Donal Grant

He turned, replaced the packet, and closed the bureau. If there was any one in the house, he must know it, and who could tell what might follow! It was the merest ghost of a sound he had heard, but he must go after it! Some intruder might be using the earl's house for his own purposes!

Going softly up, he paused at the top of the second stair, and looked around him. An iron-clenched door stood nearly opposite the head of it; and at the farther end of a long passage, on whose sides were several closed doors, was one partly open. From that direction came the sound of a little movement, and then of low voices—one surely that of a woman! It flashed upon him that this must be the trysting-place of Eppy and Forgue. Fearing discovery before he should have gathered his wits, he stepped quietly across the passage to the door opposite, opened it, not without a little noise, and went in.

It was a strange-looking chamber he had entered—that, doubtless, once occupied by the ogre—The Reid Etin. Even in the bewilderment of the moment, the tale he had just heard was so present to him that he cast his eyes around, and noted several things to confirm the conclusion. But the next instant came from below what sounded like a thundering knock at the street door—a single knock, loud and fierce—possibly a mere runaway's knock. The start it gave Donal set his heart shaking in his bosom.

Almost with it came a little cry, and the sound of a door pulled open. Then he heard a hurried, yet carefully soft step, which went down the stair.

"Now is my time!" said Donal to himself. "She is alone!"

He came out, and went along the passage. The door at the end of it was open, and Eppy stood in it. She saw him coming, and gazed with widespread eyes of terror, as if it were The Reid Etin himself—waked, and coming to devour her. As he came, her blue eyes opened wider, and seemed to fix in their orbits; just as her name was on his lips, she dropped with a sharp moan. He caught her up, and hurried with her down the stair.

As he reached the first floor, he heard the sound of swift ascending steps, and the next moment was face to face with Forgue. The youth started back, and for a moment stood staring. His enemy had found him! But rage restored to him his self-possession.

"Put her down, you scoundrel!" he said.

"She can't stand," Donal answered.

"You've killed her, you damned spy!"

"Then I have been more kind than you!"

"What are you going to do with her?"

"Take her home to her dying grandfather."

"You've hurt her, you devil! I know you have!"

"She is only frightened. She is coming to herself. I feel her waking!"

"You shall feel me presently!" cried Forgue. "Put her down, I say."

Neither of them spoke loud, for dread of neighbours.

Eppy began to writhe in Donal's arms. Forgue laid hold of her, and Donal was compelled to put her down. She threw herself into the arms of her lover, and was on the point of fainting again.

"Get out of the house!" said Forgue to Donal.

"I am here on your father's business!" returned Donal.

"A spy and informer!"

"He sent me to fetch him some papers."

"It is a lie!" said Forgue; "I see it in your face!"

"So long as I speak the truth," rejoined Donal, "it matters little that you should think me a liar. But, my lord, you must allow me to take Eppy home."

"A likely thing!" answered Forgue, drawing Eppy closer, and looking at him with contempt.

"Give up the girl," said Donal sternly, "or I will raise the town, and have a crowd about the house in three minutes."

"You are the devil!" cried Forgue. "There! take her—with the consequences! If you had let us alone, I would have done my part.—Leave us now, and I'll promise to marry her. If you don't, you will have the blame of what may happen—not I."

"But you will, dearest?" said Eppy in a tone terrified and beseeching.

Gladly she would have had Donal hear him say he would.

Forgue pushed her from him. She burst into tears. He took her in his arms again, and soothed her like a child, assuring her he meant nothing by what he had said.

"You are my own!" he went on; "you know you are, whatever our enemies may drive us to! Nothing can part us. Go with him, my darling, for the present. The time will come when we shall laugh at them all. If it were not for your sake, and the scandal of the thing, I would send the rascal to the bottom of the stair. But it is better to be patient."

Sobbing bitterly, Eppy went with Donal. Forgue stood shaking with impotent rage.

When they reached the street, Donal turned to lock the door. Eppy darted from him, and ran down the close, thinking to go in again by the side door. But it was locked, and Donal was with her in a moment.

