David Elginbrod

“I should be very sorry,” replied Hugh. “Let me beg you, as far as I have a right to do so, to join us as often and as long as you please. I will go and see how he is. I am sure the boy only wants thorough rousing, alternated with perfect repose.”

He went to his own room, where he found Harry, to his satisfaction, fast asleep on the sofa. He took care not to wake him, but sat down beside him to read till his sleep should be over. But, a moment after, the boy opened his eyes with a start and a shiver, and gave a slight cry. When he saw Hugh he jumped up, and with a smile which was pitiful to see upon a scared face, said:

“Oh! I am so glad you are there.”

“What is the matter, dear Harry?”

“I had a dreadful dream.”

“What was it?”

“I don’t know. It always comes. It is always the same. I know that. And yet I can never remember what it is.”

Hugh soothed him as well as he could; and he needed it, for the cold drops were standing on his forehead. When he had grown calmer, he went and fetched Gulliver, and, to the boy’s great delight, read to him till dinner-time. Before the first bell rang, he had quite recovered, and indeed seemed rather interested in the approach of dinner.

Dinner was an affair of some state at Arnstead. Almost immediately after the second bell had rung, Mr. Arnold made his appearance in the drawing-room, where the others were already waiting for him. This room had nothing of the distinctive character of the parts of the house which Hugh had already seen. It was merely a handsome modern room, of no great size. Mr. Arnold led Euphra to dinner, and Hugh followed with Harry.

Mr. Arnold’s manner to Hugh was the same as in the morning—studiously polite, without the smallest approach to cordiality. He addressed him as an equal, it is true; but an equal who could never be in the smallest danger of thinking he meant it. Hugh, who, without having seen a great deal of the world, yet felt much the same wherever he was, took care to give him all that he seemed to look for, as far at least as was consistent with his own self-respect. He soon discovered that he was one of those men, who, if you will only grant their position, and acknowledge their authority, will allow you to have much your own way in everything. His servants had found this out long ago, and almost everything about the house was managed as they pleased; but as the oldest of them were respectable family servants, nothing went very far wrong. They all, however, waited on Euphra with an assiduity that showed she was, or could be, quite mistress when and where she pleased. Perhaps they had found out that she had great influence with Mr. Arnold; and certainly he seemed very fond of her indeed, after a stately fashion. She spoke to the servants with peculiar gentleness; never said, if you please; but always, thank you. Harry never asked for anything, but always looked to Euphra, who gave the necessary order. Hugh saw that the boy was quite dependent upon her, seeming of himself scarcely capable of originating the simplest action. Mr. Arnold, however, dull as he was, could not help seeing that Harry’s manner was livelier than usual, and seemed pleased at the slight change already visible for the better. Turning to Hugh he said:

“Do you find Harry very much behind with his studies, Mr. Sutherland?”

“I have not yet attempted to find out,” replied Hugh.

“Not?” said Mr. Arnold, with surprise.

“No. If he be behind, I feel confident it will not be for long.”

“But,” began Mr. Arnold, pompously; and then he paused.

“You were kind enough to say, Mr. Arnold, that I might try my own plans with him first. I have been doing so.”

“Yes—certainly. But—”

Here Harry broke in with some animation:

“Mr. Sutherland has been my horse, carrying me about on his back all the morning—no, not all the morning—but an hour, or an hour and a half—or was it two hours, Mr. Sutherland?”

“I really don’t know, Harry,” answered Hugh; “I don’t think it matters much.”

Harry seemed relieved, and went on:

“He has been reading Gulliver’s Travels to me—oh, such fall! And we have been to see the cows and the pigs; and Mr. Sutherland has been teaching me to jump. Do you know, papa, he jumped right over the pony’s back without touching it.”

Mr. Arnold stared at the boy with lustreless eyes and hanging checks. These grew red, as if he were going to choke. Such behaviour was quite inconsistent with the dignity of Arnstead and its tutor, who had been recommended to him as a thorough gentleman. But for the present he said nothing; probably because he could think of nothing to say.

“Certainly Harry seems better already,” interposed Euphra.

“I cannot help thinking Mr. Sutherland has made a good beginning.”

