Part 19 (1/2)

”And if it hadn't been for me, she'd be sitting by you now.”

”I have little doubt of that.”

”And you would have been happy.”

”I should have been contented. There's a big difference between contentment and happiness. You can't have learned it, yet.”

”Oh, can't I! It's all the difference between--between--well, the difference between this borderland seen on a dark day and seen on a day of suns.h.i.+ne. It's the same landscape, but it doesn't look the same to the eyes or give the same feelings to the heart. The dark-day feelings would be calm and quietly pleasant; the suns.h.i.+ne feelings would be full of thrills and heartbeats--as to-day.”

”By Jove, you've hit it!” he exclaimed as if to please me by agreeing.

”Full of thrills and heartbeats--as to-day.”

”Then you _do_ feel the romance of everything in this suns.h.i.+ne?” I asked, quick to drag a ”yes” from him while he was in the mood.

”I should say I did. And I'm not ashamed, with you to back me up. But I've a sneaking idea I should have been ashamed of it with Mrs. West.

And I shouldn't have felt the thrills, only a calm, peaceful pleasure, as in the gray days--contentment. I shouldn't have known what I was missing, perhaps. I should have respected myself for outgrowing my enthusiasms. But--in my best moments, Princess, I've pitied people more for not knowing what they miss in life than for missing the things.”

”Yes,” I answered, ”because it's better to know there are beautiful things, and to want them in vain, than grub along without knowing of their existence. But all that's got nothing to do with Mrs. West.”

”Perhaps not. Yet it has something to do with me. No need to bother about the connection.”

”I won't bother about anything!” I laughed in my joy of life and of motoring, which seemed one and indivisible just then. ”I'm wrapped up in the magic golden web that Sir Walter Scott and Burns have woven round every mile of this land across the border--_our_ land, yours and mine.”

”So am I, caught in the web, lost in it--to my own surprise.” He laughed as he drove, his eyes alert and young. ”Burns, by the way, came to Ecclefechan, where we're arriving now. He had an uproarious time, and wrote verses to the La.s.s of Ecclefechan, which shows the place must have been a good deal livelier then than now. Or else, which is as likely, he had a faculty of squeezing the juice out of the driest, most unpromising fruit--the same faculty you have.”

”Perhaps the fruit dried up later,” I suggested. ”Burns died soon after Carlyle was born, didn't he? And maybe people began to be primmer when they were forgetting his influence.”

”No. Those of us Scots who were meant to be dour were always dour,” Sir.

S argued, ”since the days of John Knox, and long before. It was partly climate--partly persecution. Both agreed with our const.i.tutions. But look, here's the little house where one of the greatest geniuses who ever saw the light in Scotland first opened his eyes. I dare say he didn't get much light--but he spent most of his life in giving it to other people, out of his own gloom. Wouldn't Burns have been interested, pa.s.sing that house (as he must have, in the 'uproarious time' at Ecclefechan), if his prophetic soul had said, 'Here, in this little dwelling as humble as your own birthplace, will be born a man as great as you--and one of your keenest critics?'”

I didn't answer, because no answer was needed, and because we were both gazing hard at a small, whitewashed, double house made into one by an archway joining the two parts together. Coming from Gretna Green it was on our left in the midst of a gray and white village which would have looked commonplace if it had not been framed by an immense sky. It was as if this vast blue crystal case had been set down over Carlyle's birthplace to protect and mark it out from other places. There was the narrow, high-banked brook--”the gentle Kuhbach kindly gus.h.i.+ng by” (as Sir S. quoted)--which had made music in Carlyle's childish ears, to echo through them all his life. Perhaps he paddled in the brook on hot summer days, just as little boys were paddling when our Gray Dragon suddenly broke the respectable silence of Ecclefechan; and I know that he must have seen stormy sun-rises and fiery sunsets reflected in it as in a mirror, just as the Lady of Shalott saw all the things that really mattered pa.s.sing in her looking-gla.s.s.

It is the kind of village, and the gray or whitewashed houses with their red door-sills are the kind of houses, where you would say, rus.h.i.+ng through in a motor, ”Nothing can possibly happen.” Yet Carlyle happened; and he was an event for the whole world, which now makes pilgrimages to his birthplace. And I think that when his memory travelled back to Ecclefechan, he would not have changed it for a garden of palaces and flowers and fountains. Even the wee bairns playing in the road where Carlyle played, knew why we stopped our car. They pointed out the Carlyle house, gazing at us in solemn pity because we were poor tourist-bodies, who couldna bide the rest of our lives in the best village in a' the wurlld.

For my part, I pitied them, because their feet were bare, whereas the poorest children in my native Carlisle have wonderfully nice shoes, bound in bra.s.s. But all the Scot--and perhaps the crofter--rose in Sir S. when I mourned over the little dusty feet. ”Do you think they go barefoot because they've no shoes?” he asked. ”You're wrong. You don't know your own country-folk yet. They've as good shoes as those Carlisle kids, and better, maybe. It's because they don't like the feel of the shoes when they play, and they're saving them for Sundays. I did the same myself. Not a pair of shoes did I have on my feet, except on the Sabbath day, till I was turned eleven.”

