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The White People
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
March, 1996 [Etext #459]
**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The White People, by Burnett**
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THE WHITE PEOPLE
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
TO
LIONEL
"The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high
Can keep my own away from me."
THE WHITE PEOPLE
CHAPTER I
Perhaps the things which happened could
only have happened to me. I do not
know. I never heard of things like them
happening to any one else. But I am not sorry
they did happen. I am in secret deeply and
strangely glad. I have heard other people say
things--and they were not always sad people,
either--which made me feel that if they knew
what I know it would seem to them as though
some awesome, heavy load they had always
dragged about with them had fallen from their
shoulders. To most people everything is so
uncertain that if they could only see or hear and
know something clear they would drop upon
their knees and give thanks. That was what I
felt myself before I found out so strangely, and
I was only a girl. That is why I intend to
write this down as well as I can. It will not be
very well done, because I never was clever at all,
and always found it difficult to talk.
I say that perhaps these things could only
have happened to me, because, as I look back
over my life, I realize that it has always been a
rather curious one. Even when those who took
care of me did not know I was thinking at all, I
had begun to wonder if I were not different from
other children. That was, of course, largely
because Muircarrie Castle was in such a wild
and remote part of Scotland that when my few
relations felt they must pay me a visit as a
mere matter of duty, their journey from London,
or their pleasant places in the south of
England, seemed to them like a pilgrimage to a
sort of savage land; and when a conscientious
one brought a child to play with me, the little
civilized creature was as frightened of me as I
was of it. My shyness and fear of its strangeness
made us both dumb. No doubt I seemed
like a new breed of inoffensive little barbarian,
knowing no tongue but its own.
A certain clannish etiquette made it seem
necessary that a relation should pay me a visit
sometimes, because I was in a way important.
The huge, frowning feudal castle standing upon
its battlemented rock was mine; I was a great
heiress, and I was, so to speak, the chieftainess
of the clan. But I was a plain, undersized little
child, and had no attraction for any one but
Jean Braidfute, a distant cousin, who took care
of me, and Angus Macayre, who took care of
the library, and who was a distant relative
also. They were both like me in the fact that
they were not given to speech; but sometimes
we talked to one another, and I knew they were
fond of me, as I was fond of them. They were
really all I had.
When I was a little girl I did not, of course,
understand that I was an important person,
and I could not have realized the significance
of being an heiress. I had always lived in the
castle, and was used to its hugeness, of which I
only knew corners. Until I was seven years
old, I think, I imagined all but very poor people
lived in castles and were saluted by every one
they passed. It seemed probable that all little
girls had a piper who strode up and down the
terrace and played on the bagpipes when guests
were served in the dining-hall.
My piper's name was Feargus, and in time I
found out that the guests from London could
not endure the noise he made when he marched
to and fro, proudly swinging his kilts and treading
like a stag on a hillside. It was an insult
to tell him to stop playing, because it was his
religion to believe that The Muircarrie must
be piped proudly to; and his ancestors had
been pipers to the head of the clan for five
generations. It was his duty to march round
the dining-hall and play while the guests feasted,
but I was obliged in the end to make him believe
that he could be heard better from the terrace--
because when he was outside his music was not
spoiled by the sound of talking. It was very
difficult, at first. But because I was his
chieftainess, and had learned how to give orders in a
rather proud, stern little voice, he knew he
must obey.
Even this kind of thing may show that my
life was a peculiar one; but the strangest part
of it was that, while I was at the head of so
many people, I did not really belong to any one,
and I did not know that this was unusual. One
of my early memories is that I heard an under-
nursemaid say to another this curious thing:
"Both her father and mother were dead when
she was born." I did not even know that was
a remarkable thing to say until I was several
years older and Jean Braidfute told me what
had been meant.
My father and mother had both been very
young and beautiful and wonderful. It was
said that my father was the handsomest chieftain
in Scotland, and that his wife was as
beautiful as he was. They came to Muircarrie
as soon as they were married and lived a splendid
year there together. Sometimes they were
quite alone, and spent their days fishing or riding
or wandering on the moor together, or reading
by the fire in the library the ancient books
Angus Macayre found for them. The library
was a marvelous place, and Macayre knew every
volume in it. They used to sit and read like
children among fairy stories, and then they
would persuade Macayre to tell them the ancient
tales he knew--of the days when Agricola
forced his way in among the Men of the Woods,
who would die any savage death rather than be
conquered. Macayre was a sort of heirloom
himself, and he knew and believed them all.
I don't know how it was that I myself seemed
to see my young father and mother so clearly
and to know how radiant and wildly in love they
were. Surely Jean Braidfute had not words to
tell me. But I knew. So I understood, in a
way of my own, what happened to my mother
one brilliant late October afternoon when my
father was brought home dead--followed by the
guests who had gone out shooting with him.
His foot had caught in a tuft of heather, and his
gun in going off had killed him. One moment
he had been the handsomest young chieftain in
Scotland, and when he was brought home they
could not have let my mother see his face.
But she never asked to see it. She was on the
terrace which juts over the rock the castle is
built on, and which looks out over the purple
world of climbing moor. She saw from there
the returning party of shooters and gillies winding
its way slowly through the heather, following
a burden carried on a stretcher of fir boughs.
Some of her women guests were with her, and
one of them said afterward that when she first
caught sight of the moving figures she got up
slowly and crept to the stone balustrade with a
crouching movement almost like a young
leopardess preparing to spring. But she only
watched, making neither sound nor movement
until the cortege was near enough for her to
see that every man's head was bowed upon his
breast, and not one was covered.
Then she said, quite slowly, "They--have--
taken off--their bonnets," and fell upon the
terrace like a dropped stone.
It was because of this that the girl said that
she was dead when I was born. It must have
seemed almost as if she were not a living thing.
She did not open her eyes or make a sound;
she lay white and cold. The celebrated physicians
who came from London talked of catalepsy
and afterward wrote scientific articles which
tried to explain her condition. She did not
know when I was born. She died a few minutes
after I uttered my first cry.
I know only one thing more, and that Jean
Braidfute told me after I grew up. Jean had
been my father's nursery governess when he
wore his first kilts, and she loved my mother
fondly.
"I knelt by her bed and held her hand and
watched her face for three hours after they first
laid her down," she said. "And my eyes were
so near her every moment that I saw a thing
the others did not know her well enough, or love
her well enough, to see.
"The first hour she was like a dead thing--
aye, like a dead thing that had never lived.
But when the hand of the clock passed the
last second, and the new hour began, I bent
closer to her because I saw a change stealing
over her. It was not color--it was not even a
shadow of a motion. It was something else.
If I had spoken what I felt, they would have
said I was light-headed with grief and have sent
me away. I have never told man or woman.
It was my secret and hers. I can tell you,
Ysobel. The change I saw was as if she was
beginning to listen to something--to listen.
"It was as if to a sound--far, far away at
first. But cold and white as stone she lay
content, and listened. In the next hour the far-
off sound had drawn nearer, and it had become
something else--something she saw--something
which saw her. First her young marble face
had peace in it; then it had joy. She waited in
her young stone body until you were born and
she could break forth. She waited no longer
then.
"Ysobel, my bairn, what I knew was that he
had not gone far from the body that had held
him when he fell. Perhaps he had felt lost for
a bit when he found himself out of it. But soon
he had begun to call to her that was like his own
heart to him. And she had heard. And then,
being half away from earth herself, she had seen
him and known he was waiting, and that he
would not leave for any far place without her.
She was so still that the big doctors thought
more than once she had passed. But I knew
better."
It was long before I was old enough to be told
anything like this that I began to feel that the
moor was in secret my companion and friend,
that it was not only the moot to me, but something
else. It was like a thing alive--a huge
giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself,
or covering itself with thick, white mist which
sometimes writhed and twisted itself into
wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day,
perhaps, when it was purple and yellow with
gorse and heather and broom, and the honey
scents drew bees and butterflies and birds.
But soon I saw and was drawn by another thing.
How young was I that afternoon when I sat
in the deep window and watched the low, soft
whiteness creeping out and hovering over the
heather as if the moor had breathed it? I do
not remember. It was such a low little mist at
first; and it crept and crept until its creeping
grew into something heavier and whiter, and it
began to hide the heather and the gorse and
broom, and then the low young fir-trees. It
mounted and mounted, and sometimes a breath
of wind twisted it into weird shapes, almost
like human creatures. It opened and closed
again, and then it dragged and crept and grew
thicker. And as I pressed my face against the
window-pane, it mounted still higher and got
hold of the moor and hid it, hanging heavy and
white and waiting. That was what came into
my child mind: that it had done what the moor
had told it to do; had hidden things which
wanted to be hidden, and then it waited.
Strangers say that Muircarrie moor is the
most beautiful and the most desolate place in
the world, but it never seemed desolate to me.
From my first memory of it I had a vague, half-
comforted feeling that there was some strange
life on it one could not exactly see, but was
always conscious of. I know now why I felt
this, but I did not know then.
If I had been older when I first began to see
what I did see there, I should no doubt have
read things in books which would have given
rise in my mind to doubts and wonders; but
I was only a little child who had lived a life quite
apart from the rest of the world. I was too
silent by nature to talk and ask questions, even
if I had had others to talk to. I had only
Jean and Angus, and, as I found out years
later, they knew what I did not, and would
have put me off with adroit explanations if I
had been curious. But I was not curious. I
accepted everything as it came and went.
CHAPTER II
I only six when Wee Brown Elspeth
was brought to me. Jean and Angus were
as fond of each other in their silent way as they
were of me, and they often went together with
me when I was taken out for my walks. I was
kept in the open air a great deal, and Angus
would walk by the side of my small, shaggy
Shetland pony and lead him over rough or
steep places. Sheltie, the pony, was meant for
use when we wished to fare farther than a child
could walk; but I was trained to sturdy marching
and climbing even from my babyhood.
Because I so loved the moor, we nearly always
rambled there. Often we set out early in the
morning, and some simple food was carried, so
that we need not return to the castle until we
chose. I would ride Sheltie and walk by turns
until we found a place I liked; then Jean and
Angus would sit down among the heather,
Sheltie would be secured, and I would wander
about and play in my own way. I do not
think it was in a strange way. I think I must
have played as almost any lonely little girl
might have played. I used to find a corner
among the bushes and pretend it was my house
and that I had little friends who came to play
with me. I only remember one thing which
was not like the ordinary playing of children.
It was a habit I had of sitting quite still a long
time and listening. That was what I called
it--"listening." I was listening to hear if the
life on the moor made any sound I could understand.
I felt as if it might, if I were very still
and listened long enough.
Angus and Jean and I were not afraid of rain
and mist and change of weather. If we had
been we could have had little outdoor life.
We always carried plaids enough to keep us
warm and dry. So on this day I speak of we
did not turn back when we found ourselves in
the midst of a sudden mist. We sat down in a
sheltered place and waited, knowing it would
lift in time. The sun had been shining when
we set out.
Angus and Jean were content to sit and guard
me while I amused myself. They knew I would
keep near them and run into no danger. I was
not an adventurous child. I was, in fact, in a
more than usually quiet mood that morning.
The quiet had come upon me when the mist
had begun to creep about and inclose us. I
liked it. I liked the sense of being shut in by
the soft whiteness I had so often watched from
my nursery window in the castle.
"People might be walking about," I said to
Angus when he lifted me from Sheltie's back.
"We couldn't see them. They might be
walking."
"Nothing that would hurt ye, bairnie," he
answered.
