CHAPTER VIII
What I feel sure I know by this time is
that all the things we think happen by
chance and accident are only part of the weaving
of the scheme of life. When you begin to
suspect this and to watch closely you also begin to
see how trifles connect themselves with one
another, and seem in the end to have led to a
reason and a meaning, though we may not be
clever enough to see it clearly. Nothing is an
accident. We make everything happen ourselves:
the wrong things because we do not
know or care whether we are wrong or right,
the right ones because we unconsciously or
consciously choose the right even in the midst of
our ignorance.
I dare say it sounds audacious for an ordinary
girl to say such things in an ordinary way;
but perhaps I have said them in spite of myself,
because it is not a bad thing that they should be
said by an every-day sort of person in simple
words which other every-day people can understand.
I am only expressing what has gradually
grown into belief in my mind through reading
with Angus ancient books and modern ones
--books about faiths and religions, books about
philosophies and magics, books about what the
world calls marvels, but which are not marvels
at all, but only workings of the Law most
people have not yet reasoned about or even
accepted.
Angus had read and studied them all his life
before he began to read them with me, and we
talked them over together sitting by the fire
in the library, fascinated and staring at each
other, I in one high-backed chair and he in
another on the opposite side of the hearth.
Angus is wonderful--wonderful! He KNOWS
there is no such thing as chance. He KNOWS
that we ourselves are the working of the Law--
and that we ourselves could work what now
are stupidly called "miracles" if we could only
remember always what the Law is.
What I intended to say at first was merely
that it was not by chance that I climbed to the
shelf in the library that afternoon and pushed
aside the books hiding the old manuscript
which told the real story of Dark Malcolm of
the Glen and Wee Brown Elspeth. It seemed
like chance when it happened, but it was really
the first step toward my finding out the strange,
beautiful thing I knew soon afterward.
From the beginning of my friendship with the
MacNairns I had hoped they would come and
stay with me at Muircarrie. When they both
seemed to feel such interest in all I told them of
it, and not to mind its wild remoteness, I took
courage and asked them if they would come to
me. Most people are bored by the prospect of
life in a feudal castle, howsoever picturesquely
it is set in a place where there are no neighbors
to count on. Its ancient stateliness is too dull.
But the MacNairns were more allured by what
Muircarrie offered than they were by other
and more brilliant invitations. So when I went
back to the castle I was only to be alone a week
before they followed me.
Jean and Angus were quite happy in their
quiet way when I told them who I was expecting.
They knew how glad I was myself. Jean
was full of silent pleasure as she arranged the
rooms I had chosen for my guests, rooms which
had the most sweeping view of the moor.
Angus knew that Mr. MacNairn would love the
library, and he hovered about consulting his
catalogues and looking over his shelves, taking
down volumes here and there, holding them
tenderly in his long, bony old hand as he dipped
into them. He made notes of the manuscripts
and books he thought Mr. MacNairn would
feel the deepest interest in. He loved his library
with all his being, and I knew he looked forward
to talking to a man who would care for it in the
same way.
He had been going over one of the highest
shelves one day and had left his step-ladder
leaning against it when he went elsewhere. It
was when I mounted the steps, as I often did
when he left them, that I came upon the
manuscript which related the old story of Dark
Malcolm and his child. It had been pushed
behind some volumes, and I took it out because it
looked so old and yellow. And I opened at once
at the page where the tale began.
At first I stood reading, and then I sat down
on the broad top of the ladder and forgot
everything. It was a savage history of ferocious hate
and barbarous reprisals. It had been a feud
waged between two clans for three generations.
The story of Dark Malcolm and Ian Red Hand
was only part of it, but it was a gruesome thing.
Pages told of the bloody deeds they wrought on
each other's houses. The one human passion
of Dark Malcolm's life was his love for his
little daughter. She had brown eyes and brown
hair, and those who most loved her called her
Wee Brown Elspeth. Ian Red Hand was richer
and more powerful than Malcolm of the Glen,
and therefore could more easily work his cruel
will. He knew well of Malcolm's worship of his
child, and laid his plans to torture him through
her. Dark Malcolm, coming back to his rude,
small castle one night after a raid in which he
had lost followers and weapons and strength,
found that Wee Brown Elspeth had been carried
away, and unspeakable taunts and threats left
behind by Ian and his men. With unbound
wounds, broken dirks and hacked swords, Dark
Malcolm and the remnant of his troop of fighting
clansmen rushed forth into the night.
