Donal Grant

As Donal came to himself, he heard a groan from the ground, and looking, saw Andrew at his feet, and understood.

"Dear old man!" he said; "he dared to strike you!"

"He didna mean 't," returned Andrew feebly. "Are ye winnin' ower 't, sir? He gae ye a terrible ane! Ye micht hae h'ard it across the street!"

"I shall be all right in a minute!" answered Donal, wiping the blood out of his eyes. "I've a good hard head, thank God!—But what has become of them?"

"Ye didna think he wud be waitin' to see 's come to oorsel's!" said the cobbler.

With Donal's help, and great difficulty, he rose, and they stood looking at each other through the starlight, bewildered and uncertain. The cobbler was the first to recover his wits.

"It's o' no mainner of use," he said, "to rouse the castel wi' hue an' cry! What hae we to say but 'at we faund the twa i' the gairden thegither! It wud but raise a clash—the which, fable or fac', wud do naething for naebody! His lordship maun be loot ken, as ye say; but wull his lordship believe ye, sir? I'm some i' the min' the yoong man 's awa' til's faither a'ready, to prejudeese him again' onything ye may say."

"That makes it the more necessary," said Donal, "that I should go at once to his lordship. He will fall out upon me for not having told him at once; but I must not mind that: if I were not to tell him now, he would have a good case against me."

They were already walking towards the house, the old man giving a groan now and then. He could not go in, he said; he would walk gently on, and Donal would overtake him.

It was an hour and a half before Andrew got home, and Donal had not overtaken him.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE EARL'S BEDCHAMBER

Having washed the blood from his face, Donal sought Simmons.

"His lordship can't see you now, I am sure, sir," answered the butler; "lord Forgue is with him."

Donal turned and went straight up to lord Morven's apartment. As he passed the door of his bedroom opening on the corridor, he heard voices in debate. He entered the sitting-room. There was no one there. It was not a time for ceremony. He knocked at the door of the bedroom. The voices within were loud, and no answer came. He knocked again, and received an angry permission to enter. He entered, closed the door behind him, and stood in sight of his lordship, waiting what should follow.

Lord Morven was sitting up in bed, his face so pale and distorted that Donal thought elsewhere he should hardly have recognized it. The bed was a large four-post bed; its curtains were drawn close to the posts, admitting as much air as possible. At the foot of it stood lord Forgue, his handsome, shallow face flushed with anger, his right arm straight down by his side, and the hand of it clenched hard. He turned when Donal entered. A fiercer flush overspread his face, but almost immediately the look of rage yielded to one of determined insult. Possibly even the appearance of Donal was a relief to being alone with his father.

"Mr. Grant," stammered his lordship, speaking with pain, "you are well come!—just in time to hear a father curse his son!"

"Even such a threat shall not make me play a dishonourable part!" said Forgue, looking however anything but honourable, for the heart, not the brain, moulds the expression.

"Mr. Grant," resumed the father, "I have found you a man of sense and refinement! If you had been tutor to this degenerate boy, the worst trouble of my life would not have overtaken me!"

Forgue's lip curled, but he did not speak, and his father went on.

"Here is this fellow come to tell me to my face that he intends the ruin and disgrace of the family by a low marriage!"

"It will not be the first time it has been so disgraced!" retorted the son, "—if fresh peasant-blood be indeed a disgrace to any family!"

"Bah! the hussey is not even a wholesome peasant-girl!" cried the father. "Who do you think she is, Mr. Grant?"

"I do not need to guess, my lord," replied Donal. "I came now to inform your lordship of what I had myself seen."

"She must leave the house this instant!"

"Then I too leave it, my lord!" said Forgue.

"Where's your money?" returned the earl contemptuously.

Forgue shifted to an attack upon Donal.

"Your lordship hardly places confidence in me," he said; "but it is not the less my duty to warn you against this man: months ago he knew what was going on, and comes to tell you now because this evening I chastised him for his rude interference."

In cooler blood lord Forgue would not have shown such meanness; but passion brings to the front the thing that lurks.

"And it is no doubt to the necessity for forestalling his disclosure that I owe the present ingenuous confession!" said lord Morven. "—But explain, Mr. Grant."

