登陆注册
5251200000021

第21章 CHAPTER X(1)

The mist had floated away, and the moor was drenched with golden sunshine when we went back to the castle. As we entered the hall I heard the sound of a dog howling, and spoke of it to one of the men-servants who had opened the door.

"That sounds like Gelert. Is he shut up somewhere?"

Gelert was a beautiful sheep-dog who belonged to Feargus and was his heart's friend.

I allowed him to be kept in the courtyard.

The man hesitated before he answered me, with a curiously grave face.

"It is Gelert, miss. He is howling for his master. We were obliged to shut him in the stables."

"But Feargus ought to have reached here by this time," I was beginning.

I was stopped because I found Angus Macayre almost at my elbow. He had that moment come out of the library. He put his hand on my arm.

`Will ye come with me?" he said, and led me back to the room he had just left. He kept his hand on my arm when we all stood together inside, Hector and I looking at him in wondering question. He was going to tell me something-- we both saw that.

"It is a sad thing you have to hear," he said.

"He was a fine man, Feargus, and a most faithful servant. He went to see his mother last night and came back late across the moor.

There was a heavy mist, and he must have lost his way. A shepherd found his body in a tarn at daybreak. They took him back to his father's home."

I looked at Hector MacNairn and again at Angus. "But it couldn't be Feargus," I cried.

"I saw him an hour ago. He passed us playing on his pipes. He was playing a new tune I had never heard before a wonderful, joyous thing. I both heard and SAW him!"

Angus stood still and watched me. They both stood still and watched me, and even in my excitement I saw that each of them looked a little pale.

"You said you did not hear him at first, but you surely saw him when he passed so near,"

I protested. "I called to him, and he took off his bonnet, though he did not stop. He was going so quickly that perhaps he did not hear me call his name."

What strange thing in Hector's look checked me? Who knows?

"You DID see him, didn't you?" I asked of him.

Then he and Angus exchanged glances, as if asking each other to decide some grave thing.

It was Hector MacNairn who decided it.

"No," he answered, very quietly, "I neither saw nor heard him, even when he passed.

But you did."

"I did, quite plainly," I went on, more and more bewildered by the way in which they kept a sort of tender, awed gaze fixed on me. "You remember I even noticed that he looked pale. I laughed, you know, when I said he looked almost like one of the White People--"

Just then my breath caught itself and I stopped. I began to remember things--hundreds of things.

Angus spoke to me again as quietly as Hector had spoken.

"Neither Jean nor I ever saw Wee Brown Elspeth," he said--"neither Jean nor I. But you did. You have always seen what the rest of us did not see, my bairn--always."

I stammered out a few words, half in a whisper. "I have always seen what you others could not see? WHAT--HAVE--I--SEEN?"

But I was not frightened. I suppose I could never tell any one what strange, wide, bright places seemed suddenly to open and shine before me. Not places to shrink back from--oh no! no! One could be sure, then--SURE! Feargus had lifted his bonnet with that extraordinary triumph in his look--even Feargus, who had been rather dour.

"You called them the White People," Hector MacNairn said.

Angus and Jean had known all my life.

A very old shepherd who had looked in my face when I was a baby had said I had the eyes which "SAW." It was only the saying of an old Highlander, and might not have been remembered.

Later the two began to believe I had a sight they had not. The night before Wee Brown Elspeth had been brought to me Angus had read for the first time the story of Dark Malcolm, and as they sat near me on the moor they had been talking about it. That was why he forgot himself when I came to ask them where the child had gone, and told him of the big, dark man with the scar on his forehead. After that they were sure.

They had always hidden their knowledge from me because they were afraid it might frighten me to be told. I had not been a strong child.

They kept the secret from my relatives because they knew they would dislike to hear it and would not believe, and also would dislike me as a queer, abnormal creature. Angus had fears of what they might do with doctors and severe efforts to obliterate from my mind my "nonsense," as they would have been sure to call it.

The two wise souls had shielded me on every side.

"It was better that you should go on thinking it only a simple, natural thing," Angus said.

"And as to natural, what IS natural and what is not? Man has not learned all the laws of nature yet. Nature's a grand, rich, endless thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings that seem new on it. They're not new. They were always written there. But they were not unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new law, only laws read with stronger eyes."

Angus and I had always been very fond of the Bible--the strange old temple of wonders, full of all the poems and tragedies and histories of man, his hates and battles and loves and follies, and of the Wisdom of the universe and the promises of the splendors of it, and which even those of us who think ourselves the most believing neither wholly believe nor will understand.

We had pored over and talked of it. We had never thought of it as only a pious thing to do.

The book was to us one of the mystic, awe- inspiring, prophetic marvels of the world.

That was what made me say, half whispering:

"I have wondered and wondered what it meant --that verse in Isaiah: `Behold the former things are come to pass and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.'

Perhaps it means only the unrolling of the scroll."

"Aye, aye!" said Angus; "it is full of such deep sayings, and none of us will listen to them."

