  Produced by Al Haines. [image] Cover art FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE BY MAY BATEMAN AUTHOR OF WARWICK COLONIAL LIBRARY Sole Agents for India and the British Colonies Dramatic and all other rights reserved RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, TO MRS. GEORGE ALEXANDER IN MEMORY OF CONTENTS PART I PART II PART III PART IV PART V PART I THE GOAD "I have not, as some do, bought penitence with pleasure!"—SHELLEY. "When the soul arms for battle she goes forth alone."—LYTTON. FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE CHAPTER I "The potter, also tempering soft earth, with labour fashioneth every vessel for our service, and of the same clay he maketh both vessels that are for clean uses, and likewise such as serve to the contrary; but what is the use of these, the potter is the judge."—Wisdom (Douay Version). Two men, leisurely climbing a steep moor in the north of Perthshire, stopped near the summit to read a sign-post which pointed out the way to Glune. No one was in sight. Poverty held Glune in bondage, and such attractions as she yet could offer were not of the type which appeal to casual trippers and excursionists, eager for gossip and refreshment after a stiff walk up-hill. For a solitary shop, from which emerged the pervading smells of leather, peppermint and onions, represented all that local enterprise could compass, even at Bruchill, the nearest village. Cottage upon cottage was empty, and those that were still inhabited, showed evidence of neglect. Women standing at their doors, stared dully at the unaccustomed travellers; children playing in the ill-kept gardens were heavy-eyed and pallid. No joy of life, no hospitality was offered. The most persevering Bohemian or antiquarian, drawn to the desolate spot by love of adventure or tradition, was eventually pulled up short at sight of the empty lodge, the impenetrable castle gates, high and with narrow grilles, which shut in the vast wilderness of tangled growth and ruin. Grief and sorrow had concentrated about Glune, until, for Scotsmen, it had become a second Escorial. Inanimate things are as tragic in their way as human beings. A man or woman, however crushed and broken, has moments of quickened vitality in which hope springs, even if mockingly. Otherwise brains would snap. But a room which a strong personality has made vital with its presence, becomes temporarily as a place of the dead. The Escorial does not depend on shape or colouring for its impression of gloom; its air breathes tragedy on the tenderest April morning. Glune had something of that same relentless force of character which makes the Escorial one with the relentless character of its founder. But whereas jolting trains and the pitiless volubility of Cook's guides bring the palace in view a full hour before you reach it, there was but a single point from which Glune actually could be seen, so sheltered was it from inquisitive eyes by the reserve and mystery of wood and hill. Had there been one to see, he might have wondered what freak of fate had led the present travellers to a spot so lonely and obscure, and again, what chances had combined in fellowship two men outwardly quite incompatible. Each of them had the hall-mark of the public school upon him, but there their likeness ended. For the elder was of the type which willingly pays a guinea to advertise its arrivals and departures in the Morning Post; while the younger was a mere boy, whose heart as yet stirred only to the love of sport. Explorers, shooters of big game, men who had dared and done, were Cummings' models. Where Brand, his companion, was hourly handicapped by ill-health, the young man's greatest trial as yet was his total inability to achieve what could be called a moustache by any but the most biassed relative. Brand was indeed insignificant, one degree only removed from actual deformity. His mouth twisted uncontrollably when he smiled, and one shoulder was higher than the other, although a well-known tailor had done his best to remedy the defect. His eyes, set close together, were unusually light in tone, and apt to evade the glance direct. He had a trim Vandyke beard, and was dressed neatly and well. His complexion was pale, and he bore his single eye-glass as one who tolerates the defects it magnifies, because he is convinced that his Creator's designs are generally crude. Some women found him interesting; the more refined shrank back from him instinctively, and wondered why. On the other hand, his knowledge of great cities and their haunts at nightfall, and an unusual memory and gift of tongues lent him an air of distinction which was admired and imitated by younger men within his circle. Cummings, for instance, thought he leaned upon a stick rather