The autumn brought terrible storms. Many fishing boats came to grief. Of some, the crews lost everything: of others, the loss of their lives delivered their crews from smaller losses. There were many bereaved in the village, and Donal went about among them, doing what he could, and getting help for them where his own ability would not reach their necessity. Lady Arctura wanted no persuasion to go with him in some of his visits; and the intercourse she thus gained with humanity in its simpler forms, of which she had not had enough for the health of her own nature, was of high service to her.
Perhaps nothing helps so much to believe in the Father, as the active practical love of the brother. If he who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, can ill love God whom he hath not seen, then he who loves his brother must surely find it the easier to love God! Arctura found that to visit the widow and the fatherless in their afflictions; to look on and know them as her kind; to enter into their sorrows, and share the elevating influence of grief genuine and simple, the same in every human soul, was to draw near to God. She met him in his children. For to honour, love, and be just to our neighbour, is religion; and he who does these things will soon find that he cannot live without the higher part of religion, the love of God. If that do not follow, the other will sooner or later die away, leaving the man the worse for having had it. She found her way to God easier through the crowd of her fellows; while their troubles took her off her own, set them at a little distance from her, and so put it in her power to understand them better.
One day after the fishing boats had gone out, rose a terrible storm.
Some of them made for the harbour again--such as it was; others kept out to sea; Stephen Kennedy's boat came ashore bottom upward. His body was cast on the sands close to the spot where Donal dragged the net from the waves. There was sorrow afresh through the village:
Kennedy was a favourite; and his mother was left childless. No son would any more come sauntering in with his long slouch in the gloamin'; and whether she would ever see him again--to know him--who could tell! For the common belief does not go much farther than paganism in yielding comfort to those whose living loves have disappeared--the fault not of Christianity, but of Christians.
The effect of the news upon Forgue I have some around for conjecturing: I believe it made him care a little less about marrying the girl, now that he knew no rival ready to take her; and feel also that he had one enemy the less, one danger the less, in the path he would like to take. Within a week after, he left the castle, and if his father knew where he went, he was the only one who did. He had been pressing him to show some appearance of interest in his cousin; Forgue had professed himself unequal to the task at present: if he might go away for a while, he said, he would doubtless find it easier when he returned.
The storms were over, the edges and hidden roots had begun to dream of spring, and Arctura had returned to her own room to sleep, when one afternoon she came to the schoolroom and told Donal she had had the terrible dream again.
"This time," she said, "I came out, in my dream, on the great stair, and went up to my room, and into bed, before I waked. But I dare not ask mistress Brookes whether she saw me--"
"You do not imagine you were out of the room?" said Donal.
"I cannot tell. I hope not. If I were to find I had been, it would drive me out of my senses! I was thinking all day about the lost room: I fancy it had something to do with that."
"We must find the room, and have done with it!" said Donal.
"Are you so sure we can?" she asked, her face brightening.
"If there be one, and you will help me, I think we can," he answered.
"I will help you."
"Then first we will try the shaft of the music-chimney. That it has never smoked, at least since those wires were put there, makes it something to question--though the draught across it might doubtless have prevented it from being used. It may be the chimney to the very room. But we will first try to find out whether it belongs to any room we know. I will get a weight and a cord: the wires will be a plague, but I think we can pass them. Then we shall see how far the weight goes down, and shall know on what floor it is arrested. That will be something gained: the plane of inquiry will be determined.
Only there may be a turn in the chimney, preventing the weight from going to the bottom."
"When shall we set about it?" said Arctura, almost eagerly.
"At once," replied Donal.
She went to get a shawl.
Donal went to the gardener's tool-house, and found a suitable cord.
There was a seven-pound weight, but that would not pass the wires!
He remembered an old eight-day clock on a back stair, which was never going. He got out its heavier weight, and carried it, with the cord and the ladder, to his own stair--at the foot of which was lady Arctura--waiting for him.
There was that in being thus associated with the lovely lady; in knowing that peace had began to visit her through him, that she trusted him implicitly, looking to him for help and even protection; in knowing that nothing but wrong to her could be looked for from uncle or cousin, and that he held what might be a means of protecting her, should undue influence be brought to bear upon her--there was that in all this, I say, that stirred to its depth the devotion of Donal's nature. With the help of God he would foil her enemies, and leave her a free woman--a thing well worth a man's life! Many an angel has been sent on a smaller errand!
Such were his thoughts as he followed Arctura up the stair, she carrying the weight and the cord, he the ladder, which it was not easy to get round the screw of the stair. Arctura trembled with excitement as she ascended, grew frightened as often as she found she had outstripped him, waited till the end of the ladder came poking round, and started again before the bearer appeared.
