here!"
"He may be, mother! Anyhow I trust I shall do nothing he would not
like!"
"He would sooner see son of his marry the daughter of a cobbler than
of a brewer!"
"So would I, mother!" said Alister.
"I too," said Ian, "would much prefer that my sister-in-law's father
were not a brewer."
"I suppose you are splitting some hair, Ian, but I don't see it,"
remarked his mother, who had begun to gather a little hope. "You
will be back by supper-time, Alister, I suppose?"
"Certainly, mother. We are only going to the village."
The brothers went.
"I knew everything you were thinking," said Ian.
"Of course you did!" answered Alister.
"But I am very sorry!"
"So am I! It is a terrible bore!"
A pause followed. Alister burst into a laugh that was not merry.
"It makes me think of the look on my father's face," he said, "once
at the market, as he was putting in his pocket a bunch of more than
usually dirty bank-notes. The look seemed almost to be making
apology that he was my father--the notes were SO DIRTY! 'They're
better than they look, lad!' he said."
"What ARE you thinking of, Alister?"
"Of nothing you are not thinking of, Ian, I hope in God! Mr.
Palmer's money is worse than it looks."
"You frightened me for a moment, Alister!"
"How could I, Ian?"
"It was but a nervo-mechanical fright. I knew well enough you could
mean nothing I should not like. But I see trouble ahead, Alister!"
"We shall be called a pack of fools, but what of that! We shall be
told the money itself was clean, however dirty the hands that made
it! The money-grubs!"
"I would rather see you hanged, than pocketing a shilling of it!"
"Of course you would! But the man who could pocket it, will be
relieved to find it is only his daughter I care about."
"There will be difficulty, Alister, I fear. How much have you said
to Mercy?"
"I have SAID nothing definite."
"But she understands?"
"I think--I hope so.--Don't you think Christina is much improved,
lan?"
"She is more pleasant."
"She is quite attentive to you!"
"She is pleased with me for saving her life. She does not like
me--and I have just arrived at not disliking her."
"There is a great change on her!"
"I doubt if there is any IN her though!"
"She may be only amusing herself with us in this outlandish place!
Mercy, I am sure, is quite different!"
"I would trust her with anything, Alister. That girl would die for
the man she loved!"
"I would rather have her love, though we should never meet in this
world, than the lands of my fathers!"
"What will you do then?"
"I will go to Mr. Palmer, and say to him: 'Give me your daughter. I
am a poor man, but we shall have enough to live upon. I believe she
will be happy.'"
"I will answer for him: 'I have the greatest regard for you,
Macruadh. You are a gentleman, and that you are poor is not of the
slightest consequence; Mercy's dowry shall be worthy the lady of a
chief!'--What then, Alister?"
"Fathers that love money must be glad to get rid of their daughters
without a. dowry!"
"Yes, perhaps, when they are misers, or money is scarce, or wanted
for something else. But when a poor man of position wanted to marry
his daughter, a parent like Mr. Palmer would doubtless regard her
dowry as a good investment. You must not think to escape that way,
Alister! What would you answer him?"
"I would say, 'My dear sir,'--I may say 'My dear sir,' may I not?
there is something about the man I like!--'I do not want your money.
I will not have your money. Give me your daughter, and my soul will
bless you.'"
"Suppose he should reply,' Do you think I am going to send my
daughter from my house like a beggar? No, no, my boy! she must carry
something with her! If beggars married beggars, the world would be
full of beggars!'--what would you say then?"
"I would tell him I had conscientious scruples about taking his
money."
"He would tell you you were a fool, and not to be trusted with a
wife. 'Who ever heard such rubbish!' he would say. 'Scruples,
indeed! You must get over them! What are they?'--What would you say
then?"
"If it came to that, I should have no choice but tell him I had
insuperable objections to the way his fortune was made, and could
not consent to share it."
"He would protest himself insulted, and swear, if his money was not
good enough for you, neither was his daughter. What then?"
"I would appeal to Mercy."
"She is too young. It would be sad to set one of her years at
variance with her family. I almost think I would rather you ran away
with her. It is a terrible thing to go into a house and destroy the
peace of those relations which are at the root of all that is good
in the world."
"I know it! I know it! That is my trouble! I am not afraid of
Mercy's courage, and I am sure she would hold out. I am certain
nothing would make her marry the man she did not love. But to turn
the house into a hell about her--I shrink from that!--Do you count
it necessary to provide against every contingency before taking the
first step?"
"Indeed I do not! The first step is enough. When that step has
landed us, we start afresh. But of all things you must not lose your
temper with the man. However despicable his money, you are his
suitor for his daughter! And he may possibly not think you half good
enough for her."