from choice than necessity, and would have given a fortune to exchange his own stereotyped courtesies for Brand's easy assurance. For the lad, tall and athletic, with a trick of blushing, had yet to find himself. The pages of his life, so far, were singularly blank. He had the sensitive nostrils and frank gaze of a man susceptible—almost too susceptible—to influence and impressions, yet good breeding had often made him elude opportunities which less artistic natures coveted. That beauty of any kind would sway him you saw at a glance; beauty of soul and shape, Divine and human. Had he not in certain instances been kept back by the fitness of things, he would have invariably given himself joyously to its influence, as a swimmer to the sea, playing with it, while knowing that it had the power to drown. His eyes were a dreamer's eyes, able to see the Beatific Vision on Clapham Common—a faculty not often met with in a man so broad of chest and lean of flank. So far as personal courage went, Cummings' might have carried him through almost any form of mediÆval torture, except the deprivation of his means of washing. At Eton and Sandhurst he had passed through many dubious escapades unscathed, delightfully blind to "scum and rot," as he mentally summed up certain vagaries of his companions. But he was now of the age which believes worldly experience to be a necessary factor of life. In the last few days he had begun to be ashamed of his own ignorance of inessential things. It diverted Brand to play with, some said corrupt, such natures. He had won the lad as tactfully as a woman might have done, luring him step by step until confidence was established. Once that was done, the rest was easy. Little by little the sanctuary of Cummings' thoughts was invaded; his circumstances, his surroundings, his hopes betrayed, until his soul lay naked in the day. Another man, with so definite an end in view as Brand had, might have hastened matters and spoilt all. He made no such mistake. "Looks and means," he said now dreamily, in the quiet high-bred voice, which was one of his most valuable assets. "You ought to do well in life, with both in your grasp. Few women withstand either, and none both; and later on you'll realize that success in life nearly always augurs a swish of frills and furbelows in the background." He looked at Cummings critically. "Remember what wins women wins fame. She's wanton too. You have more than your share of good things, my dear fellow. The only point you really lack is confidence, the recognition that you can hold your own as well in a crowd as in a tÊte-À-tÊte. If a man doesn't believe in himself he'll never get even a woman to believe in him." "Oh, come now, I always think I'm such an awful ass," Cummings protested. His conversation was still in the ejaculatory stage. But he was pleasantly excited. What boy of his age would be unsusceptible to the flattery of being sought after by an older man? A chance meal in an anglers' inn, where space and table-cloths were equally limited, had given Brand his looked-for opportunity; a glass or two of Burgundy, and the discovery of a remote connection, warmed the acquaintance into friendship. Across the border such kinship made a closer tie than south of the Tweed, Brand asserted. The two men joined forces on the strength of the statement. Long walks and rides were the result—the first links in a chain which was to rivet more than one future. "Men of my age are not apt to make mistakes in character," the elder man continued, after a pause. Cummings, eagerly listening, failed to see the irony of his tone. "You say you haven't brains enough for diplomacy; I beg to differ. That's a career worthy of a man of influence, like you. With a good private income such as you have, and Calvert to back you—why, you could pull the strings of the world, if some one showed you how to set about it, and incidentally have a good time." "We've always gone in for the Army or the Church in our family, you see," said Cummings, simply disposing of the question. "As to what I've got in the money line it isn't worth speaking of; two thousand a year doesn't go very far in the Cavalry. Besides, of course my uncle might marry, and he's not absolutely bound to leave me his money; in any case I never count on it, though I'm supposed to be his heir. Rather a low-down game waiting for a dead man's shoes, don't you think?" He stopped awkwardly, finding it rather difficult to frame the right words in the face of Brand's mocking smile. By now they had left the main road, striking a sheep track across the narrow pass which separated Glune from distant Bruchill. Even the broad road had been singularly deserted; here, neither browsing cattle nor sheep broke the gloomy lines of the spurs, deepening