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

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"I think I know what you are thinking," she said, "but I want to hear you answer your own question."

"Why do things come right so often, do you think, Davie?" repeated Donal.

"Is it," returned Davie, "because they were made right to begin with?"

"There is much in that, Davie; but there is a better reason than that. It is because things are alive, and the life at the heart of them, that which keeps them going, is the great, beautiful God. So the sun for ever returns after the clouds. A doubting man, like him who wrote the book of Ecclesiasties, puts the evil last, and says 'the clouds return after the rain;' but the Christian knows that

One has mastery Who makes the joy the last in every song."

"You speak like one who has suffered!" said Arctura, with a kind look in his face.

"Who has not that lives?"

"It is how you are able to help others!"

"Am I able to help others? I am very glad to hear it. My ambition would be to help, if I had any ambition. But if I am able, it is because I have been helped myself, not because I have suffered."

"Will you tell me what you mean by saying you have no ambition?"

"Where your work is laid out for you, there is no room for ambition: you have got your work to do!-But give me your hand, my lady; put your other hand on my shoulder. You stop there, Davie, and don't move till I come to you. Now, my lady-a little jump! That's it! Now you are safe!-You were not afraid, were you?"

"Not in the least. But did you come here in the dark?"

"Yes. There is this advantage in the dark: you do not see how dangerous the way is. We take the darkness about us for the source of our difficulties: it is a great mistake. Christian would hardly have dared go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, had he not had the shield of the darkness all about him."

"Can the darkness be a shield? Is it not the evil thing?"

"Yes, the dark that is within us-the dark of distrust and unwillingness, but not the outside dark of mere human ignorance. Where we do not see, we are protected. Where we are most ignorant and most in danger, is in those things that affect the life of God in us: there the Father is every moment watching his child. If he were not constantly pardoning and punishing our sins, what would become of us! We must learn to trust him about our faults as much as about everything else!"

In the earnestness of his talk he had stopped, but now turned and went on.

"There is my land-, or roof-mark rather!" he said, "-that chimney-stack! Close by it I heard the music very near me indeed-when all at once the darkness and the wind came together so thick that I could do nothing more. We shall do better now in the daylight-and three of us instead of one!"

"What a huge block of chimneys!" said Arctura.

"Is it not!" returned Donal. "It indicates the hugeness of the building below us, of which we can see so little. Like the volcanoes of the world, it tells us how much fire is necessary to keep our dwelling warm."

"I thought it was the sun that kept the earth warm," said Davie.

"So it is, but not the sun alone. The earth is like a man: the great glowing fire is God in the heart of the earth, and the great sun is God in the sky, keeping it warm on the other side. Our gladness and pleasure, our trouble when we do wrong, our love for all about us, that is God inside us; and the beautiful things and lovable people, and all the lessons of life in history and poetry, in the Bible, and in whatever comes to us, is God outside of us. Every life is between two great fires of the love of God. So long as we do not give ourselves up heartily to him, we fear his fire will burn us. And burn us it does when we go against its flames and not with them, refusing to burn with the fire with which God is always burning. When we try to put it out, or oppose it, or get away from it, then indeed it burns!"

"I think I know," said Davie.

Arctura held her peace.

"But now," said Donal, "I must go round and have a peep at the other side of the chimney-stack."

He disappeared, and Arctura and Davie stood waiting his return. They looked each in the other's face with the delight of consciously sharing a great adventure. Beyond their feet lay the wide country and the great sea; over them the sky with the sun in it going down towards the mountains; under their feet the mighty old pile that was their home; and under that the earth with its molten heart of fire.

But Davie's look soon changed to one of triumph in his tutor. "Is is not grand," it said, "to be all day with a man like that-talking to you and teaching you?" That at least was how Arctura interpreted it, reading in it almost an assertion of superiority, in as much as this man was his tutor and not hers. She replied to the look in words:-

"I am his pupil, too, Davie," she said, "though Mr. Grant does not know it."

"How can that be," answered Davie, "when you are afraid of him? I am not a bit afraid of him!"

"How do you know I am afraid of him?" she asked.

"Oh, anybody could see that!"

