Warlock o' Glenwarlock, George MacDonald [ebook reader browser txt] 📗

leaving Castle Warlock to-day."

"You will spend the night with me then?"

"I will."

"But not in that room, you know."

"Anywhere you please in the house, my lord, except my mother's room."

"Then I'll stop.Joan, you may amuse yourself; we are not going till to-morrow."

The laird smiled; he could not flatter himself with the hope of so speedy a departure. Joan turned to Cosmo.

"Will you take me about the place?" she said.

"If you mean in-doors," interposed the laird. "It is a curious old house, and might interest you a little."

"I should like nothing better. May I go with Cosmo?"

"Certainly: he will be delighted to attend your ladyship.Here are the keys of the cabinets in the drawing-room, Cosmo. Her ladyship may like to look at some of their contents."

"I hardly know enough about them," returned Cosmo. "Won't you come yourself, father, and show them to us?"

It was the first time the boy used the appellation.

"If they are not worth looking at in themselves, the facts about them cannot be of much consequence, my boy," answered the laird.

He was unwilling to leave Lord Mergwain. Lady Joan and Cosmo went without him.

"Perhaps we may follow you by and by," said the laird.

"Is the place very old, Cosmo?" asked Lady Joan on their way.

"Nobody knows how old the oldest part of it is," answered Cosmo, "though dates are assigned to the most of what you will see to-day. But you must ask my father; I do not know much of the history of it. I know the place itself, though, as well as he does. I fancy I know nearly every visible stone of it."

"You are very fond of it, then?"

"There never could be any place like it to me, my lady. I know it is not very beautiful, but I love it none the less for that. I sometimes think I love it the more for its ruggednessugliness, if you please to call it so. If my mother had not been beautiful, I should love her all the same.""and think there wasn't anybody like her," he was going to add, but checked himself, remembering that of course there was not.

Arrived in the drawing-room, whither Cosmo led her first, Lady Joan took her former place by the fire, and sat staring into it. She did not know what to make of what she saw and heard. How COULD people be happy, she thought, in such a dreary, cold, wretched country, with such poverty-stricken home-surroundings, and nothing to amuse them from one week's end to another? Yet they seemed to be happy to a degree she knew nothing of! For alas, her home was far from a blessed one; and as she had no fountain open in herself, but looked entirely to foreign supply for her life-necessities, and as such never can be so supplied, her life was not a flourishing one.

There are souls innumerable in the world, as dry as the Sahara desertsouls which, when they look most gay and summer-like, are only flaunting the flowers gathered from other people's gardens, stuck without roots into their own unproducing soil. Oh, the dreariness, the sandy sadness of such poor arid souls! They are hungry, and eat husks; they are thirsty, and drink hot wine; their sleep is a stupor, and their life, if not an unrest, then a yielded decay. Only when praised or admired do they feel as if they lived! But Joan was not yet of such. She had had too much discomfort to have entered yet into their number. There was water not yet far from the surface of her consciousness.

With no little pleasure and some pride, Cosmo proceeded to take the family treasures from their shelves; but, alas! most of them were common to the eyes of one who also had a family and a history, lived in a much larger, if not half so old a house, and had had amongst her ancestors more than one with a liking for antiquities, oddities, and bibelots. Lady Joan regarded them listlessly, willing to seem to attend to the boy, but, with her thoughts far away, while now and then she turned a weary gaze towards the next window: all she saw thence was a great, mounded country, dreary as sunshine and white cold could make it. Storm, driving endless whirls of spectral snow, would have been less dreary to her than the smiling of this cold antagonism. It was a picture of her own life. Evil greater than she knew had spread a winter around her. If her father suffered for the sins of his fathers, she suffered for his, and had for them to dwell in desolation and loneliness.

One thing after another Cosmo brought her, but none of them seemed much to interest her. She knew the sort of most of them.

"This is said to be solid silver," he remarked, as he laid on a chair beside her a curious little statuette of a horse, trapped and decorated in Indian graving, and having its whole surface covered with an involved and rich ornamental design. Its eyes were, or seemed to be rubies, and saddle and bridle and housing were studded with small gems. There was little merit in the art of it beyond the engraving, but Cosmo saw the eyes of the lady fixed upon it, with a strange look in them.

"That is the only thing they say the old captain ever gave his brother, my great-grand-father," said Cosmo. "But I beg your pardon," he added, "I have never told you the story of the old captain!"

The boy already felt as if he had known their guest of a night for years; the hearts of the young are divinely hospitable, which is one of the things that make children the SUCH of the kingdom of heaven.

