LOVE.
Christina went back to London considerably changed. Her beauty was
greater far, for there was a new element in it--a certain atmosphere
of distances and shadows gave mystery to her landscape. Her weather,
that is her mood, was now subject to changes which to many made her
more attractive. Fits of wild gaiety alternated with glooms, through
which would break flashes of feline playfulness, where pat and
scratch were a little mixed. She had more admirers than ever, for
she had developed points capable of interesting men of somewhat
higher development than those she had hitherto pleased. At the same
time she was more wayward and imperious with her courtiers. Gladly
would she have thrown all the flattery once so coveted into the
rag-bag of creation, to have one approving smile from the
grave-looking, gracious man, whom she knew happier, wandering alone
over the hills, than if she were walking by his side. For an hour
she would persuade herself that he cared for her a little; the next
she would comfort herself with the small likelihood of his meeting
another lady in Glenruadh. But then he had been such a traveller,
had seen so much of the great world, that perhaps he was already
lost to her! It seemed but too probable, when she recalled the
sadness with which he seemed sometimes overshadowed: it could not be
a religious gloom, for when he spoke of God his face shone, and his
words were strong! I think she mistook a certain gravity, like that
of the Merchant of Venice, for sorrowfulness; though doubtless the
peculiarity of his loss, as well as the loss itself, did sometimes
make him sad.
She had tried on him her little arts of subjugation, but the moment
she began to love him, she not only saw their uselessness, but hated
them. Her repellent behaviour to her admirers, and her occasional
excitement and oddity, caused her mother some anxiety, but as the
season came to a close, she grew gayer, and was at times absolutely
bewitching. The mother wished to go northward by degrees, paying
visits on the way; but her plan met with no approbation from the
girls. Christina longed for the presence and voice of Ian in the
cottage-parlour, Mercy for a hill-side with the chief; both longed
to hear them speak to each other in their own great way. And they
talked so of the delights of their highland home, that the mother
began to feel the mountains, the sea, and the islands, drawing her
to a land of peace, where things went well, and the world knew how
to live. But the stormiest months of her life were about to pass
among those dumb mountains!
After a long and eager journey, the girls were once more in their
rooms at the New House.
Mercy went to her window, and stood gazing from it upon the
mountain-world, faint-lighted by the northern twilight. She might
have said with Portia:--
"This night methinks is but the daylight sick;
It looks a little paler: 'tis a day,
Such as the day is when the sun is hid."
She could see the dark bulk of the hills, sharpened to a clear edge
against the pellucid horizon, but with no colour, and no visible
featuring of their great fronts. When the sun rose, it would reveal
innumerable varieties of surface, by the mottling of endless
shadows; now all was smooth as an unawakened conscience. By the
shape of a small top that rose against the greenish sky betwixt the
parting lines of two higher hills, where it seemed to peep out over
the marge into the infinite, as a little man through the gap between
the heads of taller neighbours, she knew the roof of THE TOMB; and
she thought how, just below there, away as it seemed in the
high-lifted solitudes of heaven, she had lain in the clutches of
death, all the time watched and defended by the angel of a higher
life who had been with her ever since first she came to Glenruadh,
waking her out of such a stupidity, such a non-existence, as now she
could scarce see possible to human being. It was true her waking had
been one with her love to that human East which first she saw as she
opened her eyes, and whence first the light of her morning had
flowed--the man who had been and was to her the window of God! But
why should that make her doubt? God made man and woman to love each
other: why should not the waking to love and the waking to truth
come together, seeing both were of God? If the chief were never to
speak to her again, she would never go back from what she had
learned of him! If she ever became careless of truth and life and
God, it would but show that she had never truly loved the chief!
As she stood gazing on the hill-top, high landmark of her history,
she felt as if the earth were holding her up toward heaven, an
offering to the higher life. The hill grew an altar of prayer on
which her soul was lying, dead until taken up into life by the arms
of the Father. A deep content pervaded her heart. She turned with
her weight of peace, lay down, and went to sleep in the presence of
her Life.
