LADY ARCTURA.
It was now almost three weeks since Donal had become an inmate of the
castle, and he had scarcely set his eyes on the lady of the house.
Once he had seen her back, and more than once had caught a glimpse of
her profile, but he had never really seen her face, and they had never
spoken to each other.
One afternoon he was sauntering along under the overhanging boughs of
an avenue of beeches, formerly the approach to a house in which the
family had once lived, but which had now another entrance. He had in
his hand a copy of the Apocrypha, which he had never seen till he found
this in the library. In his usual fashion he had begun to read it
through, and was now in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon, at the
17th chapter, narrating the discomfiture of certain magicians. Taken
with the beauty of the passage, he sat down on an old stone-roller, and
read aloud. Parts of the passage were these--they will enrich my
page:--
“For they, that promised to drive away terrors and troubles from a sick
soul, were sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at.
“... For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and
being pressed with conscience, always forecasteth grievous things.
“... But they sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed
intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable
hell,
“Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted,
their heart failing them: for a sudden fear, and not looked for, came
upon them.
“So then whosoever there fell down was straitly kept, shut up in a
prison without iron bars.
“For whether he were husbandman, or shepherd, or a labourer in the
field, he was overtaken, and endured that necessity, which could not be
avoided: for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.
“Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among
the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently,
“Or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not
be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild
beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains; these things
made them to swoon for fear.
“For the whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered in
their labour:
“Over them only was spread an heavy night, an image of that darkness
which should afterward receive them: but yet were they unto themselves
more grievous than the darkness.”
He had read so much, and stopped to think a little; for through the
incongruity of it, which he did not doubt arose from poverty of
imagination in the translator, rendering him unable to see what the
poet meant, ran yet an indubitable vein of awful truth, whether fully
intended by the writer or not mattered little to such a reader as
Donal--when, lifting his eyes, he saw lady Arctura standing before him
with a strange listening look. A spell seemed upon her; her face was
white, her lips white and a little parted.
Attracted, as she was about to pass him, by the sound of what was none
the less like the Bible from the solemn crooning way in which Donal
read it to the congregation of his listening thoughts, yet was
certainly not the Bible, she was presently fascinated by the vague
terror of what she heard, and stood absorbed: without much originative
power, she had an imagination prompt and delicate and strong in
response.
Donal had but a glance of her; his eyes returned again at once to his
book, and he sat silent and motionless, though not seeing a word. For
one instant she stood still; then he heard the soft sound of her dress
as, with noiseless foot, she stole back, and took another way.
I must give my reader a shadow of her. She was rather tall, slender,
and fair. But her hair was dark, and so crinkly that, when merely
parted, it did all the rest itself. Her forehead was rather low. Her
eyes were softly dark, and her features very regular--her nose perhaps
hardly large enough, or her chin. Her mouth was rather thin-lipped,
but would have been sweet except for a seemingly habitual expression of
pain. A pair of dark brows overhung her sweet eyes, and gave a look of
doubtful temper, yet restored something of the strength lacking a
little in nose and chin. It was an interesting--not a quite harmonious
face, and in happiness might, Donal thought, be beautiful even. Her
figure was eminently graceful--as Donal saw when he raised his eyes at
the sound of her retreat. He thought she needed not have run away as
from something dangerous: why did she not pass him like any other
servant of the house? But what seemed to him like contempt did not
hurt him. He was too full of realities to be much affected by opinion
however shown. Besides, he had had his sorrow and had learned his
lesson. He was a poet--but one of the few without any weak longing
after listening ears. The poet whose poetry _needs_ an audience, can be
but little of a poet; neither can the poetry that is of no good to the
man himself, be of much good to anybody else. There are the song-poets
and the life-poets, or rather the God-poems. Sympathy is lovely and
dear--chiefly when it comes unsought; but the fame after which so many
would-be, yea, so many real poets sigh, is poorest froth. Donal could
sing his songs like the birds, content with the blue heaven or the
sheep for an audience--or any passing angel that cared to listen. On
the hill-sides he would sing them aloud, but it was of the merest
natural necessity. A look of estrangement on the face of a friend, a
look of suffering on that of any animal, would at once and sorely
affect him, but not a disparaging expression on the face of a
comparative stranger, were she the loveliest woman he had ever seen.