"No, they wouldn't hurt me," I said. I had
never been afraid that anything on the moor
would hurt me.
I played very little that day. The quiet and
the mist held me still. Soon I sat down and
began to "listen." After a while I knew that
Jean and Angus were watching me, but it did
not disturb me. They often watched me when
they thought I did not know they were doing it.
I had sat listening for nearly half an hour
when I heard the first muffled, slow trampling
of horses' hoofs. I knew what it was even
before it drew near enough for me to be conscious
of the other sounds--the jingling of arms
and chains and the creaking of leather one
notices as troopers pass by. Armed and mounted
men were coming toward me. That was what
the sounds meant; but they seemed faint and
distant, though I knew they were really quite
near. Jean and Angus did not appear to hear
them. I knew that I only heard them because
I had been listening.
Out of the mist they rode a company of
wild-looking men wearing garments such as I
had never seen before. Most of them were
savage and uncouth, and their clothes were
disordered and stained as if with hard travel and
fight. I did not know--or even ask myself--
why they did not frighten me, but they did not.
Suddenly I seemed to know that they were
brave men and had been doing some brave,
hard thing. Here and there among them I
caught sight of a broken and stained sword,
or a dirk with only a hilt left. They were all
pale, but their wild faces were joyous and
triumphant. I saw it as they drew near.
The man who seemed their chieftain was a
lean giant who was darker but, under his
darkness, paler than the rest. On his forehead was
a queer, star-shaped scar. He rode a black
horse, and before him he held close with his
left arm a pretty little girl dressed in strange,
rich clothes. The big man's hand was pressed
against her breast as he held her; but though
it was a large hand, it did not quite cover a
dark-red stain on the embroideries of her dress.
Her dress was brown, and she had brown hair
and soft brown eyes like a little doe's. The
moment I saw her I loved her.
The black horse stopped before me. The
wild troop drew up and waited behind. The
great, lean rider looked at me a moment, and
then, lifting the little girl in his long arms, bent
down and set her gently on her feet on the
mossy earth in the mist beside me. I got up
to greet her, and we stood smiling at each
other. And in that moment as we stood the
black horse moved forward, the muffled trampling
began again, the wild company swept on
its way, and the white mist closed behind it as
if it had never passed.
Of course I know how strange this will seem
to people who read it, but that cannot be
helped and does not really matter. It was in
that way the thing happened, and it did not
even seem strange to me. Anything might happen
on the moor--anything. And there was
the fair little girl with the eyes like a doe's.
I knew she had come to play with me, and
we went together to my house among the
bushes of broom and gorse and played happily.
But before we began I saw her stand and look
wonderingly at the dark-red stain on the
embroideries on her childish breast. It was as if
she were asking herself how it came there and
could not understand. Then she picked a fern
and a bunch of the thick-growing bluebells
and put them in her girdle in such a way that
they hid its ugliness.
I did not really know how long she stayed.
I only knew that we were happy, and that,
though her way of playing was in some ways
different from mine, I loved it and her. Presently
the mist lifted and the sun shone, and we
were deep in a wonderful game of being hidden
in a room in a castle because something strange
was going to happen which we were not told
about. She ran behind a big gorse bush and
did not come back. When I ran to look for her
she was nowhere. I could not find her, and I
went back to Jean and Angus, feeling puzzled.
"Where did she go?" I asked them, turning
my head from side to side.
They were looking at me strangely, and both
of them were pale. Jean was trembling a little.
"Who was she, Ysobel?" she said.
"The little girl the men brought to play
with me," I answered, still looking about me.
"The big one on the black horse put her down--
the big one with the star here." I touched my
forehead where the queer scar had been.
For a minute Angus forgot himself. Years
later he told me.
"Dark Malcolm of the Glen," he broke out.
"Wee Brown Elspeth."
"But she is white--quite white!" I said.
"Where did she go?"
Jean swept me in her warm, shaking arms and
hugged me close to her breast.
"She's one of the fair ones," she said, kissing
and patting me. "She will come again. She'll
come often, I dare say. But she's gone now
and we must go, too. Get up, Angus, man.
We're for the castle."
If we three had been different--if we had
ever had the habit of talking and asking questions--
we might surely have asked one another
questions as I rode on Sheltie's back, with
Angus leading us. But they asked me nothing,
and I said very little except that I once spoke
of the wild-looking horsemen and their pale,
joyous faces.
"They were glad," was all I said.
There was also one brief query from Angus.
"Did she talk to you, bairnie?" he said.
I hesitated and stared at him quite a long
time. Then I shook my head and answered,
slowly, "N-no."
Because I realized then, for the first time,
that we had said no words at all. But I had
known what she wanted me to understand, and
she had known what I might have said to her if
I had spoken--and no words were needed.
And it was better.
They took me home to the castle, and I was
given my supper and put to bed. Jean sat
by me until I fell asleep; she was obliged to sit
rather a long time, because I was so happy with
my memories of Wee Brown Elspeth and the
certainty that she would come again. It was
not Jean's words which had made me sure. I
knew.
She came many times. Through all my
childish years I knew that she would come and
play with me every few days--though I never
saw the wild troopers again or the big, lean
man with the scar. Children who play together
are not very curious about one another, and I
simply accepted her with delight. Somehow I
knew that she lived happily in a place not far
away. She could come and go, it seemed, without
trouble. Sometimes I found her--or she
found me upon the moor; and often she appeared
in my nursery in the castle. When we
were together Jean Braidfute seemed to prefer
that we should be alone, and was inclined to
keep the under-nurse occupied in other parts
of the wing I lived in. I never asked her to do
this, but I was glad that it was done. Wee
Elspeth was glad, too. After our first meeting
she was dressed in soft blue or white, and the
red stain was gone; but she was always Wee
Brown Elspeth with the doelike eyes and the
fair, transparent face, the very fair little face.
As I had noticed the strange, clear pallor of the
rough troopers, so I noticed that she was
curiously fair. And as I occasionally saw other
persons with the same sort of fairness, I thought
it was a purity of complexion special to some,
but not to all. I was not fair like that, and
neither was any one else I knew.
CHAPTER III
It was when I was ten years old that Wee
Elspeth ceased coming to me, and though
I missed her at first, it was not with a sense of
grief or final loss. She had only gone somewhere.
It was then that Angus Macayre began to be
my tutor. He had been a profound student
and had lived among books all his life. He had
helped Jean in her training of me, and I had
learned more than is usually taught to children
in their early years. When a grand governess
was sent to Muircarrie by my guardian, she was
amazed at the things I was familiar with, but
she abhorred the dark, frowning castle and the
loneliness of the place and would not stay.
In fact, no governess would stay, and so Angus
became my tutor and taught me old Gaelic
and Latin and Greek, and we read together and
studied the ancient books in the library. It
was a strange education for a girl, and no doubt
made me more than ever unlike others. But
my life was the life I loved.
When my guardian decided that I must live
with him in London and be educated as modern
girls were, I tried to be obedient and went to
him; but before two months had passed my
wretchedness had made me so ill that the doctor
said I should go into a decline and die if I were
not sent back to Muircarrie.
"It's not only the London air that seems to
poison her," he said when Jean talked to him
about me; "it is something else. She will not
live, that's all. Sir Ian must send her home."
As I have said before, I had been an
unattractive child and I was a plain, uninteresting
sort of girl. I was shy and could not talk to
people, so of course I bored them. I knew I did
not look well when I wore beautiful clothes. I
was little and unimportant and like a reed for
thinness. Because I was rich and a sort of
chieftainess I ought to have been tall and rather
stately, or at least I ought to have had a bearing
which would have made it impossible for people
to quite overlook me. But; any one could overlook
me--an insignificant, thin girl who slipped
in and out of places and sat and stared and
listened to other people instead of saying things
herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten.
It interested me to watch people if they did not
notice me.
Of course, my relatives did not really like me.
How could they? They were busy in their
big world and did not know what to do
with a girl who ought to have been important
and was not. I am sure that in secret they were
relieved when I was sent back to Muircarrie.
After that the life I loved went on quietly.
I studied with Angus, and made the book-
walled library my own room. I walked and
rode on the moor, and I knew the people who
lived in the cottages and farms on the estate.
I think they liked me, but I am not sure, because
I was too shy to seem very friendly. I was
more at home with Feargus, the piper, and with
some of the gardeners than I was with any one
else. I think I was lonely without knowing;
but I was never unhappy. Jean and Angus
were my nearest and dearest. Jean was of good
blood and a stanch gentlewoman, quite
sufficiently educated to be my companion as she
had been my early governess.
It was Jean who told Angus that I was giving
myself too entirely to the study of ancient
books and the history of centuries gone by.
"She is living to-day, and she must not pass
through this life without gathering anything
from it."
"This life," she put it, as if I had passed
through others before, and might pass through
others again. That was always her way of
speaking, and she seemed quite unconscious of
any unusualness in it.
"You are a wise woman, Jean," Angus said,
looking long at her grave face. "A wise
woman."
He wrote to the London book-shops for the
best modern books, and I began to read them.
I felt at first as if they plunged me into a world
I did not understand, and many of them I could
not endure. But I persevered, and studied
them as I had studied the old ones, and in time
I began to feel as if perhaps they were true.
My chief weariness with them came from the
way they had of referring to the things I was so
intimate with as though they were only the
unauthenticated history of a life so long passed
by that it could no longer matter to any one.
So often the greatest hours of great lives were
treated as possible legends. I knew why men
had died or were killed or had borne black
horror. I knew because I had read old books
and manuscripts and had heard the stories which
had come down through centuries by word of
mouth, passed from father to son.
But there was one man who did not write as
if he believed the world had begun and would
end with him. He knew he was only one, and
part of all the rest. The name I shall give him
is Hector MacNairn. He was a Scotchman,
but he had lived in many a land. The first
time I read a book he had written I caught my
breath with joy, again and again. I knew I
had found a friend, even though there was no
likelihood that I should ever see his face. He
was a great and famous writer, and all the
world honored him; while I, hidden away in
my castle on a rock on the edge of Muircarrie,
was so far from being interesting or clever that
even in my grandest evening dress and tiara of
jewels I was as insignificant as a mouse. In
fact, I always felt rather silly when I was
obliged to wear my diamonds on state occasions
as custom sometimes demanded.
Mr. MacNairn wrote essays and poems, and
marvelous stories which were always real
though they were called fiction. Wheresoever
his story was placed--howsoever remote and
unknown the scene--it was a real place, and the
people who lived in it were real, as if he had some
magic power to call up human things to breathe
and live and set one's heart beating. I read
everything he wrote. I read every word of his
again and again. I always kept some book of
his near enough to be able to touch it with my
hand; and often I sat by the fire in the library
holding one open on my lap for an hour or more,
only because it meant a warm, close companionship.
It seemed at those times as if he sat
near me in the dim glow and we understood
each other's thoughts without using words, as
Wee Brown Elspeth and I had understood--
only this was a deeper thing.
I had felt near him in this way for several
years, and every year he had grown more
famous, when it happened that one June my
guardian, Sir Ian, required me to go to London
to see my lawyers and sign some important
documents connected with the management of the
estate. I was to go to his house to spend a
week or more, attend a Drawing-Room, and
show myself at a few great parties in a proper
manner, this being considered my duty toward
my relatives. These, I believe, were secretly
afraid that if I were never seen their world
would condemn my guardian for neglect of his
charge, or would decide that I was of unsound
mind and intentionally kept hidden away at
Muircarrie. He was an honorable man, and
his wife was a well-meaning woman. I did not
wish to do them an injustice, so I paid them
yearly visits and tried to behave as they wished,
much as I disliked to be dressed in fine frocks
and to wear diamonds on my little head and
round my thin neck.
