THE EARL.
He met no one on his way from the gate up through the wood. He
ascended the hill with its dark ascending firs, to its crown of silvery
birches, above which, as often as the slowly circling road brought him
to the other side, he saw rise like a helmet the gray mass of the
fortress. Turret and tower, pinnacle and battlement, appeared and
disappeared as he climbed. Not until at last he stood almost on the
top, and from an open space beheld nearly the whole front, could he
tell what it was like. It was a grand pile, but looked a gloomy one to
live in.
He stood on a broad grassy platform, from which rose a gravelled
terrace, and from the terrace the castle. He ran his eye along the
front seeking a door but saw none. Ascending the terrace by a broad
flight of steps, he approached a deep recess in the front, where two
portions of the house of differing date nearly met. Inside this recess
he found a rather small door, flush with the wall, thickly studded and
plated with iron, surmounted by the Morven horses carved in gray stone,
and surrounded with several mouldings. Looking for some means of
announcing his presence, he saw a handle at the end of a rod of iron,
and pulled, but heard nothing: the sound of the bell was smothered in a
wilderness of stone walls. By and by, however, appeared an old
servant, bowed and slow, with plentiful hair white as wool, and a
mingled look of childishness and caution in his wrinkled countenance.
“The earl wants to see me,” said Donal.
“What name?” said the man.
“Donal Grant; but his lordship will be nothing the wiser, I suspect; I
don’t think he knows my name. Tell him--the young man he sent for to
Andrew Comin’s.”
The man left him, and Donal began to look about him. The place where
he stood was a mere entry, a cell in huge walls, with a second, a low,
round-headed door, like the entrance to a prison, by which the butler
had disappeared. There was nothing but bare stone around him, with
again the Morven arms cut deep into it on one side. The ceiling was
neither vaulted nor groined nor flat, but seemed determined by the
accidental concurrence of ends of stone stairs and corners of floors on
different levels. It was full ten minutes before the man returned and
requested him to follow him.
Immediately Donal found himself in a larger and less irregular
stone-case, adorned with heads and horns and skins of animals. Crossing
this, the man opened a door covered with red cloth, which looked
strange in the midst of the cold hard stone, and Donal entered an
octagonal space, its doors of dark shining oak, with carved stone
lintels and doorposts, and its walls adorned with arms and armour
almost to the domed ceiling. Into it, as if it descended suddenly out
of some far height, but dropping at last like a gently alighting bird,
came the end of a turnpike-stair, of slow sweep and enormous
diameter--such a stair as in wildest gothic tale he had never imagined.
Like the revolving centre of a huge shell, it went up out of sight,
with plain promise of endless convolutions beyond. It was of ancient
stone, but not worn as would have been a narrow stair. A great rope of
silk, a modern addition, ran up along the wall for a hand-rail; and
with slow-moving withered hand upon it, up the glorious ascent climbed
the serving man, suggesting to Donal’s eye the crawling of an insect,
to his heart the redemption of the sons of God.
With the stair yet ascending above them as if it would never stop, the
man paused upon a step no broader than the rest, and opening a door in
the round of the well, said, “Mr. Grant, my lord,” and stood aside for
Donal to enter.
He found himself in the presence of a tall, bowed man, with a
large-featured white face, thin and worn, and a deep-sunken eye that
gleamed with an unhealthy life. His hair was thin, but covered his
head, and was only streaked with gray. His hands were long and thin
and white; his feet in large shoes, looking the larger that they came
out from narrow trousers, which were of shepherd-tartan. His coat was
of light-blue, with a high collar of velvet, and much too wide for him.
A black silk neckerchief tied carelessly about his throat, and a
waistcoat of pineapple shawl-stuff, completed his dress. On one long
little finger shone a stone which Donal took for an emerald. He
motioned his visitor to a seat, and went on writing, with a rudeness
more like that of a successful contractor than a nobleman. But it gave
Donal the advantage of becoming a little accustomed to his
surroundings. The room was not large, was wainscoted, and had a good
many things on the walls: Donal noted two or three riding whips, a
fishing rod, several pairs of spurs, a sword with golden hilt, a
strange looking dagger like a flame of fire, one or two old engravings,
and what seemed a plan of the estate. At the one window, small, with a
stone mullion, the summer sun was streaming in. The earl sat in its
flood, and in the heart of it seemed cold and bloodless. He looked
about sixty years of age, and as if he rarely or never smiled. Donal
tried to imagine what a smile would do for his face, but failed. He
was not in the least awed by the presence of the great man. What is
rank to the man who honours everything human, has no desire to look
what he is not, has nothing to conceal and nothing to compass, is
fearful of no to-morrow, and does not respect riches! Toward such ends
of being the tide of Donal’s life was at least setting. So he sat
neither fidgeting nor staring, but quietly taking things in.
The earl raised himself, pushed his writing from him, turned towards
him, and said with courtesy,
“Excuse me, Mr. Grant; I wished to talk to you with the ease of duty
done.”
More polite his address could not have been, but there was a something
between him and Donal that was not to be passed--a nameless gulf of the
negative.
“My time is at your lordship’s service,” replied Donal, with the ease
that comes of simplicity.
“You have probably guessed why I sent for you?”
“I have hoped, my lord.”
There was something of old-world breeding about the lad that commended
him to the earl. Such breeding is not rare among Celt-born peasants.
“My sons told me that they had met a young man in the grounds--”
“For which I beg your lordship’s pardon,” said Donal. “I did not know
the place was forbidden.”
“I hope you will soon be familiar with it. I am glad of your mistake.
From what they said, I supposed you might be a student in want of a
situation, and I had been looking out for a young man to take charge of
the boy: it seemed possible you might serve my purpose. I do not
question you can show yourself fit for such an office: I presume it
would suit you. Do you believe yourself one to be so trusted?”
