第154章

All through the terrible time, the sense of help and comfort and protection in the presence of the young tutor, went on growing in the mind of Arctura. It was nothing to her--what could it be?--that he was the son of a very humble pair; that he had been a shepherd, and a cow-herd, and a farm labourer--less than nothing. She never thought of the facts of his life except sympathetically, seeking to enter into the feelings of his memorial childhood and youth; she would never have known anything of those facts but for their lovely intimacies of all sorts with Nature--nature divine, human, animal, cosmical. By sharing with her his emotional history, Donal had made its facts precious to her; through them he had gathered his best--by home and by prayer, by mother and father, by sheep and mountains and wind and sky. And now he was to her a tower of strength, a refuge, a strong city, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She trusted him the more that he never invited her trust--never put himself before her; for always before her he set Life, the perfect heart-origin of her and his yet unperfected humanity, teaching her to hunger and thirst after being righteous like God, with the assurance of being filled. She had once trusted in Miss Carmichael, not with her higher being, only with her judgment, and both her judgment and her friend had misled her. Donal had taught her that obedience, not to man but to God, was the only guide to holy liberty, and so had helped her to break the bonds of those traditions which, in the shape of authoritative utterances of this or that church, lay burdens grievous to be borne upon the souls of men. For Christ, against all the churches, seemed to her to express Donal's mission. An air of peace, an atmosphere of summer twilight after the going down of the sun, seemed to her to precede him and announce his approach with a radiation felt as rest. She questioned herself nowise about him. Falling in love was a thing unsuggested to her; if she was in what is called danger, it was of a better thing.

The next day she did not appear: mistress Brookes had persuaded her to keep her bed again for a day or two. There was nothing really the matter with her, she said herself, but she was so tired she did not care to lift her head from the pillow. She had slept well, and was troubled about nothing. She sent to beg Mr. Grant to let Davie go and read to her, and to give him something to read, good for him as well as for her.

Donal did not see Davie again till the next morning.

"Oh, Mr. Grant!" he said, "you never saw anything so pretty as Arkie is in bed! She is so white, and so sweet! and she speaks with a voice so gentle and low! She was so kind to me for going to read to her! I never saw anybody like her! She looks as if she had just said her prayers, and God had told her she should have everything she wanted."

Donal wondered a little, but hoped more. Surely she must be finding rest in the consciousness of God! But why was she so white? Was she going to die? A pang shot to his heart: if she were to go from the castle, it would be hard to stay in it, even for the sake of Davie!