from purple to indigo. Grey clouds hung low, heavy with tears. The silence was eerie; one of the two men felt its spell. To detach yourself from man is often to come near to God, but there was something sinister in this unsmiling landscape, which savoured more of the powers of darkness than of light. So far the two had walked in close companionship, but now, quickened by the wider life of the hills, and lashed by the mountain air, Cummings unconsciously set a pace which kept time with his rapid thoughts. Brand's words fell meaninglessly in his ears, like pebbles thrown to lure a terrier but sucked in by the tide before the dog had time to reach them. Brand tried to keep up with his companion, but failed. His forehead grew clammy with the effort. He broke down at last, catching his breath with a choking cry that pulled up Cummings abruptly in his hot pursuit of fugitive visions. The boy turned, scarlet and confused. "I'm awfully sorry I dashed off like that. Here, take a pull from the flask. Do forgive me, old chap. It was beastly bad form of me forgetting——" He stopped in embarrassment, taken aback by the curious change that broke out in dull white patches on Brand's face at his words. But Brand was of the world worldly, not likely to lose the object he had in view because of a temporary obstacle which tact could bridge. There was no trace of resentment in his answer. "You must remember my grey hairs. I'm quite ready to rest if you are. There's lots of time, and you've had rather a strenuous week, I gather? Although I'm a distant relation, I've only actually met Martin Calvert once, and then I found him a tough customer. Isn't a visit there rather a test of endurance? A bit of a bore between ourselves, eh? No leniency to one's little failings to be met with in that quarter. People say blood is thicker than water; one's relations always think it means that one is thicker-skinned." "My uncle has been most awfully good to me, you know," Cummings said, with some embarrassment. Brand flicked his cigar ash lightly. "A millionaire's virtues can be seen with the naked eye, my good fellow. Once you step into the dead man's shoes of which we were speaking just now, your friends and enemies alike will find you possessed of a thousand admirable qualities, to whose existence they were blind before. 'To him that hath shall be given' is about the only scriptural injunction that society ever lays to heart, you know." "Oh, come now, that's a bit satirical," cried Cummings impatiently, flushing again. The pass had narrowed into a gloomy gorge, through which it was impossible for two to walk abreast. The younger man stopped short, glad of an excuse to change the conversation. "What extraordinary country! Nothing but waste land. What's wrong with the soil? It was right enough by Bruchill. Whom on earth does this belong to?" It was said of Henry Brand in Pall Mall clubs, that were he hurled headlong into the heart of Central Africa he would know the name and sum up the exact precedence of any tribe he came across. He answered deliberately. "There are about thirty thousand acres of this desert all told. And it belongs to Farquharson of Glune. "Farquharson of Glune," Cummings repeated. The name rang familiarly. "Didn't a Farquharson once marry one of the Kilmaurs? Stay—I seem to remember some story—wasn't there a rumour——" He broke off abruptly, knitting his brow. "Stories! There have always been stories about Glune and its inmates, past and present," said Brand. "Tragedies mostly. The Farquharsons of Glune are all men of violence; leaders of forlorn hopes; knights-errant to distressed damsels, saints or outcasts; fierce heroes from whose doings tiresome bards make tiresome music—you know the sort of thing." Cummings not only knew "the sort of thing," but held it very sacred, so he kept his peace. "Well, what's the present Farquharson of Glune thinking about to let good land lie fallow like this?" he asked. "Farquharson of Glune is about ten years old," said Brand. He gave his explanations complacently, with the air of a broker propitiating his client with some valuable tip. "He lives with his mother, and they're poor. There are two kinds of poverty as you know, the poverty of the man who sells one or two horses out of his racing stud, and stops playing bridge if the points are more than half-a-crown a hundred, and the poverty which slowly starves itself to death to keep inviolate the terraces and gardens and bedchambers which Royalty has—honoured with its presence." He stopped to cut and light another cigar; he was a connoisseur in cigars, the bill for which was paid by other men. "The last is the kind of poverty the Farquharsons could tell you all about—if they told anybody anything." "Poor souls! And, meantime, this