It was when I was ten years old that Wee Elspeth ceased coming to me,
and though I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of grief or
final loss. She had only gone somewhere.
It was then that Angus Macayre began to be my tutor. He had been a
profound student and had lived among books all his life. He had helped
Jean in her training of me, and I had learned more than is usually
taught to children in their early years. When a grand governess was
sent to Muircarrie by my guardian, she was amazed at the things I
was familiar with, but she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the
loneliness of the place and would not stay. In fact, no governess would
stay, and so Angus became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic and Latin
and Greek, and we read together and studied the ancient books in the
library. It was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt made me
more than ever unlike others. But my life was the life I loved.
When my guardian decided that I must live with him in London and be
educated as modern girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to him;
but before two months had passed my wretchedness had made me so ill that
the doctor said I should go into a decline and die if I were not sent
back to Muircarrie.
“It’s not only the London air that seems to poison her,” he said when
Jean talked to him about me; “it is something else. She will not live,
that’s all. Sir Ian must send her home.”
As I have said before, I had been an unattractive child and I was a
plain, uninteresting sort of girl. I was shy and could not talk to
people, so of course I bored them. I knew I did not look well when I
wore beautiful clothes. I was little and unimportant and like a reed for
thinness. Because I was rich and a sort of chieftainess I ought to have
been tall and rather stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing
which would have made it impossible for people to quite overlook me.
But; any one could overlook me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped
in and out of places and sat and stared and listened to other people
instead of saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten.
It interested me to watch people if they did not notice me.
Of course, my relatives did not really like me. How could they? They
were busy in their big world and did not know what to do with a girl who
ought to have been important and was not. I am sure that in secret they
were relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
After that the life I loved went on quietly. I studied with Angus, and
made the book-walled library my own room. I walked and rode on the moor,
and I knew the people who lived in the cottages and farms on the estate.
I think they liked me, but I am not sure, because I was too shy to seem
very friendly. I was more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with
some of the gardeners than I was with any one else. I think I was lonely
without knowing; but I was never unhappy. Jean and Angus were my nearest
and dearest. Jean was of good blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
sufficiently educated to be my companion as she had been my early
governess.
It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving myself too entirely to the
study of ancient books and the history of centuries gone by.
“She is living to-day, and she must not pass through this life without
gathering anything from it.”
“This life,” she put it, as if I had passed through others before, and
might pass through others again. That was always her way of speaking,
and she seemed quite unconscious of any unusualness in it.
“You are a wise woman, Jean,” Angus said, looking long at her grave
face. “A wise woman.”
He wrote to the London book-shops for the best modern books, and I began
to read them. I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world I did
not understand, and many of them I could not endure. But I persevered,
and studied them as I had studied the old ones, and in time I began to
feel as if perhaps they were true. My chief weariness with them came
from the way they had of referring to the things I was so intimate with
as though they were only the unauthenticated history of a life so
long passed by that it could no longer matter to any one. So often the
greatest hours of great lives were treated as possible legends. I
knew why men had died or were killed or had borne black horror. I knew
because I had read old books and manuscripts and had heard the stories
which had come down through centuries by word of mouth, passed from
father to son.
But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had
begun and would end with him. He knew he was only one, and part of
all the rest. The name I shall give him is Hector MacNairn. He was a
Scotchman, but he had lived in many a land. The first time I read a book
he had written I caught my breath with joy, again and again. I knew I
had found a friend, even though there was no likelihood that I should
ever see his face. He was a great and famous writer, and all the world
honored him; while I, hidden away in my castle on a rock on the edge of
Muircarrie, was so far from being interesting or clever that even in my
grandest evening dress and tiara of jewels I was as insignificant as a
mouse. In fact, I always felt rather silly when I was obliged to wear my
diamonds on state occasions as custom sometimes demanded.
Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and marvelous stories which were
always real though they were called fiction. Wheresoever his story was
placed--howsoever remote and unknown the scene--it was a real place, and
the people who lived in it were real, as if he had some magic power to
call up human things to breathe and live and set one’s heart beating.
I read everything he wrote. I read every word of his again and again. I
always kept some book of his near enough to be able to touch it with my
hand; and often I sat by the fire in the library holding one open on
my lap for an hour or more, only because it meant a warm, close
companionship. It seemed at those times as if he sat near me in the dim
glow and we understood each other’s thoughts without using words, as Wee
Brown Elspeth and I had understood--only this was a deeper thing.
