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.
