David Elginbrod

A solemn stillness fell upon Hugh’s spirit, as he recalled these words; out of which stillness, I presume, grew the little parable which follows; though Hugh, after he had learned far more about the things therein hinted at, could never understand how it was, that he could have put so much more into it, than he seemed to have understood at that period of his history.

For Harry said:

“Wouldn’t this be a nice place for a story, Mr. Sutherland? Do you ever tell stories, sir?”

“I was just thinking of one, Harry; but it is as much yours as mine, for you sowed the seed of the story in my mind.”

“Do you mean a story that never was in a book—a story out of your own head? Oh! that will be grand!”

“Wait till we see what it will be, Harry; for I can’t tell you how it will turn out.”

After a little further pause, Hugh began:

“Long, long ago, two seeds lay beside each other in the earth, waiting. It was cold, and rather wearisome; and, to beguile the time, the one found means to speak to the other.

“‘What are you going to be?’ said the one.

“‘I don’t know,’ answered the other.

“‘For me,’ rejoined the first, ‘I mean to be a rose. There is nothing like a splendid rose. Everybody will love me then!’

“‘It’s all right,’ whispered the second; and that was all he could say; for somehow when he had said that, he felt as if all the words in the world were used up. So they were silent again for a day or two.

“‘Oh, dear!’ cried the first, ‘I have had some water. I never knew till it was inside me. I’m growing! I’m growing! Good-bye!’

“‘Good-bye!’ repeated the other, and lay still; and waited more than ever.

“The first grew and grew, pushing itself straight up, till at last it felt that it was in the open air, for it could breathe. And what a delicious breath that was! It was rather cold, but so refreshing. The flower could see nothing, for it was not quite a flower yet, only a plant; and they never see till their eyes come, that is, till they open their blossoms—then they are flowers quite. So it grew and grew, and kept its head up very steadily, meaning to see the sky the first thing, and leave the earth quite behind as well as beneath it. But somehow or other, though why it could not tell, it felt very much inclined to cry. At length it opened its eye. It was morning, and the sky was over its head; but, alas! itself was no rose—only a tiny white flower. It felt yet more inclined to hang down its head and to cry; but it still resisted, and tried hard to open its eye wide, and to hold its head upright, and to look full at the sky.

“‘I will be a star of Bethlehem at least!’ said the flower to itself.

“But its head felt very heavy; and a cold wind rushed over it, and bowed it down towards the earth. And the flower saw that the time of the singing of birds was not come, that the snow covered the whole land, and that there was not a single flower in sight but itself. And it half-closed its leaves in terror and the dismay of loneliness. But that instant it remembered what the other flower used to say; and it said to itself: ‘It’s all right; I will be what I can.’ And thereon it yielded to the wind, drooped its head to the earth, and looked no more on the sky, but on the snow. And straightway the wind stopped, and the cold died away, and the snow sparkled like pearls and diamonds; and the flower knew that it was the holding of its head up that had hurt it so; for that its body came of the snow, and that its name was Snow-drop. And so it said once more, ‘It’s all right!’ and waited in perfect peace. All the rest it needed was to hang its head after its nature.”

“And what became of the other?” asked Harry.

“I haven’t done with this one yet,” answered Hugh. “I only told you it was waiting. One day a pale, sad-looking girl, with thin face, large eyes, and long white hands, came, hanging her head like the snowdrop, along the snow where the flower grew. She spied it, smiled joyously, and saying, ‘Ah! my little sister, are you come?’ stooped and plucked the snowdrop. It trembled and died in her hand; which was a heavenly death for a snowdrop; for had it not cast a gleam of summer, pale as it had been itself, upon the heart of a sick girl?”

“And the other?” repeated Harry.

“The other had a long time to wait; but it did grow one of the loveliest roses ever seen. And at last it had the highest honour ever granted to a flower: two lovers smelled it together, and were content with it.”

Harry was silent, and so was Hugh; for he could not understand himself quite. He felt, all the time he was speaking, is if he were listening to David, instead of talking himself. The fact was, he was only expanding, in an imaginative soil, the living seed which David had cast into it. There seemed to himself to be more in his parable than he had any right to invent. But is it not so with all stories that are rightly rooted in the human?