all runs to waste. The timber's excellent—why don't they sell it? Does Kilmaurs know anything about it all? I thought Scotch people prided themselves on hanging together. The clan's rich enough. Why can't somebody buy——" The elder man interrupted with a laugh. "Buy Glune! Mrs. Farquharson would starve first. Probably will. She's got the old Covenanter blood in her veins. It leaves taints. The elder son—did you ever hear how Douglas Farquharson died?" He paused significantly. Cummings hesitated. "Something about it; not a pretty story." Brand shrugged his shoulders. "Suicide is seldom artistic. Douglas was always a bungler; he tried several means before he was successful. Mrs. Farquharson turned off the whole staff of servants and labourers on the estate (with the exception of her own old nurse, who had lived with her since childhood) on the day of the funeral. Everything that could be sold with decency was sold; everything, that is to say, that could be taken from the house by night. To the best of my belief neither friend nor relation has been inside Glune since, nor is Richard allowed outside the gates, except to go to the kirk on Sunday. You know how entertaining that is—black gown, tuning fork, and paraphrases—damnation measured out by the square yard. A cheerful outlook for a lad, isn't it?" "Cheerful!" Cummings echoed the word with a deep breath. It struck him for the first time that he took too many things in this world for granted, that there were indeed a hundred and one good times in such a life as his which he failed to appreciate fully. He had imagination; he could enter into the lonely boy's revolt at the betrayal of his childhood, his indignation at the grey life Glune demanded, alike tributes to its power. Memories of his own pleasant childhood came back to him in vivid contrast, recalling its sunshine and glow: competition and excitement, friendly rivalries in work and play; small sacrifices for sport that brought their own reward; his father's pride in him, his mother's love, their rooted—if delightfully absurd—conviction that he was bound to excel in anything he undertook, his personal ardour and ambition, the thrill of success.... He turned impulsively. "There must be something to do? Surely one could do something?" Brand laughed again. "It's hardly your business, is it?" he asked in a calm philosophical tone that shamed the young man's enthusiasm into silence. "Besides, it would be interference in what parsons tell us is the great scheme." The boy winced. His father had come into the family living as a matter of course; a genial atmosphere of piety had sweetened the limited disappointments of Cummings' youth. "That bugbear of religion," Brand went on, "what atrocities are committed in its name! 'God made all men equal.' What a lie! Some men are born to go under. In the fight for mere existence no allowance is made for frailty. Unless a man can keep up with his fellows, he must drop out of life's race. Some of us are doomed at the outset, fashioned and shaped and moulded in God's image, only to be ground down to powder by the great Juggernaut of circumstance, like that beetle under your heel." He pointed contemptuously to the road. "The days of miracles are passed, if they ever existed. Unless Richard Farquharson gets away from his surroundings, he will never have a chance in life. Stunted in mind and doubtless in growth, half starved, friendless, and unloved, pent up all day with a mad mother and an old woman of seventy—what can he do? It wasn't only in the much abused Herod's time that innocents were massacred. Take the police records of to-day.... No! don't, they're ugly reading." He stopped again. "Richard Farquharson's next-of-kin is now at Oxford. He has a father who moves with the times. He'll get on. The patriots of old bought titles with their blood, but gold is cheaper. This man wiped off one of a prince's debts, and got a knighthood for the privilege." "Look," said Cummings suddenly. The two men stopped near the summit of a heather-covered spur, overlooking the castle. Cummings took a few steps forward, mounting to the crest, and then with that instinctive reverence, which one must be very young or very pure instantly to respond to, raised his cap. Bleak, barren, desolate, perched like an eyrie upon the peak of a lonely moor, Glune held herself against the winds of heaven. Storms might come, storms did come, thunder would break, lightning and gales destroy, this or that avenue of trees. The spaces in the forest, the gaps and rents in the more cultivated landscape of the drive only served to give a clearer view of the severe outline of the grey building, about which such green things as strove to grow were ruthlessly cut down. Some houses are almost human in their