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LADY ARCTURA.
It was now almost three weeks since Donal had become an inmate of
the castle, and he had scarcely set his eyes on the lady of the
house. Once he had seen her back, and more than once had caught a
glimpse of her profile, but he had never really seen her face, and
they had never spoken to each other.
One afternoon he was sauntering along under the overhanging boughs
of an avenue of beeches, formerly the approach to a house in which
the family had once lived, but which had now another entrance. He
had in his hand a copy of the Apocrypha, which he had never seen
till he found this in the library. In his usual fashion he had
begun to read it through, and was now in the book called the Wisdom
of Solomon, at the 17th chapter, narrating the discomfiture of
certain magicians. Taken with the beauty of the passage, he sat
down on an old stone-roller, and read aloud. Parts of the passage
were these--they will enrich my page:--
"For they, that promised to drive away terrors and troubles from a
sick soul, were sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at.
"...For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous,
and being pressed with conscience, always forecasteth grievous
things.
"...But they sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed
intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of
inevitable hell,
"Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted,
their heart failing them: for a sudden fear, and not looked for,
came upon them.
"So then whosoever there fell down was straitly kept, shut up in a
prison without iron bars.
"For whether he were husbandman, or shepherd, or a labourer in the
field, he was overtaken, and endured that necessity, which could not
be avoided: for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.
"Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds
among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running
violently,
"Or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could
not be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage
wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains; these
things made them to swoon for fear.
"For the whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered
in their labour:
"Over them only was spread an heavy night, an image of that darkness
which should afterward receive them: but yet were they unto
themselves more grievous than the darkness."
He had read so much, and stopped to think a little; for through the
incongruity of it, which he did not doubt arose from poverty of
imagination in the translator, rendering him unable to see what the
poet meant, ran yet an indubitable vein of awful truth, whether
fully intended by the writer or not mattered little to such a reader
as Donal--when, lifting his eyes, he saw lady Arctura standing
before him with a strange listening look. A spell seemed upon her;
her face was white, her lips white and a little parted.
Attracted, as she was about to pass him, by the sound of what was
none the less like the Bible from the solemn crooning way in which
Donal read it to the congregation of his listening thoughts, yet was
certainly not the Bible, she was presently fascinated by the vague
terror of what she heard, and stood absorbed: without much
originative power, she had an imagination prompt and delicate and
strong in response.
Donal had but a glance of her; his eyes returned again at once to
his book, and he sat silent and motionless, though not seeing a
word. For one instant she stood still; then he heard the soft sound
of her dress as, with noiseless foot, she stole back, and took
another way.
I must give my reader a shadow of her. She was rather tall,
slender, and fair. But her hair was dark, and so crinkly that, when
merely parted, it did all the rest itself. Her forehead was rather
low. Her eyes were softly dark, and her features very regular--her
nose perhaps hardly large enough, or her chin. Her mouth was rather
thin-lipped, but would have been sweet except for a seemingly
habitual expression of pain. A pair of dark brows overhung her
sweet eyes, and gave a look of doubtful temper, yet restored
something of the strength lacking a little in nose and chin. It was
an interesting--not a quite harmonious face, and in happiness might,
Donal thought, be beautiful even. Her figure was eminently
graceful--as Donal saw when he raised his eyes at the sound of her
retreat. He thought she needed not have run away as from something
dangerous: why did she not pass him like any other servant of the
house? But what seemed to him like contempt did not hurt him. He
was too full of realities to be much affected by opinion however
shown. Besides, he had had his sorrow and had learned his lesson.
He was a poet--but one of the few without any weak longing after
listening ears. The poet whose poetry needs an audience, can be but
little of a poet; neither can the poetry that is of no good to the
man himself, be of much good to anybody else. There are the
song-poets and the life-poets, or rather the God-poems. Sympathy is
lovely and dear--chiefly when it comes unsought; but the fame after
which so many would-be, yea, so many real poets sigh, is poorest
froth. Donal could sing his songs like the birds, content with the
blue heaven or the sheep for an audience--or any passing angel that
cared to listen. On the hill-sides he would sing them aloud, but it
was of the merest natural necessity. A look of estrangement on the
face of a friend, a look of suffering on that of any animal, would
at once and sorely affect him, but not a disparaging expression on
the face of a comparative stranger, were she the loveliest woman he
had ever seen. He was little troubled about the world, because
little troubled about himself.