Mr. Arnold did not reply, but the cloud wore away from his face by degrees; and at length he asked Hugh to take a glass of wine with him.

When Euphra rose from the table, and Harry followed her example, Hugh thought it better to rise as well. Mr. Arnold seemed to hesitate whether or not to ask him to resume his seat and have a glass of claret. Had he been a little wizened pedagogue, no doubt he would have insisted on his company, sure of acquiescence from him in every sentiment he might happen to utter. But Hugh really looked so very much like a gentleman, and stated his own views, or adopted his own plans, with so much independence, that Mr. Arnold judged it safer to keep him at arm’s length for a season at least, till he should thoroughly understand his position—not that of a guest, but that of his son’s tutor, belonging to the household of Arnstead only on approval.

On leaving the dining-room, Hugh hesitated, in his turn, whether to betake himself to his own room, or to accompany Euphra to the drawing-room, the door of which stood open on the opposite side of the hall, revealing a brightness and warmth, which the chill of the evening, and the lowness of the fire in the dining-room, rendered quite enticing. But Euphra, who was half-across the hall, seeming to divine his thoughts, turned, and said, “Are you not going to favour us with your company, Mr. Sutherland?”

“With pleasure,” replied Hugh; but, to cover his hesitation, added, “I will be with you presently;” and ran up stairs to his own room. “The old gentleman sits on his dignity—can hardly be said to stand on it,” thought he, as he went. “The poor relation, as she calls herself, treats me like a guest. She is mistress here, however; that is clear enough.”

As he descended the stairs to the drawing-room, a voice rose through the house, like the voice of an angel. At least so thought Hugh, hearing it for the first time. It seemed to take his breath away, as he stood for a moment on the stairs, listening. It was only Euphra singing The Flowers of the Forest. The drawing-room door was still open, and her voice rang through the wide lofty hall. He entered almost on tip-toe, that he might lose no thread of the fine tones.—Had she chosen the song of Scotland out of compliment to him?—She saw him enter, but went on without hesitating even. In the high notes, her voice had that peculiar vibratory richness which belongs to the nightingale’s; but he could not help thinking that the low tones were deficient both in quality and volume. The expression and execution, however, would have made up for a thousand defects. Her very soul seemed brooding over the dead upon Flodden field, as she sang this most wailful of melodies—this embodiment of a nation’s grief. The song died away as if the last breath had gone with it; failing as it failed, and ceasing with its inspiration, as if the voice that sang lived only for and in the song. A moment of intense silence followed. Then, before Hugh had half recovered from the former, with an almost grand dramatic recoil, as if the second sprang out of the first, like an eagle of might out of an ocean of weeping, she burst into Scots wha hae. She might have been a new Deborah, heralding her nation to battle. Hugh was transfixed, turned icy cold, with the excitement of his favourite song so sung.—Was that a glance of satisfied triumph with which Euphra looked at him for a single moment?—She sang the rest of the song as if the battle were already gained; but looked no more at Hugh.

The excellence of her tones, and the lambent fluidity of her transitions, if I may be allowed the phrase, were made by her art quite subservient to the expression, and owed their chief value to the share they bore in producing it. Possibly there was a little too much of the dramatic in her singing, but it was all in good taste; and, in a word, Hugh had never heard such singing before. As soon as she had finished, she rose, and shut the piano.

“Do not, do not,” faltered Hugh, seeking to arrest her hand, as she closed the instrument.

“I can sing nothing after that,” she said with emotion, or perhaps excitement; for the trembling of her voice might be attributed to either cause. “Do not ask me.”

Hugh respectfully desisted; but after a few minutes’ pause ventured to remark:

“I cannot understand how you should be able to sing Scotch songs so well. I never heard any but Scotch women sing them, even endurably, before: your singing of them is perfect.”

“It seems to me,” said Euphra, speaking as if she would rather have remained silent, “that a true musical penetration is independent of styles and nationalities. It can perceive, or rather feel, and reproduce, at the same moment. If the music speaks Scotch, the musical nature hears Scotch. It can take any shape, indeed cannot help taking any shape, presented to it.”

Hugh was yet further astonished by this criticism from one whom he had been criticising with so much carelessness that very day.