“What a delightful story, Mr. Sutherland!” said Harry, at last. “Euphra tells me stories sometimes; but I don’t think I ever heard one I liked so much. I wish we were meant to grow into something, like the flower-seeds.”

“So we are, Harry.”

“Are we indeed? How delightful it would be to think that I am only a seed, Mr. Sutherland! Do you think I might think so?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then, please, let me begin to learn something directly. I haven’t had anything disagreeable to do since you came; and I don’t feel as if that was right.”

Poor Harry, like so many thousands of good people, had not yet learned that God is not a hard task-master.

“I don’t intend that you should have anything disagreeable to do, if I can help it. We must do such things when they come to us; but we must not make them for ourselves, or for each other.”

“Then I’m not to learn any more Latin, am I?” said Harry, in a doubtful kind of tone, as if there were after all a little pleasure in doing what he did not like.

“Is Latin so disagreeable, Harry?”

“Yes; it is rule after rule, that has nothing in it I care for. How can anybody care for Latin? But I am quite ready to begin, if I am only a seed—really, you know.”

“Not yet, Harry. Indeed, we shall not begin again—I won’t let you—till you ask me with your whole heart, to let you learn Latin.”

“I am afraid that will be a long time, and Euphra will not like it.”

“I will talk to her about it. But perhaps it will not be so long as you think. Now, don’t mention Latin to me again, till you are ready to ask me, heartily, to teach you. And don’t give yourself any trouble about it either. You never can make yourself like anything.”

Harry was silent. They returned to the house, through the pouring rain; Harry, as usual, mounted on his big brother.

As they crossed the hall, Mr. Arnold came in. He looked surprised and annoyed. Hugh set Harry down, who ran upstairs to get dressed for dinner; while he himself half-stopped, and turned towards Mr. Arnold. But Mr. Arnold did not speak, and so Hugh followed Harry.

Hugh spent all that evening, after Harry had gone to bed, in correcting his impressions of some of the chief stories of early Roman history; of which stories he intended commencing a little course to Harry the next day.

Meantime there was very little intercourse between Hugh and Euphra, whose surname, somehow or other, Hugh had never inquired after. He disliked asking questions about people to an uncommon degree, and so preferred waiting for a natural revelation. Her later behaviour had repelled him, impressing him with the notion that she was proud, and that she had made up her mind, notwithstanding her apparent frankness at first, to keep him at a distance. That she was fitful, too, and incapable of showing much tenderness even to poor Harry, he had already concluded in his private judgment-hall. Nor could he doubt that, whether from wrong theories, incapacity, or culpable indifference, she must have taken very bad measures indeed with her young pupil.

The next day resembled the two former; with this difference, that the rain fell in torrents. Seated in their strawy bower, they cared for no rain. They were safe from the whole world, and all the tempers of nature.

Then Hugh told Harry about the slow beginnings and the mighty birth of the great Roman people. He told him tales of their battles and conquests; their strifes at home, and their wars abroad. He told him stories of their grand men, great with the individuality of their nation and their own. He told him their characters, their peculiar opinions and grounds of action, and the results of their various schemes for their various ends. He told him about their love to their country, about their poetry and their religion; their courage, and their hardihood; their architecture, their clothes, and their armour; their customs and their laws; but all in such language, or mostly in such language, as one boy might use in telling another of the same age; for Hugh possessed the gift of a general simplicity of thought, one of the most valuable a man can have. It cost him a good deal of labour (well-repaid in itself, not to speak of the evident delight of Harry), to make himself perfectly competent for this; but he had a good foundation of knowledge to work upon.

This went on for a long time after the period to which I am now more immediately confined. Every time they stopped to rest from their rambles or games—as often, in fact, as they sat down alone, Harry’s constant request was:

“Now, Mr. Sutherland, mightn’t we have something more about the Romans?”

And Mr. Sutherland gave him something more. But all this time he never uttered the word—Latin.

CHAPTER V. LARCH AND OTHER HUNTING

For there is neither buske nor hay In May, that it n’ill shrouded bene, And it with newé leavés wrene; These woodés eke recoveren grene, That drie in winter ben to sene, And the erth waxeth proud withall, For swoté dewes that on it fall, And the poore estate forget, In which that winter had it set: And than becomes the ground so proude, That it wol have a newé shroude, And maketh so queint his robe and faire, That it hath hewes an hundred paire, Of grasse and floures, of Ind and Pers, And many hewés full divers: That is the robe I mean, ywis, Through which the ground to praisen is.

