GLASHGAR.
Out of Arctura’s sight Donal had his turn of so-called weakness!
The day was a glorious one, and Davie, full of spirits, could not
understand why he seemed so unlike himself.
“Arkie would scold you, Mr. Grant!” he said.
Donal avoided the town, and walked a long way round to get into the
road beyond it, his head bent as if he were pondering a pain. At
moments he felt as if he must return at once, and refuse to leave the
castle for any reason. But he could not see that it was the will of God
he should do so. A presentiment is not a command. A prophecy may fail
of the least indication of duty. Hamlet defying augury is the
consistent religious man Shakspere takes pains to show him. A
presentiment may be true, may be from God himself, yet involve no
reason why a man should change his way, should turn a step aside from
the path before him. St. Paul received warning after warning on his
road to Jerusalem that bonds and imprisonment awaited him, and these
warnings he knew came from the spirit of prophecy, but he heeded them
only to set his face like a flint. He knew better than imagine duty
determined by consequences, or take foresight for direction. There is a
higher guide, and he followed that. So did Donal now. Moved to go back,
he did not go back--neither afterwards repented that he did not.
I will not describe the journey. Suffice it to say that, after a few
days of such walking as befitted an unaccustomed boy, they climbed the
last hill, crossed the threshold of Robert Grant’s cottage, and were
both clasped in the embrace of Janet. For Davie rushed into the arms of
Donal’s mother, and she took him to the same heart to which she had
taken wee sir Gibbie: the bosom of the peasant woman was indeed one to
flee to.
Then followed delights which more than equalled the expectations of
Davie. One of them was seeing how Donal was loved. Another was a new
sense of freedom: he had never imagined such liberty as he now enjoyed.
It was as if God were giving it to him, fresh out of his sky, his
mountains, his winds. Then there was the twilight on the hill-side,
with the sheep growing dusky around him; when Donal would talk about
the shepherd of the human sheep; and hearing him Davie felt not only
that there was once, but that there is now a man altogether lovely--the
heart of all beauty everywhere--a man who gave himself up to his
perfect father and his father’s most imperfect children, that he might
bring his brothers and sisters home to their father; for all his
delight is in his father and his father’s children. He showed him how
the heart of Jesus was, all through, the heart of a son, a son that
adored his perfect father; and how if he had not had his perfect son to
help him, God could not have made any of us, could never have got us to
be his little sons and daughters, loving him with all our might. Then
Davie’s heart would glow, and he would feel ready to do whatever that
son might want him to do; and Donal hoped, and had good ground for
hoping, that, when the hour of trial came, the youth would be able to
hold, not merely by the unseen, but by the seemingly unpresent and
unfelt, in the name of the eternally true.
Donal’s youth began to seem far behind him. All bitterness was gone out
of his memories of lady Galbraith. He loved her tenderly, but was
pleased she should be Gibbie’s.
How much of this happy change was owing to his interest in lady Arctura
he did not inquire: greatly interested in her--more in very important
ways than he had ever been in lady Galbraith--he was so jealous of his
heart, shrank so much from the danger of folly, knew so well how small
an amount of yielding might unfit him for the manly and fresh
performance of his duties--among which came first a due regard for her
well-being lest he should himself fail or mislead her--that he often
turned his thoughts into another channel, lest in that they should run
too swiftly, deepen it too fast, and go far to imprison themselves in
another agony.
To lady Galbraith he confided his uneasiness about lady Arctura--not
that he could explain--he could only confess himself infected with her
uneasiness, and the rather that he knew better than she the nature of
those with whom she might have to cope. If Mrs. Brookes had not been
there, he dared not have come away, he said, leaving her with such a
dread upon her.
Sir Gibbie listened open-mouthed to the tale of the finding of the lost
chapel, hidden away because it held the dust of the dead, and perhaps
sometimes their wandering ghosts.
They assured him that, if he would bring lady Arctura to them, they
would take care of her: had she not better give up the weary property,
they said, and come and live with them, and be free as the lark? But
Donal said, that, if God had given her a property, he would not have
her forsake her post, but wait for him to relieve her. She must
administer her own kingdom ere she could have an abundant entrance into
his! Only he wished he were near her again to help her!