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.