Lady Arctura and lord Forgue lived together like brother and sister,
apparently without much in common, and still less of
misunderstanding. There would have been more chance of their taking
a fancy to each other if they had not been brought up together; they
were now little together, and never alone together.
Very few visitors came to the castle, and then only to call. Lord
Morven seldom saw any one, his excuse being his health.
But lady Arctura was on terms of intimacy with Sophia Carmichael,
the minister's daughter--to whom her father had communicated his
dissatisfaction with the character of Donal, and poured out his
indignation at his conduct. He ought to have left the parish at
once! whereas he had instead secured for himself the best, the only
situation in it, without giving him a chance of warning his
lordship! The more injustice her father spoke against him, the more
Miss Carmichael condemned him; for she was a good daughter, and
looked up to her father as the wisest and best man in the parish.
Very naturally therefore she repeated his words to lady Arctura.
She in her turn conveyed them to her uncle. He would not, however,
pay much attention to them. The thing was done, he said. He had
himself seen and talked with Donal, and liked him! The young man
had himself told him of the clergyman's disapprobation! He would
request him to avoid all reference to religious subjects! Therewith
he dismissed the matter, and forgot all about it. Anything
requiring an effort of the will, an arrangement of ideas, or thought
as to mode, his lordship would not encounter. Nor was anything to
him of such moment that he must do it at once. Lady Arctura did not
again refer to the matter: her uncle was not one to take liberties
with--least of all to press to action. But she continued painfully
doubtful whether she was not neglecting her duty, trying to persuade
herself that she was waiting only till she should have something
definite to say of her own knowledge against him.
And now what was she to conclude from his reading the Apocrypha?
The fact was not to be interpreted to his advantage: was he not
reading what was not the Bible as if it were the Bible, and when he
might have been reading the Bible itself? Besides, the Apocrypha
came so near the Bible when it was not the Bible! it must be at
least rather wicked! At the same time she could not drive from her
mind the impressiveness both of the matter she had heard, and his
manner of reading it: the strong sound of judgment and condemnation
in it came home to her--she could not have told how or why, except
generally because of her sins. She was one of those--not very few I
think--who from conjunction of a lovely conscience with an
ill-instructed mind, are doomed for a season to much suffering. She
was largely different from her friend: the religious opinions of the
latter--they were in reality rather metaphysical than religious, and
bad either way--though she clung to them with all the tenacity of a
creature with claws, occasioned her not an atom of mental
discomposure: perhaps that was in part why she clung to them! they
were as she would have them! She did not trouble herself about what
God required of her, beyond holding the doctrine the holding of
which guaranteed, as she thought, her future welfare. Conscience
toward God had very little to do with her opinions, and her heart
still less. Her head on the contrary, perhaps rather her memory,
was considerably occupied with the matter; nothing she held had ever
been by her regarded on its own merits--that is, on its individual
claim to truth; if it had been handed down by her church, that was
enough; to support it she would search out text after text, and
press it into the service. Any meaning but that which the church of
her fathers gave to a passage must be of the devil, and every man
opposed to the truth who saw in that meaning anything but truth! It
was indeed impossible Miss Carmichael should see any meaning but
that, even if she had looked for it; she was nowise qualified for
discovering truth, not being herself true. What she saw and loved
in the doctrines of her church was not the truth, but the assertion;
and whoever questioned, not to say the doctrine, but even the
proving of it by any particular passage, was a dangerous person, and
unsound. All the time her acceptance and defence of any doctrine
made not the slightest difference to her life--as indeed how should
it?