Lady Joan took the horse in her hand, and looked at it more closely.

"It is very heavy!" she remarked.

"It is said to be solid silver," repeated Cosmo.

She laid it down, and put her hand to her forehead, but said nothing.

They heard the steps and voices of the two gentlemen ascending the stair. Lady Joan caught up the horse, rose hastily, and holding it out to Cosmo, said,

"Quick! quick! put it away. Don't let my father see it."

Cosmo cast on her one look of surprise, and obeyed at once, restored it to its place, and had just closed the doors of the cabinet, when Lord Mergwain and his father entered the room.

They, were a peculiar-looking pairLord Mergwain in antiquated dress, not a little worn, and neither very clean nor in very good conditiona snuffy, dilapidated, miserable, feeble old man, with a carriage where doubt seemed rooted in apprehension, every other moment casting about him a glance of enquiry, as if an evil spirit came running to the mouth of his eye-caves, looked out, and retreated; and the laird behind him, a head higher, crowned with his red night-cap, and dressed as I have already described, looking older than his years, but bearing on his face the repose of discomfort accepted, his eye keen and clear, and, when turned on his guest, filled with compassion rather than hospitality. He was walking more erect than usual, either in recognition of the lady's presence, or from a feeling of protection towards her father.

"Now, my lord," he said, as they advanced from the door, "we will set you in a warm corner by the fire, and you must make the best of it. We can't have things all as we should like them. That is not what the world was made for."

His lordship returned him no answer, but threw a queer look from under his black wiga look of superior knowledgeof the wisdom of this world.

"You are an old fool," it said; "but you are master here! Ah! how little you know!"

He walked tottering to the fire where Cosmo had already set for him a chair. Something in the look of it displeased him. He glanced round the room.

"Fetch me that chair, my boy," he said, not unkindly, and Cosmo hastened to substitute the one he indicated. The laird placed a tall screen behind it. His lordship dropped into the chair, and began to rub his knees with his hands, and gaze into the fire. Lady Joan rearranged her skirts, and for a moment the little circle looked as if each was about to settle down to some mild enjoyment of the others. Cosmo drew a chair as near Lady Joan as he judged politeness would permit. The laird made up the fire, and turned away, saying he must go and see the sick horse.

"Mr. Warlock!" said Lord Mergwain, and spoke with a snarl, "you will not deprive us of the only pleasure we havethat of your company?"

"I shall be back in a few minutes, my lord," replied his host; and added, "I must see about lunch too."

"That was wonderful claret!" said his lordship, thoughtfully.

"I shall see to the claret, my lord."

"If I MIGHT suggest, let it be brought here. A gentle airing under my own eye, just an introduction to the fire, would improve what is otherwise perfect.And look here," he added, as, with a kindly bow of assent, the laird was going, "you haven't got a pack of cards, have you?"

"I believe there is a pack somewhere in the house," replied the laird, "but it is very old, and I fear too much soiled for your lordship's hands."

"Oh, confound the dirt!" said his lordship. "Let us have them. They're the only thing to make the time pass."

"Have you a library?" asked Lady Joanmainly to say something, for she was not particularly fond of books; like most people she had not yet learned to read.

"What do you want with a library?" growled her father. "Books are nothing but a pack of lies, not half so good for killing time as a pack of cards. You're going to play a rubber, not to read books!"

"With pleasure, papa," responded Lady Joan.

" I don't want to kill the time. I should like to keep it alive for ever," said Cosmo, with a worshipping look at the beautiful ladya summer-bird of heaven that had strayed into their lonely winter.

"Hold your tongue; you are an idiot!" said his lordship angrily. "Old and young," he went on, unaware of utterance, "the breed is idiotic. 'Tis time it were played out."

Cosmo's eyes flashed. But the rudesby was too old to be served as he had served the schoolmaster! He was their guest too, and the father of the lady by his side!

The hand of the lady stole to his, and patting it gently, said, as plainly as if it had been her mouth, "Don't mind him; he is an old man, and does not know what he is saying." He looked up in her face, and his anger was gone.

"Come with me," he said, rising; "I will show you what books we have. There may be one you would like another time. We shall be back before the cards come."

"Joan!" cried her father, "sit still."

She glanced an appeal for consideration to Cosmo, and did not move. Cosmo sat down again. A few minutes passed in silence. Father and daughter stared into the fire. So did Cosmo. But into what different three worlds did the fire stare! The old man rose and went to the window.

"I MUST