He was little troubled about the world, because little troubled about
himself.
Lady Arctura and lord Forgue lived together like brother and sister,
apparently without much in common, and still less of misunderstanding.
There would have been more chance of their taking a fancy to each other
if they had not been brought up together; they were now little
together, and never alone together.
Very few visitors came to the castle, and then only to call. Lord
Morven seldom saw any one, his excuse being his health.
But lady Arctura was on terms of intimacy with Sophia Carmichael, the
minister’s daughter--to whom her father had communicated his
dissatisfaction with the character of Donal, and poured out his
indignation at his conduct. He ought to have left the parish at once!
whereas he had instead secured for himself the best, the only situation
in it, without giving him a chance of warning his lordship! The more
injustice her father spoke against him, the more Miss Carmichael
condemned him; for she was a good daughter, and looked up to her father
as the wisest and best man in the parish. Very naturally therefore she
repeated his words to lady Arctura. She in her turn conveyed them to
her uncle. He would not, however, pay much attention to them. The
thing was done, he said. He had himself seen and talked with Donal,
and liked him! The young man had himself told him of the clergyman’s
disapprobation! He would request him to avoid all reference to
religious subjects! Therewith he dismissed the matter, and forgot all
about it. Anything requiring an effort of the will, an arrangement of
ideas, or thought as to mode, his lordship would not encounter. Nor
was anything to him of such moment that he must do it at once. Lady
Arctura did not again refer to the matter: her uncle was not one to
take liberties with--least of all to press to action. But she
continued painfully doubtful whether she was not neglecting her duty,
trying to persuade herself that she was waiting only till she should
have something definite to say of her own knowledge against him.
And now what was she to conclude from his reading the Apocrypha? The
fact was not to be interpreted to his advantage: was he not reading
what was not the Bible as if it were the Bible, and when he might have
been reading the Bible itself? Besides, the Apocrypha came so near the
Bible when it was not the Bible! it must be at least rather wicked! At
the same time she could not drive from her mind the impressiveness both
of the matter she had heard, and his manner of reading it: the strong
sound of judgment and condemnation in it came home to her--she could
not have told how or why, except generally because of her sins. She
was one of those--not very few I think--who from conjunction of a
lovely conscience with an ill-instructed mind, are doomed for a season
to much suffering. She was largely different from her friend: the
religious opinions of the latter--they were in reality rather
metaphysical than religious, and bad either way--though she clung to
them with all the tenacity of a creature with claws, occasioned her not
an atom of mental discomposure: perhaps that was in part why she clung
to them! they were as she would have them! She did not trouble herself
about what God required of her, beyond holding the doctrine the holding
of which guaranteed, as she thought, her future welfare. Conscience
toward God had very little to do with her opinions, and her heart still
less. Her head on the contrary, perhaps rather her memory, was
considerably occupied with the matter; nothing she held had ever been
by her regarded on its own merits--that is, on its individual claim to
truth; if it had been handed down by her church, that was enough; to
support it she would search out text after text, and press it into the
service. Any meaning but that which the church of _her_ fathers gave to
a passage must be of the devil, and every man opposed to the truth who
saw in that meaning anything but truth! It was indeed impossible Miss
Carmichael should see any meaning but that, even if she had looked for
it; she was nowise qualified for discovering truth, not being herself
true. What she saw and loved in the doctrines of her church was not
the truth, but the assertion; and whoever questioned, not to say the
doctrine, but even the proving of it by any particular passage, was a
dangerous person, and unsound. All the time her acceptance and defence
of any doctrine made not the slightest difference to her life--as
indeed how should it?