It was an odd thing that this time I found I
did not dread the visit to London as much as I
usually did. For some unknown reason I became
conscious that I was not really reluctant
to go. Usually the thought of the days before
me made me restless and low-spirited. London
always seemed so confused and crowded, and
made me feel as if I were being pushed and
jostled by a mob always making a tiresome
noise. But this time I felt as if I should
somehow find a clear place to stand in, where I
could look on and listen without being bewildered.
It was a curious feeling; I could not
help noticing and wondering about it.
I knew afterward that it came to me because
a change was drawing near. I wish so much
that I could tell about it in a better way. But
I have only my own way, which I am afraid
seems very like a school-girl's.
Jean Braidfute made the journey with me,
as she always did, and it was like every other
journey. Only one incident made it different,
and when it occurred there seemed nothing
unusual in it. It was only a bit of sad,
everyday life which touched me. There is nothing
new in seeing a poor woman in deep mourning.
Jean and I had been alone in our railway
carriage for a great part of the journey; but
an hour or two before we reached London a
man got in and took a seat in a corner. The
train had stopped at a place where there is a
beautiful and well-known cemetery. People
bring their friends from long distances to lay
them there. When one passes the station, one
nearly always sees sad faces and people in
mourning on the platform.
There was more than one group there that
day, and the man who sat in the corner looked
out at them with gentle eyes. He had fine,
deep eyes and a handsome mouth. When the
poor woman in mourning almost stumbled into
the carriage, followed by her child, he put out
his hand to help her and gave her his seat.
She had stumbled because her eyes were dim
with dreadful crying, and she could scarcely
see. It made one's heart stand still to see the
wild grief of her, and her unconsciousness of
the world about her. The world did not matter.
There was no world. I think there was nothing
left anywhere but the grave she had just staggered
blindly away from. I felt as if she had
been lying sobbing and writhing and beating
the new turf on it with her poor hands, and I
somehow knew that it had been a child's grave
she had been to visit and had felt she left to
utter loneliness when she turned away.
It was because I thought this that I wished
she had not seemed so unconscious of and
indifferent to the child who was with her and
clung to her black dress as if it could not
bear to let her go. This one was alive at least,
even if she had lost the other one, and its little
face was so wistful! It did not seem fair to
forget and ignore it, as if it were not there. I
felt as if she might have left it behind on the
platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it
was almost dragged into the railway carriage
with her. When she sank into her seat she
did not even lift the poor little thing into the
place beside her, but left it to scramble up as
best it could. She buried her swollen face in
her handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered
way as if she neither saw, heard, nor felt any
living thing near her.
How I wished she would remember the poor
child and let it comfort her! It really was
trying to do it in its innocent way. It pressed
close to her side, it looked up imploringly, it
kissed her arm and her crape veil over and over
again, and tried to attract her attention. It
was a little, lily-fair creature not more than five
or six years old and perhaps too young to express
what it wanted to say. It could only cling
to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg
her to remember that it, at least, was a living
thing. But she was too absorbed in her anguish
to know that it was in the world. She neither
looked at nor touched it, and at last it sat with
its cheek against her sleeve, softly stroking her
arm, and now and then kissing it longingly. I
was obliged to turn my face away and look
out of the window, because I knew the man with
the kind face saw the tears well up into my
eyes.
The poor woman did not travel far with us.
She left the train after a few stations were
passed. Our fellow-traveler got out before her
to help her on to the platform. He stood with
bared head while he assisted her, but she
scarcely saw him. And even then she seemed to
forget the child. The poor thing was dragged
out by her dress as it had been dragged in.
I put out my hand involuntarily as it went
through the door, because I was afraid it
might fall. But it did not. It turned its fair
little face and smiled at me. When the kind
traveler returned to his place in the carriage
again, and the train left the station, the black-
draped woman was walking slowly down the
platform and the child was still clinging to her
skirt.
CHAPTER IV
My guardian was a man whose custom
it was to give large and dignified parties.
Among his grand and fashionable guests there
was nearly always a sprinkling of the more
important members of the literary world. The
night after I arrived there was to be a
particularly notable dinner. I had come prepared
to appear at it. Jean had brought fine array
for me and a case of jewels. I knew I must
be "dressed up" and look as important as I
could. When I went up-stairs after tea, Jean
was in my room laying things out on the bed.
"The man you like so much is to dine here
to-night, Ysobel," she said. "Mr. Hector
MacNairn."
I believe I even put my hand suddenly to my
heart as I stood and looked at her, I was so
startled and so glad.
"You must tell him how much you love his
books," she said. She had a quiet, motherly
way.
"There will be so many other people who will
want to talk to him," I answered, and I felt
a little breathless with excitement as I said it.
"And I should be too shy to know how to say
such things properly."
"Don't be afraid of him," was her advice.
"The man will be like his books, and they're
the joy of your life."
She made me look as nice as she could in the
new dress she had brought; she made me wear
the Muircarrie diamonds and sent me downstairs.
It does not matter who the guests were;
I scarcely remember. I was taken in to dinner
by a stately elderly man who tried to make me
talk, and at last was absorbed by the clever
woman on his other side.
I found myself looking between the flowers for
a man's face I could imagine was Hector
MacNairn's. I looked up and down and saw
none I could believe belonged to him. There
were handsome faces and individual ones, but
at first I saw no Hector MacNairn. Then, on
bending forward a little to glance behind an
epergne, I found a face which it surprised and
pleased me to see. It was the face of the
traveler who had helped the woman in mourning
out of the railway carriage, baring his head
before her grief. I could not help turning and
speaking to my stately elderly partner.
"Do you know who that is--the man at
the other side of the table?" I asked.
Old Lord Armour looked across and answered
with an amiable smile. "It is the author the
world is talking of most in these days, and the
talking is no new thing. It's Mr. Hector
MacNairn."
No one but myself could tell how glad I was.
It seemed so right that he should be the man
who had understood the deeps of a poor, passing
stranger woman's woe. I had so loved that
quiet baring of his head! All at once I knew
I should not be afraid of him. He would
understand that I could not help being shy, that
it was only my nature, and that if I said things
awkwardly my meanings were better than my
words. Perhaps I should be able to tell him
something of what his books had been to me.
I glanced through the flowers again--and he
was looking at me! I could scarcely believe it
for a second. But he was. His eyes--his
wonderful eyes--met mine. I could not explain
why they were wonderful. I think it was the
clearness and understanding in them, and a
sort of great interestedness. People sometimes
look at me from curiosity, but they do not look
because they are really interested.
I could scarcely look away, though I knew
I must not be guilty of staring. A footman
was presenting a dish at my side. I took
something from it without knowing what it was.
Lord Armour began to talk kindly. He was
saying beautiful, admiring things of Mr. MacNairn
and his work. I listened gratefully, and
said a few words myself now and then. I was
only too glad to be told of the great people
and the small ones who were moved and uplifted
by his thoughts.
"You admire him very much, I can see,"
the amiable elderly voice said.
I could not help turning and looking up. "It
is as if a great, great genius were one's friend--
as if he talked and one listened," I said. "He is
like a splendid dream which has come true."
Old Lord Armour looked at me quite thoughtfully,
as if he saw something new in me.
"That is a good way of putting it, Miss
Muircarrie," he answered. "MacNairn would
like that. You must tell him about it yourself."
I did not mean to glance through the flowers
again, but I did it involuntarily. And I met
the other eyes--the wonderful, interested ones
just as I had met them before. It almost
seemed as if he had been watching me. It
might be, I thought, because he only vaguely
remembered seeing me before and was trying to
recall where we had met.
When my guardian brought his men guests to
the drawing-room after dinner, I was looking
over some old prints at a quiet, small table.
There were a few minutes of smiling talk, and
then Sir Ian crossed the room toward me, bringing
some one with him. It was Hector MacNairn
he brought.
"Mr. MacNairn tells me you traveled
together this afternoon without knowing each
other," he said. "He has heard something of
Muircarrie and would like to hear more, Ysobel.
She lives like a little ghost all alone in her
feudal castle, Mr. MacNairn. We can't persuade
her to like London."
I think he left us alone together because he
realized that we should get on better without a
companion.
Mr. MacNairn sat down near me and began
to talk about Muircarrie. There were very few
places like it, and he knew about each one of
them. He knew the kind of things Angus
Macayre knew--the things most people had
either never heard of or had only thought of as
legends. He talked as he wrote, and I scarcely
knew when he led me into talking also. Afterward
I realized that he had asked me questions
I could not help answering because his eyes
were drawing me on with that quiet, deep
interest. It seemed as if he saw something in
my face which made him curious.
I think I saw this expression first when we
began to speak of our meeting in the railway
carriage, and I mentioned the poor little fair
child my heart had ached so for.
"It was such a little thing and it did so want
to comfort her! Its white little clinging hands
were so pathetic when they stroked and patted
her," I said. "And she did not even look at it."
He did not start, but he hesitated in a way
which almost produced the effect of a start.
Long afterward I remembered it.
"The child!" he said. "Yes. But I was
sitting on the other side. And I was so absorbed
in the poor mother that I am afraid I scarcely
saw it. Tell me about it."
"It was not six years old, poor mite," I
answered. "It was one of those very fair
children one sees now and then. It was not
like its mother. She was not one of the
White People."
"The White People?" he repeated quite
slowly after me. "You don't mean that she
was not a Caucasian? Perhaps I don't understand."
That made me feel a trifle shy again. Of
course he could not know what I meant. How
silly of me to take it for granted that he would!
"I beg pardon. I forgot," I even stammered
a little. "It is only my way of thinking
of those fair people one sees, those very fair
ones, you know--the ones whose fairness looks
almost transparent. There are not many of
them, of course; but one can't help noticing
them when they pass in the street or come
into a room. You must have noticed them,
too. I always call them, to myself, the White
People, because they are different from the
rest of us. The poor mother wasn't one, but
the child was. Perhaps that was why I looked
at it, at first. It was such a lovely little thing;
and the whiteness made it look delicate, and I
could not help thinking--" I hesitated, because
it seemed almost unkind to finish.
"You thought that if she had just lost one
child she ought to take more care of the other,"
he ended for me. There was a deep thoughtfulness
in his look, as if he were watching me.
I wondered why.
"I wish I had paid more attention to the
little creature," he said, very gently. "Did
it cry?"
"No," I answered. "It only clung to her and
patted her black sleeve and kissed it, as if it
wanted to comfort her. I kept expecting it to
cry, but it didn't. It made me cry because it
seemed so sure that it could comfort her if she
would only remember that it was alive and loved
her. I wish, I wish death did not make people
feel as if it filled all the world--as if, when it
happens, there is no life left anywhere. The
child who was alive by her side did not seem a
living thing to her. It didn't matter."
I had never said as much to any one before,
but his watching eyes made me forget my shy
worldlessness.
"What do you feel about it--death?" he
asked.
The low gentleness of his voice seemed
something I had known always.
"I never saw it," I answered. "I have never
even seen any one dangerously ill. I-- It is as
if I can't believe it."
"You can't believe it? That is a wonderful
thing," he said, even more quietly than before.
"If none of us believed, how wonderful that
would be! Beautiful, too."
"How that poor mother believed it!" I said,
remembering her swollen, distorted, sobbing
face. "She believed nothing else; everything
else was gone."