"That would be a grand way out of the difficulty!"
"How?"
"It would leave me far freer to deal with her."
"Perhaps. And in any case, the more we can honestly avoid reference
to his money, the better. We are not called on to rebuke."
"Small is my inclination to allude to it--so long as not a stiver
of it seeks to cross to the Macruadh!"
"That is fast as fate. But there is another thing, Alister: I fear
lest you should ever forget that her birth and her connections are
no more a part of the woman's self than her poverty or her wealth."
"I know it, Ian. I will not forget it."
"There must never be a word concerning them!"
"Nor a thought, Ian! In God's name I will be true to her."
They found Annie of the shop in a sad way. She had just had a letter
from Lachlan, stating that he had not been well for some time, and
that there was little prospect of his being able to fetch her. He
prayed her therefore to go out to him; and had sent money to pay her
passage and her mother's.
"When do you go?" asked the chief.
"My mother fears the voyage, and is very unwilling to turn her back
on her own country. But oh, if Lachlan die, and me not with him!"
She could say no more.
"He shall not die for want of you!" said the laird. "I will talk to
your mother."
He went into the room behind. Ian remained in the shop.
"Of course you must go, Annie!" he said.
"Indeed, sir, I must! But how to persuade my mother I do not know!
And I cannot leave her even for Lachlan. No one would nurse him more
tenderly than she; but she has a horror of the salt water, and what
she most dreads is being buried in it. She imagines herself drowning
to all eternity!"
"My brother will persuade her."
"I hope so, sir. I was just coming to him! I should never hold up my
head again--in this world or the next--either if I did not go, or if
I went without my mother! Aunt Conal told me, about a month since,
that I was going a long journey, and would never come back. I asked
her if I was to die on the way, but she would not answer me. Anyhow
I'm not fit to be his wife, if I'm not ready to die for him! Some
people think it wrong to marry anybody going to die, but at the
longest, you know, sir, you must part sooner than you would! Not
many are allowed to die together!--You don't think, do you, sir,
that marriages go for nothing in the other world?"
She spoke with a white face and brave eyes, and Ian was glad at
heart.
"I do not, Annie," he answered. "'The gifts of God are without
repentance.' He did not give you and Lachlan to each other to part
you again! Though you are not married yet, it is all the same so
long as you are true to each other."
"Thank you, sir; you always make me feel strong!"
Alister came from the back room.
"I think your mother sees it not quite so difficult now," he said.
The next time they went, they found them preparing to go.
Now Ian had nearly finished the book he was writing about Russia,
and could not begin another all at once. He must not stay at home
doing nothing, and he thought that, as things were going from bad to
worse in the highlands, he might make a voyage to Canada, visit
those of his clan, and see what ought to be done for such as must
soon follow them. He would presently have a little money in his
possession, and believed he could not spend it better. He made up
his mind therefore to accompany Annie and her mother, which resolve
overcame the last of the old woman's lingering reluctance. He did
not like leaving Alister at such a critical point in his history;
but he said to himself that a man might be helped too much; arid it
might come that he and Mercy were in as much need of a refuge as the
clan.
I cannot say NO worldly pride mingled in the chief's contempt for
the distiller's money; his righteous soul was not yet clear of its
inherited judgments as to what is dignified and what is not. He had
in him still the prejudice of the landholder, for ages instinctive,
against both manufacture and trade. Various things had combined to
foster in him also the belief that trade at least was never free
from more or less of unfair dealing, and was therefore in itself a
low pursuit. He had not argued that nothing the Father of men has
decreed can in its nature be contemptible, but must be capable of
being nobly done. In the things that some one must do, the doer
ranks in God's sight, and ought to rank among his fellow-men,
according to how he does it. The higher the calling the more
contemptible the man who therein pursues his own ends. The humblest
calling, followed on the principles of the divine caller, is a true
and divine calling, be it scavenging, handicraft, shop-keeping, or
book-making. Oh for the day when God and not the king shall be
regarded as the fountain of honour.
But the Macruadh looked upon the calling of the brewer or distiller
as from the devil: he was not called of God to brew or distil! From
childhood his mother had taught him a horror of gain by corruption.