“You think, then,” said he, modestly, not as if he would bring her to book, but as really seeking to learn from her, “that a true musical nature can pour itself into the mould of any song, in entire independence of association and education?”

“Yes; in independence of any but what it may provide for itself.”

Euphrasia, however, had left one important element unrepresented in the construction of her theory—namely, the degree of capability which a mind may possess of sympathy with any given class of feelings. The blossom of the mind, whether it flower in poetry, music, or any other art, must be the exponent of the nature and condition of that whose blossom it is. No mind, therefore, incapable of sympathising with the feelings whence it springs, can interpret the music of another. And Euphra herself was rather a remarkable instance of this forgotten fact.

Further conversation on the subject was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Arnold, who looked rather annoyed at finding Hugh in the drawing-room, and ordered Harry off to bed, with some little asperity of tone. The boy rose at once, rang the bell, bade them all good night, and went. A servant met him at the door with a candle, and accompanied him.

Thought Hugh: “Here are several things to be righted at once. The boy must not have wine; and he must have only one dinner a-day—especially if he is ordered to bed so early. I must make a man of him if I can.”

He made inquiries, and, with some difficulty, found out where the boy slept. During the night he was several times in Harry’s room, and once in happy time to wake him from a nightmare dream. The boy was so overcome with terror, that Hugh got into bed beside him and comforted him to sleep in his arms. Nor did he leave him till it was time to get up, when he stole back to his own quarters, which, happily, were at no very great distance.

I may mention here, that it was not long before Hugh succeeded in stopping the wine, and reducing the dinner to a mouthful of supper. Harry, as far as he was concerned, yielded at once; and his father only held out long enough to satisfy his own sense of dignity.

CHAPTER IV. THE CAVE IN THE STRAW

All knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

LORD BACON.—Advancement of Learning.

The following morning dawned in a cloud; which, swathed about the trees, wetted them down to the roots, without having time to become rain. They drank it in like sorrow, the only material out of which true joy can be fashioned. This cloud of mist would yet glimmer in a new heaven, namely, in the cloud of blooms which would clothe the limes and the chestnuts and the beeches along the ghost’s walk. But there was gloomy weather within doors as well; for poor Harry was especially sensitive to variations of the barometer, without being in the least aware of the fact himself. Again Hugh found him in the library, seated in his usual corner, with Polexander on his knees. He half dropped the book when Hugh entered, and murmured with a sigh:

“It’s no use; I can’t read it.”

“What’s the matter, Harry?” said his tutor.

“I should like to tell you, but you will laugh at me.”

“I shall never laugh at you, Harry.”

“Never?”

“No, never.”

“Then tell me how I can be sure that I have read this book.”

“I do not quite understand you.”

“All! I was sure nobody could be so stupid as I am. Do you know, Mr. Sutherland, I seem to have read a page from top to bottom sometimes, and when I come to the bottom I know nothing about it, and doubt whether I have read it at all; and then I stare at it all over again, till I grow so queer, and sometimes nearly scream. You see I must be able to say I have read the book.”

“Why? Nobody will ever ask you.”

“Perhaps not; but you know that is nothing. I want to know that I have read the book—really and truly read it.”

Hugh thought for a moment, and seemed to see that the boy, not being strong enough to be a law to himself, just needed a benign law from without, to lift him from the chaos of feeble and conflicting notions and impulses within, which generated a false law of slavery. So he said:

“Harry, am I your big brother?”

“Yes, Mr. Sutherland.”

“Then, ought you to do what I wish, or what you wish yourself?”

“What you wish, sir.”

“Then I want you to put away that book for a month at least.”

“Oh, Mr. Sutherland! I promised.”

“To whom?”

“To myself.” “But I am above you; and I want you to do as I tell you. Will you, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Put away the book, then.”

Harry sprang to his feet, put the book on its shelf, and, going up to Hugh, said,

“You have done it, not me.”

“Certainly, Harry.”

The notions of a hypochondriacal child will hardly be interesting to the greater part of my readers; but Hugh learned from this a little lesson about divine law which he never forgot.

“Now, Harry,” added he, “you must not open a book till I allow you.”

“No poetry, either?” said poor Harry; and his face fell.