"I wonder what would have happened if you
had spoken to her about the child?" he said,
slowly, as if he were trying to imagine it.
"I'm a very shy person. I should never have
courage to speak to a stranger," I answered.
"I'm afraid I'm a coward, too. She might have
thought me interfering."
"She might not have understood," he murmured.
"It was clinging to her dress when she walked
away down the platform," I went on. "I dare
say you noticed it then?"
"Not as you did. I wish I had noticed it
more," was his answer. "Poor little White
One!"
That led us into our talk about the White
People. He said he did not think he was
exactly an observant person in some respects.
Remembering his books, which seemed to me
the work of a man who saw and understood
everything in the world, I could not comprehend
his thinking that, and I told him so.
But he replied that what I had said about my
White People made him feel that he must be
abstracted sometimes and miss things. He
did not remember having noticed the rare
fairness I had seen. He smiled as he said it,
because, of course, it was only a little thing--
that he had not seen that some people were so
much fairer than others.
"But it has not been a little thing to you,
evidently. That is why I am even rather curious
about it," he explained. "It is a difference
definite enough to make you speak almost as
if they were of a different race from ours."
I sat silent a few seconds, thinking it over.
Suddenly I realized what I had never realized
before.
"Do you know," I said, as slowly as he
himself had spoken, "I did not know that was true
until you put it into words. I am so used to
thinking of them as different, somehow, that I
suppose I do feel as if they were almost like
another race, in a way. Perhaps one would feel
like that with a native Indian, or a Japanese."
"I dare say that is a good simile," he
reflected. "Are they different when you know
them well?"
"I have never known one but Wee Brown
Elspeth," I answered, thinking it over.
He did start then, in the strangest way.
"What!" he exclaimed. "What did you
say?"
I was quite startled myself. Suddenly he
looked pale, and his breath caught itself.
"I said Wee Elspeth, Wee Brown Elspeth.
She was only a child who played with me," I
stammered, "when I was little."
He pulled himself together almost instantly,
though the color did not come back to his face
at once and his voice was not steady for a few
seconds. But he laughed outright at himself.
"I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I
have been ill and am rather nervous. I thought
you said something you could not possibly have
said. I almost frightened you. And you were
only speaking of a little playmate. Please go
on."
"I was only going to say that she was fair
like that, fairer than any one I had ever seen;
but when we played together she seemed like
any other child. She was the first I ever knew."
I told him about the misty day on the moor,
and about the pale troopers and the big, lean
leader who carried Elspeth before him on his
saddle. I had never talked to any one about
it before, not even to Jean Braidfute. But he
seemed to be so interested, as if the little story
quite fascinated him. It was only an episode,
but it brought in the weirdness of the moor and
my childish fancies about the things hiding in
the white mist, and the castle frowning on its
rock, and my baby face pressed against the
nursery window in the tower, and Angus and the
library, and Jean and her goodness and wise
ways. It was dreadful to talk so much about
oneself. But he listened so. His eyes never
left my face--they watched and held me as if he
were enthralled. Sometimes he asked a question.
"I wonder who they were--the horsemen?"
he pondered. "Did you ever ask Wee Elspeth?"
"We were both too little to care. We only
played," I answered him. "And they came
and went so quickly that they were only a sort
of dream."
"They seem to have been a strange lot.
Wasn't Angus curious about them?" he suggested.
"Angus never was curious about anything,"
I said. "Perhaps he knew something about
them and would not tell me. When I was a
little thing I always knew he and Jean had
secrets I was too young to hear. They hid sad
and ugly things from me, or things that might
frighten a child. They were very good."
"Yes, they were good," he said, thoughtfully.
I think any one would have been pleased to
find herself talking quietly to a great genius--
as quietly as if he were quite an ordinary person;
but to me the experience was wonderful. I had
thought about him so much and with such adoring
reverence. And he looked at me as if he
truly liked me, even as if I were something
new--a sort of discovery which interested him.
I dare say that he had never before seen a girl
who had lived so much alone and in such a
remote and wild place.
I believe Sir Ian and his wife were pleased,
too, to see that I was talking. They were glad
that their guests should see that I was intelligent
enough to hold the attention even of a clever
man. If Hector MacNairn was interested in
me I could not be as silly and dull as I looked.
But on my part I was only full of wonder and
happiness. I was a girl, and he had been my
only hero; and it seemed even as if he liked
me and cared about my queer life.
He was not a man who had the air of making
confidences or talking about himself, but before
we parted I seemed to know him and his
surroundings as if he had described them. A mere
phrase of his would make a picture. Such a
few words made his mother quite clear to me.
They loved each other in an exquisite, intimate
way. She was a beautiful person. Artists had
always painted her. He and she were completely
happy when they were together. They
lived in a house in the country, and I could not
at all tell how I discovered that it was an old
house with beautiful chimneys and a very big
garden with curious high walls with corner
towers round it. He only spoke of it briefly,
but I saw it as a picture; and always afterward,
when I thought of his mother, I thought of her
as sitting under a great and ancient apple-tree
with the long, late-afternoon shadows stretching
on the thick, green grass. I suppose I saw
that just because he said:
"Will you come to tea under the big apple-
tree some afternoon when the late shadows
are like velvet on the grass? That is perhaps
the loveliest time."
When we rose to go and join the rest of the
party, he stood a moment and glanced round the
room at our fellow-guests.
"Are there any of your White People here
to-night?" he said, smiling. "I shall begin to
look for them everywhere."
I glanced over the faces carelessly. "There
are none here to-night," I answered, and then I
flushed because he had smiled. "It was only a
childish name I gave them," I hesitated. "I
forgot you wouldn't understand. I dare say it
sounds silly."
He looked at me so quickly.
"No! no! no!" he exclaimed. "You mustn't
think that! Certainly not silly."
I do not think he knew that he put out his
hand and gently touched my arm, as one might
touch a child to make it feel one wanted it to
listen.
"You don't know," he said in his low, slow
voice, "how glad I am that you have talked to
me. Sir Ian said you were not fond of talking
to people, and I wanted to know you."
"You care about places like Muircarrie.
That is why," I answered, feeling at once how
much he understood. "I care for Muircarrie
more than for all the rest of the world. And I
suppose you saw it in my face. I dare say that
the people who love that kind of life cannot help
seeing it there."
"Yes," he said, "it is in your eyes. It was
what I saw and found myself wondering about
when I watched you in the train. It was really
the moor and the mist and the things you think
are hidden in it."
"Did you watch me?" I asked. "I could not
help watching you a little, when you were so
kind to the poor woman. I was afraid you
would see me and think me rude."
"It was the far look in your face I watched,"
he said. "If you will come to tea under the
big apple-tree I will tell you more about it."
"Indeed I will come," I answered. "Now
we must go and sit among the other people--
those who don't care about Muircarrie at all."
CHAPTER V
I went to tea under the big apple-tree. It
was very big and old and wonderful. No
wonder Mr. MacNairn and his mother loved it.
Its great branches spread out farther than I
had ever seen the branches of an apple-tree
spread before. They were gnarled and knotted
and beautiful with age. Their shadows upon
the grass were velvet, deep and soft. Such a
tree could only have lived its life in such a
garden. At least it seemed so to me. The
high, dim-colored walls, with their curious,
low corner towers and the leafage of the wall
fruits spread against their brick, inclosed it
embracingly, as if they were there to take care
of it and its beauty. But the tree itself seemed
to have grown there in all its dignified loveliness
of shadow to take care of Mrs. MacNairn, who
sat under it. I felt as if it loved and was proud
of her.
I have heard clever literary people speak of
Mrs. MacNairn as a "survival of type." Sometimes
clever people bewilder me by the terms
they use, but I thought I understood what they
meant in her case. She was quite unlike the
modern elderly woman, and yet she was not in
the least old-fashioned or demodee. She was
only exquisitely distinct.
When she rose from her chair under the
apple-tree boughs and came forward to meet me
that afternoon, the first things which struck me
were her height and slenderness and her light
step. Then I saw that her clear profile seemed
cut out of ivory and that her head was a beautiful
shape and was beautifully set. Its every
turn and movement was exquisite. The mere
fact that both her long, ivory hands enfolded
mine thrilled me. I wondered if it were possible
that she could be unaware of her loveliness.
Beautiful people are thrilling to me, and Mrs.
MacNairn has always seemed more so than any
one else. This is what her son once said of her:
"She is not merely beautiful; she is Beauty--
Beauty's very spirit moving about among us
mortals; pure Beauty."
She drew me to a chair under her tree, and
we sat down together. I felt as if she were glad
that I had come. The watching look I had seen
in her son's eyes was in hers also. They watched
me as we talked, and I found myself telling her
about my home as I had found myself telling
him. He had evidently talked to her about it
himself. I had never met any one who thought
of Muircarrie as I did, but it seemed as if they
who were strangers were drawn by its wild,
beautiful loneliness as I was.
I was happy. In my secret heart I began to
ask myself if it could be true that they made me
feel a little as if I somehow belonged to some one.
I had always seemed so detached from every
one. I had not been miserable about it, and I
had not complained to myself; I only accepted
the detachment as part of my kind of life.
Mr. MacNairn came into the garden later
and several other people came in to tea. It was
apparently a sort of daily custom--that people
who evidently adored Mrs. MacNairn dropped
in to see and talk to her every afternoon. She
talked wonderfully, and her friends' joy in her
was wonderful, too. It evidently made people
happy to be near her. All she said and did
was like her light step and the movements of
her delicate, fine head--gracious and soft and
arrestingly lovely. She did not let me drift
away and sit in a corner looking on, as I usually
did among strangers. She kept me near her,
and in some subtle, gentle way made me a part
of all that was happening--the talk, the charming
circle under the spreading boughs of the
apple-tree, the charm of everything. Sometimes
she would put out her exquisite, long-
fingered hand and touch me very lightly, and
each time she did it I felt as if she had given
me new life.
There was an interesting elderly man who
came among the rest of the guests. I was
interested in him even before she spoke to me of
him. He had a handsome, aquiline face which
looked very clever. His talk was brilliantly
witty. When he spoke people paused as if they
could not bear to lose a phrase or even a word.
But in the midst of the trills of laughter
surrounding him his eyes were unchangingly sad.
His face laughed or smiled, but his eyes never.
"He is the greatest artist in England and the
most brilliant man," Mrs. MacNairn said to me,
quietly. "But he is the saddest, too. He had
a lovely daughter who was killed instantly, in
his presence, by a fall. They had been
inseparable companions and she was the delight
of his life. That strange, fixed look has been in
his eyes ever since. I know you have noticed
it."
We were walking about among the flower-
beds after tea, and Mr. MacNairn was showing
me a cloud of blue larkspurs in a corner when I
saw something which made me turn toward
him rather quickly.
"There is one!" I said. "Do look at her!
Now you see what I mean! The girl standing
with her hand on Mr. Le Breton's arm."
Mr. Le Breton was the brilliant man with the
sad eyes. He was standing looking at a mass
of white-and-purple iris at the other side of the
garden. There were two or three people with
him, but it seemed as if for a moment he had
forgotten them--had forgotten where he was.
I wondered suddenly if his daughter had been
fond of irises. He was looking at them with
such a tender, lost expression. The girl, who
was a lovely, fair thing, was standing quite close
to him with her hand in his arm, and she was
smiling, too--such a smile!
"Mr. Le Breton!" Mr. MacNairn said in a
rather startled tone. "The girl with her hand in
his arm?"