She had taught, and he had learned, that the poorest of all
justifications, the least fit to serve the turn of gentleman,
logician, or Christian, was--"If I do not touch this pitch, another
will; there will be just as much harm done; AND ANOTHER INSTEAD OF
ME WILL HAVE THE BENEFIT; therefore it cannot defile me.--Offences
must come, therefore I will do them!" "Imagine our Lord in the
brewing trade instead of the carpentering!" she would say. That
better beer was provided by the good brewer would not go far for
brewer or drinker, she said: it mattered little that, by drinking
good beer, the drunkard lived to be drunk the oftener. A brewer
might do much to reduce drinking; but that would be to reduce a
princely income to a modest livelihood, and to content himself with
the baker's daughter instead of the duke's! It followed that the
Macruadh would rather have robbed a church than touched Mr.
Peregrine Palmer's money. To rifle the tombs of the dead would have
seemed to him pure righteousness beside sharing in that. He could
give Mercy up; he could NOT take such money with her! Much as he
loved her, separate as he saw her, clearly as she was to him a woman
undefiled and straight from God, it was yet a trial to him that she
should be the daughter of a person whose manufacture and trade were
such.
After much consideration, it was determined in the family conclave,
that Ian should accompany the two women to Canada, note how things
were going, and conclude what had best be done, should further
exodus be found necessary. As, however, there had come better news
of Lachlan, and it was plain he was in no immediate danger, they
would not, for several reasons, start before the month of September.
A few of the poorest of the clan resolved to go with them. Partly
for their sakes, partly because his own provision would be small,
Ian would take his passage also in the steerage.
CHAPTER IV
LOVE.
Christina went back to London considerably changed. Her beauty was
greater far, for there was a new element in it--a certain atmosphere
of distances and shadows gave mystery to her landscape. Her weather,
that is her mood, was now subject to changes which to many made her
more attractive. Fits of wild gaiety alternated with glooms, through
which would break flashes of feline playfulness, where pat and
scratch were a little mixed. She had more admirers than ever, for
she had developed points capable of interesting men of somewhat
higher development than those she had hitherto pleased. At the same
time she was more wayward and imperious with her courtiers. Gladly
would she have thrown all the flattery once so coveted into the
rag-bag of creation, to have one approving smile from the
grave-looking, gracious man, whom she knew happier, wandering alone
over the hills, than if she were walking by his side. For an hour
she would persuade herself that he cared for her a little; the next
she would comfort herself with the small likelihood of his meeting
another lady in Glenruadh. But then he had been such a traveller,
had seen so much of the great world, that perhaps he was already
lost to her! It seemed but too probable, when she recalled the
sadness with which he seemed sometimes overshadowed: it could not be
a religious gloom, for when he spoke of God his face shone, and his
words were strong! I think she mistook a certain gravity, like that
of the Merchant of Venice, for sorrowfulness; though doubtless the
peculiarity of his loss, as well as the loss itself, did sometimes
make him sad.
She had tried on him her little arts of subjugation, but the moment
she began to love him, she not only saw their uselessness, but hated
them. Her repellent behaviour to her admirers, and her occasional
excitement and oddity, caused her mother some anxiety, but as the
season came to a close, she grew gayer, and was at times absolutely
bewitching. The mother wished to go northward by degrees, paying
visits on the way; but her plan met with no approbation from the
girls. Christina longed for the presence and voice of Ian in the
cottage-parlour, Mercy for a hill-side with the chief; both longed
to hear them speak to each other in their own great way. And they
talked so of the delights of their highland home, that the mother
began to feel the mountains, the sea, and the islands, drawing her
to a land of peace, where things went well, and the world knew how
to live. But the stormiest months of her life were about to pass
among those dumb mountains!
After a long and eager journey, the girls were once more in their
rooms at the New House.
Mercy went to her window, and stood gazing from it upon the
mountain-world, faint-lighted by the northern twilight. She might
have said with Portia:--
"This night methinks is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: 'tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid."
She could see the dark bulk of the hills, sharpened to a clear edge
against the pellucid horizon, but with no colour, and no visible
featuring of their great fronts. When the sun rose, it would reveal
innumerable varieties of surface, by the mottling of endless
shadows; now all was smooth as an unawakened conscience. By the
shape of a small top that rose against the greenish sky betwixt the
parting lines of two higher hills, where it seemed to peep out over
the marge into the infinite, as a little man through the gap between
the heads of taller neighbours, she knew the roof of THE TOMB; and
she thought how, just below there, away as it seemed in the
high-lifted solitudes of heaven, she had lain in the clutches of
death, all the time watched and defended by the angel of a higher
life who had been with her ever since first she came to Glenruadh,
waking her out of such a stupidity, such a non-existence, as now she
could scarce see possible to human being. It was true her waking had
been one with her love to that human East which first she saw as she
opened her eyes, and whence first the light of her morning had
flowed--the man who had been and was to her the window of God! But
why should that make her doubt? God made man and woman to love each