“I don’t mind poetry so much; but of prose I will read as much to you as will be good for you. Come, let us have a bit of Gulliver again.”

“Oh, how delightful!” cried Harry. “I am so glad you made me put away that tiresome book. I wonder why it insisted so on being read.”

Hugh read for an hour, and then made Harry put on his cloak, notwithstanding the rain, which fell in a slow thoughtful spring shower. Taking the boy again on his back, he carried him into the woods. There he told him how the drops of wet sank into the ground, and then went running about through it in every direction, looking for seeds: which were all thirsty little things, that wanted to grow, and could not, till a drop came and gave them drink. And he told him how the rain-drops were made up in the skies, and then came down, like millions of angels, to do what they were told in the dark earth. The good drops went into all the cellars and dungeons of the earth, to let out the imprisoned flowers. And he told him how the seeds, when they had drunk the rain-drops, wanted another kind of drink next, which was much thinner and much stronger, but could not do them any good till they had drunk the rain first.

“What is that?” said Harry. “I feel as if you were reading out of the Bible, Mr. Sutherland.”

“It is the sunlight,” answered his tutor. “When a seed has drunk of the water, and is not thirsty any more, it wants to breathe next; and then the sun sends a long, small finger of fire down into the grave where the seed is lying; and it touches the seed, and something inside the seed begins to move instantly and to grow bigger and bigger, till it sends two green blades out of it into the earth, and through the earth into the air; and then it can breathe. And then it sends roots down into the earth; and the roots keep drinking water, and the leaves keep breathing the air, and the sun keeps them alive and busy; and so a great tree grows up, and God looks at it, and says it is good.”

“Then they really are living things?” said Harry.

“Certainly.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sutherland. I don’t think I shall dislike rain so much any more.”

Hugh took him next into the barn, where they found a great heap of straw. Recalling his own boyish amusements, he made him put off his cloak, and help to make a tunnel into this heap. Harry was delighted—the straw was so nice, and bright, and dry, and clean. They drew it out by handfuls, and thus excavated a round tunnel to the distance of six feet or so; when Hugh proceeded to more extended operations. Before it was time to go to lunch, they had cleared half of a hollow sphere, six feet in diameter, out of the heart of the heap.

After lunch, for which Harry had been very unwilling to relinquish the straw hut, Hugh sent him to lie down for a while; when he fell fast asleep as before. After he had left the room, Euphra said:

“How do you get on with Harry, Mr. Sutherland?”

“Perfectly to my satisfaction,” answered Hugh.

“Do you not find him very slow?”

“Quite the contrary.”

“You surprise me. But you have not given him any lessons yet.”

“I have given him a great many, and he is learning them very fast.”

“I fear he will have forgotten all my poor labours before you take up the work where we left it. When will you give him any book-lessons?”

“Not for a while yet.”

Euphra did not reply. Her silence seemed intended to express dissatisfaction; at least so Hugh interpreted it.

“I hope you do not think it is to indulge myself that I manage Master Harry in this peculiar fashion,” he said. “The fact is, he is a very peculiar child, and may turn out a genius or a weakling, just as he is managed. At least so it appears to me at present. May I ask where you left the work you were doing with him?”

“He was going through the Eton grammar for the third time,” answered Euphra, with a defiant glance, almost of dislike, at Hugh. “But I need not enumerate his studies, for I daresay you will not take them up at all after my fashion. I only assure you I have been a very exact disciplinarian. What he knows, I think you will find he knows thoroughly.”

So saying, Euphra rose, and with a flush on her cheek, walked out of the room in a more stately manner than usual.

Hugh felt that he had, somehow or other, offended her. But, to tell the truth, he did not much care, for her manner had rather irritated him. He retired to his own room, wrote to his mother, and, when Harry awoke, carried him again to the barn for an hour’s work in the straw. Before it grew dusk, they had finished a little, silent, dark chamber, as round as they could make it, in the heart of the straw. All the excavated material they had thrown on the top, reserving only a little to close up the entrance when they pleased.