Donal had not a glimmer of false modesty; he answered immediately,
“I do, my lord.”
“Tell me something of your history: where were you born? what were your
parents?”
Donal told him all he thought it of any consequence he should know.
His lordship did not once interrupt him with question or remark. When
he had ended--
“Well,” he said, “I like all you tell me. You have testimonials?”
“I have from the professors, my lord, and one from the minister of the
parish, who knew me before I went to college. I could get one from Mr.
Sclater too, whose church I attended while there.”
“Show me what you have,” said his lordship.
Donal took the papers from the pocket-book his mother had made him, and
handed them to him. The earl read them with some attention, returning
each to him without remark as he finished it, only saying with the last,
“Quite satisfactory.”
“But,” said Donal, “there is one thing I should be more at ease if I
told your lordship: Mr. Carmichael, the minister of this parish, would
tell you I was an atheist, or something very like it--therefore an
altogether unsafe person. But he knows nothing of me.”
“On what grounds then would he say so?” asked the earl--showing not the
least discomposure. “I thought you were a stranger to this place!”
Donal told him how they had met, what had passed between them, and how
the minister had behaved in consequence. His lordship heard him
gravely, was silent for a moment, and then said,
“Should Mr. Carmichael address me on the subject, which I do not think
likely, he will find me already too much prejudiced in your favour.
But I can imagine his mistaking your freedom of speech: you are
scarcely prudent enough. Why say all you think?”
“I fear nothing, my lord.”
The earl was silent; his gray face seemed to grow grayer, but it might
be that just then the sun went under a cloud, and he was suddenly
folded in shadow. After a moment he spoke again.
“I am quite satisfied with you so far, Mr. Grant; and as I should not
like to employ you in direct opposition to Mr. Carmichel--not that I
belong to his church--we will arrange matters before he can hear of the
affair. What salary do you want?”
Donal replied he would prefer leaving the salary to his lordship’s
judgment upon trial.
“I am not a wealthy man,” returned his lordship, “and would prefer an
understanding.”
“Try me then for three months, my lord; give me my board and lodging,
the use of your library, and at the end of the quarter a
ten-pound-note: by that time you will be able to tell whether I suit
you.”
The earl nodded agreement, and Donal rose at once. With a heart full
of thankfulness and hope he walked back to his friends. He had before
him pleasant work; plenty of time and book-help; an abode full of
interest; and something for his labour!
“‘Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee!’” said the cobbler,
rejoicing against the minister; “‘the remainder of wrath shalt thou
restrain.’”
In the afternoon Donal went into the town to get some trifles he wanted
before going to the castle. As he turned to the door of a draper’s
shop, he saw at the counter the minister talking to him. He would
rather have gone elsewhere, but, for unwillingness to turn his back on
anything, he went in. Beside the minister stood a young lady, who,
having completed her purchases, was listening to their conversation.
The draper looked up as he entered. A glance passed between him and
the minister. He came to Donal, and having heard what he wanted, left
him, went back to the minister, and took no more notice of him. Donal
found it awkward, and left the shop.
“High an’ michty!” said the draper, annoyed at losing the customer to
whose dispraise he had been listening.
“Far beyond dissent, John!” said the minister, pursuing a remark.
“Doobtless, sir, it is that!” answered the draper. “I’m thankfu’ to say
I never harboured a doobt mysel’, but aye took what I was tauld, ohn
argle-barglet. What hae we sic as yersel’ set ower ’s for, gien it
binna to haud ’s i’ the straucht path o’ what we’re to believe an’ no to
believe? It’s a fine thing no to be accoontable!”
The minister was an honest man so far as he knew himself and honesty,
and did not relish this form of submission. But he did not ask himself
where was the difference between accepting the word of man and
accepting man’s explanation of the word of God! He took a huge pinch
from his black snuffbox and held his peace.
In the evening Donal would settle his account with mistress Comin: he
found her demand so much less than he had expected, that he
expostulated. She was firm, however, and assured him she had gained,
not lost. As he was putting up his things,
“Lea’ a buik or twa, sir,” she said, “’at whan ye luik in, the place
may luik hame-like. We s’ ca’ the room yours. Come as aften as ye
can. It does my Anerew’s hert guid to hae a crack wi’ ane ’at kens
something o’ what the Maister wad be at. Mony ane ’ll ca’ him Lord,
but feow ’ill tak the trible to ken what he wad hae o’ them. But
there’s my Anerew--he’ll sit yon’er at his wark, thinkin’ by the hoor
thegither ower something the Maister said ’at he canna win at the
richts o’. ‘Depen’ upo’ ’t,’ he says whiles, ‘depen’ upo’ ’t, lass,
whaur onything he says disna luik richt to hiz, it maun be ’at we haena
won at it!’”
As she ended, her husband came in, and took up what he fancied the
thread of the dialogue.
“An’ what are we to think o’ the man,” he said, “at’s content no to
un’erstan’ what he was at the trible to say? Wad he say things ’at he
didna mean fowk to un’erstan’ whan he said them?”
“Weel, Anerew,” said his wife, “there’s mony a thing he said ’at I can
not un’erstan’; naither am I muckle the better for your explainin’ o’
the same; I maun jist lat it sit.”
Andrew laughed his quiet pleased laugh.
“Weel, lass,” he said, “the duin’ o’ ae thing ’s better nor the
un’erstan’in’ o’ twenty. Nor wull ye be lang ohn un’erstan’t muckle
’at’s dark to ye noo; for the maister likes nane but the duer o’ the
word, an’ her he likes weel. Be blythe, lass; ye s’ hae yer fill o’
un’erstan’in’ yet!”
“I’m fain to believe ye speyk the trowth, Anerew!”
“It’s great trowth,” said Donal.