"You go home alone, Eppy," he said; "it will be just as well I should not go with you. I must see lord Forgue out of the house."

"Eh, ye winna hurt him!" pleaded Eppy.

"Not if I can help it. I don't want to hurt him. You go home. It will be better for him as well as you."

She went slowly away, weeping, but trying to keep what show of calm she could. Donal waited a minute or two, went back to the front door, entered, and hastening to the side door took the key from the lock. Then returning to the hall, he cried from the bottom of the stair,

"My lord, I have both the keys; the side door is locked; I am about to lock the front door, and I do not want to shut you in. Pray, come down."

Forgue came leaping down the stair, and threw himself upon Donal in a fierce attempt after the key in his hand. The sudden assault staggered him, and he fell on the floor with Forgue above him, who sought to wrest the key from him. But Donal was much the stronger; he threw his assailant off him; and for a moment was tempted to give him a good thrashing. From this the thought of Eppy helped to restrain him, and he contented himself with holding him down till he yielded. When at last he lay quiet,

"Will you promise to walk out if I let you up?" said Donal. "If you will not, I will drag you into the street by the legs."

"I will," said Forgue; and getting up, he walked out and away without a word.

Donal locked the door, forgetting all about the papers, and went back to Andrew's. There was Eppy, safe for the moment! She was busy in the outer room, and kept her back to him. With a word or two to the grandmother, he left them, and went home, revolving all the way what he ought to do. Should he tell the earl, or should he not? Had he been a man of rectitude, he would not have hesitated a moment; but knowing he did not care what became of Eppy, so long as his son did not marry her, he felt under no obligation to carry him the evil report. The father might have a right to know, but had he a right to know from him?

A noble nature finds it almost impossible to deal with questions on other than the highest grounds: where those grounds are unrecognized, the relations of responsibility may be difficult indeed to determine. All Donal was able to conclude on his way home, and he did not hurry, was, that, if he were asked any questions, he would speak out what he knew—be absolutely open. If that should put a weapon in the hand of the enemy, a weapon was not the victory.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

PATERNAL REVENGE

No sooner had he entered the castle, where his return had been watched for, than Simmons came to him with the message that his lordship wanted to see him. Then first Donal remembered that he had not brought the papers! Had he not been sent for, he would have gone back at once to fetch them. As it was, he must see the earl first.

He found him in a worse condition than usual. His last drug or combination of drugs had not agreed with him; or he had taken too much, with correspondent reaction: he was in a vile temper. Donal told him he had been to the house, and had found the papers, but had not brought them—had, in fact, forgotten them.

"A pretty fellow you are!" cried the earl. "What, you left those papers lying about where any rascal may find them and play the deuce with them!"

Donal assured him they were perfectly safe, under the same locks and keys as before.

"You are always going about the bush!" cried the earl. "You never come to the point! How the devil was it you locked them up again?—To go prying all over the house, I suppose!"

Donal told him as much of the story as he would hear. Almost immediately he saw whither it tended, he began to abuse him for meddling with things he had nothing to do with. What right had he to interfere with lord Forgue's pleasures! Things of the sort were to be regarded as non-existent! The linen had to be washed, but it was not done in the great court! Lord Forgue was a youth of position: why should he be balked of his fancy! It might be at the expense of society!

Donal took advantage of the first pause to ask whether he should not go back and bring the papers: he would run all the way, he said.

"No, damn you!" answered the earl. "Give me the keys—all the keys—house-keys and all. I should be a fool myself to trust such a fool again!"

As Donal was laying the last key on the table by his lordship's bedside, Simmons appeared, saying lord Forgue desired to know if his father would see him.

"Oh, yes! send him up!" cried the earl in a fury. "All the devils in hell at once!"

His lordship's rages came up from abysses of misery no man knew but himself.

"You go into the next room, Grant," he said, "and wait there till I call you."