CHAUCER’S translation of the Romaunt of the Rose.

So passed the three days of rain. After breakfast the following morning, Hugh went to find Harry, according to custom, in the library. He was reading.

“What are you reading, Harry?” asked he.

“A poem,” said Harry; and, rising as before, he brought the book to Hugh. It was Mrs. Hemans’s Poems.

“You are fond of poetry, Harry.”

“Yes, very.”

“Whose poems do you like best?”

“Mrs. Hemans’s, of course. Don’t you think she is the best, sir?”

“She writes very beautiful verses, Harry. Which poem are you reading now?”

“Oh! one of my favourites—The Voice of Spring.”

“Who taught you to like Mrs. Hemans?”

“Euphra, of course.”

“Will you read the poem to me?”

Harry began, and read the poem through, with much taste and evident enjoyment; an enjoyment which seemed, however, to spring more from the music of the thought and its embodiment in sound, than from sympathy with the forms of nature called up thereby. This was shown by his mode of reading, in which the music was everything, and the sense little or nothing. When he came to the line,

“And the larch has hung all his tassels forth,”

he smiled so delightedly, that Hugh said:

“Are you fond of the larch, Harry?”

“Yes, very.”

“Are there any about here?”

“I don’t know. What is it like?”

“You said you were fond of it.”

“Oh, yes; it is a tree with beautiful tassels, you know. I think I should like to see one. Isn’t it a beautiful line?”

“When you have finished the poem, we will go and see if we can find one anywhere in the woods. We must know where we are in the world, Harry—what is all round about us, you know.”

“Oh, yes,” said Harry; “let us go and hunt the larch.”

“Perhaps we shall meet Spring, if we look for her—perhaps hear her voice, too.”

“That would be delightful,” answered Harry, smiling. And away they went.

I may just mention here that Mrs. Hemans was allowed to retire gradually, till at last she was to be found only in the more inaccessible recesses of the library-shelves; while by that time Harry might be heard, not all over the house, certainly, but as far off as outside the closed door of the library, reading aloud to himself one or other of Macaulay’s ballads, with an evident enjoyment of the go in it. A story with drum and trumpet accompaniment was quite enough, for the present, to satisfy Harry; and Macaulay could give him that, if little more.

As they went across the lawn towards the shrubbery, on their way to look for larches and Spring, Euphra joined them in walking dress. It was a lovely morning.

“I have taken you at your word, you see, Mr. Sutherland,” said she. “I don’t want to lose my Harry quite.”

“You dear kind Euphra!” said Harry, going round to her side and taking her hand. He did not stay long with her, however, nor did Euphra seem particularly to want him.

“There was one thing I ought to have mentioned to you the other night, Mr. Sutherland; and I daresay I should have mentioned it, had not Mr. Arnold interrupted our tête-à-tête. I feel now as if I had been guilty of claiming far more than I have a right to, on the score of musical insight. I have Scotch blood in me, and was indeed born in Scotland, though I left it before I was a year old. My mother, Mr. Arnold’s sister, married a gentleman who was half Sootch; and I was born while they were on a visit to his relatives, the Camerons of Lochnie. His mother, my grandmother, was a Bohemian lady, a countess with sixteen quarterings—not a gipsy, I beg to say.”

Hugh thought she might have been, to judge from present appearances.

But how was he to account for this torrent of genealogical information, into which the ice of her late constraint had suddenly thawed? It was odd that she should all at once volunteer so much about herself. Perhaps she had made up one of those minds which need making up, every now and then, like a monthly magazine; and now was prepared to publish it. Hugh responded with a question:

“Do I know your name, then, at last? You are Miss Cameron?”

“Euphrasia Cameron; at your service, sir.” And she dropped a gay little courtesy to Hugh, looking up at him with a flash of her black diamonds.

“Then you must sing to me to-night.”

“With all the pleasure in gipsy-land,” replied she, with a second courtesy, lower than the first; taking for granted, no doubt, his silent judgment on her person and complexion.