The next morning was still rainy; and when Hugh found Harry in the library as usual, he saw that the clouds had again gathered over the boy’s spirit. He was pacing about the room in a very odd manner. The carpet was divided diamond-wise in a regular pattern. Harry’s steps were, for the most part, planted upon every third diamond, as he slowly crossed the floor in a variety of directions; for, as on previous occasions, he had not perceived the entrance of his tutor. But, every now and then, the boy would make the most sudden and irregular change in his mode of progression, setting his foot on the most unexpected diamond, at one time the nearest to him, at another the farthest within his reach. When he looked up, and saw his tutor watching him, he neither started nor blushed: but, still retaining on his countenance the perplexed, anxious expression which Hugh had remarked, said to him:

“How can God know on which of those diamonds I am going to set my foot next?”

“If you could understand how God knows, Harry, then you would know yourself; but before you have made up your mind, you don’t know which you will choose; and even then you only know on which you intend to set your foot; for you have often changed your mind after making it up.”

Harry looked as puzzled as before.

“Why, Harry, to understand how God understands, you would need to be as wise as he is; so it is no use trying. You see you can’t quite understand me, though I have a real meaning in what I say.”

“Ah! I see it is no use; but I can’t bear to be puzzled.”

“But you need not be puzzled; you have no business to be puzzled. You are trying to get into your little brain what is far too grand and beautiful to get into it. Would you not think it very stupid to puzzle yourself how to put a hundred horses into a stable with twelve stalls?”

Harry laughed, and looked relieved.

“It is more unreasonable a thousand times to try to understand such things. For my part, it would make me miserable to think that there was nothing but what I could understand. I should feel as if I had no room anywhere. Shall we go to our cave again?”

“Oh! yes, please,” cried Harry; and in a moment he was on Hugh’s back once more, cantering joyously to the barn.

After various improvements, including some enlargement of the interior, Hugh and Harry sat down together in the low yellow twilight of their cave, to enjoy the result of their labours. They could just see, by the light from the tunnel, the glimmer of the golden hollow all about them. The rain was falling heavily out-of-doors; and they could hear the sound of the multitudinous drops of the broken cataract of the heavens like the murmur of the insects in a summer wood. They knew that everything outside was rained upon, and was again raining on everything beneath it, while they were dry and warm.

“This is nice!” exclaimed Harry, after a few moments of silent enjoyment.

“This is your first lesson in architecture,” said Hugh.

“Am I to learn architecture?” asked Harry, in a rueful tone.

“It is well to know how things came to be done, if you should know nothing more about them, Harry. Men lived in the cellars first of all, and next on the ground floor; but they could get no further till they joined the two, and then they could build higher.”

“I don’t quite understand you, sir.”

“I did not mean you should, Harry.”

“Then I don’t mind, sir. But I thought architecture was building.”

“So it is; and this is one way of building. It is only making an outside by pulling out an inside, instead of making an inside by setting up an outside.”

Harry thought for a while, and then said joyfully:

“I see it, sir! I see it. The inside is the chief thing—not the outside.”

“Yes, Harry; and not in architecture only. Never forget that.”

They lay for some time in silence, listening to the rain. At length Harry spoke:

“I have been thinking of what you told me yesterday, Mr. Sutherland, about the rain going to look for the seeds that were thirsty for it. And now I feel just as if I were a seed, lying in its little hole in the earth, and hearing the rain-drops pattering down all about it, waiting—oh, so thirsty!—for some kind drop to find me out, and give me itself to drink. I wonder what kind of flower I should grow up,” added he, laughing.

“There is more truth than you think, in your pretty fancy, Harry,” rejoined Hugh, and was silent—self-rebuked; for the memory of David came back upon him, recalled by the words of the boy; of David, whom he loved and honoured with the best powers of his nature, and whom yet he had neglected and seemed to forget; nay, whom he had partially forgotten—he could not deny. The old man, whose thoughts were just those of a wise child, had said to him once:

“We ken no more, Maister Sutherlan’, what we’re growin’ till, than that neep-seed there kens what a neep is, though a neep it will be. The only odds is, that we ken that we dinna ken, and the neep-seed kens nothing at all aboot it. But ae thing, Maister Sutherlan’, we may be sure o’: that, whatever it be, it will be worth God’s makin’ an’ our growin’.”