Donal obeyed, took a book from the table, and tried to read. He heard the door to the passage open and close again, and then the sounds of voices. By degrees they grew louder, and at length the earl roared out, so that Donal could not help hearing:

"I'll be damned soul and body in hell, but I'll put a stop to this! Why, you son of a snake! I have but to speak the word, and you are—well, what—. Yes, I will hold my tongue, but not if he crosses me!—By God! I have held it too long already!—letting you grow up the damnablest ungrateful dog that ever snuffed carrion!—And your poor father periling his soul for you, by God, you rascal!"

"Thank heaven, you cannot take the title from me, my lord!" said Forgue coolly. "The rest you are welcome to give to Davie! It won't be too much, by all accounts!"

"Damn you and your title! A pretty title, ha, ha, ha!—Why, you infernal fool, you have no more right to the title than the beggarly kitchen-maid you would marry! If you but knew yourself, you would crow in another fashion! Ha, ha, ha!"

At this Donal opened the door.

"I must warn your lordship," he said, "that if you speak so loud, I shall hear every word."

"Hear and be damned to you!—That fellow there—you see him standing there—the mushroom that he is! Good God! how I loved his mother! and this is the way he serves me! But there was a Providence in the whole affair! Never will I disbelieve in a Providence again! It all comes out right, perfectly right! Small occasion had I to be breaking heart and conscience over it ever since she left me! Hang the pinchbeck rascal! he's no more Forgue than you are, Grant, and never will be Morven if he live a hundred years! He's not a short straw better than any bastard in the street! His mother was the loveliest woman ever breathed!—and loved me—ah, God! it is something after all to have been loved so—and by such a woman!—a woman, by God! ready and willing and happy to give up everything for me! Everything, do you hear, you damned rascal! I never married her! Do you hear, Grant? I take you to witness; mark my words: we, that fellow's mother and I, were never married—by no law, Scotch, or French, or Dutch, or what you will! He's a damned bastard, and may go about his business when he pleases. Oh, yes! pray do! Marry your scullion when you please! You are your own master—entirely your own master!—free as the wind that blows to go where you will and do what you please! I wash my hands of you. You'll do as you please—will you? Then do, and please me: I desire no better revenge! I only tell you once for all, the moment I know for certain you've married the wench, that moment I publish to the world—that is, I acquaint certain gossips with the fact, that the next lord Morven will have to be hunted for like a truffle—ha! ha! ha!"

He burst into a fiendish fit of laughter, and fell back on his pillow, dark with rage and the unutterable fury that made of his being a volcano. The two men had been standing dumb before him, Donal pained for the man on whom this phial of devilish wrath had been emptied, he white and trembling with dismay—an abject creature, crushed by a cruel parent. When his father ceased, he still stood, still said nothing: power was gone from him. He grew ghastly, uttered a groan, and wavered. Donal supported him to a chair; he dropped into it, and leaned back, with streaming face. It was miserable to think that one capable of such emotion concerning the world's regard, should be so indifferent to what alone can affect a man—the nature of his actions—so indifferent to the agony of another as to please himself at all risk to her, although he believed he loved her, and perhaps did love her better than any one else in the world. For Donal did not at all trust him regarding Eppy—less now than ever. But these thoughts went on in him almost without his thinking them; his attention was engrossed with the passionate creatures before him.

The father too seemed to have lost the power of motion, and lay with his eyes closed, breathing heavily. But by and by he made what Donal took for a sign to ring the bell. He did so, and Simmons came. The moment he entered, and saw the state his master was in, he hastened to a cupboard, took thence a bottle, poured from it something colourless, and gave it to him in water. It brought him to himself. He sat up again, and in a voice hoarse and terrible said:—

"Think of what I have told you, Forgue. Do as I would have you, and the truth is safe; take your way without me, and I will take mine without you. Go."

Donal went. Forgue did not move.

