Part 25 (1/2)

”Now tell me--what can the art of writing, and its expansion, or perhaps its development rather, in printing, do in the same direction as necromancy? May not a man well long after personal communication with this or that one of the greatest who have lived before him? I grant that in respect of some it can do nothing; but in respect of others, instead of mocking you with an airy semblance of their bodily forms, and the murmur of a few doubtful words from their lips, it places in your hands a key to their inmost thoughts. Some would say this is not personal communication; but it is far more personal than the other. A man's personality does not consist in the clothes he wears; it only appears in them; no more does it consist in his body, but in him who wears it.”

As he spoke, Miss Graeme kept looking him gravely in the face, manifesting, however, more respect than interest. She had been accustomed to a very different tone in young men. She had found their main ambition to amuse; to talk sense about other matters than the immediate uses of this world, was an out-of-the-way thing! I do not say Miss Graeme, even on the subject last in hand, appreciated the matter of Donal's talk. She perceived he was in earnest, and happily was able to know a deep pond from a shallow one, but her best thought concerning him was--what a strange new specimen of humanity was here!

The appearance of her brother coming down the walk, put a stop to the conversation.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A TRADITION OF THE CASTLE.

”Well,” he said as he drew near, ”I am glad to see you two getting on so well!”

”How do you know we are?” asked his sister, with something of the antagonistic tone which both in jest and earnest is too common between near relations.

”Because you have been talking incessantly ever since you met.”

”We have been only contradicting each other.”

”I could tell that too by the sound of your voices; but I took it for a good sign.”

”I fear you heard mine almost only!” said Donal. ”I talk too much, and I fear I have gathered the fault in a way that makes it difficult to cure.”

”How was it?” asked Mr. Graeme.

”By having n.o.body to talk to. I learned it on the hill-side with the sheep, and in the meadows with the cattle. At college I thought I was nearly cured of it; but now, in my comparative solitude at the castle, it seems to have returned.”

”Come here,” said Mr. Graeme, ”when you find it getting too much for you: my sister is quite equal to the task of re-curing you.”

”She has not begun to use her power yet!” remarked Donal, as Miss Graeme, in hoydenish yet not ungraceful fas.h.i.+on, made an attempt to box the ear of her slanderous brother--a proceeding he had antic.i.p.ated, and so was able to frustrate.

”When she knows you better,” he said, ”you will find my sister Kate more than your match.”

”If I were a talker,” she answered, ”Mr. Grant would be too much for me: he quite bewilders me! What do you think! he has been actually trying to persuade me--”

”I beg your pardon, Miss Graeme; I have been trying to persuade you of nothing.”

”What! not to believe in ghosts and necromancy and witchcraft and the evil eye and ghouls and vampyres, and I don't know what all out of nursery stories and old annuals?”

”I give you my word, Mr. Graeme,” returned Donal, laughing, ”I have not been persuading your sister of any of these things! I am certain she could be persuaded of nothing of which she did not first see the common sense. What I did dwell upon, without a doubt she would accept it, was the evident fact that writing and printing have done more to bring us into personal relations with the great dead, than necromancy, granting the magician the power he claimed, could ever do. For do we not come into contact with the being of a man when we hear him pour forth his thoughts of the things he likes best to think about, into the ear of the universe? In such a position does the book of a great man place us!--That was what I meant to convey to your sister.”

”And,” said Mr. Graeme, ”she was not such a goose as to fail of understanding you, however she may have chosen to put on the garb of stupidity.”

”I am sure,” persisted Kate, ”Mr. Grant talked so as to make me think he believed in necromancy and all that sort of thing!”

”That may be,” said Donal; ”but I did not try to persuade you to believe.”

”Oh, if you hold me to the letter!” cried Miss Graeme, colouring a little.--”It would be impossible to get on with such a man,” she thought, ”for he not only preached when you had no pulpit to protect you from him, but stuck so to his text that there was no amus.e.m.e.nt to be got out of the business!”

She did not know that if she could have met him, breaking the ocean-tide of his thoughts with fitting opposition, his answers would have come short and sharp as the flashes of waves on rocks.

”If Mr. Grant believes in such things,” said Mr. Graeme, ”he must find himself at home in the castle, every room of which way well be the haunt of some weary ghost!”