同类推荐
  • 长目电禅师语录

    长目电禅师语录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 太上洞玄灵宝消禳火灾经

    太上洞玄灵宝消禳火灾经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 伅真陀罗所问宝如来三昧经

    伅真陀罗所问宝如来三昧经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 本草纲目拾遗

    本草纲目拾遗

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 太虚集录

    太虚集录

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 皇族刺客

    皇族刺客

    一个退役老刺客在深山里捡到了一个婴儿,随后将他领养,莱亚的故事开始了.......
  • 搭讪宝典:快速赢得信任的黄金话术

    搭讪宝典:快速赢得信任的黄金话术

    搭讪,是指想跟人接近,或者为了应付尴尬局面而主动去跟陌生人讲话,其目的就是为了结识对方。简单地讲,搭讪技巧就是跟陌生人交流的话术。《搭讪宝典:快速赢得信任黄金话术》内容丰富全面,搭讪的各种情景、案例、场合、功用、本质分析、训练方法、进阶层次、必杀秘技等,全部收入,真正做到让您拥有一本,从此终身受益。
  • 聪明女人要读男人心理学:男人那些不想让你知道的秘密

    聪明女人要读男人心理学:男人那些不想让你知道的秘密

    这是一本为女人量身定做的男性心理书,它不仅对男人的内心世界进行了最全面、最深刻的挖掘,而且总结了最实用、最有效的应对男人的技巧。有了它,即使不会读心术,你也可以轻松掌握男人的所思所想,并在交往中赢得主动。
  • 宝重《弟子规》

    宝重《弟子规》

    今天这个时代,依然可用狄更斯《双城记》刚刚开始的几句话来描述:“这是最好的时代,这是最坏的时代;这是最聪明的时代,这是最愚蠢的时代;这是信任的时代,这是欺骗的时代……”
  • 死鸳鸯,再相遇

    死鸳鸯,再相遇

    她与他还真的做了一对死鸳鸯,该死的老头给的什么破玉啊,却让她与他在陌生的未来重新相遇,揭开的不是当年的秘密,揭开的是刻骨的伤痛,那个叫什么左冷的,简直是个恶魔,那个叫什么亚虐楠的,说她身上有什么?蝴蝶印记?穿越过来的身体却隐藏着天大的秘密,一旦被发现,她就有生命危险。情节虚构,请勿模仿!
  • 至此终年

    至此终年

    如果你遇到一个老师,曾是个外科医生。十三岁那年,他和你的母亲在同一间医院被抢救,却意外地,在六七年后,听不见声音,上不了手术台,拿起书,成为了一个普通的大学老师。如果,他和你一样,有个遗弃自己的母亲,不能说出口的父亲。如果,他是因为一场举国的救死扶伤,损失了该有的健康。如果,他爱你。你会舍得,不爱他吗?——得顾平生,平生已无憾。
  • 逆光的幸福

    逆光的幸福

    霍香,八零后的天蝎女,注定是几代单传的霍家未来的掌门人。霍家的掌权派挖空心思地想把她打造成一条龙而她却执意的要做一条自由的虫。不够乖的她经常和父辈勾心斗角,甚至是恶语相向……一系列的家庭变故让我行我素的她学会了在妥协与抗争中蜕变成长。朱未是她的“同桌的他”,无疾而终的初恋让她痛彻心扉。她的大学同学谭水清对她情有独钟,不止一次地发动“护香”运动。黯然神伤的他曾远渡英伦,不懈的坚持最终让他抱得美人归。梁家栋是她感情生活中的不速之客,与霍香在酒吧偶然重逢的他,痛不欲生的霍香历经了一次生死之后,以为自己可以摆脱噩梦的缠绕。谁知侵犯她的人却阴魂不散……
  • 节气里的村庄(上)

    节气里的村庄(上)

    最后一枝腊梅绽成一株情韵的除夕时,大地像突然从被窝里掀了出来,万物还未来得及躲藏,大片大片地祼露着,偶有棵性急的小草从地里露出个尖儿了,羞怯怯的,杨柳梢像发了疯似的转眼间就泛出微绿,风虽然还透着寒意,但细长的柳枝扭着慵懒的腰肢尽情挑逗着,风,就忘情地满世界奔跑……
  • 重生之首席宝贝

    重生之首席宝贝

    苍白的医院走廊上,到处都弥漫着药水的味道,韩薇薇低着头,看着又一个年轻的女孩从自己的面前走过,一滴鲜红的血液落在地上、接着又是一滴……地上练成了一条血线,她恐惧的看着那女孩的大腿早已被鲜血染红,身体也忍不住的颤抖起来。“韩薇薇!”护士站在门口喊道,“韩薇薇……”“在,在这里!”回答的不是韩薇薇,而是陪她来流产的男人钟引辉,男人扶着韩薇薇站起来,几乎是把她推到手术室的门口,“……
  • 红线小娇妃

    红线小娇妃

    她本是个孤儿,却运气好的被缘神捡了当徒弟从此为各种情侣牵线。而他本是天之骄子,却为了她离家,多年不归。他等她出师,护她,宠她,等她完成一切,证明自己,成就自己。然后带她回家。