characters and impressions. In an English hospital Cummings had once seen the death of a veteran pensioner, a corporal who had served at Balaclava under his grandfather. Something in the look of the rugged stone, defaced but defiant in its pride and poverty, recalled the light in the old man's dying eyes as he said, "I've served my time, sir, eighty years of it all told, and I've got my faculties to the end, which is more than many a man can boast." Glune seemed as if it would keep its faculties to the end too. The young man looked across to the further hills and down at the castle soberly. The grey of the afternoon had broken; the long, narrow windows opposite had captured the reflected light, a blood-red light which flamed out dazzlingly. The shadows of the pines and firs cut the rank grass of a neglected lawn immediately in front of the house; the glow of the sky was repeated in the running water of a little burn at the base of the hill. So far as eye could see, a chain of purple hills stretched loftily. Hills full of warmth and colour, and the mystery which compels a man's attention. So infinite, so eternal they seemed, that facing them the petty jars of daily life took their true value; and young as he was, Cummings realized in a flash that only what children call "big things" are of account in Heaven's reckoning—love, penitence, and sacrifice. "I'm not with you," he cried, stammering and stumbling over the hasty words. "What you say can't be true. A boy who lives here has got his chance. I bet you anything you like he'll make something of it. Stunted! narrow! He needn't be! Why, if the boy is only strong enough to climb these hills and look about him, he'll educate himself instinctively. Not in book lore, of course, but book lore isn't all, nor even much. Learning from Nature is like learning at your mother's knee, you can't forget it." He caught his breath uncomfortably, and then ran headlong on, as though he were ashamed of being ashamed to speak. "Both make one feel—why, more, they make one know—that there's a God in the machine somewhere." His companion had moved away. His limp showed very perceptibly at that moment. The western windows of Glune were dull red now, flushing and scintillating like rubies in a curious setting. Cummings stood still for a moment, obviously discomforted, his face brick-red from the rare effort of wrestling with unaccustomed thoughts. Then he ran on lightly for a yard or two, and joined his companion. "Rotten luck, the whole thing," he said good-naturedly. "Let's stop at the inn at Bruchill, and drink the poor little chap's health as we pass, eh? I'm sick to death of all this arguing." Brand raised his eyebrows. His face was livid, except where an angry smear of red had broken out below the cheek-bone. "Oh—were you arguing?" he asked. CHAPTER II "Suffering of body and soul is civil war."—MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON. Thrown upon his own resources practically from four years old, Richard Farquharson at ten was older than many boys of his age. His memories grouped themselves into scenes, one was his nightmare. That dreadful day! Did he really remember it, I wonder, or was it merely a mental landmark in that valley of vision to which his old nurse had taught him the way of escape from the harshness and austerities of his life at Glune? He thought of it sometimes with that strange sort of pride which very sensitive children, and children of a larger growth who have gone forward in spite of inward shrinking, feel when recalling at a safe distance an experience which at the time had strained their courage to breaking-point. A raw, cold day, the first of days which were all raw and cold; a line of dark shadows clustered together in the gloomy hall, forming an impenetrable circle about one central shadow deeper than the rest, across which heavy drapery, a pall, was thrown. Upon this unknown object the look of all was fixed; child as he was Richard shrank back from it. He longed and feared to know what was beneath. And presently strangers appeared, six figures, which formed into a rigid line led by one familiar shape, which for the first time struck terror into his heart—his mother. The circle broke, pierced by strangers; there was a dreadful grating sound as the men bent beneath the weight of a heavy burden. Then all filed out, and Richard, a tiny child, was left forgotten, in a silence that frightened him so that he could not cry out nor move, a paralyzing silence that clutched him with ghostly fingers and strengthened its grip as the massive door clanged against him with an echo that mocked the four-year-old child, left alone in a place where dishonoured Death had just held revel. His nurse remembered him, and ran back to fetch him five minutes later. But that five minutes of mental agony had done a work which was never to be effaced. The powers of evil had come paralyzingly close, and nothing can compare with the terrors of helpless childhood. Like dying saints, children have eyes to see what is invisible to others. Children's dreams are not necessarily pleasant. There are some whose souls are laid bare to the onslaughts of devils as well as angels. Even the deaths of good men and women are not always, nor even often, peaceful. To Richard, cowed and trembling—picture him; a small boy in a white sailor suit, with tiny fingers battering vainly at the great oak door whose latch was beyond his reach!