"Yes. You see how fair she is," I answered.
"And she has that transparent look. It is so
lovely. Don't you think so? SHE is one of the
White People."
He stood very still, looking across the flowers
at the group. There was a singular interest and
intensity in his expression. He watched the
pair silently for a whole minute, I think.
"Ye-es," he said, slowly, at last, "I do see what
you mean--and it IS lovely. I don't seem to
know her well. She must be a new friend of my
mother's. So she is one of the White People?"
"She looks like a white iris herself, doesn't
she?" I said. "Now you know."
"Yes; now I know," he answered.
I asked Mrs. MacNairn later who the girl was,
but she didn't seem to recognize my description
of her. Mr. Le Breton had gone away by that
time, and so had the girl herself.
"The tall, very fair one in the misty, pale-
gray dress," I said. "She was near Mr. Le
Breton when he was looking at the iris-bed.
You were cutting some roses only a few yards
away from her. That VERY fair girl?"
Mrs. MacNairn paused a moment and looked
puzzled.
"Mildred Keith is fair," she reflected, "but
she was not there then. I don't recall seeing
a girl. I was cutting some buds for Mrs.
Anstruther. I--" She paused again and turned
toward her son, who was standing watching
us. I saw their eyes meet in a rather arrested way.
"It was not Mildred Keith," he said. "Miss
Muircarrie is inquiring because this girl was one
of those she calls the White People. She was
not any one I had seen here before."
There was a second's silence before Mrs.
MacNairn smilingly gave me one of her light,
thrilling touches on my arm.
"Ah! I remember," she said. "Hector told
me about the White People. He rather fancied
I might be one."
I am afraid I rather stared at her as I slowly
shook my head. You see she was almost one,
but not quite.
"I was so busy with my roses that I did not
notice who was standing near Mr. Le Breton,"
she said. "Perhaps it was Anabel Mere. She
is a more transparent sort of girl than Mildred,
and she is more blond. And you don't know
her, Hector? I dare say it was she."
CHAPTER VI
I remained in London several weeks. I
stayed because the MacNairns were so good
to me. I could not have told any one how I
loved Mrs. MacNairn, and how different everything
seemed when I was with her. I was never
shy when we were together. There seemed to
be no such thing as shyness in the world. I
was not shy with Mr. MacNairn, either. After
I had sat under the big apple-tree boughs in the
walled garden a few times I realized that I had
begun to belong to somebody. Those two
marvelous people cared for me in that way--
in a way that made me feel as if I were a real
girl, not merely a queer little awkward ghost
in a far-away castle which nobody wanted to
visit because it was so dull and desolate and far
from London. They were so clever, and knew
all the interesting things in the world, but
their cleverness and experience never bewildered
or overwhelmed me.
"You were born a wonderful little creature,
and Angus Macayre has filled your mind with
strange, rich furnishings and marvelous color
and form," Mrs. MacNairn actually said to me
one day when we were sitting together and she
was holding my hand and softly, slowly patting
it. She had a way of doing that, and she
had also a way of keeping me very near her
whenever she could. She said once that she
liked to touch me now and then to make sure
that I was quite real and would not melt away.
I did not know then why she said it, but I
understood afterward.
Sometimes we sat under the apple-tree until
the long twilight deepened into shadow, which
closed round us, and a nightingale that lived in
the garden began to sing. We all three loved
the nightingale, and felt as though it knew
that we were listening to it. It is a wonderful
thing to sit quite still listening to a bird singing
in the dark, and to dare to feel that while it
sings it knows how your soul adores it. It is
like a kind of worship.
We had been sitting listening for quite a long
time, and the nightingale had just ceased and
left the darkness an exquisite silence which fell
suddenly but softly as the last note dropped,
when Mrs. MacNairn began to talk for the
first time of what she called The Fear.
I don't remember just how she began, and
for a few minutes I did not quite understand
what she meant. But as she went on, and Mr.
MacNairn joined in the talk, their meaning
became a clear thing to me, and I knew that
they were only talking quite simply of something
they had often talked of before. They
were not as afraid of The Fear as most people
are, because they had thought of and reasoned
about it so much, and always calmly and with
clear and open minds.
By The Fear they meant that mysterious
horror most people feel at the thought of passing
out of the world they know into the one they
don't know at all.
How quiet, how still it was inside the walls of
the old garden, as we three sat under the
boughs and talked about it! And what sweet
night scents of leaves and sleeping flowers were
in every breath we drew! And how one's
heart moved and lifted when the nightingale
broke out again!
"If one had seen or heard one little thing,
if one's mortal being could catch one glimpse of
light in the dark," Mrs. MacNairn's low voice
said out of the shadow near me, "The Fear
would be gone forever."
"Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as
this," said her son's voice "as simple as this:
that as there are tones of music too fine to be
registered by the human ear, so there may be
vibrations of light not to be seen by the human
eye; form and color as well as sounds; just
beyond earthly perception, and yet as real as
ourselves, as formed as ourselves, only existing
in that other dimension."
There was an intenseness which was almost
a note of anguish in Mrs. MacNairn's answer,
even though her voice was very low. I
involuntarily turned my head to look at her,
though of course it was too dark to see her face.
I felt somehow as if her hands were wrung
together in her lap.
"Oh!" she said, "if one only had some
shadow of a proof that the mystery is only that
WE cannot see, that WE cannot hear, though they
are really quite near us, with us--the ones who
seem to have gone away and whom we feel we
cannot live without. If once we could be sure!
There would be no Fear--there would be none!"
"Dearest"--he often called her "Dearest,"
and his voice had a wonderful sound in the
darkness; it was caress and strength, and it
seemed to speak to her of things they knew
which I did not--"we have vowed to each other
that we WILL believe there is no reason for The
Fear. It was a vow between us."
"Yes! Yes!" she cried, breathlessly, "but
sometimes, Hector--sometimes--"
"Miss Muircarrie does not feel it--"
"Please say `Ysobel'!" I broke in. "Please
do."
He went on as quietly as if he had not even
paused:
"Ysobel told me the first night we met that
it seemed as if she could not believe in it."
"It never seems real to me at all," I said.
"Perhaps that is because I can never forget
what Jean told me about my mother lying still
upon her bed, and listening to some one calling
her." (I had told them Jean's story a few
days before.) "I knew it was my father; Jean
knew, too."
"How did you know?" Mrs. MacNairn's
voice was almost a whisper.
"I could not tell you that. I never asked
myself HOW it was. But I KNEW. We both
KNEW. Perhaps"--I hesitated--"it was because
in the Highlands people often believe
things like that. One hears so many stories all
one's life that in the end they don't seem
strange. I have always heard them. Those
things you know about people who have the
second sight. And about the seals who change
themselves into men and come on shore and
fall in love with girls and marry them. They
say they go away now and then, and no one
really knows where but it is believed that they
go back to their own people and change into
seals again, because they must plunge and riot
about in the sea. Sometimes they come home,
but sometimes they do not.
"A beautiful young stranger, with soft, dark
eyes, appeared once not far from Muircarrie,
and he married a boatman's daughter. He was
very restless one night, and got up and left her,
and she never saw him again; but a few days
later a splendid dead seal covered with wounds
was washed up near his cottage. The fishers
say that his people had wanted to keep him
from his land wife, and they had fought with
him and killed him. His wife had a son with
strange, velvet eyes like his father's, and she
couldn't keep him away from the water. When
he was old enough to swim he swam out one
day, because he thought he saw some seals
and wanted to get near them. He swam out
too far, perhaps. He never came back, and the
fishermen said his father's people had taken
him. When one has heard stories like that all
one's life nothing seems very strange."
"Nothing really IS strange," said Hector
MacNairn. "Again and again through all the
ages we have been told the secrets of the gods
and the wonders of the Law, and we have
revered and echoed but never believed. When
we believe and know all is simple we shall not
be afraid. You are not afraid, Ysobel. Tell
my mother you are not."
I turned my face toward her again in the
darkness. I felt as if something was going on
between them which he somehow knew I could
help them in. It was as though he were calling
on something in my nature which I did not
myself comprehend, but which his profound
mind saw and knew was stronger than I was.
Suddenly I felt as if I might trust to him and
to It, and that, without being troubled or
anxious, I would just say the first thing which
came into my mind, because it would be put
there for me by some power which could
dictate to me. I never felt younger or less
clever than I did at that moment; I was only
Ysobel Muircarrie, who knew almost nothing.
But that did not seem to matter. It was such
a simple, almost childish thing I told her. It
was only about The Dream.
CHAPTER VII
"The feeling you call The Fear has never
come to me," I said to her. "And if it
had I think it would have melted away because
of a dream I once had. I don't really believe it
was a dream, but I call it one. I think I really
went somewhere and came back. I often wonder
why I came back. It was only a short
dream, so simple that there is scarcely anything
to tell, and perhaps it will not convey anything
to you. But it has been part of my life--that
time when I was Out on the Hillside. That is
what I call The Dream to myself, `Out on the
Hillside,' as if it were a kind of unearthly poem.
But it wasn't. It was more real than anything
I have ever felt. It was real--real! I wish
that I could tell it so that you would know
how real it was."
I felt almost piteous in my longing to make
her know. I knew she was afraid of something,
and if I could make her know how REAL that one
brief dream had been she would not be afraid
any more. And I loved her, I loved her so
much!
"I was asleep one night at Muircarrie," I
went on, "and suddenly, without any preparatory
dreaming, I was standing out on a hillside
in moonlight softer and more exquisite than I
had ever seen or known before. Perhaps I
was still in my nightgown--I don't know. My
feet were bare on the grass, and I wore something
light and white which did not seem to touch
me. If it touched me I did not feel it. My
bare feet did not feel the grass; they only knew
it was beneath them.
"It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only
on the side of it. And in spite of the thrilling
beauty of the moon, all but the part I stood on
melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below
me and above me. But I did not turn to look
at or ask myself about anything. You see the
difficulty is that there are no earthly words to
tell it! All my being was ecstasy--pure, light
ecstasy! Oh, what poor words-- But I know
no others. If I said that I was happy--HAPPY!
--it would be nothing. I WAS happiness itself,
I WAS pure rapture! I did not look at the
beauty of the night, the sky, the marvelous
melting shadow. I was PART of it all, one with
it. Nothing held me nothing! The beauty
of the night, the light, the air WERE what I was,
and I was only thrilling ecstasy and wonder at
the rapture of it."
I stopped and covered my face with my
hands, and tears wet my fingers.
"Oh, I cannot make it real! I was only there
such a short, short time. Even if you had been
with me I could not have found words for it,
even then. It was such a short time. I only
stood and lifted my face and felt the joy of it,
the pure marvel of joy. I only heard myself
murmuring over and over again: `Oh, how
beautiful! how beautiful! Oh, how BEAUTIFUL!'
"And then a marvel of new joy swept through
me. I said, very softly and very slowly, as if
my voice were trailing away into silence:
`Oh--h! I--can--lie--down--here--on--the
grass--and--sleep . . . all--through--the
night--under--this--moonlight. . . . I can sleep
--sleep--'
"I began to sink softly down, with the
heavenliest feeling of relaxation and repose, as
if there existed only the soul of beautiful rest.
I sank so softly--and just as my cheek almost
touched the grass the dream was over!"
"Oh!" cried Mrs. MacNairn. "Did you
awaken?"
"No. I came back. In my sleep I suddenly
found myself creeping into my bed again
as if I had been away somewhere. I was
wondering why I was there, how I had left the
hillside, when I had left it. That part WAS a
dream--but the other was not. I was allowed
to go somewhere--outside--and come back."