"My lord," said Donal calmly, "I became aware that there was something between lord Forgue and the girl, and was alarmed for the girl: she is the child of friends to whom I am much beholden. But on the promise of both that the thing should end, I concluded it better not to trouble your lordship. I may have blundered in this, but I did what seemed best. This night, however, I discovered that things were going as before, and it became imperative on my position in your house that I should make your lordship acquainted with the fact. He assevered there was nothing dishonest between them, but, having deceived me once, how was I to trust him again!"

"How indeed! the young blackguard!" said his lordship, casting a fierce glance at his son.

"Allow me to remark," said Forgue, with comparative coolness, "that I deceived no one. What I promised was, that the affair should not go on: it did not; from that moment it assumed a different and serious aspect. I now intend to marry the girl."

"I tell you, Forgue, if you do I will disown you."

Forgue smiled an impertinent smile and held his peace: the threat had for him no terror.

"I shall be the better able," continued his lordship, "to provide suitably for Davie; he is what a son ought to be! But hear me, Forgue: you must be aware that, if I left you all I had, it would be beggary for one handicapped with a title. You may think my anger unreasonable, but it comes solely of anxiety on your account. Nothing but a suitable marriage—the most suitable of all is within your arm's length—can save you from the life of a moneyless peer—the most pitiable object on the face of the earth. Were it possible to ignore your rank, you have no profession, no trade even, in these trade-loving times, to fall back upon. Except you marry as I please, you will have nothing from me but the contempt of a title without a farthing to keep it decent. You threaten to leave the house—can you pay for a railway-ticket?"

Forgue was silent for a moment.

"My lord," he said, "I have given my word to the girl: would you have me disgrace your name by breaking it?"

"Tut! tut! there are words and words! What obligation can there be in the rash promises of an unworthy love! Still less are they binding where the man is not his own master! You are under a bond to your family, under a bond to society, under a bond to your country. Marry this girl, and you will be an outcast; marry as I would have you, and no one will think the worse of you for a foolish vow in your boyhood. Bah! the merest rumour of it will never rise into the serene air of your position."

"And let the girl go and break her heart!" said Forgue, with look black as death.

"You need fear no such catastrophe! You are no such marvel among men that a kitchen-wench will break her heart for you. She will be sorry for herself, no doubt; but it will be nothing more than she expected, and will only confirm her opinion of you: she knows well enough the risk she runs!"

While he spoke, Donal, waiting his turn, stood as on hot iron. Such sayings were in his ears the foul talk of hell. The moment the earl ceased, he turned to Forgue, and said:—

"My lord, you have removed my harder thoughts of you! You have indeed broken your word, but in a way infinitely nobler than I believed you capable of!"

Lord Morven stared dumbfounded.

"Your comments are out of place, Mr. Grant!" said Forgue, with something like dignity. "The matter is between my father and myself. If you wanted to beg my pardon, you should have waited a fitting opportunity!"

Donal held his peace. He had felt bound to show sympathy with his enemy where he was right.

The earl was perplexed: his one poor ally had gone over to the enemy! He took a glass from the table beside him, and drank: then, after a moment's silence, apparently of exhaustion and suffering, said,

"Mr. Grant, I desire a word with you.—Leave the room, Forgue."

"My lord," returned Forgue, "you order me from the room to confer with one whose presence with you is an insult to me!"

"He seems to me," answered his father bitterly, "to be after your own mind in the affair!—How indeed should it be otherwise! But so far I have found Mr. Grant a man of honour, and I desire to have some private conversation with him. I therefore request you will leave us alone together."

This was said so politely, yet with such latent command, that the youth dared not refuse compliance.

The moment he closed the door behind him,

"I am glad he yielded," said the earl, "for I should have had to ask you to put him out, and I hate rows. Would you have done it?"

"I would have tried."

"Thank you. Yet a moment ago you took his part against me!"

"On the girl's part—and for his honesty too, my lord!"

"Come now, Mr. Grant! I understand your prejudices, I cannot expect you to look on the affair as I do. I am glad to have a man of such sound general principles to form the character of my younger son; but it is plain as a mountain that what would be the duty of a young man in your rank of life toward a young woman in the same rank, would be simple ruin to one in lord Forgue's position. A capable man like you can make a living a hundred different ways; to one born with the burden of a title, and without the means of supporting it, marriage with such a girl means poverty, gambling, hunger, squabbling, dirt—suicide!"

