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THE GARLAND-ROOM.
All through the terrible time, the sense of help and comfort and
protection in the presence of the young tutor, went on growing in
the mind of Arctura. It was nothing to her--what could it be?--that
he was the son of a very humble pair; that he had been a shepherd,
and a cow-herd, and a farm labourer--less than nothing. She never
thought of the facts of his life except sympathetically, seeking to
enter into the feelings of his memorial childhood and youth; she
would never have known anything of those facts but for their lovely
intimacies of all sorts with Nature--nature divine, human, animal,
cosmical. By sharing with her his emotional history, Donal had made
its facts precious to her; through them he had gathered his best--by
home and by prayer, by mother and father, by sheep and mountains and
wind and sky. And now he was to her a tower of strength, a refuge, a
strong city, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She trusted
him the more that he never invited her trust--never put himself
before her; for always before her he set Life, the perfect
heart-origin of her and his yet unperfected humanity, teaching her
to hunger and thirst after being righteous like God, with the
assurance of being filled. She had once trusted in Miss Carmichael,
not with her higher being, only with her judgment, and both her
judgment and her friend had misled her. Donal had taught her that
obedience, not to man but to God, was the only guide to holy
liberty, and so had helped her to break the bonds of those
traditions which, in the shape of authoritative utterances of this
or that church, lay burdens grievous to be borne upon the souls of
men. For Christ, against all the churches, seemed to her to express
Donal's mission. An air of peace, an atmosphere of summer twilight
after the going down of the sun, seemed to her to precede him and
announce his approach with a radiation felt as rest. She questioned
herself nowise about him. Falling in love was a thing unsuggested to
her; if she was in what is called danger, it was of a better thing.
The next day she did not appear: mistress Brookes had persuaded her
to keep her bed again for a day or two. There was nothing really the
matter with her, she said herself, but she was so tired she did not
care to lift her head from the pillow. She had slept well, and was
troubled about nothing. She sent to beg Mr. Grant to let Davie go
and read to her, and to give him something to read, good for him as
well as for her.
Donal did not see Davie again till the next morning.
"Oh, Mr. Grant!" he said, "you never saw anything so pretty as Arkie
is in bed! She is so white, and so sweet! and she speaks with a
voice so gentle and low! She was so kind to me for going to read to
her! I never saw anybody like her! She looks as if she had just said
her prayers, and God had told her she should have everything she
wanted."
Donal wondered a little, but hoped more. Surely she must be finding
rest in the consciousness of God! But why was she so white? Was she
going to die? A pang shot to his heart: if she were to go from the
castle, it would be hard to stay in it, even for the sake of Davie!
Donal, no more than Arctura, imagined himself fallen in love: he had
loved once, and his heart had not yet done aching--though more with
the memory than the presence of pain! He was utterly satisfied with
what the Father of the children had decreed, and would never love
again! But he did not seek to hide from himself that the friendship
of lady Arctura, and the help she sought and he gave, had added a
fresh and strong interest to his life. At the first dawn of power in
his heart, when he began to make songs in the fields and on the
hills, he had felt that to brighten with true light the clouded
lives of despondent brothers and sisters was the one thing worthest
living for: it was what the Lord came into the world for; neither
had his trouble made him forget it--for more than one week or so:
while the pain was yet gnawing grievously, he woke to it again with
self-accusation--almost self-contempt. To have helped this lovely
creature, whose life had seemed lapt in an ever closer-clasping
shroud of perplexity, was a thing to be glad of--not to the day of
his death, but to the never-ending end of his life! was an honour
conferred upon him by the Father, to last for evermore! For he had
helped to open a human door for the Lord to enter! she within heard
him knock, but, trying, was unable to open! To be God's helper with
our fellows is the one high calling; the presence of God in the
house the one high condition.
At the end of a week Arctura was better, and able to see Donal. She
had had mistress Brookes's bed moved into the same room with her
own, and had made the dressing-room into a sitting-room. It was
sunny and pleasant--the very place, Donal thought, he would have
chosen for her. The bedroom too, which the housekeeper had persuaded
her to take when she left her own, was one of the largest in the
castle--the Garland-room--old-fashioned, of course, but as cheerful
as stateliness would permit, with gorgeous hangings and great
pictures--far from homely, but with sun in it half the day. Donal
congratulated her on the change. She had been prevented from making
one sooner, she said, by the dread of owing any comfort to
circumstance: it might deceive her as to her real condition!
"It could not deceive God, though," answered Donal, "who fills with
righteousness those who hunger after it. It is pride to refuse
anything that might help us to know him; and of all things his
sun-lit world speaks of the father of lights! If that makes us
happier, it makes us fitter to understand him, and he can easily
send what cloud may be needful to temper it. We must not make our
own world, inflict our own punishments, or order our own
instruction; we must simply obey the voice in our hearts, and take
lovingly what he sends."
The next day she told him she had had a beautiful night, full of the
loveliest dreams. One of them was, that a child came out of a grassy
hillock by the wayside, called her mamma, and said she was much
obliged to her for taking her off the cold stone, and making her a
butterfly; and with that the child spread out gorgeous and great
wings and soared up to a white cloud, and there sat laughing merrily
to her.
Every afternoon Davie read to her, and thence Donal gained a
duty--that of finding suitable pabulum for the two. He was not
widely read in light literature, and it made necessary not a little
exploration in the region of it.
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