By this time they had reached the woods in a different quarter from that which Hugh had gone through the other day with Harry. And here, in very deed, the Spring met them, with a profusion of richness to which Hugh was quite a stranger. The ground was carpeted with primroses, and anemones, and other spring flowers, which are the loveliest of all flowers. They were drinking the sunlight, which fell upon them through the budded boughs. By the time the light should be hidden from them by the leaves, which are the clouds of the lower firmament of the woods, their need of it would be gone: exquisites in living, they cared only for the delicate morning of the year.

“Do look at this darling, Mr. Sutherland!” exclaimed Euphrasia suddenly, as she bent at the root of a great beech, where grew a large bush of rough leaves, with one tiny but perfectly-formed primrose peeping out between. “Is it not a little pet?—all eyes—all one eye staring out of its curtained bed to see what ever is going on in the world.—You had better lie down again: it is not a nice place.”

She spoke to it as if it had been a kitten or a baby. And as she spoke, she pulled the leaves yet closer over the little starer so as to hide it quite.

As they went on, she almost obtrusively avoided stepping on the flowers, saying she almost felt cruel, or at least rude, when she did so. Yet she trailed her dress over them in quite a careless way, not lifting it at all. This was a peculiarity of hers, which Hugh never understood till he understood herself.

All about in shady places, the ferns were busy untucking themselves from their grave-clothes, unrolling their mysterious coils of life, adding continually to the hidden growth as they unfolded the visible. In this, they were like the other revelations of God the Infinite. All the wild lovely things were coming up for their month’s life of joy. Orchis-harlequins, cuckoo-plants, wild arums, more properly lords-and-ladies, were coming, and coming—slowly; for had they not a long way to come, from the valley of the shadow of death into the land of life? At last the wanderers came upon a whole company of bluebells—not what Hugh would have called bluebells, for the bluebells of Scotland are the single-poised harebells—but wild hyacinths, growing in a damp and shady spot, in wonderful luxuriance. They were quite three feet in height, with long, graceful, drooping heads; hanging down from them, all along one side, the largest and loveliest of bells—one lying close above the other, on the lower part; while they parted thinner and thinner as they rose towards the lonely one at the top. Miss Cameron went into ecstasies over these; not saying much, but breaking up what she did say with many prettily passionate pauses.

She had a very happy turn for seeing external resemblances, either humorous or pathetic; for she had much of one element that goes to the making of a poet—namely, surface impressibility.

“Look, Harry; they are all sad at having to go down there again so soon. They are looking at their graves so ruefully.”

Harry looked sad and rather sentimental immediately. When Hugh glanced at Miss Cameron, he saw tears in her eyes.

“You have nothing like this in your country, have you, Mr. Sutherland?” said she, with an apparent effort.

“No, indeed,” answered Hugh.

And he said no more. For a vision rose before him of the rugged pine-wood and the single primrose; and of the thoughtful maiden, with unpolished speech and rough hands, and—but this he did not see—a soul slowly refining itself to a crystalline clearness. And he thought of the grand old grey-haired David, and of Janet with her quaint motherhood, and of all the blessed bareness of the ancient time—in sunlight and in snow; and he felt again that he had forgotten and forsaken his friends.

“How the fairies will be ringing the bells in these airy steeples in the moonlight!” said Miss Cameron to Harry, who was surprised and delighted with it all. He could not help wondering, however, after he went to bed that night, that Euphra had never before taken him to see these beautiful things, and had never before said anything half so pretty to him, as the least pretty thing she had said about the flowers that morning when they were out with Mr. Sutherland. Had Mr. Sutherland anything to do with it? Was he giving Euphra a lesson in flowers such as he had given him in pigs?

Miss Cameron presently drew Hugh into conversation again, and the old times were once more forgotten for a season. They were worthy of distinguishing note—that trio in those spring woods: the boy waking up to feel that flowers and buds were lovelier in the woods than in verses; Euphra finding everything about her sentimentally useful, and really delighting in the prettinesses they suggested to her; and Hugh regarding the whole chiefly as a material and means for reproducing in verse such impressions of delight as he had received and still received from all (but the highest) poetry about nature. The presence of Harry and his necessities was certainly a saving influence upon Hugh; but, however much he sought to realize Harry’s life, he himself, at this period of his history, enjoyed everything artistically far more than humanly.