—the five minutes of desertion spelled eternity. The Bible had already taught him that a day might be as a thousand years. His momentary vision as to the real meaning of the verse was kept alive in him thereafter by the weekly sermons of the Forbeggie minister, who loved to dilate—under some fifteen or sixteen headings—upon the torture of impenitents by cheerful means of "worms of the damned that dieth not and fire that is never to be quenched." So much for the dark side of the picture, but Richard had many compensations. Fide et Fortitudine was the motto of his race; he learnt its lessons early. Let him but keep his inheritance, and he would not grudge one of those many supperless occasions which helped to retain the mere necessities of a clan deriving from Macduff, Thane of Fife. He loved his land, and throve quite joyously upon austerities that would have broken the spirit of a less hardy lad. His natural reserve was fostered by enforced solitude. The days went swiftly. To be more or less alone in the world, except for a collie dog, is certainly not to be unhappy when every other bird comes to your call, when stoats and ferrets even are familiar friends. Richard's mind, dependent upon nature for its amusements, was seldom called upon to translate the word disappointment. The peace which wrapped him round became his dear possession, and was peopled with invisible playmates. There was a hut in the park near the river, some three miles away, where Dan, the collie, and he played the parts of settlers in a land full of enemies. He knew the range of every object within view. He altered the defences day after day, laying down wire entanglements, building rough stockades, or primitive trenches, with loopholes and head cover, in all of which Dan took a profound interest. Richard was his own stern critic, and yesterday's work was pulled down on the morrow, until a day came when, after subjecting it to the severest tests he knew, he found it good. Continually burrowing in dirt, growing in experience, could the heart of boy ask more? Nature is a jealous mistress, but she gives openly of her best to the lover who lives with her as whole-heartedly as did Richard. He never felt the want of toys or ordinary amusements. The elation that came to him at times was very sweet and bore him far. His eye and ear presently became so well trained that from a great distance he could detect a moving object, and with the wind blowing gently towards him, and his ear to the ground, could distinguish a single footfall on a path nearly a mile away, like any scout. Blindfold, or in the dark, he made his way across Glune without a slip. Books of travels in far countries, stories of Burnham and other members of the brotherhood of the intrepid, taught him to destroy the tracks of his incoming and outgoing, so that every step of the way to special places of concealment had in it the thrill, the enchantment of an adventure. To one who has never been to a theatre, a country life becomes a beautiful play of birth and death; things move and have their being, that he may see them pass to their appointed end. The green earth is the stage, Nature the playwright, and God Himself the Great Scene Painter. Richard's tutor, a half-blind village schoolmaster who came for three hours daily when Mrs. Farquharson could afford to pay his meagre fees, was the only "outside" person whom he ever saw. Between the boy and his mother, there was neither freedom nor confidence. He shrank away if he heard the rustle of her dress. Her presence in the house acted upon him like the presence of death. It was as if she stood with uplifted hand always ready to strike some covert blow at one of his innocent pleasures. He told her nothing; what was there to tell? She looked upon the things he loved with terror. Morning and evening found him bidden to stand, mute and resentful, beside her erect form in its accustomed place, a high-backed chair in the study where his father's papers and diaries were collected. Her frozen lips—lips tightened into a line so hard that he always thought it must hurt her to move