I caught at her hand in the dark.
"The words are all wrong," I said. "It is
because we have no words to describe that. But
have I made you feel it at all? Oh! Mrs.
MacNairn, have I been able to make you know
that it was not a dream?"
She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately
against her cheek, and her cheek, too, was
wet--wet.
"No, it was not a dream," she said. "You
came back. Thank God you came back, just
to tell us that those who do not come back
stand awakened in that ecstasy--in that
ecstasy. And The Fear is nothing. It is only
The Dream. The awakening is out on the
hillside, out on the hillside! Listen!" She
started as she said it. "Listen! The nightingale
is beginning again."
He sent forth in the dark a fountain--a rising,
aspiring fountain--of golden notes which seemed
to reach heaven itself. The night was made
radiant by them. He flung them upward like
a shower of stars into the sky. We sat and
listened, almost holding our breath. Oh! the
nightingale! the nightingale!
"He knows," Hector MacNairn's low voice
said, "that it was not a dream."
When there was silence again I heard him
leave his chair very quietly.
"Good night! good night!" he said, and went
away. I felt somehow that he had left us
together for a purpose, but, oh, I did not even
remotely dream what the purpose was! But
soon she told me, almost in a whisper.
"We love you very much, Ysobel," she said.
"You know that?"
"I love you both, with all my heart," I
answered. "Indeed I love you."
"We two have been more to each other than
mere mother and son. We have been sufficient
for each other. But he began to love you that
first day when he watched you in the railway
carriage. He says it was the far look in your
eyes which drew him."
"I began to love him, too," I said. And
I was not at all ashamed or shy in saying it.
"We three might have spent our lives
together," she went on. "It would have been a
perfect thing. But--but--" She stood up as
if she could not remain seated. Involuntarily I
stood up with her. She was trembling, and she
caught and held me in her arms. "He cannot
stay, Ysobel," she ended.
I could scarcely hear my own voice when I
echoed the words.
"He cannot--stay?"
"Oh! the time will come," she said, "when
people who love each other will not be separated,
when on this very earth there will be no pain,
no grief, no age, no death--when all the world
has learned the Law at last. But we have not
learned it yet. And here we stand! The
greatest specialists have told us. There is some
fatal flaw in his heart. At any moment, when
he is talking to us, when he is at his work, when
he is asleep, he may--cease. It will just be
ceasing. At any moment. He cannot stay."
My own heart stood still for a second. Then
there rose before me slowly, but clearly, a
vision--the vision which was not a dream.
"Out on the hillside," I murmured. "Out
on the hillside."
I clung to her with both arms and held her
tight. I understood now why they had talked
about The Fear. These two who were almost
one soul were trying to believe that they were
not really to be torn apart--not really. They
were trying to heap up for themselves proof
that they might still be near each other. And,
above all, his effort was to save her from the
worst, worst woe. And I understood, too, why
something wiser and stronger than myself had
led me to tell the dream which was not a dream
at all.
But it was as she said; the world had not
learned the Secret yet. And there we stood.
We did not cry or talk, but we clung to each
other--we CLUNG. That is all human creatures
can do until the Secret is known. And as we
clung the nightingale broke out again.
"O nightingale! O nightingale!" she said in
her low wonder of a voice. "WHAT are you
trying to tell us!"
CHAPTER VIII
What I feel sure I know by this time is
that all the things we think happen by
chance and accident are only part of the weaving
of the scheme of life. When you begin to
suspect this and to watch closely you also begin to
see how trifles connect themselves with one
another, and seem in the end to have led to a
reason and a meaning, though we may not be
clever enough to see it clearly. Nothing is an
accident. We make everything happen ourselves:
the wrong things because we do not
know or care whether we are wrong or right,
the right ones because we unconsciously or
consciously choose the right even in the midst of
our ignorance.
I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary
girl to say such things in an ordinary way;
but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself,
because it is not a bad thing that they should be
said by an every-day sort of person in simple
words which other every-day people can understand.
I am only expressing what has gradually
grown into belief in my mind through reading
with Angus ancient books and modern ones
--books about faiths and religions, books about
philosophies and magics, books about what the
world calls marvels, but which are not marvels
at all, but only workings of the Law most
people have not yet reasoned about or even
accepted.
Angus had read and studied them all his life
before he began to read them with me, and we
talked them over together sitting by the fire
in the library, fascinated and staring at each
other, I in one high-backed chair and he in
another on the opposite side of the hearth.
Angus is wonderful--wonderful! He KNOWS
there is no such thing as chance. He KNOWS
that we ourselves are the working of the Law--
and that we ourselves could work what now
are stupidly called "miracles" if we could only
remember always what the Law is.
What I intended to say at first was merely
that it was not by chance that I climbed to the
shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed
aside the books hiding the old manuscript
which told the real story of Dark Malcolm of
the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth. It seemed
like chance when it happened, but it was really
the first step toward my finding out the strange,
beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
From the beginning of my friendship with the
MacNairns I had hoped they would come and
stay with me at Muircarrie. When they both
seemed to feel such interest in all I told them of
it, and not to mind its wild remoteness, I took
courage and asked them if they would come to
me. Most people are bored by the prospect of
life in a feudal castle, howsoever picturesquely
it is set in a place where there are no neighbors
to count on. Its ancient stateliness is too dull.
But the MacNairns were more allured by what
Muircarrie offered than they were by other
and more brilliant invitations. So when I went
back to the castle I was only to be alone a week
before they followed me.
Jean and Angus were quite happy in their
quiet way when I told them who I was expecting.
They knew how glad I was myself. Jean
was full of silent pleasure as she arranged the
rooms I had chosen for my guests, rooms which
had the most sweeping view of the moor.
Angus knew that Mr. MacNairn would love the
library, and he hovered about consulting his
catalogues and looking over his shelves, taking
down volumes here and there, holding them
tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped
into them. He made notes of the manuscripts
and books he thought Mr. MacNairn would
feel the deepest interest in. He loved his library
with all his being, and I knew he looked forward
to talking to a man who would care for it in the
same way.
He had been going over one of the highest
shelves one day and had left his step-ladder
leaning against it when he went elsewhere. It
was when I mounted the steps, as I often did
when he left them, that I came upon the
manuscript which related the old story of Dark
Malcolm and his child. It had been pushed
behind some volumes, and I took it out because it
looked so old and yellow. And I opened at once
at the page where the tale began.
At first I stood reading, and then I sat down
on the broad top of the ladder and forgot
everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud
waged between two clans for three generations.
The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand
was only part of it, but it was a gruesome thing.
Pages told of the bloody deeds they wrought on
each other's houses. The one human passion
of Dark Malcolm's life was his love for his
little daughter. She had brown eyes and brown
hair, and those who most loved her called her
Wee Brown Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer
and more powerful than Malcolm of the Glen,
and therefore could more easily work his cruel
will. He knew well of Malcolm's worship of his
child, and laid his plans to torture him through
her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude,
small castle one night after a raid in which he
had lost followers and weapons and strength,
found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried
away, and unspeakable taunts and threats left
behind by Ian and his men. With unbound
wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark
Malcolm and the remnant of his troop of fighting
clansmen rushed forth into the night.
"Neither men nor weapons have we to win
her back," screamed Dark Malcolm, raving
mad, "but we may die fighting to get near
enough to her to drive dirk into her little breast
and save her from worse."
They were a band of madmen in their black
despair. How they tore through the black
night; what unguarded weak spot they found
in Ian's castle walls; how they fought their way
through it, leaving their dead bodies in the
path, none really ever knew. By what strange
chance Dark Malcolm came upon Wee Brown
Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek
with a child of Ian's so that she might not cry
out and betray her presence; how, already
wounded to his death, he caught at and drove
his dirk into her child heart, the story only
offers guesses at. But kill and save her he did,
falling dead with her body held against his
breast, her brown hair streaming over it. Not
one living man went back to the small, rude
castle on the Glen--not one.
I sat and read and read until the room grew
dark. When I stopped I found that Angus
Macayre was standing in the dimness at the
foot of the ladder. He looked up at me and I
down at him. For a few moments we were both
quite still.
"It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark
Malcolm you are reading?" he said, at last.
"And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought
for and killed," I added, slowly.
Angus nodded his head with a sad face. "It
was the only way for a father," he said. "A
hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage
beasts in those days, not human."
I touched the manuscript with my hand
questioningly. "Did this fall at the back there by
accident," I asked, "or did you hide it?"
"I did," he answered. "It was no tale for
a young thing to read. I have hidden many
from you. You were always poking about in
corners, Ysobel."
Then I sat and thought over past memories for
a while and the shadows in the room deepened.
"Why," I said, laggingly, after the silence--
"why did I call the child who used to play with
me `Wee Brown Elspeth'?"
"It was your own fancy," was his reply. "I
used to wonder myself; but I made up my
mind that you had heard some of the maids
talking and the name had caught your ear.
That would be a child's way."
I put my forehead in my hands and thought
again. So many years had passed! I had been
little more than a baby; the whole thing
seemed like a half-forgotten dream when I
tried to recall it--but I seemed to dimly
remember strange things.
"Who were the wild men who brought her to
me first--that day on the moor?" I said. "I
do remember they had pale, savage, exultant
faces. And torn, stained clothes. And broken
dirks and swords. But they were glad of
something. Who were they?"
"I did not see them. The mist was too
thick," he answered. "They were some wild
hunters, perhaps."
"It gives me such a strange feeling to try to
remember, Angus," I said, lifting my forehead
from my hands.
"Don't try," he said. "Give me the
manuscript and get down from the step-ladder.
Come and look at the list of books I have made
for Mr. MacNairn."
I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were
walking in a dream. My mind seemed to have
left my body and gone back to the day when I
sat a little child on the moor and heard the dull
sound of horses' feet and the jingling metal and
the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick
mist.
I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake
mood, too--as if two sets of thoughts were
working at the same time in his mind: one his
thoughts about Hector MacNairn and the
books, the other some queer thoughts which
went on in spite of him.
When I was going to leave the library and
go up-stairs to dress for dinner he said a strange
thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a heavy
voice.
"There is a thing Jean and I have often talked
of telling you," he said. "We have not known
what it was best to do. Times we have been
troubled because we could not make up our
minds. This Mr. Hector MacNairn is no common
man. He is one who is great and wise
enough to decide things plain people could
not be sure of. Jean and I are glad indeed
that he and his mother are coming. Jean can
talk to her and I can talk to him, being a man
body. They will tell us whether we have been
right or wrong and what we must do."
"They are wise enough to tell you anything,'
I answered. "It sounds as if you and Jean had
known some big secret all my life. But I am
not frightened. You two would go to your
graves hiding it if it would hurt me."
"Eh, bairn!" he said, suddenly, in a queer,
moved way. "Eh, bairn!" And he took hold
of both my hands and kissed them, pressing
them quite long and emotionally to his lips.
But he said nothing else, and when he dropped
them I went out of the room.
CHAPTER IX
It was wonderful when Mr. MacNairn and
his mother came. It was even more
beautiful than I had thought it would be. They
arrived late in the afternoon, and when I took
them out upon the terrace the sun was reddening
the moor, and even the rough, gray towers
of the castle were stained rose-color. There
was that lovely evening sound of birds twittering
before they went to sleep in the ivy. The
glimpses of gardens below seemed like glimpses
of rich tapestries set with jewels. And there
was such stillness! When we drew our three
chairs in a little group together and looked out
on it all, I felt as if we were almost in heaven.