Margaret would have walked through all this infant summer without speaking at all, but with a deep light far back in her quiet eyes. Perhaps she would not have had many thoughts about the flowers. Rather she would have thought the very flowers themselves; would have been at home with them, in a delighted oneness with their life and expression. Certainly she would have walked through them with reverence, and would not have petted or patronised nature by saying pretty things about her children. Their life would have entered into her, and she would have hardly known it from her own. I daresay Miss Cameron would have called a mountain a darling or a beauty. But there are other ways of showing affection than by patting and petting—though Margaret, for her part, would have needed no art-expression, because she had the things themselves. It is not always those who utter best who feel most; and the dumb poets are sometimes dumb because it would need the “large utterance of the early gods” to carry their thoughts through the gates of speech.

But the fancy and skin-sympathy of Miss Cameron began already to tell upon Hugh. He knew very little of women, and had never heard a woman talk as she talked. He did not know how cheap this accomplishment is, and took it for sensibility, imaginativeness, and even originality. He thought she was far more en rapport with nature than he was. It was much easier to make this mistake after hearing the really delightful way in which she sang. Certainly she could not have sung so, perhaps not even have talked so, except she had been capable of more; but to be capable of more, and to be able for more, are two very distinct conditions.

Many walks followed this, extending themselves farther and farther from home, as Harry’s strength gradually improved. It was quite remarkable how his interest in everything external increased, in exact proportion as he learned to see into the inside or life of it. With most children, the interest in the external comes first, and with many ceases there. But it is in reality only a shallower form of the deeper sympathy; and in those cases where it does lead to a desire after the hidden nature of things, it is perhaps the better beginning of the two. In such exceptional cases as Harry’s, it is of unspeakable importance that both the difference and the identity should be recognized; and in doing so, Hugh became to Harry his big brother indeed, for he led him where he could not go alone.

As often as Mr. Arnold was from home, which happened not unfrequently, Miss Cameron accompanied them in their rambles. She gave as her reason for doing so only on such occasions, that she never liked to be out of the way when her uncle might want her. Traces of an inclination to quarrel with Hugh, or even to stand upon her dignity, had all but vanished; and as her vivacity never failed her, as her intellect was always active, and as by the exercise of her will she could enter sympathetically, or appear to enter, into everything, her presence was not in the least a restraint upon them.

On one occasion, when Harry had actually run a little way after a butterfly, Hugh said to her:

“What did you mean, Miss Cameron, by saying you were only a poor relation? You are certainly mistress of the house.”

“On sufferance, yes. But I am only a poor relation. I have no fortune of my own.”

“But Mr. Arnold does not treat you as such.”

“Oh! no. He likes me. He is very kind to me.—He gave me this ring on my last birthday. Is it not a beauty?”

She pulled off her glove and showed a very fine diamond on a finger worthy of the ornament.

“It is more like a gentleman’s, is it not?” she added, drawing it off. “Let me see how it would look on your hand.”

She gave the ring to Hugh; who, laughing, got it with some difficulty just over the first joint of his little finger, and held it up for Euphra to see.

“Ah! I see I cannot ask you to wear it for me,” said she. “I don’t like it myself. I am afraid, however,” she added, with an arch look, “my uncle would not like it either—on your finger. Put it on mine again.”

Holding her hand towards Hugh, she continued:

“It must not be promoted just yet. Besides, I see you have a still better one of your own.”

As Hugh did according to her request, the words sprang to his lips, “There are other ways of wearing a ring than on the finger.” But they did not cross the threshold of speech. Was it the repression of them that caused that strange flutter and slight pain at the heart, which he could not quite understand?

CHAPTER VI. FATIMA

Those lips that Love’s own hand did make Breathed forth the sound that said, “I hate,” To me that languished for her sake: But when she saw my woeful state, Straight in her heart did mercy come, Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet, Was used in giving gentle doom, And taught it thus anew to greet: “I hate” she altered with an end, That followed it as gentle day Doth follow night, who, like a fiend, From heaven to hell is flown away. “I hate” from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying—“Not you.”