INSIGHT.
Mr. Graeme was a good sort of man, and a gentleman; but he was not
capable of meeting Donal on the ground on which he approached him: on
that level he had never set foot. There is nothing more disappointing
to the generous man than the way in which his absolute frankness is met
by the man of the world--always looking out for motives, and imagining
them _after what is in himself_.
There was great confidence between the brother and sister, and as he
walked homeward, Mr. Graeme was not so well pleased with himself as to
think with satisfaction on the report of the interview he could give
Kate. He did not accuse himself with regard to anything he had said,
but he felt his behaviour influenced by jealousy of the low-born youth
who had supplanted him. For, if Percy could not succeed to the title,
neither could he have succeeded to the property; and but for the will
or the marriage, perhaps but for the two together, he would himself
have come in for that also! The will was worth nothing except the
marriage was disputed: annul the marriage, and the will was of force!
He told his sister, as nearly as he could, all that had passed between
them.
“If he wanted me to talk to him,” he said, “why did he tell me that
about Forgue? It was infernally stupid of him! But what’s bred in the
bone--! A gentleman’s not made in a day!”
“Nor in a thousand years, Hector!” rejoined his sister. “Donal Grant is
a gentleman in the best sense of the word! That you say he is not, lets
me see you are vexed with yourself. He is a little awkward sometimes, I
confess; but only when he is looking at a thing from some other point
of view, and does not like to say you ought to have been looking at it
from the same. And you can’t say he shuffles, for he never stops till
he has done his best to make you!--What have you been saying to him,
Hector?”
“Nothing but what I have told you; it’s rather what I have not been
saying!” answered her brother. “He would have had me open out to him,
and I wouldn’t. How could I! Whatever I said that pleased him, would
have looked as if I wanted to secure my situation! Hang it all! I have
a good mind to throw it up. How is a Graeme to serve under a bumpkin?”
“The man is not a bumpkin; he is a scholar and a poet!” said the lady.
“Pooh! pooh! What’s a poet?”
“One that may or may not be as good a man of business as yourself when
it is required of him.”
“Come, come! don’t you turn against me, Kate! It’s hard enough to bear
as it is!”
Miss Graeme made no reply. She was meditating all she knew of Donal, to
guide her to the something to which she was sure her brother had not
let him come; and presently she made him recount again all they had
said to each other.
“I tell you, Hector,” she exclaimed, “you never made such a fool of
yourself in your life! If I know human nature, that man is different
from any other you have had to do with. It will take a woman, a better
woman than your sister, I confess, to understand him; but I see a
little farther into him than you do. He is a man who, never having had
money enough to learn the bad uses of it, and never having formed
habits it takes money to supply, having no ambition, living in books
not in places, and for pleasure having more at his command in himself
than the richest--he is a man who, I say, would find money an
impediment to his happiness, for he must have a sense of duty with
regard to it which would interfere with everything he liked best.
Besides, though he does not care a straw for the judgment of the world
where it differs from him, he would be sorry to seem to go against that
judgment where he agrees with it: scorning to marry any woman for her
money, he would not have the world think he had done so.”
“Ah, Katey, there I have you! The world would entirely approve of his
doing that!”
“I will take a better position then:--he would not willingly seem to
have done a thing he himself despises. The man believes himself sent
into the world to teach it something: he would not have it thrown in
his teeth that, after all, he looks to the main chance as keenly as
another! He would starve before he would have men say so--yes, even say
so falsely. I am as sure he did not marry lady Arctura for her money,
as I am sure lord Forgue, or you, Hector, would have done it if you had
had a chance.--There!--My conviction is that the bumpkin sought a fit
opening to tell you that the will was to go for nothing, and that no
word need be said about the marriage. You know he made you promise not
to mention it--only I wormed it out of you!”
“That’s just like you women! The man you take a fancy to is always head
and shoulders above other men!”
“As you take it so, I will tell you more: that man will never marry
again!”
“Wait a bit. Admiration is sometimes mutual: who knows but he may ask
you next!”
“If he did ask me, I might take him, but I should never think so much
of him!”
“Heroic Kate!”
“If you had been a little more heroic, Hector, you would have responded
to him--and found it considerably to your advantage.”
“You don’t imagine I would be indebted--”
“Hush! Hush! Don’t pledge yourself in a hurry--even to me!” said Kate.
“Leave as wide a sea-margin about your boat as you may. You don’t know
what you would or would not. Mr. Grant knows, but you do not.”
“Mr. Grant again!--Well!”
“Well!--we shall see!”
And they soon did. For that same evening Donal called, and asked to see
Miss Graeme.
“I am sorry my brother is gone down to the town,” she said.
“It was you I wanted to see,” he answered. “I wish to speak openly to
you, for I imagine you will understand me better than your brother.
Perhaps I ought rather to say--I shall be better able to explain myself
to you.”
