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."