"Neither men nor weapons have we to win
her back," screamed Dark Malcolm, raving
mad, "but we may die fighting to get near
enough to her to drive dirk into her little breast
and save her from worse."
They were a band of madmen in their black
despair. How they tore through the black
night; what unguarded weak spot they found
in Ian's castle walls; how they fought their way
through it, leaving their dead bodies in the
path, none really ever knew. By what strange
chance Dark Malcolm came upon Wee Brown
Elspeth, craftily set to playing hide-and-seek
with a child of Ian's so that she might not cry
out and betray her presence; how, already
wounded to his death, he caught at and drove
his dirk into her child heart, the story only
offers guesses at. But kill and save her he did,
falling dead with her body held against his
breast, her brown hair streaming over it. Not
one living man went back to the small, rude
castle on the Glen--not one.
I sat and read and read until the room grew
dark. When I stopped I found that Angus
Macayre was standing in the dimness at the
foot of the ladder. He looked up at me and I
down at him. For a few moments we were both
quite still.
"It is the tale of Ian Red Hand and Dark
Malcolm you are reading?" he said, at last.
"And Wee Brown Elspeth, who was fought
for and killed," I added, slowly.
Angus nodded his head with a sad face. "It
was the only way for a father," he said. "A
hound of hell was Ian. Such men were savage
beasts in those days, not human."
I touched the manuscript with my hand
questioningly. "Did this fall at the back there by
accident," I asked, "or did you hide it?"
"I did," he answered. "It was no tale for
a young thing to read. I have hidden many
from you. You were always poking about in
corners, Ysobel."
Then I sat and thought over past memories for
a while and the shadows in the room deepened.
"Why," I said, laggingly, after the silence--
"why did I call the child who used to play with
me `Wee Brown Elspeth'?"
"It was your own fancy," was his reply. "I
used to wonder myself; but I made up my
mind that you had heard some of the maids
talking and the name had caught your ear.
That would be a child's way."
I put my forehead in my hands and thought
again. So many years had passed! I had been
little more than a baby; the whole thing
seemed like a half-forgotten dream when I
tried to recall it--but I seemed to dimly
remember strange things.
"Who were the wild men who brought her to
me first--that day on the moor?" I said. "I
do remember they had pale, savage, exultant
faces. And torn, stained clothes. And broken
dirks and swords. But they were glad of
something. Who were they?"
"I did not see them. The mist was too
thick," he answered. "They were some wild
hunters, perhaps."
"It gives me such a strange feeling to try to
remember, Angus," I said, lifting my forehead
from my hands.
"Don't try," he said. "Give me the
manuscript and get down from the step-ladder.
Come and look at the list of books I have made
for Mr. MacNairn."
I did as he told me, but I felt as if I were
walking in a dream. My mind seemed to have
left my body and gone back to the day when I
sat a little child on the moor and heard the dull
sound of horses' feet and the jingling metal and
the creak of leather coming nearer in the thick
mist.
I felt as if Angus were in a queer, half-awake
mood, too--as if two sets of thoughts were
working at the same time in his mind: one his
thoughts about Hector MacNairn and the
books, the other some queer thoughts which
went on in spite of him.
When I was going to leave the library and
go up-stairs to dress for dinner he said a strange
thing to me, and he said it slowly and in a heavy
voice.
"There is a thing Jean and I have often talked
of telling you," he said. "We have not known
what it was best to do. Times we have been
troubled because we could not make up our
minds. This Mr. Hector MacNairn is no common
man. He is one who is great and wise
enough to decide things plain people could
not be sure of. Jean and I are glad indeed
that he and his mother are coming. Jean can
talk to her and I can talk to him, being a man
body. They will tell us whether we have been
right or wrong and what we must do."
"They are wise enough to tell you anything,'
I answered. "It sounds as if you and Jean had
known some big secret all my life. But I am
not frightened. You two would go to your
graves hiding it if it would hurt me."
"Eh, bairn!" he said, suddenly, in a queer,
moved way. "Eh, bairn!" And he took hold
of both my hands and kissed them, pressing
them quite long and emotionally to his lips.
But he said nothing else, and when he dropped
them I went out of the room.
