What I feel sure I know by this time is that all the things we think
happen by chance and accident are only part of the weaving of the scheme
of life. When you begin to suspect this and to watch closely you also
begin to see how trifles connect themselves with one another, and seem
in the end to have led to a reason and a meaning, though we may not
be clever enough to see it clearly. Nothing is an accident. We make
everything happen ourselves: the wrong things because we do not know
or care whether we are wrong or right, the right ones because we
unconsciously or consciously choose the right even in the midst of our
ignorance.
I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary girl to say such things
in an ordinary way; but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself,
because it is not a bad thing that they should be said by an every-day
sort of person in simple words which other every-day people can
understand. I am only expressing what has gradually grown into belief in
my mind through reading with Angus ancient books and modern ones--books
about faiths and religions, books about philosophies and magics, books
about what the world calls marvels, but which are not marvels at all,
but only workings of the Law most people have not yet reasoned about or
even accepted.
Angus had read and studied them all his life before he began to read
them with me, and we talked them over together sitting by the fire in
the library, fascinated and staring at each other, I in one high-backed
chair and he in another on the opposite side of the hearth. Angus is
wonderful--wonderful! He KNOWS there is no such thing as chance.
He KNOWS that we ourselves are the working of the Law--and that we
ourselves could work what now are stupidly called “miracles” if we could
only remember always what the Law is.
What I intended to say at first was merely that it was not by chance
that I climbed to the shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed
aside the books hiding the old manuscript which told the real story of
Dark Malcolm of the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth. It seemed like chance
when it happened, but it was really the first step toward my finding out
the strange, beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
From the beginning of my friendship with the MacNairns I had hoped they
would come and stay with me at Muircarrie. When they both seemed to
feel such interest in all I told them of it, and not to mind its wild
remoteness, I took courage and asked them if they would come to me. Most
people are bored by the prospect of life in a feudal castle, howsoever
picturesquely it is set in a place where there are no neighbors to count
on. Its ancient stateliness is too dull. But the MacNairns were more
allured by what Muircarrie offered than they were by other and more
brilliant invitations. So when I went back to the castle I was only to
be alone a week before they followed me.
Jean and Angus were quite happy in their quiet way when I told them
who I was expecting. They knew how glad I was myself. Jean was full of
silent pleasure as she arranged the rooms I had chosen for my guests,
rooms which had the most sweeping view of the moor. Angus knew that Mr.
MacNairn would love the library, and he hovered about consulting his
catalogues and looking over his shelves, taking down volumes here and
there, holding them tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped
into them. He made notes of the manuscripts and books he thought Mr.
MacNairn would feel the deepest interest in. He loved his library with
all his being, and I knew he looked forward to talking to a man who
would care for it in the same way.
He had been going over one of the highest shelves one day and had left
his step-ladder leaning against it when he went elsewhere. It was when
I mounted the steps, as I often did when he left them, that I came
upon the manuscript which related the old story of Dark Malcolm and his
child. It had been pushed behind some volumes, and I took it out because
it looked so old and yellow. And I opened at once at the page where the
tale began.
At first I stood reading, and then I sat down on the broad top of the
ladder and forgot everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud waged between two clans for
three generations. The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand was only
part of it, but it was a gruesome thing. Pages told of the bloody deeds
they wrought on each other’s houses. The one human passion of Dark
Malcolm’s life was his love for his little daughter. She had brown
eyes and brown hair, and those who most loved her called her Wee Brown
Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer and more powerful than Malcolm of the
Glen, and therefore could more easily work his cruel will. He knew well
of Malcolm’s worship of his child, and laid his plans to torture him
through her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude, small castle one
night after a raid in which he had lost followers and weapons and
strength, found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried away, and
unspeakable taunts and threats left behind by Ian and his men. With
unbound wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark Malcolm and the
remnant of his troop of fighting clansmen rushed forth into the night.
“Neither men nor weapons have we to win her back,” screamed Dark
Malcolm, raving mad, “but we may die fighting to get near enough to her
to drive dirk into her little breast and save her from worse.”
They were a band of madmen in their black despair. How they tore through
the black night; what unguarded weak spot they found in Ian’s castle
walls; how they fought their way through it, leaving their dead bodies
in the path, none really ever knew. By what strange chance Dark Malcolm
came upon Wee Brown Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek with
a child of Ian’s so that she might not cry out and betray her presence;
how, already wounded to his death, he caught at and drove his dirk into
her child heart, the story only offers guesses at. But kill and save her
he did, falling dead with her body held against his breast, her brown
hair streaming over it. Not one living man went back to the small, rude
castle on the Glen--not one.
I sat and read and read until the room grew dark. When I stopped I
found that Angus Macayre was standing in the dimness at the foot of the
ladder. He looked up at me and I down at him. For a few moments we were
both quite still.
“It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm you are reading?” he
said, at last.
“And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought for and killed,” I added, slowly.
Angus nodded his head with a sad face. “It was the only way for a
father,” he said. “A hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage beasts
in those days, not human.”
I touched the manuscript with my hand questioningly. “Did this fall at
the back there by accident,” I asked, “or did you hide it?”
“I did,” he answered. “It was no tale for a young thing to read. I have
hidden many from you. You were always poking about in corners, Ysobel.”
Then I sat and thought over past memories for a while and the shadows in
the room deepened.
“Why,” I said, laggingly, after the silence--“why did I call the child
who used to play with me ‘Wee Brown Elspeth’?”
“It was your own fancy,” was his reply. “I used to wonder myself; but
I made up my mind that you had heard some of the maids talking and the
name had caught your ear. That would be a child’s way.”
I put my forehead in my hands and thought again. So many years had
passed! I had been little more than a baby; the whole thing seemed like
a half-forgotten dream when I tried to recall it--but I seemed to dimly
remember strange things.
“Who were the wild men who brought her to me first--that day on the
moor?” I said. “I do remember they had pale, savage, exultant faces. And
torn, stained clothes. And broken dirks and swords. But they were glad
of something. Who were they?”
“I did not see them. The mist was too thick,” he answered. “They were
some wild hunters, perhaps.”
“It gives me such a strange feeling to try to remember, Angus,” I said,
lifting my forehead from my hands.
“Don’t try,” he said. “Give me the manuscript and get down from the
step-ladder. Come and look at the list of books I have made for Mr.
MacNairn.”
I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were walking in a dream. My mind
seemed to have left my body and gone back to the day when I sat a little
child on the moor and heard the dull sound of horses’ feet and the
jingling metal and the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick mist.
I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake mood, too--as if two sets
of thoughts were working at the same time in his mind: one his thoughts
about Hector MacNairn and the books, the other some queer thoughts which
went on in spite of him.
When I was going to leave the library and go up-stairs to dress for
dinner he said a strange thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a
heavy voice.
“There is a thing Jean and I have often talked of telling you,” he said.
“We have not known what it was best to do. Times we have been troubled
because we could not make up our minds. This Mr. Hector MacNairn is
no common man. He is one who is great and wise enough to decide things
plain people could not be sure of. Jean and I are glad indeed that he
and his mother are coming. Jean can talk to her and I can talk to him,
being a man body. They will tell us whether we have been right or wrong
and what we must do.”
“They are wise enough to tell you anything,” I answered. “It sounds
as if you and Jean had known some big secret all my life. But I am not
frightened. You two would go to your graves hiding it if it would hurt
me.”
“Eh, bairn!” he said, suddenly, in a queer, moved way. “Eh, bairn!” And
he took hold of both my hands and kissed them, pressing them quite
long and emotionally to his lips. But he said nothing else, and when he
dropped them I went out of the room.