Christina looked also from her window, but her thoughts were not
like Mercy's, for her heart was mainly filled, not with love of Ian,
but with desire that Ian should love her. She longed to be his
queen--the woman of all women he had seen. The sweet repose of the
sleeping world wrought in her--not peace, but weakness. Her soul
kept leaning towards Ian; she longed for his arms to start out the
alien nature lying so self-satisfied all about her. To her the
presence of God took shape as an emptiness--an absence. The resting
world appeared to her cold, unsympathetic, heedless; its peace was
but heartlessness. The soft pellucid chrysolite of passive heavenly
thought, was a merest arrangement, a common fact, meaning nothing to
her.
She was hungry, not merely after bliss, but after distinction in
bliss; not after growth, but after acknowledged superiority. She
needed to learn that she was nobody--that if the world were peopled
with creatures like her, it would be no more worth sustaining than
were it a world of sand, of which no man could build even a hut.
Still, by her need of another, God was laying hold of her. As by the
law is the knowledge of sin, so by love is selfishness rampantly
roused--to be at last, like death, swallowed up in victory--the
victory of the ideal self that dwells in God.
All night she dreamed sad dreams of Ian in the embrace of a lovely
woman, without word or look for her. She woke weeping, and said to
herself that it could not be. He COULD not be taken from her! it was
against nature! Soul, brain, and heart, claimed him hers! How could
another possess what, in the testimony of her whole consciousness,
was hers and hers alone! Love asserts an innate and irreversible
right of profoundest property in the person loved. It is an
instinct--but how wrongly, undivinely, falsely interpreted! Hence so
many tears! Hence a law of nature, deep written in the young heart,
seems often set utterly at nought by circumstance!
But the girl in her dejection and doubt, was worth far more than in
her content and confidence. She was even now the richer by the
knowledge of sorrow, and she was on the way to know that she needed
help, on the way to hate herself, to become capable of loving. Life
could never be the same to her, and the farther from the same the
better!
The beauty came down in the morning pale and dim and white-lipped,
like a flower that had had no water. Mercy was fresh and rosy, with
a luminous mist of loveliness over her plain unfinished features.
Already had they begun to change in the direction of beauty.
Christina's eyes burned; in Mercy's shone something of the light by
which a soul may walk and not stumble. In the eyes of both was
expectation, in the eyes of the one confident, in the eyes of the
other anxious.
As soon as they found themselves alone together, eyes sought eyes,
and met in understanding. They had not made confidantes of each
other, each guessed well, and was well guessed at. They did not
speculate; they understood. In like manner, Mercy and Alister
understood each other, but not Christina and Ian. Neither of these
knew the feelings of the other.
Without a word they rose, put on their hats, left the house, and
took the road toward the valley.
About half-way to the root of the ridge, they came in sight of the
ruined castle; Mercy stopped with a little cry.
"Look! Chrissy!" she said, pointing.
On the corner next them, close by the pepper-pot turret, sat the two
men, in what seemed to loving eyes a dangerous position, but to the
mountaineers themselves a comfortable coin of vantage. The girls
thought, "They are looking out for us!" but Ian was there only
because Alister was there.
The men waved their bonnets. Christina responded with her
handkerchief. The men disappeared from their perch, and were with
the ladies before they reached the ridge. There was no embarrassment
on either side, though a few cheeks were rosier than usual. To the
chief, Mercy was far beyond his memory of her. Not her face only,
but her every movement bore witness to a deeper pleasure, a greater
freedom in life than before.
"Why were you in such a dangerous place?" asked Christina.
"We were looking out for you," answered Alister. "From there we
could see you the moment you came out."
"Why didn't you come and meet us then?"
"Because we wanted to watch you coming."
"Spies!--I hope, Mercy, we were behaving ourselves properly! I had
no idea we were watched!"
"We thought you had quarrelled; neither said a word to the other."
Mercy looked up; Christina looked down.
"Could you hear us at that height?" asked Mercy.
"How could we when there was not a word to hear!"
"How did you know we were silent?"
"We might have known by the way you walked," replied Alister. "But
if you had spoken we should have heard, for sound travels far among
the mountains!"