them, would touch his forehead stiffly in greeting, as one touches a thing with loathing and abhorrence. Of bosom throbbing at his approach, and the light of motherhood in her eyes, which she stifled as she heard him coming, he knew nothing. He would leave her rejoicing at a hard duty again accomplished. That she longed for him hungrily all day long, that she stealthily followed him to his play, that her spare tense figure was often shaken by passionate longing to clasp the slender limbs that had once lain warm and quiet beneath her heart, he never knew. Only the exceptional man or woman bears the strain of a great shame and sorrow with no outside help. Mrs. Farquharson's pride in her son went side by side with ceaseless fear. Richard's fatal likeness to her dead firstborn, dearer far than Richard because he was the child of early wifehood, stabbed her heart. She had loved that child too well; forgetfulness of God by the mother had been visited by God upon the son, she told herself. And to watch another pay the price of your own sin is sin's most bitter penalty. In Douglas Farquharson's case, there had been that sudden extraordinary return to a vicious type which occurs occasionally in a family that has for centuries bred fine men and fair women. When, page by page, after his death the record that proved his guilt was spelled out by his mother, the only plea she could urge in his defence was that the selfishness of her own love, given to man instead of God, had marred and distorted the human image by its very fervour. She had "counted it a glory to make vain things." Her care had been, like the potter, "to strive with the goldsmiths and silversmiths." The voices of husband and child had made such triumphant music in her ears, that God's sublime call was drowned; she had bartered Heaven for a brief hour of human rapture, to find that God was a God of vengeance as well as love and love a two-edged sword which can wound or kill. That very night, on her bedroom wall, she thought she saw a warning written in letters of flame. "His heart is ashes and his hope vain earth, his life more base than clay." ... "Being himself mortal, he fashioneth a dead thing with his hands." Day after day, as Richard grew stronger and more handsome, she asked herself if he were born only to inherit his brother's legacy of dishonour. He looked frank and open enough, but eyes that shone as purely as his had been the casket of lies, and lips which had met hers more easily had given themselves to what was incredibly base. The dead are often nearer to us than the living. Mrs. Farquharson's dead were scourges. When Douglas killed himself the shock broke his father's heart. By day and night his mother made silent pilgrimage to two lonely graves. One morning, drawn early to the cool solitude of the river after a sleepless night, she saw her boy bathing, a slim white figure without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with every muscle developed, and skin like satin, shining purely against the deep banks and undergrowth; a picture framed by pines, through which the light of the autumn dawn came slowly. Hidden from him, she watched with look wide and tender, with eyes as moist as the supple limbs from which he shook the water of the burn, standing strong and vigorous, breathing quickly after his swim, unconsciously rejoicing in his power. Bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, she thrilled again with proud remembrance that she had borne pain for him and given him life.... Then his characteristic gesture the impatient pushing of the wet hair from his forehead, reminded her suddenly of his brother. She shrank back as if a spirit of evil pursued her. Between herself and God there was a wall too high for mercy or prayers to pierce. Her religion forbade her to pray for her dead—prayers for the dead were heresy. In the blindness of her despair she invented a species of soul crucifixion striking with almost frenzied agony at the root of her love for Richard. He at least should never know how she loved him; discipline and duty should be the twin lights to guide his way, never the false light of a selfish love. After this she instituted a new and more terrible rule of discipline, both for herself and her son. Richard came to her daily as before, but now even the conventional kiss was denied him, and three hours' study of complicated points of doctrine took its place. The fate of sinners was the prevailing theme, the punishment of sins of whose very existence he was unaware. In the narrow hot room he would stand rebellious, either answering at random or not answering at all. Outside, bees hummed and birds sang, and insect life was joyous. The world he loved stretched very far in infinite fairness, God's exquisite