"My lord," answered Donal, "the moment a man speaks of love to a woman, be she as lowly and ignorant as mother Eve, that moment rank and privilege vanish, and distinction is annihilated."

The earl gave a small sharp smile.

"You would make a good pleader, Mr. Grant! But if you had seen the consequences of such marriage half as often as I, you would modify your ideas. Mark what I say: this marriage shall not take place—by God! What! should I for a moment talk of it with coolness were there the smallest actual danger of its occurrence—did I not know that it never could, never shall take place! The boy is a fool, and he shall know it! I have him in my power—neck and heels in my power! He does not know it, and never could guess how; but it is true: one word from me, and the rascal is paralysed! Oblige me by telling him what I have just said. The absurd marriage shall not take place, I repeat. Invalid as I am, I am not yet reduced to the condition of an obedient father."

He took up a small bottle, poured a little from it, added water, and drank—then resumed.

"Now for the girl: who knows about it?"

"So far as I am aware, no one but her grandfather. He had come to the castle to inquire after her, and was with me when we came upon them in the fruit garden."

"Then let no further notice be taken of it. Tell no one—not even Mrs. Brookes. Let the young fools do as they please."

"I cannot consent to that, my lord."

"Why, what the devil have you to do with it?"

"I am the friend of her people."

"Pooh! pooh! don't talk rubbish. What is it to them! I'll see to them. It will all come right. The affair will settle itself. By Jove, I'm sorry you interfered! The thing would have been much better left alone."

"My lord," said Donal, "I can listen to nothing in this strain."

"All I ask is—promise not to interfere."

"I will not."

"Thank you."

"My lord, you mistake. I will not promise. Nay, I will interfere. What to do, I do not now know; but I will save the girl if I can."

"And ruin an ancient family! You think nothing of that!"

"Its honour, my lord, will be best preserved in that of the girl."

"Damn you? will you preach to me?"

Notwithstanding his fierce words, Donal could not help seeing or imagining an almost suppliant look in his eye.

"You must do as I tell you in my house," he went on, "or you will soon see the outside of it. Come: marry the girl yourself—she is deuced pretty—and I will give you five hundred pounds for your wedding journey.—Poor Davie!"

"Your lordship insults me."

"Then, damn you! be off to your lessons, and take your insolent face out of my sight."

"If I remain in your house, my lord, it is for Davie's sake."

"Go away," said the earl; and Donal went.

He had hardly closed the door behind him, when he heard a bell ring violently; and ere he reached the bottom of the stair, he met the butler panting up as fast as his short legs and red nose would permit. He would have stopped to question Donal, who hastened past him, and in the refuge of his own room, sat down to think. Had his conventional dignity been with him a matter of importance, he would have left the castle the moment he got his things together; but he thought much more of Davie, and much more of Eppy.

He had hardly seated himself when he jumped up again: he must see Andrew Comin!

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A NIGHT-WATCH

When he reached the bottom of the hill, there at the gate was Forgue, walking up and down, apparently waiting for him. He would have passed him, but Forgue stepped in front of him.

"Grant," he said, "it is well we should understand each other!"

"I think, my lord, if you do not yet understand me, it can scarcely be my fault."

"What did my father say?"

"I would deliver to your lordship a message he gave me for you but for two reasons—one, that I believe he changed his mind though he did not precisely say so, and the other, that I will not serve him or you in the matter."

"Then you intend neither to meddle nor make?"

"That is my affair, my lord. I will not take your lordship into my confidence."

"Don't be unreasonable, now! Do get off your high horse. Can't you understand a fellow? Everybody can't keep his temper as you do! I mean the girl no harm."

"I will not talk with you about her. And whatever you insist on saying to me, I will use against you without scruple, should occasion offer."

As he spoke he caught a look on Forgue's face which revealed somehow that it was not for him he had been waiting, but for Eppy. He turned and went back towards the castle: he might meet her! Forgue called after him, but he paid no heed.