She was afraid she had spoken foolishly, and Davie might repeat her words: she did not desire to hasten further intimacy with Donal; things were going in that direction fast enough! Her eyes, avoiding Davie's, kept reconnoitring the stack of chimneys.

"Aren't you glad to have such a castle all for your own-to do what you like with, Arkie? You know you could pull it all to pieces if you liked!"

"Would it be less mine," said Arctura, "if I was not at liberty to pull it all to pieces? And would it be more mine when I had pulled it to pieces, Davie?"

Donal was coming round the side of the stack, and heard what she said. It pleased him, for it was not a little in his own style.

"What makes a thing your own, do you think, Davie?" she went on.

"To be able to do with it what you like," replied Davie.

"Whether that be good or bad?"

"Yes, I think so," answered Davie, doubtfully.

"Then I think you are quite wrong," she rejoined. "The moment you begin to use a thing wrong, that moment you make it less yours. I can't quite explain it, but that is how it looks to me."

She ceased, and after a moment Donal took up the question.

"Lady Arctura is quite right, Davie," he said. "The nature, that is the good of a thing, is that only by which it can be possessed. Any other possession is like slave-owning; it is not a righteous having. The right and the power to use it to its true purpose, and the using it so, are the conditions that make a thing ours. To have the right and the power, and not use it so, would be to make the thing less ours than anybody's.-Suppose you had a very beautiful picture, but from some defect in your sight you could never see that picture as it really was, while a servant in your house not only saw it as it was meant to be seen, but had such delight in gazing on it, that even in his dreams it came to him, and made him think of things he would not have thought of but for it:-which of you, you or the servant in your house, would have the more real possession of that picture? You could sell it away from yourself, and never know anything about it more; but you could not by all the power of a tyrant take it from your servant."

"Ah, now I understand!" said Davie, with a look at lady Arctura which seemed to say, "You see how Mr. Grant can make me understand!"

"I wonder," said lady Arctura, "what that curious opening in the side of the chimney-stack means! It can't be for smoke to come out at!"

"No," said Donal; "there is not a mark of smoke about it. If it had been meant for that, it would hardly have been put half-way from the top! I can't make it out! A hole like that in any chimney must surely interfere with the draught! I must get a ladder!"

"Let me climb on your shoulders, Mr. Grant," said Davie.

"Come then; up you go!" said Donal.

And up went Davie, and peeped into the horizontal slit.

"It looks very like a chimney," he said, turning his head and thrusting it in sideways. "It goes right down to somewhere," he added, bringing his head out again, "but there is something across it a little way down-to prevent the jackdaws from tumbling in, I suppose."

"What is it?" asked Donal.

"Something like a grating," answered Davie; "-no, not a grating exactly; it is what you might call a grating, but it seems made of wires. I don't think it would keep a strong bird out if he wanted to get in."

"Aha!" said Donal to himself; "what if those wires be tuned! Did you ever see an aeolian harp, my lady?" he asked: "I never did."

"Yes," answered lady Arctura, "-once, when I was a little girl. And now you suggest it, I think the sounds we hear are not unlike those of an aeolian harp! The strings are all the same length, if I remember. But I do not understand the principle. They seem all to play together, and make the strangest, wildest harmonies, when the wind blows across them in a particular way."

"I fancy then we have found the nest of our music-bird!" said Donal. "The wires Davie speaks of may be the strings of an aeolian harp! I wonder if there could be a draught across them! I must get up and see! I must go and get a ladder!"

"But how could there be an aeolian harp up here?" said Arctura.

"It will be time enough to answer that question," replied Donal, "when it changes to, 'How did an aeolian harp get up here?' Something is here that wants accounting for: it may be an aeolian harp!"

"But in a chimney! The soot would spoil the strings!"

"Then perhaps it is not a chimney: is there any sign of soot about, Davie?"

"No, sir; there is nothing but clean stone and lime."

"You see, my lady! We do not even know that it is a chimney!"

"What else can it be, standing with the rest?"

"It may have been built for one; but if it had ever been used for one, the marks of smoke would remain, had it been disused ever so long. But to-morrow I will bring up a ladder."

"Could you not do it now?" said Arctura, almost coaxingly. "I should so like to have the thing settled!"

"As you please, my lady! I will go at