Donal Grant, George MacDonald [classic novels for teens txt] 📗

think not. I think too I never heard it on a still summer night."

"Do you think it comes in all storms?"

"I think not."

"Then perhaps it has something to do not merely with the wind, but with the direction of the wind!"

"Perhaps. I cannot say."

"That might account for the uncertainty of its visits! The instrument may be accessible, yet its converse with the operating power so rare that it has not yet been discovered. It is a case in which experiment is not permitted us: we cannot make a wind blow, neither can we vary the direction of the wind blowing; observation alone is left us, and that can be only at such times when the sound is heard."

"Then you can do nothing till the music comes again?"

"I think I can do something now; for, last night I seemed so near the place whence the sounds were coming, that the eye may now be able to supplement the ear, and find the music-bird silent on her nest. If the wind fall, as I think it will in the afternoon, I shall go again and see whether I can find anything. I noticed last night that simultaneously with the sound came a change in the wind-towards the south, I think.-What a night it was after I left you!"

"I think," said Arctura, "the wind has something to do with my uncle's fits. Was there anything very strange about it last night? When the wind blows so angrily, I always think of that passage about the prince of the power of the air being the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. Tell me what it means."

"I do not know what it means," answered Donal; "but I suppose the epithet involves a symbol of the difference between the wind of God that inspires the spiritual true self of man, and the wind of the world that works by thousands of impulses and influences in the lower, the selfish self of children that will not obey. I will look at the passage and see what I can make out of it. Only the spiritual and the natural blend so that we may one day be astonished!-Would you like to join the music-hunt, my lady?"

"Do you mean, go on the roof? Should I be able?"

"I would not have you go in the night, and the wind blowing," said Donal with a laugh; "but you can come and see, and judge for yourself. The bartizan is the only anxious place, but as I mean to take Davie with me, you may think I do not count it very dangerous!"

"Will it be safe for Davie?"

"I can venture more with Davie than with another: he obeys in a moment."

"I will obey too if you will take me," said Arctura.

"Then, please, come to the schoolroom at four o'clock. But we shall not go except the wind be fallen."

When Davie heard what his tutor proposed, he was filled with the restlessness of anticipation. Often while helping Donal with his fuel, he had gazed up at him on the roof with longing eyes, but Donal had never let him go upon it.


CHAPTER XLI.

THE MUSIC-NEST.

The hour came, and with the very stroke of the clock, lady Arctura and Davie were in the schoolroom. A moment more, and they set out to climb the spiral of Baliol's tower.

But what a different lady was Arctura this afternoon! She was cheerful, even merry-with Davie, almost jolly. Her soul had many alternating lights and glooms, but it was seldom or never now so clouded as when first Donal saw her. In the solitude of her chamber, where most the simple soul should be conscious of life as a blessedness, she was yet often haunted by ghastly shapes of fear; but there also other forms had begun to draw nigh to her; sweetest rays of hope would ever and anon break through the clouds, and mock the darkness from her presence. Perhaps God might mean as thoroughly well by her as even her imagination could wish!

Does a dull reader remark that hers was a diseased state of mind?-I answer, The more she needed to be saved from it with the only real deliverance from any ill! But her misery, however diseased, was infinitely more reasonable than the healthy joy of such as trouble themselves about nothing. Some sicknesses are better than any but the true health.

"I never thought you were like this, Arkie!" said Davie. "You are just as if you had come to school to Mr. Grant! You would soon know how much happier it is to have somebody you must mind!"

"If having me, Davie," said Donal, "doesn't help you to be happy without me, there will not have been much good done. What I want most to teach you is, to leave the door always on the latch, for some one-you know whom I mean-to come in."

"Race me up the stair, Arkie," said Davie, when they came to the foot of the spiral.

"Very well," assented his cousin.

"Which side will you have-the broad or the narrow?"

"The broad."

"Well then-one, two, three, and away we go!"

Davie mounted like a clever goat, his hand and arm on the newel, and slipping lightly round it. Arctura's ascent was easier but slower: she found her garments in her way, therefore yielded the race, and waited for Donal. Davie, thinking he heard her footsteps behind him all the time, flew up shrieking with the sweet terror of love's pursuit.

"What a darling the boy has grown!" said Arctura when Donal overtook her.

"Yes," answered Donal; "one would think such a child might run straight into the kingdom of heaven; but I suppose he must have his temptations and trials first: out of the storm alone comes the true peace."