As he hastened up the hill, not so much as the rustle of bird or mouse did he hear. He lingered about the top of the road for half an hour, then turned and went to the cobbler's.

He found Doory in great distress; for she was not merely sore troubled about her son's child, but Andrew was in bed and suffering great pain. The moment Donal saw him he went for the doctor. He said a rib was broken, bound him up, and gave him some medicine. All done that could be done, Donal sat down to watch beside him.

He lay still, with closed eyes and white face. So patient was he that his very pain found utterance in a sort of blind smile. Donal did not know much about pain: he could read in Andrew's look his devotion to the will of him whose being was his peace, but he did not know above what suffering his faith lifted him, and held him hovering yet safe. His faith made him one with life, the eternal Life—and that is salvation.

In closest contact with the divine, the original relation restored, the source once more holding its issue, the divine love pouring itself into the deepest vessel of the man's being, itself but a vessel for the holding of the diviner and divinest, who can wonder if keenest pain should not be able to quench the smile of the prostrate! Few indeed have reached the point of health to laugh at disease, but are there none? Let not a man say because he cannot that no one can.

The old woman was very calm, only every now and then she would lift her hands and shake her head, and look as if the universe were going to pieces, because her husband lay there by the stroke of the ungodly. And if he had lain there forgotten, then indeed the universe would have been going to pieces! When he coughed, every pang seemed to go through her body to her heart. Love is as lovely in the old as in the young—lovelier when in them, as often, it is more sympathetic and unselfish—that is, more true.

Donal wrote to Mrs. Brookes that he would not be home that night; and having found a messenger at the inn, settled himself to watch by his friend.

The hours glided quietly over. Andrew slept a good deal, and seemed to have pleasant visions. He was finding yet more saving. Now and then his lips would move as if he were holding talk with some friendly soul. Once Donal heard the murmured words, "Lord, I'm a' yer ain;" and noted that his sleep grew deeper thereafter. He did not wake till the day began to dawn. Then he asked for some water. Seeing Donal, and divining that he had been by his bedside all the night, he thanked him with a smile and a little nod—which somehow brought to his memory certain words Andrew had spoken on another occasion: "There's ane, an' there's a'; an' the a' 's ane, an' the ane 's a'."

When Donal reached the castle, he found his breakfast and Mrs. Brookes waiting for him. She told him that Eppy, meeting her in the passage the night before, had burst into tears, but she could get nothing out of her, and had sent her to her room; this morning she had not come down at the proper time, and when she sent after her, did not come: she went up herself, and found her determined to leave the castle that very day; she was now packing her things to go, nor did she see any good in trying to prevent her.

Donal said if she would go home, there was plenty for her to do there; old people's bones were not easy to mend, and it would be some time before her grandfather was well again!

Mrs. Brookes said she would not keep her now if she begged to stay; she was afraid she would come to grief, and would rather she went home; she would take her home herself.

"The lass is no an ill ane," she added: "but she disna ken what she wud be at. She wants some o' the Lord's ain discipleen, I'm thinkin!"

"An' that ye may be sure she'll get, mistress Brookes!" said Donal.

Eppy was quite ready to go home and help nurse her grandfather. She thought her conduct must by this time be the talk of the castle, and was in mortal terror of lord Morven. All the domestics feared him—it would be hard to say precisely why; it came in part of seeing him so seldom that he had almost come to represent the ghost some said lived in the invisible room and haunted the castle.

It was the easier for Eppy to go home that her grandmother needed her, and that her grandfather would not be able to say much to her. She was an affectionate girl, and yet her grandfather's condition roused in her no indignation; for the love of being loved is such a blinding thing, that the greatest injustice from the dearest to the next dearest will by some natures be readily tolerated. God help us! we are a mean set—and meanest the man who is ablest to justify himself!

Mrs. Brookes, having prepared a heavy basket of good things for Eppy to carry home to her grandmother, and made it the heavier for the sake of punishing her with the weight of it, set out with her, saying to herself,

"The jaud wants a wheen harder wark nor I hae hauden till her han', an' doobtless it's preparin' for her!"