I had felt near him in this way for several years, and every year he had
grown more famous, when it happened that one June my guardian, Sir Ian,
required me to go to London to see my lawyers and sign some important
documents connected with the management of the estate. I was to go
to his house to spend a week or more, attend a Drawing-Room, and show
myself at a few great parties in a proper manner, this being considered
my duty toward my relatives. These, I believe, were secretly afraid that
if I were never seen their world would condemn my guardian for
neglect of his charge, or would decide that I was of unsound mind and
intentionally kept hidden away at Muircarrie. He was an honorable man,
and his wife was a well-meaning woman. I did not wish to do them an
injustice, so I paid them yearly visits and tried to behave as they
wished, much as I disliked to be dressed in fine frocks and to wear
diamonds on my little head and round my thin neck.
It was an odd thing that this time I found I did not dread the visit
to London as much as I usually did. For some unknown reason I became
conscious that I was not really reluctant to go. Usually the thought
of the days before me made me restless and low-spirited. London always
seemed so confused and crowded, and made me feel as if I were being
pushed and jostled by a mob always making a tiresome noise. But this
time I felt as if I should somehow find a clear place to stand in, where
I could look on and listen without being bewildered. It was a curious
feeling; I could not help noticing and wondering about it.
I knew afterward that it came to me because a change was drawing near. I
wish so much that I could tell about it in a better way. But I have only
my own way, which I am afraid seems very like a school-girl’s.
Jean Braidfute made the journey with me, as she always did, and it was
like every other journey. Only one incident made it different, and when
it occurred there seemed nothing unusual in it. It was only a bit of
sad, everyday life which touched me. There is nothing new in seeing a
poor woman in deep mourning.
Jean and I had been alone in our railway carriage for a great part of
the journey; but an hour or two before we reached London a man got in
and took a seat in a corner. The train had stopped at a place where
there is a beautiful and well-known cemetery. People bring their friends
from long distances to lay them there. When one passes the station, one
nearly always sees sad faces and people in mourning on the platform.
There was more than one group there that day, and the man who sat in the
corner looked out at them with gentle eyes. He had fine, deep eyes and a
handsome mouth. When the poor woman in mourning almost stumbled into
the carriage, followed by her child, he put out his hand to help her
and gave her his seat. She had stumbled because her eyes were dim with
dreadful crying, and she could scarcely see. It made one’s heart stand
still to see the wild grief of her, and her unconsciousness of the world
about her. The world did not matter. There was no world. I think there
was nothing left anywhere but the grave she had just staggered blindly
away from. I felt as if she had been lying sobbing and writhing and
beating the new turf on it with her poor hands, and I somehow knew that
it had been a child’s grave she had been to visit and had felt she left
to utter loneliness when she turned away.
It was because I thought this that I wished she had not seemed so
unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and clung
to her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This one was
alive at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its little face
was so wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and ignore it, as if
it were not there. I felt as if she might have left it behind on the
platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it was almost dragged
into the railway carriage with her. When she sank into her seat she did
not even lift the poor little thing into the place beside her, but left
it to scramble up as best it could. She buried her swollen face in her
handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered way as if she neither saw, heard,
nor felt any living thing near her.
How I wished she would remember the poor child and let it comfort her!
It really was trying to do it in its innocent way. It pressed close to
her side, it looked up imploringly, it kissed her arm and her crape
veil over and over again, and tried to attract her attention. It was
a little, lily-fair creature not more than five or six years old and
perhaps too young to express what it wanted to say. It could only cling
to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg her to remember that
it, at least, was a living thing. But she was too absorbed in her
anguish to know that it was in the world. She neither looked at nor
touched it, and at last it sat with its cheek against her sleeve, softly
stroking her arm, and now and then kissing it longingly. I was obliged
to turn my face away and look out of the window, because I knew the man
with the kind face saw the tears well up into my eyes.
The poor woman did not travel far with us. She left the train after a
few stations were passed. Our fellow-traveler got out before her to help
her on to the platform. He stood with bared head while he assisted her,
but she scarcely saw him. And even then she seemed to forget the child.
The poor thing was dragged out by her dress as it had been dragged in. I
put out my hand involuntarily as it went through the door, because I was
afraid it might fall. But it did not. It turned its fair little face
and smiled at me. When the kind traveler returned to his place in the
carriage again, and the train left the station, the black-draped woman
was walking slowly down the platform and the child was still clinging to
her skirt.