What was Donal to do or think now? Perplexities gathered upon him. Happily there was time for thought, and for prayer, which is the highest thinking. Here was a secret affecting the youth his enemy, and the boy his friend! affecting society itself—that society which, largely capable and largely guilty of like sins, yet visits with such unmercy the sins of the fathers upon the children, the sins of the offender upon the offended! But there is another who visits them, and in another fashion! What was he to do? Was he to hold his tongue and leave the thing as not his, or to speak out as he would have done had the case been his own? Ought the chance to be allowed the nameless youth of marrying his cousin? Ought the next heir to the lordship to go without his title? Had they not both a claim upon Donal for the truth? Donal thought little of such things himself, but did that affect his duty in the matter? He might think little of money, but would he therefore look on while a pocket was picked?

On reflection he saw, however, that there was no certainty the earl was speaking the truth; for anything he knew of him, he might be inventing the statement in order to have his way with his son! For in either case he was a double-dyed villian; and if he spoke the truth was none the less capable of lying.

CHAPTER XLIX.

FILIAL RESPONSE

One thing then was clear to Donal, that for the present he had nothing to do with the affair. Supposing the earl's assertion true, there was at present no question as to the succession; before such question could arise, Forgue might be dead; before that, his father might himself have disclosed the secret; while, the longer Donal thought about it, the greater was his doubt whether he had spoken the truth. The man who could so make such a statement to his son concerning his mother, must indeed have been capable of the wickedness assumed! but also the man who could make such a statement was surely vile enough to lie! The thing remained uncertain, and he was assuredly not called upon to act!

But how would Forgue carry himself? His behaviour now would decide or at least determine his character. If he were indeed as honourable as he wished to be thought, he would tell Eppy what had occurred, and set himself at once to find some way of earning his and her bread, or at least to become capable of earning it. He did not seem to cherish any doubt of the truth of what had fallen in rage from his father's lips, for, to judge by his appearance, to the few and brief glances Donal had of him during the next week or so, the iron had sunk into his soul: he looked more wretched than Donal could have believed it possible for man to be—abject quite. It manifested very plainly what a miserable thing, how weak and weakening, is the pride of this world. One who could be so cast down, was hardly one, alas, of whom to expect any greatness of action! He was not likely to have honesty or courage enough to decline a succession that was not his—even though it would leave his way clear to marry Eppy. Whether any of Forgue's misery arose from the fact that Donal had been present at the exposure of his position, Donal could not tell; but he could hardly fail to regard him as a dangerous holder of his secret—one who would be more than ready to take hostile action in the matter! At the same time, such had seemed the paralysing influence of the shock upon him, that Donal doubted if he had been, at any time during the interview, so much aware of his presence as not to have forgotten it entirely before he came to himself. Had he remembered the fact, would he not have come to him to attempt securing his complicity? If he meant to do right, why did he hesitate?—there was but one way, and that plain before him!

But presently Donal began to see many things an equivocating demon might urge: the claims of his mother; the fact that there was no near heir—he did not even know who would come in his place; that he would do as well with the property as another; that he had been already grievously wronged; that his mother's memory would be yet more grievously wronged; that the marriage had been a marriage in the sight of God, and as such he surely of all men was in heaven's right to regard it! and his mother had been the truest of wives to his father! These things and more Donal saw he might plead with himself; and if he was the man he had given him no small ground to think, he would in all probability listen to them. He would recall or assume the existence of many precedents in the history of noble families; he would say that, knowing the general character of their heads, no one would believe a single noble family without at least one unrecorded, undiscovered, or well concealed irregularity in its descent; and he would judge it the cruellest thing to have let him know the blighting fact, seeing that in ignorance he might have succeeded with a good conscience.

But what kind of a father was this, thought Donal, who would thus defile his son's conscience! he had not done it in mere revenge, but to gain his son's submission as well! Whether the poor fellow leaned to the noble or ignoble, it was no marvel he should wander about looking scarce worthy the name of man! If he would but come to him that he might help him! He could at least encourage him to refuse the evil and choose the good! But even if he would receive such help, the foregone passages between them rendered it sorely improbable it would ever fall to him to afford it!