"Yes! yes!" Hector said, looking slowly--
round; "it is all here."
"Yes," his mother added, in her lovely, lovely
voice. "It is what made you Ysobel."
It was so angelic of them to feel it all in that
deep, quiet way, and to think that it was part
of me and I a part of it. The climbing moon
was trembling with beauty. Tender evening
airs quivered in the heather and fern, and the
late birds called like spirits.
Ever since the night when Mrs. MacNairn
had held me in her arms under the apple-tree
while the nightingale sang I had felt toward her
son as if he were an archangel walking on the
earth. Perhaps my thoughts were exaggerated,
but it seemed so marvelous that he should be
moving among us, doing his work, seeing and
talking to his friends, and yet that he should
know that at any moment the great change
might come and he might awaken somewhere
else, in quite another place. If he had been
like other men and I had been like other girls,
I suppose that after that night when I heard the
truth I should have been plunged into the
darkest woe and have almost sobbed myself to
death. Why did I not? I do not know except
--except that I felt that no darkness could come
between us because no darkness could touch
him. He could never be anything but alive
alive. If I could not see him it would only be
because my eyes were not clear and strong
enough. I seemed to be waiting for something.
I wanted to keep near him.
I was full of this feeling as we sat together
on the terrace and watched the moon. I could
scarcely look away from him. He was rather
pale that evening, but there seemed to be a
light behind his pallor, and his eyes seemed to
see so much more than the purple and yellow
of the heather and gorse as they rested on them.
After I had watched him silently for a little
while I leaned forward and pointed to a part
of the moor where there was an unbroken blaze
of gorse in full bloom like a big patch of gold.
"That is where I was sitting when Wee
Brown Elspeth was first brought to me," I said.
He sat upright and looked. "Is it?" he
answered. "Will you take me there to-morrow?
I have always wanted to see the place."
"Would you like to go early in the morning?
The mist is more likely to be there then, as it
was that day. It is so mysterious and beautiful.
Would you like to do that?" I asked him.
"Better than anything else!" he said. "Yes,
let us go in the morning."
"Wee Brown Elspeth seems very near me this
evening," I said. "I feel as if--" I broke off
and began again. "I have a puzzled feeling
about her. This afternoon I found some
manuscript pushed behind a book on a high shelf in
the library. Angus said he had hidden it there
because it was a savage story he did not wish
me to read. It was the history of the feud
between Ian Red Hand and Dark Malcolm
of the Glen. Dark Malcolm's child was called
Wee Brown Elspeth hundreds of years ago--
five hundred, I think. It makes me feel so
bewildered when I remember the one I played
with."
"It was a bloody story," he said. "I heard
it only a few days before we met at Sir Ian's
house in London."
That made me recall something.
"Was that why you started when I told you
about Elspeth?" I asked.
"Yes. Perhaps the one you played with was
a little descendant who had inherited her name,"
he answered, a trifle hurriedly. "I confess I
was startled for a moment."
I put my hand up to my forehead and rubbed
it unconsciously. I could not help seeing a
woesome picture.
"Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from
her heart and her brown hair spread over her
dead father's breast!" I stopped, because a
faint memory came back to me. "Mine," I
stammered--"mine--how strange!--had a great
stain on the embroideries of her dress. She
looked at it--and looked. She looked as if she
didn't like it--as if she didn't understand how
it came there. She covered it with ferns and
bluebells."
I felt as if I were being drawn away into a
dream. I made a sudden effort to come back.
I ceased rubbing my forehead and dropped my
hand, sitting upright.
"I must ask Angus and Jean to tell me about
her," I said. "Of course, they must have
known. I wonder why I never thought of
asking questions before."
It was a strange look I met when I
involuntarily turned toward him--such an absorbed,
strange, tender look!
I knew he sat quite late in the library that
night, talking to Angus after his mother and I
went to our rooms. Just as I was falling asleep
I remember there floated through my mind a
vague recollection of what Angus had said to
me of asking his advice about something; and
I wondered if he would reach the subject in their
talk, or if they would spend all their time in
poring over manuscripts and books together.
The moor wore its most mysterious look when
I got up in the early morning. It had hidden
itself in its softest snows of white, swathing
mist. Only here and there dark fir-trees showed
themselves above it, and now and then the
whiteness thinned or broke and drifted. It
was as I had wanted him to see it--just as I
had wanted to walk through it with him.
We had met in the hall as we had planned,
and, wrapped in our plaids because the early
morning air was cold, we tramped away together.
No one but myself could ever realize
what it was like. I had never known that there
could be such a feeling of companionship in the
world. It would not have been necessary for
us to talk at all if we had felt silent. We should
have been saying things to each other without
words. But we did talk as we walked--in quiet
voices which seemed made quieter by the mist,
and of quiet things which such voices seemed
to belong to.
We crossed the park to a stile in a hedge where
a path led at once on to the moor. Part of the
park itself had once been moorland, and was
dark with slender firs and thick grown with
heather and broom. On the moor the mist grew
thicker, and if I had not so well known the path
we might have lost ourselves in it. Also I
knew by heart certain little streams that rushed
and made guiding sounds which were sometimes
loud whispers and sometimes singing babbles.
The damp, sweet scent of fern and heather was
in our nostrils; as we climbed we breathed its
freshness.
"There is a sort of unearthly loveliness in it
all," Hector MacNairn said to me. His voice
was rather like his mother's. It always seemed
to say so much more than his words.
"We might be ghosts," I answered. "We
might be some of those the mist hides because
they like to be hidden."
"You would not be afraid if you met one of
them?" he said.
"No. I think I am sure of that. I should
feel that it was only like myself, and, if I could
hear, might tell me things I want to know."
"What do you want to know?" he asked me,
very low. "You!"
"Only what everybody wants to know--that
it is really AWAKENING free, ready for wonderful
new things, finding oneself in the midst of
wonders. I don't mean angels with harps and
crowns, but beauty such as we see now; only
seeing it without burdens of fears before and
behind us. And knowing there is no reason to
be afraid. We have all been so afraid. We
don't know how afraid we have been--of everything."
I stopped among the heather and threw my
arms out wide. I drew in a great, joyous
morning breath.
"Free like that! It is the freeness, the
light, splendid freeness, I think of most."
"The freeness!" he repeated. "Yes, the
freeness!"
"As for beauty," I almost whispered, in a sort
of reverence for visions I remembered, "I have
stood on this moor a thousand times and seen
loveliness which made me tremble. One's soul
could want no more in any life. But `Out on
the Hillside' I KNEW I was part of it, and it was
ecstasy. That was the freeness."
"Yes--it was the freeness," he answered.
We brushed through the heather and the
bracken, and flower-bells shook showers of
radiant drops upon us. The mist wavered and
sometimes lifted before us, and opened up
mystic vistas to veil them again a few minutes
later. The sun tried to break through, and
sometimes we walked in a golden haze.
We fell into silence. Now and then I glanced
sidewise at my companion as we made our
soundless way over the thick moss. He looked
so strong and beautiful. His tall body was so
fine, his shoulders so broad and splendid! How
could it be! How could it be! As he tramped
beside me he was thinking deeply, and he
knew he need not talk to me. That made me
glad--that he should know me so well and
feel me so near. That was what he felt when
he was with his mother, that she understood
and that at times neither of them needed words.
Until we had reached the patch of gorse
where we intended to end our walk we did not
speak at all. He was thinking of things which
led him far. I knew that, though I did not
know what they were. When we reached the
golden blaze we had seen the evening before it
was a flame of gold again, because--it was only
for a few moments--the mist had blown apart
and the sun was shining on it.
As we stood in the midst of it together--Oh!
how strange and beautiful it was!--Mr. MacNairn
came back. That was what it seemed to
me--that he came back. He stood quite still
a moment and looked about him, and then he
stretched out his arms as I had stretched out
mine. But he did it slowly, and a light came
into his face.
"If, after it was over, a man awakened as you
said and found himself--the self he knew, but
light, free, splendid--remembering all the ages
of dark, unknowing dread, of horror of some
black, aimless plunge, and suddenly seeing all
the childish uselessness of it--how he would
stand and smile! How he would stand and
SMILE!"
Never had I understood anything more
clearly than I understood then. Yes, yes!
That would be it. Remembering all the waste
of fear, how he would stand and SMILE!
He was smiling himself, the golden gorse
about him already losing its flame in the light
returning mist-wraiths closing again over it,
when I heard a sound far away and high up the
moor. It sounded like the playing of a piper.
He did not seem to notice it.
"We shall be shut in again," he said. "How
mysterious it is, this opening and closing! I like
it more than anything else. Let us sit down,
Ysobel."
He spread the plaid we had brought to sit on,
and laid on it the little strapped basket Jean
had made ready for us. He shook the mist
drops from our own plaids, and as I was about
to sit down I stopped a moment to listen.
"That is a tune I never heard on the pipes
before," I said. "What is a piper doing out on
the moor so early?"
He listened also. "It must be far away. I
don't hear it," he said. "Perhaps it is a bird
whistling."
"It is far away," I answered, "but it is not
a bird. It's the pipes, and playing such a
strange tune. There! It has stopped!"
But it was not silent long; I heard the tune
begin again much nearer, and the piper was
plainly coming toward us. I turned my head.
The mist was clearing, and floated about like
a thin veil through which one could see objects.
At a short distance above us on the moor I saw
something moving. It was a man who was
playing the pipes. It was the piper, and almost
at once I knew him, because it was actually my
own Feargus, stepping proudly through the
heather with his step like a stag on the hills.
His head was held high, and his face had a sort
of elated delight in it as if he were enjoying
himself and the morning and the music in a
new way. I was so surprised that I rose to my
feet and called to him.
"Feargus!" I cried. "What--"
I knew he heard me, because he turned and
looked at me with the most extraordinary
smile. He was usually a rather grave-faced
man, but this smile had a kind of startling
triumph in it. He certainly heard me, for he
whipped off his bonnet in a salute which was as
triumphant as the smile. But he did not
answer, and actually passed in and out of sight
in the mist.
When I rose Mr. MacNairn had risen, too.
When I turned to speak in my surprise, he had
fixed on me his watchful look.
"Imagine its being Feargus at this hour!" I
exclaimed. "And why did he pass by in such
a hurry without answering? He must have
been to a wedding and have been up all night.
He looked--" I stopped a second and laughed.
"How did he look?" Mr. MacNairn asked.
"Pale! That won't do--though he certainly
didn't look ill." I laughed again. "I'm
laughing because he looked almost like one of the
White People."
"Are you sure it was Feargus?" he said.
"Quite sure. No one else is the least like
Feargus. Didn't you see him yourself?"
"I don't know him as well as you do; and
there was the mist," was his answer. "But he
certainly was not one of the White People when
I saw him last night."
I wondered why he looked as he did when
he took my hand and drew me down to my
place on the plaid again. He did not let it go
when he sat down by my side. He held it in
his own large, handsome one, looking down on it
a moment or so; and then he bent his head and
kissed it long and slowly two or three times.
"Dear little Ysobel!" he said. "Beloved,
strange little Ysobel."
"Am I strange!" I said, softly.
"Yes, thank God!" he answered.
I had known that some day when we were
at Muircarrie together he would tell me what
his mother had told me--about what we three
might have been to one another. I trembled
with happiness at the thought of hearing him
say it himself. I knew he was going to say it
now.