"Will peace come out of all storms?"

"I trust so. Every pain and every fear, every doubt is a cry after God. What mother refuses to go to her child because he is only crying-not calling her by name!"

"Oh, if I could but believe so about God! For if it be all right with God-I mean if God be such a God as to be loved with the heart and soul of loving, then all is well. Is it not, Mr. Grant?"

"Indeed it is!-And you are not far from the kingdom of heaven," he was on the point of saying, but did not-because she was in it already, only unable yet to verify the things around her, like the man who had but half-way received his sight.

When they reached the top, he took them past his door, and higher up the stair to the next, opening on the bartizan. Here he said lady Arctura must come with him first, and Davie must wait till he came back for him. When he had them both safe on the roof, he told Davie to keep close to his cousin or himself all the time. He showed them first his stores of fuel-his ammunition, he said, for fighting the winter. Next he pointed out where he stood when first he heard the music the night before, and set down his bucket to follow it; and where he found the bucket, blown thither by the wind, when he came back to feel for it in the dark. Then he began to lead them, as nearly as he could, the way he had then gone, but with some, for Arctura's sake, desirable detours: over one steep-sloping roof they had to cross, he found a little stair up the middle, and down the other side.

They came to a part where he was not quite sure about the way. As he stopped to bethink himself, they turned and looked eastward. The sea was shining in the sun, and the flat wet country between was so bright that they could not tell where the land ended and the sea began. But as they gazed a great cloud came over the sun, the sea turned cold and gray as death-a true March sea, and the land lay low and desolate between. The spring was gone and the winter was there. A gust of wind, full of keen hail, drove sharp in their faces.

"Ah, that settles the question!" said Donal. "The music-bird must wait. We will call upon her another day.-It is funny, isn't it, Davie, to go a bird's-nesting after music on the roof of a house?"

"Hark!" said Arctura; "I think I heard the music-bird!-She wants us to find her nest! I really don't think we ought to go back for a little blast of wind, and a few pellets of hail! What do you think, Davie?"

"Oh, for me, I wouldn't turn for ever so big a storm!" said Davie; "but you know, Arkie, it's not you or me, Arkie! Mr. Grant is the captain of this expedition, and we must do as he bids us."

"Oh, surely, Davie! I never meant to dispute that. Only Mr. Grant is not a tyrant; he will let a lady say what she thinks!"

"Oh, yes, or a boy either! He likes me to say what I think! He says we can't get at each other without. And do you know-he obeys me sometimes!"

Arctura glanced a keen question at the boy.

"It is quite true!" said Davie, while Donal listened smiling. "Last winter, for days together-not all day, you know: I had to obey him most of the time! but at certain times, I was as sure of Mr. Grant doing as I told him, as he is now of me doing as he tells me."

"What times were those?" asked Arctura, thinking to hear of some odd pedagogic device.

"When I was teaching him to skate!" answered Davie, in a triumph of remembrance. "He said I knew better than he there, and so he would obey me. You wouldn't believe how splendidly he did it, Arkie-out and out!" concluded Davie, in a tone almost of awe.

"Oh, yes, I would believe it-perfectly!" said Arctura.

Donal suddenly threw an arm round each of them, and pulled them down sitting. The same instant a fierce blast burst upon the roof. He had seen the squall whitening the sea, and looking nearer home saw the tops of the trees between streaming level towards the castle. But seated they were in no danger.

"Hark!" said Arctura again; "there it is!"

They all heard the wailing cry of the ghost-music. But while the blast continued they dared not pursue their hunt. It kept on in fits and gusts till the squall ceased-as suddenly almost as it had burst. The sky cleared, and the sun shone as a March sun can. But the blundering blasts and the swan-shot of the flying hail were all about still.

"When the storm is upon us," remarked Donal, as they rose from their crouching position, "it seems as if there never could be sunshine more; but our hopelessness does not keep back the sun when his hour to shine is come."

"I understand!" said Arctura: "when one is miserable, misery seems the law of being; and in the midst of it dwells some thought which nothing can ever set right! All at once it is gone, broken up and gone, like that hail-cloud. It just looks its own foolishness and vanishes."

"Do you know why things so often come right?" said Donal. "-I would say always come right, but that is matter of faith, not sight."

Arctura did not answer at once.