There was that in his countenance which seemed to seize and hold her--a
calm exaltation, as of a man who had outlived weakness and was facing
the eternal. The spirit of a smile hovered about his mouth and eyes,
embodying itself now and then in a grave, sweet, satisfied smile: the
man seemed full of content, not with himself, but with something he
would gladly share.
“I have been talking with your brother,” he said, after a brief pause.
“I know,” she answered. “I am afraid he did not meet you as he ought.
He is a good and honourable man; but like most men he needs a moment to
pull himself together. Few men, Mr. Grant, when suddenly called upon,
answer from the best that is in them.”
“The fact is simply this,” resumed Donal: “I do not want the Morven
property. I thank God for lady Arctura: what was hers I do not desire.”
“But may it not be your duty to take it, Mr. Grant?--Pardon me for
suggesting duty to one who always acts from it.”
“I have reflected, and do not think God wants me to take it. Because
she is mine, ought I of necessity to be enslaved to all her accidents?
Must I, because I love her, hoard her gowns and shoes?”
Then first Miss Graeme noted that he never spoke of his wife as in the
past.
“But there are others to be considered,” she replied. “You have made me
think about many things, Mr. Grant! My brother and I have had many
talks as to what we would do if the land were ours.”
“And yours it shall be,” said Donal, “if you will take it as a trust
for the good of all whom it supports. I have other work to do.”
“I will tell my brother what you say,” answered Miss Graeme, with
victory in her heart--for was it not as she had divined?
“It is better,” continued Donal, “to help make good men than happy
tenants. Besides, I know how to do the one, and I do not know how to do
the other. There would always be a prejudice against me too, as not to
the manner born. But if your brother should accept my offer, I hope he
will not think me interfering if I talk sometimes of the principles of
the relation. Things go wrong, generally, because men have such absurd
and impossible notions about _possession_. They call things their own
which it is impossible, from their very nature, ever to possess or make
their own. Power was never given to man over men for his own sake, and
the nearer he that so uses it comes to success, the more utter will
prove his discomfiture. Talk to your brother about it, Miss Graeme.
Tell him that, as heir to the title, and as head of the family, he can
do more than any other with the property, and I will gladly make it
over to him without reserve. I would not be even partially turned aside
from my own calling.”
“I will tell him what you say. I told him he had misunderstood you. I
saw into your generous thought.”
“It is not generous at all. My dear Miss Graeme, you do not know how
little of a temptation such things are to me! There are some who only
care to inherit straight from the first Father. You may say the earth
is the Lord’s, and therefore a part of that first inheritance: I admit
it; but such possession as this in question would not satisfy me in the
least. I must inherit the earth in a far deeper, grander, truer way
than calling the land mine, before I shall count myself to have come
into my own. I want to have all things just as the maker of me wants me
to have them.--I will call on you again to-morrow; I must now go back
to the earl. Poor man, he is sinking fast! but I believe he is more at
peace than he has ever been before!”
Donal took his leave, and Miss Graeme had plenty to think of till her
brother’s return: if she felt a little triumphant, it may be pardoned
her.
He was ashamed, and not a little humbled by what she told him. He did
not wait for Donal to come to him, but went to the castle early the
next morning. Nor was he mistaken in trusting Donal to believe that it
was not from eagerness to retrace in his own interest the false step he
had taken, but from desire to show his shame of having behaved so
ungenerously: Donal received him so as to make it plain he did not
misunderstand him, and they had a long talk. Graeme was all the readier
for his blunder to hear what Donal had to say, and Donal’s
unquestionable disinterestedness was endlessly potent with Graeme.
Their interview resulted in Donal’s thinking still better of him than
before, and being satisfied that, up to his light, the man was
honest--which is saying much--and thence open to conviction, and both
sides of a question. But ere it was naturally over, Donal was summoned
to the earl.
After his niece’s death, no one would do for him but Donal; nobody
could please him but Donal. His mind as well as his body was much
weaker. But the intellect, great thing though it be, is yet but the
soil out of which, or rather in which, higher things must grow, and it
is well when that soil is not too strong, so to speak, for the most
gracious and lovely of plants to root themselves in it. When the said
soil is proud and unwilling to serve, it must be thinned and pulverized
with sickness, failure, poverty, fear--that the good seeds of God’s
garden may be able to root themselves in it; when they get up a little,
they will use all the riches and all the strength of the stiffest soil.
“Who will have the property now?” he asked one day. “Is the factor
anywhere in the running?”
“Title and property both will be his,” answered Donal.
“And my poor Davie?” said the earl, with wistful question in the eyes
that gazed up in Donal’s face. “Forgue, the rascal, has all my money in
his power already.”
“I will see to Davie,” replied Donal. “When you and I meet, my lord--by
and by, I shall not be ashamed.”
The poor man was satisfied. He sent for Davie, and told him he was
always to do as Mr. Grant wished, that he left him in his charge, and
that he must behave to him like a son.
Davie was fast making acquaintance with death--but it was not to him
dreadful as to most children, for he saw it through the face and words
of the man whom he most honoured.