He held my hand and stroked it. "My
mother told you, Ysobel--what I am waiting
for?" he said.
"Yes."
"Do you know I love you?" he said, very low.
"Yes. I love you, too. My whole life
would have been heaven if we could always
have been together," was my answer.
He drew me up into his arms so that my
cheek lay against his breast as I went on,
holding fast to the rough tweed of his jacket
and whispering: "I should have belonged to
you two, heart and body and soul. I should
never have been lonely again. I should have
known nothing, whatsoever happened, but
tender joy."
"Whatsoever happened?" he murmured.
"Whatsoever happens now, Ysobel, know
nothing but tender joy. I think you CAN. `Out on
the Hillside!' Let us remember."
"Yes, yes," I said; " `Out on the Hillside.' "
And our two faces, damp with the sweet mist,
were pressed together.
CHAPTER X
The mist had floated away, and the moor
was drenched with golden sunshine when
we went back to the castle. As we entered the
hall I heard the sound of a dog howling, and
spoke of it to one of the men-servants who had
opened the door.
"That sounds like Gelert. Is he shut up
somewhere?"
Gelert was a beautiful sheep-dog who
belonged to Feargus and was his heart's friend.
I allowed him to be kept in the courtyard.
The man hesitated before he answered me,
with a curiously grave face.
"It is Gelert, miss. He is howling for his
master. We were obliged to shut him in the
stables."
"But Feargus ought to have reached here by
this time," I was beginning.
I was stopped because I found Angus Macayre
almost at my elbow. He had that moment
come out of the library. He put his hand on
my arm.
`Will ye come with me?" he said, and led me
back to the room he had just left. He kept
his hand on my arm when we all stood together
inside, Hector and I looking at him in wondering
question. He was going to tell me something--
we both saw that.
"It is a sad thing you have to hear," he said.
"He was a fine man, Feargus, and a most
faithful servant. He went to see his mother last
night and came back late across the moor.
There was a heavy mist, and he must have lost
his way. A shepherd found his body in a tarn
at daybreak. They took him back to his
father's home."
I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at
Angus. "But it couldn't be Feargus," I cried.
"I saw him an hour ago. He passed us playing
on his pipes. He was playing a new tune I
had never heard before a wonderful, joyous
thing. I both heard and SAW him!"
Angus stood still and watched me. They
both stood still and watched me, and even in
my excitement I saw that each of them looked
a little pale.
"You said you did not hear him at first, but
you surely saw him when he passed so near,"
I protested. "I called to him, and he took
off his bonnet, though he did not stop. He was
going so quickly that perhaps he did not hear
me call his name."
What strange thing in Hector's look checked
me? Who knows?
"You DID see him, didn't you?" I asked of
him.
Then he and Angus exchanged glances, as if
asking each other to decide some grave thing.
It was Hector MacNairn who decided it.
"No," he answered, very quietly, "I neither
saw nor heard him, even when he passed.
But you did."
"I did, quite plainly," I went on, more and
more bewildered by the way in which they kept
a sort of tender, awed gaze fixed on me. "You
remember I even noticed that he looked pale. I
laughed, you know, when I said he looked almost
like one of the White People--"
Just then my breath caught itself and I
stopped. I began to remember things--hundreds
of things.
Angus spoke to me again as quietly as Hector
had spoken.
"Neither Jean nor I ever saw Wee Brown
Elspeth," he said--"neither Jean nor I. But
you did. You have always seen what the rest
of us did not see, my bairn--always."
I stammered out a few words, half in a
whisper. "I have always seen what you others
could not see? WHAT--HAVE--I--SEEN?"
But I was not frightened. I suppose I could
never tell any one what strange, wide, bright
places seemed suddenly to open and shine before
me. Not places to shrink back from--oh no!
no! One could be sure, then--SURE! Feargus
had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary
triumph in his look--even Feargus, who had
been rather dour.
"You called them the White People," Hector
MacNairn said.
Angus and Jean had known all my life.
A very old shepherd who had looked in my
face when I was a baby had said I had the eyes
which "SAW." It was only the saying of an old
Highlander, and might not have been remembered.
Later the two began to believe I had
a sight they had not. The night before Wee
Brown Elspeth had been brought to me Angus
had read for the first time the story of Dark
Malcolm, and as they sat near me on the moor
they had been talking about it. That was why
he forgot himself when I came to ask them where
the child had gone, and told him of the big,
dark man with the scar on his forehead. After
that they were sure.
They had always hidden their knowledge from
me because they were afraid it might frighten
me to be told. I had not been a strong child.
They kept the secret from my relatives because
they knew they would dislike to hear it and
would not believe, and also would dislike me as
a queer, abnormal creature. Angus had fears
of what they might do with doctors and severe
efforts to obliterate from my mind my "nonsense,"
as they would have been sure to call it.
The two wise souls had shielded me on every
side.
"It was better that you should go on thinking
it only a simple, natural thing," Angus said.
"And as to natural, what IS natural and what
is not? Man has not learned all the laws of
nature yet. Nature's a grand, rich, endless
thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings
that seem new on it. They're not new. They
were always written there. But they were not
unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new
law, only laws read with stronger eyes."
Angus and I had always been very fond of the
Bible--the strange old temple of wonders, full of
all the poems and tragedies and histories of man,
his hates and battles and loves and follies, and
of the Wisdom of the universe and the promises
of the splendors of it, and which even those of
us who think ourselves the most believing
neither wholly believe nor will understand.
We had pored over and talked of it. We had
never thought of it as only a pious thing to do.
The book was to us one of the mystic, awe-
inspiring, prophetic marvels of the world.
That was what made me say, half whispering:
"I have wondered and wondered what it meant
--that verse in Isaiah: `Behold the former things
are come to pass and new things do I declare;
before they spring forth I tell you of them.'
Perhaps it means only the unrolling of the
scroll."
"Aye, aye!" said Angus; "it is full of such
deep sayings, and none of us will listen to them."
"It has taken man eons of time," Hector
MacNairn said, thinking it out as he spoke--
"eons of time to reach the point where he is
beginning to know that in every stock and stone
in his path may lie hidden some power he has
not yet dreamed of. He has learned that
lightning may be commanded, distance
conquered, motion chained and utilized; but he,
the one CONSCIOUS force, has never yet begun
to suspect that of all others he may be the one
as yet the least explored. How do we know
that there does not lie in each of us a wholly
natural but, so far, dormant power of sight--a
power to see what has been called The Unseen
through all the Ages whose sightlessness has
made them Dark? Who knows when the
Shadow around us may begin to clear? Oh, we
are a dull lot--we human things--with a queer,
obstinate conceit of ourselves."
"Complete we think we are," Angus murmured
half to himself . "Finished creatures!
And look at us! How many of us in a million
have beauty and health and full power? And
believing that the law is that we must crumple
and go to pieces hour by hour! Who'd waste
the time making a clock that went wrong as
often? Nay, nay! We shall learn better than
this as time goes on. And we'd better be
beginning and setting our minds to work on it.
'Tis for us to do--the minds of us. And what's
the mind of us but the Mind that made us?
Simple and straight enough it is when once
you begin to think it out. The spirit of you
sees clearer than we do, that's all," he said to
me. "When your mother brought you into
the world she was listening to one outside
calling to her, and it opened the way for
you."
At night Hector MacNairn and his mother
and I sat on the terrace under stars which
seemed listening things, and we three drew
nearer to one another, and nearer and nearer.
"When the poor mother stumbled into the
train that day," was one of the things Hector
told me, "I was thinking of The Fear and of my
own mother. You looked so slight and small
as you sat in your corner that I thought at first
you were almost a child. Then a far look in
your eyes made me begin to watch you. You
were so sorry for the poor woman that you
could not look away from her, and something
in your face touched and puzzled me. You
leaned forward suddenly and put out your hand
protectingly as she stepped down on to the
platform.
"That night when you spoke quite naturally
of the child, never doubting that I had seen it,
I suddenly began to suspect. Because of The
Fear"--he hesitated--"I had been reading and
thinking many things new to me. I did not
know what I believed. But you spoke so
simply, and I knew you were speaking the
truth. Then you spoke just as naturally of
Wee Brown Elspeth. That startled me because
not long before I had been told the tale in the
Highlands by a fine old story-teller who is the
head of his clan. I saw you had never heard
the story before. And yet you were telling me
that you had played with the child."
"He came home and told me about you,"
Mrs. MacNairn said. "His fear of The Fear
was more for me than for himself. He knew
that if he brought you to me, you who are more
complete than we are, clearer-eyed and nearer,
nearer, I should begin to feel that he was not
going--out. I should begin to feel a reality
and nearness myself. Ah, Ysobel! How we
have clung to you and loved you! And then
that wonderful afternoon! I saw no girl with
her hand through Mr. Le Breton's arm; Hector
saw none. But you saw her. She was THERE!"
"Yes, she was there," I answered. "She
was there, smiling up at him. I wish he could
have known."
What does it matter if this seems a strange
story? To some it will mean something; to
some it will mean nothing. To those it has a
meaning for it will open wide windows into the
light and lift heavy loads. That would be quite
enough, even if the rest thought it only the
weird fancy of a queer girl who had lived alone
and given rein to her silliest imaginings. I
wanted to tell it, howsoever poorly and
ineffectively it was done. Since I KNEW I have
dropped the load of ages--the black burden.
Out on the hillside my feet did not even feel the
grass, and yet I was standing, not floating. I
had no wings or crown. I was only Ysobel out
on the hillside, free!
This is the way it all ended.
For three weeks that were like heaven we
three lived together at Muircarrie. We saw
every beauty and shared every joy of sun and
dew and love and tender understanding.
After one lovely day we had spent on the
moor in a quiet dream of joy almost strange in its
perfectness, we came back to the castle; and,
because the sunset was of such unearthly
radiance and changing wonder we sat on the terrace
until the last soft touch of gold had died out
and left the pure, still, clear, long summer
twilight.
When Mrs. MacNairn and I went in to dress
for dinner, Hector lingered a little behind us
because the silent beauty held him.
I came down before his mother did, and I
went out upon the terrace again because I saw
he was still sitting there. I went to the stone
balustrade very quietly and leaned against it as
I turned to look at him and speak.
Then I stood quite still and looked long--for
some reason not startled, not anguished, not
even feeling that he had gone. He was more
beautiful than any human creature I had ever
seen before. But It had happened as they said
it would. He had not ceased--but something
else had. Something had ceased.
It was the next evening before I came out on
the terrace again. The day had been more
exquisite and the sunset more wonderful than
before. Mrs. MacNairn was sitting by her son's
side in the bedroom whose windows looked over
the moor. I am not going to say one word of
what had come between the two sunsets.
Mrs. MacNairn and I had clung--and clung.
We had promised never to part from each other.
I did not quite know why I went out on the
terrace; perhaps it was because I had always
loved to sit or stand there.
This evening I stood and leaned upon the
balustrade, looking out far, far, far over the
moor. I stood and gazed and gazed. I was
thinking about the Secret and the Hillside. I
was very quiet--as quiet as the twilight's self.
And there came back to me the memory of what
Hector had said as we stood on the golden
patch of gorse when the mist had for a moment
or so blown aside, what he had said of man's
awakening, and, remembering all the ages of
childish, useless dread, how he would stand--
I did not turn suddenly, but slowly. I was
not startled in the faintest degree. He stood
there close to me as he had so often stood.
And he stood--and smiled.
I have seen him many times since. I shall
see him many times again. And when I see
him he always stands--and smiles.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The White People, by Burnett