Part 35 (1/2)
”Yes,” his lords.h.i.+p went on, ”I taught myself hards.h.i.+p in my boyhood, and I reap the fruits of it in my prime!--Come up here: I will show you a prospect unequalled.”
He stopped in front of a large picture, and began to talk as if expatiating on the points of a landscape outspread before him. His remarks belonged to something magnificent; but whether they were applicable to the picture Donal could not tell; there was light enough only to give a faint gleam to its gilded frame.
”Reach beyond reach!” said his lords.h.i.+p; ”endless! infinite! How would not poor Maldon, with his ever fresh ambition after the unattainable, have gloated on such a scene! In Nature alone you front success! She does what she means! She alone does what she means!”
”If,” said Donal, more for the sake of confirming the earl's impression that he had a listener, than from any idea that he would listen--”if you mean the object of Nature is to present us with perfection, I cannot allow she does what she intends: you rarely see her produce anything she would herself call perfect. But if her object be to make us behold perfection with the inner eye, this object she certainly does gain, and that just by stopping short of--”
He did not finish the sentence. A sudden change was upon him, absorbing him so that he did not even try to account for it: something seemed to give way in his head--as if a bubble burst in his brain; and from that moment whatever the earl said, and whatever arose in his own mind, seemed to have outward existence as well. He heard and knew the voice of his host, but seemed also in some inexplicable way, which at the time occasioned him no surprise, to see the things which had their origin in the brain of the earl. Whether he went in very deed out with him into the night, he did not know--he felt as if he had gone, and thought he had not--but when he woke the next morning in his bed at the top of the tower, which he had no recollection of climbing, he was as weary as if he had been walking the night through.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
BEWILDERMENT.
His first thought was of a long and delightful journey he had made on horseback with the earl--through scenes of entrancing interest and variety,--with the present result of a strange weariness, almost misery. What had befallen him? Was the thing a fact or a fancy? If a fancy, how was he so weary? If a fact, how could it have been? Had he in any way been the earl's companion through such a long night as it seemed? Could they have visited all the places whose remembrance lingered in his brain? He was so confused, so bewildered, so haunted with a shadowy uneasiness almost like remorse, that he even dreaded the discovery of the cause of it all. Might a man so lose hold of himself as to be no more certain he had ever possessed or could ever possess himself again?
He bethought himself at last that he might perhaps have taken more wine than his head could stand. Yet he remembered leaving his gla.s.s unemptied to follow the earl; and it was some time after that before the change came! Could it have been drunkenness? Had it been slowly coming without his knowing it? He could hardly believe it? But whatever it was, it had left him unhappy, almost ashamed. What would the earl think of him? He must have concluded him unfit any longer to keep charge of his son! For his own part he did not feel he was to blame, but rather that an accident had befallen him. Whence then this sense of something akin to shame? Why should he be ashamed of anything coming upon him from without? Of that shame he had to be ashamed, as of a lack of faith in G.o.d! Would G.o.d leave his creature who trusted in him at the mercy of a chance--of a gla.s.s of wine taken in ignorance? There was a thing to be ashamed of, and with good cause!
He got up, found to his dismay that it was almost ten o'clock--his hour for rising in winter being six--dressed in haste, and went down, wondering that Davie had not come to see after him.
In the schoolroom he found him waiting for him. The boy sprang up, and darted to meet him.
”I hope you are better, Mr. Grant!” he said. ”I am so glad you are able to be down!”
”I am quite well,” answered Donal. ”I can't think what made me sleep so long? Why didn't you come and wake me, Davie, my boy?”
”Because Simmons told me you were ill, and I must not disturb you if you were ever so late in coming down.”
”I hardly deserve any breakfast!” said Donal, turning to the table; ”but if you will stand by me, and read while I take my coffee, we shall save a little time so.”
”Yes, sir.--But your coffee must be quite cold! I will ring.”
”No, no; I must not waste any more time. A man who cannot drink cold coffee ought to come down while it is hot.”
”Forgue won't drink cold coffee!” said Davie: ”I don't see why you should!”
”Because I prefer to do with my coffee as I please; I will not have hot coffee for my master. I won't have it anything to me what humour the coffee may be in. I will be Donal Grant, whether the coffee be cold or hot. A bit of practical philosophy for you, Davie!”
”I think I understand you, sir: you would not have a man make a fuss about a trifle.”
”Not about a real trifle. The co-relative of a trifle, Davie, is a smile. But I would take heed whether the thing that is called a trifle be really a trifle. Besides, there may be a point in a trifle that is the egg of an ought. It is a trifle whether this or that is nice; it is a point that I should not care. With us highlanders it is a point of breeding not to mind what sort of dinner we have, but to eat as heartily of bread and cheese as of roast beef. At least so my father and mother used to teach me, though I fear that refinement of good manners is going out of fas.h.i.+on even with highlanders.”
”It is good manners!” rejoined Davie with decision, ”--and more than good manners! I should count it grand not to care what kind of dinner I had. But I am afraid it is more than I shall ever come to!”
”You will never come to it by trying because you think it grand. Only mind, I did not say we were not to enjoy our roast beef more than our bread and cheese; that would be not to discriminate, where there is a difference. If bread and cheese were just as good to us as roast beef, there would be no victory in our contentment.”
”I see!” said Davie.--”Wouldn't it be well,” he asked, after a moment's pause, ”to put one's self in training, Mr. Grant, to do without things--or at least to be able to do without them?”
”It is much better to do the lessons set you by one who knows how to teach, than to pick lessons for yourself out of your books. Davie, I have not that confidence in myself to think I should be a good teacher of myself.”