world that had hitherto raised his thoughts to its Maker. "His brother the wind, his sister the earth," had seemed to point the way to a God worth loving. But how could he but hate the dreadful God of the ancient law into whose power it was so terrible to fall, the God who raised His hands only to strike, who broke the heart of His children as men break stones by the wayside, and had so little pity for the innocent child of shame? Yet this was the God with whom he was brought in hourly contact, this Being who saw evil where Richard was convinced no evil was. Why was it wrong, for instance, to love inanimate things so passionately, to weep at a bird's death and rejoice at its birth? Why should not his face light up at sight of the small furred and feathered things, which were his only friends? He would escape for hours to be in their company, and pay the penalty for such adventures later, when, sought for with terror, he was met with punishment and humiliation. Only when he was alone would passionate tears come, choking sobs that shook the boy's body and were succeeded by stoniness. Sorrow may melt the heart like dew; rebellion breaks it. Night after night, prostrate upon the floor of her room, Mrs. Farquharson would pray for her son with tears of blood, as one who would wrest grace from the Almighty. And night after night, in his attic, Richard would lie awake, lonely and impenitent, thinking himself loveless and neglected while love was burning at his very door. CHAPTER III
The picture-gallery ranked high in Richard's list of compensations. Although it was the sanctuary of fine records, he always associated it with the last definite memory of his elder brother. Two or three days before Douglas chose that easy way of shifting responsibilities which it takes a brave man or woman to evade, Richard had been carried pick-a-back by his elder brother down the long gallery; had been shown, with a certain solemnity, pathetic in view of what was so soon to occur, portrait upon portrait of their ancestors, notably men who were famous for good rather than great deeds. There were two especial portraits before which they lingered, Richard remembered afterwards—that of their great-great-grandfather, upon whose tomb, by the wish of his country and his tenantry, the motto, "Noble by birth, noble in all things else," had been engraved; and one of his wife, known in her day as "The Ivory Mayde," because of the dazzling fairness of her skin. A contemporary poet wrote of her—
"Something worth while, old chap, to have that said of one," Douglas had commented, and Richard, bored at the delay, overcome by the gloom and seclusion of the gallery, and long array of still figures in unaccustomed clothes; remembered butting at him with his head until his brother cried out for mercy and moved on. The portraits—the knights in armour who guarded the entrance to the rooms so jealously, awed him still, but not as of old. They were his friends now, like the squirrels, and passionate love and pride thrilled him each time he entered the gallery. The deeds they had done, the records they had left, few even in Scotland could match. The blood they shed made a sea of glory which reflected the light of God; merely to cross the threshold was an act of faith. Richard could have prayed to some of these more easily than to an unknown God. He knew their histories, man for man, woman for woman. Before some he habitually paused longer than before others. Had the veil invisible between that world and his been rent, and the familiar shades taken fleshly form before his eyes, and called to him, he would not have known fear. He was theirs and they were his; he faced them buoyantly, with head erect. His mother and nurse shunned the gallery, believing it to be haunted—so much the better! Time after time, generally at dead of night, but sometimes even in the day, Richard himself had fancied he heard the stir and rustle of a silken skirt close beside him, and saw the flash of some dead soldier's dirk. Whereupon, the moment being critical, a cold draught from some open door would generally blow in upon him, keen and sharp like the wind in mountain heather, to announce some ill-timed interruption of his nurse. Afterwards—a shrill scolding and imprisonment in a room from whose window he would immediately get out. Richard had no compunction as to flight when it was thus forced upon him, but by the time he returned the dream unfortunately, like many a later dream, would have had time to break. "Do you think that is what dreams are made for, Dan—only to break?" he asked his collie sometimes. Whereupon Dan would look up with the profoundly wistful negation of one who, although dumb, is wiser than his master. |
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