Such was the only friend lady Arctura had. But the conscience and
heart of the younger woman were alive to a degree that boded ill
either for the doctrine that stinted their growth, or the nature
unable to cast it off. Miss Carmichael was a woman about
six-and-twenty--and had been a woman, like too many Scotch girls,
long before she was out of her teens--a human flower cut and
dried--an unpleasant specimen, and by no means valuable from its
scarcity. Self-sufficient, assured, with scarce shyness enough for
modesty, handsome and hard, she was essentially a self-glorious
Philistine; nor would she be anything better till something was sent
to humble her, though what spiritual engine might be equal to the
task was not for man to imagine. She was clever, but her cleverness
made nobody happier; she had great confidence, but her confidence
gave courage to no one, and took it from many; she had little fancy,
and less imagination than any other I ever knew. The divine wonder
was, that she had not yet driven the delicate, truth-loving Arctura
mad. From her childhood she had had the ordering of all her
opinions: whatever Sophy Carmichael said, lady Arctura never thought
of questioning. A lie is indeed a thing in its nature unbelievable,
but there is a false belief always ready to receive the false truth,
and there is no end to the mischief the two can work. The awful
punishment of untruth in the inward parts is that the man is given
over to believe a lie.
Lady Arctura was in herself a gentle creature who shrank from either
giving or receiving a rough touch; but she had an inherited pride,
by herself unrecognized as such, which made her capable of hurting
as well as being hurt. Next to the doctrines of the Scottish
church, she respected her own family: it had in truth no other claim
to respect than that its little good and much evil had been done
before the eyes of a large part of many generations--whence she was
born to think herself distinguished, and to imagine a claim for the
acknowledgment of distinction upon all except those of greatly
higher rank than her own. This inborn arrogance was in some degree
modified by respect for the writers of certain books--not one of
whom was of any regard in the eyes of the thinkers of the age. Of
any writers of power, beyond those of the Bible, either in this
country or another, she knew nothing. Yet she had a real instinct
for what was good in literature; and of the writers to whom I have
referred she not only liked the worthiest best, but liked best their
best things. I need hardly say they were all religious writers; for
the keen conscience and obedient heart of the girl had made her very
early turn herself towards the quarter where the sun ought to rise,
the quarter where all night long gleams the auroral hope; but
unhappily she had not gone direct to the heavenly well in earthly
ground--the words of the Master himself. How could she? From very
childhood her mind had been filled with traditionary utterances
concerning the divine character and the divine plans--the merest
inventions of men far more desirous of understanding what they were
not required to understand, than of doing what they were required to
do--whence their crude and false utterances concerning a God of
their own fancy--in whom it was a good man's duty, in the name of
any possible God, to disbelieve; and just because she was true,
authority had immense power over her. The very sweetness of their
nature forbids such to doubt the fitness of others.
She had besides had a governess of the orthodox type, a large
proportion of whose teaching was of the worst heresy, for it was
lies against him who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all;
her doctrines were so many smoked glasses held up between the mind
of her pupil and the glory of the living God; nor had she once
directed her gaze to the very likeness of God, the face of Jesus
Christ. Had Arctura set herself to understand him the knowledge of
whom is eternal life, she would have believed none of these false
reports of him, but she had not yet met with any one to help her to
cast aside the doctrines of men, and go face to face with the Son of
Man, the visible God. First lie of all, she had been taught that she
must believe so and so before God would let her come near him or
listen to her. The old cobbler could have taught her differently;
but she would have thought it improper to hold conversation with
such a man, even if she had known him for the best man in Auchars.
She was in sore and sad earnest to believe as she was told she must
believe; therefore instead of beginning to do what Jesus Christ
said, she tried hard to imagine herself one of the chosen, tried
hard to believe herself the chief of sinners. There was no one to
tell her that it is only the man who sees something of the glory of
God, the height and depth and breadth and length of his love and
unselfishness, not a child dabbling in stupid doctrines, that can
feel like St. Paul. She tried to feel that she deserved to be burned
in hell for ever and ever, and that it was boundlessly good of
God--who made her so that she could not help being a sinner--to give
her the least chance of escaping it. She tried to feel that, though
she could not be saved without something which the God of perfect
love could give her if he pleased, but might not please to give her,
yet if she was not saved it would be all her own fault: and so ever
the round of a great miserable treadmill of contradictions! For a
moment she would be able to say this or that she thought she ought
to say; the next the feeling would be gone, and she as miserable as
before. Her friend made no attempt to imbue her with her own calm
indifference, nor could she have succeeded had she attempted it.
But though she had never been troubled herself, and that because
she had never been in earnest, she did not find it the less easy to
take upon her the rôle of a spiritual adviser, and gave no end of
counsel for the attainment of assurance. She told her truly enough
that all her trouble came of want of faith; but she showed her no
one fit to believe in.
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