"Then I think it was a shame!" said Christina. "How could you tell
that we might not object to your hearing us?"
"We never thought of that!" said Alister. "I am very sorry. We shall
certainly not be guilty again!"
"What men you are for taking everything in downright earnest!"
cried Christina; "--as if we could have anything to say we should
wish YOU not to hear?"
She pat a little emphasis on the YOU, hut not much. Alister heard it
as if Mercy had said it, and smiled a pleased smile.
"It will be a glad day for the world," he said, "when secrecy is
over, and every man may speak out the thing that is in him, without
danger of offence!"
In her turn, Christina heard the words as if spoken with reference
to Ian though not by him, and took them to hint at the difficulty of
saying what was in his heart. She had such an idea of her
superiority because of her father's wealth and fancied position,
that she at once concluded Ian dreaded rejection with scorn, for it
was not even as if he were the chief. However poor, Alister was at
least the head of a family, and might set SIR before, and BARONET
after his name--not that her father would think that much of a
dignity!--but no younger son of whatever rank, would be good enough
for her in her father's eyes! At the same time she had a choice as
well as her father, and he should find she too had a will of her
own!
"But was it not a dangerous place to be in?" she said.
"It is a little crumbly!" confessed Ian. "--That reminds me,
Alister, we must have a bout at the old walls before long!--Ever
since Alister was ten years old," he went on in explanation to
Christina, "he and I have been patching and pointing at the old
hulk--the stranded ship of our poor fortunes. I showed you, did I
not, the ship in our coat of arms--the galley at least, in which,
they say, we arrived at the island?"
"Yes, I remember.--But you don't mean you do mason's work as well as
everything else?" exclaimed Christina.
"Come; we will show you," said the chief.
"What do you do it for?"
The brothers exchanged glances.
"Would you count it sufficient reason," returned Ian, "that we
desired to preserve its testimony to the former status of our
family?"
A pang of pleasure shot through the heart of Christina. Passion is
potent to twist in its favour whatever can possibly be so twisted.
Here was an indubitable indication of his thoughts! He must make the
most of himself, set what he could against the overwhelming
advantages on her side! In the eyes of a man of the world like her
father, an old name was nothing beside new money! still an old
castle was always an old castle! and that he cared about it for her
sake made it to her at least worth something!
Ere she could give an answer, Ian went on.
"But in truth," he said, "we have always had a vague hope of its
resurrection. The dream of our boyhood was to rebuild the castle.
Every year it has grown more hopeless, and keeps receding. But we
have come to see how little it matters, and content ourselves with
keeping up, for old love's sake, what is left of the ruin."
"How do you get up on the walls?" asked Mercy.
"Ah, that is a secret!" said Ian.
"Do tell us," pleaded Christina.
"If you want very much to know,--" answered Ian, a little
doubtfully.
"I do, I do!"
"Then I suppose we must tell you!"
Yet more confirmation to the passion-prejudiced ears of Christina!
"There is a stair," Ian went on, "of which no one but our two selves
knows anything. Such stairs are common in old houses--far commoner
than people in towns have a notion of. But there would not have been
much of it left by this time, if we hadn't taken care of it. We were
little fellows when we began, and it needed much contrivance, for we
were not able to unseat the remnants of the broken steps, and
replace them with new ones."
"Do show it us," begged Christina.
"We will keep it," said Alister, "for some warm twilight. Morning is
not for ruins. Yon mountain-side is calling to us. Will you come,
Mercy?"
"Oh yes!" cried Christina; "that will be much better! Come, Mercy!
You are up to a climb, I am sure!"
"I ought to be, after such a long rest."
"You may have forgotten how to climb!" said Alister.
"I dreamed too much of the hills for that! And always the noise of
London was changed into the rush of waters."
They had dropped a little behind the other pair.
"Did you always climb your dream-hills alone?" asked Alister.
She answered him with just a lift of her big dark eyes.
They walked slowly down the road till they came to Mrs. Conal's
path, passed her door unassailed, and went up the hill.