She was kindly received, without a word of reproach, by her grandmother; the sufferer, forgetful of, or forgiving her words of rejection in the garden, smiled when she came near his bedside; and she turned away to conceal the tears she could not repress. She loved her grand-parents, and she loved the young lord, and she could not get the two loves to dwell together peaceably in her mind—a common difficulty with our weak, easily divided, hardly united natures—frangible, friable, readily distorted! It needs no less than God himself, not only to unite us to one another, but to make a whole of the ill-fitting, roughly disjointed portions of our individual beings. Tearfully but diligently she set about her duties; and not only the heart, but the limbs and joints of her grandmother were relieved by her presence; while doubtless she herself found some refuge from anxious thought in the service she rendered. What she saw as her probable future, I cannot say; one hour her confidence in her lover's faithfulness would be complete, the next it would be dashed with huge blots of uncertainty; but her grandmother rejoiced over her as out of harm's way.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

LORD FORGUE AND LADY ARCTURA

At the castle things fell into their old routine. Nothing had been arranged between lord Forgue and Eppy, and he seemed content that it should be so. Mrs. Brookes told him that she had gone home: he made neither remark nor inquiry, manifesting no interest.

It would be well his father should not see it necessary to push things farther! He did not want to turn out of the castle! Without means, what was he to do? The marriage could not be to-day or to-morrow! and in the meantime he could see Eppy, perhaps more easily than at the castle! He would contrive! He was sorry he had hurt the old fellow, but he could not help it! he would get in the way! Things would have been much worse if he had not got first to his father! He would wait a bit, and see what would turn up! For the tutor-fellow, he must not quarrel with him downright! No good would come of that! In the end he would have his way! and that in spite of them all!

But what he really wanted he did not know. He only knew, or imagined, that he was over head and ears in love with the girl: what was to come of it was all in the clouds. He had said he meant to marry her; but to that statement he had been driven, more than he knew, by the desire to escape the contempt of the tutor he scorned; and he rejoiced that he had at least discomfited him. He knew that if he did marry Eppy, or any one else of whom his father did not approve, he had nothing to look for but absolute poverty, for he knew no way to earn money; he was therefore unprepared to defy him immediately—whatever he might do by and by. He said to himself sometimes that he was as willing as any man to work for his wife if only he knew how; but when he said so, had he always a clear vision of Eppy as the wife in prospect? Alas, it would take years to make him able to earn even a woman's wages! It would be a fine thing for a lord to labour like a common man for the support of a child of the people for whom he had sacrificed everything; but where was the possibility? When thoughts like these grew too many for him, Forgue wished he had never seen the girl. His heart would immediately reproach him; immediately he would comfort his conscience with the reflection that to wish he had never seen her was a very different thing from wishing to act as if he had. He loafed about in her neighbourhood as much as he dared, haunted the house itself in the twilight, and at night even ventured sometimes to creep up the stair, but for some time he never even saw her: for days Eppy never went out of doors except into the garden.

Though she had not spoken of it, Arctura had had more than a suspicion that something was going on between her cousin and the pretty maid; for the little window of her sitting room partially overlooked a certain retired spot favoured of the lovers; and after Eppy left the house, Davie, though he did not associate the facts, noted that she was more cheerful than before. But there was no enlargement of intercourse between her and Forgue. They knew it was the wish of the head of the house that they should marry, but the earl had been wise enough to say nothing openly to either of them: he believed the thing would have a better chance on its own merits; and as yet they had shown no sign of drawing to each other. It might, perhaps, have been otherwise on his part had not the young lord been taken with the pretty housemaid, though at first he had thought of nothing more than a little passing flirtation, reckoning his advantage with her by the height on which he stood in his own regard; but it was from no jealousy that Arctura was relieved by the departure of Eppy. She had never seen anything attractive in her cousin, and her religious impressions would have been enough to protect her from any drawing to him: had they not poisoned in her even the virtue of common house-friendliness toward a very different man? The sense of relief she had when Eppy went, lay in being delivered from the presence of something clandestine, with which she could not interfere so far as to confess knowledge of it. It had rendered her uneasy; she had felt shy and uncomfortable. Once or twice she had been on the point of saying to Mrs. Brookes that she thought her cousin and Eppy very oddly familiar, but had failed of courage. It was no wonder therefore that she should be more cheerful.