It seemed to me that suddenly he had quite a Scotch burr in his voice, and I did like him for it!

An apple-cheeked old body opened the door. On it was a bra.s.s plate which would have told us, if we hadn't known already, that in this house Thomas Carlyle was born. Remembering what he grew to be and to mean in the big world, the three tiny rooms and the few simple relics were a thousand times more pathetic than if we'd been led through apartment after apartment of a palace, seeing christening cups and things under gla.s.s cases. They did not seem sad to me, only a little dour in a wholesome way, as porridge is dour compared to plum-cake. But the cemetery which we went to after we had seen the house made me want to cry. I didn't like to think that, coming back here to sleep after all those many years, Carlyle had not his wife to rest beside him. Lying with his ain folk behind grim iron railings couldn't have consoled him for her absence. This is the only graveyard I ever saw except the one where my father is buried; and somehow, it doesn't seem respectful to the dead to go and criticise their graves, unless you are their friends, bringing them flowers--pansies for thoughts and rosemary for remembrance. It's like walking into people's houses and opening their doors to look at them in bed when they're asleep, and can't resent your intrusion, though they would hate it if they knew. I said this to Sir S., and he partly agreed with me on principle; but he warned me that there are cemeteries I must visit in Scotland unless I want to miss the last volumes of several interesting human doc.u.ments. I don't know exactly what a human doc.u.ment is; still, I suppose I shall go to the graveyards for the sake of finding out what he means.

He spoke as if I were likely to go to these places with him, and said that he would enjoy showing me Carlyle's house in Chelsea, which is ”more full of the man's heart and soul than Ecclefechan is.” But, of course, he said this without stopping to think. He will go back to America and forget the forlorn little princess he happened to rescue from a neighbouring dragon. Yet never mind, I shan't be forlorn after this! I shall have my mother, and mothers are more important to princesses than the most glittering knights. I shall, of course, travel about with her wherever she goes, so I can never be lonely or sad. I ought to be even more impatient than I am for the day to come when she is due in Edinburgh, and I can surprise her there: but I suppose, having lived without her so long, it is difficult to realize that I'm actually to see her at last. However, I think of her every minute--or perhaps every other minute; and I haven't fully realized until to-day how much there is for which I have to thank her: the gayety and hopefulness she must have kept in her heart, and handed down to me. Without gayety and hopefulness neither of us would have dared or cared to run away from Hillard House.

I think, far-fetched as it seems, it was seeing Carlyle's birthplace, and feeling the influence of his parents upon him, which made me understand. Great genius as he was, I wonder if he might not have been even greater if his mother or father had taught him that it was right to be happy and wrong to be sad? Sir S. says that Jenny his wife could have taught him all that, if he had chosen to learn; but he was grown up then, and so it was too late. The suns.h.i.+ne must be in your blood when you are a child, and then no shadows can ever quite darken the gold--or at least, that is the thought which has come into my mind to-day.

It was the right thing to turn southward off the Glasgow highway after Ecclefechan, to go to Annan and see the place where Carlyle got his schooling. The Gray Dragon, travelling slowly (for it, or ”her,” as Sir S. and Vedder always say), came to the end of the journey in a few minutes; but when Carlyle walked along that pleasant shadowy road, carrying his school books, he must have had plenty of time for day-dreams. Now and then he could have seen the Solway gleaming, and I can imagine how the beautiful, winding river must have given that grave, wise boy thoughts of the great river of life, running to and from eternity. We pa.s.sed close to Hoddam Hill, where--Sir S. and Mrs. James told me--the Carlyle family lived for a while when Thomas was grown up, he translating German romances, and his brother working on the farm.

At Annan, looking at the statue of Carlyle's friend, Edward Irving, in the broad High Street, we came back to the subject of Doctor James, and I heard for the first time the real truth at the bottom of the bad gossip.

We had got down from the car to look at the statue, and read what it said on the pedestal. We were not thinking at first about the doctor, but only of Edward Irving, and Sir S. was saying to Mrs. James how Annan was only one of many towns where statues are put up to the memory of men once misunderstood and cruelly persecuted in the very place where they are afterward honoured. It seems that Edward Irving (who loved Mrs.

Carlyle when she was Jenny Welsh) had to come back to his native town to be tried for heresy by the presbytery, after a brilliant career in London as a fas.h.i.+onable preacher and founder of a new faith. All the theologians of Scotland and crowds of other people (Sir S. says all true Scots are theologians at heart) came pouring into Annan by coach and chaise on the great day of the trial; and in spite of Irving's pa.s.sionate appeal, he was found guilty by a unanimous vote.