Such was the only _friend_ lady Arctura had. But the conscience and
heart of the younger woman were alive to a degree that boded ill either
for the doctrine that stinted their growth, or the nature unable to
cast it off. Miss Carmichael was a woman about six-and-twenty--and had
been a woman, like too many Scotch girls, long before she was out of
her teens--a human flower cut and dried--an unpleasant specimen, and by
no means valuable from its scarcity. Self-sufficient, assured, with
scarce shyness enough for modesty, handsome and hard, she was
essentially a self-glorious Philistine; nor would she be anything
better till something was sent to humble her, though what spiritual
engine might be equal to the task was not for man to imagine. She was
clever, but her cleverness made nobody happier; she had great
confidence, but her confidence gave courage to no one, and took it from
many; she had little fancy, and less imagination than any other I ever
knew. The divine wonder was, that she had not yet driven the delicate,
truth-loving Arctura mad. From her childhood she had had the ordering
of all her opinions: whatever Sophy Carmichael said, lady Arctura never
thought of questioning. A lie is indeed a thing in its nature
unbelievable, but there is a false belief always ready to receive the
false truth, and there is no end to the mischief the two can work. The
awful punishment of untruth in the inward parts is that the man is
given over to believe a lie.
Lady Arctura was in herself a gentle creature who shrank from either
giving or receiving a rough touch; but she had an inherited pride, by
herself unrecognized as such, which made her capable of hurting as well
as being hurt. Next to the doctrines of the Scottish church, she
respected her own family: it had in truth no other claim to respect
than that its little good and much evil had been done before the eyes
of a large part of many generations--whence she was born to think
herself distinguished, and to imagine a claim for the acknowledgment of
distinction upon all except those of greatly higher rank than her own.
This inborn arrogance was in some degree modified by respect for the
writers of certain books--not one of whom was of any regard in the eyes
of the thinkers of the age. Of any writers of power, beyond those of
the Bible, either in this country or another, she knew nothing. Yet
she had a real instinct for what was good in literature; and of the
writers to whom I have referred she not only liked the worthiest best,
but liked best their best things. I need hardly say they were all
religious writers; for the keen conscience and obedient heart of the
girl had made her very early turn herself towards the quarter where the
sun ought to rise, the quarter where all night long gleams the auroral
hope; but unhappily she had not gone direct to the heavenly well in
earthly ground--the words of the Master himself. How could she? From
very childhood her mind had been filled with traditionary utterances
concerning the divine character and the divine plans--the merest
inventions of men far more desirous of understanding what they were not
required to understand, than of doing what they were required to
do--whence their crude and false utterances concerning a God of their
own fancy--in whom it was a good man’s duty, in the name of any
possible God, to disbelieve; and just because she was true, authority
had immense power over her. The very sweetness of their nature forbids
such to doubt the fitness of others.
She had besides had a governess of the orthodox type, a large
proportion of whose teaching was of the worst heresy, for it was lies
against him who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all; her
doctrines were so many smoked glasses held up between the mind of her
pupil and the glory of the living God; nor had she once directed her
gaze to the very likeness of God, the face of Jesus Christ. Had
Arctura set herself to understand him the knowledge of whom is eternal
life, she would have believed none of these false reports of him, but
she had not yet met with any one to help her to cast aside the
doctrines of men, and go face to face with the Son of Man, the visible
God. First lie of all, she had been taught that she must believe so and
so before God would let her come near him or listen to her. The old
cobbler could have taught her differently; but she would have thought
it improper to hold conversation with such a man, even if she had known
him for the best man in Auchars. She was in sore and sad earnest to
believe as she was told she must believe; therefore instead of
beginning to do what Jesus Christ said, she tried hard to imagine
herself one of the chosen, tried hard to believe herself the chief of
sinners. There was no one to tell her that it is only the man who sees
something of the glory of God, the height and depth and breadth and
length of his love and unselfishness, not a child dabbling in stupid
doctrines, that can feel like St. Paul. She tried to feel that she
deserved to be burned in hell for ever and ever, and that it was
boundlessly good of God--who made her so that she could not help being
a sinner--to give her the least chance of escaping it. She tried to
feel that, though she could not be saved without something which the
God of perfect love could give her if he pleased, but might not please
to give her, yet if she was not saved it would be all her own fault:
and so ever the round of a great miserable treadmill of contradictions!
For a moment she would be able to say this or that she thought she
ought to say; the next the feeling would be gone, and she as miserable
as before. Her friend made no attempt to imbue her with her own calm
indifference, nor could she have succeeded had she attempted it. But
though she had never been troubled herself, and that because she had
never been in earnest, she did not find it the less easy to take upon
her the rôle of a spiritual adviser, and gave no end of counsel for the
attainment of _assurance_. She told her truly enough that all her
trouble came of want of faith; but she showed her no one fit to believe
in.