That his visits to Eppy were intermitted, Donal judged from her countenance and bearing; and if he hesitated to sacrifice his own pride to the truth, it could not be without contemplating as possible the sacrifice of her happiness to a lie. In such delay he could hardly be praying "Lead me not into temptation:" if not actively tempting himself, he was submitting to be tempted; he was lingering on the evil shore.

Andrew Comin staid yet a week—slowly, gently fading out into life—darkening into eternal day—forgetting into knowledge itself. Donal was by his side when he went, but little was done or said; he crept into the open air in his sleep, to wake from the dreams of life and the dreams of death and the dreams of sleep all at once, and see them mingling together behind him like a broken wave—blending into one vanishing dream of a troubled, yet, oh, how precious night past and gone!

Once, about an hour before he went, Donal heard him murmur, "When I wake I am still with thee!"

Doory was perfectly calm. When he gave his last sigh, she sighed too, said, "I winna be lang, Anerew!" and said no more. Eppy wept bitterly.

Donal went every day to see them till the funeral was over. It was surprising how many of the town's folk attended it. Most of them had regarded the cobbler as a poor talkative enthusiast with far more tongue than brains! Because they were so far behind and beneath him, they saw him very small!

One cannot help reflecting what an indifferent trifle the funeral, whether plain to bareness, as in Scotland, or lovely with meaning as often in England, is to the spirit who has but dropt his hurting shoes on the weary road, dropt all the dust and heat, dropt the road itself, yea the world of his pilgrimage—which never was, never could be, never was meant to be his country, only the place of his sojourning—in which the stateliest house of marble can be but a tent—cannot be a house, yet less a home. Man could never be made at home here, save by a mutilation, a depression, a lessening of his being; those who fancy it their home, will come, by growth, one day to feel that it is no more their home than its mother's egg is the home of the lark.

For some time Donal's savings continued to support the old woman and her grand-daughter. But ere long Doory got so much to do in the way of knitting stockings and other things, and was set to so many light jobs by kindly people who respected her more than her husband because they saw her less extraordinary, that she seldom troubled him. Miss Carmichael offered to do what she could to get Eppy a place, if she answered certain questions to her satisfaction. How she liked her catechizing I do not know, but she so far satisfied her interrogator that she did find her a place in Edinburgh. She wept sore at leaving Auchars, but there was no help: rumour had been more cruel than untrue, and besides there was no peace for her near the castle. Not once had lord Forgue sought her since he gave her up to Donal, and she thought he had then given her up altogether. Notwithstanding his kindness to her house, she all but hated Donal—perhaps the more nearly that her conscience told he had done nothing but what was right.

Things returned into the old grooves at the castle, but the happy thought of his friend the cobbler, hammering and stitching in the town below, was gone from Donal. True, the craftsman was a nobleman now, but such he had always been!

Forgue mooned about, doing nothing, and recognizing no possible help save in what was utter defeat. If he had had any faith in Donal, he might have had help fit to make a man of him, which he would have found something more than an earl. Donal would have taught him to look things in the face, and call them by their own names. It would have been the redemption of his being. To let things be as they truly are, and act with truth in respect of them, is to be a man. But Forgue showed little sign of manhood, present or to come.

He was much on horseback, now riding furiously over everything, as if driven by the very fiend, now dawdling along with the reins on the neck of his weary animal. Donal once met him thus in a narrow lane. The moment Forgue saw him, he pulled up his horse's head, spurred him hard, and came on as if he did not see him. Donal shoved himself into the hedge, and escaped with a little mud.

CHAPTER L.

A SOUTH-EASTERLY WIND

One morning, Donal in the schoolroom with Davie, a knock came to the door, and lady Arctura entered.

"The wind is blowing from the south-east," she said.

"Listen then, my lady, whether you can hear anything," said Donal. "I fancy it is a very precise wind that is wanted."

"I will listen," she answered, and went.

The day passed, and he heard nothing more. He was at work in his room in the warm evening twilight, when Davie came running to his door, and said Arkie was coming up after him. He rose and stood at the top of the stair to receive her. She had heard the music, she said—very soft: would he go on the roof?